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Alan Gross Released from Cuba; U.S. on Its Way to Normalize Its Relations with Cuba; Hackers Threaten Movie Theaters

Aired December 17, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Administration officials tell me with Gross's release, President Obama set to announce later today the most sweeping overhaul in U.S. policy towards Cuba since the embargo was imposed in 1961.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LABOTT (voice-over): A historic hand shake between President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela's funeral. An early sign perhaps of the sweeping change in U.S. policy towards the communist island.

Today, American government contractor Alan Gross finally coming home just two weeks after this desperate plea from his wife on the ailing Gross's fifth year in prison.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, Mr. President, don't leave Alan to die in Cuba.

LABOTT: Last week, President Obama hinted a deal may be in the works in an interview with Univision.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You know, we've been in conversations about how we can get Alan Gross home for quite some time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the Cuban government?

OBAMA: We have been working through a whole variety of channels.

LABOTT: Gross was arrested in 2009 for trying to deliver cell phones and other communications equipment to the communist island. He was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in jail for trying to subvert the Cuban government. Two years ago, he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer he was a hostage not a convict.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Do you have any idea what the Cuban government would want in exchange for releasing you?

ALAN GROSS, HELD PRISONER IN CUBA FOR 5 YEARS: Yeah, I think they want something that's completely unrealistic. I think they want since I'm not really a prisoner, I'm a hostage, they took me with the idea of trading me.

LABOTT: The landmark deal involves the release of three Cubans convicted in the U.S. of spying. Part of the so-called Cuban five. For more than five decades, the U.S. has observed a trade embargo on Cuba, imposed during the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro's takeover of the island. In 2011, President Obama relaxed some travel restrictions and last year he raised eyebrows in the Cuban exile community, telling a fundraiser in Miami the embargo doesn't make sense saying "We have to be creative and we have to be thoughtful and we have to continue to update our policies."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LABOTT (on camera): And, Carol, the initiatives the president will announce today, I'm told, include a major relaxing of travel restrictions for Americans, we're talking about a general license to travel to Cuba for practically anything but tourism. A resumption of banking between U.S. and Cuban banks, an increase on those remittances, Cuban Americans are sending home to their families. The president will also allow expended commercial and export services of goods to Cuba. On the diplomatic front, officials tell me President Obama will move to restore formal diplomatic ties with Cuba, see about taking Cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list.

Why now? Officials say there have been some modest reforms on the island, they want to continue to encourage that. Officials stress this is not a reward for the Castro regime, but a recognition the embargo is not working and if the U.S. wants to change in Cuba it needs to engage more with the Cuban government and the Cuban people. Officials say they will not let up on human rights. To that end as part of this deal, Cuba has agreed to release 53 political prisoners from a list provided by the U.S. and allow more access to the Internet and for the international Red Cross and U.N. who are also on the ground, more engagement with them and the political opposition. Carol?

COSTELLO: This is just incredible because when you think about it, that U.S. embargo has been in place for, what, more than 50 years. So this is a sea change. I want to head to Cuba now and check in with Patrick Oppmann, he is the only U.S. correspondent in Cuba. So, Raul Castro is also going to make some sort of statement at noon Eastern Time. What do you expect that will be like?

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think the headline will be that the three Cuban intelligence agents are returning and will probably be the largest government-sponsored celebration that we've seen since Elian Gonzalez's return. In Cuba, these men are considered heroes, if they were sent to enemy territory, as U.S. (INAUDIBLE) is referred in Cuba, to carry out a dangerous mission and were captured and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Of course U.S. prosecutors call those men spies and said they should rot in prison, but, you know, what's next for Alan Gross and his Attorney Scott Gilbert has told me that Alan Gross, when he does land in the United States is looking forward to his first drink in five years, smoking a cigar, obviously something he spent a lot of time in Cuban prisons doing, being outside, he was only outside one hour a day at best during his five years of imprisonment here and spending time with his family. He's really not interested in doing any interviews, I'm told, at least right away. He also wants to go to his mother's grave, his mother Evelyn Gross passed away from cancer while Alan Gross was here in prison and he was apparently, as anybody would be, completely distraught that he was not able to say good-bye to her in person. So for him it's really making up for lost time. But you know, a U.S. Official tells me that this is just the first domino to fall in a series of changes that will really reframe the entire U.S./Cuba relationship and as this U.S. diplomat told me, it will really help U.S. policy catch up with the reality because already the U.S. does sell food to Cuba, it's one of Cuba's major trading partners despite the embargo. You have tens of thousands of American visitors coming through a somewhat confusing process, but coming here legally. You have even more Americans coming through third countries illegally but almost never punished, so they're going to make travel restrictions much less confusing and expensive and cumbersome.

And finally, they're hoping that by loosening up some of the restrictions that they'll bring the Cuban people together and that we'll see more and more Cubans in South Florida and other parts take an active role in supporting the relatives here and get around some of the frankly draconian government restrictions on starting businesses and capitalism on the island. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Patrick Oppmann reporting live from Cuba, thanks so much. I want to head to Miami now and check in with Ana Navarro, our political commentator. Ana, tell us a little bit more about these three Cuban spies that are going to be swapped for Mr. Gross.

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They were -- they're part of a larger spy ring. It was initially a five spy ring who were convicted here in U.S. courts. Two of them have already been released. These three were the ones accused of the more serious crimes. They were involved with the shoot down of the brothers to the rescue, which was a rescue mission of Cuban American pilots that would fly, leave from Miami and fly over the Straits of Florida trying to identify, locate people fleeing Cuba on rafts and help rescue them. They were shot down by the Cuban government over international waters with the help of these five. That's what they were convicted of. And these are the guys, these are the bad guys that are being swapped for Alan Gross.

COSTELLO: I don't hear much happiness in your voice, you seem angry about this swap.

NAVARRO: I don't like it. I don't like -- I don't like this idea that the United States engages with regimes like Cuba in prisoner swaps and that Cuba can unfairly, unjustifiably imprison an American citizen and then demand the release of spies that have tried to harm our country and have caused harm to our citizens. I think it is not a good precedent for the United States. I also don't like what feels like a very unilateral change of policy. Even though I'll tell you something, Carol, there's only so much that the president can do through executive order. I'm sure there's much more he can do, but the U.S. embargo is codified in law. That means that it needs to be decodified in law. It's not something that he can do away with so easily with the stroke of a pen. There's regulations that he's going to be able to change but the core of the embargo, you cannot change it because it's codified in law.

And I think he's going to face a challenge from legislators, from Congress on this when Congress comes back because there are Cuban Americans in the appropriations committee. There are Cuban Americans on the Senate foreign relations committee. There are Cuban Americans in leadership roles in the house foreign affairs committee. And I don't think that they're going to roll over and play dead with the president taking these unilateral actions without weighing in with Congress.

COSTELLO: I know that you've reached out to lawmakers and talked with them about the president's pending announcement. What did they tell you?

NAVARRO: Well, first of all, they didn't know. I was amazed that frankly I knew from CNN before even Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat and the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had been informed. None of the Cuban American members of Congress that represent an enormous amount of the Cuban American community in the United States had any previous knowledge about this or were consulted about it. Which also tells you that the families of the brothers to the rescue pilots that were shot down, the victims of these spies that had been convicted and were in U.S. custody, you know, also didn't know. So it's come as a surprise to everybody and it's a very unilateral action by the Obama administration.

COSTELLO: All right, Ana, stand by. I want to bring in CNN global affairs analyst Bobby Ghosh, he's on the phone right now. Hi, Bobby.

BOBBY GHOSH, CNN ANALYST: Hi.

COSTELLO: Hi, Bobby. So, not only does this deal involve a prisoner swap, but it also reinstates diplomatic relations with Cuba, at least some. It takes Cuba off the list of terrorist states. It eases travel restrictions, it eases banking regulations and it also eases trade in some ways. So, it sounds like the United States is well on its way to normalization of relations with Cuba, am I right?

GHOSH: It certainly does. The prisoner swap, part of it, is not entirely surprising if you've followed the course of this administration - I mean this administration that only a couple of months ago did a major prisoner swap with the Taliban where we released several people from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for an American citizen. So, you know, doing a prisoner swap with Cuba is potentially less controversial than that.

But the diplomatic relations, the restoring of diplomatic relations, that is a whole different order of change and that's going to be much more controversial. The administration clearly is trying to do this by executive fiat. I'm less certain about whether it can actually pull that off. It's something the president has hinted at before. It has been flagged in many different places, the "New York Times" only I think a month or two ago did a major editorial on the subject, so if you've been reading the TVs about Cuba, you knew something like this was coming, but this is still quite an ambitious plan to change something that has been unchanged for five decades now.

COSTELLO: So, so you're saying there might be constitutional issues?

GHOSH: Oh, there are definitely constitutional issues, as Ms. Navarro said. It's one thing for the administration to try and work some things out through executive decision, but this is something that is written in American law and at some points, sooner or later, this thing is going to have to go before Congress. And I don't think that it's a given that it can be passed through Congress. This congress is a lot different from, let's say 20 years ago, 25 years ago, American attitudes towards Cuba are quite different than they used to be so there may be a 50-50 chance that this will get through. But it still has to go through that process and as we've seen with so many other important things, anything that goes through Congress these days is highly controversial, gets slowed down by all kinds of legislative minutiae and becomes immediately polarized and this was an issue that was polarized from the get-go.

COSTELLO: Oh, yeah, it's been an issue for the past 50 some years. So, let me ask you this question. Because I would suppose one of the president's arguments would be look, the embargo hasn't worked for 50 years because the Castros remain in power today. You know, if not Fidel, his brother Raul, right? So obviously the embargo hasn't worked. Democracy has not been restored to Cuba so maybe we have to go down another road.

GHOSH: Yeah, there is something to be said for that. The reason the embargo hasn't worked is because it is a unilateral embargo. The United States is pretty much the only serious country in the world that has an embargo. It's always Cuba. Almost every other major country in the world does business with Cuba. But that hasn't changed Cuba's attitudes towards its own people. The fact that Britain or Canada, Europe in general does business with Cuba hasn't softened the Cuban leadership's record on human rights the way it sort of runs its country and keeps its people in poverty. Will the -- the United States ending that embargo, will that make a big change? I guess we have to see.

But my feeling is that the Castro administration, whether it's Castro the elderly or Castro the younger has not done enough to loosen the -- its grip on its own people. You can begin to trust a dictatorial or an oppressive regime when it begins to give its own people a little bit of a break. We haven't seen enough of that out of Cuba and it's going to be hard for the Obama administration to argue that, well, if we give these people this regime, some leniency, then they're going to go and be nicer to their own people. That's a bank shot at best.

COSTELLO: Bobby Ghosh, thanks so much. Bobby Ghosh with CNN global affairs, of course, or analyst, rather.

I want to head to Little Havana, that's, of course, in the city of Miami, Florida. Alina Machado is there. She's been talking to some people. What are they telling you? ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, I think for the most

part people here are happy that Alan Gross is free. I mean that is something that regardless of who you ask and how they feel about the other things, they're very pleased by that. But in talking to the Cubans who are here, particularly the older generations, they're very disappointed. They're angry by the fact that the United States is going to be swapping these three prisoners with Cuba. They're also very upset about the easing of restrictions, economic restrictions. This is something that for this generation, for the people who came here in the '50s and the '60s is a big, big deal. There's a long history here of hurt, of families who went through a lot when they left Cuba and then came here and never returned to the island, leaving behind their families, their belongings, everything they knew because of the Castro government. So you can imagine for people like that who hear about these changes, it's not a good thing for them. They feel the U.S. government is giving in to Castro. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Alina Machado reporting live from little Havana in Miami, thanks so much, Alina. I want to head to Washington now and bring in justice reporter Evan Perez. I know you've been digging for information. So, tell me what you got.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you know, I spent a lot of time in Miami, I was a reporter down there and this is the Cuba issue is something that I spent a lot of time covering there when I was with the "Wall Street Journal" and the Associated Press and I'll tell you, as Alina mentioned just now, you do have a generational divide on this issue. You have older Cubans who are definitely going to be very upset about these news, about what the president is planning to do. But here's the thing, younger Cubans, Cubans who came and demographically most Cubans now in this country are people who probably came from Cuba after 1980 in Mariel where the big boat lift that happened and increased the population, most Cubans in recent years are economic migrants and these people don't have the same feelings about the Castro government and about the embargo as some of the older generation do.

So that's what's driving this. This is why the Obama administration feels that they can do this and the consequences politically are really not going to be that bad. I mean, I remember going to press conferences down there in Miami for many years where this was something Democrats, Republicans, would never touch.

And, you know, that has begun to change and, you know, Obama is the first Democrat in decades to actually win the Cuban vote so this is something that he's actually been trying to move towards for some time and I think you're going to see in the next few days, you're going to see a reaction from Republicans, some - Bob Menendez, for instance, is the senator from New Jersey, is a Cuban American and he's going to probably be very opposed to this. But I think the administration feels that the political moment is right, Carol.

COSTELLO: I'll let you know, I tend to agree with you only because, you know, Americans are traveling to Cuba in droves.

PEREZ: Right. COSTELLO: And they come back with wonderful stories. I've heard from

like dozens of my friends, they want to go to Cuba. They don't really remember, you know, back to the days of the cold war and the intense fear and hatred Americans had toward Fidel Castro. Of course, people of my generation absolutely do remember, but the younger generation really doesn't.

PEREZ: They really don't. And Carol, you know, the other thing that people ask and this is something that I, you know, my Cuban American friends down there in Miami that I always talked about is, you know, why is it that you can travel freely to China, Vietnam, you don't need to go to the Treasury Department to get a license to be able to travel to North Korea and yet Cuba, 90 miles away from U.S. soil, you have this restriction and it's something that's always been a very difficult thing for everyone to explain, really.

And, you know, the Clinton administration had tried to do some of this back in the 1990s, tried to ease some of these travel restrictions and then, of course the Castro government shot down these Brothers to the Rescue planes and everything changed again. And so what's going to be key here is how Fidel Castro - I'm sorry, how Raul Castro's government behaves in the next year or so, whether they do anything that sets this effort back again. It's really all on them whether or not they can, you know, make sure that this relationship doesn't get set back after what President Obama is really going on a limb for in this announcement today, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Evan Perez, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

I want to bring our viewers back to Cuba, Havana Cuba. Patrick Oppmann is standing by. He has new information about the negotiations to release Alan Gross. Tell us more.

OPPMANN: Yeah, you know, these negotiations were so fraught, living here in Cuba, we heard little bits of information over the past months and the U.S. and Cuba have been talking really since ever since Alan Gross was arrested here about freeing him. But it's only really been the last few months that we've seen as we're entering the end of the Obama administration really pick up steam. But they're so sensitive that nobody would ever admit Cuban or U.S., the negotiations were taking place so it relies on back channels and people were just afraid that even if any information leaked out that it would scuttle the whole process. And the U.S. got certain concession, but they did not get everything they want as you'd expect in any negotiation. You know, for instance, the U.S. did raise the possibility of having U.S. fugitives, there are dozens of U.S. fugitives, some with million dollar price tags on their heads here in Cuba and they raised that possibility and they were told no, they've been giving asylum by Fidel Castro, they would not be sent back.

Of course the U.S. would like to see freer and open relation- free and open elections here, Carol, that's not going to take place any time soon. They'd like to see a more liberal media out of state controlled hands, that's not likely to happen any time soon. But you are seeing gradual changes. You know, for instance Cubans can now travel anywhere in the world that will accept them, all they need from their government is a passport. Whereas just up until three (ph) years ago they needed government permission every time they leave the country so in that sense the Cuban government has made the claim that Cuban citizens are more free to travel than U.S. citizens. Of course, you know, Cuba is the only country in the world that they're banned from traveling, but it sounds like, Carol, that that will be changing.

We're hearing now that Alan Gross is traveling towards the United States. It's only about a 45-minute flight from Havana to the U.S. So he must be, you would assume, in U.S. airspace by now. He's expected to probably briefly address the media, is what his attorneys told me. Enjoy some time with family and then decompress. He's really gone through a wringer here. And just up until a few weeks ago, his attorney told me that it wasn't clear if Alan Gross was going to be released and they felt that if Alan Gross wasn't released now in this crucial period while President Obama is in the last months of his presidency that he might very well likely die in prison. And this really sets the stage as well between the next expected meeting between President Raul Castro and President Obama which takes place in Panama. It will be the first time that Cuba is invited to the summit of the Americas so obviously there is going to be a lot more for them to talk about there as they take this first but yet quite historic step towards closer Cuba -U.S. relations.

COSTELLO: All right, Patrick Oppmann, thanks so much. I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The hackers who have caused massive headaches for Sony are now targeting you -- the moviegoer, saying they will attack theaters showing the controversial film "The Interview." One New York City theater is taking that threat very seriously. The landmark Sunshine canceling the film's premier which is scheduled for tomorrow night. And while Sony does not officially plan to pull the movie, a source close to the situation says the company will not object if theaters decide not to show it.

But the box office may not be the only place that Sony takes a hit. Two former employees have now filed a class action lawsuit against the company after the hackers got access to information like Social Security numbers and medical conditions. The suit reads in part "an epic nightmare, much better suited to a cinematic thriller than to real life is unfolding in slow motion for Sony's current and former employees. Their most sensitive data has been leaked to the public and may even be in the hands of criminals." Now, one of the film's stars, Seth Rogan, is telling Stephen Colbert, he expected some backlash, but he felt the film should portray what life is truly like under the Kim Jong-Un regime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SETH ROGAN, ACTOR, "THE INTERVIEW": We did not think they would love the concept of the movie, to be totally honest. But more than anything, I mean, we wanted to make a movie that had kind of one foot in reality? That's something that we as filmmakers like and think is interesting as audience members as well. STEPHEN COLBERT: Did you think about changing his name at all? Like

calling him like, you know, Phil Jong-Un?

(LAUGHTER)

ROGAN: We actually did. Yes. We did. And then we thought, like, whose feelings are we trying to spare by doing that?

COLBERT: Right.

ROGAN: Kim Jong-Un?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, so let's talk about all of this. With me now Laurie Segall, CNN money tech correspondent. Brian Stelter is CNN senior media correspondent and Will Ripley is the CNN correspondent. He is in Tokyo right now. I want to start with you, Will, because this thing is having repercussions there, too. Tell us.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Japan and North Korea are very close neighbors so while for audiences in America filmmakers in America it might seem like a distant joke, North Korea is a very real threat for people in japan, a threat that they've dealt with for decades, North Korea has kidnapped Japanese citizens in the past and forced them to train spies. They routinely fire projectiles into the Sea of Japan and now there's new fear that Japanese companies, Sony and perhaps others, perhaps the Japanese government could be vulnerable to a major cyber-attack because the suspicion here as it is across the world, is that North Korea is somehow is behind this.

COSTELLO: It's just getting worse and worse. Brian, you've heard of a major movie studio that's going to pull the movie, movie chain, I should say.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, there are four or five big companies that own movie theaters in the United States. One of them has decided they are not going to screen the movie. They haven't said so publicly yet. But folks close to Sony are saying that's true. And the question today is, are we going to see the biggest in the mall, AMC, Regal and those are the theaters I go to every week, are they going to decide not to air the movie? I think that's very possible. And we'll hear from them later today. Sony still has some hope. That some of these theaters will air it in the theater. But they could also choose to put it online if not.

COSTELLO: OK, so you've been looking into these hackers. I mean are these hackers responsible? I mean could they carry out a 9/11 style attack? Do we know?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's hard because we don't exactly know who these hackers are. But one of the things that we're really wrapping our head around is this idea of cyber terrorism, too. The idea that these aren't just credit card numbers too being released, these are very personal -- this is so much personal information and they've made good on those threats. Their next threat is physical terror. Will they make good on those? I don't know. But we're already seeing the repercussions, we are seeing people who say I don't want to go to the movies on Christmas Day which is a big day to go to the movies because I just don't feel comfortable, I don't feel safe. You have, you know, former employees suing so you're already seeing the damage of this cyber terror.

STELTER: And I'm sitting here feeling really sad about that. You know, that anyone ...

COSTELLO: Me too.

STELTER: ... would sit at home and think to themselves "I'm not going to go to the movies because I'm worried about a terrorist attack from some hackers." You know, listen, we have got to take it always, take it seriously, but this is incredibly farfetched, Carol. This is ...

COSTELLO: I just think -- I don't know, like I value my freedom of speech and I don't like when people scare me into doing things that are against, you know, my patriotic duty.

STELTER: That's what terrorism is, it's trying to instill fear and I don't think we have to let them. I'm really glad people are coming online today this morning, people like Judd Apatow who you showed a little while ago saying "I am now going to go to see this movie." That's why I hope ...

COSTELLO: Of course he has a stake in the movie, too.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: So, let's not give him too much credit.

STELTER: We are seeing lots of other folks there, too. People without skin in the game saying we now have to go see this movie because we cannot let these threats win.

COSTELLO: Yeah, so will, I would guess that Sony, you know, it's headquarters in Japan, is looking into who these hackers are. I mean what's the word from where you are about who these hackers are?

RIPLEY: The official word that Sony is telling us is that the investigation is ongoing, but you can guarantee that behind closed doors right now and around the clock, really, Sony is actively trying to figure out who is behind this. Because they have a major stake here, being a Japanese company, they have to answer to the Japanese government who's not very happy that Sony executives here even greenlighted a production like this. But there's also something else to keep in mind. You talk about the power of a cyber-attack. If, in fact, North Korea is behind this, think about how this levels the playing field for so many decades. North Korea's military has kind of been a joke. People haven't really taken their nuclear program that seriously. But if they have the capability to paralyze a major American company and cause this much destruction and fear in the United States, what kind of a message does that send to the rest of the world.

COSTELLO: Exactly right. You know, the other worrisome thing, in my mind, is that this could have a chilling effect on the way people make movies and what they decide to put into movies.