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CNN NEWSROOM

Veterans Affairs Secretary Apologizes; American Sniper Trial Continues; American Woman Kidnapped in Nigeria

Aired February 24, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police units were the first units to respond. And the first unit arrived three minutes later at 5:48 a.m.

Upon their arrival, they found a truck which was described as being fully engulfed in flames. So, in other words, it was completely burning. The officers that first arrived did not know whether or not the occupants of the vehicle were still inside.

However, after fire arrived, they were able to do a primary and secondary search of the vehicle and determine that there was no driver, nor was there a passenger in the vehicle. Amazingly, a short time later, one of our patrol officers saw what he believed to be a disoriented male walking approximately one to two miles...

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. We're going to break away from this press conference. As we get the update there, we will go back.

But now we have another press conference we're monitoring. This is the Veterans Affairs secretary, Robert McDonald, addressing the media. And, of course, he's come under scrutiny for some comments he made about his own military record. Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

ROBERT MCDONALD, U.S. VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY: And I have no excuse.

I have great respect for those who have served our nation in Special Forces. They and all veterans deserve a Department of Veterans Affairs that provides them the care and benefits that they have earned. We at VA are working hard to restore trust, and, again, I apologize to those who may have been offended by my misstatement.

We remain very focused on continuing our progress to better serve veterans.

I would be glad to take your questions at this time.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) Have you had time to think in a little more detail about what caused you to burst out like that? And what was your motivation?

MCDONALD: Well, Dave, my -- as I said, my biggest motivation -- my biggest motivation was to connect with the veteran. As all of you know, in my first national press conference, I gave out

my cell phone number, and many of you have been kind enough to publish it and repeat it. And I get calls from veterans every single day. My whole purpose in this job is to try to connect with veterans and to better serve veterans. And so that's what I was trying to do.

QUESTION: A lot of people are wondering, Mr. Secretary, with your experience, your service to the military then and now, how could you possibly say such a thing?

MCDONALD: I made a mistake. And I apologize for it.

I was in the Army, went to West Point. I was an Army Airborne Ranger. I went to jungle warfare school in Panama, Arctic warfare school in the Arctic, desert warfare school. When I was in the 82nd Airborne Division, we were the rapid deployment force for the U.S. military.

QUESTION: Did you even realize that you had made that mistake, as you call it? And did you ever think you would need to correct it?

MCDONALD: I was talking to a homeless veteran. I was concerned about getting that homeless veteran, if they were a veteran, the kinds of cares and services that they needed.

What I said was not on my mind at the time. I was trying to connect with them. And we had people with us that could help get them into a home if they were a homeless veteran.

QUESTION: To those Special Forces who say they feel a bit insulted, even with your service, even with your Ranger tab, that they have a sense of insult, would you answer that, please?

MCDONALD: I apologize to them.

Suzanne Malveaux? Suzanne?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Mr. Secretary, you say you wanted to connect with that particular veteran. I mean, in light of how Secretary Shinseki went out and these recent situations where people misstate or lie, why did you think that connecting with this veteran was making a misstatement or lying about your record? What does that have to do with connecting?

MCDONALD: Well, what you try to do when you connect with someone is try to find common ground. And with veterans, my common ground is my veteran experience. And so what I was trying to do is find a way to connect with that veteran.

And, as I said, I made a misstatement. I apologize for that. I have no excuse for it. But if you look at my 61 years of biography, you will never find anywhere in any of my biographies that I have claimed to be part of Special Forces. I have never claimed that. It was a misstatement. It was a mistake.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) tell you that you had misspoken (OFF-MIKE)

MCDONALD: The question was, did anyone around me tell me I had misspoken? The answer is no.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, you also recently stated that 60 people had been fired from the department (OFF-MIKE) and that was also a misstatement. Are you concerned that these are going to confine your ability to rebuild the trust you talked about in your statement there?

MCDONALD: For my 61 years, integrity has been one of the foundations of my character. It's the reason I was a Boy Scout, the reason I went to West Point, the reason I went into the infantry of the 82nd Airborne Division, the reason I'm joined the Procter & Gamble company and the reason I'm here.

The reason I want to be here is to care for veterans. Integrity, character is part of who I am. And I will do better to make sure that I don't make mistakes like I did in Los Angeles.

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, right now, Capitol Hill lawmakers seem to be accepting your apology, but do you feel like you have maybe used up your one free pass you have with them, considering the relationship that the VA has had with Capitol Hill?

MCDONALD: Look, trust is something that is gained every single day, one veteran at a time.

When I get these phone calls from these veterans or text messages, they tell me the problem they have. I go away and work on it with a team of people that I have, and if I can solve that problem, I have earned one bit of trust. Now, I may give up a bit of trust the next day, but my job is to work for these veterans every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and get them the benefits they have earned. I served with them.

QUESTION: Did you ever consider resignation?

MCDONALD: I want to serve veterans.

I'm here to try to prove that we can make VA work and that the veterans who we serve can get all the benefits that they have earned. And that's what we're working against, and we're making progress. Wait times are down 18 percent. The backlog is down. The claim backlog is down about 60 percent. Homelessness is down 33 percent. Great progress made during General Shinseki's time, when Sloan Gibson was interim secretary.

We're trying to keep that going.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Chairman Miller and others have questioned the statements you made on "Meet the Press" about the number of people who have been fired. And there's been some clarification. You said there were 900 people fired, and 60 directly related to the wait list scandal, when, in fact, it was a much smaller number. So, I guess they're saying there might be a pattern of credibility issues here.

MCDONALD: Well, Chairman Miller and I meet frequently. We talk on the phone frequently. We have a great relationship.

We work together to help solve veterans issues. I think what you saw in our last committee hearing was tremendous unanimity from all the members of Congress and the VA around what we need to do. We're here to serve veterans. Everybody wants that. Nobody can dispute that.

Thank you very much for your questions. Thank you.

CABRERA: And now I want to bring in our senior investigative correspondent, Drew Griffin, who's joining me now.

OK, Drew, you broke the story about problems within the Veterans Affairs Administration, led to the resignation of the former VA secretary. And now we have Robert McDonald, who got this job after your reporting, and he has problems of his own. What do you make of it?

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, first off, I think it's a credit to him he's come out, he's met the press, he's apologized. You know, he obviously has no excuse for this. It was just a mistake. He's not trying to say anything else.

But, Ana, the problem here is Bob McDonald took over an agency, the VA, that for the better part of the last two decades has gotten into problems because of lies. It lied to Congress. It's certainly lied to the press. It's even lied to itself in terms of how it's treated veterans.

When you have the leader who is supposed to reform this agency now caught in a lie of its own, I think that's very unsettling to all of us who want this VA Administration to work to tell us the truth about how good or bad the treatment is for veterans and to work to improve that.

That's where I think he really had a big hiccup here in terms of his daily work.

CABRERA: I want to make sure our viewers are with us in terms of what we're talking about and give a little bit of the backstory here.

Robert McDonald the other day was caught on video talking to another homeless veteran. And in the exchange with this homeless veteran, the homeless veteran said, I served in the Special Forces. And that's when VA Secretary McDonald said, hey, I served in the Special Forces, too, even though he didn't.

Now, he just came out and said the reason for that misstatement, as he called it, and he also called it a mistake, he said the reason was simply he was trying to connect with that veteran because he ultimately wanted to serve that person.

Is that a fair thing for him to make a mistake like that when he's having kind of an off-the-cuff conversation?

GRIFFIN: You know, certainly, he probably didn't think it would come back to haunt him. I don't think there was anything deliberately about what he said, although he admits it was a flat-out lie. It is what it is. He didn't serve in Special Forces.

He served in the 82nd Airborne. But, yes, I think you have to look at the context in whether or not he does get a pass. There was nothing malicious about this. He wasn't getting any money. We have had some major stories in the news lately, Ana, that you and I know about, one involving somebody, a FOX reporter who wrote it in a book, some of his statement, the other, Brian Williams, the NBC anchor who had repeated his lies over and over again in interviews.

This was an off-the-cuff conversation with a potentially homeless veteran that Bob McDonald, the VA secretary, was trying to help. I don't think there was anything malicious about it, but it certainly was wrong, what he said, and it is offensive. Given the background of all the lies that have come out of the Veterans Administration, I think that's where it's resonating.

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: And that's why it's a bigger deal, I guess.

GRIFFIN: Yes, absolutely.

CABRERA: I know Suzanne Malveaux is with us as well. She was just that the press conference.

I want to turn to you, Suzanne.

What's the fallout here, at least the immediate fallout that you're seeing?

MALVEAUX: Well, Ana, first of all, all the questions that are coming to him, I asked the secretary myself, you know, he was talking about he really wanted to relate with this homeless veteran and why he thought that that was something that was relatable, not giving the truth, but actually telling a lie here, in light of the -- as Drew had mentioned before, the climate that we had seen previously in the Veterans Administration -- in the Veterans Affairs Administration about all the problems with Shinseki.

The one thing that the American Legion, the people I have been talking to on the phone, say that they desperately want is somebody who is credible. The head of the American Legion said earlier today in a statement that it was a poor choice of words. But he also said a lie is a lie and that it's going to take a lot of work here for this secretary to rebuild the trust of many veterans.

Some people are also using it to pile on to the secretary. We heard from Senator John McCain earlier today. He spoke before the cameras, saying he wants to make sure that some of the legislation that's been passed regarding health care for veterans is actually implemented.

So he was criticizing the secretary for a different reason. I think you have got a whole slew of responses from some of these veterans who have pointed out early this morning they're dealing with a very serious homeless problem. That was something that the secretary was trying to address in that particular story. They're dealing with suicides that are happening among veterans.

So there are many, many big problems that this department has to deal with, but they also -- they don't want to overstate how important this s, but they also say, look, they want somebody at the very top that they can trust, that that's the bottom line. So far, what we're seeing from the White House, the administration, they are standing by him for now.

But one person asked a very good question. I thought it was quite on point was, maybe this is your one pass here. Do you think this is your one pass that you get? Because veterans are looking at him very closely. They want somebody that, yes, is going to be with them when it comes to the very serious issues. But they also want somebody they can really count on and who they believe in, Ana.

CABRERA: And, Drew, on that note, is this going to be just a one and done for this man in terms of -- has his trust now been broken completely?

GRIFFIN: I think Suzanne said it right. This could be his one and only pass. She mentioned the American Legion, the head of the American Legion today releasing a statement saying what a disappointment from the leader of the department whose number one issue right now is the restoration of trust.

Chairman Jeff Miller, who heads the House Veterans Affairs Committee, basically said the same thing, all talking about the restoration of trust from this department. I think this guy does get one pass. This wasn't -- in the big scheme of things, this wasn't that big of a lie related to his work. But Bob McDonald's got to remember, he was hired not because he was in the Army. He was hired because he ran Procter & Gamble for 30 years and he could turn a big kind of bureaucracy around in the direction of positive values and positive truth.

He needs to get back to work doing that and forgetting about what kind of medals he did or did not earn back in his Army days, of which he only spent five years in the Army. I don't think he was hired because he was an Army Ranger.

CABRERA: All right, Drew Griffin, Suzanne Malveaux, thanks to both of you.

Another big story we're following, the trial for the man accused of killing American sniper Chris Kyle is close to going into closing arguments. It could happen any minute. A final witness took the stand today -- what he said next.

Plus, an American woman kidnapped in Nigeria, she was there as a missionary -- details on how this kidnapping happened coming up.

Plus, developing news involving George Zimmerman and the Justice Department. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: American sniper Chris Kyle survived four tours in Iraq, but at a Texas shooting range in 2013, Kyle just could not defend himself because -- quote -- "He never saw it coming."

That's how an expert witness described the last moment of Kyle's life as the trial of his accused killer, Eddie Ray Routh, winds down.

And closing arguments could begin today, possibly tomorrow. Routh in the center here admits gunning down Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, but his lawyers say Routh is not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors say Routh has been faking it and should be found guilty of capital murder.

Let's turn to CNN's Martin Savidge, who's live outside the courthouse.

Martin, what else did jurors hear from this witness, a crime scene analyst?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of the things, Ana, that I think has been in the back of people's minds is how is it possible that Eddie Routh would have gotten the drop on both of these men, one of whom was a war hero, an excellent shot and was known to be a fast draw?

Both men, remember, had .9-millimeter handguns tucked in their waistbands fully loaded. How could he shoot them both down? And this is what this expert was able to show, that it happened to fast, so furious, that the wounds were so devastating to both men, they literally dropped where they had been shot.

And also what the prosecution was trying to say, this was not the act of a man who is insane; this was the act of a cold, calculating killer.

Then it was the defense's chance to cross-examine this expert witness. They only asked one question, which was, is there anything in all of this science that told you or gave you insight into the mind of Eddie Routh at that time, to which the witness said, no. And the defense said, thank you very much, we're done here, and they moved on.

So two-and-a-half-hours of testimony for the state literally blown out of the water with that one simple question because it's the state of mind that's crucial to this case. What was Eddie Routh's state of mind? Was he sane or insane? And that point still being debated now.

The defense brought on its own mental expert, trying to reinforce to the jury he was insane and thereby should be found not guilty -- Ana.

CABRERA: And, of course, that will be the heart of their closing argument, and whenever that happens, the next few minutes or few days.

Martin Savidge, thank you.

So, how will these harsh details about the last moments of the victims' lives play to the jurors?

Joining me now, HLN host and former prosecutor Nancy Grace.

Nancy, great to see you. These details coming towards the end of the trial now through this

rebuttal witness. Do you think that's a sign the prosecutors think they needed a little boost to their case?

NANCY GRACE, HOST, "NANCY GRACE": Oh, you know what? No. And I will tell you why.

Whenever I could bring on a rebuttal witness, I would do it. Now, the law is that your rebuttal witness must directly controvert something within the defense's case. You can't just bring on a witness because you found a good witness you like. It's got to connect back to something the defense has presented.

What you don't want, if you can avoid it, is for the defense to have the last word to the jury. You don't want to give them that tactical, that strategic advantage. So you want to end with a rebuttal. There's always a chance, as we see today, the defense will then bring on a surrebuttal. So it's like a tennis match.

Do I think they needed it? No. But I think the fact that we now know that there was a telephone conversation recorded from inside the jail where Routh is telling his mom about an episode -- I think it was a "Boss Hog" reality show about a pig farm. He saw that behind bars, and suddenly his defense is that he thought the American sniper, Chris Kyle, and Littlefield were mutant pig people that were going to kill him?

(CROSSTALK)

CABRERA: Right. They were talking of being from a "Seinfeld" episode that he might have seen, that that is where he got that idea.

GRACE: Yes, there were two. There was "Seinfeld" and a "Boss Hog." And he was discussing the "Boss Hog" that with his mother. And suddenly that's his defense? You know what? Try to sell it to a jury that had nothing to do with it.

CABRERA: And, Nancy, let me ask you this. We're talking about insanity in this case. Is it the prosecution's burden to prove that he was sane, or is it the defense's burden to prove he was insane?

GRACE: Yes, in most jurisdictions, it's what we call an affirmative defense, such as self-defense, wherein you say, I did the act, but I should be excused for this reason. I was insane.

It is the defense's burden to show insanity and to say -- but, practically speaking, the state must knock it down and disprove it. It's great deal of semantics. The state must disprove it, practically speaking. And, again, the law in Texas was brought over from Great Britain. It's the old M'Naghten rule, which says that you didn't know right or wrong at the time of the incident. That's what the defense is up against.

CABRERA: Right.

Well, before we let you go, Nancy, I just have to say congrats on your show celebrating 10 years. It's your anniversary.

GRACE: It's flown by, like, in the twinkling of an eye. And I can't believe 10 years has flown by. And it has meant so much to me and our staff to give a voice to those people that cannot speak for themselves. And I'm very honored, and I want to thank the viewers that have stuck by me for so long.

CABRERA: Well, you do it like nobody else can, Nancy Grace. So, thank you.

GRACE: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

CABRERA: And we know you will be covering the American sniper trial in your show tonight. That's at 8:00 Eastern on HLN.

And, of course, don't miss the 10-year anniversary special. That's at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on HLN.

Again, our thanks to Nancy Grace for joining us.

Up next: an American woman kidnapped in Nigeria, masked gunmen storming her office, now holding her for ransom. We will have a live report from the region.

Plus, the Department of Justice has just made a decision on George Zimmerman. It was investigating if he should face civil rights charges in Trayvon Martin's death. What was determined -- just ahead.

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