Maria Puente

USA TODAY

On Tuesday, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson sat down with ABC News, speaking publicly for the first time on the shooting death of Michael Brown. He described his side of the altercation, saying there was "no way" Brown had his hands up when he was fatally shot.

Wilson says he couldn't have done anything differently in his confrontation to have prevented the 18-year-old's shooting death.

A grand jury on Monday declined to indict Wilson on any charges, setting off a night of angry protests, looting and gunfire in the Ferguson area.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos tweet-bragged about landing the first interview with the cleared Ferguson cop.

"Just finished a more than hourlong interview with Officer Darren Wilson. No question off limits," tweeted the co-host of Good Morning America on Tuesday.

The interview led off World News with David Muir Tuesday night, with Wilson insisting to Stephanopoulos that he had no choice but to shoot Brown (he compared him to a "demon" and Hulk Hogan), that Brown was huge and intimidating, that he had grabbed Wilson's gun and punched him, and that he, Wilson, feared Brown would kill him.

When asked if he would be haunted by the incident, Wilson said, "I don't think it's a haunting; it's always going to be something that happened."

"The reason I have a clean conscience is I know I did my job right," he said.

Wilson said he asked himself if he could legally shoot Brown. "I thought, 'I have to. If I don't, he will kill me if he gets to me.' "

Over the weekend, CNN's Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter reported that Stephanopoulos was one of several major news anchors who had met secretly with Wilson for off-the-record chats aimed at persuading the officer, then in hiding, to grant his first interview after the grand jury decision was rendered.

Stephanopoulos appears to be the winner of the coveted "get" but others who were angling included Matt Lauer of NBC, Scott Pelley of CBS, and Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon of CNN.

The get is likely to add to ABC's bragging rights over GMA, which has toppled NBC's long-leading Today show in the morning-show ratings.

And it's a major coup for Stephanopoulos, who first came to America's attention as a young, brash political operative in 1992.

As communications director during Bill Clinton's first winning presidential campaign, and early in Clinton's first term, Stephanopoulos was known for testy jousting with reporters, until he got fed up and quit. Later, in his memoir, All Too Human: A Political Education, he described White House pressures so great he became depressed and his face broke out in hives.

Contributing: Melanie Eversley, Associated Press







