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CNN NEWSROOM

Fastest Trip to the Space Station; March Madness in Florida; Looking at the FBI's Vault of Notorious Cases; Former US Soldier Accused of Fighting on the Side of Al Qaeda Affiliate in Syria

Aired March 29, 2013 - 15:30   ET

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


BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Technology, sports, business, health, science, showbiz news, we're hitting it all in what we call the "Power Block," beginning with this.

Rescue teams in Latvia had to leap into action after two ice floes carried off more than 220 people. The floes broke off the Latvian coast, started drifting in open water, helicopters and some of these boats joined in for this rescue attempt.

One person refused to fly in a helicopter, insisted on waiting for one of these boats. Rough seas made the entire operation pretty tricky.

And it is still incredible. This land here, still moving, near homes sitting on this cliff in Washington state. This is Whidbey Island.

Geologists say a landslide like this doesn't happen but once every 100, maybe even 200 years.

No one is saying yet what triggered this, this week, but one woman who lives here, she moved in a couple of months ago, is just waiting and watching her house for now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAREN MCCOY, RESIDENT: I thought of it as like a huge, huge, huge wave crashing against the cement wall, and it was just really strong.

There is just a lot of anxiety about, like, what's going to happen, will I be able to move back home?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: One home was destroyed. Dozens of others have been evacuated.

Three men including an American inside a rocket have set the record -- this rocket -- set this record for the fastest trip to the International Space Station.

You can see the Soyuz spacecraft here docking, made it to the space station in a quick six hours.

Chad Myers, I know the trip is supposed to take two days. Six hours?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEROLOGIST: Well, it certainly does.

You know what? It's only 240 miles up there, though, so even at six hours, you're only doing 40-miles-an-hour up. Obviously, they go much faster than that.

The big thing is you have to catch up to this thing. You have to catch up to the ISS doing almost five-miles-per-second.

So they changed the altitude of the ISS just a little bit, just a mile and a half. And that moved the -- where it was going to transport itself right over the Cosmodrome, almost like a perfect pass between a quarterback and a long wide receiver doing a 50-yard bomb.

It was a perfect spot. They lifted right up into the path of the ISS, and it only took six hours, the fastest ever for a manned event to the ISS. Good stuff there.

BALDWIN: Leave it to you with a football analogy for space.

What about -- so once they're -- now that they're at the ISS, we're know they're there for a couple of months until September. What's the mission?

MYERS: There is a lot to do up there. And I don't know if you know this or not, but remember the Dragon that came down the other day?

BALDWIN: Yeah.

MYERS: It brought down all the Legos that they sent up there, that the kids made.

BALDWIN: Oh, yeah?

MYERS: So I guess now they can't go play with Legos anymore, but all these things -- it's about what the lack of gravity will do to growing plants, to just how seeds will germinate.

There are so amazing things up there. And I don't know when we're ever going to use them, but obviously if we're going to keep this man in space or think about going to mars, we're going to have to know more technology than we know down here at the surface and they're working on all those experiments up there.

BALDWIN: A lot of space experiments. We were just talking to some of the guys up there the other day.

Chad Myers, thank you.

MYERS: You're welcome.

BALDWIN: Lil Wayne dodging questions on whether sipping "sizzurp" caused his seizures.

The 30-year-old rapper says epilepsy is behind his latest health care that sent him to the hospital. Here is what he says. Quote, "I have people around me who know how to handle it. This time was real bad because I had three back-to-back, and the third one was so bad," end quote.

His hospitalization led many to believe this stuff, this "sizzurp," this cough syrup stuff, maybe caused the seizures. It's a dangerous cocktail, cough syrup mixed with soda, pieces of candy, something he's admitted to drinking quite a bit of in the past.

IPhone, sim (ph) phone, the next big thing may actually be a Facebook smartphone.

Facebook seems to be whipping up excitement by inviting reporters to an event at its Menlo Park campus, April 4th.

There is a bit of mystery -- of course, there is -- mystery about the event, as the e-vite only says, Facebook will be unveiling its -- quote -- "new home on Android."

And most New York Yankees fans would say Alex Rodriguez is overpaid. Players for the Houston Astros would probably agree because we did a little math. Actually, a lot of people did some math here.

A-Rod is paid more than all of the Houston Astros combined. A-Rod will make $29 million this season. Folks, that's more than the Astros' entire payroll of $25 million.

Oh, and did we mention A-Rod probably won't play for the first half of the season?

A-Rod, not the only Yankee making big bucks. New York will have the highest opening day payroll for the 15th straight season.

You want to know why the NCAA tournament is called March Madness? Because of this.

These fans, these are students at Florida Gulf Coast University, also dubbed "Dunk City," and we are joined now by -- what shall we call you, the mayor of "Dunk City," AKA Peter Cuderman, student body president at FGCU.

What do you think of that, Peter, mayor of "Dunk City?" Does that sit well with you?

PETER CUDERMAN, STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT, FLORIDA GULF COAST UNIVERSITY: I love it. I love it.

BALDWIN: We'll go with it.

CUDERMAN: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: We'll go with it, Mr. Mayor.

Tell me the truth here. Let's get real about your brackets. Did you pick your Eagles to advance this far?

CUDERMAN: Absolutely, yeah. It's a special moment for, obviously, Florida Gulf Coast University.

BALDWIN: I know it is a special moment, but I'm asking you the tough question, my friend, that was, did you pick your team to go this far?

CUDERMAN: There is no tough question there. It is a pretty easy answer, absolutely, I picked us going the whole way.

BALDWIN: Did you really? OK, so ...

CUDERMAN: Yeah, yeah.

BALDWIN: Can we talk about the coach, Andy Enfield, we've seen him -- here is your team, partying outside their bus.

Andy Enfield, he's like a rock star, got the supermodel wife. What was he like on campus pre-Georgetown win? Was he a legend?

CUDERMAN: Not necessarily a legend, but he was somebody that all the students could definitely go up to and talk to.

He wanted to get everybody involved on campus, for sure, get them out to the game. He was supportive of the clubs and organizations on campus and seeing him be this successful in his second year at FGCU is great.

BALDWIN: What do you make of the fact that so many people and I mean no disrespect, just had never really heard of your school in Ft. Myers until -- what -- last Friday night?

What do you think of all of this attention on your school?

CUDERMAN: I love it. I love it. I love seeing Florida Gulf Coast University get the recognition that it should have been getting.

You're talking about a school where academics have always been there. Students, staff, administration are all great, and then you get this type of exposure from sports and athletes and it just makes our university that much better.

BALDWIN: So the big game tonight with the Gators, if you win -- I guess, I'm going to say when you win -- when you win, "Dunk City" is an eight-hour drive from Atlanta, home of the Final Four this year, will you be making that trek, Mr. Mayor?

CUDERMAN: Absolutely. There's no question in mind at all.

If -- when we win, I will be going to Atlanta and we will be bringing a bunch of students up to support our Eagles.

BALDWIN: We have seen, I know this team called "Dunk City," played some pretty fun basketball. You've got the alley-oop dunks.

Are the Eagles games, are they always like this?

CUDERMAN: Absolutely, yeah. It's -- Florida Gulf Coast University is such a hidden gem, and the basketball games are no different. You have three, four, five of those plays every single game, no matter who we're playing.

When we're taking on Miami, we took them down the exact same way. So the teams that we're playing, we're throwing three-to-five alley-oops a game.

You have Brett Comer coming down making the transition plays, getting it to Fieler or Eddie Murray.

And then you have Sherwood who can pretty much do whatever he wants on the floor.

And then McKnight who's a big man, who can flame it down just as good as anybody else.

So, it's very special on campus and, when we get to go to the games, it's a really cool thing to see.

BALDWIN: That's fantastic. Love this time of year. Excited for you and your team.

Peter Cuderman, the -- informally now known, thanks to us, as the mayor of "Dunk City," good luck to your team tonight.

I'll definitely be watching, 10:00 tip-off, Eastern time. Thank you.

CUDERMAN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, inside the top secret files of the FBI, serial killers, notorious mobsters and UFOs? We are talking "X-Files" stuff here, right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: It has been the stuff of tabloids for years, the government cover-up, alien ships crash landing in the desert.

What do you think?

I love that movie.

Our question is, do you believe some type of E.T. creatures exactly exist? The FBI made some of its files public.

Here is our Brian Todd with a look at what people are flocking to see in the FBI vault.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's called "the vault," the FBI's digital reading room, where any of us can go online and view the bureau's most notorious cases.

Guess which is the most popular file? John Dillinger's? Jimmy Hoffa's? Nope.

JOHN FOX, FBI HISTORIAN: Since we opened the vault, it's been this memo about flying discs or flying saucers and it relates to an allegation that we heard from a third-hand saying that the Air Force had found a couple of saucers out in the New Mexico desert.

TODD: No. No, can't be. Most people want to read about Machine Gun Kelly and Al Capone, right?

FOX: You would think so, but this memo itself has gotten over a million page views in two years since we've put it up. Al Capone doesn't make our top 50.

TODD: The memo is all of two paragraphs. Agent Guy Hottel, then head of the FBI's Washington field office then, writes that an Air Force investigator stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico.

They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter.

Not only that, each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape, but only three-feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a fine texture.

Each body bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.

John Fox is the FBI's historian.

This was never followed up on, right?

FOX: No. In fact, it says right here, "no further evaluation was attempted concerning the above."

TODD: Why not?

FOX: From what is written here, from what we can read, it certainly looks like they thought that this was third-hand information, that this was not necessarily a hoax, which it could well have been, but that, you know, someone was simply reporting hearsay.

TODD: And it was more for the Air Force to look into, along with countless other reports of UFOs in Roswell, New Mexico, and elsewhere, reports that were never substantiated.

One reason the memo from Agent Hottel went viral is because, when the FBI vault was set up online two years ago, tabloids seized on that memo, saying it appeared to back up theories that aliens exist.

And it's not just the Guy Hottel memo that's a favorite. There are hundreds of other pages of memos and files in the FBI vault in the unexplained phenomenon section all about alien and UFO sightings that are more popular online than the FBI's files on Bonnie and Clyde, serial killer Ted Bundy and other famous cases.

Cases involving Osama bin Laden, investigations into the murders of civil rights leaders, all part of FBI lore.

Fox says out of all the strange cases he's come across ... FOX: The descriptions here of 50-foot diameter saucers and human- shaped, three-foot tall, metallic-clothed aliens, that's unique.

TODD: And, we can say, a little frustrating for FBI officials, who tell us it diverts attention from all the work they've done, all the dangers they've faced through the years, to capture fugitives and solve the nation's most difficult crimes.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Who knew?

Brian Todd, great piece, thank you.

Coming up next, a Syrian rebel fighter arrested on U.S. soil, possibly faces life in prison.

Why? He is an American citizen and a former U.S. soldier.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A former American soldier in some very hot water this afternoon. This video is part of the reason here.

That is 30-year-old Eric Harroun. Allegedly, he went to Syria to help rebels fight president Bashar al Assad, then bragged about it online, then posted videos, then photos of himself in Syria.

Here's the problem, though. Some of the rebels belonged to the al Nusra Front, an alias for al Qaeda in Iraq.

And some of those photos that this guy allegedly posted show him handling weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades.

And now, Harroun has been arrested. He is charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Meg Strickler is here with me in studio. Welcome to you. How serious is this charge?

MEG STRICKLER, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This is scary serious. He's facing life in prison with this charge.

BALDWIN: Wow.

STRICKLER: What's so surprising is his use of social media. Once again, social media rears its ugly head.

BALDWIN: Just like that, post videos, boom.

STRICKLER: And I'm not saying his behavior is good or bad, but the social media did not help because now we have all kinds of evidence.

The FBI has evidence of Facebook pictures, videos and his statements, so he is in a big world of trouble.

BALDWIN: We have this affidavit here, I want to quote part of it because he, obviously, is telling a very different story.

According to the affidavit, this is what the FBI tells is what the FBI says he told them. Let me quote this. "He further claimed that he hated al Qaeda, that he did not know any al Qaeda members, and that he would fight against any regime if it imposed Sharia law in Syria."

How would you defend him?

STRICKLER: This is a gray area. That's a very good -- that's exactly how I would find it because did he have lawful authority to be doing this fight?

As you know, Obama's policy at this point is to be fighting the rebel forces in Syria, so it's difficult.

And what's really funny here is that November 2012 is when this particular group was declared terrorists, and that's right around the time he is running in and out of Syria if you read the affidavit.

So it's a very interesting, very gray area and I'm hoping that the defense attorney in this case -- right now it's a public federal defender who will probably work to fight jurisdictional issues, fight the issues where it's gray area, and say, look, this is a person that was fighting the good fight, so to speak.

BALDWIN: You say life in prison.

STRICKLER: Yes.

BALDWIN: Do you think the government will prosecute him to the fullest extent here?

STRICKLER: It clearly looks like they are. There is a criminal complaint by our government against this person and he has been arrested. He came back into this country and became arrested the minute he came in.

Now if I was defending him i'd point out he gave interviews at the embassy over in Turkey to the FBI. In other words, he willingly cooperated.

In the federal system, there are things we can do that allow us to allow our clients to cooperate, which then allows departure from the sentencing guidelines.

Let's hope that's what goes on here.

BALDWIN: Meg Strickler, "On the Case," thank you.

STRICKLER: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Appreciate it.

And we will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TAWANDA JONES, CNN HERO: Who are we?

(Inaudible).

It's very hard for children growing up in Camden today. It's dangerous. You can hear gunshots almost every other night.

These kids want more. They don't want to be dodging bullets for the rest of their life.

My name is Tawanda Jones and my mission is to empower the youth of Camden, New Jersey, through the structured drill team.

What I try to do in order for them to go to the right path is simple. You instill discipline.

Come on. Go all the way to the end.

Drill team is really just a facade to bring these children in because it's something they love to do.

Then once I have them, I introduce them to the college life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: CSS changed me a whole lot. My dad was shot and killed.

When my dad passed I stopped going to class. I started hanging with the wrong people.

JONES: Did you complete your homework? Let me check it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's my second mom. Without her I really don't know where I would be right now.

JONES: In Camden the high school graduation rate is 49 percent, but in my program it is 100 percent graduate. We have never had a dropout.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My grades now, I have GPA of 3.0. I want to be a sports manager.

JONES: We need to take back our city and, most importantly, take back our youth. Let them know that we really care about them.

I don't think people really understand how important it is to have these children succeed. We do this and you get great rewards. It's better than money.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: A lot of Google in the news this week. Here is the news today. You may soon be able to google your groceries. Google has launched a shipping business now.

Yep, the company is taking on Amazon Prime and the website for Google Shopping Express says they offer unlimited, same-day delivery.

For now the service is available only in the San Francisco Bay area where they are testing it out.

And now to this. How do you decorate your living room? Maybe you have a big flat screen TV, maybe a big painting over the mantle.

Take a look at this. Look at this. This is a guy's house. This is Bristol, Wisconsin. He installed a giant fish tank in his living room. This is giant, 24-feet long, 10-feet tall, 10-feet wide.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything I have I can figure out very quickly and then I get bored, so I move on to the next one.

This I've never been able to master. I'm learning something new every day. I get to do something new every day, so that's why I'm interested in it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: At more than 20,000 gallons, this is the largest privately- owned reef tank in all of North America.

Hope you watch, I'm back at 7:00, in for Erin Burnett tonight.

In the meantime, "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right now.