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Bomb Downed Russian Plane; Look Into Ben Carson's Past; Small Town Cop Found to Have Staged Own Murder; Living with Alzheimer's. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired November 05, 2015 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00] NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Saying that they will investigate the avenue of terrorism and on the other hand, essentially pouring cold water on the notion that - that perhaps a bomb was put on board the aircraft. However, the Kremlin has also said that it is not ruling out entirely the possibility of terrorism, but it very much, Carol, does seem to want to play down that idea right now.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it's interesting because we all know that Russia likes to control the message. So how transparent is Russia really being at this point, Nic?

ROBERTSON: I think transparent is - is not the right word. I think it's being quite cloudy. You know they seem to be working in a number of directions. However, if we try to sort of - to use the word or metaphor, part the waters, and understand what's going on here, you also have President Putin today, in a way, preparing Russians for the possibility of more terrorist attacks. He said that the Russians who are working right now in Syria and in Libya and in Yemen, the Russian nation stands fully behind them. We will protect you. And he said that the Russian forces right now in Syria, that - who are fighting, he said rebels and terrorists, that they are heroes. He says that they chose to go there but he salutes them.

He's now positioned more sophisticated surface to air missile systems in Syria he says - or the Kremlin says to prevent against a threat from hijacked aircraft. So the narrative coming from President Putin does seem in some ways to prepare the country for an increase level of terror threat. So while on the one hand not being clear at all about how this plane came down, on the other hand you have a sort of a slow narrative behind the scenes almost to prepare people for perhaps worse to come, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Nic Robertson reporting live from St. Petersburg Airport in Russia.

This just in to CNN, France is deploying the aircraft carrier, The Charles De Gaulle, to join the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS. The French government saying the consequences of the Russian passenger jet crash in Sinai played a part in its decision. Here's the statement. Quote, "the defense council examined the state of the terrorist threat targeting our country and the establishment of measures necessary to protect our citizens." Still to come in the NEWSROOM, today's soft spoken Ben Carson says he had a violent past, but what are his friends and former classmates saying about that? We'll tell you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:36:46] COSTELLO: Social media is buzzing this morning over Ben Carson's take on Egypt's pyramids. The candidate is staying by his long-held belief about that historic site, that the pyramids were for grain storage and not for tombs. You know, tombs for pharaohs like King Tut. The subject came up after video of a 1998 commencement speech Carson gave surfaced online. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My own personal theory is that Joseph build the pyramids in order to store grain. And all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big, when you stop and think about it. And I don't think it would just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain. And when you look at the way the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they would have to be that way for a reason.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: This is not the only time that Carson has raised eyebrows. His claims of a violent past on the streets of Detroit have also come into question. Here are some of the things Carson has said about his out of control youth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARSON: Another time a fellow was trying to close my locker at school. I didn't want it closed. I struck him in the forehead with my fist.

I would go after people with rocks and bricks and baseball bats and hammers.

I had a large camping knife and I tried to stab him in the abdomen. And, fortunately, under his clothing, he had on a large metal belt buckle and the knife blade struck with such force that it broke.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Now friends and classmates and neighbors who grew up with Carson tell CNN they have no memory of his violent tendencies. Some of the interviewees expressed surprise about the incidents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was shocked. I was surprised because he was just, you know, he was quiet and calm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was really surprised when I read he tried to stab someone. I was like, what? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does it fit with the guy who you knew? That - I

mean that kind of activity?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I said, man, you hid it from us all those years. And he said he was just too embarrassed to even talk about it. I was surprised at some of the things he said. But, you know, he said them honestly. And I believed everything he told me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Maeve Reston and Scott Glover are the team that dug into Dr. Carson's past.

Good morning to you both.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol.

SCOTT GLOVER, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

So, Maeve, did anyone you talked with challenge the stories directly?

RESTON: No. No one that we talked to challenged the stories directly. All of the people that we talked to were skeptical that these events ever happened. They couldn't - nine out of the ten people we talked to on the record could - did not have any recollection of them at all. One person we talked to said he may have heard a rumor perhaps at one point. But I think the larger point is that the person that Dr. Carson had described, this violent youth who then had this sudden transformation with the help of God to be someone who's calm and collected, that violent person is unrecognizable to people that knew him during his early childhood years, junior high, high school, neighbors. We are still looking for this Jerry and Bob who he's identified only by the first names, which were the kids who he said he hit over the head with a lock and the kid that he tried to stab.

[09:40:14] And the Carson campaign has not cooperated with us so far, giving us the identities of these people or what. And I think it's important to remember, Carol, that this is a really important part of Ben Carson's personal journey. It is how he has connected to evangelical voters by explaining how God intervened when he had this violent temper and, you know, saved him at that point. And he said from that point on, he never had a violent episode. But in our vetting so far, we have a lot of questions unanswered.

COSTELLO: So, Jerry, when you went to Detroit and you went to talk to Ben Carson's old classmates and friends, did it surprise you that none of these incidents came to light?

GLOVER: Frankly, yes, it was a little surprising. You know, I'm a law enforcement reporter and so I was, of course, intrigued by hearing Dr. Carson speak about, you know, acts that are potentially crimes such as assault with a deadly weapon or attempted murder. I mean he writes at length in the book and, you know, says that he intended to kill Bob when he stabbed him. And so I was interested in fleshing out some of these accounts. And, you know, the more phone calls that I made, the more doors that I knocked on, I was running into people who, you know, remember Dr. Carson but they remembered him as a studious kid who wore a pocket protector and, you know, carried a musical instrument. He was friendly, a good neighbor, a good friend, you know, and sort of the calm figure that you see today.

COSTELLO: So, Maeve, is it possible though that these incidents in Ben Carson's life were so embarrassing at the time that he didn't share them with even his closest friends?

RESTON: Well, sure. And, you know, that is what his - the person who has said he was his best friend, Timothy McDaniel (ph), who you just heard from a moment ago, said, that he approached Ben Carson after Carson wrote his book, "Gifted Hands," in 1990 and said, Ben, you hid this from us all these years. How did we not know about this? And Carson said that he was embarrassed to talk about it.

But I have a lot of questions about that explanation. I mean given the fact that we're talking about hitting other kids with bricks and bats and baseball - you know, baseball bats and rocks. The neighborhood that Scott went to in Detroit was, you know, where Carson spent a lot of his childhood years was a very close knit neighborhood. The parents disciplined other children who were not their own. Everybody knew about everything. And the classmates that we talked to also said that the reason why this is so perplexing is because this would have been around the school within, you know, half a day. So that's why we want to talk more to Dr. Carson and his campaign about these incidents.

COSTELLO: On the other hand, Scott, these stories have been out for a long time. There have been movies made about Ben Carson's live. He's written a couple of books describing these incidents and no one has come forward and said, we don't - we don't know Ben Carson as that person before.

GLOVER: Again, again, that is part of reason that it was surprising. You know, I expected to delve into this and identify a victim or some people who had witnessed this. And, you know, that's a compelling story to tell about a presidential candidate. I'm not a political reporter, but it strikes me as unusual that you've got a candidate with this kind of violence in their background.

But just to echo what Maeve said, you know, the people who knew Dr. Carson and who remembered him in this different way, in this friendly manner, though they expressed skepticism, you know, nobody called him a liar. They just said they were very surprised to hear these things. And I was surprised to not be able to kind of get somewhere in terms of finding one of the victim.

COSTELLO: Interesting. Scott Glover, Maeve Reston, thanks so much.

RESTON: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, police say an officer in Illinois, who was once hailed a hero, actually betrayed an entire town. Now some who say they were duped are fighting back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:48:38] COSTELLO: Shocking revelations today of alleged criminal activity by a small town police officer who many regarded as a hero. Police now say the shooting death of officer Joe Gliniewicz two months ago in the Illinois community of Fox Lake was, quote, "a carefully staged suicide" to cover up alleged embezzlement and money laundering. The task force commander said a big break in the case was the recovery of incriminating text messages from Gliniewicz's own phone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE FILENKO, COMMANDER, LAKE COUNTY MAJOR CRIME TASK FORCE: We obtained information from his personal telephone that was submitted to the FBI lab in Quantico approximately two weeks ago. Now there were 6,500 pages of text messages that were deleted we believe shortly before the staged incident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Based on those text and bank statements, investigators have now concluded the officer had been stealing money from a police mentoring program for years. One text from last June read, quote, "Start dumping money into that account or you will be visiting me in jail. The 1600 and the 777 all came from there."

Obviously this message was sent to someone but police have not told us who that person is.

Deborah Feyerik has been investigating this. Do they know and they're just not saying?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they do know and they are not saying for a very deliberate reason, which is they want to make sure that they execute this investigation as thoroughly as possible.

[09:50:04] It's very interesting even listening to them speak yesterday in terms of how much they did to make sure that they crossed all the "t"s, dotted their "i"s, because so much attention was paid to the search for his killers. And now it turns out that this guy was nothing more than a dirty cop who was stealing money from a kids' program, which was meant to inculcate the values of policing in these young individuals.

Now there's no question that he probably had a good impact on these kids. They came out and spoke very glowingly after he died about what an impact that he had had on him. But it now it appears that Gliniewicz's wife was an adviser on this Young Explorers program. So the family did issue a statement after finding out, or after the world found out that this guy was just a dirty cop saying, "Yesterday was a day of deep sorrow. The family, the Gliniewicz family, is cooperating with the task force." But they're not going to have any comment at this time. And it really appears through these texts, and you see all the boys there, it really appears through these texss that Gliniewicz was having a very problem with a new female administrator, a village administrator, who was going through accounts, launching a big, massive internal audit. And he knew that time was running down, that if he did not move this explorers program outside the police department, that she may have access to all the accounts and he would be discovered.

He texted, quote, "The chief won't sign off to move it to the American Legion and if she gets a hold of the old checking account, I'm pretty well done." It's a little more saucy --

COSTELLO: Colorful.

FEYERICK: Right. So he knew that things were unraveling. He had been under investigation for about six months and he had been stealing from this program for seven years, requisitioning surplus items, taking the money, and basically using it for his own purposes.

COSTELLO: Unbelievable. Deborah Feyerick, I'm sure you'll continue to dig. Thank you so much.

Coming up in our next hour, the Vatican under fire. The release of two bombshell books rock the church.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:56:39] COSTELLO: According to the Alzheimer's Association, someone in the United States is diagnosed with the disease every 67 seconds; that's about once every minute. It's the leading cause of death in the United States and there's no prevention or cure.

CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta has spent the past three years observing how the disease has slowly consumed one patient, who says it feels like cotton stuffed inside his head.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Over the last three years I've been following this man and his family, who frankly refused to let Alzheimer's define who he is and also what he can accomplish. And it's been this extraordinary journey and I'm thrilled now to share it with you.

SANDY HALPERIN, DIAGNOSED WITH EARLY ONSET ALZHEIMER'S: Say hi, Mommy.

All right, I'm holding you. Do it.

I held her and she clutched onto me. Don't let go of me, Daddy. Just don't let go.

I just lost my train of thought there. But --

GUPTA (voice-over): Five years ago, at age 60, Sandy Halperin, a former dentist and Harvard assistant professor, father of two, grandfather of three, was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. This is his story.

For nearly three years now, Sandy has literally welcomed us into his life and his brain with open arms.

(on camera): How are you?

HALPERIN: Oh, what a treat.

GUPTA (voice-over): He's given us a rare glimpse into the actual experience of losing your memory.

(on camera): How are you? I mean, are you suffering?

HALPERIN: Yes.

GUPTA: Are you suffering?

HALPERIN: I'm suffering a lot. Like I often feel like in the front of my head that there's cotton stuffed in there. Like an uncomfortable feeling in the front of my head.

GUPTA: Does it hurt?

HALPERIN: No. Just like a pressure feeling. Like this whirling sometimes confusion with that sensation in the brain.

This is my operating center.

GUPTA (voice-over): Yet each time we visit Sandy and his wife Gail, the toll the disease is taking is becoming painfully clear.

HALPERIN: And now as I -- I forget what I'm saying in the middle of what I'm saying. It's so --Now -- I'm sorry. I just lost my train of thought.

What's in my bucket?

GUPTA: Sandy has created a motivational bucket list filled with things he'd like to accomplish while he still can. Most focus on family. But Sandy's also found what truly energizes his brain is his volunteer work for Alzheimer's.

GAIL HALERPIN, SANDY'S WIFE: That got him up and going. And with purpose. It's given him a life.

HALPERIN: I'm broken. I'm not missing a limb, but I've got a defect. But it doesn't mean I can't live with life with that defect.

Off we go.

LAUREN HALPERIN, SANDY'S DAUGHTER: It was so powerful to me. You know, it's like the fact that he has that attitude. That he's like you may be in me but you're not going to take me down. I got this. I'm in control of this. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kiss my foot!

HALPERIN: Yes, I'll kiss your foot.

LAUREN HALPERIN: I'm so grateful for that.

GUPTA (on camera): And that is just the beginning. Next, we're going to show you how Sandy handles everything for caring for his wife during her cancer treatments to preserving his own memories and also planning for the future. Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Incredible. Be sure to watch the CNN film "I'LL BE ME" about singer Glen Campbell's farewell tour after his Alzheimer's diagnosis.

[10:00:04] It re-airs this Saturday from 8 to 10pm Eastern and again from 10 to midnight.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.