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CDC: 10 People at "High Risk" of Ebola; ISIS Threatens to Kill American Hostage; Hong Kong Protesters Report Beatings; Cameron: U.K. Allies Will Go After ISIS; Secret Service: What Went Wrong?; Hong Kong Protesters Connect with FireChat

Aired October 04, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: That was sweet.

Good morning. I'm Christi Paul.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Seven o'clock here on the East Coast.

PAUL: Yes, federal officials -- you know everybody is talking about, 10 of the 50 or so who came into contact with the Dallas Ebola patient, are at high risk of contracting that disease. This morning, Thomas Eric Duncan is still in isolation in serious condition, we know.

BLACKWELL: And his partner and three of her family members are among those at high risk. They had been quarantined in their apartment for the past week. They've since been moved to another location and hazmat crews, they're giving the apartment a good cleaning. We understand the process here could take days.

PAUL: But here's the thing. Duncan's fight against Ebola isn't his only worry. The Dallas County district attorney's office is now, quote, "looking into whether he knowingly and intentionally exposed the public to a deadly virus", unquote.

So, basically, what that means is, Duncan could possibly face criminal charges.

BLACKWELL: Of course, we know that Duncan traveled from Liberia to the U.S. last month and has already been accused of lying on a pre- flight questionnaire about whether he had contact with any Ebola patients while he was abroad.

PAUL: This morning, we're following the story from all angles.

CNN's Erin McPike is at the White House. On the ground in Dallas, CNN national reporter Nick Valencia.

BLACKWELL: Let's get to Nick first. He is joining us from Dallas.

Nick, give us an idea of what you're learning about Thomas Duncan as he came into this country?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Good morning, Victor.

We're being told by the clutch of the family that Thomas Duncan traveled here to marry his girlfriend. We know that they had a child together some years ago, now 19 years old and in college. And somewhere in that period, they had a falling out. They had recently reconciled and in August, she took a trip to Liberia and he says, according to the church, he was planning on coming here to Dallas to marry his girlfriend -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: And the apartment, we understand that's being cleaned. The people who lived there, they've been moved. Thanks to some faith- based organization. Are the people in this community, are they any calmer this morning?

VALENCIA: Well, we know that there is some concern, certainly curiosity. When we were out there yesterday during the first phase of the cleaning of the apartment, there was a lot of people from the neighborhood, certainly a lot of people from that complex looking on. No one there had seen anything like it before. It was very strange scenario for those that were watching.

But yes, there are some that are concerned. There's certainly those that are concerned outside of the community. City officials yesterday at a press conference mentioned at least one report of somebody who lived in that apartment complex being turned away from their job because of concerns they may have contracted something.

Again, though, Dallas county health officials stressing that there is only one person here, Thomas Duncan, who has shown Ebola symptoms, and while they're monitoring at least 50 others, 10 who had direct contact and are at higher risk, there's no one else that has shown Ebola-like symptoms. We know that Thomas Duncan is still in the hospital today, in isolation, in serious condition. We've yet to receive an update from Presbyterian Hospital here in Texas, but we do expect to receive that a little later today, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Nick, yesterday we heard from the secretary of health and human services, Secretary Burwell also from lieutenant governor there in Texas, that this is a county issue. The county is taking the lead.

Are Dallas officials taking responsibility for the obvious missteps thus far?

VALENCIA: Certainly. And if you look at the "Dallas Morning News", that's front page news here that they acknowledge the missteps but they're saying in the process, there has been a lot of things done right. And this shouldn't create any fear or panic that this could lead perhaps to an outbreak or epidemic. There was some concerns and questions among the community yesterday, I spoke to one person who said that that was his biggest concern, that they just don't know.

But, yes, health officials have acknowledged they could have done better early on. They are saying that this is a very strong health infrastructure here and that they have all the tools and resources to help improve the condition of Duncan -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Nick Valencia there in Dallas for us -- thank you, Nick.

PAUL: Thanks, guys.

You know, I know that a lot of you are waking up this morning and you're concerned about a possible of Ebola outbreak with all of this news. In D.C., we know hospital officials are waiting on test results to see if a patient who recently traveled to Nigeria contracted the virus.

But despite concerns, White House officials say the chances of an outbreak in the U.S. are extremely low. How so?

CNN's Erin McPike takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With alarm growing over a potential Ebola outbreak in the U.S., President Obama sent out top officials to reassure the country.

LISA MONACO, WHITE HOUSE COUNTERTERRORISM ADVISOR: The United States is prepared to deal with this crisis, both at home and in the region.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH: Our health care infrastructure in the United States is well-equipped to stop Ebola in its tracks.

MCPIKE: The White House trying to show it has the situation under control after heated criticism that local health officials in Dallas first sent Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, visiting from Liberia, back home, before his family brought him back. That gap between care causing concern the disease could spread.

FAUCI: There were things that did not go the way they should have in Dallas, but there are a lot of things that went right.

MCPIKE: Dr. Fauci says the CDC is tracing any contacts Duncan had, essential to preventing an outbreak. But as of now, the Obama administration is not considering increased screening for passengers coming into the U.S. or banning travelers from hard-hit nations in West Africa, relying on screening by those countries.

MONACO: The most effective way to go about controlling this is to prevent those individuals from getting on a plane in the first place.

MCPIKE: Even as they sought to calm Americans' concerns, officials acknowledge they need to do more.

FAUCI: We're having the press conference because we need to get information out because there is a lot of fear.

SYLVIA BURWELL, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICE SECRETARY: We cannot over- communicate about this issue.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: All right. Let's bring in Erin McPike, who's live for us from the White House this morning.

Good morning, Erin.

MCPIKE: Good morning, Christi.

Well, what we know the president has been doing himself is he's been making the case that the U.S. is the country leading the efforts to contain and control Ebola in West Africa. Yesterday, he spoke with general David Rodriguez, who is the commander of U.S. Africa Command to get a sense of what the U.S. is doing on the ground in West Africa, and Rodriguez made the case that they are speeding up their efforts -- Christi.

PAUL: All righty. Hey, Erin McPike, we appreciate it this morning. Thank you.

MCPIKE: Of course.

BLACKWELL: Now to the brutal beheading of British aid worker Alan Henning in Syria. He's the fourth Western captive to be killed by ISIS since August.

Now, the terror group is now threatening to kill American aid worker and Iraq war veteran, Peter Kassig.

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron are vowing to go after ISIS and destroy it.

CNN senior international correspondent Arwa Damon joins us now from the Turkish/Syrian border.

Arwa, we've said this morning that you met Kassig in 2012. He calls himself an idealist. Expound upon that for us?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And he really was, Victor. He, like Alan Henning, like the three others, four others, who were beheaded beforehand, whether aide workers or journalists, went to Syria because he had a profound belief, the sense of responsibility he took upon himself to make some sort of a difference.

We met him in the summer of 2012 and he was volunteering at a hospital in northern Lebanon in Tripoli, helping to treat wounded Syrians. And a few months earlier, he had just -- because of his medical background, thrown a bunch of supplies into a backpack and headed off to Lebanon to help in which ever which he could.

But take a listen to what he told us back then.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER KASSIG, AMERICAN AID WORKER: We each get one life and that's it. We get one shot at this. We don't get any do-overs, you know? And like for me, it was time to put up or shut up. The way I saw it, I didn't have a choice, you know? Like this is what I was put here to do. I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic and I'm an idealist and I believe in hopeless causes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAMON: And it was that very belief that shortly after we met him, prompted Peter Kassig to start up his own non-profit, SERA, Special Emergency Response and Assistance. SERA's main objective was to try to help train up volunteers at the makeshift clinics inside Syria that were constantly being bombarded by the Assad regime. He also was delivering a variety of medical assistance, both to Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.

And it was in October 1st, 2013, while he's on a trip to Deir Ezzor that Peter was kidnapped.

Now, we do see at some point during his captivity, he converted to Islam, changing his name to Abdul-Rahman. The family says they understand from hostages who were previously released that Peter or Abdul-Rahman as he is now seemingly calling himself, was taking great strength from his faith, but incredibly trying time for that family and for the family, of course, of Alan Henning and so many others at this stage.

BLACKWELL: Kassig said he could not do his work from sitting on a sofa here in the U.S. So, he went back and did what he thought he should have been doing at that time.

Thank you so much, Arwa Damon, for joining us this morning.

PAUL: All right. Back here at home, jobs market, seems to be getting better.

BLACKWELL: Yes, some good news there. The unemployment rate hits a milestone, employers add thousands of jobs. We'll break it down for you.

PAUL: Plus, we're ready to answer your questions about Ebola. Go ahead, tweet us, #EbolaQandA.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

Busy, busy morning. Here's your morning read.

PAUL: Yes. In Dallas, first of all, the family of four people who came into contact with the Liberian man diagnosed with Ebola has been moved out of their apartment. Now, they are in a home secluded from neighbors, we're told. In the meantime, you see here the crews, they're cleaning the apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan has stayed.

BLACKWELL: Three top North Korean officials have paid a surprise visit to South Korea today. According to South Korean officials, Pyongyang says it is willing to hold a second round of high-level meetings this fall. The first round of talks were held in February.

Meanwhile, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been out of sight three weeks suffering from what's being called discomfort.

PAUL: Talk about business -- there are some good news from the jobs market. U.S. employment rate fell below 6 percent last month for the first time in six years. Employers added 248,000 jobs. Job growth was particularly strong in professional and business services.

BLACKWELL: And now to sports, LeBron James is trying to sell his Florida home for $17 million. An infinity pool.

PAUL: Wow.

BLACKWELL: You see, he went back to Cleveland to play for the Cavaliers. Of course, the massive house overlooks the bay and comes fully equipped with a movie theater, wine cellar, large docks, enough for two yachts. Because, you know, what are you going to do with the second one?

(LAUGHTER)

PAUL: You're going to pull it up next to that infinity pool. Victor, come on.

BLACKWELL: Yes, you got to do it.

PAUL: All righty. Take a look at your weekend forecast if you haven't peeked your head out just yet. Several parts of the country, you will be facing cooler temperatures. There are freeze warnings for the northern plains this morning and the highs today are anywhere between 10 to 25 degrees below normal. So, enjoy it. It's fall.

BLACKWELL: Yes. It started in earnest.

Let's talk now about the top story. Ebola and all the concerns around it.

Joining me now, Dr. Seema Yasmin, a professor of public health at the University of Texas in Dallas, and staff writer for "The Dallas Morning News."

Doctor, it's good to have you this morning.

You've worked in Kenya and Botswana, investigated epidemics before. Ebola is scaring a lot of people. This was discussed at the White House yesterday. So, are people justified in being concerned about it spreading and an outbreak here in the U.S., or are the fears overblown?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Well, of course, public health officials are telling us that the system here is geared up and ready to deal with this, so that even --- though we've seen one case here, they're telling us that the spread is very unlikely. However, as we had that press conference yesterday, federal officials are now saying that mistakes and missteps were made here in Dallas. Many of our "Dallas morning news" readers are concerned about this.

The key question they are asking us, is what happened that Thursday night when this patient first went to the hospital and was sent home -- and even though that travel history was taken, it sounds like that was not relayed to the rest of the medical team.

BLACKWELL: We keep hearing about how, you know, bodily fluids spread Ebola, but I think that may be a little too vague and please remember the hour and I know it's an indelicate topic, but which bodily fluids? I mean, can a micro spec of blood be enough or do you need a pint of it? Help us understand?

YASMIN: Sure. So, as we've heard Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with infected bodily fluids. And so, those include everything from blood, saliva, urine, feces and vomit. However, we know that of those fluids it's really blood and feces that have the highest concentration of the virus.

So, we often talk about those being the most infectious fluids, as well as contact with bodily organs which is happening a lot in West Africa where there are burial teams who are burying the decreased. So, it's really those particular bodily fluids that are the most infectious.

And again, when you come into contact with them, you have to have cuts or breaks in the skin or those bodily fluids would have to come in contacts with your own mucus membrane. That means things like the eyeballs, insides of the cheeks and gums.

BLACKWELL: There was a lot of talk about the sheets on the bed in this apartment in Dallas and how they were there for days. Over the course of that time, was it less likely that the disease, this virus, could be transmitted because it sat so long, or is the likelihood still as possible or probable four days later?

YASMIN: So, we know that virus can survive outside of the body. It doesn't do as well, though, as when it's inside the human body. It can survive on surfaces we think for maybe a few hours up to a few days, but the thing is, that really depends on the kind of heat it's exposed to, any kind of radiation, the humidity. We also know it's disinfected quite easily with common bleach. So, all of those factors play into how the virus would survive on surfaces.

BLACKWELL: OK. So viewers have been sending us their questions via CNN iReport, also tweeting us. If you have a question at home, use the #EbolaQandA.

Let's listen to an iReport and get an answer for one of our viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DARY BOWIN: Hi. I'm Dary Bowin from Texas. What I would like to know is can Ebola survive on surfaces such as door handles and glass windows?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: How about it, Doctor? YASMIN: So, again, it would be the same thing. You would have to

have those kind of infected bodily fluids there in the first place. So, if it was saliva, for example, we think that's not as infectious as if there was blood or diarrhea for example on that handle. Again, you'd have to have cuts or breaks in the skin for the virus to travel through into your body.

Theoretically, though, yes, the virus can survive on surfaces. That's why good hand hygiene is important. And as I mentioned earlier common bleach can disinfect the virus.

BLACKWELL: So, you're there in Dallas, some of the missteps that we've seen over the past few days, is this something you would have expected knowing the community there?

YASMIN: I mean, the missteps are not expected and it's really put some of our readers into a heightened alert about whether health care systems here are actually geared up and ready to deal with this. We were told the U.S. hospitals are prepared.

Now, of course, this one hospital doesn't seem that it was prepared. However, I have been visiting local emergency rooms in the past few days. Many of those reassure me that those missteps would not have happened in their emergency rooms in their hospitals. They tell me that over the past month. In fact, they've taken measures to make sure those critical screening questions, do you have flu-like symptoms, have you had fever, have you traveled to West Africa, have been popping up automatically in their health care system so every patient is asked those crucial questions.

BLACKWELL: And, of course, this begs the question, if this is what happened in a county as large with as many resources as Dallas County, what would happen in a smaller county with fewer resources? We'll try to get an answer to that as we continue the conversation throughout the morning.

Dr. Seema Yasmin, thank you so much.

YASMIN: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: And everyone at home, don't forget to send in those questions. We'll get more answers throughout the morning, #EbolaQandA.

YASMIN: Thank you.

PAUL: Thank you, guys.

Now, listen, pro-democracy protesters are refusing to back down in Hong Kong. CNN's Will Ripley is on the scene. We're going to take you there live, next. Take a look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Good morning to you. Twenty-three minutes past the hour. And Hong Kong is really on edge this morning after another night of

violent clashes between pro-democracy protesters and police, as well as anti-occupy opponents. Listen to crowds who were facing off with police just a little while ago.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

PAUL: Scary, isn't it?

In the seventh day of the protest, here's what we know -- 148 people have been injured, more than a dozen are still in the hospital, and now, students have called off talks with government officials.

Our Will Ripley is joining us live from Hong Kong now.

Will, what does it look like there at this hour? I know it's about 7:30.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, we're less than an hour away, Christi, from looks like one of the biggest rallies that we've seen in recent days.

I just want to show you the sea of people that are filling Harcourt Road, the main boulevard that leads into the central Hong Kong business district. On any given day, this is full of cars but for the past week, it has been full of people, student protesters who are demanding democracy in Hong Kong, saying China's decision to essentially handpick candidates for these people to vote for just isn't good enough.

But we're getting now indications within the last hour of an ultimatum from the chief executive of this city who has refused the protesters' demands to step down, C.Y. Leung. He says on Monday, the entrances and exits to government buildings, including the government building right behind us here, need to be clear because on Friday, the protesters actually blocked the entrance, they put up blockades. City employees, 3,000 of them, had to stay home. He says no matter what, city employees will have to be able to go to work on Monday.

So, if protesters do not clear out those areas, we could see more police activity like what we saw last night. And the video, Christi, really doesn't do justice of the fact that there were thousands of people on these streets, just like this right now, and as soon as the officers appeared on that pedestrian bridge behind me, the entire crowd started screaming almost in unison, "police, police." everybody raced to the area. It could be giving us a preview of what to expect if the Hong Kong police department which has 35,000 available officers decides to act.

You see these students -- this is a really telling sign. They're handing out these helmets with the words "no violence." These protesters say they will stay here until their demands are not. The city saying they're not going to have their demands met.

We'll have to watch very closely what happens over the next 24 to 48 hours, Christi. PAUL: Obviously, no kidding. Hey, Will Ripley, thank you so much for

bringing us the latest there. We appreciate it.

Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right. Christi, thanks.

ISIS is threatening to kill another American hostage in Syria. It's released the video showing the beheading of a British taxi driver who went to Syria to help war refugees. The U.S. and Britain are condemning the killing and vowing more action.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Well, mortgage rates dropped again this week. Take a look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Thirty minutes past the hour right now.

Think about this, abhorrent, unforgivable, barbaric -- that's how David Cameron is describing ISIS this morning and its brutal beheading of British aide worker and taxi driver Alan Henning. Cameron met with top security chiefs today following Henning's killing.

ISIS is now threatening to kill another aide worker who went to Syria to help war refugees there. It's 27-year-old Peter Kassig.

CNN's Kellie Morgan is joining us now from London.

Kellie, let's talk more about Prime Minister Cameron's response. What are you reading into that?

KELLIE MORGAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the British prime minister wasn't actually in the country when we learned of this latest beheading. He was in Afghanistan having come from Cyprus visiting the bases there, which is where the British jets have been launching their airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq. Now, of course, it has been a week since the decision was made by the British parliament to join the coalition campaign there in Iraq and it is that decision which the ISIS that was cited in this ISIS video for the reason the 47-year-old father of two, Alan Henning, was killed.

So, that will obviously be weighing very heavily on Mr. Cameron's mind and also MPs voted overwhelmingly to join the coalition air strikes. Mr. Cameron has said this is the struggle of a generation, the threat from ISIS, and he said we needed to be patient, that we are in this probably not just for weeks and months but for years, and what's particularly difficult about being so resolute in that path that the parliamentarians have chosen is that ISIS does still hold other hostages.

And let's just have a listen to what Mr. Cameron had to say about the path ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We will use all the assets we have, as we have up until now, to try to find these hostages, to help these hostages, to help their families, and do everything we can to defeat this organization which is utterly ruthless, senseless and barbaric in the way it treats people. And this will be the work that we continue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORGAN: So, yes, ISIS is actually threatening to behead a fifth victim, the American man you mentioned. These beheadings, these threats to aide workers, to journalists, it's been widely condemned. Also by leaders here in the U.K., it must be said, they had described these acts as barbarics and as offensive and that the perpetrators have no regard for Islam.

PAUL: All right. Kellie Morgan in London for us this morning -- Kellie, thank you.

Victor?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Let's bring in Will Geddes, managing director of International Corporate Protection.

Will, ISIS has released another beheading video. We just talked a bit about it earlier in the show. Alan Henning went as part of an aid convoy.

How can these aid organizations protect their people when they are sent to these war zones?

WILL GEDDES, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE PROTECTION: Well, it's very difficult. I mean, there are the legitimate and very well-known and established, long-established humanitarian aid and relief companies which will have the experience of working in conflict zones and they've provide training, briefing to their volunteers before they deploy into these high-risk environments. And they'll also have security, which will be a mix of both potentially local security, to ensure they can carry out their work safely.

The problem we've got here, a lot of smaller groups, a lot of less, if you like, established groups like the group that Alan Henning was attached to, who were going down there with all the best intentions in the world, but they just do not have that fabric of protection around them.

BLACKWELL: There are some countries that are open to ransom, to negotiation. The U.S., U.K., they are not two of them. If a country is open to negotiating to a ransom, how would they go about that?

GEDDES: Well, to be honest, you have to have an established or certainly a viable contact on the other side. A lot of very professional and organized groups will have a known negotiator on their part. Now, this will be someone who will act as an intermediary and negotiate, obviously, with the government representative that will be trying to come to some sort of agreement in terms of affecting the release of the hostages. A lot of these cases, stemming from my experience, although they may come through with some completely ridiculous political request or demand, fundamentally underneath it there will be some kind of financial aspect.

One of the problems that you then have is, obviously, hostages being traded over to other groups, but that can be an advantage because once they get traded to another group, then you can affect a more amenable negotiation process. But I think in these beheading videos that we're seeing here, inevitable by the pleas by the family, obviously, for their release, which is usually a last-ditch attempt, they have no intentions of negotiating on these specific hostages.

BLACKWELL: It's a horrible loss for these families, for the respective countries, but let's talk about it from the perspective of ISIS. There has to be some diminishing value, now that there is the fourth Westerner who's been beheaded in these videos and it has not dissuaded the U.S. or U.K. or this growing coalition.

GEDDES: Yes, you make a very, very good point there, and when one also puts that in a dynamics against John Cantlie who's been releasing video blogs, any kind of legitimate message ISIS has been trying to communicate to validate their mission or crusade or whatever they want to call it, is simply being undermined. So, any kind of credibility they're trying to establish, whether to a wider community, whether it'd be to recruits is being undermined by the fact that they are not prepared to concede on any kind of level with some of these beheading videos which are being released.

So, to be honest, it's counterproductive for them on so many levels. It can't work to their favor.

BLACKWELL: It is not. Will Geddes in London for us -- Will, thank you.

PAUL: We've got cell phone video showing an intruder on the White House lawn. You see it there. The Secret Service is on the job. A lot of people are saying, are they doing their job, though? As discussion about what's gone wrong with the agency tasked with protecting the president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Well, with the resignation this week of Secret Service Director Julia Pierson following a series of embarrassing lapses in White House security, there's widespread suspicion now that something's just gone very wrong with the agency charged with protecting the president.

Let's talk about it with Evy Poumpouras. She's a former Secret Service agent.

And Jeffrey Robinson. She's co-author of "Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service."

Thank you so much for being here.

Evy, I want to start with you. How do you think the Secret Service has gone from being so highly regarded to now being the agency that essentially left the front door to the White House unlocked?

EVY POUMPOURAS, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: So, I think that's a good question. If you look at it, Secret Service has had an excellent track record, they are an elite, prestigious agency, and what happens is when you're on that level, you tend to do things a certain way and you tend to stick to that same routine. But you have to be progressive. You have to be adaptable to change.

And sometimes, you look at it and say, this has worked before and we're going to continue to keep doing it this way because it's always worked out for us. I think at some point, that doesn't work out anymore. And that's why you have these issues arising.

PAUL: OK. Speaking of issues, Jeffrey, you wrote an op-ed for CNN.com and you traced the downfall of the Secret Service to a move by George W. Bush. What was that move and why do you think it is what hampered the agency?

JEFFREY ROBINSON, CO-AUTHOR, "STANDING NEXT TO HISTORY": I mean, I'm not blaming President Bush. This is all hindsight, of course, 20/20 vision.

PAUL: Yes.

ROBINSON: What happened was they took the Secret Service out of its traditional home at treasury where it was treated very differently, where there was serious oversight and put it into this morass that is the Department of Homeland Security.

But I do want to say something, that the men and women who protect the president, not only on the protective division and protect the vice president as well, but the entire Secret Service, are the best and the brightest in law enforcement. They are really wonderful. The sacrifices they make -- and Evy can talk to that -- are incredible, the personal sacrifices.

But we know what failure looks like. Failure looks like Dallas '63 and failure looks like March in Washington of 1981 when President Reagan was shot. Now, the presidential protective division after the Reagan attempt changed everything and they really set a gold standard of how you protect the president and the vice president. They put into plan all sorts of things that required great intensity, enormous close proximity to the president, and attention to the minutest details.

And once President Bush moved Treasury into Homeland Security, all of that started to slip. It's now 33 years later and the corporate memories has completely forgotten the gold standard. It's time to go back to that.

PAUL: OK. So, Evy, let me ask you, there seems to be a fracture within the agency or some mistrust or some voices of Secret Service agents that don't feel like they're being heard by the higher ups. How do you get this agency back on track? And how do you shrink that gap? POUMPOURAS: You know, I heard what Jeffrey said earlier and I do

agree that somewhat the shift did complicate that, but I think the bigger problem here is what you just asked me. If the problem is within, if your rank and file, the people that work for you are not happy and you have whistleblowers, you have people leaking information to the press, then how can you fix everything on the outside when the inside is imploding from within.

They need to have trust. They need to look to their leaders. They need to feel the ability to communicate. What happens sometimes when you have a paramilitary structure, and especially one that's had such a great track record, they're less inclined to listen to the -- their subordinates. They're more like, no, we know what we're doing, we've been doing this before, just listen to us.

And so, you have this distrust, this break, when people are speaking to you and they're voicing their opinions you haves to listen, otherwise what happens? Whistleblowers, you have people going to the press and that doesn't look good. I think that's the bigger problem here.

PAUL: Jeffrey?

ROBINSON: I absolutely agree. But that problem stems from the fact it's in the wrong agency. I mean, Homeland Security is a total mess and they've screwed up the Secret Service.

Look at what happened within a year of that transfer when George Bush landed a fixed wing aircraft on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier. The Reagan PPD would never in a million years have allowed that. In fact, several of those agents have said to me, if we had been confronted with that problem and the president and the staff and the staff is blamed for this, insisted on those kind of optics, we would have resigned. We would not have taken responsibility for the president.

A few years later, four or five years later, you have the shoe incident in Iraq where the president -- where some Iraqi journalist threw shoes at the president. The Secret Service was nowhere near him. There is no proximity. You can see it on the video. There's one agent sitting in front facing the president the wrong way, of course, and after the second shoe, an agent moves close to the president.

The PPD under the Reagan years would never have permitted that. They would have been right there and dragged him off and protected him. No proximity, no intensity, no attention to detail.

They left the front door open. You can't do that anymore.

PAUL: Right. OK. So, Evy, who do you think could be tasked with leading this organization at this point?

POUMPOURAS: I think they need to look outside of the Secret Service. I think promoting from within right now is not the answer and from what I'm hearing from the representatives, that's not what they're looking for.

I listened to Representative Cummings earlier. He spoke very well, very eloquently. He gets it.

So, I think you want someone if you're going to put someone from the outside, they can be a former agent, but someone who's been in the private sector, who understands the outside, has external experience, or somebody with a military experience or law enforcement experience. You can't put somebody in there who doesn't have that because again, the rank and file will not respect that.

In going off of what Jeffrey said earlier, I 100 percent agree. What happens is, sometimes instead of doing security, you're trying to compromise and work with staff and other entities to appease other entities and in doing that, sometimes you can go too far and not being assertive enough to say, you know what, no, I don't agree with this, you're not going to do this. We don't agree with this. We're going to say no to this one, absolutely not.

But sometimes you try to work so hard with others, you try to compromise and you have certain incidents like this happen.

PAUL: All righty. Evy Poumpouras and Jeffrey Robinson, we really appreciate getting your insight today. Thank you for being here.

POUMPOURAS: Thank you for having us.

PAUL: Sure.

BLACKWELL: No Internet access, no cellular coverage -- not a problem, at least for the tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong. The protesters we've seen this morning, they've taken to social media and they're going -- using something really innovative. They're connecting to each other over a messaging app that works without an Internet connection, without the mobile phone coverage. We'll explain.

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PAUL: Fifty minutes past the hour. Welcome.

You know, we are watching tensions that are really high in Hong Kong right now. Its massive crowds of pro-democracy protesters are taking to the streets for a rally that is supposed to start any moment.

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PAUL: It would be frightening to be there, wouldn't it?

Let me tell you what happened today: 20 people have been arrested in some of these clashes. But just in the last seven days of protests, there have been 148 injured, more than a dozen in the hospital and now students have called off talks with government officials.

BLACKWELL: You know, a lot of the people there, a lot of the students there, are getting around the censorship laws using a relatively new app called FireChat. It's called off-the-grid messaging app. It lets them communicate without having to connect to the Internet.

CNN technology analyst Brett Larson joins us now.

Let's learn more about this FireChat. I think people here in the U.S. are hearing about it for the first time. So popular with protesters because of necessity.

BRETT LARSON, CNN TECHNOLOGY ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean, FireChat has become a sleeper hit. It came out a while ago. It takes advantage of new technology, not necessarily new, new abilities in our smartphone. It's called mesh networking.

And the way it works is instead of actually communicating to a cell phone tower or to the Internet to get information, it communicates with other phones. So, suddenly your phone's Bluetooth connection and its Wi-Fi connection can speak to other telephones. It's kind of an ingenious idea.

So, what it allows the people to do, in areas where the Internet is no longer working is they can communicate with one another and, of course, the more of them there are, the further along that network begins to spread.

And what's great about this is it's so far it's been downloaded over 200,000 times.

BLACKWELL: Wow.

LARSON: The app, in Apple's Hong Kong iOS store. That's in just the past couple days. They are able to get around the fact that the government has come in and said fine, if everybody is going to use their smartphones, we're just going to shut down the cellular network. They are still able to communicate with one another.

BLACKWELL: You know, there are reports there are some who are trying to spy on these protesters using some phishing applications. Do we have any idea who is responsible for that?

LARSON: I have seen several reports of that. Not entirely sure who is behind that, but yes, just like we often get those, you know, the prince from Nigeria who wants to give us a million dollar we are kind enough to give him our Social Security number or bank account number, he'll give us that money.

It's the same type of e-mail that they are being sent. It looks like it's something that's coming from the government that is sending you know, here, give us this information and we want to be part of this protest or we want you to be part of this protest. Respond with where you're going to be and where you're going to go.

If it's the government doing it, it's kind of smart on their part because they are getting this information that they otherwise wouldn't have. But it is definitely a phishing scam.

BLACKWELL: Have been so helpful to the protesters there. And that Nigerian prince, he is so polite. LARSON: He's so nice. He just wants your bank account number,

Victor.

BLACKWELL: Just hold these several million until I get there.

Brett Larson --

LARSON: Tell him to download FireChat and you'll chat with him later.

BLACKWELL: All right. Thank you very much, Brett.

LARSON: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: All right. East Coast, Midwest, get ready. Temperatures are dropping. And they are dropping quickly. A live report on the weather, coming up.

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JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning to you.

In Boston look at this -- a dreary start to the day. One of those days you just want to stay in bed. We've been talking about that storm system that pushed through portions of Texas -- well, this is the same system. It has weakened considerably, not causing quite the damage anymore on the East Coast, but it is causing a lot of rain and making for just a dreary Saturday.

This front has very chilly temperatures behind it, though. It is bringing a powerful punch, so cold air descending across the Northern Plains and the Great Lakes. We are waking up with temperatures mighty chilly -- and look at this -- even some snow along Interstate 90, just to the west of Chicago. We are picking up a little bit of rain in Chicago this morning as well.

We have frost and freeze warnings in effect, that does include Bismarck, Sioux Falls, Omaha, even as far south as Kansas City feeling the chill.

Look at these temperatures, 34 degrees in Fargo, 41 in Chicago, 37 in Cedar Rapids, temperatures at 42 in Springfield.

We'll only make to the 47 degrees today in Chicago, but temperatures rebounding quickly. We'll be back up to 61 degrees by Monday.

So, temperatures will be warming up. Detroit's high temperature, 50 degrees today. Then back up to 62 by Monday.

Temperatures tonight are going to cool off across much of the country, Atlanta, 44 degrees. Tonight, 45 in D.C., New York City, 46, in Chicago, 38.

Victor, seasons are changing, man. It is getting chilly.

BLACKWELL: I mean, I feel like we're dressed for the fall jamboree but it's winter. I mean, I saw 20s on that map. PAUL: Cover your plants. Cover your plants, people.

GRAY: Yes.

BLACKWELL: All right. Thanks, Jennifer.

PAUL: Jennifer, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Hey, keep it here. We've got a busy morning of news.

PAUL: Yes, the next hour of your NEW DAY starts right now.

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