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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Crisis in Yemen: Key U.S. Ally on Brink of Collapse; Time Running Out for ISIS Hostages; Boehner Bypasses Obama, Invites Netanyahu; Michael Brown Shooting: No Charges for Officer Wilson

Aired January 22, 2015 - 04:00   ET

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


CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Crisis in Yemen that could derail the war on terror. The country, a crucial ally to the United States, on the brink of collapse. Al Qaeda hoping to increase power there. We are live with the latest this morning.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Time running out for two hostages held by ISIS, threatened with death if Japan does not pay a hefty ransom. We are live in Tokyo with the latest this morning.

ROMANS: No charges. No charges expected for the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown. A federal investigation not finding enough evidence against Officer Darren Wilson. What we're learning this morning about the new report, ahead.

Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. It is Thursday, January 22nd. It is about 4:01 in the East.

And we do begin this morning with a crisis in Yemen that could give al Qaeda a new foothold and new power. There is now a tentative deal with the U.S.-backed government there and rebels who have been attacking the president's palace for days. But it is not clear whether this truce will hold any longer than the last one.

Yemen is a hotbed of terrorism. Al Qaeda's affiliate there claims to have planned and funded part of the Paris terror attacks. An al Qaeda leader in the Arabian Peninsula, right there, released a video, calling jihadists to launch lone wolf attacks at home there in Europe and in the United States.

ISIS, of course, is known now or this is new information now or new information actually. ISIS has been recruiting actively in Yemen. The Obama administration sees Yemen as crucial to the U.S. war on terror, but this morning, that partnership is anything but stable.

We want to bring in our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson with the latest.

Good morning, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, John. I mean, regional experts begin to look at Yemen as tipping towards a failed state status. There's no indication that the Houthis are going to be -- are going to settle for the deal that they have made. There is with no indication and the deal progresses along the timed outline. They said that they will accept stronger positions in government and pull back some of the forces, release some of the people they detained.

But there are indications that they are beginning to spread influence into other parts of the country, some of the key oil regions there. You also have the gulf cooperation council meeting in an emergency session in Saudi Arabia. Calling this a coup and giving their backing. It would appear to the government, President Hadi. But we are also hearing from the south where there are secessionists that want to break-away calling for the GCC support.

We have, of course, this opportunity for al Qaeda. You have the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen. He's the number two of al Qaeda calling for people to stay at home and attack there rather than go to Yemen and join the fight.

You will see the Sunni tribesmen emboldened, not only to attack the Houthis, but now are ready recruiting ground for al Qaeda. And a small ISIS element there, the forces element there in Yemen as well, opportunity for them to try to grow as this becomes a worsening situation. Again, regional experts viewing this now as tipping towards a failed state, John.

BERMAN: And, of course, the United States does have an embassy there, there is concern for the U.S. personnel in that region ready to be evacuated at moments notice, if the need should arise.

Nic Robertson covering that for us, thanks so much.

ROMANS: All right. This morning, Japanese officials trying to save the lives of two hostages. They are scrambling for a means to communicate with ISIS. The Islamic terror group demanding $200 million or it will execute these men on Friday.

Japan's prime minister has cut short a trip to the Mideast to deal with this crisis. In the meantime, Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting in London this morning with partners in the coalition trying to defeat ISIS.

Turning now to CNN's Will Ripley on the ground in Tokyo for more on the effort to save the two hostages.

Will, what's the latest?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine, we are just 20 hours away or so from the deadline, early Friday morning 8:58 a.m. Eastern Time. That is when ISIS says it will murder two Japanese men if they do not receive $200 million from the Japanese government.

All day today, the word we've been getting from officials here in Tokyo is that Japan is trying to open a line of communication with ISIS. They reached out to partners in Turkey and Jordan, trying to get some sort of intelligence, some sort of an in to talk with ISIS, but have not, as far as we know right now, been able to communicate with the terror group.

Now, this is significant that Japan is saying publicly they want to talk to ISIS, because it means that perhaps Japan is at least willing to talk to the group that is demanding $200 million. There are news reports from unnamed government sources in Japan that the wife of Kenji Goto, one of the hostages, actually received an e-mail after he disappeared, saying that if they were able to come up with $18 million and maybe $16 million, Goto would be set free.

Now, it's not clear if that email came from ISIS. The Japanese government is working to confirm that. But if it did come from ISIS, it is a sign this terror group may be able to accept a smaller amount of money than the $200 million they are demanding. Meanwhile, we are also hearing for the first time from the Syrian guide who took Kenji Goto close to the border and warned him not to cross, and then had to call his wife, the mother of his two children, after he went missing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: That's a very hard phone call to make, to call the wife.

ALAAEDDIN AL ZAIM, SYRIAN FIXER FOR JOURNALIST KENJI GOTO: I know that. But I call her and she is very strong woman. Also, he is very strong. Anytime he wants to do his job very well. If it is danger, he is not afraid from -- sometimes we're going to dangerous places, he don't afraid. He tell me, this is my jobs, I am journalist, I have to do that.

(END VIDEOI CLIP)

RIPLEY: Christine, the Goto family is going to need that strength in the coming hours as this deadline looms closer.

ROMANS: All right. Will Ripley for us this morning in Tokyo -- thank you, Will.

BERMAN: It's six minutes after the hour right now.

A grand jury has indicted an Ohio man who allegedly plotted to bomb the U.S. Capitol.

Twenty-year-old Christopher Lee Cornell faces two counts of attempted murder of government employees. Each count carries a possible 20-year sentence. He is also facing firearms charges. Cornell was arrested outside a suburban Cincinnati gun shop last week after purchasing two M15 assault weapons and 600 rounds of ammunition.

ROMANS: There is controversy this morning over a congressional end run without consulting the White House. House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress next month and make a case for new sanctions against Iran. The Obama administration is concerned that could jeopardize negotiations on the Tehran's nuclear program.

We get more this morning from CNN's Jim Acosta at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John and Christine, the White House was not pleased, it's safe to say. White House official told me the first they heard of this was not from the Israelis. It was when they got a head's up from Speaker Boehner's office only minutes before the announcement, because the president was on the road in Boise, Idaho.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest did not have an on-camera briefing, but he told reporters on Air Force One, the White House believes Prime Minister Netanyahu's decision to accept Boehner's offer was a, quote, "departure from protocol".

Earnest said the standard procedure in this kind of cases, that a head of state normally notifies the White House when announcing a trip to the U.S. That did happen here.

And asked whether the White House is annoyed, Earnest said the administration is reserving judgment until after U.S. officials speak to the Israelis. Netanyahu's speech comes after the president warned he will veto a new Iran sanctions bill that has passed while negotiations are underway with Tehran over their nuclear (AUDIO GAP)

It's worth noting the White House is not saying at this point whether the president will even meet with Netanyahu when he delivers that speech next month, but read between the lines. And this is yet another chapter in the long saga of the frosty relation between the president and Netanyahu -- John and Christine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: All right. Our thanks to Jim for that.

Historic high level talks on normalizing relations between the United States and Cuba being held in Havana. The initial discussions will focus on trade and travel and reopening embassies in both capitals. These talks come just weeks after President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro formally ended nearly six decades of official estrangement between the two countries.

ROMANS: An abrupt about-face by House Republicans, dropping plans to debate a bill that would ban virtually all abortions after 20 weeks. Objections from female lawmakers left leaders short of the votes they need to pass it. The vote had been scheduled to coincide with the gathering of anti-abortion activists marking the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Rowe versus Wade decision that legalized abortion.

BERMAN: President Obama issuing an executive order to better coordinate federal programs in the Arctic Ocean. The president says this is a necessary response of climate change for the arctic. One Alaska senator says the order does not do enough and focuses too much on climate change that have transformed the Arctic, its features and its accessibility. One Alaska senator says the order does not do enough and focuses too much on climate change and too little on development and build up of critical infrastructure.

ROMANS: All right. As for the political climate in Washington, the Republican-controlled Senate is now on record saying climate change is real and not a hoax. That measure passed by 98-1 margin. But senators voted down a pair of amendments to the bill approving the Keystone XL pipeline, stating that human activity contributes to climate change.

BERMAN: Yes, they said climate change exists, but humans aren't contributing.

The president is still on the road. He's trying to sell his middle class economic program and other ideas in the State of the Union. He delivers a speech today at the University of Kansas, and after that, he turns to Washington where he will be interviewed by several YouTube stars. So, there you go.

ROMANS: Time for an early start of your money this morning.

Asian shares ended the day higher. European shares looking a little uncertain ahead of an important decision from the European Central Bank. That comes later this morning. The ECB is expected to announce a massive bond-buying program worth 50 billion euro a month. That will be about $58 billion. It's a stimulus and aimed to stop deflation and prop up the European economy. An anticipation of the program has been boosting stocks for weeks.

U.S. stock futures pointing higher. Yesterday, stocks climbed for the third day, the longest winning streak so far this year. That's saying something.

BERMAN: Not much of --

ROMANS: It looks like it might continue today.

BERMAN: Keep it going four days, make it four.

All right. Ten minutes after the hour.

The Justice Department set to clear Officer Darren Wilson of deadly shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown. We'll tell you why federal investigators will not be filing charges. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: The Ferguson police officer who shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown will not face criminal charges, state, federal or otherwise. The FBI has completed its investigation of Darren Wilson and the case is now in the hands of federal prosecutors.

Sources telling CNN the Justice Department determined there is not enough evidence to file any charges against Wilson.

The formal announcement is expected before Attorney General Eric Holder leaves office this spring. ROMANS: New video this morning of a deadly police shooting a New

Jersey street. The chilling encounter captured on the dash cam video of Bridgeton, New Jersey. Officers pulling over a blue jaguar for running a stop sign late last month when suddenly -- well, watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFFICER: Show me your hands! Show me your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hands. Show me your hands. Don't (EXPLETIVE DELETED) move! Don't you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) move!

Get him out of the car, Rog. We've got a gun in his glove compartment. I'm going to shot you. You are going to be (EXPLETIVE DELETED) dead! I'm telling you. You reach for something, you going to be (EXPLETIVE DELETED) dead! I'm telling you.

Jerome, you reach for something, you're going to (EXPLETIVE DELETED) dead. He's reaching, he's reaching. Show him your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) hands! No, you're not! No, you're not! No, you're not! Don't you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) move!

(GUNSHOTS)

OFFICER: Don't you (EXPLETIVE DELETED) move!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Thirty-six-year-old Jermaine Reid was killed by the officers. The use of deadly force is being investigated by county prosecutors. Now, Reid had a criminal record spending 13 years in prison for shooting at least -- shooting at three New Jersey state troopers as a teenager.

The police officers found a gun in the glove compartment and told him repeatedly not to move.

BERMAN: City council members in Newtown, Connecticut, voting to tear down the home where Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza had lived. The yellow colonial sits on a grassy two-acre hill. You can see it there.

Lanza shot and killed his mother inside that house before heading to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 children and six educators before taking his own life. There is no timetable for demolition. A council member says it will be scheduled as soon as practical.

ROMANS: All right. Breaking overnight, fire crews battle a massive fire that tore through a New Jersey apartment complex. Hundreds of people have been displaced from The Avalon at Edgewater Complex along the Hudson River. So far, there are no reports of any injuries. Officials say everyone in the four-story building appears to have gotten out safely. No word yet on what caused that fire, but it was really big fire. Hundreds of families displaced now.

BERMAN: New information about the fatal metro incident in Washington, D.C. Members of the National Transportation Safety Board met Thursday, calling what happened earlier this month on the yellow line completely unacceptable. One member said the train's air intake system was not turned off, which meant it drew smoke into the cars. One passenger died and many others were sickened by that smoke.

ROMANS: New details emerging in the shooting at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. It turns out the surgeon who was shot dead had treated the mother of the gunman. Stephen Pasceri shot Dr. Michael Davidson in a foyer before turning the gun on himself. Pasceri's sister says he blamed Davidson of their mother's death in November.

Jay Leno coming to the defense of women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. The former "Tonight Show" host says he doesn't understand why it is hard to understand dozens of women. He says, quote, "You go to Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here, you need 25."

We're also hearing from Malcolm-Jamal Warner who played Cosby's son on his NBC sitcom. He tells "Billboard" magazine it is difficult to see Cosby faced allegations of sexual assault and calls him an important mentor and friend.

BERMAN: And he looks just the same as he did.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: All right. Happening today: New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, he will speak to reporters for the first time since reports emerged that 11 of the 12 footballs that the Patriots used in the game against the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday did not have enough air in them.

So, when Bill Belichick gives a news conference, it is hardly a conference. He sort of grunts and speaks in monosyllabic terms. He does not really emote that much. So, it is unlikely you get information from him.

Some NFL players are coming to the Patriots defense, even members of the Seahawks who are going to play the Patriots in the Super Bowl next week. Many players say the air pressure of the football would not have changed anything, leading up --

ROMANS: I mean, this is the highest level of football in America. You would think that everything is dotted "I's" and crossed "T's."

BERMAN: If it's a rule and you broke, it's cheating. We'll see -- you know, look, if the ESPN report is true, that 11 of the 12 balls did not have enough air and the question is why? We need to find out the why.

ROMANS: And who did it.

BERMAN: Well, if there is a who. I mean, it could have been the weather. There could be some other worldly force perhaps.

ROMANS: Speaking of the weather and other worldly forces, a winter storm set to dump a half of foot of snow across the southern Rockies and Southern Plains.

Let's get to meteorologist Derek Van Dam for an early look at your weather.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Waking up to a winter wonderland across New Mexico and Texas today. Here's the reason why. Very active radar at the moment from Dallas to Albuquerque. Be careful traveling east or westbound along Interstate 40. We are expecting 3 to 6 inches of snow.

Temperatures today, 46 for the nation's capital, 39 for the Big Apple. The Windy City tops 36 with sunshine overhead. Look at the storm system developing across the Gulf of Mexico. This is going to produce roughly between three and five inches locally from Texas through the Carolinas.

But as we look towards Friday night and into Saturday, we have the potential for the big snowstorm. That would be a nor'easter for New York City and Washington, the exact path of the storm still uncertain with some computer models indicating anywhere between two and four inches of snow for the big cities and as little as a light dusting.

Either way you look at it, Christine and John, we're going to monitor this storm very closely here at CNN weather center.

Back to you.

ROMANS: All right. Thank you. We know you will be watching that for us.

A new terror warning: investigator revealing suspects on the run in the Paris terror attacks. They could return to kill again. We are live in Paris with very new developments, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: Welcome back.

France is rolling out sweeping new measures aimed at safeguarding the country from terror. In the wake of the massacres in Paris, inspired perhaps or orchestrated by Islamist terror groups, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls announcing what he calls exceptional measures. They include spending almost half a billion dollars and hiring thousands of new law enforcement personnel.

Meanwhile, law enforcement sources telling CNN that the Paris attackers may have urged their associates to leave France weeks ago as Amedy Coulibaly's wife Hayat Boumediene did. The sources say officials are worried some of those associates may return to Europe and launch more attacks.

Senior European correspondent Jim Bittermann joins us now. He's live from Paris.

Jim, bring us up to date on what investigators are saying about all of these associates of Amedy Coulibaly and where they could be around the world.

JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, they believe they are in Syria. They slipped across the border into Syria. But as important as they might be, at least they are known, one of the things the French are worried about are the people they don't know about. They believe there are about 300 or so French young people who are in Syria right now being trained up and have been trained and fighting alongside ISIS, when another 1,000 radicalized or self radicalized on the Internet.

And what Manuel Valls said yesterday when he announced the sweeping security measures, was that there are 3,000 people in France, actually in France at the moment, who should be watched. The security agents should be watching and monitoring and surveying.

So, it is a real problem here. I think it is the thing that merited the kind of action that Valls was talking about -- Christine.

ROMANS: All right. Jim Bittermann for us this morning.

Again, trying to track all of those associates -- really worried about the associates, John, they don't know, who aren't in their radar yet.

BERMAN: All right. Twenty-four minutes after the hour.

Separatists shelling civilian areas in eastern Ukraine this morning. Ten people reported killed, another 20 injured. I suppose it is not clear who exactly is doing the shelling. It's not an auspicious follow-up to a new agreement reached by Russia and Ukrainian diplomats, settling on the dividing line between the sides.

Both camps are supposed to pull their heavy weapons back nine miles from that demarcation. But there was no agreement made to withdraw all the troops. This move comes after fierce fighting erupted between the Ukrainian military and rebels over a remote border checkpoint near in Luhansk.

ROMANS: A small victory this morning in the fight against Boko Haram. Troops from Cameroon and its allies have freed a German hostage kidnapped in Nigeria six months ago by the Islamic terror group. Cameroon's president, Paul Biya, announced the rescue of Robert Nitsch Eberhard on state TV. Biya did not say how, when or where that rescue took place.

Boko Haram has been kidnapping and slaughtering thousands of people in Nigeria and its neighbors.

BERMAN: Prince Andrew is expected to deny to ever having sex with an underage American girl. He's going to do that when he addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos.

ROMANS: Oh my.

BERMAN: What a setting for that.

That comes this afternoon. We are told he will open his speech with this denial. His accuser, now 31-year-old Virginia Roberts, claims she was a teenager working as a sex slave for financer Jeffrey Epstein when the prince has sex with her on three different occasions in 2001. In court documents filed on Wednesday, Roberts lists some pretty salacious including apparently, the prince's predilection for feet.

ROMANS: You know, and Davos is the big gathering of all the corporate titans. And, you know, the biggest people in business, and every year, he gives this speech and has this event. I don't know how you can do that event without having to address these allegations right away, to get it out of the away.

BERMAN: As you say, slightly off topic, you know?

ROMANS: It's off topic, but it's all anybody's -- when you hear his name, it is accusations, Jeffrey Epstein, et cetera, et cetera.

All right. Crisis in Yemen that could cripple the country and derail the U.S. war on terror in the Middle East. New developments right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)