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American Sniper Killer on Trial; Bill O'Reilly Questioned over War Reporting; Hollywood Gets Ready for the Oscars

Aired February 20, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

He thought his co-workers were cannibals -- that's what a psychiatrist told a jury about accused American sniper killer, Eddie Ray Routh. The defense says Routh suffers from mental illness and was battling a severe case of psychosis when he gunned down Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield at a Texas shooting range.

Yesterday a doctor who treated Routh after the killings told the court that Routh was quote, "delusional" and that he didn't know what he was doing when he shot and killed both men. Today the prosecution is expected to call medical experts to the stand for rebuttal. And closing arguments could come as early as next week.

The big question remains, did Routh know what he was doing was wrong? Some key moments in the testimony suggest he could have known. Among them, Routh called a psychiatrist quote, "He figured someone would be arrested and that the bible says it's wrong to kill." Routh also told his sister he would flee to Oklahoma to quote, "get out of this mess" while his uncle testified that he knew right from wrong.

Let's talk about this case in a wider sense with Todd Vance. He helps vets deal with PTSD every day. Todd's also the founder of POW a program that helps reintegrate veterans back into civilian life through MMA style fitness, yoga and peer-to-peer support.

Todd, I'm glad you're here. Thank you for joining me.

TODD VANCE, FOUNDER, PUGILISTIC OFFENSIVE WARRIOR TACTICS: Thank you for having me, Carol.

COSTELLO: This trial certainly puts PTSD in the spotlight. On one hand you have Chris Kyle who suffered from PTSD but helped others and on the other hand you have Eddie Ray Routh whose family says he suffered from PTSD but could not function. What should we take away from this trial when it comes to PTSD?

VANCE: I think the simple fact that PTSD is not a clearly diagnosable issue and there's a scale of severity. It's not a one size fits all shoe when it comes to PTSD symptomology. So where one person may suffer from PTSD and function well in society, another may need serious psychiatric help. COSTELLO: Do you think Eddie Ray Routh was suffering from PTSD?

VANCE: I would have to see his records to know fully what his level of PTSD was. But being in combat and seeing the things that take place in combat and taking part in those things, it would be a safe assumption.

COSTELLO: So a mental health expert told the court that Routh has a mental illness, not PTSD. From your experience dealing with victims, could Routh's military service have made an existing mental illness worse?

VANCE: Oh yes, definitely. I think that's one of the less talked about issues dealing with PTSD and these soldiers and service members coming home is pre-existing mental health illness and issues. The screening process is not very substantial and I think that if they have pre-existing illnesses, combat can definitely set that off.

COSTELLO: Some have questioned why Chris Kyle took Routh to a gun range even after Kyle realized Routh was quote, "nuts". Can you walk us through why some veterans find gun ranges therapeutic?

VANCE: Yes. I mean first of all, using the word "crazy" or "nuts" in my field is kind of taboo because really in the reality of combat and the reality of what service members have to live is nuts. The scale of what is normal is definitely thrown off.

As far as treatment goes and going through that, yes, that makes sense to me. Going to a range makes sense because it's something that they're comfortable with. It's something that they're good at. It's almost like a reassuring comforting activity that they can be together and find a camaraderie and kind of like a safe zone away from civilian life.

COSTELLO: Does it kind of mimic the battlefield in a way and make them feel more comfortable?

VANCE: You know, I would say no. My personal opinion I would say no. I mean service members, we look at weapons not as a normal civilian would where we see Hollywood grenade launchers and things like that.

Weapons become tools of war. So you have the specific weapon for a specific task. The bravado and the chest-thumping especially at these guys' level is not there. So they're looking at it as just like a recreational activity.

COSTELLO: And just my final question. I just like to get your thoughts on Chris Kyle in general because he's become such a heroic figure in this nation. Why do you think that is?

VANCE: Yes. I think that the service members that are fighting the battle on a daily basis, the grunts and the low level soldiers need to get a lot more attention. I think that as a society we like to glorify the upper echelon fighters and that's important. They are definitely deserving of the attention that they get. But there's a lot of other branches out there doing great things and I think that, you know, it's easy to market a Navy SEAL but it's harder to market an artillery guy with a family.

COSTELLO: I understand. Todd Vance -- thanks for your insight. I appreciate it.

VANCE: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, it's being called Fox News' Brian Williams' problem; Bill O'Reilly now facing questions over his war reporting. We'll break it all down next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'REILLY: Fox News Bill O'Reilly is firing back after a report in a left-leaning magazine, "Mother Jones". That magazine claimed that O'Reilly exaggerated his reporting experience at CBS while covering the 1982 Falkland War in Argentina.

In particular, that O'Reilly was in a war zone when he was hundred of miles away. In an interview with Howard Kurtz, O'Reilly said about the author of the report, quote, "David Corn is a liar, a smear merchant and will do anything he can to injure me and the network. Everybody knows that. Everything I reported during my journalistic career is true."

So let's talk about this. I'm joined by CNN senior media correspondent and host of "RELIABLE SOURCES" Brian Stelter and director of Syracuse University's Media Study Center, Robert Thompson. Welcome to you both.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Thanks.

ROBERT THOMPSON, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY MEDIA STUDY CENTER: Thanks.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

OK, so Brian, can you go into a bit more detail for us about what "Mother Jones" is alleging?

STELTER: Yes, they are describing times in Bill O'Reilly's past where he talked about being in a war zone or a combat situation while covering this war around the Falkland Islands. Now, no reporter was able to get to that area. That's been pretty agreed upon.

Bill O'Reilly says I never said I was there. I always said I was in Argentina. But there are some quotes that disagree. So we can put one of them on the screen. He talked about and he says here, "Having survived a combat situation in Argentina during the Falkland War. I know that life and death decisions are made in a flash."

So he would cite something like this --

COSTELLO: Wait -- a combat situation in Argentina. What would that be? STELTER: So he said in Argentina, he said he wasn't on the islands --

in the islands. But he says combat situation.

COSTELLO: What was the combat situation in Argentina?

STELTER: It was apparently a protest -- apparently a violent protest in the capital of Argentina at the time. To call that a combat situation, "Mother Jones" would say is misleading. They would that's trying to puff up your credentials and sound like you were in a hairier situation than you were actually.

COSTELLO: Well, Robert -- what do you say?

THOMPSON: Well I say a journalist puffing up their credentials has hardly stop the press's kinds of stories. They're not just Brian Williams style -- every journalist.

I mean one of the reasons we have people who write biographies is to correct what gets written in autobiographies and memoirs.

So the question is what Bill O'Reilly has done here, blatant lying and blatant tall tale telling. And I think we have to wait to see what exactly his report said and what exactly he's claiming.

Combat situation, I suppose is kind of a vague thing. I would predict though, I don't think Brian Williams is ever coming back to NBC News. And I don't think Bill O'Reilly is ever leaving the O'Reilly.

COSTELLO: I think you're probably right there.

OK. You have another example.

STELTER: You know Bob Schieffer from CBS is one of the people quoted in the "Mother Jones" story. I just heard back from him as well. So we can put on screen what he said to "Mother Jones". He said, "Nobody from CBS got to the Falklands. I came close. We've been trying to get somebody down there. It was impossible.

And I just heard back from Schieffer, he says he has nothing more to add. He doesn't know what Bill O'Reilly has been saying over the years.

But the point being, you know, there's a couple of these quotes from O'Reilly from the past where he says I was there. I was at the Falklands. Then he'll say I was in Argentina. It makes you wonder if he was trying to exaggerate his credential in order to be able to say I've been there, I've done that.

And we should say, he has been in some risky situations. He was a correspondent in many parts of the world before he became a host on "The O'Reilly Factor".

I think the underlying point here though is there are war correspondents who are risking their lives literally every day. And those are the people that don't overstate what they experienced. They actually understate. They actually underplay what happens to them. (CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Nic Robertson and yes -- you're absolutely right.

STELTER: But I agree with Robert. This is not something that's going to be career ending offense for Bill O'Reilly. He's in a different category than Brian Williams and he's treated differently by Fox.

COSTELLO: OK. So Robert do you agree with that? Is he in a different category than Brian Williams?

THOMPSON: Yes.

COSTELLO: Or is this like -- is this a left-wing hack job on a right- wing network?

THOMPSON: Well, I wouldn't simplify it that way. I do think that the act that Bill O'Reilly does on Fox is different than the act Brian Williams was doing on NBC. Let's face it. They were all acts. So was Merrill (ph), so was Cronkite and all of the rest of them. But they were different.

And to think that -- I mean actors, war correspondents, journalists, soldiers, the idea that if we start looking at all of these people and whether everything they have said in a public context jives with the facts, we're going to find an awful, awful lot more of these kind of stories.

STELTER: And it's uncomfortable but it's I think it's a good thing for this industry. I mean what are journalists taught in journalism school? It's not to overstate their experiences. It's to stick to the facts and not make it about yourselves. Sometimes those basics are lost along the way.

COSTELLO: I think that's what I learned. Like, I'm not the star, right?

STELTER: And I think that's what our audience at home wants. Whether it's Brian Williams or Bill O'Reilly or Brian Stelter, Carol Costello or anybody, the audience doesn't want it to be about us. These cases now repeated cases are sort of reminding us of all that.

COSTELLO: I don't know if I totally agree but we'll get into that later.

STELTER: Another segment then.

COSTELLO: Robert Thompson, Brian Stelter -- thanks so much. You can catch Brian's "RELIABLE SOURCES" every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. Eastern. Thank you, Brian.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the red carpet is ready and we're just 72 hours away from the biggest night in Hollywood. We'll head to Los Angeles for a preview of the Oscars.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: The red carpet is rolled out. In less than 72 hours Hollywood's elite will come together to honor the best in the business. Stephanie Elam is outside the Dolby Theater this morning, thinking about what she's going to wear to the big ceremony.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm so split Carol between two dresses. I've been doing fashion shows within the newsroom here in L.A. Getting votes, taking votes, it's a bit deal.

COSTELLO: I knew it.

ELAM: It's a bigger deal than you ever can imagine. It's amazing. Of course, not everyone cares about what dress I'll be wearing. What people really want to know is what's going to be going on here on the red carpet come Sunday. Right now, you can see it's a little gloomy here. I know the weather is worse on the East Coast. Don't tweet me about that.

But out here, they have the carpet protected for the famous people that will be here on Sunday.

But we wanted to give you a preview of some of the magic that happens out here in Hollywood. And taking a look at how, you know, we see movies, we see crazy things about you have an actor fighting himself. Well, we want to show you how that magic happens. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ELAM: In Hollywood, actors can do the impossible. Think of tom cruise fighting himself in "Oblivion", Brad Pitt ageing backwards in the "Curious Case of Benjamin Button", or Angelina Jolie taking flight in "Maleficent".

ANGELINA JOLIE, ACTRESS: How quaint.

ELAM: The goal -- to make seeing believing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We really want to base it in reality.

ELAM: Visual effects company, Digital Domain provided computer generated imagery or CGI for those films. Darren Hendler (ph) says conquering the human face is the final frontier.

DARREN HENDLER: Our faces are so complicated. We have so many different facial muscles and just a number of poses that we can get into to replicate all of those things and every single nuance of the human face is just really, really difficult to do and takes a lot of effort.

ELAM: A lot of effort and a flesh-and-bone actor scanned in a multitude of images.

HENDLER: The scan is a very good base. It kind of shows us what that actor's face look like at that specific moment in time but it doesn't give us that performance the way the actor would have acted.

ELAM: If it wasn't for CGI, Paul Walker's character might not have appeared in "Furious 7" after the actor's untimely death.

HENDLER: If you are kind of recreating an actor, somebody who's deceased, having those scans is really, really helpful. It's as much real material as we have of the actor and as much real footage of the actor that's all helpful for us.

ELAM: Why don't studios digitally scan all actors before filming begins? A move that could help keep the cost of insuring a movie down. Just like in Children's stories, in Hollywood, all magic comes at a price.

So we're still talking thousands or millions?

HENDLER: Definitely in the millions.

ELAM: To see how the actors are digitized, we headed to the light stage at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The actor is invited to sit down in the middle of the stage. We have seven sports photography cameras that take a series of 16 photos of them really fast under specialized lighting conditions that tell us everything we need to know about how light reflects off their face and what the shape of their skin is.

ELAM: Now my turn. I was scanned making a series of expressions and ultimately from those images, my avatar.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELAM: OK. Pretty cool. Maybe a little creepy but pretty cool when you look at how they were able to do that.

COSTELLO: I wanted to see more.

ELAM: It takes so many man hours to do it and so much money. But that's the thing though, it takes so much time and so much money for the efforts of putting together this story we went with that because to do more would take more. It's just so many hours that go into doing this. That's why you see movies and it will take years before they actually come out because you have to fine tune every little bit of that. It's crazy. It's amazing.

COSTELLO: So your avatar is just like a face.

ELAM: It doesn't even have hair. You can make me whatever you want -- red head, blonde, whatever -- short, long. It's all up to you.

COSTELLO: That's awesome. Stephanie Elam, thanks. That was fascinating. I love that.

You can catch Hollywood's biggest night right here on CNN. Don Lemon and Michaela Pereira, live on the red carpet before everyone celebrates in the biggest and the best in cinematic achievement at the academy awards. Don't you love these teases and how I can't read them? I'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Jeanne Moos got her hands on the unsuccessful audition tapes for a one-way ticket to the Red Planet. Meet the Mars 1 rejects.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You've heard all the hoopla about that one-way manned mission to Mars. Well, here's some who won't be manning it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good evening, fellow Martian wannabes. My name is Ryan.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a huge chucky.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hello, Earth. I'm Max.

MOOS: These are audition videos from Mars One rejects.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My name is Derek and I would love to go explore some of (inaudible) -- I think I want this more. My name is Derek.

MOOS: Everyone wanted a chance to colonize Mars and be part of a reality show had to send in a video, 99 have made the cut so far. But you won't see these faces among them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Therefore, I can stay active in space.

MOOS: The candidates had to say why they'd be good for the mission.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They love my pointy ears. I was born to be a Martian.

MOOS: Some included photos in costume, weird visual effects, a card board helmet, an entire space suit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Am I crazy? I would say adventurous.

MOOS: They were also ask to describe their sense of humor.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon, great food. No atmosphere.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How about this? Or this.

MOOS: How would you like to spend seven months in a spaceship with this guy?

But the rejects weren't the only ones with weird application videos.

This winner named Cody did most of his audition upside down.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see, on Mars, you may need to dig a hole to survive the radiation. MOOS: Now, the good news for the rejects, it's better to be a living reject than a dead winner. An MIT study suggested the first of the Mars colonists would suffocate in 68 days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This one man named Cole Leonard (ph), willing to die in front of billions of people.

MOOS: The reject will never get the public death and now, the transgender taxi driver will never pilot a spaceship.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No one here. Not for long. She went to Mars and it went wrong.

MOOS: Jeanne Moos --

MUSIC: This is my quest --

MOOS: -- CNN --

MUSIC: -- to follow the star --

MOOS: -- New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: I don't even know how to react to that, so I won't.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. Another hour of NEWSROOM straight ahead.