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U.S. Soldier Killed in Afghanistan; Syrian Regime Weakening?; Interview with Georgia Congressman Paul Broun

Aired December 13, 2012 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour here. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We begin in Syria. There are signs the regime behind the reported murder of 40,000 people is cracking. Just recently, our senior international correspondent, who has been reporting from in country, Arwa Damon, captured some tough images to look at, a man crawling on his arms trying to rescue a woman, a stranger in the midst of all this bullets flying right here.

It's pretty tough to watch. Syrian teenager, here he is, crawling on his hands and knees to save the stranger who is barely alive. She didn't make it. He survived. Now we are hearing from an ally to Syria that the regime is weakening, the ally being Russia.

The Russian deputy foreign minister, seen here to the right of -- here he is -- to the right of President Bashar al-Assad, he told state-run media in his country that Assad's government is losing control of more of Syria. Here's a quote from Mikhail Bogdanov -- quote -- "We need to look the facts in the eye. Unfortunately, we cannot exclude a victory by the opposition."

Keep in mind that Russia was one of the votes that has kept the United Nations from acting against Assad. Also, we heard this today from NATO's secretary-general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN, NATO SECRETARY-GENERAL: I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse. I think now is only a question of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: How significant is all of this here?

Let's talk to Hala Gorani from CNN International.

Hello to you.

We had talked before about possibly leaving Assad. Now do you think that might be more serious?

HALA GORANI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No. I mean, no, and the question is how significant is what the deputy foreign minister has said? And my answer to that is, it is very significant.

This is a high-level Kremlin official publicly saying -- keep in mind Russia is Syria's most important friend. Russia is still fulfilling military contracts and it's blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions to impose more sanctions on the Assad regime. It is now publicly saying -- you read part of the quote that we must face the facts. But then the deputy foreign minister also added an opposition victory cannot be excluded.

BALDWIN: Cannot be excluded.

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: But that being said, let's put it into context. They are not saying Assad should step down and they're still saying a political transition should include Bashar al-Assad and they're now saying they will now be on board in any future U.N. Security Council initiatives against Syria.

BALDWIN: But they're saying there is a possibility that Assad may not win this war?

GORANI: Absolutely. This is the first time we are hearing it from Syria's most powerful friend, Russia.

BALDWIN: Speaking of Russia, let's talk Soviet-era Scud missiles and we had the story yesterday about how now there are reports that they are being used here against opposition in Syria. The Assad regime saying, no, this is not coming from us. It's obviously a sign that it's an uptick in violence and is it also an uptick in desperation?

GORANI: Possibly, because these are very lethal weapons and some call them egregious weapons. Is this a desperate situation where at this point they have no choice but to use the crudest, most destructive weapons?

These are incendiary bombs in come cases that fall. Here's what important too to keep in mind is when Scud missiles are launched from the central part of the country toward the northern part of the country which in many cases is in large parts controlled by rebel forces, there is a very, very significant chance they will fall on the Turkish side of the border. Turkey, as our viewers know, has requested NATO's Patriot defense missile system in order to shield it from this type of aggression.

According to a U.S. official who spoke to CNN, some of these Scud missiles fell very close to the border, not in Turkey proper, but the risk is there.

BALDWIN: Hala Gorani, thank you. We will keep watching it right with you from CNN International.

Now today a tragedy in Afghanistan. One American killed and another three injured after this suicide bomber launched an attack just outside of a base in Kandahar. All of this came hours after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta left the area. Still yet not clear whether the attack was linked to his visit. But here's the thing.

Erin Burnett walking along with the secretary of defense traveling with him hours before the attack. He talked about al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: The original mission here was -- I will quote the president, right -- was to defeat and disrupt and destroy al Qaeda. Is that mission accomplished?

LEON PANETTA, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: The mission of defeating and deterring al Qaeda I think is well on the way towards achieving the mission with regards to Afghanistan and the threat we face here. We continue to face al Qaeda obviously elsewhere, not only in Pakistan, but Yemen and Somalia and elsewhere.

But we have had remarkable success going after special operations st al Qaeda here. And we're continuing to do that. I think the main challenge here is obviously to make sure there is no safe haven for al Qaeda in which to conduct attacks, but the key is to that is an Afghanistan that can secure and govern itself. Those two are interlocked in terms of a mission that we have in Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: You can hear much more from the defense secretary on "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" tonight 7:00 Eastern on CNN.

A satellite launched into space Tuesday by North Korea may not be in a stable orbit. A U.S. official says North Korea may not be in total control of the satellite and so it's on this polar orbit at a relatively low altitude. One U.S. defense official describes it as a rudimentary communications satellite with limited capability.

As for the South Korean navy, they have already gotten part of the rocket's first stage booster off the western coast of South Korea.

Right now a former Marine sitting in a Mexican jail on gun charges. He has been there for months and is apparently being threatened by drug cartels. We told you this story yesterday, talked to Senator Nelson, who is trying to get him out. Well, now we are hearing from the Marine's parents and they are emotionally drained.

CNN's Gary Tuchman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Johnny Hammar is an American war veteran. He was a Marine serving in the Infantry in Afghanistan and Iraq. He decided to drive with a fellow Marine from Florida all the way through Mexico to Costa Rica for a surfing vacation. John and Olivia Hammar are Johnny's parents.

JON HAMMAR SR. , FATHER OF FORMER MARINE ARRESTED IN MEXICO: I mean, he had been there before and surfed. I mean, they took every single decent board they had. TUCHMAN (on camera): So he was looking forward to that cool trip, drive in there. I mean, he knew it was Mexico, but he wasn't planning on staying in Mexico.

JOH HAMMAR SR: The only reason they stopped was to get more gas.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): His parents were concerned when Johnny said he wanted to bring an antique Sears and Roebuck shotgun, his great grandfather once owned, one that looks just like this. His parents he said he wanted to be able to hunt with it. They said he got the proper forms from U.S. border agents to declare it. But once he did declare it, the nightmare began.

(on camera): How far was he from the United States of America when he was arrested?

JON HAMMAR SR: He was on the border. He was crossing the border.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Johnny Hammar's friend was released, but Johnny was brought to this jail and charged with violating Mexico's strict gun laws. His parents say they were told the jail is largely controlled by Mexican drug cartels members.

A few nights after Johnny was imprisoned, his parents got a call from someone threatening to kill their son unless the parents paid money.

OLIVIA HAMMAR, MOTHER OF FORMER MARINE ARRESTED IN MEXICO: So then he said I have your son and he said I'm going to "f" him up and he said I already have. For some stupid reason my response was, no, I'm going to call the consulate.

And he put Johnny on the phone and I couldn't believe it. And then I realized, my God, and I really thought he wasn't in the prison. I thought someone has taken him out of the prison because I couldn't conceive of this going on in a government facility.

TUCHMAN (on camera): What did Johnny tell you?

OLIVIA HAMMER: He said, mom you need to do whatever they say and he said they are really serious.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The Hammars never heard from the caller again. Although the U.S. Consulate has known about this from the beginning, Johnny's parents kept this story out of the press. Scared that attention could be bad for their son, but increasingly desperate they are speaking out now.

JON HAMMAR: The longer we go in with him in there, the greater chance it is that he is not going to get out alive.

TUCHMAN: The Hammar's congresswoman is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who heads up the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The family has informed her about this. REPRESENTATIVE ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R), FLORIDA: This is outrageous and I'm asking for the State Department to be more proactive. I have communicated with them. I have communicated with our U.S. ambassador in Mexico. This week I meet with the Mexican ambassador to the United States, and enough is enough.

TUCHMAN: Their son had looked forward to a surfing vacation. Now he's passed the four-month mark in a Mexican prison. He talked to his parents on the phone Friday.

OLIVIA HAMMAR: I said Johnny we are going to get you out. And he said mom, you have been telling me that since August.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: As time runs out, John Boehner at odds with Tea Party Republicans. I am about to speak with one of them live who says, no, no way I am giving on taxes.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. The news is now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN (voice-over): Be prepared. A massive cyber-attack may be coming and the target, your cash.

Plus, oh, yes, Barbara Walters goes there with Chris Christie and his weight. But does it matter? A presidential historian weighs in.

And, so long, Hollywood. America's got a new hot spot for movies, in the Deep South.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It is that time again, time to peer over the fiscal cliff of higher income taxes and punishing spending cuts. No real progress to speak of in the effort to get a deal done here to prevent this one-two punch scheduled to kick in, in 19 days now.

As we mentioned, House Speaker John Boehner said today that the president still is not serious about long-term cuts in government spending as demanded by Republicans, but we did notice this. Speaker Boehner did not reject the idea of holding a vote before the 1st of the year to prevent the scheduled tax increase on incomes under $250,000 a year.

President Obama with the broad support of Democrats and much of the public wants to keep those taxes the same, but raise tax rates on the top 2 percent, the wealthiest Americans. He is saying do that first and then he will talk about spending cuts.

Joining me now, Congressman Paul Broun. He's a Georgia Republican.

Congressman Broun, nice to have you on.

REP. PAUL BROUN (R), GEORGIA: Great to be with you, Brooke. BALDWIN: Let me begin with something that one of your colleagues actually just said this morning. This is outgoing Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina. And he sounds as though he is throwing in the towel.

He said this morning that President Obama -- quote -- "will get his wish," higher tax rates for the wealthy.

Congressman Broun, do you agree? Is the president going to get his wish?

BROUN: I think the president wants higher tax rates for everybody, even the lowest paid employees in this country. And that is what he is pushing towards very firmly.

But, Brooke, the problem is not the tax rate or higher taxes, which I totally oppose raising taxes on anybody in this economy. We have got to talk about spending. Spending is the problem and what's going to us off the cliff. It is leading towards a collapse. Spending is what is going to push us off the cliff. It's leading us towards an economic collapse in America that is going to hurt the poorest Americans, seniors on a limited income, and those working middle-class Americans.

So we have got to stop the outrageous spending.

BALDWIN: OK. I have heard this before. I have had many a Republican here on the show.

And so let me just cut through that and say this. Speaker Boehner, he said today, as he's said many, many times before, that the problem facing Washington, it is not taxes being too low. It's government spending being too high.

BROUN: That's right.

BALDWIN: And we all know that your side wants spending cuts. We know which programs you have talked about cutting.

But let me show you this here. Medicare. We saw this poll today. Medicare, 68 percent of Republican voters are saying don't cut Medicare. This is Republicans, sir. This is your party. Next graphic, mortgage deduction, 66 percent of Americans, according to this poll, say don't cut that. Tax deductions for making donations to charity, 72 percent of Republicans say don't cut that.

The numbers, it just makes me wonder, do Republicans in Congress who clearly want to cut these things, do they have the support of their constituents?

Do you?

BROUN: Well, Brooke -- well, the problem is that the polls don't reflect the reality here in America.

I think that we have got to cut spending. Medicare and Social Security are unsustainable. We need to fix them. The Democrats are totally denying that they have a problem. But both of them are going broke very quickly.

We have got to cut the spending. We have got to fix Medicare and Social Security. And actually if we don't cut spending, this country is already broke. We are going off the financial cliff, the big cliff that is going to cause a total economic collapse of America. We're headed towards a big depression, particularly...

BALDWIN: But the polls,sir, in a lot of cases don't lie. Again, 68 percent say don't cut Medicare, 66, don't cut mortgage deductions.

You have your party saying one thing, your constituents saying another. How do you appease both?

BROUN: Well, I don't think you can appease both.

Brooke, we were elected to look at the problems America faces and do the hard work. And I'm wanting to fix Medicare. I want to fix Social Security to make them sustainable. The Democrats don't. They want to go off the cliff.

We have got to cut spending because the outrageous spending that both parties have been doing is going to cause the financial collapse of this country. I'm willing to make those hard decisions.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this.

BROUN: Yes. OK.

BALDWIN: Off topic of the fiscal cliff here, but would you support Speaker Boehner's reelection to his position or might you support a possible challenger, someone who was just on this show, for speakership, maybe your colleague from Georgia Tom Price, should he run? I hear you laugh. Just answer the question.

BROUN: Well, Brooke, I think the speaker is doing a good job. And I support him and will continue to do so as long as I think he does a good job.

BALDWIN: Is there any dissatisfaction there in your chuckle?

(LAUGHTER)

BROUN: Well, this is a lot of things that the press likes to talk about and try to create some fear off of, I guess for ratings.

But the thing is we have got a speaker who is trying to negotiate with the president. The president has been missing in action on this. I think the president wants to take us off the -- over the fiscal cliff.

BALDWIN: So, you will vote for Speaker Boehner?

BROUN: I don't see any reason not to at this point.

BALDWIN: OK. Congressman Paul Broun, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

BROUN: Thanks, Brooke. God bless you.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

Until recently, blockbuster movies normally have been created in Hollywood, but now the industry is taking on a more Southern style and moving away from Tinseltown. We will take a look at why.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Atlanta, Georgia, the new Hollywood? There is reason to believe it is looking that way.

Take a look at this. Georgia made a whopping $3.1 billion in revenues from TV, film production. That was this year alone. Some of your favorite shows shot in 50 Georgia counties. So, big question, why Georgia?

CNN's George Howell went to a set here in Atlanta to find out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When it came to the filming of this movie called "Killing Season" starting John Travolta and Robert De Niro, producer John Thompson had a choice to make and Hollywood was not the answer.

JOHN THOMPSON, PRODUCER: We found that Atlanta offered a very deep and experienced crew base and we had to bring very, very few people to the Atlanta area to build our crew.

HOWELL: Thompson is not the first producer to pack up and head East. A recent study shows that Los Angeles County lost more than 16,100 movie-related jobs between 2004 and 2011, jobs lured away by states like Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, and Georgia, where filmmakers get big tax breaks. The tax incentive for filming in Georgia can be as much as 30 percent.

Kris Bagwell, who runs a studio complex in Atlanta, says he has seen the difference.

KRIS BAGWELL, SCREEN GEMS STUDIOS: We have had 15 different shows. And that ranges from network, cable networks, some pilots, which are when they make the first episode of a show.

HOWELL: Filming in Georgia had its roots with the now classic movie "Deliverance" starring Burt Reynolds back in 1972. Forty years later, the state now boasts of generating some $3.1 billion in film-related revenues in 2012 alone, a booming industry that attracted studios like EUE/Screen Gems to Atlanta, setting the stage with infrastructure to support even more film production.

(on camera): How big is the stage? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This stage, stage six, is 30,000 square feet. It's 40 feet tall and no columns, 150-by-200 feet. And that's the key. It's the combination of the height and the fact that there is no columns. You can build entire houses in here and think about it. You could three 10,000-foot houses in here just on the floor level.

HOWELL (voice-over): As other states benefit from California's loss, legislators there recently voted to extend tax incentives to filmmakers for two additional years, a move to stop the flight of films elsewhere, as industry leaders in L.A. look for solutions.

But the director of Georgia's Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office says right now one thing is very clear.

(on camera): Is it easier to find a job in the industry here right now than L.A.?

LEE THOMAS, GEORGIA FILM, MUSIC AND DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT OFFICE: Absolutely. Definitely.

We have more shows going on and there are so many people that are so specifically in that industry there that there are so many of them out there it makes it hard for them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: I wondered why I kept seeing more and more and more movie trailers around town.

George Howell, let me just ask you this, though. You talked about the tax incentives, as much as 30 percent in Georgia. Is that the predominant reason why?

HOWELL: The tax incentives are very important.

But it comes down to two other things, first of all, the diversity of the land. For Georgia, for instance, you can film in North Georgia. You have mountains. You can film in the south and you can have tropical scenes.

So, movie producers, they want that diversity of landscape, also diversity within the population. These are big attractions for them.

BALDWIN: What about jobs? It has to help Georgia and other states in the South, where unemployment is not so hot.

HOWELL: Yes, unemployment here just under 9 percent, above the national average. But the thing about these jobs, they come and go. So, they are temporary jobs.

The last study that I looked at showed that Georgia earned some 800 jobs from movie productions, but these jobs they come and go. They are temporary. You finish one job and another set of jobs comes into the state, so it keeps coming through.

BALDWIN: I thought it was wild. I was in New York the other week for work and I was walking around SoHo and they were filming a movie. And all these different trucks had from Atlanta, Georgia, in New York. I thought, my goodness.

George Howell, that is fascinating.

HOWELL: Brooke, thanks.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much.

Let's talk about your bank account now, because you could be the target of a massive cyber-attack. Ahead, we will look at when the threat might appear and what's being done to stop it, what you need to know.

Plus, Barbara Walters asks Chris Christie, are you too heavy to be president? Caused quite a stir. But when it comes to image, to health, does it matter? A presidential historian gives us his take next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)