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Joe Biden Announces Not Running for President; Ryan to Run for House Speakership; Hillary Clinton Testifies Tomorrow Before Benghazi Committee; Amb. Wendy Sherman Talks Benghazi, Iran Nuclear Deal. Aired 1:30-2p ET>

Aired October 21, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:35] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. We are following the breaking news that the vice president, Joe Biden, announcing a little while ago that he is not going to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, and this is after months of speculation, and he made the announcement in the Rose Garden with the president of the United States alongside him, and his wife, Jill Biden, standing alongside as well.

The reaction is pouring in. Donald Trump tweeting, quote, "I think that Joe Biden made the correct decision for him and his family and, personally, I would rather run against Hillary, because her record is so bad."

And this statement coming from the Republican Party chairman, Reince Priebus, saying, "The vice president's decision not to enter the 2016 race is a blow for Democrats, who now will almost certainly be saddled with their unpopular and scandal-plagued frontrunner, Hillary Clinton. Vice President Biden was the most formidable general election candidate the Democratic Party could have fielded. And his decision not to challenge Hillary Clinton greatly improves our chances of taking back the White House." And Priebus concluding with this, "With each revelation about the growing e-mail scandal or the growing conflicts of interest at the State Department, Hillary Clinton is getting more beatable by the day."

And let's bring in someone who has worked closely with Vice President Biden. Joining us, Luis Navarro, who was his campaign manager in 2007, 2008 when he was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

Luis, thank you for joining us.

LUIS NAVARRO, FORMER JOE BIDEN CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Thank you for having me.

BLITZER: Did you think that he would make this decision?

NAVARRO: I was not sure, but i knew that he would make the decision based on what was best for his family and the country and the party.

BLITZER: And he said that he didn't have a pathway that it was too late to win the nomination, because it was so late in the process. He said that the family was ready for it, and he had gotten past that, but he didn't feel like he could win.

NAVARRO: Well, he did due diligence and the staff in the DNC, and talking to people in the field, talking to donors, talking to the head of the firefighters union. And this was a function of a process that he went through in terms of trying to assess what the pathway was to nomination, and clearly he made the decision that the time and window had closed.

BLITZER: So many people who had spoken to him over the past few weeks, they came to the conclusion that he would seek the Democratic nomination, and so this must have been very painful decision for him, and it is also made relatively late, right?

NAVARRO: I would also say that a lot of people came away from the conversations, hearing what they wanted to hear, and so the vice president said well, I am thinking about it, and while I'm looking into it, the people who wanted him to do that might have inferred that he is absolute really doing it in part because that is what they wanted.

BLITZER: People were already hired to work on the campaign, and people were moving to Washington and elsewhere to start working on the Biden campaign, and they are going to be deeply disappointed now with this decision.

NAVARRO: As with any situation, I don't know how the process went in terms of hiring, but, in my case, I did not take my job until I met with then-Senator Biden, and so it all depends. If I had been in their situation, I think they would have asked for that to have my own sense of mind.

BLITZER: He did not do well the first two times he ran for president, and I remember covering the effort in 2007 and 2008 and I moderated at several of the Democratic presidential debates, and he did very well in the debates --

NAVARRO: Absolutely.

BLITZER: -- but it did not translate that to into votes and he did not well in Iowa, for example, and I guess that he realized that he would not get the nomination.

NAVARRO: But then those debates elevated him to the point of vice president of the United States, and had he participated in the debates, he would have performed well. And given the unpredictability of the election city, who knows what might have been possible.

BLITZER: But after eight years in line, behind the president of the United States, he probably felt that he was next in line, the sitting vice president, but that didn't exactly work out.

NAVARRO: No. There was a difference in how he was looking at this at the beginning of the year, and the tragedy that befell the family.

BLITZER: The tragic los of his son, Beau Biden, who was attorney general of Delaware. A really, really nice guy as well. (CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: A big loss to the Biden family.

Thanks, Luis Navarro.

NAVARRO: Thanks very much.

[13:34:40] BLITZER: Thanks for joining us.

And coming up, Hillary Clinton heads to Capitol Hill tomorrow. She will testify about the loss of American lives during that terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. I'll talk to a Republican on the Benghazi Committee about what to expect. Stay with us.

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[13:39:20] BLITZER: After repeatedly saying, no, not interested, don't want it, the Congressman Paul Ryan is now finally signaling to fellow Republicans that he is after all going to run for the speaker of the House, but he has conditions that have to be met or he won't do it. Last night, he told the Republican colleagues that he wants a promise that the Republicans in the House of Representatives are willing to reunite behind him, including those in the Freedom Caucus who helped to force out the current speaker, John Boehner, and he set a deadline for them to agree, and that is this Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOEHNER, (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I thought that last night went very well, and, hopefully, by the end of the week, we will have a nominee.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And what do you believe --

BOEHNER: Don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[13:40:08] BLITZER: Ryan, by the way, is scheduled to meet with the House Freedom Caucus at 4:00 p.m. eastern. And meantime, the Republicans are going to vote for their nominee one week from today on October 28th. It will then go to the full House for the vote the following day. We will see what Paul Ryan and the other Republicans have to decide.

The other big story in Washington is tomorrow's testimony from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will be testifying before a Select Committee on Benghazi.

The Indiana Republican Congresswoman Susan Brooks is joining us now from Capitol Hill. She's a member of the Select Committee.

Congresswoman, thank you for joining us.

REP. SUSAN BROOKS, (R), INDIANA: Hi, Wolf. Great to be here.

BLITZER: Your chairman, Trey Gowdy, says there's much more to the investigation than the Clinton e-mails, that there's important leads to follow outside of the e-mails. What specifically are you looking for tomorrow from Hillary Clinton that we have not heard yet?

BROOKS: There will be many lines of questions that in think that the secretary has not been asked about in previous Congressional investigations. I'm particularly focused on the security incidents, and the posture of the State Department with respect to the security requests. We have learned through e-mails and through documents that there were hundreds of mentions about security incidents, particularly in 2012. So we have questions for the secretary about what she did with respect to the security requests. So we have a lot of unanswered questions, and we look forward to a long day of question/answer, and in hope that we are able to get to the facts, and that is what we have been very focused on from the beginning of the investigation 17 months ago.

However, we do continue to receive more documents. And as you know, yesterday, we received 1,300 more e-mails of Chris Stevens. We don't even believe that is all of the e-mails, and we don't have all of the documents, and all of the e-mails that we have requested from other individuals. So it has been very frustrating for us, and that is why it has taken this long to get to this place.

BLITZER: And as you know, there's been several other investigations in the House and the Senate and the State Department and the inspector general's investigation. The House Intelligence Committee, led by then Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan, concluded that there was no intelligence breakdown saying -- and I'm quoting now from the report -- "The intelligence community provided intelligence about previous attack, and the increased threat in Benghazi, but did not have specific tactical warning of the September 11th attacks in Benghazi," the same day as 9/11/2001.

And you are critical of the House Intelligence Committee report led by Chairman Mike Rogers. Why?

BROOKS: Through our investigation, we have interviewed over 47 individuals who had never been interviewed by congressional committees in the past. We interviewed seven individuals who were actually on the ground on the night of the attack who had never been interviewed. So our interview is more comprehensive. I commend the work of the other committees, but we have so much more documentation. We did it in a more comprehensive way. The broader the jurisdiction has been much broader. And because of that, we are now able to ask not only Secretary Clinton, but we will be asking other agency heads questions, and people that have not been questioned in the past as well. So the investigation doesn't end Thursday. I know that a lot of people believe it might be, but it is not going to the end. We have questions of Director Petraeus, and questions of Secretary Panetta and Secretary Gates. And so we will take the documents, and the witnesses that we have interviewed, and complete the investigation. So I look forward to -- (CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: I take it that the three individuals that you just mentioned have not yet been called to testify, right?

BROOKS: Well, we have not had the date yet set forth, but that is because we also have been waiting to get all of the information. To do a conference of investigation, it is best to have all of the documents in order to ask the witnesses the questions, and we have had a difficult time getting all of the documents from the State Department. We had a better time getting them from the CIA and the Defense Department, but we are going to plan to call them and ask them to be witnesses before the committee. However, because of the nature of the testimony, in all likelihood, it is a classified setting, and not in the public setting, like Secretary Clinton, because of the nature of their positions. But, no, I think they should anticipate they are going to be called at some point --

BLITZER: All right, so you're --

BROOKS: -- and we will look forward to their testimony.

BLITZER: Will they be called this year, Panetta, Petraeus, Bob Gates, the former defense chief? They will be called to testify? Is that what you are saying?

BROOKS: We hope they will appear before the committee. We would like to do it. And we have a number of witnesses scheduled in November. And so we will be working with the colleagues and the staff that have helped to arrange the meetings and the interviews and the hearings, and we'll be setting forth that schedule. But I must say that we want to finish this investigation. We want to issue that comprehensive report for the families of those who died, and for the State Department employees who are involved, and the State Department employees and others who are working in dangerous places. So we want to get to this. And Secretary Clinton was head of the State Department at this time, and she is a critical witness, but we have more critical witnesses to go.

[13:45:] BLITZER: Representative Susan Brooks, of Indiana, thank you for talking to us.

BROOKS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: We will have live coverage tomorrow of the Select Committee on Benghazi. The hearing when Hillary Clinton testifies is scheduled to go on for about eight hours tomorrow. We will have much more on that ahead on CNN.

Still ahead, she has been called the iron fist with velvet gloves when it comes to negotiating nuclear deals. Ahead, I will talk to Ambassador Wendy Sherman about Benghazi and the Iran nuclear deal that she helped to negotiate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:50:13] BLITZER: My next guest has had a long distinguished career at the State Department. Ambassador Wendy Sherman served most recently as the undersecretary of political affairs, and she also served as counselor for the State Department special advisor to President Clinton, policy coordinator in North Korea, only a fraction of her credentials. Ambassador Sherman is joining us now live. This is her first television interview since leaving the State Department. She's now at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge.

And, Ambassador, thank you for joining us.

WENDY SHERMAN, AMBASSADOR, HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL & FORMER UNDERSECRETARY FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS & FORMER POLICY COORDINATOR FOR NORTH KOREA: Good to be with you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Quickly, on the Benghazi hearing tomorrow, you know that the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is going to be testifying hours tomorrow before the committee. Knowing what you know now, what should have been done to prevent the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the other three Americans?

SHERMAN: Well, Wolf, because of Secretary Clinton and the initiative that she took and the work of the Accountability Review Board after the horrific events of Benghazi, the State Department has implemented 29, all of the recommendations of the Accountability Review Board. And as undersecretary of state for political affairs, I was responsible for all of the regional bureaus and the international organization, and every single day started with me trying to assess who might be at risk. We put more security guards in place, and more training, and hardened more embassies, and we have created a process called the Vital Presence Validation Process for high-risk posts, and put new ways to understand when a place might be at risk. But I think that most viewers understand that we have all kinds of challenges coming at us everyday. You cannot anticipate all of them, so you have to have the team well prepare. Our ambassadors start their day looking at what risks are in front of them.

I'm very grateful to what Secretary Clinton did, and I'm sure that she is going to be speaking to this. We're glad that she is doing it publicly. I say "we" because I consider all my colleagues at the State Department, though former, still my colleagues. I'm glad she is doing it publicly, because she advocates for the security, as Secretary Kerry does, and as President Obama does. That is critical.

BLITZER: And to the subject of Iran, you were the lead U.S. negotiator in putting together. The U.S., France, Germany, and all involved, to freeze the nuclear program of Iran for the next 10, 15 year, but nobody knows what is going to happen after that. Today, the supreme leader, the Ayatollah, Ali Khomeini, said he would approve the deal, but if there are any issues with the agreement, if the U.S. or anybody else imposes new sanctions, it is over. Do you trust the Iranians to implement this agreement?

SHERMAN: It is not about trust, but it is verification and monitoring, and, indeed, we will see how fast Iran can implement what they need to do in terms of taking the nuclear steps that are outlined in the deal, and at that point, we will be ready to lift sanctions along with the European Union and the U.N. Security Council. But all of the sanctions and the concerns regarding the actions of state sponsorship of terrorism, human rights abuses will remain in place. We do have good evidence that they will comply and the first step in this, the joint plan of action has been complied with for nearly two years now, and so I'm hopeful, but this is about actual implementation. So we will all be working hard, and my former colleagues will be working hard, but most of all, this is what the Iranians are going to do. And I am hopeful that they will do what they said they will.

BLITZER: A lot of us remember -- I was the White House correspondent for the time for CNN, '93, '94, you were one of the top negotiators that worked out a nuclear deal with North Korea that was supposed to end its nuclear ambitions. We know how that turned out. They now have, what, 10 nuclear bombs, going towards a hundred. Why did that deal collapse? And a lot of people are wondering if that deal collapsed this one could as well.

SHERMAN: Well, it was quite a different deal, Wolf. Actually, Ambassador Bob Galuci (ph) negotiated the agreed framework it toward the end of the Clinton administration. I was trying to negotiate an end to long-range missile testing so they wouldn't have a delivery weapon for nuclear weapons. All during the Clinton administration, there wasn't a single ounce of additional plutonium that could be used for a nuclear bomb that was created.

I will say, however, that agreement was four pages long. The Iran agreement is many, many more pages than that. It only addressed plutonium, not enriched uranium, which this deal does as well. It did not address covert concerns, this one does. And, indeed, the additional protocol of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was created in the aftermath of the North Korean deal, among other NPT concerns, because we wanted to make sure we had a way to get to any site where there were suspicious activities, and that's now in place.

We have an additional access agreement in the Iran deal to ensure that if the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will verify this deal, will be able to get to any site they need to if they have any suspicions at all.

[13:55:39] BLITZER: Let's hope this one has a better outcome than the North Korea nuclear deal. Let's hope this one works so much at stake right now.

Wendy Sherman, thanks very much for joining us.

SHERMAN: Thank you.

BLITZER: That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our viewers in North America, NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right after a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)