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Suspect Used Greece to Return to Paris; Mother Teresa to Become Saint; Interview with Larry Cohen; Cruz and Rubio Trade Punches Over Immigration; Shooter's Neighbor Arrested on Terror Charges;; Cruz and Rubio Trade Punches Over Immigration; Hillary Clinton Blast Republicans' Fear-mongering; Russia's Naval Might; Earthquake-proof Bed Buries One Alive. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired December 18, 2015 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:04] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Sara Sidner is live from one of the other Greek islands that has been a major focus, that is the island of Lesbos, and you're seeing these refugees pouring in. How is that tying in the refugee concerns with the security concerns?

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That is tying in very closely. The refugees terrified that Europe is going to start shutting down its borders, making it harder and harder for them to try and find a safe place to be, once they cross through Syria, crossed from Turkey, into Greece, and then into Europe. Many hoping that that doesn't happen. But it already seems to be happening. And that is partly because of the security concern. It is a real and present security concern from the EU and the rest of the world, frankly, including the U.S. where you are there.

Really what people are concerned about is whether or not these Paris attackers were able to use the Syrian refugee crisis to their advantage to end up attacking France, attacking Paris, without being noticed.

We understand now from an investigator talking to CNN that the ringleader Abaaoud was able to make it from Syria, potentially to Turkey, then to the island of Leros, an island that is not where we are, but south of where we are, and that he was able to somehow make it from there to Europe.

But we have to also be clear, Poppy, that the attackers were European citizens so they could very well have used their own legal documents at some point to get back into the country. We do not have the details on exactly they took their route. But we know that if they did come from Syria and if they were found here, two of them found with fake Syrian passports, they may have been trying to use the asylum seekers as cover. And that has a lot of people worried that others could do the same.

But the vast majority of these refugees that come through here are children, are mothers, and a few fathers who have made it from absolute devastation in their country. Mixed in with them are Afghans who are dealing with war for the past 40-odd years, trying to find refuge. And they are extremely concerned on how much this will impact them, as are people in places like the European Union concerned about security -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Sara Sidner live for us in the Greek islands. Thank you very much.

I want to talk more about this with CNN intelligence and security analyst, Bob Baer.

And, Bob, you just heard that number. A million. A million refugees crossing into Europe by the end of this year. As you look at that number and you look at the plight of so many of them and the questions about the system and security, given that Abaaoud is believed came through the refugee process, really scamming it, into Europe, what questions need to be asked, Bob?

ROBERT BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Poppy, I mean, it is a plight. It's a disaster really for humanity. There's more than 60 million people this year displaced. That's going to go away up, according to the U.N. Countries like Turkey can only absorb so many. Other Middle Eastern countries if you let the refugees move into them, they will destabilize them and of course the Islamic State sees this chaos as opportunity.

I mean, if you're the Islamic State in Libya and you want to send operatives into Europe, you send them into Lampedusa. The Italians cannot sort them out. There's no way to check the passports and, you know, why others -- we're talking about a handful of people that might sneak in among the refugees but it's enough to scare Europeans. And as Chancellor Merkel has said, of Germany, enough is enough. And I think you're going to see a lot of European countries who are just going to put up barriers. And I don't have an obvious solution to this. And especially with more and more refugees.

HARLOW: Sure. Absolutely. More and more in need, what do you do? Here in the United States when you look at the visa process, how Tashfeen Malik, the female shooter in San Bernardino got in, Obama administration officials are saying that they have asked that these visa experts at the State Department, work through the holidays, scrub the screening process, do more on that front after especially the questions about how much social media is vetted before people come into this country weighs into the process. What's your take here in the United States?

BAER: Well, the social media checking, that is absolutely necessary. Some of these people declare their allegiance to militant jihad. They have to -- they have to be excluded. They cannot come to this country, of course. The problem is, local authorities -- she was living in the state of Pakistan near Multan, the Punjab, which is radicalized, there's 70 groups there. You know, what sort of contact did she have with those groups? Did they radicalize or did they give her military training? We don't know because we don't get the cooperation.

So we have to scrub the entire visa system, especially from countries which support jihad, like Pakistan. And so we really have to redo our policy. [10:35:05] But going back to the refugees, you have to immediately

come to some sort of political settlement in the Middle East that stops this, this hemorrhaging of people, because there's no obvious way to fix it unless you fix the political problems first.

HARLOW: Bob Baer, thank you very much. Important insight. I appreciate it. Thank you, Bob.

BAER: Thank you.

HARLOW: Coming up next, St. Theresa, the Pope's plan to give this famous nun the Catholic Church's highest honor. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Mother Teresa is becoming a saint. Pope Francis revealing last night that he is now recognizing a second miracle attributed to the late nun. A miracle that is now launching her into sainthood.

CNN Vatican correspondent Delia Gallagher in Rome with more this morning.

Delia, do we know anything about what this second miracle is?

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN VATICAN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, the Vatican is not confirming details but the "Italian Bishops" newspaper has said that it involves a Brazilian man who was cured in 2008 of multiple brain tumors. Remember that for the Vatican in order for a miracle to be declared as such, the healing has to be spontaneous, it has to be long-lasting and it has to be medically inexplicable.

You also have to pray to the saint after their death. Mother Teresa of course died in 1997 and this man's family apparently prayed to her for his recovery. It is the second miracle after John Paul II declared an Indian woman healed spontaneously of tumors in the abdomen. So this is the miracle that will open the doors to her sainthood, which the date has not yet been announced. But it's expected it will be sometime in September of next year because September 5th is Mother Teresa's Feast Day -- Poppy.

[10:40:02] HARLOW: In terms of other people that this Pope has sainted, if that's the correct terminology, have there been others?

GALLAGHER: Well, this Pope has gotten all the big names because there was Pope John Paul II in 2014. He was made a saint. You'll remember at his funeral everyone was saying, and Pope Francis was able to make him a saint. And with his miracle, it's interesting, it was a Costa Rican woman who said he was cured of a brain aneurysm and I was actually able to meet her local doctor who was here at the Vatican, brought the X-rays of the before and after, showing the aneurysm, showing the disappearance of the aneurysm and was able to see the process of the process of how the Vatican determines a miracle, because there's a lot of miracle skeptics out there.

But they have a whole office dedicated to this. It takes them years. They investigate it at the local level. And of course they don't just look at the miracles, Poppy, they also look at the whole life of the person, what they call the heroic virtues that they've lived a holy life. And what extraordinary things they've done in their life. It was something like With Mother Teresa, many people think -- John Paul II certainly thought -- she was already a saint, and she's somebody for whom Pope Francis has personal admiration. He met her in 1994 here at the Vatican.

He said he admired the fact that she was so forthright, able to speak out to the bishops, speaking her mind. And he was even a little afraid of her. But certainly Mother Teresa and her outreach to the poor is one of the main messages of Pope Francis' papacy so he'll get to make her a saint sometime next year.

HARLOW: Absolutely. Focusing as he does on those on the margins.

Delia Gallagher live for us in Rome with an absolutely stunning sunset behind her. Thank you so much.

Still to come, a setback with Democratic voter rolls, and major union endorsement and a major debate on Saturday night. Bernie Sanders' senior adviser live with me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:45:38] HARLOW: With just a day until the next Democratic debate, a setback for Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. The DNC has suspended his campaign from a database after at least one staffer accessed confidential voter information belonging to his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. That staffer has been fired but the staffer insists he was only trying to see how poorly Sanders' data was exposed.

All of this comes as Sanders looks to make up ground during tomorrow night's Democratic debate. Right now the Vermont senator is 33 points behind Clinton in the latest national poll out of Monmouth University. In Iowa he is facing a double-digit deficit.

Joining us now to talk about all of it, Larry Cohen, a senior adviser for the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Thank you for being with me.

LARRY COHEN, SENIOR ADVISER, BERNIE SANDERS CAMPAIGN: My pleasure.

HARLOW: Let's start with the campaign staffer. He spoke to CNN on the phone this morning. I know he's been fired. He said, look, I wasn't doing anything wrong. The fire wall came down. There was a technical error. I was trying to see how badly our campaign used that is used for strategy was out there. Others say otherwise. He's been fired. What do you know since you're part of the camp?

COHEN: Well, as you know, I'm an adviser and a surrogate. That's -- I'm not a campaign staffer. But what I would say is the DNC has a system failure on their hands. The staffer is gone. It's time to focus on the issues that millions of Americans face and want to hear about. HARLOW: All right. Let's talk about the issues. A new Monmouth

University poll found a majority of Bernie Sanders' supporters, 59 percent of those that support your guy would be OK with it if Hillary Clinton beat Sanders, won the nomination. How do you turn that around?

COHEN: I don't think that data is so much the problem because when you look at the Republican candidates, what they're saying, hateful rhetoric. I think what those voters are saying is either candidate is fine with us.

HARLOW: But that number does matter, doesn't it, in a Democratic primary? You don't want voters saying that.

COHEN: Well, no. I think what we want voters saying is we need to win the election, number one. Number two, there are key differentiators between Bernie and Hillary. And those key differentiators are things like higher education for our kids, health care for all. And that's why we'll go out and caucus in Iowa and that's why I think we'll win the Iowa caucuses.

HARLOW: OK. One thing I found very interesting from that Monmouth poll is it actually showed Democratic primary voters are most concerned with the economy and jobs over terror. Republican voters are concerned most about terror.

For your voters, it is economy, economy, economy. Bernie Sanders has made his campaign on income inequality, a hard line on Wall Street. How hard will he go after Hillary Clinton on that tomorrow night?

COHEN: Well, he'll go after those issues. And the real question is, is the debate going to be about those issues? Bernie doesn't control the way the debate is framed. He certainly wouldn't have picked a Saturday night before Christmas. And so yes, in our mind, the people that are involved in this campaign, it's about the things we can actually control. And then we move on to the things that other people in the world control. And we react to. So the things we can control are what happens in this economy.

How do you give every kid a fair chance? How do you provide health care like the rest of the world does for every citizen? Those are the things we can control. That's why we're excited about working for Bernie.

HARLOW: All right. So you bring up the fact that this debate tomorrow night is a Saturday night before Christmas. We've seen the viewership of the Democratic debates be significantly lower than the Republican debates. Fascinating opinion piece by in Frank Bruni in "The New York Times" yesterday called the invisible Democratic debate. Let me read this to you.

He writes, "What a shameful imbalanced primary season this has been. For all their flaws and fakery, the Republican candidates have squared off frequently. The Democratic candidates have in contrast hidden in a closet." He goes on to say, "The disparity in viewership is also a function of scheduling. And was thus predictable and obviously intended. When the Democratic debates were set up, party leaders assume that Hillary Clinton would be their best candidate. Putting their chips on her and sought to make sure that some upstart didn't upset their plans or complicate things to a point where Clinton would stagger into the general election all banged up."

Do you agree with him?

COHEN: Mostly I do agree with him. I think that the Democratic Party needs to be a populous party, not a party that tries to control and manage how people behave.

[10:50:07] At the same time, this campaign will make the best of that debate schedule. Bernie's fired up, he's ready to go. He'll be as authentic as he always is. But yes, we believe that a Democratic Party, to be successful, needs to be wide open, needs to attract young voters and needs to rock 'n' roll and not try to manage.

HARLOW: What are we going to hear? Any zingers, any one-liners to come like the -- well, that the now famous e-mail line from the first debate?

COHEN: To be honest, that's Bernie's authenticity. We could all coach him on great one-liners. Those are his. And if you know Bernie, they're always going to be his. And that's what we love about him.

HARLOW: All right. We'll be watching, as you guys try to make up some of those numbers in the national and Iowa polls ahead of the caucuses.

Thank you, Larry.

COHEN: My pleasure.

HARLOW: While Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump dominates in the polls, his rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, battling it out in the shadows. This time it is on immigration. The candidates continue to take swing after swing, accusing the other of muddying their political records for political gain. Who is right? Who is wrong?

CNN's Tom Foreman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Marco Rubio attacking Ted Cruz on the campaign trail.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's the one that supported legalization and legalizing people that are in this country illegally.

FOREMAN: Cruz hitting right back at Rubio.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He still supports amnesty and citizenship today. FOREMAN: Both men are locked in a bitter battle over immigration with

dueling claims about each other. So who is right? Start with a Cruz's accusation.

CRUZ: There was a battle over amnesty and some chose, like Senator Rubio, to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan.

FOREMAN: That's a bipartisan immigration reform plan in 2013 that was crafted by Rubio and seven other senators, the so-called Gang of Eight. That legislation did include a pathway to citizenship for many who came illegally.

RUBIO: We have an obligation and the need to address the reality of the situation that we face.

FOREMAN: Many conservatives never liked Rubio's support for it and Cruz know it is. But Rubio is counterattacking.

RUBIO: Ted Cruz supported a 500 percent increase in the number of h1b visas, the guest workers that are allowed into this country, and Ted supports doubling the number of green cards.

FOREMAN: The problem for Cruz, that's true, too. He pushed amendments to that same bill that would not have offered citizenship but would have legalized the status of many who came illegally.

CRUZ: I don't want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass.

FOREMAN: Cruz's camp now says the amendments were meant as poison pills, forcing Democrats and others to abandon the plan. But listen to Cruz in a radio interview back at the time.

CRUZ: Legalization is the predicate of the Gang of Eight bill and in introducing amendments, what I endeavored to do was improve that bill so that it actually fixes the problem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Tom Foreman reporting. Tom, thank you very much.

Quick break. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:56:56] HARLOW: All right. Checking top stories. A bank robber making his debut on live television just before holding up a bank in Iowa for the second time. The reporter on scene did not realize what was happening until the bank employee ran out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Just 24 hours ago, this bank -- what?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's him right there. UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: What?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's the robber.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Oh, that's the robber. I got to go here and call 911. I'll talk to you later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Police used the station's video to identify the robber as Ryan Liscow. Officers say they found him an hour later in a stolen car with illicit drugs.

Basketball star LeBron James crash landing, sending a woman to the hospital. He fell on top of her trying to save the ball from going out of bounds. Well, the woman happens to be the wife of golfer Jason Day. She was taken off court on a stretcher and a neck brace. Good news, she is back home this morning, recovering. LeBron later apologizing to her on Twitter.

It has to be one of the most bizarre beds ever. An earthquake-proof bed that acts like a giant mouse trap. Only our Jeanne Moos could tell us this story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If the idea of an earthquake keeps you up at night, maybe you'd like to sink into an earthquake-proof bed. And we do mean sink. Buildings could come crashing down and you'd be snug in your --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coffin bed.

MOOS: Coffin bed? As one commenter joked, "Quake provides free burial."

Seismic activity would activate the bed, seen here in this animation apparently created by a Russian company. Those details are sketchy. The bed also contains supplies, though it's unclear how you get to them. If this is an earthquake-proof bed, I'd rather take my chances, poopoo'd one headline. But an expert on earthquake preparedness kept an open mind.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Currently, if you're able to be in a steel enclosure with supplies, that's not a bad thing. It looks very expensive.

MOOS: Someone asks, "Does it come with tourniquets for those of us who tend to dangle limbs over the side of the bed?"

(On camera): Some wondered if shaking triggers the thing. Would you have to worry about the second most common thing people do in bed?

(Voice-over): Babe, did you feel the earth move? Seismic activity was sensed by this Chinese made bed demonstrated in 2012. When a man whistles so rescuers can find him, his companion can't keep a straight face.

To simulate a building collapse they dropped almost three tons of concrete on the bed, it remained intact.

Some say the latest version could become an oven if an earthquake caused a fire. "Quake and bake," wrote one commenter. But at least there's a fire extinguisher underneath.

(On camera): So what do you say? Thumbs up, thumbs down?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thumbs up if you can afford it.

MOOS (voice-over): Just keep those thumbs out of the way.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: We'll leave you with that for the weekend. Have a great weekend. Thank you for being with me today. I'm Poppy Harlow. "AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan begins right now. '