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American Arrested Trying to Join ISIS: Black ISIS Flags Raised; Mortars Hit Baghdad; Ebola Patient Treatment; Pennsylvania Fugitive

Aired October 06, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: For our viewers in North America, "NEWSROOM" with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you so much.

Hi there. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

We have to begin with the breaking news into us here at CNN. Let me tell you about this 19-year-old American who has been arrested in Chicago moments before the U.S. government says he was preparing to board a flight overseas with plans to join ISIS. His name, Mohammed Hamzah Khan. And here's an artist's sketch of his first appearance today in federal court. Let's go straight to Washington to get all the latest details from our justice correspondent there, Evan Perez.

Evan, who is he and how much do we know about why he was headed to Syria?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Brooke, we know that the FBI says that Mohammed Hamzah Khan was at O'Hare Airport on Saturday night when they arrested him. He was en route on a -- trying to get on a flight to Vienna and ultimately traveling to Istanbul, to Turkey. Turkey is -- has been a big -- major transit point for people who are trying to get to Syria to join ISIS and some of the other groups that are fighting in the civil war there. According to the FBI, they did a search of his house, his parents' house, while he was at the airport and questioned him for several hours before putting him under arrest and he was charged this morning in a criminal complaint in Chicago, Brooke.

BALDWIN: I know that he left this letter for his parents back at their home.

PEREZ: Right.

BALDWIN: Tell me about this letter. Tell me about the evidence the government has against him.

PEREZ: Well, Brooke, the government, the FBI says that they found a lot of documents, both in a car and also in his parents' house. They said he had drawings that indicated support for ISIS. They also said that he left a letter for his parents imploring them not to call the authorities because it would be bad for him and for his family. We have a little snippet of the letter he left behind in which he says

that his - that his -- he felt that - "my dear parents, there are a number of reasons I will be going to the blessed land of Shaam (ph)," which is a term that they use for Syria, "leaving my home." And he said there was an obligation to migrate to join ISIS now that they've established this caliphate. And also that he felt that as an adult, he was against paying taxes that were ultimately being used to kill Muslims. His Muslim brothers and sisters, Brooke.

The FBI says that, in addition to this, they have proof that he bought a $4,000 plane ticket. Again, that's a lot of money for a 19-year-old. And also --

BALDWIN: That was round trip, Evan.

PEREZ: Yes, exactly, it was a round trip ticket. Now, what's interesting about that is, you know, that's one way people sometimes avoid being flagged. If you buy a one-way ticket, especially right now if you're buying a one-way ticket to Turkey, you might get immediate attention from the FBI. In this case, he brought a round-trip ticket and he said in his interview with the FBI, according to this affidavit, that he was either going to join -- go there for humanitarian reasons or to do combat. He had the names of four people that he was going to - that he was going to contact when he got to Turkey, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Wow. Evan, keep working your sources, as you do for us in Washington. We should also point out to you, we do have a CNN crew en route to this man's home in Chicago. So as soon as we get more information, as soon as we get a picture there live, we'll bring it to you, at least one hour from now.

Also we're getting these pictures. Let me share this with you. This is -- you see that black flag on the top of that building? Folks, ominous symbol of an ISIS victory here. One of two black flags actually spotted by news crews raised on buildings high above Kobani. We've been talking about Kobani for at least the past couple of days. This is that key border city straddling the Turkish/Syrian border. And for three weeks, in fact, this has been the flashpoint of this deadly assault by ISIS militants.

And today Kurdish fighters are seemingly losing the battle in the southeastern part of the city. Local sources inside of Kobani say, while Kurdish forces are repelling many of their advances, ISIS has one major battle tool that the Kurds do not have, and that is this, night vision. It is just after 9:00 p.m. right now in Kobani. That is when darkness falls. And ISIS may very well strike again.

Our senior international correspondent Arwa Damon is working this one for us near Kobani with the very latest.

Arwa.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, Kobani right behind us, continuously bombarded. We've been hearing the sounds of clashes throughout the entire day. Earlier this morning, ISIS hoisting its flag upon one of the buildings. ISIS fighters managing to entrench themselves in the southeastern part of Kobani. Also, another flag later on in the day hoisted on a strategic hilltop. That Kurdish fighting force inside doing really what it is that they can, but those calls for assistance only getting even more desperate.

People we're talking to on both sides of the border fail to understand how it is that the U.S. led coalition let this situation escalate to this degree. Let it become this dire. They believe that there were targets of opportunity that the coalition could have taken advantage of when ISIS fighters were completely exposed as they advanced on Kobani.

Kobani's strategic for ISIS and, should they capture it, they would have a direct logistical supply line to their strong hold of Raqqa. But when you speak to people, what they talk about is the humanitarian catastrophe that this has caused. Many of those on both sides of the border feel that the U.S. led coalition took upon a sense of responsibility when they began launching strikes against ISIS, but that they have failed in stopping the terrorist organization's advance.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, Arwa Damon, thank you. We'll be in close contact with you, talking to you next hour there on the Syrian/Turkish border.

But now to the fight against ISIS in Iraq because what we're hearing now is that mortars are hitting the capital city of Baghdad right now. This is happening just a day after U.S. Central Command begun using this risky new tactic. The U.S. added Apache helicopters to the fight. U.S. Central Command say the Apaches hit ISIS targets approaching Fallujah, which is less than an hour's drive from Baghdad. Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr will have all the updates on the usage of the Apache helicopters, the Apache offensive. But first to you, Ben Wedeman, for us live in Baghdad, what do you see?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Brooke, what we heard about an hour and a half ago were alarms going off in the so- called green zone or international zone where the U.S. embassy is located, warning people in English and Arabic to take cover. Subsequently, we learned that three or four mortars landed in that area. No word at this point about any damage or casualties.

The same thing essentially happened last Wednesday with similar effect. This is something relatively new in recent years for the international zone. Until recently, there weren't any mortars falling in that area. Now, we have spoken to people who do believe that this could be, in fact, Shia militias that are doing -- firing these mortars, as they did several years ago because they believe that the United States involvement in Iraq now is simply a pretext for the United States to become more involved again in Iraqi affairs.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Ben, stay with me. Barbara, just pivoting to you. I think we should take a half step back and just remind everyone the effect, the role of an Apache helicopter and why I'm reading some are considering this offensive risky.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, where Ben is in Baghdad, drive about -- Ben knows this better than anybody -- drive about an hour or so west and you are deep in Anbar province, Fallujah, Ramadi, the areas where so many Americans fought and died over the years. Why put the Apaches back into the sky, because that clearly is going to put those helicopter pilots at risk? It is because ISIS is so much on the move in Anbar province about an hour west of Baghdad.

Over the weekend, Iraqi forces again coming under attack by ISIS and the U.S. moved using the Apaches at low altitude to try and push ISIS fighters back. Because they were so close together, we're told, they needed some precision ability and it's the helicopter at a lower altitude than a fighter jet that allows them to do that. But the big picture here is the concern, as Ben knows better than anybody, he's seen it firsthand, that ISIS is about to take over in Anbar province, that places like Fallujah and Ramadi are at serious risk due to the ISIS advance and that the Iraqi forces are still really unable to fight back.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Ben, we've been talking for months and months about how Baghdad just seemed -- that it couldn't be possible. That ISIS could take Baghdad. But since we're hearing all of this about Anbar province and, as Barbara said, you know this area so incredibly well, how vulnerable is it now truly?

WEDEMAN: Well, we were actually out on the western perimeter, defensive perimeter of Baghdad today, which is about 20 miles from where I am standing to the west in Anbar province. There it seems that the Iraqi army is doing a fairly good job at holding the line, but they say ISIS really isn't focusing on that defensive perimeter. They're focusing, as Barbara mentioned, on towns like Hep (ph), which it managed to occupy, on Fallujah, on Ramadi, basically to control an entire stretch of more than 400 miles of the Euphrates River from Fallujah, which is only about an hour's drive from here, from Fallujah up to the border with Syria, into Syria, up to the Turkish border. Almost -- more than 400 miles. That seems to be their goal.

It's important to stress, however, ISIS has really only been successful in taking over areas and holding them where there's a sympathetic largely Sunni population. Baghdad is largely Shia and it is far from sympathetic. In fact, it's very antagonistic to ISIS. So we do know from Iraqi military and security sources that ISIS has sleeper cells inside Baghdad. There are sympathizers among the Sunni population for ISIS, but by and large Baghdad would probably be far too much for ISIS to try to even attempt to swallow at this point.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: Good. Let's hope it stays that way. Ben Wedeman and Barbara Starr, thank you both very much.

Coming up next, did the man who brought Ebola to the United States come to America to reunite with a long lost love? Pretty fascinating new details about his journey overseas to Dallas.

Plus, we are now getting word Thomas Eric Duncan is getting experimental treatment as I speak, but it's not ZMapp. We'll tell you what it is.

And breaking news in the hunt for this fugitive who has evaded the feds for weeks and weeks. Crews now have found this note, this piece of paper. Here what Eric Frein (ph) allegedly wrote. Stay right here. You're watching CNN.

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BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The very first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States is being given this experimental drug. This we've just learned within the past hour or so. But I can tell you that the hospital in Dallas says this drug being given to Thomas Eric Duncan is not the same one that was given to the American doctor and that American aid worker who recovered from Ebola at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

What we are learning definitely a bit more as far as the reasons that drew Duncan to America. It was, in fact, love. He was days into a happy reunion with a woman he hadn't seen in 16 years. The mother of his child, right? But the reunion, as you now know, was short lived because Duncan fell deathly ill practically here fewer than a week after arriving in the U.S. from Liberia where he had tried to help actually this pregnant woman back in Liberia who they were trying to get into a hospital. They turned her away. She later died from Ebola. Ebola, the virus that's killed more than 2,000 people in Liberia.

So let me go straight to Dallas to bring in "New York Times" correspondent Kevin Sack, who wrote just this phenomenal piece in "The Times" this morning with all kinds of details.

So, Kevin, really a pleasure to have you on.

KEVIN SACK, "NEW YORK TIMES" CORRESPONDENT: Yes, thanks, Brooke. It's good to be here.

BALDWIN: Before we get to all the details from your piece, first, I mean you're there at the hospital. I understand his - this -- Duncan's condition worsened over the weekend to critical. What are you hearing right now?

SACK: Yes, well that's pretty much what we know at this point. You know, he was serious on Saturday and they downgraded him to critical that day and it stayed the same through the day. The hospital put out a statement about an hour ago where they affirmed that he was still in fact critical. And, obviously, it's very concerning that he's taken a turn for the worse. We don't know a whole lot about exactly what that means and what prompted the change in status but, obviously, it's never a good thing when you're going in the wrong direction.

BALDWIN: So, as you discovered and as we've sort of been learning over the last couple of days, Duncan was coming to the U.S. for this woman and the mother of his child.

SACK: You know, it's a really interesting story and I think it's probably not an unusual story for people like him from West Africa. You know, there was a horrible civil war in Liberia that started in 1989 and ran all the way through 2003. There was a respite there for a couple of years in the middle of it. But the impact was that a huge number of people were killed, I think estimated to be at least 5 percent of the population, and literally hundreds of thousands, I think more than 700,000 people fled as refugees. And that included both Mr. Duncan and this woman, Louise Trove (ph). They both wound up in a refugee camp in the Ivory Coast where they met and developed this relationship and had a child.

Something happened between them. We're not exactly clear. Ms. Trove came to the United States in 1998. Mr. Duncan wound up going with his family for a while to Ghana and then eventually back to Liberia where he stayed until last -- two weeks ago when he came to the United States.

BALDWIN: So he's coming back to see this woman and who knows what they were hoping their future would look like, right? And this child, who's now, as you write, in college. But then there's that whole issue about how he apparently lied multiple times about, you know, his contact with Ebola patients trying to leave Liberia. And you talked to several of those family members in that piece, Kevin. What did they tell you about that?

SACK: Well, they obviously feel that he did not lie. They feel that he, you know, he did not know what his condition was when he got on the plane. And I think we ought to be cautious about that. I don't know that we actually know what he knew and what he didn't know. It certainly would seem, given the context over there, you would think it would be natural that he would either know or at least suspect that the woman that he was helping to care for, who died, you know, on the day that they took her to the hospital and then back home when she was rejected by the hospital, it would seem that he would know that -- or suspect at least that she might have had Ebola. But we can't say for sure that that's the case. And so it's hard to know exactly what his culpability was when he answered no on the form at the airport, when he was asked whether he had been around anybody with Ebola and the same thing when he got to the hospital here and was asked if he had had any exposure to anybody who had been ill.

BALDWIN: Let's flash forward to where you are in Dallas. So he goes to this apartment. And those who took care of him, you know, this girlfriend, Louise, sounds like her daughter and everything he had touched. I mean he had been quite violently ill, as you detail. I mean, you know, down to mattresses and towels and sheets. He was all over.

SACK: Right. Well, his - Miss Trove's daughter, who was the one who actually called 911 and summoned the ambulance that Sunday morning, said that he told her that he had been to the bathroom seven times that night and so, obviously, he was not well. He was strong enough to get down the stairs of the apartment and into the ambulance. That's a second-floor apartment. But he did not seem to her very well and, obviously, didn't have a lot of energy. I think it was all he could do to get downstairs.

But, yes, the amazing thing, obviously, is that these folks stayed in that apartment for five days after it was clear that it had been contaminated.

BALDWIN: As health officials are waiting to see, and here's hoping they see nothing as far as any symptoms they could be showing, my final question for you is ZMapp. You know, ZMapp is this experimental drug that's really in scarce supply that may have saved those other Americans lives. We know that Louise had talked to Anderson Cooper saying she had gotten upset that Mr. Duncan had yet to receive ZMapp, though we confirmed today through a federal official that he is receiving some kind of experimental treatment. Have you talked to the family about that? What can you share about that?

SACK: Yes, I have not spoken to the family about it but the one thing I can say is that Dr. Frieden, the director of the CDC, said yesterday that in fact there are no doses of ZMapp available. I don't exactly know why that is. Obviously it is experimental and the manufacturing process, I'm sure, is difficult and long, but the doses just don't exist for him.

BALDWIN: Folks are trying to chip in, talking to someone from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last week. They have given 50 million hoping that they will be able to help produce these vaccines soon.

Kevin Sack with "The New York Times" reporting out of Dallas, thank you so much for your time. I truly appreciate it.

And if you are sitting there and you're watching all of our coverage here on CNN about these patients, about the infection, about Ebola, you can help. Go to our Impact Your World site. That's at cnn.com/impact. And there you'll find multiple organizations CNN has vetted that are helping fight this deadly disease and how you can help. Again, cnn.com/impact.

Coming up next here on CNN, there is new evidence in that Pennsylvania hunt for a man accused of killing a state trooper and wounding another. We're now learning about this note allegedly written by Eric Frein himself. Find out what police say he wrote in this note next.

Also ahead, Vice President Joe Biden apologizing to Turkey and the UAE after comments he made suggested the Middle Eastern allies may be partly to blame for the strengthening of ISIS. But what was the vice president saying? Was it true? We'll discuss. Stay here.

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BALDWIN: A possible, underline possible, break in the hunt for a man wanted in the shooting of two Pennsylvania state troopers. This note that investigators found in the woods may have been written by fugitive Eric Frein. Looks like a possible confession here. The 31 year old is wanted in the deadly September 12th ambush out the state police barrack in the Pocono Mountains. CNN's Alexandra Field joins me with more on this, beginning with the note.

What's in the note?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: OK, there's such a high level of detail in this note.

BALDWIN: Really?

FIELD: It's a handwritten letter. And that's why sources believe that it was written by the suspect, Eric Frein. It talks about everything from the shooting of those two Pennsylvania state police officers --

BALDWIN: Totally saying I did it?

FIELD: To these people. They're reading it as a confession. Yes, this outlines the details of that shooting, suggesting someone with very intimate knowledge. So they are looking at this as, hey, this letter confesses the crime. And then it talks about how he managed to escape, stashing different items in the woods. How he has managed to hide out in those woods and evade police officers because, Brooke, you and I have been talking for weeks now about the fact that there are literally hundreds of officers in those woods surrounding him.

BALDWIN: And they keep spotting him. Where is he?

FIELD: That's the question.

BALDWIN: OK.

FIELD: Look, they haven't changed the search area.

BALDWIN: Yes.

FIELD: They've been telling us for at least three weeks now that they are confident that Frein is still in this area, in this very small, wooded search area. So, yes, why can't they close in on him given the fact that there are so many reported sightings of this suspect? Well, they tell us a couple of factors are involved here. One, the abundance of caution. You've got to make really certain in a case like this that you are looking at the suspect and not a fellow law enforcement colleague when you close in on someone. They're also saying that, you know, they keep continuing to talk about the terrain out there, the woods. They say just yesterday there was a reported sighting. They had canines tracking the suspect, they believe, for some 200 yards and then they got to a creek, lost the scent in the water. Went to another crossing, lost the scent again. It's pretty unbelievable to a lot of people who are sitting back and watching, but, you know, I've got to say that law enforcement officers have been out there using the full extent of their resources.

BALDWIN: We know they have. We know they have. Hopefully soon enough you'll be up here and say, they got him. Alexandra, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Just ahead, Vice President Joe Biden causing a stir with an off the cuff remark about countries the U.S. needs to help fight ISIS. He is apologizing. But is the vice president right? Is he accurate? Is he just telling the hard truth? We'll discuss that. Plus, a female ISIS fighter defects and talks to CNN about what she saw from the inside. Don't miss that.

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