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Syria Talks; Remembering 9/11 Heroes

Aired September 11, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: And we continue on. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Great being with you. Let me tell you that the Secretary of State John Kerry gearing up right now to head to Geneva, Switzerland to try to reach this deal on Syria's chemical weapons with his Russian counterpart Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The White House says no stalling allowed, got to move quickly here. Spokesman Jay Carney says the Russians need to deliver in a way they simply haven't so far.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Russia is now putting its prestige on the line when it comes to moving further along this diplomatic avenue. Russia is Assad's and Syria's closest ally. Russia has played the role of blocking international efforts thus far to hold Assad accountable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: The Russian news agency Itar-Tass says the Russians already have submitted a plan to Washington to put Syria's chemical weapons under international control. So things are moving along, at least for the time being.

Let's go to New York. Christiane Amanpour, our chief international correspondent, joining us, as is in Lebanon Syria's neighbor our senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon.

Christiane, first to you. Just simply put, can the U.S. trust the Russians?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Oh, you know, the proof is going to be in the pudding, but I think both sides need each other right now.

In fact, I was just interviewing a Russian ambassador, the Russian ambassador to the E.U., who is familiar with at least the outlines of what's going on. He said that they believe that Russia has come to the rescue of President Obama, who was clearly going to be defeated in their view in Congress and not get military authorization.

I said, well, actually, don't you believe that President Putin came up with this plan and Sergei Lavrov because President Obama had put the credible use of force on the table and after years of the Russians being obstructionists, finally, they have come up with some kind of initiative? Both sides are playing that game a little bit. But to the reality of what's going on and the substance of it, the five permanent members of the Security Council are meeting at the United Nations here today to discuss it. The plan, according to this Russian ambassador, involves not just securing these chemical weapons, which are the largest and deadliest in the world, that's Syria's stockpile, but also to eventually destroy them. So the Russians in their own words, no matter what the Syrians might say, this is not just about putting them under international control.

It's about destroying them. Obviously, it's going to be very difficult, it's time-consuming, it's lengthy. Any number of chemical weapons experts will tell you that. But that, of course, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good in this case.

BALDWIN: With the complexities, Arwa Damon, my next question is to you. Could this diplomatic push on chemical weapons, might this actually eventually form the basis of a much larger push to halt the brutal civil war altogether?

ARWA DAMON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the sad reality, Brooke, is that we're nowhere even near beginning to contemplate an answer to that question.

And here's the issue with this entire debate that is taking place. The U.S. administration, supporters of Obama keep touting this move, this Russian plan, as being something of a success. They're saying, you know, look, at the very least, just the threat of a U.S. strike has brought the Russians to bring the Syrians about to admit that they have chemical weapons, to eventually hypothetically putting forth some type of a plan to eventually destroy them.

But, at the same time, a lot of opposition activists inside Syria will look at this and very rightfully say, if that threat of a U.S. strike can force the Syrians to the table on the chemical weapons issue, why is that same stick not being applied to something that is perhaps arguably even more pressing, and that is the issue of the need to establish humanitarian corridors to get much-needed medical and food aid to areas in the country that are under siege?

If we want to talk about the Americans testing the Russians, testing the Syrians, then that should be, aid agencies are saying, part of an initial plan. That's quite simple to put forward. Establish these humanitarian corridors as an act of goodwill at this point.

BALDWIN: What about the Russians, though, Christiane? They have stood back. They have watched as Washington oftentimes through the use of force expanded its role in the Middle East, in Afghanistan, Northern Africa, and looking at the map today, you have former Yugoslavia, even parts of the former Soviet republic.

How big a blow would it be to Moscow for President Obama to pull the trigger on Russia's ally Syria?

AMANPOUR: Well, I mean, this is something that Russia has not wanted and has shown that over the last two-and-a-half years, but I think in terms of what Arwa says, she's absolutely right. The opposition today are crying foul. They feel they have been sold down the river, that this is a deal simply on, yes, the most important crime under this international treatise, that of the use of weapons of mass destruction, but what about the war that has killed a hundred thousand or more?

There is no plan at the moment we know of to mitigate that. That is going to grind on. I spoke today to the former ambassador to Syria, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who was also ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq, and he said to me, look, Christiane, the Assad family has been planning for this rebellion, revolution, whatever, since the Assad family stormed Hama back in the 1980s and killed something like 20,000 people as they tried to put down a rebellion by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

So this has been in the works and been planned for decades, this response. And he believed, Ryan Crocker, that in terms of the broader war, which has killed 100,000 people, according to the United Nations, that this would either drag on into a stalemate, which might then lead to a possibility of some kind of diplomatic initiative, or -- or he felt that Assad would, in his word, regain control foot by bloody foot.

BALDWIN: It's incredible just to bring up Hama, to think just what his father did and now look at his son, his son who shouldn't even -- wasn't even supposed to be the president of the country in the very beginning. Christiane and Arwa, thank you both very, very much for that.

Back here at home, one of the two states to actually legalize the recreational use of marijuana, talking about Colorado, has now just tossed out not just one but two state lawmakers who played prominent roles in passing these new gun restrictions.

The two losers of yesterday's recall elections both are Democrats. And they include John Morse, a former police officer. And up until yesterday, he was the head of the state Senate. And he says he's proud of the stance that he took.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MORSE, FORMER COLORADO SENATOR: If passing gun safety legislation in Colorado cost me my political career, that is such a small price to pay because the families of gun violence victims pay a huge price every single day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: OK. At the same time, you have this other story percolating today. In Missouri, the Republican-led legislature there is considering whether to override the veto of the Democratic governor there, Governor Jay Nixon, of this bill that threatens criminal charges against federal agents who would attempt to enforce federal gun control laws.

Missouri's attorney general says the legislation could also prevent local police from working with the feds on solving gun crimes or writing this bill that they want people to own machine guns.

Let's mull all of this over with Errol Louis, a CNN political commentator and political anchor at New York One News and Ben Ferguson, also a CNN political commentator.

Welcome to you both.

Ben, I'm going to give you the first at-bat here, beginning with Colorado. Reading in this story, might there be -- I just wanted to broaden it out bigger picture -- a national message in what we just saw happen with this recall election?

BEN FERGUSON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, absolutely.

When you have Bloomberg spending more than $300,000 in a state race in Colorado, I mean, you're talking about a very small area where these people are fighting for a legislature seat on the state level and then at the same time you see the NRA spending the almost exact same amount of money in these two races, this had much more to do with the overall conversation of we can recall people if you go outside the scope.

I think a lot of people in Colorado were making the argument early on in this recall is that the theater where all of this started was a gun-free zone. And that gun-free zone did not work. And so when you pass these laws and you don't listen to us as hunters and others, we're going to recall you, and it cost two people their seat, which is honestly exactly what voters should do on the left or the right. You don't like what your elected officials do, hold them accountable. They did yesterday.

BALDWIN: It was a grassroots effort there in Colorado. You bring up Bloomberg. You look at the money here, Bloomberg outspent the NRA. Still, essentially, the NRA won in this case.

Errol Louis, what message is this sending to other folks in state legislatures across the country who are pro-gun control?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think it's a mixed message. You go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I think what the message is, is that this is rapidly becoming a thoroughly nationalized battle that is being fought out in a million different arenas, at the county level, at the state level. There's no telling -- local politics are exactly that, local -- how any one contest is going to turn out. There are people who have been turned out of office or who have lost primaries because they were pro-gun, and the reality is, look, it's called the National Rifle Association for a reason.

They have a national agenda. They get involved in local races, and what Bloomberg has been trying to do, and some others as well, has been trying to sort of create a national counterpart and let people know that there will be single-issue consequences if you vote one way or the other on some of this gun control legislation.

BALDWIN: Ben, why were you laughing?

FERGUSON: I was laughing because I think Bloomberg here made a really bad decision to personally write a check for this kind of money because I think smaller communities don't like being bullied with cash from all the way across the nation.

And I would say to this any conservative out there that would do the same thing. Most local communities in a race like this, they finally came out and said we're making the final decision. You're not going to bring what you believe in from not even our state in, and think you can buy our election or keep who you want in there.

And that's also something else that people should look at from this and learn from this, is you better be careful if you're one person trying to spend a bunch of money in someone else's argument that you have no business being in.

LOUIS: I would love to see the conservative legislators across the country who are turning back the checks that get sent to them from Washington from the NRA and the gun manufacturers who fund the NRA.

(CROSSTALK)

LOUIS: The fact that it's -- outside vs. inside is not what this is about. We have got an issue-based national battle that is being fought as our federal system really requires and prefers at the local level. How all of this will bubble up to the national level remains to be seen.

BALDWIN: Let me just interject and ask you about that one other issue because I'm curious just both your thoughts. And then we will let it go, what is happening in Missouri. Here you have ultimately the House and Senate have to vote on this proposal, this bill that would allow a Missouri resident, A., the right to own a machine gun, and, B., if we know that goes through and we know that's illegal on that federal level, that would mean that state folks in Missouri could arrest federal agents for trying to enforce federal law.

That would be a first in the nation. Errol, crazy or OK?

LOUIS: You know, it strikes me as crazy. But, you know, this is typical of the overreach that often happens, frankly, on both sides when it comes to this debate.

Brooke, there are jurisdictions in Iowa where you can get a gun permit even if you're legally blind. There are some people for whom there are absolutely no restrictions that make any sense on guns and to many people that lack of restriction is absolutely insane. What you just described to me sounds like a formula for interagency disaster, and, you know, look, it's 9/11.

This is specifically the problem that we had in New York, was agencies not cooperating with each other. For the Missouri legislature to even contemplate setting local law enforcement against federal law enforcement is incredibly reckless. It would never fly in New York. FERGUSON: But it's not -- this is where I would say, what do you expect? When you talk about being incredibly reckless, look at this administration, how they have come out to the entire country and Eric Holder has said we're not going to enforce marijuana laws and we're going to let people that smoke and want to smoke it, we're not going to send back illegal immigrants or prosecute any more that are here illegally, and so we're not going to enforce the laws on the books.

And then Washington is shocked when states say, OK, well, if you're not going to enforce the laws you're supposed to enforce, then we're going to do what we want to do. Washington should have said we knew this was going to happen. States are going to fight back when we don't do our job. They're going to say, well, then why would we expect anything from you on the other ones?

BALDWIN: All right, guys, we have to leave it there. We will see if that thing even makes its way all the way through both chambers in Missouri. We will see. Ben Ferguson, Errol Louis, thanks, gentlemen, very much.

Coming up, you are about to meet a mom whose son died in the South Tower on 9/11. She didn't actually make a revelation about her son's last moments until months later. This young man, I tell you, he was a hero, his story.

Plus, actor Ed Asner says Hollywood is scared to weigh in on Syria. And his reason is definitely raising eyebrows.

Plus, a new video shows the moment police came face-to-face with George Zimmerman after his wife called 911. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: As we remember the victims of 9/11 today, we have to recognize the heroes. And one young man's actions that very day are still reverberating 12 years later; 24-year-old Welles Crowther was sitting at his desk in the South Tower, high, high up on that morning on 9/11, and he made it down some of the stairs, past the inferno and wreckage near the 78th floor, and you know what? He could have kept going. He could have gotten out of there, but you know what he chose to do? Help others.

Welles, a volunteer firefighter, led panicked people through the smoke. In fact, one of the stories, he carried a woman down 15 flights of stairs. And he told them to keep going down. At the time, no one knew his name, had no idea who this young man was. They just knew him as the man in the red bandanna, that red bandanna something he began carrying around when he was 6 years old, something his father gave to him.

Welles never made it out of the South Tower that day, but the memory of his actions and selflessness absolutely did. And so his family has created the Red Bandanna Project in his honor. This is incredible. This is a program for classrooms and camps, even sports teams designed to build character. Reaction to this program has been resoundingly positive. It's something I'm sure that pleases his mom, Alison, who is so kind enough to take a moment to talk to me today from New York.

So, Mrs. Crowther, thank you so much for joining me. And, you know, going back 12 years and we know the story about how, you know, I had read that you just knew, and that when the tower came down, you knew you lost your son, but I want to focus on the moment a couple months later when you picked up "The New York Times" and you read about this mysterious man in the red bandanna as a hero. Tell me about that moment.

ALISON CROWTHER, MOTHER OF 9/11 VICTIM: Well, it was an incredible moment for me.

Something had been driving me since the beginning to keep searching for Welles, keep looking. Something was telling me that some day I might find him. And so his body was recovered on the 19th of March, 2002, so although he had been in his offices on the 104th floor at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, where he worked, at the time that the attacks began, his body was recovered with firefighters that were at the incident command center under Donald Burns, who was the incident commander.

I knew he had to have gotten -- we knew he had to have gotten down somehow. And then a couple of months later, I was reading the story in "The New York Times," the first big article trying to piece things back together, entitled "Fighting to Live as the Towers Died."

And I said if I'm ever going to see anything about Welles, it will be here in the section that said 902 in the South Tower sky lobby. I said if there will ever be a chance for me to see anything, it will be here. I started reading it, and sure enough, there they were, the references to the mysterious man in a red bandanna, a red kerchief and by two different eyewitnesses.

BALDWIN: Wow. Wow.

CROWTHER: And the minute I read that, I said -- and he was calling out fire commands, someone who was trained in triage. And the minute I read that, I said, oh, Welles, I have found you. I had found you.

BALDWIN: And this young man who went to Boston College, was a leader on the lacrosse field, had been this volunteer firefighter since he was 16, chose this career in business, but here he is, these heroic actions that he so respected in others come out of him. He chooses not to run, he's saving others. By accounts, something like 12 people lived because of your son.

And so because of his incredible story, tell me about Project Red Bandanna, this curriculum that is helping other kids.

CROWTHER: Well, I would be happy to. Thank you.

We're very proud of this work. We were approached by the Fetzer Institute that is based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, through a friend of our son's at Boston College, Timothy Epstein, who is an attorney in Chicago.

He was working on the Sports and Embodied Spiritual Practices Advisory Council for the Fetzer Institute, and their mission is to study how love and forgiveness can work in the world. So, the Fetzer Institute approached us through Tim to say, why don't you give us a proposal for your next creative step?

And back in 2011, for the 10th anniversary, another friend of Welles', Drew Gallagher, produced a beautiful 13-minute documentary for ESPN that actually won a Sports Emmy last spring, and so we had been receiving yet again another huge influx of tributes from students and teachers and coaches, religious leaders, about Welles, and we knew there was a need.

So, I said, our next creative step needs to be developing a curriculum. So I reached out to Vernoy Paolini, who had been invited by the 9/11 Museum to write curriculum, and she chose Welles' story. She's an astonishing educator, and she put together a group, a team of educators who she had worked with writing curriculum for the New Jersey Holocaust Museum, the D.C. Museum, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, and the 9/11 Museum.

BALDWIN: So his memory through this curriculum, through, I'm sure, you all and his friends and everything, continues to live on and his love and his passion and his heroism.

CROWTHER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Alison Crowther, thank you so, so much, the Red Bandanna Project.

Back in a moment.

CROWTHER: Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: New developments today in that domestic dispute between George Zimmerman and his estranged wife. Florida police said just a short time ago that Zimmerman will not be charged until investigators recover this video from a smashed iPad.

Shellie Zimmerman, his wife, told police that she used this iPad to record this confrontation, but that George Zimmerman broke it after he was hit on the back with it. Now, police say it could be quite a while until we see what is actually on it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZACH HUDSON, LAKE MARY, FLORIDA, POLICE DEPARTMENT: Because we had an opportunity to take a good, hard look at that iPad, the iPad is in really bad shape. At this point, we do not have the tools available to effectively look at the video on the iPad. That could take months, weeks, in order for us to get that video off that iPad.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: As we await the iPad video, what is caught on camera is this dash-cam video, we will show it to you, of Zimmerman surrendering to police after his wife called the cops. Take a look for yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get him back out there.

(SHOUTING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. All right. Turn around. Walk back to me. Keep coming. Keep coming. Keep coming.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: HLN "Evening Express" anchor Ryan Smith joins me now. Here I see in your hands police report. What does it say?

RYAN SMITH, HLN ANCHOR: Police report, just going through it. It explains a lot of the tit for tat that was going on between Shellie Zimmerman, her father, and George Zimmerman.

And what police have done here is they have detailed both sides' stories. Shellie Zimmerman when she talked about the idea of he's got a gun, it seems like those threats come from him, at least according to her, reaching into his coat or making a motion into his coat saying, step closer, and she stepped closer, kind of antagonistically, and she thought that might mean he has got something on him. That's why cops are now saying there was no gun on him.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Did they find a gun, period?

SMITH: There was a gun in his car, according to his lawyer, but they never searched for that gun because witnesses at the scene, even Shellie and her father, said that they didn't see a gun, so police felt they didn't have probable cause to go into his car.

But when you look at George Zimmerman's side of the story, he paints a picture in talking to police of her being aggressive and her father coming after him, and at one point, throwing his glasses on the ground. It's kind of he said/she said at this point.

BALDWIN: That's why the iPad video is so clutch, but it's smashed and it will take a couple of weeks, you were telling me?

SMITH: Right. It could take weeks, even months, said the police today.

But the key to that is going to be who attacked whom, because is someone hits someone else with that iPad, that's potentially domestic battery. That could carry anywhere up to, depending on how it's looked at, a year in prison. That's max, by the way.

BALDWIN: So, with domestic battery under Florida law, police actually decide whether or not those charges could be filed, correct?

SMITH: Right. It's up to police.

Now, what they want, if police are filing charges like this, they want the victim in this case to step behind them and say, yes, I will testify. Yes, I want to press charges. But police can go forward either way and press charges if they think a crime has been committed. So the question is going to be what is on that iPad? Because if it shows someone hit someone else, that's something they could move forward with.

BALDWIN: No pressure on that technician to put the pieces back together.

SMITH: Oh, boy. They say they need more tools to go through it. We will see when those tools come in.

BALDWIN: OK. Ryan Smith, thank you very much.

SMITH: Yes, sure thing.

BALDWIN: Are celebrities shying away from reacting to what has been happening on the ground in Syria? One veteran anchor says Hollywood is scared.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ED ASNER, ACTOR: That's right. I think they don't want to jeopardize Obama's presidency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: I should say veteran actor.

And the criticism does not end there. Hear why Ed Asner wants Hollywood to take a stand.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)