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THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER

Clinton: Looking Forward to Hugging It Out; New Details on Officer Who Killed Teen; Palestinians: Cease-Fire Extended; Tourist's Body Turns Up In Blood-Smeared Suitcase

Aired August 13, 2014 - 16:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HABERMAN: And beyond the Syria point where she described the decision not to intervene early to aid rebels in Syria early on in the conflict there as a failure which was very pointed. We knew that she disagreed with him on Syria. We had never heard her use that language before.

But the difference here, too, is that she was asked about what White House aides have privately, the reporters repeatedly described as President Obama's sort of core foreign policy doctrine, which is "Don't do stupid stuff," quote, unquote and sometimes said in a saucier way. And she said that is not an organizing principle. Great nations need organizing principles. "Don't do stupid stuff" is not an organizing principle, and she was asked what hers was. And she said peace, progress and prosperity, I believe. It was three "P's," very different than his.

And so yes, that is a criticism. They do have actual philosophical differences. For somebody who needs to be seen as authentic this time around, this presents a real challenge.

TAPPER: Josh Rogan for "The Daily Beast" came on the show yesterday, and he reported that Obama has been outraged by the criticism, referring to suggestions that he could have done something differently, backing moderate Syrian rebels and, thus, stemming the tide of ISIS. He called it horse -- hockey, whatever you want to call it.

And his former senior aide, David Axelrod, tweeted, quote, "Just to clarify, 'Don't do stupid stuff' means stuff like occupying Iraq in the first place, which was tragically bad decision." A tragically bad decision made by President Bush but also voted for, Maggie, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

HABERMAN: Hillary Rodham Clinton. And I saw you noted that on Twitter and I think as you know, I read that tweet from Axelrod exactly the way you did. David Axelrod is a professional communicator; understands very well how Twitter works. He's a frequent user of it. I think he knows exactly what he was doing and I think he was stirring the pot.

I think he wanted to make clear to Clinton and her people. And what was interesting was at the same time the White House was actually not trying to directly inflame this. They were not directly addressing this on the record. Axelrod went and did it anyway. I think they want to make clear there will be repercussions if you come at Obama in a certain way that I think is unfair.

TAPPER: Others, of course, who voted for that war include the vice president, but we don't have to go there right now.

Maggie Haberman, thank you so much.

HABERMAN: Thanks.

TAPPER: Coming up next, police still refusing to name the officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, but they are finally releasing some details about that night and why they say the officer felt the need to shoot. Will it be enough to calm protesters on the streets?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Now time for "The National Lead."

In the days since an unarmed teenager was shot and killed by police, we have seen chaos erupt in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and we've heard witnesses step forward, claiming the teen was surrendering at the time he was killed. His hands were up.

But in the midst of all the controversy we have heard very little about the officer involved. Until now. The police chief is still refusing to name who shot 18-year-old Michael Brown citing concerns for the officer's safety. Just moments ago he revealed that his officers are being trained to help try to heal some of the wounds between cops and members of the community.

The chief also said that Brown's body has been released to his family, and he's being more forthcoming about what he says lead up to the deadly altercation and how it has impacted the officer involved.

CNN correspondent Jason Carroll is live in Ferguson, Missouri. Jason, what can you tell us?

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, just a few more details about that officer. The Ferguson police chief telling me that that officer actually had an injury to his face, Jake, and also that the officer is still emotionally rattled about what happened that day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice-over): New details emerging about the moments before an officer shot and killed this unarmed teenager. The police chief in Ferguson, Missouri, telling me the officer sustained an injury in an altercation before the shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The officer was taken to the hospital and treated for a swollen face. That's pretty much all I know.

CARROLL: Police said Michael Brown attacked the officer in his car and then tried to take his gun. The officer, they say, then opened fire. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a devastating thing to -- to take a life

under any circumstances, and so he's going to have to deal with that. He's very shaken about what happened that day, and the aftermath.

CARROLL: Dorian Johnson was with Michael Brown on that day; and he says his friend was unarmed and his hands were in the air when he was shot.

DORIAN JOHNSON, FRIEND OF MICHAEL BROWN: At no point in time did they struggle over the weapon, because the weapon was already drawn on us. So we were more trying to get out of the way of the angle or aim of the weapon besides going towards the weapon, because it was drawn at us already.

CARROLL: Tensions are running high since 18-year-old Brown was shot while he and Johnson walked home from a store. Johnson says the officer is white. There are calls for the officer's name to be released, but officials aren't naming the officer involved in the shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was also concern for the officer's life. There has been death threats to many of our officers. Hackers have tried to find personal information and display it online in social media, asking people to target myself, council members, our police chief. The county police chief's own home was put up on Instagram and people asked to go there and assault him.

CARROLL: The lawyer representing the Brown family says the officer's name should be released.

BENJAMIN CRUMP, REPRESENTING BROWN'S FAMILY: That doesn't give the community confidence. That doesn't make it transparent. And remember, we have a long way to go before this community starts to believe that the police are going to give them all of the answers and not try to sweep it under the rug.

CARROLL: Protests have erupted in the St. Louis suburb since the shooting on Saturday. Overnight, police fired tear gas at demonstrators who threw bottles at them. The latest protest follows clashes with police and looting on Sunday and Monday.

Michael Brown Sr., the teen's father, renewed calls for people to steer clear of violence and says he just wants justice for his son.

MICHAEL BROWN SR., VICTIM'S FATHER: I need all of us to come together and do this right, the right way. The right way so we can get something done about this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: The family wants more transparency, more information released about the investigation, but the police chief tells me they're being very reluctant to do that. And the reason for that, Jake, is because there are still more witnesses out there that they have to interview, and they don't want a lot of information out there in the media that might unduly influence the people they still have to speak with -- Jake.

TAPPER: Jason Carroll, thank you so much.

This case has attracted national attention with civil rights leaders calling for a full-scale investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. And joining us now live from Birmingham is the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Reverend Jackson, good to see you. You wrote an op-ed that appeared in today's edition of "USA Today" entitled "There's a Ferguson Near You." What do you mean by that?

REV. JESSE JACKSON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER: Right across the country you have these dry (ph) strips of urban alienation where you have high levels of mortality and of unemployment and lack of trade skill training, first-class jail, second-class schools and tremendous alienation. And low urban plan of policy reconstruction. And these dry chips (ph) and an incident can spark an explosion.

You may recall the -- back during the -- in the '60s in the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) report, poverty created a rebellion. Some combination of these repressive tactics by police and vast alienation created the crisis.

TAPPER: Of course, the Ferguson police disagree. They say that the officer's -- the officer was being assaulted to a degree. He was reaching for his gun. There are very little -- very -- there is very little that we know for sure about what happened, right? Wouldn't you agree with that?

JACKSON: Right, but you know -- but you know, you have a town of seven percent African-American police forces like 53 whites and three African-Americans is not representative.

I mean, really the Department of Justice should be looking to make of that in the police department, since they receive federal funds. And you will see it should be more balanced in the police department horizontally. And it clearly is a case of alienation and distrust.

I would hope that the self-destructive violence would end. And to hear the voice of those unemployed and to keep the police name concealed sounds like -- sounds so much like we've heard Trayvon. We've heard what Zimmerman had to say. We've not heard what the guy with the gun has to say. So the guy with the gun keeps talking. The guy who's dead, they can't find his weapon.

TAPPER: In the same op-ed you also write, quote, "Michael Brown has joined a long line of blacks, especially black males, who have recently been killed by white men and/or white police officers, who claim reasonable fear of self-defense. Chicago has experienced a rash of young blacks in gangs killing each other over territory or in retaliation, so it's not just whites killing young black males," unquote.

JACKSON: Jack, the thing... TAPPER: Yes.

JACKSON: The thing -- blacks are in the zone. If a white kills a black it's rebellion time. If a black kills a white it's still justice time. Black on black or white on white is a kind of concession. The fact is nobody has the right to kill anybody.

What makes the trip (ph) in Chicago so tragic is that you close 50 public stores; you close 50 drugstores, 75 grocery stores and 80,000 a home in vacant lots, for unemployment, that is a dry chip. And a spark to trigger it. And I hope that does not happen unless there is some plan for reconstruction and for urban policy. Right now, it does not exist.

TAPPER: We've seen peaceful demonstrations -- demonstrations in Ferguson since Michael Brown's death. But we've also seen some violent confrontations with police, vandalism, looting. You have condemned the violence as recently as a few seconds ago. And obviously, we still don't have all of the information about what happened in this case.

What do you think it will take to stop these kinds of incidents -- I'm talking about the shooting of Michael Brown -- from happening?

JACKSON: We focus on the incident of violence, but the violence is these people bought homes and banks and use pre -- use schemes, subprime lending to take homes and grind them into a hole. Guns in, drugs in, jobs out. That was violence, too.

We bail out the banks and then locking in the lending in reinvestment.

Alienation is the profile our youth and lock them up. The police retention is much too high. That's why police forces should be more representative. I, for the life of me, cannot understand the 7 percent African-American police department, 53 whites and three blacks. It just not -- is not good police composition.

TAPPER: Reverend Jackson, thank you so much, as always.

Coming up, a murder mystery in Bali after a young couple hail a cab and put a suitcase in a cab and walk off. In the luggage, a body of a wealthy American woman.

Coming up, new details on the strange case baffling police and later she stole the show opposite Hollywood's biggest star and even landed him in real life too. We will remember actress, Lauren Bacall, and the line that made her famous.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Some breaking news now, perhaps the fears that the cease-fire between Israelis and Hamas have been shattered were premature, a member of the Palestinian delegation negotiating in Cairo says that the cease-fire, which was supposed to expire at the end of this hour in just 10 minutes has been extended for another five days.

This despite the Israelis accusing quote, "Gaza terrorists of firing a rocket into Israel about before the expiration. We'll continue to monitor events on the ground as they happen.

The Buried Lead now, it began as a familiar scene outside a posh resort in Bali. A young couple waving off help from the driver unloading the trunk with their luggage and then the driver says the couple walked back into the hotel and they didn't come back outside again.

And that's when the driver realized that the heavy silver suitcase that they have loaded into the back of the taxi was covered in blood. Our Pam Brown has the horrifying details in this very weird story -- Pamela.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, very disturbing, Jake. In fact, I just got off the phone with a family friend who actually knew this victim for around 30 years and he says that the victim was a warm, thoughtful, privileged -- she came from a privileged background and she was an academic who was a former aide to Senator Kennedy.

A family friend also says the 62-year-old victim had a tumultuous relationship with her daughter, but the family friend said had several run-ins with police and the daughter now in police custody in Bali in connection with her mother's death.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Found inside this bloody suitcase the badly beaten body of a Chicago woman, left inside a taxi trunk at the upscale St. Regis Hotel in Bali. Indonesian officials say the body of Sheila Von Weisemack was bundled into a hotel bedsheet and stuffed into the suitcase.

A forensic doctor says there were signs of a struggle. From the existing wound we found the victim was hit by a blunt object on her face and head, the doctor says. Her 19-year-old daughter heather and Tommy Schaefer were taken into custody Tuesday in connection with the grisly crime.

So far they haven't been charged. Police say the young couple hailed a cab at the St. Regis Hotel. When it arrived the cab driver told police they put the suitcase in the trunk and then went back inside the hotel and disappeared. The driver became suspicious and contacted hotel employees.

When they opened the trunk they saw blood on the luggage and drove it to a police station and that's where police made the gruesome discovery. Authorities say two smaller suitcases containing bloodied hotel towels were later found in the St. Regis garden seen here in this promotional video for the hotel.

Six miles away, police found Mack's daughter and Schaefer sleeping in another hotel. The couple said they had been attacked by an armed gang who killed Maxene, an affiliate Trans TV reported. The 62-year-old's death stunned her Chicago community.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She has a lot of friends and a lot of people knew her here and I think this will be a real shock.

BROWN: Just a day before her murder, Schaefer, a self-proclaimed rapper from Chicago tweeted this message, out of the country for a while, #blessed. How long he'll be out of the country is now in the hands of Indonesian authorities.

TOM FUENTES, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Americans have this delusional thought that they go overseas and think that they're in the United States. I'm going to call my attorney and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. When you're in another country, you're under their law. They could face the death penalty.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And according to Indonesian law, police can keep the couple in custody for up to 24 hours before they are named as suspects. If they are named, they could be held up to 20 days and a State Department official says the U.S. Embassy will seek permission to visit the couple and will provide information on the Indonesian legal process and a list of attorneys.

And also, Jake, the attorney appointed to this couple says that they do not want to make a comment at this time and we will stay on top of this story.

TAPPER: Such a bizarre and perplexing story.

BROWN: Really is.

TAPPER: It's not a good way to get away with a theoretical murder to put the person in a suitcase and put it in a cab.

BROWN: No. With blood all over the luggage.

TAPPER: I'm no expert.

BROWN: Are you sure?

TAPPER: Pamela Brown, thank you so much.

When we come back, she's forever be Humphrey Bogart's perfect foil and now one-half of the greatest American love story is reunited with her man. Remembering Lauren Bacall coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Time now for another sad Pop Culture Lead. Another somber note in a week already defined by sadness. Lauren Bacall simply known as the look passed away yesterday. The woman born, Betty Joan Perske, was 89. Bacall made her debut at just 19 in the move "To Have and Have Not" opposite Humphrey Bogart. She admitted a magnetic energy. She was steel with curves, he said. Bacall stole every second of

every scene in that first movie. The young Jewish girl from a middle- class New York family one-upping Hollywood's leading man. She stole Bogart's heart, too, on screen and off. Bacall even found the time to teach him how to do this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAUREN BACALL: You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Bogart and Bacall's marriage lasted only a short 12 years, overall too soon when Bogart died from throat cancer in 1957. His parting words to her, goodbye, kid, hurry back. At least today we can imagine that somewhere Bogey and Bacall are whistling again together at last.

That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer. He is next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.