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New Day

CIA Director Defends CIA Interrogation Techniques; Government Spending Bill Gets Passed; Northern California Hit by Large Storm; Interview with Supermodel Beverly Johnson about Cosby

Aired December 12, 2014 - 08:00   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Apologetic, yet defiant. The head of the CIA defends the spy agency's harsh interrogation tactics but never uses the word "torture." John Brennan does admit some officers went too far.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And a powerful storm battering the Pacific Northwest and California this morning. Hundreds of thousands without power, homes sliding into the ocean, and streets looking like rivers. This is the strongest storm to hit the west coast in years. We're live with the latest.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Telling her story. Famed supermodel Beverly Johnson breaking her silence, saying that she, too, was drugged by Bill Cosby. The disturbing details of how she says the comedian made advances on her during an audition for "The Cosby Show." Beverly Johnson joins us live this morning.

CUOMO: Your NEW DAY continues right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Kate Bolduan and Michaela Pereira.

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to NEW DAY. It's Friday, December 12th, just after 8:00 in the east. Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota here. How can the director of the CIA defend his agency but admit he does not know if enhanced interrogations helped slow terrorism? Well, that's what John Brennan did, and now as a result there are questions building about the future of him and the agency.

CAMEROTA: So, Brennan is promising changes in the wake of that scathing Senate report, but what those changes are remain unclear, and what's next for the CIA? Let's get right to senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta with all the latest developments. Good morning, Jim.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn and Chris. That's right, CIA Director John Brennan was trying to sort of have it both ways yesterday at that unprecedented news conference at CIA headquarters. He conceded the agency made mistakes in using those harsh interrogation techniques, but he said in some cases it's possible those methods provided some useful intelligence, in particular, he said, in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But, as you mentioned, Chris, he did not use the word "torture" in a quote that will be long remembered after he's gone from the CIA. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BRENNAN, CIA DIRECTOR: They went outside of the bounds in terms of their actions as part of that interrogation process. And they were harsh. As I said, in some instances, I consider them abhorrent, and I will leave to others how they might want to label those activities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Now, as for Ssenator Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee that produced that controversial torture report, she listened to what John Brennan had to say and she responded via Twitter. As for that claim that some of these interrogation techniques may have helped in the hunt for Usama bin Laden, she said no. Critical intelligence that led to bin Laden was unrelated to EITs or those enhanced interrogation techniques.

One thing that's also important to point out is that what John Brennan had to say yesterday, that it's possible that some of these interrogation methods provided useful intelligence, that goes way beyond what the White House was saying all week long, way beyond what the president has been willing to say. He even called it torture. But you've been saying all morning, you know, is it possible that John Brennan's head will roll? The White House has been saying all week long, Chris and Alisyn, that the president has full confidence in this CIA director. Chris and Alisyn?

CUOMO: All right, Jim, thank you very much. Appreciate the reporting.

So one of the things you may not know about this Senate report is that it references two psychologists who developed this controversial program, and one of those psychologists has identified himself as James Mitchell. He is deeply critical of the report. Here's what he told CNN's Chris Frates.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES MITCHELL, PSYCHOLOGIST: I think it's a partisan pile of crap. I think primarily it's an attempt to smear the men and women of the CIA as the Democrats leave their position of authority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: "Crap" seems to be the new buzz word surrounding the resistance to this report. Well, let's get a little deeper than that. We have Stephen Soldz with us right now. He is a professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis and cofounder of the coalition for ethical psychology. Very good to have you, professor. When you talk about ethical psychology, can you square that at all with what was done in the formation of this program?

STEVEN SOLDZ, PROFESSOR, BOSTON GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS: First, thanks for having me here. And the way we square it with what was done is that we formed our group opposed to this type of activities by psychologists. They violate the ethics of not only psychology but all the health professions that's basically based on a principle of do no harm in helping people. And what Mr. Mitchell and others were doing with the CIA was in direct violation of this. They were using their psychological knowledge and expertise to hurt people, to harm people, as the report says, probably to no avail as well.

CUOMO: What do you think they were using? Like, what kind of tools does a psychologist have that become useful in figuring out how to torture people?

SOLDZ: Well, that's an interesting question, because in some sense the so-called enhanced interrogation tactics that they developed were those that have been used by torturers for a long period of time. In fact, they learned about them from the Military SERE School, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape, where service members who may be captured by a power that violates the Geneva conventions that tortures people are subjected to a brief regimen of these torture techniques in order to sort of try and inoculate them. That was developed in response to communist brainwashing techniques.

So, there's really no secret there, but one thing that Mitchell and Jessen brought -- Jessen is the other person, the other psychologist there -- brought to this was the patina of science. They claimed the basis on a psychological theory called learned helplessness.

CUOMO: Learned helplessness.

SOLDZ: Learned helplessness.

CUOMO: What is that?

SOLDZ: Learned helplessness is based on experiments with dogs. They were strapped in cages so they couldn't get out and then they were given electric shocks. And they became, eventually became helpless. They gave up trying to escape. And then you remove the straps and they still don't escape. So --

CUOMO: People from your community are saying that one of the tragedies here is that for all of the horrible things that we hear being done, that what works best psychologically to break someone down is sleep deprivation, and that they believe that is what worked with KSM, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's what made him break down, not the horrible things they were doing to him. Is that true?

SOLDZ: That's probably true. I mean, sleep deprivation and isolation are really the essence of these techniques. All the rest of it is sort of icing on the cake. Sleep deprivation is awful. And we're talking about in some cases, you know, six or more days without any sleep. But in a lot of cases, what they call sleep deprivation wasn't just that. It was being strapped in such a way that you were standing for days on end. Your feet --

CUOMO: Is there any justification --

SOLDZ: -- would get swollen -- CUOMO: From the psychological perspective, does that give it any

legitimacy or is it still torture no matter what you call it, no matter who helped developed it?

SOLDZ: That is torture. My perspective and that of my colleagues, extended sleep deprivation is in torture. It is in some sense the essence of torture. Research shows that the long-term effects of techniques like sleep deprivation on people are similar to the so- called physical torture.

CUOMO: So, how do you justify or how do you explain so many officials from the Department of Justice and otherwise, lawyers, who are supposedly, arguably intelligent, saying it's not torture, it's OK, you can do it?

SOLDZ: Well, I think they decided they wanted to do it and they twisted the laws in order to justify it.

CUOMO: Professor Soldz, thank you very much. We appreciate you coming on to explain why you're very resistant to this type of enterprise and thank you for helping us forward this conversation. Appreciate it. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, it was another contentious battle, but after a long day of uncertainty, the House managed to pass a bill to keep the government running. The House narrowly passed the $1.1 trillion package, despite objections from House Democrats. Let's bring in chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash. She's live in Washington with all the behind-the-scenes haggling. Good morning, Dana.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exhausting haggling. You know, this kind of brinksmanship was supposed to be over with this bill because it was negotiated in a bipartisan way. It had support from Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate. But what happened is that there was a surprise issue that touched a raw nerve, and that is something that everybody remembers all too well what happened with the financial meltdown in 2008.

Democrats were very concerned that this rolled back too much Wall Street reforms. And so you had the situation where the top Democrat in the house, Nancy Pelosi, came out against this bill that her colleagues in the Senate negotiated, the White House was supporting. So you had the White House chief of staff come in at the last minute late last night trying to convince Democrats to vote for it, and at the end just two votes, that's all it passed by, two votes.

CAMEROTA: And Dana, one of the crazy things about this deal are the strange alliances, these strange bedfellows it created.

BASH: Bizarre. So, what we saw last night walking the hallways were House Republican leaders who are always at odds with the Obama White House working with the Obama White House trying to find votes for this massive bill to keep the government running for an entire year. And then on the sort of wings of the party, you had the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, the more liberal Democrats, agreeing that this was a bad bill with Tea Party conservatives. So very strange bedfellows. And I think evidence that, as much as everybody talks about wanting compromise, the wings of the party are very powerful, powerful enough to make the jobs of negotiators very difficult.

CAMEROTA: I guess we've just seen the evidence of that. Dana Bash, thanks so much for explaining it.

BASH: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Chris?

CUOMO: Arguably they agreed on cutting Pell grants, allowing Wall Street to have more flexibility to play with derivatives and things that got us in trouble, and more money in politics. So know that that's in this bill as well.

So over on the west coast, people are waking up right now to widespread flooding, power outages, and really a deadly monster storm that's moving through. Falling trees, two deaths in Oregon, one of the victims just a teenage boy. He was in a car and a tree came down. More than a foot of rain has fallen in parts of California. And let's get more now on the situation from CNN's Dan Simon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A deadly monster storm battering the west coast. Ferocious winds and torrential rain bearing down on residents leaving more than 225,000 people without power from San Francisco to the Canadian border. In Oregon, the storm turning deadly with record-breaking wind gusts, fallen trees claiming at least two lives. The powerful winds of nearly 70 miles per hour blowing a giant sheet of metal into the windows of this office building in downtown Portland.

STEVE SMITH, ATTORNEY, WORKS AT THE STANDARD BUILDING: It was like being in a tornado. It was such a big piece of metal and it was going so fast. I thought, you know, this may be the last moment.

SIMON: Strong winds also to blame for this partial roof collapse farther north.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like this before. It's pretty unbelievable.

SIMON: The same storm destroying a few homes in Washington state, the rising tide eroding beaches, leaving more in peril. In California, hurricane-force winds shaking area bridges and knocking over trees, including this 80-foot cypress tree that pinned a boy on a school playground in Santa Cruz. Firefighters freed the 11-year-old escaping with just minor injuries. Nearly a foot of rain drenching parts of the golden state, causing streets to flood and rivers to rise.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This amount of rain in a short period of time, anything can happen.

SIMON: This grocery store parking lot looking more like a lake, while Lake Tahoe looked more like a beach, gusty winds providing daring surfers with huge waves.

Entire neighborhoods under water, many residents stranded on washed- out roadways, while other thoroughfares closed completely, public transit shut down. Further north, heavy snow and fierce winds creating blizzard conditions in the Sierra Nevadas, a possible three feet of snow on the horizon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIMON: Well, the weather outlook here in northern California is improving, but this storm is now pushing its way south. And now it is the L.A. area that is getting absolutely hammered. We just got word that there were mandatory evacuations in the town of Camarillo, which is northwest of Los Angeles. So it appears that southern California's going to be facing some of these similar situations. Michaela, back to you.

PEREIRA: And one of the concerns there, so many areas, fire-ridden, if you will. In past years not a lot of ground covered to soak up any of that water. It's really going to be a concern. Dan Simon there in San Francisco, thanks for that look.

Let's give you a look at the headlines now. Breaking in the last hour, an apparent acid attack on a Jewish family in Jerusalem. Israeli officials say the family members, including four children, were slightly injured before a witness opened fire on the attacker. That suspect has been taken to the hospital and has been arrested. Now, tensions are already high there following the death of a Palestinian official after a confrontation with Israeli soldiers on Wednesday.

Back here at home, over 100 black congressional staffers and lawmakers walked out on Capitol Hill Thursday, raised their hands in show of support for the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Senate Chaplain Barry Black led the group in prayer, saying they were working as a voice for the voiceless. More protests are planned for today and throughout the weekend in New York and in Washington, D.C.

The Justice Department says Native Americans can grow and sell marijuana as long as they follow federal rules laid out for states where it's legal. If tribes do decide to grow and sell pot it could be an economic windfall, but don't expect immediate changes. Many tribes have expressed wariness of this idea.

Forget handcuffs. An Alabama officer whipped out some cash for a grandmother who was caught stealing five eggs for her hungry children. Officer William Stacy bought Helen Johnson a carton of eggs after she promised never to steal again. That is not the end of the story, my friends. It got so much attention people from all over have now delivered over two truckloads of groceries to Johnson's doorstep.

CAMEROTA: That is beautiful.

CUOMO: That's the good stuff.

PEREIRA: Yes, you're stealing good stuff from Chris, I think. PEREIRA: It's Friday. I figured he might not mind.

CUOMO: I love it.

PEREIRA: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: It's so great. Police do that across the country every day and I'm so glad we highlight these stories.

PEREIRA: I am very glad.

CUOMO: And generosity's contagious, for people to see it.

PEREIRA: It is.

CAMEROTA: It's so nice.

Well, there is another Bill Cosby accuser coming forward. This is supermodel Beverly Johnson. She says the comedian lured her into his home and drugged her. She will join us in her first live interview to tell us about her encounter with Bill Cosby.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Another Cosby accuser coming forward this morning. Supermodel Beverly Johnson says Cosby lured her to his home and drugged her in the mid-1980s. She writes this in a new "Vanity Fair" piece: "My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin nonstop. As I felt my body go completely limp, my brain switched into automatic survival mode. That meant making sure Cosby understood that I knew exactly what was happening at that very moment."

And Beverly Johnson joins us this morning for her first live interview from California.

Beverly, great to see you this morning.

BEVERLY JOHNSON, MODEL AND ACTRESS: Thank you for having me on.

CAMEROTA: Can we just rewind the story back to how you first met Bill Cosby?

JOHNSON: Well, I got a call from my agent that "The Cosby Show" and Mr. Cosby wanted me to come down for an audition for the Bill Cosby show. Needless to say, I was very excited about that, and I went to the studio and met Bill Cosby and the cast and the crew.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

JOHNSON: And actually had a conversation with him in his office. I told him about my aspirations of being an actress -- I had already done a couple of films at that time. And also I told him a little bit about what was going on in my life. I had come out of a very nasty divorce and was in a big child custody battle with my daughter, my only daughter. CAMEROTA: And just --

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: And he seemed concerned.

CAMEROTA: He was concerned. And that's why getting the call from "The Cosby Show" was such a plum pick. I mean, that was the show of the 1980s and being on it could catapult you.

JOHNSON: Absolutely. I mean, there wasn't a bigger figure in entertainment, in the entertainment industry than Bill Cosby. And I was a big fan, my family. I don't know anyone, white America or black America, that was not a fan of Bill Cosby and "The Cosby Show".

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. So, you take this call, you go to the set, he shows you around and he invites you to his home a couple of times because he's going to mentor you and he wants you to audition for the part. So, you go to his home a couple of times. You eat dinner with him. And then what happens?

JOHNSON: Well, he asked me to come to another taping, and he said bring my daughter, which was a big deal for my daughter, who was very young at the time. And then he said that we could do a rehearsal at his brownstone that weekend and I said, well, you know, I have my daughters (ph) on the weekend and I wouldn't be able to do that. And he said to bring my daughter along. And I thought, oh, this is just terrific.

And I did bring my daughter to the brownstone. We had a brunch that was prepared by his staff there. And he showed us the brownstone. He was very charming, very nice, to my daughter and I. And since we hadn't had any chance to rehearse then, he suggested that I come back in a couple of days to rehearse for the scene for "The Cosby Show" -- and that's what I did.

CAMEROTA: And by then, your guard was down. You had brought your daughter to his home and he was being friendly and he was being helpful. So, you go back another -- a second time by yourself. And this time, you again have a meal with him. He says it's time to audition for the scene. And he offers you a cappuccino. What happens when you start drinking that cappuccino?

JOHNSON: So, when I -- when we went up to the living room area where he had this elaborate cappuccino or espresso contraption there, he offered me a cappuccino before we were to do this scene where I was to play a drunk woman, which I didn't know that had anything to do, because the part was of a pregnant woman. But I said OK.

And he made this cappuccino. And I said I really didn't want to drink any coffee, it would keep me up late at night, but he was very insistent that I try this cappuccino that would be the best coffee that I would ever have. So, I relented and he gave me the cappuccino. I took one sip. And I felt something very strange going on in my head. And then --

CAMEROTA: Describe the sensation in your body that you started feeling immediately.

JOHNSON: Well, the first sensation was, you know, a little woozy. And so then I took another sip. And after that second sip, I knew I had been drugged. It was very powerful. It came on very quickly. The room started to spin. My speech was slurred. I remember him calling me over towards him as if we were going to begin the scene then. And he placed his hands on my waist. I remember steadying myself with my hand on his shoulders.

And I just kind of cocked my he head because, at that point, I knew he had drugged me. And I was just looking at him and I just asked him the question, that you are an M.F., aren't you?

CAMEROTA: Yes, you cursed at him, because you were conscious enough to know what was happening and you confronted him.

What's interesting, Beverly, about your story -- we've heard an eerily similar story from now more than 20 women. And they all describe Bill Cosby as having drugged them. But they wake up after the fact, because they lose consciousness. You somehow kept the presence of mind not to lose consciousness and you confronted him.

And tell me about that exchange and the angry Bill Cosby that confronted you back.

JOHNSON: Well, I immediately went into survival mode. I knew that he had drugged me and I wanted him to know that he had drugged me. So, the only word I could get out -- and I don't swear -- was MF. And I kept saying it to him louder and louder.

And for a moment, he stood there looking at me like I was crazy. And then -- it happened very quickly. He immediately grabbed me and started to drag me towards the stairs that went downstairs to the outdoors. And I was, you know, stumbling around trying to grab my handbag, and I really didn't know where he was taking me, but we ended up outside. And it was still -- it was dusk, so it was pretty light out. And all I remember is him, you know, grabbing me by one arm and him flailing for a taxi with the other.

I remember kind of looking around at people and, you know, people really recognizing that, you know, that's Bill Cosby. And a taxi stops. He opens the door and he throws me in there, and he slams the door shut, and I somehow get my address out to the taxicab driver.

CAMEROTA: You escaped. You escaped something else --

JOHNSON: And the only thing I could remember --

CAMEROTA: -- worse from happening. And I just want to -- before I let you go on -- read what you wrote in "Vanity Fair" about that whole exchange, because you say, "I recall his seething anger at my tirade and then him grabbing me by my left arm and yanking all 110 pounds of me down a bunch of stairs as my high heels clicked and clacked on every step. I feared my neck was going to break with the force he was using to pull me down those stairs."

That's an angrier picture of Bill Cosby than any of us have ever heard.

JOHNSON: Yes. He was most certainly angry. He was pissed. He was trying to get me out of there as quickly as possible. I didn't know that at the time. And I had on, you know, a little heel on, and I was totally trying to remain conscious, but my body was, you know, very -- you know, almost as if I were intoxicated.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

JOHNSON: That I couldn't get my balance. I was fearing that I was going to, you know, fall down the stairs so I was, you know, trying to be conscious not to fall. And he's dragging me down the stairs.

And all I remember after I got in that taxicab driver and actually telling him, somehow, my address, I just remember saying, did I just call Bill Cosby an M.F.? I was concerned about him, not me.

CAMEROTA: Right, and we've heard this from other women as well, the fact that he was Bill Cosby, that that persona was bigger than even the experience, and that that's why so many people remained silent.

Why, Beverly, did you remain silent all these years and are only now coming forward?

JOHNSON: Well, it's a number of reasons. The norm is people that have been sexually assaulted -- and fortunately, I was drugged and I don't think I was sexually assaulted -- is that, you know, there's shame to coming out. There is this powerful man in an industry that I would like to be a part of. That went through my mind. I had just finished a very ugly divorce with a powerful man, and I knew firsthand what it was like to go up against a powerful man, and it didn't fare well for me.

So -- and I was, at that particular time, I had spent so much money on this divorce and ensuing custody battle. I knew that it was someone that was a formidable enemy and I didn't think I had a chance of winning, basically.

CAMEROTA: So, what changed? What changed for you in these past four weeks?

JOHNSON: What changed for me was a number of things, once again, but the women coming out and telling their story.