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At This Hour

Panetta Book Criticizes Obama; New Details on Chicago Teen Who Wanted to Join ISIS; Feds Nab Teen Before He Can Join ISIS; Ebola Outside Africa

Aired October 07, 2014 - 11:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Persuasive truth or stunning disloyalty? President Obama under attack from a man who used to be a trusted member of his team.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN HOST: A Chicago teenager allegedly tries to leave the U.S. to join ISIS in the Middle East. What federal agents say they found in the family home and how terrorists are recruiting Americans from half a world away?

BERMAN: A frightening new case of Ebola, a health care worker catches the disease after being in the room with a sick patient just twice. Are hospitals really taking the right precautions?

Hello, everyone, I'm John Berman.

PEREIRA: And I'm Michaela Pereira. Those stories and so much more ahead @THIS HOUR.

We begin with this. A fighter in the Syrian border town of Kobani says U.S.-led coalition forces are, quote, "finally hitting the right places" as they try to pry the town away from ISIS, U.S. officials announcing there were five air strikes overnight, targeting the terror group.

BERMAN: Kobani is a key city in this war. With it, ISIS will control a big stretch of Syria, you can see it right there, from its self- proclaimed capital of Raqqa all the way to the border with Turkey.

Now some new developments today, Dutch forces have joined the air strikes for the first time, the coalition getting bigger, coalition planes launching an additional four strikes in other parts of Syria. That would be U.S. planes along with its Arab allies, as well as hitting ISIS targets in Iraq.

At least 29 militants were reported killed in the city of Talafrah (ph). That's about 70 miles from Mosul.

And as all this is happening, a new book from the former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, a man who has spent decades in Democratic politics, says that President Obama's action or inaction over the last two or three years has made the battle in the Middle East much tougher.

PEREIRA: In that book, titled "Worthy Fights -- A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace," Panetta writes that the war on ISIS could help the president get things right after, quote, "having lost his way."

Panetta also believes that, despite what President Obama has said, defeating ISIS will require U.S. boots on the ground. Panetta explained this to our Gloria Borger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON PANETTA, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY: I take the position that when you're commander in chief that you really ought to keep all options on the table to be able to have the flexibility to do what is necessary in order to defeat this enemy.

But to make those air strikes work, to be able to do what you have to do, you don't just send planes in and drop bombs. You've got to have targets. You've got to know what you're going after. To do that, you do need people on the ground.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: But, wait, there's more. In his book, the former defense secretary also says the president's inaction in arming Syrian rebels, not holding Bashar al-Assad accountable for his use of chemical weapons, and pulling troops from Iraq helped create the crisis that the U.S. now faces.

Here's more from Gloria's interview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PANETTA: To a large extent it wasn't that the president kind of said, no, we shouldn't do it. The president kind of never really came to a decision as to whether or not it should happen.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: What do you mean by that, "never came to a decision?"

PANETTA: I think it basically sat there for a while and got to the point where everybody just kind of assumed it was not going to happen.

BORGER: Is that the right way to do things?

PANETTA: I think it would have been far better had he just made the decision we're not going to do it and so that everybody kind of knew where we stood, but we all kind of waited to see whether or not he would ultimately come around.

BORGER: And --

PANETTA: And it didn't happen.

BORGER: And you talk about hesitation and half steps. 1 that what you're referring to?

PANETTA: Yeah, I mean, it was that kind of just hesitation to really do what needed to be done. Now, you know, don't get me wrong. I think he was very strong in terms of the war on terrorism and he made some tough decisions. But there were these decisions that basically never were confronted that I think in many ways contributed to the problems we're facing today.

And he's made the decision to put troops on the ground in Iraq, to try to help the security forces, he's made the decision to arm and train rebel forces in Syria, and he's made the decision to conduct air attacks.

So in many ways he's made the right decisions now. Now I think those decisions should have been made two years ago.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Kind of rare to see a presidential ally hit his old boss, his former boss, so soon, too soon, according to some. In fact, if you open up the "Washington Post" opinion section today, you'll see an op- ed from Dana Milbank accusing Panetta of "stunning disloyalty."

BERMAN: Dana is with us @THIS HOUR. So is our military analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona.

Dana, I happen to know for a fact you've been in Washington for a long time and you've seen a lot of books from a lot of former advisers to presidents. Why are you so stunned? What is so stunning, then, about this to you?

DANA MILBANK, "THE WASHINGTON POST": You know, John, when you and I were covering the bush administration, he had his share of disloyalty. Remember there were books by Paul O'Neill and (inaudible).

What's happened, though, I think is without precedent, because you had the Bob Gates book, then you had the Hillary Clinton book, and now you have the Panetta book, all essentially saying the same thing, if you can shorthand it, saying he's been too weak and hasn't been a tough enough leader.

It's not necessarily that they are saying something wrong. I've made that critique oftentimes myself. But it is really stunning to see so much vitriol coming out so quickly while this president's still in office.

And, you know, Republicans are holding this up as evidence. I was at an event with Bobby Jindal yesterday, and he said, "You don't need to listen to me; just listen to Leon Panetta."

PEREIRA: To Colonel Rick Francona here in studio with us, we are at war with ISIS. We've been talking about this for some time now. But to the former defense secretary's point, he says -- and I've heard you say this -- that in order to beat them, it's not going to just take air strikes; it's going to take ground forces.

So the question is, did the president drop the ball by not arming those Syrian troops years ago? LIEUTENANT COLONEL RICK FRANCONA (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well,

yeah. There were several events that happened within the space of a couple of years.

First of all was the withdrawal of all of our forces from Iraq. You can decide whether that was a good thing or bad thing, but in hindsight, we should have kept a residual force there, if not just to have force on the ground but to watch what was happening to the Iraqi army.

Then combine that with not supporting the Syrian rebels, and we created that power vacuum that allowed the resurgent al-Qaeda in Iraq to move into Syria.

So, you know, those things, the conflation of events, created the problem we're facing right now. So, yes, you can look back and say the president's decisions not to arm and to pull the troops out of Iraq probably brought us where we are today.

BERMAN: You know, Dana, I'm still struck by the parlor game of this a little bit. A lot of people talking about Leon Panetta's book now and his interviews.

But isn't it a matter of perspective? When you agree with the criticism, isn't it whistle blowing and truth-telling and shining a light on crisis, and when you disagree with it, it's disloyalty?

The roster of people here, from Leon Panetta, Robert Gates, Hillary Clinton, these people have decades -- decades -- of public service in a whole bunch of jobs.

MILBANK: John, I think it's both it's disloyalty, and it's truth- telling. And it's no coincidence these three people are people who are -- they had independent careers. They were famous and well known.

They didn't owe their careers to Barack Obama. So when they left government, they didn't feel any residual loyalty to him the way some kid who was just brought up through ranks with Barack Obama might feel. So that's sort of the perils.

It's good to have people in your administration who are independent. He's now learning that there is a downside, and you can't necessarily have them keep their mouths shut when they leave office.

PEREIRA: Panetta did say, though, Colonel, that he did agree that the president is doing some things right now.

So, you know, are we going to see more of this president that we saw that green lit the Osama bin Laden raid?

FRANCONA: I hope so. We need more decisions and we need more positive action.

Right now the limitation of no troops on the ground, even to the point where we can't have forward air controllers, is really hurting us. I think the president needs to relook that. And I hope that Secretary Hagel and Chairman Dempsey will go back to the president and say we need to alter this strategy, because as we've talked before and as we can see over the past couple days, the past week or so this is not working.

We've got ISIS moving not only in Syria, but they're moving in Iraq, and we initially thought the air strikes were stopping them in Iraq. We're finding out that's not the case, the Iraqi army does not have the capability to dislodge these guys. We have to change what we're doing.

BERMAN: Quite a discussion. Lieutenant Colonel, thanks for being with us. Dana Milbank, a stunning debut discussing your article about stunning disloyalty here on @THIS HOUR. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it.

PEREIRA: Thanks, gentlemen.

MILBANK: Thanks a lot.

BERMAN: As Dana wrote this morning, you know, Republicans, he mentioned Bobby Jindal. They are loving this, eating it up. All they have to do is criticize the president is quote his former defense secretary. It's like guilt-free mudslinging.

The question is how damage willing this be and might it have an effect on the midterms? We'll have more on that later this hour.

PEREIRA: Also ahead, what would make an American teen suddenly try to leave the U.S. and possibly join up with ISIS fighters half way around the world?

Some of his friends offer some revealing clues.

BERMAN: And how did a hospital worker get Ebola just by treating a patient a couple of times? This is the first case of anyone catching this virus outside of Africa, and it's raising serious concerns about whether hospitals are ready.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: New details this morning about a Chicago teenager who allegedly wanted to join ISIS. Nineteen-year-old Mohammed Hamzah Khan has a federal court appearance Thursday on attempting to provide support for a terrorist organization.

He was arrested over the weekend at Chicago's O'Hare Airport as he was about to board a flight to Turkey where he supposedly was going to meet an ISIS contact.

PEREIRA: At the same time he was detained at the airport, federal agents executed a search warrant on the family home in suburban Chicago. Allegedly they found incriminating documents that Khan planned to join up with terrorist fighters in Syria or Iraq.

Laurie Segall of course is our tech correspondent with CNNMoney. Joining us from Glasgow, Scotland is Maajid Nawaz. Thanks so much for joining, Maajid, and, Laurie, you're here with us as well.

We should point out that Maajid, his former life as a Muslim extremist is chronicled in his book "Radical," a fascinating read. You've written some fascinating article. We'll get to you in a second.

But, Laurie, I want you to get us up to date on what you've been looking into, the digital footprint this young man left behind and what investigators clearly are going to be combing through.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNNMONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: Sure. You know, I started by looking at his Facebook page, and I actually spoke with a lot of his Facebook friends.

A lot of his friends said he went to a predominantly Muslim school and said he took time off to go memorize the Koran, which they said was completely normal. And everyone said they were shocked, that he was very smart, that he was very social.

But looking further at his digital footprint, right, looking at that Facebook profile, there are a couple clues, right? If you look at his cover profile, it's a picture of lions. And what one terrorism expert told me was he said that image is used overwhelmingly by ISIS reporters.

But you're looking at his likes right now, Chicago Bulls, you know, Muslims for Peace. And so it's very hard to put the two and two together.

On YouTube he liked "Vice," he loved the "Godzilla" trailer but he also liked some pretty extremist religious videos and I actually gained access to some of his status updates that you can't actually see unless you're friends with him and one thing he said on September 2nd was "ISIS' actions are just going to make our lives harder."

So when you put the two and two together you've got to think that the feds must have had some very compelling evidence before he went to that airport and I didn't see it 100 percent in his digital footprint. And a lot of times these guys are very vocal online.

BERMAN: Looks a little bit a like a kid.

SEGALL: Yes. Of course.

BERMAN: He's like any kid when we're looking on line there.

Maajid, I want to bring you in here. You wrote a really interesting open letter about a month ago.

PEREIRA: Powerful.

BERMAN: Asking members of ISIS to quit while they can. And this has been passed around on social media a lot. I'm curious about two things. One, did you convince anybody? Has anyone reached out to you and said, "I'm going to quit ISIS"? And, two, can people who would be susceptible to the ISIS message, can they be reached by an alternative message that really is anti those ideals? MAAJID NAWAZ, COFOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN, GUILLIAM FOUNDATION: Well,

thank you. On your first question, I think that -- I know that the letter has had some impact. I wouldn't want to go into details because it's very dangerous for people that are attempting to defect from ISIS or ISIL. Some people who are foreign fighters from the West, in particular, Britain, have attempted to do so and have been arrested and have been punished by ISIL as traitors. So we have to be very careful when discussing this. But yes.

On the second part of your question, people can change. I don't think that Western fighters who go to join ISIL should be spared the full force of justice when they come back. And my letter made that point clear to them. My open letter that you've referred to. Of course they should face justice. But the argument rested on the idea that actually our justice systems in the West are far more equitable and fairer than anything they could expect under ISIL's authority or even under some of the dictators of the Arab world like Assad of Syria.

So I was actually saying, yes, they should face justice but they should be -- they should rest assured that these are the sorts of societies in the West and once they serve their time in jail they will be released and reintegrated back into society. And my commitment to them was that I would personally involve myself in attempting to rehabilitate them.

But those fighters are the ones -- that I addressed are the ones who went to Syria thinking that they were going to fight a dictator and ended up in ISIL, ended up being swept up by the events and joining a group far more extreme than al Qaeda without really at the beginning intending to do so.

Those who went out there deliberately to join ISIL specifically -- and we won't comment on the ongoing case of Mohammed Khan at the moment. But those who have gone out there to specifically join ISIL, that's a tougher nut to crack.

PEREIRA: So tell me what you would say to a young man, a 19-year-old, a teenager still, who is thinking of leaving the safety of his own home and going over to a fight a war as you say that isn't his and it isn't as clear-cut as they originally think.

What would you say to a young man like this fellow in Chicago?

NAWAZ: Well, if I -- if I were to address through your television screens these young men, what I would say to them is, look, we can all empathize with the desire to go and fight for the oppressed against the brutality of the dictator that is Assad. We can all empathize. And in fact I've been there, and I know what Arab jails are like. I've served as a political prisoner in Egypt's jails where we witnessed torture. I mean, I know that the oppression of these jails and these dictators.