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Should Ebola Health Workers Be Quarantined?; Soldiers Monitored for Ebola after Liberia Trip; American Hostages Beaten, Tortured by ISIS; Ebola Victim's Fiancee Facing New Hurdles

Aired October 27, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN.

The public outcry from quarantined nurse Kaci Hickox sparked the debate about mandatory quarantines, who should get them, when, if at all. Claims of being mistreated at the New Jersey hospital where she was isolated ignite concerns for the scores of health care workers already overseas, trying to help, really ground zero in West Africa.

Joining me from Sierra Leone, one of those nations, is Dr. Oliver Johnson with Doctors without Borders. He's been on the front lines treating these Ebola patients and has been so gracious talking to me in the past weeks and months.

Oliver, welcome back. I have to assume that, you know, over the proverbial water cooler there in Sierra Leone that you and your colleagues have already been talking about this case here in the States of this, you know, nurse who was quarantined, furious over it.

What are you and your colleagues saying?

DR. OLIVER JOHNSON, KING'S SIERRA LEONE PARTNERSHIP: So, one correction. I'm not actually with Doctors without Borders, I'm with King's Sierra Leone Partnership. But we work a lot with the MSF, Doctors without Borders. It's a small community here of health workers from around the world, trying to tackle this outbreak.

And I think all of us share a concern that these sort of measures being put in place in Europe and U.S. are not proportionate and actually undermine our efforts to get this outbreak under control.

What we're saying it seems crazy to us. If we want people in the U.S. and Britain and Europe and Britain to be safe, we have to stop the outbreak here in West Africa as soon as possible. That means getting doctors and nurses and logisticians and others as quickly as possible out from our countries over to West Africa to help out like the King's Team is here in Freetown to try to end the transmission.

When we hear things like, we'll be held, incarcerated when we get back, it's a surprise to us. It's a surprise because, you know, it makes it harder for us, but also it's not based in good evidence.

So I think what we want to make sure is that we don't give any risks back home when we return. That's why we're very open to the sorts interventions that the Centers for Disease Control and public health bodies in Europe have suggested, and that's measuring our temperature twice a day, making sure we're within a traveling distance of an isolation unit, reporting in to public health officials.

And yet all the evidence we have is that those sorts of measures are absolutely sufficient and more than adequate in completely containing any risk. And what we've seen with the MSF doctor, Dr. Craig, is that this system seems to works well.

He noticed he was unwell, he contacted officials. He's been quickly isolated. So I guess our message is let's stick with what the evidence is, let's stick with what we know works and that's the proportionate response.

Otherwise we're at risk of actually making the situation worse and then putting our lives and our families back in Europe and U.S. at more risk.

BALDWIN: I'm listening. I'm hanging onto your every word. And then I know that you are saying you are open to these precautions. You bring up the CDC. I'm glad you did.

We actually just got a quick note saying -- this is according to the White House that we'll be hearing from CDC officials shortly, I don't know exactly when but shortly, because they plan on announcing new guidelines, Oliver, new guidelines on workers such as yourself eventually returning from West Africa.

What those changes are, I don't know.

But what would you recommend?

JOHNSON: I think what we got to do is hold our nerve and keep to the evidence and I think what I would recommend is that we look to the scientists and the doctors and the public health officials to tell us what's going to keep us safe. And let's start with their guidance.

Ebola is a thing of legend, of myth, I think for all of us. All of us in our operatings have seen films and heard of this disease and it strikes fear into the heart of any community where it appears, be it Freetown, New York or Dallas. When we face those kind of fears I think we have told onto our nerve and look to science and look to the doctors and follow their advice.

So I guess what I would say is whatever the guidance is, whatever Centers for Disease Control comes up with, I think politicians and state officials would do well to heed that advice. That would have the right balance in keeping us safe and allowing health workers like me to be out here in the field and what we need is as much support as possible.

Where I am in Freetown the situation is continuing to deteriorate. The biggest thing we need, if we're going to get this under control, is more doctors, more nurses out here and we've got to do everything we can to encourage them and everything we can to applaud people like Dr. Craig, when they come back, and recognize them as the heroes, that they are putting their lives at risk not just to help people in Africa, but to keep us back in New York and London safe in our homes.

BALDWIN: I cannot commend you enough for the work you are doing as we said on the front lines and to repeat what Dr. Fauci of the NIH said, if we want to contain and control what's happening here in the States, we have to send people to where you are in West Africa.

Oliver Johnson, thank you. Thank you, thank you. We'll talk again soon, I really hope. My best to you.

It's not just health care workers at the center of this Ebola quarantine debate.

CNN has learned that the Joint Chiefs of Staff are debating whether all U.S. troops returning from West Africa should be placed in a mandatory 21-day quarantine. This news as an Army major general and 10 other Army personnel are being held in, quote-unquote, "controlled monitoring" in Italy after returning from a trip to Liberia.

So, to the Pentagon we go, to our correspondent there, Barbara Starr.

Barbara, do we know, do we have a clue when the Pentagon could actually make a decision about this potential mandatory quarantine for the troops?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: We don't know at this point, Brooke. What we're told is the Joint Chiefs behind closed doors have been debating this for some time and may move ahead with recommending to Secretary Hagel that mandatory 21-day quarantine for all troops returning. Let's start with General Williams.

Major General Darrell Williams, two-star, just returned over the weekend to his base in Italy, from 30 days in West Africa with his team, beginning to set up operations there. And they flew straight into a quarantine. The Pentagon is calling it monitoring, they are calling it enhanced monitoring, but you and I certainly in common language would know it as quarantine.

All of the team and several dozen more that are expected to land as soon as this evening in Italy back from Africa are in a separate facility now, behind closed doors for 21 days. They will have their temperature monitored. They can't go home or see their families at this point. But none of them have symptoms. We're told everybody thankfully is asymptomatic.

That they are doing this quarantine out of an abundance of caution. So this is a very difficult situation. Putting the military right up against, in opposition if you will, to what the White House wants to see and to what much of the medical community is saying, which is if someone -- if you do not have Ebola symptoms, you don't need to be quarantined, you're not sick, you can't transmit it.

But going ahead and doing with it these military personnel. If they go across the board there are already nearly 900 personnel in West Africa and it could go as high as 4,000 -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Question of practicality and precaution. Keep your ear to the ground, as we know you will. Let us know what the Pentagon decides. Barbara Starr, thank you very much.

Coming up she's the woman who shared that apartment with Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who was forced into a quarantine. Remember he was the patient who passed away.

Just this weekend she went to church for the first time since that ordeal and members of her church welcoming her with open arms, offering to get her back on her feet. We'll talk to her pastor coming up.

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BALDWIN (voice-over): Also ahead, horrifying details of how ISIS captives like James Foley were treated before ultimately being executed -- absolutely brutal. A stunning and phenomenal piece of journalism from "The New York Times." We'll talk to the writer next.

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BALDWIN: It has been a mere two months since America came to grips with the savage cruelty of the terror group ISIS. It was August 19th when ISIS revealed its murder of journalist James Foley through this video release on YouTube. Foley was held for nearly two years at various ISIS sites in Syria before being beheaded.

Two weeks after the Foley beheading ISIS announced that American Steven Sotloff had suffered the same fate. Since then ISIS has beheaded two Britons and now the group is threatening to kill American aid worker Abdul Rahman Kassig, who has converted to Islam since his abduction last October.

Those death scenes in the desert, as chilling as they are, they represent the culmination of months and months of brutality suffered at the hands of ISIS.

That part of the story came out over this past weekend through painstaking reporting by this correspondent, Rukmini Callimachi of "The New York Times." Her piece in "The Times" documents beatings, torture and uncertainty suffered by 23 ISIS hostages, including those we mentioned.

So, Rukmini, thank you so much for coming on. It's a phenomenal read. It's a tough read. But the details are stunning. So if I may, let me begin there.

My first question is how, how did you manage to piece this story together, how they were kidnapped, how they were held down to the proof of life questions?

How did you get that?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": It started almost by mistake. I was in Europe this past summer in June, working on a different story. I was researching the use of ransoms by Al Qaeda groups and one of the former ISIS hostages agreed to see me. I knew that James Foley was missing and I had heard sort of through

the grapevine that he was being held by ISIS, but what I did not know and what was shocking to me is that there were at least 23 foreigners, almost all of them European, who were held with Foley in this particular network of jails in Aleppo and in Raqqa.

And this hostage who spoke to me became my guide. He first of all outlined the moment when each of them was taken, how they were taken and then how ISIS systematically divided them up into groups based on which nationalities they thought would negotiate with them first.

They started with the Spanish; they moved through the French. They were able to get the ransoms that they wanted. And the Americans and the Brits, because they're the only two nationalities that do not pay, suffered the worst.

BALDWIN: Can you just -- I've read it, but for people who haven't, the details you had in the piece of the time that James Foley and the others were held hostage down to the secret Santa he orchestrated out of trash, to the questions he was asked, such as who cried at your brother's wedding?

CALLIMACHI: Right. For the first year of his captivity James Foley, who was already being held with several other people, there were no demands for Foley and for the others. And it's still unclear to us why it is that they waited so long to make the first demands.

Starting last November, the hostages were taken out of their jail one by one and were asked a series of proof of life questions.

It was at this moment that witnesses tell us that Foley returned to the jail cell and collapsed in tears because he realized that the questions were so personal, just like the one you mentioned, who cried at your brother's wedding, that he knew that finally his family would know he was alive and finally he assumed his government would begin negotiating for his release.

BALDWIN: He ultimately realized that his fate would not be rescue as you allude to in part of the piece, and I want to get to that in just a moment. You mentioned one of the hostages was giving you information.

You also mentioned to me the most crucial information appears to come from this Belgian man, this former ISIS militant the group had turned against because they suspected and he was a spy.

What did you get from him?

CALLIMACHI: Jejoen Bontinck is -- he's 19 now and he was 18 when he ran away from home. He's one of these thousands of European men, most of them very young, who became radicalized. He's a convert to Islam and got drawn in by whatever promises ISIS makes. He traveled to Aleppo.

And he was initially stationed as essentially a foot soldier in the same jail where James Foley and John Cantlie at that point were being held.

A text message from his worried dad came on his cell phone and his colleagues managed to see it and the text message was such that they thought, oh, he might run away and he might be a spy.

And so at that point they threw him in the same jail as James Foley, where he spent three weeks and is, as far as I know, the only witness to the early months of Foley's captivity.

He's returned to Antwerp. He's now one of 46 young men from Belgium that are facing terror charges for belonging to a terror organization.

He's interesting, though, because I think he recognizes that he made a mistake and that this was not the path that he should be on and he has worked very hard to try to bring information to the Foley family about where James was and he agreed to speak to me for the first time this September.

BALDWIN: Incredible. The detail you had about the hostages being happy is overstating it, but being relieved when they saw someone being beaten and bloodied, because that meant at least they weren't waterboarded, the details of this imaginary Risk game, this scribbling in the paper of chess and as I mentioned before that, that Secret Santa that James Foley, you know, exchanged gifts with his family every Christmas.

But in the end, as far as his fate, let me just loop back around to that. Eventually he became convinced he would die in captivity.

What convinced him of that final question?

CALLIMACHI: You know, I think James Foley stayed hopeful up until the very end, but there's a letter that is smuggled out, I believe in June, by a fellow hostage who was being released, and this person gives it to the Foley family and they published the letter. The letter is full of expressions of love.

And also moments of hope where he's describing, look, it's getting better, we're getting more food than before. I read this letter very carefully and there's just a sentence in there where he throws in instructions to his parents on how to disburse the money in his bank account. So, you know, it foreshadows that he might have known that he would not come out alive.

What is so tragic to me, is in their very difficult captivity, a majority of the European and Western hostages converted to Islam. Some of them did it -- all of them, I think, did it initially understand duress. Some did it as a way to save themselves.

James Foley and I think, Peter Kassig, who now called Abdullah Rahman, and who's the next person -- who is in line to be killed next, I think they were the two that were truly sincere in their new faith, and Jejoen Bontinck, who is this young Belgian jihadist, who was held with him, told me that the moment that he saw the execution video, the thing that shocked him is seeing James Foley without a beard. Foley had a beard up until the moment of his death, because he had

become a Muslim, and ISIS -- I feel it shows the great hypocrisy of this group. They converted him, but in the moment of his death, they presented him to us as a kafir, an infidel, you know, just somebody who is not of the faith.

BALDWIN: Rukmini Callimachi, the piece is "Horror Before the Beheadings." It's a chilling read, a tough read but a must read. Thank you so much for your journalism. I appreciate it. We'll be right back.

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BALDWIN: For 21 days they were considered the untouchables, the family of Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan. Louise Troh, her son and two nephews were quarantined until it was certain that they did not have this deadly virus. They were forced to stay indoors even as they mourned Duncan's death.

For the first time since this ordeal began, Troh and her family attended church just yesterday, receiving a worm welcome from the church family, who stuck by them through the toughest times.

Joining me from Dallas, Pastor George Mason, head of the church Louise Troh attends. He actually had to break the tough news to her that Mr. Duncan had passed away.

Pastor, welcome.

SENIOR PASTOR GEORGE MASON, WILSHIRE BAPTIST CHURCH: Thank you very much, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Everything I've read, sir, she's had a tough time finding a place to live because of the stigma that's Ebola. But I know you and your church members embraced her with open arms yesterday.

How is she doing?

MASON: Well, I think yesterday morning she was doing great. She was feeling loved. She came to church with some of her children, grandchildren, nieces. Went to her Bible study class. They had a special brunch and welcomed her back. Then in worship we had probably nearly 1,000 people, who were ready to say hello to her and welcome her back.

BALDWIN: Pastor, was there any convincing that you needed to do among anyone who has been hesitant, just out of not understanding what Ebola really is?

MASON: Mostly that's been true of people outside the church. We have tried to keep our communication lines open at the church and tell the church everything they needed to know on a regular basis.

And I think they were prepared, they were more eager to move toward her than away from her so we really didn't experience that yesterday. It was a great reunion. BALDWIN: That's wonderful. I know a lot of her items, her possessions had to be burned, so I know you and church members are helping her get those items.

What about, final question, is she having luck finding a home?

MASON: We really are hopeful today she's found a place that she would like to be able to lease and I have a call into the landlord to see if we're going to be able to make that deal. The church is trying to backstop her in this and we're doing everything we can to make this easy for someone actually to rent to her.

But so far we've not had any luck finding a place. We're hoping that changes real soon.

BALDWIN: We all hope it changes. Pastor George Mason from Dallas, thank you so much, sir. I really appreciate it. Best of luck to all of you.

Coming up next, I will speak with a doctor who is about to go to West Africa to help. He wants to help. This is ground zero for this Ebola crisis. What he told his wife when he decided to go. Stay with me.

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