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In case You Missed It

Investigating Cockpit Culture; Unity On Budget Deal Begins To Crack; Presidential Bonding; Deaf Community Claims Mandela Interpreter Is A Fraud; Murder Or Self-Defense?; School Calls 6-Year-Old A Sexual Harasser

Aired December 11, 2013 - 23:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Welcome to our new program. It's called "ICYMI." And our mission here is to comb through every single story CNN has been covering all day all over the world to bring you the very best moments of what we do. They happen just a few times each and every day, in powerful interviews, dramatic video. They're the reason we do what we do.

Like these pictures of a frightening mystery in Philadelphia. Police searching for clues about what happened to this screaming woman dragged down the street, apparently abducted.

Also, CNN turns to actress, Marlee Matlin, to figure out exactly what was going on at that Mandela speech with that sign language interpreter for President Obama who turns out to be a big fake.

And just trust me. You will want to be there when Piers Morgan meets the real-life Ron Burgundy. We're calling this Anchorman versus Anchorman, IN CASE YOU MISSED it. Now let's get started.

We begin tonight with the greatest fear of so many Americans, a plane crash. Accidents happen very rarely and we all like to think we can trust the pilot to fly our planes. But what if the behavior of the flight crew could put your life at risk? I'm talking about the Asiana plane crash that happened in San Francisco back in July. You remember this terrifying video.

Three people were killed. And in case you missed it, there was an NTSB hearing today in Washington investigating what really happened. I'll explain the role of the pilots reportedly played here in just a moment. But first, this is new video CNN obtained with a different angle. Watch this closely. Shows what starts out looking like a normal landing but becomes here anything but.

And according to investigators, here is one of the chief reasons it happened. One of the pilots was just too deferential, too polite. This is the Korean culture of respect, the fact that in some cases Korean pilots are hesitant to speak up to a superior when there is a problem. Even before this crash, the airline industry was all too familiar with this cultural issue.

Let me take you back. Several incidents involving Korean Air in the last few decades including air disaster in 1997 that killed 228 people. And writer Malcolm Gladwell researched this issue for his book entitled "Outliers." Listen to what he told CNN's Fareed Zakaria back in 2009.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, CNN'S "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": You found that by and large, Koreans were very bad at being pilots. Explain that.

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Yes. The overwhelming majority of crashes are the result of a breakdown in communication between the co-pilot and the pilot. Something comes up, a situation emerges that requires those two pilots to be in open and honest communication and they fail to do that.

Korea as it happens is a culture which has enormous respect for hierarchy. In fact the entire linguistic structure of the Korean language is infused with this sense of how do I treat you if you are older and superior to me? Use specific pronounal forms, goes on and on, right? That is in 99 percent of cases a beautiful and wonderful thing. In the cockpit, it's a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Malcolm Gladwell. Now, Korean Air solved their problem by retraining those pilots to be more assertive. But now listen to disturbing details we learned today about this Asiana flight. The first officer says he told the pilot that the plane was sinking too fast, said this at least four times. The pilot at the controls was in training. He could have changed the approach of the landing. But he said it was quote, "a very hard decision to make because the instructor pilot had not made the call."

In other words, he just didn't want to speak up to his superior. There was also confusion in the cockpit about the automated systems that the crew was depending on them but apparently believed they were turned on, but in actuality they were flipped off. Still to be clear, investigators have not yet issued their definitive report on the cause of that plane crash.

Turning to politics now tonight, and the good news we talked about last evening that our do nothing Congress had finally agreed on something. America now has a budget for the first time in four years. But of course you didn't really think this era of good feeling would last, did you? There are of course critics a plenty.

Despite the fact that Republican Congressman Paul Ryan here and his counterpart in the Senate, Patty Murray, labored long and hard to find enough common ground to develop a plan that set spending levels and reduces the deficit for the next two years. It also avoids a government shutdown in January or October.

But though it has critics on both sides, let's be clear. The deal has sparked its biggest battle within the Republican Party. Speaker of the House John Boehner did not hesitate to lash out against those infidels today. In fact he would not even let a reporter finish asking her question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Most major conservative groups have put out statements blasting this deal. Are you worried --

REPRESENTATIVE JOHN BOEHNER (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: You mean the group that came out and opposed it before they ever saw it?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, those groups. Are you worried --

BOEHNER: They're using our members and they're using the American people for their own goals. This is ridiculous. Listen. If you're for more deficit reduction you're for this agreement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: The White House supports the deal as much as Speaker Boehner does and is urging Congress to approve that deal. The House is expected to vote Thursday.

And now the journey that President Obama and so many others made back and forth to the Nelson Mandela memorial service in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was of course on board Air Force One. That is we've told you he had a lot of company. And tonight in case you missed it, we are getting this fascinating glimpse inside Barack and George and Hillary's excellent adventure, two presidents and a first lady just hanging out on the world's most famous airplane.

In this one we see President Obama sharing a joke with President Bush. We were talking here on ICYMI the other night about how past presidents bond in these moments on Air Force One. They've been doing it for years. It's been reported that President Obama and Bush have become good friends.

Here's another one. President Bush showing off his paintings to Hillary Clinton, you know painting has become his hobby in we'll call it retirement. His wife, Laura, has been quoted as saying it is all he does.

And this is what appears to be an intimate pre-dinner chat between the current and former most powerful men in the world around that huge table on board and finally, the president putting those final touches on the eulogy that he gave at that massive memorial service in honor of Nelson Mandela. Just fascinating stuff we seldom get to see.

And now to the mystery of that sign language interpreter for President Obama's stirring speech at the Mandela memorial. South Africa is outraged and embarrassed tonight. Twitter there continues to just be ignited with these angry messages from all over the country at the fact that the man who was signing during President Obama's speech, you see him here spotlighted, translating it for the deaf was apparently a fraud.

CNN's Jake Tapper decided to dig into what really happened by asking deaf actress, Marlee Matlin, to help interpret the signs made during that Obama speech. And Matlin brought along her own long-time interpreter to help explain what she was seeing, but first a clip from the speech just to set this up. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZOZUKO DLAMINI MANDELA, GRANDDAUGHTER OF NELSON MANDELA: You are lodged in our memory. You tower over the world like a comet leaving streaks of life for us to follow.

JAKE TAPPER, HOST, CNN'S "THE LEAD": So knowing what she is saying and watching that, can you tell that he's faking it?

MARLEE MATLIN, ACTRESS (through interpreter): You can tell. I can tell and I can tell that he is thinking to himself, no, how should I do this? Well, let's see what I just did. I'll do it again.

TAPPER: One of the other signs is that he wasn't making any facial expressions. That's not normally how it is done, right? It is important for someone.

MATLIN: That is exactly a giveaway. Sign language involves of all kinds, let me emphasize that sign language is not international. So each country has its own sign language. But in this case, each language shares something which is facial expressions as part of the grammar. To see someone standing there without any sort of movement of his body, without any sort of facial expressions that one incorporates into sign indicates that he has no understanding of the culture of language. I knew right then and there he wasn't authentic at all and it was offensive to me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Quick break here on CASE YOU MISSED IT, but when we come back a crime mystery in Philadelphia and the police don't even know who the apparent victim is, a frightening abduction ICYMI.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back to ICYMI. I'm Brooke Baldwin and this mystery tonight in Philadelphia, a frightening video of an apparent abduction uncovered by our sister network, HLN. Police in that city are pleading with the public for help in solving this. This all started with a woman who witnessed the whole thing. Alarmed she called the police for help.

They looked at surveillance tape from a building on that block, and this is what they saw, a man dragging a woman down the street, throwing her into this car and driving off. Witnesses say the woman was screaming. If you look at it again you can see a passerby -- watch this -- who sees what's happening but does absolutely nothing. Police report that they are getting some tips. We'll keep you posted.

If you have been married long enough, you might have fantasized a time or two about taking out your better half. The Jordan Graham scene in this wedding video here is on trial in Montana for actually following through. She's accused of murdering her husband all of eight days after saying I do. The big question is, was it murder or self- defense? Here is CNN's Kyung Lah with an update on the trial in case you missed it. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Cody Johnson's friends arrived for the third day of his murder trial, with their grief visible and still raw. They testify Jordan Graham was not an overwhelmed newlywed who accidently pushed her husband of eight days off a cliff, but a regretful bride who planned to kill. Eddy Clone said he saw his friend, Cody Johnson, the day he died and asked him to go golfing.

Johnson said he couldn't because Jordan said she has a surprise for me. Three witnesses testified the same thing, including Steven Rotlidge, Graham's own stepfather who said his new son-in-law also mentioned the surprise to him. The defense downplayed it and Graham later told the FBI the surprise was just a barbecue with friends.

Later that night, Johnson plunged to his death off the steep cliff at Glaciers National Park. Graham's lawyers call the death an accident and the couple was fighting on the cliff. Johnson grabbed her, she pushed and he fell to his death. Prosecutors have a different version. They say Graham wanted out of the marriage and plotted to kill her new husband.

Deputy Coroner Richard Stein testified downstream from Johnson's body he found a black cloth. Prosecutors have raised the theory that at the cliff, Graham blindfolded her husband possibly with a black cloth before pushing him in the back with two hands face-first to his death.

Defense attorneys have already began fighting how this cloth was handled by police alleging contamination of evidence. Prosecutors say Graham spun a web of lies, lying to one of the groomsmen, Cameron Fredrickson, who said in court what he told CNN this summer.

CAMERON FREDRICKSON, GROOMSMEN: She actually changed her story and stated she was at the house when Cody left, and that she saw him leave in a dark-colored car. So, between the two days, two completely different stories, and at that time, that's when I became suspicious and then actually went to the authorities.

LAH: Where she continued lying to Detective Corey Clarke.

(on camera): Have you had many people lie to you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want to talk about that.

LAH: But he did talk on the stand, testifying Graham created a fake e-mail account so she could send e-mails that would cover her tracks. Jordan Graham continued the lies to police, friends and family until an FBI interrogation where she was shown this image. It's a snapshot on surveillance camera at the entrance of Glaciers National Park. It's clear Graham is a passenger in the car sitting next to her husband, putting her at the scene of the crime.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Kyung Lah joins me now from Missoula, Montana. Kyung with every damaging piece of evidence you lay out against her, what are the chances she actually gets off the hook?

LAH: Well, remember, Brooke, we've only heard one side of the story so far in court, the prosecution's case. The defense has yet to present its side. So just based on that, yes, it sounds like she's in trouble. But the defense says there's an explanation for all this. She's a scared, 22-year-old woman who rushed into marriage. She was overwhelmed. So yes, she lied.

But there's a reason for those lies. And the other thing we should point out is that no one saw this happen. No one saw her push him off the cliff. It's very plausible that her explanation is the case here, and the jury's going to have to weigh all this. And one last thing, don't underestimate the power of a good attorney. Her attorney, Michael Donahoe, he represented the unibomber, Ted Kazinski. This is a guy who knows his stuff -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Great point. We'll watch to see how this is defended. Kyung Lah in Montana for us tonight, thank you.

Next, on IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, the 6-year-old boy suspended from school in a classic case of kiss and tell at six? What is going on here? That story when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Welcome back to IN CASE YOU MISSED IT. I'm Brooke Baldwin. A 6-year-old boy in Colorado has been suspended from school for kissing a little girl in his class. And apparently Hunter Yelton is a repeat offender. And the superintendent of Canyon City Schools said what Hunter did meet their definition of sexual harassment. I know. I know what you're thinking.

Now the boy's mother is speaking out. She's concerned about her son. She's worried school officials are tarnishing his permanent record and so is this 6-year-old offender.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUNTER YELTON, FIRST GRADER: I'm doing reading group and I leaned over and kissed her on the hand. That's what happened.

JENNIFER YELTON, MOTHER OF HUNTER: This is taking it to an extreme that doesn't need to be met with a 6-year-old. Now my son's asking questions. What is sex, mommy? It should not ever be said "sex" in a sentence with a 6-year-old.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Hunter's mother did tell CNN today the principal is going to approach the superintendent to ask him to reconsider removing the term "sexual harassment" from the boy's file. You think? And now to the video wall with of course the best videos that have come into CNN in the last 24 hours.

Let's begin tonight in Brazil. I want you to take a close look at this because you going to see heavy, heavy rains. That is all muddy, muddy water here, completely flooding parts of Rio De Janeiro. Rescues happening by boat or even jetski. No reports of casualties yet. But this is a major setback for a city that going to host the World Cup six months from now.

Next to the Ukraine where demonstrators have taken to the streets for more than a week, they want to oust their president. They see him as a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. So today police cracked down on hundreds of thousands of protesters camped out in Kiev's main square. But after hours of fierce resistance, the police retreated. The president is now offering to negotiate with them, but the people refuse.

And there was this one single picture that set the blog sphere afire. Supermodel and mom, Giselle Bunchen posted this photo on Instagram of her breastfeeding her 1-year-old baby writing this, quote, "what would I do without the beauty squad after the 15 hours flying and only 3 hours of sleep," #getting ready. Is that beautiful or obnoxious? You be the judge.

This final seconds Marvy Otay -- this shot, but it came up short. They lost 69 to 76.

Coming up next, anchorman versus anchorman. The real-life Ron Burgundy versus our own Piers Morgan, need I say more, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Now I want you to look really closely at this next story. Do you recognize this man? How about him now? This is Mort Crim, Will Ferrell recently revealed that this former local news anchor is the real legend of Ron Burgundy, the man who was the model for "Anchorman." When you hear Crim describe life in the 70s news rooms, you can see exactly where Will Ferrell got his inspiration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MORT CRIM: You have to understand that I was a typical traditional 1972 male chauvinist anchor. I liked women but I didn't think their place was sitting beside me on an anchor set.

"RON BURGUNDY": Come on, going to, it's bull crap. Don't get me wrong. I love the ladies. They rev my engine but they don't belong in the newsroom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Art imitating life for you. Tonight on CNN our own anchorman, Piers Morgan sat down with Crim and he addressed sexism in the newsroom during that era. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERS MORGAN, HOST, CNN'S "PIERS MORGAN LIVE": You did appear to be a self-confessed chauvinist there. So your denial doesn't carry much credit, does it? CRIM: As presidents and senators often say, I misspoke. I think the choice of the word "chauvinist" did not really accurately reflect what was going on. I really don't think that as I reflect back on it, I don't think the antagonism was toward the idea of a woman coming in. My daughter would be the first to tell you that I raised her to believe that a woman can do anything she wants to do.

And I think I was very much a feminist all going all the way back. So I think I used the wrong word when I said I was a typical male chauvinist. I was a typical member of the old boys club.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Well, in case you missed it, that old boys club no more. Let's see how Mort Crim matches up to Ron Burgundy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BURGUNDY: I'm Ron Burgundy. You stay classy, San Diego.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All clear.

CRIM: Stay classy, San Diego.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Not too bad. That does it for me tonight. I'm Brooke Baldwin. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for watching. Join us again Monday night on IN CASE YOU MISSED IT.