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Iran: U.S. Drone Shot Down; Gingrich Leads in Two Iowa Polls; Romney Gets Key Endorsement; Cain Suspends His Campaign; Rev. Eddie Long to Take Time Off; Islamists Surge in Egypt Vote; Unexploded Bombs Defused; U.S. "Cyber-Helping" Syrians; Christmas Trees Stolen From Scouts; Winds Cause More L.A. Damage; Snow Hits Arizona; Flooding Rains Threaten Mid-South; Top News Stories Of 2011; Good Week on Wall Street; U.S. Oil Exports Top Imports; Green Bay Packer Stock Options

Aired December 04, 2011 - 14:30   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

Topping our news today, Iran state media reporting an unmanned American spy plane has been shot down. State television is citing military sources as saying the U.S. drone was seized after minimum damage.

But since that announcement we've gotten a response from NATO with a possible explanation. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is joining us right now on the phone from Washington. So Barbara, what is this news about the unmanned plane?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, here's the latest we know, Fredricka. NATO authorities and U.S. authorities in Afghanistan have issued a statement saying that, indeed, a drone went missing late last week over the Afghan/Iran border.

So that, of course, Eastern Iran, Western Afghanistan. This drone, as all drones are, on an intelligence gathering mission. What the U.S. and NATO will not say is that it was shot down by Iran.

They say it has gone missing. They believe it has gunned down. They believe that this may well be the drone that the Iranians are talking about, but they also say that the crew operating the unmanned drone, had reported a loss of flight control, a loss of control, and ability to guide the drone and that it drifted.

So their working theory at this point, if the Iranians are telling the truth about it being inside Iran is it may have drifted into Iran. So far they are saying they cannot confirm on the part of NATO and the U.S. it was shot down by the Iranians.

But there's pretty good reason at this point it appears to be that the drone that went missing is the drone that the Iranians are talking about -- Fred.

WHITFIELD: So Barbara, to what extent will NATO or U.S. authorities go to try to verify these claims to even, perhaps, retrieve any remnants, if there is such a thing?

STARR: Well, you know, that's a fascinating question, because typically when a drone, helicopter, airplane goes down in an area where the U.S. very strongly does not want insurgents or militants to get their hands on it, they do exactly that.

They call in an air strike and they bomb the wreckage so nobody can get their hands on it. That's not very practical or feasible inside Iran, of course. So, they are going to want to see any photographic evidence that the Iranians may put on TV of the wreckage.

Try and figure out how badly destroyed this thing is or what was preserved. This is a drone. If the Iranians are saying the truth about the one they have their hands on, it's called "The Sentinel."

It's a stealth drone. It's one of the most classified pieces of technology in the U.S. intelligence arsenal. There is no way the U.S. wants the Iranians to have their hands on it and be able to figure out how this thing works. So this is now very tricky business in the next few days.

WHITFIELD: All right. Barbara Starr, thanks so much. We'll see you later on this afternoon.

On the campaign trail, now the GOP game of musical chairs shows up in the latest polls from two key states. A new poll from the "Des Moines Register" shows Newt Gingrich leads with 25 percent of likely Republican voters.

Ron Paul is in second place with 18 percent and Mitt Romney is in third with 16 percent. But there's still time for movement with 11 percent of likely Iowa caucus goers undecided.

And in the latest NBC/Marist poll, Gingrich leads with 28 percent, Romney is tied for second with Ron Paul, 9 percent still haven't made up their minds.

Romney got a key endorsement in a state where he hasn't even spent a whole lot of time, Iowa. "The Sioux City Journal" says Romney understands economics and fiscal problems. Its editorial board likened him to Ronald Reagan, saying he's a pragmatic conservative and confident, not arrogant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HERMAN CAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am suspending my presidential campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Herman Cain is now a former presidential candidate. He made the big announcement yesterday. Now we're waiting for him to throw his support behind one of the other Republican candidates. He says he'll make that decision soon.

The Mega Church pastor at the center of a sex scandal involving young men is taking some time off. Atlanta based Bishop Eddie Long made the announcement before his congregation this morning. This comes just days after his wife filed for divorce.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. EDDIE LONG, NEW BIRTH MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH: We're not hiding nothing or anything like that. I'm going to take a little time off to work with my family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: Earlier in the week, there was some confusion over whether the divorce was on or off. Friday, Eddie Long's church issued a statement saying his wife Vanessa Long was withdrawing the divorce petition, but her attorney insists the divorce is still on.

The Atlanta-based pastor gained national attention last winter after four young men alleged the pastor had sex with them. The suit was settled this past summer. The men claimed Long had pressured them into having sex with him when they were still teenagers.

Anti-government protesters in Syria are getting help from the U.S. government in getting their voices heard. Details on that, next.

And what do you think were the top stories of the year? We'll look at the leading picks coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Overseas today, Israeli leaders are concerned about how the historic election in Egypt is taking shape. Early results from the first round of voting for Egypt's parliament show strong support for moderate and hard line Islamist parties.

Israeli officials call the results disturbing. It's the first democratic exercise in Egypt since the ouster of long-time President Hosni Mubarak.

Bomb squads today managed to diffuse two enormous bombs discovered in a river in Germany. The bombs dated back to World War II, nearly half of the residents of one city evacuated for safety reasons while the bombs were diffused.

The Syrian government is preventing protesters from contacting the outside world. That's the reason most of the images you see from the uprising there come from unofficial sources like amateur video and social media sites.

But activists are occasionally getting around those government blocks because of help from the United States. Here's CNN's Ivan Watson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A phone call from Syria. Opposition activist, Mussab Al Husseini is calling via Skype from the city of Holmes, a major center of the Syrian protest movement. (on camera): Do you feel safe right now talking to me on the internet?

MUSSAB AL HUSSEINI, OPPOSITION ACTIVIST (via telephone): I feel safe now because I use obscurity to get connection by the internet.

WATSON (voice-over): Husseini says he just installed Cyphone, an encrypted networking system that allows him to circumvent Syrian government firewalls that block Skype. Cyphone helps him evade online surveillance by Syrian intelligence agencies.

Canadian businessman Rafal Rohozinski's company designed Cyphone with funding from the U.S. State Department.

RAFAL ROHOZINSKI, CEO, SECDEV GROUP: We decided to start actively propagating among the Syrian community about three months ago. And then much more aggressively about three weeks ago so we've seen the numbers go from a handful of individuals and now reaching up to the low thousands.

WATSON: Cyphone has delivered to Syrian opposition members discreetly either through text messages or e-mails that guide them to links where they can download the software.

The government in Syria controls media and telecommunications networks and refuses to allow most foreign journalists into the country. So opposition activists use the internet to distribute images of the regime's deadly crackdown on demonstrators.

But President Bashar Al Assad's security forces have proven effective at tracking down dissidents using internet and cell phone surveillance.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What makes it more problematic and something that I think needs to be elevated on the political agendas in both Europe and the United States is that western companies from America and from European member states are actually providing precisely the tools that Assad and his collaborators are using against people.

WATSON: A series of investigative reports prompted two California- based internet companies to agree to cooperate with U.S. investigators after their surveillance technology was discovered in Syrian government hands.

An Italian company, Area SPA announced it had frozen work on a new surveillance center in Damascus. But Damascus appears to have other weapons in its cyber arsenal.

The European Union slapped sanctions against three members of the group known as the "Syrian Electronic Army." They're all accused of calling for violence against civilians in Syria.

Mussab Al Husseini, the Skype caller in Syria, knows this violence only too well.

HUSSEINI: There's more than five or six of my friends have been killed.

WATSON: He says, western supply programs like Cyphone may protect the opposition as they continue their dangerous struggle against the government.

(on camera): And what is it that you're fighting for?

HUSSEINI: We are fighting for freedom, for democracy, toward dignity.

WATSON (voice-over): On the streets, and over the internet. Ivan Watson, CNN, Istanbul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: And back in this country, Southern California, better brace for more fierce Santa Ana winds today. Jacqui Jeras will be along.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, other stories making news. Boy scouts in St. Louis battling a Grinch who has stolen Christmas trees three years in a row. This time police say the suspect was caught on tape backing up her SUV and then hauling off two trees.

Meteorologist Jacqui Jeras says Southern California can expect a possible repeat performance of the destructive Santa Ana winds. Last week the winds uprooted trees, crushed cars and homes and left tens of thousands of people without power.

It looks like Colorado or perhaps even Utah, right? That is Arizona. I know that's hard to believe. Usually heavy snow closed some interstates and left others looking almost deserted, the streets that is.

By today, parts of Arizona will have accumulated up to 11 inches of snow since Friday. Wow. That is so odd to see, isn't it? Jacqui Jeras in the weather center. You're like no?

JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You get up there by flagstaff and you'd certainly get heavy some snow up in the mountains of northern Arizona. It's not all desert in that state. It's a very big state. This has been an incredible storm.

WHITFIELD: This has been a very strange winter already.

JERAS: It's been pretty aggressive, certainly.

WHITFIELD: Or fall I should say. We're not officially winter yet, are we?

JERAS: Not officially, but meteorological winter, December, January, February, like for climate records, but when we consider, you know, amount of day and all that kind of stuff, it's the 21st, I think.

WHITFIELD: Yes. JERAS: Yes, well, let's start out talking about what's happening here and now and our most immediate concern that's happening today and that's the rain, which has been heavy across parts of the plains and the mid south and you can see this big stretch here that goes from Texas, where we're actually happy to see it, all the way up to the great lakes.

But when you focus in on places like Arkansas, on up towards the Ohio River Valley, that's where we're getting too much rain. It's been raining pretty much nonstop in these areas since late last week. Flood watches are in effect here.

We'll have up to six inches by tomorrow, so a lot of swollen rivers will be expected and even after the rain stops, that could be a problem continuing at least through the middle part of the week.

All right, this is our next big weather focus here and the west, we were talking about how brutal things have been in places like Arizona, New Mexico and the Santa Ana winds.

Well, our next system is coming on through, all right. Here's our area of low pressure. There you can see our high to the north and that whole thing is going to be sinking down towards the south.

As it does so we're going to increase that wind gradient once again with a return starting tonight of the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. We're going to see a return of the winds in Utah, across the Wasatch.

And we're going to see heavy snow again starting tonight into tomorrow for places like New Mexico through the mountains. The winds with this, Fredricka, tomorrow will be gusting around 30 miles per hour. It's going to be near whiteout, almost impossible to travel across the northern half of New Mexico tomorrow.

WHITFIELD: Wow, so hopefully just stay in.

JERAS: That's a good idea.

WHITFIELD: Not necessarily stay in your car and be stuck. All right, thanks so much, Jacqui.

JERAS: Sure.

WHITFIELD: All right, from the capture of Osama Bin Laden to the death of Steve Jobs, CNN is counting down the top stories of 2011. This countdown won't be complete without your participation. I'll tell you how, right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: This has been an incredible year of news, from calamities to uprising and to elections. So it means it's time to kind of take stock of the biggest news stories of the year. You can actually be part of the process. There are projects set up at cnn.com. Mallory Simon is here to explain how this project works. So we're talking about year enders, everyone used to seeing at the end of the year kind of a reflection of the year in news.

And that's what this is about on dotcom and it really is compiling all the big stories and then allowing viewers at home to decide what are the most meaningful and impactful ones to them.

MALLORY SIMON, CNN.COM WRITER/PRODUCER: That's right. I mean, as you said, there's been a huge number of news stories this year. What we're asking readers and viewers to do, log on-line, go to cnn.com/yearinreview.

You've got 20 of the biggest stories of the year and what we want is for readers to tell us, you know, which are the big ones for you, which are the most impactful? There are so much --

WHITFIELD: You've given them a little help by whittling it down to 20 because there were so many. There was a resounding consensus, Osama Bin Laden up there, the Japan earthquake and tsunami.

SIMON: Yes.

WHITFIELD: What else?

SIMON: You know, the other big story we're seeing is obviously everything that's been happening with the Arab spring. It started early this year and it's still continuing.

You've had big uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, people are really interested in that. But we're also seeing on the other spectrum, you know, huge interest in Steve Jobs' death.

WHITFIELD: Was it difficult to do this year because there have been so many? I mean, this has been a year and a news cycle where it seems like, you know, it's not just one after the other, but a lot of dovetailing of big, big stories that took place.

All at once this year and it was up to you and your team to kind of, at least, highlight the 20 and allow people to select from there?

SIMON: Yes. I mean, it was, obviously, a difficult task to narrow it down. You have so much. I mean, just looking at the economy, globally, looking at the economy in the U.S. and the unemployment, how that's led to, you know, the "Occupy" movement, which is another story we're seeing huge traction with.

There's a lot of big news and what we're hoping is people are going to tell us what is the most important this year for them.

WHITFIELD: How will they do that? They'll go to the dotcom site and then what?

SIMON: That's right. What you're going to do is you're going to log on and you'll see the list of the 20 stories. You will be able to drag and drop in the ten in the order you think are the most important. You've got until December 15th to do that.

WHITFIELD: OK, so they've got a couple weeks and then when is the unveiling?

SIMON: The unveiling will be on December 30th. You'll find out what is the number one story that our viewers or our readers across the globe have said resoundingly we think is this is the most important story.

WHITFIELD: And they'll see that in terms of in pictures too, some of the most, you know, captivating pictures that capture that moment.

SIMON: Absolutely. You'll see that in pictures. You'll see that in text. We've got stories already sort of making the run down. So we're going to go the gamut and show them everything.

WHITFIELD: Very fun. All right, thanks so much. I love the year enders.

SIMON: Me too.

WHITFIELD: I think people really do look forward to them and I think sometimes you forget how much has happened in just one year's span. You need that reminder.

SIMON: It's an unbelievable look.

WHITFIELD: Yes, Mallory, good to see you. Thanks so much. We'll be looking for that on dotcom.

All right, so here's that link to the cnn.com site. Go to cnn.com/interactive/2011 and your vote will actually help determine what stories topped that list for this past year.

All right, one of the most prescribed drugs in the country drops in price by 80 percent and Wall Street has a pretty good week. We're just moments away interest our financial look ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, beginning of the work week now, beginning of the financial markets as well. We're going to look at the financial week right now with Alison Kosik, Poppy Harlow and Felicia Taylor.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka. It was quite the stellar week on Wall Street. The Dow Industrials soared almost 800 points, the biggest point gain in three years.

This as six central banks around the world announced the coordinated plan to help ailing economies. The November jobs report helped out as well with the unemployment rate plunging to 8.6 percent.

AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, filed for bankruptcy protection. American is at a disadvantage because most of its rivals have merged with other carriers allowing them to cut costs. The airline will continue to operate as normal, as it goes through the bankruptcy process -- Felicia.

FELICIA TAYLOR, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, Alison. The world's most popular prescription drug is cheaper than it was a week ago. Pfizer's Lipitor lost patent protection. That opens the door to generic versions of the cholesterol fighter, which experts say could be discounted by as much as 80 percent.

And the U.S. could hit a milestone this year. Government figures show that for the first time in more than 60 years, we're on track to export more petroleum products than we import due to slow economic growth in the U.S. and growth in emerging countries like Brazil and Mexico.

Poppy Harlow has a look at what's coming up in business news -- Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNNMONEY.COM CORRESPONDENT: Thanks so much, Felicia. Well, the upcoming week on Wall Street will bring reports on manufacturing, the service sector, consumer sentiment and foreclosures.

And, of course, Europe will continue to be a major focus as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner travels across the continent. He will meet with euro zone leaders to discuss efforts to resolve the debt crisis there.

Finally, football fans listen up, on Tuesday you will be able to buy stock, that's right stock, in the Green Bay Packers for $250 a share.

It's the fifth stock offering in the Packers' 92-year history. The Pack is the only publicly traded NFL team. We'll keep on top of all of it for you all week on CNN Money. Back to you.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks so much, ladies. Checking our top stories right now.

Iran state media is reporting an unmanned American spy plane has been shot down. State television citing military sources as saying the U.S. drone was seized after minimum damage.

NATO released a statement saying they lost contact with an unmanned aircraft a few days ago and that may be what the Iranians are talking about.

And Mega Church Pastor Eddie Long announced this morning he is, quote, "taking time off to work on his family." Long's announcement comes three days after his wife filed for divorce.

The Atlanta based pastor gained national attention last spring after he settled a lawsuit with four young men who said that he pressured them into sexual relationships.

I'll be back in one hour with an in-depth look at the 2012 presidential campaign. Newt Gingrich is rising in the polls, Herman Cain suspends his bid, and President Obama courts the conservative vote. Stay with CNN. "YOUR MONEY" starts right after this.

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