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New Video Captures El Chapo's Prison Escape; Taped FBI Interrogation of Terror Suspect; Obama Sells Iran Nuclear Deal in News Conference; Interview with Representative Matt Salmon; Amazon Offers Prime Day Deals Today; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 15, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now on the NEWSROOM. Now you see him, now you don't.

IOAN GRILLO, AUTHOR, "EL NARCO": It makes the government look dumb.

COSTELLO: Inside the cell of notorious drug lord El Chapo moments before he escaped through this tunnel complete with a motorcycle.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's leaving so many people here to wonder exactly who was helping Chapo escape.

COSTELLO: Also, Trump on top? He's tied for the lead in a new national poll.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to save the country. Our country is going to hell.

COSTELLO: Plus, he killed 12 people in that massive movie theater massacre. But should shooter James Holmes die?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's not guilty by reason of insanity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sane, sane, sane. Guilty.

COSTELLO: . Attorneys make their case. But what will jurors decide?

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

Caught in the act, new surveillance video capturing the moment, one of the most notorious drug lords breaks free from prison. You'll see Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman there. He'll eventually get off the bed and walk to the shower. You see him there. And then he disappears from view. And I believe he comes back and he changes his shoe. But once he goes back to the shower, he disappears for good.

Despite being caught on camera, El Chapo is still on the loose. Authorities say he used this mile-long tunnel equipped with lighting and a motorcycle to escape. Also new this morning, a law enforcement source telling CNN, federal

agents actually warned Mexico about a possible escape plan. Mexico denies those claims.

Let's bring in CNN's Polo Sandoval. He's on the ground in Mexico where that brazen escape took place.

Good morning, Polo.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, good morning. This information coming from the Mexican government overnight. Those images that were released showing the exact moment of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's escape.

This is really a critical piece of evidence here, Carol, for two reasons. One, it actually shows the escape moment itself but it also is technically the last time he was captured on camera. This is what he could potentially look like well into this week now, several days after the escape.

What we can tell you as this video shows where he appears to be pacing back and forth after standing up from his bed there in his cell. He then walks towards a shower area where it was later determined that area is actually a blind spot of the surveillance camera that's constantly monitoring his cell. He then ducks out of sight and never emerges again. So seconds later that's when officials here at the prison were able to determine that he was in fact missing.

We now know that that was the moment that he's dug out of view and into this custom-made tunnel, if you will, that stretched from the prison itself to that partially built home about a mile out from the location itself -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And this drug lord, he has many ties to the United States including his wife. Tell us about that.

SANDOVAL: Yes. It's an interesting one. A beauty queen in here, as she's described. A U.S. citizen who was raised in Mexico, a family with ties to several drug organizations. We know that Guzman and this young lady actually married in 2007. He was in his 50s. She was 18. They got married in Mexico. Then she went to the United States, maybe to California, to give birth to two daughters and we do know that she in one way or another, directly or indirectly, has led authorities to her husband.

In fact, we are told by law enforcement officials here on the U.S. side of the border that when Guzman was captured in 2014, last year, that was because they were actually able to trace this woman's cell phone, his wife's cell phone. So we do know that she is likely now in Mexico. And authorities are trying to track her down to see if she could potentially provide any sort of information, again, whether intentionally or unintentionally that may lead authorities to this most wanted man now.

COSTELLO: Interesting. Polo Sandoval, reporting live from Mexico. Thanks so much. So let's talk a bit more about all of this with Steve Dudley. He's

the co-director of InSight Crime, a foundation focused on organized crime. He's also a senior fellow at American University Center for Latin American and Latino studies.

Thanks so much for being with us. I appreciate it.

STEVE DUDLEY, CO-DIRECTOR, INSIGHT CRIME: Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: So the United States has offered to help find this guy. But so far Mexican authorities have turned down the U.S. Why do you think that is?

DUDLEY: Well, this is a very prideful country. This is a country that thinks of itself as if not on a par certainly rising in the world's view. It's certainly a position that the president himself took at the beginning of his presidency, spent the first year and a half talking about Mexico on the rise, Mexico being able to sort of put crime and organized crime in particular behind it and the violence behind it.

[10:05:17] So, you know, it's not surprising that at least publicly, they would say that they're not going to, you know, take the United States' assistance.

COSTELLO: Shouldn't they take any help they can, though? This is a dangerous man and frankly it's embarrassing for Mexico. And wouldn't they need all the help they can in capturing this guy?

DUDLEY: Yes, I think they are taking help. I think that, you know, there's the public side of any administration. There's the private side of an administration. And I think, you know, they realize that the manhunt for Chapo before involved, you know, foreign governments, in particular, the United States. And I think that they'll take help again.

COSTELLO: Transparency International has a scale that ranks countries based on corruption. And I just want to put that up on the screen, with zero being highly corrupt and 100 being very clean. Mexico has a score of 35. You see the United States on there for comparison. Hopefully we'll put up that graphic so you can see. So with so much corruption in Mexico, how do you even begin to fix the problems there?

DUDLEY: Well, I think you take incremental steps. You know, you can't do these sorts of things overnight. And obviously when you're dealing with someone who has brought in, you know, the amount of money that Chapo has brought in, you know, you're dealing with someone with the incredible power to corrupt. And that power to corrupt was evident in his escape. You know, as has been pointed out over and over.

The reality is that he does not get out of that prison unless he has some sort of high-level collusion. This is a prison with 750 cameras. This is a prison with all kinds of sound sensors. And the most sophisticated equipment that you could expect from any prison, yet he got out. Got out through the means that he uses throughout his career, tunnels. So, you know, this comes from corruption. This comes from the incredible power that comes from the amount of money that he's accumulated in his criminal career.

COSTELLO: So where do you think he went?

(LAUGHTER)

DUDLEY: Oh, boy.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: I know.

DUDLEY: It's a very funny question, of course. I mean, if you go on Twitter, you'll get all kinds of theories about where he went and why he went there, including to perhaps to chase down the nemesis of the day, you know, Donald Trump. So there's no real -- there's no real -- you know, there's no safer place for a guy like this than in Mexico. It is where he has his infrastructure. It is where he has his contacts obviously because he escaped from maximum security prison with 750 cameras on him.

And so, you know, it would be very surprising if he made his way to another country. Having said that, there have been, you know, pretty steady realm of reports over the years that his ability to set up shop in other countries such as Honduras and Guatemala so perhaps you'll see him or, you know, we'll find him in a neighboring country. He was first captured in a neighboring country back in 1993. So I think he'll stay in the general territory, most likely in Mexico. But of course anybody's guess at this stage.

COSTELLO: I know. It was an unfair question but I just wanted to pick your brain.

Steven Dudley, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

DUDLEY: You're welcome.

COSTELLO: Now to a terror suspect's devotion to ISIS. In his own words, this is the FBI's interrogation of 23-year-old Alexander Ciccolo. You're about to hear some of it for yourself. Ciccolo is accused of plotting an attack on a college campus and planning to slaughter students live on the Internet. He's the son of a Boston police captain. And a law enforcement source tells CNN that it was the father who first alerted authorities.

CNN's Alexandra Field is here with more on the investigation.

Good morning.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Carol. This 23-year- old man from Massachusetts is now being held without bail on these terrorism-related charges. Investigators say that he was inspired by ISIS, that he was taking very active steps to plot and plan and carry out an attack. Once they took him into custody, they had the opportunity to interview him and to actually ask him, what about ISIS did in fact inspire him, and here's how he described it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, ISIS this, ISIL that, all these things. What is your take on that? What do you feel about, you know, the group that calls themselves ISIS or ISIL? Are they doing a good thing?

ALEXANDER CICCOLO, SUSPECT: Yes. Yes, they are. They're doing a good thing.

[10:10:06] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And what part of what they're doing is good? Like what, what is their -- and again, this is education for us, too. So what is their ultimate goal? What are they doing? What's good?

CICCOLO: They're implementing the Sharia. They're freeing people from oppression. Wherever they go, they're changing things. Finally establishing Khalifah.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: Court documents show that Alexander Ciccolo had a history of mental illness. Investigators have been watching him for some time, monitoring his conversations on social media, also actively listening to his conversations in which he was plotting this attack. But they finally intercepted those on July 4th after he received four firearms. And then, Carol, they went in, they did their searches, they turned up Molotov cocktails that they say that he was assembling.

They say he had two machetes, another long knife, and that he had purchased a pressure cooker. I mean, you read through these court documents, you'll see, he makes a lot of references to the Boston marathon bombing and being inspired by the improvised explosive device used in that attack. Two pressure cookers as we know.

COSTELLO: Alexandra Field, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a nuclear deal is in place but not everyone is thrilled. Why getting it passed through Congress could be complicated.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:56] COSTELLO: Just a few hours from now, President Obama ratchets up his sales campaign to rally support for the new nuclear deal with Iran. He'll field reporters' questions at a White House news conference. His goal? Tamping down public doubts and the partisan vows to kill the agreement before it goes to Congress.

CNN correspondent Michelle Kosinski is live at the White House with more on this.

Good morning.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Right. Yes. Well, we're going to hear from President Obama, and this time he's taking questions. So we expect him to not only hit those points that he hit yesterday when he was announcing the completion of the deal. But now he's going to face tough questions., in fact, from members of the White House Press Corps.

So no sit-down interviews with bloggers or people who aren't intimately connected with this issue and the ins and out of it. So I think that's where it could get really interesting. But he's faced so much criticism already. Much of it expected because, you know, we've been hearing from Republicans who are opposed to the deal once we saw that framework a few months ago. That's been ongoing. But once the deal was announced, it really just let loose, like the floodgates were open.

I mean, some Republicans calling this deal things like dangerous, naive, wrong, a mistake, saying that President Obama abandoned the original goals of the deal. And the White House has been ready with a response to all these criticisms. But here's a taste of it from Senator Tom Cotton, and remember he was the one who penned that letter to Iranian leaders a couple of months ago that was signed by 47 senators saying that basically Congress was going to be the one doing the deciding. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TOM COTTON (R), ARKANSAS: I've reviewed the entire deal and unfortunately it's not as bad as I had feared. It's actually much worse. But first before we get to the details, we have to remember who we're dealing with. Iran is an anti-American, terror-sponsoring regime with the blood of hundreds of American soldiers on their hands. They cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, or even nuclear threshold capacity. But this deal puts them on the path to that, whether in the coming months and years that they violate the deal or even in eight to 10 years if they keep the deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: And the president did face some tough questions yesterday from a "New York Times" reporter. I mean, one of the big areas of criticism is you have the U.S. and five other countries sitting down with Iran. Why not use that powerful leverage of sanctions to get them to dismantle their nuclear capability altogether? But the president countered by saying first of all that's misguided criticism because that was never going to happen, saying it's unrealistic to think that over the course of decades Iran was going to be left with no capability to, you know, generate energy from nuclear power, for example, Carol.

So the White House is going to be ready for those questions and we're looking forward to seeing them in a couple of hours now.

COSTELLO: All right. We'll check back. Michelle Kosinski, many thanks to you.

My next guest says he will not support the Iran agreement, vowing to work tirelessly to convince his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to oppose it. Congressman Matt Salmon serves on the House Committee of Foreign Affairs.

Good morning, sir. Thank you for being with me.

REP. MATT SALMON (R), ARIZONA: Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

COSTELLO: Thank you. It's great to have you with me. So you say you're going to lobby Democrats as well as Republicans. What will you say to convince them that this deal is not a good deal?

SALMON: Well, for the Democrats, I'll tell them one of their standard bearers, Democrat nominee for vice president, Joe Lieberman, yesterday testified before our committee and said that members of Congress should do everything in their power to kill this deal. In fact, he said and others that were on the panel said that in the last 40 years, this is probably the most important decision that Congress will have voted on.

I tend to agree. It's very important. And some of the threshold items that we were hoping to accomplish like anytime anywhere inspections is not available. In fact, they're going to be managed inspections. I say if it's good enough to do managed inspections with Iran, maybe we should do that with our boards of health. Have them go ahead and notify the restaurants a couple of weeks ahead of time that they're going to come investigate. And I guarantee there won't be any citations issued.

COSTELLO: Have you read the agreement? Have you seen the deal?

SALMON: We're reading it as we speak. It's a long agreement. It's well over 100 pages.

COSTELLO: One hundred pages.

SALMON: Yes. And so I am reading the agreement. But I sat through --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Well, is it possible --

SALMON: Three hours of testimony yesterday.

COSTELLO: Is it possible to make up your mind without first reading the entire deal?

SALMON: I think so. I think that -- I rely very, very heavily on other people as well, such as the Democrat nominee for vice president who I believe is one of the most intelligent folks when it comes to national security that I know. And listening to his concerns about the deal, I think that --

COSTELLO: You're talking about Joe Lieberman, right, who is very pro- Israel, by the way, right?

SALMON: Yes. Talking about Joe Lieberman. COSTELLO: So he has --

SALMON: Well, he's also -- he was also John Kerry's running mate for vice president and standard bearer of the Democratic Party.

COSTELLO: I understand that but if you're talking to Democrats who were for this deal maybe bringing up Joe Lieberman they might say something like that.

SALMON: I can't -- I can't answer for that. The fact is, I think that his credentials are unimpeached. He is somebody that has been willing to cross that threshold time and time again. But the ranking member of our full committee, Elliot Engel, has expressed dire concerns about the deal as well. And so Joe Lieberman is not alone. Bob Menendez on the Senate side has expressed dire concerns. Those are not members of my party.

COSTELLO: What do you tell Britain and France and Germany, if you're the president of the United States and President Obama and the Congress rejects the deal? What do you tell those other countries?

SALMON: The same thing that other presidents have told other leaders of other countries when they've had to go back to the negotiating table. It's not the end of anything. It simply means that this deal wasn't good enough for the people of the United States to agree to and we're going to have to go back to the drawing board. It's been done before and it can be done many times in the future. We've got to get it right.

And the other thing that I would say is that I'm really not ultimately responsible for the people of Great Britain or France. I'm responsible for the people here in the United States. And I think that's what the president would have to say and our people have given it a resounding no. And so we're going to have to go back to the drawing board and get it right.

COSTELLO: And when you say get it right, is there an alternative plan out there to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons?

SALMON: You know, I heard earlier in some of the comments on your news station that big defense that Iran has to have this program for energy purposes. Yesterday it was brought up in our committee and the hearings that there are 20 countries in the world today that use nuclear power that do not produce their own fissile material. They actually buy it from other countries. You do not have to produce fissile material to have a peaceful energy program. In fact it's far cheaper to buy it from other countries that already produce.

COSTELLO: But as far as an alternative deal, is there one out there?

SALMON: Well, the president hasn't pursued any kind of an alternative deal. We have maximum leverage right now, I believe, with the sanctions that have been imposed upon Iran not just by our country but internationally as well. And so we hold the cards. Iran doesn't hold the cards. They're not going to change their stripes unless we force them to change their stripes. And this deal does nothing to really require -- they're the ones that are out celebrating right now because they got everything and basically we got nothing.

COSTELLO: All right. Congressman Matt Salmon, thank you so much for your insight. I appreciate it.

SALMON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: And a reminder for you. We'll carry the president's news conference live. It will come your way in just a few hours. It's scheduled for 1:00 Eastern Time.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Donald Trump's popularity is rising. A look at what could be fueling the polarizing presidential candidate's campaign.

[10:24:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It is Christmas in July for some shoppers. Amazon has declared today Prime Day Today with deals, it says, that are better than on Black Friday. There is a catch. The deep discounts that started at Midnight are only available to prime members. Wal-Mart decided to get in on the action, too, offering hundreds of deals of its own.

CNN Money digital correspondent Paul La Monica joins me now with how it's going. And I guess it's not really going.

PAUL LA MONICA, CNN MONEY DIGITAL CORRESPONDENT: There's a bit of a backlash in social media. Some people think it's more like subprime day than prime day. One of the problems in addition to the fact that you have to spend $99 for the annual prime subscription, a lot of the best deals are these so-called lightning deals that have wait lists.

COSTELLO: What?

LA MONICA: Yes. If I wanted a wait list, I'd apply for college again. And it doesn't make any sense.

COSTELLO: So if you want a TV -- if you want a TV that's on sale they put you on a list --

LA MONICA: For some of the products there are wait lists. And not everything. There are certain deals of the day that you can buy and immediately it goes in the cart, 50 percent off. Some of the deals are really good. There's like "Lord of the Rings," the trilogy DVD, like 75 percent off if you're a huge Tolkien fan. But it doesn't make a lot of sense for consumers to have to wait when they can go over to walmart.com and all these rollbacks, they're promising you click and you've bought it.

COSTELLO: Shopping online is about instant gratification, and I mean, right now.

LA MONICA: You'd think Amazon would get that. But I think a lot of consumers are probably just going to play that game, put something in their cart, maybe wait to see if the price drops a little bit later. For some, I guess, that have nothing better to do, maybe it's worth just trying to sit in front of the computer or your phone all day.

COSTELLO: Sit in front of your computer, waiting. Yes. Yes. So Wal-Mart is doing -- why did Wal-Mart jump in?

(CROSSTALK)

LA MONICA: I'm sure Wal-Mart is doing great. We have to be careful.

COSTELLO: OK.

LA MONICA: We have no idea what the sales for the two companies are like actually just yet. But Wal-Mart is desperately trying to play catch-up to Amazon. They are way beyond in online retail. That is the way of the future. People obviously buying not just on the computers but smartphones as well. Wal-Mart recognizes that they have to do more to be competitive with Amazon now. This deal maybe it does help because they are getting people to buy stuff and get that --

(END)