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Police Preparing for Slain Officers Funeral; Taking Precautions to Prevent More Violence; Plunging Oil Prices; Hotel for Hackers in China; Russians See Rising Prices

Aired December 26, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

RANDI KAYE, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Randi Kaye in for Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. We begin in New York where anti-police anger and tension appear to be escalating. Nearly one week after two New York City police officers were ambushed and gunned down, authorities have arrested at least half a dozen people for allegedly making copycat threats. The most recent, a 26- year-old hauled off in cuffs after officials say that he posted online pictures of weapons with a vow to kill police officers. CNN has also learned that a 41-year-old man was arrested after he allegedly threatened officers in the same precinct where officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were stationed. So far, officials have analyzed hundreds of online postings and 9-11 phone calls.

All of this happening as friends and family prepare to say good-bye to Ramos at a public wake. Let's bring in CNN's Miguel Marquez. He is in New York outside the church where loved ones and police from around the country are expected to gather later today. Good morning, Miguel.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning there, Randi. Regardless of how much anti-police sentiment there may be out there at the moment, I think we are going to see an overwhelming amount of support for police in the next couple of days here. For the funeral for Officer Ramos alone, NYPD preparing for 25,000 police to show up here as NYPD is on alert for new threats.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: NYPD in mourning and on heightened alert.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, (D) NEW YORK: Any statement suggesting violence towards the police need to be reported to the police so we can stop future tragedies.

MARQUEZ: Seven people arrested in connection with making threats against NYPD. Three arrested for posting threats on social media, two for making false 911 calls. Two others arrested, one for making threats against 104th precinct in Queens, the other against the 84th precinct in Brooklyn where the two assassinated officers worked. Officer Rafael Ramos' family came to the 84th precinct Wednesday. His elder son Justin calling his father a hero, said "I'm going to miss his loving presence and I can't begin to fathom what life is going to be like without him." The memorial to the two officers growing in proportion to the sorrow felt citywide.

Police have come, sometimes alone, others in groups, all with a show of respect. Their grief unmistakable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's sad. It's really hurting me. No, I'm not a police officer, but it just -- it really got to me watching this on TV with my family.

MARQUEZ: Like NYPD funerals before, an enormous display of respect and grief will blanket the Glendale section of Queens as officers from across the country remember one of their own.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D) NEW YORK: To now bow our heads in memory of Officer Ramos and Officer Liu.

MARQUEZ: Wenjian Liu's funeral is still being planned. It's the city and country grief. JetBlue Airlines is working to fly family members from China and has offered to fly two officers from any law enforcement agency along its route to the funerals. JetBlue says there will be about 600 individuals they'll bring from different departments to the funeral here. It will be an absolute wall, an ocean of blue here in Glendale. City also, businesses across the city also stepping up. Tens of thousands of dollars have been raised for both families, for the remainders of both families to help them through this grief, but nothing will get them over what they are about to go through in the next few days. This city is going to turn out for this funeral and NYPD is going to stand up and show its impressive colors. Randi?

KAYE: Yeah. An emotional couple of days for sure. Miguel Marquez, thank you very much.

Experts say one of the biggest challenges right now for law enforcement is trying to determine which threats against officers are actually credible.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: When they get word, you know, from either a citizen who's reading postings or another measure, they have to follow up. They have to look at it because you can't take it as idle. You know, the Instagram that was put out by Brinsley the other day, last week, turns out to be true. He goes and shoots and kills two police officers so they have to treat everything like it's another person intending to kill police officers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: According to reports, police have received a total of 40 threats since Ramos and Liu were gunned down. Officials say only half of those were credible. So, let's discuss this with CNN political commentator Marc Lamont Hill. He's also the host of "Huff Post Live." Marc, good morning to you.

MARC LAMONT HILL, HOST, HUFFPOST LIVE: Good morning.

KAYE: First, what's your reaction to these latest arrests?

LAMONT HILL: You know, they're frustrating and they are disappointing for a range of reasons. Obviously you don't want to see any kind of environment developing where people's lives are under threat, they're under constant threat of death or other forms of violence, perpetrated against them. I don't want to see that for police officers, I don't want to see that for every day black people in the street.

So for me there's a moral consistency that has to be there. It's also frustrating for me because I don't want the protests which have been largely peaceful, which have been largely organized, which have been largely principled and which have been largely directed toward policy change to somehow be obscured by the one or two or three people in the whole country who are doing absurd things and inexcusable things. I really want to keep the focus on black lives matter, I want to keep the focus on organized protests and struggle, not on this few people, but the police have a point on this regard. They have to investigate credible threats against them and they have to investigate all threats to see if they are credible. I would do the same thing.

KAYE: So we were talking about the protests earlier and you brought them up here once again. I mean last night we certainly saw in Oakland more protests. Officials saying just a few dozen people vandalized stores. At one point as we know now that they even lit a dumpster on fire, they damaged the Christmas display. I mean the majority of the protests we've been seeing as you said as well, they have been peaceful, but do you think when this sort of things happens that the message is lost? When even if it's just a handful of protesters acting out this way?

LAMONT HILL: I think the message can be lost to people who want the message lost. You know, the truth of the matter is people are screaming out because they're hurting. People are burning things because they're hurting. People are looting because they're hurting. They're attempting to scar public tissue. They're attempting to be heard in the world that often doesn't hear the voices of everyday vulnerable people, black, brown, white, red or yellow. And so for me, that's something we have to take seriously. It doesn't mean we excuse bad behavior. It doesn't mean that we don't develop an organized response to it, but it does mean that we take it very, very seriously. And I worry that people use the one or two looters or the one dumpster that gets set on fire any given night, as the pretext and as an excuse to avoid dealing with the real problems, which is that black people and brown people's lives are extremely vulnerable in the streets as the result of state violence.

KAYE: Is this the way to get policy change?

LAMONT HILL: I think that the spectacle of the protest is a way to get policy change. I think having your voices heard is the way to get policy change. If there had not been an uprising in Ferguson, we would have never talked about Michael Brown. If there hadn't been organized protests, stopping the highways in New York and in Oakland and in L.A., we wouldn't still be talking about Eric Garner. We can disagree with people's tactics, but again, I go back to Selma and I think about - the new film on Selma. And we see this again. Dr. King stopped people from walking across bridges, Dr. King shut down highways, Dr. King stopped buses from operating. He did it because he needed to put a national attention and the national 1spotlight on an issue that America had a willful neglect of.

KAYE: Let me read you something that a Georgetown professor told "The New York Times" about the challenges within protests like the ones that we're seeing. He said "In the anti-war movement, too, there was a lot of bad publicity, given people burning draft cards and burning flags, but the movement went on and was successful in convincing the public that we needed to get out of Vietnam. In some ways, the test of a successful movement is how you respond. You have to expect that there will be moments like this in a movement. If you don't, you're naive and you don't know what you got yourself into." What do you make of that?

LAMONT HILL: That's - I think he's absolutely right, or she, I don't know who the person is, but I do knows that this is something that we do historically. Whenever a movement is over we look back on it romantically and we pretend that everything happened smoothly and perfectly and that people made a demand and the government said "OK, we'll do it, we never thought of this before." The truth is, that demand comes and then organized response from the government comes, and then it's a tug-of-war, it's a struggle over these ideas, over these values and over these politics. It's necessary to sit in. It's necessary to burn draft cards when you're fighting for war - against the war in Vietnam. It's necessary to do things that the government might find somehow untoward. But you do these things because that's what you get. That's what you get when you have an organized struggle. You have discomfort.

And right now what we're attempting to do in a movement to declare that black lives matter is to create social discomfort. Not unrest to the point of killing people, not unrest to the point of violating basic principle, humanistic principles, but you do have to challenge the authorities of the state. Sometimes that means you violate laws that are not appropriate. That's why you sit in. That's why Dr. King integrated lunch counters. That stuff wasn't legal. Trying to walk into a public library that was segregated was illegal.

KAYE: Right. Right. Marc Lamont Hill, I appreciate you coming on this morning to talk about it. Thank you.

LAMONT HILL: My pleasure.

KAYE: So, they are saying, show me the money in the show-me state. Paying at the pump, thing of the past in Missouri right now. CNN business correspondent Alison Kosik is live here with the gas price trends not seen in five years. Alison, that's some great news.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Randi, how about this for a good Christmas present? Good timing idea, especially as so many people are traveling for the holidays. So Missouri happens to be the first state in five years to have the average gas price below $2. $1.98 per gallon to be exact. One station there is at $1.75 a gallon. To keep in mind, this is below the national average of $2.32. Why is it happening? Well, oil prices continue their plunge. You look at where they are, they're 50 percent from their highest level this year. Now you are seeing a bit of pressure on oil happen today because of some unrest in Libya, but that's not really expected to affect oil prices that much. You can expect to enjoy those lower gas prices for much longer time. But we are seeing some pressure on oil momentarily not by much, though, Randi.

KAYE: All right, Alison Kosik, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Gamers are hoping to get back online soon after hackers launched a Christmas day attack on Sony's PlayStation and Xbox networks. A group calling itself Lizard Squad is claiming responsibility for the hacks. Sony's PlayStation networks are still down. Xbox is mostly out, but some functions are limited.

China is maintaining its distance in the U.S./North Korea dispute over the movie "The Interview." As you know, the U.S. blames North Korea for hacking Sony pictures. North Korea says it had nothing to do with it. Here's what China's foreign ministry is saying. "This is a controversial movie, we hope that the relevant side can maintain calm and exercise restraint and appropriately deal with this issue."

Some were called by patriotic duty and some people came because going to the movies is just what they do on Christmas day. It's their tradition. Audiences across the country flocked to see "The Interview" yesterday, reportedly bringing in nearly a million dollars for Sony at the box office. Right now it is the top rental for both YouTube and Google play. To discuss, let me bring back in CNN senior media correspondent and host of "Reliable Sources" Brian Stelter. Good morning again to you.

So, what do you make of that? I mean I guess a lot of people were buying in?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, the box office data will come in more efficiently there this morning, but it looks like it did pretty well given that it was only playing in about 331 theaters. That means about $3,000 per theater. And that's a number a lot of movie studios like to hit when releasing a movie like this. But I think it will do even better online. You know, it has got a bigger opportunity on line on YouTube and Microsoft's Xbox and the Google play store because anybody pretty much can watch as long as they have Internet access. They can make many millions more on there, but they are not going to release today unfortunately. Sony really has no reason to. They don't have to tell us how many rentals there have been, so I don't think they will. Unless they want to brag about it later.

KAYE: I mean this is a history-making moment, right? By putting this out online when it's in theaters as well. Do you think that if this is going well that we might see more of these big movies?

STELTER: It does feel like a glimpse into the future. It does. But on the other hand, this was a desperation move by Sony, so probably not right away will we see more like this. We've seen documentaries already come out in same day in theaters and online, but not big movies starring people like Seth Rogen and James Franco. So, it is glimpse into the future. But the big movie theater chains - they don't want this to happen, because they think it will hurt their theatrical releases and they're concerned about piracy. So there's real resistance of this idea, of letting movies come out at home on the same day they are in theaters. That's why this might be a glimpse into the future, but not something we are going to see right away in the future.

KAYE: And we don't expect the big changes to take this on?

STELTER: Not at the moment, and that's because it's playing online. They really want to resist this idea of letting movies show at the same time. But the fact that there was an incident-free release yesterday is notable.

KAYE: Right.

STELTER: You know, there was that threat invoking 9/11 last week, and yet we saw people go to sellout crowds go to these theaters yesterday. There was one weird incident in New Jersey nearby us here in New York. The power went out at a pivotal moment in the movie, scared some people. But other than that, totally incident-free yesterday. A lot of people enjoyed it, too.

KAYE: A lot of beer and chicken wings and American flags. And ...

(LAUGHTER)

STELTER: It is the kind of movie that, you know, you might want to have a glass of wine or something beforehand. You know, it's a silly comedy. But I think a lot of folks enjoyed it yesterday.

KAYE: All right, Brian, nice to see you. Thank you.

STELTER: Still to come, is this the swanky base where North Korea is carrying out cyber-attacks against the U.S.? An inside look at the so-called the hacker hotel. What just about 50 bucks a night can buy?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: If you are looking for a unique holiday getaway, well, how does this sound? It is a hotel equipped for all of your needs, a workout center and sauna, a beauty parlor, even karaoke to channel your inner rock star. If it sounds like a luxury hotel, that's because it is. And it can be all yours for just $53 a night. But don't be fooled here. It's also known by some as the hacker hotel. And according to "The Daily Beast," it is where some of the most skilled cyber hackers from North Korea carry out their secret missions. The Chilbosan Hotel is located in Shenyang, China about seven hours from the capital city of Beijing. It's co-owned by China and North Korea, making it an easy place for the hackers to operate. Let's talk more about this with special correspondent for "The Daily Beast" Michael Daly, he recently wrote about this so called "hacker hotel." Fascinating article. How did you first find out about it?

MICHAEL DALY, "THE DAILY BEAST": I was, you know, when the whole question of whether North Korea was hacking Sony, I started reading and I saw that in 2004 -- their big problem is they don't have a lot of connection to the outside world. They didn't get an Internet connection with outside world until 2010 so if you want to be a hacker, you are going to have some place to hack from. KAYE: Right.

DALY: So there was a defector in 2004 said that the big place they went was this hotel in China and the big amenity for them, from their point of view, was Internet access. And I think the Chinese didn't want everybody to say well, they're running hacker headquarters out of China so they kept up this hotel so guests also get there and you can check in and you can go online, you can make your reservation. And the $53, by the way, includes a North Korean breakfast, which I think is probably much better breakfast than what most North Koreans enjoy.

KAYE: Absolutely.

DALY: Which would probably be nothing.

KAYE: And so, there's regular people there and then the hackers, actually?

DALY: Yeah.

KAYE: And you don't know who's who, really?

DALY: I would think you probably wouldn't know.

KAYE: Yeah.

DALY: Maybe the guy is wearing little badges with the hackers, I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

KAYE: A little "H" on their shirt or something like that. So, how many of these so-called hacker hotels exist? I mean is this the only one?

DALY: Well, from what I know, this is the only one that was routinely used. There was some mention of a hotel in Thailand and a few other places during this last hacker investigation, but I think this is the place. It's right by the border. They need border access and they need Internet access.

KAYE: That's what I was going to ask you. Why there? Why would North Koreans send their people there when it's about expense of the operation, or the cost ...

DALY: No, I think, first of all, there are not a lot of places North Korea can co-own a hotel.

KAYE: True.

DALY: And the other - it's right by the border. I mean what they really needed was they needed a connection to the Internet and from their point of view the danger of having a connection to the Internet is that that can lead to the truth actually reaching the people of North Korea and this way they can go to this hotel, have their Internet access without having to worry about everything filtering back into the mother country.

KAYE: Let me read you something that you wrote. Because I want you to comment on it, "The problem with connections is that they can go both ways and the North Korean regime is in a constant struggle to keep its citizens from glimpsing the splendors of the outside world. At the same time, the regime has recognized that the Internet is a realm where it can act out its aggressions at relatively little cost or risk."

DALY: All they need is one hacker to cause a lot of damage. Without, you know, worrying about anybody coming back after them because we can't really get to them because they don't have those Internet connections.

KAYE: Right. And there's new - I mean there hasn't been any proof of any connection to the Sony hack from this hacker hotel, right? Just to be clear?

DALY: No, no, there's no one saying that this hack was done from this hotel. I think that it can be said is that North Korea co-owns this hotel, it has Internet connections and one problem North Korea has in the realm of hacking is it doesn't have the connections and it doesn't want to have the connections.

KAYE: Right.

DALY: And there's one very moving testament by a recent North Korean defector who talks about her transformative moment is when she saw "Titanic."

KAYE: Is that so?

DALY: And the other thing is that North Korean defectors will tell you that one of the big hits now in North Korea among the smuggled stuff is "Desperate Housewives."

KAYE: Really?

DALY: So you have people risking their lives to see Wisteria Lane.

KAYE: But they get executed in North Korea for something like that.

DALY: No, I know they literally are risking their lives to see an episode on Wisteria Lane. But for them to see Wisteria Lane, it's such a danger for the North Korean regime because they're trying to tell everybody "You live in a paradise, everybody else is impoverished, and everybody else envies us." And the truth, all of a sudden, takes the form of Hollywood. So I think what you can say is no matter how the Sony/North Korea thing plays out, Hollywood is going to win.

KAYE: It's fascinating. It's a great read and a great article. And Michael Daly, thank you.

DALY: Thank you.

KAYE: Still to come, Putin the Grinch? The Russian president cancels holiday vacations. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAYE: Vladimir Putin as the Grinch? That's what workers in the Kremlin may be thinking. The Russian president is saying nyet (ph) to holiday vacations for members of the government. CNN's Erin McLaughlin is in Moscow.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's this joke making the rounds here in Moscow that the ruble, the currency, has dropped so much, these government ministers couldn't afford to take a holiday anyway. But jokes aside, Russian President Vladimir Putin's latest announcement really illustrates the critical state of the Russian economy. Now, traditionally Russians holiday from January 1 all the way through to January 12. It begins with the New Year's celebrations and continues through the Orthodox Christmas, which is on January 7. But yesterday President Putin in a televised statement announcing that he's cancelling holiday leave for members of his government so that they can keep working on the economic situation which, by all accounts, is pretty dire. In mid-December, the ruble dropped to a record low in part, economists say, due to Western sanctions and in part due to falling oil prices. And while the currency has managed to rebound since then a bit, inflation persists and ordinary Russians are saying that they're really struggling to make ends meet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): It's good as long as they don't cut our holidays. Let the government officials work. Seems like they are not tired of this year.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The government should haven't any holidays. They failed to perform.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Everything became more expensive in shops and they promise it will become more expensive in the New Year so everything, food and household utilities, became more expensive.

MCLAUGHLIN: The government has taken a number of steps to stem this crisis, but the fact of the matter remains that the root causes of Russia's economic woes persist. And President Putin himself acknowledged that 2014 has not been easy. Economists are saying that 2015, well, the situation could get even worse. Erin McLaughlin, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAYE: Still to come, as troops prepare to leave Afghanistan, the president says the country will no longer be a source for terror attacks. But is he speaking out too soon? We'll ask our political panel coming your way next.

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