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Patriots Cheating Investigation Continues; Paris Terrorist Buried

Aired January 23, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's move along, top of the hour here. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Want to begin with this. This murderous deadline has just past. We are now waiting for word on the fate of these two men being held right now hostage by ISIS in the video.

This is a familiar video, sadly, to so many of us. You see this masked man. He does something ISIS actually has never done, at least thus far on camera, ask for a ransom, ask specifically for the dollar amount of $200 million to be paid by midnight Friday Eastern time. We are now hours past the deadline, but no word yet whether these two men are dead or alive.

The mother of one of these men has a direct message for ISIS publicly pleading for her son's life.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUNKO ISHIDO, MOTHER OF HOSTAGE (through translator): To all members of is, Kenji is not an enemy of ISIS. I really think he is a man who is able to help you as your friend once you get to know him.

Over the past three days, simply, I can't understand what was happening around me. And when I consider again how my son has caused inconvenience and troubles for so many people, I will take this opportunity to apologize again from the bottom of my heart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now, Buck Sexton, CNN political commentator and former CIA counterterrorism analyst, and CNN global affairs analyst David Rohde, who was also held captive for seven months after being kidnapped by the Taliban.

So, gentlemen, welcome both to you.

And just beginning with you in your own experience, obviously, you got away. No ransom was paid. Why do you think -- we don't still know the situation with these two Japanese hostages. Do you think it's possible ISIS is giving them more time?

DAVID ROHDE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: If they are, it's probably not much more. It's a pretty bleak situation. There was a tweet from one ISIS follower -- and no one knows if it's

true or not -- early this morning saying they had been killed and is was just -- the video had gone into production. It was sort of the sick way, frankly, that this person described it. It's awful. These are ridiculous demands. They want $200 million. But I think the execution will happen soon, if it hasn't happened already.

BALDWIN: The difference is, Buck, this time, as we pointed out, the public demand of the $200 million, but also this is the first time we have seen actively two different people being held hostage, not just one now and one later, two simultaneously. Do you think ISIS is changing tactics? What's going on here?

BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No, I think that ISIS is trying to make a specific point here. It's one that deals with Japanese government policy. And that's why, as David pointed out, the request for $200 million is just completely absurd.

There have been situations in the past where ISIS has released hostages, but it was for a few million dollars. There's no way the Japanese government or anyone is going to come up with $200 million for these hostages. That number is a direct response to Abe in the region saying he will give money to alleviate the suffering of people who are under ISIS' thumb essentially.

That means that the Japanese government is essentially doing something that makes them a target for the Islamic State now. That's where the $200 million comes from. I think the prognosis is grim, though, very unlikely these two individuals are going to see many more days.

BALDWIN: OK. Stay with me, because I want to have a broader conversation really about this region in just a moment.

But, first, in the Middle East, we know the two leaders are gone from power. Now one region critical to the U.S. war against terrorism is at a crossroads, this one specific country.

First, let's talk about Saudi Arabia, today buried its king just a day after leaders in Yemen resigned. And now many people are wondering what happens next, what happens as far as the West is concerned here? Remember, Yemen is known as a breeding ground for jihadis targeting the United States, specifically the home base of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

So, first, for more on the turmoil in this entire region, Tom Foreman, I go to you with the map.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke.

Yes, people are looking at this entire region right now and saying, this is not a good situation, because so many things are in flux right now. Saudi Arabia, you mentioned a minute ago, a new king coming in. He says he will follow the policies of the previous King Abdullah. But we know there are things at play here. Oil of course is always a big concern. But more importantly, the Saudi military has been a big force here.

Saudi Arabia has been a political force, an economic force and a military force all to help stabilize the region. The question is, how stable will the new Saudi Arabia be?

Yemen down here, you just mentioned a minute ago, yes, we even don't know who is in charge there right now. That matters because at least the existing government said it was going to try to help fight against terrorism in the region. We know this about the area down there. It's the breeding ground for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

There have been various terror plots that have come out of Yemen for years now. The question is, what do we wind up with when the dust settles there? If you move up to places like Syria and Iraq, we know in Iraq the concern is whatever the government is trying to do in the north, ISIS is in play.

We can say the same thing about Syria, because ISIS, of course, is spanning the border up in there. Bashar al-Assad there is dealing with ISIS on another front. But he has his own separate problem, because he has had a four-year civil war going on there, which the U.S. has said he should step aside, he shouldn't even be there.

Brooke, that's just three of the countries. You go beyond that and you get problems over in Egypt. You have concerns about the relations with the U.S. and Israel and hovering over all of this, Brooke, absolutely is the question of Iran and whether or not leaders in Iran are going to use all this turmoil to greatly increase their influence throughout the region. That could change a lot of things if that happens, Brooke.

BALDWIN: That is precisely -- thank you, Tom Foreman -- where I wanted to begin.

Back with David and Buck.

David, to you, the question over whether or not with all of this happening and they support the Houthis, who are the rebels who have taken down the presidency. We know the prime minister in Yemen and the entire cabinet resigned yesterday. What do you see as Iran's role in all of this?

SEXTON: There's no question that Iran has been backing the Houthis and what's happened in Yemen is a success for them.

It's pretty remarkable the last two or three years that Iran now, they have this influence in Yemen. They become the main backer of the Assad regime in Syria. For decades, they have been powerful with Hezbollah in Lebanon. They are being very successful at extending their influence. In Iraq, they are extremely powerful. This is a step forward for them.

But I think Saudi Arabia will remain stable. I think they will follow the same policies on oil in the region. But there won't be an immediate Saudi reaction in Yemen, which was a possibility. If you remember, Saudi Arabia intervened in Bahrain four years ago. But the transition, the new ruler will want to sort of consolidate power before he does anything. That means more of a vacuum in Yemen for a while.

BALDWIN: With the vacuum in Yemen, what do we look for? You have this president who was this ally of the United States. We have been giving them a lot of money, although I talked to Michael Scheuer. Let me just play the sound bite, because I recall this specifically, you were part of this conversation. I was talking to Michael Scheuer yesterday. He led the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden.

I said, what happens with all that money that the U.S. has been giving Yemen as far as counterterrorism? This was his response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CHIEF OF CIA BIN LADEN UNIT: Since I began working for the CIA, we have been given Yemen money. Most of it has been gone in graft and corruption and buying whiskey for the former president.

All the Yemenis gave us in terms of a response for what we gave them was permission to use our forces in their country. There was nothing else. The government didn't rule anything but Sanaa, the capital.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Who could rule? Who could the U.S. support? Who would the U.S. want in charge?

SEXTON: Well, the U.S. is pretty clearly unsure at this point I think who we would even want to be taking the reins.

BALDWIN: That's the crazy thing.

SEXTON: You have large suicide bombings happening in Sanaa now because AQAP is fighting against the Houthi rebels. That's going on. It's not getting a lot of media coverage.

The Saudis I think are prepared for fallout. They think that good fences will make good neighbors. They have a fence now they are building the north of Iraq and they're continuing the fence to their south of Yemen. I think they recognize there's going to be instability coming from both those directions for some time.

With Yemen, instability is really nothing new. The difference is that we may not have proxy, may not have anybody who is essentially willing to be our guys on the ground or rather let us use our guys, so to speak. I think that's where the big problem comes in with the vacuum and AQAP actually being able to operate more freely.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Is this benefiting them? Are they sitting back and just -- this is good for AQAP?

SEXTON: There has been some ebb and flow to this. They were more powerful a few years ago. And now I think that they are ascendant again because of what's happening with the government.

But you have a Sunni-Shia layer in all of this which was just discussed at the sort of regional level, but it's also playing out inside of Yemen, because you have a Shia militia, which is what the Houthis are, and you also have AQAP, which is Sunni militants.

They are getting backing from Sunnis around the region. This is many layers of a conflict playing out that could lead to a total vacuum. Yemen is basically on the verge of becoming a failed state, is the easy way to say this with no water, by the way.

BALDWIN: With no water.

When you look at this huge map, David Rohde, flash forward five years. Who are the major players?

ROHDE: I think that this is what's so scary if you look backwards, because Yemen won't be as violent at Syria, but it's the exact same thing. It's the sectarian division and a Shia-Sunni battle, a very ugly battle going on in Syria, in Yemen.

Libya right now is basically a civil war between tribes in that area. And Egypt, looking forward, I worry about Egypt. It's a military regime. Their decision has been to crush the Muslim Brotherhood. Will the Brotherhood resort to violence? They haven't done that so far, but you could have a very ugly civil war in Egypt as well.

There is supposed to be a new generation of rulers in Saudi Arabia. But there's questions about can this autocratic kingdom continue that model?

BALDWIN: Continue.

ROHDE: And then Iran, again, is growing in influence. They have had a very good few years.

SEXTON: I just wanted to add a silver lining to this might be that the Saudis...

BALDWIN: Silver lining?

SEXTON: I have a silver lining. The Saudis are not as important to us as they were in the past because of the shale revolution, because of the differences in how we can extract oil.

So, they don't have quite -- they are not quite as -- they are still very important, but they're not quite as important. And going forward, hopefully, they will be less important if the energy revolution continues here at home.

BALDWIN: Smart conversation. David Rohde and Buck Sexton, thank you so much. See you again. We are going to be talking about this for a while.

The last moments of Flight 8501 just released. And the plane not only made a startling climb, but there's a gap after the pilots asked for permission to ascend. We have more on that timeline.

Plus, we are now hearing one of the gunmen in those Paris attacks has been secretly buried. We will tell you where.

And breaking news, the NFL now saying there is evidence that indicates those footballs used by the New England Patriots last Sunday were indeed underdeflated. At least they're specifying in the first half of the game. We will talk to the legendary quarterback who lost his job actually to Tom Brady. Does Drew Bledsoe think Brady is telling the truth? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You are watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

More on our breaking news. After days of speculation, and innuendo, the NFL has finally responded to what has become known as Deflategate. And moments ago, the league says the footballs used by the New England Patriots were indeed underinflated.

Let me bring in CNN Sports' Rachel Nichols, who can talk us through the statement and the timing of all of this, Rachel.

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.

All right, the timing is important because, first of all, the league was being faced with so much pressure. Why aren't you saying anything? Don't you look out of touch the way did you with some of the much more serious domestic violence investigations they had earlier in this season? They had to say something.

What's interesting about the timing -- I want to take you through a key points in the statement. They talk about the investigators, the outside investigator, Ted Wells, that they are bringing in to this.

Ted Wells investigated the Miami Dolphins bullying scandal. You may remember that took him three months of investigating to come up with. In terms of timing, this is basically a message to everyone, you are not going to get resolution to this any time soon. You are not going to get resolution to this before the Super Bowl, which, by the way, is important for the New England Patriots.

(CROSSTALK)

NICHOLS: That means that all next week when they show up in Phoenix and people want to ask Tom Brady questions about this or other players or Bill Belichick even Roger Goodell, when he gives his annual press conference, everyone can say, hey, it's an open investigation. I can't comment on it. It gives everyone a little bit of cover during the Super Bowl, lets them focus on the game, which is of course what the NFL is interested in.

Another key point here, it says they have interviewed 40 people in this investigation thus far. We know one of those 40 people was not Tom Brady. Let's listen to what he had to say yesterday about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: It's odd that they haven't at this point, that you are the quarterback and you are the center of the story right now. And the league's officials investigating haven't talked to you indicates that they are letting this drag on, twist in the wind.

TOM BRADY, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: I'm not sure.

QUESTION: Have you been told whether they will talk to you?

BRADY: I'm not sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLS: Of course, we all want to know when they will talk to Tom Brady. We don't know why they might be waiting to talk to Tom Brady. It seems like they are talking to possibly people from other teams, because there aren't 40 people on the Patriots for them to talk to who would be directly involved in this.

Maybe they are getting consensus of other policies of other teams, things like that. The other key part of this thing was just the basic setting out of, yes, not only were the balls underinflated, as you stated at the top of this here, but if you look at this part of the statement here, they said: "The evidence supports the conclusion that the footballs were underinflated used by the Patriots the first half, properly in the second half, confirmed at the conclusion of the game that they remained properly inflated."

What this means is basically, they weren't up to code in the first half. They discovered that during the first half. The officials at halftime inspected the footballs. That's when they found the problem. So, they made the Patriots switch out to new properly inflated footballs for the second half.

BALDWIN: They fixed it, OK.

NICHOLS: And they stayed that way through the game.

So, weather, which seems to be a big sort of boogeyman in all of this, well, the weather was 51 degrees at kickoff.

BALDWIN: I see what they saying.

NICHOLS: The weather -- the temperature then dropped throughout the evening since it was a late game. In the second half of the game, the footballs remained properly inflated. Take that as you will.

But those of us who can do the math on weather and air pressure can at least remove that at least a little bit from this part of the equation. We are still looking for other reasons.

BALDWIN: OK. I just got word from my executive producer that the Pats have -- the Patriots have now released their own statement I guess responding to the NFL statement.

This is how this works. The Patriots are saying they are cooperating with the NFL and they're taking this very, very seriously.

Rachel Nichols, thank you very much.

I want to say on this, because you are about to hear from a legendary quarterback who lost his job to Tom Brady. This is back in 2001. Drew Bledsoe.

Does Drew Bledsoe believe his former teammate? Here he is. Nice to see you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: I have got Drew Bledsoe with me.

Drew, nice to see you.

DREW BLEDSOE, FORMER NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS QUARTERBACK: Yes, thanks for having me on.

BALDWIN: Let's just begin with the fact that from everything I have read, a lot of these players who have been playing this game for years and years, including a lot of quarterbacks, say this was common practice. Did you do this?

BLEDSOE: You know, we always inspected the footballs. It's pretty important to us. We would do it on Saturday.

And then I generally wouldn't see the balls again until game day after we -- or until they hit the field on Sunday. So, yes, you want to make sure the football is right, but, certainly, we're never looking to bend or break the rules for sure

BALDWIN: You would inspect the balls. But would you we at all -- because we had heard in a radio interview with Tom Brady -- I think it was from 2011 -- he said, listen, yes, my preference is a ball a tad deflated. Did you have a preference?

BLEDSOE: Yes. I always liked the football a little more inflated, honestly.

I wanted to -- but I was never all that particular, though. I saw a great quote from Russell Wilson. And I kind of agreed with him. As long as it has got laces, I will throw it.

BALDWIN: OK. We know that -- saw Tom Brady in the news conference yesterday at Foxborough, said he had no idea as far as what was happening. Again, this is the 11 out of 12 balls.

As a quarterback, you deal with footballs each and every day. And this means nothing to me. Maybe it means something to you, that these balls in last Sunday's game were inflated two pounds per square inch below what is required by NFL regulations. Would you have noticed that they were a smidge deflated?

BLEDSOE: Yes, I don't know. I really don't know. During a game, you don't have time to focus on that at all. The only

thing I would ever notice is if a ball was slick. And every once in a while -- there was a time in like kind of the early '90s where they took the footballs completely away from us and they would just show up on game day and they had brand new footballs. Those were really slick. That's what I would notice. But outside of that, no, I never really noticed.

BALDWIN: Let me read you a quote. This is from Richard Sherman, who obviously is the Seattle Seahawks cornerback, who the Pats are taking on in two Sundays. So, just consider where this is coming from.

This is what Richard Sherman said. "I think people sometimes get a skewed view of Tom Brady, that he's just a clean-cut guy, does everything right, never says a bad word to anyone. And we know him to be otherwise."

Drew, is that a fair assessment of Tom Brady's character?

BLEDSOE: Tom is a great competitor, man.

He gets fired up. He will talk a little smack on the field. All of us did. Everybody sees these clean-cut quarterbacks and they think that we're just these super nice guys on the field. But we're competitive. We will talk a little bit and chirp a little bit.

But that doesn't mean that there's anything unethical at all with Tom. He is a guy of great character, works really, really hard. And after watching his press conference, I believe him. I don't think that he had any complicity in trying to break the rules.

BALDWIN: All right, we have to talk about punishments, because I guess on one end it could be just paying this $25,000 fine. On the other end, legendary quarterback Troy Aikman weighed in with "The Dallas Morning News" yesterday essentially saying -- going back to Bountygate with the New Orleans Saints, which is when the players were rewarded, given money to injure players from the opposing team.

We're talking injuring players, maybe getting them tossed out of the game. That punishment at the time was the coach being suspended for a year. So Aikman is saying the punishment for this "Deflategate" should be worse than that. Do you think that's fair?

BLEDSOE: No.

I think we're talking apples and oranges here. This is to me is a nonissue that has no impact on the outcome of the game. It has nothing to do with player safety. The outcome of the game was not going to change, even a little bit, if there was...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But it is -- I have to press you on that, Drew, because there are regulations for a reason. And so this was outside of the regulations. Therefore, that would be against the rules. Therefore, that would be cheating. BLEDSOE: You know, if, in fact, there was some conspiracy to do this,

then, yes, that would be cheating.

And I think it's already laid out what the fine is for that. And one thing that I think people are missing here is, you have got really smart people. You have got Bill Belichick, Tom Brady. You have an organization -- say what you want about them. They are both very smart guys.

And if in fact they had done something wrong, the thing that would make the most sense would be, yes, we did it, we're sorry, we will pay the fine, and we will move on and we can stop talking about it would be the obvious way to handle this. And so that leads me to believe that there truly is nothing going on here, because if there was, the easiest thing was and, hey, yes, we did it, we will pay the fine and move on.

But what I'm seeing is that if Tom was going to say that, that he would have to make up a new story, because I truly, truly believe that this was not something he was complicit in. The fact is, I trust Tom. He's an honest man. And he is ethical. He's a great person. And if he says he didn't do it, he didn't do it.

BALDWIN: Drew Bledsoe, thank you so, so much.

BLEDSOE: Thanks for having me on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Coming up next, the final moments of Flight 8501. The plane climbs so fast in just a minute. We will take you through those seconds ahead.

Plus, we all watched the heartbreaking moments as Paris laid the terror attack victims to rest. But the gunmen behind the attacks, their burials were much more secret -- why that is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)