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CNN NEWSROOM

Sony Drama Revealed in Recent Hack; Cosby Faces Lawsuit; Top Terrorist Leaders Survived Drone Attack; Uber Faces Roadblocks; The Story Behind T-Rex Sue

Aired December 11, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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


BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I have to say though, it's not as if the media companies are hacking this information. We are not going in, hacking those documents. We are just sharing what's already now available in the public domain. This is a cyber attack and now we're seeing the damage.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm sure Sony doesn't want us to share - to share these e-mails with the public, but there out there and you can't help --

NISCHELLE TURNER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

COSTELLO: I mean they're all over the Internet, so we're not sharing anything new, right?

TURNER: Exactly. And, you know what, there -- this is actually having repercussions in other areas as well because we know we've all kind of been focusing on the movie "The Interview" with Seth Rogen and James Franco that will be out Christmas Day wondering, you know, did North Korea have something to do with this because they don't like this movie and all this other conjecture. Well, tonight is their premier in Los Angeles. And I will tell you, there will be no broadcast outlets there tonight. They have -- no one is invited to it. There will only be still photographers there and a house crew. So no one will get to ask questions about this because we won't be there.

STELTER: So no interviews at the premiere of "The Interview."

TURNER: Exactly.

COSTELLO: Which is bizarre, right?

TURNER: Good one, Brian.

STELTER: I think it's because Sony hasn't -- you know, Sony hasn't explicitly said that North Korea was behind the attack.

TURNER: Right.

STELTER: There's been a lot of speculation that North Korea or their allies are responsible for this, but the company hasn't said so. So I have a feeling they're afraid Seth Rogen and James Franco might say something that they're not supposed to say about this.

COSTELLO: I can totally understand that, right?

TURNER: Well, they already went on "SNL" and joked about it.

STELTER: Yes. True.

TURNER: But you know what, but to be -- to be serious, I mean, if you're Amy Pascal and you're Scott Rudin this morning, I mean, what are you doing and what are you thinking because now you have some of the biggest stars that you have movies for, I mean, they have Kevin Hart's next two or three movies and I can -- I can bet, you know, I talked to his people yesterday when these e-mails leaked about him, they hadn't seen it yet, so they were just getting wind of this. But you have to, you know, think that these people are not going to be happy. And not only do you have that, a lot of these stars, their agents have other huge stars, so this could definitely have a snowball effect.

STELTER: Right.

TURNER: They've got some cleaning up to do, because this isn't good.

COSTELLO: All right, Nischelle Turner, Brian Stelter, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

STELTER: Thanks.

COSTELLO: I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Comedian Bill Cosby is getting hit with a new lawsuit by one of his accusers. Tamara Green claims Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her back in 1970. Cosby has denied her claims. Well, now Green is taking the case to federal court and trying to get around the statute of limitations in her case. Green's goal, to prove that Cosby's repeated denials have damaged her image. So far, at least 22 alleged victims have come forward.

So let's bring in CNN's national correspondent Susan Candiotti with more of Green's story.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this one is really a different one, Carol. Tamara Green's lawyer thinks that he has found a way to file a lawsuit that he hopes will force Bill Cosby to publicly address sex assault allegations. Miss Green says she hopes it will work.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Tamara Green finding a creative way to get around the statute of limitations, largely shielding Bill Cosby from criminal and civil sex charges. Green is suing him for basically calling her a liar. TAMARA GREEN, COSBY ACCUSER: I want the truth of this matter to be

finally established forevermore.

CANDIOTTI: It's a defamation lawsuit claiming that when Cosby's lawyers and publicists issued statements saying he, quote, "didn't know her," and the "incident did not happen in any way, shape or form," branded Green as a liar and damaged her reputation.

GREEN: We shall all now have our day in court. Bill Cosby will also have his day in court. He will have his day in court to defend himself and I look forward to that event.

CANDIOTTI: Her lawyer, Joe Cammarata, who represented Paula Jones in a sexual harassing lawsuit against President Clinton.

JOE CAMMARATA, ATTORNEY FOR TAMARA GREEN: She will have to litigate and Mr. Cosby will have to answer the allegation that he, according to Ms. Green, sexually abused her.

CANDIOTTI: Green was an aspiring model and singer. Like so many other accusers, she says Cosby drugged and assaulted her, but she eventually fought him off.

GREEN: The center of my being understood that, you know, he had gone from helping me to groping me and kissing me and touching me and handling me, and, you know, taking off my clothes.

CANDIOTTI: Green, now an attorney, signed on as a Jane Doe to Andrea Constand's lawsuit that Cosby settled in 2006. When the Cosby scandal broke wide open last month, Green spoke out to CNN and others.

GREEN: I hope that women have been saved by not having been victims after 2005.

CANDIOTTI: Cosby himself has not directly responded to his accusers, except to say he should not have to answer to innuendos. In response to Green's lawsuit, Cosby's lawyer issuing this statement, "we are very confident that we will prevail and we will pursue claims against the attorneys who filed this action."

GREEN: This will give us a chance to go to a forum where we will speak our stories and tell our truth. And the most important thing is that Bill Cosby will be required to appear in court and to speak and he will finally be heard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI: Now, Green's lawyer predicts another accuser will soon be filing a similar lawsuit claiming defamation of character. The whole idea is wanting to try to get Cosby to talk before a jury and explain what happened here. But will this move work? That's the question.

COSTELLO: That is the question, that's why we have Paul Callan over here, CNN's legal analyst.

So, is this a good strategy? PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you know, I want to start by

saying, I'm not expressing an opinion about whether Cosby did it or he didn't do it, all right? We're only talking about legal doctrines here.

And I think it's a strategy that's going to lose in the end. Is it a good way to get into court and try to air these things publicly? Yes, it is. But it's obviously a back door effort to get around the statute of limitations.

Now, we have statutes of limitations for good reasons. This thing allegedly happened over 40 years ago. And is it fair to subject somebody to defending themselves against an allegation that's 40 years old? And I don't even think she's saying she was under some sort of psychological disability.

COSTELLO: Who doesn't -- why doesn't Cosby sue her?

CALLAN: Well, Cosby is not going to sue her because that would open the same box and create all of the public embarrassment. And in terms of how a court will look at this in terms of defamation, what we're really saying here is that Cosby's attorney came out and his publicist came out and said, hey, he's innocent, OK, and now they're saying that that constitutes defamation of Ms. Green.

CANDIOTTI: Well, they went further that. They called her a liar.

CALLAN: Well, they did. No -- well, yes. But whenever somebody accuses you of a crime and you say, I'm innocent, you are accusing them of being a liar. You could make that allegation in virtually every lawsuit. A federal judge is going to look at this and say, do I want to create a precedent where in every single lawsuit arising out of a criminal case, 40 years later with could have a whole new round of defamation charges? And the second thing, and this stuff gets very complicated, it goes on for months and years when you litigate, but did Cosby explicitly authorize singer to say these things and the publicist to say these things? Because, remember, Cosby's being sued for what they said.

COSTELLO: OK.

CALLAN: And there's another doctrine called the opinion doctrine. If the publicist was just saying, in my opinion this has been discredited, that's a doctrine that's protected under First Amendment law. So there are a lot of defenses available here.

COSTELLO: Well, the other interesting facet of this is that Cosby's lawyers have threatened to go after Green's lawyers. So Green's lawyer commented this morning on "New Day," so let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH CAMMARATA, ATTORNEY FOR TAMARA GREEN: Let him bring it on. You know, I -- let him take his best shot. I just think it's the M.O., their tactics. But we've got a case. It's been filed appropriately in court. We have a forum, like I said, where truth can be tried in our system of justice. We don't engage in hand-to-hand combat on street corners. We have a battleground. The battleground is in a courtroom.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so could Cosby's lawyers sue Green's lawyers in this care?

CALLAN: It's very rarely done. Lawyers don't like to see it. But I'll tell you, a very famous case that it was done, when Bill O'Reilly was accused of sexually harassing an employee at Fox News, they sued his attorney. They sued the attorney who brought the case as well. And, of course, that suit all disappeared in a quiet, super-secret settlement which, by the way, is, of course, what this attorney is hoping that, in the end, just to make it go away, even if he may lose it, maybe Cosby thinks I should do a settlement in the case. And that's how most of these cases end.

CANDIOTTI: Now, this woman also, of course, could very well prove injury to herself, and how she is regarded. She's a lawyer, as a matter of fact, but -- and what she has undergone and the mental anguish and what she said --

CALLAN: But you see the hard part about that is, I think, that claim that she's been damaged by it, by publicly coming forward and bringing the lawsuit, she's kind of outing herself to -- and subjecting herself to attacks that maybe would not have occurred had she not brought the lawsuit involving something that happened 40 years ago. So -- right? That's how the -- that's what the defense will be.

CANDIOTTI: (INAUDIBLE).

COSTELLO: Got to end it there. I wish we could go on.

CALLAN: As I said, I started out -- what did I start out by saying, I don't have an opinion about this. These are legal documents.

COSTELLO: You're talking about legal doctrines, Paul, I heard you.

CALLAN: OK, thank you very much.

COSTELLO: I did. Paul Callan, Susan Candiotti, many thanks to both of you.

I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A man considered to be one of al Qaeda's greatest threats to the world's air travelers, and Americans in particular, appears to be very much alive. U.S. officials telling CNN new information suggests that this bomb mastermind survived U.S. drone strikes in Syria last month. The French jihadist is the much feared Khorasan group and is an expert in smuggling explosives aboard airliners.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is working her sources. She has more for us. Good morning. BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

You'll recall the Khorasan group is a group of al Qaeda operatives in Syria, very hardcore, many of them having moved from Pakistan to Syria a number of years ago. The U.S. has been conducting air strikes against the Khorasan group, even as that war against ISIS goes on. A number of air strikes, they thought that they have perhaps killed this French bombmaker David Drugeon a number of weeks ago in an air strike. But new intelligence is now shoing he likely did survive.

Unless they have the dead body or a picture of the dead body, all of these things are assessments. And now the assessment changed, that he is alive. Also, the leader of the Khorasan group, Muhsin al Fadhli, also alive.

The big worry is exactly what you said -- these are people who are capable of making bombs that can potentially get past security airport measures, so there's a lot of concern. And it does appear now, after weeks of U.S. air strikes, the leadership of this very dangerous group still very much alive. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Barbara Starr reporting live for us this morning, thank you. I'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The ride sharing service Uber is hitting some major roadblocks. First it gets kicked out of countries like Thailand and Spain for violating local laws. Now it's under legal pressure in its own backyard. Two California cities are suing the Silicon Valley- based company to block the service over its allegedly shoddy background checks.

CNN Money technology correspondent Laurie Segall has been following this story. Talked to Uber; what did it say?

LAURIE SEGALL, CNN MONEY TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I did and it's tough. It's been a rough couple weeks in general for the company. You had a passenger allegedly raped in New Delhi. So this is not good for the company's image. And then you go to their own backyard in California where the business is booming. And they've decided that they've been sending cease and desist orders for the last year. I spoke to the San Francisco D.A., who says there's something wrong with the screening process. And he spoke to me specifically about the background checks.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE GASCON, SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY: In order to have the, quote, unquote, "best background system", you have to fingerprint people. We know that the system they have where a potential driver simply sends his or her information through the internet, they can be sending anybody's information. There is no guarantee that the person they're backgrounding is actually the person that will be driving the vehicle. So you have a company that is saying openly they're so concerned about public safety; what they're actually doing is the contrary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SEGALL: And, Carol, this is a company that got its start by not playing by the rules, by going in, asking for forgiveness, not permission. And you're beginning to see it is catching up to Uber.

One other thing the D.A. said to me that I thought was really interesting and noteworthy was he said if something happens to you when you're inside an Uber, God forbid, you don't have the same protection and liability as if something were to happen if you were in a taxi cab. So that's something to think about now. And you're seeing this backlash. The company also is valued at $40 billion, and part of that valuation depends on how quickly they can keep expanding.

COSTELLO: So let's go back to the taxi cab/Uber thing. So how are you safer in a taxi cab?

SEGALL: Look, in general, I think people feel pretty safe when they get in an Uber, when they get in a taxi cab, anything. The idea is that, if you go in a taxi cab, the background checks, they actually fingerprint you. And that's something that's a certain type of standard. They can find out more about your criminal background. When you look at Uber expanding internationally, they don't have the same types of background checks everywhere. And you're seeing that's become a bit of an issue and that's something they're actually looking into and trying to remedy.

COSTELLO: Laurie Segall, thanks so much. I'm back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: This week CNN Films dives into the extraordinary story behind Sue the dinosaur, the most complete T-rex fossil discovered to date. The story starts with a dramatic moment when two brothers realize exactly what they found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I crawl up on the cliff face and I see three articulated vertebrae. And from that point on, I'm absolutely certain this is going to be the best thing we ever found and it's going to be a complete T-rex.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He called up and said, Neal, I need you to bring a lot of plaster, two-by-fours. Well, it took me a day to get everything ready. And I came up and I got up there with all these materials. And he took me over to this big cliff. And he said take a look. I looked at it and I looked at him. I said is that T-rex? He said, yes -- and I think it's all here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Wow. So that's the story of how researchers found Sue, but there's also an amazing back story on what it took to get her to a museum. Joining me for more on that, CNN's Poppy Harlow. Good morning.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. I have the best assignment of the day because I get to be with the real Sue. I mean, look at Sue. She is 67 million years old. Those bones alone weigh 4,000 pounds. She is the -- not only the most complete T-rex ever found in the history of the world, she is also the largest. She is hugely important scientifically.

But you're right, there was a massive legal battle. The scientists that found her in South Dakota started unearthing her. And then the FBI came, raided. The Justice Department got involved. She was held in storage in a legal battle for seven years and then finally auctioned off for $8.4 million. She ended up here at the Field Museum.

Let's bring in a very important man here, Bill Simpson. He takes care of Sue; he is the collections manager here for fossils. And you're the only one who is allowed to clean Sue.

BILL SIMPSON, FOSSIL VERTEBRATES COLLECTIONS MANAGER, FIELD MUSEUM: I do it with the expert help of our exhibits department.

HARLOW: What makes Sue so important scientifically?

SIMPSON: Sue is a spectacular example of museum collections advancing science and thrilling the public at the same time.

HARLOW: When you look at what you have done from her, so many studies, so many papers, tell us about those?

SIMPSON: We've had over 50 scientific papers based on Sue. As an exhibit, over 16 million people have come to Field Museum and seen Sue. We produced a couple of mounted casts, which have traveled the world, 10 countries, 63 institutions, 8 million people have seen those. So Sue is one of the best traveled dinosaurs.

HARLOW: You cannot overstate the importance of her scientifically.

SIMPSON: As the most complete T-rex, she's like the Rosetta Stone for this species. She really explains all the other partial skeletons.

HARLOW: Yes, it is amazing to be with her. Bill, thank you so much.

SIMPSON: You bet, Poppy.

HARLOW: I get to hang out with Sue all day, Carol. But her story is absolutely fascinating, named after the woman who found her. And you can see it tonight 9:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN. We'll all be watching "DINOSAUR 13".

COSTELLO: Oh my goodness, I can't wait. You do have the best assignment of the day. Thank you to both of you.

HARLOW: I do.

COSTELLO: You do. Watch "DINOSAUR 13" tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

COSTELLO: All right, a little breaking news from the New York Stock Exchange. Alison Kosik, the Dow is surging?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It is. Can you see them? The bargain hunters, they are out after stocks got hammered yesterday. The Dow surging 159 points. But we do still see oil falling, more than half a percent, now about $60.50.

We're keeping an eye on oil because oil prices dropping, I'm talking about, they were the catalyst to that huge selloff we saw yesterday where the Dow lost more than 200 points. This is really -- with oil, it's one of those supply and demand 101 issues. If there's more supply and less demand, prices will fall. That is the exact equation that's going on right now with oil.

But what investors are really worried about when it comes to oil is what it means for the global economy when you see oil fall so much, more than 40 percent over the past six months. So investors are worried what's behind the decline in oil prices. Is it because of more supply? Or is the reason more because of less demand in economies including in Asia and in Europe? And so the worry there is their economic slowdown can move on over to the U.S. and affect companies here.

But, in the meantime, you can celebrate the Dow in the green once again, up 159 points. We'll keep an eye on it for you today. Carol

COSTELLO: All right, Alison Kosik reporting live from the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

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