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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Americans Detained in North Korea Plead for Help; U.K. Wants New Policies to Stop Members of ISIS from Returning from Syria

Aired September 1, 2014 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: A CNN exclusive, desperate pleas from three Americans held in North Korea, what can -- what will -- the U.S. do to bring these men back home?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Cracking down on the ISIS threat at home, the U.K. has a new plan to deal with the militants in its midst. Could the British prime minister's plan here work here in the U.S. too?

BERMAN: Too cautious? What is the president's strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria? New criticism from within his own party.

Hello, everyone. Happy Labor Day. I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: Happy Monday, I'm Michaela Pereira. Those stories and much more ahead @THIS HEAD.

And we begin with pleas. Pleas this morning from three Americans detained in communist North Korea. These three detainees are desperate to come home and are begging for Washington's help.

BERMAN: Each man was allowed five minutes to speak exclusively with CNN.

Missionary Kenneth Bae has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for being part of a so-called Christian plot to overthrow the regime.

Matthew Todd Miller, a 24-year-old, from Bakersfield, California, he seemed reluctant to talk. He was allegedly seeking asylum in North Korea.

And Jeffrey Edward Fowle says he's desperate to get back to the United States to his wife and children Ohio. His crime, quote/unquote, was leaving a Bible behind.

BERMAN: Their interviews with our Will Ripley certainly came to a surprise even to all of us here at CNN.

So here now, listen to them in their own words.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Will Ripley, CNN. First of all, can you tell me about the charges you're facing in North Korea?

MATTHEW MILLER, DETAINED IN NORTH KOREA: I will not find out until I go to trial, but I will say that I prepared to violate the law of the DPRK before coming here, and I deliberately committed my crime. I have already admitted my guilt and apologized to the governments of the DPRK, and I have been asking for forgiveness.

RIPLEY: Did you tear up your visa and seek asylum, is that report accurate?

MILLER: The previous interview that is what I said. I'm not here to discuss --

RIPLEY: Tell me about your conditions here. How are you being treated?

MILLER: With good health and received medical checks and provided with humanitarian treatment.

RIPLEY: And what is your message to your family?

MILLER: First, I'll just say my message to my governments. I've been requesting help for a long time and there's been no movement from my governments. The American government is known for having a strong policy of protecting its citizens yet for my case there is still no movement. I've also written the letter to my president, with no reply.

JEFFREY FOWLE, DETAINED IN NORTH KOREAN: The charges are violation of DPRK law, which stems from me trying to leave a Bible up at the (inaudible) club in (inaudible).

It was a covert act and a violation of the tourist purposes as well. And I admit my guilt to the government, and signed a statement to that effect and have also put in a request for forgiveness to the people and the government of the DPRK.

And the legal process is ongoing right now, and it's in the final stages of preliminary investigations. The trial will be forthcoming soon, and so time is getting urgent.

Within a month, I should be facing trial, and sentencing will be right after that. So can you guys convey my desperate situation.

KENNETH BAE, DETAINED IN NORTH KOREA: I'm serving a 15-year sentence right now. And I've been going back and forth from the hospital to the labor camp the last year and a half. And right now I'm serving at a labor camp right now.

RIPLEY: Can you tell me about the conditions at the labor camp?

BAE: Condition at labor camp is I'm working eight hours a day, six days a week. And working -- I've work with other hard labor that is required to do every day.

RIPLEY: Do you feel you are being treated humanely?

BAE: Yes.

RIPLEY: And your message to your family? BAE: I'm sure they are very worried about my health at this time, and

even though right now, like last month and a half, I have been -- my health has been -- it's been failing, so right now, what I can say to my family and friends is to continue to pray for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Our Will Ripley who conducted that interview joins us right now by phone from Pyongyang, North Korea.

Will, first of all, such an extraordinary thing that happened to you. Give us a little back story. And also tell us about the restrictions they placed on you.

RIPLEY (via telephone): Yeah. This has certainly been a surreal day for us in North Korea. We came here five days ago on a CNN trip to cover a wrestling tournament that has some international political implications, mainly between Japan and North Korea.

But on our first day in Pyongyang, we asked our government minders if we could speak with the three detained Americans. We also asked for access to a high-level government official.

We were told both of those requests were very unlikely. And essentially, what we've been doing for the past few days is a government-controlled tour of all of the monuments and sights of North Korea. That's what journalists often do here, and that's what we were doing today.

We were two hours north of the capital city of Pyongyang, eating lunch, about to tour a temple, one of many that we've seen on this trip, when all of a sudden, I was pulled away from my table, taken out into the hallway and told that our crew needed to get into a van at that very moment and that we were granted an interview with some kind of government official. That's all we were told.

So we get in the van. Our government minders were on the phone. At one point, we pulled over. They stepped away, made more phone calls. We kept driving and we pull up to this secret hotel in Pyongyang, still not knowing where we were, who we were going to be speaking to, and at the front door, as we were getting ready to walk in, we were told that plans had changed again, and the government decided to grant this interview with Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller, and Jeffrey Fowle.

We were told we had only five minutes with each of them, and we could not go over that time limit. We were also told that we had very specific topics we could discuss -- the charges that they are facing, the conditions under which they are being held -- by the way, all three told us that they have been treated humanely -- and we were told that they'd be given the chance to send a message to their families and, perhaps most importantly for the North Koreans, a message to the American government.

We were also told that if we did not -- if we violated those terms of our agreement, there could be some pretty serious consequences, and we agreed to the terms, went into the hotel, and started talking to the interviews, with each of the men held in separate rooms.

BERMAN: You mentioned, Will, their message to the U.S. government. What struck me, listening to these three interviews was how similar that message to the U.S. government was, almost as if it had been scripted.

Clearly, these men have every interest in the world to get U.S. diplomacy involved here to get them free, but that seemed to be the mission -- the message that the North Koreans wanted to get out as well.

RIPLEY (via telephone): Yeah. You know, some of them had notes. Others spoke off the cuff. I'm sure -- and I don't know this for sure, but I would imagine that there was discussion with them ahead of time as well, just like there was with us. What that discussion was, what those details were, I don't know.

But, yes, one key theme was send in some help from the American government, send a special envoy. Jeffrey Fowle talked about Bill Clinton coming here again just like he did when there were two American journalists who crossed illegally and were held here. Bill Clinton came and secured their release. They would like to see something like that happen for them as well.

Right now, the two Americans who go on trial later this month, Fowle and Miller, they are still saying essentially in a hotel suite, each of them. They get three meals a day. They are allowed to go outside and take one walk every day.

Only Kenneth Bae is serving his sentence. He's really the only prisoner, spending his time between that labor camp where he is doing agriculture work and a hospital recently because he's had some health problems.

But those two men that are in the hotels now know that, once they go on trial, sentencing would happen immediately afterwards. They both already signed confessions saying they are guilty, asking for forgiveness.

And if they're sentenced, their conditions will quickly change, and that is the desperation that they conveyed to us when they sat down with us today.

PEREIRA: Will, real quickly, tell me -- you had a chance to look them in the eye and to touch them on the shoulders. Each one of them, tell me quickly what their demeanor was because sometimes the camera doesn't translate that, what it's like to be with them in person.

RIPLEY (via telephone): Jeffrey Fowle, in his eyes, I could see he desperately wants to be with his family with his elementary school- aged kids. He was arrested on his daughter's birthday. His wife is a part-time hairstylist. And he's having -- they're struggling. He's afraid he's going to lose his job. He was very emotional.

Miller was very distant and didn't want to talk. He didn't even use his whole five minutes. He said what he felt he needed to say and nothing more. Didn't want to talk about his arrest. Didn't want to talk about his conversation that he had his family. He was very detached, very distant.

Kenneth Bae, the longest held here, almost two years now, he looked tired. He looked tired, and he's not well, and he wants to go home. He doesn't have as much hope as I think the other two because he's been in this situation for this long, but again, I need to stress. They all told us they are being treated humanely, and they all want help from the American government to go home as soon as possible.

PEREIRA: And you wonder how much of that is true or they felt they had to say.

Will Ripley, a tremendous opportunity, I know their families are really grateful to see them as we all are, to just to see them for ourselves.

BERMAN: They are healthy. At least they look OK. They are there. It's proof of life.

PEREIRA: It is.

BERMAN: I think that's got to be reassuring to the families.

PEREIRA: Absolutely.

BERMAN: However, I think it only must make them long more to be with them, once again.

PEREIRA: Obviously, we're going to stay with this story.

Ahead @THIS HOUR, more on the plight of those Americans, we're going to speak with the former New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson, also an ambassador, former ambassador. He's been to North Korea before to try to win Kenneth Bae's freedom.

What can be done to bring these men home?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: I think it's fair to say that nobody saw this coming. North Korea allowed three detained Americans to speak with our correspondent Will Ripley from here at CNN.

Kenneth Bae, Matthew Todd Miller, and Jeffrey Fowle, they seemed to have one message. They are desperately asking the U.S. government to send an envoy to North Korea to work for their freedom.

BERMAN: Here's what somebody told Will Ripley.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RIPLEY: What's the bottom line about your situation here and your message that you want to put out?

MILLER: That my situation is very urgent, that very soon I'm going to trial, and I would directly be sent to prison.

I think this is -- this interview is my final chance to push the American government into helping me.

RIPLEY: So the bottom line, your message about your conditions here and your situation?

FOWLE: I'm good for the time being, but I need to let people know that I'm getting desperate. I'm getting desperate for help.

RIPLEY: Anything else important that you want to say in our final seconds?

BAE: Well, I do need help from the U.S. government, and my health is failing, and I've been since the last time I was transferred back from the hospital to the camp. I lost already 15 pounds or more and it's been very difficult to stay in the camp right now, so I do ask U.S. government and people out there to really put effort to send somebody.

RIPLEY: Okay.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BERMAN: You know, it was amazing to hear. As we said, our Will Ripley. He didn't know this was going to happen.

PEREIRA: No.

BERMAN: CNN didn't know it was going to happen. The U.S. government certainly did not know it was going to happen. So what comes of it now?. Joining us by phone is former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. Also a former ambassador to the United Nations. One of the few men who was actually negotiating with the North Koreans before for the release of prisoners. Ambassador, thanks so much for being with us. Why do you think the North Koreans invited CNN in today to speak to these men?

BILL RICHARDSON, FORMER AMBASSADOR TO UNITED NATIONS (via telephone): Well, to send basically three messages. The first is, look, we North Koreans, we're still around, it's not just ISIS. It's not just Ukraine, Russia, Middle East. We're still at the top of the news. Number 2, they are sending a signal saying we're ready to bargain for the three hostages. They are bargaining chips. United States, you need to start talking to us. And the third message, which was probably the North Koreans pressuring the Americans to say, one, we're being treated properly, two, send an American envoy, in other words, a government envoy, that was significant. Not an outside envoy. Not a non-government envoy but a government envoy. Those were the three messages that they were sending. But most importantly we're ready to deal for the hostages.

PEREIRA: Help us understand some of the intricacies here if you could. It's so interesting to me that they didn't speak directly to the United States. They haven't. North Korea won't speak directly or communicate with the United States, but they chose to do it sort of through this third party intermediary, through CNN, through a journalist to make sure the message was delivered. Talk about what that end game would be, especially if they are essentially saying we're inviting, quote unquote, to the table to talk. It's not very direct.

RICHARDSON: Well, I don't speak for the administration, but I did see an administration statement that they have made in response to your article, to your interviews, that basically says this is the administration saying all right, North Korea, you want to talk to us, you've got to do something on your nuclear proliferation. You got to shut down your detonations of nuclear devices. In other words, be ready to negotiate on what concerns us the most, and that is that you're a nuclear state acting irresponsibly. And North Korea refuses to do that.

I think here the end game would be the sequence of when does a U.S. talk to North Korea, but in exchange for them releasing these prisoners? You know, it's diplomacy, but this North Korean new leader, we don't know how he reacts, how he negotiates. In the past, I've negotiated releases with his father, where you know, it's clearer. Okay, you get some humanitarian aid, some food. We release these prisoners, but now with this new leadership, you don't know where they are coming from, but it was a clear signal. They know that your interview will be broadcast around the world. That's the way they communicate to the U.S. government, because the U.S. government has basically said we're not going to talk to you unless you take some steps on the nuclear front.

BERMAN: Do you think that's correct, Ambassador? Do you think the United States should respond to the request of these three men and send an envoy?

RICHARDSON: I believe you need to negotiate that. I would like the North Koreans to take some nuclear steps too. I think it's reaching a point where like Kenneth Bae, he's been there over 2 years, his health is really deteriorating. The other two Americans, they deserve not to be pawns in this bargaining chip negotiation, but I see a light at the end of the tunnel because the fact that the North Koreans have put this up so openly that we're ready to talk by the interviews, I think is a good sign and you can see it's the only good sign in this very dramatically bad situation for these three Americans and their families.

PEREIRA: In a word, would you go if President Obama asked you to?

RICHARDSON: Well, yes, but I would go but they are asking for U.S. government people. They are not asking for me or President Clinton. They want somebody that will say okay we're ready to engage in nuclear talks or whatever. So that's the difference of the signal and I'm not consulting with the -- they haven't called me. I haven't called them. So I think it's best that they -- the U.S. government, the State Department handle this directly with them.

PEREIRA: Alright. Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson, thanks for joining us and giving us your perspective and insight into this. BERMAN: Really interesting discussion. Seems to think it's the

beginning of a little bit of a diplomatic dance here. We'll see where it goes,

Meanwhile, Britain, trying to keep home-grown ISIS fighters out of its country. Will David Cameron's plan prevent some citizens from bringing jihad back to Britain, and should the United States be doing something similar? That's ahead @ THIS HOUR.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: The terror threat in the U.K. nearing its apex @ THIS HOUR.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA (voice-over): It's at the second highest level thanks to what ISIS has been doing in Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of those militants are believed to be British citizens.

BERMAN (voice-over): Just a short time ago, Prime Minister David Cameron announced how the U.K. will keep its home-grown ISIS fighters out of Britain, at least his plan how he wants to deal with the ones who have already returned home from the Middle East.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Mr. Speaker, we are proud to be an open, free, and tolerant nation, but that tolerance must never be confused with a passive acceptance of cultures living separate lives or people behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values. Adhering to British values is not an option or a choice. It is a duty for all those who live in these islands. So we will stand up for our values, we will in the end defeat this extremism, and we will secure our way of life for generations to come and I commend this statement to the House.

BERMAN: The prime minister's plans include keeping British-born jihadists who are in Syria and Iraq out of the U.K. At least in the short term. He also wants a new law to give police the temporary power to seize a passport if a citizen is suspected of traveling to fight for ISIS.

PEREIRA: Additionally, he wants more efforts to de radicalize British Muslims and for airlines to comply with no fly list rules and to share passenger lists. Otherwise, their flights won't be allowed to land in the U.K.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA (on camera): This is certainly a far cry from the U.S. plan which is essentially right now do nothing. Last week President Obama said he had no defined strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria.

BERMAN (on camera): I want to talk with our terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank. Paul, thanks so much for being with us. We should say this is a little bit of a different situation than President Obama is dealing with right now. British Prime Minister David Cameron is talking about a homeland security issue when the president was criticized for his statements about having no new strategy, it was for what he may or may not do in Syria itself. But, the British plans as they are, the ability to seize passports, to prevent British-born citizens from going back into their country, would that ever work here in the United States?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, the United States are going to be looking at whatever measures are necessary to protect the homeland. There's a lot of concerns here in the United States, but the concern isn't as great as it is in the United Kingdom because in the United Kingdom you had 500 people travel from the U.K. to join jihadist groups in Syria. 250 and people coming back. In the United States, that number is 100 with perhaps a dozen or so joining ISIS. So the threat is actually much greater in the U.K. and that's why you are seeing a raft of new measures in the U.K. now to try and tackle this problem. They are very, very worried that ISIS may try and retaliate in some form of way. The U.K. is seen, of course, as the closest ally of the United States.

PEREIRA: But to be fair, while it is laudable that the U.K. is directly looking at ways to deal with this growing threat and increasing threat in their nation, to be fair, if you look at other countries, Denmark, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Belgium per capita they have more of their people leaving to go to Syria and join up in the fight. What is being done there?

CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right and that's partly a reflection of the fact in some of those countries like Belgium, you actually have greater Arab populations. In Britain the most Muslims are kind of Pakistani origin so a bit more difficult for them to go and fight in Syria. In countries like Belgium and France, you've got Algerian and Moroccan populations. They find it a lot easier to travel and fight in Syria so you've seen very alarming numbers go from some of these countries.

And European counter terrorism officials tell me that the threat right now is unprecedented, bigger even than before 9/11, after 9/11, during the Iraq War. They have never been more worried and this really is something echoed in the Muslim community. I spoke to one Muslim community leader who's working at the cutting edge of deradicalization. He says there's been a surge in support for ISIS on British streets. More and more people wanting to go and fight in Syria for the group since the group declared a Caliphate a couple of months ago. So these are very worrying times.

BERMAN: Worrying times, but in your talks over the last three days, have you caught any whiff that British officials think there is a specific threat?

CRUICKSHANK: It does not seem to be linked to a sort of specific plot. Sort of more general concern about the numbers returning, concern that some of these people may retaliate in the U.K. for these U.S. air strikes in Iraq. And also because you have this big NATO summit this coming week in Wales. It's not lost on British officials that last time you saw a major terrorist attack on British soil, the 2005 London bombings, there was a G8 summit in Gleneagles, in Scotland. So a lot of concern right now about the potential for attack. These returnees coming back, but also lone wolves in the U.K. who may take matters into their own hands.

BERMAN: Paul Cruickshank, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

CRUICKSHANK: Thank you.

PEREIRA: The plight of those Americans held in North Korea and the interview no one was expecting. What the sister of one of those prisoners is saying after she saw him on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)