Face the Nation Transcripts December 7, 2014: Bratton, Brooks, Hayden
(CBS News) -- Below is a transcript from the December 7th edition of Face the Nation. Guests included David Martin, Bill Bratton, Cornell William Brooks, Bob Orr, Michael Hayden, Scott Thomson, Soledad O'Brien, Jeanne Cummings, David Ignatius, Charles Blow, Gerald Seib and Peter Westmacott.
BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: I'm Bob Schieffer.
And today on FACE THE NATION: the great divide over race, and another American dies at the hands of terrorists.
We will have latest on the failed mission to rescue photojournalist Luke Somers in Yemen. Back home, more trouble overnight in the aftermath of racial episodes in New York and Missouri. We will talk to key officials dealing with the firestorm, New York Police Commissioner William Bratton, NAACP president Cornell William Brooks, plus Scott Thomson, the chief of police in Camden County, New Jersey, where things are actually looking better in a once troubled community.
We will reveal new details of a controversial still secret congressional investigation into CIA interrogation methods and whether the report's release could put American intelligence officers in danger, as some officials fear. And we will put all in perspective with our analysts, documentary filmmaker Soledad O'Brien, Charles Blow of "The New York Times," Jeanne Cummings of Bloomberg Politics, David Ignatius of "The Washington Post," Jerry Seib of "The Wall Street Journal," plus former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Sixty years of news because this is FACE THE NATION.
And good morning again.
We're going to begin with the failed rescue attempt on American journalist Luke Somers. After the al Qaeda group holding Somers hostage in Yemen vowed to kill him, the U.S. military launched a raid to try and free him. It was the second attempt. But Somers was killed by his captives during this second raid.
For more on this daring rescue attempt, we are going to turn to CBS News national security correspondent David Martin.
David, what actually went wrong here?
DAVID MARTIN, CBS NEWS NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They lost the element of surprise.
The SEALs had been dropped off several miles away from the compound where Luke Somers was being held and they tried to sneak up on the compound. But when they were about a hundred yards out, something, perhaps something as simple as a barking dog, gave them away.
A firefight broke out. And during that firefight a figure, a person was seen running into the building where Somers and another hostage were being held. And he was only in there for a few seconds. But that was long enough to turn his gun on the two captives. And by the time the SEALs got there, both men were mortally wounded, both Somers and a South African hostage.
They had a medic with them. They tried to get him back to a ship off the coast of Yemen, but not in time.
SCHIEFFER: These things are so dangerous to start with. Do you think we will continue to do this or perhaps are they too dangerous to attempt? MARTIN: You know, it's like the old Texas football coach said about the passing game. When you throw the ball, three things can happen and two of them are bad. When you go on a rescue mission, you can get the guy, he can be missing or he can be killed.
So the odds are against you going in. In this case, they were even longer because there had been a previous attempt to rescue these guys and so the guards would have been on higher alert. But when you know where an American is, and you have been told that he's going to be executed within 24 hours, you don't have much choice.
SCHIEFFER: All right, David Martin, thank you.
We want to turn now to the other major story. And that is the outrage following the New York City grand jury decision not to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo after he killed 43-year-old Eric Garner, holding him in a chokehold following his arrest for selling cigarettes illegally.
This video, of course, we have seen over and over. Mostly peaceful protests have been held across the country again from New York to Seattle overnight.
We are going to begin our coverage with the commissioner of the New York City Police Department, William Bratton.
Commission Bratton, let me just ask you, what could happen now to this officer? When do you expect the investigation into this incident to be done? We know the grand jury has decided not to bring charges, but your department is now looking into this. What could happen to him and when can we expect the results of your investigation?
WILLIAM BRATTON, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: Well, now that the criminal investigation is concluded, the administrative investigation, which focuses on violation of policies, procedures, rules and regulations, can now move forward unimpeded.
That is in fact occurring. On Friday, we began interviewing police officers involved in that situation we had not had access to during the criminal investigation.
Our investigation may take upwards of three to four months, based on past experience, number of officers, number of witnesses. It will probably conclude well ahead of the federal civil rights investigation which has just been initiated.
SCHIEFFER: How did you feel, Commissioner, you personally, when you saw this video and you heard him 11 times say, "I can't breathe"? That must have been a hard thing for you as the commissioner to watch.
BRATTON: Well, I don't think that anybody that watches that video is not disturbed by what they saw, that policing, involving use of force, is -- it always looks awful.
We have an expression, lawful but awful. The criminal courts have decided, our district attorneys, grand jury has decided there were no criminal actions involved. We're now going to have to see if the actions the officers engaged in were in violation of our policies and procedures.
A civil rights investigation will determine if there were any violations of his civil rights.
SCHIEFFER: Did it appear to you, just looking at that video, that he did use excessive force? He said he did only what he had learned at the police academy.
BRATTON: Well, my understanding is that was the substance of his testimony to the grand jury.
I will make the final decision in the NYPD. We will move forward with internal affairs investigation directed by our prosecutor, the department advocate. And there will then be a department trial, potentially, if the advocate finds there are grounds for violations of our rules.
That process is an open process, an open trial. That trial judge will then make a finding and make that finding known to me and I will make the final decision. I'm not free to comment at all on anything I observed or my feelings. I'm going to make the final decision for the NYPD.
SCHIEFFER: In the meantime, in the meantime, what are you doing? I understand you're going to order some new training? What actually are you doing in regard to the rest of the department?
BRATTON: There's a lot happening here in New York City. We have a new inspector general that is starting up a 50-person office.
We have federal monitor that will be looking at violations of the stop, question and frisk practices going back to the beginning of the decade. We also have initiated prior to Mr. Garner's death a full retraining of all of our officers that work in the field, 22,000 officers, a three-day training session that will be held annually every year thereafter.
We're acquiring new technology. Every one of our officers within a year or so will be equipped with smartphone technology, where we had begun already a pilot program on body cameras. There's probably no department in America right now that is doing more on these issues.
A lot of this is informed by my experience during 2002 to 2009 in Los Angeles, where I headed up that organization responding to the federal consent decree after the riots of the 1990s. L.A. is a city you want to look to in terms of how all of this can eventually turn out.
As I was leaving in 2009, "The L.A. Times" opined that in the area of race relations, which this is all about, between police and the minority community, they opined that finally a corner had been turned on race relation in that city that was probably America's most troubled city relative to this issue. SCHIEFFER: The head of the police union, of course, famously said that the mayor, your mayor threw the police under the bus when he came out and made statements about this. Is this a serious rift between the mayor and the police department, and what are you doing about that?
BRATTON: Well, at the moment, we are in contract negotiations. The union president is entitled to voice his opinion. He is a member of the police department. He has two sons, one in the academy, one who has been out on the street for several years.
He has a perspective. But this mayor, my mayor, Bill de Blasio, is probably one of the best I have ever worked with. We're spending over $200 million outside our budget on new equipment, those smartphones I talked about, almost $50 million on overtime training to get officers training accelerated.
This is a mayor that has been very, very supportive of equipping the police to deal with many of the issues that the city is facing. He's a progressive. He certainly wants police to police constitutionally, compassionately, respectfully, which is why he has hired me, because we are both of a shared mind on that issue.
So, I think that comment, while it may reflect the attitude of Pat Lynch, the president of the union, who I'm very close to, I have a greatest respect for, we have a very strong difference of opinion on that comment.
SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Commissioner, we want to thank you so much for joining us this morning.
BRATTON: It's great to be with you.
SCHIEFFER: I know you have a busy, busy day.
We again turn now to the president of the NAACP, Cornell William Brooks.
Mr. Brooks, well, you just heard the commissioner here. Are they doing enough?
CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS, PRESIDENT, NAACP: Short answer, no.
If we're looking at the tragedy of Eric Garner as a single incident, it's not enough. To talk about training retrospectively, as opposed -- training prospectively, as opposed to holding people accountable retrospectively, that's where we have to go.
We have to look at, yes, body cameras. We have to look at training. We have to look at fundamentally changing the culture of policing in New York City and across the country. We have to change the model of policing. In other words, where we have police fulfilling the role or serving in the role as an occupying army, as opposed to using a community policing model, that's where we have to go. So, unless we're talking in terms of global, comprehensive reform, it's not enough. Iterative, piecemeal reform is insufficient. We have across this country a generation of young people who are simply saying that we believe based upon lived experience, empirical evidence, we're living in the midst of a pandemic of police misconduct.
And I would simply say that we are not a nation of ostriches who will on cue collectively put our heads in the sand. We have citizens who are rising up, who are saying, now is the time.
SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you about these incidents that have happened.
Do you think they happen by coincidence? Do you think what happened in Missouri, people in New York saw that, and this may have triggered the reactions there? We know what has been going on in Cleveland. Is there a connection between these three things? Did they happen think by coincidence, or are a lot of communities facing the very same problem and it just all happened at once here?
BROOKS: The commissioner understands this, as do the citizens of New York and citizens across the country, that what we see here in terms of these incidents of police brutality and misconduct is a part of larger, longer narrative, where you have stop and frisk policies, where you have generations of young men who have been criminalized and arrested en masse.
The point being here is we have a model of policing that is predicated on essentially operating in the community, and not being of the community. And that is fundamentally a problem. And this is a part of a longer narrative. We simply can't treat these as individual incidents, incidents to be assessed in that way, without talking about larger reform in terms of passing the Federal End Racial Profiling Act, having a national standard for the use -- excessive use of force, looking at and implementing a body camera policy, and, again, fundamentally changing our policing model.
Nothing less than that is sufficient.
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this. You know, the election of Barack Obama, many people thought that the election of our first African-American president would herald in a new era in race relations in this country, yet that does not seem to have happened. Why do you think that is?
BROOKS: Well, the election of President Barack Obama may speak to our capacity as a nation to look beyond race.
It does not necessarily speak to the reality of race in this country. Racism is alive and well. And so, as I discovered with so many in terms of our Journey for Justice tour across 134 miles in seven days, we met people who understood that there is a problem. And we also met people who put their heads into the sand.
And the fact of the matter is, we have a generation of people, our children, who are being profiled. Those are the hard, cold facts. Where one out of every four young African-American men believes that they have been treated at the hands of the police in a given month, that's a tough reality. And we have to grapple with it.
SCHIEFFER: So, we still have the divide?
BROOKS: We most certainly do.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. Brooks, thank you so much for joining us.
And we will be back in one minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to issue a long-expected report on the CIA's interrogation practices that were adopted in the aftermath of 9/11.
This report is scheduled to be released Tuesday, but it is so controversial and it's expected to be so explosive that Secretary of State John Kerry called committee Chair Dianne Feinstein last week and expressed concern that its release now could endanger American facilities overseas, as well as the lives of American diplomats and intelligence officers.
We have learned that the report, which was approved only by Democrats on the committee, concludes that the CIA routinely went beyond what was legally allowable in using techniques, including water-boarding. It says these techniques were not effective in getting information, and it alleges the agency systematically lied to itself, to the White House, the Department of Justice and to Congress about the effectiveness of the program in order to keep it going.
While the committee reports and findings are scathing, Republicans on the committee and the CIA refute almost all of the Democrats' conclusions and say the release of the report will have a chilling effect on intelligence-gathering and will endanger lives.
The controversy over what could be made public became so heated, we have learned that at one point CIA Director John Brennan threatened to resign.
To help us untangle this, we are joined by Justice Department Bob Orr and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.
Bob, I want to go to you first.
We know the secretary of state did talk to Chairwoman Feinstein. Do you think she -- what do you know about whether she still intends to go ahead with releasing this report?
BOB ORR, CBS NEWS HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Senator Feinstein is in a tight spot. And she's not tipping her hand, Bob.
But I think everyone we have talked to expects the report to come out probably on Tuesday. If it does come out, as you outlined, this will be a public smackdown of the CIA. This essentially will accuse the agency in very strong language, I'm told, of going outside the law, doing too much without authority to try to get information from these al Qaeda detainees.
On top of that, the committee, the Democrats are going to allege that this went for no purpose. No good intelligence was gleaned. Well, the CIA is going to defend itself. They're not going to necessarily defend the policy, but they are going to say, look, we tried to stay within the bounds of the law in the shadow of 9/11, when things were very, very tough. We made some mistakes, but in the end real intelligence was had.
SCHIEFFER: But we also -- it's my understanding the Republicans on the committee are also going to enter a report of their own into the record.
And I talked to Republicans last week. They are apoplectic about what the impact of this thing might be. Senator Saxby Chambliss, who's the ranking Republican on Intelligence, says he is worried that lives may actually be in danger, that facilities may be attacked when this thing gets out, and he says it's simply not true, that the CIA didn't do anything that they thought was illegal, that they went to the Justice Department and in their view of events and the CIA's, they say, we were doing what we were told we could do.
And they also remind us of what the circumstances were when these things were taking place. We had just had 9/11.
ORR: Well, that's exactly right.
This program, the detainee program and the enhanced interrogation program, was stood up in 2002 almost from a zero start. The CIA admits that it didn't have everything in place necessarily to do it perfectly at the outset. Some mistakes were made.
But over time, a number of very important, key pieces of intelligence were gleaned that allowed the CIA to take key al Qaeda operatives into custody, and to pull those strings to learn more about al Qaeda now than we knew then.
I'm told that just about everything we know about the terror group al Qaeda has come from the detainee and the interrogation program in the last 10 years. And that's a volume of information.
SCHIEFFER: All right, we want to go now to General Michael Hayden. He ran the CIA from 2006 to 2009. He's in Orange County, California, this morning.
General, was the CIA -- we know that there was water-boarding in those months after 9/11. Was that still taking place when you were the director?
GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN (RET.), FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: No. It wasn't, Bob.
And, in fact, while I was director and under President Bush's guidance, we took water-boarding off the table. A popular story is that President Obama had done that. Actually, it was long gone before he became president.
The last person water-boarded, of a total of three, was in March of 2003.
SCHIEFFER: Do you know of anybody from the CIA, in your view, who lied to the Congress about what was going on there, or lied to people in the administration, as this report is going to allege?
HAYDEN: Of course not, Bob.
Now, look, this program took place over multiple years. And it was very complex. And if the Senate Democrat report was arguing over point A, or point B or point C, I would probably still be here arguing my point of view on each of those individual points.
And I would understand, though, that that was a legitimate argument. But to say that we relentlessly, over an expanded period of time, lied to everyone about a program that wasn't doing any good, that beggars the imagination.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think the report did -- do you think these practices did do any good? Did you get information?
HAYDEN: Bob, I was a blank sheet when I went into CIA in late May of 2006.
This was the elephant in the room. What were we going to do with this program? This had not been my program up to that point. I was free to stop it cold. And I spent the summer of 2006 looking at the facts, documents and, most importantly, Bob, people.
I talked to analysts. I talked to interrogators. And at the end of the summer, I recommended to President Bush that we reduce the program, that we reduce the number of techniques, but that the program had been so valuable, that we couldn't stop it altogether. Even though now we had so much more intelligence on al Qaeda from the detainees and other sources, even then the program had proven its worth, that I did not in conscience, Bob, in conscience, I couldn't take it off the table.
SCHIEFFER: What do you think the impact will be if in fact the report is made public this week?
HAYDEN: Multiple layers, Bob.
First of all, the CIA work force will feel as if it has been tried and convicted in absentia since the Senate Democrats and their staff didn't talk to anyone actively involved in the program. Second, this will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans in American facilities overseas, and I am genuinely concerned by that, as was the secretary of state and the director of national intelligence.
And then, finally, Bob, there are countries out there who have cooperated with us in the war on terror at some political risk who were relying on American discretion. I can't imagine anyone out there going forward in the future who would be willing to do anything with us that even smacks of political danger.
SCHIEFFER: Well, for sure, this is story that is going to go on, and if this report is released. Democrats, of course, say the public needs to know about these things, and that's their side of it.
But we will have more on this. And we will be back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: If we named news cycles the way we called hurricanes, this one would be called the upside-down world cycle.
Whether it's institutions we once took for granted that no longer work, or terrorist acts too hideous to describe, nothing lately has seemed to go right for America at home or abroad.
And now we have been jolted in the most tragic way into remembering that the one problem the world's greatest democracy has never gotten quite right, race, is still with us. The police put their lives on the line every day and must make snap life-or-death decisions most of us never have to face. And, sometimes, as humans will, they get it wrong.
Yet, wherever you place the blame for these episodes we have seen play out on television, it's obvious there is a serious disconnect between the police and African-Americans in many communities, and it's all of our interest to fix that.
Demonstrations are understandable. It's what we do in America. And they can be an effective way to illustrate a grievance. But we must never forget the most effective way to effect change is the next step, to vote. Even though a majority of Americans felt the country was headed in the wrong direction, just over one-third of us bothered to vote in last month's election. That is not the way to fix anything. But if we really want to change things, it's still the best place to start.
Back in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now, but, for most of you, we will be right back with a lot more FACE THE NATION.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.
We're going to continue our conversation on race and policing this morning with Scott Thompson. He's the chief of police in Camden, New Jersey, a city that was ranked as the most dangerous city of its size just months ago.
Things are not perfect there now but they are getting better.
And so, Chief, I'd just like to ask you as we talk about this situation in general, what are you doing differently there in Camden?
SCOTT THOMPSON, CHIEF OF POLICE, CAMDEN, N.J.: Well, Bob, On May 1st, 2013, we established a new police department in what is arguably one of the nation's most challenged cities in terms of crime, poverty and social inequities.
In less than 24 months we began a remarkable transformation of taking streets that were once controlled by criminals and drug dealers now being occupied by children riding their bicycles and families enjoying the front steps.
We did this in a manner without militarizing neighborhoods or polarizing the community. We established a culture from very early on that the relationship that would bind us with our people was one based upon building community first and enforcing the law second.
SCHIEFFER: Did you get rid of any police that were on the force because basically what you've done is you made the city and county into one police unit as it were, did that mean discharging some of the people you had in the original force there?
THOMPSON: Well, every member of the organization is a new member of the organization, including myself. We all applied -- essentially about 150 of -- 155 that applied were hired. But we had suffered through some significant attrition prior to that.
But the transformation that we were able to do enabled us to connect with our people and to establish the fact that cops are going to perform as guardians, not as warriors. And the results we've seen, is we have cut shootings and murders in half in less than 24 months.
SCHIEFFER: If you had to pick out one single thing that you would say to other departments around the country, this is the thing that worked for us, what would it be, Chief?
THOMPSON: Human contact, officers walking the beat, getting out of their squad cars, riding their bicycles, nothing builds trust like human contact. There is no replacement for it. When we launched our organization, we had officers going up and down the streets during daylight hours, knocking on doors, talking to the residents, asking them the things that mattered most to them. What's been negatively defined in your life for years?
And then we will work with you to address that. We can't have our only interaction with the public be during moments of crisis. We need to have interaction with the public all throughout the day and not just when times are bad.
SCHIEFFER: What about the equipment question, do you think these cameras on each police officer, will that help things?
THOMPSON: I think it's a start. I believe that the cameras are the wave of the future.
What is key in all of this, and what we were seeing now as well, Bob, is that for the police to be able to function efficiently and effectively, we need the consent of the people. And what we're hearing now is that there's issues.
So it's a critical moment for law enforcement, for us to not circle our wagons to get a defensive position but to keep our ears and our minds open and move forward in a way that has a collective, universal agreement of how the justice system operates.
SCHIEFFER: Chief, thank you for being with us this morning. I also want to wish you the very best; it sounds like you're making some progress there, and there are not many communities in the country right now who can say that. Keep it up. Thanks so much.
I want to turn now to Soledad O'Brien. She is the executive producer and director of "Black and Blue" which is part of her "Black in America" series on CNN. It focuses on the New York City Police Department and the Eric Garner case.
You, Soledad, actually used this incident in New York as to set the stage for this documentary to survey what is going on in America.
What did you find?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, DOCUMENTARY PRODUCER: You know, it's interesting, even though the killing of Eric Garner opens our documentary, I think anybody who thinks that what is happening right now is only about Eric Garner or only about Michael Brown, is really missing what is happening in black America.
It was fascinating to hear the chief talk about what they're focused on. He has where his community, he talked about culture, he talked about transforming how you interact with people. What you actually realize is that those aren't the words that Commissioner Bratton used.
He talked about retraining, he talked about cameras. It's a different philosophy. African Americans feel that they are treated differently in the criminal justice system. They are treated differently under the law. There is this aggressive targeting of black people that doesn't happen in white communities. And it's that anger over so many years that is really percolating up now.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think that is a valid feeling that they are being treated differently?
O'BRIEN: Look at the statistics. If you look in New York City at stop and frisk, we measured between 2,000 -- these are police numbers. We looked at them for our documentary. Between 2002 and 2012 there were 5 million stops; 83 percent of those stops were blacks and Latinos; 90 percent of those people who were stopped, 90 percent, that did not move onto an arrest, it not move on even to a summons.
Those people had done nothing. So 90 percent of the blacks and Latinos that were stopped in stop and frisk in New York City didn't do anything. Imagine what that does to a psychically to a culture if you fit the description, which means you're a black male, 19-25.
SCHIEFFER: Were most of those stops, when they stopped, were those in high crime areas?
O'BRIEN: Often in high crime areas, absolutely.
SCHIEFFER: So you wouldn't see that as justification that you might operate differently in areas where there are lots of crimes than in areas where there are relatively -- ?
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: I think the challenge is that it's not being applied proportionally. For example, you have -- if you are arresting and stopping people who are -- many of them haven't done anything, you create a culture in that community, even a high crime community, where people feel like they are being criminalized. Even those, as we saw in our documentary, who haven't done anything. We had a young man we talked to named Keshon (ph), who has been stopped a hundred times, 100 times at least. He has been stopped in front of his college; his professors walking by, his classmates going by.
At some point I think it becomes very damaging to these individuals but also to a community that understands, this is unfair.
SCHIEFFER: I saw one interesting -- it was interesting to me, you highlight that one major problem you say is putting rookie cops in neighborhoods that they're not from.
O'BRIEN: It's not even that they're not from necessarily, I think you're putting rookie cops in neighborhoods that are these high crime neighborhoods. We were out in the streets in some of the dangerous neighborhoods three days after the rookie cops had been brought on to the force.
SCHIEFFER: It's somehow almost like school teachers, where people say you ought to put your best teachers in the worst schools, not in the best schools.
O'BRIEN: Most experienced. Exactly. When I asked Commissioner Bratton about that he used the word, you know, think of it as a surge, which is a military term, if you will. And I think that what they're trying to do now in the police department, the NYPD, is to match the rookies with people who are more experienced so that they're helping them. You overwhelm an area but with people who are experienced (INAUDIBLE) problematic.
SCHIEFFER: What is the one thing that you would say to people about, after doing this work and looking at the problem, what needs to be done here? With is the most important thing to do?
O'BRIEN: Understanding. We did our first "Black in America" documentary eight years ago. We talked to black families, whether they were poor, whether they were middle class or they were rich. And they would tell me about the conversation which is the conversation they had with their 11- or 12-year-old son not about how to deal with the police.
White people would say to me, well, I tell my children they should be respectful of the police. And black people would say I teach my son how to survive an interaction with the police regardless of socioeconomic status. That is problematic. And that I think is at the core of all of these marches and anger that we've seen.
SCHIEFFER: Soledad O'Brien. Nice to have you with us.
O'BRIEN: Likewise.
SCHIEFFER: Thank you so much.
O'BRIEN: You bet.
SCHIEFFER: We'll be back in a minute.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: Well, these days, there's no shortage of things to analyze in the news.
And to do some of that this morning, we're going to welcome "New York Times" columnist Charles Blow to the broadcast.
He's joined by "Washington Post" columnist David Ignatius, Jeanne Cummings, senior editor of Bloomberg Politics, and Jerry Seib, "The Wall Street Journal" Washington bureau chief.
And I want to start with this business of race.
Jeanne, Bloomberg has a new poll coming out that I -- I must say, I find astonishing. When asked if race relations have gotten better or worse under Barack Obama, the first black president, 53 percent of those polled said they have gotten worse. And when you break it down further, 56 percent of whites said relations have gotten worse, as did 45 percent of blacks.
Are we going backwards here when it comes to race relations?
JEANNE CUMMINGS, SENIOR EDITOR, BLOOMBERG POLITICS: Well, I think it depends on which community you're in. And for the black community, I'm not sure that they saw a whole lot of improvement. They were hoping. They were very hopeful for improvement.
I think that when we look at our prior polls, the white number -- the white community's numbers moved substantially to say that things have deteriorated in recent times.
But in general, there is not a huge difference between the two. Both communities now believe that things have deteriorated.
And that division is evident also when we polled where the public is on the non-verdict in Ferguson and New York. In Ferguson, a slight majority, 52 percent, agree with that decision. And that's driven by a majority of whites.
In New York, it is both communities view it as unacceptable. That decision is unacceptable. In both cases, about 90 percent of the black community, they reject both of the decisions by the grand juries not to indict.
This could be evidence that that camera is important, because in New York, people could see what happened. And in Ferguson, there's debate about what happened.
SCHIEFFER: Well, Charles, let me -- I want to get back to this -- this first finding here, that relational -- race relations are worse under a Black president than they were under a white president.
What -- what do you make of that?
CHARLES BLOW, "NEW YORK TIMES": Well, I mean they...
SCHIEFFER: Or at least they're saying that's what people say -- are saying.
BLOW: Right. So -- but you have to figure -- ask yourself, is it a causal relationship, right?
Is it because of him and something that he has done or is it a reaction to him actually being the president, which is -- which is not really about him, but about us, right?
And -- and I think that is the bigger question, that is a bigger philosophical question as to how do we respond to people who do not look like us?
Do we believe that they have our interests at heart?
Do we believe that we can -- we can identify and -- and empathize with that person?
And -- and if we cannot, then there's -- we kind of exacerbate something that may already exist in terms of bias, in terms of how we see race relations in this country.
And I think that's a real question that we have to ask ourselves about who we are and whether or not things were, in fact, better before this president and -- and just were kind of underneath the -- kind of under the surface.
SCHIEFFER: David, what do you -- and I don't mean to suggest that it's Barack Obama's fault.
BLOW: Right.
SCHIEFFER: But I mean I found that stunning, that this would be the finding that a lot of people say that things are worse now than they were.
DAVID IGNATIUS, "WASHINGTON POST": Sociologists sometimes talk about a revolution of rising expectations, where because of changes, the election of the first African-American president, having Eric Holder, an African-American as our -- as our attorney general, people expect things are changing.
And then when they see evidence in these cases where young unarmed black men are being shot and they're -- they're not -- the people who shoot them are not being indicted, there's a special anger because people thought things were getting better. They thought with this African-American president that it would be different six years on.
And I think that's part of what's behind it, is a sense of disappointment. You know, America has had race issues. This is our original sin. And it's a continuum in our national story.
But I wonder if the explosion of anger now doesn't have something to do with people saying it should have been better because of the changes we thought the country had made in electing Barack Obama.
SCHIEFFER: And -- and it's not.
IGNATIUS: And it's not...
(CROSSTALK)
IGNATIUS: Here's this problem that -- I mean how many years have we heard about driving while black as an experience that African- Americans have?
You know, white people hear this, but do we really react?
Do we really take it in and then say, OK, if that's true, if so many people say that, what do you do different about it?
SCHIEFFER: You know, Jerry, "The Wall Street Journal" had a -- a great forum last week. You talked to a lot of top newsmakers there, including Jeb Bush, among other people.
I want to just ask you this. Attorney General Holder is expected to announce new racial profiling guides this week. But since racial profiling is already illegal, supposedly, as you were talking to these newsmakers last week, did you get any feeling about what the impact of this is going to be?
GERALD SEIB, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Well, you know, it's -- it's funny, because I think everybody has this sense that we've been talking about around the table here, which is one of frustration. You know, like why can't we get this right?
What is it that -- that's gone wrong?
And I think there's racial profiling as the law applies to it and there's racial profiling as it actually works on the ground in American society. And in law enforcement circles, what I was struck by as -- as we had these conversations was the inability to -- for anybody to get their arms... (COUGHING)
SEIB: -- excuse me -- arms around this subject. And, you know, we were talking about the president. I -- what's striking to me is you can sense his frustration when he talks about this, that, you know, not only can I not figure out how to stop this, I may be actually having a more difficult time as the nation's first African- American president, because he's acutely aware that he can't be seen only as that. He has to be seen as the president of all Americans.
And it may make it more difficult for him. He has to keep reminding us, I can't put my finger on the scales of justice.
Well, I think a lot of people share the same frustration that he shows so obviously when he's talking about this.
CUMMINGS: Certainly, that came out when we talked to the people that were participated in our poll -- and this is the first of several stories that will be coming out this week.
But they -- even both white and black respondents on the poll felt like there was more the president could have done.
SCHIEFFER: Mr. Blow, I want to ask you about something else. And that is this Intelligence Committee report that is coming out. Maybe -- maybe those of us in Washington become more intrigued by this than people in the rest of the country, but this thing sounds like if it is made public, and obviously there's a lot of politics at play here, do you think it's going to -- what kind of an impact do you think it's going to have?
BLOW: Well, I mean I think it's -- I mean there -- there's a lot of worries about whether or not it will put actual lives at -- in danger. But I do believe that the American people have a real desire to know and I think that I -- I kind of always err on the side of the right to know more. And not -- not that I want to put anybody's life in danger, but I do believe that the American people want to know. And I think it's -- it's important to have it.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think it's important for this to come out, David, or -- or what do you think the impact...
IGNATIUS: I think...
SCHIEFFER: -- is going to be?
IGNATIUS: -- I think the -- the facts about what happened during this really horrifying period in which we used extreme techniques should come out. The argument that's made by people who've read this draft, both former CIA officers and Republicans who are on the Committee, is that it's not a fair rendering of the facts. And for that reason, they're -- they're troubled by it.
I'm struck by -- it's an unusual situation where you've got representatives of the administration, John Brown, the CIA director, and John Kerry, the secretary of State, plus members of the other party on the Congress, joining to say we have real misgivings about this.
Senator Feinstein really wants to do this and I think it's going to happen this week, almost, you know, whatever worries people have, we're going to -- it will happen and we'll get through it.
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you, quickly, jerry, you talked to Jeb Bush and he said -- he said you -- in order to get the nomination, you may not be able to win the primaries or something to that effect.
SEIB: Yes.
SCHIEFFER: Number one, do you think he's actually going to run?
SEIB: He looked to me like somebody who -- who wants to run. I don't think he's crossed that final bridge, which is to make sure your family is on board for the ride, which is essentially what he said.
But I asked him -- he leaned forward in his chair and he said I'm thinking about running for president and I'm going to decide soon, in a way that made you believe this is at the front of his mind.
He also kind of seemed to me in the other answers to be trying out a -- an announcement speech, here are the things we've got to do as Republicans, here are a handful of issues we ought to pay attention to.
And then he made this fascinating remark that you just referred to, that we Republicans have to be more prepared to lose the primary in order to win the election, which is to say, don't cater to the special interests along the way.
SCHIEFFER: We know there's going to be more coming on this story...
SEIB: Exactly.
SCHIEFFER: -- that's for sure.
Well, something else is coming -- the British, when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: The British ambassador now to the United States, Sir Peter Westmacott.
Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for coming.
Americans need a little break in the news. We're having a lot of bad news. We have this situation now involving race that's going on.
But at least we're going to get a little change of pace with the visit of Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge.
Most Americans, of course, call her Kate.
But are you concerned that they may be flying into something here, with this situation we've got going in New York now, that might put their security in danger?
SIR PETER WESTMACOTT, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: Well, thanks for having me on the show, Bob.
I appreciate it.
Is very much hope not, of course, this is a visit which is going to take in both New York and Washington. The Duke will be coming to Washington, as well. Her Royal Highness will stay in New York. They will be doing a number of events together in New York.
We very much hope not. Obviously, what's going on there is -- is a matter of concern for those who are looking after law and order issues. But we see no reason at all why the -- the royal program should be affected by this.
SCHIEFFER: Do you think it might put a damper on this visit in some way?
WESTMACOTT: I can't tell exactly what's going to happen from one day to the next. We obviously hope not, because this is a visit to which we attach a great deal of importance. The mayor and the city of New York have been very supportive, very kind in helping us put together a visit which I believe will be a great success.
SCHIEFFER: You know, I was thinking about this. Americans have no desire to have a monarchy of their own, but they seem fascinated with -- with the British royal family, and especially these two.
I wonder sometimes, are they more popular in this country than they are in Great Britain?
WESTMACOTT: Well, some of my friends tell me that they even regret the fact that you got rid of the monarchy and feel that we left you with the middle alternative, but something you'd rather not have done.
So who knows?
But it's certainly the case that these days, there is enormous affection for the royal family. I find this wherever I go across the United States. And I think you are right, people focus not only on the longevity and the extraordinary devotion to duty -- and our queen has been on the throne for more than 60 years now, but also on the next two generations, as the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and then, of course, the next generation after that.
And I think you're right, that Kate and William or the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, as we call them, have captured the hearts and the imagination of people around the world.
SCHIEFFER: But are they treated with more reverence here than they are in Great Britain?
Because some of the press accounts there can be pretty snarky. WESTMACOTT: Well, the press can be pretty snarky in the United Kingdom toward all sorts of people, in -- including the royal family. I think at the moment, that the press have actually been, on the whole, pretty fair, pretty balanced, pretty constructive, they have been delighted at the way in which the Duchess has slipped into the role of being the wife of the heir but one to the throne and of how hard-working she has become.
And I think all that is going well. You're right, that in the past, sometimes, the British media toward members of the royal family have been a little bit harsh. But for the moment, it seems to me to be going well.
SCHIEFFER: Now, she is pregnant again.
WESTMACOTT: Yes.
SCHIEFFER: She's expecting, when, in April?
WESTMACOTT: That's what I hear.
SCHIEFFER: And do we know yet, is it a boy or a girl?
WESTMACOTT: If anyone does know, they're not telling us.
SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about some other things.
How would you describe relations between the United States and Great Britain right now?
WESTMACOTT: Of course, I would say, because I'm the British ambassador, but I think we are in a good place. I think we have very, very strong relationships at the political level. Our defense organizations, our armed services, our intelligence agencies, I think, work more closely together now than they ever have. And they need to, given the threats that we are up against around the world.
And on all of the foreign policy, international security challenges we have at the moment, the United States, the United Kingdom pretty much are eye to eye and often shoulder to shoulder in the different theaters around the world where there needs to be an international presence.
SCHIEFFER: Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us.
We hope that the visit goes well and is a big success. I know they will be warmly welcomed here, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
Thank you so much.
WESTMACOTT: Thank you so much for having me.
SCHIEFFER: We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SCHIEFFER: Back right here next week, so thanks for joining us and for watching FACE THE NATION.