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Director of NSA Testifies; U.S. Hacks China; Sara's Lung Transplant; Ariel Castro Pleads Not Guilty; Wildfires Burn Out of Control

Aired June 12, 2013 - 13:59   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: With weeks to live, she waited, she fought, she captivated a nation. And now we know this 10-year-old girl is getting a lung transplant. We'll tell you what to expect in the coming hours.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. The news is now.

Inside the hunt for Edward Snowden. Could his pole dancing girlfriend provide clues?

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When they looked at this garage, they saw boxes.

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BALDWIN: A rookie shooter can hit a target 10 football fields away. How? With this new gun, available to the public.

Plus, the trial begins for one of America's most notorious gangsters. And Whitey Bulger's former protege joins me live.

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JOHN "RED" SHEA, FORMER MOBSTER: In that dream, I snap his neck.

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BALDWIN: And -

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Otash (ph) claims that he had recordings of JFK having sex with Marilyn Monroe.

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BALDWIN: A Hollywood spy's wiretaps discovered in boxes. And they apparently reveal a presidential love triangle.

Thanks for joining me. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We begin with NSA leaker Edward Snowden is in hiding, reportedly in a safe house. And from a new interview with this Hong Kong newspaper, it appears he is still in the city dropping bombshells, continuing to leak.

Here's what we know. Snowden told the "South China Morning Post" that the U.S. has been hacking Chinese and Hong Kong computers since 2009. The paper says it viewed documents supporting this claim, which the paper was not able to verify. We're going to talk to Jake Tapper, our chief Washington correspondent, on this breaking development here momentarily.

But first, let me take you here and just bring you up to speed as far as what's happening with the story today in the United States.

Who knows if Edward Snowden realizes today, in fact, at this precise hour, at any moment, he may be getting exactly what he wants. Because do you remember what he told "The Guardian" on why he leaked these documents? Showing the National Security Agency is secretly snooping on people. You remember this?

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EDWARD SNOWDEN, LEAKED DETAILS OF U.S. SURVEILLANCE: I think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.

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BALDWIN: Snowden hoped for explanation and debate. And this hearing, right here, Capitol Hill, you are seeing live, may not only provide them, but put them on the congressional record. So on schedule to speak here, this is a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, the director of the NSA, among other titles he holds, is this man. This is General Keith Alexander. And keep in mind, today's hearing, this was an already scheduled hearing on cyber security. However, it will likely be much more about the surveillance the U.S. government is doing on millions of Americans and foreigners that has generated a swarm of reaction on Capitol Hill and beyond.

Keep in mind now, the ACLU is suing. A Philadelphia couple is suing as part of this $3 billion class action suit. Google, Microsoft, FaceBook has now asked the Justice Department if they can make public the requests they get from the secret court that orders them to provide information.

And add to this list Mozilla. Web browser Mozilla just launched a position demanding the NSA disclose all its spying programs. Fifty-six thousand signatures and counting.

So let's go straight to these ladies. We have chief political analyst Gloria Borger and our chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash, to both watch this hearing with us.

So, Dana, to you first. Tell me just, broadly speaking, what should we expect out of the hearing today? And how much of this NSA story do you think will permeate sort of the testimony of the questioning? It's hard to imagine that it won't. I've already been told by sources on this committee that they've been alerted that several Democratic senators will ask about the issue of the phone records and also probably the so-called prism program and that it needs taking -- getting involved with people's Internet searches and things like that.

But this hearing is scheduled to be on cyber security, which is not an unimportant issue. It is a very important issue for the chairwoman, who you see there, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland. What is interesting is that she and a few other people on -- I just checked the roster of the committee members of this appropriations committee. Several of them are actually on the intelligence committee. So they are, as they say up here, briefed up or fully briefed as much as probably anybody on these secret programs.

It is probably going to be the other senators who don't have the access at their fingertips or haven't been immersed in these programs that will talk about it. Also, people who, probably for the most part, who are really skeptical of it. And we, again, we'll see that on both sides of the aisle, from Democrats and Republicans.

BALDWIN: As we watch for that, specifically some people on this roster, Gloria, to you, because we heard from the president, speaking about this, addressing some of this last Friday. And he was talking - I remember listening to him. He was talking about, you know, privacy of American citizens versus protecting them. So just talk to me about the pressure. The pressure that the Obama administration has to be under right now.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. I mean what we watched last week was a president whose clearly struggling with these issues himself. I mean what struck me about that was that he seems a little ambivalent about what the right balance is. The public right now, Brooke, is giving him a lot of leeway. They don't like the fact that the National Security Agency may be gathering all of this metadata, as we call it, which includes phone numbers, et cetera. But when you look at the polls, they get it. They also understand that there's a reason to do it and they think it's rational given the fact that you -- you know, that you want to fight the terrorists.

But at a certain point there are members of Congress, like Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, who are saying to the administration, you know what, we may need to do a little bit more explaining about why this is so important. So maybe you ought to start declassifying some instances in which the gathering of this data has really helped us thwart some terrorist attacks. And if they do do that, it wouldn't surprise me if the president were to lead that conversation.

BALDWIN: What about this then, because let's just talk about the Clapper moment that I know, Dana, you've talked to -

BASH: Yes.

BALDWIN: You've talked to Senator Wyden, who has been this advocate for years on The Hill, you know, advocating more transparency. He called out James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, you know, when he testified, this was back in March, that the NSA doesn't collect data on Americans. Let me just - let me play that exchange first.

Don't have the sound. Basically he said no when asked the question. This is me, you know, paraphrasing it.

So, Dana, to you first, and then to Gloria, when you think of the Clapper moment, now translating to General Keith Alexander today testifying, it's a delicate dance.

BASH: It is a delicate dance. The difference, of course, between then when, you know, Clapper admitted this past weekend that he, you know, went right up, maybe even sort of stood on the line of telling the truth, and then he quickly said they're not doing it wittingly. The difference between then and now is that it has been disclosed. It has been leaked. We can thank Edward Snowden for that.

So the NSA - and we don't even - you know, we believe we know, at least most of it, but, you know, who knows what we don't know. But the NSA director is going to be in a public setting for the first time since -- since these lawmakers have found out about it. He's been in private, both on the Senate side and on the House side. This is the first time it will be in public. So it will probably be less awkward for him to say, I can answer this to a certain point. Other than that, we're going to have to go into a classified setting.

BALDWIN: Gloria, final thought, final word.

BORGER: You know, look, Senator Wyden was clearly upset. And Mr. Clapper has since said it was the least untruthful answer, whatever that means, that he could have given in a public setting because normally you're not going to answer - you'd say to the senator, senator, I think we need to take this private and maybe I'll answer that behind closed doors. But for whatever reason he chose not to. And that's going to come around and boomerang on them and it may even boomerang at this hearing today with Mr. Alexander.

BALDWIN: Ladies, stand by. We're going to watch this. I know you're going to be watching it very, very closely. We'll be dipping in and out as news merits, of course. This Senate Appropriations Committee hearing with the director of the NSA testifying again underscoring Dana's point, this is the first time that an NSA official has had, you know, had to basically go public since the news broke.

Now to Jake Tapper, anchor of "The Lead," chief Washington correspondent, with more on the breaking news.

Jake, because we mentioned at the top of the show, and this is key, a couple headlines out of this, I think. The NSA leaker told the "South China Morning Post" that the U.S. has been hacking Chinese and Hong Kong computers since '09. Again, the paper says it viewed documents supporting the claim, which the paper was not able to verify. So two things. One, this says to me that Edward Snowden is continuing to leak. This is another bomb. JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Oh, right. No, he will continue to share information and Glenn Greenwald told me a few days ago that there are more stories to come.

It's not a huge surprise that the U.S. military is engaged in offensive cyber attacks. We've been told by generals and others last fall, I believe, that the U.S. was engaged in offensive capabilities when it came to going after adversaries in Afghanistan. We also, of course, know about the Stuxnet virus, which is cyber warfare against the Iranian nuclear program. And then earlier this year, the head of cyber command also allowed and told lawmakers that the U.S. was using cyber warfare, not just to protect the U.S. from cyber attacks, but also offensively.

We did not know specifically, of course, what Snowden is alleging, which we have not confirmed to be true, that there have been U.S. cyber attacks on China and Hong Kong. But that would not be a huge surprise given what has already been admitted.

BALDWIN: And you know as well as I do, this comes not even a week, you know, a matter of days since President Obama met with the president of China. What was it, in California on Friday evening, specifically talking about China's cyber surveilling of the United States.

TAPPER: Right. And when I asked Glenn Greenwald about the timing of this all, did they start leaking all this information timed to President Obama meeting with Chinese Premier Xi, and what Glenn Greenwald says was, no, the specific timing of the leaks starting to come out had nothing to do with this summit between President Obama and President Xi.

But the one document that was released, I believe, Friday, which had to do with President Obama, a top secret document telling the intelligence and national security apparatus to prepare cyber targets for cyber warfare, that document Greenwald said they did release to be timed specifically with President Obama meeting with President Xi because that issue was going to come up, except the shoe being on the other foot, of course, with all the hackers attacking the United States, especially the United States military and banking systems.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Jake Tapper, thank you for the perspective. We will look for you 4:00 p.m. Eastern on "The Lead."

TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Let me totally switch gears and tell you about a positive step forward here. Finally today this major update in the story of 10- year-old Sarah Murnaghan. We've been telling you this story. This is the 10-year-old in Pennsylvania who has cystic fibrosis. And she and her family have been waiting for a lung transplant. But until this judge recently intervened, this 10-year-old couldn't qualify for the list of people waiting for lungs from an adult donor because she is too young. You have to be 12 or above. Well, today, Sarah is getting those new lungs she so desperately needs. Her mother announced the news on Sarah's FaceBook page writing late this morning, quote, 'Sarah got," and in big, big capital letters, "the call. She will be taken back to the OR in 30 minutes. Please pray for Sarah's donor, our hero, who has given her the gift of life." Pediatrician Benjamin Gaston specializes in children's respiratory systems. He is with UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland.

So, doctor, thank you. Welcome. I got a lot of questions for you, but let me just begin with how does this transplant actually work when you are taking a pair of lungs from an adult and placing them in a 10- year-old?

DR. BENJAMIN GASTON, UH RAINBOW BABIES AND CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: Hi, Brooke. Yes, so it's very difficult. Probably what she's getting is lower lobes from the adult and put into -- attached to her airways, her blood vessels and her chest. So sometimes those lower lobes are even a little bit too big and they have to actually be trimmed down a little bit. So it can be a lengthy procedure.

BALDWIN: So let me just stop you. You said lower lobes. I'm assuming this is the lower section of the lung. And so there will have to be cutting, as you said, to place these lungs that would be too large into her tiny chest cavity, is that right?

GASTON: That would be my bet, yes.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. What are the variables, the unknowns, in a procedure like this?

GASTON: Well, almost always something a little bit unexpected happens. Sometimes, of course, the lungs can be the wrong size and need to be trimmed back a little bit. Sometimes there's fluid issues. And then you have to remember that this young lady has had a lot of difficulty with her own lungs and so the question is always whether she can breathe through the breathing tube, of course, on one lung while they change the other lung out, or whether she would need to go on bypass.

BALDWIN: So then at what point, once they're -- the doctors are finished trimming and they see that the lungs fit inside of her, when do they know she'll be OK?

GASTON: That's a great question, Brooke. Ordinarily, you get a sense of what's going to happen pretty soon after you get out of the operating room. Whether there's going to be any acute rejection or infection. Usually in the first 24 hours you get an even clearer picture. But for the most part, those kinds of complications, you know, fluid, early rejection, those kinds of things declare themselves in the first 24 hours.

BALDWIN: So she will know, fingers crossed, if she is out of the woods once this procedure is done. I think we're hearing something like six hours, if that's correct. So within 24 hours, basically a day of this being over, they'll know if she's OK or not? GASTON: Well, that's true, that she'll be over the biggest hurdle, but there are many, many other hurdles to cross. And so sometimes the process can take weeks, sometimes just days.

BALDWIN: OK, Dr. Benjamin Gaston, thank you so much. We appreciate that. Obviously we'll keep you posted on Sarah's health throughout the coming days and hours here on CNN.

Coming up, wildfires raging in Colorado, moving fast and expected to pick up steam. More than 2,000 homes have been evacuated so far. We will take you live to Colorado for that.

But first, remember this man? Ariel Castro, charged with more than 300 counts of kidnapping and rape, appearing in a courtroom today. We will tell you about his plea and his bizarre revelation about his living room. That's next.

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BALDWIN: The man accused of kidnapping, raping, and holding three women captive inside his Cleveland home is pleading not guilty to more than 300 charges. Ariel Castro kept his head down for this entire hearing today in Cleveland. You know the story. He's accused of those horrific crimes against Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, like chaining them, raping them over and over, and holding them captive inside of this home for about a decade.

We are now learning about some unusual items inside Castro's home. For example, there is a mirrored disco ball -- here it is -- hanging in the living room, and some silver tinsel or some kind of decorative garland in there. Investigators were inside the home yesterday and Monday. Castro's lawyers signaled they may not contest many charges of rape or kidnapping. He is also accused of aggravated murder for purposely causing the unlawful termination of pregnancies. And that charge is what Castro's lawyers are honing in on here.

Let me go straight to Cleveland to CNN's Pamela Brown.

And, Pamela, this aggravated murder charge, I know it could bring the death penalty into play. How are Castro's lawyers preparing to handle that?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, they talked about that today for really the first time. They said, essentially, some of the charges Ariel Castro faces are indisputable, but they said that they don't feel like there's enough adequate evidence, adequate forensic evidence and medical evidence to support that aggravated murder charge, which, of course, could lead to the death penalty. It was interesting, Brooke, because, for the first time, Castro's attorneys conceded that some of these charges are indefensible and they basically said they would be willing to work out a plea deal if that aggravated murder charge would be taken off the table. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CRAIG WEINTRAUB, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: We are very sensitive to the emotional strain and impact that a trial would have on the women, their families, and this community. Mr. Castro currently faces hundreds of years in prison with the current charges. And it is our hope that we can continue to work toward a resolution to avoid having an unnecessary trial about aggravated murder and the death penalty.

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BROWN: So today, Brooke, the attorney, Craig Weintraub, sympathized with the victims saying that his hope is to reach a resolution so that these victims won't have to testify in trial.

BALDWIN: Pamela Brown in Cleveland. Thank you, Pamela.

Coming up next, we're going to talk to -- with a mother who lives near this evacuation zone in Colorado. All the while, her husband is out on this Boy Scout camp with some youngsters who don't even yet know whether their homes have survived this fast moving wildfire. Stay here.

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BALDWIN: Hot and windy and dry making for a treacherous situation and conditions here in Colorado. These fast moving wildfires are forcing thousands of people from their home, destroys dozens of others. I mean just look at - look at the smoke here. Firefighters, they are joined by National Guard troops. They are fighting five separate fires. And so far they are zero percent contains. More than 2,600 homes have been evacuated, affecting more than 7,000 people. And one of them is Alicia Welch. She is an assistant principal, lives near the evacuation zone. She is good enough to join me this afternoon from Colorado Springs.

So, Alicia, first, tell me, your home, how far are you from evacuating?

ALICIA WELCH, FAMILY LIVES NEAR WILDFIRE EVACUATION ZONE: How far are we from the evacuation area?

BALDWIN: Yes.

WELCH: We're about a mile away from where the fire initially started yesterday in the -- just above us. The Black Forest area is where the fire started. We live just below Highway 83.

BALDWIN: So these pictures that I'm looking at with this huge plume of what looks like big gray smoke, is this taken from our neighborhood?

WELCH: Yes, they were taken yesterday. Yesterday evening.

BALDWIN: Wow. What are you doing to keep some of the smoke out of your home?

WELCH: You know, we're keeping the windows closed. We're trying to just keep the fans going, air-conditioning running to keep as much smoke as possible out of the house. We didn't really smell it as much until this morning about two hours ago. It seems to be moving this direction, at least the smell of it.

BALDWIN: So here you are trying to keep the smoke out of your house. You are -- your have your husband, who is, you know, out on this hiking trip with a bunch of Boy Scouts, and some of the boys' homes in the line of fire. They don't really know the fate of their home. Tell me about that.

WELCH: You know, they found out yesterday that the fires went up. It's actually, just so you know, my younger son was out in the area at Cathedral Pines where the fire started, with a Boy Scout camp, a church camp, and they were doing hikes in the area that morning where the fire is right now and they had to leave early from that day camp because there was a mandatory evacuation. It was then that I found out about the fire. And that's when I started checking in with my husband, who's camping just on the other side of the mountain, in the Rampart Range, and checked in with him and he said that a lot of the boys, the scouts, knew what was going on. The leaders care about their families and what's going on at home and -- I'm sorry. They were trying to decide what to do and they decided to get together and pray.

BALDWIN: It's OK, Alicia. It's OK.

WELCH: And the boys made the decision to stay up there. I'm sorry. The boys made the decision to stay up there and just be focused on what they need to do up there. There's very little they can do at home right now, so we're just trying to keep the kids up there focused on what they're doing.

BALDWIN: And is it extra tough for you just because your son is away with your husband and these are kids? How old are these kids?

WELCH: How old are they? I'm sorry?

BALDWIN: Yes. I know it's windy.

WELCH: Is that what you asked?

BALDWIN: Yes.

WELCH: Yes, the boys who are up with my husband are scouts, so they're mostly 11 to 13-year-olds. My son was with a day group, a day camp. They can't spend nights yet because they're a little younger. He's a nine-year-old. He was with the eight through 10-year-olds.

BALDWIN: Alicia, I am sorry that you and your friends and these little guys are going through this. We're thinking about you all. Stay safe. At least you have yourselves. Alicia Welch, thank you so much for joining me from Colorado Springs.

WELCH: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: A very tough situation there for thousands of people as we mentioned.

WELCH: Thank you. Yes.

BALDWIN: Yes.

Coming up next, the trial of James "Whitey" Bulger got underway today. You know he is the alleged Boston mobster accused in the murder of 19 people. And my next guest, he's been on this show before, had some pretty choice words for Mr. Bulger.

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JOHN "RED" SHEA, FORMER MOBSTER: Why did he, you know, become an informant against basically myself and -- and betrayed the code of silence? And --

BALDWIN: What do you do in that dream?

SHEA: And he said he wanted -- in that dream, I snap his neck.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Bulger's former protege, John "Red" Shea, back with me today, joins me live, next.

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