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Silver Shield Fund Educates Children of Slain Officers; EMTs' Desperate Attempt to Save NYPD Officers; First Western Journalist Embeds With ISIS; U.S. Helps Cuban Spy's Wife Become Pregnant

Aired December 22, 2014 - 14:30   ET

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

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Just past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

One of the slain New York City police officers, Rafael Ramos, left behind two sons. Jayden, who is just 13, and Justin, who is a college student in Maine. Ramos had only been on the force for two years and now the financial burden of his children's education falls to his widow.

Well, you have the Silver Shield Foundation. Have you heard about this group? Founded by late New York Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner, that will pay for their education of the sons here.

Joining me on the phone from the Silver Shield Foundation is Casey Fuchs.

This is tremendous. I was reading about this. What you all do and what you have done but let me begin. Have you spoken with the Ramos family?

CASEY FUCHS, SILVER SHIELD FOUNDATION (voice-over): No, I have not. I don't speak with the family until it comes time for them to send us the bills and I walk her through some of the steps of how some other assistance.

BALDWIN: I see. Why don't you take me back to how this foundation started? I read that Steinbrenner had seen a number of children at a funeral of a fallen police officer here in New York and that moment changed things for him.

FUCHS: Actually, my father and George Steinbrenner were at a funeral and they were handing a flag to the family and he said, what happens when it comes time for college for these children. We need to help them. So he said we need to start a foundation and raise money and give it away. And that's how it started in 1982. And we've now supported over 800 children under our caring wing.

BALDWIN: 800 children all fallen officers' children?

FUCHS: There are police officer -- we started covering New York City Police Department and fire department and, since then, we added New York, Connecticut and New Jersey state troopers. And we cover all police in Connecticut and all police officers in Long Island along with the New York, New Jersey Port Authority Police Department.

BALDWIN: Incredible.

FUCHS: We cover over 100,000 police officers and firefighters.

BALDWIN: When you say education, are we talking you foot the bill for an entire four-year college education?

FUCHS: That's how it started. We put $20,000 aside, $5,000 for four years. It can be used for college. It can be used for tutoring if they need assistance to get into college. We're one of the only organizations that helps with grad school if children decide to use their funds for grad school, nursing school, law school. Some specialized after their undergrad. They can save funds for Silver Shield to use in later years.

(CROSSTALK)

FUCHS: It is available until they're 25.

BALDWIN: It's absolutely wonderful what your father and what Mr. Steinbrenner did. Again, it's the Silver Shield Foundation.

Casey Fuchs, hank you so much for calling in and sharing what you all will be doing for these young men.

Coming up, a reporter goes behind enemy lines and embeds with the terror group ISIS. It's was months and months of negotiating to have this access. Why he says ISIS is as strong as ever.

And next, the heart-pounding moments after the shooting when first responders tried desperately to save those officers in Brooklyn. Hear their story.

We'll be right back.

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BALDWIN: When that shooter opened fire and assassinated these two New York City police officers, police weren't the only ones to respond on the scene. You see how it played out on Saturday afternoon. Then you had New York paramedics, EMTs arriving minutes later. Their job certainly not at all easy as they had to begin the process of trying to stabilize the injured officers to try so see if there were any signs of life, you know, begging them to blink.

One paramedic became emotional as she spoke with our correspondent, Alexandra Field, about those moments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TANTANIA ALEXANDER, NEW YORK PARAMEDIC: He has a family. You don't know if -- you don't know if you're going to make it to your family. You put your life on the line every day for people.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: With me now Michael Daly, special correspondent with "The Daily Beast."

You spoke with that young woman, that young EMT, 23.

MICHAEL DALY, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, THE DAILY BEAST: She's a magnificent human being. Magnificent. Just like at the Trade Center when absolute evil struck us and good responded, that's what happened. Absolute evil in the murder of those two police officers and absolute good responding in the person of her and other people.

BALDWIN: You wrote your piece today for "The Daily Beast" and you begin it with this powerful narrative of this 27 year old, one of the other paramedics was begging one of the police officers to blink, begging for a sign of life.

DALY: He described to me -- it's hard to think about that he's pushing on this poor cop's chest and he's wounded there and he's looking into the cop's eyes telling him, "Please, just blink. If you can hear me, just blink." All he wants is some tiny sign of life. He's just waiting for that one blink. He keeps staring in those eyes and he keeps pushing and he keeps hoping and nothing happens.

BALDWIN: Michael Daly, I see the pain in your eyes. I see the tears welling up in your eyes. We were talking at commercial break and you were saying you covered 34 murders in the city one weekend back in the '80s. You're a hardened reporter, if I may. You've seen a lot, is my point. For you to become this emotional over these people you met on Tompkins Avenue on Saturday, can you explain to people who don't live here, the emotions wrapped up in this.

DALY: You have a city that was once like a war zone. It was transformed into the safest big city in America and it was transformed by the police officers. A lot of us felt that the city had gotten better. It had gotten better. No one bothered to thank the cops but it had gotten better. You had two cops that were sitting on Tompkins Avenue and they're not down protecting rich people on central park south but they are parked across from a housing project. That's why they are there to protect those people. They are sitting there in a city that they made better. That they made safer. That they never have been thanked for.

And someone comes up and in my mind just the personification of evil and shoots these two poor officers in the head and then you just -- when you think, all right, evil is going to win. You have these magnificent people from a volunteer ambulance corps. They don't get paid. They do that because they want to save lives. And they come and they are the first ones on the scene. There are two police officers wounded. There's only one ambulance. They have to split up.

First, they say which one should we help? Who is hurt worse? The cops say they're both shot in the head and neither one is breathing. And they both start working and then the fire department arrives and they help with the other one and Johnson keeps fighting and praying and pushing and praying and pushing and praying. And then you go and hear about Officer Ramos' son, two sons. You find

out that he worked at a school named after Rocco Lorry (ph), someone murdered in the same way in the '70s, and all he wanted to do was become a police officer. He became a police officer. The other cop all he wanted to do was help people. You stop almost any cop and say, why did you become a police officer? It's almost always the same reason, to help people. And there they were. All they wanted to do was help people and they got shot in the head and these good people tried to save them. That's it.

BALDWIN: Just final question as you talk to other law enforcement and this deranged total mental issues from everything I read, are police officers recognizing this as an isolated thing or are they worried that people who are currently actively trying to keep all of us safe, are they fearful?

DALY: I think they're fearful but to do their job they can't let the fear rule them. What we have to think about the family that sits at home. They hear something like this, and then 3:30 in the afternoon, it's time for daddy or mommy to go out on the streets of New York in their blue uniform. And you got to wonder about them. Excuse me. I don't have a right to get choked up. I didn't lose anybody. There's something about this one happening so close to Christmas in the city that thought it was better. There's something about this one that tears you up.

The cops are going to keep doing their job. No matter how they feel about the mayor and no matter how scary it is out there. They're going to do their job. There's never been a time when someone in the city called for help and they didn't get it.

BALDWIN: I think your point is well taken. I think any of us, if they know, wives, husbands of police officers, the kids, give them a big hug. Know that those are the ones we should think about right now.

Michael Daly, thank you so much for your stories and your antidotes and your emotion. I truly appreciate it.

We'll be right back.

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BALDWIN: We are now getting a rare glimpse into a world very few of us know and most of us fear. The men you see are ISIS terrorists on the left. The man in the blue on the right is the first Western journalist ever allowed to walk alongside them, traveling deep into ISIS territory in Iraq, embedding himself with ISIS inside the area they now call a caliphate.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen sat down with this journalist.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JUERGEN TODENHOEFER, GERMAN AUTHOR EMBEDDED WITH ISIS: They said 1 percent movement in the Islamic world but this 1 percent movement has the power of a nuclear tsunami. It's incredible. I was so amazed. I couldn't understand the enthusiasm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: While negotiating his way into the situation for months and months, one fear that remained with him the fact that he wouldn't just share the same hotel as James Foley but would end up sharing his fate as well. But 10 days later, he walked away with a warning that ISIS is "much stronger and much more dangerous than the West realizes."

Joining me now Bob Baer, CNN national security analyst and former CIA operative.

Bob, when you hear from this journalist, every day, foreign fighters arrive every day from all over the world, it's incomprehensible. What did you learn about his details about ISIS that we didn't already know?

ROBERT BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST & FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: Well, Brooke, it's not that I learned so much, but it's confirmation, what I keep hearing is ISIS is here to stay. The Islamic State has legitimacy. It uses terrorism and slavery and so forth, but on the other hand, for a lot of Sunni Muslims and not just jihadis, it's a shield. It's a protection.

The problem is that Iraq and Syria are now effectively partitioned countries and Sunnis are circling the wagons. There's a lot of local support and the bombing, yes, will blunt their offensive against the Kurds and other places and against Baghdad and, at the end of the day, I have a feeling this state is here to stay.

BALDWIN: So confirmation for you. We know that this German journalist negotiating for months and months for rare access into Mosul. We talked about power of propaganda and sophistication from ISIS. What's in it for these terrorists to let someone in? How much of it do you think is cherry picked through a narrow lens?

BAER: Well, I think this is definitely propaganda. They are trying to -- now that they are more established, they are turning against terrorism that wouldn't be true but what they are trying to do is improve their image because they think they have staying power. And the government in Baghdad is not doing much to help this. It is continuing to send in Shia death squads to combat ISIS. One of their leaders was killed yesterday. This is a sectarian war and I think what they would like to do is -- it's too late, but to broadcast their grievances and demands.

BALDWIN: In Mosul, he saw social welfare and school system and plans to provide education to girls. And when I read that, I thought I don't know if I buy that. Do you buy that?

BAER: I don't buy it either. Brooke, this is a new state. Most of these people were incapable of governing and it will collapse the caliphate and something similar will take its place and maybe not so violent, but it's pretty much -- we've got to look at the Sunni mentality and they feel that they are embattled and these people, locals in Mosul, and I've talked to some of them, have temporarily allied with ISIS. I think one day they'll turn against them as, I just said, but how long that will take I don't know.

BALDWIN: And we heard the president announcing the other day additional troops going in. We know that we've been covering for months and months this air campaign. You say this is sectarian war. You said this before. Final question. The air campaign won't be enough?

BAER: It will be enough to save those in Sinjar. It will stop an attack on Baghdad. I believe that. At the end of the day, to crush this movement, we would actually have to destroy the Sunni parts of Iraq. And we're not going to do that, obviously. We're going to have to let this metastasize into something different. I hope it does soon.

BALDWIN: Bob Baer, thank you.

Coming up next, this convicted Cuban spy being held in a prison in California somehow manages to get his wife pregnant from thousands of miles away. How could that happen? We have those details coming up.

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BALDWIN: The U.S./Cuba negotiations and that bombshell agreement that followed is rife with details here, not least the U.S. government's decision to help the wife of a jailed Cuban spy become pregnant.

CNN's Patrick Oppmann has this bizarre story.

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(SHOUTING)

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just released from U.S. prisons, the Cuban Five received a hero's welcome from Raul Castro and top officials.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

OPPMANN: The men's return has Cubans buzzing. Not just over the secret negotiations that freed the five, but also over the mysterious pregnancy of a wife of one of the men, Gerardo Hernandez. That is wife was with child is all too clear in these TV images.

Greeted by admirers in his old neighborhood, Gerardo said, "As much as I prepared for my return, it was still surprising."

The couple's pregnancy is also surprising since she was long banned from visiting Gerardo in U.S. federal prison for herself being a Cuban intelligence officer. The family says she was inseminated artificially and that Gerardo is the father.

ADRIANA HERNANDEZ, WIFE OF GERARDO: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

OPPMANN: "Gerardo is in good shape, strong and happy," she told me about the expecting father. "He'll explain how it happened. It was science." Cuban Five member, Rene Gonzalez, said he can't disclose how a

pregnancy worthy of a spy thriller was pulled off.

RENE GONZALEZ, CUBAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: It was accomplished with good will of the U.S. government. That's important.

OPPMANN: In a statement released to CNN, a Justice Department spokesman said we can confirm the United States facilitated Mrs. Hernandez's request to have a baby with her husband in light of Mr. Hernandez's two life sentences. The request was passed along by Senator Leahy who was seeking to improve conditions for Mr. Gross while imprisoned in Cuba.

Gerardo received a double life sentence for his role in the downing of two planes by the Cuban air force that killed four Cuban Americans.

(SHOUTING)

OPPMANN: The U.S. officials helped him conceive a child is sure to add salt to the wounds of Cuban exiles already enraged at rekindled U.S./Cuba relations.

(SINGING)

OPPMANN: Gerardo and his wife say in about two week's time, they're due to have a baby girl, and thanked the U.S. officials who made this unlikely pregnancy possible.

Definitive proof of the old saying that politics really do make strange bedfellows.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Patrick Oppmann with that report from Havana.

Coming up, we're minutes away from a news conference. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton will speak at police headquarters talking about the murders of two police officers over the weekend and they'll speak to reporters. We'll bring it there live as soon as it happens.

Stay with me. We'll be right back.

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