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New Day

U.K. Flights Boarding; Obama on Russian Crash; New CNN Poll; Carson Defends Stories. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 06, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: On this flights. We are on every angle of this story. We want to get straight to Erin McLaughlin live at the airport in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt.

Erin, what's going on?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, there's outrage and confusion here at Sharm el Sheikh International Airport. Very angry British tourists arriving here thinking they're going to get on flights to go home and only to be turned away. They confronted the British ambassador inside the airport, accusing the Egyptian government and the British government of some sort of tit for tat exchange that they say they think they're caught in the middle of. The British ambassador, though, dispelling those rumors, saying that flights have been delayed due to British authorities demands for a security package that they say has taken some time to get implemented in this airport, saying that flights have not been canceled, simply delayed.

This after we heard from Easy Jet. Easy Jet putting out a statement this morning saying that Egyptian authorities had suspended all flights. The ambassador saying that that's simply not true. Easy Jet had 10 planned flights out of the airport today. They say that those flights no longer operating.

BERMAN: No checked luggage, Erin, which has got to be an credible inconvenience for the tourists who arrive in Sharm el Sheikh with God knows what kind of luggage. But it indicates there's some concern, at least by the British and these airlines and these countries flying in and out of there, that perhaps something was placed in the baggage, the luggage container, for that Russian jet.

MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, that is the concern. British authorities say that they are very concerned about the cargo area, the luggage area of the aircraft. What part of the security process they're specifically concerned about is unclear. Whether they're concerned about someone having access to the cargo holds of planes here or the baggage screening process itself. But what we do know is that they are asking passengers to leave any luggage that would be too big to carry on the plane behind. They say that their luggage will be returned to them on a separate flight at an unknown date.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Erin McLaughlin for us in Sharm el Sheikh. Thanks so much.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, President Obama now on record saying there's a possibility a bomb was indeed on board the doomed Russian passenger jet. He's vowing U.S. investigators and intelligence officials will closely monitor those developments. CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski live with the very latest.

Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Michaela, you know this is interesting because we've heard from the British prime minister saying that it is more likely than not that a bomb brought this plane down. We've heard from our own secretary of defense saying that is consistent with U.S. intelligence. But the White House really hasn't wanted to go that far. They've essentially said, well, there's no evidence to rule that out. But now the president himself, in a radio interview, is directly addressing that possibility. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think there is a possibility that there was a bomb on board. And we're taking that very seriously. You know, we know that the procedures we have here in the United States are different than some of the procedures that existed for outbound and inbound flights there. But it is certainly possible that there was a bomb on board.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: So what is the U.S. doing about it? Well, the White House says it hasn't been invited to join the investigation by Egypt, but it is using all available resources to try to figure out what happened because of the obvious implications for American safety. And right now officials around the world are looking at particular airports to see if security does need to improve when flights are going to be heading to the U.S.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Michelle, thanks so much.

Want to bring in CNN contributor Michael Weiss. He's the co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," and Phil Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official.

And if we can, Phil, I want to play the sounded from President Obama last night saying it could have been a bomb.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: Because this is the type of thing that I don't know that I've ever heard from a president before. So let's listen.

MUDD: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: I think there is a possibility that there was a bomb on board. And we're taking that very seriously. We're going to spend a lot of time just making sure that our own investigators and our own intelligence community figures out exactly what's going on before we make any definitive pronouncements.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now, he's saying no definitive pronouncement.

MUDD: Yes.

BERMAN: He's saying possibly. But, nevertheless, you have the president of the United States musing about the possibility of a bomb on an aircraft. It's hard for me to imagine he would be doing so unless he had pretty good reason to wonder.

MUDD: Pretty good reason, but not perfect reason. Let's be clear. Intelligence is not evidence. For example, in this case, you might get a circumstance where a couple of ISIS guys in the Sinai are talking and one of them says, hey, didn't you see what we just did? Isn't that remarkable? To my mind that's a long way from saying, ISIS is responsible for this event. I've seen circumstances, for example, where senior terrorists will tell junior guys, did you see what we just did, just to assure them that the organization is still active.

[06:05:12] BERMAN: But you've been working investigations like this before.

MUDD: Yes.

BERMAN: When - if you were working this investigation as part of the CIA or FBI and the president said, you know, it might have been a bomb, would you feel, hey, the president's putting his finger on the scale right there?

MUDD: Yes, I - this is where the intel guys get nervous. Let me give you one example. You put the president of the United States out there in 2002, 2003 to say, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. It turns out, based on intelligence, that wasn't true. The intelligence guys, once burned, twice shy, are looking at this saying, we want to be very cautious before, for example, we figure out whether the tapes from the plane show anything. We want to be very cautious about taking vague intelligence information and suggesting that that's equivalent to evidence.

BERMAN: Now, Michael, you know the region right now and the Egyptians are saying, look, not so fast. We want the investigation to play out. Now, I'm not saying that they're not admitting something that's happening here. I'm not saying that there is the evidence necessarily that it was some kind of terrorist bomb here. But why wouldn't the Egyptian officials want it to be an ISIS bomb? Is there a reason they would hesitate to say it is so?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Oh, sure. I mean their whole economy revolves around tourism. So, you know, imagine if you will, that, you know, the Sisi government and all of a sudden ISIS is able to take down a commercial airliner in one of the main tourist attractions of Egypt, the peninsula. That would essentially bring all tourism to a halt. I mean they've been fighting this insurgency for a long time. Look at what (INAUDIBLE) Sinai did just last July. They managing to strike 15 Egyptian checkpoints, security checkpoints simultaneously. So, you know, we tend to look at these so-called affiliates of ISIS, the one in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, as kind of the farm teams. But, actually, this one is quite good at giving the government a run for its money. They assassinated the general prosecutor of Egypt. And they - they're mostly confined. This is the thing. When they pledged allegiance to ISIS, it was a prior terror organization that had been pulled into al Qaeda. They broke away, pledged allegiance to ISIS. The actually localized their actively. They became, instead of a national franchise, a more regional one, you know, sort of high - focused in the peninsula itself. So they have fairly good operational capability. The Israelis are, you know, absolutely all over this as well.

BERMAN: Well, you brought up the Israelis.

WEISS: Yes.

BERMAN: So a lot of people have been wondering about this. Phil, I'll ask you.

MUDD: Yes.

BERMAN: I mean you've worked with Israeli intelligence before. People suggest they must know what's going on. You would think Israel has a very good sense of exactly what's going on in Sinai right now.

MUDD: I would say a good sense but not perfect. In terror organizations, you can have an organization, in this case, for example, that's fighting the Egyptian government. The sliver of that organization that is focused on planning to take down an aircraft is typically very small. So you can't think of about, why didn't you penetrate this organization? The question is much more narrow. It is, did you know the three, four, five, six people who were involved in the vision and execution of a terror strike.

BERMAN: That's a fair point.

Again, Michael, you talked about ISIS in this region, this ISIS affiliate that's been operating in Sinai for some time. Two things, one, do they have the capability, have they shown it before to put a bomb on a plane that could explode at altitude? And, two, how hard would it be for them to infiltrate this airport? There is the suggestion that it was an some kind of inside job.

WEISS: Well, taking number two first. That would be a stunning debut for them, if they've managed to either bribe some corrupt government official or even more alarmingly if somebody on the inside of the Egyptian government with security services was just ideological loyal or sympathetic to ISIS. This has happened before. You know, when Chechen jihadis take down Russian airliners, the so-called black widow phenomenon of female suicide bombers, what they tend to do is just bribe their way through the Russian border guard. You know, some corrupt, you know, custom agent just takes $200 and lets a woman with sintex (ph) or hexogen (ph) vests on board a plane and then all of a sudden they take out the plane.

But what's important to note about that phenomenon is that you don't need the kind of explosive device that can circumvent security protocols. You don't to be -

BERMAN: Right. (INAUDIBLE) crack in a door. You could put anything in a plane.

WEISS: Right, you don't need to be sophisticated or clever. You could have a pressure cooker bomb or something very rudimentary that you can make in your own, you know, backyard. And, remember, al Qaeda, their encouragement of the lone wolf, the most famous article that their magazine "Inspire" put out was how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.

BERMAN: Right.

WEISS: So you don't need operational training for this kind of thing.

BERMAN: Phil, last question here. What's the next thing you think we're going to learn here?

MUDD: We've got to learn not only what happened at the site, that's the National Transportation Safety Board, for example. I have - I would - if I were looking at this, I'd say we have to learn names. Who was the visionary who decided the organization had to do this? Who was the operator who planned the operation? Who built the bomb and what was the network inside the airport that got this done?

WEISS: Definitely.

MUDD: This is a people business. Who did it?

BERMAN: We've got to find out more about this chatter that we've been hearing so much about.

MUDD: Yes. Yes.

BERMAN: And exactly who's behind it.

Phil Mudd, Michael Weiss, thank you so much.

MUDD: Thank you.

WEISS: Thank you.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John.

Now to some breaking political news. A new CNN/ORC poll released just minutes ago shows Donald Trump and Ben Carson running neck and neck in Iowa. Trump is at 25 percent, Carson at 23 percent. Meanwhile, the stage is set for next week's Republican debate with some notable changes in the lineup.

[06:10:11] CNN's Sara Murray is live in our Washington bureau. What's been changed, Sara?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, there are going to be some changes when it comes to this Fox News debate, but first I want to take another quick look at that poll. It is clear that there are really two tiers of candidates emerging here in Iowa but also nationwide. If you look at our Iowa poll, you see Trump and Carson right there almost tied, 25 percent, 23 percent. A big jump for Carson since August. But you also see Rubio and Cruz there in the teens and then it's just everybody else. So a big division there.

And when we look ahead to this Fox Business debate, it's going to be a slightly smaller stage. There are going to be eight candidates. Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee are missing the cut for the big kid's table. They're going to be in the so-called undercard debate. What's also amazing, though, is Lindsey Graham isn't going to be on the debate stage at all. Neither is George Pataki. Neither of them are even qualifying for the under debate - undercard debate that's going to be a little less quippy.

If you look back at those Iowa polls, you start to get a better sense of where Trump is getting his support when you dive in on some of the issue questions. If you look at how Trump does on the economy, it's overwhelming the number of Republicans who think that he is the one who's best - best able to handle that. Forty-nine percent of Republicans in Iowa said he would be best on the economy. Completely blowing away the rest of the field.

Now, if you dig into Carson's support, you want to take a look at how he's doing on the social issues. Twenty-seven percent of Republicans in Iowa say Carson would be best on social issues. Everyone else who's even close to him is trailing by more than ten points. There you see Trump, Cruz, Rubio, all in the teens. And you sort of see a similar sort of phenomenon playing out when you look at values, too. When you look at whose values are closest to yours, Carson is the one who leads the pack with 25 percent compared to 20 percent for Trump. That's really what I've heard when I've been talking to voters, too. They like Carson, they like Trump, see them both as outsiders, but they relate to Carson more. They think he's closer aligned with their values.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Sara, thanks so much for all of that.

We do have a programing note to tell everyone about. At 7:00 a.m., GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson will be with us live, right here on NEW DAY. We have so many questions for him. A lot of issues to talk about. So stay tuned for that.

PEREIRA: Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is dominating the Democratic race in Iowa. A new CNN/ORC poll out this morning has her leading Bernie Sanders by 18 points among likely Democratic caucus goers. That's changing the tone of what has mostly been a civilized campaign. Let's bring in Jeff Zeleny, our senior Washington correspondent.

The tone is a changing, is it?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

It is changing, at least for now. I mean Hillary Clinton is holding a comfortable lead in Iowa. Our poll, as you said, shows she now has an 18-point lead over Bernie Sanders in this state that, of course, launches that 2016 campaign, just three months from now. Both she and Sanders have climbed since August after Joe Biden decided not to run and the Democratic field narrowed to three candidates. But if you look behind these numbers, Clinton has a wide gender gap. She has a strong advantage among women, twice as much as Sanders. But her edge among men is only four points. There's also an age gap between the two Democratic rivals. Sanders is stronger among voters under the age of 50, while Clinton holds an edge even over the age of - over 50, those voters, of course, who are so reliable in going to the polls.

But Senator Sanders acknowledged an uphill climb yesterday in New Hampshire. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you look at a number of the polls that come out, and admittedly polls this early on, you know, will have their ups and their downs. When you look at Bernie Sanders against somebody like Donald Trump or against other Republican candidates, more often than not, not always, but more often than not I do better than Secretary Clinton does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So the race is on between Sanders and Clinton, but increasingly she's sitting back and watching this wild Republican race with interest. Increasingly, she's confident in her own primary fight.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jeff, thanks so much for all of that.

Now to this story, the failed White House plan to train moderate Syrian rebels in the fight against ISIS. It costs U.S. taxpayers, we now know, $384 million. This is according to "USA Today." That equals about $2 million per trainee. The program yielded fewer than 200 fighters and has since been suspended. When it was implemented, the Pentagon promised to graduate 3,000 trained and equipped Syrian fighters this year.

BERMAN: Chicago police believe that a murdered nine-year-old boy was targeted by gangs. Authorities confirm Tyshawn Lee's father did have gang ties. The child was shot repeatedly in the back and the face. His body found in the alley where he was lured into apparently. One suspect has been brought in for questioning. A funeral for Lee is scheduled for Tuesday. [06:15:01] PEREIRA: Dr. Ben Carson, he's now standing by the stories

that he told about his violent past, calling CNN - a CNN investigation into his claims a smear campaign. We're going to take a closer look at all this controversy when NEW DAY continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: A new CNN/ORC poll shows that Donald Trump and Ben Carson, they're neck and neck in Iowa. Trump's a little bit ahead at 25 percent, Carson at 23 percent. This as Carson really goes on the attack against CNN and a CNN investigation that called into question some claims that he made, that he has made repeatedly and for many, many years about his violent past. CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston was part of the reporting team that investigated Carson's background. She joins us now, along with political reporter Sara Murray.

And, Maeve, I suppose let's just start with yesterday, because after your report, Ben Carson came out with a whole bunch of new information that we had never heard before.

[06:20:00] MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes. I mean one of the - the things that's been really puzzling and trying to retrace this aspect of his past is that he has given over the years a vague and shifting accounts of a number of violent incidents, including trying to stab a friend, hitting another friend over the head with a lock, hitting people with rocks and bricks and baseball bats. Yesterday, apparently not having read our story, which everyone can look at, at cnn.com, he claimed that we had only spoken to people who knew him when he was 14, right around the time that he went through this religious transformation that he says that cured him of ever having any angry outbursts again. We talked to people from his past from elementary school years, junior high school years, high school years, as well as people who lived in the neighborhood with him. None of them could recall any of these kind of violent incidents. And, in fact, said that the person that he's described is unrecognizable.

When we started this some time ago, we went to the campaign, asked them to help connect us with people who knew Dr. Carson during those times, as well as eyewitnesses to these attacks and the victims themselves. The campaign refused to cooperate. Yesterday, for the first time, Dr. Carson said that the names of two of the boys who were attacked, Bob and Jerry, who he refers to in his 1990 book, that he had used fictitious names. There's no indication in his book to alert the reader that those are fictitious names. And there's a number of details that have changed.

Just in one instance, on the stabbing, at various - in various books and at various times he has said that this boy, Bob, in the stabbing incident, was at one point a friend, at another point a classmate, now he's saying is a close relative. So we'll have those questions to ask Dr. Carson later this morning when he's on with us.

CAMEROTA: So, Maeve, as you know, Dr. Carson has called this a CNN smear campaign. He doesn't see the merit in going back and trying to sort of rehash these decades old stories. He was on Fox last night and he went farther. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BEN CARSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is simply an attempt to smear and to deflect the argument to something else. The person that I tried to stab, you know, I talked to today, said would they want to be revealed? They were not anxious to be revealed. And it was a close relative of mine.

This is something that I've decided to do. None of those people decided that they wanted to do this. And the media is ruthless. So, you know, I would say to the people of America, do you think I'm a pathological liar like CNN does?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So, Maeve, what's your response to that? And what's your response to why you thought it was important to go back and try to find some of these people?

RESTON: Well, first of all, it's ridiculous to say that CNN has called Dr. Carson a pathological liar. We, in our story, made it clear that while many of these people had no recollection of these violent incidents, they said at the same time that, you know, they - some of them said that they still believed him. Others were skeptical that these things ever happened.

But this is part of the vetting process of, you know, a presidential candidate. This isn't little league. This is like the big leagues. You need to look at a person's temperament, whether they're able to handle the rigors and the stresses of the Oval Office and looking into incidents that could have amounted to attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon is certainly part of the vetting that I think that the Americans should expect that we would do of any presidential candidate.

BERMAN: Id' be malpractice not to. I mean we go back and we vet all candidates. We go back and we try to vet candidates who have key relationships over their lives. And this is a key part of the Ben Carson narrative.

RESTON: That's right.

BERMAN: It's in his book "Gifted Hands" in 1990. There's a movie about it and he reiterated it in a book in 2012 "One Nation." And as you point out, Maeve, in the book in 2012, he said the person he tried to stabs with a classmate. And today, for the very first time, as far as we know, he told Fox News that it was a close relative. That is the first time we heard that. Maybe - maybe it's both. Maybe it's a close relative and a classmate. But, again, these are the things we're learning only for the first time right now.

Sara Murray, Donald Trump not one to miss an opportunity to talk about anything about his opponents. He put something out on Twitter last night. He tweeted, "the Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse, trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend." So Ben Carson, you know, not letting this slip - I mean Donald Trump not letting this slip by, Sara.

MURRAY: Yes, it is kind of amazing that we have a presidential candidate who's trying to convince America that he was violent in his past and that's a selling point. But the truth is, that has been a - sort of a corner stone of Ben Carson's biography and it's the kind of thing that's helped him in a place like Iowa where white evangelicals love a redemption story. They love a story of how finding Jesus has made someone a better person. And I think that that's what we've seen from Carson. And it's - it is, you know, Maeve said it's puzzling that he would tell these stories and not be willing to offer any evidence or anyone who was around these events. I realize some of these people might not want to come forward. But because there were multiple instances, you would think the campaign, that the candidate, would realize that this is part of the vetting process and that if you are going to use this part of your biography as a selling point, that you should put up some kind of proof or someone who can verify the things you're saying. That's part of running for president.

[06:25:40] RESTON: And, John, very - very briefly.

CAMEROTA: Yes, go ahead, Maeve.

RESTON: I just want to also point out that the other incidents that he's talked about, you know, hitting people with rocks, bricks, baseball bats, Carson, for his early childhood years, and where he lived from eighth grade through high school, lived in a very close- knit neighborhood. We went out and talked to people in that neighborhood. They talked about how the parents would discipline other children in the neighborhood. Everyone knew what was going on. So the idea that it's so hard to find anyone who can recall these incidents is very puzzling.

CAMEROTA: Maeve, you know, Dr. Carson, one of the objections to our reporting, he said, you know, they only talked to nine people. Those people didn't know me well. They didn't - they weren't there. So how could they ever possibly have known about these violent incidents? Are you confident that you followed every thread and that you talked to as many people as possible to get a full picture?

RESTON: Well, we're continuing to talk to more people. You know, we called dozens of people, dozens of classmates that we talked to ten of them on the record. But, you know, there - we talked to many people who knew him during this period of his life, again, as I said, from early childhood all the way through high school. We didn't leave any, you know, periods uncovered, you know, according to the timeline of violence that he's talked about. And so, you know, it is possible that no one knew about these incidents, they were all behind closed doors. But I think that, you know, that's something that bears further investigation. And we're still looking for the victim of the attempted stabbing. We've renewed our request to the campaign to get us in touch with that person and the person in the lock incident. And we would love to talk to them and hear their recollections of those stories.

BERMAN: Ben Carson says outright he talked to the stabbing person yesterday. Doesn't want to come forward. Be curious to see what he says about that in a little bit. Maeve Reston, Sara Murray, thank you so much.

MURRAY: Thank you.

BERMAN: At 7:00 a.m., we're going to be talking with Ben Carson about all this, about these new questions. That will be live here on NEW DAY.

PEREIRA: Meanwhile, another stunning twist in the suicide of an Illinois police officer. Police say Lieutenant Joe Gliniewicz tried to hire a hitman. We'll have details on that plot ahead on NEW DAY.

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