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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

ISIS Claims Yemen Mosque Attacks; Mad Dash to Get into College; Investigation into Maltese Johnson Arrest at UVA. Aired 11:30-12p ET

Aired March 20, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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


JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: 120 people killed.

[11:30:01] That number seems to be rising. 300 more injured and "Reuters" is reporting that ISIS is now claiming responsibility.

I want to bring in Paul Cruickshank, CNN's terrorism analyst.

Paul, that claim of ISIS responsibility, we do not know if it's true, however, if it is true, that's a big deal.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: It would be a very big deal. Absolutely. It would be a big surprise to many of us who follow this because ISIS is not thought of as more of a fledging presence there. ISIS and al Qaeda in Yemen can't strand each other. There's a lot of tension between those two groups. But it doesn't take that many people to launch suicide bombings. Four suicide bombers as ISIS is now claiming and now perhaps logistical support network. It would be a big deal, indeed. And whoever is responsible trying to plunge the country into civil war. Remember that bombing at the Golden Mosque in Iraq in February of 2006, that was al Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS that carried that out. And back in 2006, their aim was to get Shia to overreact so the Sunnis would be driven toward al Qaeda in Iraq and ISIS. Whoever is responsible for this attack today in Yemen are trying to do the same thing. They're trying to create an overreaction from the Houthis and create a civil war kind of situation in Yemen where the Sunnis go over to the al Qaeda or ISIS side and really strengthen jihadis.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Put this in the context of what's happening in Yemen over the past month. It's been devolving into chaos. How bad is it now?

CRUICKSHANK: It's unprecedentedly bad inside Yemen right now. And the Houthis --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Why does that matter?

CRUICKSHANK: It matters to the United States --

(CROSSTALK)

CRUICKSHANK: -- because al Qaeda in Yemen has been the most active group in terms of targeting the United States, specifically U.S. aviation, and there have been three attempts in the last several years to target U.S. passenger jets and they're getting closer and closer to building more sophisticated devices. The more space and resources these jihadis have inside Yemen, the more able they will be to bring down an American passenger jet somewhere around the world.

BERMAN: The subject of ISIS claiming responsibility we now have an ISIS claim of responsibility for the terror attack on the museum in Tunisia. The guys trained in Libya and went back to Tunisia and carried out this raid. What do you know about that and what does it mean?

CRUICKSHANK: We don't have proof that ISIS was responsible. Clearly they are claiming responsibility for that attack.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Does that surprise you? That was part of our discussion yesterday when you just had gotten that information of this claim of responsibility and you said then there's no proof. Do you think there would have been proof provided by now?

CRUICKSHANK: I think it's very possible it could be ISIS in Tunisia. All of those Tunisians that have gone out to fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq about 500 have come back. And also ISIS is training Tunisians in the eastern part of Libya around Benghazi. And now Tunisian security officials are saying that some of the perpetrators and some of the terror cell received training in Benghazi region. It could be ISIS recruited and trained them there in eastern Libya.

BERMAN: They're not just training grounds in Syria and Iraq where we've been talking about it for months and months but now Libya is training territory for is.

CRUICKSHANK: Absolutely. Just on the southern shore of the Mediterranean just a few hundred miles away from Europe. Parts of Tunisia are just a few dozen miles away from the southern-most point of Europe off the southern coast of Sicily, about 25 miles away from Tunisia. ISIS is on the doorstep of Europe. It's very alarming from the European point of view.

BOLDUAN: That has implications in the right against ISIS from the U.S.-led coalition.

Paul Cruickshank, always good to see you. Thanks, Paul.

Ahead for us AT THIS HOUR, friends of the college student whose violent arrest was caught on video are coming to his defense. One saying this, "He was always nice and kind to everybody." New details on both sides of that story coming up.

[11:34:11] BERMAN: And will you be successful? More successful if you go to an Ivy League school? One author says not necessarily. He'll tell us why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BOLDUAN: It's a nerve-racking time of year for millions of young

men and women right now. High school seniors checking the mail every day -- do they come by e-mail now?

BERMAN: I'm told they do.

BOLDUAN: -- to see if they got into their dream college or university.

BERMAN: For a lot of high school seniors, this is their first experience with the cold reality of rejection. For a lot of them, it may seem like the end of the world.

But as Frank Bruni writes in "The New York Times" and also in his great new book, "This is the great brutal culling. What madness and what nonsense." His book is called "Where You Go is Not Who You'll Be, An End to the College Admissions Mania." He joins us here AT THIS HOUR.

The students out there are getting the letters. Frankly, more will be rejected than will get into their main choices, right?

FRANK BRUNI, AUTHOR: At some schools it will be -- Stanford rejected 95 percent of its applicants last year.

BOLDUAN: That's amazing when you think about that. A graphic to show the schools and their admission statistics. It's startling.

BRUNI: When you look at statistics, you realize you can't give kids a message whether they get in or not will determine their future.

BOLDUAN: But after.

BRUNI: The odds are so stacked against them that you cannot have them tethering their self-worth to that.

BERMAN: How do you convince them of that? There's a notion out there --

(CROSSTALK)

BRUNI: With a book.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: In addition to your book, what do you say to them? It's the kids and parents and college counselors.

BRUNI: It's the colleges themselves and the way they come to students. What you say is look at the world around you. Look at the array of successful people you know. They didn't all travel one path through an elite school to get to where they got. Many paths to success and college is important but it's nor important in how you use it and not in the name on the school. BOLDUAN: To go back, why did you want to take this on? What was

motivation?

BRUNI: I was seeing kids, my nieces and nephews, children of friends, I was seeing them go through this process, which has become so saturated with anxiety. I was watching them believe that what happened on a few days in late March or early April was going to have a profound affect on their lives. I wanted to say, no, that's not the case. Life is long. This is one juncture. You are what you make of your opportunities. Don't tether everything to this one passage.

BERMAN: In going to an Ivy League school, there's no guarantee of success either. You actually make the point in your book that sometimes it can be stifling and works against what you're after.

[11:40:01] BRUNI: There are kids I talked to in the book, who went to ivy league schools, and they fell in lockstep with the direction their peers were going and realize it's not who I want to be and they had to change course. There are kids that end up in that overheated extremely competitive environment not flourishing the way they might in a different environment. So when you're coming up to college, you really have to think about what kind of atmosphere is going to help you flourish and not just how exclusive is the school you can get into.

BOLDUAN: Frank, it's important but it fits into the difficult categories of things we need to strive for like getting eight hours of sleep every night. It sounds great. I know it would be better for me. In the end the easiest thing is just to continue on. That kind of fits into this category of you want to tell kids to find the best school for them but isn't that also difficult for a high school senior to navigate rather than just say I want to go for the best college.

BRUNI: It is difficult, but it can be easier if those of us who are around them who are adults who know better and have perspective give them a saner and healthier message and truer to reality.

BERMAN: How helpful when you have "U.S. News and World Report" putting out their ranking?

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: I pulled it up to figure out where my college ranked.

BRUNI: Where did you rank?

BOLDUAN: 54th.

BRUNI: Did that make you feel good, bad?

BOLDUAN: It made me feel like a failure.

BRUNI: See, and clearly, it all went downhill from there.

BOLDUAN: It did. BRUNI: If you had gone to a school in the top-10, everything

would be different. It's absurd. These rankings are absurd and our allegiance to them is absurd.

BERMAN: It makes the problem that much worse. You have schools trying to game the system to get a higher ranking.

BRUNI: You can game the system. You can't put faith in the rankings because they can improve their ranking by figuring out what "U.S. News" is looking at and making sure it scores well in those categories.

BERMAN: They can reject more kids and get a higher ranking.

BRUNI: Or they look at SAT scores more of incoming freshman because that's measured.

BOLDUAN: Anything that surprised you on your journey of investigating this?

BRUNI: You know, I asked people if there was a school out there that had given them more great ideas and more students with great ideas that became successful tech ventures and they said yes, one school stood out. The University of Waterloo in Canada.

BOLDUAN: Really?

BRUNI: Really.

BOLDUAN: A surprise. Very interesting.

BERMAN: Wow. I wasted four years.

BOLDUAN: You wasted four years at Harvard.

BRUNI: You should have gone to Waterloo.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Frank Bruni, it's a terrific book. I recommend it to every parent and every student out there going through this hell right now.

BOLDUAN: Hell it is.

All right. Coming up for us, there are eight states in the U.S. without a policy requiring schools to test kids eyesight, but left undetected, many eye problems can lead to blindness. This week's "CNN Hero" is fighting to make sure children see clearly. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right, Chelsea.

CHELSEA ELLIOTT, CNN HERO: I was a very active child. Anything I could see I grabbed. I was barely four when I lost my vision in my left eye. The following years, I was so angry. This was an irreversible change.

25 percent of children ages 5 to 17 have a vision problem. 25 percent. How can you fully embrace all of the opportunities available if you can't see them?

Keep looking right at the light for me.

Our program provides free vision screenings to all school age children in Maui County.

We actually use advance technology which allows us to test in seconds. Had this device been around when I was 4 years old, it could have saved my vision. After the screening, we deliver referral reports to the school health aide and for low income families we provide access to an eye care professional and financial assistance to cover the cost of corrective wear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter loves books. We never thought something was wrong so when I got the letter, we were caught off guard.

ELLIOTT: Hi.

Riley reminded me a lot of myself. We both turned out to have pretty severe conditions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Riley is only four years old. Because they caught it early, we can help her.

ELLIOTT: Just seeing her even today with glasses knowing that her vision is going to be completely fine because we caught it, that's what we do.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[11:44:33] BOLDUAN: Go to CNNheroes.com to nominate someone who deserves recognition who is making a difference.

Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Happening now, University of Virginia students are getting set to meet with officials from the state's alcohol control agency and local police. They are hoping to get answers and reduce tensions following the bloody arrest of a UVA student, Martese Johnson. On campus, question-and-answer session begins an hour from now.

BERMAN: Video of that violent takedown has triggered accusations of police excessive use of force.

Joining to discuss this with Cedrick Alexander, president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives.

Always great to have you. Thank you for coming in. CEDRICK ALEXANDER, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF BLACK LAW

ENFORCEMENT EXECUTIVES: Thank you for having me.

BOLDUAN: You've seen this video. We've seen this video. We watched it many times at this point. What do you see in the video? Do you see excessive use of force?

ALEXANDER: I think there's a part of the video we don't see. What needs to happen very clearly, once Virginia State investigation begins, which I think is the right thing to do, is that this goes to an independent investigation. They have an opportunity to look at maybe more video footage that may be available that has not been revealed at this point because what's going to be clearly important is what occurred right from the inception and how did this young man end on the ground in the way in which he did. So I think there's still a lot to be accounted for here in terms of what actually occurred, witness statements, and any other forensic evidence that might avail itself to this investigation.

[11:50:02] BERMAN: It's a good point, we haven't seen what happened before this but we do know what happened before this, which is public intoxication and obstruction of justice without force. When you hear obstruction of justice without force, it makes me think that he wasn't fighting them physically so how could it ever be OK that he ends up with blood gushing from his forehead.

ALEXANDER: Something happened, and that's what I think everyone deserves to know. The university deserves to know too what actually happened, how did he end up on the ground. The officers are going to have to prove the charges that they have placed on him based on whatever their account may be. And of course, those statements are going to need to be consistent to what the findings of witness statements are and also to whatever video footage that might be available during this case as well too.

But let me note something here very clearly, is that in light of everything that's going on in this country, I'm not surprised as to what we see here, the outrage that we see, that people are speaking to across the country and in the university of Virginia community. This is just -- shows us just how sensitive things are still in this country between police and community relations. So there's still a lot of work that has to be done. But I am very hopeful, and I'm also going to be optimistic, in that that university community along with that investigation and the community across the country at large are going to get to the bottom of actually what occurred that night, how it occurred and what led up to that young man being injured. We all noted he has an impeccable reputation in and around the community, there on campus, and he still has a bright future ahead of him. It is unfortunate what occurred both with the officers now having to answer and to the young man, of course, who received injuries as well too. But we're going to work through this. One of the best things that has happened in all of this is that there is an independent investigation and it's going to clear up a lot of the questions which we have today.

BOLDUAN: And there are a lot of questions. Speaking to kind of the sensitivity and the attention that's being given to this issue right now, I want to read you just a bit, Marcus Martin, he was on the show yesterday. He's the vice president for diversity and equity at the university. He's also a doctor. He was on the show. He put out a letter to faculty and students. In it in part he said that, "This was wrong. It should not have occurred." He said, "It was highly unusual." and he's also "appalled based on the information that he's received."

He's clearly troubled by it. The community there is clearly troubled by it. I know you are being careful to reserve judgment until all the facts are out, but are you troubled by it?

ALEXANDER: Well, what I'm troubled by is the fact that I think any time we see a young man who is promising, has such an impeccable reputation in and around the campus and you see this happen to him, it certainly does create some pause for all of us. But here again, in all fairness, and we have to make sure that we're fair in this, none of us know what occurred until this investigation is complete. It is unfortunate, but if I had to say anything at this point, I think there's opportunities for law enforcement across this community to continue to enhance our training, to look at de-escalation opportunities when they avail themselves. Could this have been deescalated? It very well possibly could have been. But, of course, me, not being there, we'll see as it relates to this investigation going forward.

BERMAN: We will all see.

Mr. Alexander, thank you for being with us.

ALEXANDER: Thank you for having me.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

Ahead for us AT THIS HOUR, the changing landscape of India is putting some of the country's most beautiful creatures at risk. "The Wonder List's," Bill Weir will be with us next to talk about what's being done to try to save them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:57:25] BERMAN: The change throughout India could be threatening many of that country's national treasures, especially the tiger, which is quickly disappearing.

BOLDUAN: On a brand new episode of "The Wonder List," CNN's Bill Weir tries to see how to save tigers before they're gone. Look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL WEIR, CNN HOST, THE WONDER LIST: Punam (ph) and Harsh (ph) have another idea. Convince farmers to quit farming, let the land go wild and live off the eco-tourists who they hope will come in droves.

(on camera): So is your vision that all this area will be forest instead of farms? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Happier people, people who look at

the tiger as their own. And the next time the poacher comes here and he's going to say can I lay I trap, I'll give you 500, the guy will say no, your 500 is useless to me. This tiger is mine and don't you dare come here. Looking at the situation today, that's probably the only solution we have, that the local people, they benefit and they take care.

WEIR (voice-over): To prove their concept, they bought seven barren acres between two tiger forests, put in a little water hole and let it go wild. In just a few years, it is an animal super highway.

(on camera): Oh, look at that, sloth bears.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Porcupines, leopards, you know, of course many, many tigers.

WEIR: Oh, my goodness, look at that, family of four.

What do your neighbors in the big city say when you say we're going to spend the weekend with the tigers out in the woods?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It kind of freaks them out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: It would freak me out too, I guess.

Bill? Were you freaked out?

WEIR: I was a little freaked out. My question is who is going to be the last person to see a wild tiger? There is more in cages in Texas than there are in the forests of India, which shocked me. That's why I went over there.

BOLDUAN: That's shocking.

WEIR: But good news, thanks to the work of folks like this and some other interesting ideas, India is one country where they're on the up rise. The last census had a few hundred more than a few years ago so there are signs of hope. The planet is getting so crowded and these fearsome beasts need to roam free for the genetics to work so how do you balance that.

BERMAN: So great. So great to see you. Bill Weir, thank you so much.

BOLDUAN: Wait.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: I'm going to ask.

Remember to watch the new episode of "The Wonder List" this Sunday at 10:00 p.m.

In answer to the question of did Bill Weir catch a tiger?

(LAUGHTER)

WEIR: By the toe.

BERMAN: You'll have to watch to find out.

(LAUGHER)

BOLDUAN: Great to see you, Bill. Thank you so much.

WEIR: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: And thank you all for joining us for a very special hour AT THIS HOUR.

Before we go, happy almost birthday.

BERMAN: Thank you very much.