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Amanpour

"Indisputable Evidence" in U.N. Report; From the Heart of the Financial Meltdown; Imagine a World

Aired September 16, 2013 - 14:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

The facts speak for themselves: the results are overwhelming and indisputable. Those are the words of the U.N. secretary-general on the long-awaited report into the chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus last month.

According to Ban Ki-moon, there is, quote, "clear and convincing evidence" that rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used and that a war crime did indeed take place.

He said, "This is the most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since Saddam Hussein used them in Halabja in 1988."

The report also seems to point the finger at the Assad regime, saying the chemicals were delivered by surface-to-surface missiles which only the regime is believed to possess.

In a moment, I'm going to be speaking live to CNN's Fred Pleitgen about the details of this report and the exclusive access he got to the U.N. investigation.

But let's also remember that it wasn't the first time chemical weapons have been used in Syria. After this attack in March on this program, we interviewed Syrian doctors who also found traces of sarin in blood and tissue samples after a government attack near Aleppo.

But August 21st was large-scale and a pivotal moment, which led the U.S. President Barack Obama to threaten military strikes. Those are now on hold as the West tries to hammer out a U.N. resolution to dismantle the Syrian regime's chemical weapons.

A meeting today in Paris between the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, French President Francois Hollande and the British Foreign Secretary William Hague in consultation with other Western partners, reiterated that any resolution must have teeth.

Now gathering and analyzing the evidence of this attack has been meticulous and painstaking. And our Fred Pleitgen had exclusive access to the very lab where that evidence was scrutinized and here now is his special report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Horrifying images that changed the international community's perception of Syria's civil war, a gas attack on the rebel-controlled outskirts of Damascus on August 21st.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have a deeply held preference for peaceful solutions. Over the last two years, my administration had tried diplomacy and sanctions, warnings and negotiations. But chemical weapons were still used by the Assad regime.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): U.N. inspectors were allowed to visit the sites several days after the attacks. Most of the experts came from here. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or OPCW, which has now given CNN rare access to their laboratory and staging facility in the Netherlands.

Franz Ontal is the head of inspector training at OPCW.

FRANZ ONTAL, HEAD OF INSPECTOR TRAINING, OPCW: The Holy Grail for environmental sampling is the new agent, the agent itself. That might not be very practical. We don't expect to find agent by the time we arrive.

So we need to look for secondary evidence, and that could be munition fragments or the delivery devices or whatever they used to deliver the device.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): The inspectors are not allowed to talk specifically about their investigation in Syria. But they say they did not deviate from standard procedures.

ONTAL: If we are to use this, detectors, to identify our sampling points or to identify what type of agent is on the ground or on the sample, we like to use two -- at least two different technologies at the same time.

So for example, they might use this and this detector and go in to sample at the same time. And then use both readings to confirm what comes up.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): A picture released by the Syrian opposition show the inspectors on the ground at the site of the chemical attacks. There was speculation that the team might have received samples from opposition doctors who took them immediately after the attack.

But Franz Ontal says, for a credible investigation, the inspectors must do all sampling themselves.

ONTAL: It is very important. We cannot consider a sample if it has lost the chain of custody, if it has gone away from our view, if it's been tampered with at any given time. We have to be sure that whatever samples were taken stand up under any scrutiny and be as rigorous as possible.

PLEITGEN: So I mean, do you take them?

ONTAL: Right.

PLEITGEN: No one else takes them?

ONTAL: No one else takes them. And from the time that we take the sample, we cannot lose sight of that sample at any given time

PLEITGEN (voice-over): But the inspectors do speak to survivors and doctors in the affected areas, and say that information is very important to the overall investigation.

Shortly after the Damascus suburb of Zamalka was hit with chemicals, CNN managed to get a journalist on the ground, who filmed a mass grave and many bodies still in the makeshift hospital. Survivors giving details of the attack and what the chemicals did to them.

"I can't breathe," this first responder said. "I have nerve problems. I have really bad cramps and headaches. I threw up all the time. I can't sleep and can't see really well."

The samples from chemical weapons sites are brought to this lab. The transport container is made to withstand a plane crash. Scientists used detectors while opening it to make sure they're not exposed to nerve agents.

Dr. Hugh Gregg is the head of OPCW's lab.

DR. HUGH GREGG, HEAD, OPCW LAB: The vinyl container is the sample itself. The samples that were collected in the field, we ensure that those seals are absolutely correct and that they haven't been tampered with. And then we're ready for that sample.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): Samples are analyzed in a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer or GCMS, a device that breaks the samples down into its components and then identifies the chemical agents.

GREGG: The routine GCMS analysis that we would do for environmental samples can see things down below a part per million. They can see samples that have been there for weeks or months.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): Under the threat of U.S. strikes and with Russian diplomatic pressure, Bashar al-Assad has agreed in principle to put Syria's chemical weapons under international control.

The OPCW would mostly likely take the lead, cataloging and monitoring the stockpiles. The organization has done it in other countries and knows how long it takes.

GREGG: For inspectors to catalog that, they would actually have to go and witness how many artillery shells, how much would they contain on an average fill. They would have to, you know, look at storage containers. They would have to figure all that out.

So cataloging something would depend on how many sites there are, how many different munitions there are. You know, it could take months.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): And OPCW will probably play a pivotal role as the Syrians and the international community determine what the consequences of the gas attack will be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And Fred Pleitgen joins us live now from Berlin.

Fred, a really scrupulous undertaking, really rigorous. You had amazing access.

What did you learn? What more did you learn about where and how the investigators do their work?

PLEITGEN: Yes, you know, it was really interesting, Christiane. First of all, the inspectors told me that it was actually eight of the members of the U.N. team that were on the ground that came from the organization for the prevention -- for the prohibition of chemical weapons. So they were the largest amount of the team members. They had munitions experts there; they had chemical experts there.

They took great pains not to have any of the team members come from a country that's a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council simply because they didn't want international criticism. So everything they do is about objectivity; it's about keeping all this as credible as possible, hence they have all these seals that they put on these things. They have numbers that apply to every sample.

And so they do everything they can to keep this as objective as possible. And then they send all of these samples to their partner labs. And it's interesting, the web of partner labs that they have. Some of them are in the United States. There's some in Germany.

But there's even a partner lab in Iran, although I'm not sure whether or not any of the samples were sent there. I don't think that they actually were in this case, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: So let me ask you, because obviously you were in Damascus. You had amazing access.

What do you think this report that you've done, the report that was just publicized by the secretary-general, how is that going to be received by the regime?

PLEITGEN: Well, you know, that's a very interesting question. We've already seen the initial regime reaction, where they are now saying that they believe that some of these weapons might have been smuggled in by Al Qaeda groups from Iraq, things that they've said in the past. But I mean, certainly there are going to be a lot of people on the ground in Damascus, asking certain questions.

One of the things that really stuck out to me in this report is that when we sent that journalist into the Zamalka district, the one thing that eyewitnesses kept saying is that the people who were able to survive this attack were the people who fled to the tops of houses.

And now this report says that apparently whoever used this gas -- and of course there are strong indications that it was the regime -- waited for the weather to be perfect to have that gas then stay on the ground or close to the ground to kill as many as people as possible.

So there's a lot of things that, having been on the ground back then, we were wondering about, that make a lot of sense right now and certainly a lot of people are going to be asking questions.

I was talking to people who were pro-regime, who said the regime would never do anything like this, certainly a lot of those people are going to at least question their point of view, it seems, after this report has come out, certainly with the munitions detailed in all of this, the way all this was used.

And also how clear it was, the inspectors finding the traces of sarin in those munitions on the ground, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Very briefly, Fred, now the whole focus is on dismantling the chemical weapons. Has it happened before?

PLEITGEN: Well, it certainly has. It's interesting that you asked that question. One of the things that the inspectors keep pointing to is they said their case in point in this was Moammar Gadhafi's Libya, which in 2005, signed up to the CWC, to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and laid open all of its stockpiles. And the inspectors came in there and cataloged them.

And they say the interesting thing was that after the Gadhafi regime fell in 2011, they went back to all these sites and almost nothing was missing. There was one little stockpile that turned up after Gadhafi was out of power that they hadn't managed to get back then. But they said that all of that was ammunition that was out of date, that couldn't have been used anyway.

So they say it is possible, but it will be very, very difficult.

AMANPOUR: Amazing, really incredible.

Now of course all focus this will be on the dismantling of the Assad regime's stockpile. And with or without chemical weapons, though, Syrians still live in the daily grip of fear as the war carries on.

And five years ago, the whole world awoke to another kind of nightmare. It was total financial panic after Lehman Brothers collapsed and shook the global economy to its very foundations.

Sheila Bair, then head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, led the rescue and recovery of America's banks. Today, she says things are safer but she joins us later with a chilling possibility. That's when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Five years ago this week, the collapse of Lehman Brothers kicked off the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It was a terrifying moment when no one knew if the whole global economy would implode.

U.S. President Barack Obama marked the anniversary, counting his success in growing the U.S. economy since that crash.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We've cleared away the rubble from the financial crisis and we've begun to lay a new foundation for economic growth and prosperity. All of this happened because ultimately of the resilience and the grit of the American people. And we should be proud of that and on this five-year anniversary, we should take note of how far we've come from where we were five years ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: But critics, like Nobel winning economist Paul Krugman, say it's been a rich man's recovery. Corporate profits are up and Wall Street is booming. But income for the average American family actually dropped since 2008.

And this is a staggering statistic, from a leading U.S. economist. Ninety-five percent of the economic gains and income gains in the first three years of the recovery have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent.

Sheila Bair was at the white-hot center of the meltdown as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC, first under President Bush and then President Obama. It was her job to keep Americans' savings accounts safe.

So today I asked her are we out of the woods now?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Sheila Bair, welcome to the program. Thank you very much for joining me.

SHEILA BAIR, FORMER CHAIRPERSON, FDIC: Thanks for having me.

AMANPOUR: Five years later, President Obama is telling the world that his administration has stabilized the economy, that it's growing, that employment has increased and it's not out of the woods yet, but everything's on the right track.

Do you agree?

BAIR: No, I don't think we are on the right track at all. The economy is still very sluggish. A lot of the improvement in the unemployment rate, about half of it has come from people just dropping out of the workforce, getting discouraged.

When the jobs do come back they're lower paying; income inequality is getting worse. So, no, I think there's a lot left to be desired about this economic recovery.

AMANPOUR: Well, what? Tell me, what would you do if you could?

BAIR: I've advocated for infrastructure programs and massive infrastructure programs -- we need them anyway, whether we were in economic problems or not -- fundamental corporate tax reform, getting our top rate down to an internationally competitive rate by broadening the base, those are the kinds of things, with some leadership, I think, would make a real difference for our economy.

We also need a complete financial reform. We still don't have a stable financial system. And I think that continues to be a drag on economic growth.

AMANPOUR: Well, I'm going to ask you a few questions that lead from that answer. First and foremost, I want your reaction -- you mentioned the Fed -- to Larry Summers pulling out.

BAIR: Yes, well, I think he did the right thing. You know, this is being strongly pushed by the president's economic team. I think they got a little out in front of the president, frankly, on this, and I think what Larry did was good for the president and good for the country. I don't think he could have gotten confirmed; he was quite controversial.

The president has Janet Yellen there, a very supremely well qualified candidate, who's actually -- will become chairman no matter what. I think she was -- you know, I think she will be confirmed by the Senate. I don't think there's going to be a lot of opposition.

AMANPOUR: All right. Let me ask you another thing you raise, and a lot of people are talking about right now. In fact, Bob Diamond, who was the former head of Barclays, he's joined the basic chorus of criticism that not enough is being done in terms of regulation and "too big to fail" is not a slogan of the past; it exists today.

So could this happen again? I mean, how far are we as a world --

(CROSSTALK)

BAIR: Yes, it -- well, I -- it could. I do worry about that. The system is safer, but not nearly as safe as it should be. We don't have enough capital into the banks; there's less leverage. But you know, we had a pretty low baseline prior to the crisis. So saying there's less leverage now isn't saying a lot.

Still too much reliance on short-term debt, which can -- becomes very volatile if you get into a distressed situation.

So we -- it could happen again and as the Fed -- we expect the Fed to start tapering. I think they need to get out of this. This has gone on for far too long.

But it's going to be rocky. It's going to be volatile and typically when you get into volatile times, the poorly managed banks, they surface. You find out who they are.

AMANPOUR: And how much does public confidence play into the real prospect of the financial situation and the economy really growing?

Let me just read you probably the polls that you actually know. The Pew Research Center just earlier this month has said that the state of the U.S. economy five years later, 63 percent feel no more secure and only 33 percent of the people feel more secure.

That's pretty damaging isn't it, if you want to convince people that the economy's booming?

BAIR: It is.

Well, I do think the public perception -- and there's some justification for that. Frequently, you know, the popular will, there is some underlying truth there. And the banks are still not as stable as they should be.

Financial reform has been incremental; it's been very publicly fought by the industry. That's one of the reasons why the pace of financial reform has been so slow and so incremental when it happens.

So long term, I think the banks are really hurting themselves. It's self-defeating for them to oppose their regulatory process that has credibility, because the public will not trust them unless they trust the regulatory process, and they don't trust the regulators now, either, unfortunately.

AMANPOUR: No, by a very wide margin.

And what about the other very real problem, and that is certainly in the United States and many other parts of the world, that the income gap is simply getting wider and wider and not smaller and smaller, that the 95 percent of the gains over the first three years of the recovery went to the top 1 percent?

How is that even sustainable?

BAIR: It's not. It's -- you know, an economy that's driven by inflated financial assets, which is basically what we have, which does make the rich become richer, it's not sustainable. And you need a healthy growing middle class and lower, middle income people who are rising up. They're the ones who spend and drive the economy.

AMANPOUR: So if you were to describe where we are right now, as a final question, are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic? Are we going to have another bubble that then crashes? What -- where are we?

BAIR: Yes. Well, I get -- I'm a bear, no pun intended. I am not optimistic right now. We really need leadership. We need to have a bipartisan coalition, a governing structure here in the U.S. to move us forward on fiscal policy, because fiscal policy is really what's needed for a brighter economic future.

And I do think, as painful as it's going to be, the Fed needs to stand down and start tapering, go slow. It's going to be volatile. But get us out.

AMANPOUR: So President Obama is facing an upcoming budget battle, isn't he? How is that going to shape out, do you think? And is that going to give a knock again to the, you know, to the sort of credibility of the United States to get past this domestic wrangling?

BAIR: Yes. I don't know why we always have to go to the brink on the debt limit or whether we're going to keep funding the government. And those are always -- those tools have been used -- look, I'm concerned about the unsustainable path of our fiscal situation as well. But those are nuclear bombs that you can never actually use. You don't want to use and it would be.

You know, if you shut down the government or don't raise the debt limit, you know, that's just not even a tenable scenario, to try to use those as leverage to extract policy changes. I think it's self-defeating.

And I do wish, as sympathetic as I am to some of the Republican concerns about our fiscal situation, to use different tools, because it makes the country look very bad. And those are tools that, you know, at the end of the day, their bluff is going to be called. They're not going to use them.

AMANPOUR: Sheila Bair, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

BAIR: Sure.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And so continuing difficulties and a huge amount of work ahead, not just in the United States, but also for the economy in Europe and around the rest of the world.

And now despite the diplomatic developments on chemical weapons in Syria, a civil war is still raging and there's growing concern that Syria's cultural heritage already at risk could suffer even greater damage.

We've seen what the war has done to ancient mosques and markets in cities like Aleppo and Damascus. Yet even crusader castles far from the city and so far untouched by the conflict as well as priceless Roman ruins have been designated endangered sites by UNESCO.

And now preservationist groups have also written to President Obama, reminding him of his obligation under international law to protect these and other treasures should he end up ordering a military strike.

And across the border in Lebanon, can an artist's brush help preserve one of its ancient cities? And not just any artist; we'll explain when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where you can own a Picasso for the price of an opera ticket and help save a priceless archeological treasure at the same time. Too good to be true? Actually, your chances of winning this million-dollar work of cubist art titled "Man with an Opera Hat" are a healthy 1:50,000.

That's how many lottery tickets are being raffled off at 100 euros a pop by the International Association to Save the Ancient Lebanese City of Tyre. The lottery hopes to raise awareness and 5 million euros to help preserve what is a UNESCO World Heritage site, founded over 4,000 years ago, Tyre is one of the oldest cities on Earth.

In its heyday, it was the crown jewel of the ancient Phoenicians, who ruled the seas from Carthage, which is today's Tunisia, all the way to Cadiz on the coast of Spain. Over the centuries, waves of invades from Alexander the Great to the crusaders to Israeli artillery and Hezbollah rocket launchers, not to mention U.N. checked urban sprawl, have taken their toll.

And with the flood of 750,000 refugees from the Syrian civil war, and the spillover of sectarian violence that have left its economy in tatters, Lebanon is hard pressed to protect its national heritage.

Perhaps Picasso, the artist who captured the horrors of civil war in his masterpiece "Guernica" can come to the rescue at least of this great city.

And that's it for our program tonight. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

END