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Amanpour

How Can Ebola Be Stopped?; Spying for Israel; Imagine a World

Aired October 16, 2014 - 14:00   ET

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

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: grilled by U.S. lawmakers on Ebola, the chief of the CDC says the virus will be a threat

for a long time to come. I'll ask one of Britain's leading scientists: can anyone stop the disease?

Also ahead, how did a son of Hamas end up becoming a spy for Israel? The extraordinary drama full of intrigue and betrayal.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

So can anyone stop Ebola? Leaders around the world are giving that question their full attention today.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency security meeting. E.U. health ministers are gathering in Brussels and in the United

States President Obama has cleared his diary and canceled travel plans for a second straight day to figure out how to stop the spread of the deadly

disease after the CDC leading the charge promised and failed to stop Ebola in its tracks.

And if America is having such trouble, what does it mean for everyone else? CDC director Tom Frieden was grilled on Capitol Hill today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, DIRECTOR, CDC: And I will tell you, as the director of CDC, one of the things I fear about Ebola is that it could spread more

widely in Africa. If this were to happen, it could become a threat to our health system and the health care we give for a long time to come.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): The CDC is under fire not least for reportedly allowing a nurse who said she had a fever to travel by plan. Amber Vinson

has now been transported to a specialized unit at Emory Hospital in Atlanta. She, too, had treated the patient who died in Texas last week,

just like nurse Nina Pham, who now is being sent for better treatment as well in Maryland.

As nurses complain that they have not been properly train to deal with this disease, President Obama has vowed to do more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We are monitoring, supervising, overseeing in a much more aggressive way exactly what's taking

place in Dallas initially and making sure that the lessons learned are then transmitted to hospitals and clinics all across the country.

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AMANPOUR: So can Ebola be stopped?

And is it too late to prevent it spreading even further?

Joining me now in the studio is Sir Roy Anderson. He's professor of infectious disease at Imperial College here in London. He was chief

scientist for the British Ministry of Defense and he's also advised the WHO and U.N. AIDS.

Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program.

How bad is it?

SIR ROY ANDERSON, IMPERIAL COLLEGE: Well, the situation in the three main countries affected, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, is very serious

indeed. So the virus continues to spread. The doubling time of the epidemic, which is the time between the doubling in number of cases, is

running at about 25-28 days. So if we have 10,000 cases today, 25 days later we're going to have 20,000.

So nothing as yet that has been done is slowing the spread of this virus.

AMANPOUR: So can anything?

That is the obvious next question.

What can stop this spread and this disease?

ANDERSON: Well, you have very limited -- there are no drugs to treat patients. And there is no vaccine at the moment. So you have two options,

quick isolation of the infected patient, the ill patient, and then the follow-up and quarantine of all the contacts of that patient.

But this is the problem. If you now have a set of field hospitals being put in Sierra Leone and Liberia by United Kingdom and United States, the

number of field hospitals is probably about 22 for the U.K., 25 for the United States. Those hospitals have got to be able to deal with and

quarantine a very large number of patients.

And so one's fear is that the doubling time of this epidemic is going to escalate the Western response at present.

AMANPOUR: And yet this is -- or is it -- a massive Western response. I mean, the United States has sent something like 4,000 military personnel

plus doctors, plus trainers, plus equipment. Britain has done something similar and is sending more to Sierra Leone. Obviously the French are in

Guinea. They are the only ones that can do this heavy lifting.

Is it too late though?

ANDERSON: Well, I hope not. But I think it's going to take some time for these three countries to be able to allocate and deploy the resources that

are required to slow the spread.

I'm not totally convinced that these hospitals will actually slow the spread significantly. Their first task is to treat the infected or contact

health care workers. So that's the first task, because these individuals are most important.

Stopping spread and quarantining in the population, in these three major urban centers, is going to be very difficult indeed. And so although they

may slow the spread -- and we need more resources to do that -- longer term the solutions must be either immunotherapy, which is putting serum into

infected patients, and more importantly of course in the longer term a vaccine.

AMANPOUR: Well, let me ask you about that because last week on the program we spoke to Dr. Adrian Hill. He's at Oxford University. And he talked

about trials being conducted right now. He thought they might take a long time, some 10 years to actually come to fruition.

But what can you tell us about any advances in these vaccine trials?

ANDERSON: Well, so far there have been trials in volunteers, in United Kingdom, United States and Mali. These individuals have volunteered to

receive a trial vaccine. And Dr. Fauci announced quite recently that in the United States there have been no safety worries as yet of this

inoculation into these patients.

So then if that continues to be good news, then the question is an international agency and regulatory authority one it is how can we speed up

the process of getting this trial vaccine first of all manufactured on scale? And that's a challenge, real challenge for the companies, and then

deploy it as quickly as possible?

Now under the most optimistic scenario, you're talking about the first quarter to the first half of next year. And then the vaccine has to be

used in the best manner possible, not only to protect health care workers, which is the primary function at the moment, but also to think about ring

vaccination to slow the spread of this infection.

AMANPOUR: But are you hopeful for this vaccine? We just heard about the trial.

Is -- can you tell us anything new about it?

Is it something that you think will actually do the trick?

ANDERSON: So far, so good.

AMANPOUR: So that's good news.

ANDERSON: That is good news. But there's a long way to go and there's also very important decisions to be made by the World Health Organization

and the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom about what trials would satisfy the safety and efficacy needs to get --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Do we have that time?

ANDERSON: I think if people really move, these decisions could be made in weeks.

AMANPOUR: Could be done in weeks?

ANDERSON: Yes.

AMANPOUR: So this could be available in weeks, you're saying?

ANDERSON: No. I'm saying that the availability of a candidate vaccine is going to take the manufacturing process to develop thousands and --

AMANPOUR: But the approval could be.

ANDERSON: The approval and what would satisfy the international community to use the vaccine if everything went well --

AMANPOUR: And you're saying, frankly, that is the only way to stop the spread?

ANDERSON: Well, I think the current quarantine and isolation has to be pushed very, very hard in the most affected areas. And of it -- and the

United States and United Kingdom and France need to step up that effort. But longer term, to prevent this infection becoming endemic, not only in

West Africa but I really do fear as WHO (ph) made the comment, that this might jump to the East Coast and other cities.

AMANPOUR: Well, the East Coast of the United States, you're talking about. There are a huge number of questions and we pose that question, if the U.S.

can't get a grip on this, you know, how can these other countries? And we've just talked about this a lot.

Let me play you a little bit of an interview from Dr. Brantly, who was also infected, cured and then he's been giving his blood to some others in the

front lines. Listen to what he said about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. KENT BRANTLY, EBOLA WORKER AND SURVIVOR: I think there's a lot of irrational fear about Ebola spreading in the United States. If we think

about what we've seen so far, we had one man who came from Liberia, contracted the disease there and came to America and got sick here.

And now who else has gotten sick from him? It's two health care workers who were taking intimate care of him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So is he right?

Is this being blown out of proportion?

ANDERSON: Well, I think for the Western countries, United States and Western Europe, probably yes. But here's an observation. The epidemic is

spreading in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea at a rate which is each primary case of infection generates two secondary cases. That's the average.

The United States, two secondary cases were generate admittedly by health care workers who were caring for the very ill patient in that time.

Now many of us are surprised at what has happened in Texas. But I suspect now CDC will control nationally, not just state by state, the criteria and

the protocols that were required to prevent this happening.

AMANPOUR: And yet, even after the death of this man, the infection of another nurse, another nurse reporting she has a fever; she's allowed to

get on a plane.

Can I just play also a little bit of what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, America's top military official, said about the possibility

(INAUDIBLE).

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: If you bring two doctors who happen to have that specialty into a room, one will say, no,

there's no way it'll ever become airborne. But it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: He's caused a lot of controversy and a lot of fear with that.

ANDERSON: Well, this virus is a little bit different from the viruses that were causing sporadic epidemics way back in 2004 in the previous 40 years.

The number of changes in a code which has 19,000 bits is about 300, relatively small. So my first concern is not mutation. My first concern

is getting this under control.

And at the moment there's no evidence to say that this is airborne droplet transmitted. However, I stress that this is a very difficult infection to

study and there's no evidence to say not, that my assumption and the evidence at the moment points to contact.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Roy Anderson, thank you so much indeed for joining me tonight, clearing up some of the many, many questions and fears about this.

And after a break, what if we told you the son of a founder of Hamas, the radical Palestinian organization, grew up to become one of Israel's most

valuable spies? It is not the plot of a novel by John le Carre. It is a true story and it's the basis of a remarkable new documentary. We'll meet

that son of Hamas and the director who brought his story out of the shadows when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

In the eyes of his family, his friends and his fellow Palestinians, my next guest committed the ultimate betrayal. Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a

senior Hamas leader, turned his back on everything to become a spy for Israel. He didn't do it by choice, at least not at first, but he did it

for 10 years.

Now a new documentary film tells the extraordinary story of how and why and who turned him. The film is called "The Green Prince." Mosab Hassan

Yousef joins me now in the studio, along with the director, Nadav Schirman.

Welcome to you both. Thanks for being here. An amazing film, obviously, an amazing story. We met a while ago -- I interviewed you three to four

years ago about this precise story. Why and has anything got better? Have you met your father again? You were totally ostracized from them at that

time.

MOSAB HASSAN YOUSEF, SHIN BET COLLABORATOR: They disowned me, since that moment we have not spoken.

AMANPOUR: Not at all?

YOUSEF: Not at all.

AMANPOUR: Do you regret at all doing what you did?

YOUSEF: I don't regret. I did make some choices under difficult circumstances and I believe that they were the perfect choices.

AMANPOUR: Even if you don't see your family or your friends?

YOUSEF: I believe I'll see them again.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, Nadav, before we get into the nitty-gritty and the details, I guess why did you make this film is an obvious question.

It's fascinating, a leader of one of your biggest enemies, Hamas, the son of, is now an agent for Israel.

What do you think this story tells Israelis and Palestinians?

NADAV SCHIRMAN, DIRECTOR, "THE GREEN PRINCE": I think what's very interesting is how different cultures perceive different elements in the

film. Personally I was very much touched by the relationship, which is at the center of the film, which is the relationship between Mosab and Gonen

and the way that I perceived it, it was a relationship which transcended the political, religious and national divide. I mean, these two gentlemen

took a great risk to trust one another. And they were best of enemies who became best of friends. So if that is possible, you know, many things are

possible.

AMANPOUR: And when you look at him and you think, oh, my God, his father is Hamas, my big enemy, what do you think? You as an Israeli, not as a

filmmaker.

SCHIRMAN: Well, listen, first of all, you know, when I read Mosab's book, "A Son of Hamas," it was an eye-opener because I realized how little we

actually know about Hamas. It's the same thing like ISIS today, Islamic State. You know, Hamas, we know from snippets in the news, we know from

really headlines. But there is no in-depth literature or films available.

And what was fascinating is that Mosab was the son of the top camaseder (ph). So he comes from that culture. So his perspective was genuinely

fascinating. And that was the first step. And then when you see how Mosab came from a very devout Muslim family, he was groomed to be the next Hamas

leader and how his consciousness changed and evolved in the process of working with Israel, which was his worst enemy at the time, it's

fascinating. And it's very inspiring because it shows you that with a certain sense of responsibility, many things are possible.

AMANPOUR: Let me play a snippet from the film, which is actually from your handler, Gonen Yitzhak. And we want to just play what he says and then

talk to you about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

To collaborate with Israel is the most painful thing you can do (INAUDIBLE). If somebody raped his mother, that's very shameful. But if

he collaborated with Israel, this is much more shameful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Well, of course, that's you. So let's talk about that.

You said collaborating with Israel is even more shameful than raping your mother.

What led you to collaborate with Israel?

YOUSEF: You know, when I started working for Israel, I was motivated by revenge because they arrested my father at very young age and I was

motivated by lots of hatred.

AMANPOUR: To them?

YOUSEF: To the Israelis. So this was the beginning of that relationship.

Now down the road, I started to have a different realization, that we are the same. We have the same struggles. And that led me to take a stand.

What we were doing with the Israeli intelligence, they had their agendas. They were doing their thing. But in my position, as individual, I had a

chance to stop a suicide bomber of killing innocent people, which, by the way, were not only Israelis. And I took that responsibility as individual.

Now if the Israeli intelligence had different agendas, that's their problem. But for me in that position, which you know, I did not choose, I

went there because I was full of hatred and revenge. But then my eyes started to open that a suicide bomber does not differentiate between an

American or Israeli or Christian or a Muslim. He does not care for his own life. And he needed to be stopped.

AMANPOUR: This all happened -- you were turned in prison under interrogation, I believe. And your handler was Gonen Ben Yitzhak and now

we're going to play a little bit of what he said to you in the film.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GONEN BEN YITZHAK, SHIN BET: When you handle a source, you make him do things that he would never do for your benefit. It's not yours it's the

government's benefit. And you do it by finding his weak points and use them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: So he remains in the shadows in that scene. But that's pretty cynical. I mean, he's not your friend. He's trying to find your weak

points in order to help his own government.

What weak point did he find?

YOUSEF: You need to ask him that question.

AMANPOUR: What weak point did he find?

SCHIRMAN: I think what's interesting and I wish Gonen was here, because you know, in the film as well as in real life, Gonen started off as really

as a manipulator. He wanted to use Mosab for the benefit of the government, of the system he was working for.

But in the process of working with Mosab, as you see in the film, things began to change. And ultimately Gonen turned against the Shin Bet, turned

against his own system. He took a great risk to trust Mosab. Mosab took a great risk to trust Gonen. And they worked outside their systems and which

is extraordinary.

AMANPOUR: Which actually he also said -- and we're not going to play this -- but he said that he actually started, as you said, to take a risk and

work outside. And that was the beginning of the end of his time at Shin Bet. So I mean, he also led to his own expulsion from that organization.

You don't necessarily take sides in this film. It's really classic reportage. You have two people, the former Hamas Palestinian and the

Israeli intelligence, who are just telling their stories to the camera.

You're not asking people to take sides.

What are you asking people to do?

SCHIRMAN: Well, you know, I'm a filmmaker. So my world is cinema. Cinema deals with emotion. We're not -- as opposed to journalists, who are

supposed to relay facts or interpret facts for us, our job as filmmakers is to give the audience a story. When I was very touched by the story, so I

wanted in turn to be able to touch the audience.

So we deal with emotions and also when you see the film, you know, what was interesting for us was the emotional uproar of Mosab and of Gonen to their

own narratives. So it's a very emotional film at the end of the day.

AMANPOUR: Let me fast forward you now to today. Your -- you know, there's been a terrible war in Gaza obviously between Hamas and Israel and now

there's an even more terrible perhaps rise of a terrible militant terrorist group, ISIS.

What do you think when you see these mutations of Islam, hijacking whole societies and whole worlds?

What do you think of the narrative of your religion? I know you've converted to Christianity but what do you think of that today?

YOUSEF: Unfortunately everybody choose to be politically correct. And I have said this on your show a few years ago. I believe that the problem

itself is in the Islamic books. And those guys are inspired by the Islamic teachings. If you look at the example of the Prophet of Islam, and I don't

mean to insult anybody, you know, he beheaded people. He used a sword. He launched military campaigns. And those people think by following his

footsteps they are going to establish an Islamic state and emancipate humanity, even though they're destroying it.

AMANPOUR: I wonder how that's going to change.

YOUSEF: It's going to change when we create awareness that this is not the way. Violence can lead humanity to destruction. Tolerance, understanding,

dialogue and forgiveness are the only ways for us to survive.

AMANPOUR: Which is a little bit the narrative of this film.

Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us. Thank you.

And after a break, we will go from the serious game of espionage to the often ludicrous game of U.S. politics. Imagine if an election could turn

on the influence of just a single fan. We'll explain when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where fanfare over a fan blows away U.S. politics as usual. The stage was set last night in the

state of Florida, as two candidates for governor were supposed to engage in a debate before a live audience.

But when the lights came on, the two leading actors were nowhere to be seen.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ladies and gentlemen, we have an extremely peculiar situation right now.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Peculiar indeed. The former governor, Charlie Crist, finally walked to the podium, but his opponent, the incumbent

governor, Rick Scott, remained in the wings. Listen to what happened next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor Rick Scott, we have been told that Governor Scott will not be participating in this debate.

Now let me explain what this is all about. Governor Crist has asked to have a fan, a small fan placed underneath his podium. The rules of the

debate that I was shown by the Scott campaign say that there should be no fan. Somehow there is a fan there. And for that reason, ladies and

gentlemen, I am being told that Governor Scott --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- will not join us for this debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: No, that wasn't political parody. It really did happen.

Governor Scott eventually appeared and the debate went on. But by then, all the buzz was about what's already being called Fangate. And when the

votes are counted in November, it may not be a laughing matter.

And just imagine this at a time when everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong in the world, say the Ebola response, fighting ISIS,

just a couple of the really serious challenges to be debated.

And that's it for our program tonight. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

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