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At This Hour

Robin Williams Dead at 63; Iraqi Refugees Flee ISIS; Highlighting the CNN Documentary: The War Comes Home

Aired August 12, 2014 - 11:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Hello everyone. I'm John Berman.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: And I'm Michaela Pereira. Thanks so much for joining us at this hour. It's 11:00 a.m. in the east, 8:00 a.m. out west.

We begin this morning with the news of the death of Robin Williams. That comedic genius loved by so many, known for his variety of characters from Mrs. Doubtfire, Aladdin, the eccentric professor in Dead Poets Society. He was found dead in his home in Tiburon, California yesterday, just 63-years-old.

BERMAN: The autopsy scheduled for today, but authorities do suspect that Williams took his own life. His publicist says he'd been suffering from severe depression. Over the decades, he also battled addiction.

PEREIRA: Robin Williams was a classically trained actor. Many people might not have known that he was Julliard trained, in fact

He won an Oscar for his role as the firm yet caring psychologist in "Good Will Hunting," but he was also nominated for several other roles in several other films.

Most of all though, he made us laugh.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBIN WILLIAMS, ACTOR: I don't know if it's a dream or not. All I know it was terrifying and you were in it too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Me, what did I do?

WILLIAMS: Don't play dumb. We set off first by going through this human carwash and being covered in "Shake 'N Bake," and the entire cast of "The Untouchables" there too.

And then we end up in this big hot tub where we played "Connect the Dots" with each others freckles and bobbed for wet things.

This hollandaise smells like burnt rubber. God, it's hot in here.

Look at it. My first day as a woman and I'm getting hot flashes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know what? I'll take Mork. Give me Mork.

PEREIRA: Any day. "Comic Relief," look at his body of work. What an incredible --

BERMAN: As if Mork was not enough, Robin Williams also gave so much back to the community as well. He helped to raise $50 million to benefit the homeless. "Comic Relief," we're talking about right there.

He entertained troops in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He often visited with cancer patients as well.

PEREIRA: Robin Williams leaves behind three children. Last night his daughter Zelda posted a message that read, quote, "I love you. Il miss you. I'll try to keep looking up." I think she speaks for all of us.

Joining us is comedian Chuck Nice, here in the studio, a 16-year veteran of stand-up comedian -- nothing like calling you a veteran -- and psychologist Jeff Gardere, always a pleasure to have you here with us.

Good to meet you, Chuck.

CHUCK NICE, COMEDIAN: Good to meet you too.

PEREIRA: I know you didn't work directly with Mr. Williams, but you had met him, and I imagine that you are like many other comedians out there that can say you felt his influence.

NICE: Absolutely. The entire comedy world, I mean, all of entertainment felt his influence. He was such a force, and as you mentioned earlier at the top that he was a classically trained actor, but more than anything he brought a spirit and an energy to everything that he did.

When you saw that clip from Mork and Ork -- or Mork from Ork -- he -- you can tell that's him improving. You can tell. That is not scripted. We were there and we were all covered in "Shake 'N Bake." I mean, who writes that? That's -- you know, and that's how great he was.

BERMAN: Who can make a character like Mork, which is so silly on its face, so compelling at the same time?

NICE: Right. Absolutely. A lot of what he did was like that. There was a depth and a humanity to much of what he did, even his stand-up where he talked about the struggles that he faced with drug addiction and depression, and he made it funny, but he also made it poignant because he was giving us a look inside what happens when a person is in that kind of painful situation.

BERMAN: I want talk about that, because one of things that has struck me and we've been talking about it all morning, how aware Robin Williams was of the issues he was dealing with. He talked about addiction so much.

I want to play a clip, Jeff, for you right here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KING, TALK SHOW HOST: What happens in rehab?

WILLIAMS: What happens? You dry out. I mean, what happens, people basically start the process of, you know, just saying no and being among others, you know, and learning that you are not alone and working on giving up, you know, giving up -- that you could do it yourself because everyone is saying, I got this under control, Gary.

KING: Do you think you've beaten it?

WILLIAMS: No, Larry, it's always there. Do I think I've beaten it? Yeah, I kicked it. I'm fine.

No, the idea is that you always have a little bit of fear, like you just have to keep at it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He's talking about addiction there and recently had been battling depression as well.

How can you be so aware and so eloquent about something like that and also so powerless against it?

JEFF GARDERE, CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST: What we're seeing with Robin, his whole act, the act, being the comedian, that's him. Those are the demons he's expressing. That's his self-medication. That's him working out a lot of the very deep depression that he had and being very honest that the fact that drug addiction and recovery is a lifelong process.

And for him, it got to be too much. The depression was too deep. There were other medical problems going on, and I think it pushed him over the edge, and he made a decision that we see as being the wrong decision.

But when you're deep inside of a depression, when you're having those drug abuse issues, it makes sense to you at the time, even though you leave so many people that are hurt.

And you know what's going on, you know what your issues are, but yet you are powerless to fight them yourself.

PEREIRA: I think we can't miss this opportunity to talk about this notion, Chuck, of the sad clown.

We've talked about this before. I know a lot of comedians that have their own, you know, demons they struggle with.

NICE: Thank you for saying that we're all messed up and you are right.

PEREIRA: No, no.

NICE: We are all messed up. We're all messed up in the head.

GARDERE: But they have an opportunity to work it out on stage. We become their therapist when we listen to comedians, because they are taking the deepest, darkest, most painful things and putting it out there and making it funny.

This is a very sophisticated coping mechanism that we see in psychoanalysis and psychology, so it is brilliant.

NICE: You're absolutely right. I often would like to go see a therapist, but instead I just get on stanl and it works. You know?

Because what you are doing is you're taking -- there's a saying. All comedy comes from pain. OK?

Very rarely will you meet a stand-up comic who's good, who is good, OK, who is just like I have the happiest life ever. My life has just been awesome.

PEREIRA: That's not necessarily funny.

NICE: Right. And so what you do is you take pain and you make it into something funny in hopes that somebody will get a deeper and greater message.

PEREIRA: Jeff Gardere, Chuck Nice, it's really a pleasure to have here to talk about something that so many people are struggling to understand. I don't know that there's understanding --

BERMAN: I don't think you can.

NICE: Let me just say this. I know we have to go, but I think one of the things we have to do is take this opportunity to educate ourselves, OK, on the fact that depression and addiction are brain disorders. OK?

People fight cancer and we say, hey, man, I'm with you, I'm behind you, fight cancer. Well, guess what? It's the same thing. These are brain disorders. These are chemical malfunctions in your brain, and the more we know about it, the less stigma we'll attach to it.

GARDERE: Which means you got to get treatment.

PEREIRA: You've got to get help.

And to that end, I want to point something that CNN has put together, we know that there are a lot of folks, as you mentioned, Chuck, so eloquently, right there on our panel, CNN.com/impact.

There are a lot of resources and tools. If you or someone you know is suffering and struggling trying to find some help, that's a good place to start.

Thanks so much, gentlemen.

NICE: Thank you. GARDERE: A pleasure.

And we should point out that, coming up to 11:30 Eastern, we're going to have a very special look at Robin Williams' life.

BERMAN: Nischelle Turner is going to host "CNN SPOTLIGHT: REMEMBERING ROBIN." Again, that airs in about 23 minutes, so stick with us for that.

Also ahead @THISHOUR, air strikes, air drops, advisers on the ground, the war in Iraq, maybe you thought was over.

Plus, we're live from Iraq with just an unbelievable look at the crisis from the ground. Our reporter Ivan Watson with some sights you just have never seen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: Secretary of State John Kerry has a message for Iraq. The U.S. is ready with more money and military support to fight ISIS militants once a new leader is in place.

BERMAN: The secretary says that Haider al-Ibadi should form a new government as fast as he can. al-Ibadi was nominated yesterday to replace the current or outgoing -- depending on how you want to say it -- Nouri al-Maliki.

President Obama called Ibadi to congratulate him.

PEREIRA: But al-Maliki, for his part, says he is not going anywhere. In fact, he's digging in his heels and vowing to hold onto power.

BERMAN: While this is all going on, ISIS fighters in some places are making new gains in their deadly march across Iraq. U.S. Central Command says that U.S. forces successfully conducted an air strike today against an ISIS mortar position north of Sinjar.

We're just getting word right now that the U.S. could be sending as many as 75 more military advisers to Iraq, upping the U.S. participation there.

PEREIRA: One frontline in this deadly fight, Sinjar Mountain, thousands of people have been trapped there by ISIS forces.

BERMAN: Some have been rescued, airlifted out by helicopter. Our Ivan Watson was part of just such an aid mission, which turned, really, into a rescue mission.

PEREIRA: Ivan joins us now from the Iraq-Syrian border. We'll talk to you in a moment about that situation.

Also here with us in studio, Austin Long's an international security policy professor at Columbia University.

Ivan, why don't we start with you? You can tell us about the situation where you are on the ground right now. IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela I'm at

the Iraqi Kurdish border with Syria. There's a river in between and a bridge, and we've seen throughout the past couple of hours that we've been here, a constant stream -- now somewhat dwindled to a trickle, but it ebbs and flows -- of Iraqis fleeing the ISIS offensive in Iraq. And they are taking this long, bizarre journey to get here.

They flee across the border to a Kurdish controlled part of Syria. I'm going to get out of the way, so you can see some of the faces of these people as they kind of come stumbling up the bridge and the banks of the river. They flee to Syria where they are then transported to this bridge and brought back into Iraqi Kurdistan.

These people have fled their homes, quite literally in a matter of minutes. They are carrying little more than the clothes on their backs. We see -- have seen elderly coming. We've seen women leading their children. People look exhausted as they make this journey in.

And they have nothing. because as you go up the banks of the river from here, there are makeshift camps cropping up of tens of thousands of newly homeless people who have no place else to go.

The Kurdish border guards here, Michaela, they say that the stream of people that have crossed and we've seen thousands in the last hour or two was much more in the past two days, so this is a part of a massive displacement of people who are fleeing.

I spoke with one old man with his grandchildren, his elderly wife, his adult children, they said they walked more than 10 hours to escape. I asked how they could possibly do it? He said when you are running for your life, you'll do it. You have no other choice.

To help bring some context to this, I'm joined by Sirwan Sami Abdul Rahman, a Kurdish businessman here. His father was deputy prime minister killed by a Jihadi suicide bomb ten years ago. I knew him. He was a good man, and we're watching these scenes here, this crisis now has occurred. First of all how does it make you feel to see these hundreds of thousands of people on the run?

SIRWAN SAMI ABDUL RAHMAN, KURDISH BUSINESSMAN: It's beyond words how upsetting it is for us. This is not the first time. We've had multiple attacks on the Kurdish nation. We've had genocide in the 1980s, called the Anfal, where 180,000 people were wiped out. Then we had chemical attacks, such as the famous one in Halabja, amongst others. Then we fled in 1991 after Saddam Hussein's Gulf War I, and now we are again. It's profoundly upsetting and very worrying, I'm actually from the town of Sinjar originally myself. It brings it home for me.

WATSON: It's not just Kurds, Iraqi Kurdistan is welcoming Iraqi Christians, Turkeymen, people of the Arabs of different religious and ethic groups. It looks like a policy of ethnic and sectarian cleansing. If you are not an Arab Sunni who follows ISIS's violent ideology, there's no place for you?

ABDUL RAHMAN: Yes. You must subscribe to ISIS abhorrent way of life and belief system or you are dead. That's effectively what happens, and Kurdistan is accepting everyone. Many minorities, the Yazidis, of course, Shabak's, Kakaes (ph), it's a rainbow nation of religions and ethnic groups, and they are all part of Kurdistan.

WATSON: It must be traumatizing to watch this all unfold

ABDUL RAHMAN: It is indeed. Yes

WATSON: Sirwan Sami Abdul Rahman, a kurdish businessman here. That's just a bit of a touch of this. And I have to stress this, John, and Michaela, we have seen other people on the move in other parts of Iraqi Kurdistan. More than 100,000 Iraqi Christians also, and all of these people across this region are going to be leaving, sleeping on the side of the road tonight. It is a humanitarian crisis.

BERMAN: It's literally an odyssey, Ivan, and a tragedy playing out in front of your very eyes, and thank goodness we have you there to show the world what is going on right now.

This mass of humanity running away wherever they can, even into Syria and back into Iraq. Professor, let me ask you this, what more can be done? Are these air lifts enough? Are the air strikes enough? We just got word that an Iraqi chopper went down while out on Sinjar mountain trying to bring aid to the people? So obviously it's a dangerous mission.

AUSTIN LONG, INTELLIGENCE SECURITY PROFESSOR, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: It is incredibly dangerous. And more can be done. But it is going to take quite a lot to turn the tide against ISIS. Air strikes will help. Humanitarian air lift will certainly help the refugees, but ISIS is an incredibly powerful organization. It survived basically everything the United States could throw at it in the period when it was al Qaeda in Iraq. And it has only gotten stronger since then.

PEREIRA: It seems as thought it is like an organism that is strengthened and emboldened and has gotten more wild.

LONG: Absolute. It is without doubt stronger than it was a few years ago. In 2007 it was being pushed back by the United States and Iraqi's. It was, sort of, pushed into the fringes around Mosul, including near Sinjar. But since the war in Syria began, it's drawing strength from that, and it's converted that strength into very effective fighting power which is not back in Iraq.

BERMAN: I think what it needs is an Iraqi Sunni to stand up and say, no, not here?

LONG: I think you are right. That's exactly what turned the tide in 2007, Iraqi Sunni's turning against, what was then, al Qaeda in Iraq. The problem now is the United States isn't there to help them.

BERMAN: Professor, thanks so much for being with us. Again, we're going to leave you with these live pictures right now from the border. That mass of humanity between Iraq and Syria.

PEREIRA: Can give you an idea of the desperation to walk at least ten miles. My goodness.

All right, we're going to take a short break here. Ahead @THISHOUR, we're going to take a look at how the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are now battling at home from post traumatic stress, to addiction. Many of them are in the fight of their lives. We're going to speak with Soledad O'Brien next.

Plus, in just a few minutes, we will have a special "CNN SPOTLIGHT: REMEMBER ROB". A look at the life and legacy of Robin Williams, that is at 11:30 right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Twenty-two a day, veterans committing suicide. Twenty-two every day. The pain that these heroes face physically and mentally when they return from the horrors of war, it is all too real, and it's the focus of a CNN documentary, "THE WAR COMES HOME", which airs tonight at 9:00 p.m.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

UN IDENTIFED MALE: I pulled out my Glock 19 out of my walker. Sit down at my desk. Made sure it was loaded. Stuck it in my mouth and was going to pull the trigger. The next thing that crossed through my mind was my kids, my two sons. At that point, I was like, I don't want some other [ bleep ] raising my kids. I put my gun down and I called the V.A. suicide hot line, and that is where I can tell you a 40-minute wait on hold with a Glock pistol sitting on my desk. Funny isn't it? A gGock pistol sitting on my desk and I'm on hold.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

PEREIRA: Joining us is Soledad O'Brien, CEO of Starfish Media Group, who produced that documentary. I cannot believe how salient that point is. Given the V.A. scandal that we have been covering here, on our show, in the news, here on CNN --

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CEO, STARFISH MEDIA GROUP: Indicative of the desperation, right? That is Bobby Farmer, 10 tours of duty. Bronze star, purple heart, and a guy who worked in special forces, right. So -- The power of Bobby Farmer and guys like him, is their ability to go to this program which is called Save A Warrior, and show that room full of other veterans, most of them in this case from Iraq and Afghanistan, although the suicide numbers are about all veterans, and say I was there. I am this guy who was well respected. I am, you know, a veteran's veteran and I was there too. I was suicidal also, and you can come back from the brink.

And I think it's guys like Bobby Farmer, who is one of the most impressive human beings I've ever met, sharing his story with those guys, it's made a big difference.

BERMAN: What they need is a map, in some cases, right, in how to deal with the different situations. Situations like people saying, thank you for your service, something as simple as that can be difficult? O'BRIEN: They describe it a lot as a toolbox. That's what they

actually teach them at Save A Warrior, is tools to manage these stresses. So for example, transcendental meditation is a great tool when you're feeling like you have these all these rushing feelings and you can't control them. So TM. They do a ropes course, they teach equine therapy, all these things to manage how they are dealing with their daily interactions which sometimes can be stressful, sometimes can have anxiety. These are guys, the two that we profile, have very loving families. They are really lucky guys who just have lost the ability to feel anything.

PEREIRA: And they can't even feel the love of their families, which is like this terrible irony. This is a powerful, powerful program. Hopefully it's going to expand, Save A Warrior?

O"BRIEN: I think they are run on a shoe strange -- string. It costs $1, 600 per guy. And it is all funded, so they raise money to send the guys through. It is free to the warriors. They have just done their first women's cohort. It's small. It's one of those things they have to decide how --

PEREIRA: Maybe the airing of this documentary.

O'BRIEN: I would say they would say from your mouth to God's ears. I know that financial challenges are really a real thing to them. It's called Save A Warrior and it's based in Malibu, California.

BERMAN: And just by looking at your documentary, which I hope everyone gets to see, you can see the determination, in some ways, in their faces. They are there. They are determined to get there.

O'BRIEN: They are warriors. These are guys who have been through a lot. Now we, as civilians, have to help support them come back fully.

BERMAN: Let's do that. Great to see you.

PEREIRA: Let's give it the due that it needs. The War Comes Home airs tonight 9:00 eastern right now here on CNN.

BERMAN: Set your DVR right now. And in just a few moments we're going to have a special "CNN SPOTLIGHT: REMEMBERING ROBIN". Coming up after a quick break. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)