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What's At Stake In Obama's Asia Trip; Freed Americans Back Home; ISIS Leader Wounded In Airstrike; ISIS Video Jokes About Sex Trafficking; Does the President Like Politics?; Berlin Wall After 25 Years

Aired November 09, 2014 - 19:00   ET

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

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow. Thanks so much for joining me this Sunday.

President Obama arrives in China within the next hour or so, kicking off a week-long trip to Asia. He left Washington late last night for this Asia Pacific Economic Summit as well as the G-20 summit in Australia -- a big week ahead for the president.

Let's head straight to Beijing. It is early Monday morning. Our senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta is standing by there. What is most important about this trip -- Jim?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Poppy, what is most important about this trip, White House officials say, is that the President wants to get back to this rebalance with Asia. The President wants to really sort of refocus and reshape his foreign policy for the last two years of office on all things Asia.

That has been going on inside this administration. It's been a priority for the President over the last few years. And so wants to get back to doing that. This is his second trip to Asia this year. You recall earlier this year he was in Japan and Korea and Malaysia. So he's getting back to business on this front.

But he's got a lot on his plate, not to mention, Poppy, the release of those American prisoners in North Korea which, of course, the President will be asked about during this trip to Asia. He also is dealing with the escalation of the military operation in Iraq and Syria with respect to ISIS -- the President doubling the number of troops heading into that region to serve as American military advisers to Iraqi and Kurdish forces. So that is something the President will be talking about with reporters at some point during this trip.

We should point out during this visit to Beijing, the President will be meeting with Chinese president Xi. They'll be talking about a whole range of human rights and cyber security issues. The President may find his own freedoms curtailed here we're told by White House officials. He may not be able to have a news conference with U.S. reporters here on Chinese soil because of reservations and opposition voiced by leaders here in Beijing. So that will be something interesting to watch. But Poppy, one thing that the President is doing on this trip is getting away from Washington after that really difficult midterm election. That happened earlier this week. The President was asked about that earlier today on CBS' "Face the Nation". The President acknowledged he has to do a better job of selling his policies to the American people. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've got to reach out to the other side and where possible, persuade. And I think there are times, there's no doubt about it, where, you know, I think we have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we're trying to do and why this is the right direction. So there is a failure of politics there that we've got to improve on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: So the President will be here in China for a couple of days. He'll have talks with some Chinese President Xi as well as giving a speech here at the APEC Summit, then it's on to Myanmar, also known as Burma, for an ASEAN Economic Summit. There he'll wrap up this one- week-long trip in Australia at the tail end of this week Poppy where the President will be meeting with leaders of the G-20.

And the big highlight of that visit, of course, may be whether or not he comes face to face and has some serious talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. As you know, with the recent escalation in eastern Ukraine, those two leaders also have a lot to discuss -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Right. And that's what I just was going to ask you about, Jim, do we have any indication from the White House? Is anything planned for any sort of informal, formal meeting with Vladimir Putin?

ACOSTA: Well, they're saying at this point there will not be a formal bilateral sit-down meeting but they are expected to potentially meet on the sidelines in Australia. The White House officials are not saying one way or the other whether or not that will happen, but they're sort of telling us the same thing earlier this summer when the President and Putin met during the D-Day celebrations in France in June. We may see something similar there where they're pulled aside, they have a few moments to chat and they go over some of these very, very pressing issues -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Yes. We'll see. We'll be watching. You'll be traveling with the President the whole time. Jim Acosta, live for us Monday morning in Beijing. Thanks, Jim.

Freed Americans Kenneth Bae and Matthew Miller are returning. They are reuniting. They're home free on American soil reuniting with their family after returning home from detention in North Korea.

We know that Bae and his family enjoyed pizza. Look at that great picture. That happened last night when he landed about midnight Eastern time. That was his first meal back on American soil. There's the photo. He's with his best friend who came from Oregon to Seattle to be with him. Bae's sister described those first hours back home.

TERRI CHUNG, SISTER OF KENNETH BAE: It's been good. Just to be in -- just to be with each other and to be a family. You know, just to hang out and to see glimpses of the old Kenneth. He's a guy who just loves to hang out with friends and some friends had driven up from Oregon to be there for him last night. And he was just so happy to see them. And to be just hanging out and telling stories. That's what he does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Bae and miller returned home late last night. They were held in North Korean; Bae was held there for two years, Miller for seven months before they were just suddenly at a moments notice released.

President Obama scored a victory with the North Korea prisoners' release but it comes after a very tough week -- brutal midterm election losses for his party as he prepares to meet with leaders in Asia.

Let's examine Obama's standing on the world stage. I want to bring back in Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer. What do you make of what the President is going to try to accomplish on this trip to Asia given what he's been through domestically?

ZELIZER: Well, foreign policy is one area that Congress doesn't have as much influence right now. So he's looking for diplomatic breakthroughs. He's looking for economic alliances and developments. All of this is post-midterm activity that he can do without Capitol Hill.

HARLOW: When you talk about his legacy --

ZELIZER: Yes.

HARLOW: -- do you believe that he has a better shot of making a big, bold move on the international stage in diplomacy than making a big, bold move here with the Republican-led congress?

ZELIZER: Well, the model is Ronald Reagan lost the senate in 1986 and then comes the breakthrough with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. That's what we remember him for ending the Cold War. So he's hoping for that. The trick is it's hard to control things that go on overseas and so you're depending on --

HARLOW: It's hard to control things that go on here.

ZELIZER: It is. But it's even more unpredictable. So you're looking for the breakthrough. You're looking for the opportunity. But it can have a big impact. Reagan is an incredible model on that front.

HARLOW: We heard Secretary of State John Kerry say recently that the single most important strategic relationship for the United States is with China.

ZELIZER: Well, China is the economic power right now, and we've been talking about that for a while. It's different than the Soviet Union was during the Cold War when it was really about military power. And we haven't quite figured out what our foreign policy should be on this front. So, if the Obama administration can make some positive development on this front, it would be huge.

HARLOW: What would be seen as a significant positive development with China? Because we saw how angry the Chinese got this year in terms of the indictments of companies that the U.S. said, look, you've been cyber hacking, et cetera. What would be significant and positive on that front?

ZELIZER: Economic security and political liberty. Meaning healing some of these economic tensions that have been developing so we can have more functional economic ties with the country. But at the same time, the U.S. wants to create pressure for internal political reforms.

HARLOW: Interestingly, one of the few areas where you do have Republicans agreeing with the President is on a trade pact.

ZELIZER: Absolutely. But a lot of Democrats are nervous about this. And Senate Democrats in particular are warning they're not in favor of some of the fast-track trade legislation that they're proposing. So the question is does Obama form an alliance with his opponents over his own party? Many Democrats would be upset after losing so many seats during his presidency to then see that happen.

HARLOW: So from Asia, he's going to Australia for the G-20. Vladimir Putin will be there, as we just heard from our Jim Acosta. What do you think should happen between the two leaders there, if anything?

ZELIZER: Well, look, he's trying to resolve the tensions with Russia obviously in a nonmilitary fashion and so negotiations and trying to convince Putin to back off.

HARLOW: They should sit down.

ZELIZER: Well, probably. And that's probably what Obama wants to do. That is his nature. He believes in the negotiations going back to Reagan; that is ultimately how he brought the Cold War tensions to an end. If you can't talk to your adversary, sometimes you can't resolve the tension other than through force.

HARLOW: Yes. We'll be watching. It's going to be a fascinating trip. Julian Zelizer from Princeton -- thank you.

ZELIZER: Thank you.

HARLOW: Good to be with you this Sunday evening.

Well, the leader of ISIS has had a target on his back for a long time, but if the U.S. can take him out, how much does that really hurt and cripple ISIS? Could another ruthless leader just step in and fill his shoes? That's a big unknown.

Also today in Berlin, Germany partied like it was 1989 -- today, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall; the moment when courageous Germans stood up to the communists and ripped apart that symbol of the Cold War.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Now, the U.S.-led military operation against ISIS. Here is what we know. The Pentagon confirmed airstrikes were used against what was believed to be a gathering of ISIS leaders. Here's what we don't know -- whether this man was hurt or possibly killed. His name, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, he is the leader of ISIS. Iraqi officials say his convoy was hit. U.S. military sources so far not confirming that report.

Let's talk about it with retired army Lieutenant Colonel James Reese; also Bob Baer, our intelligence and security analyst here at CNN. Colonel Reese, let me begin with you. So far al Baghdadi's fate is unclear. We just don't know. The U.S. intelligence community is not confirming anything. But if he were injured or dead, what would that mean? Let's -- if he were killed, what would that mean to ISIS overall? Is it significant, or is he really just a figurehead?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE, ARMY (RET.): Well, Poppy, yes, the bottom line is if he is killed, it is significant. It's significant because he's a very dynamic leader. He has great command and control.

Here's the other thing most people don't realize. We caught him in 2004. He went to prison in Iraq and then he was released in 2009, you know, when they did the prisoner exchange. So he was one of Zarqawi's lieutenants. He's a bad guy. Yes, they can put someone else in, but if he's dead, that's great for everybody.

HARLOW: Bob?

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYUST: You know what concerns me about Iraq and Syria is we're talking about an year that goes from Damascus to Mosul, all the way down into Baghdad. What we're facing there is what I call a Sunni insurrection. We have a lot of these people that aren't in ISIS but they're still supporting ISIS. It's an uneasy alliance. The question is, how do we address those problems?

Yes, we can get rid of Baghdadi. Yes, he's dynamic. Yes, he's a charismatic figure. His Arabic, as I've said, is beautiful. He's a religious figure. But what do you do about the rest of the people in that region? Because they're not going to roll over and put up with the government in Damascus which is a Shiite government, or the Shiite government in Baghdad and unless you address those underlying problems, you can't get through this war quickly.

HARLOW: Well, and Bob, I want you to take a listen quickly, then respond on the other side to what President Obama said in a new interview about what the U.S. is willing to do and not do within Syria. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Now, obviously, our priority is to go after ISIL, and so what we have said is that we are not engaging in a military action against the Syrian regime. We are going after ISIL facilities and personnel who are using Syria as a safe haven in service of our strategy in Iraq. We do want to see a political settlement inside of Syria. That's a long-term proposition. We can't solve that militarily, nor are we trying to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Bob, your reaction. Is that the right strategy? He's saying that's just not something we can do militarily. That's long term and that's political, diplomatic, not done with the military force.

BAER: Well, here's my problem is that we've left Syria alone since 2011 when the so-called Arab Spring started and it's just become more and more chaotic. That chaos has spread into Lebanon. It's spread into Yemen. It's even spread into Saudi Arabia with murders last week. There were five Shia killed. So how fast does this chaos move? Does it threaten the gulf? I don't know.

I'll let Colonel Reese correct me, when the military is on the ground, the intelligence gets a lot better. When they got soldiers on the ground, they can carry out targeted killings and the rest of it. And they did their job in Anbar Province in 2007. The question is, are we willing to commit troops to let them do their job? Advisers, alone -- I don't think is going to do it.

HARLOW: Colonel Reese, do you agree with Bob on that point?

REESE: I do. Bob's got a lot of experience in this region as do I. We both look at it a little bit differently. You know, the one thing I believe we have now is we're starting to gain the foundational logic back that we lost in 2011 when we left. One of the things that will happen here with this influx of 1,500 soldiers is that we will start now with our interagency and our IC community, our intel community brethren that out there, start to build some of these operation and fusion centers out in al Anbar, up in Taji, to really help the Iraqis put together this man-hunting type of capability and to look at the order of battle and how to help the Iraqis start to get ready for a counteroffensive here hopefully in the next couple months.

HARLOW: Yes. We'll certainly be watching. Thank you both for your expertise this evening. Good to have you on.

REESE: Thanks.

HARLOW: It seems like there's no atrocity ISIS is not capable of. The group of butchers -- the group, as you know, butchers, murders, tortures its enemies, brainwashes the innocent. Wait until you hear how they mock their victims, joking about them as sex slaves. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Well since ISIS emerged and took control over a large area of Syria and Iraq, there have been horrifying reports about what happens to many of the women and girls who are taken captive. A chilling new video has surfaced. It seems to confirm many of the worst fears. Our Linda Kincaid has the story. A warning first, a lot of what these ISIS fighters say and do is shocking and incredibly disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDA KINCAID, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The ruthlessness of ISIS' tactics is ever present -- beheadings, mass murder. But their inhumanity is felt not only by those who have been killed, but also by those who survive and end up in ISIS hands.

This recent video posted to social media sites purports to show a group of ISIS fighters joking, or maybe not joking, about the buying and selling of Yazidi women and girls. CNN cannot verify the authenticity of this disturbing video.

Leila Taylor (ph) has worked directly with Yazidi with Human Rights Watch. She says regardless whether or not the trading actually occurred the conversation is telling.

LEILA TAYLOR, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: These men refer to one women's teeth, for example, let's check her teeth before we buy her. Another comes in and makes a comment that your Yazidi woman is dead. Now, it's not clear if this is a joke. It's not clear if there really is a Yazidi woman in another place, in another room who's been killed. These are shocking, shocking conversations. And whether the actual sale took place on that particular day or not, it shows just how far this group will go.

KINCAID: The Yazidi, a religious minority, have long been marginalized and are a frequent target of ISIS fighters. Women and girls are among the most vulnerable. They're kidnapped by ISIS for many reasons -- sometimes for no reason at all.

TAYLOR: We have heard story after story of women and girls being sold for all kinds of atrocious reasons. We heard stories of sexual slavery. We heard stories of forced marriage. We heard stories of sexual violence and of forced religious conversion. Many of the victims were children.

KINCAID: One escaped Yazidi girl sat down with CNN's Ivan Watson.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They came to the room and looked around at the girls and if they liked one, they chose her and took her. If the girls cried and didn't want to leave, they beat the girl. The guy who chose me was 70 years old.

KINCAID: The girls who escape face a very long road to recovery, and the world is faced with a brutality that must be stopped.

Linda Kincaid, CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Thank you for that report, Linda. It is unbelievable. Let's bring in Bob Baer, our CNN intelligence and security analyst, to talk about this. Bob, first of all, does this surprise you at all? It is beyond the pail. I know that a lot of people say nothing that ISIS does can surprise them. But this?

BAER: Well, Poppy, it surprises me because this is -- this behavior is pre-Islamic -- the beheadings, the taking of slaves. It doesn't accord with the Koran which protects minorities.

HARLOW: Right.

BAER: And this idea that you can just define people as pagans or falling away from Islam and do anything you want is not in the tradition of Islam. The chaos in that part of the world, by the way, it stretches to Nigeria with Boko Haram and Mali and other parts of Africa.

HARLOW: Exactly.

BAER: It's truly shocking. I've never seen this in my 40 years in the Middle East. This is just -- I can't believe this happened, frankly.

HARLOW: You make such an important point and also the point that this isn't just ISIS. Boko Haram the same thing -- torturing, kidnapping, hundreds of young girls -- why, though, do you think that ISIS advertising this? Why put this on social media? Does it actually help them gain followers?

BAER: It doesn't, but this is a form of ethnic cleansing, a purification. They think they have to completely purify their region, the caliphate, which also involves in destroying, for instance Sufi (ph) tombs and the rest of it. Anything they define as un-Islamic, whether it's a church, a mosque, anything that they don't like, they will simply tear it down.

So they go after people, they go after architecture. They have this bizarre interpretation of the Koran which is not accepted anywhere. It's just -- like I said, this is a brutality we have not seen since 5th century.

HARLOW: So what do you credit, then, their ability to gain so much territory and their ability to gain so many fellow fighters? Not only internally within Iraq and Syria, but from the West?

BAER: It's simple -- the chaos that's in this part of the region in Syria and Iraq. When -- it's this default to an imaginary religion which we can't understand. Why people do this, you'd have to ask a psychologist. But the longer this Arab Spring continues to fail and the chaos spreads, it's moving into Yemen now, and the Gulf, the more violence, random violence we're going to see like this. It's almost certain.

HARLOW: Do you think that this shows that we should be pushing to have more U.N. peacekeepers on the ground? Or is the situation just far too volatile for them to be there?

BAER: Well, I think the Arabs should get on board. So far they haven't. I know they've joined this coalition. I mean, they really -- it's the Muslims, the Arabs, not just the Iranians that have to come together and put an end to this. Having outsiders do it alone like the United States or the United Nations isn't going to do it. It's going to aggravate things I think for at least the time being. But if we can get the rest of Muslims to turn on them, it might solve it.

HARLOW: Yes, we have seen some success in the coalition coming together. So we'll see if we can see more on that. Bob Baer, good to be with you tonight, thanks.

Coming up, it has been a tough week for the president -- beaten handily in the midterms, slammed for relying too much on his inner circle.

We're going to talk to an expert who knows the White House inside and out about all of it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Welcome back. I'm Poppy Harlow, in New York.

President Obama came up mostly empty this week in the political campaign and faces a lot of unfinished business with Capitol Hill soon to be firmly in Republican hands. CNN senior political analyst David Gergen joins me now. Thanks for being here, David. Appreciate it.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Poppy, thanks.

HARLOW: I know it's been a long week for all of us, especially all of you covering politics. Even after six years in office, there's a lot of talk about whether the president really likes to roll up his sleeves and do the bargaining, the selling, the horse trading that is required to get things done in Washington. And he was asked a fascinating question in an interview on CBS this morning, bluntly asked, do you like politics? Do you like politicians? Do you like this job? Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I love this job, and here's, I think, a fair statement. If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you had to have liked politics in order to get into this office. I wasn't born into politics, and I wasn't encouraged to go into politics. I got into politics because I believed I could make a difference, and I would not have been successful and would not be sitting at this desk every day if I didn't love politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: David Gergen, you've advised four presidents. You have followed this president very closely. What do you make of it? Does he like politics? Does he like this job?

GERGEN: Well, Poppy, in that interview today with Bob Schaffer on the 60th anniversary of "Face the Nation," the president made a distinction between campaigning and governing. There's no question that he enjoys the politics of campaigning and he is very good at it. You know, he inspired the country way back in his first campaign and mesmerized a lot of people.

But, you know, the politics of governing is something that seems foreign to him or almost alien to him. He enjoys it. He's willing to make the call when he has to cut the deal at the last minute, but he's not - he's been refrain from building relationships which are so important to how this town works. And it's the relationship on the golf course or the relationship, you know, like a Lyndon Johnson used to call Everett Dirksen who was the head of the Republican Party almost every day at 5:00 to talk for half an hour. The opposition leader called almost every day at 5:00.

Barack Obama and with many Democrats of his own party, leading senators will tell you, that they've been here over the six years they've heard from him twice or three times maybe. That does not build relationships and has left not just the Republicans distrustful, but a growing number of Democrats are clamoring for a change of personality, changing the way he does business.

HARLOW: There are some who have said that if this doesn't change the president could end his second term the most isolated U.S. president since Nixon. If you were advising him, officially, David Gergen, what would your recommendation be?

GERGEN: Well, I do think you have to give the president credit on this point. The economy - the American economy now is the most impressive in the industrialized world. And the president deserves some credit for that, as does the Federal Reserve, and the country really hasn't picked up on it yet. Voters are still pretty glum about the economy.

And I think in foreign policy, I hope (INAUDIBLE) campaign against ISIS, so vital to us all. Having said that, are there things he needs to do? Yes. He now embraces the idea that he's entered the fourth quarter of the presidency. He's a clutch player. He needs to step up his game. He really needs to push hard with his team.

Secondly, he needs to hit the reset button on policies and personnel. The policy issue he's built a box up for himself now is over immigration. Says he wants to do it unilaterally, wants to move forward. Republicans think he's spitting in their eye. You know, it's really, I think, ill advised to move forward with an executive order as he plans to do.

But if he pulls back now, from what he says he plans to do, then he looks weak. So either way, he's sort of boxed himself in which is terribly unfortunate, but I think that overall, he has to show he got a message from the voters that they wanted a change, of course. A recalibration of the course. Not a major dramatic change, but a change. He's just rejecting that.

HARLOW: And we heard him say "I hear you" the day after the midterms. Let me ask you to respond to this. Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan writes in the "Wall Street Journal" "It's as if Mr. Obama doesn't think he has to work with others, he only has to be right. I think Mr. Obama sees himself as a centrist because he often resists the pressures of the leftward edge of his base, therefore in his imagination he is in the middle, the center." What do you make of that, David?

GERGEN: I think that's a - I thought Peggy's column was pegged at pretty well. You know, and I - I didn't disagree with that. There are a number of people who are calling for, you know, the heads of, you know, Valerie Jarrett, who is a very close friend of the president, or Susan Rice who's a national security adviser, I think in the case of Valerie Jarrett, it's important to understand - some years ago I had a conversation with the leading biographer of Abraham Lincoln, David Herbert Donald.

I asked him what's the most important thing a president needs? He said, a friend. A friend in the White House. I think Valerie serves that role. The issue for the president is to expand his circle. So you keep Valerie Jarrett. She may not have the same portfolio, but you keep Valerie Jarrett, keep the key people you really trust, but you have to bring in some fresh blood here to make this work better than it does.

HARLOW: We'll watch, we'll see if the change happens. David Gergen, good to be with you this evening.

GERGEN: Thank you. Good to be with you.

HARLOW: For 28 years the Berlin wall cut the city in two. Today that city celebrated 25 years without it. There were fireworks, thousands of balloons. An absolutely beautiful celebration.

Our reporter, Fred Pleitgen, experienced this divided city firsthand, himself, growing up there with his family. Since one of the people of the communist regime feared the most was his father. This fascinating story, straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Images and memories came flooding back to Berlin today as the city and the world commemorated the Berlin Wall being torn down piece by piece. Fireworks and music marked this 25th anniversary. Thousands of people gathered around the city's iconic Brandenburg Gate. And look at this. 8,000 glowing balloons released into the night sky. Representing where the Berlin Wall used to stand.

So, imagine being spied on, harassed, hated, simply for your job and where you live. This was life in Germany in the early 1980s. For CNN correspondent Fred Pleitgen and his family. And now 25 years after East and West Berlin united again, and the wall was ripped down, Fredrik and his father went back to see how far their city has come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A drive through the (INAUDIBLE) Berlin is like a journey back in time for me.

(on camera): My dad was a correspondent for West German TV ARD in East Berlin and we lived right here on this street.

(voice-over): Fritz Pleitgen ran the bureau in East Berlin from 1977 until 1982. One of the people the communist regime feared most.

FRITZ PLEITGEN, FMR. ARD BUREAU CHIEF: It was war of airwaves. Even more than a military war. Because there was competition between East Germany and West Germany.

PLEITGEN: We went back to our old house together. To talk about the old days that I can barely remember, but that were among the most challenging of his career.

This video was provided to CNN by the West German Broadcasting Company. It shows my dad and his crew getting harassed by East German agents while trying to interview the author and opposition figure, Stephan Hime in 1979.

FRITZ PLEITGEN: They wanted to stop our contacts with the East German population. That was a nightmare. That it could be an alliance of West German correspondents with the people of East Germany.

PLEITGEN: Many who talked to western media were jailed. The reporters constantly observed.

On videos like this one, the East German secret police showed their spying methods. They did the same to us. Their code name for my father was "the tiger."

FRITZ PLEITGEN: They broke in to our flat, but also in our office they took pictures and sometimes they wanted to show me, I got the impression, well, I'm observed.

PLEITGEN: Imagine trying to raise a family first with three and later with four children in that kind of environment. What was family life like? To me it was always - it seemed very nice, but I'm sure to you and especially mom if wasn't that great.

FRITZ PLEITGEN: Yes, it wasn't too easy for your mother. She had always real problems with the border guards, and she was not ready to talk to them smiling because she hated their questions.

PLEITGEN: But our family story also shows how far Germany has come since the fall of the wall. Those ruins behind us on this family picture from 1980 look like this today.

FRITZ PLEITGEN: This was the most desolate square in whole Europe. It was lost. And now it has changed into the most beautiful square of Germany.

PLEITGEN: And the western reporters so dreaded by the communist leaders, played their part making Germany's peaceful unification possible.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Berlin.

(END VIDEOTAPE) HARLOW: That was a fascinating report. Fred, thank you for that.

On this night that was so historic, 25 years ago, did you know this? Opening of the gates was actually something of an accident. We're going to explain the back story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: 25 years later only very small pieces of the wall that divided East and West Berlin remain, but the images of the concrete and the barbed wire being torn down still bring a chill to many.

So what prompted it to be torn down in the first place? Why did it happen when it did? Let's talk about that with the man who knows it all very well, Jeffrey Engel, he's SMU's presidential history director and author of "The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989." Thank you for joining us from Dallas this evening, sir. Appreciate it.

JEFFREY ENGEL, SMU'S PRESIDENTIAL HISTORY DIRECTOR: Hi, good to talk to you.

HARLOW: You say this is fascinating, you sent these - you know, the three things that you think a lot of people don't talk about when we talk about a historic anniversary like this. First, why this wall came down when it did. That it was kind of an accident.

ENGEL: Well, the actual evening was in fact an accident, it really demonstrates that small events, individual events with in great tectonic change can have a great effect. East Germany was suffering under great pressure to reform, there was lots of protests in the streets. Thousands of East German citizens that were leading through Hungary to get into Austria and into the West. And the regime felt it had to do something.

Consequently, they had one of their spokesmen announce they were going to relax restrictions and that anybody could go West if they can get the proper papers. Well, he bungled the announcement and he essentially said, anybody can go west.

HARLOW: Right.

ENGEL: And people heard that and began gathering at the wall.

HARLOW: Yes, and that - amazing to think that a mix up of a few words could lead to this and this timing. Also though, there were a lot of other political factors, diplomacy going on behind the scenes and in public that led to this, Tienanmen Square, you think played a very big role?

ENGEL: It played a tremendous role for all sides. The East Germans essentially saw Tienanmen Square in many ways as a model for how to use crowd control as Eric Conner (ph), East Germany's leader put it. The rest of the world, the Soviets and Americans and the western Europeans were terrified when they saw crowds gather in Berlin. When they saw crowds gather in Lipzig. They were terrified that the East Germans were going to essentially pull a Chinese solution and essentially use force to put down the crowd. Consequently, President Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Helmut Kohl, all the leaders at the time worked behind the scenes to try to ensure as well as they could that East Germany knew there would be consequences for violence and consequently they should violence at a minimum.

HARLOW: And on that point, working behind the scenes, let's talk specifically about President H.W. Bush. When you look at his role, the way he was perceived by the public around this and what he was doing behind the scenes, big difference.

ENGEL: Well Bush realized quite early that the more he said, the more trouble could arise, if he went out and said these people in the streets are right, they need to seize their government, violence could ensue. If he said the governments were bad, violence could ensue. Consequently, he wanted to say as little as possible. In fact the evening that the wall fell, reporters were invited into the office to watch him, essentially watch it on TV and he had very little to say.

One of the reporters, CBS Leslie Stahl (ph) actually said to him "Mr. President, you don't seem very elated," and he said "Well, I'm just not that emotional a guy." The truth is we now know from diaries, we now know from his phone calls, he was very emotional and very excited, but he knew the more he said, the more trouble could arise. He wanted to do as little as publicly as possible while working behind the scenes.

HARLOW: Wow. Thank you for the perspective, it's really good to go over that and hear all of that now 25 years later. What a day. Thank you so much, good have you.

ENGEL: Good to talk to you, thank you.

HARLOW: Coming up next, brrr, look at all that snow, do you have your parkas, your scarves, your hats, your gloves ready? If not, you better get them out. Arctic onslaught, on its way. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Two days from now much of Canada and the continental United States will be in the grips of freezing temperatures. It's because of a monster typhoon in the Pacific that had moved north into the Bering Sea. Our meteorologist Tom Sater is tracking it all for us from the CNN weather center in Atlanta. No, I'm not ready for this. No thank you.

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Not for the first one of the year. It's OK to get a nice cold snap now and then, but this one could be dangerous, Poppy, because if we get a foot in parts of Minnesota, even into Wisconsin, there's still enough leaves on the trees that'll snap some branches, power could be out. Pipes could burst, cold air.

This was typhoon Nuri. It was a super typhoon, equivalent to that of a category five hurricane. Missed Japan, they had enough of them this year, but it moved right into the Bering Sea. (INAUDIBLE) here's Alaska, get into Russia, it's going to sit and spin for a while. Because it's going to spin, it's actually going to draw polar air from the Arctic into the U.S.. It would be one thing if it continues to move, it would be all right.

As this spins, watch this - it's going to be warmer in parts of Alaska than it will be in the continental U.S.. This is just wave number one. After a mild weekend, we'll get another cold snap next weekend, but as this continues to plunge into the southern plains of Texas, slides eastward, may not be as bad on the east coast, it will hit parts of the south. But it's really going to be the northern tier states. It's going to be the great lakes.

Ahead of the cold comes snow. Some of this could create white out conditions, you get into the bad lands and across areas of the Dakotas, but again the heaviest amounts of snow upwards to a foot, even a little bit of a breeze with that, heavy snow on some of the leaves, I think we will have power outages, warnings (INAUDIBLE) stretch from western Montana (INAUDIBLE) Michigan.

It's just amazing to think though, it will be warmer in some areas. The average in Anchorage is 29, it will be 10 degrees warmer while Minneapolis averages 45, they're looking at 25. Chicago, 34 when your average is 52. These are highs. And it's going to get worse, 15 in Rapid City. The real cold air comes in on Wednesday and Thursday, teens in Rapid City. Chicago, you're in the 30s, maybe getting up to the freezing mark, and then Poppy, we do it again next week. A little too early.

HARLOW: Cannot wait though, I think the good people of Minneapolis, my hometown can do with it.

SATER: I think they can, good point.

HARLOW: Looking forward to it. Tom, good to be with you tonight. Thanks so much.

We got a lot ahead for you on CNN tonight, 9:00 Eastern Time, a brand new "Parts Unknown," Anthony Bourdain returns to his roots where he got his start as a chef. Then at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, "This is Life with Lisa Ling," here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LISA LING, CNN HOST (voice-over): This is 27-year-old Brianna from Malibu, California. And she's about to do something she's always dreamed of. How are you feeling, Brianna?

BRIANNA: I'm nervous.

LING: Yes.

BRIANNA: Definitely nervous.

LING: Brianna's come to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to ride a steer for the very first time. She's competing in a rodeo. But this isn't just any rodeo. This is gay rodeo. It's a place that promises to challenge expectations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My mission is not to go beat everybody who (INAUDIBLE).

LING: And buck stereotypes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right. That's tonight, 10:00 p.m. Eastern, right now, "ANTHONY BOURDAIN: PARTS UNKNOWN." Thanks for joining me. Have a good night.