>> that is the last question. thanks. last question. >> have you ever been accused of something? >> have a nice day. >> mr. cain also said, quote, i'm not going to comment about two people who you won't tell me who they are. he's talking about the two women mentioned but not named in the politico story. former employees of the national restaurant association, a group that cain headed in the '90s. they and others complained to colleagues about their boss' inappropriate behavior. politico citing but not naming sources say that the women complained of sexually suggestive behavior by cain that made them angry and uncomfortable. both women left the nra and reached five-figure money settlements which included nondisclosure agreements. this morning on fox news cain denied the allegations and said he was unaware then or now of any settlement. >> if the restaurant association did a settlement, i am not -- i wasn't even aware of it. i hope it wasn't for much because nothing happened. so if that was a settlement, it was handled by some of the other officers that worked for me at this association. so the answer is absolutely not. >> in short, unaware then or now. he said the same just a few hours later at the national press club. >> i am unaware of any sort of settlement. i hope it wasn't for much because i didn't do anything. but the fact of the matter is i'm not aware of a settlement that came out of that accusation. >> just a few hours after that, he seemed to change his story. >> i was aware that an agreement was reached. the word "settlement" versus the word "agreement." i'm not sure what they called it. i know that there was some sort of agreement, but because it ended up being minimal, they didn't have to bring it to me. >> well from no comment to i didn't know then and don't know now to i knew about an agreement all in less than 24 hours. we should mention that politico first contacted the cain people about this story ten days ago. and said that cain was unaware of a key piece of it today is hard to understand. if politico's reporting standses up, there may be more to come. the story cites a source familiar with cain's tenure in washington who says, quote, i happen to know there were sealed settlements reached in the plural. i think that anybody who thinks this was a one-time, one-person transgression would be mistaken, this source said. we should point out that these are unnamed sources. many, to be sure, but anonymous. we should point out that allegations whether one or many are not facts. allegations are not facts. and settlements are not admissions of guilt. the restaurant association is not commenting. herman cain declined our invitation to come on the program even though he's been talking to just about everybody else in the last couple of days. and politico's jonathan martin joins us now. so, jonathan, herman cain wouldn't talk to you when you tried to get him to answer questions about the allegations. he has been talking plenty today, including a taped interview with fox news, about a woman who claims to have made a sexual harassment allegation. she was in my office one day and i made a gesture saying -- and i was standing close to her -- and i made a gesture saying you are the same height as my wife. and i brought my hand up to my chin saying my wife comes up to my chin. saying this comment made the woman uncomfortable. is this consistent with what you've been told by your sources? >> anderson, thanks for having me on. no, the kind of behavior that we understand took place in the late 1990s by mr. cain towards at least two female employees at the organization was far more suggestive, more sexual of nature when it came to both verbal comments and also physical contact with these two individuals. in fact, it was so off-putting to the two women, that they contacted colleagues, they contacted superior officials in the organization, both full-time employees and board member, and they ultimately received five-figure payouts from the organization to leave under the condition of signing a nondisclosure agreement. so these women were obviously bothered by it. mr. cain was asked tonight, anderson, also in a separate interview on pbs if he had ever crossed the line. he said he didn't think he crossed the line, but obviously that's in the eye of the beholder and some have a different view. from our reporting over the course of the last three weeks talking to multiple sources it sure was the view of two female employs there that he did cross the line. >> you've had this story now or been working on this story for three weeks. when did you inform the cain campaign? >> we informed the cain campaign on thursday, october 20th of our reporting. we did not get back any kind of a response, anderson, until the following monday. at that point, the response was not satisfactory. we went back to them again and on wednesday we had a telephone conversation. at that point the spokesman said that mr. cain vaguely recalled the allegations, that the general counsel at the organization had taken care of the matter and that they, the campaign officials, all talked to the counsel to figure out what happened. that was their on record response for days. we asked for more, they wouldn't give it to us. so finally as you mentioned, anderson, i went to cbs yesterday morning. the washington bureau here of cbs news and asked mr. cain very directly and straightforward, have you ever been accused of sexual harassment. i asked him that question three more times. he never answered. >> he answered by asking you, have you ever been accused of sexual harassment, correct? >> yes, sir. >> in your article, you talk about one incident which was not in an office but in a hotel, correct? >> right. our sources tell us that a board member talked to the woman who was approached by mr. cain and asked to come to his hotel room through an official restaurant association event. and she was very offput by that. and i subsequently talked to the board member about it and the board member actually pursued that and her issue was ultimately resolved, of course, by the organization. she got five figures to leave and sign the buyout. >> as a result of the allegations, do you know specifically the amount of money, can't say or were you just told five figures? >> we can say that we have seen documentation, anderson, on both the allegations that the women lodged against mr. cain and a confirming that it was a formally resolved by the organization. so yeah, we have seen documentation on this matter. >> do you know what herman cain knew about it at the time? is there any documentation on the level of his involvement in any settlement or any discussion of the incident? >> he was definitely aware of the allegations that were made against him because the allegations were made, again, to board members, to senior officials at the organization. so he very much was aware, according to our sources, of the allegations against him. keep in mind, this is the ceo of a major trade group. and there were separate five figure payouts made to these women. it's hard to see how he wouldn't know about that kind of money leaving his organization to two employees. >> in your report, you say you're aware of the women making these claims but chose not to print their names. >> that's correct. >> did you speak to the women? >> you know, over the last three weeks we've talked to, anderson, dozens of folks from across the country. current and former employees, current and former board members, people in d.c. who are close to the trade group. our piece has multiple sources quoted in there and we'll just leave it at that. >> you don't want to say whether or not you spoke to the women. >> i'll just refer you and your viewers to our piece on politico.com. again, we cite multiple sources including current around former board member, current and former staff and a lot of folks in d.c. close to the group. >> there are some alleging that you may have been tipped off to this story by another campaign. can you say? >> yeah, again our sourcing is very straightforward in the story and i would refer you back to there. we'll leave it with that. >> thank you. >> thank you, anderson. let's dig deeper now with ari fleischer, white house press secretary in the george w. bush administration. you can follow him on twitter @arifleischer. also democratic strategist paul begala. i spoke to them just a short time ago. paul, what do you make of this? how damaging might this be to the cain campaign? >> well, the truth is we have no idea about even the content, really, of these allegations much less their truth or falsity. so i certainly don't want to cast judgment. i think you can observe how mr. cain is reacting. and i think it's not the way his campaign might want. his story is shifting. if i had been working for him, i would have tried to beat this out of him before the campaign began. so you can bleed it out before. you don't want this bombshell breaking just when you're starting to soar in the campaign. >> ari, you agree with that? the fact that it's based on the span of 24 hours he's begun to kind of contradict himself or shift the story a little bit? >> anderson, i think there's only one issue in play here. did he sexually harass somebody? if he didn't, then this is unfair to herman cain. if he did, he has a huge problem on his hands. to me, that's what this whole thing is about. today he came out and flatout said he did not sexually harass anybody. all the other details about settlement, did he remember this, did he get an update from his counsel, i don't think any of that matters. did he tell the truth, did he harass anybody? to me, that's it. >> what should he do next? you say he's addressed the key point. does he stop talking about it? does he try to flesh out all the details? how would you advice? >> it wasn't that long ago that a sitting united states president settled with paula jones when she alleged that former president clinton harassed her when she was a state employee of arkansas and president clinton at the time was governor of arkansas. so these things have been settled before. and will have an impact on politics. if i'm herman cain and i didn't do it -- >> if i could, that suit was dismissed. >> let ari finish. >> if i'm herman cain and i didn't do it, i would just reiterate what i did earlier today and say i didn't do it, it's not true, it's baseless. but that's the only issue that i think that matters. the press runs the risk of making too many other things at issue, if, in fact, he never sexually harassed anybody. >> paul? >> the problem is he's had these shifting stories and that sets off every red flag. the smarter way to do this, he could have found a way to leak this out himself, to put this out himself. ari is working for george w. bush. he was running for office when he started running on the national stage replete with rumors that in his youth he used drug. bush got out in front of it. he said, when i was young and irresponsible, i was young and irresponsible. then he said, i'm not going to tell you. then he roped it off. i'm not going to go through a laundry list. i'm not going to tell you. and i think none of your business is a pretty good answer. he put it out there. barack obama in his book years ago wrote that he smoked pot as a college student and he even tried, as he wrote in his book, a little blow. nobody chased him on that. because he admitted it, it was out there 37 people could decide if 10 or 20 or 30 years ago these things mattered. but mr. cain is caught in part because he didn't get out in front of the story. >> it's trickier than that because on both of those instances paul's exactly right, but they cited things that they did. herman cain would have to say here is something i didn't do but i want to tell you about it anyway because there's a settlement. i didn't do it. it doesn't fall into that easy a category. this will be vexing no matter what, whichies which brings me back to funds amtal truth. if he didn't sexually harass anybody, he has nothing to really worry about and i think this story will become a washington fixation. i don't think it will move republican primary voters. if he did, he's got a whole lot of trouble on his hands. >> paul, does he try to address it again or leave what he said, he said it and move on? >> he's got to get one very brief, very short story and then move on. i talked to one friend of mine who is a prominent republican. it was funny. he kind of laughed it off. he said, it doesn't matter. i said, how can it not matter? this is an allegation that he sexually harassed someone? he said, it's like saying rick santorum doesn't tip his bartender. he's not going to be my party's nominee. he laughed it off. >> follow me on twitter at anderson cooper. i'll tweet some tonight. the syrian government keeps saying they don't beat their own people, they don't torture, that they're only targeting terrorists. yet video keeps surfacing reportedly telling a much different story. we'll talk to a filmmaker who worked undercover in syria who has been held captive by syrian authorities. what he heard was shocking, inside the prison. a travel nightmare. imagine being stuck on a plane, no food, no water, no bathrooms right next to the jetway inches, feet away from being able to get off. others were held on the tarmac more than 7 1/2 hours within view of the gate. how did this happen? 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[ chorus ] ♪ we are farmers bum-ba-dum, ba-bum-bum-bum ♪ keeping them honest tonight. about a story we promised never to look away from, the torture that syria's government continues to inflict on its people. they deny it. as they brutalize ordinary syrians, the regime lies about it and does everything to bar our eyes to their barbarity. tonight you'll hear firsthand from a reporter and filmmaker, sean mcalister, who worked undercover and witnesses the daily horror, and then was arrested and witnessed eastern worse when he was in customer addy. the videos keep emerging online and they jive with mcallister's reporting. there's this new video of a man whip and beaten by authorities while in custody. sean mcallister said he heard numerous beatings from the room he was held in. the regime doesn't shy away from turning away. this is a man beaten, burned, mutilated and murdered by authorities. they say -- according to human rights activists inside syria. they say he was murdered by authorities. the regime has fired on ambulances, sent tanks into the streets, had attack helicopters and strike fighters open fire on protesters. all the while, the dictator bashar al assad promises reform and blames the unrest on outsider, terrorists and thousands of criminals who have somehow managed to be roaming the streets, this in a total dictatorship. now he's telling britain's sunday telegraph that only terrorists are being targeted and the fighting has become much less. virtually everyone inside syria and around the world say otherwise. the regime, they say, is targeting opponents, dissidents and ordinary civilians. 13 people were killed today in syria, dozens over the weekend. about 3,000 according to the u.n. since the uprising began. day after day we see pictures like these, people beaten and killed by armed thugs. men shoved into car trunks, taken away, beaten, tortured and killed. that's the reality of the syrian dictatorship tries to deny to the world. remember, the regime denies they torture and beat prisoners. tonight a man who said he heard their cries, filmmaker sean mcalister. last week he was arrested while working undercover for itn news and they held him in a house of torture for six days. i spoke to him earlier. what did you witness while you were being held? what did you hear? what did you see? >> we were blindfolded. we were taken in a car. we were led to some security center. i was placed in a room next to another room where i could hear screaming and shouting and constant slapping. my blindfold was taken off, but i could see that the syrians around me that were coming in and out were all the time blindfolded and i can assume, and having spoken to activists in this situation, they were blindfolded and beaten. this is the first stop before -- i think it's about a six-hour stay here before you are taken to the security center prison, which is a dungeon basically in a basement. because of my british passport, i was relieved of that -- that day and night. i just endured it by the night. by the day i lived upstairs with the security police. but daily and nightly, i mean, usually around 3:00 a.m. each night in this place you would hear the most howling, horrific cries of people being whipped and tortured basically. when i was taken down -- i was eventually given a room next to what i called the torture chamber which was basically a room which had huge amounts of belts. in fact, when i left, they took my belt to add to their collection. and there was a cable that must have been an inch thick, and inside the cable were four electric wires. if you imagine the electric wire that goes to your kettle, there was a cable with four of these inside. it must have been like an inch thick. and they'd manufactured a handle at the end of it and the whole thing had taken the natural form of an arc as it would hit repeatedly on the backs of god knows how many of these guys. >> the syrian government repeatedly denies that they're torturing anybody. yet we've seen video after video of people whose bodies have been returned to their families bruised with signs of shocks. we've seen a child whose genitals were cut off, whose kneecaps were damaged. it seems hard listening to your account to believe what the syrian government has been telling us. we haven't believed it so far, but your account just verifies that people are without a doubt being tortured. >> well, you know, towards the end of my stay, i befriended my guys upstairs. in the day time i would spend hours and hours with my interrogators. the head guy spoke perfect english. and they were all quite anglophiles. and they enjoyed my company. and the irony was they would treat me like a king. they would treat me so respectfully and so beautifully, but downstairs they were treating their own people so horrendously. to me, it was so disturbing. it was so shocking. >> now your belt has been added to the room of other belts. i mean,