ever bringing a charge. and from a logistical standpoint the idea of taking them from a spot where they re removed from the american populace and even removed from the cuban populace in guantanamo bay and instead bringing them to a place like hanahan, south carolina where you have churches, schools, a place that s rated as a tourist mecca and saying why don t we house them there doesn t make common sense. chris inness. hold on, congressman. especially taking them toon absolute supermax where it s down in some dungeon where they re never going to get out in a million years that s not the issue of security because there are such places. from an aclu point of view do we have the right to take a dangerous terrorist who we can t convict of a crime and hold him until these hostilities are over as dianne feinstein put it? these hostilities are going to go on forever as far as we know. are we allowed to hold them? a lost these people have already been held for 14 dwraerz. the united states
minutes, maybe an hour or so away. i know it s very close. how bad are things right now where the storm s hitting? reporter: given everything you ve just described, you would expect to come to us and see utter destruction in the background and me hanging on by my eyelashes. it s not happening, not here. that devastation is taking place, but not here. it is still going to get here, but it doesn t appear it s going to be a direct hit. and that is, of course, for the people who live here and for all those that are evacuated, extremely welcome news. because this city, right on the coast, as it is, and being such a tourist mecca, is so vulnerable. and that s what they feared, because there was so little time to prepare. they still were able to evacuate thousands of tourists, many of them are actually taken far away to get out of the path of this storm. and then the other local people here have been put into shelters. so right now, they re hunkered down, hardly anybody is out.
welcome to the lead. i m jim sciutto in today for jake tapper. we begin today with breaking news in the world lead. seemingly out of nowhere hurricane patricia has exploded. now the largest hurricane ever recorded. it is just seconds away from slamming a tourist mecca in mexico 200-mile-per-hour sustained winds, 245-mile-per-hour gusts, 20 inches of rain. and with a pulverizing wall of water that could leave the coastline drowned and devastated. the u.s. not out of danger at all with this monster threatening to team up with another storm that has already flooded parts of texas and sent mobile homes floating away. cnn s martin savidge is live inside puerto vallarta. martin, i mean really an incredible storm as we listen to these warnings. what are the conditions there right now? reporter: well, you know what s fascinating, jim, is the fact you look out here and this is looking on the old part of
downtown. about 15 more people are still believed to be inside. this is essentially a tourist mecca. police now wearing night vision goggles and say the gunman is carrying an ipad and communicating on social media. the hostages, who escaped, said the gunman also encouraged them to use social media to get his message out. police still say they are communicating with the gunman nearly 14 hours later. only goal tonight and for as long as this takes, is to get those people that are currently caught in that building out of there safely. earlier you could see hostages inside holding up a flag with an arabic writing on it that has been used by extremists in the past. he recently moved the hostages away from the window and back inside the cafe. all right. so the gunman is reportedly demanding an isis flag to speak with australian tony abbott. he wants to do it live on the radio.
secret service and other law enforcement to deal with actual security. seems relatively common. the pedestrians are still not walking past the gates here. i see some uniformed secrecy service officers who are setting up their own perimeter so people can t get close to the gate. apparently out an abundance of caution, not because of some specific threat or anything like that. and i see pedestrians a few hundred feet back in lafayette park. it appears life is coming relatively back normal here at the white house. neil: all right. glad everybody is safe, yourself included. ed henry. this is the footage we re getting, and this is a tourist mecca, going to be a lot of people who caught this on their own video cameras or shot pictures of it. so we re told more is coming and we re going through it. we re