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Piers Morgan Live
Bloodshed and Chaos in Egypt; Hannah Speaks Out Online; America Gone to Pot
Aired August 14, 2013 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PIERS MORGAN, CNN HOST: This is PIERS MORGAN LIVE. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world.
Tonight breaking news. Hundreds slaughtered across Egypt on the bloodiest day since the Arab spring revolution.
Is the country now teetering on the brink of open civil war and what will it mean for America?
Plus gone to pot. America's marijuana obsession. I'll talk to people on both sides of the issue that's gotten this country fired up. You heard Dr. Sanjay Gupta tell me this about his U-turn on marijuana.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: If you look at all the papers that are written in the United States about marijuana, the vast majority of them are about the harm. We fund studies on harm. We don't fund studies on benefit nearly as much. So it gives a distorted picture.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: Tonight the man who wants to thank Sanjay personally for changing his mind on weed. Medical marijuana user Montel Williams.
Plus the mother of Michael Jackson's children. An angry Debbie Rowe testifies about his drug use.
And Hannah Anderson speaks out in an extraordinary online series of revelations just days after her rescue. Why she says she'll never forgive herself for the deaths of her mother and brother, and other fascinating information.
But I want to begin tonight with our breaking news. Egypt in uproar. At least 278 people killed across the country in just one day. The worst bloodshed since the Arab spring revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak.
Cairo's Tahrir Square eerily calm tonight as the clock ticks towards dawn and the lifting of the curfew. But what happens when the sun comes up is anybody's guess. There are fears the death toll could go much, much higher.
CNN's Arwa Damon is live for us in Cairo.
Arwa, a terrible day in Egypt. Really a sense of the country exploding. What is your take on what is happening here?
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, covering this throughout the day, watching the clashes beginning to spread and intensify across the capital, hearing the reports of clashes breaking out elsewhere, angry mobs of supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, even attacking churches, it felt as if one was beginning to see the very edges of Egyptian society fraying.
People are so angry. There is so much anger that is out there. These security forces here not only having to deal with trying to clear those Morsi supporters from the two main sit-in sites but really multiple front lines erupting across the capital.
There were supporters of the ousted president who were trying to break through the ranks of the riot police to reach one of the main sit-in sites. There were clashes that were taking place in another location in Cairo where Morsi supporters actually did manage to set up yet another sit-in sight.
As far as we are aware, hundreds of them are still in that location. They've established a makeshift barricade all around it, a field hospital. They've begun building a stage. They're saying that they're going to stay there. The security forces are going to have to deal with that.
And it's just not the dynamic of security forces clashing with Morsi supporters, you also have anti-Morsi residents in some of these neighborhoods getting involved as well. In some other areas, a neighborhood watch is being set up. Residents, checkpoints, manning these checkpoints themselves, armed with bats.
And so it's an incredibly tense situation here. A lot of people very fearful of what the next stage in this chapter of Egypt's bloody history is going to bring.
MORGAN: And also, a very dangerous day for journalists, Arwa. We saw three journalists lose their lives today including a Sky News cameraman Mick Deane who also had previously worked for CNN.
You yourself came under fire at one stage. I want to show some footage of that now and then talk to you afterwards.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAMON: For some of these hardcore supporters you will see them out there but then at the same time you have --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: And the obvious question, Arwa, I guess, is do you believe that journalists including yourself are coming under deliberate attack here or is it simply being caught up in the general mayhem? DAMON: It's difficult to judge that. But it does seem as if journalists are being targeted. At the very least they are being intimidated. A number of our colleagues out there in their reporting that was coming out talking about how police threatened them, telling them to get away, if they saw them again they would be shot.
You had at least three journalists who were killed. There were a number of other journalists who were wounded. Dozens of journalists reportedly detained in some cases, beaten as well.
Look, Egypt has never been a country that has exactly been friendly to the press corps, no matter what story it is that you're covering may be. We saw similar violence towards journalists back in the days of the uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak. So it's a very difficult country to work in as a journalist.
A lot of people angry at the press, especially angry at the foreign media. In fact in one of the areas where we were today outside of the main city in Rabah (ph), we had a very angry woman throw a brick at us. The crowds there, turning against us. We were advised to leave the scene. So it's a very difficult environment to navigate, especially because the front lines here, too, when it comes to violence are not entirely clear.
MORGAN: Well, Arwa Damon, stay safe out there. It's obviously a very dangerous, fluid situation, and I appreciate all the reporting for us.
And now I want to bring in Egyptian journalist, Mona Eltahawy. She knows just how quickly the situation in Cairo could spiral out of control. She was arrested and assaulted in 2011 while reporting on the revolution, and she joins me now on the phone from Cairo.
Mona, thank you for joining me. The last time we spoke was of course in more euphoric scenes back in the Arab spring days. It seems a long way away now. What do you think is really going on here in Egypt and how bad could this get?
MONA ELTAHAWY, EGYPTIAN JOURNALIST (via phone): It's been a horrible day, Piers. I mean, I want to condemn unequivocally the mass killing by the security services and the church torchings that had happened across the country. And I'm speaking to you right now in a Cairo that's under curfew as many other provinces across the country are.
But I want to emphasize one thing, and this is really important. That we have to stop the bloodshed. The revolution was not launched in the name of an Islamic state or a military state. Our revolution was launched in the name of freedom and social dignity and social justice. And we need wise heads to rise above this horrendous day and say, let's sit down and talk and stop shooting at each other, stop killing each other and stop burning churches because Egypt is much bigger than all of this.
I refuse to believe that the revolution is dead. We have not lost all these people and we have not fought this hard for more than 60 years now. We've been fighting to break a very dangerous paradigm. We've been told as Egyptians you must choose between military rule or the Muslim Brotherhood. And Egypt is much bigger than both of those.
And as I said, I condemn the killing today. I think it was a big mistake for the security services to violently disperse the sit-ins. I think they should have left the Morsi supporters where they were. I believe in everybody's right to peacefully protest anywhere and to keep -- and they must keep those protests peaceful. But we know too well how violence and brutal our security services are and we saw that today.
MORGAN: Mona Eltahawy, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
The world is watching in horror as Egypt descends into chaos. Today Secretary of State John Kerry called the situation deplorable.
But how would the White House react?
And joining me now one Middle East analyst Robin Wright and senior international correspondent Ivan Watson.
Welcome to you both.
Ivan Watson, this is a good awful mess, isn't it? There is no other way of putting it. How bad do you think this is going to get?
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's really scary and just heartbreaking to see. I mean, it's hard to believe that it was a little bit more than two years ago, Piers, that Egypt looked like it was embarking on this incredible hopeful period of democracy and now I think it's very clear, you know, since the military coup at the beginning of July and now with this tremendous loss of life that that experiment in democracy is truly dead.
The options in the future -- I just don't understand where the military planners behind this crackdown think their country can go. How can you hold elections when the first democratically elected president of the country, Mohamed Morsi, is in detention in an undisclosed location now for six weeks. Much of the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood has been arrested. You have this colossal loss of life, as well.
Are they hoping that the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that has survived for decades in Egypt facing torture and serious repression and persecution from previous dictatorships, are they believing that these people will simply disappear? They are part of Egyptian society. And I guess the measures that we saw today seem to be an effort to crush this part of Egyptian society.
MORGAN: Let's listen what Secretary of State John Kerry had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: Today's events are deplorable. And they run counter to Egyptian aspirations for peace, inclusion and genuine democracy. Egyptians inside and outside of the government need to take a step back. They need to calm the situation and avoid further loss of life. We also strongly oppose a return to a state of emergency law.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: I mean, Robin Wright, the problem here is that nobody is mentioning the C word, coup. What we're seeing here is quite obviously a military coup. Why are the Americans persisting and pretending otherwise?
ROBIN WRIGHT, MIDDLE EAST ANALYST: Well, it's really an issue of semantics. The core issue is really what the policy is and this is some of the toughest language the United States has used since Egypt became the U.S.' closest ally in the 1970s. But the United States faces a really tough dilemma now -- what to do about the most important country in the Arab world, the cornerstone of the peace process, a country that has received over $30 billion in U.S. aid since the peace process began in the late 1970s.
And the military which many of -- whose leaders including the current leader, General El-Sisi, were trained in the United States. The fact is, United States has to decide what to do about $1.5 billion provided annually to Egypt and military exercises. There were a lot of other stakes, not just the peace processes, there's also the use of the Suez Canal for major trade and military issues.
There are a huge number of issues that Washington has to face. And it's not just the Obama administration, it's also Congress which may well pressure the White House to take tougher action because of that issue of the coup. Senators Graham and McCain were in Egypt recently and used the word coup, alienating many in Egypt, but that's exactly what it was.
They warned about the dangers of disintegration into bloodshed and the danger now is that the role the United States had tried to play as mediator between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood to try to find some kind of compromise is now moot. That there is not much the United States can do.
MORGAN: Robin Wright, Ivan Watson, thank you both very much indeed.
We'll obviously update you with any developments in Egypt. A very dramatic and dangerous day out there.
I want to turn now to other big stories tonight. Breaking news about the kidnapping of Hannah Anderson. Search warrants just released include shocking new details including that DiMaggio may have tortured Hannah's mother and brother. And authorities believe that James DiMaggio's sister may have been helping him.
A preliminary autopsy shows that DiMaggio was shot at least five times. The cause of death will not be formally determined until toxicology tests have been completed in six to eight weeks. Meanwhile, Hannah herself is speaking out about what happened to her. She answered questions from strangers on the social networking site Ask.FM, saying that DiMaggio, quote, "got what he deserved." But is the site a good forum for her just days after her rescue?
And joining me now to answer some of these questions is Charles Sophy, a psychiatrist and medical director of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services.
Charles, we spoke earlier and some extraordinary revelations coming out from the warrants that had been issued. According to these documents, James DiMaggio tortured and killed his best friend's wife and 8-year-old son. He also shot and killed the family dog. After the double homicide, DiMaggio set the house on fire. And it goes into more detail about that.
It also -- if you couple it with the revolutions from Hannah Anderson in this really very far-reaching series of questions and answers with random strangers she revealed more details about why she had no idea apparently what had happened to her mother and her son, and he had persuaded her that he needed her help in carrying stuff to the river, and that she had to take backpack after backpack up there for him and he was armed and dangerous and threatening her all along.
What do you make of all this?
CHARLES SOPHY, PSYCHOTHERAPIST: Well, I think there's a lot more to this story probably than that's -- we really understand at this point. And whenever there is a convergence of a family friend or an uncle or a relative who's an odd-acting kind of person they have an influence over the family but there's also the thing that we always forget about.
Those parents have let that person into their lives of their children and there is a -- there's a boundary issue there. And I always wonder why would that happen. Where is her dad while she's on social media? Where is her mother and father to not know that this guy is creepy and she feels creepy about him?
MORGAN: It does seem strange. I mean, to some of the Q&As here, you know, are you happy they shot him? Would you want him to live in prison? She said, they shot him. He deserved what he got. What was the worst thing that happened to you during the whole kidnapping, finding out my mom, Ethan and my dog were all dead. Where were you when the fire went off? On the road to Idaho.
Was it uncomfortable to see your dad again? Well, personally it's kind of hard to see any guy adult right now. Where were you when they found you? Sitting on the ground. Why didn't you run? He would have killed me.
And somebody asked, so your mom and Ethan went at the house for no reason and the thing went off and they caught fire and burned. She replied, he told us he was losing his house -- this is DiMaggio -- because of money issues. We went up there one last time to support him and to have fun riding go carts up there, but he tricked us. And she said where were you in the process of him burning the house down? Was it secret? She says, he had -- he'd set it so it'd catch on fire at a certain time.
So building a picture really of him trapping them all in the house, luring them down there, clearly having some issue with the property and losing it perhaps, killing we believe now from -- killing and torturing perhaps the mother and son to death. But oblivious Hannah then going off with him to help in his -- in his moving stuff to the river.
Here's another interesting fact that's come out, Dr. Sophy, which is that they apparently exchanged 13 phone calls.
SOPHY: Right.
MORGAN: During the day, Hannah Anderson, the 16-year-old teenager, and James DiMaggio, her kidnapper. What do you read into all this?
SOPHY: Well, I mean, the same thing that you're saying. There was an obvious connection. We don't know obviously anything because there was some -- a longstanding history of her knowing him, not really a good connection. He creeped her out. She felt some powerlessness around him and he owned them for some reason.
Why were they going up there to help him feel better? Why were they going up there one last time? How did she know that he set a fire and it was going to go off? There was -- there's a conflicting piece to all of this.
Let's remember, she's been really traumatized. She's saying things when she walked out of that Idaho situation that will probably be very different as time goes on.
MORGAN: I mean, she also answers a question, do you think that he had a crush on you or was that a rumor, she says, yes, he did it, he said it was more of a family crush, he had feelings as in he wanted nothing bad to happen to me. She was indirectly asked, did he do anything sexual to you in any way? She said, I can't answer that.
Did he tell you he wanted to be with you or out of hate? He took me to get him to the river. I had to carry 50-pound backpacks up mountains back and forth. Why didn't you tell your parents he creeped you out? Because he was a close family friend and my dad's best friend, I didn't want to ruin anything between them.
I mean, this is all riveting new information.
SOPHY: Absolutely.
MORGAN: Answering many of the questions if you assume that everything she's saying is an accurate picture.
SOPHY: Exactly. So if we do assume that, it's far too much pressure for a 16-year-old girl to have to be almost a parent in her family, to make sure her parents don't get upset by this guy who's creeping her out. This is very similar dynamic whenever there is a perpetrator and a victim and a bully effect and if you tell people what goes on with us, I'm going to hurt your family.
All these kinds of thinly veiled threats that people that are victimized believed and that's the trauma.
MORGAN: And in relation to James DiMaggio's sister, Laura, obviously the only surviving sibling, the authorities also tapped her phone and Facebook account, and they say through further investigation, it is believed DiMaggio's sibling, Laura Robinson, is possibly aiding DiMaggio in his capture by authorities when he was -- when he's on the run. Robinson had multiple unusually large number of calls to DiMaggio's phone on the day of the crime.
Obviously, we don't know what her explanation would be for those calls but certainly a huge welter of new information coming out about this.
SOPHY: Yes.
MORGAN: And some unanswered question.
SOPHY: Many.
MORGAN: Dr. Sophy, thank you very much indeed.
SOPHY: Thank you.
MORGAN: For joining me.
When we come back, gone to pot. America's marijuana obsession. You heard Sanjay Gupta tell me he's changed his mind on marijuana. Well, tonight Montel Williams is here to thank him and he'll explain why.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN OLIVER, "DAILY SHOW": Sanjay Gupta getting on the Mary Jane train. Chief medical correspondent of the cannabis news network. Talking some weed with Erin Burn-out and Wolf Split-zer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: John Oliver there from "The Daily Show" who incidentally still owes me $10,000 for the bet he made that I wouldn't find a video of myself nearly dying on a Segway. But we'll move on.
He may be laughing about cannabis. But the fight over pots is a very serious one. Should it be legal, should it be a crime?
Joining me now is Montel Williams who uses medical marijuana every day to treat intractable pain caused by multiple sclerosis. Also CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta who changed his mind on marijuana and tells us why in a documentary "WEED." Gentlemen, let me come to both of you together. I want to start really with Montel.
I've talked to you before about this and about your daily use of marijuana. I believe you've taken some today as you would every day, is that correct?
MONTEL WILLIAMS, USES MEDICAL MARIJUANA EVERY DAY: Well, you know, here's something -- we haven't had a chance to talk for quite awhile. I've been involved in a program that's a very unique program. It's a deep brain stimulation program that's been helping me as much so I don't have to use as much as I have in the past, but when I try to use it like I would use if I was using Vicodin or any other medication.
When I'm really in that pain, most of the time before I go to sleep at night, that's when I have the toughest time because I have night cramps and tremors, and those tremors then cause that pain. It stays there until about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, so I normally use in the evening. And so part of the reason why I reached out to you, Piers, last week while I was in Chile, the second I saw Sanjay promoting his Sunday special, and just the fact that he said, you know what, I stopped and looked at the research, did what a doctor is supposed to do, looked at the research and now I'm ready to at least look at this under a different light.
His mind isn't completely changed, but I think his mind is in the direction that let's just support the research that's there that says that this is an efficacy and doctors should be the ones that should be able to prescribe it.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well said.
MORGAN: And for somebody like you, Montel, who suffered in pain for years and years and years, and has constantly put out there a belief that you do think marijuana could be used in a medical way to help people in your position, you must feel pretty -- not only vindicated by this debate going the way it's going, but also pretty grateful to Sanjay. He's a very imminent doctor making such a public U-turn on it.
WILLIAMS: You know, to say thankful, I don't know whether I'd hug this guy and kiss this guy because what we've been waiting for in this entire movement -- I'm not talking about the movement to legalize, because that's not what I'm involved in at all. I'm talking about the fact that I have a relationship with a doctor who can right now prescribe me any myriad of psychotropic medication to help affect my pain. Everything from the most extremes to the others.
I'm not going to name any because I don't want to put any drugs down. They don't work for me anymore. I've out used my opiate lifestyle. I can't do it anymore. Opiates don't work for me. And so this is a drug that works. And if my doctor -- if Sanjay was my doctor and he said, I think I should prescribe this little tablet for you to eat or this for you to smoke each night, Montel. I prefer you didn't smoke, but I want you to do this because I think it's going to work for you, and that will help you work and be a contributing member to society, that's the kind of doctor I want and that's the relationship I think I should have with my doctor and the fact that he is such a preeminent doctor and recognize that way, not just in the United States, but worldwide. I want more doctors to recognize his statement. Do the research. That's all we ask.
GUPTA: Yes. Yes. Good point.
MORGAN: Now, Sanjay, you -- you got enormous ratings for this special on Sunday, some of the biggest ratings CNN has had outside of the breaking news in a very long time, showing that there's vast interest in the subject.
America is moving slowly, but inexorably many believe towards at least bringing in medical use of cannabis in a legalized way and possibly recreationally. You've been keen, I think, to stress the medical benefits, not straying too far into recreational, similar position to Montel. But you've also, in fact, attracted lots on flak this week from some doctors who say this is dangerous and it shouldn't be happening.
I've got one of those doctors coming up after the break. But what is your response to the criticism you've had this week?
GUPTA: Well, look, a lot of the criticism I think, you know -- first of all, you talk to a guy like Montel and he's been ahead of the curve on this, frankly. He's been talking about this for years because he's lived this and I wish, you know, more people, myself included, would have paid attention to the course of legitimate patients with legitimate problems who got legitimate benefit from this.
But having said that, I think the criticism often stems from this dichotomy that look, if you do this, what about the kids? And I get it. I have kids. I -- that -- I understand that concern and all that. But I don't think either Montel or I are saying that this is something that we would start advocating for kids to start taking.
Look, if the tradeoff is because of the concern about kids, that patients will then be denied therapy that works for them like Montel Williams, and like hundreds and thousands of other patients out there, that is not something that I think, you know, doctors or frankly any compassion person, should accept.
WILLIAMS: And Piers, I got to tell you, before we go to break, honestly, for the last 37 years in the United States of America, our federal government already figured out how to do it. Every single month they send one of these out to (INAUDIBLE) four patients who are alive. It started out with almost 30 patients -- 22 patients and now only four of them are alive. They get 500 marijuana cigarettes rolled by the federal government grown at the University of Mississippi and then sent out to dispensaries every month.
This isn't that hard. All we have to do is have the president of the United States change it from schedule one to schedule two, bring it under the controls that we already have and therefore pharmacies could dispense it. They already have safes. We already have the system in place. And if our government has been testing it, growing it, and selling it for 37 years, how long is it going to take them to figure out?
(LAUGHTER)
GUPTA: There is a hypocrisy here, Piers.
MORGAN: Let's take --
GUPTA: You know, it's amazing.
MORGAN: Yes.
GUPTA: I mean, you know, that is an example of the hypocrisy the United States government also owns a patent on marijuana as a medical application. Montel has it here. So we have a patent through our Department of Health and Human Services on marijuana as a therapeutic and we also scheduled it as a schedule one, saying it has no medical application.
MORGAN: OK. Well, look, we all are going to go to that break I promised now. We are going to come back with Dr. Sharon Levy. She's the director of Adolescence Substance Abuse Program and also the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics. So she has a different view to the pair of view and I'm sure it will be a pretty forthright discussion coming after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MORGAN: So is pot harmless or a gateway drug? And do the benefits of medical marijuana outweigh the risks?
Back with me now, Montel Williams. He uses medical marijuana everyday. Also Sanjay Gupta, obviously, CNN's top doctor and Dr. Sharon Levy joins me, the Director of the Adolescence Substance Abuse Program, Boston's Children's Hospital.
Dr. Levy, you've heard what Sanjay has had to say. You've heard Montel who actively uses marijuana to deal with his pain very successfully.
Why are you so opposed to this?
DR. SHARON LEVY, DIRECTOR OF ADOLESCENCE SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROGRAM, BOSTON'S CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: Well -- well, I oppose medical marijuana -- I want to really start by saying that there is a lot that I do agree with, with both Sanjay and Montel. So it's pretty clear that there are a lot of potential therapeutic effects of cannabinoids that are helping Montel with his pain.
There is cannabidiol that's helping the little girl who we saw in Sanjay's documentary. And you know, as a physician, I think it's really important that we develop these as medications. And I'm not here to try and block patients who really need this -- really need cannabinoid therapy from getting it. The issue is, though, that it's -- I would say as a medication, it's not really quite ready for prime time.
There's a lot we just don't know about it. We don't have a good idea about how to do dosing. We don't know about the pharmacokinetics of the substance.
And we don't know about the -- the -- as much as we need to know about the potential harms, especially for adolescence, the issue really is that for every patient who would benefit from medical marijuana, there are probably several others who could be harmed by marijuana by using it for a condition that's really not going to help it (ph).
MORGAN: But, I mean, isn't it certainly absurd that the U.S. government still classifies marijuana in the same category as LSD and heroin which are defined, I'm quoting here, "drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." Quite clearly, even you agree with Sanjay and Montel.
But there is clear evidence that it does bring therapeutic help and medical help where appropriate. So the classification seems to be completely wrong, doesn't it?
LEVY: Well, you know, I think that there has been difficulty in studying cannabinoids largely because of a confluence of circumstances that -- that were brought up in the special and in other interviews that we've seen on CNN. And we know that there are more agencies regulating cannabinoids than other substances that we develop as medications.
And you know, that may need to be addressed. But I think as physicians, we could should be advocating for fixing the regulatory problems so that we can study this the proper way and we can use it as medications.
I worry, though, that medical marijuana is really a workaround. And whenever you do a workaround, you can make mistakes. And -- and that's why those regulatory processes are there in the first place.
And so I -- I think we need to fix them. But I don't think that we should be going around them.
MORGAN: Well, let's play a game from Sanjay's riveting documentary, "Weed." This is a girl called Charlotte. She was five years old and was suffering 300 epileptic seizures a week.
She's now down to one a week thanks to a special formula of marijuana that didn't get a high. Let's watch this clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(UNKNOWN): It was his five-year-old daughter Charlotte seizing. Diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy, she was having 300 seizures a week, each attack so severe it had the potential to kill her.
They had already tried dozens of high-powered drugs.
(UNKNOWN): We needed to try something else. And at that point in time, marijuana was that natural course of action to try.
(UNKNOWN): Holding Charlotte in her arms, he'd (ph) waited. An hour ticked by, and then another and then another.
(UNKNOWN): She didn't have seizure that day. And then she didn't have a seizure that night.
(UNKNOWN): We just sat there and...
(UNKNOWN): Yes.
(UNKNOWN): ...looked at her watch and...
(UNKNOWN): Right. I thought this is crazy. And then she didn't have one the next day and then the next day. And I thought, that is -- she would have had a hundred by now.
And I just -- I know, I just thought this is insane.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GUPTA: Yes, I still get goosebumps when I watch that. But you know, I have to say, you know, I agree with Dr. Levy.
You know, we need to approach this cautiously and responsibly. But just to give you a little context with Charlotte again, who is emblematic of many more patients, she was on several different anti- seizure medications.
She was on medications that, well, could potentially be toxic. They wanted to compound a veterinary pill, Dr. Levy, for her. And when someone -- they suggested marijuana, everyone thought, well, hang on a second.
That's -- that's crazy. Marijuana? Come on now. And -- and you look at her. She's on a medication now that's for her is clearly working -- working better than everything else that was out there and for her, far less toxic.
So again, I -- I don't want you to think this is an anecdotal story. She is emblematic of so many more patients...
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Right. And here's the thing.
Here's the thing, Montel. I want to bring Montel in here because Montel, you, yourself, have had trouble at airports. You know, you've stopped with -- with marijuana pipes and so on.
The -- to me, the completely incongruous part of Charlotte's (ph) story is that we're all stunned by it. We're all in awe over what has happened in -- in solving her terrible, terrible affliction with medical marijuana.
And yet if she steps foot out of Colorado where it's legal, she could end up breaking the law in other states for something that's clearly almost certainly saved her life.
Dr. Levy, I would -- let me come to you first then Montel. That can't be right, can it?
LEVY: Right. Well, again, you know, my point of view isn't that we should be trying to keep cannabinoids away from children like Charlotte. You know, clearly, it's helped her tremendously.
You know, and the best way to deliver cannabinoids right now may very well be these extracts of marijuana. You know, I hope that in the future, that we're able to do a little better, that we're able to develop these substances as a medication just like every other.
And, you know, I certainly don't imagine ever recommending that any patient smoke a medication. There's been some illusion to that.
So you know, I think all of these steps are very, very important. Now, for a child like Charlotte, that may mean that we need to have some mechanism for compassionate use because clearly, she can't wait.
But do you think that...
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: OK, OK. Let me just go to -- go to Montel on this and for a final word from you, Montel, because you're a classic example of somebody whose life has been immeasurably improved by medical marijuana. Where do you think this is all going to go?
WILLIAMS: I think that now that we have more doctors and even Dr. Levy agrees, we need to do the research. This is what we're all saying.
Unfortunately for the last 38 years, our federal government has wasted money researching something and dispensing it, claiming that it was effective (ph). So what they've already made and delivered is effective (ph) so send me this.
Why not expand the program and allow me to have what our government grows if they now, over 38 years, says is effective (ph) and should work. And just like the people who receive this canister, they can travel from state-to-state-to-state with this canister.
So I'm just going to say that, you know, I -- I spent 22 years in the military supporting and defending this Constitution of the United States in a uniform. I should have the same rights the our government affords for the people.
They give this to them to solve their pain problems. I'm in pain. MORGAN: Yes.
WILLIAMS: Give it to me. And then I don't have to worry about going through airports because this is a pass from the federal government to take it with me.
MORGAN: Right. Well, I'm totally with you. I'm totally with Sanjay but I understand the concerns of Dr. Levy. Thank you, all -- all for joining me.
And good to see you, Montel, as well. Every time you come on my show, I think why is that guy not back doing his own show on television. I'm sure it wouldn't be long.
WILLIAMS: I'm coming back, Piers.
MORGAN: We'll (ph) discuss that -- discuss that at another time. I'm going to leave it there. Sanjay's special "Weed" is re-airing on CNN at 10:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday.
That follows my own one-hour special on pot which is equally fascinating. It's a riveting subject which all Americans are currently debating.
I urge you to watch, well, effectively this pot night on CNN on Friday night.
Coming up next, Michael Jackson's ex-wife testifies about his drug use, all the latest live from the courthouse.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(UNKNOWN): Oh, that wasn't good. Sorry...
DEBBIE ROWE, MICHAEL JACKSON'S EX-WIFE: Get out of my way.
(CROSSTALK)
(UNKNOWN): How is Paris doing?
(CROSSTALK)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MORGAN: An angry Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson's ex-wife leaving courthouse today after testifying the explosive wrongful death suit against AEG. Jackson's family says the company is responsible for the pop star's death because they (inaudible) failed to supervise Dr. Conrad Murray.
Rowe choked up but she told the jury about Jackson's fear of pain. CNN's Ted Rowlands is outside the L.A. courthouse for us and joins me now with the very latest.
Ted, pretty dramatic and emotional performance there from Debbie Rowe. What did you make of what happened?
TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know what, frankly, it was sad, Piers, the story that she told. And that was of competing doctors trying to give Michael Jackson as much pain medication as they could and trying to one up each other during the time period after he was recovering from that 1984 Pepsi commercial debacle where he burned his head all the way through the rest of his life.
She also testified that she saw in Munich, Germany during the 1997 Victory tour, Michael Jackson getting propofol in a hotel room saying it looked like a surgical suite getting it just for sleep two consecutive nights or two separate nights during that tour. And she talked about his drug use and how low he got during this period.
It all comes back to these doctors that she says was taking advantage of him. She did the one thing she was supposed to for AEG who put her on the stand and that was to describe that event in Germany. They wanted her to tell the jury that Jackson and Jackson, himself, had plotted this.
And they had no idea he had this problem before hiring him for this concert series, of course, which he was preparing for before he died.
MORGAN: Ted Rowlands, thank you very much indeed. So who should AEG -- should AEG be blamed for Michael Jackson's death? That's a question that Tom Mesereau -- he's a defense attorney who wrote (ph) into Jackson and his molestation case and joins me now.
Tom, a pretty fascinating day there with Debbie Rowe. But in the end, there (ph) was a picture built that helps AEG in the sense of Jackson's clear long-time use of propofol and all these doctors -- not just Conrad Murray queuing up to supply it for him?
TOM MESEREAU, ATTORNEY: I think it helped Kathryn Jackson and -- and Michael's children, Piers. Remember, both sides are trying to prove that Michael had an addiction to painkillers and prescription medications.
The blame (ph) is Kathryn and Michael's kids are trying to say that AEG knew of this because one of their executives was his tour manager twice during the '90s and actually hired an addiction specialist to help him after he became addicted following the Pepsi commercial. The defense is claiming that he was addicted to prescription medications because they want to say two things.
They want to say he was responsible for his own demise. And number two, if they're held liable, they want to keep the damages low.
They want to say that addiction to painkillers and medication lowered the value of -- of his career, lowered whatever expectations there were about what he could earn. So they're both trying to prove he was addicted.
I think she helped Kathryn and Michael's children. I think she -- what she described is something that AEG, in my opinion, had to know about because of their constant involvement with Michael Jackson, particularly that executive who was his tour manager on two tours.
So I think AEG is going to be hard-pressed to say we never heard this was going on. We knew nothing about it. It's news to us. Particularly when they said they investigated Conrad Murray to see if he was suitable and changed their position and said we said that but really didn't do it.
Particularly when they had said they had investigated Conrad Murray to see if he was suitable and then changed their position, said, we said that but we really didn't do it.
MORGAN: But if Conrad Murray is simply related to the long line of doctors who've been happy to supply the propofol to Michael Jackson and in the end, we're talking about a 50-year-old man here, not a -- not a young teenager in Michael Jackson, somebody who clearly was very in charge of his life in many ways.
If he was just using Conrad Murray as he had many other doctors to give him what he wanted, does that not in a way help AEG's case, too?
MESEREAU: Well, but that's not what I think happened. I think what AEG did was they were willing to take big risks to get big returns.
They knew they could make a fortune if Michael Jackson's comeback was successful. And what I think they mistakenly did looking backward is they agreed to take responsibility for Conrad Murray.
They agreed to pay him a hundred and $50,000 a month. They sent him an agreement to sign where they talked about the -- the obligations they would have with respect to him.
And they sent e-mails just reminding everyone who was paying Conrad Murray and suggesting that they were putting pressure on Conrad Murray to make him perform. So I think the problem is that they took some risks including taking responsibility for Murray as their -- as a price to pay for getting him on a comeback plan that would have been the biggest entertainment comeback in history.
MORGAN: So right now, dollar-for-dollar, Tom, your money would be on AEG losing this case?
MESEREAU: That's what I think. Now, I have not been in the courtroom. I'm not allowed in there because I'm on the plaintiff's witness list.
But I think Brian Pannus (ph), the plaintiff's lawyer is the best civil plaintiff's lawyer in America. I've often said, nobody else in Los Angeles comes close.
But what I've heard, he's doing a bang-up job. And I think I the end, Kathryn and the kids are going to win. And I think they're going to win big because what Michael Jackson could have earned the rest of his career, I think exceeds a billion dollars.
MORGAN: Tom Mesereau, fascinating as always. Good to talk to you. Thank you.
Coming next, the real secrets of Bradley Manning. We know about the spying but was he a cross dresser? The (inaudible) released his extraordinary photograph of him today would break in the news, coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MORGAN: Bradley Manning's case, secrets to Wikileaks and at a sentencing today, he apologized for hurting his country. But the most revealing and dramatic moments in today's proceedings were about his private life and his personal struggles.
Breaking news tonight with "Los Angeles Times" reporter, Maeve Reston and Alyona Minkovski is the host of HuffPost Live. What an exotic name you have there to start (ph) with (ph).
And let's just talk very quick before you get to Private Manning about Hannah Anderson because I -- I found (ph) some really intriguing development today that she's gone online. It's a very teenage thing to do.
But what do you think about that, and the -- the fact that she's revealing all this information?
MAEVE RESTON, LOS ANGELES TIMES: Well, I think what's so shocking about it, if -- if this is, in fact, Hannah who's speaking to the public. It's just that there -- there isn't someone watching over her at this very pivotal time and keeping her away from forums like that which as psychologists have said can drudge up lots of things that she shouldn't be thinking about or talking about right now.
And I mean, as you said earlier, where -- where is the dad in all of this? Where are the psychologists?
MORGAN: Right, I mean, Alyona, it does seem a little odd, doesn't it?
ALYONA MINKOVSKI, HUFFPOST LIVE: It's -- it's definitely odd but at the same time I think that...
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: But she's a victim, not (ph) wanting (ph) to (ph) mislead people. She's clearly a victim here and a terrible (ph) victim...
MINKOVSKI: She's a victim. She's 16 years old. And we've -- we've all made -- we all make mistakes when we're 16 years old and do things that we later regret.
But I think it really tells you where we are in this time where technology plays such a huge role in our lives, too. She just went through this horrific experience.
I can't even imagine what she's going through now. And rather than just having reporters calling her and knocking on her door, she has the ability to go and approach people on her own via the internet and so -- and -- and have no filter there.
And clearly, that's what's going on here.
MORGAN: Well, it's true (ph). Let's turn to -- to Bradley Manning, this extraordinary development today where we see this picture of him dressed as a woman and a wig and so on and lots of details of a very difficult upbringing with two parents who had drinking problems, that he, himself, had characteristics, according to Mercy (ph) psychiatrists, a fetal alcohol syndrome.
What do you think of this, Maeve? It's -- it's -- it's an odd development again in a very high profile case.
RESTON: Well, obviously, I mean, it's a -- it's a very important attempt by his team to humanize him. But I mean, what I think it raises -- what this entire case has raised is how do you have a kid like that with those kinds of problems who's curled up in a fetal position and carving things into his chair, being sent back to his desk to deal with sensitive information.
I mean, we assume that all of these people are handling sensitive classified information are adults -- rational adults. And it's revealing that -- that they keep a guy like this on the job because they're so understaffed, that they need him there.
MORGAN: Alyona, when we look at Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden and all these whistleblowers in various ways, are they heroes to you?
MINKOVSKI: Absolutely. I definitely think that Bradley Manning is somebody who I -- I commend for what it is he did.
And I think that this entire focus on his personal background is a bit of a distraction. Sure, it's an attempt by the defense right now while they're in the sentencing phase to try to get some -- some mercy from the judge, right?
They want the sentenced reduced. I mean, this kid is facing a reduced sentence of a maximum of 90 years in jail.
And you know, a lot of people have been focusing on the apology today saying that maybe did he somehow mislead or disappoint his biggest supporters out there, absolutely not. What other options does he have left?
He's been convicted. He's facing 90 years in jail. If you go back to previous statements that he made at the pre-trial hearing in February, he gave a very long speech and wrote a 35-page document there where he spoke about how this is a matter of conscience for him and how he wanted to...
MORGAN: Right.
MINKOVSKI: ...spark a debate. And I think that it's really a travesty what the government has done to Bradley Manning and the way that they've treated him. He -- he was detained for three years before he even got a trail, some of that time at the -- at the marine brig at Quantico, where he was stripped naked, in isolation...
(CROSSTALK)
MORGAN: Now, finally, one word, hero or villain, Bradley Manning?
RESTON: It's not our job to weigh in on that. But I mean, obviously...
MORGAN: Force yourselves.
RESTON: ...this is a kid here who's delusional. I mean, he's talking about his disclosures could potentially end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and wars for all time.
I mean, this is not someone who should be handling life and death...
MINKOVSKI: Yes, but these are disclosures that no one else is willing to make and at least...
MORGAN: Right.
MINKOVSKI: ...we're having the conversation now and same thing with Edward Snowden because if you want to talk about the debate that we're having over the NSA and the -- the new changes that the president has announced, they wouldn't be happening had it not been for whistleblowers.
MORGAN: That's - that's fascinating to talk about. You could come back soon. Now, that's all for us tonight. Anderson Cooper starts in just a few moments.
