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New Allegations against Bill Cosby; Massive Cyber Breach at Sony; Flooding in San Francisco

Aired December 12, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

We start this hour with stunning new allegations against Bill Cosby. Supermodel Beverly Johnson, an icon in American fashion, is speaking out against the comedian, claiming Cosby drugged her at his Manhattan brownstone back in the '80s. Early this morning, Johnson described what happened after she was offered a drink by Cosby.

BEVERLY JOHNSON, SUPERMODEL & ACTRESS: He gave me the cappuccino ice. I took one sip and I felt something very strange going on in my head.

COSTELLO: Describe the sensation in your body that you started feeling immediately?

JOHNSON: Well, the first sensation was, you know, a little woozy and so then I took another sip and after that second sip I knew I had been drugged. It was very powerful. It came on very quickly. The room started to spin. My speech was slurred. I remember him calling me over towards him as if we were going to begin the scene then and he placed his hands on my waist. I remember steadying myself with my hand on his shoulders and I just kind of cocked my head because at that point I knew he had drugged me and I was just looking at him and I just asked him the question that "you are a mf aren't you?"

COSTELLO: Yes, you cursed at him because you were conscious enough to know what was happening and you confronted him. What's interesting, Beverly, about your story, we've heard an eerily similar story from now more than 20 women. And they all describe Bill Cosby as having drugged them. But they wake up after the fact because they lose consciousness. You somehow kept the presence of mind not to lose consciousness and you confronted him and tell me about that exchange and the angry Bill Cosby that confronted you back?

JOHNSON: Well, I immediately went into survival mode. I knew that he had drugged me and I wanted him to know that he had drugged me. So the only word I could get out -- and I don't swear, was "MF" And I kept saying it to him louder and louder and for a moment he stood there looking at me like I was crazy and then -- it happened very quickly. He immediately grabbed me and started to drag me towards the stairs that went down stairs to the outdoors and I was stumbling around trying to grab my handbag and I really didn't know where he was taking me but we ended up outside and it was still -- it was dust so it was pretty light out and all I remember is him grabbing me by one arm and him flailing for a taxi with the other. I remember I was kind of looking around at people and, you know, people really recognizing that, you know, that's Bill Cosby. And a taxi stops, he opens the door, and he throws me in there and he slams the door shut and I somehow get my address out to the taxicab driver.

COSTELLO: You escaped. You escaped.

JOHNSON: And the only thing I could remember ...

COSTELLO: Something else, worse from happening. I just want to - before I let you go on, read what you wrote in "Vanity Fair" about that whole exchange because you say "I recall his seething anger at my tirade and then him grabbing me by my left arm and yanking all 110 pounds of me down a bunch of stairs as my high heels clicked and clacked on every step. I feared my neck was going to break with the force he was using to pull me down those stairs." That's an angrier picture of Bill Cosby than any of us have ever heard.

JOHNSON: Yes, he was most certainly angry. He was pissed, he was trying to get me out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't know that at the time and, you know, I had, you know, a little heel on and I was totally trying to remain conscious. But my body was, you know, very -- almost as if I were intoxicated.

COSTELLO: Yes.

JOHNSON: That I couldn't get my balance. I was fearing that I was going to fall down the stairs so I was trying to be conscious not to fall and he's dragging me down the stairs and all I remember after I got in that taxicab driver and actually telling him somehow my address I just remember saying "Did I just call Bill Cosby an MF?" I was concerned about him.

COSTELLO: Yes.

JOHNSON: Not me.

COSTELLO: Right. And we've heard this from other - other women as well, the fact that he was Bill Cosby, that that persona was bigger than even the experience and that's why so many people remained silent. Why, Beverly, did you remain silent all these years and are only now coming forward?

JOHNSON: Well, it's a number of reasons. The norm is people that have been sexually assaulted and fortunately I was drugged and I don't think I was sexually assaulted is that there's shame to coming out, there is this powerful man in an industry that I would like to be a part of that went through my mind. I had just finished a very ugly divorce with a powerful man and I knew firsthand what it was like to go up against a powerful man and it didn't fare well for me. So and I was at that particular time I had spent so much money on this divorce and ensuing custody battle, I knew that it was someone that was a formidable enemy and I didn't think I had a chance of winning.

COSTELLO: So what changed, what changed for you in these past four weeks?

JOHNSON: What changed for me was a number of things once again. But the women coming out and telling those stories, I would just look at that television and just think how brave they are and also, you know, listening to Janice Dickinson, who is a friend of mine, who to me I've known her for 30 years was never a liar. If anything she's uncensored and there is no fitter there so if anything you're getting the truth and the absolute truth from her and how she was being treated and how they were being vilified and that's the norm also, that women who do have the courage to speak about sexual assault are -- they are put - you know, they are the people that are shamed and --

COSTELLO: Re-victimized.

JOHNSON: And victimized all over ...

COSTELLO: In many ways.

JOHNSON: thank you, re-victimized all again, once again. So I wanted to stand with those women.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: There has been no comment on Johnson's allegations yet from Bill Cosby's attorney, and that attorney would be Martin Singer. The "New York Times" calls him guard dog to the stars and it's true, he's represented Arnold Schwarzenegger, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Sheen, even Senator Harry Reid. So, that just alone describes Singer in the "New York Times" as ferocious and fearless one minute and warm and fuzzy the next. What is clear right now, Singer is in the ferocious mode when it comes to Cosby's accusers. Example, singer described accuser Louisa Moritz this way "we've reached a point of absurdity. The stories are getting more ridiculous. People are trying to come up with these wild stories in order to justify why they have waited 40 to 50 years to disclose these ridiculous accusations." Singer went on to say "Moritz has been prohibited from practicing law."

Now, it will be interesting to see how Singer responds to Beverly Johnson's accusation. With me now to talk about that is CNN legal analyst Mark Geragos. Thanks, Mark, for coming in.

MARK GERAGOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: My pleasure.

COSTELLO: You know Mr. Singer.

GERAGOS: I do.

COSTELLO: What's he like?

GERAGOS: I think the description there is accurate. I don't know that I would go as far as to say warm and fuzzy. But he's a gentleman. We've worked with each other and opposed each other and he's got a name of client ...

COSTELLO: So his strategy at first seemed to be to say these women's allegations were ridiculous and to malign their characters. Is that a good strategy?

GERAGOS: Well, look, he's in a very difficult spot. He has a client who is out there and doing interviews and then going silent in the middle of the interview. Most people are going to see that and are going to think "That's somebody - it's indicative of somebody who's guilty." So if he has to deal with that, there's that kind of constant b-roll going out there and the normal way to defend this case is to attack the people, why are they waiting, things of that nature. The interesting thing that I'm seeing here that just rings somewhat true is, you know, I represent Kesha (ph) against another powerful Hollywood type and you see -- you hear the same stories. This does seem to be kind of a pattern in Hollywood. You get these women who aspire to an industry, whether it's TV or whether it's music and rich powerful men and then this drugging aspect is kind of bizarre. But it is the same consistent story that we're hearing. That they're given something to drink, next thing you know they either wake up later on or they feel woozy at the time and unfortunately feel violated?

COSTELLO: Here's the thing about - Here's the thing about Beverly Johnson, and I have heard it from more than one person. They didn't quite believe every woman who came out, but they believe Beverly Johnson.

GERAGOS: Well, Beverly Johnson is an icon. There is just ...

COSTELLO: So what is Mr. Singer going to say about her?

GERAGOS: Well, the - you know, one of the tactics that he's used is to sue people for defamation, but at this point that would be 30 different lawsuits and everybody affiliated with it so I don't know that that's going to be an instructive or constructive strategy. At this point, it appears with the last couple of accusers that he's just keeping his head down below the radar at this point and trying to ride it out and wait for the next scandal to come along.

COSTELLO: Well, that's true, because Mr. Singer has gone radio silent in the past couple of weeks because I'm sure he's hoping it's not going to be on television anymore.

GERAGOS: Well ...

COSTELLO: And every time he releases a statement, we put it on TV.

GERAGOS: Yeah, and that's part of, you know, crisis management 101. Do you prolong the story by immediately engaging or do you just sit back and wait for the next scandal to come along?

COSTELLO: OK, so I've been asking everyone what the end game is. Like what's the end game? Because statutes of limitation has run out, right?

GERAGOS: Well, this lawsuit that was filed in Massachusetts is interesting because there's an accuser whose attorney has come up with the strategy of suing one of the representatives for defamation with the idea being that hopefully they can get that underlying the merits of the sexual allegation, the sexual accusation, in front of a court to determine the truth in a defamation suit. So, that's kind of a creative end run around it. I doubt it's going to work in a federal court, but maybe somebody comes up with a bright idea doing in the state court somewhere in a defamation context and then you might be able to fight it out there.

COSTELLO: Mark Geragos, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

GERAGOS: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the "NEWSROOM" a massive cyber breach at Sony. Salaries, medical records and embarrassing e-mails all laid bare for the world to see. Suspected to be behind the hack attack, North Korea. We'll talk about the shadowy group called the Guardians of Peace next.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New revelations from the Sony hack. Here we go, number ten. Amy Adams and Jessica Chastain, same woman. Same woman.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ralph - I'm sorry Ray Fiennes has no idea how to pronounce Ralph Fiennes.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: and neither do I. Number eight, most people go to the movies just to eat junk food in the dark.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And number seven, the only profitable film of the last ten years was "Paul Blart, Mall Cop."

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number six, Brad and Angelina won't adopt kids named Justin.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number five, Dame Judi Dench is a person of interest in 12 unsolved murders.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number four, Benedict Cumberbatch's middle name is also Cumberbatch.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number three, on film sets, Tom Hanks insists on being called two time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks. (LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Number two, to avoid attention, many stars check into hotels using the alias D. Letterman.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the number one revelation from the Sony hack, Seth Rogan is paid in weed.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: I believe that one about Seth Rogan, don't you? Late night laugh, of course, with David Letterman about the Sony hacking scandal. But the fallout from the cyber breach is no laughing matter. Sony executive is apologizing for racially insensitive remarks mocking President Obama in an e-mail to Hollywood producer Amy Pascal. That e-mail one of many leaked in a massive breach. Others contain nasty comments about some of Hollywood's biggest stars including Angelina Jolie seen this week in an awkward moment with Pascal, one of the Sony executives involved in those insulting e-mails.

Now, North Korea is believed to be behind the massive hack along with a loosely affiliated group of hackers who call themselves Guardians of Peace. The question now, who are these hackers, how did they do it and how can they be stopped? Lots of questions, right? Let's bring in CNN's Samuel Burke and former hacker Kevin Mitnick, welcome to both of you.

OK, so ...

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Can we just talk about that photo for a second?

COSTELLO: The Amy Pascal photo?

BURKE: How awkward would that be if you and Anderson Cooper were talking smack about me and then e-mails were released to the public and then I had to walk by and run into you guys in the hallways. That is exactly what my face would be like too, Carol.

COSTELLO: I think your face would be worse and you would be - it would be open and spouting something toward me. I don't know. But it is an awkward picture and it's terrible these e-mails got out. And so, let's talk about the group supposedly responsible, the Guardians of Peace. Who is this group, Samuel?

BURKE: The truth is, nobody is sure. Right now many security experts believe that North Korea is most likely the group behind this hack, but that doesn't mean that they are the group. And many times hacking is outsourced to other countries and a lot of experts don't believe that North Korea in and of themselves by themselves have enough wherewithal to carry out a hack attack like this. So it could be North Korea paying another group using another group, maybe a group from China. But the truth is nobody is certain. There are just what security experts are surmising at this point and narrowing down the possibility.

COSTELLO: So, how does that work, Kevin? North Korea says "Hmm, we have to hire a hacker." How do we do - how do they do that?

KEVIN MITNICK, FORMER COMPUTER HACKER: Well, I'm sure they have assets on the payroll that when they need cyber-attacks they can go to a group of people to carry it out. But, you know, I think it's all speculation. You know, but then again, you have to think about who would want to do something of this magnitude, basically break into Sony and release all their private information to cause embarrassment and mayhem. It could be North Korea. I don't really know. What's really sophisticated about this attack is not really that you can break in and get access to this data, because I do it all the time when companies hire my team to break in, we're pretty much successful most of the time. But it's the amount of data that they were able to steal. 100 terabytes. That's a humongous amount of data. And so, I think these guys were in Sony's network for a longer period of time. Probably for months, maybe even a year.

COSTELLO: Oh, you're kidding? Because you're right, the hack included like leaked movies, Social Security numbers, health information, salaries and, of course, all those racially insensitive e-mails. And were they all stored on the cloud?

BURKE: Carol, you know, we talk about ...

COSTELLO: Go ahead, go ahead, Kevin.

MITNICK: Probably not. They probably were stored on internal file servers within Sony's network. And the hackers had to find a way to move the data out from the company, you know, out to the Internet where they would have, you know, complete control over that information. And the hackers got administrative access so usually what a hacker will do when they break into a company is they'll target the administrators of that company to learn how they manage everything. And they have things called intrusion detection systems that are supposed to detect when you transfer, you know, a great deal of data outside the company, but if they have administrative access to the console that allows them to manage this, they can basically just turn it off. So probably that's what happened is they turned off a lot of the alarms so Sony had no idea that their data was leaving the company.

COSTELLO: That's so disturbing because, you know, if my company is hacked, right? How can I possibly protect myself?

BURKE: You know, we have a lot of companies used two factor authentication. It's very annoying when you have to type in that code on top of your password, but that will keep you safe. All that annoyance really will pay off for something and could protect you against the hack like this, Carol.

COSTELLO: Got you. Let's go back to that picture with poor Ms. Pascal and Angelina Jolie, because those e-mails are causing some serious repercussions.

BURKE: Yeah, they were racially insensitive e-mails. She makes these jokes about she's going to be having dinner with Barack Obama, and so Amy Pascal, who's not just one of the most powerful women in Hollywood, she is one of the most powerful women in the world, according to "Forbes," number 28 on the most powerful women in the world. And she joked "Should I ask Obama if he liked "Django unchained? "The Butler" - all these movies with African American characters. And so, now she's come out and apologized. I want to read you what she said in the statement, Carol. She said, "The content of my e-mails to Scott" - who is another big producer in Hollywood "were insensitive and inappropriate, but are not an accurate reflection of who I am. Although this was a private communication that was stolen, I accept full responsibility for what I wrote and apologize to everyone who was offended." Scott Rudin also apologized.

But I want to get back to motive for a second, because although we don't know for a fact that North Korea was behind this attack, Carol, we do know for a fact that they didn't like this movie, "The Interview" and imagine if they were able to get the job of this co- chairwoman of Sony. Some people are saying that she might lose her job because of this. Some important media analysts in Hollywood. So imagine that type of power that North Korea if, indeed, they're the ones behind this has - over big film studio.

COSTELLO: OK. Biggest lesson? Don't put stuff in e-mail. Why do people do that? I don't understand that.

BURKE: Everybody does.

COSTELLO: It it's insane. I know. And I've been guilty of it, too. It's insane.

BURKE: What have you been saying about me?

COSTELLO: I can't tell you. You'll have to hack - you'll have to have Kevin hack me. Samuel Burke, Kevin Mitnick, thank you so much.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM" surf's up on Lake Tahoe. California's monster storm leaves indelible images and lots of cleaning up. CNN's Dan Simon in San Francisco this morning.

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, the bad weather continuing in Northern California. A lot of people still don't have power. We'll tell you how folks are dealing with the aftermath coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Thankfully, the worst of a monster storm is over for northern California, but crews have a ton of work to clean up and restore power. More than a foot of rain fell in some places and a couple of feet of snow fell in the mountains, both types of precipitation driven by hurricane force wind gusts. CNN's Dan Simon live in San Francisco this morning. . Good morning.

SIMON: Good morning, Carol. Well, we have a new storm cell pushing through San Francisco so things still a bit wet here. But for the most part, this storm is moving to southern California. We just got word that there are some massive evacuations taking place in the town of Camarillo, that's northwest of Los Angeles and based upon what we saw here in northern California, they could be experiencing some severe problems. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON: It's the worst weather to hit northern California in years. Pounding rain causing some streets to flood and rivers to rise. This grocery store parking lot turned into a lake. With winds at or near hurricane strength, the storm also knocked down scores of trees, including this 80-foot cypress tree that pinned a boy at a school playground in Santa Cruz. Firefighters freed the 11-year-old who had only minor injuries. The wind also shaking area bridges, making driving hazardous. And those same conditions knocking out power to more than 225,000 people and businesses, including this restaurant in downtown San Francisco that cannot open.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, we cannot. Can't see, it's a safety issue so certain corners are blocked off and somebody falls, that's -- we can't do that.

SIMON: At the San Francisco International Airport, at least 240 flights canceled. Ferry service also halted for many routes today, but this rider was able to make his daily commute to the city.

MARK MONTEMAYOR, SAN FRANCISCO COMMUTER: It was pretty bumpy. We got -- I swear we had it -- we were airborne as we were going up and down and everybody was in great spirits and laughing. But it was no normal ferry ride today.

SIMON: To the northeast it began snowing in the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe where two to three feet of snow is anticipated. A wind gust clocking in at 107 miles per hour. The same storm system hitting Washington State a day earlier, the rising tide eroding beaches and destroying at least two houses. Back here in California, the miserable conditions come with one positive side effect -- the state in the middle of a record three-year drought can use all the moisture it can get.

(on camera): What do you make of all this rain?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need it, but I wish it would come more evenly spread out instead of all in one night. We just have got to roll with the punches. It will be fine.

SIMON (voice over): Well, this single storm won't get us out of the drought Carol, but it's going to help.