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Amanpour
World Powers Meet in Vienna for Syria Talks; "All the Way" Explores LBJ's Push for Civil Rights; Imagine a World. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired May 17, 2016 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:00:00]
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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: The British prime minister joins Tinder. David Cameron plans to use that dating app to
entice young voters to stay in the E.U.
With Brexiters touting Norway as their Leave model, the country's defense minister joins me here live on that, on Syria and on Russia's model.
Also ahead: he became a global phenomenon as a high school chemistry teacher, breaking bad in the drugs world. Now actor Bryan Cranston is
running for president -- on screen, at least.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRYAN CRANSTON, ACTOR: How this man ascended to the most visible office in the world under tragic circumstances and, within six months, got the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 passed, which changed the face of our country, a remarkable achievement, landmark legislation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
It's the biggest crisis of our time. But, yet again, efforts to end it have failed. World powers gathered again today in Vienna to try to restore
the Syrian cease-fire and set a date for new peace talks. But they could not.
Instead, they agreed to keep trying and also they announced some humanitarian airdrops. The U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry,
acknowledged the major challenges ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: A variety of competing interests are going to have to be reconciled. And those involved in this conflict with
competing agendas are going to have to be willing to prioritize peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So one such competing agenda seems to be coming from Moscow. The Russian military is still very much operating inside Syria and
President Putin continues to back the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian crisis brings together a great many threats, an increasingly
aggressive Russia, the spread of ISIS and the massive refugee crisis.
Norway's defense minister is dealing with all of that; Ine Eriksen Soreide joins me now in London.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Defense Minister, welcome back to our program.
INE ERIKSEN SOREIDE, NORWEGIAN DEFENSE MINISTER: Thank you very much for having me.
AMANPOUR: So as you see, all these crises that we've enumerated, yet again, no progress toward Syria.
How do (INAUDIBLE) the strategic partnership with Russia?
SOREIDE: Well, I think that, first and foremost, Russia has a chance to play a good part and a good role in this conflict as well. But so far I
think that their projection of power mostly has led to keeping the conflict alive.
And I think we also need to realize that, even though there is good and constructive dialogue and also discussion between the U.S. and Russia, I
think Russia also uses Syria to send other messages.
For instance, that their military modernization has now come even further and that they are sending a message also politically, that you have to
relate to Russia in these kinds of instances.
AMANPOUR: We hear a lot of instances of them flexing their military might, whether it's up by the Baltics, whether it's buzzing and rolling around
U.S. flight, U.S. warplanes and warships.
What are you seeing in terms of their projection of that military power that concerns you as a NATO member?
SOREIDE: Well, I think that, from my perspective up in the north, I think that one of the most challenging things we see at the moment is not
necessarily an imminent crisis but an emergence of strategic challenges, namely, the anti-Axis area denial challenge in the North Atlantic.
And that is a crisis or a potential crisis and a conflict situation that could easily threaten the whole trans-Atlantic area. And even though we
don't see a military threat from Russia at this stage and we have a dialogue, a pragmatic dialogue with Russia to keep tensions down, which is
important to Norway, we work closely both together with the U.S. the U.K. and other close allies to actually address this issue also in NATO.
AMANPOUR: You don't see a military crisis ahead. But General Breedlove, the NATO commander who just stepped down, said that he's noticing new
dangerous actions from Russia and that Russia is using all elements of its power to engage nations on its periphery.
You're all going to a NATO meeting soon, next month.
What are you planning in order to counter these threats?
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SOREIDE: Well, there are a range of issues that we'll be discussing. I think that what we are looking into is the more long-term adaptation of the
alliance, not necessarily only the assurance measures that we have been doing for a year and a half now but also the long-term adaptation, how to
relate to Russia in the future.
We had a strategic partner in Russia. And I think what we are seeing now and have been seeing for some time is that that is not a partnership that
will come back to any kind of normality when it comes to the more strategic partnership.
So that's why we also have to address these challenges. And one of my main concerns as a Norwegian defense minister is that I share with many other
defense ministers and especially those with maritime borders, is that we have a challenge in the North Atlantic that we have to address, because the
High North is not an area where conflict necessarily would start if there was any potential conflict.
But it is an area of military strategic importance to Russia and increasingly so. And that's why we have to pay close attention to the
development of new military capacities and we monitor that quite closely also on behalf of NATO.
AMANPOUR: Let's get to the Brexit issue because, as I said, Brexiters are often pointing to Norway as their example of how you can be out of the E.U.
and thriving and have your own sovereignty.
So on the issue of immigration, which is something that the Brexiters are very concerned about, being outside the E.U., does that mean you do not
have to engage in the free movement of people?
SOREIDE: No. On the contrary, we are a part of the internal market. So we do engage in the free movement of people. And when it comes to
migration, we have also received over 30,000 refugees and migrants so far in 2015. And we are a part of Schengen and we are of course closely
looking into what kind of measures E.U. will be taking next. And we are following that quite closely.
AMANPOUR: On the issue of having a say in the E.U. and being -- you're part of the economic area --
SOREIDE: That's right.
AMANPOUR: -- do you feel that you have all the rights and benefits and say in what happens in the E.U.?
SOREIDE: Well, we don't. We adopt almost 75 percent of all E.U. legislation. And from a Norwegian standpoint, of course, it's, for us,
important to say that the British voice within the E.U. is important to us, because we have the same view on many of those laws and rules and
regulations.
But we also have around, I think, 10,000 rules and regulations that have been adopted for the past 20 years. So if you divide that into the number
of days where the Norwegian parliament is sitting, you could say that it's five a day.
And we have also, in that context, of course, the fact that we have full pay but we actually do not have a say. So I think the British people need
to decide for themselves what kind of future they would like with the E.U.
But as a defense minister, I would also like to say that we see the increasing importance of the E.U. also as a security policy actor. And in
a time where cohesion and unity is maybe more important than ever, I think that staying closely together in Europe and addressing the challenges that
lie ahead of us is more important maybe than ever before.
AMANPOUR: And on that note, Defense Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide, thank you very much for joining me.
SOREIDE: Thank you.
AMANPOUR: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And from politics to playing politics, next, what do U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and a
high school chemistry teacher breaking bad have in common?
The many faces and many talents of Bryan Cranston -- after this.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
In American politics these days, truth is stranger than fiction. But in the early 1960s, politicians were grappling with enacting massive historic
change.
Following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson became the so-called accidental president. He soon set
himself the very tough task of passing the Civil Rights Act and desegregating the American South.
And this is now the subject of a new HBO film, "All the Way." Here's a clip of LBJ, trying to convince Martin Luther King to stick with his plan,
even if it means delaying black voting rights.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "ALL THE WAY")
BRANDON DIRDEN, ACTOR, "MARTIN LUTHER KING": Well, nothing in this country will ever change until negroes can vote.
CRANSTON, "LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON": The next bill will be voting rights.
"KING": After President Kennedy's election, Eisenhower had publicly declared that his party had taken the negro vote for granted. I would hate
to see the Democratic Party make the same mistake.
"JOHNSON": If you think Barry Goldwater is a legitimate heir to Abraham Lincoln, you should vote for him.
(END VIDEO CLIP, "ALL THE WAY")
AMANPOUR: "Breaking Bad's" Bryan Cranston plays LBJ there, having already won a Tony for his Broadway performance in 2014. I spoke to him earlier
about this role from New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Bryan Cranston, welcome to the program.
CRANSTON: Thank you. Good to be here.
AMANPOUR: I've been watching the film, a special screening of it, because it's not released yet.
What was it about LBJ that grabbed you, about his style of politics and governance?
CRANSTON: Well, the first thing that always grabs me is the story itself. And this story was how this man ascended to the most visible office in the
world under tragic circumstances and, within six months, got the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, which changed the face of our country, a
remarkable achievement.
It was a tough battle. But the political acumen of LBJ was such that he knew he had a window of opportunity, of sympathy toward him and toward the
administration after the assassination. And he had to get it done within that time.
AMANPOUR: You talk a lot about how he did it and he was known as this sort of back-slapping, wheeling-dealing politician. He used all his experience,
all his skill, crossing the aisle and getting this amazing thing done.
But he also, some of his party would say, betrayed them, the Southern Democrats, including his long-time mentor, the Atlanta senator, Dick
Russell.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "ALL THE WAY")
"LBJ": I still need you, Dick.
FRANK LANGELLA, ACTOR, "SEN. RICHARD RUSSELL": I'm still here, Mr. President. But the rest of Texas -- I hope you haven't just killed your
election chances.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations, Mr. President, on your glorious achievement.
"LBJ": The Democratic Party just lost the South for the rest of my lifetime and maybe yours.
(END VIDEO CLIP, "ALL THE WAY")
AMANPOUR: What does it tell you really when we look at today and today's election and the argument between principle and pragmatism and how business
gets done?
CRANSTON: Well, I think there is a stark difference. Unfortunately, today in the United States, there's a polemic nature of politics and a polarizing
sense that the two basic sides are not in a condition where they would work out their issues.
In Johnson's day, he socialized with a lot of these people in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. And he got to know them under that
basis and know their wives and some of their children so that, when it came time to iron out issues, they didn't want to throw each under the bus.
They didn't want to mention any vitriolic statements against the other person because they liked them. And they were incentivized to find common
ground.
And unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the structure of Washington is that way any longer.
AMANPOUR: Bryan, there's so much incendiary politics, so much name- calling in the current election in the United States right now. Donald Trump has set a new standard when it comes to the public debate.
And even in the film, Lyndon Johnson worries about --
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AMANPOUR: -- Democratic opponent, Barry Goldwater. And he says Goldwater is stronger than you think, he warns to his own party.
There must have been a sense of what's going on today as you were filming that and speaking those lines?
CRANSTON: I don't think there's anyone, perhaps with the exception of Donald Trump himself, who thought that he would be around at this point, at
this juncture in the presidential election. It's an amazing story that will be taught in universities around the world, of this presidential
election.
And I think, you know, there are some -- there are some benefits to it. I am ideologically opposed to almost everything that comes out of his mouth.
I don't feel he is presidential. I don't feel he has a grasp on the issues.
But regardless of that, I'm going to start here and say that, Donald Trump, I believe, loves this country. He does. And what we want to be able to
get to in our country and around the world is to be able to disagree with someone without becoming disagreeable.
AMANPOUR: What do you see in him as a performer on this global stage that has been so effective?
CRANSTON: I think, first of all, without using the teleprompter, being able to just speak extemporaneously. And whatever is on his mind comes
out. And there is -- it's a refreshing notion, it is.
And he is a -- he's a smart man. He knows how to wake up people and touch buttons that are triggers to their emotional well-being and how they feel
about the country or jobs or whatever.
To that end, though, I would say that he is a fearmonger and he's pushing those buttons, making promises that no sensible person can say he's
actually capable of doing. He's putting forth ideas in a demagoguery sort of way that presents the problem over and over again without the potential
of presenting solutions.
And I have trust and faith in my fellow citizens that, when all is said and done, common sense and sensibility and a desire for an intellect and an
honorable person to be in that position and he will not become the President of the United States.
AMANPOUR: Bryan Cranston, thank you very much indeed.
CRANSTON: My pleasure, thank you, Christiane.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And next, we go even further back in time. Imagine a world pulling the past up from unknown depths, drowned Egyptian cities and the
most famous queen, who could be hiding right there in plain sight. We'll have that next.
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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where one of ancient history's greatest discoveries was under our noses all along. As the
British Museum gets ready to exhibit Egyptian artifacts that have been reclaimed from the bottom of the ocean, in Egypt, archaeologists are
working toward the last great discovery, finding the last Egyptian queen, Nefertiti.
New evidence suggests that she's hiding behind the wall of another great archeological site, the golden tomb of Tutankhamen. All that treasure.
CNN's Nick Glass brings back the story of this extraordinary dig.
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NICK GLASS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The north wall of the burial chamber of Tutankhamen, is there a hidden chamber behind it?
DR. NICHOLAS REEVES, EGYPTOLOGIST: At the moment, this is just a hypothesis. But, you know, I'm pretty cautious as a scholar. I don't
stick my neck out too often. But I'm prepared to stick my neck out here, because I think there is something to investigate. If I'm right, well,
fantastic. But let's cross that bridge when we get to it.
GLASS (voice-over): Seven months on, despite the skepticism of other Egyptologists, Nick Reeves sticking by his theory.
After a special conference in Cairo earlier this month, he said this, "I was looking for evidence that would tell me that my initial reading was
wrong. But I didn't find any. I just found more and more indicators that there is something extra going on in Tutankhamen's tomb."
This story, of course, begins back in 1922 with the tomb's discovery by another obsessive middle-aged British Egyptologist, Howard Carter.
We still have the original plate glass negatives, a tomb filled with strange animals, statues and gold, everywhere the glint of gold.
Carter, about to break into the burial chamber, marveled at the treasures but was also mystified. The architecture, the orientation of the spaces,
seemed odd. The tomb was surprisingly small, just four chambers. Carter initially thought it merely demi-royal.
You descend the steps and turn right. And turning right in a burial chamber in Ancient Egypt usually meant that the occupant was female.
And this tomb was decorated in a rush. Tutankhamen had died young and suddenly, aged between 17 to 19. This was evidently a hasty, slapdash
burial.
ADAM LOWE, FACTUM ARTE: (INAUDIBLE). It's got lots of grates (ph), lots of stashes. It was painted fast. The mold, the microbacteria tells you
that.
GLASS (voice-over): These extraordinary high-resolution images were made by Factum Arte, a specialist art company commissioned to make a replica of
the tomb. They scanned the burial chapel over six weeks in 2009 and went on to publish the images online in 2014, just eight images, the four walls
with the paintings, the four walls without; in effect, a relief map of the surface.
LOWE: He said, that data's amazing, it will be a game-changer. So if he - - what he was basically saying is, if I can sit and look at that data, I can identify the things I'm looking for.
GLASS: Back then, in 2014, Nicholas Reeves was working at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and although he'd visited the tomb itself on countless
occasions, he arrived at his astonishing theory sat at a computer in New York 9,500 kilometers from the Valley of the Kings.
GLASS (voice-over): Nick Reeves began with the west wall, with its decoration of 12 baboons, representing the 12 hours of the night. With the
scans, he could dissolve the painting away and analyze the bedrock beneath.
And here he detected the ghost of a door, apparently plastered over in antiquity; the door, he thinks, to a storeroom.
GLASS: And Reeves then moves on from the west wall to the much longer and more detailed north wall and, for a second time, he finds a ghost door.
The image on the north wall tells the story of the pharaoh's journey into the afterlife. The dead pharaoh, the mummified Tutankhamen in white on the
left, is having his mouth opened so he can speak and eat in the afterlife.
The ritual, using a special tool, is carried out by his successor on the right, the pharaoh Ai, wearing a leopard skin. But here --
[14:25:00]
GLASS (voice-over): -- Reeves invites us to look at the faces again. The pharaoh Ai still has puppy fat.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You look at this, the chin. He's got a little double chin. This is identical to portraits of Tutankhamen.
GLASS (voice-over): So if Ai is, in fact, Tutankhamen, who is the mummy with the false beard?
Reeves points to a fold, a laugh or smile line around the mouth, the characteristic found in sculptures of Nefertiti in middle age.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You'll see that tick here.
GLASS (voice-over): To Reeves, it was all blindingly obvious.
REEVES: I look at this now and I think, how can anybody have thought this was anybody but Tutankhamen opening the mouth of his predecessor,
Nefertiti?
GLASS (voice-over): As he set out in his paper, published online last summer, Reeves' belief is that Tutankhamen was buried in the empty chamber
to Nefertiti's tomb; she, his stepmother is, he believes, entombed behind the north wall.
Nick Reeves re-aired his theory at a special conference in Cairo earlier this month and the debate got briefly a little heated.
Dr. Zahi Hawass on the left, Egypt's best-known Egyptologist, entirely dismisses the theory.
Dr. Eldamaty on the right, until recently Egypt's antiquities minister, thinks there's a 50 percent chance of voids behind the walls. Back in
November, he was 90 percent sure. Deflatingly, the latest scans of the tomb contradict the earlier ones, suggesting there's no evidence of hidden
chambers. More scans are planned.
REEVES: This could be nothing. It's just a wild goose chase. But on the other hand, if I'm right in my reading of the evidence suggesting there
might be the burial of Nefertiti behind the north wall, surely that's worth -- that's worth going the extra mile.
GLASS (voice-over): Back in 1922, Howard Carter was astounded to find a tomb that as filled with golden artifacts, over 5,000 of them. It took him
10 years to clear the tomb and document them all.
The shrines around the sarcophagus rose so high Carter could barely make out the decoration on the walls. He didn't have the technology to look
behind the paintings. Now we do.
After 3,000 years or more, are we going to find something?
Nick Glass for CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: A mystery indeed. And that is it for our program tonight. Remember, you can listen to our podcast, see us online anytime at
amanpour.com and follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
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