Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

U.N. Envoy says Yemen "On Edge of Civil War"; Sen. Ted Cruz Announcing White House Bid Monday; Is Yik Yak App Fueling Cyberbullying?; Former FBI Informant Harassed Online; Millionaire Murder Suspect in Court; Pope Francis Performs a Miracle?; Did Jesus Have a Secret Brother? Aired 6-7p ET

Aired March 22, 2015 - 18:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[18:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can hear them trash talking each others a little bit or the coach yelling at them and it's gotten to where it means something to the guys and girls to win it. They'd like to have this title in their pocket. It's not the history, it's not the slam, but it's become the perception of importance which I think is good.

(END VIDEO CLIP))

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everyone. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow, joining you from New York.

Right now, the U.N. Security Council focused squarely on Yemen, the small country with a major impact on the Mideast and the world, especially if it slides into civil war. One U.N. envoy says Yemen is a rapid downward spiral and two things are happening at once. A rebel militia group is running unchecked all over the country, violently taking over cities including the capital. At the same time, ISIS is claiming several deadly suicide bombings in Yemen were carried off by them.

It is so unstable there that the elected president has fled to yet another city. All U.S. Special Forces have been evacuated and a descent into complete chaos looks very likely.

Jonathan Gilliam joins me now. He's a former U.S. Navy SEAL, former FBI agent.

Thank you for being here to add perspective to this.

JONATHAN GILLIAM, FORMER FBI AGENT: Good to be here.

HARLOW: Exactly what you don't want to happen in Yemen is a deterioration into civil war. What happens if Yemen completely does slide into that? What does it mean for the region?

GILLIAM: Well, one thing that actually worries me about this is that if they do slide into civil war and it deteriorates further which we have to admit, Yemen is just a hotbed of deterioration and it's been going downhill, that's been dangerous for a long time. But my worry is that we start putting more and more effort into Yemen, and that takes away from the overall war plan of fighting terror, which includes Syria, protecting Iraq from falling any further, and see this overall warplane can be affected greatly by these different skirmishes that are happening.

HARLOW: Why are they mutually exclusive?

GILLIAM: Well, because -- why is Yemen different than the other side?

HARLOW: You're worried that more attention falls away from Iraq and Syria into Yemen?

GILLIAM: Right, because the way this is spreading right now, my worry with the whole area around Syria, with Iraq, is that as ISIS gets a foothold in these environments that right now, we're seeing towns that collapse and they fall into ISIS, my worry is that you'll start to see state governments fall. And then while this goes on in Syria, Iran is actually growing in power and it's my belief that Iran and I think there's proof of this, Iran is actually funding, you know, these different skirmishes all over the place.

So, even on the ISIS side --

HARLOW: Iran has a lot of power in Iraq.

GILLIAM: Exactly. And even on the ISIS side you do see influence from Iranian money getting into that region.

HARLOW: The U.N. Security Council is still meeting right now. They've issued a long statement, sort of condemning what the rebels have done in terms of really deposing the head of the government, Hadi, there in Yemen. But as Richard Roth said from the U.N. earlier today, those statements have no effect on the ground.

GILLIAM: Right.

HARLOW: Can the U.N. do anything to effectively help the situation in Yemen right now.

GILLIAM: Yemen maybe too far gone, the point that's whenever Special Forces pulls out of somewhere, you know that it's bad. So, I'm foreseeing that people are pulling out to allow this to collapse, basically, because how -- what are you going to do? You know, the Special Forces go in there can run certain operations, but the U.N. are absolutely right. U.N.'s words have nothing to do -- they're not going to stop anything in Yemen right now.

HARLOW: I do want to ask you about this headline today, really disturbing, a group called the Islamic State Hacking Organization.

GILLIAM: Right.

HARLOW: Posting online threats to behead and attack American service members, men and women of the armed services in this country.

GILLIAM: Right. HARLOW: Now, threats like this have come before and so, we don't want to be alarmist in this. But they've posted their names, photos, addresses and all of this publicly available information online.

How much does this concern you?

GILLIAM: It concerns me on several different levels. The first level is the fact that this information is even able to be out there. I think our military needs to take a step back and start looking at force protection, a great -- much greater, just like celebrities don't go, they're very protective in what they put out there on the Internet, it's the same thing with military members. You know, their information getting out there is a bad thing for force protection and a lot of this is coming because press has been embedded with them, they've allowed stories and quotes from certain people, and then you have Facebook, Twitter.

HARLOW: Yes.

GILLIAM: All of these other things.

HARLOW: They're warning all of these service members to be very careful, double-check their password protection, et cetera, online on their social media presence.

GILLIAM: Right.

HARLOW: Good to have you on, sir.

GILLIAM: Thank you. It's good to be here.

HARLOW: Thank you for being here and for your service to this country.

GILLIAM: Thank you.

HARLOW: We appreciate it.

Coming up, we're going to switch gears and talk about the race for the White House in 2016. It is ramping up. Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is set to announce that he is officially going to make a bid for the White House in 2016.

[18:05:02] CNN has learned that he will launch his presidential bid tomorrow during a speech at Liberty University in Virginia.

So, will this give him a jump on what is sure to be a very crowded GOP field?

Joining me now to talk about it from Cambridge, Massachusetts, former presidential adviser to four presidents, also CNN senior political analyst and a good friend, David Gergen.

Thanks for being here, David. Appreciate it.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you, Poppy. Good to talk to you again.

HARLOW: In the most recent CNN/ORC poll, we saw Ted Cruz with 4 percent of the support. What do you make of him jumping out to be the first official candidate as of tomorrow?

GERGEN: Well, right now, of course, it looks like the longest of long shots. He's -- as that CNN poll has eight among Republicans, Jeb Bush and Huckabee and Carson and Scott Walker all in double digit, Ted Cruz at around 4.5 percent for a CNN poll. He is seen as an extremist in even in his own party. John McCain has called him a whacko bird.

But I'll tell you this, don't underestimate him.

HARLOW: Yes.

GERGEN: He's a smart fellow. He -- I've met his wife recently, Heidi, who is, she works for Goldman Sachs, she's a partner near, and runs the Houston operation for Southwest, and he's been well-educated, Princeton, Harvard Law School, and he pulled a big surprise in Texas when he first ran for the Senate.

HARLOW: Right.

GERGEN: Nobody thought he would win that against Dewhurst, and he did. And he's a Tea Party candidate. So, what he's playing for, he's not playing to come in at number one, of course, he'd like that, but what he wants to be is the alternative to the establishment candidate, whether it's a Bush or a Walker or something like that, and he has a shot at that.

So I wouldn't underestimate him, I think -- you know, it's the longest of long shot, but coming out of the gate first is also a smart move. You know, he gets himself out there and gets the discussion, by the time we get to the third or fourth announcement, this is going to get pretty old hat and they'll say another person is in the ring, but if you go first, you get a little more attention.

HARLOW: Yes, we know it's going to be on a lot of headlines to come tomorrow morning.

HARLOW: Let me ask you this, interesting editorial by the "Boston Globe" editorial board today urging Elizabeth Warren to jump in the race for president. She has said she has no intention to, but I thought it was interesting the way they put it. They said, Democrats would be making a big mistake if they let Hillary coast to a presidential nomination without real competition.

And we know that Elizabeth Warren is on opposite sides to Hillary Clinton when it comes to the transpacific partnership, a potential big free trade deal, and we also know that they are -- you know, Elizabeth Warren is even more dogged in terms of her fight for consumer protections against Wall Street.

GERGEN: Well, it's interesting, isn't it, Poppy? Hillary Clinton, despite the email controversy still has a commanding lead, a commanding lead among Democrats and a big lead over any Republican nominee. But what we're seeing and we saw it in the "Boston Globe" today, a very significant editorial, breaking with what one has assumed, you see a drumbeat starting up among Democrats that would like to have some alternative that they say, oh, not only would it help to pull Hillary Clinton to the left if it's an Elizabeth Warren or someone of her vintage or belief system, but it would also, you know, warm Hillary Clinton up and she'd be a better candidate and it would be healthy for the party to get some of these issues settled.

So, it was interesting to me -- striking to me that Mike Allen who writes this newsletter gets so much attention to the political world. He led today with the drumbeat that you see in various places like New Hampshire's, "Boston Globe", urging someone else to get in the fight starting with Elizabeth Warren.

HARLOW: I want to ask you about John McCain, Senator John McCain's comments this morning. They released it out to me here on this network on "STATE OF THE UNION." He talked about President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu's relationship. And he was, you know, fired up. He said get over your tantrum, Mr. President.

And he said that in terms of saying the U.S. will reassess its relationship with Israel, he said that he obviously doesn't agree with it, it's not the right move, perhaps the president is delusional.

What's your reaction to that?

GERGEN: Well, I think delusional is out of bounds and is inappropriate to talk about President Obama in those terms. In terms of getting over it and not treating it as a personal affront and recognizing the very real interest each country has and a continuing, durable, sustainable relationship, that's true for both parties.

But Netanyahu should stop insulting the president and the president should stop, you know, this rhetorical tirade against Netanyahu. We've got much bigger fish to fry with these Iranian negotiations coming down the homestretch now, and so many other things happening and the turmoil in the Middle East with ISIS.

HARLOW: But can I ask you when it comes to that word just your take on reassess, because of the historical background you had with a number of different presidents?

[18:10:04] It's not the first time that this has been used by the White House, right, or by an administration. When you look back at 1975, Henry Kissinger saying, we might reassess a relationship with Israel under Yitzhak Rabin. Later saying yes, it was a bit of political theater, but it was effective.

Will it be effective here?

GERGEN: Listen, I -- we've had rough spots in the relationship before. I do not remember a president saying he might support a resolution in the U.N. recognizing Palestine as a second state. That's -- a number of presidents in both parties opposed that position, and it's not have been American policy. I'd be quite shock if we reverse that. I do think we have fundamental interest despite the difference in

personalities, the poisonous, loathing quality on both sides. We have fundamental interests here and you -- what a person has to do and what President Netanyahu has to do and Bibi started all of this, and they both need to recognize this and calm this down.

HARLOW: David Gergen, thank you very much. Good to have you on tonight.

GERGEN: Thanks, Poppy.

HARLOW: Coming up next, we're going to talk about hate groups whose messages are all over the place online.

Ahead, we'll look at the new state of hate in America.

Then, see it for yourself. Did Pope Francis perform a miracle?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: You hear about it on a daily basis, hateful tweets and posts causing an online war of words. But is there any accountability when it comes to what you say online, on Twitter on Facebook or maybe on the app Yik Yak? Not really.

Laurie Segall, CNN Money tech correspondent is here with me now.

This is getting a lot of attention because when you say something on Twitter, usually your name is associated with it.

[18:15:03] On Yik Yak, totally anonymous.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: Totally anonymous. But I will say, Yik Yak is being used on every single college campus in the United States and it's become a huge, huge thing and there are these fun, awesome light-hearted conversations and important conversations, but there is also a dark side.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEGALL (voice-over): These are yaks.

(MUSIC)

TYLER DROLL, CO-FOUNDER, YIK YAK: If you have a funny thought or relevant piece of news that you want to share with your local community, that's why you use Yik Yak.

SEGALL: Twenty-four-year-old Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington are the founders of Yik Yak. It's an app reportedly valued at $400 million. The app, who's name was inspired by the classic '50s song, lets you send anonymous messages and reads chatter within a 1.5 mile radius.

Users vote up comments they like and vote down ones they don't.

Brooks and Tyler first worked on the app when they were in college.

BROOKS BUFFINGTON, CO-FOUNDER, YIK YAK: We saw a promo on the campus where there was a select few Twitter accounts which held the campus voice. We said, you know, everybody should be able to have this power and so, we kind of Democratized it, gave it to everyone and allowed the whole campus to connect.

SEGALL: Fast forward a year later, the app is exploding on college campuses across the country.

DROLL: Basically every campus in America.

BUFFINGTON: At Vanderbilt University, someone, you know, posted something about his brother is getting a full-body blood transfusion and posted on Yik Yak. Seven hundred people showed up in the first hour to see if they were a match for this guy's brother.

SEGALL: That's the upside of what can be accomplished with anonymous discussion forum like Yik Yak.

The down side? Anonymity can lead to bullying or harassment. No user name, no accountability.

(on camera): How do you guys try to help with the cyber bullying on it.

BUFFINGTON: We have filters on it for names and personal information and generally offensive things.

DROLL: Early on made a set of rules about no targeting people and no bullying, and we took the kind of daring step to enforce them and enforce them strongly. We wanted good growth, not growth at all costs.

SEGALL (voice-over): Yik Yak still had growing pains, one professor complained after discovering demeaning yaks during her lectures. Other students decided online harassment. Just this month, a university official sent a letter to the company, seeking identities of the people inciting danger.

(on camera): For the people that are bullied or have been bullied, what is your responsibility here, just kind of legal responsibility?

BUFFINGTON: Yes, I mean, there's federal laws in place that prevent sharing a private user information so that we're kind of limited in what we can do there. But in cases like imminent threat or harm or something like that, we work with law enforcement to do what we can.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SEGALL: And the thing is, Poppy, anonymity on the web is interesting, specially now that you have mobile in these devices and Yik Yak is one of many apps that allow you to do this. But how do you monitor this community because it's not going to disappear and that will tell us if it will succeed or if this could fail.

HARLOW: It just seems like this is in its nascent stages and like the law is trying to caught up -- like so much in technology, the law and regulation is trying to catch up with these companies and this is doing, you know, it's really revolutionizing things, but it's also causing a lot of harm and pain for people on the college campuses who have experienced -- a big article in "The New York Times" about it -- racism, a lot of women being harassed as a result.

What can you do if you're someone who is watching this and saying that happened to me?

SEGALL: You know, it's really hard. What they're trying to do is they're trying to put out filters for racist words and trying to tweet that, but I hate to say this -- if you say something about you and it doesn't fit into that, there's nothing you can do, and you can try to vote it down. You can try to contact the company, but that's something that's an ongoing conversation. Unless there is a physical threat of harm against you and blatantly racist, then you can really do flag it, but there is this gray area that we're all living in and trying to figure out.

You also have to remember -- these guys are 24 years old and have a $400 million company that is just exploding. So, they're on to something.

HARLOW: And you can tell that they want to help solve this. This wasn't their intention but they're now dealing with what happens when things can sort of get out of control.

Stay with me, Laurie, into the conversation.

I want to bring in Rabbi Abraham Cooper. He's associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights association.

Thank you for joining us.

And we're having you on to talk about this, because you have been studying and have the results of the study you guys have done on what you call digital terrorism. What have you found?

RABBI ABRAHAM COOPER, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER: Well, I guess it was very interesting to hear the young men speaking because I think they actually have at least publicly stated they recognize there is an issue when people can say things anonymously and are grappling with the issue in terms of potential hate speech.

The real crisis right now is not so much in hate speech on campus, although that's bad enough, but when you have some of the other companies that allow for encrypted conversations between individuals without any opportunity for law enforcement or intelligence to know how it goes.

[18:20:12] We've seen how you can go from Twitter to a conversation with an ISIS soldier in Syria and not be traced back. So, as difficult -- and it was an important to report to talk about hate speech and the impact on our society.

HARLOW: Yes.

COOPER: We have an even greater problem that you talked about earlier with military information and all kinds of things. Our study and our report card this year basically concludes that ISIS, al Shabaab, al Qaeda are running circles around us. They are -- they have an online marketing campaign in which they use everything we're prepared to give them in order to get young people in Minnesota to come, in order to get young teenagers in U.K. to join them in Syria, and, in fact, to even dictate to CNN and everyone else what stories we're going to talk about at the top of the hour.

We need the companies to be involved to begin to degrade that capability.

HARLOW: So, I want to bring Laurie into that. He brings up this great point and that's the battle that we've seen play out between the major tech and social media companies in the U.S. government, and how much access officials have.

What do we know on that front?

SEGALL: We know for a very long time after what happened with Edward Snowden there was this backlash, where we thought, hey, we want our privacy. But now, we've seen what's happened with ISIS over the last year or so, where they're actively reaching out to people, they were actively spreading their message -- and Twitter is an interesting company because they've taken a stand where they're actively trying to take down these accounts.

That being said, what's so terrifying, Poppy, is all of the employees names have been put out there, there are threats against employees, threats against Jack Dorsey, the founder. He's not even involved in day to day activity anymore. I will say, what's scarier is the dark web where you can't monitor -- where you can't really monitor the conversation.

I was looking at the dark web the other day and found a site devoted to people who want to give money to ISIS. They pay in Bitcoin. It's on the dark web, you can't trace it and people have an easy way of donating. So, it's really terrifying.

HARLOW: Rabbi, to you. What you found in this new report is staggering and as Laurie and I were just talking about, the laws. Do you feel as though the laws have not caught up with where they need to be to actively fight this and deter people?

COOPER: Well, I think the laws will never catch up. You were just talking about the heads of company who are 24 years old. What we need at this point are the collective genius who are giving us these fantastic tools to step up and voluntarily begin to create strategies, for example, like Facebook and making it difficult for the evildoers to quickly get back on.

It's true, Twitter has finally begun to take on tens of thousands of tweet, but they've made it too easy for the groups that back the terrorists to get right back online. They can do a lot more.

Facebook has teams on three continents looking at these issues every single day. They have the technological means to try to block it.

We're urging Twitter, YouTube which has also begun to do a better job and you have to change your philosophy where you have to actually co opt and make sure that the terrorist groups can't get in even as we continue to struggle with the issue of hate speech at home and how much -- sort of bottom line, if the companies will get more involved, the politicians will stay out. If they don't get more involved, there will be I think demands for action when god forbid, you will have tragedy strike out in campus or in the community.

HARLOW: Rabbi Cooper, thank you very. Laurie Segall, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Important conversation to have.

We're going to keep talking about it because chasing down extremists online is one thing, but what about infiltrating extremist groups? We're going to have on, joining me next a former undercover FBI agent who exposed some of the biggest hate groups in the country. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:58:04] HARLOW: Well, we've been talking about hate groups and even though physical face-to-face hate group membership has declined, hate has found a new home online. A report out from the Southern Poverty Law Center says fewer people are joining groups like the KKK. In fact, the number of hate groups is at the lowest level it's been in ten years and online is a completely different story. It has exploded.

David Gletty knows exactly what I'm talking about. He went undercover for the FBI. He infiltrated neo-Nazi groups and he wrote about it in his book "Undercover Nazi."

Thanks for being with me, sir. I appreciate it.

DAVID GLETTY, AUTHOR, "UNDERCOVER NAZI": Thank you very much. What an honor to be on with you today, Poppy.

HARLOW: Well, let's talk about what you went through, because you say you were cyber bullied after it came out that you had undercover infiltrated these groups. What was that like?

GLETTY: Absolutely. Once I was exposed in the media as an undercover operative after finishing my final assignment for the FBI for years, everyone that I had infiltrated during that time that did not go to jail or prison, they were able to get online, track me down and cyber bully me. These guys were relentless and women also. We're talking about anti-government militias, the neo-Nazis, skinhead groups and some Klan members.

You know, I had YouTube channels and several email addresses, I had to close those down, and pretty much start a new life, which I did, physically and online, because these people were relentless, even giving me phone calls and the threats I received. You have to take every threat seriously, because I've been in the belly of the beast. I see what these people are capable of and they're not people to take lightly.

HARLOW: We're looking at some of the video that they put out there of you sort of writing FBI informant on it, et cetera. But you're out here now and you're speaking to me and written this book. So, you made the choice not to completely change your identity or disappear from your public life.

[18:30:00] How hard has that been, though?

GLETTY: Well, absolutely. I was not going to cower in the face of evil, in the face of criminals. Once I was exposed it didn't matter how many times I was in the news after that, so I wanted to stand strong and put forward an example that this does not happen -- have to happen to you. There are things you can do to avoid this and get on with your next life. So like I said --

(CROSSTALK)

HARLOW: What can you do?

GLETTY: Well, first off, you need to -- you know, I'm a little different because it's my job to go out there and tell people about this -- the evil face of these cyber bullies and these nasty groups, but you can, you know, control your online presence. You don't need to be, you know, updating your Facebook account, or your status every couple of minutes.

Watch what you say, what who you associate with because as you can see on YouTube, there are so many of these young children killing themselves because they've been cyber bullied because of something they put on the Internet, you know, by mistake. Not thinking there would be a backlash.

You know, always watch who you're associating with and do some study. Like Yik Yak and these other apps, studying on them and study how the bad cases that happen sometimes.

Parents, you know, you need to watch your children. Of course, we like to think of all of our children as the smartest in the world but we're the adults here. And it comes with family first. They need to control --

HARLOW: Yes.

GLETTY: -- their online presence of their children because it starts at home.

HARLOW: Let me ask you quickly before I let you go, sir. Do you think the laws are tough enough on prosecuting online bullying?

GLETTY: No, I do not believe they're strong enough. Curt Schilling, his daughter, you know, the famous baseball player, his daughter was bullied online because she joined a softball team and made it, and they went after her relentlessly because of her father. Well, her father took proactive steps, tracked those scumbags down and I believe some of them lost their jobs and that's what we need to do with these people.

Don't cower, stand up to them, look them straight in the eye because you have the power to do that. It's your life, take charge and control your online presence and be aware that there are criminals and these are extremist groups that will use that against you and cyber bully you, bully you at school, bully you at the workplace, and it's a very serious problem that we need to adjust and take hold of right now before we lose one more child to one of these cyber bully suicides.

HARLOW: David Gletty, thanks so much for talking to us about such an important issue.

GLETTY: Thank you very much.

HARLOW: Coming up next, he is the jailed millionaire murder suspect. What is next for Robert Durst? He goes before a judge tomorrow? Will he get bail? Our legal analyst discussed that and how his medical problems might figure into all of it. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:35:51] HARLOW: A bail hearing has been set for tomorrow for multimillionaire murder suspect Robert Durst. He has been charged with the 2000 murder of his longtime friend. The 71-year-old real estate mogul is said to be in frail health as he sits in a New Orleans prison awaiting extradition to Los Angeles. When he does appear in court tomorrow, his head will be shaved because of a medical procedure to treat a brain condition.

Let's discuss what is next in this case that is getting so much attention. Let me bring in criminal defense attorney and host of the upcoming show "Did He Do It?" on Investigation Discovery, Darren Kavinoky in Los Angeles. Also with me here in New York, HLN legal analyst Joey Jackson.

Thank you both for being here.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Darren, let me start with you.

DARREN KAVINOKY, HOST, "DID HE DO IT" ON INVESTIGATION DISCOVERY: Hey, Poppy.

HARLOW: Look, this is a multi-multimillionaire, this is someone who the authorities have said to look into potential cold case connections with, is this someone who is going to be granted bail?

KAVINOKY: I think the chances are slim and none and slim as they like to say in Texas has left town. So even though in Los Angeles the crime of murder does allow somebody to be bailable. It's a $1 million scheduled bail, but that goes out the window when you are charged with murder with special circumstances. That's a crime that is not bailable and so even though he's got this

pending case in New Orleans now with the drugs and being a felon in possession of a firearm which, by the way, is subject to attack, apparently because according to his lawyers he doesn't have any of the predicate felonies in Louisiana.

When all of that smoke is cleared away, ultimately he's facing the special circumstances murder case out in Los Angeles, not a bailable offense. He's going to be fighting that from behind bars.

HARLOW: His attorney also, Joey, has said look, they're trying to pin anything on him, they're desperate opening up these cold cases and saying he has this medical condition.

JACKSON: Right.

HARLOW: And it -- I just wonder if that's going to play in at all, if they're going to say he can be at home or in a hospital rather than held in jail if they don't grant bail.

JACKSON: You know, it could play out and let's take it from here. What happens is, is that, of course, the attorneys are saying, look, we're not trying -- they're trying to pin everything on him under the sun and law enforcement does have an obligation to go back into the cold cases and examine them and see if there is any connection. If there is a connection then he should be held accountable if it's him.

But with regard to the medical condition, it depends upon ultimately what the defense is. In the event that he wasn't there and he didn't do it, well, then medical condition is not an issue. In the event, however, you look at the actual confession, so-called confession, OK, and it was me, I killed them all, of course, you could say certainly --

HARLOW: Caught on tape in that HBO documentary.

JACKSON: Caught on tape. You can say certainly that that had something to do with his mental state, his mental condition.

HARLOW: Got it.

JACKSON: And a normal person wouldn't have said something under those circumstances.

HARLOW: I do want to talk about that piece of evidence. I don't know if we have it, if we do, we can roll it for our viewers. But I'll describe it. And it is -- in this HBO documentary "The Jinx," he's miked up, goes into the bathroom, they're still recording and he says, OK, I killed them all. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT DURST, SUSPECT: Maybe this is the bathroom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, that's --

DURST: You're right. This is the bathroom. There it is. You're caught.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right. We couldn't play that right -- the correct sound there, but he then goes on to say, OK, I killed them all.

The question, Darren, becomes is something like that admissible in court?

KAVINOKY: It likely is. Generally speaking, Poppy, any words or acts of a party to the case the defendant, in this case, are admissible as what's known as a party admission. I think there's a lot to be said, though, about the defense being able to sidestep what is being characterized as a confession.

In this clip, you see that he's muttering to himself in the bathroom there. It's hardly the same as saying that statement in response to an accusation. Tell us the truth, Durst, yes, I did it, is far more powerful than an elderly gentleman with medical problems muttering to himself in the privacy of the restroom. I think there is far more compelling evidence that pins Durst to the crime.

[18:40:20] HARLOW: Quickly, Joey. You agree?

JACKSON: Well, here's the point. Darren and I disagree about this a little bit and here's why. What happens is, his defense attorneys are going to move to preclude that. Now in order to move to preclude it, it has to be police conduct, but listen to this, Poppy. They're going to argue, the attorney, that the HBO special and the police was so in cooperation that they were acting as police agents. Agents of the state.

He had a reasonable expectation in that bathroom and as a result it doesn't come in and even if it does come in, of course, they're going to argue this proves nothing and says nothing, these are the murmurings and stammerings of a person who could potentially have some mental or medical defect. And so we'll see how that plays out.

HARLOW: It will be fascinating to watch again tomorrow, that hearing. We'll see if he gets out on bail or not.

Thank you very much, Darren, Joey, good to have you both on.

JACKSON: Thank you.

KAVINOKY: Thanks, Poppy.

HARLOW: Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Did Pope Francis perform a miracle? When the Pope held and kissed a vial of dried blood on Saturday belonging on Naples patron saint, half of it liquefied. The archbishop of Naples calls it a miracle indeed. Skeptics not exactly convinced. Some argue it may have been a chemical reaction. Let's talk more about this with David Gibson, co-author of "Finding

Jesus: Faith, Fact, Forgery."

[18:45:03] So what's your take?

DAVID GIBSON, CO-AUTHOR, "FINDING JESUS: FAITH, FACT, FORGERY": Well, first off, only God performs miracle, so this wasn't a miracle that Pope Francis performed, but perhaps is intercession in the prayers of the faithful there. This is the blood of San Gennaro, the patron saint of the city of Naples. He died in the year 300 and was in persecution by the Roman emperor. So they had this vial of blood of his and they bring it out three times a year on feast days and sometimes, most times, it -- this dried blood liquefies.

Nobody has ever explained it. A lot of skeptics out there, but other popes have visited and held it up and it's never liquefied.

HARLOW: Never.

GIBSON: So, you know, what mojo did Francis have here? Of course, you know, Francis is great, and the actual -- the blood only half liquefied and Francis said, in his way, well, we've got a lot of work to do.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: The little joke there. Does the church at all, the Catholic Church at all eventually weigh in on something like this?

GIBSON: The Catholic Church has been pretty careful on this. I mean, they believe this is something worthy of a veneration, this is a remarkable thing. But they haven't weighed in on whether this is technically a miracle because nobody's gotten in there. If you open that vial they believe it will all, you know, dry up permanently or whatever, so they've not allowed any hands-on testing to see if this is actual ancient blood or if it's a miracle.

HARLOW: But it is fascinating to talk about.

GIBSON: Amazing stuff.

HARLOW: All right. Stand by with me because we're going to talk next about a fascinating -- a fascinating new part of our series, "Finding Jesus," it is premiering tonight and other religious mystery. Could bones inside an ancient box tell us more than we ever knew about the family of Jesus? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:50:24] HARLOW: Tonight on CNN's original series "FINDING JESUS" could a 2,000-year-old box prove Jesus had a brother? Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's claimed that this box measuring 10 inches by 20 is no less than the burial casket of James, the brother of Jesus Christ.

GIBSON: Ossuary is so important not just for the fact that it says the brother of Jesus, but you have to understand that there's no physical evidence of the existence of Jesus of Nazareth dating from the time of Jesus. There is nothing except the gospels which were written down decades later. This would be the first physical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth existed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is such a landmark. I mean, this is the only material evidence, nonliterary we have for the family of Jesus.

CANDIDA MOSS, NEW TESTAMENT AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY PROFESSOR, NOTRE DAME: I think most people would be extremely surprised to learn that Jesus had siblings. Even though James is called the brother of Jesus in the New Testament, most Christians grow up thinking that Mary was a virgin and that he didn't have any siblings. To think most people would be astonished.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining me now, two of the people you just saw on that clip, David Gibson, co-author of "Finding Jesus" and Candida Moss, a professor of the New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame.

Thank you guys for being here. I've been watching week by week and it is a fascinating series and this was one of the most interesting, I think, because it tackles a very controversial question and that is -- did Jesus have a brother by the name of James? How significant is the finding and exploration of this ossuary, the box of bones?

MOSS: Well, I think we can start off with the question of, does he have siblings? And the answer to that is just yes. It's in the New Testament, it's in the gospels, and James is called the brother of Jesus in the Act of the Apostles and so Jesus does have siblings. The controversial question is, are these full siblings?

HARLOW: Right.

MOSS: Or are they step-siblings from Joseph's earlier marriage or something?

HARLOW: Because many Catholics believe that Mary remained a virgin.

MOSS: That's right. The Catholics who are deeply invested in the perpetual virginity of Mary, this is very controversial and it's one of the reasons that people know James as James for just and not his biblical title which is James, the brother of Jesus.

HARLOW: David, how significant is the ossuary, right, a fancy word for a box holding bones that is 2,000 years old in determining this?

GIBSON: Well, it's really critical because for a couple of reasons. One is there is really no physical evidence of Jesus' existence from the time that he lived. I mean, the gospels were, you know, written down based on oral traditions, but decades really after the crucifixion, so to have something like this come out which is basically more or less contemporary with Jesus and it has -- you know, it has James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, written on it.

HARLOW: Etched.

GIBSON: Etched on it. That's really big, it's like, you know, having, you know, the closest thing you're going to have to sort of a birth certificate.

HARLOW: So part of what people will see tonight is a huge, huge controversy and forgery trial that plays out over whether this is indeed authentic.

GIBSON: Almost over the past decade that has been playing out over whether again this inscription on the top of this bone box, this ossuary is legitimate. Some people think that that brother of Jesus was conveniently added later in recent years by a forger.

HARLOW: What I think is interesting also that this gets into the family relationship and strain with Jesus and his family when he leaves to go spread his word. I don't think a lot of people knew about that.

MOSS: Right. When Jesus' family comes up in the course of his ministry, he actually sort of dismisses them. He actually says that his followers are his family members and dismisses his biological relatives. And then when he goes home he sort of rejected by people from his hometown. There's a lot of tension between Jesus and his family members. And I think a lot of people don't know that. Now we can emphasize, I guess, my sibling came to me and said, I'm the son of God, I'd be surprised.

But there seems to be a lot of tension there. And I think people who have full conversations with their relatives at Thanksgiving should feel good about things because I'm not sure Jesus --

(CROSSTALK)

MOSS: Yes. Exactly.

[18:55:06] HARLOW: That's what I'm saying at the dinner table next holiday.

David, what -- for you, writing this, putting this together, researching this, what was the hardest part? The biggest sticking point?

GIBSON: Well, the biggest sticking point is the science, really figuring out what is going on. I mean, it gets so detailed, it's like a "CSI" episode, you're going in there, trying to figure out was this a recent forgery or was it a forgery way back when? You know, when it would have benefited the early church.

So I think that, but I think the most rewarding thing is the recovery of really this lost man of the gospels which is James the just, the brother of Jesus, who went on to become really the leader of the Jerusalem church because he was recognized as the brother of Jesus. What kind of brother? That's the big question, as well. HARLOW: And what about for you? What stood out the most to you in

this exploration?

MOSS: Yes, I agree with David. I think what's really exciting about this particular episode is you're retrieving the voice of James which is very important in the earliest stage of the church and because Paul sort of receded from you and so reclaiming his voice and looking at his importance in the early church, I think that's going to be new and exciting for people.

HARLOW: It's a fascinating episode tonight.

Candida, David, thank you both very much. Good to have you on. It is tonight, 9:00 p.m. Eastern. That new episode of "Finding Jesus," catch up before on other episodes starting with "John the Baptist." That is coming up right before. That is after a quick break.

Thank you so much for being with me. I'm Poppy Harlow. Have a great week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)