Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Australia Foils Possible Terror Attack; Clinic That Treated Joan Rivers Still Open; Apple Locks Down iPhone Data; Ukraine's President Asks Congress for Money; Scotland Votes on Independence Today

Aired September 18, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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


KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And with that let's hand you over to "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, have a great day.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Happening now in the NEWSROOM arming the rebels.

SEN. BOB MENENDEZ (D), FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Congress cannot be providing a blank check for the anti-ISIL campaign.

COSTELLO: The ground game against the terrorists heat up, the House backing Obama's plan bringing us one step closer to conflict.

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: ISIL must be defeated, period, end of story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What do we want?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Independence.

COSTELLO: Independence.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: If Scotland votes yes --

COSTELLO: Will Great Britain survive?

CAMERON: -- the UK will split.

COSTELLO: Without Scotland.

CAMERON: And we will go our separate ways forever.

COSTELLO: And the death of Joan Rivers, new questions this morning about the clinic, should it even stay open?

Also for shame.

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D), CALIFORNIA: Instead of fighting injustice off the field for the sake of the sport, the NFL chooses deafening silence.

COSTELLO: Is the NFL doing enough about domestic violence?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR, NEW DAY: Breaking overnight another star football player arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife and child.

COSTELLO: This morning, Representative Jackie Speier joins us.

SPEIER: Anything for football. I say bench them.

COSTELLO: Let's talk.

SETH MEYERS, HOST, "LATE NIGHT WITH SETH MEYERS": President Obama, reiterated that the U.S. will not be sending ground troops to fight the militant group ISIS in Iraq. He has a much better idea. He's going to send suspended NFL players.

COSTELLO: Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

COSTELLO: And good morning to you. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We begin with breaking news in the global fight against terrorism. Australian police say they foiled a major terrorist plot by ISIS supporters. Intelligence officials say the suspects planned to target a random citizen, behead them in public, and then drape a black ISIS flag over their bodies. So far two people have been charged in the grisly plan, dozens of others served warrants.

All of this as the United States tries to bolster international support to snuff out this terrorist group.

CNN senior international correspondent Ivan Watson begins our coverage.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Predawn raids across Australia's largest city. Authorities are calling it the country's biggest ever anti-terror operation. Armed with dozens of search warrants, Australian Security Forces detained at least 15 suspects.

The Australian media reporting disturbing details. The suspects allegedly planned to film the public beheading of a random individual and then drape the body in the black flag of ISIS.

ANDREW SCIPIONE, NSW POLICE COMMISSIONER: It is of serious concern that right at the heart of our communities we have people that are planning to conduct random attacks and today we work together to make sure that that didn't happen. We have in fact disrupted that particular attack.

WATSON: Among the suspects detained a man timed Omarjan Azari who appeared briefly in a Sydney court charged with a terrorism related offense. He did not enter a plea. His neighbors shocked a suspected terrorist lived next door.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never thought I would see anything like this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's actually quite frightening. My heart is actually pounding.

WATSON: Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he believes at least 60 Australians are fighting alongside ISIS and other militant groups in the Middle East. He's repeatedly voiced fears these Australian jihadis could pose a threat if they ever come home. Australian intelligence revealed ISIS was urging homegrown sympathizers to carry out attacks in Australia.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Direct exhortations coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in ISIL to networks of support back in Australia to conduct demonstration killings here in this country.

WATSON: Last week Australia raised its threat level to high for the first time in the country's history. Warning a terrorist attack is likely.

Ivan Watson, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right. Let's talk more about this with CNN's national security analyst Peter Bergen.

Welcome, Peter.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Peter, this is -- I don't know how to characterize this. It's such a strange act of terror, behead a citizen and drape the body with the black flag of ISIS. Why this method of terror and not something bigger?

BERGEN: Well, I mean it's possible that there is the -- a you know sport in athletics for ISIS and Australia. The British government assesses that there are 100 facilitators facilitating those 60 people that the Prime Minister Tony Abbott identified as being fighting in Syria, but you know, obviously there would be a huge shock value.

You'll recall, Carol, the attack on the British soldier in London who is sort of randomly selected but of course he was an off-duty soldier, and that -- the horror that surrounded that attack. I mean, obviously it would be -- I mean there would be great coverage of this in the sense that it would be widely disseminated and it would be a way for these is supporters in Australia to protest what they know is the fact that Australian government is going to be part of this international coalition, sending advisers to fight ISIS in Iraq.

COSTELLO: The Australian prosecutor also said this plight involved an unusual level of fanaticism, more fanatic than the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Center?

BERGEN: Well, I mean, it's an interesting question, Carol. I mean, there's a certain level of fanaticism obviously, you know, beyond which most normal people would find surprising. Obviously beheading somebody in public is equally horrible as what the al Qaeda hijackers did on 9/11, except on a much smaller scale, but you know, they're ideologically very aligned, although of course ISIS and al Qaeda are, you know, in a public dispute right now but the fact of the matter is their etiology is pretty much precisely the same.

COSTELLO: And then the final question, should we expect this sort of plot to unfold in the United States?

BERGEN: I think it's unlikely.

Carol, we've seen 60 Australians go to Australia. The population of Australia is about a 20th of the size of the United States. And we've only seen 100 Americans go, and only a dozen of them fought with ISIS, two of them are already dead. So, you know, I think it's a lot less likely in the United States, obviously we've seen something like 2600 Europeans go, and that I think is more likely that we'd see some kind of attack in Europe. In fact we've already seen one in Brussels by an ISIS affiliated guy who killed four people May 24th at a Jewish museum.

So that's where you're going to much more likely to see these kinds of things if indeed they do happen at all.

COSTELLO: And I hope and I pray they don't.

Peter Bergen, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

Checking some of other top stories for you this morning at seven minutes past.

These are live pictures from Capitol Hill where the House Intelligence Committee is focused on the threat from the terror group ISIS. Lawmakers are hearing from retired General James Mattis, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and other security experts. This is just one of the hearings under way on the hill today to discuss ISIS.

To Scranton, Pennsylvania, now. This is the funeral site for the slain Pennsylvania state trooper, Corporal Bryon Dickson. A mass of fellow troopers are gathered outside the cathedral where the funeral is to be held. Dickson was gunned on Friday. His suspected killer Eric Matthew Frein remains at large. Authorities say he's a skilled marksman with a longstanding grudge against law enforcement. They're worried he could strike again today at the funeral. Police are releasing new surveillance video they say shows University

of Virginia student Hannah Graham the night she disappeared. You can see her there on the left and a white man right behind her. A man later told police he was following her because she looked upset. Graham texted a friend she was lost early Saturday morning, the 18- year-old has not been heard from since.

And heavy rains from the remnant of tropical storm Odile could pose a threat to the southwest. Some areas have seen three inches of rain in just 30 minutes. Another storm system has soaked parts of Texas. A number of people reportedly were trapped in their cars as the waters rose.

There are new questions this morning about the New York clinic where Joan Rivers went into cardiac arrest while undergoing surgery. Chief among those questions with what investigators are learning, should that clinic even be opened right now?

CNN's Susan Candiotti has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): At the Yorkville Endoscopy Clinic it appears to be business as usual pending the outcome of a state investigation following the death of Joan Rivers, but the clinic's accrediting agency has for two weeks been calling Yorkville to suspend procedures and surgeries immediately.

It's the non-profit American association for Accreditation of Ambulatory Surgery Facilities. Yorkville and more than 2,000 other medical facilities pay the group for inspections to assure the public of quality care. In some states accreditation is the same as being licensed.

ANDREW SMILEY, MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ATTORNEY: It shows that you're a member of the club, that you're in good standing and that you are recognized to be good at what you do.

CANDIOTTI: CNN has exclusively obtained letters written by the accreditation group to the clinic and we've learned to the federal agency that governs Medicare payments, stating Yorkville is in. quote, "immediate jeopardy" putting it on emergency suspension, adding, "It must stop procedures and surgery until accreditation questions are settled."

One letter was written to Dr. Lawrence Cohen, who CNN has learned performed the endoscopy on Rivers. According to the letters, "The agency jumped in on its own when it heard about Rivers' cardiac arrest at the clinic." Accreditors made an unscheduled visit to Yorkville and cited two so-called deficiencies, both an expert tells us involve possible uncertified, uncredited staff, doctors, and unauthorized procedures at the clinic.

(On camera): The same allegations CNN has been told, that state investigators have been looking into, including Rivers' personal doctor not certified by the clinic, who was asked to begin an unauthorized vocal chords biopsy.

(Voice-over): If Rivers didn't consent at all --

SMILEY: That's malpractice. You're not allowed as a physician to operate on a patient without consent to perform that operation.

CANDIOTTI: That's because one penalty of even temporarily losing accreditation could mean losing all Medicare reimbursements according to an expert. Yet with activity Wednesday inside and out of the facility on New York's affluent Upper East Side, there was no sign of an emergency suspension.

How can that be? Medical malpractice attorney Andrew Smiley.

(On camera): It appears to be open. It appears that they are seeing patients. What are we to make of that?

SMILEY: What I would make of it is that they're not too worried about Medicare. They're on the Upper East Side and they probably have a lot of private paying, wealthy patients that don't want to deal with hospitals.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): The fact is, New York licenses Yorkville Clinic, not the Accreditation Association. So far neither the clinic nor any doctors have been accused of wrongdoing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI: And the malpractice attorney you just heard from, Mr. Smiley, also makes the point that if doctors saw something that really concerned them while they were examining Joan Rivers, then it would have been malpractice not to perform a biopsy.

So a lot of still unanswered questions here -- Carol.

COSTELLO: So what's the clinic saying?

CANDIOTTI: You know, they provided a statement to us last night maintaining that they are adhering, as they put it, to all of the federal and state accreditation authorizations, and that they continue to provide the very best in-patient care and continue to do so, maintaining they say their quality.

What's interesting about that is we also spoke with the accreditation company again and they told us, well, we can't comment because the clinic remains under investigation. So hard to put all this together, but we're still working on it.

COSTELLO: All right, I'm sure you are. Susan Candiotti, thanks so much.

Apple is announcing major changes to its privacy policy. The company says that even cops will now have to go through you if they want to get access to your phone's data. Apple is rolling out new encryption software that makes it impossible for the company to access certain smartphone and tablet data, even if law enforcement serves the company with a search warrant.

CNN technology analyst Brett Larson is here with along with CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson.

Welcome to you both.

Good morning. So Brett, I'll start with you. What's different about this policy specifically what type of data will now be inaccessible?

BRETT LARSON, HOST, TECHBYTES: Well, it's -- from what we're reading on their "End User License Agreement" which I will say is probably one of the few times any of us have ever read one of these privacy policies, is they are saying that anything that's contained on your phone will no longer be accessible by them. In the past if you were to misplace your four-digit code they can walk you through several steps that would then unlock your phone.

Now what they're saying is if you lose this code we have no way of getting in to help you, you'll have to wipe all the data off of your phone and basically start fresh. What's interesting about this is they're not saying that about the day that's held on iCloud, so anything that is backed up to iCloud, which would hopefully be your entire phone if you're a smart user who likes to keep backups of your stuff, that will be accessible to authorities and will be accessible to Apple, should they be questioned or be served a warrant.

COSTELLO: Interesting. OK, So Joey, I'm going to read you Apple's Web site statement. It says, "Government information requests are a consequence of doing business in the digital age. Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed any government access to our servers and we never will."

Do you believe them?

(LAUGHTER)

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: That's a loaded question, Carol. How dare you? Listen, the reality is this, is that people need to trust, of course, their government institutions and they need to trust their corporations. And from a public relations perspective, hallelujah, it's great business practice because people want to be secure.

And that's particularly true, Carol, you remember all the stories you've been -- you know, reporting over the years, where there are encryption data violations, there are breakthroughs, there are leaks, and there are so many people who are driven crazy.

So, from a legal perspective, look, you have the Fourth Amendment, people have the right to be secure in their place, homes, (INAUDIBLE) are in effect. But the reality is, there's always a tension between my right to privacy and law enforcement's to detect and deter crime. And they say, if we don't have it, we can't give it to you. We wipe our hands clean. COSTELLO: But the bottom line here is if law enforcement can't get

data they want by serving Apple with a search warrant, how will they get it? Because sometimes they need it to solve major crimes?

JACKSON: It's so true, Carol. That's the delicate balancing test I speak to, because I have a right to privacy, we all have right to privacy. But at the same time, Carol, we want to feel protected. We want to feel that the government is detecting crime, deterring crime, weeding out crime.

And so, they're saying, Apple, that is, you go to the user, you have an issue, our encryption is such that we can no longer break the code. In a regular modern day age, we had the key but we threw it away, it's no longer ours. So, your beef, government, is not with us. It's with the individual user who has the smartphone.

COSTELLO: Fascinating. So, Brett, will other companies follow suit?

LARSON: Absolutely. I think when we saw what Edward Snowden revealed about what they know about all of us, what they're able to gather about all of us, a lot of these tech companies stepped in and said we're not getting in the middle of this. We're going to do whatever we need to do to separate ourselves from this controversy.

I think it's great that Apple did this. It's definitely a PR move, if they want to search and seize your phone, they can get a warrant and take it from you, but I think other companies are going to follow suit and I think over the next year, we're going to see the way that different companies are saying, hey, look, we'll put our servers in another country if that's what it takes to keep the government off of your data.

COSTELLO: Brett Larson, Joey Jackson, thanks as always.

JACKSON: Pleasure and a privilege, Carol.

COSTELLO: Thank you.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM, Ukraine's president come to Congress for help for Ukraine to give Russia the boot, they need American money.

CNN's Erin McPike is in Washington.

Good morning.

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning.

President Poroshenko want more help from the United States, but just how much more is the White House willing to give? More on that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: President Obama meets later today with the president of Ukraine. First, Petro Poroshenko though will address a joint meeting in

Congress that will happen in just about 25 minutes. As you know, Poroshenko and Obama were side by side at the NATO talks earlier this month, and Mr. Poroshenko is on a mission to get economic and military aid to help his government battle pro-Russian militants.

CNN's Erin McPike is in Washington.

How much is he asking for?

MCPIKE: Well, Carol, more is really the key word there, but at this point it doesn't appear that the White House is willing to give much more, as you know, this conflict has been going on in eastern Ukraine for six, seven months and has been damaging to not only Ukraine itself but also Ukraine's economy causing very serious inflation.

But, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked repeatedly what President Obama might be willing to give. And at this point, Josh Earnest said that he didn't have any specific announcements to make, and basically that this meeting between Presidents Poroshenko and President Obama is going to be, by and large, symbolic, Carol.

COSTELLO: So, Poroshenko could go home empty-handed?

MCPIKE: What it appears right now, no. There have been some U.S. lawmakers who have been to Kiev in recent months and seen that they think that Ukraine does need more military assistance through the United States -- the words they're using are lethal assistance and right now the United States is giving nonlethal assistance. But at this point, it doesn't look like the White House and frankly other Western nations want to give any more, because they don't want to enflame Russia to make this conflict worse, Carol.

COSTELLO: I was just going to ask you, how would Russia respond to that?

MCPIKE: How would Russia respond to?

COSTELLO: To America not giving Ukraine any more money.

MCPIKE: Well look, currently what the U.S. has been doing and they've been doing it in an incremental fashion is step up sanctions against Russia. So, that's been really the line they've taken so far. They're really just focused on Russia and more sanctions. The key is the United States is obviously very involved in the fight against ISIS right now, there are resources there to give but it's a matter of priority, and right now the priority for the U.S. is ISIS.

COSTELLO: That is a true story. Erin McPike, thanks so much.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM: it is decision day for millions of Scots as they vote on splitting from the U.K.

Nic Robertson live in Glasgow for us this morning.

Hi, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

An historic day here in Scotland, 4.25 million voters registered to vote, half way through the voting day, how is it going? We'll have all of that on the other side of the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Good morning. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Carol Costello.

Ahead this half hour, the big breakup, who wears the kilt in this family? Scotland voting to separate from the U.K. -- the oil, the pound, the nukes, keep calm and carry on, people.

Also, bad behavior, a new day, a new NFL domestic abuse scandal. Seriously folks, we're keeping track that's six players in just a few days.

And this --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where's the beef?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Where is the beef? It's 4 bucks a pound, that's where, the highest price ever.

Let's talk, live in THE CNN NEWSROOM.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: Voting now under way as Scots decide whether or not to split from the United Kingdom and the historic measure is earning quite a bit of attention state stateside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

JIMMY FALLON, COMEDIAN: This week, Scotland will vote on whether or not it wants to leave the United Kingdom. If it votes yes, it will leave the European Union and NATO and be responsible for defending itself. Or as Vladimir Putin put it "I got dibs." If Scotland breaks up with England, England will just do what everyone else does, stop them on Facebook.

Scotland has gained a lot of weight.

JIMMY KIMMEL, COMEDIAN: This is the official ballot. This is real, we did not make this up. That's the ballot. It's one line, should Scotland be an independent country? And that's it.

Why is it I have to go through 18 pages of terms and conditions to download iOS8? Whole country can secede from the U.K. by checking a box that says yes?

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

COSTELLO: Let's be clear, this is no laughing matter, more than 4 million people have registered to vote, the largest electorate in Scotland and regardless which way the vote goes, it's worth noticing some of the things to come out of Scotland, penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928, the bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick Macmillan in 1839. And in 1929, John Baird transferred pictures through what you're watching right now, the television.

Nic Robertson has invited a few things himself, but I'm not sure what at this point. He's live in Glasgow to tell us how the vote might go.

Good morning.

ROBERTSON: Good morning, Carol. Well, it's going very bitterly, I think is we can safely this time, 4.25 million people registered to vote, 97 percent of the total electorate of the country is registered to vote. Turnout is expected to be high. That's what we've seen here, 7 1/2 hours into the voting, 7 1/2 hours to go.

We were here just before the polls opened and it was quiet. Then in those minutes right before you could hear the feet thundering down the pavement here, and the doors opened, there was a line of people, a lot of people in suits on their way to work and that's the way it's been, a continuous stream of people coming and going since then.