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Wolf

Suspected Ebola-Infected Nurse's Rights Violated; Debate over Ebola Health Care Worker Quarantines; Man Made Video Prior to Canada Attack; American Veteran Fights ISIS in Syria.

Aired October 27, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

The release of a nurse from quarantine in New Jersey doesn't erase some of the serious legal questions raised by this case.

Let's bring in Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, a well-known constitutional scholar.

Jonathan, thanks very much for coming in.

She claims -- Kaci Hickox, the nurse, held in quarantine, now she's released, being flown on a private charter plane back to her home in Maine. She believes, her lawyers have suggested that her civil rights were violated. Were they?

JONATHAN TURLEY, LAW PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: I think they may have been. The state is on very shaky ground in the policy it put out, the assertion that it, without discretion, can hold people for 21 days or more on the mere chance that they could develop Ebola.

The problem, Wolf, is this is an area that is dangerously vague on a legal basis. That is, the Supreme Court, back into 1824, was referring to quarantines as being a state power. But the actual standard, still if you can believe it, remains a work in progress. The courts have been all over the field on when you can confine or detain someone as a civil matter. But what particularly New York and New Jersey are suggesting is they have the discretion to hold someone who has not developed any symptoms of Ebola for a very long period of time. And holding them is equivalent to incarceration.

BLITZER: But the other argument that the states presumably will make or the federal government, if they want to go down this road is, yes, there are civil rights, but the public's interest, the public health, for example, supersedes that.

TURLEY: Well the problem here is that the politics of the scandal are getting ahead of the science. The politicians often ride the waves of public hysteria and try to stay out front. But we've seen historically that they've also gone too far. You have a lot of experts who are saying this isn't based in any science that we know of. We haven't really faced this, Wolf, since about a hundred years ago when we dealt with Spanish flu. We had a short type of crisis. We dealt with drug resistant T.B. But a good example of that is that was challenged in court and the states had a tough time of it. The judges said they were not comfortable saying you could grab someone and hold them indefinitely. And what came out was a compromise, that the state could force people to take medication to observe them. It was nothing like this.

BLITZER: So when the White House says -- we just heard it, you know what, this is an issue that the states are going to have to decide down the road. What do you make of that?

TURLEY: I was chuckling a little bit. This administration has fought state authority in the health care area where they barely acknowledge state authority, and now they seem very eager to say this is a state issue. They're right on this occasion. The Constitution makes one reference to state inspections, but it's always been accepted since the 1800s that quarantines and inspections are state issues. The government bases it on the Commerce Clause that people traveling between states becomes a federal issue. I think the tune will change if the White House wants to invoke its jurisdiction. You'll see a 180-turn very quickly on that issue.

BLITZER: We'll see if it makes it way up to the Supreme Court for a definitive decision down the road.

Jonathan Turley, thanks for coming in.

TURLEY: Thank you.

BLITZER: So should health care workers returning from West Africa to the United States, should they -- be the norm, should they be inspected, should they be in quarantine? Our conversation with one doctor is coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Mandatory quarantines for health care workers returning from the so-called Ebola hot zone has set off a political and medical debate. And what about the medical issues?

Dr. Alexander Garza is a former assistant secretary for health affairs, former chief medical officer of the Department of Homeland Security, currently the associate dean of the St. Louis University College of Public Health.

Dr. Garza, thanks so much for joining us.

I guess the bottom line question is, do you think there should be automatic quarantines for any health care professionals, doctors, nurses, others, returning from the so-call Ebola infected hot zone if they were dealing directly with Ebola patients there?

DR. ALEXANDER GARZA, ASSOCIATE DEAN, ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF PUBLIC HEALTH & FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AFFAIRS & FORMER CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I think it depends on what you mean by automatic quarantine. I think we see on one end of the spectrum, the decisions made by New York and New Jersey, which was, you know, we take these people and put them in extreme isolation. That's one end of the fence. The other end of the fence could be a self-imposed quarantine where the medical works that have been at high risk do self monitoring and are able to report in to public health officials. There's a wide span between those two. And I think the public health folks and the policy oriented folks have to get together and come up with a reasonable plan to benefits everybody, that benefits civil liberties as well as protects the public.

BLITZER: As you heard from the White House, there's a consideration now being given on what to do with those nearly 4,000 U.S. military personnel that will be in Liberia in that Ebola hot zone helping to deal with the crisis. Once they come back, should they be forced to go into 21-day quarantine periods on their bases. Should they not necessarily have to go through it? Should there be one category for those directly involved with the Ebola patients and another category for people indirectly working with the folks other there?

GARZA: As you know I'm an Army Reservist so I can't comment publicly on the policy. But you bring up a good point, which is there's different levels of risk. People who are not directly exposed to Ebola patients, that are not treating them are at a lower risk if they're building facilities and training people away from the hot zone. So coming up with a measured approach based on risk is very important for the Pentagon to figure out at this time.

BLITZER: Because we do know this one physician who just came back working with Doctors without Borders in Guinea, he's at Bellevue. He's got Ebola, and that's obviously a source of great concern. The nurse, who has now been released from quarantine, on her way back to her home in Maine, I guess she's allowed to stay in her home and sort of self quarantine. She was dealing with patients over there as well. A lot of Americans are worried that these are the people that directly work with Ebola patients that should at a minimum be self quarantined.

GARZA: Right. I think that could be a reasonable approach. So again, you see the two opposite ends of the spectrum. So a person what was diagnosed with Ebola and one who has exposure but doesn't have active disease. So how do you come up with a policy that fits both of those spectrums? Let's not forget that Dr. Spencer was still at no risk to anybody as long as he was asymptomatic.

And one other thing I think to bring up is the idea of trust for volunteer quarantine. You know, I think physicians and nurses are very well -- they very well understand the risks that come to them as well as putting the public at risk. And it's also within their own self interest to report problems as soon as they occur. So I think the notion of it being involuntary because we don't trust these individuals is on a little bit of shaky ground, frankly.

BLITZER: Dr. Garza, always good to get your perspective. Thanks for joining us.

GARZA: Thank you, sir.

BLITZER: Dr. Garza's with the St. Louis University College of Public Health. Police say the man who carried out the attack against parliament last

week made a video of himself shortly before he shot and killed a Canadian soldier in cold blood. We'll have more on that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: In Ottawa, Canada, police say the man who carried out the attack against parliament last week made a video of himself shortly before he shot and killed a Canadian soldier in cold blood. Neither the video nor the contents have yet been released. The police did comment on the shooter's motive. They said -- and I'm quoting -- "The RCMP" -- the Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- "has identified persuasive evidence that Michael Zahaf-Bibeau's attack was driven by political motives." He was killed after he stormed the parliament building armed with a hunting rifle.

Let's bring in our law enforcement analyst, former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes.

We don't know the details of the video. We don't know its contents. But we know that very often when some of these jihadists come out on a suicide mission, they do record a video in advance.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Right. Essentially, Wolf, it's an electronic manifesto of putting out why he wanted to do what he did.

BLITZER: They also say they're looking to try to find not just the motive but the money, as much as they can to make sure that he wasn't simply an individual inspired by a terror organization, but he didn't necessarily have any direct logistical contacts with others. They're still investigating that.

FUENTES: Right. That effort goes on every day by the Canadian authorities, the U.S. authorities, our allies around the world to determine terrorists financing, how it is transmitted, how they use electronic systems around the world to support this ideology. And as we know, ISIS has a huge piggyback of money from the oil they sell illegally, to the banks that they've overtaken in Mosul. They actually pay a salary to the jihadists that show up and give them money each month for fighting. They have an enormous amount of money. The difficulty would be to transmit it around the world to support terrorism.

BLITZER: Yeah. They have hundreds of millions of dollars, if not a billion dollars, money that they stole from some of the huge banks in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, plus some of the money that were funneled in from the supporters of ISIS for whatever reason. They were getting a lot of money and they were able to pay soldiers in Iraq, for example, Saddam Hussein's former military, to come serve in the ISIS military.

FUENTES: Plus, I know they don't have to buy a huge amount of military equipment because they stole ours, so.

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: For example, the Iraqis ran away from it, left it behind and ISIS has tanks, armor personnel carriers, missiles, launchers, all sorts of weapons.

FUENTES: Right.

BLITZER: So it's a huge problem. So what is the U.S. learning from what happened in Canada last week?

FUENTES: We're learning that it's just about unstoppable. You have thousands people from around the world watching these videos, listening to the etiology, even just watching regular cable news around the world, and seeing this message that ISIS puts out that you don't have to be a soldier here. You don't have to learn how to make a bomb or do anything sophisticated. Drive your car or run somebody over. Grab a knife, cut their head off. Grab a hatchet, grab anything at your disposal. In this case, if you happen to have a firearm, fine. That's just about unstoppable ahead of time.

Now, in hindsight, we can go back, of course, if we have the metadata to go back to, and see who the person has been in contact with over the past couple of years, who have they been in contact with, try to identify the link chart of what's going on with that group. But that's not easy. We're always balancing how much data can the government collect, how long can they store it for, once it's collected, versus civil liberties. In Canada, this is a huge issue. They've been much more liberal on these issues than the U.S. has.

BLITZER: It's sad to think that someone like myself, who grew up in Buffalo, New York, that unfortunately they're going to have to tighten security along the U.S./Canadian border to make it more difficult for people to go back and forth out of those concerns.

Tom Fuentes, thanks very much.

Coming up, a 28-year-old's amazing journey from working for a meat packing company in Wisconsin to fighting against ISIS in Syria.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The end of an era in Afghanistan. A ceremony over the weekend ended 13 years of the British involvement. Both the massive camps in southwestern Afghanistan were turned over to the country's military. Just hours later, in northeast of Afghanistan, Taliban fighters killed as many as seven people in an attack on a court building.

In Iraq, an ISIS attack killed more than a dozen Shia militia fighters aligned with the Iraqi military. That attack happened south of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, in Syria, troops battling ISIS have added an American to their ranks.

Our Ivan Watson has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Armed men are a common sight here in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria, a country embroiled in a vicious civil war. But one of the gunmen in this truck is not like the others.

(on camera): How do people react to you when they see you and realize you're from the U.S.?

JORDAN MATSON, AMERICAN VETERAN JOINS ANTI-ISIS FIGHT: They ask me if I'll come over to dinner at their house.

WATSON (voice-over): Jordan Matson is a 28-year-old former U.S. Army soldier from Wisconsin.

(CROSSTALK)

WATSON: For the last month, he's also been a volunteer fighter in the Kurdish militia, known here as the YPG.

MATSON: I got in contact with the YPG on Facebook, and I prayed about it for about a month or two and just really soul searched, is this what I want to do. And eventually, you know, decided to do it.

WATSON: During his two years in the Army, Matson never once saw combat or deployment overseas. But soon after arriving here in Syria, he says he ended up in a battle against ISIS.

MATSON: The second day in, I got hit by a mortar in a fight.

WATSON: While recovering from shrapnel wounds he went to work online. Recruiting more foreigners to help the YPG fight against is.

MATSON: I've had from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, U.S., you name it, they have been asking. ISIS has threatened all these countries I've named to push their agenda, and the veterans of those nations that love their countries, don't want to sit by while this is happening.

WATSON: Back home in Wisconsin, Matson used to work in a food packing company.

MATSON: Other than that, we just hang out in here.

WATSON: Now he lives in places like this former restaurant converted into a militia camp.

(on camera): What are the pictures?

MATSON: These are men that died fighting against ISIS.

WATSON (voice-over): The YPG are very lightly armed guerillas.

(on camera): Is this even a flak jacket?

MATSON: No this is just a vest to carrying ammunition. WATSON: Basically, people are running into battle without any armor?

MATSON: Yes.

WATSON: And wearing sneakers?

MATSON: Yes.

WATSON (voice-over): U.S. law enforcement officials say it's illegal for an American to join a Syrian militia. But Matson says, being here, fighting ISIS alongside the Kurds is a dream come true.

(on camera): You could not be further from home right now.

MATSON: Yeah. I guess this is the other side of the world.

All my life I wanted to be a soldier, I guess, growing up. So it fits well over here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Ivan is joining us now from northern Iraq.

Ivan, excellent reporting.

Is the U.S. government providing any direct assistance to this Kurdish militia group the YPG?

WATSON (voice-over): Certainly did last week. They parachuted weapons and ammunition as well as medicine to YPG fighters in this Syrian border town of Kobani that they have been defending themselves for a month now in a siege against is. That was a big policy shift for the U.S. military and the U.S. government to help this Kurdish faction.

BLITZER: Because I know that the U.S. government, the State Department lists at least the PKK, one of the Kurdish groups as a terrorist organization, and some have suggested the YPG, the group that this American is fighting for, was an offshoot, if you will, of the PKK and that's why it's illegal, according to U.S. law, and you point this out in the piece, for Americans to go over there and volunteer to fight for this group.

WATSON: That's right. YPG fighters, they insist they are a sister organization of the PKK, which the U.S. and Europe list as a terrorist organization. The fact is, as I met many fighters there who were former PKK fighters, they venerate the same man, Abdulla Oldjulan (ph), the imprisoned leader of PKK. They had a lot of symbolism of the PKK. And this Kurdish movement has a lot of history of changing their name to get around that terrorist designation. But they are very close to that organization. And it seems that the U.S. is trying to fudge its own terrorism definition, making the enemy of an enemy, that being ISIS, suddenly a friend.

BLITZER: I know that so many of the Kurds I've spoken to that are really upset that the State Department still continues to list some of these Kurdish militia groups as terrorist organizations and all the consequences that unfold from that.

Excellent explanation. We'll continue to watch. And you're absolutely right, the fact that the U.S. is supplying the YPG with some direct assistance represents a significant change.

Ivan Watson reporting for us.

That's it for me. Thank you very much for watching. I'll be back at 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, a quick check of your headlines coming up after a quick break.

For our viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Brooke Baldwin starts right at the top of the hour.

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