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U.S. Allies Seek Peace as Fighting Spikes; Obama Considers Arming Ukrainian Troops; Kayla's Mueller Parents Pleading with ISIS; Is Brian Williams' Career Over?

Aired February 09, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: NEWSROOM starts now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

This morning the U.S. and some of its key allies are scrambling for peace as some of Europe's worst fighting in decades escalates even more.

Watch this blast in Ukraine.

A European diplomat now tells CNN that massive explosion was likely an arms depot or factory. Pro-Russian rebels say it was struck by a government artillery shell. The pro-U.S. government won't confirm that. And like so many things in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, details are murky at best.

Also hard to come by consensus, later this hour, German Chancellor Angela Merkel visits the White House. As a potential split among the allies take shape. She will urge President Obama to not send arms to Ukraine's government for fears it could prompt Russia to escalate the crisis.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski live at the White House. But first, let's get the news from eastern Ukraine. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins us now from Donetsk.

Take it away, Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we're seeing today on the ground is how much damage has been caused by the fighting already. One town we went to called Uglegorsk is actually looking very similar to Grozny, that part of Chechnya leveled with carpet bombings. So many residential homes there flattened. I saw one what must have been an administration building with a huge hole torn in it. Another nine-story apartment block ripped to pieces.

People fleeing, coming back, some of them quickly to collect what they can so they can leave permanently and then it's just one town on the route the separatists are taking towards taking another key town Debaltsevo.

There is so much damage being done to the everyday fabric of life here, it is quite remarkable. You referenced that explosion last night near central Donetsk. Well, I have to say it shook the whole building I'm standing in here. Yes, we now learned from that European diplomat speaking to me that it may have been an arms depot that was hit in separatist areas and that there's a second time that one facility was hit last year.

The use of heavy weapons here quite remarkable by both sides. There's a brief lull now but normally when I'm standing here you hear constant shelling behind me. The fear is that as these peace talks edge closer whatever sense of public divisional, unity the Germans managed to get with the White House today, the real concern is, there's a reality on the ground here. The territorial ambitions the separatists have and there's a lot of protection that Ukraine wants to operate its own territory, we could see the violence escalate ahead of those talks as both sides try and get in the best position they can.

Back to you.

COSTELLO: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, reporting live for us from Ukraine. Thanks so much.

Russia, of course, denying that it's funneling troops or weaponry into eastern Ukraine but there's no debate that government forces are losing ground in the region that borders Russia. The Ukrainian troops are simply outgunned in many of the battles.

So will the White House send newer weaponry to the pro-U.S. government and if so how will our allies or Moscow react?

CNN's Michelle Kosinski is at the White House with a closer look.

Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Right. And this meeting today between President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will cover that ground. I mean, they want to talk about three things. First is this peace talk that's going to happen on Wednesday in Minsk to see if something can be forged that would avoid additional sanctions or, on the U.S.' side, the arming of Ukraine. And that's just something that's just being considered at this point by the U.S.

But we know that Merkel and others are staunchly opposed. So that begs the question of this unity. I mean, Secretary of State John Kerry over the weekend insisted that this unity is still there, that it's strong between the U.S. and Europe in -- in their responses to Russia. But we know that there's this divergence of opinion on what to do next and whether Ukraine should be armed.

So there's going to be a press conference later on. I think that will be extremely telling as to where that unity is. I mean, obviously, when you're talking about sanctions and now this morning we're learning that the EU has prepared additional sanctions but is waiting to see what happens after peace talks, that unity is really necessary. And the U.S. has emphasized that many times before over the last few months, that if you have just the U.S. or the EU imposing sanctions and not working together then it really diminishes the effectiveness of that response.

When you're looking at possibly arming Ukraine, the U.S. doesn't necessarily need Europe's cooperation on that. But, of course, cooperation is generally better than not. So we'll see if there's any common ground that can be found there. I think most likely, though, what we're going to get out of it is a wait and see. Let's wait until Wednesday, see if there's any progress on peace and then we'll go from there -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Michelle Kosinski reporting live from the White House.

And joins us later this morning, that press conference that Michelle mentioned, 11:40 Eastern. Wolf Blitzer hosts our special programming on the Obama-Merkel news conference. Again, 11:30 Eastern.

The U.S. and other coalition forces are stepping up attacks against ISIS. U.S. military officials say at least nine air strikes hit ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq in just the last day. These latest strikes follow three days of air strikes by Jordan after ISIS burned a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage.

The man leading the coalition against ISIS, retired Marine Corps General John Allen is now in Jordan offering his condolences to King Abdullah. General Allen telling ABC News the pilot's murder has backfired on ISIS. He also points out ISIS is a much different terror group than al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JOHN ALLEN, LEADING COALITION FIGHT AGAINST ISIS: Isis is an entirely different level than al Qaeda was.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are they harder to find now? They have adapted.

ALLEN: Well, they have. And we expected that would be the case. You don't see the long convoys now. The flags flying in broad daylight. But we have also adapted our targeting process as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In the meantime the family of a young American aid worker is pleading with ISIS for hard proof about her fate. It's been three days now since ISIS claimed 26-year-old Kayla Mueller was killed during a Jordanian air strike on a building in Syria.

CNN's Kyung Lah has more now from Mueller's hometown of Prescott, Arizona.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The days passed, one after another in Prescott, Arizona. And no real answer about Kayla Mueller.

TODD GEILER, MUELLER FAMILY FRIEND: This is such a fluid situation going hour to hour.

LAH: Todd Geiler is a longtime family friend. For a year and a half the Muellers have lived with the knowledge that ISIS seized their 26- year-old daughter ordered by their captors to remain silent or Kayla would be executed. Then came Friday, a claim by ISIS but no proof saying Kayla Mueller died in this building.

(On camera): What was Friday like?

GEILER: Oh, Friday. Friday was a dark day. Punched a hole through you. A big hole.

LAH (voice-over): Kayla Mueller's name now forced into the open. Her parents urged her captors to contact them directly.

(On camera): Is there a statement that they are trying to get through to this?

GEILER: You know, at this time, they just want contact through the original channels.

LAH (voice-over): They remain secluded at their home guarded by local police, still afraid to say the wrong thing. But they stand behind their daughter's choices.

KAYLA MUELLER, AID WORKER IN SYRIA: I am in solidarity with the Syrian people.

LAH: A woman who refused to accept the suffering of Syria's nearly four million refugees. Her parents want, they need answers. From one of the world's most brutal terrorist groups.

GEILER: You have no control so you have to abide by the rules. And it was a living hell and it has been a living hell for the family and it is today.

LAH: One this entire town prays will end soon.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Prescott, Arizona.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right. More now on Kayla Mueller. As a student at Northern Arizona University, she led a group called Stand, a student led movement to end mass atrocities. After graduating, Kayla worked for aid agencies that took her to India and Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Mueller started working in the Syrian region in -- in the Syrian region, rather, in December 2012 and she was taken captive by ISIS in August of 2013 after leaving a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria.

I'm joined now by one of Mueller's former professors at Northern Arizona, Carol Thompson, she's live from Zimbabwe this morning.

Welcome, Carol.

CAROL THOMPSON, KAYLA MUELLER'S FORMER PROFESSOR: Good morning.

COSTELLO: As you watch this tragic situation unfold, what goes through your mind in knowing Kayla?

THOMPSON: Kayla went, as you said, to Palestine, Israel and India and then to Turkey, to understand, to reach across the differences. Kayla taught me that we'd try hardest to understand those with whom we disagree the most seriously. And so she went to understand. She went to teach us understanding. And to try to make some sense out of the endless killing for 13 years now. So we need more Kaylas. She represents the best of America.

COSTELLO: I think a lot of people still find it hard to understand why she would risk her life to help others like this. Help us understand.

THOMPSON: Yes. Kayla went not for salary. Her weapon was her mind and her wanting to understand. She went in order to, as she said, it's her words, to not allow suffering to become normal. She went to do her small part in reaching out. And she very much was doing that. As was James Foley and Stephen Sotloff and Peter Kasik.

COSTELLO: Actually, it's interesting you bring up James Foley because James Foley's mother commented on Kayla's captivity and she said the U.S. government isn't doing enough. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DIANE FOLEY, SON JAMES KILLED BY ISIS: Kayla, along with our son and others, were held for nearly two years. And there were many opportunities along the way. And yet nothing was done to save our young Americans.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Carol, do you think the U.S. government is doing enough to save Kayla?

THOMPSON: Well, Kayla's response that she got from the Syrians is where is the world? And I think that's still a very important question. Where is the whole world in moral outrage, not only government, but peoples. And I think it's very important that Americans say, this is enough, Jesuis Kayla, Kayla, or Peter or Steve or James.

So my interpretation of what Kayla taught me is the whole world takes responsibility, not one government, not two governments. And certainly not the few that are on the front line for peace and for justice.

COSTELLO: Professor Carol Thompson, live from Zimbabwe, thank you so much for being with me this morning. I appreciate it.

THOMPSON: Thank you for giving voice to Kayla. COSTELLO: Any time.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Brian Williams reporting during Hurricane Katrina launched him into the national spotlight. Now the NBC anchor is facing new scrutiny over what he says happened there.

We'll talk about that and more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Brian Williams has visited the David Letterman show an estimated 21 times. But there will not be a 22nd visit, at least not this week. The embattled NBC anchor canceling the appearance this Thursday and taking himself off the news desk for a few days as the fallout of his recounting of an Iraq war mission continues.

The Twitter universe, as you might expect is having a field day, sparking the hashtag, #BrianWilliamsmisremembers. And tweets like this one, "Tonight on NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams talked about his interview with Honest Abe." Or this one, "So, I said, no, Rosa, you were here first, you keep the seat. I'll go to the back." And this one, "I'll never forget that day in July 1969, when I took that first step on the moon." Oh.

Back to real life now. Williams is facing scrutiny for yet another story, Hurricane Katrina. Here's what he said about the days he spent covering the disaster in New Orleans.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS ANCHOR: When you look out of your hotel room window in the French Quarter and watch a man float by face facedown, when you see bodies you last saw in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and swore to yourself that you would never see in your country.

I accidentally ingested some of the floodwater. I became very sick with dysentery. Our hotel was overrun with gangs. I was rescued in the stairwell of a five star hotel in New Orleans.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

COSTELLO: One of my next guests was also in the French Quarter during Katrina and he remembers things a bit differently. Dr. Brobson Lutz is an infectious disease specialist who aided relief efforts after the storm. Also joining us is Kimberly Dozier. She's CNN's global affairs analyst.

Welcome to both of you.

DR. BROBSON LUTZ, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

Dr. Lutz, I want to start with you. Do you think Brian Williams is telling the truth? And if he's not, why not? LUTZ: Well, if he saw a body floating from the window of the Ritz

Carlton down Canal Street, he was the only one who saw that body. There were no pictures of it. There was no reporting of it. There were bodies floating around New Orleans in various places but not on Canal Street.

COSTELLO: What about the dysentery thing?

LUTZ: Well, that's another interesting situation. I was down here at ground level. We set up a little first aid station in the middle of the Quarter, with some paramedics from California who came in. We treated a lot of people with infectious problems. But the infections they had was skin and soft tissue infections.

We didn't treat any dysentery. We didn't treat any diseases related to the storm. We treated infections related to the cleanup efforts. There wasn't any cholera here. There wasn't any dysentery here.

If he caught dysentery, maybe he ate some bad pork from some place. But he didn't get it from the floodwaters.

COSTELLO: It is possible he could have ingested some floodwaters or some of the floodwaters, right?

LUTZ: Well, anything is possible. But the floodwaters came in from Lake Pontchartrain and they came in, en masse. And that's not necessarily water that will have these human germs in it because dysentery is caused by a bacteria that has to be -- when the sewage gets mixed up with the water supply. This is why, say, in Mexico City, where earthquakes moved the pipes around a little bit. The fresh water pipes or drinking water pipes become infected with the sewage pipes.

That's not the kind of flooding we had down here. But he wasn't the only one off base. Rumors were flying galore about everything post- Katrina.

COSTELLO: So, he wasn't the only reporter that you had problems with during Katrina?

LUTZ: Oh, no. I'm not talking about reporters, I'm talking about we had a police chief who got on television saying that babies were being raped in the Superdome. We had the then health director getting on TV saying people couldn't come back to New Orleans because there were E. coli spores in this dust and they would get E. coli pneumonia.

I mean, you just -- there were rumors galore down here. One of the local papers actually did a catalog of all these rumors that had no basis in fact.

COSTELLO: Did you have a problem at the time when Brian Williams initially reported these things?

LUTZ: Well, I didn't even know about it until about a week ago I hear Brian Williams occasionally on NBC. I love his booming voice and love his delivery style. But I had not seen those clips and things. It was news to me.

But I know most of the Quarter down here, little parts of the Quarter flooded. Technically, the hotel he stayed in is not even in the French Quarter, though it is at the border of the French Quarter. But there were not bodies floating down Canal Street. If he saw them, he was the only one in town who saw them. I think if he really saw them he must have been smoking something.

COSTELLO: So you said you were a fan of Brian Williams. How do you feel about him now?

LUTZ: Well, Brian Williams is no Walter Cronkite, that's for sure. I -- I don't know. Do you expect the news reader to elaborate a little bit or something?

I was much more concerned about the false information being given out by our elected officials and our appointed public officials in New Orleans at the time than I was about Brian Williams coming out and saying some things that were obviously not true several years later.

COSTELLO: Would you watch Brian Williams again on the network news when ever he decides to come back to the news desk?

LUTZ: Sure. Sure. I don't -- I mean -- to me, this is -- I mean, in the scale of Katrina, this is minute. It's really a minute problem. I think it's of much more interest to the news media and much more interest to people who follow people who make $10 million a year.

But for us in New Orleans, we're used to hearing stories like this all the time. It's no big deal.

COSTELLO: OK, Dr. Lutz, thanks for your insight.

Kimberly Dozier, I'm sorry to make you wait so long. But the reason I really wanted to have you on this morning and I want to remind people what happened to you in Iraq. In 2006, you were seriously wounded in a car bomb. Your crew was killed. You were terribly injured. You spent months in the hospital.

So, when you hear stories about Brian Williams inflating what happened to him in Iraq, what goes on in your mind?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, SEVERELY WOUNDED IN 2006 IRAQ CAR BOMBING: What goes on in my mind I met Brian Williams several times in Iraq he was taking chances risking his own safety. He was always gracious to me and there I was at the same location from a competing network.

So, I want to give him the benefit of the doubt and chances to explain. But we need to hear more. Look, one of his conflations of the story of the helicopter he now remembers being shot at, he said at a public event introducing an army veteran who was a witness with him at the time.

I don't think he would have told that story publicly like that unless he believed it. You know, there's something funny that happens with memories over time from stressful, high intensity a adrenaline filled situations. They can change as the mind processes that memory. Perhaps over the years, every time he thought back, it just started getting amalgamated. That's what I want to hear from him.

COSTELLO: You're a very kind person. I mean, would something like that happen in your case?

DOZIER: Well, you know, I went to a number of different bomb scene, suicide bomb scenes over a three year period. When I was telling the story of them at speaking events afterwards, I told the story of a father who I rushed to the bomb scene and there he was with the body of this injured child screaming into our camera, "You Americans were supposed to bring us security. Look what you've done."

And then I had someone ask me a question at one of the events about exactly where and when it happened. I started thinking back. And then I went back to my scripts and then I went back to my notes. I couldn't find the reference to that exact father.

So, now, I tell that story as, you know, I have this amalgamated image of all the different parents I interviewed. And that's how I as a reporter stay true to what I saw without getting specific about one individual.

I would like to hear that from Brian Williams. I would like to hear him say, you know what, I thought back and I got this wrong or I got it a little wrong. We have to hear more.

COSTELLO: We do have to hear more and probably will as the days go by.

Dr. Brobson Lutz and Kimberly Dozier, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM: already buried Boston is about to get more snow. Sara Ganim is there this morning.

Good morning, Sara.

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. The snow is piling up in Boston. Over 2 feet might fall by night by the time this is all over. How residents are dealing with the snow coming up on CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)