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Alternative Perspectives on American History; U.S. Troops Arrive to Aid Turkey; Outrage Grows Over Rape in India; Company Seeks Workers with Autism; Comet Will Blaze Across the Sky

Aired January 04, 2013 - 12:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: From "Platoon" to "Wall Street" to "JFK," director Oliver Stone has spent his career offering us alternative perspectives on history.

Well, now, he's embarking on a 10-part documentary on Showtime. It aims to give viewers a peek into the lessons that they didn't learn in school.

Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kennedy himself was quite ill from Addison's disease and the effects of spinal operations from World War II injuries.

Addicted to painkillers and his own ravenous appetites, finding himself in a cocoon of deceits not only to himself, but to his wife, to his Cuba and Vietnam policies and to the country.

MARILYN MONROE, ACTRESS: Happy birthday. Mr. President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Joining us from New York, Oliver Stone. We're continuing our conversation with him along with American University history professor, Peter Kuznick.

Thank you. Both of you wrote the book that accompanies the TV series and, Oliver, I want to start off with you.

What do you think is the most surprising part of the series, something we did not know that we will learn from this project?

OLIVER STONE, DIRECTOR: Suzanne, that's not a fair question. I mean, it's a whole -- you have to go through the 10 hours. There's so much in there.

It's like five years of my life right now. I mean, January, it would have been five years we've worked on this thing off and on.

MALVEAUX: Give us a taste.

STONE: You know, the patterns, the repetitions, from the Philippine American war of 1898, the growing militarism, the growing sense of American exceptionalism becomes evident.

You showed a clip on Kennedy. It's an incredible story where John Kennedy actually starts to dehypnotize himself from what everything we've learn and goes in another direction. And it's a wonderful story of hope and opportunity.

This week, Reagan is on, the 1980s, and we really, I think, do a great job of revealing another side of Reagan because he's deified by some people, but --

And then next week, we have the Bush/Clinton era, the squandered opportunities and the return of American triumphalism after the fall of the Soviet Empire.

MALVEAUX: It's a fascinating series.

Professor Kuznick, I want you to weigh in on this because there is some criticism about whether or not it is completely accurate.

"The New York Times," not very flattering, saying it's a 10-part indictment of the United States that doesn't even pretend to be even- handed and says that accuracy is sometimes hard to find.

Do you stand by the facts that back up this research project that you did?

PETER KUZNICK, HISTORY PROFESSOR, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, Showtime has fact-checked this twice, professional, outside fact-checkers. So, they go through every word, every comma.

I mean, they really are ruthless in their look at it and anything that they've been able to question even we've changed to make sure that it's accurate.

So, we've bent over backwards to be as accurate as possible.

STONE: He's a history professor. He's not going to put his reputation on the line writing -- this is unfair of "The Times" because they didn't have time to read the book and they didn't even have -- they saw one or two -- I think they saw three episodes and, you know, they judge them as they will.

But, you know, we can question "The New York Times" on their record of authenticity about the Iraq war, about Vietnam.

KUZNICK: And, if you look at all the blurbs and all the support we've gotten from leading historians -- I mean, some of the leading scholars on foreign policy, domestic policy, so we've got a lot of scholars saying that this is not only accurate, but that's it's eye-opening, that it's revelatory, that it's giving a new interpretation.

So, we've gotten very, very positive support.

MALVEAUX: And, Oliver, tell me a little bit about why you're behind this project.

Why do you feel it's important that there are some untold stories that need to get out there? Because you have taken on a lot of big projects, "JFK," "Platoon."

STONE: No, Suzanne, this is going to put me in my grave. You asked about Hugo earlier, but frankly, because, you know, one has to wake up in life.

I feel like I grew up very privileged in New York in a Republican family, conservative. I went to Vietnam, as you know, and I felt like my life in the last 30 years has become less and less hypnotized and I wasn't sleep-walking.

And the more I learned, the more I wanted to share it with my audience in feature films. And as I went on and made more histories, or let's say historical dramas, really, I decided, look, before I go, I've got to get this -- I've got to get something down that I feel is what happened in my lifetime from 1946 on, which when -- a year after the atomic bomb was dropped.

In fact, my life begins with the atomic bomb in a sense because that is the founding myth of this national security state we live in. I would say international global state we live in, the atomic bomb.

So I met Peter and he was teaching a class at the American University and I was fascinated. He knows a lot about the bomb and we -- he told me why we did not have to drop it on Japan in 1945.

And all the reasons are very lucidly presented in chapter 3 of our series. But that is important to understand that all our lives -- I don't know if you're American born or France, but ...

MALVEAUX: American, right here, born and bred.

STONE: It's very self-delusional unless you go into it and you have to before you die.

MALVEAUX: It is a ...

KUZNICK: What we're doing is we're ...

MALVEAUX: Go ahead, real quick.

KUZNICK: We tell you the history of the American empire, the history of the national security state, as Oliver says, tracking it back to the 1890s up to the present.

And the thing about is that those same themes recur over and over again. The militarism, the interventions and the sense, the self- conceited sense of superiority that the United States has.

Oliver mentioned American exceptionalism, the idea that United States is unique among nation. Other nations are motivated by greed or power, some lust, but the United States is benevolent. We do things in the world because we're generous and we want to spread freedom and democracy.

And you don't want on to tell that to the . You don't want to tell it to the Chileans. You don't want to tell that to the Iraqis or the Afghans. I mean, our history is more complicated.

So, we're looking at that side of it because we want to get it right in the future. And we show, also, the times at which the United States could have been very, very different.

We tell the story of Henry Wallace, the now-forgotten vice president from 1941 to 1945 and how close he came to being president, how close he came in 1944 at the Democratic convention to getting the nomination instead of Harry Truman.

And we argue that had Wallace become president instead of Truman when Roosevelt died, then there would have been certainly or very likely no atomic bombing in 1945 and very possibly no Cold War.

But we're looking at those turning points.

MALVEAUX: Peter and Oliver, it's a -- it really is a -- it's a fascinating series. It's controversial in some ways. It is so great to have you both on air.

And, again, it is on Showtime. It's a 10-part series. Thanks for joining us. Really good to see you.

STONE: Thank you, Suzanne, for having us.

KUZNICK: Thank you, Suzanne.

STONE: Sorry you couldn't get your question in.

MALVEAUX: You got another question? Oh, we've got to go. I'm got to go. I'm sorry. We've got to let you go.

A German company is seeking a special kind of person to work for them, people with Asperger's syndrome. We're going to show you why these folks are uniquely qualified for the job.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: U.S. troops have started arriving in Turkey. They are there to protect the growing threat from Syria.

I want to go live to Nick Paton Walsh who's in Istanbul and, Nick, tell us why these U.S. troops are manning these Patriot missile defense batteries and the border of Syria.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's simply because Turkey requested NATO's help from this. We heard Turkish media reports late last night saying that nearly 30 American military personnel had arrived and were staying in a hotel in (INAUDIBLE) in the south of the country.

And, now, the U.S. embassy expanding on that saying that, since today, personnel and equipment has been arriving in the Incirlik Air Base often staffed by U.S. personnel in the south of the country and slowly this will build in the weeks and months ahead, of course, complemented by German and Dutch personnel and equipment.

Each nation contributing two Patriot missile batteries. These designed to shoot down weapons.

Of course, the history of this starting months ago in which there were exchanges the fire between the Syrian and Turkish military, Turkey accusing Syria of firing into its territory. That's where the request came from.

And, now, finally, we're seeing the U.S. contributing to this NATO mission here, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Nick, do we know think that this is an escalation when you look at what is taking place there between Syria and Turkey?

WALSH: It's very clear that both Turkey, NATO and the U.S. regard this as an entirely peaceful issue. They're simply about trying to protect Turkish territory from these artillery shells which there haven't been too many of in the past few months.

The concern really, though, is that as we reach what many see as the end game in this 21-month long civil war now across the border in Syria that the Syrian regime will resort to the nastier weapons in its arsenal, chemical weapons, some say. U.S. officials have accused them of using SCUDs in the past weeks or so.

So, that's what many hope these Patriot missiles will protect Turkey from.

The big escalation, though, is psychological. We now have America and the world's biggest military machine, NATO, slap on the border of this very messy civil war in a very volatile area where there are lots of Syrian rebels, lots of desperate regime soldiers and that's potentially a very dangerous mix, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, thank you, Nick. Appreciate it.

Five men accused of brutally raping and fatally beating an Indian woman are expected to go on trial as early as this week. The 23-year- old woman was attacked on a bus last month and died of her injuries a week ago. Well, so far five men have been charged with murder and rape.

The case is stirring up outrage across India and across the world. People are calling on the government to take action to reduce the number of rapes, a crime that often goes under-reported and unreported in India.

When it is reported, many times the suspect is never prosecuted. The problem is particularly bad in and around New Delhi.

My next guest knows how difficult this is for women living there. Sonia Faleiro is the author of "Beautiful Thing." She's joining us now from San Francisco.

And, Sonia, first of all, you wrote a moving, emotional editorial piece in "The New York Times" describing what it was like to grow up in New Delhi. And you talked about how dangerous it is for girls and women to even just walk around in the city during the day.

I want to read this for viewers here and share this with us. You write that, "Pepper spray wasn't available and my friends, all of them, middle- or upper-middle class like me carried safety pins or other makeshift weapons to and from their universities and jobs.

"One carried a knife and insisted I do the same. I refused. Some days I was so full of anger I would have used it or worse had it used on me."

Why? Why were the conditions so bad when you were growing up there?

SONIA FALEIRO, AUTHOR, "BEAUTIFUL THING": Well, you know, first of all, I should say it wasn't something we spoke about at that time. I discussed it with my friends and I heard the stories of groping in buses.

So, one of the ways I coped when I was working at this renowned national news magazine was to take the bus two hours ahead of time at a time I figured out it would be least crowded so I wouldn't go through that terrifying experience that had filled so many of my friends with fear.

I think, you know, there are a couple of reasons. Sort of a perfect storm that enabled the situation to occur in Delhi all those years and resulted in this outcry finally in December. And it was the result, number one, of frankly patriarchal misogynistic culture that sees women, that believes truly that women are subservient to men and therefore subservient to their wishes. And, number two, systems that don't work. So, you know, we obviously have laws against rape. We have cops, we have courts, we have everything that we need to ensure that our citizens are safe, but they don't work.

So women will go into a police station, she will try and report a case of sexual harassment or rape, and often she feels humiliated, she feels that the cops are blaming her for what has happened. And the cops, on more than one occasion, have basically told the woman that, you know, she doesn't have a case for rape because she has brought it upon herself or because it was consensual. We have courts that exist, obviously, but that take so long to deal with rape cases that by the end of it, evidence has been sullied. You know, the rapists have disappeared, and the women have been forced to withdraw their charges. In such circumstances, women have no reason really to report a crime. And as you know from Delhi about --

MALVEAUX: And, Sonia, you had mentioned before, excuse me, that one of the things that happens, too, is that because a woman is considered not valuable after she is raped, that she's actually encouraged to marry the rapist at certain times. Is that correct?

FALEIRO: Yes, that certainly happens. I mean it's happened within families. It's something that judges have encouraged women in the court to do. It takes into accountability the fact that, you know, we are a society which places so much weight on honor that we don't really care about the humanity of our people, not even a victim of a crime as heinous as rape.

MALVEAUX: What do you think about what's happening in India now? The fact that you have so many of these people who are out there. They are protesting. We've seen it's young men, it's young women. That people are actually standing up and speaking out on this.

FALEIRO: It is an extraordinary moment in our history. It's something that we need to hold onto, that we need to convert into change. But, you know, as an Indian woman, somebody whose grew up there and has experienced this, it -- I feel like this is our time to make very specific changes to how the law looks at rape, how people look at rape, and also for us to look at one another and to say, well, you know what, we are also to blame. We don't report rape. We don't support victims of rape. So we -- this is a moment of introspection for each one of us. And very specific and quick change.

MALVEAUX: Sonia Faleiro, thank you so much. We really appreciate your speaking out. And, of course, the op-ed, which is very insightful. Thanks again.

A German company is seeking a special kind of person to work for them. People with Asperger's syndrome. We're going to show you why they say they're uniquely qualified for the job.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Seventy-five percent of the world's leaders have a Twitter account. That is right. That's from a new study from the Digital Policy Council. There are 123 heads of state who are tweeting, potentially connecting with more than 200 million Twitter users.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has 3.8 million followers, making him the second highest leader followed. He is recovering, of course, from cancer surgery. Has not tweeted since November. President Obama tops the list with 25 million followers. His re-election tweet showing him hugging the first lady and the words "four more years." That is the most re-tweeted tweet ever.

Indonesia's government might step in to stop one northern city from banning women from wearing pants. Yes, officials in the city say the practice goes against Islamic cultural values. Well, they also want to ban women from straddling bikes or motorcycles. The city's mayor says, quote, "we wish to honor women with this ban because they are delicate creatures." Well, Indonesia's government says it may prohibit that ban from going into effect.

And a Germany company looking to hire workers with Asperger's syndrome. It is a form of autism. And the management says, while they usually have trouble in social settings, people with Asperger's also have certain skills. Fred Pleitgen, he says that it is a perfect fit they have found for testing software.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GERALD MOLEN, ACTOR, "RAIN MAN": How much is 4,343 times 1,234?

DUSTIN HOFFMAN, ACTOR, "RAIN MAN": 5359262.

TOM CRUISE, ACTOR, "RAIN MAN": He's a genius.

MOLEN: He's right.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the late 1980s the movie "Rain Man" showed a world-wide audience that people with autism not only have deficits, but often also huge talents. While Hollywood may have over simplified the issue, there are links to the real world. Because of their condition, people with autism often have trouble integrating into the working world. Now a Berlin company wants to give people with a form of autism, known as Asperger's syndrome, new opportunities. The firm is called Auticon and is training dozens to become software testers. Philip Von Der Linden is one of the new hires. He says it is the first time he truly feels valued as an employee.

PHILIP VON DER LINDEN, SOFTWARE TESTER TRAINEE: That is what my love valuable (ph), to be needed. And if what you can do is appreciated and if what seems to be a weakness is turned into an asset.

PLEITGEN: Management at Auticon says they've found that some people with Asperger's have a knack for finding patterns and flaws in gigantic calculations and that makes them perfect software testers. Owner Dirk Mueller-Remus founded the company when his own son was diagnosed with Asperger's.

DIRK MUELLER-REMUS, AUTICON: Our guys have a lot of skills in concentration, analytical, logical thinking and things like that. And we are sure about that the industries, the IT industry, will have benefits.

PLEITGEN: But only about 15 percent are employed in the private sector according to the German government. That's largely because of their difficulties with social interactions. That's why Auticon has job coaches to help its employees with customer relations, something psychologists say is key trying to give Asperger's autistics a chance in the working world.

ISABEL DZIOBEK, FREE UNIVERSITY BERLIN: They do look at the assets that people with autism have and try to construct or to basically develop work conditions around that so that the autistic individuals can use their skills, at the same time reducing social demands.

PLEITGEN: In the movie "Rain Man," the character's skills are used to make a lot of money gambling in Las Vegas. Auticon's goals are more down-to-earth, not only making a profit, but they say making a difference in the lives of their workers.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin. (END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: All right. When you look into the night sky in late November, you're going to see something that is absolutely dazzling. This is a comet that is shining brighter than the moon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Late this year there's a new comet that's going to blaze across the sky. Experts say Ison is going to be dazzling. That is late November. The brilliance lighter, brighter than the full moon. Chad Myers is going to actually show us a little bit -- a preview here.

Hey, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: This could be really cool. I mean I watched Haley's comet as a kid go across the sky. I would kind of not be a kid. I was older than a kid. But, OK. But that might have been a little disappointing to some. And we don't know exactly how great comets will be until they get here, because the tail here, the moisture coming off, the ice being flown off and the tail here.

North sky here. This is from a website. You can go on to eagleeyes.me.uk. We found this yesterday. Dave Eagle made these from Sky Safari. So December 10, 2013, a huge streak is what it will look like, we hope, across the sky looking to the east. Before that it will be at one side of the sky to the other. And on the 18th, it will actually be streaking across the western sky. It could be briefly at least for a while brighter than the full moon. Visible to the naked eye for sure and possibly rivaling, we believe, the great comet of 1680, which you will find actually in ancient paintings, that's how cool this comet was. Painters of the time actually painted about this comet. We'll see if this one lives up.

MALVEAUX: Wow. How does it rank among the greatest comets?

MYERS: Yes, you don't know -- we don't know until it gets here, because if it falls apart or if it melts to early, then it's not going to be a great comet. But all indications are right now that this could be the coolest thing we've seen in our sky in our lifetime.

MALVEAUX: Where's it going to be most visible, Chad? Where can we see it?

MYERS: It's going to go all across the sky, the northern and southern hemisphere, for a change. We had Lovejoy last year that was only southern hemisphere. We didn't get to see very much of it up here. Didn't get -- other than on pictures. But this will be all across the globe.

MALVEAUX: All right. Cool stuff. Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: You're welcome.

MALVEAUX: We'll be watching. From Katrina to Sandy, massive storms seem to be happening more often. Are we ready yet for the next superstorm? Be sure to watch our special report, "The Coming Storms," this Sunday night at 8:00 Eastern.

And there were several photos that caught our eyes today. Take a look at this. Flying high. This Norwegian athlete got this amazing view. Tom Hilday (ph) was taking part in a world cup ski jumping tournament today in Austria. He won third place.

And some shoppers in Tokyo were greeted by this, Japanese firefighters dressed in 19th century uniforms performing tricks at the top of a bamboo ladder. Pretty cool. Every year the men perform outside a department store during new year's celebrations.

And elephants apparently know how to make good use of an old Christmas tree. In Berlin, Germany, zoo keepers giving leftovers