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Dallas Ebola Update; Mandatory Quarantine; ISIS Gains Ground; Iraq Army Abandons Base; Media and Cops Targets

Aired October 13, 2014 - 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: Wolf, thank you so much.

Great to see all of you on this Monday afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Less than a week after Liberian Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan died inside that Dallas hospital, one of the nurses who treated him is infected with this deadly virus. Here's what we can tell you. This nurse works at Texas Health Presbyterian. Her case is the first known transmission in the U.S. Hospital officials say she had a number of contacts with Duncan and that she followed all the proper protocols.

The CDC, however, is not so certain. It believes there was some kind of breach, although it cannot pinpoint that. That was the phraseology from that news conference yesterday. A source with direct knowledge of the case tells CNN that CDC detectives talked to the nurse several times and found inconsistencies about the kinds of protective gear she wore, how she put this gear on, how she removed it.

But let me share this with you. Just this morning, CDC director Tom Frieden clarified his comments about this so-called protocol breach that a number of people were saying was absolutely blaming the nurses who are treating these Ebola patients. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: What we need to do is all take responsibility for improving the safety of those on the front lines. I feel awful that a healthcare worker became infected in the care of an Ebola patient. She was there trying to help the first patient survive and now she has become infected. All of us have to work together to do whatever is possible to reduce the risk that any other healthcare worker becomes infected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: We'll talk to a nurse live here in just a couple of minutes because their perspective is so, so important. They're the ones who are helping some of these patients and they have definitely responded vehemently to what Tom Frieden said yesterday.

Also coming out of the CDC today, a bit of good news. Before Thomas Eric Duncan was hospitalized, he might have had contact with nearly 50 people. Here's what we know now. Those people, not a single one is showing Ebola symptoms. So that is some great news. Let me bring in our CNN senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen,

who's following all of this for us from Dallas. But let's get back to the Dr. Frieden comments. I mean what was that today, would you - would you say that's a clarification? Cleaning up what he said yesterday? Because that ticked a lot of people off.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It certainly did. I think that it was perceived as somehow blaming the nurse when in fact the nurse is the hero here. I mean she and other healthcare workers are so brave to take care of Ebola patients and they shouldn't be blamed for any breach in protocol. It's a systems issue, it's not an individual issue.

So the question has to be asked, are the CDC guidelines clear enough? Have they been conveyed to hospitals in the right way? And are hospitals instructing their healthcare workers how to do these processes and are they giving them the right supervision? I have to say that in something that Dr. Frieden said was a little bit disturbing. He said that, you know, they're now telling this hospital where I'm at right now to appoint a supervise whose job it is, is to supervise the safety of these workers. And I've got to tell you, Brooke, I've been here for weeks. I assumed that had already been done. And it sounds like they haven't --

BALDWIN: News flash. Not so much.

COHEN: Specifically doing that. Right, exactly. So it's disturbing that it sounds like there wasn't someone who was appointed to do that.

You know, another aspect of this is that other hospitals, hospitals in Africa and hospitals here for other diseases, have a buddy system. Buddy systems are a proven way of preventing infection. When you go in, when you put on that gear, your buddy watches you. When you do the procedure with the infectious patient, your buddy is right there coaching you through it, making sure that you're not doing anything wrong. Your buddy watches you as you take the gear off. And your buddy isn't just a lay person. Your buddy's another healthcare worker.

BALDWIN: Right.

COHEN: And, you know, it has -- we don't know that they were doing that here.

BALDWIN: So there are assumptions and then there are realities and now there are fixes. And I know that the CDC is telling these hospitals, think Ebola. What does that mean, Elizabeth?

COHEN: What that means is that when someone comes in with symptoms of Ebola, which include a fever, abdominal pain, that, you know, ordinarily when you hear hoof beats, you think horses. You don't think zebras, right? But they're thinking - saying, you know what, maybe you should think about zebras. You need to ask, has this patient had a travel history to West Africa? Here at the hospital when they did that, when Thomas Eric Duncan came in initially back in September, but then somehow that information got lost and they kind of forgot somehow that he had had that travel history. So they're saying, think about Ebola when a patient comes in with this set of symptoms.

BALDWIN: Elizabeth Cohen in Dallas for us for weeks. Thank you so much for your reporting.

And then there's the other -- so many layers of this story, right? So then you have this NBC News crew, they are on mandatory lockdown here after Dr. Nancy Snyderman, she is the network's chief medical correspondent, she reportedly violated this voluntary quarantine because of the Ebola virus. Dr. Snyderman's crew was covering the Ebola crisis in Liberia when its cameraman started showing symptoms of this virus. You know his story. He's now since been flown to this Omaha, Nebraska, hospital where he's currently being treated.

Now, the rest of this crew, including Snyderman, who you see here in this "Nightly News" report, you know, they all agreed to stay home, avoid contact with others, check their temperatures for 21 days. However, Snyderman reportedly chose to disregard that voluntary isolation. So for more on that I turn to Brian Stelter, our senior media correspondent and host of "Reliable Sources."

Why?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I wish I knew. It is a mystery. It's a baffling thing because she and her colleagues at NBC came on television repeatedly and said they were going to self- quarantine. And, by the way, they're not the only reporters who have done that. Other reporters who have been over in these infected countries in West Africa have also stayed home just to be safe. One of the reasons why you stay home is not just for your own health, it's also for people around you in your community.

BALDWIN: Of course.

STELTER: You don't want to make people nervous in your community. It's not as if people in your community are going to get sick from Ebola. It's about the nerves that it creates. So the fact that she was seen out and about in her local community in New Jersey is baffling.

BALDWIN: I mean anyone - and just talking to Sanjay Gupta who's been over there -- if anyone knows the realities and the ramifications of this virus, it's those people who are going to Africa to cover it.

STELTER: Right. It's a medical correspondent. And we've got to give her and her team credit. I'm glad they were there doing the reporting -

BALDWIN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

STELTER: Because we need journalists there. But it's strange that she hasn't explained what happened. This apparently happened last Thursday. What I don't understand is why she hasn't made any comments. I have tried to reach out to her repeatedly.

BALDWIN: She hasn't said anything.

STELTER: NBC - she hasn't said anything. Now NBC did put out a statement, and I can read part of it.

BALDWIN: OK.

STELTER: They said they're not going to comment on any individual case due to privacy concerns. But then they went on to say that the team was deemed to be low risk. They've been doing all the right things by taking their temperatures. Now here's the statement. It says, "upon returning from Liberia, our team was deemed to be low risk and agreed to follow guidelines set by local health authorities. We fully support those guidelines and continue to expect that they will be followed." I think they were sending a message to Dr. Nancy right there. "Our team are all well with normal temperatures, which they check multiple times a day, and they are also in daily contact with local health officials."

I think NBC News, in that statement, was trying to say to Dr. Nancy and the rest of the crew, stay home. Let's not have this happen again. Because, clearly, it's embarrassing to the network to have their health correspondent seemingly violating the self-quarantine rules.

BALDWIN: Not good PR. Not good safe medical practices.

STELTER: Yes, we might look back one day and say this is all an overreaction. There's no need for her to stay at home. But because of the concerns that people have right now, because of the hysteria there seems to be in some communities, it seems to be better safe than sorry.

BALDWIN: Uh-huh. Brian Stelter, thank you so much.

STELTER: Thanks.

BALDWIN: Also just getting some news into CNN, moving from what we're learning about Ebola and to Ferguson, Missouri, now. As many as 10 people, including author and activist Dr. Cornell West, have been detained at a march in Ferguson. The march is called Moral Monday. This is part of the ongoing protest surrounding the police shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown and the relationship between the public and the police. So there you have it, Cornell West, that photograph, detained.

Coming up next, breaking news in the war against ISIS. Bombs dropped in the key city of Kobani there on the Turkish-Syrian border. This as the U.S. was revealing that terrorists nearly made it to the airport in Baghdad, asking, prompting, once again, that question, is the capital vulnerable? We'll discuss that.

Plus, Iraqi security forces have bailed from an important base near Baghdad, allowing ISIS to take over. This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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

In the fight against ISIS, the bad guys are winning. That is coming from Senator John McCain, who spoke on CNN's "State of the Union."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: First of all, they're winning and we're not and the Iraqis are not winning. The Peshmerga, the Kurds are not winning. And there's a lot of aspects of this but there has to be a fundamental reevaluation of what we're doing because we are not - we're not degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Want you to take a look at this map here with me and you'll see ISIS appears to be on the verge of taking over Anbar province, which is just next there to the west of Baghdad. We'll dig into its advance there in just a moment.

But first then to the north, to Kobani, Syria, this is right by the Turkish border. Despite this massive plume of smoke, this firepower that we believe is from U.S. air strikes, ISIS is gaining ground. The Kurds, though, they're running out of food, running out of ammunition and, quite honestly, running out of hope. It has gotten to the point that Senator McCain is conceding the worst will happen for those who remain in this border city.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I don't think that it's possible to protect those civilians who are basically trapped within Kobani and I also agree there will be a massacre.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now from the Syrian/Turkish border is our own Nick Paton Walsh.

And, Nick, I know you and your crew have reported seeing, what, at least five massive blasts today. What is happening there right now?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're at dark at this stage. As we left, there were two further explosions after. Since calmed the coalition behind the air strikes released a statement saying that today and Sunday there had been a total of seven air strikes around Kobani targeting ISIS positions. That could bring us to about a total of nine here.

What's important, Brooke, is there seems to be a pretty substantial fight going for official crossing into Turkey and what's potentially bad news for the Kurds is the positions in which those air strikes landed started to the east of the town but continue sort of moving slightly toward the west. That suggests that they were targeting ISIS and ISIS was moving toward Kurdish positions. Bad news for them, day after day, as you mentioned, their supplies surely getting scarcer.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: What about, Nick, these reports, these tweets that we're seeing from YPG (ph), that's the Kurdish army, saying that chemical weapons, Nick, chemical weapons are being used against its people? What have you seen?

WALSH: That's a very big accusation to make and frankly I think a logic test would suggest if ISIS had weapons of that nature, they might save them, quote, for a more sort of discerned occasion to attack. Perhaps a more high profile target.

Yes, we have seen some explosions that seemed to push white plumes of smoke into the air, but, let's face it, ISIS have overrun a lot of Iraqi army bases, a lot of Syrian bases. There's a whole different arrange of substances that could be behind that, even conventional explosives potentially too. Lots of things, even white phosphorous may be behind those kind of things. So a lot of conflicts like that, particularly when a side is under very desperate circumstances you hear claims of chemical weapons. It just takes an awful lot to be true, to be absolutely sure that that's the truth.

Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Thank you for that clarification. Nick Paton Walsh for us. After 9:00 at night your time along that Turkish-Syrian border.

And while these Kurds are fighting, house to house battles to save Kobani in Syria, you have the Iraqi military abandoning one of its final military bases in Anbar province, Iraq. So it leaves just one base under Iraqi control in that province. One local official says ISIS now has 80 percent of Anbar.

And you see the geography. The province sits precariously close to Baghdad. President Obama's top military adviser revealed on ABC News exactly how close to Baghdad's airport ISIS actually got.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: This is the - a case where you're not going to wait until they're climbing over the wall. They were within, you know, 20 or 25 kilometers where --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Of Baghdad airport?

DEMPSEY: Sure. And had they overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the airport. So we're not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Twenty kilometers, roughly 15.5 miles.

With me now, CNN military analyst, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.

General, welcome. And we'll get to that startling number in just a moment. But first, back to this, you know, bailing from this base. I mean what should -- what can, maybe is a better question, U.S. military leaders do to stop these Iraqi forces from leaving their bases, leaving their stations? Anything? LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, truthfully,

Brooke, I'd suggest that some of these comments about Iraqi military just throwing away their weapons and leaving their bases isn't quite accurate.

BALDWIN: How do you mean?

HERTLING: In fact there are some - yes, there are some indicators that some of the Iraqi forces and especially some of the newer units, the National Guard units in Anbar province, are fighting very hard. They're fighting a tough battle. It's sort of the same battle that was fought during the civil war of 2007 and '06 when the Sunni and the Shia were going hard against each other with al Qaeda pressing the issue. But there are a lot of fights going on. Hard fighting. We don't see what's going on in Anbar. We see what's going on in Kobani. But this is a tough fight. ISIS is gaining the upper hand in some cases, but it's not a one sided affair quite.

BALDWIN: OK. Then let me bring you, fast forward to these comments from General Dempsey because he said basically on Sunday, he said no circumstances has yet arisen that warranted recommending the limited use of American ground troops. Then he said, precisely quoting him, "there will be circumstances when the answer to that question will likely be yes." I mean, general, if we're talking about, you know, ISIS 15 miles from the airport, I want to know what those circumstances would be that would trigger those troops?

HERTLING: Well, I have a pretty good feel for what General Dempsey was attempting to say and what he was saying was, once it gets to the point where the Iraqi army, the Iraqi security forces has regained some of their balance, when they've gotten a new defense minister, when they've reinstituted some of their discipline, when they have new leaders in place and they are actually going on the offensive, which is the word he used and he used the example if they have to go on the offensive in Mosul, he foresaw a time when advisers would be embedded with lower level units, brigades and battalions. I can see that too.

But this isn't the time yet. We haven't reached that point yet. I think we continue to contribute at the operational centers, which we are doing. We are contributing to trying to get the Iraqi army stood back up and get a better logistics flow going. But it's difficult and, again, Brooke, I'd harken back to the same kind of experiences that were there in 2006 and 2007. It was dire during that time, just like it is dire now. But we're depending on the Sunni tribes in both the north and the west to consolidate and start fighting again and we're hoping for the Peshmerga in the north to continue their push against. It's all going to be difficult fighting.

BALDWIN: How realistic is the hope versus reality? Final question, general.

HERTLING: Well, it - yes. Right now it doesn't look good. But I'm not as object as Senator McCain is. I think there is the potential for the standing up of the tribes in Anbar province especially. They've got a tough fight now. They had their police chief, Major General Sadack (ph), killed in Anbar province and that's devastating to the people of that province.

We also have to be concerned ourselves with what we used to call Iraqi math. When they say when some of the province members are saying there's 8,000 of them coming at us, you multiply - or you divide that by about 10 and you've got about the right number. I'm not downplaying the threat. It's certainly hard out there. But we've got a lot of fighting to go and we can't do this in just a couple of weeks.

BALDWIN: Iraqi math, huh. General, do me a favor and stick around because we're going to talk about whether Baghdad is vulnerable to ISIS or not. That's coming up in just a few minutes.

Also ahead, the FBI is issuing this new warning that ISIS may be targeting police officers, may be targeting members of the media right here at home and the feds are revealing how they got that information.

Plus, one health official says it is concerning, they do not know how this Texas nurse got Ebola. We'll actually take a close look at the hazmat suit and whether it is vulnerable.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: ISIS is now targeting the media and police officers. The FBI is sending out this new warning, saying increased chatter in recent weeks on social media and extremists forums include calls by ISIS to target FBI investigators and other law enforcement personnel, as well as members of the news media. So joining me now, Kimberly Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst.

And, Kim, you have said just sort of always, historically, there has been an uptick in militant chatter any time a journalist is in the neighborhood, wherever in the world that may be.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I've got to say, it's partly -- we have our own selves to blame. When a journalist is attacked, we tend to cover it pretty intensively. But also when I used to cover the conflict inside Iraq, press officers would tell us that when a journalist went into a neighborhood, they could detect on radios and telephones an uptick in militant chatter. Hey, there's a media crew here. If we hit them now, you expand the attention and the focus. If you get it caught on camera, it spreads the terror. That's why they have their own camera teams often to capture some of their attacks to put online.

BALDWIN: I know people, you know, we've seen these horrendous beheading videos and many Americans have, obviously, been journalists. It's not like a lot of people are going to Syria for - it's either that or maybe a humanitarian mission. But I really think it is the power of the camera. Journalists are a prize, sadly.

DOZIER: Well, it's the power of the camera, but it's also the weird position that we're in as members of the media, balancing what is the function of telling the public what's going on on the ground and being their ambassadors on the ground, but also balancing that against trying not to be used as just another tool to expand terrorism. When you think about things like the news media's coverage of the FBI manhunt for Eric Frein. That's part of what could be driving the militants to think about attacking law enforcement as well. Look how we covered that wall to wall.

But part of that is serving the public interest. We need to let them know that there are authorities on the case and that there is someone dangerous out there. It's really like every time you put something on the air, that you have to weigh that.

BALDWIN: Eric Frein, the person who's wanted for shooting and killing this Pennsylvania state trooper and also injuring someone else.

We also have the bulletin, it was also based on recent crackdowns on alleged ISIS members and sympathizers in the U.K. and Australia. What do you make of that?

DOZIER: Well, just the fact that there might be cells in those areas that want to strike back, that want to say, you didn't lock us down just by catching those one or two members. We have other capabilities. So that's one of those things that every time there's an arrest, the counterterrorism official look for the response. But I do have to say that in the FBI bulletin it said that this was not based on any specific warning, that this was just on a specific threat, just overall chatter.

BALDWIN: OK. Kimberly Dozier, thank you so much.

Meantime, nurses in America blasting the director of the CDC, saying he implied that it's the nurse's fault that she got Ebola in Dallas, Texas. Coming up next, we'll speak live with the head of one nurse's group and we'll hear her response.

Plus, can you get Ebola from touching a doorknob? How fast could it spread? I know a lot of you are talking about that. We've got the answers for you in a CNN original video, next.

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