Return to Transcripts main page

NEW DAY

Three Possible Cases of Ebola in Spain; U.S. to Ramp Up Airport Ebola Screenings; One-on-One with Leon Panetta

Aired October 7, 2014 - 08:00   ET

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


CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: It's Tuesday, October 7th, 8:00 in the East, joined by Alisyn Camerota. It's good to have you here.

And we do have breaking news: three more possible cases of Ebola in Spain. A nurse there, the first person to contract the disease outside of Africa. That's the case.

Now, this as the U.S. is weighing tighter screenings at airports to keep another case of Ebola from entering the United States.

We have complete coverage so let's begin in Madrid with Al Goodman.

Al, we want to distinguish between possible cases and people known to be infected. But what's the latest?

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Chris.

We're at the entrance to the Carlos Federal Hospital, which is the reference hospital for infectious diseases here in Madrid, where this nurse's assistant is now a patient with the Ebola virus.

Now, she used to work here on the medical team that took care of two other Ebola patients. They got the disease in Africa. Spanish missionaries, they came back here, one of them died in August, another one in late September. She became ill shortly after that, did not immediately go into hospital but that has now happened in the last day or so.

In terms of the other potential cases you just mentioned, officials here saying three other people are in hospital, two considered suspicious cases, one of those is the husband of this nurse's assistant, another is a man who recently traveled to Spain from Africa, and the third is another nurse who worked on that medical team for those missionaries.

Now, there are about 50 people overall under observation who have contact with this nurse's assistant between her medical colleagues and other people that she knew and was close to in Madrid. Officials here saying that all of the proper procedures were followed but certainly some health care unions and many people in the public are saying something went terribly wrong here -- Chris.

CUOMO: There's obviously a learning process involved, Al, you keep hearing that. But you can only do so much. Nothing is 100 percent, but a tough reminder of how difficult this disease is that the two people the nurse was working on both lost their lives and another nurse involved. We'll monitor the situation.

Al, thanks for the reporting.

Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Let's talk about those screenings. We have no specifics yet, but President Obama indicating that they will involve airports in major American cities as well as West Africa.

Let's go to senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. She is live from Dallas where doctors are treating that Liberian man with an experimental treatment.

Tell us more, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, these airports screening, it will be interesting to see what the U.S. comes up with.

More than two months ago a spokesman said that people were being carefully monitored as they came in from airports from West Africa. But, you know, from my experience and others that wasn't the case, we weren't carefully monitored at all. We were let in with basically no screening at all.

So, screening could range from being asked were you in contact with anyone with Ebola to actually having your temperature taken to having a team of nurses looking at you to see if you appear ill because, well, people don't always tell the truth. So, right now, we don't know what form it will take. We hope to hear from the White House or from the Customs and Border Protection folks soon -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right. Elizabeth, thanks so much for that update.

CUOMO: All right. Let's bring in the chair of the Department of Preventative Medicine at Vanderbilt University, Dr. William Schaffner, and also, CNN national security analyst and former Bush homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend.

Because when we get information we have to match it up with perspective. And the first idea, Doctor, to bring up here, doctor, is the idea of the disease spreading outside of Africa. Obviously, we're hearing about what's going on in Spain.

What does it mean to you that a nurse there who was treating somebody with Ebola, wound up catching the disease? Now there are other potential cases.

Does that mean this virus is mutating? Is this just about the gaps in safety protocol?

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, DEPT. OF PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: It's more likely to be gaps in the safety protocol, the infection control precautions. You know, health care workers are at great risk when they take care of patients with Ebola. And we anticipated that from time to time, there may be one or perhaps even a few more cases of transmission in the United States, in Western Europe, from patients with Ebola during health care to their health care providers. That's a possibility.

CAMEROTA: So, Fran, tell us what's going on at the White House this morning when they get the news there has been this case now in Spain, that's contracted outside of Africa.

FRAN TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, look, the president and the White House were clearly anticipating this move. They understood this was likely to happen because of global travel and the exposure. And so, what they're talking about now is this global screening both at the point of exit, that is from an exit from a contagious area and at the point of entry.

The problem is -- and you'll hear Dr. Tony Fauci, who's somebody who has advised multiple White Houses, talks about it closes at least a little bit of the gap and will help you identify those during that period of travel maybe 18 to 20 hours have begun to exhibit symptoms but it's not foolproof, right, because if you managed to enter before you are asymptomatic and don't have a fever, you're still going to get in.

So, what you're trying to do is limit -- mitigate the risk of further spread but it's not foolproof and Americans ought to understand that.

CUOMO: Right. It's far from foolproof and it's almost to the point of being more cosmetic than it is a practical thing.

The practical thing, Doctor, back to you, would be treatments and vaccines. We know vaccines take a longer time but, you know, we're out of ZMapp, okay? Now, they're trying an experimental drug on it.

Where are we in terms of knowing what may work against Ebola? We've heard about someone using an HIV drug in Africa, maybe with success in a couple of cases. What do you know?

SCHAFFNER: Well, the first thing I'd like to do is reinforce the fact that screening is a needle in a haystack activity and as Tony Fauci says, it's not foolproof. We all ought to understand that.

In the meantime, research on treatment, research on vaccines is mushing ahead absolutely as rapidly as possible. We have nothing definitive yet, but a number of products are being evaluated clinically, as we speak, and we all have our fingers crossed that in the next several months, we'll know much more both about treatments and vaccines, do they work and are they safe?

Both of those have to be determined, of course.

CAMEROTA: Doctor, I want to stick with you for a second about that pipeline that you're talking about, how it might take several months, but one of the drugs in the pipeline I believe an experimental drug is Brincidofovir. What's that?

SCHAFFNER: Yes, that's an anti-AIDS drug. CAMEROTA: Oh, that's the one, the anti-AIDS drug, and that would do

what for Ebola?

SCHAFFNER: Well, it's designed to interrupt its multiplication in the body. And so, as with AIDS patients, that would slow down the progression of the disease. I'm not sure that's going to work and neither are the people who are trying it.

CUOMO: So what can we do? First, let's take one step backwards, Fran. Should we be doing anything? How much of this is false panic, how much of this is something we have to deal with because you have two different sides. One is this is fine, you can't catch this, it's very hard. There will never be an outbreak in the U.S., we're too good at fighting it. And then the other side is don't let people travel from that part of the world into the U.S. until you have it under control.

Where do you fall?

TOWNSEND: As in most things --

SCHAFFNER: Well, I --

TOWNSEND: As in most things, Chris, I think what you're going to find is the truth is in the middle. You can't do nothing, be like saying we're not going to try to prevent the next 9/11 because it's so unlikely they're going to knock down another building. You don't do it. You don't not do something because it's hard or it may not produce the results you want.

On the other hand, I think people have to understand how the -- as the doctor describes, how does this actually mutate, how does this actually -- how do you catch it? This is not an airborne virus. So, it's not an H1N1, which is easily gotten and that it can mutate easily.

This is -- it's waterborne, it's by body fluids, much more difficult to catch. It's likely a slower spread, but I think we can't be unrealistic that because of global travel, you are going to see cases here but we do have kind of the protocols and the medical capability in place that we ought to be able to with the right process contain.

CAMEROTA: And very quickly, not just that, it seems like one of the places we could be most effective is our troops in Liberia, helping them get organized enough to figure out how to dispense all of the needed equipment and everything.

TOWNSEND: Not only that, Alisyn, but because U.S. AMRID, the Army Medical Research Infectious Disease, collects samples there, and that allows researchers to get the right drugs to be effective against it.

CAMEROTA: Great point. Fran Townsend, Dr. William Schaffner, thanks so much for the information.

SCHAFFNER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Alisyn, Chris, thanks so much.

Let's look at your headlines at eight minutes past the hour. Despite coalition air strikes, the key Syrian town of Kobani along the border with Turkey is in danger of falling into ISIS hands. More than 400 fighters and civilians from both sides have been killed in the battle for Kobani, this according to a human rights group.

Back here at home, a Chicago area teenager is facing up to 15 years in prison for allegedly trying to join ISIS. Nineteen-year-old Mohammed Hamzah Khan was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

Quite a fright here, two planes clipping one other on a roadway this morning, at the Dublin Airport. It happened as the aircraft were taxiing on the runway in Ireland. One of the wing tips of the Ryanair planes seen lodged into the tail of the other plane. Thankfully no one was hurt. Officials say the incident caused minor delays at the airport there in Dublin.

Quite a strange discovery in New York Central Park, a bear cub was found dead in the city's famed park. The question now is, where did it come from? A dog walker spotted the carcass of the animal under bushes Monday morning. Officials at the Central Park Zoo are sure the cub did not belong to them.

Police say the three-foot cub showed signs of trauma. They're not sure if it wandered into the park which begs many questions to be asked or if someone perhaps dumped him there.

I have to show you this -- this is the most special walk down the aisle for a bride in Iowa. Twenty-six-year-old Gina Jafaloni (ph) is paralyzed from the waist down after an accident six years ago. But underwent intensive therapy for several months. She was determined how to use a brace specially designed to go under her wedding dress.

She said she wanted to fulfill her childhood dream and commitment of walking down the aisle with her dad. It turned out to be a beautiful surprise for everyone at the wedding. She and her father worked very hard to make that happen. How beautiful.

CAMEROTA: It's wonderful, what a great story.

PEREIRA: We needed to show that to you today.

CUOMO: What a special day.

PEREIRA: Isn't that great?

CUOMO: What a special day. Jafaloni, what great name.

PEREIRA: I thought you'd like that.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much, Michaela. All right. Leon Panetta slamming the president in his new memoir. He

attacks Obama in his new book on foreign policy and leadership. Find out what else he has to say about the commander in a stunning one-on- one interview.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Welcome back.

President Obama is getting criticized from a former top member of his cabinet. In his new memoir, "Worthy Fights", former CIA director and defense secretary, Leon Panetta, criticizes the president on foreign policy and leadership style. He's just the latest former Obama staffer to vent after leaving the president's administration.

Chief political analyst Gloria Borger had a chance to sit down with Panetta to get more insight. What an interview.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he's a fascinating character particularly now that he's out of the administration.

In the Washington power grid, Leon Panetta was among the biggest players in this Obama administration and he's now written this memoir that is full of respect and administration for his former boss, but also contains some very blunt criticism.

I asked Panetta about the war against ISIS and whether the president should have ruled out ground forces.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEON PANETTA, FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: I take the position that when you're commander-in-chief, that you really ought to keep all options on the table, to be able to have the flexibility to do what is necessary in order to defeat this enemy. But to make those air strikes work, to be able to do what you have to do, you don't -- you don't just send planes in and drop bombs. You've got to have targets. You've got to know what you're going after. To do that, you do need people on the ground.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): Panetta argues that President Obama is making up for lost time and going after ISIS now, because of the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011.

(on camera): Would ISIS be as much of a threat today had we left some force behind?

PANETTA: I do think that if we had had a presence there, it might not have created the kind of vacuum that we saw develop in Iraq.

BORGER (voice-over): He blames former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and a passive White House.

(on camera): You described a White House that, and this is your word, that frustrated you, that didn't use the leverage -- and that is your word, too -- leverage that we had in the United States to try and keep a force in Iraq.

PANETTA: What I'm saying is that Maliki was the kind of leader that you had to constantly put pressure on to direct him in the right direction. We had with Iraq made a commitment with regards to military assistance, F-16, fighter planes, other types of military aid, that I think if we had said, look, you know, if you're not going to give us the agreement that we need to maintain our force there, you know, we may not provide this kind of assistance. In other words --

BORGER: A threat.

PANETTA: Trying to push him, of course. I mean, you know, you need to threaten guys like that who won't come along, and everybody knew that.

BORGER: But you wrote that the president's active advocacy was missing.

So, are you saying he didn't give it the push?

PANETTA: I think the kind of push and direct involvement that I think would have had an impact simply never developed because the sense was, if they don't want it, then why should we want it?

BORGER (voice-over): Panetta describes a similar scenario on the question of arming the Syrian rebels in 2012. As defense secretary, he made the case to do it, as did most of the national security team, but the president never signed off, arguing the weapons could wind up in the wrong hands.

PANETTA: It's understandable, but at the same time, if we're going to influence the rebel forces, if we're going to try to establish a moderate element to those forces, that it was important to provide this kind of assistance in order to have some leverage over what they were going to do.

BORGER: There was honest disagreement, but then -- no decision.

PANETTA: You know, to a large extent it wasn't that the president kind of said, no, we shouldn't do it. The president kind of never really came to a decision as to whether or not it should happen.

BORGER (on camera): What do you mean, never came to a decision?

PANETTA: I think it basically sat there for a while and got to the point where everybody just kind of assumed that it was not going to happen.

BORGER: Is that the right way to do things?

PANETTA: I think it would have been far better had he just made the decision we're not going to do it, and so that everybody kind of knew where we stood. But we all kind of waited to see whether or not he would ultimately come around.

BORGER: And? PANETTA: And it didn't happen.

BORGER: And you talk about hesitation and half steps. Is that what you're referring to?

PANETTA: Yes, I mean it was that kind of just hesitation to really, you know, do what needed to be done.

Now, you know, don't get me wrong -- I think he was very strong in terms of the war on terrorism, and he made some tough decisions. But there were these decisions that basically never were confronted that I think in many ways contributed to the problems we're facing today.

BORGER (voice-over): Finally, the president is taking action, Panetta says, albeit a bit late.

PANETTA: He's made the decision to put troops on the ground in Iraq, to try to help the security forces. He's made the decision to arm and train rebel forces in Syria, and he's made the decision to conduct air attacks.

So, in many ways, he's made the right decisions now. I think those decisions should have been made two years ago.

BORGER: The portrait Panetta sketches of Barack Obama sometimes looks more like a professor than a president.

PANETTA: He relies on the logic of his presentation, with the hope that ultimately people will embrace that logic and then do what's right.

You know what? In 50 years, my experience is, logic doesn't work in Washington. You got to basically go after people and make them understand what they have to do, and that means you create a war room, you go after votes, you have to push people.

BORGER (on camera): So, did you have a sense that the president found that distasteful or that it wasn't something he wanted to do, or was comfortable doing or --

PANETTA: I think it offended him that people would not really get serious and work on the issues, and I think as a result of that, he just felt, you know, how can I deal with people that simply won't want to do the right thing for the country? Well, the reality is, if you want to govern in this country, you have to deal with people you don't like.

BORGER (voice-over): And you have to keep your word, which, he argues, the president did not do when Syria used chemical weapons against its own people, violating the president's clearly drawn red line.

PANETTA: The president very clearly should have said, you have crossed that red line and we're not going to allow that to happen -- and I think initially my sense was they were going to do exactly that, but somehow they backed away from it. I think that was a -- you know, a key moment in time in terms of

sending a message to the world that there was a question mark as to whether or not the United States could stand by its word.

BORGER: Panetta tries to reconcile the president who vacillated over Syria with the decisive Obama who gave the bin Laden raid a green light.

PANETTA: A president that made the decision to go after bin Laden and made a very gutsy decision to do that, and I really respected that decision. I just could not have imagined him not making the same decision when it came to credibility of the United States on drawing that red line in Syria.

BORGER: To no one's surprise, the White House has not warmly welcomed this version of history.

JOSEPH BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Former administration officials, as soon as they leave, write books, which I think is inappropriate, but anyway.

BORGER (on camera): Does he have a point there?

PANETTA: You know, I'm of the view that you don't put a hold on history. History is what it is. You know, and I would say, right now, I recommend the president and Vice President Biden take the time to read the book, because I think, you know, when you read it, it's a pretty balanced presentation of what happened.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Wow. Gloria, what an interesting window into the president's decision-making --

BORGER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: -- or lack thereof.

BORGER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, it's the first time we get a real primary source about how those things were being considered in the White House.

BORGER: Well, and I think Panetta himself is conflicted about that, because he thinks the president made, for example, as he pointed out on Osama bin Laden, a tough call, he was getting conflicting advice on that and he made what Panetta calls a very gutsy decision. On the other hand, he says on the red line in Syria, you know, he was kind of scratching his head saying, you know, you drew a red line, you stepped up to it and then you kind of backed away and that damages American credibility.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: -- Mr. Panetta, and I know everybody's going out of their way to say how laudable and veteran and respectable he is. BORGER: Yes.

CUOMO: So, we use that as a basis.

But we did the interview with the president about the crossing of the red line. And he started his position we don't know what happened yet and within three, four days he said he was going to bomb. It's not somehow they backed away. Congress wouldn't support him.

BORGER: That's right.

CUOMO: And a wake-up call to America, Congress declares war, not the president. That's how that happened.

BORGER: And I think, and I think Panetta's answer to that would be that Panetta's answer to that would be the president's leadership style is not go to Congress, saying I need this, you have to do this for me and perhaps more with the give and take on Congress.

You know, Panetta also was chief of staff to Bill Clinton and we chatted a little bit about the difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

And Bill Clinton was somebody who loved the combat of politics, and was right in there cutting deals, telling you why this deal was good for you, right? This deal is good for you, and President Obama doesn't do that. That's not his style.

PEREIRA: Well, that's certainly ruffling feathers but it is interesting. Axelrod, over the weekend, you see, Panetta doing this. He's a sitting president with two years left in his term, it's interesting to see the timing of this. You brought that up.

BORGER: Right, and there are -- and there are people in this administration who are very upset about this, because this president does have two years left and you know, this is not the first book that's been written, his former defense secretary gates also wrote a book, so I think they're feeling just like Joe Biden is, you know, why didn't you just hold off a little bit and wait.

CAMEROTA: Well, great interview, thanks so much for sharing it with us.

Gloria, great to talk to you this morning.

CUOMO: Yes, and a lot more than just the president and the vice president will be reading the book, that's for sure. Always good to have you here, Gloria.

BORGER: Thank you.

CUOMO: All right. So, we've been covering Ebola for you all morning and now, we have to kind of get a little perspective on it. First, there were no measures being taken against Ebola at the airports. Now, they're saying we should have extra screenings. What about banning travel all together from the Ebola hot zones?

Other big carriers are doing it out of other countries. Officials here say it's not a good idea, but one congressman has a different idea that he says will be very effective. We're going to talk to him about it.

CAMEROTA: And the terror in the homeland. An American teenager charged with trying to join ISIS. We'll have a live report from his hometown.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)