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Missing Child Mystery Solved?; Ben Carson Under Fire; Plane Crash Investigation. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired November 05, 2015 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:05]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But I hope that the influence that I have on them, the time I spend with them has been worthwhile, because they have certainly given it back to me multifold every day of their lives.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
Question: Did ISIS or an ISIS affiliate bring down that Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board?
Well, the answer is predicated upon who you ask. The U.S. and the U.K. suspect they may have terrorism specifically here with news of specific chatter about bomb capabilities fueling their suspicions.
But, meantime, you have Egypt and Russia saying, not so fast, the British prime minister calling Russian Vladimir Putin after today declaring it's "more likely than not this plane was downed by a bomb. In fact, the German airline Lufthansa joining the Brits, joining the French, the Irish now all in suspending flights out of Sharm el-Sheikh Airport.
By the way, some are now set to resume tomorrow. But the U.S. still says this airport is known for lax security. For its part, the Egyptian government says it's premature to make declarations and the Kremlin agrees, saying any statements made outside of the official investigation are "unverified speculation."
Let's go to our justice correspondent, Evan Perez, here with more on this.
And specifically this U.S. intelligence from you and Barbara Starr getting from your sources, talk to me about this specific chatter. What does the U.S. intel, what are they saying?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, some of that division about what exactly this means is even here within counterterrorism and intelligence circles. Some people think that the chatter and some of the analysis that have been done points to the likelihood of this being a bombing.
And other people say it's not that clear. So even within U.S. circles, there is still very much a division about what this all means. So some of the chatter we're talking about is discussions among individuals, people that U.S. intelligence is aware of, was keeping an eye on, was listening to this as something that they went back after the bombing -- I'm sorry -- after the aircraft crashed and heard some of this discussion that they think, that some people believe points to the possibility that someone carried out a bombing on this aircraft.
Other people are not so sure. Some of this intelligence information is also coming from open sources, which is online forums and other places in social media where we know that terrorist groups are hiding some of their communications simply because they know that the U.S. is trying to use covert means to listen to their communication.
So all of this is a picture being put together. We know that people here are being briefed in Washington about this. And the picture that emerges, it all depends on who you talk to. Some people come out from these briefings and they say, look, this really looks like a bombing. Some people say, we just don't know enough yet. That's the picture that we have right now, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Just quickly reading some of your reporting, it sounds like before this crash, there was an uptick in chatter in Sinai, but was there anything specific about a bomb or a plane ahead of time?
(CROSSTALK)
PEREZ: There was not.
BALDWIN: Or it was just some bragging after the fact? OK.
PEREZ: A lot of it is bragging after the fact. But I will tell you this. In July, the ISIS affiliate there in the Sinai carried out a rocket attack against an Egyptian navy ship right off the coast there and it really alarmed U.S. intelligence because they did not know of that capability.
So that's what one of the things that is feeding this, is that they suddenly realize that this group has a lot more capability than had been previously known. So that has changed the way they are looking at this. And so is this possible that this group carried this out? It's quite possible, but we don't know enough yet because they have not been able to get any of the forensics there.
The Egyptians and the Russians are not sharing that information yet.
BALDWIN: We will get to the strength of this ISIS affiliate in the Sinai in a second. Evan Perez, fantastic reporting, thank you so much in Washington.
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: I have Michael Weiss with me now, CNN contributor, co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," and senior editor at The Daily Beast. Also here, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.
Michael, to you here. We talk about coming out strong statements, U.K., U.S., this is primarily Russian middle class, heart of Russia. This is who was taken down and killed in this plane. Why haven't we heard more from Vladimir Putin, do you think?
MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Right.
Well, look, he was actually silent after Saturday after the attack -- or the plane blew up in the sky. This is actually characteristic for Putin. You will remember not long after he became president of Russia in his first administration, the submarine the Kursk sank and he was quite silent for days afterward and gave this very perfunctory and sort of strange statement shortly thereafter.
[15:05:05]
Look, the Kremlin might either not know what really happened because we're not sharing whatever we have got with them. In fact, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry today said the Brits and the Americans have this intelligence, why haven't they shared it?
They might know what happened and it could very well track with what the U.K. and America is saying, but they are trying to figure out how best to present this now and also calculate, look, is this going to hurt our effort in the war that we claim is against ISIS in Syria or is it actually going to help us? Could we now double down?
(CROSSTALK)
BALDWIN: That's the follow-up. What happens in Syria?
WEISS: Well, and, remember, Putin's solidification of power, in fact, the thing that established his public profile in 1999, the Moscow apartment bombings that took place, under very mysterious circumstances -- a lot of journalists investigating them said the FSB, the Russian security forces or services, were themselves complicit in this.
Whatever the case, Putin came out very forcefully afterward and said we will find these Chechen jihadists linked to al Qaeda. If we find them in the outhouse, we will rub them out of the outhouse. He devolves into this sort of gangland or prison patois whenever he really wants to sound macho and tough on terror.
He could very well do the same now. My suspicion is, it would play well, it would play well in the Russian population. As you said, these are salt of the earth bourgeois Russian -- this is exactly the kind of victims that tend to suffer the most from Islamic terrorism in Russia.
BALDWIN: Looking at you with regard to planes, airport security, yes, this was Egypt, but will this affect all of us somehow?
RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: We won't know until we know how the thing got on the plane. BALDWIN: If it's a thing.
QUEST: If it's a thing.
And that's right. If this is just an example of Sharm el-Sheikh's weakness, a loophole, that they found a way through, then every airport has to make sure they don't have that same loophole or that same easy trapdoor.
However, if ISIS has discovered some sort of trick or way around all the airline, aircraft and airport security, that's a much more serious matter. To give you an idea of what's happening at the moment, all the planes, Monarch, EasyJet, Thomson, flight -- Thomson, they are about to start evacuating the British people from Sharm el-Sheikh, but under some extraordinarily difficult...
BALDWIN: This is a big resort town.
QUEST: Yes, but what they're doing is, you can't -- all your luggage, all your hold luggage to put be in the hold of the aircraft is going to be sent separately and you're only going to be allowed one carry-on bag on the aircraft.
BALDWIN: Wow.
QUEST: And if it's too much carry-on luggage in the aircraft, it won't just go in the hold, it will be sent with everything else. So the warning to all these passengers is do not bring too much carry-on baggage and all your hold luggage, in the words of the announcement, you will be reunited with it.
So they are taking no chances, absolutely none. But longer term, was this Sharm's problem or was this aviation's problem?
BALDWIN: What about this ISIS Sinai affiliate? If it wasn't -- we talk about possible affiliate, may not be ISIS, ISIS, if I'm making sense there. How active is this affiliate? How deep in communication would they be maybe directed by someone at ISIS H.Q.?
WEISS: Yes. This is the million-dollar question. Right?
This affiliate actually, it used to be a prior terror organization in the Sinai Peninsula beholden to al Qaeda. In fact, when members of it pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, it actually caused a rift internally. This was seen to be a going concern not just in Sinai, but throughout the entire country of Egypt.
Now, because they became an ISIS affiliate officially, they are more localized. That said, as the correspondent mentioned, in July, they attacked simultaneously 15 Egyptian security checkpoints in one day. They killed two dozen Egyptian security forces. They used Kornet anti-tank missiles, sophisticated armaments.
We heard about the attack on the naval ship. They got the general prosecutor of Egypt assassinated. This is not -- I have called them the farm team maybe too flippantly, but they have made the show. (CROSSTALK)
WEISS: They pulled this off. This is a stunning, stunning debut for them in international terrorism.
BALDWIN: Jump in.
QUEST: But you make a very valid point here, very strong point.
They may not have the full range of anti-aircraft missiles of a BUK system.
BALDWIN: Like we saw in Ukraine with Russia. Right.
QUEST: But then -- but they are using professional armaments of the highest caliber and they have lots of them.
WEISS: Right.
QUEST: This it isn't the IRA making homemade bombs in the back of somewhere. If you think about some of the fighting we have seen from is, they are using full-scale military equipment.
[15:10:04]
WEISS: Sure.
BALDWIN: They are, but when you look at our reporting from the U.S. intelligence, what was used to apparently take onto this plane was not sophisticated, was not a sophisticated device.
(CROSSTALK)
WEISS: But, look, it's even scarier, to be honest, if they have got people working in the Egyptian government or the Egyptian airport security who are essentially double agents who are working for ISIS and let these guys through.
(CROSSTALK)
WEISS: Yes.
BALDWIN: Michael Weiss and Richard Quest, thank you so much.
Coming up next here, talking politics, Ben Carson responding today to a CNN investigation into his self-described violent past, what some of Ben Carson's childhoods friends are now saying about those claims. Also, he's making headlines and raising some eyebrows about his theory about the Egyptian pyramids, why they were built. You will hear what he just told CNN next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:15:08]
BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. In politics here, when presidential candidate Ben Carson was a mere 14
years of age, he says he tried to stab his friends to death. It's a story that this pediatric neurosurgeon has shared publicly many, many times.
In his book "Gifted Hands," he details a troubled and violent young man growing up in Detroit and Dr. Carson it was his faith that quelled a "pathological temper" and set the foundation for a successful career in medicine.
But a CNN investigation released this morning found that several of Carson's classmates and neighbors were surprised by that description and the alleged friend on the other side of Carson's knife nowhere to be found.
Senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns has more on the CNN investigation. We're calling it a tale of two Ben Carsons.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ben Carson's quiet, dignified approach is a big part of his appeal, but he says his calm demeanor was carved out of a violent past.
BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As a teenager, I would go after people with rocks and bricks and baseball bats and hammers.
JOHNS: Carson wrote in his book about striking a schoolmate in the face with a combination lock, nearly punching his mother, smashing a kid's face with a rock. Carson said he also tried to kill a friend, identified as Bob, in a disagreement over the radio. He describes his temper as pathological -- a disease that made him totally irrational.
CARSON: 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.
JOHNS: It was, he says, a pivotal point in Carson's life, depicted in a TV movie.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Benny, what did you do?
JOHNS: But then an epiphany. Carson says he quelled his anger with prayer.
CARSON: I locked myself in the bathroom and started contemplating my life and realizing that I would never realize my dream of becoming a physician with a temper like that.
JOHNS: From that day forward, Carson says he was a changed man -- now on a course from poverty in Detroit to world famous neurosurgeon.
CARSON: I never had another angry outburst since that day.
JOHNS: But that early picture of violence is not recognizable to some who grew up with Carson.
MARIE CHOICE, FORMER NEIGHBOR OF CARSON: I was shocked. I was surprised. Because he was just -- you know, he was quiet and calm.
JOHNS: CNN reporters Maeve Reston and Scott Glover tracked down 10 schoolmates and neighbors. None challenged Carson's story directly. Only one said they'd heard vague rumors about one of the incidents but all said this was not the boy they knew.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was really surprised when I read he tried to stab someone. I was like, what?
JOHNS: Does it fit with the guy who you knew, I mean that kind of activity?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
JOHNS: The campaign has refused repeated requests from CNN to help find witnesses or the victim Carson mentions only by first names telling CNN it was a, quote, "witch hunt". CNN has been unable to locate witnesses or victims.
TIMOTHY MCDANIEL, FRIEND OF CARSON: I associate him with a lot of things but never stooping to the level of a common street thug, so I was a little surprised by it.
JOHNS: Timothy McDaniel says he was one of Carson's closest childhood friends. He says he raised it with Carson after the book came out.
MCDANIEL: I said, man, you hid it from us all those years. 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.
JOHNS: Joe Johns, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BALDWIN: As Joe pointed out in that piece, CNN Maeve Reston is responsible for a lot of that investigation.
Let's bring Maeve in.
And, Maeve, I know he responded today. What did Ben Carson say?
MAEVE RESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ben Carson responded to CNN when we asked about this investigation this morning, saying, why was it so hard to find these people, Jerry, who he hit over the head with a lock, and Bob, who he says that he stabbed with a camping knife?
He said that there was no reason for us to be able to find these people and how would anyone know who they are unless he told us who they were? I think we have a little of that sound to listen to.
BALDWIN: Here we go.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: I don't want to expose people without their knowledge. But, remember, when I was 14, when the knifing episode occurred, that's when I changed. That's when most of those people they talk began to know who I was. They didn't know me before that.
RESTON: Our investigation could not find these people.
CARSON: Well, why would you be able to find them? What makes you think you would be able to find them, unless I tell you who they are?
[15:20:05]
And if they come forward on their own because of your story, that's fine. But I'm not going to expose them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RESTON: So just -- it's important to point out there that what Dr. Carson said is completely inaccurate.
We didn't just talk to people who knew him when he was 14. We talked to neighbors. We talked to elementary school classmates, junior high classmates, high school classmates, people who were in (INAUDIBLE) with him. None of these people had heard about any of these incidents, except for one who said he remembered a vague rumor about the stabbing incident at the time, but had no evidence to prove it.
And we just find it really odd that the campaign will not help us find any of these people or eyewitnesses who can talk about what happened during this time. And this is a really important piece of vetting a presidential candidate. We went about this story to find these people to talk to them about Dr. Carson's temper, this moment that he had with God where he said that the temper went away from that point forward.
And that's an important thing to know for someone who is going to be in the Oval Office.
BALDWIN: So, I would say, listen, this is what happens. You're under the microscope when you're the top or near the top of any of these polls that we have been seeing.
And so from that thread and questioning pieces of his violent past to what he said in a speech, what, 20 years ago that he's recently stood by about the pyramids in Egypt and that he believes that they were built to store grain and not to inter pharaohs. And so you have folks like Donald Trump and others jumping on it taking issue with that. Here's that piece.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids in order to store grain. You know, all the archaeologists think that they were made for pharaohs' graves. But it would have to be something awfully big, when you stop and think
about it. 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)
BALDWIN: OK. So, as I pointed out, Maeve, that was 1998. But he was asked about this recently. And what's happened today?
RESTON: Right.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARSON: Some people believe in the Bible, like I do, and don't find that to be silly at all, and believe that God created the Earth and don't find that to be silly at all.
The secular progressives try to ridicule it any time it comes up, and they're welcome to do that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Sorry, Maeve, we jumped it, but the floor is yours here.
RESTON: Obviously, this is one of a number of puzzling things that Dr. Ben Carson has said.
And the voters will have to take a look at these statements and see whether or not he's someone that they relate to.
I will say that what has been most important to him in his surge is this connection with evangelical voters and the way that he talks about these Bible verses and proverbs. And they really have connected with that and that's also a huge piece of these violent incidents in his past.
It becomes a story of spiritual redemption, that God saves him from his temper. And so all of this is part of his appeal to that very core group of voters who dominate the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. What the rest of Republican voters will think, we will see about that.
BALDWIN: To be continued. Maeve Reston, great work. Thank you so much.
RESTON: Thanks.
BALDWIN: Ben Carson, by the way, will address these issues and many others tomorrow morning. He will be on "NEW DAY" here on CNN. Don't miss that live interview 7:00 a.m. Eastern here on CNN.
Coming up next, have you heard about this story? This 18-year-old suddenly discovers he has been a missing person for 13 years, a stunning revelation that started after he tried to apply to college. And, later, the first promos are out for Donald Trump's appearance on
"Saturday Night Live." And he uses the opportunity to take a shot at Ben Carson. I will be joined live by an "SNL" legend Joe Piscopo to talk about why this weekend's "SNL" so controversial coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:28:35]
BALDWIN: OK, imagine this. The story starts with an Ohio teenager just trying to apply for college.
But what unraveled ended up bringing a 13-year mystery to an end. Julian Hernandez was in the legal custody of his mother when he vanished in Alabama back in August of 2002. At the time, he was just 5 years of age.
Fast forward to this past weekend. The Jefferson County district attorney says the 18-year-old was just filling out a college application when he discovered his Social Security number did not match his name. It was then that he and a school counselor realized he was actually listed in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database.
That's when police in Alabama got a phone call.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LT. JOHNNY EVANS, VESTAVIA HILLS, ALABAMA, POLICE DEPARTMENT: I received a call from the FBI office in Cleveland asking if Julian Hernandez was still missing, that they saw where he had been missing since 2002.
We did some checking. We discovered that he was still reported missing, had not been talked to. They went and talked to him. Then they went and talked to the father. And that's when identification was made.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: A short time later, the teen's father was arrested.
Jean Casarez has been working this for us.
I mean, 13 years, you have got to be kidding.
JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And the father, Bobby Hernandez, was arrested on really aggravated identity theft in Ohio, because he allegedly falsified to get an Ohio state I.D., assuming an identity that he was not.
There is his mug shot right there. He's being held on $250,000 bail. But you're right. This all started so innocently, a young little 16- year-old trying to...
BALDWIN: Go to college. CASAREZ: ... go to college, right?
And it would have been in 2002, when he was 5 years old, that he allegedly was abducted from his mother in Alabama.
