What Really Happened In Osama Bin Laden Killing?
CAMEROTA: Alright, well, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh was on NEW DAY minutes ago. He was defending a new report suggesting that the White House lied about the manhunt that killed Osama bin Laden. Does Hersh's report pass the smell test?</s>CUOMO: The White House lied, Pakistan lied, the SEALs lied, the Saudis lied, everybody's lying. Let's have some people on here to tell the truth. CNN political commentator and host of "The Ben Ferguson Show," Ben Ferguson, and CNN political commentator and host of Huff Post Live, Marc Lamont Hill.</s>BEN FERGUSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.</s>CUOMO: I mean that's my main takeaway having just interviewed him, is that for this to be true, what Hersh has in his reporting, and again his pedigree is long, everybody's lying, Ben, not just some people.</s>FERGUSON: Well, I highly doubt the SEALs are lying to the point. I mean they - they have a pretty big code of integrity when it comes to raids and what's happened and look at all the heat that even those that have mentioned anything about the raid have taken from other SEAL members. I can't imagine that they would allow this lie to be taken this far and to be a part of it. And also, like you said, you have multiple governments that would have had to lie for this to happen. I'm not buying it at all. I mean I'm not saying that they weren't maybe protecting him or some people in Pakistan knew where he was or in an area where he was. I think it's very, very realistic. But overall, no.</s>CAMEROTA: And, Marc, I mean one of the things - two of the big claims that Seymour Hersh is saying is that Pakistan knew all along where he was and that there was no firefight when the Navy SEALs rushed in. They didn't encounter -</s>MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's a tough claim. The second thing was particularly tough, to say that there was absolutely no firefight, because as Chris said, it means a bunch of people are lying. But not just a bunch of people, but a bunch of people who historically and by practice don't cover for each other. So it's not - so it doesn't make sense to me. The idea that Pakistan could have in some way had access to information or intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts -</s>CUOMO: It was weird where he was. That we thought he was in the Hindu Kush mountains -</s>FERGUSON: Sure, he was at a resort.</s>HILL: Yes. Yes.</s>CUOMO: And he was right down the street from the equivalent of their west point. That's always been a point of intrigue.</s>HILL: That is curious, and it would be bad for business in terms of stability in the region and political strength for Pakistan to have known where he was and not revealed it, or to have been babysitting him for an extended period of time. So there is some plausibility to this argument that Pakistan would be lying at some point, but the idea everyone is lying.</s>FERGUSON: The other thing is, not having a firefight, you're telling me that people that pledge allegiance to do things like 9/11, to blow up buildings, to blow up ships, to blow all these things up that al Qaeda has done as terrorists, all of a sudden America comes in and you're just going to lay down your arms and say we don't want to fight?</s>CUOMO: And also, Peter Bergen went there.</s>FERGUSON: Especially if you're willing to live in a hole with Osama bin Laden. I mean, think about how isolated, that's a role in al Qaeda that's much more isolated than any other role. You have got to be so quiet, you have to cut off virtually all of your family contacts. You're not living even close to a normal life and they come in, you go, hey, don't shoot me?</s>CUOMO: And Peter Bergen went to the compound before they destroyed it in Abbottabad and he said it was riddled with bullets, so somebody would have had to have done that as some part of the coverup. But then on the other side, why would Hersh go with a story that has this many holes if he didn't feel confident in the people he was talking to?</s>HILL: I think he believes it. I don't think this is salacious sensational journalism here. I think he could be wrong, but sincerely wrong. First of all, he relied on one senior official as the primary contact.</s>CUOMO: He says he talked to other people and he did a lot of vetting, but he does get a lot from this one anonymous source.</s>HILL: But these other people haven't said publicly, at least, that this story is true. Saying something is plausible is very different than saying something affirmatively happened and that's what we haven't seen so far.</s>FERGUSON: I would say anything's plausible when you have a guy this close to their West Point. There is a very good chance you might have one or two people that knew where he was and they didn't give him up.</s>CAMEROTA: Okay.</s>FERGUSON: For whatever reason, but to say they were protecting him? I don't know if I would buy that.</s>CAMEROTA: But if there is something in Seymour Hersh's investigative reporting, if there is a germ of truth somewhere and if it turns out that the administration somehow fudged or fabricated what happened that night, then what did that mean for the administration?</s>FERGUSON: It means everything else -</s>HILL: I don't think it means anything.</s>FERGUSON: I disagree. I think if they lied and there's something that you can prove, that they did not tell the American people or the world the actual story that happened, then everything else in his article now becomes plausible to people. Well, they lied to us about this and lied about this, they misled us on this, so now maybe I do believe more of this.</s>HILL: I took what you're saying to mean if we verify that much of this is not provable but this one thing is, that they overstated the role of the U.S. military, they overstate their own intelligence, or they dismissed the role of the ISI in terms of what it knew and how it intervened. I think that is problematic, but I think we may overestimate how much the American people and the global community care how Osama bin Laden got killed.</s>FERGUSON: I cannot imagine Osama bin Laden being taken and thinking that somehow he was going to end up in American hands without laying down a fight or the people in front of him. That's the part to me that I cannot see in any circumstance where he's going to say, okay, here's my weapon, let's go to trial, hand me over to another country? There's no way that wasn't a blaze of glory going down.</s>HILL: What would be the logic, what would be the motivation for the president to say that we had absolutely no outside help, that this was a purely U.S. mission?</s>FERGUSON: Pakistan didn't want to have blood on their hands because of possible people, they would anger their own society, say, hey, this is all America, I don't want any part of this.</s>HILL: Then it becomes a conspiracy between the United States and Pakistan, that Pakistan actually didn't want to have blood on his hands.</s>CUOMO: Pakistan put out really hard statements after this saying this was a complete rejection of their sovereignty, and Hersh's theory is they had a plan where everybody was going to acknowledge it and went wrong because the president decided to --</s>HILL: This sounds like an episode of "House of Cards" more than it does an actual political -- I don't buy it. I don't buy it.</s>CAMEROTA: Ben, Marc, thank you. Great to see you guys. Let's get over to Michaela.</s>PEREIRA: Well, it's graduation season, lots of commencements happening. First Lady Michelle Obama speaking candidly about race during a commencement speech in Alabama. Her passionate speech and message to the students next.