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THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER
Vladimir Putin Reappears; Arrest Made in Ferguson Police Shooting; Suspect: Police Were Not the Target; "Jihadi John's" Chilling Mock Executions. Aired 4-4:30p ET
Aired March 16, 2015 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: THE LEAD with Jake Tapper starts now.
<16:00:15> JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Vladimir Putin disappears for a few days. Now the Russian Northern Fleet is on high alert. What is going on? I'm Jake Tapper. This is the lead.
The world lead. He fell off the grid for 10 days. Now Vladimir Putin is back in public, just as we find out he was ready to prime Russian nukes over the dispute over the land that he stole away from Ukraine.
The national lead, a jinx or a jackal? Clearly, a son of privilege connected to not one, but three murders over the past 30 years. Now a hot mike moment on national television seems to catch him confessing to killing them all.
The politics lead, Hillary Clinton's team now saying they did individually review every e-mail before trashing some 32,000 private e-mails, but new poll numbers breaking this hour show the American people aren't exactly satisfied with her explanation.
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
We are going to begin with the world lead. He has been on a warpath for more than a year, with pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops laying waste to huge parts of Eastern Ukraine and basically daring the West to try and stop him in the process; 10 days ago, however, the world was left to wonder just what exactly happened to Vladimir Putin.
He vanished from the public eye. Today, finally, the Russian president came out from wherever he's been for close to two weeks, putting those rumors to rest. The rumors ranged from his being dead to having the flu to seeing to the birth of a secret love child. And not only is Putin back, but he may be more dangerous than ever.
We are now hearing how far he was willing to go to tear off a piece of Ukraine for himself almost exactly one year ago. It almost included bracing for nuclear war.
Our Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon for us.
Barbara, Putin saying himself he nearly put his missiles at the ready?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: He is saying that he was indeed thinking about it, Jake, this according to a documentary on Russian state media. He was thinking about it. And that is what has the U.S. so concerned right now. What else is coming down the road, what else could Vladimir Putin be thinking about?
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
STARR (voice-over): Vladimir Putin reappeared for the first time in 10 days, making light of his absence, saying it would be boring without gossip, gossip that captured world attention not seen since Cold War days when ousted Soviet leaders suddenly failed to appear. Did this Russian leader have the flu, back trouble? Even reports he went to Switzerland to be with his girlfriend for the birth of his baby.
Publicly, Russia and the U.S. making light of it all.
QUESTION: Was the president pleased to see Vladimir Putin resurface?
(LAUGHTER)
STARR: Behind the scenes, the U.S. says it believes Putin was ill, but was always in charge. Not so fast, say some experts.
STEVEN PIFER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UKRAINE: In a normal country, had you had this kind of situation, they would have had a photo-op with the president. Why didn't they do it with Mr. Putin?
STARR: Is Putin, always wanting to be seen as the strong man, in a weakened political position?
PIFER: I think that there may be something going on inside the Kremlin that we don't fully understand.
STARR: What we do know, Putin has been under fire by protesters after the murder of his opponent Boris Nemtsov. And there is more trouble, as Russians begin to realize they are losing troops in the battle for Eastern Ukraine.
According to a new report from Britain's independent Royal United Services Institute, some Russian units are so decimated by casualties that new ad hoc front line units are being formed in the field. The Interior Ministry has sent in special teams to keep Russian soldiers from retreating. Some Russian conscripts are being tricked into signing long-term enlistment papers.
Still, Putin making more military shows of force. U.S. military officials say he is sending increasing numbers of nuclear-capable aircraft into Crimea, though no nuclear weapons. And he has just ordered snap military exercises of the Northern Fleet in the Arctic, according to state-run media, involving some 40,000 troops.
The Pentagon warning the Arctic is being militarized.
GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN: The Russians have just taken a decision to activate six new brigades and four of them will be in the Arctic.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
STARR: Now, look, no one at the Pentagon or the intelligence community or the White House at this moment thinks that Russia is getting ready to attack Europe, to attack the United States.
<16:05:02> But all of this stirred up tension is causing a lot of concern because this is what the U.S. military calls miscalculation. If they don't know what Putin's up to, the concern is that somebody out there is going to miscalculate and there will be a crisis that nobody needs -- Jake.
TAPPER: Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon, thank you so much.
And joining me now is Julia Ioffe, contributing writer at "The New York Times" magazine and the former Moscow correspondent for "Foreign Policy" and "The New Yorker."
Thanks so much for joining us.
So, let me just -- the context here, Putin's chief opponent murdered right near Red Square. Putin drops off the map. He then returns amidst this nuclear threat and the mobilization of troops. It feels like a menacing series of events. Are they connected?
JULIA IOFFE, "NEW YORK": The short answer is yes and no. The long answer is that it feels -- it's starting to feel, especially to the Moscow chattering classes, like the wheels are starting to come off a little bit, that Putin is not fully in control, that, if he disappears, they don't know what's going to happen to the country.
The investigation into the murder of Boris Nemtsov is starting to indicate that maybe Putin didn't have full control over it, that somebody did it without his approval.
TAPPER: Somebody else in his government?
IOFFE: That's right, which indicates -- which I think is far scarier than Putin actually ordering the murder.
TAPPER: Because it means there's this rival force within his own government.
IOFFE: That is violent and that he can't control.
TAPPER: In his absence, people speculated that he was sick. There was covers of tabloids suggesting a love child of some sort. Today, he joked, life would be boring without gossip, he said to the president of Kyrgyzstan.
Why can't the Kremlin give a straight answer about where he was?
IOFFE: Because it doesn't have to, because it doesn't owe anything to the Russian people. I hate to bring him up in this, but Joseph Stalin once said about the Russian people, they will eat it up like a roll.
And that's the tactic Putin seems to be going with, that he doesn't have to explain anything to them. The Russian people will eat it up and say thank you, can I have another?
TAPPER: If President Obama and the other world leaders didn't know where he was for 10 days, and that seems to be the case, that nobody really knew where he was, this is a country with major nuclear forces, what happens if they need to reach him, if something goes wrong?
IOFFE: Well, that's the problem, is that he has so personalized the government that if he disappears, it means the government would radically change. If something were to happen, God forbid, to the American president, America wouldn't fundamentally change. Russia probably would.
And that's the scary part. We don't know in what direction it would change.
TAPPER: This nuclear threat he made on state television, where he basically said that he was ready to get the missiles ready if this dispute over Crimea came to it, how seriously should world leaders like President Obama and Angela Merkel and others take that?
IOFFE: Well, they have to take it very seriously, right, because you can't just go throwing around nuclear threats.
TAPPER: Right, but this is a guy that does puffery. This is a guy who beats his chest, literally in some cases.
(LAUGHTER)
IOFFE: That's right. But I will tell you why it's important. It's important because a year ago when the annexation of Crimea was happening with polite people and little green men on the ground, Vladimir Putin was denying it up and down, swearing up and down that the Russians had nothing to do with it, that these were just local volunteers who were motivated, who hated the fascist junta in Kiev.
And then a year later, he comes out on national TV in a state- television produced documentary and says, of course, it was all -- it was us and we sent in tens of thousands of Russian special ops forces into Crimea to take it.
Meanwhile, the same day, you have Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that, you know, if you really want to negotiate a real cease-fire, you have to talk to the parties in this conflict. We have nothing to do with this.
TAPPER: Right.
IOFFE: So, in a year, I think we will see another tell-all about Eastern Ukraine.
TAPPER: Excellent point. Julia Ioffe, thank you so much. Good to see you, as always.
The national lead now. The man in jail for shooting two police officers in Ferguson admits he pulled the trigger, but Jeffrey Williams argues, hey, I wasn't aiming at the police. I was aiming at someone else. Just why did it take so long for this accused gunman to come forward? His mother says her son may actually be a victim in all of this. A booking photo is only adding to speculation about what really happened -- that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<16:13:34> TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
The national lead today, police say that they cracked the case of who shot two police officers during that protest in Ferguson, but three critical questions remain. One, was the suspect actually targeting police? Two, was he one of the protesters? And, three, did this person act alone?
Twenty-year-old Jeffrey Williams is currently in custody being held on a $300,000 bond. Investigators say he admitted to firing the shots that seriously wounded two officers last Wednesday night/Thursday morning during a protest after the Ferguson police chief announced his resignation, but Williams says, hey, I wasn't aiming for the cops.
Let's go live now to CNN's Ana Cabrera.
And, Ana, you were supposed to interview the suspect in jail today. What happened?
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right.
Initially, he agreed to do an interview with us, and we had set a time to do that. But then he canceled about 45 minutes prior after he got a lawyer, who advised him not to talk. Those who have been out here outside the Ferguson Police Department day in and day out really since the Michael Brown shooting insist that Williams is not one of them.
But we are also hearing from witnesses who say Williams was seen among the protesters last Wednesday night, that in fact he raised some red flags with his presence because he seemed out of place.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA (voice-over): Investigators say 20-year-old Jeffrey Williams admits he opened fire outside the Ferguson Police Department. The shots hit one officer in the face and another in the shoulder.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He has acknowledged his participation in firing the shots.
CABRERA: But Williams claims the police were not his target. The arrest happened over the weekend following a public tip. Police say they found a .40-caliber gun at Williams' home matching shell casings recovered at the shooting scene.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was shocked. I didn't expect it.
CABRERA (on camera): No?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I didn't think he had anything to do with that.
CABRERA: Why?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't know he was that type of person. Like, well, he's real quiet.
CABRERA (voice-over): Not many neighbors we spoke to knew Williams well. Family and friends who declined to go on camera adamantly defend Williams. His mom's ex-boyfriend says Williams wasn't an angel but wasn't violent. His Facebook page verified by a family friend shows him drinking alcohol and flashing money. He also posts about Ferguson and at one point writes about joining the looters.
Officials say, at the time of his arrest, he was on probation for receiving stolen goods.
(on camera): I also spoke with Williams' mother, who tells me she believes her son was coerced by police or even beaten into saying he was the gunman.
(voice-over): Williams' booking photo appears to show an abrasion on his right cheek.
Bishop Derrick Robinson, a community activist, says he spoke to Williams in jail.
DERRICK ROBINSON, COMMUNITY ACTIVIST: He was brutally beaten by the police and he was sore, still had bruises all around his neck, his back and his entire body.
CABRERA: St. Louis County police call the allegations completely false. Jeff Roorda with the St. Louis Police Officers Association tells CNN Williams was taken into custody using the handcuffs of the injured officers. A 32-year-old from the Webster Grove Police Department and a 41-year-old 14-year veteran of St. Louis County PD, both have been released from the hospital.
JEFF ROORDA, ST. LOUIS POLICE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION: They are doing better. They are very relieved at this hour. The entire law enforcement family is breathing a sigh of relief.
CABRERA: Witnesses say Williams was seen at the protests Wednesday outside the Ferguson Police Department and that he was with at least one other person. As the investigation continues, police are urging anyone with more information, more pictures or video, to come forward.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA: At this point, Williams faces a half dozen charges, including two counts of first degree assault, also firing from a moving vehicle and he is being held on a $300,000 cash only bond -- Jake.
TAPPER: Ana Cabrera in Ferguson, Missouri, thank you so much.
In other national news, it's being described as eight minutes of sheer terror. Watertown, Massachusetts police officer who confronted the Boston bombing suspects three nights after the bombing attack recalled in heart-stopping detail today -- the insanity of the shootout between the suspects and police that played out in this quite residential area just outside Boston.
That shootout ended with an explosion and one of the suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, dead after being run over by his own brother, Dzhokhar, who was, of course, on trial for terror charges in connection with the Boston bombings. Countless maimed and four killed in those attacks and explosions and their aftermath, Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, and Officer Sean Collier, of course.
"Boston Globe" columnist Kevin Cullen was inside the courtroom for today's testimony. He joins us now live.
Kevin, great to see you as always.
Can you share some of the more dramatic moments of today's testimony?
KEVIN CULLEN, COLUMNIST, THE BOSTON GLOBE: Well, the way you describe it, Jake, is pretty accurate. I would compare it to sort of a Hollywood action film. This stuff doesn't happen in real life very often.
The first cop, Joe Reynolds, was on routine patrol. He was the first one that encountered them. He described going by them on one way and they going the other way on a side street and he was -- he looked eye to eye with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He turned around, did a three point turn, started following them and his supervisor, John MacLellan, a sergeant, was on the way and said don't, you know, go after them until there's some backup, let me get there.
As soon as MacLellan rolls around the corner on to Laurel Street and sees the cruiser, he says to Joe Reynolds, "Light them up". That doesn't mean fire. That means turn on the blue lights. Even before Joe Reynolds got to turn on the blue lights, there were bullets pinging off his cruiser. He throws his cruiser into reverse at a high rate of speed and this is where it gets to be like one of the "Die Hard" franchise movies.
John MacLellan decides to keep going. He keeps the car -- he has an SUV, keeps it in drive, jumps out of the vehicle, lets it go towards Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is out there firing, and that was critical because Tamerlan Tsarnaev wasted bullets into that empty vehicle and that would come back to haunt him.
TAPPER: What about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? He has been described pretty much as stoic for this trial. What was his demeanor as these details came forward, including ones about him killing his own brother?
CULLEN: This kid has shown the same demeanor all along, whether you had the father of Martin Richard up there describing the killing of his 18-year-old -- his 8-year-old boy at the hands of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, or describing killing his own brother by running him over. He's not showing any emotion. He basically sits there, strokes his beard and doesn't do much of anything. TAPPER: It must have been surreal today because jurors also got a
chance to see the boat where Dzhokhar was ultimately captured along with that bloodstained note he wrote before he was caught.
<16:20:11> CULLEN: Yes. The jurors spent about a half an hour looking at that boat. It's about a mile away from here in a storage facility. They went up there and looked at it.
It was interesting, the pool reporters who went there said the blood stains that were so evident, the things that were shown as a photo to the jurors and all of us last week is very faint. It's actually brown. You wouldn't know it's blood. But the words are there, the bullet holes that are all over the hull of the boat are there, so the jurors saw that.
I must say, Jake, of all the things that happened today, I would say the most extraordinary testimony was sort of mundane in them saying that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not have to go back and run his brother over. He actually did a three point turn and reversed the vehicle. He could have sped off the other way. He was in a much better position to flee but apparently he decided to do a U-turn and come back that way.
And then the police officers describe them being on top of Tamerlan. Even after he was hit, Jeff Pugliese, the sergeant who hit him a number of times, they engaged in five, ten feet away firing at each other before Tamerlan ran out of bullets. Those bullets he pumped into the empty vehicle.
They were wrestling him on the ground trying to subdue him and here comes Dzhokhar to run them over. That was the most extraordinary thing. That didn't have to happen. He actually turned the car around and made it happen.
TAPPER: It makes it sound like he purposely killed his brother? That can't be. Just maybe --
CULLEN: No, I wouldn't say that. I think he wanted to run over the cops. That's what I think he wanted to do. There's no other explanation. Why would he turn and go into the -- why return to where the fire was coming from? He had the car pointed the other way. He could have just kept going down Laurel Street. It would have been a much easier exit for him.
Instead, he turned the car around, went back at the cops and in doing so, killed his brother because the cops jumped out of the way.
TAPPER: Amazing and very disturbing. Kevin Cullen from "The Boston Globe", thank you so much, as always.
Coming up, we heard his voice, we have seen his face and now we hear firsthand details of how Jihadi John tortures his captives. The shocking information from a hostage who lived through the misery.
Plus, a decades-old murder mystery that may have been solved by an on- camera confession on premier cable. Will it be enough to convict the eccentric millionaire?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
<16:26:30> TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD.
In more world news today -- mock executions, gruesome and detailed descriptions of beheadings and constant reminders that any day, any day could be your last day on earth. Those were the methods of torture a former ISIS hostage says he endured at the hands of the masked monster known as Jihadi John.
CNN's Pamela Brown is here with more of the sordid details now being revealed by a Spanish journalist who was held captive by ISIS for more than six months.
Pamela, we've heard very little from those who have survived these ordeals with ISIS.
PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. This is really the first time we are hearing from a former hostage, Jake, who is sharing these really terrifying details. It's a bone-chilling account of daily physical and psychological torture at the hands of the man called Jihadi John during the 194 days of this former hostage spent in captivity before being released by ISIS last March.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN (voice-over): Reunited with his son in Spain, Javier Espinosa finally saw the end of a hellish journey that led him face-to-face with Jihadi John.
Captured by ISIS in the fall of 2013, Espinosa, a journalist for "El Mundo", described the torture he suffered at the hands of Jihadi John in an article he wrote for "The Sunday Times" in the U.K.
Espinosa said, at one point, the infamous masked terrorist held a sword to his neck and said, "Feel it? Cold, isn't it? Can you imagine the pain you'll feel when it cuts, unimaginable pain."
Espinosa, seen here in an interview with "El Mundo", says Jihadi John relished scaring the hostages with gruesome details of how he would slaughter them. Telling him, "The first hit of the sword will sever your veins. The second blow opens your neck. You would make some amusing guttural sounds. I have seen it all before. You will squirm like animals, like pigs. The third blow will take off your head and put it on your back."
When he was finished with the sword, Jihadi John put a pistol to his head, pulling the trigger three times.
DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: The visceral experience means a lot to him. He likes the visceral experience. He's not turning away when he beheads and kills people. Rather, he's thinking about what each blow looks like.
BROWN: Espinosa was held with more than 20 other Western hostages in Syria, including Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller, who were all now dead. Espinosa said, Kassig, a humanitarian worker, told him of his own torture saying, "When they realized I was American and that I had been a soldier in Iraq, they went crazy. They hung me from the roof and started beating me. I thought they were going to execute me."
Sometime later, Kassig was beheaded. The gruesome video posted on the Internet.
GARTENSTEIN-ROSS: Given ISIS's ranks, given how many people they have who have been drawn to them, how many English speakers they have, I have no doubt that if Jihadi John were killed or captured, you would have someone else come along and replace him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: An ISIS defector who was there during one of the beheadings, one of the recent beheadings, also said during an interview with sky news that the militant group reveres Jihadi John as the quote, "big boss" who is the only one in the group allowed to kill foreigners. Really disturbing, Jake.
TAPPER: Horrible stuff. Pamela Brown, thank you so much.
To the national lead now, did a hot mic catch a killer's confession? Robert Durst has no doubt lived an unusual life, born into a wealthy New York real estate family. He once admitted that he dismembered his neighbor. But unbelievably, a jury found him not guilty in that case.
Now, prosecutors say perhaps they finally have enough evidence to lock him up for another murder. How his court appearance today could unravel mysteries dating back 33 years. That's next.
