President Obama to Delivery Major Speech; Ukraine Pledges to Oust Separatists
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: My computer never crashes, right?</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the good thing is my computer always goes so slowly, it can't hurt anybody.</s>BERMAN: That's a great point. That's a great point.</s>ROMANS: Sorry tech support.</s>BERMAN: All right. EARLY START continues right now.</s>ROMANS: Should the United States police the world? President Obama just hours away from unveiling how much and how little the U.S. will intervene in the problems of other countries. The new strategy, ahead.</s>BERMAN: A community in mourning after six college students were murdered. Now the father of one victim makes a new emotional plea in front of thousands. That's ahead.</s>ROMANS: New this morning, Donald Sterling outlining his legal fight against the NBA and why he says they can't force him, they can't force him to sell the L.A. Clippers. Good morning. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.</s>BERMAN: I'm John Berman. Great to see you today. It's Wednesday, May 28th, it's 5:00 a.m. in the east. And we begin with breaking news from Afghanistan. Two Americans from the U.S. consulate have been injured in an attack on their vehicle in the city of Herat. This is in the far western part of the country, near the Iranian border. Not exactly clear as of yet what happened but there are reports that the vehicle was shot at with a rocket propelled grenade. The two Americans are said to have suffered light injuries and they are currently being treated. We will stay on this for you throughout the morning.</s>ROMANS: All right. A U.S. warship carrying some 1,000 Marines is on its way to the coast of Libya this morning as the State Department has issued an urgent warning advising Americans to leave the country immediately due to an unpredictable and unstable security situation. Officials say the warship is a precautionary move as bloody battles for power pushed Libya to the brink here nearly three years after its revolution.</s>BERMAN: All this as President Obama is set to deliver an important address about U.S. foreign policy coming a day after outlining the future for U.S. troops in Afghanistan and how nearly 10,000 troops will remain there into next year. Today the president will go to West Point where he'll explain the U.S. role in the world going forward. This is a highly anticipated speech. And as Jim Acosta tells us, it's coming at a critical time when the administration's foreign policy plans have been under close, close scrutiny.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, President Obama will answer his foreign policy critics in a speech to graduates at West Point later today after more than a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Aides to the president say now is the time for the U.S. to redefine its leadership in the world. The president's vision, officials say, is for the U.S. to intervene in foreign crisis but not act unilaterally. In recent weeks, the president has come under heavy criticism over his handling of the civil war in Syria and the crisis in Ukraine. But White House officials say the U.S. now has greater flexibility to tackle global challenges with the war in Afghanistan winding down. The president laid out his plan to dramatically reduce troop levels in Afghanistan in a speech at the White House yesterday.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The bottom line is, it's time to turn the page on more than a decade in which so much of our foreign policy was focused on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.</s>ACOSTA: The president's plan for Afghanistan will call for less than 10,000 troops in that country next year and only a fraction of that as he leaves office in 2017. A group of Republican senators led by John McCain attacked the president's proposal as a monumental mistake -- John and Christine.</s>ROMANS: All right. Jim Acosta -- thank you, Jim. Dealing with Russia and Ukraine has become a major focus for this president. And there's a new pledge this morning in Ukraine. The government promising it will oust separatists from the east. This a day after intense fighting ended a militant takeover of the Donetsk airport leaving dozens -- dozens dead. Let's get the latest from Nick Paton Walsh who's live for us in Donetsk. Nick, things are quieter there today than they were the last few days.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly the violence has been ebbing. Sporadic shooting occasionally reported around the airport where the Ukrainian army made that fierce move on Monday to push separatists out. But I should tell you, Christine, where I'm standing here, for the past half an hour, we've been hearing a military jet that's been circling around the city of millions of people, flying low, clearly wanting to have its jet engines heard by those civilians here. And I have to say, too, separatists, you know, who've been putting out suggestions that they thought a bombing campaign would start, there's been a ratification of that from Ukraine officials, we're told. But all this, the buzzing of the jets and the claim for the separatists, feeds in to the border climate of fear amongst people here. And upsets an odd tactic for the Ukrainian military. Presumably they want to win over the people living in this city to send a military jet quite so low down, a lot of people are looking up anxiously at the skies. As I said, it comes after Monday's move to retake the airport. That was a clear red line in the eyes of the government. They didn't want the separatists to have part of that key infrastructure into their control. The issue now is where do we go forward. There have been a lot of losses on the sides of separatist militants through that attack on Monday. People now, I think, beginning to bury the dead, begins to take stock of where the violence goes next. And scenes like where, you know, people going about their daily business, but anxiously looking up to the skies to see quite what's happening, where that roar is coming from, just adding to the sense of tension here -- Christine.</s>ROMANS: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, thanks for that, out in Donetsk this morning. Edward Snowden is on the defensive firing back at critics in a new interview with NBC News. The former NSA contractor charged with espionage for leaking more than one million pages of secret documents. He says -- he's trying to set the record straight. He was much more than just a low-level hacker. Listen.</s>EDWARD SNOWDEN, FORMER NSA CONTRACTOR: I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas, pretending to work in a job that I'm not and even being assigned a name that was not mine. But I am a technical specialist. I am a technical expert. I don't work with people. I don't recruit agents. What I do is I put systems to work for the United States.</s>ROMANS: "What I do is I put systems to work for the United States." John, it's so interesting because he doesn't do that anymore.</s>BERMAN: Very defensive about his stature inside the U.S. intelligence establishment.</s>ROMANS: Pretty measured when he talks about himself, too. You know, just -- I don't know.</s>BERMAN: Six minutes after the hour. The White House is asking its top lawyer to investigate how the identity of a CIA station chief in Afghanistan was leaked to the public. This happened over the weekend when President Obama was preparing for a briefing during his unannounced visit to Afghanistan. The names of everyone meeting the president including the CIA station chief were released to the media and distributed to thousands of people on the White House e-mail list. The CIA station chief's identity is supposed to be classified. And this was a bad, bad mistake.</s>ROMANS: Now on hold, a major Obama administration review of deportation procedure. The White House had asked Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to look into any way to shield some 11 million undocumented immigrants from being deported. But now the administration says it is moving the review to the back burner as it pushes Congress to act on immigration reform instead.</s>BERMAN: The House Veterans Affairs Committee holds a rare evening hearing tonight to review dozens of suspicious deaths at the VA hospital in Phoenix. The facility allegedly kept secret lists and kept some veterans waiting months for treatment allegedly leading dozens to die. Three top VA officials have been asked to appear at this hearing but it's not clear whether they will. Now Republicans are threatening to subpoena them if they don't show up tonight. So a surprising political role for the first lady. Michelle Obama taking on critics of the administration's policies on healthier school meals. She sat down with school nutrition officials and told them it was simply unacceptable that some in Congress now say districts should be able to opt out of the rules.</s>MICHELLE OBAMA, FIRST LADY: Parents have a right to expect that their kids will get decent food in our schools. And we all have a right to expect that our hard-earned taxpayer dollars won't be spent on junk food for our kids.</s>BERMAN: Some districts say the rules are too restrictive and serving meals with more fruits, vegetables and whole grains is too expensive. The first lady suggested perhaps there was more the federal government could do to help schools that are having a difficult time meeting these standards. All right. Time for an EARLY START on your money this morning. Here's what stocks are doing around the world right now. But the big story here in the U.S. Record high for the S&P; 500. We told you to watch 1900. The S&P; closed about at 1911.</s>BERMAN: You told us.</s>ROMANS: It's 12 times it's been at record high close for the S&P.; The Dow very close to breaking its record as well. Futures pointing higher right now so we'll see if that happens today. Meantime, another state taking the fight for a higher minimum wage into its own hands. Michigan. The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. President Obama is hoping to raise that to $10.10 an hour. That plan has been stalled in Congress. But the states are doing it themselves. Twenty-six states have or have adopted minimum wages above $7.25 including now Michigan. The state's current minimum wage is $7.40 but that will go up to $9.25 over the next few years.</s>BERMAN: That's a long way from what the president is calling for.</s>ROMANS: Yes. And, you know, the fast food industry, they want $15.</s>BERMAN: Right.</s>ROMANS: The fast food workers. So this is the -- the states are doing the action, Washington is really doing nothing, but the conversation is one of the biggest topics in terms of money this year. All right. Donald Sterling apparently won't give up ownership of the L.A. Clippers. He's not going to go without a fight. He is now formally responding to the NBA's attempt to force him out, accusing the league of violating his constitutional rights, blasting others who received lesser punishments for similar -- infractions, rather. Sterling says he has been prejudged and won't get a fair hearing when the Board of Governors meets June 3rd. The NBA says it is moving ahead with the vote to give the league the right to sell that team. Now in a statement, his wife Shelly says she's working to negotiate a sale of the team. But despite all the suitors, there have been no formal offers yet.</s>BERMAN: I still submit that this will be resolved before the owners get a chance to vote on June 3rd, although this letter from Sterling's lawyer maybe makes that a little less likely. Nine minutes after the hour, an emotional plea from a father of a college student murdered in the Santa Barbara killing spree. His search for answers and actions ahead.</s>ROMANS: Plus storms leaving communities under water. The threat is not over yet. We're going to tell you who should be on alert today, next.