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Three Americans Held in North Korea Speak Out; Interview with Bill Richardson; Interview with Labor Secretary Tom Perez; GOP Sharpens Call for ISIS Strategy

Aired September 01, 2014 - 09:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. We start this hour with breaking news.

The three Americans being held in North Korea, Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle, all spoke exclusively to CNN this morning from a secret hotel in Pyongyang. This was even a surprise to CNN. Our Will Ripley was on a government tour in North Korea when he was told to board a van and leave immediately. He was later given the truth about seeing the American prisoners in the reclusive nation's capital.

As you might expect, the government tried to control every aspect of the interview, limiting time with each man to five minutes and keeping them all separated in different rooms. Will was told they could only ask the prisoners about three things -- charges, treatment, and messages to loved ones.

Here's more from CNN's Will Ripley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Mr. Bae, Will Ripley with CNN. Hi. It's good to see you. I'm going to pull up this a little closer to you.

KENNETH BAE, DETAINED IN NORTH KOREA: OK.

RIPLEY: Have a seat. So we have five minutes. I'm sure there is a lot that you want to say, so just try to keep your answers as concise as you can.

BAE: Sure.

RIPLEY: Sure. It's good to see you. Are we ready to start? OK.

First of all, what do you know about the charges that you now -- do you believe you're guilty of the charges that you've been convicted of here?

RIPLEY: And you're currently serving time. Can you tell me about your conditions? BAE: Yes, I'm serving a 15-year sentence right now. And I've been -- I've been going back and forth from hospital to the labor camp for the last year and a half. And right now, I'm serving at the labor camp right now.

RIPLEY: Can you tell me about the conditions at the labor camp?

BAE: Condition in labor camp is I'm working eight hours a day, six days a week and working agricultural work to other hard labor that is required to do every day.

RIPLEY: Do you think you're being treated humanely?

BAE: Yes.

RIPLEY: And your message to your family.

BAE: Well, I'm sure they're very worried about my health at this time. And even though right now -- last month and a half, my heart has been -- or so, not -- it's been failing. So right now what I can say to my family and friends is to continue to pray for me and also ask them to continue an effort in getting me released here.

RIPLEY: When you say health, do you have any specific details?

BAE: I do have sleep disorder right now and that back pain, serious back pain, and also (INAUDIBLE) condition not doing so well, so I can -- numb and tingling hands. And so it's been very difficult sleeping at night and also working in the field every day.

RIPLEY: Your message for the American government?

BAE: For the American government right now, I've asking the American government to act upon the -- getting me released here. And I do believe that special envoy need to come in order to resolve the situation that I am in right now so I do ask the U.S. government to send an envoy as soon as possible. I think that's the only hope that I have right now in order for me to go home and be reunited with my family.

RIPLEY: When you acted the way that you did, can you tell what you did? And did you know at that time that you were breaking the law here in North Korea?

BAE: Well, I did have some assumptions (ph), but I not quite agree with the charges until I got here. So -- and after being on trial for, you know, during that period of time, I realized that what I did was offended and has violated their law. But at the time that I wasn't quite sure that it was as quite serious as they're charging me now.

RIPLEY: What's the bottom line of actual situation here and the messages you want to put out to them?

BAE: Right now is that I'm here, I've been here for almost two years now and then -- and I do believe that I'm -- I've been treated humanely as possible. They have been doing that for me. But at the same time that I realized that at this point that is, I've been here -- I think I'm the American that's been here the longest since the Korean War. And I do believe that the sooner that this gets resolved, it'd be better for not only for myself, for the rest of the other Americans who may come here in the future as well.

RIPLEY: Can you give me more insight about your daily life? And do you have contact with any of the other Americans?

BAE: No.

RIPLEY: Or Korean or other people, Koreans, et cetera, in prison?

BAE: No. There's actually -- I'm the only prisoner in the camp. I've been the only prisoner in the camp for the last year and a half. I didn't have anybody else in the camp other than the guard. And there's one doctor stationed in there as well.

RIPLEY: So how many staff members are overseeing you?

BAE: At least 15 or 20 people on a daily basis. But there are I think 30 or more people in the camp.

RIPLEY: Do you get to talk to people on a daily basis? What kind of communication do you have?

BAE: Just talking with the -- with the guard and just small talk, and that's all.

RIPLEY: Anything else important you want to say in our final seconds?

BAE: Well, I do need help from the U.S. government. And my health is failing. And I've been -- since the last time I transferred back from the hospital to the camp I lost already 15 pounds or more. And it has been very difficult to stay in the camp right now. So I do ask the U.S. governments and the people out there to really put effort to send somebody to make it work.

RIPLEY: OK. Thank you, Mr. Bae.

BAE: Thank you. OK.

RIPLEY: Best of luck to you. We'll get the word out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When did you move back to the prison camp?

BAE: July 29th.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right. So let's talk a little bit more about this extraordinary interview in North Korea.

Joining me now by the -- by phone, former U.S. ambassador Bill Richardson. Bill Richardson, he has negotiated for the release of hostages in the past. Good morning, sir. Thank you so much for taking time out on Labor Day

to talk to us about this.

BILL RICHARDSON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR: Of course, Carol.

COSTELLO: What do you make of this? Will Ripley was in North Korea to cover a completely different story and all of a sudden North Korean officials show up and say, hey, we're going to take you to a secret location so you can interview these three Americans. What do you make of that?

RICHARDSON: Well, the North Koreans are trying to send a message. One that they're ready to deal with the United States on the three Americans. They're obviously using them as bargaining chips. Secondly, they -- you know, the North Koreans pressure our prisoners to script them, to send messages to. One, that they're being properly treated, secondly, that they want the U.S. government, not anybody else to send a special envoy, the North Koreans want to talk to us.

But what we're saying to the North Koreans is, first, release them on humanitarian grounds, and then talk to us, although I had no inkling. I had not talked to the administration about this, but that's the back and forth.

The good news here is I think that North Koreans are saying, OK, everybody is worried about ISIS, about Russia, we're still here, and we have these bargaining chips. And we want the U.S. to pay attention to us. I think that's the message that was being sent by, as you said, these extraordinary interviews.

COSTELLO: When you say bargaining chip, what do the North Koreans want? Just for a popular powerful American figure to show up and negotiate so they can say, see, we got the Americans here?

RICHARDSON: What they want is to talk to us and we have said to the North Koreans, we're not going to talk to you unless you make a gesture, do something about your nuclear weapons. Don't detonate another nuclear bomb. Do something about acting responsibly in the international community. Then the North Koreans come back to us and say, well, maybe we'll do that in talks, but send somebody to talk to us.

And I think the administration is doing the right thing. I think the North Koreans want a freebie here. They want -- you know, they want a platform to express their views with the U.S. government and the six party countries, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea. And so what we also have, Carol, is a new North Korean leader that has its own way of negotiating. We don't know much about him.

In the past, (INAUDIBLE) and other envoys were able to go with his father, and you know, you set some parameters, OK, in exchange for this, we send humanitarian aid, we do this. But we don't know much about this guy, so he's testing us. But the fact that they had this interview and the good news, the only other good news is that they were apparently being treated properly, humanely, although Kenneth Bae is in a labor camp, the poor guy has been there over two years, his health is failing. You know, he's got a family that wants him out.

All three of them. So I think this will spark within the administration some kind of a policy analysis on what we do next. So in a way it is a good sign.

COSTELLO: Well, you know, if I were Kenneth Bae's family or family member of the other two Americans being held hostage in North Korea I would think about the Ling sisters. Remember, they were held hostage in North Korea for 140 days, but an envoy did go to rescue them, that would be Bill Clinton.

So perhaps the families are wondering why can't the same thing happen for Kenneth Bae and the others?

RICHARDSON: Well, because the North Koreans, I think, have changed their tune. In the past they've said we want a Bill Clinton, we want a nongovernment person, we want a lot of publicity from that visit. What the North Koreans are now saying, if you say, if you hear Kenneth Bae what he said, is send a U.S. government envoy, in other words, they want somebody from the State Department, an official person that can lead to the North Koreans to some kind of negotiation, an official discussion.

So I think that's the -- the nuance there, that the North Koreans have changed their tune. They want a U.S. government person. And then the U.S. government is saying, OK, release these people and then we'll talk or maybe the U.S. government is also saying, take some responsible gestures on nuclear proliferation and the North Koreans don't want to do it. So it's a little cat and mouse game.

COSTELLO: Ambassador Bill Richardson, thank you so much for your insight this morning. We appreciate it.

RICHARDSON: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: We managed to get Will Ripley on the phone. He's still inside North Korea. So that's no easy task.

Will Ripley, tell our viewers how these extraordinary interviews came to be.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, we were in the middle our scheduled daily tour government controlled tour just like we have every day for the past five days that we've been here, and so we were actually two hours north of the capital city, having lunch, getting ready to go to a temple when our government minors pulled us out of lunch and said we needed to get a van right now and they wouldn't tell us exactly where we were going or who we'd be speaking with.

We have put in a request to speak with these detained Americans as soon as we arrived. We also requested to speak with a high ranking government official and we were told we were going to be speaking with somebody within the North Korean government, but we didn't know who, we didn't know exactly where we were going. As we drove, towards the city of Pyongyang, our government minors were

getting a number of phone calls and they were speaking very quickly into the phone. At one point we pulled over, one of them stepped away from the vehicle, made another phone call, write down some notes. And then we kept driving to this -- excuse me, this hotel in Pyongyang, and we got out of the van, and at the front door, we were told that plans had changed again and we would be speaking with Kenneth Bae, Matthew Miller and Jeffrey Fowle.

And we had very specific conditions that we had to agree to ahead of time. Five minutes with each American, no more. And we're also told we could only talk about the conditions surrounding their arrests, the charges they're facing, the conditions in which they're being held, are they being treated humanely and any message they have for their families and perhaps more importantly to the American government.

We were told if we veered beyond those topics or went over our time, there could be very serious consequences. We agreed to the guidelines. We went and spoke with each man. They were held in separate rooms inside this hotel and conference center. And they had no contact with each other. They have never seen each other. They've never spoken. But one by one we went in there, they set the clock and we started talking.

COSTELLO: All right, Will Ripley, thanks for the great reporting. We appreciate it.

Later this hour, you'll get to hear the full exclusive interview with another one of those detained Americans, Jeffrey Fowle. He's been held since May for leaving a bible in a hotel and now words that he's getting desperate for help.

I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: It is Labor Day, as you know, with three-day weekend to celebrate summer's last hoorah.

But the serious side of labor, the right of a worker to earn a fair wage has rarely been more center stage that it is right now. I want to share some statistics with you that "Forbes" magazine generated. In 1965, the average CEO earned about 20 times more than the people he or she employed. By 2012, that same CEO took home nearly 273 times as much as the average worker.

And then there's this. In 2012, the average CEO at one of the top 350 publicly traded companies earned just over $14 million. That was an increase of about 875 percent since 1978. Jaw dropping, right?

During the same 24-year period, the average worker's wages grew at a rather anemic 5.4 percent. Ouch.

I want to bring in CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

We talk about this a lot. It's always so depressing. But let's focus open the bright side. The economy is improving, right?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It is. It is improving. And the labor market is getting a little bit better, and that's going to bring more people along. But what we have seen, it's not just the recession, but what we have seen back to the '70s is, quite frankly, you're seeing wages stagnant, absolutely stagnant or falling even in some categories.

Now, since the recession, Carol, this is what so many people -- it makes people crazy. Since the recession, you have seen corporate profits explode. Companies' bottom lines are improving, they're doing so well. Some industries seeing record profits, but the worker is not sharing in that.

At what point will the workers share in the corporate profit explosion or does it take government raising a minimum wage to make that happen.

COSTELLO: See, that is a very excellent question and hopefully, we have a man with answers.

I want to bring in Labor Secretary Tom Perez. And I want to you to stay here, too.

ROMANS: OK.

COSTELLO: Good morning, sir. Happy Labor Day.

TOM PEREZ, LABOR SECRETARY: Happy Labor Day to you and to all your listeners.

COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it.

PEREZ: Always a pleasure.

COSTELLO: So, let's talk about the wage gap and how it is still very, very wide and may be getting wider. The president's first call for a raise of the national minimum wage during his State of the Union Address in 2013 and as you know, it's kind of gone nowhere.

So, let's look at that graphic again that shows what is happening with CEO raises over the past 24 years. The president mentioned raising the minimum wage again in his recent weekly address.

But this is going to require, I don't know, require what of politicians to get this done -- if it's even going to happen.

PEREZ: Well, I -- here is where I disagree with you. The notion that it has gone nowhere ignores what is happening at state and local levels. And we're playing a very, very active role.

Today, Mayor Garcetti in Los Angeles is going to be announcing an initiative to raise the minimum wage to $13.25. I applaud his efforts.

Since the president put the pedal to the metal on the minimum wage, 13 states and the District of Columbia have raised their minimum wage. You have action in Seattle.

Carol, I think America works best when we feel the full team and we're getting people back to work. And America works best when we have shared prosperity.

And the statistics you point out are the reasons why so many people are doing what the employees at Market Basket did, in Boston. They rallied around Arthur T as they call him because he's an employer who understands that it is not the either/or thing. This notion that you either take care of your shareholders or you take care of your workers, people like Arthur T categorically reject that. People like the president at Kentucky State University --

COSTELLO: I think that's terrific, but as Christine pointed out, profits --

ROMANS: Yes.

COSTELLO: -- the profits of big companies, they're doing just fine, but they're not increasing workers wages at all.

Go ahead, Christine.

ROMANS: And in some cases, you know, they're trying hard not to have to add workers, Mr. Secretary, if they don't have to.

It brings me to the question -- I look at something like mal- employment, for example, of these millennials. They're going to college, they have student loan debt, they get out and don't have the opportunities they once had in the economy.

What do you tell somebody to be when they grow up in a place where wages are flat and we're not creating as many jobs as we would like to?

PEREZ: Well, I mean, as someone who just dropped his daughter off at college this weekend, education continues to be the great equalizer. You look at unemployment rates. You have a college degree, unemployment rate is somewhere in the 3 percent range. If you have less than a high school degree, your unemployment rate is much higher. So, education continues to be the great equalizer.

You know, we've added almost 10 million jobs over the last 53 months. The economy is clearly moving in the right direction. We need to pick up the pace of this growth and we need to make sure that everybody shares in that prosperity. And that's one of the fundamental challenges moving ahead is making sure that the wage growth that we need to see across America actually occurs. That's why, again, people like Arthur T, people like --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: Mr. Secretary, can I just ask you one more question, before we let you go, because Christine brought this up in the break, is there any -- if companies refuse to share the profits, with their employees, which they're not doing because frankly they don't have to, right? Because the economy is still hurting, they don't have to do that. Is there anything the government should do to force the issue?

PEREZ: Well, again, we're fighting to raise the minimum wage. We're fighting like heck to pass immigration reform, a long-term transportation bill, investments in skills. These are the things.

The more we pick up the pace of growth, the more we put money in people's pockets, 70 percent of GDP growth is consumption. Once we do that and we're picking up the pace of growth even further, that's what puts upward pressure on wages, that's what helps lift wages to better levels.

You know, I think there are so many employers out there who understand you have to think long-term. I spoke to Fortune 50 CEO who said we need to be thinking long-term. I have too many renegade shareholders who tell me -- and this is a quote -- I would rather be rich than right.

That's not the philosophy that got America where it is today. The philosophy that got America where it is today is we need to grow the middle class. And the challenge that we're confronting right now is to make sure we lift wages of everybody so that everybody can punch their ticket to the middle class, put money in people's pockets so they spend it, so employers hire at an even brisker pace.

We're moving in the right direction but we have more work to do.

COSTELLO: Labor Secretary Tom Perez, and Christine Romans, thank you both so much.

Still to come in THE NEWSROOM, ISIS gets stronger, Republicans get louder. So what is President Obama's strategy to contain this growing threat? We'll talk about that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Next hour, a key U.S. ally as in Britain announces new efforts to contain ISIS and its threat to the West. Just three days after Britain raised its terror alert level, the British Prime Minister David Cameron will propose new measures to reign in the danger. Those measures include temporarily blocking the return of British born jihadists from Syria and Iraq.

Cameron also wants to renew efforts to de-radicalize British Muslims and improve the information sharing on airline passengers, specifically who they are, and where they're traveling.

Britain's call to action only stokes the Republican outrage that the president has not announced a strategy to deal with the growing ISIS threat. Some GOP leaders say the lack of swift and desire of action only strengthens the terror group and what may be the biggest threat to Americans since 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: A full-blown strategy would be recognizing that we now are facing the largest, most powerful, wealthiest terrorist organization in history and it's going to require some very strong measures to defeat them. And they must be defeated, not contained.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R), TEXAS: ISIS says they want to go back and reject modernity. I think we should help them. We ought to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

(CHEERS)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Let's talk about that. Let's go to the White House and CNN's Michelle Kosinski.

It's really not only Republicans criticizing the president's lack of a strategy, but Democrats too, right?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, to some extent. I mean, that interesting sound over the weekend, some strong stuff there, seems like what everybody can agree on, of course, is that ISIS is bad, bad. In op-eds over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry called it savage and genocidal.

And then you have the Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham calling it the world's most sinister terrorist army, but these were dueling op-eds with Kerry laying out what he sees as needed, as this broad international coalition, something that sounds like it is going to take a little bit of time. And then you have McCain and Graham's call -- calling for immediate military strategy for Syria, calling for urgency.

I think what was even more interesting, though, is hearing at least one Democratic senator, Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying she agrees with McCain and Graham.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: I think I've learned one thing about this president, and that is he's very cautious -- maybe in this instance too cautious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: The White House said that they are dealing with this, they're weighing military options that will be presented by the Pentagon. And they insist they do have a strategy against ISIS. But right now, it is focused on the situation in Iraq, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Michelle Kosinski, reporting live from the White House for us.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we'll have more on the three detained Americans in North Korea. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)