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Religious Freedom Laws; Iran Nuclear Deal; American Accused of Trying to Join ISIS. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired April 03, 2015 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Just into us: another American accused of trying to join ISIS. This time, this is a 30-year-old Philadelphia woman charged with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Federal prosecutors say she communicated with an ISIS fighter in Syria who asked her if she would like to be a martyr.

Her response was this. She said, according to the feds: "That would be amazing. A girl can only wish."

Jason Carroll is with me with more. We were just talking yesterday about these two young women, 28 and 31, who were inspired to wage jihad, and now this woman.

(CROSSTALK)

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now we have another one. Her name is Keonna Thomas, as you say, 30 years old. She is from Philadelphia.

She is accused, according to this new criminal complaint. It seems like all we have doing lately is reading criminal complaints.

(CROSSTALK)

CARROLL: It says here that she attempted to travel overseas -- quote -- "in order to join, fight with and martyr herself in behalf of ISIL."

Now, according to federal agents, as far back as 2013, she started tweeting things about jihad on Twitter. One of the tweets that we have here pretty much says it all. Quote: "If we truly knew the realities, we would all be rushing to join our brothers in the front lines to pray Allah. Accept us as shuhada," which that means martyrs. That was one of the things that she had tweeted way back in 2013.

Federal authorities had been -- she was on their radar. They started looking at her travel plans. In February, she got her passport. Then just last month, she got her visa to travel to Turkey, then bought a ticket to travel to Barcelona. Then they moved in and made their arrest. This is a young woman who is definitely in a lot of trouble.

If convicted, she faces up to 15 years in prison, again for allegedly trying to provide material support for a terrorist organization. Unbelievable.

BALDWIN: And we know counterterrorism officials, after talking to you, I had Buck Sexton on saying, in other words, sloppy with regard to those women that we were talking yesterday, just sending poems and communicating with al Qaeda. This is how you're obviously on FBI's radar.

CARROLL: Right. And you know what? I think a lot of people from the outside are looking and saying some of these people aren't very smart. You know, they're communicating online, they're tweeting things out, doing things seemingly that you would think someone would not want to do.

BALDWIN: Right.

CARROLL: But then you also have to think about something else. In order to carry off some sort of an attack, you don't have to be brilliant. So it doesn't take much.

And So I think what you're seeing is federal authorities moving in on some of these people in the early stages before it gets to something more serious.

BALDWIN: Got you. Jason Carroll, thank you very much.

CARROLL: You bet.

BALDWIN: Now to this. New information here in the downing of Germanwings Flight 9525 and what may just be really this final piece of the puzzle in what investigators are now calling a case of premeditated murder.

And it comes from this charred black box, this mangled black box. Initial tests on this flight data recorder show that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz did not just set the plane to fly automatically into the mountains, he actually sped it up during the descent.

Mary Schiavo is with me now, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Department of Transportation.

Mary Schiavo, why speed up a plane when it was already going down toward the mountain?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, the only thing I can think of is that there is an eerie similarity to what was going on, on United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. There, the passengers were using the food cart as a battering ram to get into the cockpit and the hijackers on that day did the same thing.

They sped it up and they were discussing in the cockpit, because we had the cockpit voice recorder, what to do. So my guess is the banging on the door and then the cart or whatever metallic instrument that the pilot in command had trying to get through the door made him want to speed it up on per chance that he could get through the door. He couldn't have.

Once the doors were reinforced after September 11, 2001, those doors are pretty secure.

BALDWIN: And all the while, while this is happening in that cockpit, this co-pilot is breathing normally, according to that cockpit voice recorder. What about this condition of the black box? We just showed the picture here of the second one they just found. Are you surprised? You were always confident they would find it, but are you surprised they were able to get useful information off of this burnt- out piece of machinery?

SCHIAVO: No. I have worked so many crash cases where there's just been a terrible inferno and in almost every case were able to get data off the black box and the cockpit voice recording.

They're really tough. And remember all they have to do, while the outside is charred and bent and mangled, they just have to get those data chips and then they have literally 500 different kinds of data. It looks like -- when you print it out, it looks like an EKG, but then you have to have time to decipher it.

BALDWIN: So on this kind of EKG, this is how they determine, as we were just discussing, this co-pilot was readjusting the autopilot to speed up as it was going down, but we also heard yesterday that he had been slowing down the speed of this aircraft to prevent alarms from going off.

[15:05:10] If you're going to commit mass murder and take the lives of 149 people, why would one worry about alarms going off?

SCHIAVO: Well, I don't think that -- I can't imagine why one would, but some of the alarms, of course, might have alarms concerning the actual integrity of the aircraft.

Maybe he did not know how tough this plane was, and if they had overspeed warnings that the plane wouldn't fall apart, that this plane could probably take it. They were not anywhere -- he wasn't anywhere close to an overspeed.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: What does that mean, overspeed override? Would the aircraft realize something was going awry and correct itself?

SCHIAVO: The Airbus will. The Airbus will, on autopilot, will try to save itself, to tell you the truth.

BALDWIN: Wow.

SCHIAVO: It's -- the fly by wire is pretty good. While this is an older plane, if it was on autopilot and he was on overspeed, then it might have taken action to try to save itself. It has what they have different modes that the plane itself will try to do.

But the recording of him breathing and when they put that on with the speeding up of the speed of the aircraft, it certainly will paint a very chilling picture. BALDWIN: With your investigation forensics hat on, Mary Schiavo, and

we know that these recovery crews are sifting through the remains and working on the DNA matching and I.D.ing individuals, if and when they find the co-pilot's remains -- we know we found out yesterday he was indeed doctor shopping.

We know in his past he had suffered bouts of severe depression, perhaps that, had drug injections. Will they be able to if they find his remains determine if he had drugs in his system that day?

SCHIAVO: Most likely not. You need to get blood, bodily fluids or you can sometimes take it from liver and other organs. But if they just have skin and things like that, probably not. But from an organ, from blood, that's where they will be able to do it. So I wouldn't suspect that they will be able to do it on him, although that kind of data would be very, very helpful for the investigators.

BALDWIN: Mary Schiavo, thank you.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Next, now that the U.S. and Iran have agreed to this tentative nuclear deal, what happens if Congress says no? We will talk to Jake Tapper, our chief Washington correspondent, for that ahead.

Also, a turn of events for a pizza shop in Indiana. The owners here face crazy huge backlash after saying they would not cater a same-sex wedding. But now they have hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations. We will talk about that. What's next for them?

And CNN confronts flower shop owners who refuse to serve gay couples. Hear their stunning responses on whether they would serve others they consider to be sinners.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:12:00] BALDWIN: The tale of two countries over the tentative nuclear deal with Iran. Iran says it's ready to -- quote, unquote -- "cooperate with the world."

But one of America's closest allies, Israel, is calling the proposal a threat to its security. Here's a look at the terms hailed by President Obama as historic. Iran agrees to eliminate two-thirds of its centrifuges. It will also reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium, a critical component of these weapons. In exchange, the West will lift the sanctions that have crippled Iran's economy.

Let's go to our chief Washington correspondent, host of "THE LEAD," Mr. Jake Tapper.

Let's take this back here to the United States. We heard the president yesterday saying this is a good deal. How does he sell that to Congress?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you heard some of it yesterday with his argument basically that, in his view, the choices are this deal, the status quo under which Iran has created this nuclear program, or war.

Now, obviously, a lot of people think that those are not the three options, there are other options, including continuing with even tougher sanctions and demanding a better deal. But in the president's argument, he's going to say these are the three options. Who wants to go to war, who wants the status quo? Not me. Then this deal is the best option.

BALDWIN: OK. Let's move to Hillary Clinton. News in today she signed -- her camp signed a lease for this big building, maybe campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. My thought is either she wants a better view of the East River or this woman is running for president.

TAPPER: This woman is running for president. It's been very, very clear for months and months and months she is running. There is even a tentative date being discussed.

I know theoretically no one is declared a presidential candidate until they come out and say, I am a presidential candidate, but clearly she is running for president, as are Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz obviously the only one who has formally declared so far. But, yes, she is running for president. I don't think we have to couch that anymore, do we?

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: OK, no more couching.

TAPPER: Well, when you start leasing office space, there's only one reason she could be leasing the office space. You know, she's not opening up a co-op.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Right. I'm with you, Tapper. I'm with you.

Finally, before I let you go, I understand you have a pretty special interview coming up on "THE LEAD." Tell me about it.

TAPPER: We do. In honor of Good Friday and Easter and this holy weekend, we have an interview with Mark Burnett, who is obviously a big producer of all sorts of reality television, but also, along with Roma Downey, they did "The Bible" miniseries that was such a huge hit on cable and then also in theaters.

BALDWIN: Huge.

TAPPER: And this time, they actually managed to convince a major American network, NBC, to run their next miniseries, which is "A.D.," and this -- in a way, it's interesting coming off all these stories about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Brooke, because there you had chambers of commerce pushing the religious community, the conservative religious community, saying, we don't like this, it's not good for business. [15:15:05] Here, you have an example of the religious community, the

big business working their way. They saw the huge demand for "The Bible" miniseries and now NBC, although they didn't do it last time, now they're on board because there is this huge audience.

BALDWIN: All right, Jake Tapper. We will look for it and many other things happening, I'm sure, at 4:00 Eastern with "THE LEAD." Thank you very much, my friend.

TAPPER: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Next here on this show, a pizza shop in Indiana -- speaking of what is happening there, a pizza shop in Indiana definitely making some headlines because its owners said they would not cater a gay wedding. A number of people outraged here. They have even been getting death threats. But others opened their wallets.

And if you check this GoFundMe page today, it is closing in on that $700,000 mark. We will talk to the man who got this fund-raising Web site started.

Also, we are seeing some of the first images out of Kenya after that massacre at the university. We will tell some of the stories of the survivors and show you these just awful pictures here. This is such an important story to tell today. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:20:21] BALDWIN: One week after he signed that controversial religious freedom law that sparked quite a national backlash, Indiana Governor Mike Pence has now signed a fix to that law. He says it ensures the measure cannot be used to discriminate against gays and lesbians.

Meantime, Arkansas, the governor there, Asa Hutchinson, also signing an amended version of his state's religious freedom bill after lawmakers changed it to mirror federal law. But you know what? The controversy, this isn't over. Many other states are or are considering similar religious freedom bills, case in point the state of Georgia. It died at midnight, when lawmakers wrapped up their session.

But CNN's Gary Tuchman actually spoke to a number of Georgia business owners who said, law or no law, they will not serve gay customers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Head out to rural Jeff Davis County, Georgia and you don't have to look hard to find supporters of the state's proposed Religious Freedom Restoration Act and they aren't afraid to say why.

If you had gay customers coming here to buy flowers and they said, we want you to come to our commitment ceremony, bring the flower -- marriage is not allowed in the state yet, would you do it?

JENNIFER WILLIAMS, FLOWER SHOP EMPLOYEE: No. I couldn't.

TUCHMAN: Jennifer Williams is an associate to this flower shop, an observant Southern Baptist, who says she regards the Bible as the rule book for her life. She doesn't believe refusing service to a gay couple is discrimination.

You talk about the Bible, and how important it is. I mean, the Bible talks an awful lot about love and loving your fellow man.

WILLIAMS: Right. And it doesn't mean that I love them any less, because I don't -- I pray for them. I hope...

TUCHMAN: So if you don't serve them, it's not like you're...

WILLIAMS: It's not that I hate them. I don't hate them. But...

TUCHMAN: But you're not loving them if you don't want to serve them, right? WILLIAMS: Well, yeah, you can still love someone. I mean, even though you don't serve them.

TUCHMAN: At another flower shop just down the street, the exact same opinions, from the florist and her son, who is studying to be a Southern Baptist pastor.

MELISSA JEFFCOAT, FLOWER SHOP EMPLOYEE: I would respectfully tell them that I'm sorry, that I just don't want to do it because of my belief.

TUCHMAN: But right now, you know, while Georgia is considering a law to make that legal for you to do that, it is not, and you can get in trouble for doing that.

M. JEFFCOAT: I understand that.

TUCHMAN: So you would be willing to take that risk?

M. JEFFCOAT: Yeah. He died on the cross for me, so that's the least I can do for him.

CARLTON JEFFCOAT, SON OF FLOWER SHOP EMPLOYEE: I serve a God who's higher than any Supreme Court judge. He's called the judge of the universe. And I don't care what anybody else says.

TUCHMAN: So, no matter what, whether it's a law or not, you would not bring your flowers to a gay commitment ceremony?

C. JEFFCOAT: No.

TUCHMAN: There are five florists we found in this area. The employees of three of them did not want to appear on camera. But they all told us the same thing -- that they want this law to pass in Georgia--that they want the right to turn away business from gay people.

Meanwhile in Indiana where religious freedom law has already passed, the owners of the Memories Pizza Parlor in the small town of Walkerton, say they will turn away business from gay newly weds.

CRYSTAL O'CONNOR, CO-OWNER, MEMORIES PIZZA: If a gay couple was to come in, let's say we wanted -- they wanted us to provide them pizzas for wedding, we would have to say no.

TUCHMAN: After Crystal O'Connor's comments aired on local TV, outrage followed in the restaurant closed. One tweet from a high school coach reading "Who's going to Walkerton, Indiana to burn down Memories Pizza with me?"

The assistant police chief of the town now telling CNN, the department is considering charges against the woman who wrote that tweet, and get this, supporters of the family that owns the pizza shop have donated money online to help them out. More than a quarter million dollar so far.

Back in Georgia.

You know, in the Ten Commandment, it says you can't commit adultery-

M. JEFFCOAT: Right.

TUCHMAN: That you need to honor your father and mother. If someone didn't honor their parents or committed adultery, would you serve them?

M. JEFFCOAT: Yes.

TUCHMAN: Well, why would you serve them, but not serve someone who is gay?

M. JEFFCOAT: It's just a different kind of sin to me, and I just don't believe in it.

TUCHMAN: In these flower shops, they are happy to do business with you, but not so much if you tell them you're gay.

Gary Tuchman, CNN, Jeff Davis County, Georgia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Like those florists in Georgia, there is an Indiana pizza shop that also cites its religious beliefs as reasons as far it would not provide services for a same-sex ceremony.

Memories Pizza is now at the center of this national debate over religious freedom after this reporter for a local TV station asked the owner of this pizza shop a hypothetical question and got this answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

O'CONNOR: If a gay couple was to come in, like say we wanted -- they wanted us to provide them pizzas for a wedding, we would have to say no.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: That family-run restaurant says it's since had to close its doors because of death threats, but supporters are stepping in. This online donations page has raised more than $700,000 in just a day and the donations continue in.

Lawrence Jones is one of those behind the fund-raiser. He's a contributor on "The Dana Show" on Blaze TV.

Lawrence, welcome.

LAWRENCE JONES, THEBLAZE TV: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

BALDWIN: So I know since this whole story happened, this pizza shop has been receiving death threats, so they closed. Are they still closed? What's the status?

[15:25:05] JONES: Yes, currently they are closed, but they have been receiving death threats from people saying that they shouldn't be discriminating against gays, which they're not.

And they are seeking to destroy this family, not just that family, but people from our network.

BALDWIN: I know there is a saying tolerance, except when it suits you. Not matter how you feel on this issue, you can't preach tolerance and acceptance, but also threaten someone's life.

(CROSSTALK)

JONES: That's right. That's right.

And we have members of the gay community that are supporting -- look, this is not an anti-gay agenda. This is about freedom and this is about showing love to our gay brothers and sisters as well. This GoFundMe was to support freedom and that is our message. We want to support freedom, religious freedom.

And we believe that everybody has that right, especially private businesses.

BALDWIN: What are you or what does this pizza shop plan to do with the now above $700,000 in donations? I have to imagine that is more that they would make in five years? I don't know.

JONES: Well, you know what, one of the things that our show really wanted to do is make sure they could handle some debt as well as repair the shop, do whatever they needed to do.

There's been some graffiti and things like that, as well as if they needed to do some repairs or take care of some personal things ever since this happened. We also decided to set them up with a financial adviser who also decided to donate their service. And so they will be flying out Monday to help that family with those funds.

But I want to be clear that The Blaze, as well as "The Dana Show," is not getting any of those funds. This is all going to the family. BALDWIN: And so just so we're clear, after all this has happened and

you say this is about religious freedom and it's not anti-gay, again, the question if it were hypothetically posed to these people, if somebody wanted a bunch of pizzas at a same-sex wedding, their response would be?

JONES: No.

But the thing that is clear is this family said if a gay person wanted to come in and eat pizza in that shop that they would serve gays. They were just against serving at a gay wedding as far as catering to them, which is totally different.

BALDWIN: Lawrence Jones, thank you.

JONES: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Next, the harrowing stories from survivors of that massacre at a university. One woman covered herself in blood and pretended to be dead. We will take you live to Kenya next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)