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CNN NEWSROOM
Ferguson Prosecutor Speaks; Ferguson Police Chief Apology; U.S. Airstrikes Target ISIS-Controlled Refineries; Hostage-Taking on the Increase?
Aired September 25, 2014 - 09:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We have your piece now, Ana, so let's roll.
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do have it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA,(voice-over): A new explosion of violence in Ferguson, Missouri.
CAPT. RON JOHNSON, MISSOURI STATE POLICE: This behavior will not be tolerated. The safety of the officers and the individuals in our community will be maintained.
CABRERA: The fresh unrest.
CROWD: No justice, no peace!
CABRERA: A reminder of the tensions still simmering in this small town.
CROWD: Hands up! Don't shoot! Hands up! Don't shoot!
CABRERA: Tensions that could reach a full boil depending on the actions of the St. Louis County grand jury, now more than six weeks after Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown.
CABRERA (on camera): Why did you decide to take this case to the grand jury?
BOB MCCULLOCH, ST. LOUIS COUNTY PROSECUTOR: Well, a couple reasons. One is that forever we have taken all homicide cases to the grand jury.
CABRERA (voice-over): Prosecutor Bob McCulloch has done few interviews since his office got the case. He remains the target of protesters who want him to step aside.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bob McCulloch has got to go.
MCCULLOCH: You don't just walk away from a case because, you know, you're catching a lot of grief over it. I can be fair and I have been fair.
CABRERA (on camera): People still are angry about this and worry that there is a bias because your father --
MCCULLOCH: Right.
CABRERA: Was killed in the line of duty, a police officer, and was killed by an African-American person.
MCCULLOCH: Correct. All of that is correct. And all that is irrelevant in terms of whether there's any bias or prejudice on my part. I know what it's like to lose a loved one to violence, and so I know what that feeling is. If it causes me to lean one way or the other, it causes me to lean towards victims of violence.
CABRERA: Did you think ever about maybe making a grand gesture by stepping down from this case and letting a special prosecutor take over?
MCCULLOCH: I mean there's a very vocal group, don't get me wrong, that thinks, you know, that I'm the devil incarnate and shouldn't be on this case. But when you look at the ones making those allegations, you know, look behind them.
CABRERA (voice-over): McCulloch insists there is no hidden agenda behind the grand jury's secret proceedings. Their term, just extended until January, but a decision could come sooner.
MCCULLOCH: It's taken longer than we have anticipated on each witness, and so it is likely to go 'til probably the end of October, into the first part of November, maybe as far as the middle of November.
CABRERA: He says the seven men and five women, selected randomly by a judge, are hearing from every witness, seeing every piece of evidence, all of which he says will eventually be made public when a decision is made on whether to indict Officer Wilson.
CROWD: We don't get it! Justice! We don't get it! Justice!
CABRERA: A community desperate for answers. These protesters say they will not rest.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody's here for Mike Brown. Everybody's here for justice.
CROWD: Don't shoot!
CABRERA: It's justice they demand, no matter how long it takes.
Ana Cabrera, CNN, Ferguson, Missouri.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: All right, Ana, I want to bring you back in to talk about this apology issued by the Ferguson Police chief. Before we get to the video, how did this come about?
CABRERA: Well, we really know very little information about why now, why do it this way, but we are told that the police chief wanted to give this heartfelt apology and he wanted to be able to say it in a complete way. And we're going to ask him more specifically about kind of the background behind doing it this way, when we sit down with him for an interview in just a couple of hours. But let's listen to his apology.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF TOM JACKSON, FERGUSON, MISSOURI, POLICE: As many of you know, my name is Tom Jackson and I'm the chief of police of the city of Ferguson. The events of the past few weeks have sent shock waves, not just around the community here, but around the nation. Overnight I went from being a small town police chief to being a part of a conversation about racism, equality, and the role of policing in that conversation. As chief of police, and as a resident, I want to be part of that conversation. I also want to be part of the solution. But before we can engage in further discussion of the broader issues, I think it's important that we address the central issue that brought us here today, and that's the death of Michael Brown.
I want to say this to the Brown family. No one who has not experienced the loss of a child can understand what you're feeling. I'm truly sorry for the loss of your son. I'm also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street. The time that it took involved very important work on the part of investigators who were trying to collect evidence and gain a true picture of what happened that day. But it was just too long, and I am truly sorry for that. Please know that the investigating officers meant no disrespect to the Brown family, to the African-American community or the people of Canfield. They were simply trying to do their jobs.
There were many people who were upset about what happened in Ferguson and came here to protest peacefully. Unfortunately, there were others who had a different agenda. I do want to say to any peaceful protester who did not feel that I did enough to protect their constitutional right to protest, I am sorry for that. The right of the people to peacefully assemble is what the police are here to protect. If anyone who was peacefully exercising that right is upset and angry, I feel responsible and I'm sorry.
I'm also aware of the pain and the feeling of mistrust felt in some of the African-American community towards the police department. The city belongs to all of us and we're all a part of this community. It's clear that we have much work to do.
As a community, a city and a nation, we have real problems to solve, not just in Ferguson, but the entire region and beyond. For any mistakes I have made, I take full responsibility. It's an honor to serve the city of Ferguson and the people who live there. I look forward to working with you in the future to solve our problems. And, once again, I deeply apologize to the Brown family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Again, that was Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson with a public apology, really the first public apology we have heard since the shooting death of Michael Brown. It's something that people who live in the community around where Michael Brown was shot and killed have been calling for and asking for and saying, why haven't you done this. And that would be a first small step in maybe healing this whole situation. And so it's interesting that it is coming now, six weeks later, and in this form.
I can also tell you, though, that we are hearing and learning that there will be some kind of a public apology tour of sorts where he is planning to go out directly and talk with the folks who feel so much pain and hurt and anger towards him and his department and really wanting justice in the death of Michael Brown. And, in their view, that justice would be the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson.
Carol.
COSTELLO: And you're going to talk to Chief Jackson a little later today, right, Ana?
CABRERA: Right. We will sit down with a one on one where we can ask him these questions about why he hasn't done this sooner, why now, and more about what the department is doing in order to bridge that divide that is so deep and so wide in this community. He mentioned the racial tensions in this community, and in his video, as we just heard, he talked about the police department having a responsibility and a role in that divide. And we'll talk to him about why he thinks it has developed, and what he plans in order to move forward.
COSTELLO: All right, Ana Cabrera, thanks so much.
I want to bring in CNN legal analyst Paul Callan.
A few things intrigue me about that public apology. He wasn't in uniform. Chief Jackson was in street clothes.
PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That's interesting. And I don't know if you want to get to your second interesting point but --
COSTELLO: Well, that's the most interesting, but I --
CALLAN: The most interesting to me, yes, he was in street clothes, so he's kind of doing this as an individual citizen, maybe then as a spokesman for the police department. But I've never seen a high profile case where a police chief, while the investigation is still ongoing, apologized for conduct of himself or his police officers. That's very, very unusual. But he answers to a constituency in Ferguson, majority African-Americans. And guess who gets to pick the police chief? Their elected representatives. So if, you know, the population there starts voting more aggressively for their own candidates, he's kind of worried about his job in the future because the community he answers to is a largely African-American community.
COSTELLO: Well, he seemed to indicate his officers did something wrong with leaving Michael Brown's body in the street for so long. He said, didn't mean any disrespect. I'm very sorry about that. That shouldn't have happened. It's not often you hear a police chief, while the case is ongoing, admit that his officers might have done something wrong. CALLAN: Well, I've always thought that that was the one thing that
really set this off, that level of disrespect that the public perceived by leaving that young man's body in the hot sun for all of that period of time. Now, I rode homicides myself when I was a prosecutor in New York. Whenever there's a murder, the D.A. goes out to the scene. So I've been to many a homicide scene. Usually they're inside buildings and the body is not within view. But the body has to be left in place while forensic experts come in to take photographs and while investigation is done. And, of course, if it's an officer- involved shooting, it's a longer investigation. What they should have done here was, they should have screened it off so that it couldn't be viewed from the surrounding buildings and photographed. And that was a huge error because it looked like enormous disrespect to the black community.
COSTELLO: He also apologized for the demonstrations that took place and the police tactics that were used, although he didn't implicitly say that, but he did apologize for that, too, which I thought interesting.
CALLAN: Yes, well, he did. But, of course, he implied that there were a lot of troublemakers who came in and caused the problem.
COSTELLO: Yes.
CALLAN: But, you know, you have to look at the situation. This is a town of 25,000 people approximately. It's a small town police force. They were so over their heads in this case and with the demonstrations that it's clear they were out of control, they didn't know what they were doing. And I think he's publicly acknowledging that. And I think it's a very good move by the chief.
COSTELLO: Well -- well, it's seemingly a good move, especially, you know -- and I like that he was in street clothes because he seemed less intimidating, right?
CALLAN: Yes.
COSTELLO: And that's probably why he chose to wear street clothes. And he also says he's aware of racial tensions in a way he has never been before and he wants to be part of the conversation. Now, I don't know how receptive the community will be to that, but at least he's trying.
CALLAN: Well, he's trying and I think, in the end, the African- American community has to be shown that law enforcement works for them as well as everybody else in the community. And I think this is a step in that direction. That's not to say he'll keep his job when this case is over and if the city council or the town council changes in the future, as I suspect it will.
COSTELLO: Paul Callan, many thanks. Thank you so much.
CALLAN: OK. Thank you.
COSTELLO: We're back in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: Just hours after President Obama called on the international community to reject the cancer of violent extremism, coalition forces unleashed yet another round of punishing air strikes against ISIS. The targets included an ISIS headquarters a training camp and several mobile oil refineries. The goal here, to obliterate the terrorist group's main source of revenue.
Let's dig deeper on that with Seth Jones. He's a political scientist with the RAND Corporation. We're also joined by CNN military analyst General Spider Marks. Welcome, gentlemen.
SETH JONES, POLITICAL SCIENTIST, RAND CORPORATION: Thanks, Carol.
MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Thank you, Carol.
COSTELLO: Thanks for being here. I'll start with you, General. The Defense Department says ISIS generates about $2 million a day from the black market oil. So is it enough to go after the refineries?
MARKS: Well, you know, what we're going to do is eliminate their ability to refine and then distribute clearly on the black market, I mean the difficulty is do we go after the crude? Do we go after where they produce the oil, where they get it out of the ground? And that has, that would have a monstrous effect on Syria in terms of ultimately somebody coming in and trying to clean the mess up.
So we're trying to, at this stage, we're going to go light before we have to go too heavy, and go after their ability to refine and distribute. So I think the short answer is yes, it can certainly have a negative effect, but it has to be assessed and then we have to possibly get a little more aggressive as we go along.
COSTELLO: But, Seth, don't you have to go after the buyers, too?
JONES: You have to go after the buyers. You have to go after a range of other sources. The challenge with ISIS is it's got redundant financing. It's got financing from bank accounts that it's stolen, taxation among areas that it controls, so the problem is, if you focus on one area, they have an ability to gain finances from other types of activity.
COSTELLO: Seth, I also wanted to ask you about this. According to a report you wrote for the RAND Corporation earlier this summer, you said between 2010 and 2013 the number of jihadist groups worldwide grew by 58 percent. That's a staggering number. And it seems to be military might can only go so far, so how do you degrade and destroy recruiting efforts in ISIS' global network in light of that?
JONES: Well, just to be clear, that increase in jihadist activity spanned North Africa, the Middle East and parts of South Asia. But I think what you have to do is consider this just as much of a political as it is a military struggle, and that is going after the ideology of these groups. Groups like ISIS almost invariably overstate and overreact. They
behead individuals and that tends to undermine local populations. We saw it in Iraq in the 2005 and '06 period with at that time al Qaeda in Iraq, brutal killings and beheadings. So it's taking advantage of those kinds of activities and sending and developing an information campaign towards local populations to undermine their support base.
COSTELLO: So when the -- when Pentagon officials, General, say it's going to take years to win this war or degrade ISIS and ultimately destroy it. Actually listen for yourself what the military is saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REAR ADMIRAL JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: This is the beginning of a long effort. The United States military is poised and ready to contribute to that effort for as long as it takes. There will be more. There will be more.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: OK, so as long as it takes, General. He said maybe it will take up to six years, who knows.
MARKS: This could ,Carol, be a decades fight. Seth is absolutely spot on. The root of this is the radicalization of Islam. It clearly has presence in all the Mideast, North Africa, other places of the world to include South Asia.
But the immediate issue that we have to focus in on now -- we have to attack that. It is not dissimilar to a national effort, an international effort, against cancer. There must be research, there must be efforts, and it's going to take a lot of time, it's going to take money. But what we have to do right now is we have to be able to stop the immediate bloodshed that's occurring. There is a military effort to that. There's not a military solution. It's an effort and it's part of an entire strategy that has to include all the elements of power.
So what you see right now is the isolation of ISIS, that is to say, cutting off its elements of support in Syria. This is a good first step. That allows the forces in Iraq to get their act together over time, give them some time, give them some space. And then what you see next, Carol, will be an increase of the air strikes in support of Iraqi forces in Iraq, again, to further degrade ISIS. Nothing is going to go away in terms of a defeat until you're able to get at all those sources of support, which will possibly be generational.
COSTELLO: All right, General Marks, Seth Jones, thanks so much for your insight. I appreciate it. I'm back in a minute.
MARKS: Thanks, Carol.
JONES: Thanks, Carol.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: As a global coalition aims to stop the rising growth of ISIS, the fear of terror could be spreading even quicker. More terrorists are using ISIS' game plan, kidnapping and beheading ordinary citizens to spread their message. It's one of the most effective tools these groups have. And we could see even more kidnappings in the future.
CNN's Brian Todd has more for you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A blood curdling page out of the ISIS playbook -- militants stand behind a French hostage in Algeria. He speaks. They speak. Then they behead him. These terrorists are not under ISIS control, but they've pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
In the Philippines, another terror group not affiliated with ISIS still threatens to execute two German hostages if the allied bombing campaign against ISIS doesn't stop. They come on the heels of three hostage executions by ISIS on videotape.
With air strikes intensifying, will this tactic of abduction spread? Will more Americans and others from allied nations be at risk from ISIS and its supporters?
DANE EGIL, FORMER WHITE HOUSE HOSTAGE ADVSIER: There's every reason to believe that when you start to antagonize them and increase the attacks, that they're going to do what they can. They're in survival mode so this is a tactic which they do all the time, to raise money, to influence societies, and to legitimize their organization. So there's no reason to doubt that they're going to do everything they can.
TODD: U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials wouldn't comment when we asked if they're worried air strikes would lead to more hostage taking. So we asked a former FBI hostage specialist.
CHRIS VOSS, FORMER FBI HOSTAGE NEGOTIATOR: They have to be. They're responsible. Any responsible government official would be concerned. Is it the right thing to do, militarily? Where they're killing people has to be disrupted. So it's the right thing to do and they're concerned.
TODD: ISIS is now threatening to behead another hostage, British aid worker Alan Henning, whose wife just received an audio message from him pleading for his life. Analysts say with ISIS coming under much more military pressure right now, abductions might be their most effective and highly visible weapon.
VOSS: Gets them tremendous publicity. These murder videos are really recruiting videos. And they're really after getting more followers and they're after more funding. And that's the principle reason for this. They need to show themselves as a force to be reckoned with.
TODD: Should Americans and other Westerners be more worried now about traveling to more and more places?
EGIL: If you look at the State Department postings and you look at the briefings, the security briefings, absolutely. It increases the threat environment. It puts any American or coalition member society at risk because you're a more valuable target.
TODD (on camera): But former FBI hostage specialist Chris Voss says it isn't any different than if you're in a neighborhood you shouldn't be in in any city in America or elsewhere. If you know there's a lot of criminal behavior, or in this case terrorist behavior, in a given area and a lack of security, use common sense. Don't go there.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
