Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

McAfee Back in the U.S.; NATO Says Syrian Government Near Collapse; Fiscal Cliff Draws Nearer

Aired December 13, 2012 - 11:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, I'm Ashleigh Banfield. It's 11:00 on the East Coast, 8:00 a.m. on the West Coast.

And, on the move again, anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee is now here in the United States. From Belize to Guatemala to Miami, just the latest twist in a bizarre odyssey, McAfee's path is perplexing as the mystery that has followed him through Central America back home to the U.S.

This time he did not sneak in over a border like he did from Belize to Guatemala, it was more like he seemed to be kicked out of Guatemala. He flew into Miami last night, but says that it wasn't his choice.

Guatemalan authorities rejected his request for asylum and instead put him on a one-way flight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MCAFEE, SOFTWARE COMPANY FOUNDER: I don't even know why I'm here. You know, this morning, I was in jail. Today, here I am.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why Miami? Why'd you come here?

MCAFEE: I said, sir, I had no choice. They put me on an airplane. I am here.

I'm not worried at all. If I'm in front of a court, there's nothing in the world they will do to send me back. They have no evidence. I have tons of evidence about the corruption, the harassment, beginning with the attack on my property in April.

I mean, of course, I'm not worried. I'd be happy to go in front of a judge, just not one in Belize.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Well, that's exactly the problem, though, because he's still wanted for questioning in Belize since his neighbor, this man, American businessman Gregory Faull, was found murdered in November.

A month long ago saga that now stretches across three countries and, in just 24 hours, has taken McAfee from a Guatemalan prison to a swanky hotel on South Beach, in fact, Ocean Drive and that's exactly where our John Zarrella caught up with him.

And, John, I know this is a bit of an unusual circumstance, but you're right now joining me by telephone. You're in the hotel room with Mr. McAfee?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, I'll tell you were I was and I have been. I'm sitting in the lobby in the cafe with Mr. McAfee where I've been for the last 45 minutes.

He has refused to give us and on-camera interview, but he did shed many, many details of his saga. And he says that so many people have gotten it wrong, that bottom line, he says, was that back in last April that, after he refused to pay a $2 million bribe, he says to a politician, that 42 soldiers showed up at his place, handcuffed him, shot his dog and then released him.

And after that he periodically went into hiding at night and surfaced during the daytime and that he was in hiding, he says, at the time that Gregory Faull was murdered back on November 11th.

Now, an interesting subject, he talked about how he ended up coming to the United States rather than going back to Belize.

He told me just a few minutes ago that what he did was that, in fact, he did fake the heart attack, fake the heart problems so that he would be put in a hospital in Guatemala and that, by putting him in the hospital, that there was no way during a short window of opportunity that he says that Belize and Guatemalan authorities had had to send him back to Belize, that by being in the hospital, he prevented that ...

BANFIELD: So these pictures, John, these pictures that we're looking at, of him on the stretcher on the gurney and then into the ambulance, all of this is a fake? He's admitting he made this all up?

ZARRELLA: Yes, and he said that to me -- I said, so, you faked it? And he said, yes, what would you have done? You know, he says, are you kidding? What would you have done? So he ...

BANFIELD: Are his troubles in Guatemala over now? I mean, is that country out of the picture?

ZARRELLA: Yeah, Guatemala is out of the picture. I mean, you know, he was deported to the United States yesterday. They want nothing more to do with him.

You know, he entered the country illegally and he freely admits entering the country illegally, saying they crossed rivers, that even claims to have had a body double on another border.

So it's who they were chasing down, which allowed him to make his exit at the border where he crossed.

So all kinds of things that, you know, that he is saying about how he and his girlfriend, Samantha, who is still in Guatemala and who he is trying to get a visa for to come to the U.S., you know, the details how they made it across into Guatemala.

And he says, again, that crossing rivers and wading through, you know, dark and dense underbrush. So you know, quite a story, he is telling.

BANFIELD: John Zarrella, you can't make this stuff up. An unbelievable story, thank you for that.

So obviously, there's still a lot of questions here. Now, that the software mogul is on U.S. soil, could it complicate things legally. He's a U.S. citizen, but he was living in Belize and he is still wanted for questioning there in that murder of his neighbor. He is not, however, officially a suspect and the only place where he's charged with breaking the law was Guatemala.

As John Zarrella just said, Guatemala is out of the picture here, so sneaking into that country now a done deal, over with, but what does it mean for McAfee now that he's back in the U.S.?

Let's get some perspective from our legal contributor, Paul Callan. I was shaking my head while I was getting the details from John Zarrella, but here's, I think, the big question for Mr. McAfee.

What is our extradition relationship with Belize should the authorities there decide, you know what? Enough already, we're going to charge so you we can get you back here?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's interesting. You know, McAfee's become like a virus in the criminal justice system ...

BANFIELD: Oh, have you been working that one up?

CALLAN: ... to use a computer analogy. How do you like that? But, you know, going from Belize to Guatemala to the United States.

We have a very good cooperation treaty with Belize. We have a mutual assistance treaty that allows us to cooperate in criminal investigations. We also have an extradition treaty.

So if Belize decided to charge him with murder, he could be extradited from the United States. Now, there would be some defenses that would be put up.

I understand, by the way, he's also, I think, a British citizen, as well. He claims that he has dual citizenship.

BANFIELD: So what about the -- when you say "cooperation," what about the level of cooperation? For instance, if the authorities in Belize aren't ready to indict because they may have time constraints like we do in the United States, once you indict, once you arrest, the clock starts, would America send him back for questioning? Would we actually do that or only wait for the charge and wait for the official extradition requests?

CALLAN: No, they won't. He won't lose any rights that he would have under U.S. law. And even if he were a person of interest in an investigation in the United States, in the absence of an arrest warrant, he cannot be taken into custody. So he will have the same rights under the U.S. constitution. However, if they return a murder indictment, he can be forced back. If it were ...

BANFIELD: Do they have capital punishment? Belize?

CALLAN: You know, I don't think that they do.

BANFIELD: A sticky wicket when that comes into play for a lot of countries. People won't extradite prisoners to the U.S., oftentimes, if there's a potential for facing the death penalty. I don't know how we feel about it, the other way around?

CALLAN: You know, it is. And I think the way this plays out -- of course, you know, this is a murder investigation, at least in theory. His neighbor was murdered.

Whether he'll be charged is an entirely different question, but the p.m., the prime minister of Belize now has called him paranoid and, quote, "bonkers," so as a result of statements that McAfee's made about the Belize government. So he's not really making too many friends there.

BANFIELD: One last question about just the legal situation here in the United States for him. The family of Mr. Faull, the victim in the case in Belize, the murder victim, do they have any recourse? Could they go through the civil courts here and go after from McAfee for, say, wrongful death even though we don't have a conviction? We don't have a charge.

Can they actually mount some kind of a case here in the U.S., as well?

CALLAN: Well, they probably could not, but what they could do is they could mount a civil case probably in Belize and they could use that civil case as a mechanism to take his testimony under oath in the United States and sort of do their own private investigation into the murder if they think Belize police authorities are not properly investigating. So the story is not over for Mr. McAfee yet.

BANFIELD: It is so complex and so fascinating. Paul Callan, thank you. Appreciate that.

CALLAN: Nice to be with you.

BANFIELD: You, too, as always.

So Mr. McAfee is insisting that he has absolutely nothing to do with the death of his neighbor, Gregory Faull, and he is adamant that he left Belize to escape what he calls police persecution.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: We know more now about the apparent suicide of the London nurse who was involved in the British royal hoax. A coroner's report says that Jacintha Saldanha was found hanged by a scarf. Colleagues found her body last Friday. She was hanging from a closet door at the hospital living quarters. She left three notes behind, but the content of those notes right now is not being released. There has, however, been a request for a death inquiry, an inquest. Her death is coming, obviously, after that prank, that prank call at the hospital where Prince William's wife, Catherine, was being treated for morning sickness.

We have some serious developments in the bloody civil war in Syria to report on today. Number one, NATO Secretary-General says the country's government is approaching collapse -- collapse -- and it's urging President Bashar al-Assad to stop the fighting and allow a political transfer of power.

Number two, this all comes as the country denies reports of its military using Scud missiles -- Scud missiles -- against rebel groups inside its own borders.

And, also, number three, Russia, a long-time ally of President Assad, is now saying that the opposition may in fact win this civil war.

All of this on the heels, of course, of the United States move to recognize the opposition movement as the representation of the Syrian people.

And, in the meantime, back on the streets where all of that fighting goes on every single day, this is one heck of a story of courage, a 17-year-old crawling directly into the line of sniper fire, desperately trying to save the life of an innocent victim.

It's an exclusive video report given to CNN's Arwa Damon in Aleppo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A fighter slithers across the street, his body hugging the cold pavement. Yards away, a woman lies motionless. She's been shot by a sniper.

Her rescuer is not a relative nor a neighbor. He's never met her. Abdullah Fatah Fayhan (ph) is just 17. He knew he had to save the woman or die trying.

When we met him later, he tells us, we had a feeling that she was still alive. We wanted to save her, to get her to it a hospital.

As he crawls closer, he can see her hand, her fingers shaking.

"Cover him! Cover him!" someone shouts. Other fighters lay down cover fire.

Abdullah (ph) quickly ties the hose to her legs, but he's unable to retreat.

I said to myself, if I die, it's God's will that I die next to this woman, he tells us.

Finally, he makes a run for it and the rebels drag the woman back.

The woman and her son were walking right down the street there. Rebel fighters shouted at them to stay away, but it was too late.

Aleppo is crisscrossed with similar sniper alleys. Some are known, but others do not reveal themselves until the first shot is fired.

Despite Abdullah (ph) (INAUDIBLE) efforts, the woman dies, her son utterly distraught.

"Don't die now. Don't die today," he pleads. "Answer me, Mom. Answer me."

"She's not dead. She's not dead," he says, as he collapses.

Abdullah (INAUDIBLE) is left wondering whether her life could have been saved if he'd reached her sooner.

Until recently, he worked at a bakery. Now, like thousands of young Syrians, he puts his life on the line.

"I'm not a hero. I'm just like anyone else," Abdullah (ph) tells us.

And we're left to wonder how many similar acts of courage go unrecorded every day in Syria and how many innocents are lost.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Aleppo.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: Just incredible, incredible reporting from Arwa Damon.

As the ground fight in Syria continues, the United States has announced that it's going to provide $14 million for emergency supplies and medical care to help the Syrians through what's coming, that very cold winter ahead. And those supplies include things like plastic insulation boots, something as simple as that, and also nutritional items.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: It's the holiday season and we all have a wish list, don't we? The Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are no different. Only Santa's toy sack is nowhere big enough to fit all the goodies that each party wants to include in a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff. Neither party seems willing to compromise very much on any of this. The White House wants higher taxes on the wealthy.

And here's a quick look at the Republican's wish list. They want to bring in $800 billion in new revenue. That's lower than what the Democrats want. They want to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and reduce Social Security cost-of-living adjustments.

And then, today, House minority -- Nancy Pelosi had this to say about it all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: The president has been very specific, do you not agree?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE).

PELOSI: Well, that -- $1.6 trillion? At some point, you are cutting the seed corn of our future. The president wants investments in infrastructure. He wants education. He wants job creating investments for the future.

You're not going to reduce the deficit by only cutting your way to it because you will cut the prospects for job creation which produce revenue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: So while people in Washington go back and forth over the fine print and the thick print, too, what does this mean for you on January 1st? Your personal economy of one, as we like for say here.

I asked you to tweet me some of your questions and concerns and you have been fabulous at doing that, so, today, one of the best in the business, Ali Velshi, our chief business correspondent, was kind enough to grace us with his presence here.

ALI VELSHI, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, those are great questions.

BANFIELD: They are great.

VELSHI: And it really helps in our continuing coverage of this because we're going to have to cover it forever ...

BANFIELD: I know.

VELSHI: ... to know what people actually want to know about the fiscal cliff.

BANFIELD: There were so many, Ali, and I wish I could do them all, but let me get some of the highlights because these are terrific.

@Lisaluvsualways -- first of all, love the handle. She asks how does this affect the extension of unemployment benefits which expire December 31st. She says, so how am I paying the bills?

VELSHI: This is awful. This is the worst part about it.

So unemployment benefits are traditionally 26 weeks and they're provided by your state. When the financial crisis hit, the federal government added extra weeks to that so that you could get either 79 weeks or 99 weeks. Remember, we called the 99ers, people who were out of work.

The average length of time that you're unemployed right now is about 40 weeks, but as of December 31, the federal extension to unemployment benefits will end, which means you will then only qualify for the 26 weeks. So if you're in the federal extension, you're getting that right now, it ends, December 29th actually, completely ends, and then, thereafter, you can only get your 26 weeks from the state.

There is discussion about extending it and it's a tough one. That one always gets -- becomes a political football.

BANFIELD: OK, I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce this name right. I think it's either @Schuiteman or @Schuiteman, but in any case, the question is good. It says, I was hoping to buy a house after the new year. If we fall off the cliff, how will it affect the process or mortgage taxes.

VELSHI: OK, so, this is the best time probably ever in the history of the world to buy a house because you've got low prices and you've got historically low interest rates.

If you've got good credit, you've got 20 percent down to put down on a house, you can get a mortgage for three-and-change percent.

Now, nothing is likely to change with the process. The one thing that's interesting is one of the biggest government expenses is the mortgage interest rate deduction. It costs the government about $100 billion a year and it's increasing at a rate of about 10 percent a year.

Doesn't get us much. You look at Canada where there's -- they almost make it hard for you buy a house and the home ownership rate is actually higher in Canada than it is in the United States.

So from a return perspective, it's not very good, but it's not very political. You're not going to get rid of it.

BANFIELD: The Canadians are used to that because they get no ...

VELSHI: You are correct.

BANFIELD: We are used to the goodies.

VELSHI: Right, so what you probably do is you can phase it out. You can say people buying a house over a certain amount or have an income over a certain amount, you get less of a deduction. That already happens.

And you can phase it out so that it's only affecting lower-income people because, right now, the vast majority of the savings from that mortgage interest rate deduction, go to wealthy homeowners.

BANFIELD: OK, but then, of course, they build the houses and they fill the houses with goods.

VELSHI: And that creates jobs. So the short answer to your question is probably not going away. Nothing's changing.

BANFIELD: OK, another one, @Knsobrien says, we're a small business -- we're small business owners, husband and wife, how will the fiscal cliff hurt us?

VELSHI: This is a big answer. Can't get it all because I don't know specifically what your situation is and how you're structured, but the bottom line is it will probably affect small businesses in a couple ways.

First of all, small businesses tend to deduct things, but then they run their taxes, in many cases, through their personal income. You may fall into the alternative minimum tax and the bad thing about that is that you can't deduct things. So the Department of Revenue says that we're going to go from about 4 million people who use AMT, file under AMT, that's going to explode.

The other thing is there will be fewer deductions quite possibly. One of the advantages of being a small business is you can deduct lots of things. Many of those deductions are going to change. You're going to have to speak to your accountant about the specifics, but it is probably going to have an effect on you if you are a small business.

If you are self-employed, there are even more things that will affect you because the things that you pay like Medicare, like the payroll tax deduction, those things are going to fall to you.

So for small businesses, this is going to be complicated and make sure you get it right. This is the tough part. If you're a major corporation, you've got a team accountants figuring this out.

BANFIELD: They do it all in-house.

VELSHI: Yeah, if you're a small business, this is hard to figure out.

BANFIELD: I'm only going to cut you off for the Speaker of the House because he is live on Capitol Hill with his weekly address. Let's listen in.

(BEGIN LIVE FEED)

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE SPEAKER: ... avert the fiscal cliff with a bipartisan agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem. The president still has not made an offer that meets those two standards, but Republicans have.

And while the president promised the American people a balanced approach, his proposals have been anything but. He wants far more in tax hikes than in spending cuts and, instead of beginning to solve our debt problem, he wants new stimulus spending and the ability to raise the debt limit whenever he wants without any cuts or reforms.

Now, it's clear that the president's just not serious about cutting spending, but spending is the problem.

How big a problem? Look at this chart put together by Paul Ryan in the budget committee. This line is the current baseline for revenue. Here, if the president got everything he wanted, over $1.4 trillion in taxes, this is what that would represent. But if you look at the spending problem, you see it does nothing, nothing to solve the spending problem that our country has.

Listen, Republicans want to solve this problem by getting the spending line down. The president wants to pretend the spending isn't the problem. That's why we don't have an agreement. The chart depicts what I've been saying for a long time now. Washington has a spending problem that can't be fixed with tax increases alone. The right answer is to start cutting spending, addressing our debt and paving the way for long-term economic growth.

Unfortunately, the White House is so unserious about cutting spending that it appears willing to slow walk any agreement and walk our economy right up to the fiscal cliff. Doing that puts jobs in our country in danger, jeopardizes a golden opportunity to make 2013 the year that we enact fundamental tax reform and entitlement reform to begin to solve our country's debt problem and, frankly, revenue problem.

As you can see from this chart, real revenue growth is critically important as long as real cuts in spending if we're going to solve our long-term fiscal problem.

As I said five weeks ago, the election wasn't a mandate to raise taxes on small businesses. It was a mandate for both parties to work together to take on the big challenges that our country is facing. Republicans are ready and eager to do just that. We made a reasonable offer. It's now up to the White House to show us how they're going to cut spending and give us the balanced agreement that the president has talked about for weeks.

If the president will step up and show us he's willing to make the spending cuts that are needed, I think we can do some real good in the days ahead. If not, if he wants to keep chasing higher spending with higher taxes, this chart's going to look a whole lot worse and our kids and our grandkids are the ones who are going to suffer because Washington was too short-sighted to fix the problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Several recent polls have showed that about 75 percent of the public believes that the tax rates for the upper-income earners should expire.

Why are you holding out if a tax cut for the wealthy that most Americans, even many wealthy people, say we shouldn't (INAUDIBLE)?

BOEHNER: Raising tax rates will hurt small businesses at a time when we're expecting small businesses to be the engine of job creation in America.

Ernst & Young has made it clear that, if we were to do what the president is asking for, some 700,000 jobs would be at risk. It's as simple as that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) payroll tax, healthcare, (INAUDIBLE) a myriad of issues, why is it that every Christmas, why is it we are here this late every single year, no matter what (INAUDIBLE)?

BOEHNER: Well, we really shouldn't be. I argued going back to spring that this issue had to be dealt with. That's why in May the House moved a bill to replace the sequester with other cuts and mandatory spending.

That's why in July the House passed a bill to extend all of the current tax rates.

I've been pushing all year for us to address this problem, but here we are at the 11th hour and the president still isn't serious about dealing with this issue right here. It's this issue. Spending.

(END LIVE FEED)