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Hillary Clinton on Michael Brown; Ebola Epidemic Escalating; Interview with Former Jihadist

Aired August 29, 2014 - 08:30   ET

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


HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Not in America. We are better than that. We can do better. We cannot ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system. Inequities that undermine our most deeply held values of fairness and equality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: That was Hillary Clinton weighing in on the shooting of Michael Brown, discussing the scenes on the streets of Ferguson that followed that tragedy. Her comments came three weeks after Brown was shot. Did she wait too long to take a stand?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Here to shed some light on this and much more, Maggie Haberman, CNN political analyst and senior political reporter for Politico.

Maggie, not only does this come three weeks after the shooting, but it comes some time after Hillary Clinton at a book signing on Long Island actually dodged or evaded questions about this. You know, she had an answer prepared yesterday.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: She did. And her team's answer as to why this happened yesterday, this was her first formal public appearance, proper public appearance, as opposed to the book signing, which I attended, where she ignored two questions that were asked of her, not shouted but asked at pretty close proximity. There has been some pressure for her to speak. Most of that pressure, however, came from the Reverend Al Sharpton who suggested that both she and Jeb Bush and Chris Christie on the right should not get laryngitis about this issue. There is another school of thought among Democrats that there was little that could be helped in this situation by having another politician go in front of a camera or issue a statement. So she has gotten criticism for waiting too long. I do think there is something of a dammed if she does, damned if she doesn't problem here.

CAMEROTA: But, Maggie, can we just parse what she said because it was hardly going out on a limb.

HABERMAN: Right.

CAMEROTA: She was barely even taking a stand. Here's - let me just read it to you, "nobody wants to see our streets look like a war zone." Fair enough. I think everybody could agree with that. "Not in America. We are better than that." OK. "We can do better. We cannot ignore the inequities that persist in our justice system." Wow, she's really taking some risks here with this statement. I mean could it be more bland?

HABERMAN: I think, look, I got a lot of e-mails yesterday after she delivered this statement saying essentially this was such a safe statement, this was such a safe space she carved out. And, look, appropriately, most people who are talking about what happened in Ferguson are not really saying that much. Elizabeth Warren and Deval Patrick, both of whom have said they're not running for president, would be the exception.

I do - I agree with you that this is certainly not controversial what she was saying. She appears to be having some trouble transitioning from, you know, this year and a half of not being a candidate after she left the State Department to moving toward a very likely presidential campaign. The expectation has become, in part because she has weighed in on so many issues of the day, that she will talk about things that are going on. You know, she talked about a shooting at a shooting range with a nine-year-old as well when she gave this appearance yesterday. It's going to be harder for her as the next couple of weeks develop for her to say essentially, I'm not taking a stand on x, y, z.

CAMEROTA: We do have that sound about the tragedy that happened at that gun range. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: This incident with the nine-year-old girl is just heartbreaking and horrifying. I mean, first of all, what nine-year-old little girl is strong enough to manage an Uzi submachine gun, which is apparently what it was? You know, the kick, the effort to control it. I mean that's just the height of irresponsibility, to say nothing of the choice of letting your child do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, so, Maggie, that was a little bit more of a position there.

HABERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: That she said that's the "height of irresponsibility." But just back to what you were saying, this is the problem with Hillary Clinton as a candidate, many would say, which is that she's so controlled, she's so calculating that she ends up sounding robotic instead of really kind of emoting.

HABERMAN: What she said about the nine-year-old, I think, is less of an example of that, but that is absolutely true, that that has been the knock on her. Look, she -- her folks will say, and her supporters will say, you ask for candor, she gives candor and then you hit her for making gaffes. She gets controlled again and then you hit her for being controlled. There is some truth to that, but not entirely. Look, you know, if you really are going to go all bullworth (ph), then just sort of do it.

BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE). HABERMAN: And she has not hit that moment yet to wit (ph). When she talked about Ferguson in this speech, this was a paid speech at Nexenta (ph), at their -- a conference they were giving. It's a software company. She said at the end after - this was in her preamble of her remarks before she finished up, she talked about Ferguson and then she mentioned Nexenta and said at Nexenta you say, and I don't remember what their slogan is. At the Clinton Foundation we say x, y, z. That struck a couple of people as a bit off. You know, when she is actually a candidate, you won't see that. But this is what happens when there is this confluence of these paid speeches and political commentary.

BERMAN: So, Maggie, we're three days away from Labor Day now, which is the traditional kickoff to the campaign season. We have a midterm election here. I'm curious what we are going to see from Mrs. Clinton over the next two months and some days. Will it be commenting every day full campaigning or this trying to back off the throttle a little bit that you saw before yesterday?

HABERMAN: Big question mark about Hillary Clinton over the next month is going to be what she says and how she is at the Harkens Day Cry (ph) on September 14th in Iowa. It's the first time she's expected to set foot in Iowa since she lost the caucuses. It is a very anticipated appearance. I think you will see actually less of Hillary Clinton than people think they will for the main reason that her daughter is expected to give birth at some point in the next two months and I expect she will spend a lot of time with her grandchild. I think after that is when you are going to start seeing her forced into true candidate mode, if she runs, which I assume she is.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Right. Got it. Maggie Haberman, thanks so much. Have a great Labor Day weekend.

HABERMAN: Thank you. You too.

CAMEROTA: All right, we want to know what you think about this. You can find both John and me on Twitter and you can also go to our FaceBook page facebook.com/newday. We'd love to hear your thoughts on Hillary's comments.

All right, next up, the World Health Organization announces a road map to slow the spread of Ebola. But as many as 20,000 people could be infected before it's contained. We will ask Dr. Sanjay Gupta if it can work.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Twenty thousand people in West Africa could be infected with Ebola within the next six months if this outbreak is not contained. That is the word from the World Health Organization. The official count of Ebola cases in the region has topped 3,000, about half of them have died. You know, the number of actual cases might be higher already. We're joined by chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He's at the CNN Medical Center for us in Atlanta. Sanjay, you've been to West Africa. You've seen what's going on there

firsthand. Why has this been so difficult to contain?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, part of it, when you're actually on the ground in West Africa, you see just how tough the infrastructure is. To simply, you know, get from one place to another place is challenging, to get to people to get medical attention. I think that's really a large part of the challenge, they just don't have the medical infrastructure to take care of these things. And typically these types of outbreaks were relegated to more remote areas. Now you've got people who are actually coming from these remote areas to bigger cities, more globalization and then traveling even to other countries, as you know. So many country outbreak sort of simultaneously all coming from the same place but spreading much more quickly because of the world in which we live, John.

BERMAN: And that new outlook, this new projection from the World Health Organization, very alarming. There is this trial of an Ebola vaccine that the NIH just announced the other day. How is this going to work?

GUPTA: Yes. And let me just say one thing about the 20,000 number, and that is that, you know, it make - I think even in passed outbreaks, they grossly underestimate the number of people who actually get infected because so many people, again in more remote areas, they never have any contact with doctors. They don't get counted, so to speak. So I think the 20,000 number, obviously, they're trying to project how many people, if you account for everybody. People they may never even see.

With regard to this trial, it's really interesting. As you might guess, John, it was sort of -- there was a fire lit underneath this whole process with what's happening now in West Africa. The FDA expedited this trial. They're going to do three healthy people, people who don't have an infection and have no other health problems, and inject them with this vaccine. It's a vaccine that's been made in conjunction with the NIH and GlaxoSmithKline. Three people, and then seven people a little later, and then 10 more people, so 20 people total. And that's the first part of the trial. It's the safety part of the trial. And you see how they do over a period of time. You give slightly higher doses to each group and make sure there's no side effects. Getting some of that information back will take some time, probably not until the end of the year, John.

BERMAN: It is a time-consuming process, as you say. So then does this have any realistic chance of having an impact on this outbreak that we're seeing in Africa right now?

GUPTA: I don't think so. And as you're alluding to, there's good news and bad news in there. The bad news is that this medication probably won't be ready for this outbreak. The good news is, it's because hopefully the outbreak's over, right? That we actually -- there is some control over this before the medication's available.

Let me make another point though, John. Going back to this infrastructure issue. Somebody once said to me that if the cure for AIDS came in a clean glass of water, we still couldn't rid the world of AIDS because it's not just the medications, it's the distribution. And people say this all the time, but again, when you see the conditions - and particularly in some of these remote areas, simply getting the medications to the people who need it, the vaccines in this case, it's challenging. Who would get it exactly? How would they get it? Those are questions that have to be answered even if this vaccine works.

BERMAN: Now, Sanjay, one of the things I was reading overnight, it seemed concerning to me, I'm hoping you can explain it. There is this notion that the virus has mutated, or at least they're looking at a different type of virus in two different parts of Africa. Explain that to me.

GUPTA: So two points there. First of all, the strain, the second sort of strain in Congo, does appear to be another strain of this Ebola virus, but it may have been a strain that we already knew about. We've known about five or so strains.

The other part of that report said, now that this outbreak's been circulating in humans for so long, it accumulates more and more mutations. It was sort of lying dormant in the forest, not doing much. But now that it's spreading in humans, it accumulates mutations. And what that means is the virus changes ever so slightly. Most of the time those mutations mean nothing. It doesn't do anything in terms of how the virus actually behaves. But the question is, could it change the virus in some bigger way, could it make it something that could be less transmittable or more transmissible?

BERMAN: Right.

GUPTA: We don't know. And that's a little bit of the roll of the dice. We know, for example, with the flu virus, we get a different flu shot every year because we know it's going to change. It's going to genetically change throughout one year's time. Ebola typically didn't act that way, but now it's -- because it's been around so long in humans in this outbreak, it is accumulating these mutations. So they've got to keep a very close eye to see what any new, big mutation might do to the virus and how it behaves.

BERMAN: Because it potentially could make it harder to treat, not that there are many, frankly, available treatments?

GUPTA: Make it harder to test. Wait, is this not Ebola or is it just a mutated version of Ebola? So that's the first thing to test for. And then, as you say, to treat it after someone's already got an infection, and then to create the vaccine, so that the vaccine, the treatment and the testing, all those things would be affected if it underwent a big sort of mutation.

BERMAN: Yes, as if we needed any more complications here. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, great to have you with us this morning. Really appreciate it.

GUPTA: Any time, John. BERMAN: Of course, you can all tune in to "Sanjay Gupta M.D." weekends

right here on CNN. It airs Saturday at 4:30 p.m., Sundays at 7:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Do not miss it.

There are concerns to tell you about this morning. They keep growing as we learn that Americans are joining ISIS terrorists to fight against the United States. We'll speak with a former jihadist about what drives people to the ISIS cause.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: As the ISIS threat increasing in the Middle East, fears of homegrown terror right here in America, they also grow. The FBI scrambling to track down potential jihadi recruits after reports of more Americans joining extremist groups. Joining us is a former jihadist. He was recruited to join the fight and then recruited others. Mubin Shaikh is now a securities operative. Mubin, great to see you this morning.

MUBIN SHAIKH, FORMER JIHADIST: Thank you for having me, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Okay, tell us about your experience, how were you recruited to become a jihadist?

SHAIKH: Yes, like many others, I self-radicalized. I began to take on a world view in which the West is the enemy, the West needs to be attacked, and if attacks do happen in the West then we celebrate it.

CAMEROTA : What was your life like? Why were you susceptible to that mind-set?

SHAIKH: I grew up a very normal life, dare I say cliche high school life. The cheerleaders were our friends, I wasn't discriminated against, I had a very multicultural social community, but its identity conflict really for me, it was an identity conflict. I was being told from members in the community, or people in the community, you need to be more religious. My father's very religiously active and I was not at that time so the guilt, they guilt tripped me into becoming a better Muslim and I thought that meant I had to become very religious just to kind of make up for the life that I had lived previous.

CAMEROTA: And that's what's so hard for many Americans to understand, which is because you're becoming a more religious Muslim, why does that mean you had to become a more extremist?

SHAIKH: This is one of the, so a sudden change in religious behavior in and of itself is not a cause of concern, but when you attach that to a political ideology or some kind of political thinking, that's when the extremism starts to come. So for me, many people have become more religious and in fact, being more religious inoculates you from being an extremist, but if you add a political ideology to that, especially one in which anti-Western, very anti-Western. It's okay to be critical, of course, but this is way beyond just mere criticism so adding the two together creates that volatile mix.

CAMEROTA: Here's another thing that's mind blowing for most Americans, which is why would someone like you, you grew up in Toronto, Canada, why would an American or Westerner or a Canadian give up the freedoms and give up democracy to go to a place like Syria?

SHAIKH: A lot of these people are fed a mythology, if you will, a utopian fantasy idea where you reestablish the caliphate and will live happily ever after. And they have this idea that we will be heroes when we go there. Look, you're dealing with disaffected, lost boys, and especially those that come from an abusive home background, let's say, or criminal backgrounds, or just don't feel that people like them or they're wanted. These are groups that will make them feel that, make them feel not just that they're wanted but that they belong to something greater and in doing so become heroes, even if they die.

CAMEROTA: We have heard that, that people have this tremendous sense of wanting to belong. We heard from one of the Americans who was recruited to go to the Middle East who's -- his mother who said that he had this need for a sense of belonging. That's a human need, everyone has that. But you didn't have that. You were susceptible, even though you weren't a lost boy. So how do you fight against that?

SHAIKH: So I think what you're looking at is there's no single pathway. That's the thing. We have this tendency to want to look at this nice, neat, clean package, but it just doesn't work like that. So for me, of course, I didn't have that issue, but there were other issues, and what it shows is that there are multiple factors that act together. They're sometimes interdependent or start to act with one another, so a person who is integrated can go the same route as somebody who is isolated and marginalized. It just depends on which factors are at play at a particular moment.

CAMEROTA: Once you became radicalized you then attempted to recruit others. How did you do it?

SHAIKH: The group I kind of hung around with we would go to conferences, mosques, we were also online, and this is where we find people. For example, we would look for converts. Converts are easy pickings because they don't know the religion as much, so it's easy for us to manipulate them by way of showing them how much more we know than them. Also, by going to the mosques to see which kids were kind of sitting by themselves. Are they separated from their parents? The same thing with converts as well, if they're having trouble at home it's easier for them to always want to hang around with us who will deliberately make them feel like they're home.

CAMEROTA: So what did you do as a jihadist? What did you plan?

SHAIKH: Well there's a general idea that of course the West is the enemy, the West has to be attacked in any way, shape and form, and it was, you know, things like wanting to see destruction and harm come to other people. I always give this example, there was a synagogue that we used to pass on the bus every day and we would always say that we want to blow this place up. I didn't even know why, I mean, I'm not Arab. I don't have the conflict background, especially related to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, but the problem was that it was next to a police station.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

SHAIKH: So it was just silly things like driving by and saying yes, I wish somebody took that out. Seeing somebody even a Hindu person, a Sikh person, anyone that was not like us, we did not want to see.

CAMEROTA: And very quickly, you have ten seconds, how did you get out of that mind-set?

SHAIKH: Ideological deprogramming. I spent two years in Syria studying Arabic-Islamic studies and was taught that those interpretations that these jihadists used is completely mistaken.

CAMEROTA: Well, we're so glad that you did and we're so glad that you're speaking out now against it. Mubin Shaikh, thanks so much for the information. It's fascinating.

SHAIKH: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Alright, more on this topic ahead, including a laptop found that apparently contains the secrets of ISIS, including efforts to develop biological weapons. Stick around.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Welcome back to NEW DAY, everyone. Just a short period of time for us left before we head out for the weekend, which is not necessarily a long weekend for us.

CAMEROTA: But I am going to see you on Monday.

BERMAN: Exactly.

CAMEROTA: We're going to be back together on Monday. Meanwhile, the five things you need to know before you head out today. Number one, the White House taking heat after the president told reporters he had no strategy yet to fight ISIS.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA (voice-over): Aides later clarified that the president meant only in Syria but, as you've heard this morning, the critics pounced.

BERMAN (voice-over): Russia's foreign minister denying accusations that Russian troops crossed into Ukraine, that despite the NATO images showing otherwise. Now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is comparing actions of the Ukrainian army to the Nazis.

CAMEROTA: U.N. officials are working to get freedom for 43 peacekeepers detained by militants in Syria, another 81 peacekeepers are said to be trapped in that area.

BERMAN: Comedian Joan Rivers is in a New York hospital this morning. The 81-year-old went into cardiac arrest during minor throat surgery at a New York clinic. Rivers' daughter Melissa says she is resting comfortably. CAMEROTA: And good news for the millions of you making a holiday

getaway by car. AAA says the price of gas is down an average of 11 cents a gallon from last Labor Day weekend. There you go, you're heading out with some good news.

BERMAN: My colleague Christine Romans, though, who covers business says beef prices are going up. So --

CAMEROTA: Your hamburgers.

BERMAN: So your hamburgers are going to cost more for the Labor Day barbecue even if the gas is cheaper.

CAMEROTA: Wah-wah.

BERMAN: Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

CAMEROTA: Thanks for joining us.

BERMAN: "THE NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello begins right now.

Good morning, Carol.