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New Ebola Patient Arrives in the U.S.; Bill Cosby's Rape Allegations; More Troops in Iraq?; Mexican Mayor in Trouble for Missing 43 Students

Aired November 15, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow, live today in Atlanta. Thanks so much for joining me. This just in to CNN.

Reuters reporting that the latest Ebola patient to be brought from West Africa to the U.S. has landed in Nebraska for treatment. Dr. Martin Solia is a legal permanent U.S. resident from Sierra Leone. He lives in Maryland and he had returned to his native country to help treat patients suffering from Ebola there. He is said to be critically ill and will be treated at the bio containment unit at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha where they have successfully treated two other Ebola patients. Will have much more on that coming up.

We begin now with very serious accusations haunting one of America's most well-known comedians. Bill Cosby yet again facing the sexual assault allegation that surfaced nearly a decade ago. These allegations have been repeatedly denied by Cosby and began during an attempt to get some good press this week on twitter. His twitter account asked fans to take part in a caption contest but that backfired in a big way producing a slew of pictures on twitter like these dredging up more than a dozen allegations of rape.

We'll go straight to Alexandra Field who joins me from New York. Alex, you have been covering this very closely, and we also know that just in the last hour or so that his appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman" this week has been cancelled. Just sort of the latest repercussion of all of these allegations resurfacing.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Poppy. No explanation was given but we know that he was scheduled to appear on the show later this week. That date is now cancelled at the end of October. He was also scheduled to appear on "Queen Latifah Show," that was cancelled as well. But Bill Cosby did a schedule sit down interview with Scott Simon of NPR. It was reported earlier this week. He decided to do that interview, largely focusing on Cosby's art collection.

His wife sat at his side during the interview when Simon changed the line of questioning asking about these old allegations that had suddenly resurfaced, well, Bill Cosby said nothing. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT SIMON, NPR: This show, this question gives me no pleasure, Mr. Cosby, but there have been serious allegations raised about you in recent days. You're shaking your head no. I'm in the news business, I have to ask the question, do you have any response to those charges? Shaking your head no. There are people who love you that might like to hear from you about this. I want to give you the chance. All right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: No words from Bill Cosby on those questions. Several years ago several women came forward accusing Cosby of sexual assault. One of those women, Barbara Bowman - we should listen to that interview and here's what she had to say about Cosby's silence.

She says "I'm not surprised that Bill Cosby was speechless. He has met his maker. A simple shake of his head is implication of a man whose heart is heavily burdened with shame." Now Poppy, CNN cannot independently confirm any of the allegations against Bill Cosby but we do know that his attorneys have continued to deny these allegations through the years and right now they are not commenting on the resurfacing of these allegations.

HARLOW: And Alex, that was a lot of people scratching their heads, that Bill Cosby did not respond at all when the NPR reporter asked him three times, he had nothing to say. I also - you know, Barbara Bowman gave a series of interviews, one yesterday on CNN, talking about this and saying, the statute of limitations ran out on her. She can't prosecute Bill Cosby anymore even though the law has since changed, but that she is speaking out for other victims and being an advocate on all of this. But one thing that she did talk about is the fact that no one believed her. Her lawyers, her agent, no one believed her.

FIELD: Right. Poppy, put yourself in her shoes to a certain extent. She says that she was 17 years old. A young actress when she came to know Bill Cosby, who is famous as America's dad, a very well known and beloved comedian, but this very wholesome image. She says that he was her mentor and then she says that the assault began after she turned 18. But this was in the 1980s, around 1986, she first met him in 1985.

By 1989 she says she had summoned the courage to share her story. She says she went to an attorney but says that she was laughed out of the attorney's office. And she says that's just the struggle that she was confronting. Years later when another alleged victim filed a lawsuit claiming that Bill Cosby had raped her. That's when he heard from Bowman again and that's when she felt the need to step forward.

HARLOW: So a lot of outstanding questions. Will we hear from Bill Cosby and will prosecutors bring any charges in other cases? He's never been prosecuted. And also there's this reported TV show that he's working with NBC. What is going to happen to that? All right. Alex, we appreciate the reporting. Thank you so much.

Meantime, America's top military leader in Iraq on a surprise visit, General Martin Dempsey today meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Al Abadi also meeting with U.S. ambassador Stewart Jones and U.S. troops there. The U.S. is preparing to expand assistance to Iraqi forces as they continue to battle ISIS.

President Obama has increased the number of American non-combat forces in the country. Dempsey though has refused to rule out asking the president eventually, possibly to send ground troops into Iraq. Our Arwa Damon has more.

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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: America's top military had a surprise visit to Iraq, a clear indication of just how seriously Washington is taking this situation. General Martin Dempsey meeting with Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi. According to a statement by Al Abadi's office, the two spoke about progress being made so far by the Iraq security forces.

General Dempsey also then travelled on to Irbil, the capital of the autonomous region of Kyrgyzstan meeting with the prime minister there as well. Part of this next phase of the U.S.-led mission and coalition is to focus on training up security forces. 12 units. Part of the initial effort. Nine of them Iraqi army, three of them Kyshmyrga, that is the Kurdish (INAUDIBLE).

General Dempsey also speaking with America's military commanders on the ground, wanting to get an idea from them of exactly what it is they need to be able to move this mission forward.

General Dempsey is very aware of the situation on the ground having been the commander of the first armored division in the initial years of the war. And then moving on to head up America's effort to train and equip the Iraqi security forces.

This assessment is vital because part of the reason why ISIS was able to take over such great territory in Iraq is because of the U.S.' perhaps underestimation of their capabilities but also overestimation of the capacity and cohesiveness of the Iraqi security forces that America left behind. And that is not a mistake that the U.S. or the region can afford to see happen once again.

Arwa Damon, CNN, (INAUDIBLE) Turkey.

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HARLOW: Arwa, thank you for that. Also, a lot of focus on Ferguson, Missouri, right now, where an announcement can come at any time. The town officials fear could trigger another violent wave of protests. It's a grand jury deciding on whether to indict the police officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August. At least one protester in Ferguson tells us at CNN that he considers Brown's killing a, "modern day lynching."

We are seeing this weekend for the first time police station surveillance video showing officer Darren Wilson shortly after the shooting. A statement from Michael Brown's family says the video contradicts earlier reports that Wilson was badly injured during the incident.

Also new, this weekend, audio recordings of the police dispatcher from that day alerting Ferguson police about an alleged shoplifting and describing Michael Brown.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 25, it's going to be a black male in a white t- shirt running toward Quik Trip. He took a whole box of Swisher cigars.

UNIDENTIFED MALE: Black male, white t-shirt.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's affirmative. She said he just walked out of the store.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right. We're going to have more on that in a live report from Ferguson, coming up.

Also, Mexico, furious and devastated over the disappearance of 43 students. Now we have learned the former mayor of one town may be suspected to be at the center of this tragedy. He may have links to ruthless drug cartels. Much more on that straight ahead.

Also, Russia's economy quickly deteriorating, but the military there ramping up. How are the two connected? We're going to talk to an expert about that, straight ahead.

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HARLOW: An ex-mayor has been implicated in the disappearance and possible massacre of 43 college students in Mexico. The charges include attempted murder and CNN has learned that he's accused of also having drug cartel members on his payroll. Our Rosa Flores has more.

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ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Iguala City, they are dubbed the imperial couple for their exercise of power and influence in cartel territory. The power couple's throne came tumbling down when they became suspects in the disappearance of 43 students from a teacher's college who arrived in Iguala on September 26.

(INAUDIBLE) Our informant who very nonchalantly observed their surroundings and tipped off their bosses about what's going on, the major reportedly had cartel members on his payroll who after being arrested told authorities that the mayor paid them tens of thousands of dollars to be at his disposal.

On September 26th Alcones (ph) and police officers reported to local authorities the students' arrival in four buses, according to officials. Their arrival raised eyebrows. The mayor's wife was scheduled to deliver a speech outdoors, but the concern, this would be the backdrop. The aftermath of last year's destructive protest held in part by the students from the Teacher's College. (on camera): The word spread quickly and internal radio message ordering police to stop or confront the students. The official word, it was coming from A5. The mayor's assigned radio code.

(voice-over): The mayor's posse, part of the more than 70 arrested suspected, including police officers and cartel members, told investigators they assumed the students would sabotage the event. The mayor's wife was hosting it. Officials say the students were ambushed in the evening by police, shots were fired and six people were killed, three of them students.

Whether the mayor ordered the shooting remains unclear. And what happens next has only added to the mystery. The remaining 43 students were turned over by the cops to a cartel and never seen since.

(on camera): Here's where a possible misunderstanding took a sinister turn. What started as an idea by the mayor to possibly protect his wife's event, officials say, turned into a false battle between two rival gangs. Authorities say the leader of the cartel confessed that on that ill-fated day, one of his cronies told him that the confrontation here in Iguala was with another cartel.

The leader thought he was defending his territory from an enemy but instead it was students in the cross hairs.

Rosa Flores, CNN, in Mexico's southern state of Querello.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: And Rosa and CNN will continue following that story very closely.

Thank you for that, Rosa.

Meantime, falling oil prices are putting a huge dent in Russia's bottom line. And western sanctions are also taking a toll, but Vladimir Putin has found a new economic friend in China. What does that mean for the U.S.? We'll talk about that, straight ahead.

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HARLOW: President Obama today took on China and Russia in remarks to the G20 summit in Australia vowing to increase support for Asian nations to the big nations in his words "do not believe small." His remarks were widely interpreted as a reference to China's territorial disputes with neighbors like Vietnam and Japan as well as Russia's annexation of Crimea and its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.

Also in an image you will only see in Australia. What could be our video of the day. World leaders with koalas. That's a close-up of Putin and the koala. It kind of looks like a koala is giving Putin a hard time.

All right. Falling gas prices here are making it a lot cheaper for American drivers to fill up their tank, but those price cuts also causing a huge economic headache for Russia where the economy depends really heavily on oil revenue.

At this week's APEC summit, Vladimir Putin famously placed a shawl around China's first lady, some call it a symbolic move, representing Putin's new embrace of China as a huge economic partner.

Let's talk about the implications here because we're talking about big deals, billions of dollars in deals. Joining us, Gordon Chang. He's a columnist at forbes.com, also an expert on the region. Thanks for being with us. We appreciate it.

GORDON CHANG, FORBES.COM: Thank you so much.

HARLOW: Gordon, Russia has made these multi, multi-billion dollar deals with China recently. New energy deals. And on the "Daily Beast" website, you called this partnership, "America's number one foreign policy challenge. Why is that? Why do you think it's number one at this point?

CHANG: The United States has not faced two competitors since the end of the second world war. We have not faced a united China and Russia since the 1950s, but these two countries now see themselves in the same terms. They foresee that their interests are coinciding and also they identify the same adversary, which is the United States.

We saw this very clearly with Syria where they joined for four security council vetoes. And also the Chinese and Russian warships sorting together in the eastern Mediterranean last September in opposition to NATO vessels. China and Russia cooperated on a rant, they cooperated with North Korea. This really is an enduring partnership.

HARLOW: An interesting, you know, we used to just in the past only see Russia invest in other nations, energy companies, et cetera, if they needed the technology now, just this week we're seeing this $400 billion deal between Gas Prom, Russia's national oil company and then China's national petroleum agency. But this is a bid about course, it seems. Because in past decades you have seen these two nations clearly butting heads, how big of about an about force is this?

CHANG: Well, this is really a 180-degree churn. We saw this big oil deal last October, a big gas deal in May and then at the beginning of this week, there was a gas deal and an oil deal. You know these two economies are now starting to mold themselves together. The Russians realized they need the Chinese and so there's a very different view from both Moscow and Beijing about each other and also about the rest of the world.

HARLOW: I want to read a quote from your article on this, and then have you respond. You said "Ronald Reagan employed an economic strategy to get rid of the Soviet Union intentionally forcing commodity prices downwards to starve its military. At the moment the same dynamic is at work but largely the result of market forces, not intentional policy in Washington. In the next few years, before Chinese money flows in great quantities to the Russians pursuant to newly signed deals, Putin is vulnerable. Without firing the shot, we can save Ukraine and end bomber patrol off the shores." What needs to be done from Washington?

CHANG: Well, with the way things are going with oil prices, it seems as almost we don't have to do anything. Because the Russian economy this year will grow 0.2 percent according to the IMF, probably worse than that because oil prices are now at a three-year low and they're heading lower. But there are a number of things we can do.

We can certainly tighten the sanctions, we can cut Russia off from the global financial system. We probably know where Putin's personal wealth is, some $40 billion or so dollars. And with the click of a mouse, we can sort of deny him the ability to tap his own accounts. There's so many things that we can do right now. But with the way things are going, maybe we don't need to do anything. But nonetheless, Putin should not be running Russia because we have seen him do all sorts of things to disrupt the international system, kill people, bring down the jetliner, it is just awful.

HARLOW: Well, Gordon Chang, wish we had more time to discuss this with you. Thank you for joining us.

But we do have breaking news just into CNN. That is the latest Ebola patient has arrived in the United States. His plane touched down just moments ago in Nebraska. We're going to talk about what it all means, next.

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HARLOW: Well, the latest Ebola patient from the United States has arrived back here on U.S. soil. Moments ago Dr. Martin Salia was loaded into an ambulance on the runway there in Omaha, Nebraska. He'll be treated at a biocontainment unit at Nebraska's medical center. He is married to a U.S. citizen. He is a permanent U.S. resident. He's been in West Africa treating Ebola patients in his native Sierra Leone, one of those three West African nations hardest hit by the Ebola virus.

Let's go back to our medical analyst, Dr. Seema Yasmin. Let's show this video and I'll describe it to you because I want your take, Dr., on one of the things that we saw as this patient was coming off of the plane. We saw him coming off the plane and then we saw sort of a bubble. You can barely see it, but a bubble was placed around him. This is different than other Ebola patients we've seen returning to the United States.

He's on a stretcher. He's got some sort of bubble around him. He's not walking off the plane like we saw some of the other Ebola patients do.

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, PROFESSOR OF PUBIC HEALTH, UNIVESITY OF TEXAS: That's right, Poppy. This kind of protective bubble or cocoon is typical of what is on these medical evacuation planes. But so far we have not mentioned that bubble or cocoon come off the plane with a patient. And we were told by spokespeople in Nebraska just this morning that this patient is the sickest of the Ebola patients that's been transferred to the U.S. and been transferred to them. So this situation that we're seeing on this video really speaks to how critical his health is. HARLOW: And do you think the CDC officials are on their way or shortly

will be on their way to Nebraska? We know they came up to New York when another doctor was being treated for Ebola at Bellevue Hospital.

YASMIN: We know they set up an Ebola S.W.A.T. team of sorts, Poppy, so it would make sense that they would be deployed to Nebraska to help, but also Nebraska has such expertise in this area. When I spoke to the nursing director there, she said, "we have been preparing for this for seven years for a situation like this." They are so highly trained and they really have this kind of situation under control as we have seen with the other two Ebola patients they have cared for.

HARLOW: And very quickly before we go, do you think that the teams there have learned something from the Dallas health care workers who did treat Ebola patients as well.

YASMIN: I think it's been the other way around, Poppy. The folks from containment units have been going to Dallas and other places to teach health care workers there. They are so highly versed in treating Ebola patients that they can provide expertise to other health care workers as well.

HARLOW: Yes, thank you so much, doctor. We appreciate your expertise. Thanks for being with us.

CNN NEWSROOM continues at the top of the hour. Right now, stay right here "SANJAY GUPTA M.D." is next.