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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Charges Expected Today in OK Beheading Case; Another Man Charged With Terrorist Threats After Threatening to Behead Coworker; IL Air Traffic Control Fire Could Snarl Traffic for Weeks; Pro- Democracy Protests in Hong Kong

Aired September 29, 2014 - 11:00   ET

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


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MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: New information about a man accused of beheading his co-worker.

Now we're hearing about another man who threatened to behead a nursing home worker. Was it in jest?

A nightmare for air travelers. It could be weeks before Chicago's air traffic control center is back to normal.

And a Secret Service security lapse that could have put the lives of President Obama's daughters at risk. It might never have come to light if a housekeeper had not noticed.

Good morning to you. I'm Michaela Pereira. John Berman is off for the day. We have those stories and so much more ahead @THISHOUR.

We begin with the horrific beheading case in Oklahoma. Charges are expected today against the man who allegedly stabbed a former colleague, eventually severing her head then he attacked another woman with that very same knife.

The suspect is this man pictured on your screen. His name is Alton Alexander Nolen. He is a recent convert to Islam but officials say no terrorism link has been found.

Our national correspondent Deborah Feyerick has more on the subject.

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DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: New details are accused about the man accused of behead ago female co-worker at an Oklahoma food processing plant last week. People who knew them say they're stunned.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was really just a normal person.

FEYERICK: Police say 30-year-old Alton Nolen is expected to be charged with first degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon, allegedly going on a knifing spree inside his workplace at Vaughn Foods after being fired. An FBI probe into Nolen's background is under way. Police say he recently converted to Islam and tried to convert his co-workers. Members at his mosque described him as quiet.

SAAD MOHAMMED, ATTENDED THE SAME MOSQUE AS THE SUSPECT: You could tell he was different from everyone else, but as far as violence, we never saw it coming.

FEYERICK: Nolen's knife spree was stopped when he was shot twice by Mark Vaughan, the company's CEO who's also a reserve deputy with the Oklahoma county sheriff's office, shots fired recorded in this 911 call.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sounds like he's running around out here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that -- that's a gunshot.

FEYERICK: Other disturbing details coming to light, a beheading posted on his Facebook page under the alias Jah' Keem Yisrael.

Officials have found no links to terrorism, but Oklahoma residents wonder whether the attack could have been influenced by Muslim extremism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son was raised up in a loving home.

FEYERICK: In this video, two women who say they're relatives come to his defense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's two sides to every story, and we're only hearing one.

FEYERICK: Oklahoma police reveal Nolen has a lengthy rap sheet. In 2010 he got into a scuffle with a state trooper during a traffic stop. She made this chilling statement to CNN.

TROOPER BETSY RANDOLPH, OKLAHOMA HIGHWAY PATROL: There had been any way to know the things that he is alleged to have done a couple days ago I would have killed him when I had the opportunity.

FEYERICK: Deborah Feyerick, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: In a separate incident, a fired Oklahoma City nursing home employee was arrested on Friday after a co-worker reported that he had threatened to cut her head off.

Our Pamela Brown has been following this story for us and has new details on that. She joins us now. We're also joined by our law enforcement analyst former assistant director Tom Fuentes. Good morning to both of you.

Pam, I would like to start with you. What are we learning about this nursing home threat? What can you tell us?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It's disturbing, Michaela. This happened in Oklahoma City, in fact, not far from where the alleged beheading happened in Moore, Oklahoma. This happened earlier this month.

According to this affidavit I'm looking at right here, a man told a fellow employee he was going to cut her head off because he was a Muslim. He told her that he was part of ISIS. When the employee asked her what he was going to cut her head off with. he said a blade. and then he told her he was going to post it on Facebook.

Now, initially this man we see right here was charged with a misdemeanor and then after the incident in Moore, Oklahoma, the district attorney actually elevated the charge to a terrorist charge, a state statute there in Oklahoma.

At this point, there's no connection, I want to make this clear. There's no connection to the beheading in Moore, Oklahoma, but of course investigators will want to dig into this and see if they were in contact, whether they attended the same mosque, whether there was any connection but at this point there is not.

Michaela?

PEREIRA: Pam, and also wasn't there some indication that originally the two were joking, or that it was said in jest? Do we know any more about that?

BROWN: Right. So, according to this affidavit that I'm looking at, the employee says he was very serious when he was making these claims.

But when police went to his home to speak to him he said that he was just joking about it, that he wasn't being serious. So that's what his defense is.

PEREIRA: All right, now I understand you're learning more about this suspect in the beheading in Oklahoma that killed a woman and injured another.

What can you tell us?

BROWN: In talking to law enforcement officials, they are telling me, reaffirming that essentially at this point there is no link to terrorism, that he was disgruntled, that he was told that morning that he was going to be suspended, that he had been asking for a raise, and he was upset that he wasn't getting a raise.

And he was told that he was going to be suspended because he was trying to, according to several officials, convert his fellow co- workers to Islam, and so he was upset by this.

And he told investigators apparently that he felt oppressed at work and that there was essentially nothing connected to ISIS or any terrorist group that motivated him to commit this act. Essentially this was a workplace violence act, sort of a crime of passion. But we did learn, too, as far as this beheading goes, because I know that's a big concern among people in light of what we've seen from ISIS. He did say that he'd watched beheading videos but, again, no indication, Michaela, that this was connected to terrorism at this point in the investigation.

PEREIRA: Great reporting, Pamela. We'll leave you there and pick up with Tom now.

Tom Fuentes, joining us, law enforcement analyst here with us at CNN. I heard the words "disgruntled" and "disenfranchised." Boy, those words are trigger points for people being inspired by ISIS, aren't they?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, that's true, Michaela, but senior officials very knowledgeable of the investigation told me the same thing that Pamela just reported, that while it appears that he's inspired and may have been led in that way by the media reports that ISIS has been putting out, that in this particular situation they have not found any indication that he was directed by someone in a terrorist organization to actually to this, and that this is so far appears to be more workplace related because of the situation with the company that morning, and that it appears that he was just intent on going to the company and murdering as many employees as he could murder based on the situation in the workplace more so than being directed by ISIS or another terrorist organization.

PEREIRA: Yet still, Tom, I mean, it's awfully chilling when you think of the fact that this person beheaded this innocent woman much in the way we've seen journalists beheaded by ISIS.

How concerned are law enforcement agencies about situations like this and the copycat syndrome or affect they could have?

FUENTES: They've very concerned about both and this is what they've been putting out for weeks. And many people say, oh, you know, the authorities are exaggerating, there's no threat, ISIS has no intent right now to come to the United States and kill people.

They don't have to. If they inspire people, that's one problem. If they actually direct somebody to do it, which they have not determined in this case, that's another. And copycats are always, always the problem.

In this situation he has gotten so much attention because it was a beheading not just that he went in and stabbed somebody. Unfortunately, we have workplace violence like that all the time, but in this case, because it was a beheading, because he has recently converted to be a Muslim, then that triggers all of the worries that he was somehow being directed by a member of a terrorist organization to do these acts when he may just be psychopathic or violent in the first place as evidenced by the encounter with the state trooper a few years ago.

PEREIRA: It's really concerning, too, because of what could happen within the Muslim community, you know, law-abiding, religious faithful people in the Muslim community who are concerned that they're going to be unjustly tarnished for the acts of a radical who acted outside the faith.

Tom Fuentes, our thanks to you. Thanks for joining me, and Pamela brown, great reporting. We appreciate both of you joining us.

Ahead @THISHOUR, can you believe one guy who allegedly set a fire at the air traffic control center could disrupt flights for weeks to come? What does this say about the system?

Protesters in Hong Kong are playing cat and mouse with police, able to pop up and block roads in just minutes because of what? Social media. Could this turn, though, into another bloody Tiananmen Square?

And, later, a new report that's not exactly flattering for the Secret Service has some experts wondering, just how safe is our president and his family?

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PEREIRA: All right, let us talk about Chicago. Turns out that the fire that left more than 2,000 fight canceled at Chicago's O'Hare and Midway Airports Friday, well, it's going to keep disrupting flights for a couple weeks more.

Now the FAA has just announced it's launching an internal review of security protocols. O'Hare is the second-busiest airport in the world. It also is the main hub for United Airlines and other carriers.

Ted Rowlands is with me right now. Good to see you. You are there at the airport. You're keeping an eye on the boards, something we've all done from time to time when we're trying to make a flight.

How bad is it going to be today? How many flights are going to be impacted?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michaela, already we've had a couple hundred flights canceled here out of O'Hare. At Midway there have been no cancellations as of yet but there are delays over there.

The bottom line is, because this is going to take so much time to repair this facility, it's going to take time for it to catch up as well, and you're going to see some canceled flights.

And the bottom line is, if you're flying, call ahead and make sure you aren't one of those canceled flights before you come out to the airport. You'll save yourself a lot of headaches.

PEREIRA: And that's the thing. You're going to think that by the end of the week, oh, those problems will be gone, but as you're saying, this could take a couple weeks for things to return to normal.

It makes one wonder about the fact that a fire intentionally set by a contract employee there, we should point out, that one fire can impact a system so drastically. I mean, the delays were felt all across North America. ROWLANDS: Absolutely. And that's a question that a lot of people are

having, and the FAA, as you mentioned, announced this morning they're going to do an internal review on the security.

The guy that allegedly set this was a contract employee, but he had been working there for eight years, and he knew exactly what he was doing. His goal, according to the affidavit filed in federal court, was to kill himself but also to disable this system, and he did a very good job of it.

In fact, they're rebuilding the entire system, computer system there, in another area. That's how bad it is. They had to go to another area, bring in all new components. Some of those components arrived last night, but they're working 24/7.

The bottom line is they won't have it up and running 100 percent until October 13 -- that's their target date -- meaning the other control centers around Chicago and Indianapolis, Minnesota, Cleveland, they're going to have to help out, and that's what they're doing now.

They're hoping to get air traffic back to almost normal levels before that two weeks is up, Michaela, but they can't guarantee it.

PEREIRA: Any sense, Ted, that they're going to do something to, I don't know, create a redundancy so that if there were to be an emergency, not even one nefariously set, but if something were to happen again, they're not going to run into this kind of problem?

ROWLANDS: Yes, well, there's two things they'll look at. First of all, the security measures of the facilities themselves. This is a contract employee, according to this affidavit, he showed up with a suitcase. In the suitcase, apparently he had gasoline in it. His suitcase wasn't searched, there was no security, even though he had clearance, should he have been searched, should his luggage have been searched? Why did he have the suitcase?

Something like that. That's something they're looking at. And then the other one is the Plan B. When something does happen, how do you seamlessly get to a better spot? Both of those things are being looked at by the FAA and all of the stakeholders in this and I wouldn't be surprised if there's going to be some changes.

PEREIRA: Yeah, I bet. I'm going to say it again for the benefit of those working or watching. Check ahead. If you've got a flight in and out of O'Hare or a flight anywhere, for the next couple of weeks it will be a bit of a miss. Ted Rowlands, thanks so much for that.

Ahead @THISHOUR -- pro-democracy protesters flooding the streets of Hong Kong, eluding police with the aid of social media.

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PEREIRA: Police armed with tear gas and batons went up against thousands of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong overnight. Thousands remain camped out on major highways, blocking traffic. The young protesters rely on social media. They're able to move quickly from rally to rally. It's really been amazing to see the role of social media in that.

Joining me right now, Forbes contributor Gordon Chang; he's author of "the Coming Collapse In China." Gordon lived and worked in China for almost two decades, so I think you're the man that we can talk to about this. Because I think, first of all, help us understand what the protesters are seeking. We understand they're looking for political reform, correct?

GORDON CHANG, AUTHOR, "THE COMING COLLAPSE OF CHINA": Certainly, in 2017 there will be the next election for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, which is the Chief Political Officer of the city. And Beijing has a procedure, which is universal suffrage, but they control the nominating process so tightly that only Beijing's candidates can run. So the whole issue is over nominating rules for the 2017 election.

PEREIRA: Do you think there's a sense that they'll have any of their demands met?

CHANG: Well, you know, everyone says it's impossible that Beijing can't change its mind but when you get a lot of people out in the streets -- and there were 60,000 this weekend -- and on Wednesday there will be a lot more because that's pa public holiday, it's the 65th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic -- you get a million or two people out on the streets, I think Beijing could change its mind quickly.

PEREIRA: Well it's interesting to see how it's already had a ripple effect on our markets. U.S. markets opened lower because of the unrest, we're told, in Hong Kong. It's going to be interesting to see how it will affect the markets the rest of the week. I think the concern is we all have remembrances of Tiananmen Square. Are they concerned that this, potentially, could turn further violent and turn bloody?

CHANG: Well, certainly. Because people think that Beijing is worried about the democracy contagion. That if you have meaningful elections in Hong Kong, people in Shanghai are going to want them as well. As a matter of fact, over the weekend yesterday we saw a protest in the middle of Shanghai supporting the Hong Kong students. Now, there are reports that the People's Liberation Army is mobilizing and today state media said that Beijing is willing to send in the People's Armed Police, which is really an arm of the military into Hong Kong if the Hong Kong authorities can't restore order. And as we saw over the weekend, Hong Kong authorities have not been very good at controlling these protests.

PEREIRA: One thing they have been controlling is social media. We understand that social media really has played a part in sort of gathering steam and spreading the word about the rallies and the protests to the younger generation. We know how tuned into social media they are. We're also learning word that the government shut down Instagram. So it seems as though they're trying to sort of lodge a spear in the heart of this movement.

CHANG: But it isn't going to work. Because what got a lot of people out into the streets yesterday were those images on TV of tear gassing. And when you saw the 40, 50, 60-year-olds leave their homes because what they saw on TV and go out on the streets to support the students, this is old-fashioned media and essentially what's happening right now, all of Hong Kong is being motivated to actually support the call for more democracy.

PEREIRA: So there's no a disconnect as we often times see between the youth and the other generation that remembers past times. They seem unified on this. They may be differing on how to go about it but they agree on the need for reform.

CHANG: And the thing about the students is they're really driving this. There's no one in control of this and that's what makes this really scary. This is not a well-organized protest. And essentially what you've got right now are people just going out doing what they want to do and this scares the Hong Kong authorities and it certainly scares Xi Jinping, the ruler in Beijing.

PEREIRA: That sea of people is the thing that just strikes me as so -- I don't know, it's moving and it's also shocking at the same time. Gordon, I'm hoping maybe you can come back and chat with us this week because obviously, as you said, Wednesday being a holiday things could ramp up again. We're concerned about the potential for violence. Thanks for joining me.

CHANG: Thank you.

PEREIRA: Alright, ahead @THISHOUR, presidents usually see a bit of a boost in their poll numbers when acting as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces during a military operation. Not this time, though, for President Obama. We'll take a closer look at his approval rating. It's stagnant, even after ordering airstrikes against ISIS.

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PEREIRA: A stunning admission from our nation's Commander in Chief. With U.S.-led fighter jets dropping bombs on ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq, President Obama is acknowledging that the United States got it wrong, both in terms of the rise of the militants and Iraq's ability to fight them. Take a listen to the president speaking on 60 Minutes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE KROFT, 60 MINUTES, CBS NEWS: How did they end up where they are in control of so much territory? Was that a complete surprise to you?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.

KROFT: He didn't say that -- just say that we underestimated ISIL. He said we overestimated the ability and the will of our allies, the Iraqi army, to fight.

OBAMA: That's true. That's absolutely true. And I've --

KROFT: And these are the people that we are now expecting to carry on the fight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: In an effort to carry on that fight, Iraq is now starting to reenlist soldiers and officers who abandoned their units, rather than take on ISIS. The Iraqi army is desperate for experienced soldiers, so it's offering a de facto amnesty for deserters and apparently officials say thousands are signing up.

A new CNN/ORC poll shows about three out of four Americans support the airstrikes against ISIS targets, yet that endorsement seemingly has had zero effect on the president's approval rating. This is noteworthy because presidents typically enjoy a bump in the polls on the heels of U.S. military action, the so-called rally effect. The president's approval rating was 43 percent before he authorized the airstrikes. Look at it there, virtually unchanged at 44 percent. His disapproval rating is 52 percent.

Adriana Cohen is a columnist with "the Boston Herald" and a former Republican political analyst. Joining us from Washington, Democratic strategist Linda Tran of 270 Strategies. Ladies, great to have you with me, thanks so much. It's like girl power this hour.

ADRIANA COHEN, BOSTON HERALD COLUMNIST: Great to be here, thank you.

PEREIRA: Adriana, I'll start with you. Why no rally affect? Why do you think we're not seeing that?

COHEN: Well, first off, the president had yet to declare we're at war with ISIS. He gives a very nuanced response and he did that in the 60 Minutes interview, yet again. What he needs to do is declare, say to the American people, we are at war, and the give the war a name. As you know, Michaela, past presidents when they're at the war, they give the war a name, they call it Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm. This president has yet to acknowledge that we are at war. So that's the first starting point for him