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Can Rand Paul Win The GOP Nomination?; Obama To Meet With Castro?; State Department Victim Of Phishing Scheme?; New Book Spills White House Secrets. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired April 8, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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


[07:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Good morning to you all. We'll be back in just a few minutes on a busy to go "Inside Politics." With me to share reporting and their insights are Margaret Talev of "Bloomberg" and Jonathan Martin of "The New York Times."

Let's start with the big announcement yesterday. Rand Paul, the number two candidate in the race, we all know the big challenge for Rand Paul, as he is the son of Ron Paul, he started his career in politics saying essentially let's reduce the American military presence overseas.

The Republican establishment especially with the rise of ISIS is nervous about that. Listen to Rand Paul yesterday in his announcement speech trying to thread the needle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Conservatives should not succumb though, to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow succeed in building nations abroad. I envision a national defense that promotes as Reagan put it, peace through strength.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Will the conservatives accept the Rand Paul comparing himself to Ronald Reagan or is he got a little bit of a hill to climb there?

JONATHAN MARTIN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, the neoconservatives are not going to accept him. In fact, they're already targeting him with a pretty large television buy, going after him, which raises a larger question about Rand's candidacy and about his whole political identity is, you know, the short-term versus the long-term.

He's making more of a short-term play to try to accommodate both the national security conservatives in his party and also frankly the cultural conservatives in in his party.

Would he have been better off being more true to a libertarian approach and making a long-term play, to be a viable candidate down the road by forcing the party to become more of a libertarian party?

What he's done now essentially is trying to be viable this time around. But doing so, do you lose your own identity as the sort of libertarian style candidate?

KING: Right, and you can see the tension there, the more he embraces the establishment, the more the libertarians might say wait a minute, this is not Rand Paul -- who are you, we don't accept this, are you genuine? Are you authentic?

MARGARET TALEV, "BLOOMBERG": But peace through strength, by the way, are like not three random words that are strung together that is like a rallying cry of the neoconservative movement, right, originally, and so the specific use of those three words is more than just a move to accommodate.

It's a buzz word, buzz phrase, but it's all in the eye of the beholder, President Obama would say that he's operating from a position of strength. Rand Paul would say President Obama is operating from a position of weakness.

KING: And so the question is in this coalition building, can he keep his Tea Party slice? Can he keep the libertarians without losing them and then grow into the mainstream Republican establishment. One of the guys, who hope to block him, is the former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Listen to him saying welcome to the race, but --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Libertarianism definitely has a place in the GOP. We all share a common belief that we need to limit government's power. I do think there are some differences of opinion on foreign policy. Should I get into the race?

I'll express my views about the need for a strong national defense and for an America that is consistent so our friends know that we have their back and our enemies fear us a little bit. That's what creates peace and stability which I think is the objective that everybody wants.

KING: Rand Paul's presence guarantees I think a debate we're going to have anyway. They believe the Republicans do, that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. They want to go after her record as secretary of state.

They believe, the Republicans do, that President Obama has mishandled ISIS or Boko Haram, global issues. Does Rand Paul's presence in the race will guarantee more of an uprising about this question of America's place in the world?

MARTIN: It insures it takes place. It would have been a more robust debate had Rand stuck to his more sort of pure libertarian approach on foreign policy. But this is someone who has signed the Tom Cotton letter to Iran. This is somebody who introduced during the budget process an amendment to increase defense spending, which is unthinkable.

TALEV: And we'll be hearing more about Israel, a lot.

MARTIN: It will take place. I just think it would have been much more robust had he run on a more sort of Ron Paul-esque candidacy.

KING: Where he was a year ago, but the times have changed. I think he's adapting to the changing world events. The question is does he lose some of his standing because of that another world event that could become an issue in this campaign and will become a big issue in the country and around the world is the president is going this weekend to a regional summit in Panama.

Where we know that Raul Castro will be there and we know from the White House there will be some interaction, we don't know exactly what it will be yet.

Remember we have to go back to the Eisenhower administration, it's a long time. They didn't have this thing called cable television back then.

TALEV: No Twitter yet.

KING: So the question is how much of an interaction, how much of a dialogue between an American president and a Cuban leader? A big question for the president is do you take Cuba off the list of countries that are state sponsors of terrorism?

Listen to what the president told NPR about it. He said he's waiting for a State Department recommendation, but he is looking to turn the page.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't expect an immediate transformation, to Cuban/American relationship overnight, but I do see the possibility, a great hunger within Cuba to begin a change, a process that ultimately I think can lead to more freedom and more opportunity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now he's optimistic, looking at the long-term. He also notes I assume that if he spends a lot of time with Raul Castro, the conservatives, like they do about Iran, will say what do you do if you can't trust these people?

[07:35:08] TALEV: That's right. And the White House said there's not going to be a bilateral meeting where he and Castro sit down and hammer out stuff and sit down. But they haven't ruled out a number of interactions, to just sitting, how is it going or sitting together in group meetings or spending time together on the sidelines or actually inside the summit.

So the question is, is he going to take Cuba off of the state sponsors of terror list? This is a designation that goes back to the Reagan era. If you go to the State Department page and you actually read what the designations are. It's a pretty half-hearted designation to begin with if you read it on the page.

It deals with things like Farc and Basque separatists. The president, even if he doesn't go all the way, although, it certainly seems like they may be poised to even just in raising the issue is signaling pretty clearly what direction he wants to go.

KING: The criticism is why give them another carrot when they have not reciprocated in the American government view, including the Obama administration's view with more openness, freeing political prisoners and things like that?

MARTIN: Well, I think this is a cornerstone of President Obama's foreign policy that the so-called Obama doctrine now, which is basically instead of using sticks, you know, try some carrots. The isolation against a lot of these regimes hasn't worked over the years, he would argue it's been self-defeating, it hasn't changed the status quo, let's try a different approach.

KING: I love this story. So let's get to it quickly, Bill Clinton is on the cover of "Town and Country" magazine. I repeat. Bill Clinton is on the cover of "Town and Country" magazine. I love this idea.

Mr. President, if were you a tree, what kind of tree would you be. He's talking about his potential role in a Hillary Clinton campaign, which will begin any day now.

He said I think it's important and Hillary does, too, that she go out there as if she's never run for anything before and establish her connection with the voters and that my role would be backstage adviser to her until we get much, much closer, closer to the election.

I guess, he thinks, you know, if she's the nominee, much close to the elections, he get to --

TALEV: And that's a backstage role, on the cover of a magazine?

MARTIN: It jibes with everything that we're hearing about the coming Hillary campaign, low-key, much more intimate with voters, more biographical, touches about who she is, and a very different experience than '08. The rallies crowds may come, but it's not going to be out of the gate. She wants to start this thing slowly and reintroduce herself to the American electorate.

KING: It's just yet another exclamation point in the changing of our business to help with the presidential campaign you're on the cover of "Town and Country." It's a good get, why not.

And Alisyn, as we get back to New York, if there's somebody special in your life who needs a gift and they like politics, when Rand Paul launched his campaign, he also launched a website, much like the Obama campaign, does a lot of campaigns do now, sell some merchandise there.

If you're skeptical about NSA spying and the government, you can get a laptop camera blocker there to keep the government, I guess, from snooping on you if you think that's what is happening.

He's an opthalmologist, Dr. Paul, and you can get an eye chart at Rand Paul's web site. You can also get flip flops that say I stand with rand that one is a bit more of a risk. Somebody who people say has changed his position on a border fence or changed his position on foreign aid to Israel, selling flip-flops might lead to a couple of late-night jokes maybe.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Wow, I think you are setting it up perfectly. I also like that you can stop the NSA for just $15, that's a deal right there.

KING: If you only knew, Edward Snowden

CAMEROTA: Thanks, John. Thanks so much for that.

Speaking of hack attacks, Russian hackers are said to have accessed the White House computer system, how vulnerable is our national security? We'll get into that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:42:28]

BERMAN: A cyberbreach at the State Department and now the White House, well, U.S. officials are saying only unclassified systems were affected, they consider it one of the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against the U.S. government systems.

I'm joined now by CNN national security analyst and former Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser, Fran Townsend. Thanks so much for being with us. The headline here is alarming, Russia hacks the White House, huge headline, but was it really mean?

FRANCES TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, John, let's be honest. It's nothing new. There's been decades of spying by the Russians, right, and it's gone from human spying, that is Alder (ph) James and Robert Hanson (ph), those big cases.

Then it goes -- it moves on to more sophisticated things like electronic surveillance, I remember doing a case where they planted a bug in the State Department conference room and they were actually monitoring that.

So this is a long history of Russian spying against Americans. Here's what makes it different. We know that the Russians have got a very capable cyber offensive capability. We've seen it before, we've seen it against Georgia. We've seen them shutting down systems including dedicated denial of service.

This is far more aggressive. What they're talking about is this is an offensive operation and it's very targeted even though it's a classified system. You know, we know now that the president's schedule may have been accessed.

What they're not telling you is these are the systems that they write the talking points, they do the negotiating strategy. Was the Iranian negotiating strategy breached? We don't know that.

The dialogue between the State Department and the White House about policy positions, pre-decisional, that is officials going back and forth, who's on what side of a policy argument, that's the kind of very valuable intelligence that the Russians can get at.

BERMAN: It may not be classified, doesn't mean it's not sensitive and sensitive is bad enough if that's being used right now. Fran, you call it a very sophisticated operation and I've heard that phrase tossed around over the last several hours.

But the way they got into the White House apparently was through phishing, which is what happens to people, you know when they're like J. Crew account. You say we've got a great deal for you. Open this email. This does not sound like a sophisticated attack exactly.

TOWNSEND: No, but people are more aware so you talk about phishing, and people know you're not talking about a rod and reel. They understand what you mean now, and that's good.

But the ability to launch a phishing attack has gotten better. I got one, it said Apple Pay. I have an Apple Pay account, and you click on it and there's no reason, the icon looks right. All of it looks right until you look at the domain.

[07:45:07] That's when you go to reply to this. Look at the email address at the top and you realize it's going to a Gmail account. It couldn't possibly be Apple Pay.

BERMAN: You and me and my grandparents and stuff with their Gmail accounts, it's not supposed to happen in the White House, right?

TOWNSEND: It isn't, but you know, these guys are very sophisticated. They'll get into the State Department system and then they use that as what we call a Trojan. That is you then go in when the State Department account, goes into the White House, in an email, you travel with it and you're masked that way to get inside the White House system.

BERMAN: Does the White House, the U.S. government, have a way to detect this as it is happening or when it has happened? Do you know when you've been hacked?

TOWNSEND: We didn't. We didn't originally, right? Going back to my time in the White House, I left in 2000 -- early 2008. We were just setting up those systems so the answer is now yes. They've got the ability to monitor the perimeter of each of the government entities, the domain accounts and look for the sort of aberrant activity, identify it. Sort of put, restrict it to what it has access to and to watch how it moves about, to understand what they're trying to collect.

BERMAN: Watch how it moves about, in other words, it's there, it's still there. They know it's there and they can't get rid of it completely?

TOWNSEND: Sometimes you want to watch it, right? You want to see what it is they're looking for. So it's basically running an intelligence operation against what they're doing. And you can restrict then what they've got access to once you've identified it.

The more difficult part is identifying it and make sure you've gotten it completely. Think that's why we've heard the director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper, talk about sort of how big a threat the Russian hackers are.

BERMAN: When you say Russian hackers, I want to break it down. Is that like Vladimir Putin behind his laptop or not even that his intelligence people doing this or are these criminal elements? And Lord knows there are a lot of them in Russia as well.

TOWNSEND: Right. You've got both. You've got the Russian criminals, who are looking at your J. Crew account, to use your example, right. They're looking at commercial accounts and looking for personal data because they can make criminal use of it by stealing your identity.

But you also have intelligence services and you have proxies that are outsiders used by Russian intelligence services to launch these attacks and allow them some deniability.

BERMAN: And there may be some overlap, too, which is interesting.

TOWNSEND: That's exactly right.

BERMAN: All right, Fran Townsend, great to have you here with us. Really appreciate it -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, JB, the secret lives of first families revealed by White House staff. But some of the most dramatic details in a new book involve a power couple looking to move back into the White House, yes, the Clintons. We have some of the book's juiciest revelations, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:10]

CUOMO: It's 10 minutes before 8:00 in the east. Have a little political intrigue, how about the walls of the White House? Well, imagine if they could talk, the history, the debauchery.

Well, imagine no more, just released book revealing intimate details of the drama that has unfolded inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Kennedys, to the Obamas.

We have CNN senior White House correspondent, who better than Brianna Keilar here with the provocative details. What do you know?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You see if you walls could talk, you might as well as say if the staff could talk, and they are now talking so we learn a lot through this book.

Nancy Reagan, perhaps the most particular of the recent residents in the White House, LBJ, perhaps the most peculiar, and according to multiple sources in this book, the Clintons, the most paranoid.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): As Bill and Hillary Clinton prepare to fight their way back into the White House, a new book reveals details about the explosive arguments they had inside its halls.

(on camera): There was blood all over the president and first lady's bed. The blood was Bill Clinton's. What did they think had happened?

KATE ANDERSON BROWER, AUTHOR, "THE RESIDENCE": Well, everyone on the staff said that they were convinced that she clocked him with a book.

KEILAR (voice-over): In an ABC interview with the "Time," Clinton dismissed similar rumors that she had thrown a lamp at the president.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: You know, I have a pretty good arm. If I had thrown a lamp at somebody, I think you would have known about it.

KEILAR: But insiders say the Monica Lewinsky scandal left her reeling. One summer day Hillary Clinton enlisted an usher to help her get to the swimming pool unspotted and without a Secret Service detail.

BROWER: He escorted her and made sure she wouldn't have to see any Secret Service agents, wouldn't have to see anybody on a tour, and no staffers. She didn't want to see anyone and she specifically said that. So he was so proud he was able to make this happen.

KEILAR: Just a few of the juicy tidbits in a new largely on the record account of life behind the scenes in the White House. Kate Anderson Brower interviewed dozens of former maids, chefs, florists, butlers, and doormen who have worked at the White House dating back to the Kennedy years for "The Residents inside the Private World of the White House."

Their accounts of everyday life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seemingly ripped from the script of the PBS series "Downton Abbey" and just like in the popular show, the lack of privacy in the White House is a constant theme in the book. Former employees describe Bill and Hillary as the most private first couple they worked for.

BROWER: I've had staffers say that the Clintons were the most definitely paranoid first family that they ever had to work with and they didn't ever really trust the staff. It took them a year to carry on a conversation while the staff was in the room.

KEILAR: And the Clintons had the White House phone system rewired so they could make their own calls instead of going through an operator.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Now the Clintons ultimately did get on much better with the staff. In fact, there are a number of sweet moments in this book, not just with the Clintons but with all of the administrations. One, for instance, during the height of the Lewinsky scandal, the pastry chef tells of Hillary Clinton frequently calling and asking for her favorite dessert, which was mocha cake.

That was something he prided himself on. That he could at least give her that little bit of comfort. Also a lot of the female staff at least amongst themselves in the residence let it be known that they were rather happy that Hillary Clinton had relegated Bill Clinton to the couch, yes.

CAMEROTA: You said that this was mostly on the record. Are people using their real names to talk?

KEILAR: Yes, their real names so these are former butlers, florists, electricians and many of these --

CUOMO: The electrician. They know everything.

BERMAN: They know how it's wired.

KEILAR: An electrician reveals an interesting story about Richard Nixon and just actually right after he resigned the person who walked from the oval office to the residence with President Nixon at his request was the electrician, which is sort of ironic.

CAMEROTA: Yes, to your point.

KEILAR: It's a good read.

CAMEROTA: It sounds like it.

KEILAR: I was like this last night.

CAMEROTA: I bet you were. After that I'm firing my butler. All right, Brianna, thanks so much.

[07:55:08] KEILAR: You bet. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: All right, back to our top story, dramatic and disturbing. A South Carolina police officer charged with murder after video shows him shooting a man as he runs away unarmed. We will speak with that man's grieving brother and the family's attorney coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:59:14]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED CALLER: Shots fired.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What if there was no video. What if there was no witness.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shot eight times in the back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The guy is clearly running away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This looks like cold blooded murder. BERMAN: Russian hackers were able to access sensitive parts of the White House computer system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Russia has been active in the espionage space.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've been targeting our infrastructure for a long time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are in the peak of our air campaign.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have expedited weapons deliveries. They cannot overrun Yemen by force.

CAMEROTA: A second day of jury deliberations in the Boston bombing trial.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He faces 30 different counts, 17 of those charges coming with a possible death sentence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, April 8th, 8:00 in the east. Michaela is off. John Berman is joining us. Good to have you, my friend. We have a lot news.