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Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien
Ravens Rule!; Harbaugh Versus Harbaugh; Missing American Found Dead In Istanbul; Bill Clinton To Speak At Ed Koch's Funeral; Bones Are Remains Of Lost British King; Did PTSD Cause Marine To Kill?; Beyonce Lights Up Super Bowl
Aired February 04, 2013 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome, everybody. You are watching STARTING POINT. Today's big story, Super Bowl XLVII, the memorable and the kind of odd, the Baltimore Ravens were dominating the San Francisco 49ers 28-6 lead during -- early in the third quarter that's when the game took a turn for darkness.
The lights went at the Super Dome suddenly went out, holding the game for 34 minutes. When the lights came back on, so did the Niners. They erased most of the Raven's lead. At the end, they had four chances from the inside the 10-yard line for a game winning touchdown.
Thankfully, they couldn't get it done. CNN's Rachel Nichols is live in New Orleans. In New Orleans, we got more on the blackout and a little more on the battle of the Harbaughs as well. It's nice to have you with us. Good morning.
RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. And, yes, you know, John and Jim Harbaugh, 15 months apart and like all brothers who play sports, they went at it competitively as kids.
Their parents, Jack and Jackie Harbaugh, tell us all kinds of stories of them beating on each other, but this is a close-knit family when it comes down to it. John is the older one and you can tell he is protective of his brother, even on the biggest stage of them all.
Take a listen to our conversation when I talked to him on the field, right after he won the Super Bowl.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN HARBAUGH, BALTIMORE RAVENS HEAD COACH: It was incredibly hard, but I was really proud. You know, just looking across the field and see being Jim over there, watching him coach, watching him compete, and seeing his team roaring back after the lights went out. Like I kind of knew he would because that's what he's done his whole life. I just couldn't be more proud of him.
NICHOLS: You can appreciate that, while they were roaring back against you?
JOHN HARBAUGH: I wasn't happy about it. You know, didn't feel really good about some of the thing we were doing and the way we were playing. But I just knew that they would be there because they reflect his personality.
NICHOLS: What did your parents say?
JOHN HARBAUGH: They were really happy, really thrilled and really disappointed and really devastated at the same time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NICHOLS: John said that this entire experience was a lot harder than he anticipated it being. He even told me, guys, in that moment when the clock ticks down to zero and all are you supposed to feel is joy and everyone around them is throwing arms up and celebrating.
All he could do is look across the field and see the pain on his brother's face, and he couldn't fully enjoy that moment because he knew what his brother was going through. A night of mixed emotions for the Harbaugh family, but certainly I'm sure when John and the Ravens look back on this, it will be an exciting experience, but certainly a unique one.
O'BRIEN: Rachel Nichols for us this morning. Thanks, Rachel.
You can check us this tweet from "Sports Illustrated" Peter Ling about that sibling rivalry. He tweeted this. John Harbaugh said to me I am totally devastated for my brother.
ROLAND MARTIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: You can tell. You can tell.
O'BRIEN: He's going to get over it.
MARTIN: My brother is one year, one day older than me. I can't imagine in this game, where you really want to celebrate. The look on his face walking off, I have to go shake the hand of my brother and he lost.
JOHN BERMAN, ANCHOR, CNN'S "EARLY START": The brother was a little bit ticked off too. I mean, the game did not end well for Jim Harbaugh. There was the non-call in the end zone. Harbaugh spent the last minute yelling -- I agree, but he spent the last minute of the game and screaming at the refs.
CONNIE MACK, FORMER FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN: This is a great story, the two brothers, the whole family, like the build up to the Super Bowl with it. And which one, it has got to be a nightmare.
CHARLES BLOW, COLUMNIS, "NEW YORK TIMES"": The other story of the night was the power outage. I think they should have power outages all the time in these games whenever there's a blowout.
MARTIN: I'm sure CBS is going we would really love to run all of the ads right now. Roger Godel probably was not happy.
O'BRIEN: There are a lot of not happy people at that moment and for 34 minutes after that. John Berman has got a look at some of the other stories making news this morning.
BERMAN: Thanks, Soledad. A tragic ending to the mystery of the missing American woman who disappeared in Turkey last month, her body was found Saturday in Istanbul. Turkish authorities say she died from an apparent blow to the head and showed signs of stab wounds.
The 33-year-old Serai Sierra was traveling alone through Europe. She went missing the day before she was supposed to return to the U.S. CNN's Ivan Watson now has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Turkish police made the grim discovery on Saturday. A woman's body, hidden behind the old stonewalls of this ancient city. Within hours, police identified her as Serai Sierra.
A 33-year-old mother of two, a native of Staten Island, New York. Sierra had been missing for more than a week, after disappearing during what was supposed to be her first foreign vacation. Turkish police suspect she has been murdered.
HUSEYIN CAPKIN, ISTANBUL POLICE DIRECTOR (through translator): It has been determined she was killed with a blow to the head. For us to get concrete details of the case, we need more time to investigate. It's not right to say anything about the ongoing interrogation of the detained people. She was a tourist traveling alone.
WATSON: These are the last known images of Sierra. Security cameras caught her on the night of January 20th, walking alone inside an Istanbul shopping mall. Sierra flew from New York to Turkey on January 7th solo because a friend canceled coming along at the last minute.
She was an amateur photographer, who shared photos of Istanbul's mosque and skyline with friends she met on Instagram. Sierra is believed to have met some of these Instagram acquaintances during her stay in Turkey and during a short side trip to Amsterdam.
Sierra's husband, Steven, sounded the alarm after she failed to board her flight back to New York on January 21st. Days later, Steven and Serai's brother, David Gimenez, flew to Istanbul to help Turkish police with the investigation.
In an interview with CNN last week, it was clear Steven, a New York City transit worker, was beginning fear for the worst.
STEVEN SIERRA, HUSBAND OF MISSING AMERICAN WOMAN IN TURKEY: Along with her missing, you are hoping that she is OK, wherever she is at and she's not hurting. That she's not cold, being fed, not being consumed with fear.
WATSON: The shocking news of Sierra's death devastated her family who have tried to protect her two sons from news of their mother's disappearance. As friends and family grieve in New York, police in Istanbul have an urgent question to answer, who killed Serai Sierra? (END VIDEOTAPE)
BERMAN: The late New York City Mayor Ed Koch will be laid to rest at funeral services today. Former President Bill Clinton will deliver a tribute. Clinton is a long-time friend and he cut a trip to Japan short in order to make the services.
Current New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will deliver the eulogy at the funeral, which will conclude with the song "New York, New York." Of course, it will.
So has Britain's long lost king been found? Take a look at this, a battle-scarred skeleton found under a parking lot in Central England. Are they the century old remains of Richard III? Scientists just confirmed this. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. TURI KING, PROJECT GENETICIST: And I can now tell you there is a DNA match between the maternal DNA from the descendants of the family of Richard III and the skeletal remains that we found at the Friar's dig. In short, the DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: So now is the winter of our discontent. Now is. Anyone, get it? Get it? Silence.
O'BRIEN: Carry on.
BERMAN: Richard III is the last English monarch who was killed in battle, way back, Roland, in 1485.
O'BRIEN: That is pretty amazing.
MARTIN: Riveting.
BERMAN: They can find him, but can't find Hoffa. We should bring the British over here.
O'BRIEN: This morning, we're talking about the former Navy SEAL, Chris Kyle, who was shot to death allegedly by a Marine he was trying to help. Eddie Ray Ralph was accused now of opening fire and killing Kyle and another man who was with him. Police are still trying to piece together exactly what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHERIFF TOMMY BRYANT, ERSTH COUNTY, TEXAS: Apparently, Mr. Kyle works with people that are suffering from some issues that have been in the military, and this shooter is possibly one of those people. He had taken out to the range to mentor, to visit with, to help him, you know, that's all I can tell you.
(END VIDEO CLIP) O'BRIEN: The second victim, who was a friend of Kyle's, is Chad Littlefield. Kyle dedicated much of his time to helping veterans including many with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Dr. Michael Welner is with us. He is a forensic psychiatrist. He has worked on lots of cases of soldiers who have been charged with crimes, violent crimes who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's nice to have you back with us. We appreciate it.
MICHAEL WELNER, PH.D., FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: So when you first heard some of the details of this case. The 25-year-old man, Eddie Ray Ralph, who has now been charged in these two killings, three tours of duty, relatively young, is your first thought, did PTSD play a role?
WELNER: Please understand that PTSD is rarely associated with homicidal violence --
O'BRIEN: Really?
WELNER: -- when we kill our own. Now, when it is, let's understand about PTSD first. PTSD is very commonly associated with a number of other conditions that are regularly attached to violence, alcoholism, personality disorder, depression. So diagnostically, PTSD may be relevant and it may just be part of the picture, including traumatic brain injury.
O'BRIEN: I was going to ask you that.
WELNER: There is more.
O'BRIEN: So there are two separate things, but one could cause the other. Would you say, all right, could traumatic brain injury be something would have causality for someone who has come back from three tours of duty opening fire on two people who are there to mentor and help him?
WELNER: When it comes to PTSD, taking a closer look at it, PTSD is very commonly associated with anger and hostility. Now you may think, well, a lot of conditions are, and a lot of people are depressed and they don't kill people around them.
Consider that we understand mental illness when it's associated with dangerousness. The people who are at higher risk are people in the family and closest to you. So the fact that Chris Kyle was generous, and giving and really heroic, not just living on his past.
But continuing to give, and bringing people close to him who really were troubled, and allowing himself to continue to be in harm's way, the equivalent of family that would be at risk to somebody who might have been a little bit too sensitive, a little bit too vigilant, a little too angry.
O'BRIEN: Now, Roland wanted to jump in. MARTIN: I thought the Department of Veteran Affairs should be one of the most appointments by any president. Is the VA prepared for all of the soldiers coming back and the long-term care they are going to need for PTSD and other types of mental illness?
WELNER: Well, they are and they aren't. They are in the sense that the VA medical system and VA mental health care probably have a far more sophisticated expertise than we give them credit for.
They aren't and this goes back to some of your discussions about Newtown and Sandy Hook. Let's just fix mental health. Well, you could build building. You can build hospitals, but you have to incentivize the most talented mental health people to be treating the people who really need it.
Otherwise, from a standpoint of universities and medical centers, if you don't financially incentivize folks to stay in the military, to be treating the veterans, to get the best doctors, to provide the best services, then are you going to have a community that naturally fills the void and people like Chris Kyle may be exceptionally qualified, but they are in harm's way.
MACK: I'm sorry.
WELNER: Please.
MACK: The VA is, you know, a great place to go, but a lot of time the access to the VAs for our veterans isn't as what people would think. I mean, a lot of times they spend hours and --
O'BRIEN: We have done so many stories about that especially when it comes to suicide.
MACK: We need to do a better job of getting facilities into the population where our veterans are.
O'BRIEN: Michael Welner, it's nice to have you with us. It's great to have you back.
WELNER: Appreciate it.
O'BRIEN: We're going to take a short break. Still ahead this morning, got talk a little bit about John's alma mater, Harvard students caught up in a big old cheating scandal.
MARTIN: Was that Harvard?
O'BRIEN: Yes, yes, at Harvard.
BERMAN: They figured it out.
O'BRIEN: Yes, exactly. We'll tell you exactly what happened, how far it goes. That's our in-depth report coming up next.
And then to her outfit to her reunion with Destiny's Child, the awesome Beyonce moments of the super Bowl. We'll take a closer look at those.
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BERMAN: The approval rating just shot up 15 points.
O'BRIEN: Lie down on the table, Connie. We miss that TV moment.
MARTIN: Like that.
O'BRIEN: Beyonce did not lip sync. She didn't miss a beat, bringing the house down at the Super Bowl last night, wearing that cute little outfit. Everybody was watching her. The designer of that hot leather and lace peel apart outfit is Rubin Singer.
He is with us as well as Alina Cho, who is the expert on all things fashion. It's nice to have you both with us. So first, Rubin, let's start with you. How does it feel to have -- what was the number of people watching the Super Bowl last night?
BERMAN: Ten bazillion.
O'BRIEN: Ten bazillion, looking at an amazing outfit.
RUBIN SINGER, DESIGNER/STYLIST: It was a career-changing moment. It was very, very exciting. I mean, leading up to it was a lot of craziness and hard work. So it was very, very rewarding to see it all come together was worth it.
O'BRIEN: Walk us through the craziness. I have to imagine, a million fittings with one of the busiest people in the world. You have to figure out what to cover and wear when she is doing the lying on the ground things. How did you do that?
SINGER: Well, you know, the process started a few months ago, and the fittings started to take place in the beginning of January with the actual costume and the development of it, with the kind of rehearsal that schedule she was on and the vigorousness of everything going on.
She was losing weight every -- every day really towards the end, so there was constant adjustments, plus developing this kind of a piece for a woman who is such a fierce performer and such an amazing, amazing show woman, I couldn't make anything that was constricting in any way. The range of motion needed to be maintained at all times, that was a challenging aspect.
BERMAN: It seemed to fit well.
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDETN: It fit very well. Rubin, it's Alina Cho. When we spoke last night, you told this great story about how you won this sort of ultimate gig. And it started with book you compiled of 15 sketches and your explanation of your vision for what she should wear and how she should look. You actually met with her and when you started to read from that book, you told me this remarkable thing that she told you. What did she say?
SINGER: Well, you know, the whole concept of what we developed came from the concept of what I was already working on for my spring -- or I mean, my fall 2013 collection, about to show in New York, and the concept, when I started reading to her about the book, she turned to me, and she said have you been living in my head?
And I turned to her and said, no, have you been living in mine? And we both laughed and that's kind of how we sort of broke the ice and started getting better understanding of one another and really started to work together.
MARTIN: Ruben, Roland Martin here. What role did the NFL play in approving the costume?
SINGER: My God, it is so much strife from the NFL. It was crazy. You know, because of what had transpired in the past with wardrobe malfunctions, the stringency of how they, you know, check everything, and they even said we're very hypocritical.
We have all of these cheerleaders in scantily clad little outfits and here we are telling you, you can't do this, you can't do that. So the costume initially was much more risque and much more exposed.
And we came closer and closer, we decided to kind of bring it down because it is the Super Bowl and it is America. We didn't want to ruffle any feather so ultimately it ended up working in our benefit because I think she really looked amazing last night.
O'BRIEN: Ruben Singer, congratulations. I hope this means that when you do your show in New York that it's a huge, huge hit, and everybody is pre-ordering. I need a little leather outfit.
CHO: Will you go with me?
O'BRIEN: I'd love to go with you. I don't know if I could wear that on TV, but I'd love to go see your show. Alina, also, thank you.
There was an ad that was kind of controversial at the Super Bowl this year brought by a group promoting gun control. We'll show you that ad and talk about it on the other side. We're back in just a moment.
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O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning on STARTING POINT, from Beyonce's powerful halftime performance to those crazy commercials. We'll have more from the longest Super Bowl ever played. We'll talk to a man who fought side by side with Chris Kyle. He was the former Navy SEAL sniper who was shot and killed by a fellow veteran. STARTING POINT is back with those stories and much more right after this.
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O'BRIEN: Welcome, everybody. Our STARTING POINT is Super Bowl XLVII. Kind of a nail biting win after the power eventually returned to the Super Bowl and it was a girl power halftime show.
It was a girl power halftime show. It was a great half time show. Beyonce rocking the stage, Destiny's Child reunion and yes, she did not lip sync although many people were joking that's the reason the power went out.
BERMAN: All right, an Ivy League shocks, students at Harvard connected to a widespread cheating scandal learned their fate and how deep did this go?
And why did a U.S. veteran turn his gun on a fellow veteran at a shooting range? The bizarre details plus we're going to talk to two former Navy SEALs who knew Chris Kyle.
BERMAN: Ahead this hour, we're going to talk to Mike Golic and Mike Greenberg of ESPN's "Mike and Mike in the Morning." Also Oklahoma Senator James Inhoff is with us. We're going to talk to the geeky star of the Go Daddy ad that really has grossed so many people out. And of course, the stars of the very cute Taco Bell ad, the oldies have joined us.
It's Monday, February 4th. STARTING POINT begins right now.
