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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Hurricane Comes Ashore; U.S. Government Tracking Verizon Calls; Transgender Former Navy SEAL Speaks Out; Judge's Ruling Puts 2nd Child in Line for Adult Lungs

Aired June 06, 2013 - 22:00   ET

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

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone. Breaking news tonight.

It's not just the government grabbing your cell phone records. They are online with you as well, new and frankly stunning reports on just how much they know about your life online.

Also tonight, a remarkable story. She was a warrior beyond compare as Navy SEAL commander Christopher Beck. Now she's showing no less courage in her new life. Tonight, only on this program, Kristin Beck talks about her new and newly public life as a woman.

Plus, the hurricane season's first big storm comes ashore with tens of millions more people still in its path.

A lot to get to tonight. We begin, though, with breaking news. It goes far beyond the government just accessing your cell phone records. That was the first shoe to drop. The second shoe fell late today. They're looking at your Internet access as well, plugging directly into Facebook, Google, YouTube, Yahoo!, and five other big names, in short, a direct line into your online life.

The FBI and National Security Agency are doing it. According to a report in "The Washington Post" and Britain's "Guardian" newspaper, they have been doing it for the last six years, part of a highly classified, never-before-disclosed intelligence-gathering program code named PRISM.

According to the reporting, it began during the Bush administration, but has grown sharply, exponentially, during the Obama years, the FBI and NSA vacuuming up your e-mails, online pictures, audio, video by tapping directly into the servers of those five companies that I mentioned, plus Microsoft, Paltalk, AOL, Skype, Apple, and, soon, according to "The Post," Dropbox.

"The Post" and "Guardian" reporting that PRISM use the data feed as raw material for a massive data-mining operation aimed at spotting patterns that might provide early warning of a terrorist attack. As we said, it comes hard on the heels of the revelation in "The Guardian" newspaper and elsewhere that must be giving any one of the tens of millions of Americans who use a Verizon cell phone a chill, word that the FBI and NSA asked for and got a secret court order giving them access to phone records for all Verizon cell phone calls, foreign, domestic and local, not the conversations themselves, just everything else that's identifiable.

White House officials neither confirming nor denying the story, but they are defending the practice of data collection for national security purposes. And, again, both these programs have their roots in the prior administrations, but have grown immensely since then, leading The Huffington Post today to run a composite photo under the headline "George W. Obama."

It's also turning partisan politics on the head -- on its head with a number of Democrats slamming the president and Republicans defending his policy.

A lot to talk about with Jim Acosta at the White House and former Congressman and libertarian Ron Paul.

Jim, this has been a remarkable day. First, what's the latest you're hearing in Washington from this?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, I can tell you right now that White House officials are simply not commenting. And congressional officials who have oversight over these matters, they are not commenting about these latest revelations, broken this afternoon in "The Washington Post" and "Guardian" newspapers.

But we can tell you, Anderson, and you have been talking over the last couple minutes about these I guess revelations that have come out in these stories that the government has been using the servers at about nine Internet companies, technology companies, out in the Silicon Valley, to look at what people have been doing online.

But I have to tell you, Anderson, in the last hour or so, we have gotten a number of statements from some of those companies in question. You mentioned Google, you mentioned Apple. We have a statement from Apple saying that they have never heard of this program called PRISM. They say they do not provide any government agency with direct access to their servers.

Google put out a statement saying that from time to time, they do disclose data to the government in accordance with the law, they say, but they do not have a back door as they call it into their servers for the government to use.

So there is some pushback. There seems to be I guess a contradiction here perhaps if you listen to what these companies are saying at this point, but, as you said, Anderson, a very remarkable day up on Capitol Hill, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle questioning the Obama administration trying to get at exactly what is going on with the Patriot Act and the authority that's been given apparently to the FBI and the NSA to look at phone records from millions of Americans who subscribe to Verizon Communications.

But at this point, just no answers from the White House at this point -- they're not commenting directly on those stories, only saying that this type of data collection is consistent with the law and that it does protect national security.

COOPER: And if it's Verizon, it's probably -- one can assume it's probably others as well.

Congressman Paul, who is joining us on the phone, what is your reaction to this news that it's not just phone records, but, apparently, according to "The Washington Post" also Internet data that the government is monitoring?

RON PAUL (R), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: Well, I guess I wish I could be shocked. But I'm not surprised.

I think there has been a few of us who have been warning about this, and voted against the Patriot Act, voted against these FISA courts. So it doesn't surprise me a bit.

And because it's not confirmed by these companies, this means that they are intimidated. They can get in a lot of trouble. I mean, they can turn over these records and are not allowed to even talk about it, so it's a horrible, horrible situation.

The one thing that's doing it, it's -- these events are really helping me make my case that I have been working on for a couple years. You have got to watch the power of government. Power in government is almost always abused. And this is abuse and it isn't Democrats and it isn't Republicans. It's both of them.

And then it's the toleration of the people. The people put up with it, so it's very, very dangerous. I don't think there's anything left to our Fourth Amendment. This whole idea of needing probable cause to get a search warrant, that's totally gone. And this to me is very, very serious, but also, it's an awakening call.

Let's hope that we can get the progressives together with the libertarians and the constitutionalists and say enough is enough. We have had enough of this. And we have to stop. Our economy doesn't work. The foreign policy's in shambles and now we have no privacy because people say they want to be safe.

Governments cannot make us safe. To pretend they can make us safe, they have to destroy personal liberty. Oh, they can make an attempt. They can make us safe if they turn us into cattle in a cage or something. This is...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Congressman, let me...

(CROSSTALK)

PAUL: I'm not surprised at what's happening.

COOPER: Congressman Mike Rogers, who is obviously head of the House Homeland Security Committee, he said today that going through those phone records prevented a terrorist attack. A., do you buy that, and how do you argue against this kind of surveillance if it is in fact preventing attacks?

PAUL: Well, first thing is I don't believe it. I have heard so many of those stories. There have been dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks over the years. The FBI is involved and they save us from all this.

But, no, this is -- this is not justification to turn over your liberties, turn over everything that is precious and say the government can have total control of me because they might stop something sometime.

No, that would never be a justification. We have been warned about that. There's a lot of people that would agree with them. I got to be safe. You know, safety is the only thing that I care about. Both economically and physical safety is the driving force and it's also the destruction of liberty and that is what we're witnessing today.

COOPER: Jim, the political reaction to this is interesting. A lot of people in the president's own party are not thrilled by the national security policies. I mean, where do you see this going? What is the next step here?

ACOSTA: Well, Anderson, it's interesting. Lindsey Graham, he came out very forcefully in favor of this program at a hearing earlier today, and was basically saying, keep going, President Obama, keep going, Obama administration, I like this program, and there are many of us like that.

But he was commenting, Anderson, about phone records, the collection of phone records, and now what we have is sort of an apparent bundling of government surveillance data, not just your phone, but also perhaps your Internet. And I think that is why you're going to maybe see the dam breaking when it comes to some of the frustrations up on Capitol Hill.

You heard from Barbara Mikulski, a liberal Democrat from Maryland, who is chair of the Appropriations Committee, telling Eric Holder at a hearing, hey, wait a minute, we're a little sick and tired of this idea that only the people on the Intelligence Committees are briefed on this. Perhaps other members of Congress should be briefed on this, because, Anderson, they're being blindsided by all of this right now.

COOPER: Yes.

ACOSTA: Not only do they have people calling them saying, hey, wait a minute, my phone records are being collected by the government. Tomorrow, they're going to be hearing from Americans all over the country who are worried about when they're online, what videos they're looking at, what Web sites they're looking at. Is that being collected as well?

COOPER: Yes.

Jim Acosta, appreciate it. Congressman Ron Paul, appreciate you calling in as well.

I think I said Rogers, Rogers on the House Intelligence Committee. I think I misspoke before.

Again, reaction on both sides of this story really defies party politics.

Let's talk about it now. Joining us tonight, two partisans who prove this fact, Democratic strategist Paul Begala and Republican strategist Ari Fleischer. Paul helped get President Obama reelected. Ari served as press secretary in the George W. Bush administration.

Paul, this is pretty remarkable. The president is now defending a policy that he probably would have opposed when he was a senator. Does this make sense to you?

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I have no doubt that Barack Obama would be appalled by this in the past. And I would like to know why he's doing it in the present.

COOPER: Ari, they're saying, well, we don't know the names of the people whose data we're collecting, but you could, I mean, I imagine easily piece together, link a number to a name.

ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER GEORGE W. BUSH WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I praise the president for taking the steps he's taken to keep this country safe from a potential terrorist threat.

Across the board, when you look at what he's done, he's continued so many of the Bush administration policies from drone strikes to military commissions to wiretaps to renditions to -- you name it, he's doing it. It's like George Bush is having his fourth term. And I praise President Obama for it.

Now, I think he's a hypocrite. He campaigned against President Obama. He said it was a violation of the Constitution. He campaigned against President Bush, said it was a violation of the Constitution to do these things. But I think he's learned this is what's necessary to protect the country. And he's wise to do it.

COOPER: Ari, do you not have any concerns about the government collecting all this data, about potential abuses of it down the road?

FLEISCHER: Here's how I think this worked. It's a very broad collection that detects patterns. It's not aimed at any individuals, and they haven't listened to any individuals' conversations. I presume they are going to get a proper warrant to do that if necessary.

But they look for patterns, and from those patterns they are able to discern what we need to do with intelligence assets and what we need to do about obtaining other legal means. And this program is legal.

COOPER: But the data that is being collected is not just on terrorists or people who are known to be terrorists. It's on anybody.

FLEISCHER: Well, it's not about any individuals. It's about patterns that are seen from a whole series of mails or phone records.

And that's because we don't know who from another country is calling, but if we see a pattern from another country there are calls going, that gives people at the NSA suspicions. This is how intelligence pieces are put together for them to act on.

COOPER: Paul, is that acceptable to you?

BEGALA: No is the short answer. No.

I do want my government to protect us from terrorism. I do. But there has got to be a less intrusive alternative than getting the data of every single cell phone call, both domestically and internationally. I don't doubt those who defend the program who say it has been efficacious. I don't doubt that. I'm sure it has been.

The question is, what are we trading in response? My goodness, my conservative friends don't even want the government to keep records of felons who try to buy guns, and they're OK with keeping records on every single cell phone call placed in America and overseas. It's really -- if this is not overreaching, what is?

COOPER: Paul, do you agree with Ari that the president is being a hypocrite here, that he ran against this kind of stuff when it was George Bush doing it, and now, I mean, Ari says it's the fourth term of the Bush administration?

BEGALA: Well, yes, I think Ari is trying to needle him just a bit. There have been many places where he's put in place better legal strictures and real legal strictures.

I think the drone program, which he stepped up far beyond what Bush did, is a terrific program, but he also gave an important speech just last week where he outlined the legal framework for that. I think there was very little framework under Bush. In fact, the guy who wrote the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, very conservative right-wing Republican from Wisconsin, Congressman Sensenbrenner says that this is excessive and un-American.

FLEISCHER: What's fascinating is Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, has come out in favor of this.

BEGALA: She has.

FLEISCHER: You have this very unusual changing of position, depending I suppose on -- Democrats are supporting the -- I don't know. Republicans are supporting President Obama.

BEGALA: I'm being consistent. I love President Obama. I support him. I spent two years of my life helping reelect him through that super PAC, but you got to call them as you see them.

And I also give a lot of credit here to Al Gore. Vice President Gore, no stronger supporter of President Obama, he tweeted right away that he found this obscenely outrageous.

COOPER: It's interesting. Ari, you have "The New York Times" now today saying that the administration has lost all credibility.

FLEISCHER: Yes, "The New York Times" slammed President Obama for this, and, frankly, I was used to that. "The New York Times" used to slam George Bush for protecting the country and for the steps he took. And I don't want us to drop our guard. I don't want us to be struck again.

It's each of these tools that has allowed us not to be hit by a major al Qaeda attack since September 11. That's vital. As we saw in Boston, Anderson, people are willing to sacrifice their civil liberties. People sheltered inside, which was another name for martial law, if the government authorities asked them to do so or told them to do so.

COOPER: It is interesting, Paul, though. I saw, Paul, recently, people are less willing to have their civil liberties curtailed now than they were in the days after 9/11.

BEGALA: Well, it has been over a decade, and I think the president talked about this in his really important speech he gave on national security at the National Defense University recently.

We cannot simply have a one-part test, does this work? It must also be, is this consonant with our values as a free society?

COOPER: All right. Ari, Paul, thanks very much.

BEGALA: Thanks, Anderson.

COOPER: Well, let us know what you think about this, about this government monitoring program. What do you think? Follow me on Twitter @AndersonCooper. Let's talk about it during the break.

Up next, a 360 exclusive interview. A former U.S. Navy SEAL, part of an elite secretive team with a secret herself. Since childhood, this Navy SEAL felt that deep inside he was really a woman. Now after 20 years as a SEAL, she's finally living the way she truly is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: So, you -- there was part of you that felt if you could become a SEAL and be in the toughest of the tough, that feminine side of you would disappear?

KRISTIN BECK, FORMER U.S. NAVY SEAL: Yes. I could totally make it go away if I could be at the top level and be -- I could -- maybe this would go away. Maybe I could cure myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back.

In just a moment, an exclusive conversation I had today with someone who has demonstrated their bravery time and time again as a U.S. Navy SEAL. They served this country with great strength and great honor for 20 years, but now she's showing another kind of strength, living as the woman she's always felt she's been.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Christopher Todd Beck enlisted with the military in 1990, with the dream of joining the U.S. Navy SEALs, the elite unit with the reputation for being one of the toughest, the fittest and most secretive forces in the U.S. military.

Beck realized that dream, serving for 20 years with the SEALs in some of the most dangerous battlegrounds around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. A former Navy SEAL who knew Beck says he had a stellar reputation among his comrades.

By the time he retired from service in 2011, Beck had a long list of medals and commendations, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. But for 20 years, while Beck was fighting for his country, he was also fighting an inner battle, a battle over his gender identity.

Chris Beck wanted to live his life openly and honestly as a woman, which is what he started doing after he retired in 2011. Chris Beck is now Kristin Beck and lives her life openly and honestly as a woman. She's currently on hormone replacement therapy and feels like she's becoming the person she was always meant to be.

It's been a long journey for Kristin to get to this point. She's written a book about her experience called "Warrior Princess," hoping to help others. The book comes nearly two years after the Department of Defense repealed its don't ask, don't tell policy, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality.

Transgender men and women are still banned from service. The 20-year decorated combat veteran would not be allowed to serve in the military as she lives her life today.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And, as you will hear, she wants it to be a happy, even ordinary life.

For years, though, life was anything but. Here's part one of my exclusive conversation with Kristin Beck.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: I don't think most people can imagine what it's like to feel like you are in disguise, to feel like you are not in the body you were meant to be in, that you're not the gender you're meant to be.

Do you feel that way always? You would feel like that all the time, constantly?

BECK: It is a constant.

But, as you suppress it and as you bottle it up, it's not like on the surface. So maybe I can put it back a few different layers, so it's not like you would never notice it because I can push it so deep. But then it does kind of like -- it gnaws at you. So, it's always there. COOPER: And so how would you let off steam, let off pressure? You said you would go to sometimes Victoria's Secret?

BECK: Yes. I would go to Victoria's Secret and buy something because it's easy, because I could say, yes, close to Valentine's Day was the best day to buy stuff at Victoria's Secret, because there's a lot of guys there buying things for their girlfriends.

So, I would go buy a couple things and then bring it home and wear it. And then you have to purge, because you can't have anything laying around or anything even close. So you hide a few things.

It's -- you buy a lot of stuff and you have like these really cool shoes or this really good stuff that makes you feel, you know, more closer to how you would like to feel, closer to that, you know, that spark, that spirit.

And you feel good about yourself. But then you can't expose yourself or you can't take the chance that anybody else would ever see this, or you can't let it be there too much because then you get too comfortable with it and then it spills out. So you have to get rid of everything.

COOPER: Someone might find it.

BECK: Yes. Or you get too comfortable with that, and you fall into that.

COOPER: You let down your guard.

BECK: You let down your guard.

So the purge is something that probably every cross-dresser and transgender and everybody else, you have to like -- it's like a reset point where, OK, I'm not doing this ever again.

COOPER: You're also in this incredibly secretive community. You're in this incredibly masculine, traditionally thought of as masculine military community, the Navy SEALs. And so that's got to add a whole other layer to it.

BECK: A huge layer.

So, I always looked at as kind of like that onion. So, I have the skin on the onion, you peel take back and you keep having as many layers of the onion as you can, but then deep down inside the middle of the onion is where my female persona was hidden. And it was through so many different layers and through so many purges and through so many of those little disguises, that I was able to just keep it totally pretty much turned off.

COOPER: So for 20 years as a Navy SEAL, 20 years in the Navy, there was a core of who you were deep down inside, but you had all these disguises layered on top of it?

BECK: Yes. COOPER: So, no one really knew the real you.

BECK: No one ever met the real me.

COOPER: All the people you served with, as close as you were...

BECK: Never. Never.

No one -- you could ask every SEAL out of the thousands and thousands and thousands that I have known, or special forces, my Green Beret brothers or anyone else that I worked with in the military. They -- no one knew anything.

COOPER: Why did you want to be a SEAL?

BECK: That's a tough question.

I wanted to be a SEAL because it was like the toughest of the tough. There was no movies out at the time when I joined up. This is the late '80s. And all we knew about it was what we knew from some of the books and some of the old guys from Vietnam, and they were the men in green faces. And they did some, you know, amazing things. And we read the stories about it. And so you grow up with that always around you.

I want to be the toughest of the tough. And so, for me, having my inside little kernel of me and my femininity, it was like I have heard people say before I escape in hypermasculinity. And I have heard that term thrown around. And it was like, I kind of look back and go, yes, I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know the term hypermasculinity. I didn't know anything. But it was like -- it was more of those layers being put on. And that is a huge, thick layer.

COOPER: So there was part of you that felt if you could become a SEAL and be in the toughest of the tough, that feminine side of you would disappear?

BECK: Yes. I could totally make it go away if I could be at the top level and be -- I could -- maybe this would go away. Maybe I could cure myself.

COOPER: You really thought that?

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: Yes. And I think that's probably -- it's just the society pressure and family pressure and everything else.

COOPER: Did you like being a SEAL?

BECK: Yes. It's amazing. I mean, can you imagine being in a group of people where life and death is the -- every day, you know, we do it all the time. And your trust and your camaraderie and the tightness of that, it's nothing like anything I have ever seen. COOPER: There's nothing else like that bond.

BECK: Nothing else like that, I don't think, and especially when we start going to war with these guys and we're bleeding in the same sand or bleeding -- we're going to the jungles over there and fighting in a couple spots, and the places I have been, Bosnia and all over Africa and a few spots in Afghanistan and Iraq and all the other places I fought in these wars, and these different conflicts.

You can never compare that to anything else.

COOPER: And yet you couldn't tell these -- you couldn't tell your brothers, your brothers in arms who you really were.

BECK: No, not at all. It was so deep that I sometimes -- I was scared for 20 years maybe. I don't know. That's the hard thing to explain. But I had to put it -- I had to suppress it so far.

Now, I did it here at the house. When I was off, out, I had weekends. So, on the weekends, I would decompress, because I was away from the stuff, but then there would be six months that we were on a deployment or whatever, and I wouldn't do anything and stayed away from it.

COOPER: Well, even when you stayed away from it, when you weren't buying the clothes or wearing the clothes at home, were you thinking about it in the back of your mind?

BECK: Yes, it would come up sometimes. But just like the regular guys would do, we will look -- there are some magazines you will pick up and start flipping through the magazines.

COOPER: So as a SEAL, when you were with other people, you could look at magazines...

BECK: I think about it totally different.

COOPER: But you would look at different things? You would look at the pictures of the women and would want to be that?

BECK: Yes. Yes.

COOPER: And no one else knew that's what you were looking at the magazines...

BECK: No. That was all the way inside of that deep little piece, way inside of that onion. They wouldn't know what's inside of my head.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Imagine what that's like for 20 years to be around these people who you love, your brothers in arms, and not be able to really know who -- let them know who you really are. Kristin said, "No one ever met the real me." That's what she just said.

Well, how -- coming up next, she is going to talk about how she worried that if someone did meet the real Kristin, that they might lash out against her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: But you would -- that was a legitimate, that was an actual fear of yours, a concern of yours, that, if this got out, somebody might kill you in the field?

BECK: Yes. Yes. That's a fear I have right now. I don't know.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back.

Continuing tonight with former Navy SEAL Commander Kristin Beck. Kristin spoke about how hard it was for 20 years as a SEAL to hide the fact that inside, Kristin felt she was a woman. In part two of our exclusive interview, she talks about the consequences that she feared of breaking her silence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: It's got to be so -- just sad to think that for 20 years, you have to -- that you have this incredible bond with these people you're fighting with, and you want it to be the closest bond imaginable, and yet you can't really let yourself be yourself.

BECK: It's definitely tough. It's -- we say it's strength and honor. That's one of the things, when we shake hands. When we shake hands, we say strength and honor. That's still what I gave true. I gave true brotherhood. I did my best, 150 percent all the time, and I gave strength and honor and my full brotherhood to every military person I ever worked with.

And I feel that if there's any transgender person that is in the military right now, there's a lot of them right now, probably, in the service that are doing the same thing, and you would never know that they are transgender or anything. It's just too bad because they're doing a great job, and nobody even knows it.

COOPER: What would have happened if you had said to some of the SEALs you were serving with that this is who you are?

BECK: Well, it's probably very similar to some of the -- some of the support I'm getting right now, but it would have been only that, you know, a few of them that would have accepted it and said, "Hey, you're my brother and I have never seen you do anything wrong and totally honorable and it's good to go." And they might have accepted it and maybe half and half. Maybe less. I don't know. That's a chance that if I took it, I might be dead today.

COOPER: You might be dead because what?

BECK: If it got out while I was on active duty. I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say what the -- what the reaction would be. COOPER: But that was an actual fear of yours, a concern of yours, that "If this got out, somebody might kill me in the field?"

BECK: Yes. That's a fear I have right now. I don't know.

COOPER: You worry about that now?

BECK: Yes. There's a lot of prejudice out there. There's been a lot of transgender people who are killed for prejudice, for hatred.

When the book came out, some amazing support and some amazing praises but also some pretty amazing bigotry and hatred, and they don't want to know. They make comments like "I will never read that book." If you read it you could educate yourself a little bit, at least.

I don't want you to love me. I don't want you to like me, but I don't want you to beat me up and kill me. You don't have to like me. I don't care. But please don't kill me.

COOPER: Everybody knows that SEALs are incredibly strong. In my opinion, to do what you're doing now requires a whole different kind of strength.

BECK: I've seen that comment quite a bit. And two of my SEAL team brothers, they said it's a whole different type of courage. And I look at it, and it's not something I look at myself or I say, you know, I'm courageous. I never thought about that way. But there have been a lot of people that say that.

COOPER: What's it like to -- to go outside now as you? Is it -- I imagine part of it's liberating, and there's got to be also fear.

BECK: Yes. Going outside for me right now, every time I walk out my front door is -- it's a challenge. It's a mission, because I want to make sure that I represent, you know, all of us women in a good way.

COOPER: How do you go from being 20 years a Navy SEAL, the way you would sit as a SEAL, to the way you're sitting right now is as a woman sits.

BECK: I would say to any of the guys out there, if you put a skirt on, you automatically kind of do this.

COOPER: Not a lot of options.

BECK: Yes. It's like whoop, I just -- but it's something I probably have to think about a lot more. Let me step back maybe a couple years after I retired. So after I retired, it was...

COOPER: You retired 2011?

BECK: 2011, yes. So in 2011, I started -- I went out in public a couple times and started kind of, you know, going out the front door. Actually, I always went out the side door. But it was a -- it was a very scary thing.

COOPER: You went out the side door of your own house?

BECK: Yes. Because I didn't want too many lights or anything so I would go out and real quickly jump in my car and drive. And I tried to drive from here because you're safe inside my own house. I would open the car door up and drive away and go to a safe haven.

COOPER: Where are you on this journey?

BECK: This is -- it's an amazingly long journey, and the book, "The Warrior Princess," is only about the coming out. So it builds up. Some of my past, my growing up, some of the SEAL team stuff, and then coming out and some of the psychological aspects of that coming out.

The journey I'm on right now, I just recently came out, I'm starting to live my life as a full female. I live; this is my life.

COOPER: What do you hope happens?

BECK: I want to live my life. I want to live in peace and happiness. I fought for 20 years for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I want some happiness.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Earlier I said that Kristin was a Navy SEAL commander. I misspoke. She was a Navy SEAL senior chief. We have more of my interview with Kristin tomorrow night on this program. Let me know what you think. Let's talk about it on Twitter right now.

Up next, a new twist to a story that we have been following closely about a 10-year-old girl named Sarah fighting to live. Yesterday, a judge ruled she was eligible for adult lungs, a decision that could save her life. Today, a new decision that could save another child.

Also ahead, the first tropical storm of the season makes landfall in Florida. Tens of millions of people are in its path. We'll tell you where it is and how bad it's going to be.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back. Tonight, new developments in the story we've been following closely.

Ten-year-old Sarah Murnaghan's battle to live. Sarah has cystic fibrosis, desperately needs a lung transplant. She's running out of time.

Yesterday, a judge issued a temporary restraining order that will prevent Sarah's age from keeping her off the waiting list for adult donor lungs. It was a big victory for Sarah and for her family, but Sarah isn't the only child fighting this battle.

Today an 11-year-old boy named Javier Acosta won an identical ruling from the same judge. Javier is being treated at the same Philadelphia hospital as Sarah.

Sarah's dad was on the program last night and told us her condition declined in the last couple of days.

A lot of different medical factors go into deciding who should receive donor organs when they become available. A complex scoring system is used. We're going to dig a little deeper on all this right now. Jason Carroll joins me along with chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

So Jason, you've been in direct contact with Sarah's family. What have they told you about recent developments? I mean, how is she doing?

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: She had a very rough night last night, Anderson, a rough day today. And in fact, at one point, doctors thought they might have to have her intubated. That's basically where they take a tube, put down your throat so you can breathe a little easier. But doctors were able to stabilize her, get her heart rate down.

Her mother basically saying she's a tough little girl, she's a fighter. And she's going to have to keep fighting every single day, because her condition is critical, and every day is going to be a fight for her.

COOPER: Sanjay, so after the ruling yesterday by this judge, Sarah is now eligible for an adult lung transplant, but can her body actually accept adult lungs if she were to receive them? How does that work?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: They could. The body could accept adult lungs.

There's a couple things to keep in mind. You mentioned she has cystic fibrosis. That's caused by a defective gene, so it's going to affect both lungs, so she needs both lungs transplanted. Sometimes people just need one lung transplanted.

Also, just size, just the mechanics is an issue here. The lungs are too big, sometimes the adult lung, the donor lungs, can be trimmed. They use staples and actually staple around it to make the lungs smaller. Sometimes they can actually use part of the lung, use only certain lobes of the lung to transplant, as well.

So those are a couple of options. But not ideal. You'd prefer the right size lungs. But to your question, it is possible.

COOPER: And after she -- if she was able to get a lung, are there other problems she could encounter after receiving an adult lung?

GUPTA: Yes. So when you think about the adult lungs, for example, if you do trim them, then there's a concern that perhaps they might start to leak and that would cause a buildup of air around the lungs as opposed to within the lungs. And that could be a significant problem.

Also, just -- it's not just the length of the lungs, but also the size from front to back. It may just be harder to sort of literally just fit the lung into her body. That's just something doctors have to sort of maneuver. If you are using adult lungs, the blood vessels, for example, may be bigger in size as compared to the pediatric smaller child-size blood vessels. So these things do make a difference.

I will point out, as well, with cystic fibrosis, one of the concerns is that you develop infections, you're more likely to develop infections and could those infections also affect the new lungs. That would be true if they were adult or pediatric lungs. That's something doctors are going to have to think about.

COOPER: And Jason, today I know you got court documents from the mother of an 11-year-old Bronx boy who also has cystic fibrosis. They sought -- they also received a federal ruling just like the one Sarah's family received. What do we know about that boy's condition?

J. CARROLL: Well, Javier Acosta, he's 11 years old. Again, he does have cystic fibrosis, as well. He critically needs a lung just like Sarah does. They're in the same hospital. Their families know each other. They've been talking to each other about the entire situation.

And what's so tragic about the Acosta family is back in 2009, Javier's brother, who was 11 years old at the time, also had cystic fibrosis, was also waiting for a lung transplant. Unfortunately, he died waiting for a transplant.

So you can imagine now what the Acosta family is going through, but they now feel as though, at least now, Javier has a chance like Sarah.

COOPER: All right. It's just so unthinkable for these kids. Jason, appreciate the reporting. We'll continue to follow it.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as well.

Just ahead tonight, what you need to know if you're one of the millions of people in the path of Tropical Storm Andrea, the first named storm of the hurricane season.

Also, Mindy Crandall let Gloria McKenzie cut in line to buy what turned out to be the winning Powerball ticket in last month's $590 million drawing, but she's not bitter about it at all. You'll hear from her ahead.

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RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Randi Kaye with the "360 Bulletin."

Breaking news, we have an update to a story we brought you at the top of the program. The Obama administration is responding to reports that the government has been accessing Internet activity, including Facebook and Google. A statement from the director of national intelligence says that the report from the "Washington Post" and "Guardian" has a number of inaccuracies.

The director says a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is designed to collect information from people outside the United States and that, quote, "It cannot be used to intentionally target any U.S. citizen, any other U.S. person or anyone located within the United States."

Flash flood warnings and watches are in effect from Florida to Maine as Tropical Storm Andrea hits the East Coast, after making landfall about 180 miles north of Tampa.

The National Weather Service is predicting up to 6 inches of rain for Washington, D.C., tomorrow and 1-2 inches of rain per hour in New York City. At last report, the storm was about 45 miles west of Gainesville, Florida, with maximum sustained winds of 50 miles an hour.

A "360 Follow," a New York woman has pleaded guilty to fraud charges stemming from a fundraising scam we reported on last December. Nouel Alba tried to solicit donations by posing as a relative of 6-year-old Noah Pozner, one of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims.

And Powerball winner Gloria McKenzie has mentioned the kind stranger who let her cut in line to buy her winning Quick Pick ticket in last month's $590 million drawing. Well, tonight, we now know who she is.

Her name is Mindy Crandall, and she says she's not upset about giving up her spot in line. She told ABC's "Good Morning America" that things are meant to be for a reason. She also shared her 10-year-old daughter's take.

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MINDY CRANDALL, LET POWERBALL WINNER CUT IN LINE: She was like, yes, sometimes it's better to be patient than rich. And I was like that's right. I knew then no matter what, like, we were teaching our daughter the right thing.

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KAYE: New unemployment figures are due out tomorrow and are expected to show little change. With the job market the way it has been, more and more people are going out on their own as freelancers.

Tom Foreman reports in tonight's "American Journey."

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When this small tech company began out in Texas, one of the founders, Dan Carroll, knew he needed virtually no permanent staff, just talented temporary workers, hired when needed and ready to embrace a new, professional mantra.

DAN CARROLL, LEAP 2: I guess sort of the idea that the job you create for yourself is the most stable job you could have.

FOREMAN: He's not alone. One business study estimates there are already more than 17 million Americans who no longer work for companies but sell their skills day-by-day. And that number could jump to 23 million in the next few years. SARA HOROWITZ, FOUNDER, FREELANCERS UNION: Yes, freelancing is happening everywhere.

FOREMAN: At the Freelancers Union in New York, the founder, Sara Horowitz, knows all about it.

HOROWITZ: It's really a phenomenon where people are hard-working, and they're just putting together a bunch of projects. And they work in fields ranging from hard-working, and they're just putting together a bunch of projects. And they work in fields ranging from being a doctor to a programmer to being a nanny.

FOREMAN: Not much like a traditional union, her group helps its members take on all the tasks that employers used to manage: networking for the next job, marketing your skills, and the toughest part, managing health care. By combining their purchasing power, she says group members get insurance for 40 percent less than it would cost them individually.

And for all the headaches...

HOROWITZ: Because they don't work that 9 to 5, they can be home when their kids come home from school. They can still do the things they love, the projects that many of us say, "Well, we'll do that when we retire."

FOREMAN: And she suspects many freelancers, despite some economic jitters, are feeling more free because they left the everyday office behind.

Tom Foreman, CNN, Kansas City.

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KAYE: Anderson is back next with "The RidicuList."

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COOPER: Time now for "The RidicuList." And tonight, we have a story of a brazen theft from a certain store in Washington state. It's called Lovers. And it's a store that specializes in -- shall we say relationship enhancement. You get the picture, right?

All right. So recently, a shoplifting incident was caught on surveillance video. The store's marketing director explains what happened.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He basically just ran in to one of the doors, tried to grab an entire mannequin and run off with it. Well, as he grabbed it, the bottom half of the mannequin fell off. So he got the top half out the door with him and off he went.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COOPER: But the thief didn't stop there. Oh, no, he apparently wasn't satisfied with just that torso. He actually returned to the store later that night. But oddly, it wasn't the bottom half of the mannequin that he seemed to be after.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When he came back that night, after business hours and broke in, he was wearing the wig from the mannequin that he had stolen and he went around and found some, apparently, clothing for his new friend to wear.

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COOPER: So the police eventually caught up with the suspect who was riding his bike nearby and left a trail of stolen, well, toys I guess you would say behind him. The store says it is a first.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every once in a while, we get people who come in and, you know, they kind of ask questions about the mannequins and do we sell them and things like that. But it's pretty strange that someone would go on that much trouble just to get their hands on one.

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COOPER: It does seem like an awful lot of trouble for a mannequin. For a lot less work, the suspect could have just kicked back with the classic 1987 film called "Mannequin" starring Andrew McCarthy.

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ANDREW MCCARTHY: You know, you're the first thing (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Do you need a scarf? I really think I'm going crazy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All the girl mannequins disappeared from the window last night. Film at 11.

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COOPER I did not remember that Kim Cattrall was in that '80s-tastic epic.

So the real-life alleged mannequin thief was arrested, held on $15,000 bail. When other customers heard about the theft, they were somewhat perplexed about the whole deal.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's pretty stupid, I guess. Like, why would you steal a mannequin? Go get the real thing. I guess he couldn't get the real thing, so that's why he stole a mannequin.

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COOPER: Pretty cogent commentary for a man-on-the-street interview conducted at a relationship enhancement store.

Mind your mannequins, people. They're there for all of us to enjoy. Resist the urge to call one your own, or you might end up in an '80s movie or in the real thing called jail or on "The RidicuList."

Hey, that's it for us. Thanks for watching. "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now.