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ISIS Militants Recruiting Women; Michael Sam Cut By The Rams; Joan Rivers In "Serious" Condition

Aired August 30, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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


BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Fred. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Brianna Keilar.

Brutal ISIS militants are reportedly selling abducted Iraqi girls and women to other ISIS fighters in Syria. A UK-based monitoring group reports ISIS considers adducted Yazidi girls and women to be "slaves of the spoils of war with the infidels." Yazidis are one of Iraq's smallest religious minorities.

Meantime secretary of state John Kerry has written a strongly worded op-ed calling for other nations to help the U.S. defeat ISIS. Kerry writes "air strikes alone won't defeat the enemy. A much fuller response is demanded from the world. In this battle there is a role for almost every country. Some will provide military assistance direct and indirect, some will provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance."

Let's go to the White House now and bring in correspondent Erin McPike. She's following this story, and Erin, John Kerry's op-ed it really seems to be downplaying the impact of air strikes alone. How does this play into the plan the White House is working up right now to deal with ISIS and Syria?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, first of all, it buys them time. Because, of course, the Pentagon is trying to develop a plan and a strategy for the White House. The president has looked at some things but is still weighing options and they haven't determined what that strategy will be just yet.

So what this op-ed does is lay out what Secretary of state John Kerry wants to do to get other countries on board for a larger international coalition. So, we know that President Obama will be traveling to Wales next week for the NATO summit where he will be conferring with foreign leaders.

Secretary of state John Kerry and defense secretary Chuck Hagel will be trying to rally allies of the United States there and then Hagel and Kerry will be traveling to the Middle East to confer with Middle Eastern leaders to try to get them on board. And then later in September the United States is hosting the presidency of the U.N. security council and they will apply further pressure on foreign leaders so that the United States does not have to act unilaterally. Brianna. KEILAR: Yes, a lot of opportunities for the president to enlist some international help. And it's interesting, Erin, the president changed his travel plans so that he would be in Washington so he would be at the White House today. When he changes his plans, it doesn't go unnoticed. Why did this happen?

MCPIKE: Well, it may be a couple of different things. One is optics, you may remember when he was on vacation earlier this month in Martha's Vineyard. He came back for some meetings for a couple of days. There may have been some meetings today. We don't have an official read-out from the White House just yet, but White House press secretary Josh Ernest did say yesterday that the president basically wanted to come back, spend some time with his family and do a little bit of work.

KEILAR: Erin McPike at the White House, thank you.

Well, most ISIS fighters on the front lines are men, but there are plenty of women working for ISIS behind the scenes including possibly an entire brigade of female ISIS militants in Syria. Correspondent Brian Todd is looking in to why women are joining ISIS.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The terrorists of ISIS, dressed in black, armed with (INAUDIBLE), and now some have observed them wearing hijabs and burkas, human rights observers and analysts say women have joined the ranks of ISIS. We're told there's at least one group of women called the Al Hansa Brigade which operates in the ISIS stronghold of Rakah (ph) in Syria.

LOUAY ALMOKTAD, FORMER SPOKESMAN, FREE SYRIAN ARMY: If your daughter will serve in this brigade, that's something that will protect you, will protect your family.

TODD: Louay Almoktad is a former spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group which is a rival to ISIS. He said friends of his have had female relatives pushed into ISIS. CNN could not independently verify his accounts. Observers from the U.N. and Amnesty International tells CNN ISIS uses women primarily in a policing role, patrolling the streets, cracking down on other women who are not wearing conservative enough clothing. According to reports, female ISIS militants also help at checkpoints where their male comrades are not allowed to touch women coming through.

NIMMI GOWRINATHAN, U.N. GENDER EXPERT: They are very useful because they will be able to check any woman coming through and be able to detect any sort of enemy combatant coming through the checkpoint.

TODD: Including men trying to sneak through checkpoints dressed as women. Almoktad says ISIS women also go on house raids.

ALMOKTAD: They need the women to search inside the woman's clothing, inside the bedrooms and even they do body check for the women.

TODD: A U.S. intelligence official tells CNN ISIS has demonstrated a, "diabolical flexibility in pursuing its goals and is open to using women tactically to advance them."

Does that include fighting on the front lines?

CHARLES COOPER, QUILLIAM FOUNDATION: Females do not fight for ISIS. There is no theological legitimation for a lady to be allowed to take up arms against men on a battlefield within ISIS' very, very austere, extremist interpretation of Islam.

TODD: Why would a woman join this brutal terrorist group? Experts who follow the region say personal security and small salaries are factors.

GOWRINATHAN: Particularly when the alternative is to be displaced to Turkey or elsewhere and have to work as a prostitute to get money for your family, women join because they have relatives in the movement. They have networks within their communities were a part of that movement. Women join because they've been raped.

TODD (on camera): There seems to be little, if any, empowerment of women in all of this despite the lure of security, money and responsibility, one activist says ISIS created these female brigades to terrorize women.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: You can learn more about ISIS and the terror that they've spread across Iraq and Syria like recruiting children and training them to be killers. We have those stories and more on cnn.com.

Well, the fight for territory in eastern Ukraine is heating up.

No one seems to be capable of stopping this conflict that seems to grow worse by the hour and we'll be speaking with someone who has been on the ground in Ukraine and has seen these problems first hand.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: This just in to CNN, Michael Sam has been cut by the St. Louis Rams. Today was cut down day in the NFL and the deadline for cuts was 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Sam, of course, is the first openly gay player drafted by the NFL. He was the seventh-round pick of the Rams but he was also considered a long shot to make the team. He could still be picked up by another NFL team and we'll keep you posted throughout the day on that.

Well, there's concern over Russia's actions in Ukraine continues to grow, European leaders are meeting in Belgium today to discuss possible new sanctions against Moscow. One leader saying this could lead to, "a point of no return if a political solution isn't found."

A CNN team in (INAUDIBLE) saw Ukrainian forces strengthening defensive positions on the eastern outskirts of the city reinforcing checkpoints, digging trenches along roads leading toward the Russian border, this coming a day after Russia's foreign minister denied accusations that Russian troops crossed into Ukraine despite these NATO images.

Joining me from Vancouver Island British Columbia is OSCE spokesman Michael (INAUDIBLE) to talk about this. Michael, last time we spoke you were in Ukraine and you've been there several times in recent months. Talk to us about how this situation has changed. Has it gotten worse obviously?

MICHAEL BOCIURKIW, OSCE SPOKESMAN: Hi, Brianna, good to be back to you. Yes, there's definitely been an escalation in the violence. We now have a group of monitors from our special monitoring mission to Ukraine in my real poll and they've just reported to us, in fact, just a few minutes ago, that there's definitely a lot of activity backing up what your correspondents have been saying in terms of Ukrainian troops digging in, building trenches, military barriers and protection for themselves and in addition they spoke to Ukrainian soldiers on the ground (INAUDIBLE) and I guess you could call it trepidation because of the sense we got was that they feel far more outdone and on the rebels' side they reported seeing tanks, armored personnel vehicles and missile launchers. So it sounds like a very unbalanced situation right now on both sides.

KEILAR: Can you talk a little bit about some of I guess you would say the semantics of this. We see U.S. officials who are reticent to use the word invasion. They aren't using it. We've heard the word incursion. Yesterday I was told by a U.S. official that this is an effort by Russia but not calling it an invasion. Why isn't that? And how does it change the imperative to act if you do use the word invasion?

BOCIURKIW: Yes. Well, you know it's our mission well enough by now, Brianna, we've been on the ground there for four months and what we've been doing is documenting month by month a gradual kind of escalation not only in terms of the violence but also in terms of the type of military equipment that we've seen, unidentified individuals carrying around.

It started with lightly armed individuals, and then it went up to mobile missile launchers. That's the first thing. The second one, of course, is the shelling that is going on right now. We have a team in -

KEILAR: I know we're having some technical difficulty there with Michael. Let's see if we can get that back. Do we have that signal? All right. Unfortunately we don't. That was Michael Bociurkiw. We really appreciate his speaking with us.

Now the fallout from questionable police actions in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown continues after another officer retires. You may remember the St. Louis County police officer Dan Page from a video that surfaced. This is showing him ranting about President Obama amongst a lot of other Americans. He was also seen pushing CNN's Don Lemon during protests in Ferguson earlier this month.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): We've been standing here all day -

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go. Come on, let's go.

LEMON: That's what's happening here. So people are here and they're standing on - you can see what's happening. We've been standing here all day. They told us to come here. I can't move.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Now, the lieutenant who threatened and pointed an assault rifle you see him here at protesters, he also retired this week and a third officer in a nearby city was fired after making what his police chief called very inappropriate Facebook comments about the protests.

Joan Rivers spent a lot of her life on stage and that's where she was the night before she was rushed to the hospital. A man in the audience says that she told a joke that thinking back is just chilling now.

And about a half hour from now Dr. Sanjay Gupta looks at the new front line against ISIS online.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, in the battle against ISIS we're seeing big social media sites like YouTube and Twitter start to pull down content that's posted by these terrorist organizations. So, how do they decide where to draw the line?

And when kids do get exposed to this sort of thing on the web, how should you handle it as a parent? What to do when the news becomes too much. We got that at 4:30 Eastern.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Comedienne Joan Rivers remains in serious condition after she stopped breathing during an outpatient medical procedure on Thursday but her daughter, Melissa, said yesterday that her mom would be touched by the tributes and prayers pouring in from around the world.

CNN's Miguel Marquez talked with one of the comedienne's super fans. He says Rivers even joked about dying the night before she was rushed to the hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joan Rivers appearing fit as a fiddle and in full outrage comedy mode at the New York's Laurie Beechmann Theater Wednesday night even joking about her own death.

SHADE RUBE, FILM DIRECTOR: She looked out at the audience and she said, "You know, I'm 81, you know, I'm - I could go at any moment. I could just go over." That was her term, go over. "I could just go over right here and you would all look down and think it's part of the show."

MARQUEZ: Shade Rube snapped this pic from his front row seat, a hardcore fan, aka, Joan Ranger. He even got this one with the queen of mean just after the show around 9:30 p.m., he said she was the picture of health.

RUBE: This was the classic Joan, tough, funny, outrageous.

The best I've ever seen her. Truly I was really surprised that she just gave everything.

MARQUEZ: Hours later early Thursday morning she was at Yorkville Endoscopy, a facility specializing in digestive disorders. By 9:30 a.m. during what should have been a routine outpatient procedure, she stopped breathing and went into cardiac arrest and was rushed to nearby Mt. Sinai for emergency care.

(on camera): How shocked were you when you heard the news?

RUBE: Absolutely. World turned upside down. 911.

MARQUEZ (voice-over): In recent days the 81-year-old has been in tip- top form. No indication she was ailing. Here she is taking the ALS ice bucket challenge on E! Entertainment last week.

JOAN RIVERS, COMEDIAN: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joan.

RIVERS: Everybody. Security! Security!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Love you, Joan.

MARQUEZ: Then there was Rivers walking out on a recent CNN interview.

RIVERS: Stop it with -- and you do this and you're mean and you're that. You are not the one to interview a person who does humor, sorry.

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Are we serious?

MARQUEZ: Feisty and tough as ever. Love for the razor sharp-witted Rivers pouring out. Actress Marlee Matlin urging Rivers to get well and, "moon the doctors for us while you are recuperating." Comedian Billy Eigner tweeted, so looking forward to Joan Rivers jokes about this. Actor Zachary Quinto tweeted no one is ready to go on without you, lady. Her fans agree.

RUBE: Joan Rivers is necessary. We love her. We love you, Joan.

MARQUEZ: Miguel Marquez, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And a quick sports note, Tony Stewart was back on the track last night three weeks after hitting and killing a fellow driver. He also spoke publicly about the incident for the first time. He said this has been one of the toughest times in his life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TONY STEWART, RACER: This is something that will definitely affect my life forever. This is a sadness and a pain that I hope no one ever has to experience in their life. That being said, I know that the pain on the morning that Kevin Ward's family and friends are experiencing is something that I can't possibly imagine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Stewart hit and killed driver Kevin Ward earlier this month after Ward got out of his car on a New York dirt track. Police say their investigation of the incident will continue for several more weeks.

Like a buzz saw going off in your hands, that's what one gun expert described the firing of an Uzi machine gun as, that helps explains how a nine-year-old ends up killing her instructor with an Uzi and making some question why she was allowed to fire it to begin with.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: I think to this story shocked us all when we found out that a nine-year-old girl accidentally shot and killed a gun instructor who was showing her how to fire an Uzi on a gun range. It had many people asking should a nine-year-old be allowed to handle an Uzi and sadly this is not the first time that something like this has happened. Here's Jean Casarez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Arizona outdoor gun range, end of summer, family time together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to keep that held in.

CASAREZ: A nine-year-old girl learning how to shoot an automatic Uzi by an instructor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Go ahead and give me one shot. All right! All right. Pull auto.

CASAREZ: Those fateful last words, all right, full auto.

SAL BERTOCCI, RETIRED NYDP BALLISTICS EXPERT: He just put the gun on fully auto and he tells her that and his left hand is holding the bottom of the magazine where it should be on - somewhere closer to the top of the weapon. She looks very uncomfortable holding the weapon and when she pulls the trigger he loses the grip on the bottom of the magazine and gets muzzle rise and winds up getting shot.

CASAREZ: The sheriff's department says the recoil from the powerful weapon sends the gun out of her control over her head. 39-year-old instructor Charles Vaca, a member of California's National Guard died later at the hospital.

BERTOCCI: She probably hit the full auto, wasn't expecting the recoil that she got and was completely surprised by it and lost control of the weapon.

CASAREZ (on camera): What's it like when the shots come out? Describe it.

BERTOCCI: It's going to be like a buzz saw going off in your hands.

CASAREZ (voice-over): The outdoor shooting range Bullets and Burgers advertises on the highway. Stop in, fire a machine gun and enjoy a meal and their rules fitting within Arizona law allow children eight years old and up to shoot the guns.

BERTOCCI: I would want to see a little bit more experience from the girl and to see the girl was a little more comfortable handling single-shot weapons before giving her a fully automatic weapon.

CASAREZ: The Mohave County Sheriff's office has determined there will be no charges, but other states have decided these accidents could be crimes.

In 2008 in Massachusetts, a nine-year-old boy accidentally shoots himself at a gun show while also firing an Uzi. His father records it all on video. But it is the show organizer Edward Flurry charged with involuntary manslaughter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You the jury find the defendant not guilty.

CASAREZ: Flurry was acquitted but as a result the victim's home state of Connecticut now makes it illegal to give or sell machine guns to anyone under 16. And just last year in New Jersey, Anthony Senatori's four-year-old son shot his six-year-old neighbor to death and now Senatori has been charged with six counts of child endangerment. He rejected a plea deal which included prison time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, it was beautiful. I could hardly wait to try it out.

CASAREZ: Children and bb guns were once the stuff of Christmas tradition.

BERTOCCI: I always had a bb gun as a kid.

CASAREZ: But an Uzi?

BERTOCCI: The Uzi was designed by Israeli military industries for the IDF, Israeli Defense Forces.

CASAREZ: A gun made for the battlefield in the hands of a child with deadly consequences.

Jean Casarez, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Some people are calling for that whole video of that tragic accident to be released saying we should all witness just what these guns are capable of. Agree? Disagree? We're going to talk about that with Ben Ferguson and Marc Lamont Hill coming up.

Updating you on news this hour Michael Sam, the first openly gay player drafted by an NFL team has been cut. The St. Louis Rams announced they were cutting Sam earlier this hour. He was a seventh- round pick. He was considered a long shot, but he played well in the pre-season and he could still be picked up by another NFL team.

I'm Brianna Keilar in New York. CNN NEWSROOM continues at the top of the hour. Right now should terror groups like ISIS be allowed to post terrifying videos on YouTube? It's "SANJAY GUPTA, M.D."