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Fed Statement; Obama in Berlin; Obesity a Disease; TWA Flight 800

Aired June 19, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Brooke Baldwin. The news is now.

Tragedy at a pool party. Someone pours liquid nitrogen into the water. What happens next is horrifying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We put a camera on the hood of our car and drove through the neighborhood at night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Re-enacting the scene when Trayvon Martin was killed.

Plus, Serena Williams being accused of blaming the victim after her remarks about the Steubenville rape case.

And --

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I really don't know why. That's my question, I don't know why.

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BALDWIN: A teenager kills his sister after practicing WWE wrestling moves on her and now he's charged with murder. We're on the case.

And here we go. Top of the hour. Good to see all of you. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We begin with breaking news. Huge, huge hour of news, including this, as we mentioned, breaking right now.

The Federal Reserve has just wrapped up this highly anticipated meeting on the economy. And the results of that meeting could affect your retirement savings, your ability to sell your home, buy a home, your 401(k), your cash. The list goes on and on. As we know, everyone sits with bated breath waiting for the words of Ben Bernanke, including my colleague Christine Romans, who, I hear, has a phone hanging out of her ear, or perhaps you did mere seconds ago.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, HOST, CNN'S "YOUR MONEY": I do.

BALDWIN: Good to see you. I know we are hoping that you can help translate some of the Fed speak in language we can all digest. I know this is your beat. Tell me, we're awaiting this statement. What will you be listening for?

ROMANS: Well, what we know is we have seen this statement and we know there's no change in the amount of bonds that the Fed is going to keep buying. That's stimulus into the economy. No change in its interest rate target. Really I would say overall no change from the Fed right now. And that is what so many people wanted to know. Will the Fed chief, will Ben Bernanke, and the Federal Open Market Committee, will they continue to stimulate the economy? They're putting $85 billion every single month right into the economy by making these bond purchases. And so what we can tell you, the statement from the Fed, that's going to stay the same. They are not announcing how, when, why, if and how much they're going to pull back on that. At least just not right now.

BALDWIN: OK, because I know I was listening in, and we're all listening sort of for these two "t" words -- tapering and tightening.

Hang tight with me, Christine, because let me bring in Rana Foroohar, CNN's global economic analyst at "Time" magazine assistant managing editor.

So, Rana, I read your piece that came out, you know, an hour ago on time.com and you mentioned one of the questions you were looking for, will the Fed taper? Will the Fed tighten? And I think it's important just to point out to the viewer, when we talk tapering, that's tapering of the bond buying specifically. So, thus far, as Christine is saying, no change. Are you surprised?

RANA FOROOHAR, TIME ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR: Right. I'm not surprised. I think the Fed is really tiptoeing their way out of quantitative easing, this program of asset buying that they've been in for many years now. And that's because it's been of an unprecedented size. There are a lot of worries about what this has done to the economy. We know that, in part, it helped bring us out of recession, helped bolster the stock market, helped increase consumer confidence. But there are a lot of worries within the Fed even that it's also created asset bubbles in the market. We've already seen a correction in emerging markets and in Japan's Nikkei over the last couple of weeks. They're worried about what it could do to corporate bonds and even the housing recovery. So that's one reason why I think we're going to see very, very gentle tiptoeing away from quantitative easing in the next few months.

BALDWIN: Watching the markets down 60 points here upon this news.

Christine Romans, back to you. I hear you have the precise statement. Spill it.

ROMANS: Yes. And the Federal Reserve, I'll tell you, the first three lines of this are exactly what they were in May when they had their last statement. So the Fed is telling us that the economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace. That means the recovery is happening, but not as quickly as they would like. The labor market is improving. The jobs market is improving. But the unemployment rate is still too high. Look, we've seen a lot of this. We've heard this song before from the Fed. What Ben Bernanke is concerned about is taking the training wheels off the economy too quickly. There are hawks. There are people within the Fed, though, who would like to see the economy start to do it on its own. Would like to start to pull back some of this money they've been putting in, into the system.

BALDWIN: Yes.

ROMANS: So you're seeing there has been a brisk discussion, I think, within the Fed. But for right now we're seeing no change in what the Fed has been doing. You know, what I - what I do, Brooke, is I try to explain what this - look, I mean this is like Ben Bernanke with a big fire hose spraying money into the economy every single month.

BALDWIN: OK.

ROMANS: So everything we've seen from the economy doing a little bit better --

BALDWIN: People are enjoying the water.

ROMANS: They are. Well, what would it look like if they weren't doing that?

BALDWIN: Yes.

ROMAN: And when will -- when will we be ready for them to stop? That is the big obsession on Wall Street right now.

BALDWIN: Because didn't he tell Congress May 22nd, right, it was the -- in the next few meetings, and we saw the volatility with the markets just based upon the word "few."

ROMANS: Yes.

BALDWIN: What does "few" mean? When might that be? When does the tapering happen? Here's my question to you, Rana, because, listen, let's just talk about you and me and the rest of Americans. We're wondering, how does this affect me? And so we did this CNN poll and one of the questions we posed was, how would you rate the economic conditions in the country today. And when you look at the results, I mean, 35 percent of the people we polled said good, 65 percent, basically two-thirds, saying poor. Christine, you know, was talking sort of main street versus Wall Street. Rana, who's right?

FOROOHAR: Well, both of them. And that's the rub. That's the pressure the Fed is under right now.

BALDWIN: Huh.

FOROOHAR: Stock markets have been up because this money hose that Christine's talking about has worked very, very well in terms of inflating the markets. And if you own stocks, which a lot of middle class and wealthier people do in America, you are feeling that. But housing recoveries have just begun. Most Americans are still really feeling compressed with the job market. Unemployment is higher than the Fed would like to see it. If you remember, the Fed said that they would like to see unemployment at 6.5 percent before they -

BALDWIN: And that's when those interest rates would change, right?

FOROOHAR: Right. But that's before they stop this program, really pull back that money hose and start to raise rates. And we are not there yet.

BALDWIN: What about, Christine, though, you know, you talk about recently there's been a consumer confidence boost.

ROMANS: Yes.

BALDWIN: You know, housing market seems to be fairing pretty well. Who should people be listening to? People who are trying to save for their kid to go to college, people who are trying to save for their retirement, what's your advice?

ROMANS: Yes, that's such a good question. That's such a good question because the only economics that matter are your personal economics. Are you spending a little less than you make? Are you putting money away for your kids' college? Are you first putting money away for your retirement? Are you under water on your home? Are you -- do you have six to nine months of living expenses in the bank or in short term, you know, assets so that you can get them quickly?

I mean this is about repairing your personal balance sheet. Even if the Fed is putting all this money into the system, I mean things are getting a little bit better for getting a job. Things are getting a little bit better in the housing market. But on a very micro basis, family to family to family, I think some families are still very nervous. People, Brooke, who have money and want to take risks are doing great right now. People who are not secure at their job, don't have money or are underwater in their home loans, they're saying, look, I feel the same today as I did last year.

BALDWIN: I will keep coming back to you two ladies as we're going to be watching the markets because, let's be honest, money matter. That big fire hose matters for all of us right now.

Christine Romans and Rana Foroohar, thank you so, so much. We'll check back in with you. And, of course, we'll check in on the markets as they respond to the news from the Fed today.

Meantime, after all of the revelations about the government getting into your private data, this next disclosure may not surprise you. The FBI uses drones to watch Americans. That detail coming out today from FBI Director Robert Mueller who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY (R), IOWA: Does the FBI use drones for surveillance on U.S. soil?

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: Yes.

Very, very minimal way. And very seldom.

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BALDWIN: Mueller also repeated much of what was heard yesterday on The Hill, that surveillance by the National Security Agency helped thwart those terror plots. Stay with me because at the top of next hour, I will talk with a national security expert about how the FBI is using drones to watch U.S. citizens.

And now, once upon a time you had the Berlin Wall. West side, freedom. But on the east side, the walls had ears. Police state. Surveillance state. Whatever you want to call it. So today is an uncomfortable irony. Barack Obama, now the leader of the free world, a man Germans once adored, found himself explaining his own surveillance program to the Germans. Jessica Yellin is in Berlin for us. Just past 8:00 p.m. local time there.

Jessica, tell me about this speech.

JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke. You put it really well. You know the president probably would have liked to give a speech today that was entirely about big things. Following in the footsteps of Kennedy and Reagan, who also spoke at the iconic Brandenburg Gate, the president had to pivot away from messages about freedom and equality to explain why he has continued some of President Bush's practices from the war on terror, including NSA surveillance. Listen to this.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Real dangers and they keep people safe here in the United States and here in Europe. But we must accept the challenge that all of us in democratic governments face. To listen to the voices who disagree with us. To have an open debate about how we use our powers and how we must constrain them. And to always remember that government exists to serve the power of the individual and not the other way around. That's what makes us who we are, and that's what makes us different from those on the other side of a wall.

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YELLIN: Now, Brooke, this was such an important issue to the Germans, as you point out, that he also addressed this in a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier in the day. As you point out, they have a history with surveillance. The president assured Germans that nothing's being done without a warrant, nothing's being done without a court and nobody's listening to their phone calls. Clearly, though, this is a theme that doesn't sit easy -- rest easy with the people here in Germany, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You know, in Germany, you think of Berlin. This is where American presidents give these history-making speeches. Just months before his death, John F. Kennedy, for example, he brought the Germans to tears by saying all free people are Berliners. Flash forward to Ronald Reagan, '87, imploring the Soviet Union to scrap the Berlin Wall. So just big picture, Jessica, how did the president do?

YELLIN: You know, it is hard to point to a single memorable line from this speech that will go down in history the way Kennedy had "ich bin ein Berliner," or Reagan had "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Each of those firmly etched in our memories. I'm not sure that Mr. Obama had one of those lines in this speech.

What we can remember this speech for is the fact that it happened on the east side of the Brandenburg Gate. Each of the prior presidents spoke on the west side because there was still a wall dividing the city. And Mr. Obama is historically now the first U.S. president to speak on the east side of that gate. And it's the first time he has been able to speak there. Last time he was in this city, he spoke five years ago as a candidate somewhere else. He had a crowd of 200,000. This time a much, much smaller crowd, Brooke, I'd point out. Perhaps because people are so upset with him about some of those practices he's continued. Two hundred thousand last time. Somewhere around 4,500 turned out to see him this time.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Wow. Chief White House correspondent Jessica Yellin in Berlin. Jessica, thank you so much.

Coming up next, this new documentary raises all kinds of questions about what really took down TWA Flight 800. And I'm about to talk with one of our CNN producers, Pulitzer Prize winning producers, who's been all over this case. He's going to cut through the muck for us.

Plus, obesity now considered a disease that one in three Americans have. And critics are pretty upset over this declaration. We'll talk to Dr. Sanjay Gupta. He'll explain what this means, next.

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BALDWIN: Now a recommendation from a doctors group that some critics are calling a major copout. The American Medical Association has voted to designate obesity as a disease. Obese is when your body mass index, your BMI, is 30 or higher. And an AMA board member says this, quote, "recognizing obesity as a disease will help change the way the medical community tackles this complex issue that affects approximately one in three Americans."

But many do not agree with this move. I want you to listen to this. This is a comment from a reader on the "L.A. Times" website. Quote, "this is bad. Obesity causes disease. It may be considered a food addiction. But if the AMA calls it a disease, the next step will be disability being caused by obesity."

Huh. Let's go to our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, for just some context and understanding how significant this is because I know a lot of people, Sanjay, were under the impression that obesity, including myself, was already a disease. But apparently it's not.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And people - and some of this may be semantics a little bit, Brooke, but, you know, and obesity being a condition versus a disease. I - there's a couple of things here that I think are important. First of all, this idea if you call something a disease, it may change people's attitudes toward it both inside and outside the medical community. Change funding in terms of insurance and research funding.

But there's a little bit more to it than that as well. When people have a lot of fat cells in their body, we know more than ever that those fat cells do more than just add weight. They can release these various types of chemicals. They can increase inflammation in the body. And that can lead to other sorts of problems.

So the question, is obesity in and of itself a disease? I think that there's actually pretty good evidence that it is. It can lead to other diseases. But, in and of itself, a disease as well.

BALDWIN: So then when you look at the numbers here that came out of this AMA report, one-third of Americans are not just overweight but obese. What does this mean for them?

GUPTA: Well, I mean, I think that probably, in terms of immediate things, I mean if doctors are actually treating this as a disease and there's more funding, insurance is reimbursing doctors, for example, for counseling patients on obesity, getting types of treatments that might work for them. It could be counseling, it could be medications, sometimes surgery, as we've talked about before. I think that they're going to have more options possibly as a result of this.

You know, the complaint that I hear a lot is that patients who are either very overweight or obese don't get enough guidance from their doctors on what they can specifically do about it. Even if they want to. So this may empower some of that to happen.

I should point out, we're talking about the AMA here, Brooke. This is not an official organization. They -- obesity is now not an official disease. This is a group of doctors, an organized group of doctors, who say we think it should be a disease. So it's going to change attitudes. But this isn't a formal thing here, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. OK. Dr. Gupta, thank you so much.

GUPTA: You got it.

BALDWIN: And do not miss your appointment with the good doctor this weekend. Bullying, alternative medicine, Morgan Spurlock and more. "Sanjay Gupta M.D." airs Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern and Sunday at 7:30 in the morning right here on CNN.

Coming up next, TWA Flight 800 crashed shortly after takeoff back in 1996 over New York City killing all 230 people onboard. So now there's this new documentary. Big claims to now have proof that the flight went down because of an explosion outside the body of the plane. But my next guest says, not so fast. Stay right there. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: I want to take you back some 17 years to an airline disaster. Flight 800. TWA Flight 800. What you see right there is the eerie nighttime glow atop Long Island Sound cast by flaming wreckage of the ill-fated 747. Now, Flight 800 exploded and crashed minutes after takeoff from JFK, killing 230 people. Every single soul onboard that plane.

They had an exhaustive investigation. They pieced this plane together and identified faulty wiring as the cause of the blast. But, for whatever reason, all these conspiracy theories abounded. And now comes this guy, this filmmaker, who claims he has built a case that the fatal explosion was caused by something that actually happened outside of the plane. Like a missile, perhaps.

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TOM STALCUP, CO-PRODUCER, "TWA FLIGHT 800": We have inside investigators who handled the wreckage directly that are saying this. These aren't people just on the street. This isn't just me. I have investigators behind me backing up everything we say in this documentary. They're saying it themselves, as you said in the lead-up to this show, there was an external detonation, external the aircraft. This -- the person who said that actually laid out the reconstruction of the aircraft and oversaw the entire reconstruction of the inside of that aircraft. Senior NTSB investigator Hank Hughes.

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BALDWIN: So another theory surrounding Flight 800 here. Jim Polk, Pulitzer Prize winning Jim Polk, investigative reporter, led our coverage of the 800 crash back so many years ago.

You're here with me now. Tell me, what did you find?

JIM POLK, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: This is not really a new theory. We've been hearing from Stalcup for a decade now. The NTSB's finding was that it was an internal explosion in the center fuel tank. The wreckage from the TWA 747 has been reconstructed. It's in a hangar in northern Virginia. Correspondent David Mattingly got an opportunity to go inside that fuel tank a few years ago with NTSB investigator Jim Wildey (ph).

BALDWIN: Let's look.

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DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The explosion was here, in the center fuel tank.

MATTINGLY (on camera): I'm really struck by the size. You really could park a couple of cars in here.

JIM WILDEY, NTSB INVESTIGATOR: The fuel tank is the size of about a two-car garage. MATTINGLY (voice-over): The center tank, just below the passenger area, is rarely used.

MATTINGLY (on camera): How much fuel was in here at the time of the flight?

WILDEY: The fuel tank was basically empty. I think it was 50 gallons is what they calculate was the residual amount.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Only a thin layer of fuel on the bottom, but the fumes were more than enough to bring down the plane.

WILDEY: That's the stuff that can ignite and burn -- rapidly burn in here.

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POLK: That comes from a 2006 CNN documentary which David and I did together. We were told the explosion ripped upwards into the passenger cabin. In other words, from inside out. The controversy has always been what the radar may or may not show. There were dozens of radar readouts from around Long Island that night. A retired pilot had a bootleg copy of one of them. And here again is David Mattingly with retired pilot Richard Russell.

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MATTINGLY: If this is a missile, we're about 30 seconds away from the explosion.

RICHARD RUSSELL, RETIRED PILOT: That's right.

MATTINGLY: How does it take a missile 30 seconds to reach that aircraft when it's so close?

RUSSELL: Well, it - I have no explanation for that.

MATTINGLY: We never actually see it cross the path of Flight 800.

RUSSELL: You don't.

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POLK: In fact, Brooke, that blip was moving in a different direction behind and away from the TWA flight. Now, I've talked to Tom Stalcup over the years a number of times. He first contacted us back in 2006 to argue about that documentary. As I recall, his theory then was a disappearing blip. That disappearing blip could have been a ship that fired a missile. But even he will conceded, no missile shows up on radar.

Stalcup has been asking the NTSB to reopen this case as far back as 2002.

BALDWIN: For years. POLK: That was the first time his petition was rejected. I gather from talking to him back a few years ago that one radar return seems to show a piece of wreckage flying away from the pilot twice the speed of sound. And that, he thinks, may have been a piece of a missile. The NTSB thinks it was merely an anomaly on the radar.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: So, then, there are dozens of people, though, eyewitnesses, who said that they saw something streaking toward this plane before this explosion. How do you - how do you explain that?

POLK: Actually, a number of them saw a red streak going across the sky.

BALDWIN: A red -

POLK: And it's still unexplained. What it may be, and what the NTSB thinks it was, was when the plane fell apart, the cockpit and first class separated from the rest of the airplane. The rest of the airplane kept flying a bit. Then it plunged, too. And as it plunged, the fuel in the wing exploded. A large explosion, burning, plunging, and that's what the NTSB thinks the witnesses may have seen.

Now, there was one really good witness who had a front, close-up view. Here's his account with David Mattingly.

I'm sorry. Apparently the clip is not in the system. Well, I can tell you, David Maclaine (ph) was a pilot on a flight from New England to Trenton. The explosion happened right in front of his eyes. He saw two red things. But he didn't see anything else. Nothing approaching the plane. Just the explosion.

BALDWIN: So if you've talked to this documentary, you know, filmmaker multiple times, just quickly, because you are so entrenched in this story, what's the likelihood that the NTSB finally listens to this guy and says, all right, we'll reopen.

POLK: My guess, on a scale of one to 100, zero. They've looked at this before. They haven't found anything. And if he has any new evidence it certainly was not in that clip, the trailer from the movie that was made public to CNN today.

BALDWIN: Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jim Polk. A pleasure, my friend. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

POLK: Thank you, as always.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, this.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tonight on HLN, after dark, a rare nighttime tour.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: Walking in the footsteps of George Zimmerman, the man accused of killing Trayvon Martin. HLN's Vinnie Politan gives us a step by step look at the path Zimmerman took. And it takes you to the spot where everything began. That's next.

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