[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn Anchor:] Hello. I'm Wolf Blitzer. This is a CNN special live coverage event. After eight days of silence, Hillary Clinton is getting ready to address the controversy that critics say could impact her presidential aspirations. Why did she use a personal e-mail address exclusively as secretary of state? And why did she set up her own server in her home in Chappaqua, New York, to keep the messages? Those two questions have sparked a fierce debate over cyber security and transparency during her four years as secretary of state. Keeping e-mails on her own server has given former Secretary Clinton and her staff control over which messages are turned over to federal archives. Clinton has reportedly handed over 55,000 pages of e-mails, which the State Department is now sifting through. Since the story broke, it has overshadowed every move she has made, including her speech today at the women's empowerment principles event at the United Nations. It's underway right now. We have a team of reporters and analysts standing by. But first, let's set the scene. Our chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper is with me. Jake, this is a critically important event for the former secretary of state, assuming, as all of us do, she wants to be the next president of the United States.
[Jake Tapper, Cnn Chief Washington Correspondent:] Right. I mean I think it's a foregone conclusion that she will announce her candidacy sometime in the next couple months. Really the only thing that's being debated right now by her advisers is when and how. This is the first test for her as a presidential candidate in the 2016 run. There are a lot of unanswered questions. So far, a lot of political observers have noted that this is something that she could have tried to answer questions for either back when Michael Schmidt of "The New York Times" was working on the story about these e-mails, to any time in the last eight days, as you point out. And it's a question as to why this has been allowed to build and build and build. It is a different media environment, even in just in 2008 when Hillary Clinton ran. And there are issues about not only what is she revealing to the State Department, what is she not, why she felt the need to go against the State Department's own rules, rules that the State Department under her watch criticized individuals in the department for not abiding by, but also there are questions about cyber security. As you know, in 2013, one of Hillary Clinton's, Secretary of State Clinton's top advisers, a guy named Sidney Blumenthal, was hacked by a hacker and some of Hillary Clinton's e-mails were released into the public. Gawker printed them. They didn't get a lot of attention at the time, but they seem to be about detailed information having to do with the Middle East and other items. And that was information that wouldn't fall under the purview of what Secretary Clinton's supporters have said in the last week, which is, hey, any time she e-mailed anybody at the State Department, that would be automatically preserved because those individuals were using official e-mail addresses. Well, this conversation she had with Sidney Blumenthal, both of them were on private e-mail that wouldn't fall under the purview, that wouldn't be capped by the U.S. Archives. So a lot of unanswered questions. And really this is the first big test for Hillary Clinton presidential candidate.
[Blitzer:] How she handled this. And so far the only thing she's done is issue a short little tweet saying
[Tapper:] A tweet.
[Blitzer:] She's handed over documents to the State Department. She hopes they release those documents as soon as possible. The State Department, though, has to review all of those 55,000 pages to make sure that no confidential or secret classified information is there.
[Tapper:] But even in that her tweet, and I don't know if we can put it up, but the quote was something like, I want to show the public my e-mails. And that's a little bit misleading because she doesn't want to show the public all of her e-mails. She wants to show the public the ones that she and her staff have handed over to the State Department out of what one assumes are many more than 55,000 pages.
[Blitzer:] All right, stand by. I want to go to Brianna Keilar, our senior political correspondent. Brianna, you're at the United Nations right now. She's delivering a speech on women's issues, girl's issues. When she finishes that speech, she's going to go to another room, we're told, and then make a statement and start answering reporters' questions. Is that what you understand? I don't have Brianna?
[Brianna Keilar, Cnn Senior Political Correspondent:] Well, actually, Wolf, we're expecting her to come right here to this stakeout position. We're can you hear me, Wolf?
[Blitzer:] Yes, I hear you. Go ahead.
[Keilar:] OK. So we're expecting Hillary Clinton to come here to this stakeout position after she finishes up her speech, which is currently underway. She's talking about women's empowerment. This is a speech that was previously scheduled. And this press conference was sort of last-minute tacked on to the end of this. Let me just describe the scene for you because it's a crush of reporters and of cameras that otherwise wouldn't be here. I'm looking right now at a line of at least 25 cameras, all of the news networks represented. You can see just the crush of reporters who have had to scramble to get here today for what is such a key press conference. And we're expecting that Hillary Clinton will address the folks here, that she'll take at least a few questions. And we know that she's going to be asked about why she felt it was necessary to have this personal e-mail account to house her e-mails on a personal server. And we would imagine she'll also be asked if she deleted any of those e- mails. These are key questions and there are many, many more for her to be asked as well, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Stand by for a moment, Brianna. I want to bring in David Gergen. David's our senior political analyst who's joining us as well. She's been through this before. Those of us who have covered the Clintons, this is not necessarily new territory, but this is a critical moment given the fact that she presumably wants to run for president of the United States.
[David Gergen, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] Absolutely, Wolf. I think Jake Tapper is right, this is the first event of the campaign. It's probably one of the most important events she's going to have because it's going to color everything else. And the issue is going to be whether she walks away from this presser with more questions being asked by reporters in a sense. She really didn't clear it up. She basically danced. If that's the case, she's going to be in deeper controversy than she is now. If she comes out, squarely hits it, is transparent, I think she's got to find a way to make the all of these e-mails available to a neutral third party, perhaps someone like Lee Hamilton, who would command the respect on both sides of the aisle, a Lee Hamilton type figure, as a way to clear this up. Otherwise if she if she leaves this press conference with many of the e-mails going to be sort of in her own possession where nobody else can look at them, I think controversy is going to continue to dog her.
[Blitzer:] And we don't know yet, David, if she's going to just make a statement then answer two or three questions or if she's going to stay for a while, a half an hour, 45 minutes or an hour and answer a lot of questions. That's going to be significant, right?
[Gergen:] I think it will be, Wolf. But even more significant is what steps she's willing to take. If she comes in and says, I basically didn't understand and it's somebody else's fault and, you know, I've given over 55,000 pages, end of story, then the arguments are going to continue and this won't go away. And I think it does feed into an unfortunate narrative. We've got you know we have today two sides of Hillary Clinton. We have her defending herself in this very controversial forum with 25 cameras and we've got the Hillary Clinton now addressing the U.N. on women's empowerment, which is the good Hillary Clinton. And that's being lost. Her U.N. speech is being lost by the fact that she's now coming out to answer all these questions. That's why she's got to get this behind us behind her so that she can be heard again about what she really cares about.
[Blitzer:] All right, stand by, David, because there's a lot to assess right now. Critically important moment in Hillary Clinton's political career. Let's get some more analysis. Joining us, our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, our national political reporter Peter Hamby, our CNN political commentator, Hilary Rosen, and our political commentator, Margaret Hoover is going us as well. Gloria, this is, as all of us agree, very, very important how she handles this. Why has she waited so long to do this? She probably should have done this on day one, right?
[Gloria Borger, Cnn Chief Political Analyst:] Right. And she look, Wolf, she's an undeclared candidate for the presidency. She doesn't have a campaign apparatus up and running. And the downside, Wolf, of not running so quickly or getting in so early is the fact that I think they were unprepared for this controversy. I think they tried to kind of see if a tweet would work. In this particular circumstance, it did not work. I would argue that it backfired to a degree and raised more questions. And I think, look, we have to see how she answers the why question. Was it to be protective? Was it evasive? Or, by the way, was it a bad idea to do this? I mean, maybe Hillary Clinton would surprise us and say, you know what, this wasn't such a great idea. What did she use these e-mails for? Did she ever get any advice from anybody about whether she could or could not do this? And what's she going to do about it? Is she going to have a third party archive some of it? Is she going to hand it all over to the National Archives? So these are these are questions that all remain to be answered. And how she handles it will tell us a lot about what the new Hillary Clinton is going to look like as a candidate in 2016.
[Tapper:] And, Peter Hamby, let me bring you in. I want to ask you, because a lot of Republicans have been of two minds when it comes to how to deal with this controversy. Some Republicans saying this is something we need to be aggressive about, we need to be talking about how this is the same old Clinton problem. They think the rules apply to everyone except for themselves. And other Republicans saying, you know what, don't overplay your hand, this is the trap the Republicans fall into all the time. Sit back, let the Clintons do this to themselves. What are you hearing from the Republican consultants, the people working on the soon-to-be presidential campaigns for the Republican nomination about how to deal with this?
[Peter Hamby, Cnn National Political Reporter:] Yes, I mean, Jake, I mean that's the sort of general conundrum that Republicans face. You know, both the institutional party, the RNC, and then research groups, they are trying not to veer too much into, you know, wild accusations, sexism, the sort of '90s conspiracy theories and keeping the focus on the issues at hand, being credible when dealing with reporters about this stuff. You know, what I'm hearing, talking to Republicans today, they are literally just sitting back and watching, getting their popcorn ready, going through they're going to watch to see what she's going to answer, what she isn't going to answer. Look, this isn't going to go away after today. She could talk for two minutes, 20 minutes, or two hours. And there's still going to be ongoing questions about this from Republicans, from reporters. This is the world we live in. And from the Benghazi committee. But, as you said, I think they're trying to keep the focus on just what she's going to say and then, after that, see what happens and sort of push the media to ask more questions.
[Tapper:] And, Hilary Rosen, it isn't just the Republicans who are expressing chagrin at falling into another particularly bleak and dreary episode of "I love the '90s." It is Democrats also saying, oh, God, here we go again. This is what we went through in the '90s when Bill and Hillary Clinton were running the country, secrecy, proclivity to delay and delay and delay. What are you hearing from Democrats?
[Hilary Rosen, Cnn Political Commentator:] Yes, I don't think Democrats are going that far. I think it's kind of unfair to talk about it in that context at this point. Look, you know, I think Peter and David just made the same point, which is no almost no matter what she says today, people are going to say it's not enough. So I think this is kind of the test we have to apply when we listen to what she's saying, which is, is she giving a reasonable explanation for why she used a personal e-mail address? Do we think there is mal intent there? And do they have a process for closing this issue out? Because, after all, if you look at general polls today, people still really aren't that interested in this kind of insider game. People really still like Hillary Clinton and believe that as secretary of state, she really did move the ball forward for this country. And that's what her speech is about at the U.N. today. I think that's what most Democrats are encouraging people to focus on. So, you know, my guess is that she'll give some leeway today in terms of making people happy with answers to their questions, but she's not going to answer everybody's questions.
[Blitzer:] Dana Bash is our chief congressional correspondent. She's joining us from Florida right now. I know you're doing some reporting on Jeb Bush, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls, out there. What are you hearing? I know that he's been reacting to this Hillary e-mail controversy for several days now.
[Dana Bash, Cnn Chief Congressional Correspondent:] That's right. He was one of the first to jump on this as soon as the news got out about the controversy. And he is probably the most interesting to watch because he has some similar issues just regarding e-mail, not that he did anything wrong per say and that's what he's arguing. He has been talking about e-mails and making a big deal out of the fact that he is a very and has been and when he was governor, a very prolific e- mailer, releasing 275,000 e-mails. But they were from a jeb.org server. So it was not a public server. It was a private server. Not unlike Hillary Clinton. But what the sources who I'm talking to here who are close to Jeb Bush are saying that they're looking for is her explanation of why she used that e-mail, that personal e-mail exclusively, and why it took until now to release them when they think that they have a nice juxtaposition between that and the fact that he, on his own, released hundreds of thousands of e-mails to the public just a couple of weeks ago. So certainly Democrats are trying to say, a-ha, you see, Jeb Bush has a private server. Jeb Bush e-mailed on private e-mails. It's not only Democrats, it's not only Hillary Clinton. But they're arguing that it's actually a case study in how different kinds of politicians handle this issue in a very different way.
[Blitzer:] We're looking at live pictures from the microphone over there. That's where Hillary Clinton will be walking over momentarily, we're told, making a statement, then answering reporters' questions. We don't know if it will be one or two or three questions or a whole bunch of questions but we'll, of course, have live coverage, the first time she's going to go in depth and discuss the whole e-mail controversy that has erupted over the past several days. Dana, stand by. Margaret Hoover is one of our CNN political commentators. Margaret, do the Republicans who are really going after her right now have a risk in going too far right now, overreaching, if you will, that could backfire?
[Margaret Hoover, Cnn Political Commentator:] Sure, and that's exactly, I think, what Pete and Jake were talking about. You've really got Republicans of two minds here. The Republicans who want to default automatically to the '90s playbook, and then the Republicans who are a little more savvy saying, hold on a sec, we're not going to replay the playbook of the '90s. Let's wait and see what Hillary Clinton says. She may give us sort of enough rope to hang herself, so to speak. But I'd love to take it back to what Hilary Rosen said, my colleague here at CNN. You know she said, whatever Hillary says won't be enough. And I'm not sure that's true because Hillary actually could take the opportunity to cut against hype. If she were to, for example, take every single question, sort of remember how Chris Christie did when the Bridgegate scandal came up? He had this really long press conference. He spoke for almost an hour. He took every single question until there were no more questions in the room. If she really let it air out and had reasonable explanations and then said, we're going to turn over the hard drive, you guys can look at it, so that there was really full transparency, that would cut against the narrative of secrecy and defensiveness. And frankly answer the questions about where are the e-mails? Were any deleted? That would go a very long way to silencing sort of the paranoia on the right and frankly winning over that would stop this from plaguing the issue into the actual election, which, by the way, hasn't even started yet.
[Blitzer:] Hilary Rosen, you want to respond to that?
[Rosen:] Well, I actually don't think that Chris Christie press conference really answered nearly enough questions, and I think that we saw that went on for weeks. I do think one thing Margaret said is important, though, which is, you know, if she expressed some regret as to what happened here and not just the flare-up that happened after the fact, but, you know, perhaps in retrospect it might have been better to not use her personal e-mail for this business. You know, that, I think, would be a big step. And, you know, it's just possible she may say that. But but I don't think my point is, I don't think it's possible to satisfy everyone's questions because there's too much vested interest in a story continuing and that's the point.
[Hoover:] But, Hilary, you and I know it's not about it's not about convincing every single person. It's about convincing the moderate majority of Americans who are frankly the independent-minded voters who fast forward to October of 2016, when they turn in, do they think Hillary's responsible, believable, transparent, and can lead the free world?
[Rosen:] Right. I agree with that.
[Hoover:] And that's obviously who we're going for.
[Rosen:] That and I believe that she's prepared to give a reasonable explanation that most people will understand. And that's going to be the test.
[Hoover:] Do you think she will turn over the hard drive? Because I think that's key.
[Rosen:] I just don't know.
[Hoover:] I mean there's no way to really get rid of get rid of the questions about the e-mails unless she's willing to be fully transparent and turn over her hard drive.
[Rosen:] Yes, well, Jeb Bush didn't do that either. So I just don't know what Hillary Clinton is going to do.
[Hoover:] Well, the federal government has different laws than state governments.
[Rosen:] Well, it's still public accountability. You're you have to hold them both to the same test. And if you continue to do that, then maybe I'll join you on the turning over the hard drive request here.
[Hoover:] Well, no, she was she was secretary of state though. But he wasn't the secretary of state and we all know that.
[Blitzer:] All right, guys, stand by for a moment. We're looking at live pictures from the United Nations. An unusual place for a potential Democratic presidential candidate to be making a statement then answering reporters' questions on a political controversy that has erupted. Hillary Clinton's e-mails, should they all be made public? What's going on right now? This is the first time she's going to go in depth and answer reporters' questions. We'll take a quick break. She's getting ready to go to that microphone. Live coverage coming up right here on CNN. Welcome back. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. You're looking at live pictures from the United Nations. The former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has just delivered a speech there on women's issues, girls' issues. Now she's going out to what's called the stakeout position. A lot of camera crews are out there, a lot of reporters are standing by. She'll make a statement, we're told, on this whole e-mail uproar that has developed in recent days and then answer some questions. We don't know how long she'll stay there but we're standing by for live coverage of that. Jake Tapper is with me. This has been pretty awkward, not only for the former secretary of state, but for the Obama administration as well, especially the State Department, where she served as the top diplomat for four years.
[Tapper:] That's right. The State Department actually, ahead of the secretary's press conference, getting ahead of the story, talking about the process by which they will release these 55,000 pages of e- mails that Hillary Clinton and her team have turned over from her private servers to the State Department. They are going to release all of them. The first ones that are going to be released are 300 e-mails, about 900 pages' worth, that the select committee investigating Benghazi have requested. But then and then others will be reviewed and released and they'll be put on a publicly accessible website after that initial 300. And then also the State Department wanted to interject a note saying that those who are reporting that this whole process could cost the U.S. State Department millions of dollars. That's not true. They didn't get into a cost estimate, but they said that that figure of millions of dollars is overstated, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] And, Gloria, we don't know, do we this is one of the key question questions why she decided to do all of her e-mailing why she served as secretary of state for four years on this private e-mail account, this private server and not use at all the official State Department e-mail?
[Borger:] Right. I think the why question is the biggest question that's looming out there that nobody else can answer other than Hillary Clinton. And the way she answers that question is going to tell us a lot about the new Hillary in the 2016 campaign because if she says, look, I did this because I thought it was going to be easier. I didn't do it to be evasive. And maybe, looking back, I shouldn't have done it, but this is the way this is how I'm going to handle this. This is how we're going to handle this going forward. Then you take a little bit of the toxicity out of it and you take away sort of the Republican claims, same-old, same-old Clintons. If you see a new and a different Hillary Clinton there, we don't we don't know what she's what she's going to do. As my colleagues were talking about, this sort of possibility of Republican overreach is, of course, there. So I think what Hillary has to do is sort of present herself as the authentic Hillary Clinton who did this, as someone said to me earlier this week, someone who's an ally of hers, in a completely quote, "innocent," way and wants to fix it. And, you know, maybe she made a mistake here and we're just going to have to see how she explains the why, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Yes, that's a key question, why, to begin with. David Gergen, I remember when you were brought into the Bill Clinton administration during that first term to try to help him, he was going through, obviously, some uproar, some controversies at that time. You served three other presidents as well. If you were asked by Hillary Clinton right now for some advice, what would you tell her?
[Gergen:] Go transparent. Go all out. Be bold. Surprise everyone by being very direct, making things available on an expedited basis. Let a third party judge. I think that would put an end to this and let her get on to the more important issues. As to why she did it, Wolf, I did work with her and her husband back in 1993, '94 when they were first in the presidency and I can tell you that there is a strong feeling among the Clinton people, especially among the lawyers around her, that she always ought to be protective because there's so many people out there trying to find things that they can use against them that they would use Freedom of Information Act requests or something like that to get information. And the lawyers sort of generally take the view, don't give them anything. And there is a there is a sort of quality about being in Clinton land where you do feel the outside world is out there are people in that outside world who want to do everything they can just to tear you down. And so I understand. I'm actually sympathetic with the fact that she set up a private e- mail account. I think the mistake was not in setting up the private e- mail account but in not then coordinating with the State Department to ensure that all things related to government went into the government server as it was supposed to do. That's where, I think, she went off the track.
[Tapper:] David Gergen, if I could interject, for some of our viewers who might not remember or might not have been old enough to recall the '90s and where and when this attitude of Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton even, to not necessarily go right towards transparency came from, remind us, if you would, about what it was like from the view of the White House. This is during an era when the Republican chairman of the House Government Affairs Committee actually claimed to have fired a bullet into a pumpkin in his backyard while investigating this suicide of a top White House aide, Vince Foster. This was a strange time in Washington,
[D.c. Gergen:] I think you're absolutely right, Jake. And politics took a turn for the worse. And the Clintons became the center of a lot of controversy. But perhaps the parallel here is over the Whitewater documents, as you'll recall during the savings and loan crisis in the late '80s, early '90s, the Clintons had a relationship through a group called Whitewater to one of these failed savings and loans. And there was a during the campaign, Bill Clinton's campaign in 1992, there was a lot of press pressure to get ahold of the Whitewater documents, see what was in there. And the Clintons didn't want to give them up. The lawyers said you don't have to give them up. And there was a big fight that went all the way into his presidency and, in fact, led to a special prosecutor. There was nothing incriminating in those documents. When they eventually came out, there was nothing incriminating. There was stuff that was unflattering. And I think that's what she likes to protect herself against. I think it's I think it's in her nature now. And there are a lot of people around her who believe the press is part of a problem. There are a bunch of jackals out there who are going to try to bring you down if you start giving over documents and you just you you're going to they're inevitably going to find you've done something wrong or unflattering and, you know, and it's just there's this sort of people sort of close they clinch up in those circumstances when, you know, when you feel all you're getting all that incoming fire.
[Tapper:] And, Gloria Borger, remind us, if you will, there was a controversy about the Bush White House
[Borger:] Sure.
[Tapper:] And officials there using their own private e-mails and the accusation was they were trying to skirt National Archives and records acts
[Borger:] Right.
[Tapper:] And laws mandating the preservation of those e-mails.
[Borger:] Right.
[Tapper:] What did then-Senator Hillary Clinton in 2007 have to say about White House officials being accused of doing the same thing?
[Borger:] Well, she took White House officials to task. In no uncertain words she accused them of, her words, shredding the Constitution. And she, you know, raked them over the coals about their secret wiretaps. She called them secret military tribunals and, of course, the secret White House e-mail accounts.