Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

"Torture Report" Edits Anger Feinstein; Netanyahu: Hamas Repeatedly Uses Human Shields; Doctor Who Survived Ebola Shares His Story; Russians Gangs Steal 1.2 Million Passwords

Aired August 06, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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


CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: So they don't want to deflate an agency for what may have been, and what appears to have been, clearly, some real heavy-handedness. Some torture here. They're trying to find a spot I think on the committee as well at the CIA and at the White House.

But right now there are many on the committee who think the White House is protecting the CIA. We need to get this out there, call it what it was and move on.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Candy Crowley and all your years in Washington. Always love talking to you. We watch you on Sunday morning, "STATE OF THE UNION" at 9:00 a.m. Eastern here on CNN. Thank you, Candy.

Next, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says 90 percent of the deaths in Gaza, it's Hamas' fault and he actually gave a video example that he says supports that claim. We'll play that for you coming up here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just past the bottom of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We heard from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just a little while ago, saying his country's military made significant efforts to avoid hitting Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Just a short time ago, he used a PowerPoint presentation to try to explain to back up, support his claims. Prime Minister Netanyahu says Hamas routinely uses civilians as human shields to protect its rockets, to protect its weapons, and Israel tried to avoid hitting those human shields.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: -- fires a warning shot, providing civilians with ample opportunity to evacuate the area. And here you see residents leaving the house. Here you see actually a different example of civilians climbing on the roof of a building because they have been asked to act as human shields. Here you see we avoid it. We stop the attack, so as not to hit civilians.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: With me now to discuss with his military eye, military analyst, Colonel Rick Francona. So Colonel, just beginning with what Netanyahu showed, what we also showed at the top of the hour from that Indian journalist staying at a hotel, showing what looked to be potentially members of Hamas building a rocket up -- outside of his hotel room in Gaza, is that what you're seeing? Tell me what you're seeing.

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, it's obviously -- that was some sort of a rocket launcher. These are the smaller home- made El-Cassom rockets, small enough you can just carry it and launch it. You can tell the tube on that was home made.

This was not a manufactured rocket launcher, say, imported from Iran or Syria. This is one of the short range, you would probably just fire over the border into the villages and Kibbutz's.

BALDWIN: We're all looking at this for the first time. This is actually from France 24, TV network over there. So they have correspondents covering this. So we have video and this is from France 74, an alleged Hamas rocket launch pad that he has found in Gaza. And the detail is that it was 100 meters from a U.N. facility. I'm not quite sure exactly what we're looking at with him here. But just another example?

FRANCONA: Yes, that tube that he showed just before he walked off --

BALDWIN: We'll watch this with you.

FRANCONA: It was made --

BALDWIN: That tube right there.

FRANCONA: You can look and see it's made with iron welded together. That's home-made. That's one of the rocket launchers used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

BALDWIN: So we watched Benjamin Netanyahu on TV a little while ago. What would, if you were the militant wing of Hamas watching all of this, watching Netanyahu saying, see, this is why. This is what's happening over there. What would they be thinking? FRANCONA: Well, they think they got caught. This is obviously --

they were doing what Netanyahu is accusing them of doing. I don't think it's any secret. There's ample evidence that Hamas and Islamic jihad launched from areas near these U.N. schools, mosques, hospitals. El Shifa Hospital was partly taken over by Hamas to use as an administrative area. So there is no question that they're doing that.

BALDWIN: But what?

FRANCONA: But the response does not -- that does not in itself justify the use of that kind of force against those targets. It's against international law to use these buildings for that purpose. It's also against the international law to bomb them indiscriminately.

If you know they're using the hospital, you just can't go bomb it. You have to actually try and eliminate them doing something at the hospital. It's a fine line and both -- I think both sides have gone over the line.

BALDWIN: OK. Colonel Rick Francona, thank you. Appreciate it.

We have been following closely the condition of these two Americans who are battling this potentially deadly Ebola virus. They're in Atlanta, staying and being treated at Emory Medical Center.

But coming up, you will hear from this man. He says he survived Ebola some 40 years ago. We talked to Erin Burnett. She'll join me to explain that conversation and how he says he beat it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: More death, more sickness from the worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was discovered nearly 40 years ago. The latest update we have from the World Health Organization just out today, and when you look at the numbers here with me, you can see the numbers climbing sharply.

You see that line curving upward, because 108 new cases of Ebola reported, pushing the total now to more than 1,700. And the number of those who have been killed by this virus up as well, topping 900.

So my colleague, Erin Burnett, as in Erin Burnett "OUTFRONT" is joining me. I appreciate it. You talked to this guy a couple nights in a row who said I had Ebola before it was even called Ebola and I beat it.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST, "OUTFRONT": Incredible story. He was a doctor working in a missionary program, similar to those two fighting for their lives in Liberia. This was in the Congo in the '70s. And a patient came in who was bleeding, hemorrhaging, the horrific death that is Ebola and he immediately started to treat it.

And there was a scalpel. He got cut. The patient died. And 12 days, nothing happened. And all of a sudden, it turned out he had all of the symptoms that were Ebola. And here is Dr. Cairns. I'll let you hear him describe what it was like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. THOMAS CAIRNS, EBOLA SURVIVOR: Fever and flu normally doesn't drag on that long, and it carried on -- might have wife made very good temperature charts and this went into two weeks. And this would not be typical for flu.

BURNETT: And it must have been, honestly, Dr. Cairns, a miracle, you didn't affect your wife or children or anyone else.

CAIRNS: That's right. Using that word miracle is exactly what I would use too. I can't account for it, other than the power of God.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow.

BURNETT: He talked about he had to slough his skin off, in a stupor, rash over his torso and body and just horrific and he survived.

BALDWIN: Without the serum. We talked so much about this experimental serum and only tested in monkeys and now we have these two American patients being treated at Emory, getting these additional doses of this stuff.

And it did bring up, at least in our meeting this morning and I was talking to you about it in commercial. It makes you wonder, did it really -- he really did have Ebola and you were saying the CDC kept taking his blood.

BURNETT: So what happened was, they started to notice these outbreaks and they said there is something wrong. Ebola is named after the Ebola River where some of these outbreaks had happened. So they went to Africa and said we're going to test some of the people who had whatever this horrible thing is.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BURNETT: And he was really the only American among them. They tested him. And that's when it turned out that all the antibodies in his blood present were the antibodies of Ebola. So when he came to the United States for the next three years took his blood until the antibody got so low that they couldn't.

What that raises is that we know that the serum that was used for the blood transfusion for someone who survived Ebola perhaps was instrumental of saving his life within an hour. How many blood samples does the CDC have that might be usable for that? We know they have three samples, for example, of Dr. Cairns.

BALDWIN: Amazing. Thank you for sharing the story. We wanted to get you on. Erin Burnett, thank you very much.

BURNETT: Good to see you.

BALDWIN: We watch you every night at 7:00, ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT here on CNN.

We move along. And when you think of hackers, a Russian gang, maybe not the first thing that comes to mind. That is precisely the group that has stolen more than 1 billion user names and passwords. Yours could be among them. And that is not even the most bizarre part. Wait until you hear why they did this.

Plus, I bet your morning commute was not quite this interesting. Have you seen these pictures? These are the passengers rocking a train. We will tell you why. Coming up here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Russian gangs may have swiped your e-mail passwords and user names along with more than a billion others? Apparently, these Russian cyber crooks do not want to break into your bank account here. This is the twist. They would like to spam you instead.

About 420,000 Web sites may be affected. This is possibly the biggest password hack of all time. So Alison Kosik, beginning with question number one, the companies aren't coming forward and saying, you, customer, you were hacked. Why is that?

ALISOK KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: The person who uncovered this is the guy who heads the security firm called Hold Security, and what he found was that this huge hack happened that these hackers went into 420,000 websites and grabbed people's user names. They grabbed their passwords, the combinations.

So he doesn't want to go ahead and publicize this information just yet because these companies don't yet necessarily know that they've been hacked and he doesn't want to put out that red flag and say, other hackers, go jump into x company because they don't have their security in place.

BALDWIN: But here's the story that makes it unique, of all of the hacking stories we cover, I never hear they want to spam you.

KOSIK: This is interesting. This is I guess the best case scenario if you can think about it. Yes, they want to spam you. So if you get this e-mail from your friend or an e-mail from me later saying, come on vacation with me --

BALDWIN: No offense, delete.

KOSIK: Exactly.

BALDWIN: People make money off that.

KOSIK: They do. These spammers, that's how they're making money and they're getting a kickback from these spam e-mails and these bogus advertisements that they're sending out. Here is the worrisome thing with this giant, massive hack of your data.

The big worry is maybe these spammers and maybe these hackers are after something worse and maybe looking to get at your bank accounts and maybe sell your information online and that is where the concern really starts.

BALDWIN: The takeaway from me, what do I need to be doing, Alison Kosik?

KOSIK: You have to change your passwords often and make them complicated. Have a few e-mail addresses and maybe work on one e-mail address with all of your banking and important stuff or have a separate e-mail address that actually you use to maybe go to company websites, like online shopping.

That way if they get a hold of your e-mail address. Also, the authentication, start investing in your security because this stuff is becoming just an everyday occurrence, it seems.

BALDWIN: That's a great idea, just using different e-mail addresses depending on banking or shopping.

KOSIK: It's a lot to remember, but you're secure in your online presence.

BALDWIN: Thank you. Alison Kosik, appreciate it.

Coming up next, I know this sounds like science fiction, but it is very real. This is a comet, ladies and gentlemen, 250 miles -- 250 million -- scratch that, miles away from the earth, a spacecraft that left has just now arrived and is currently orbiting this comet. Why you ask? We'll tell you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: I know I always hear this when I go to London. You hear them at the train station saying mind the gap. Here's why you need to mind the gap. Keep your eyes on the guy in the circle. A passenger's leg slips into the train, you see this between the train and the platform and he is stuck, stuck, stuck.

Several dozen of his fellow passengers, they started -- see them all? They start to rock the train until he could wiggle free. The man who was stuck got his leg out and was not injured at all.

And if you watch the show enough you know that, I love that background. Admit it. I'm a space geek, and I think this next story is just really, really cool because we're looking at a comet way out there in space, and I mean way, way out there.

It's 250 million miles away out there from earth, and this video was taken by Europe's Rosetta spacecraft as it pulled up close enough to snap these shots, but here the thing, Rosetta left earth a decade ago.

Chad Myers, my fellow space geek joins me now in outer space. Do-do- do, do-do-do. What's happening? They're trying to land on this comet.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Bruce Willis is in that thing and he'll bring back some -- no, no, no. I'm sorry.

BALDWIN: Totally. Start that rumor.

MYERS: Maybe that's what eventually happens, not Bruce Willis and right now we're trying to figure out this comet didn't get together as a planet. So this is the oldest type of stuff flying around our solar system, what's happening to it. What's it made of? How did it get there?

All of these questions and all of these questions will be mainly answered by the orbit, but more by this guy, by File Island is a place out in the Nile. This will eventually depart from this spacecraft and it will land on the surface and this is the big thing.

It's about 220 pounds that will orbit for a while, probably until November to find the right place. Let this thing go. The legs will come out and it's going to land on this thing and that's when they'll get a feel for what is really down there. What is on part of this comet?

There it is, solar panels on top. There go the arms and they're made of carbon fiber and they're going to absorb the impact as it lands on the comet and pick up some pieces and take a look at these instruments and finding out what is on the base of this, what is below this and what is our solar system, the oldest pieces. What are they really made of?

BALDWIN: I can't say I've looked at comets beyond with my dad through a telescope, maybe, but is there a chance they would miss it or is it pretty easy to land on a comet, 20 seconds.

MYERS: They're now there and they're within six miles. It will get closer and closer and closer and by November, it will be close enough, there's no chance of it missing, I don't think.

BALDWIN: That's incredible. Chad Myers, thank you very much. That is it for me. I'm Brooke Bolduan in New York. A special edition of "THE LEAD" live from Jerusalem -- Jake Tapper.