Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

London Beheading Plot; U.S. Military Tests for Ebola; Dog May Have Ebola; DEA Under Fire for Fake Facebook

Aired October 8, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Who is this man? A cold-blooded ISIS killer with an American accent? The FBI wants your help to find him.

Plus, a new front line for U.S. troops, testing for the Ebola virus. We go inside their mission to save one patient at a time.

And the DEA under fire, accused of stealing a woman's identity, creating a phony FaceBook page with her face, her son's face, and all kinds of personal information, all in an attempt to bait drug dealers.

NEWSROOM continues now.

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

Checking our top stories at 30 minutes past the hour.

The FBI is now asking for your help in identifying an English speaking militant from an ISIS recruitment video released last month. In the video, the jihadist goes from speaking Arabic to English with a, quote, "North American accent." He appears to order a mass execution.

Canada is joining the air fight against ISIS. Its parliament is pledging up to six fighter jets for the international strike force. In addition, other aircraft for surveillance, reconnaissance and refueling are also being sent to Iraq.

And the opening bell on Wall Street, I think, oh, it just rang actually, as investors look to rebound following one of the worst days for the stock market this year. The Dow closed Tuesday down 272 points. Ouch. Alison Kosik is live at the New York Stock Exchange.

Are things looking up this morning?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Things are looking a little better. We're seeing a flat start, but we're seeing green arrows this morning. If you want to look for something to blame for yesterday's sell-off, Carol, you can blame Europe as a big reason for the sell-off. From France to Italy to the U.K., we're seeing economies across Europe slowing down. And the worry is that that can spill over here to the U.S.

Now, what happened yesterday was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back with the manufacturing report showing that Europe's biggest economy, Germany, is really showing signs of slowing down, too. So while the U.S. economy, although not going gangbusters, it is a standout compared to Europe. But what's happening now is that we're seeing investors begin to kind of sweat it out about this slowdown, how over there that slowdown could impact big U.S. companies here, which make a big piece of their sales overseas.

Now, we're going to find out how companies are doing as they release third quarter earnings beginning today. But I'll tell you what, Carol, whoo, what a difference a few weeks makes. It was just, what, three weeks ago we were logging those record highs for the Dow and the S&P 500. But now you look at the S&P 500, it's off almost 4 percent, off its all-time high. But I've got some good news, the S&P 500 is still up more than 4 percent for the year. So all is not lost just yet, Carol.

COSTELLO: Awesome. Alison Kosik, thanks so much.

KOSIK: Sure.

COSTELLO: It is a terrifying scenario. Terrorists roaming your city, looking for an innocent bystander to kill in the most gruesome way possible. British police say they have uncovered a possible plot to behead people on the streets of London. Four men now under arrest with possible links to ISIS. And we're learning that neighbors have identified one of the suspects as Tariq Hassani (ph). Authorities are not confirming that, however. CNN's senior international correspondent Nic Robertson joins us with more now from London.

Hi, Nic.

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

Well, it's just a few miles from here where those neighbors in a west London address say that they heard a commotion in the early hours of Tuesday morning and that's when they say they believe they heard somebody being Tased as part of the arrest operation by the police forces here. They say that the man that they identify as Tariq Hassani, they say (INAUDIBLE) student, but that (INAUDIBLE) began in the early hours of Tuesday (ph) (INAUDIBLE).

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Searches, tonight, continue after early morning raids rounded up four young men who were in the early stages of a terror plot. Armed counterterrorism police made the arrests. One suspect was subdued with a Taser. Their names have not been released and few other details are known. This just a week and a half after at least ten other London area terror related arrests and last month Australian police arrested 15 men with alleged ISIS ties who were said to be planning public executions in Sydney. Following Great Britain's air strikes against ISIS, and a heightened threat level of severe, authorities here say they are taking a more interventionist approach to suspected terror plots and Islamist related terrorism.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: As a country, we must do, with our allies, is everything we can to defeat this organization in the region, but also to defeat it at home. ROBERTSON: It is believed that hundreds of British citizens have gone

to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS and other Islamist militant groups. A Britain ISIS link is best known in the form of the ISIS militant with the British accent who is seen in the beheading videos of two Americans and two British hostages.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON: While the police are still questioning those four individuals, the two young - the four young men, the police say they have another 13 days before they need to charge them, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Nic Robertson reporting live from London this morning, thank you. I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: An American who survived Ebola has now donated blood to another American being tested for the disease. Dr. Kent Brantly contracted Ebola back in July while caring for patients in Liberia. He was flown to an Atlanta hospital where he did recover. Brantly has now donated his blood to NBC cameraman, Ashoka Mukpo, who's in a Nebraska hospital. Mukpo is listed as reasonably stable, though doctors say he's certainly not out of the woods yet.

All of this as the fight against Ebola rages on in Liberia where hundreds of U.S. troops are trying to contain the virus and they may be there for a while. The Pentagon now saying it could be about a year before the outbreak is under control. CNN's Nima Elbagir is in - is with the U.S. Navy personnel in Bong (ph) County, Liberia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is what we do in our day job I guess you could say.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. naval personnel deployed to Liberia the day job has become testing for the Ebola virus. Their lab just minutes from International Medical Corps Ebola care center. The U.S. has funded four such labs in the fight against the virus.

SEAN CASEY, INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS EBOLA TEAM DIRECTOR: It's a complete game changer. I mean it -- patients were afraid at one point of coming to an Ebola treatment unit because they are afraid of becoming infected. Some patients have only minor symptoms and they're not convinced that they have Ebola and so they might avoid coming because they're afraid that they'll become infected here. And now that we have the lab, patients can get the results back within hours.

ELBAGIR: Perched on top of a hillside, the IMC treatment facility feels very far away from the crowded beds and dinghy hallways of the Liberian government centers. This 19-year-old waited a week for an ambulance. He was carried here bleeding by his father. Today he's recovered enough to tell us he thinks he's going home.

For the naval scientists stationed here, it's hot and difficult work, but it's worth it.

LT. COL. BENJAMIN ESPINOSA, TEAM LEAD: In one aspect, we're all humans, you know. This is the humanitarian crisis that we want to help with. But this isn't just a regional threat. Really this is a continental and a global threat if this were allowed to continue to propagate.

ELBAGIR: But there will always be those they couldn't save. The IMC treatment center opened less than a month ago and already a line of graves has snaked through this clearing in the jungle. And more are being dug.

President Obama has authorized up to 4,000 troops. Two hundred have arrived in country, 600 are expected before the end of the month. But will it be enough?

COL. JIM CZAMIK, COMMAND SURGEON, JOINT FORCES COMMAND: There is no question in my mind that we are making an impact. There is no better fight worth fighting than the one in Liberia right now. Soldiers are used to moving toward the sounds of the guns. These are the loudest guns that the world has heard in a long time.

ELBAGIR: How quickly they can translate the gains here across the country will go some way to silencing the guns for good.

Nima Elbagir, CNN, Bong County, Liberia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Other Americans are stepping up to help stop the spread of Ebola in the hot zone. Tamba Hali of the Kansas City Chiefs is joining with Heart to Heart International to build an Ebola treatment center in Liberia. Hali is a native of Liberia. He has family there. Heart to Heart International is a Kansas City based relief organization that responds to global health crisis and natural disasters. Good for him.

Now to the story of Excalibur, a dog in Spain authorities fear has Ebola. They want to euthanize him. But not so fast. There is now a huge social media campaign to save this dog. Excalibur belongs to a Spanish nurse and her husband. The nurse contracted Ebola after caring for a missionary and a priest after they returned from West Africa. Now the nurse's husband says authorities want to euthanize their pet dog, Excalibur. Animal lovers and pet - animal lovers are rallying behind a Twitter campaign #saveexcalibur in English and in Spanish. More than 315,000 people have already signed a petition on change.org to save Excalibur.

Demonstrators are also -- demonstrations are also underway on the streets. A group of people chanted their support for Excalibur outside the family's home today. CNN's Al Goodman is in Madrid to tell us more.

Good morning.

AL GOODMAN, CNN MADRID BUREAU CHIEF: Hi, Carol. Well, Excalibur's owners are the nurse's assistant and her husband.

They're both in this hospital, where the nurse's assistant was working on these other Ebola patients. Now, we're getting the first word since this crisis began of what might have caused her to get the virus. She had told a Spanish newspaper in a brief interview on the phone she had no idea and that she'd followed all the procedures. But in a news conference a short while ago, right over here, a massive scrum of reporters with hospital officials. One of the hospital officials, a doctor, said that the nurse's assistant had told him that she might have, after being in the room with one of the Ebola patients, as she was taking off her protective gear, she might have touched her face with a part of the gear, possibly a glove. That's the first time we've heard what might have led to that.

Now, as to Excalibur. Excalibur is about 30 minutes from where I'm standing in a southern Madrid suburb, their home, which authorities are trying to completely isolate and Excalibur is with us at this hour, but clearly the protests have been out there. Now the medical officials in Spain are saying, out of extreme precaution, just in case, this is the right thing to do, to put the dog down. But we've heard earlier this day from our medical expert on CNN saying that may not be the best thing to do and maybe it would be better to isolate Excalibur and see what you could learn whether the dog is actually going to get Ebola or what.

Carol.

COSTELLO: I just - I can't imagine anything worse. You have Ebola and now authorities want to kill your dog. Why don't they just isolate Excalibur? That would be the easiest thing in the world to do with a dog.

GOODMAN: Well, we have to see. You know, the prime minister, the health minister, they say that they've been in close touch since this crisis began with world health organization officials, their colleagues in the European Union. They're really trying to get the best advice possible. Now maybe the pressure of the campaign, which was started by the husband, the nurse's assistant's husband in a series of media interviews and social campaigns, he started this push to try to save the family dog. And maybe that will have some effect and get the officials to hold off for a little while.

Carol.

COSTELLO: Alright, Al Goodman reporting live from Madrid this morning, thank you.

Imagine having photos from your cell phone you never intended anyone else to see, blasted on the Internet by the U.S. government to lure suspected criminals. That is exactly what happened to one woman. Up next, why the Drug Enforcement Administration is under fire for setting up a fake Facebook account.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: For five seasons, Breaking Bad fans were riveted by Walter White's ability to outsmart and outmaneuver the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as he dealt meth to some of the world's biggest drug kingpins. The mild-mannered chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-lord sent his own brother-in-law, Hank, a DEA agent, on the chase of a lifetime. Remember?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN NORRIS, "HANK SHRADER," "BREAKING BAD," AMC: To W.W., my star, my perfect silence. W.W. I wonder who you figure that is? Woodrow Wilson? Willy Wonka? Walter White?

BRYAN CRANSTON, "WALTER WHITE," "BREAKING BAD," AMC: You got me!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Art does imitate life sometimes. Now, the DEA is under fire in real life in a report, originally published by BuzzFeed, a New York woman claims a DEA agent set up a fake Facebook account using her face, her son's face, and personal information. The DEA even posted racy photos of this woman on this fake account. Why? Because the DEA arrested this woman back in 2010 for a low-level drug charge and figured it could use her as bait to track down higher-level drug dealers. Well, it worked with at least one suspected criminal.

Well here's the thing, the woman had no idea whatsoever her face was being used to lure suspected criminals. The case is now being reviewed by the Justice Department. So let's talk about this with "Washington Post" reporter and author of "Rise of the Warrior Cop," Radley Balko. We're also joined by CNN Legal Analyst Paul Callan. Welcome to you both. Alright, such a deeply disturbing story to me. So Radley, you reported on this story. Explain how this woman found out the DEA was using her image on Facebook.

RADLEY BALKO, REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: I believe it was other people had told her that this was going on. But, she wasn't aware of it. She didn't have a Facebook account and this all came out in the lawsuit that she recently filed that BuzzFeed, I guess, was given a tip about it. The really amazing thing about it is not just that a DEA agent did this, you know, rogue police officers, narcotics officers, they're going to make mistakes. But the troubling thing is that the Federal Government is actually defending this and defending the government's power to steal someone's identity without their consent in federal court. That, I think, is the really disturbing part of this.

COSTELLO: And what was the basis of that? They confiscated her cell phone and then they determined that since they did it, they confiscated her cell phone, that she lost her First Amendment rights? I mean isn't the racy photos that they pasted on this fake Facebook page, so is that --

BALKO: What I wrote about yesterday at the Post is that, I mean I think this is part of a larger kind of cultural problem within the drug enforcement community. I think politicians and law enforcement officials, for a generation or two now, have been dehumanizing drug offenders as this idea that they're sort of lower than low, that they're not, sort of, worthy of rights. And you see this all the time with police when they bust someone for a low-level drug offense and then recruit them as an informant and then put them in very dangerous situations where, in some cases, juveniles and young women have been killed because they were put in situations that were way over their head. I think there is a kind of sentiment that drug offenders are somehow not entitled to sort of the same rights as the rest of us, even after they have been convicted and fulfilled their sentences.

COSTELLO: And Paul, what's most disturbing -- I want to get back to the cell phone and how the DEA thought it had the right to use these pictures. So can you sort of take us through that, what their thinking was?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well I mean, this thing is so astonishing and so offensive that when I read the article I thought, this can't be true, this has to be a mistake. It's so clearly wrong what they did. I mean, she apparently gave them permission, in the course of a criminal investigation, to use her cell phone. Now, one would assume that that was maybe they were going to get the bad guys to call her number or maybe they were going to look at the numbers in her cell phone to see who she had communicated with. That's, I think, what a reasonable person would assume. Instead, the DEA said well, when you gave us the phone, that gave us the right to use your Facebook account and then to create this false persona online.

COSTELLO: Unbeknownst to you.

CALLAN: Unbeknownst to you. But, and play this out, what they're doing to her. They're invading her privacy, they're stealing her identity, and by portraying her in a promiscuous way, they're actually committing libel and slander in the way that she's portrayed. All of the things, the DEA can be sued for.

COSTELLO: And they put her kid on there and her niece.

CALLAN: Yes. Absolutely. And what's the precedence here? Any American citizen, they can take our Facebook account and use it as a lure to other criminals? I mean, that's the precedence, isn't it? That this is fair game if you're a DEA agent. Well it's not, and they're going to be rudely awakened in an American courtroom when this case is concluded.

COSTELLO: Radley, last word?

BALKO: Well I think the other thing to remember is that they also subjected this woman to a fair amount of danger, right? They used her to lure in criminals and they put her kid on there. I mean, they subjected her and her family to possible dangers and possible threats, all over a low-level drug offense.

COSTELLO: It was a great article. Radley Balko, it's in "The Washington Post," thank you so much. Paul Callan, thanks to you, as usual.

And make sure to stay with us because the Justice Department has its hands full these days. Twitter is taking the U.S. Government to court in an effort to loosen what the social media site can say publicly about national security data. We'll have that story for you next hour. Next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Good morning, thank you so much for joining me, I'm Carol Costello. We have breaking news for you this morning. Passengers arriving on flights into the United States from countries stricken with Ebola will now have to get their temperatures checked. Let's get more on this from Cnn's Senior Medical Correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, who is in Dallas. Good morning, Elizabeth.