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Gun Smuggling Flew Over 200 Delta Flights; Artists are Threatening to Sue YouTube

Aired December 23, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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


KENNETH THOMPSON, BROOKLYN DISTRICT ATTORNEY: And so when the employees arrive at the airport, they can get into the terminal without going through any screenings. Henry knew that, and so he worked with Harvey. So, Henry would give Harvey the guns outside the airport. Harvey would go through. All he had to do is just badge himself in, and he can -- parked in the employee parking lot, badge himself in, and he's in the terminal with the guns.

Henry would go through the normal TSA check points, like any other passenger. With the knapsack that wasn't quite full. So he went in as a standard passenger. But they had a meeting place that they would meet. And it is different in the airport. Sometimes it was in the restroom, sometimes it was at a credit union. But they knew.

And so, they would meet at the airport, Harvey would find hen Henry, give him the guns, Henry would take the guns, put it in his knapsack, and then Henry would literally catch a delta flight to New York.

We know that Henry did this on at least 17 occasions between may and December of this year. We also know based on investigation that Henry has been smuggling guns on commercial airliners for years, for at least five years. The investigation is ongoing.

Now, what I want to do. So if he's on the plane, like any other passenger with these guns. Now I want to show you some video from the airport so you can see exactly how this happened. Please direct your attention to the screen.

So on December 10th of this year at the airport, you're going to see at 7:30, you're going to see mark Henry. That's him right there. Going through the normal TSA check point. He has a knapsack on him that's not full. Now, he -- can you stop that just for a second? Now, this is important. His flight was about 8:15 from Atlanta. But what he did going between the TSA check point, he and Eugene Harvey sent text messages to each other about the meeting location. And Harvey told Henry I'm going upstairs now. Henry said I'm coming. So they met in the bathroom of one of the concourse there and they exchanged the guns.

So the next video, the next clip you're going to see, Harvey no now -- I'm sorry, Henry now has the guns in his knapsack and he's heading to catch the flight to Kennedy.

So, this is Henry on the left walking towards this flight. He has a knapsack on, and he has a bag in his hand. That's mark Henry right there. The next clip you're going to see, this is a still photo. Henry is walking to his flight with the guns in his knapsack.

Now, you're going to see him boarding the flight to JFK. This is Henry coming into view. And he has these at least 16 guns in his knapsack. With ammunition, with clips. So he's catching his flight at gate A1.

So now, he's on the plane. Now he arrives at Kennedy airport that morning at about 10:30. And he's literally getting off the plane at Kennedy airport. And he has a knapsack on him. And you may say I can't see the knapsack, you're going to see the next clip.

The next clip shows mark Henry leaving JFK that morning. Right there, can you freeze that? That is Mark Henry with the knapsack that he filled with guns down in Atlanta at Kennedy airport leaving the airport. That knapsack had 16 guns in them, in it.

So he walks out of the airport, and once he left the airport, we as part of our investigation started to follow him because we knew he was on that flight. Now, I want to go back to just this board real quick. So Henry is now in New York city with the guns. He just left Kennedy airport. His destination is Brooklyn. Mark Henry lives in the section of Brooklyn. So does Ernest Linau, he lives there, as well.

Henry comes to Brooklyn and he gives the guns when he arrives to Ernest Linau. Ernest Linau is the guy in Brooklyn who we allege who sold these guns to the undercover agent. You see Mark Henry's a guy down in Atlanta who gets the guns and brings them on the plane. But he brings them to this guy Ernest Linau who then sells them to our undercover detective.

Our undercover detective purchased over 100 guns from Earnest (INAUDIBLE) from his home. And then he literally would come out his house and sell his guns right in front of his house and go back upstairs and enter his house. On 43 occasions right here in Brooklyn between May and December of 2014.

Now, it's also interesting is, we investigated Ernest Linau very carefully. And by investigating him, we learned about other folks involved in this conspiracy. One is Grayline Smith (ph). Grayline Smith (ph) sold guns to him, as well. Grayline Smith (ph) lives in crown heights, and he also lives in Snellville, Georgia, which is right outside of Atlanta. He not only sold weapons to our undercover detective in our case. He sold nine guns to a guy named Adrian Aline (ph). Adrian Aline (ph) also lives in Canarsie. The nine guns he got. He sold to a separate NYPD undercover detective.

But it's key, all of these guns emanated with mark Henry. And so, what we have here in this particular case is if we just security down in that airport because these employees are not required to go through screening, they were able to bring bag full of guns and bag full of guns through into the terminal and put them on commercial airliners. Also important to know is that Mark Henry was able to fly all over the country because he had a certain companion pass. He didn't have to pay for his tickets. It's something that they give all employees. And he got it because his mother was a long standing employee. So he had unlimited, the ability to take unlimited flights for life all over the world. And so, we know that he has traveled not only to New York but also gone to the Dominican republic. The investigation is ongoing. And so what do we have here? On December 10th, the video that's depicted there. Once he came out of the airport, you followed him to his home in Canarsie. He went into his home with the knapsack for a short period of time. For a few minutes and then he came out, without the knapsack forgotten his car will stop him and we told him that he was under arrest, we are going to issue a search warrant. We are going to conduct a search warrant at his house.

At that point, he said my son is home he has nothing to do with it. So he made that admission right after we stopped him. We looked into that bag and we found 16 guns that were wrapped up individually in different bags within that bag. We also found three other guns in Mr. Henry's car. We also arrested Ernest Linau. And we searched his home. And we found a gun there. In total, we seized 153 guns as part of this investigation. And those guns were directly traced to Georgia. We have now five people in custody. We have --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: I'm sorry to interrupt.

THOMPSON: Sure.

We have five individuals who are in custody. The five individuals are Mark Henry, Ernest Linau, Adrian Aline (ph) and Grayline Smith (ph). We have indicted four out of the five. The only one we have not indicted yet is the delta employee. He has been charged by federal prosecutors in Atlanta with selling guns and with violating the security at the airport. We intend to also charge him here in Brooklyn.

And so, this investigation is deeply troubling. Because not only these guns creating havoc on the streets of Brooklyn, throughout the country, but now the scheme really poses a threat in terms of terrorism. They could have easily put a bomb on one of those planes.

And so we're not trying to alarm anyone. We have worked carefully with our partners in Atlanta. Our federal partners. The TSA has been outstanding. The federal air marbles have been helpful. The U.S. attorney's office down there, the FBI has been involved. Delta has been so cooperative from beginning to end.

Once we learn that mark Henry was involved in guns. We didn't know for sure he was transporting guns until we caught him on December 10th. But delta would let us know every time he was flying. And so, they were they were crucial in this investigation.

And so, I want to tell you that we are determined. This is an example we're not just going to buy guns on the street of Brooklyn and call it a day. But we intend to trace down the source of these guns no matter where it takes us. If it takes us to Atlanta, that's where we're going. Because we've got to do more to stop these guns. And I hope that now we will do all we can to make sure that no one can ever get into an airport whether they work for the airport or not. Without being screened. BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: This is absolutely stunning. I mean, just

imagine all the planes flights. There could have been a loaded AK-47 up above as a carry-on. Kind of gun that can shoots a real car, a bullet proof vest. That is precisely what was happening for eight months.

Huge, huge case. You've been listening to the district attorney because they have arrested these five individuals.

Joey Jackson sitting here, and he's been listening to me and this whole thing. This is the first time he really heard the details of how this gun smuggling scheme worked with these different people right parts of the puzzle. The guy walking through security, former employee, the current employee, who was able to go in Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson airport, which is the busiest in the country.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: One guy had the empty knapsack, the other guy had the guns, they have walked into the bathroom, put the guns in the knapsack and this guy would hop on a plane with guns.

JACKSON: Very troubling, Brooke. But what we should take solace in is the fact they were investigating, they were on top of it. And, in fact, from what this press conference shows, they have compelling evidence to establish that this was a conspiracy involving these five individuals that the Brooklyn district attorney went over. Mark Henry, Eugene Harvey, Ernest Linau, Grayline Smith (ph), and Adrian Aline (ph).

And apparently, and you see it right there, Brooke, and apparently each of them having a separate role which would get those guns from Atlanta, bring them on to the streets of Brooklyn and then selling them to an undercover officer. You know, thereby giving more information and ammunition in terms of this prosecution. They're facing significant penalties. They won't see the light of day for a long time.

BALDWIN: Forty-three different times selling to --

JACKSON: From May to December. And that's, you know, that's what's troubling. And you would say, you know, look maybe they could have taken action previous to that, but why, you know? It seems as though the authorities had it well under wraps. They wanted to know the extent of this whole enterprise was. And they were confident at this point on December 10th, Brooke, that they have really uncovered and unraveled this whole enterprise. And so, they made the arrest there.

And, Brooke, there was an admission at that time when before they executed the search warrant to actually get the guns, it was an admission by Mr. Henry in terms of what he was doing and what the guns that were in his bag.

BALDWIN: And to the point, the Brooklyn district attorney saying, look, today it was gun, tomorrow it could be bombs. That they were able to walk into the airport because there were obviously lacking, the security screening for these employees. You know, you and I were listening, you said that's going to change. A lot more fallout.

And also to the DA's credit, you know, say, we're not just going to call it a day. We're going to look at every single one of these guns and find the source.

Quickly, I do want to get to the delta statement. Delta is cooperating with authorities in this investigation. We take seriously any activity that fails to uphold our strict commitment to the safety and security of our customers and employees.

Joey Jackson, thank you.

JACKSON: Absolutely. Thank you, Brooke.

And you know what, it's important investigation. I think when you look at what you talked about in terms of it could have been something else, the DA. talked about it, bombs, thank goodness they brought this under control.

BALDWIN: Thank goodness and thank goodness none of those guns went off on those planes.

Joey, thank you.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Right now, across the world, there are growing concerns of lone Wolf attacks this holiday week. And in particular, and in the aftermath of the deadly hostage situation in Sydney, the prime minister of Australia issued this dire warning today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: An attack is likely. We don't know when and how an attack may come. But we do know that there are people with the intent and the capability to carry out further attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: That's Australia, this is France. Fears there, as well, after a vehicle's crashed into groups of civilians with a driver yelling something about Palestinian children.

Joining me from Washington is our CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank. And Paul, let me begin with France. The attacks linking back to terror. How big of a threat is France facing?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: France is facing a very, very big threat from terrorism right now. The French prime minister says it's the biggest threat the country has ever faced. Probably of all the western countries it faces the highest threat.

Why is this? Because there's a significant degree of radicalization amongst immigrant communities living in French (INAUDIBLE). These are suburbs on the outskirts of French towns which are very often run down. There is large sense of alienation there from North African population. A lot of French extremists have traveled to Syria, about 400 to believed to be fighting now. Another 200 on the way with almost 200 back in France. So concern that people have experience there in killing people could kill people, as well, in France, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And then why is it, Paul, when we talk about the holiday week, and fears of some sort of attack, then, why is that more likely according to officials?

CRUICKSHANK: I think there's a lot of concern now because we've seen attacks over the past few weeks in the west that there could be some sort of copy cat attack. We saw that hostage attack in Australia, at least one terrorism attack in France over the weekend. Those three terrorist attacks in north America recently. So concern that there could be a copycat type of strike.

Also, in the past, documents captured the compound suggested that Al- Qaeda might want to strike around the Christmas period, for sort of psychological reasons. Also, a lot of people are traveling at that time.

But generally speaking, terrorists launch plots when they're ready to go rather than on a particular date, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK. Back to Australia. And this is my final question for you. When you look at the -- when you look closer at the high alert facing Australia and the talk from officials, you know, of raising this alert to extreme. What are you hearing about this increased terror chatter?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, Australian officials are not elaborating on this. But I think their concern is there could be somebody inspired by what they saw last week play out in Australia, which was this hostage drama, this deadly hostage drama by an ISIS sympathizer, ISIS supporters have glorified this guy online. And there's concern that another extremist could launch an attack. Australia is also dealing with a significant radicalization, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right. Paul Cruickshank, thank you so much, live in Washington.

And YouTube facing a big, big lawsuit from some musicians. They are telling the site to take down thousands of videos or else they want a billion dollars.

And stocks hit a record high today so they in with the record slow. Look at all of the green on the screen, my goodness. North of that 18,000 mark. We'll take a look at the Dow's historic day, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYING)

BALDWIN: Pharrell, just a dozen of artists, not exactly happy that the music is readily available on YouTube. They are telling the Internet service yank it down. Yank down some 20,000 videos or face a $1 billion lawsuit.

List, this boils down to a battle over performance, right? So to help us walk through this is David Lowery live in Richmond, Virginia. He is a singer with the band Cracker. And he is also a lecturer in music business certificate program at the University of Georgia.

So David, nice to see you.

DAVID LOWERY, SINGER: Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

BALDWIN: All right, so what do you think? What do you think? We know this new music group called global music rights, representing some 40 artists, we mentioned Pharrell but 40 are behind this. Do you think its value lid?

LOWERY: Yes. Well, there is -- yes. I do think its valid. Songwriting is bizarrely hyper regulated by the government, essentially. There's a department of justice process that you go through whereby you license your performance rights to companies, anything from a restaurant to a company as big as Google, which has YouTube to license your songs. This is because the organizations of songwriters, unions for songwriters, they have been under this department of justice consent decree since 1941.

So what's happened now is some songwriters have left and formed a new pro so they are no longer under this consent decree. And so these artists, in my view, are right fully claiming that there is no longer a license for YouTube to perform these songs and they want to negotiate over this license. It's pretty cut and dry.

BALDWIN: It doesn't sound -- it sounds pretty complicated to me. When you answered you're like, yes --

LOWERY: Well, yes. Everything to do with song writing is incredibly complicated. So relatively, it's cut and dry. You tube is claiming that they still have the rights to perform these songs, from what I can tell. This isn't a lawsuit yet. This is just threats of a lawsuit.

BALDWIN: Yes.

LOWERY: It looks like that they are claiming they still have the rights to perform these songs under the consent decree with these two companies but the songwriters are no longer part of those companies so it would seem like they don't have the right to perform these songs. And YouTube looks like it's going to rely on a loophole to continue to play these songs. I see a comment from one of their lawyers that they want these songwriters to go through the sort of notice and take down, like notify them of each infringing video and take them down. That was never the point of the law.

BALDWIN: David, what is this all about? Because I am listening to you, I'm thinking about, you know, what we covered a couple of weeks ago, it was Spotify and the whole Taylor Swift, yanking her music off Spotify and now all of this with YouTube, what direction are the artists trying to go to?

LOWERY: Well, Spotify -- artists have complained about the rates they get from Spotify. YouTube is much lower.

BALDWIN: And apparently Spotify is not a lot at all.

LOWERY: Yes. Exactly. And YouTube is even lower. So a lot of artists are just -- they are unhappy with this. I mean, why do we have to be -- why do we have to be a part of the service if it doesn't pay us well? I mean, that's that just seems like a fundamental American, you know, right. That is like they are not paying me enough, I don't want to be part of this service. That's it.

BALDWIN: Talking to singers and songwriters and not necessarily the Taylor Swift, you know. You can understand where they are coming from and they are frustrated.

David Lowery, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming and we will see. We will see what happens with YouTube. Appreciate it.

LOWERY: Thank you.

BALDWIN: And before I let you go, can we listen on good news.

Thank you.

If you have not checked the Dow today, let me the first to say happy holidays to you and your 401(k) because, hello, the Dow hitting the 18,000 milestone for the first time ever. Remember all the guys and gals on the stock exchange that printed those hats couple of weeks to go, 18,000, and they thought they jinxed. Well, you see, they haven't. The S&P 500 also trading in an all-time high.

So why is this happening? Huge reasons, numbers out today. U.S. economy grew five percent in the third quarter. But let's just go to Poppy Harlow who has been watching and crunching and looking at the numbers. What is happening?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm here to bring you the great news. I mean, it's not just that everyone wants to start the new year happy. This is a great GDP reading. We're in the broadest measure of our economy. We grew five percent last quarter. That it's huge. It's actual proof that our economy is not only doing well, here and there, it's doing really, really well.

And when you look at the market, it is astonishing, right? Over the last week, we've seen the Dow up a thousand points, up triple digits in four of the five last sessions because people are believing this growth. They are loving this economy better than the U.S. global economy right now.

You have the Dow up nine percent year to date. You got the broader S&P 500 which tracks your 401(k), up 13 percent. Nasdaq is up 14 percent and it is strong sentiment and that really the low gas prices aren't hurting either because consumers are spending money on other things. BALDWIN: It seems, though, you see what is happening on Wall Street.

Though again, you've been on Main Street so many times talking to people. And it is like they are not feeling necessarily --

HARLOW: So people will watch this and say, you don't get it. You don't understand how I am feeling. My wages haven't increased in years, I'm still out of work. That's true. But the recent poll that we did here at CNN showed us and it is really astonishing. So let's pulled that up.

For the first time in seven years, the majority of Americans have a positive view about the economy, 51 percent of Americans told that economic conditions are good, 38 percent in October. So that has improved.

BALDWIN: There we go.

HARLOW: But that's OK. That's reflective of how people are feeling. There's the poll. Fifty one percent feel the economy is good versus 38 percent in October, 49 percent still feel it's poor. (INAUDIBLE), Brooke, digging in to the poll. The economic optimism is among all races. People that live in the cities, people that live in the suburbs, people who live out in rural areas and the growth and positive use of this economy is highest among low-income Americans. You talk about people struggling the most, their view of the economy has improved the most that of all the groups. So we are doing better. We got ways to go.

BALDWIN: Good. Good. To change the 401 (k).

All right, and here we go, the bell.

HARLOW: Look at that.

BALDWIN: Smiles and happy face and applause.

HARLOW: Look at that. This is a record day, over 18,000 for the U.S. economy that's market ever in American history.

BALDWIN: Poppy Harlow, thank you for that.