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Obama to Talk Plans for Battling ISIS; Concerns as 9/11 Anniversary Nears; Josh Earnest Press Conference.

Aired September 08, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It's the bottom of the hour. I'm Brianna Keilar.

We're awaiting a White House briefing. President Obama will be talking about his plan for battling ISIS terrorists. The president will reveal his plan is a reminder of the real threat of terrorism.

Let's bring in our global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott. She's at the State Department.

Elise, I wonder, certainly 9/11 is a time of remembrance. It's also a time where I think people are fearful that something may happen, that perhaps somebody may be inspired to carry out some sort of attack. What right now are we hearing about that?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brianna. Every 9/11, of course, for the last 13 years, America has just waited and worried whether something would happen at a U.S. facility. And certainly the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi raised those fears to a new level. This 9/11 is in some ways different because now a lot of U.S. posts around the world, particularly in the Middle East, are extra fortified. The U.S. has been taking action against that. But with everything going on with ISIS, the question, does ISIS pose a threat to U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, and officials say no. They don't think ISIS has the breadth and the depth and the reach to be able to carry out an attack against U.S. facilities. Certainly, there's a concern that Westerners could travel and hurt U.S. facilities but they don't have any indications of any attacks right now.

But what they are concerned about, Brianna, are unaffiliated, unidentified extremists who might want to prove themselves, might want to make a name for themselves and try to identify with ISIS and try to launch an attack. Those people don't really come up on what they call intelligence chatter, and those are the people that they are a little bit worried about right now. But right now, all posts on high alert, clearly for 9/11, U.S. embassies around the world looking at their security, looking at the intel, meeting with the host government to make sure that everything is on high alert for 9/11. But we hear that all U.S. embassies and consulates will be open for business. Right now, everyone is optimistic that 9/11 will happen without incident -- Brianna?

KEILAR: Yeah, we certainly hope that remains the case.

Elise Labott, at the State Department, thank you so much.

Once again, we're awaiting today's White House press briefing. We'll bring that to you live when it happens. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: On "This Day in History," September 8th, 1974, this was the day that President Gerald Ford gave a universal pardon to former President Richard Nixon. That got Nixon off the hook for all of the crimes that he may have committed during the Watergate scandal. Many historians said that this defined Ford's presidency and later told CNN's Larry King that, "It was his principle responsibility to restore integrity in the White House and to bring about healing in the country."

We are currently waiting for the White House press briefing.

And I'm joined right now by CNN's senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, as we wait for Josh Earnest.

Ron, I wonder, what are you expecting to hear today from Josh where the president speaks on Wednesday? He obviously doesn't want to get ahead of the comments but there's a lot of curiosity about some of the things that he will say.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah. I think that you're going to hear, as we discussed before, the idea that it's going to be a comprehensive strategy, it will not just be a military strategy. There will be economic, diplomatic elements. This is going to be a long haul. I think you're going to hear in the questions a lot of wondering, why now, as opposed to many months in which ISIS has been gathering strength. That's going to be the key question that is going to resonate, Brianna, into the 2016 presidential campaign as well with the Democrats and Republicans.

KEILAR: We've heard criticism from Republicans, not just Republicans, but from Democrats, who wanted the president to come out more strongly. We heard from Dianne Feinstein, Democratic Senator. She said basically he's in the right place, but sort of, in parenthesis, it was a, finally, it took him some time to get here.

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

KEILAR: What do you think Congress is looking to hear from him and what's the Congressional role when we talk about being so close to a midterm election.

BROWNSTEIN: Don't forget, last year, when he went to Congress for authority to strike Syria, he had to poll the request because there was not a lot of support. There's still post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan skepticism in the public and, of course, reflected in Congress about extensive military engagement in the Middle East.

But the basic dynamic, I think, is that within the foreign policy leadership of both parties, now the dynamic is there's going to be more rather than less pressure. Whatever he announces, there's going to be pressure that he should be doing more. I don't know if that's going to be the majority of the opinion but it's going to be a clear and loud drumbeat I think from this point through the end of his presidency.

KEILAR: He's meeting tomorrow with top congressional leaders, really just the top leader from each party in each chamber. What do you think the president is going to say to them? Is this just a, hey, guys, heads up, this is what I'm planning to say tomorrow?

BROWNSTEIN: No. I'm betting he reminds them that when he came to them for support last year, it wasn't there, and I think they are going to be discussing areas of debate in the White House about how much congressional involvement and authorization they want to seek because even -- you would have to assume after everything that has happened with the horrible beheadings of two Americans, there would be a congressional majority if he came, for example, and said I want explicit authority to strike at ISIS in Syria. But that is not guaranteed even today. I thought even when you were talking to Representative Thornberry before, there was not that explicit, yes, come to us and we will put our fingerprints on action inside Syria. So it's still an uncertain environment in public opinion, certainly, but I believe that the general trajectory is changing and if --

KEILAR: Yeah.

BROWNSTEIN: -- the overall thrust in the first years of the Obama presidency was that we have to be careful not to do too much, the debate will be did we overcorrect and done too little. And I think that will rebound into the 2016 campaign.

KEILAR: And I think some of that is reflected in Republicans who tend to be more hawkish on this. They are saying that the president doesn't need to Congress. We are hearing that a lot from them. When I was watching this up close around this time last year, Ron, the effort by the White House to lobby Congress to get on board with strikes against Syria for using chemical weapons was unlike any sort of White House-to-Congress lobbying effort I had seen. And I covered health care reform. So this --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

KEILAR: -- was really something that sort of struck me knowing that. Is there any way that -- there's just no way that the president is going to be looking for support in the form of a vote.

Oh, and actually, hold on for just a second. Ron, Josh Earnest is starting the briefing right now.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Explain a bit more about what that means.

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, what the president also mentioned in his interview is his intention to give a speech on Wednesday to discuss some of these issues, so I don't want to get out ahead of that speech.

But let me try to give you a sense of, at least what the president is speaking when he talks about something like that. As the president confronts the situation and the threat posed by ISIL, he puts the safety and security of the American people at the top of his list of concerns. And the actions that he has ordered, thus far, in Iraq to strike ISIL is principally motivated to protect those in Iraq, provide humanitarian assistance, those religious and ethnic minorities targeted by ISIL and counterterrorism operations. But when the president is making these decisions, particularly as it relates to an organization like ISIL, what he's focused on is the safety and security of the American people and the threat that this extremist organization poses to the homeland is foreign fighters, individuals with passports that have taken up arms to fight with ISIL. There is concern that they may try to travel back to the West and carry out acts of violence or engage in terrorism here. So as it relates to our principle concern about the threat posed by ISIL, the president is concerned about the threat of terrorism, and that is why the other counterterrorism operations that this administration has carried out are a relevant reference point.

One of the other things the president mentioned in his interview is that we have seen the United States, effectively, under the leadership of this president, and thanks to the courage of men and women in uniform and the intelligence agencies, we've worked very effectively to defeat terrorists who pose a threat to the United States. That is true of the success of our efforts to decimate the al Qaeda core and the counterterrorism efforts that you've seen the president order in Yemen and Somalia and other places. What the president is trying to do is to illustrate that there is a track record here and each of these situations is different and we'll have to consider each of them differently. But in terms of evaluating what the president's chief concern is and what our solution looks like, it is similar to some of the other counterterrorism submissions that the president has ordered and have been successfully executed by the United States military and with the support and in conjunction with our allies around the world and, of course, the support of the American intelligent agencies.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The other counterterrorism missions, people often think about this in the context of Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, missions that are in shrouded in secrecy. Some cases, it's not even acknowledged what is happening. That's not what the president is talking about when he talks about counterterrorism, right?

EARNEST: Well, the president has been engaged in an effort -- he gave a speech on this earlier this year -- his desire and our collective effort to try to bring some more transparency to some of these issues.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: That's one time of counterterrorism mission. That's not the mission he's talking about here, though, right?

EARNEST: Each of these situations is a little bit different and each one has its own unique threat. And -- I mean, I guess what I would say is the president has been pretty clear what this -- about what he's not contemplating. The president is not contemplating the deployment of combat boots on the ground into Iraq or Syria to deal with the situation. He's talking about building a broader international coalition, engaging regional governments, looking for the support and the effective -- the effective governance of the Iraqi central government to confront this threat. Is it possible that there might be some clandestine efforts that are also under way here? I'm sure that's the case and I'm sure that's something that I won't be in the position to talk about if they do occur. But what the president is talking about is something that he's laid out a couple of times and we'll have the opportunity to talk about at more length on Wednesday.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Has he made a decision on whether air strikes should extend into Syria?

EARNEST: What the president has said is he -- and he said this, again, in the interview that he conducted over the weekend -- is his willingness to go wherever is necessary to strike those who are threatening Americans. And that is -- that has been true in a range of other circumstances. To the extent that there are parallels here, the president ordered this military mission to go after Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and he was fulfilling a campaign promise in a speech that he made in the summer of 2007 where he talked about his commitment as commander-in-chief to deploying American resources wherever necessary to protect the American people. And I think that is a useful guideline as you tried to assess the president's thinking about these issues.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: To play that out, if he's willing to go after groups that threaten Americans wherever they are, and you say ISIS could pose a threat to Americans in Syria, has he made a decision to go after them in Syria?

EARNEST: Well, if the president has made a decision along those lines, I'm sure that is a decision that would rise to the level of the president making an announcement about that decision. But I'm trying to provide insight into the president's thinking on this issue. And I don't know if I'm successful in that effort but it was a valiant effort.

Jeff?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, the president also said in his interview that he did not believe he needed further authorization for action on this plan but he's also been very clear that this is a long-term thing. So how do those two elements if this is going to go on for a couple of months, what does he need from Congress?

EARNEST: The administration has been transparent with a very transparent way, our commitment to communicating with Congress as we look at these priorities. The president convened a couple of meetings with leaders in Congress to discuss these issues before they went away on their August recess six weeks or so ago. The president has invited the four leaders of Congress, the Democratic and Republican leader of both the House and Senate, to come to the White House tomorrow to discuss some of these issues and to follow-up on the successful NATO summit that the president attended in whales at the end of last week. So the president is committed to intensive consultations with members of Congress and the Senate as we consider these difficult and high- stake questions.

In addition to that, I think the president has long believed -- and something that the president articulated as he's confronted different national security questions. The president believes that when the American people, through their elected representatives, can demonstrate a united front across party lines that that is beneficial to our foreign policy and sends a clear signal to people all over the world that the American people are united in pursuing and accomplishing a specific foreign policy or national security priority. So the president, in his interview with Chuck Todd at NBC, was clear that he does believe that he has the authority to quote, "Do what's necessary to protect the American people." He went on to say, "I do think it's important for Congress to understand what the plan is, to have buy-in and to debate it. That's why we've been consulting with Congress throughout."

So there will continue to be an effort to keep an open line of dialogue between the administration and leaders in Congress as we move on this important foreign policy priority.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Dialogue but no need to ask for authorization, is that a correct understanding of that?

EARNEST: Well, I think the way the president described it is he believes it's important for Congress to understand what the plan is, to have buy-in, to debate it and engage in the kinds of consultations that this administration is leading right now.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: That does not mean vote on it? I'm just clarifying that --

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: The president is not in a position where he sets the legislative floor calendar for the House or the Senate. He's not in a position of asking --

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: He's not in a position of asking. But he's also in a position of consulting and trying to be as candid as possible with leaders in Congress about what he's contemplating and what policy implications are of some of the decisions he's prepared to make. And it's important in the mind of the president for Congress to be a partner in these decisions. They have a solemn responsibility as elected representative of the American people to be engaged in this process. But ultimately it's the responsibility of the commander-in- chief to make the kinds of decisions related to our military that rest on the shoulders of the president.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: He also said there may be a need for more resources. Can you address what kind of money requests or funding requests he might end up submitting to Congress as well?

EARNEST: I don't have any sort of funding request to preview at this point. I would remind you, in a speech that I believe you covered, Jeff, when the president traveled to West Point, he talked about his interest in creation of this counterterrorism partnership fund. This is a core component of the president's strategy of dealing with this and other issues like it around the globe. That is additional resources that can be used by the United States to build up effective partners so that when the United States has to confront threats like this, that we have well trained, well equipped, effective partners that we can work with to confront these problems. Ultimately, we need to get into a position where the United States is not solely responsible for dealing with these kinds of emerging threats. We want to be able to work closely with partners around the globe and partners who have better knowledge of local politics and have better knowledge of the local terrain who, in some cases, can prevent some of these situations from becoming so urgent and so severe. And that is one example of a funding request the president has made to members of Congress that I think that members of Congress have talked about but have not voted on. The president would like to see those kinds of resources be provided because it would strengthen the hand of this president and future presidents for dealing with urgent situations like this.

Let's move around just a bit -- Zeke?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: The president's long standing to counterterrorism obligations, one of them, but I was wondering, the administration doesn't like to talk about is the assassination and the administration talks about 100 American citizens who are fighting alongside ISIS and potentially could come back here and pose a threat here. I was wondering whether the president has sought out any sort of legal justification like he did in that case as considering the use of using, whether drone strikes or direct air strikes, on potentially American citizens.

EARNEST: Zeke, I don't have any sort of policy announcement to make along these lines. I would point out the administration has sought, at the president's direction, to try to provide additional insight to the American public and to journalists about at the legal justification and the decision that was made to strike threats in Somalia and Yemen.

But as it relates to ISIL, more generally, we are concerned about the threat that is posed by these foreign fighters. There are, it is believed by some analysts, that there are dozens of individuals with American passports who have traveled to the region and taken up arms to fight alongside ISIL. Now, there are some reports that indicate that there is a risk that those individuals could return to the West, whether it's the United States or one of our allies using their Western American passport to travel, either completely unimpeded or relatively unimpeded, in a way that poses as threat to the American people. And the president will not hesitate to take the actions that he believes are necessary to protect the American people.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: If there's potential legislation on Capitol Hill in terms of stripping citizenship or taking action on passports of Americans who are fighting alongside ISIL, is that a measure we can expect to hear more from the president about on Wednesday and something he would support? EARNEST: I read about some of those proposals. I haven't looked at

them specifically. I don't think we've taken a position on them at this point. As I mentioned to Jeff, the administration certainly is interested in working in a partnership with members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans as we confront this threat.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Josh, the president wants to degrade and destroy ISIL but he doesn't want to put boots on the ground.

EARNEST: American combat boots on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: American combat boots on the ground. Yesterday in response to Chuck Todd of NBC News --

(LAUGHTER)

EARNEST: I've heard of that guy.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Chuck asked who is going to go into Syria and the president said Syrians like the Free Syrian Army will occupy that space assuming the president is successful in pushing ISIL back from its Syrian stronghold. The Free Syrian Army -- the administration is reluctant to arm them or allow countries like Saudi Arabia to send them should-launched ground-to-air missiles, man pads. Some of the equipment that has been transferred to them has shown up in ISIS hands in Iraq, fighting against American, British and Iraqi forces. Why is the Free Syrian Army a more viable force than it was a few months ago?

EARNEST: There's on aspect of your question I want to quibble with just a little, which is that we have, for more than a year now, been providing both non-military and military support.

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: We've been providing military support, is the term of art.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Assuming now you're going to provide them with lethal military support if they are going to carry a fight as a proxy for this coalition.

EARNEST: Well, I'll get to that. But let's start with, but it's important for people to understand that support from the Obama administration has been flowing to the moderate Syrian opposition for more than a year ago. And that includes military supplies. The president has sought -- and this is in the context of the West Point speech that I mentioned in response to Jeff's question earlier -- additional resources using our Title X authority to ramp up that assistance to the Syrian opposition. And that certainly we would hope and expect would improve their capacity and success in taking the fight to the Assad regime and to the ISIL to effectively wage that battle on behalf of the citizens of their country to try to retake their country. So there is an effort that's been under way for some time. We have, as you point out, sought to increase or ramp up that assistance. Now, the question you're asking though is somewhat more complicated

which is the question is why. Why them?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Why now.

EARNEST: And why now.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And who else?

EARNEST: And who else.

So you have three complicated questions.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: -- point out that there are no American groups --

(CROSSTALK)

EARNEST: I'm not suggesting -- it's complicated, but not illegitimate. Why them? It's their country.