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Kurdish Fighters Stop ISIS Assault in Iraq; Fighting Against ISIS Propaganda Machine; Copenhagen Gunman Pretended to be Drunk; "American Sniper" Trial

Aired February 18, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, ISIS waging war on the battlefield and online, pumping out 90,000 messages every day. Now activists firing back with pictures and posts of their own from inside Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What kind of a punishment is there for somebody for doing something like this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunate to say, it's going to be death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: A look inside the high stakes propaganda fight. Plus the defense now center -- the defense now center stage in the "American Sniper" trial. How the shooter's attorneys plan to use his own words to help him.

And out to sea. What's on these boats that won't make it to your doorstep because of the west coast port shutdown?

Let's talk, live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

And Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

And ISIS advance in northern Iraq comes to a screeching halt as Kurdish fighters stopped an ambush near the Kurdish capital of Irbil. It took several hours of heavy fighting and air strikes to repel the ISIS advance. Those air strikes led to the death of several dozen ISIS fighters.

For weeks now, ISIS was making almost daily attempts to break through those Kurdish lines.

CNN producer Tim Lister has more for you from Irbil.

TIM LISTER, CNN PRODUCER: Carol, the battle overnight some 25 miles from here in Irbil went on for five hours. It was fierce but at close quarters much of that time. Peshmerga desperately trying to stave off an ISIS assault across a river that runs roughly north-south.

I don't think there was any prospect of ISIS militants reaching Irbil. This is a very well defended city. But their purpose is to draw Kurdish Peshmerga forces into all sorts of battles along this one passing kilometer fence the Kurds are trying to defend.

Why do they want to do that? Because they're trying to protect their crowned jewel in northern Iraq. And that's Mosul. Kurds have it surrounded on three sides but ISIS is still able to resupply -- with fuel, with weapons and with extra fighters. We've seen that ourselves. Managing top position, looking at highways leading into Mosul from Syria.

ISIS is still a very resilient organization. It's well organized, it's well disciplined. It's able to launch attacks. By contrast the Kurds are really not that well armed. They don't have much in the way of defensive armor. They don't have very much in the way of heavy machine guns or mortars.

The ISIS militants have a lot of this because they seized it from the Iraqi army when they (INAUDIBLE) last year. So Mosul, this great prize, it seems that the much wanted assault on what is Iraq's second largest city is still some months away. There's going to be much more of this war of attrition in the meantime.

Carol, back to you.

COSTELLO: All right. Tim Lister reporting. Thanks so much.

ISIS isn't just waging war on the ground, they are also battling for hearts and minds of their supporters and potential recruits online. The terror group posting as many as 90,000 messages every day flooding sites like Facebook, Twitter, AskFM and others with propaganda ranging from the horrific to the mundane but ever so slowly some users are fighting back risking life and limb to post their own messages about what life is really like under ISIS.

Atika Shubert has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: ISIS propaganda videos attempt to show normal life in Raqqa. A, delivered by fighters with AK-47 but now more and more people are posting their own pictures to counter ISIS' claims.

These pictures of what appears to be aid from the World Food Program and Red Crescent papered over with an ISIS flag and delivered by ISIS fighters.

We spoke to the Syrian online activist who posted this video. He runs a network of a dozen activists inside the ISIS strongholds of Raqqa and Abu Khamel (ph). For his own safety he had asked not to be identified but for this interview we called him Rafike (ph).

(On camera): What kind of a punishment is there for somebody for doing something like this?

RAFIKE: Unfortunate to say it's going to be death. We will treat him as traitor.

SHUBERT: So literally risking their life to be in this photo.

RAFIKE: Yes. Yes.

SHUBERT (voice-over): It is one of many small movements working with only mobile phones and sporadic Internet access, mostly on Twitter. Syrians who say they are living under ISIS rule are posting pictures with hashtags scribbled on paper and photographed at the scene to prove they are there, witnessing events with their own eyes, though there is no way for CNN to independently confirm this.

ISIS has been hit by hundreds of air strikes. Activists say these pictures suggest they may be taking a toll especially in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa.

RAFIKE: It says it's warning for -- coming from ISIS to all vehicle drivers and don't pick up any ISIS members and don't take them anywhere. There is a sign of how much they are scared and worried because of the number of people defecting and leaving the ISIS.

SHUBERT: Rafike's network is not the only one. The online group Raqqa is being slaughtered silently has consistently countered ISIS propaganda from the heart of ISIS controlled territory. And Rafike goes one step further, challenging ISIS supporters online, he believes that all of this will add up to a revolt against ISIS rule.

RAFIKE: I've been talking to some guy two days ago or three days ago and he said I think there will be a revolution very soon in Raqqa against IS.

SHUBERT (on camera): Does it look like there will be this revolution, this revolt?

RAFIKE: I think so. Because know certain people are very patient but we have limits. So what's happening with Assad it might happen with Danesh, with anyone else. And I think that's what's going to happen very soon.

SHUBERT (voice-over): Small but important steps in challenging the rule of ISIS.

Atika Shubert, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: So as you know, there is now a summit going on in Washington to combat ISIS' efforts online. So let's talk about that.

I'm joined by Frank Cilluffo, he's the director for George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, and Jason Tanz, "Wired" magazine's editor-at-large.

Welcome to both of you.

FRANK CILLUFFO, DIRECTOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR CYBER AND HOMELAND SECURITY: Thank you, Carol.

JASON TANZ, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, WIRED: Thanks for having me.

COSTELLO: Atika's story was chilling, right?

TANZ: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: Really chilling. So, Jason, talk a little bit about why ISIS has been able to be so effective online?

TANZ: Yes. ISIS is doing pretty much what any major corporation does when they're launching out a new product. They have got a very sophisticated marketing campaign and it starts with their infrastructure. In the four months before the James Foley beheading video was released, they set up 60,000 social accounts. So they have an infrastructure to spread their message. Very sophisticated. Very targeted.

COSTELLO: And they made it very difficult for their messages to be taken off Twitter and Facebook, right?

TANZ: Yes. That's right. They have an app right now that's called Dawn of Glad Tidings. It's an Android app and if you download it, ISIS will use your Twitter account to spread its messages and they space it, you know, hours apart so the Twitter won't see that it's spam and won't take it down.

Now Twitter has tried to take down their accounts and ISIS has responded with death threats against Twitter. It's a really terrifying scenario.

COSTELLO: It really is.

OK, so, Frank, let's talk about what the government might be able to do about this. I mean, some of the ideas they're talking about, the U.S. government, you know, having its own Twitter account and flooding Twitter with messages, talking about how, you know, the U.S. government really helps people in Syria, it doesn't harm them. But is that really going to be effective?

CILLUFFO: You know, the government really has three steps that it can take. One is to collect intelligence and information, to try to get a sense of who is being seduced and who is traveling overseas to fight alongside ISIS and other jihadist organizations in Iraq and Syria as well as who the facilitators may be.

We can do more to be able to push this to the margins, to work with ISPs and others, to make it more difficult at least for the joy surfer to come across some of this material, and if you push it to margins, you push it to dark Web, then you can devote your collection resources in a more calibrated and smart way.

But the third way is in essence we've seeded this battlefield, the cyber battlefield to the bad guys. We need to do more to be able to push back just like the organization that teed up this story. We need to see much more of that and expose the hypocrisy of ISIS' narrative. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it's not the economy, stupid, but it's the

ideology, stupid. We need to do more to be able to undermine and expose the hypocrisy of ISIS' message.

COSTELLO: So, Frank, does the government have the people in place to be able to do all of those things you just mentioned?

CILLUFFO: You know, the third piece cannot be government alone. I think governments do have a role to try to get a sense of foreign fighters. For example, you've got 20,000 foreign fighters who flocked from over 90 countries around the world to fight alongside ISIS including 150 Americans and thousands of Europeans. So it needs to do more to be able to identify and prevent those sorts of folks from traveling.

But ultimately it's going to come from the grassroots. It's going to come from families, from victims, from others who are seeing the brutality on the ground in terms of ISIS' activities.

COSTELLO: And Jason, you brought up a good point, I mean, people who go on Twitter, they're not necessarily going to listen to some government people tweeting, right?

TANZ: Yes. Right. I mean, to the degree that this is a just say no sort of campaign, I don't think it's going to be very effective. But what social media is good at is taking down the establishment and that's actually ISIS has played that card very well in taking down the West as the establishment but now ISIS is becoming the establishment. So the more that outsiders can poke holes in their narrative, as Frank suggests, I think -- I think Twitter is very well-suited for that kind of campaign.

COSTELLO: Like that very brave man in Syria we just saw, right?

TANZ: Absolutely.

COSTELLO: So you get more of that going. So can't the U.S. government work with people like that in Syria, Frank?

CILLUFFO: Enable I think others and serve as an instigator but to a point Jason brought up earlier, in a weird way they're like spammers. In a spam campaign all you need are a handful of people to click and it's a successful campaign. In ISIS' activities same sort of thing. You don't need to appeal to vast majorities but you're going to appeal to a small majority that reaffirms this abhorrent attitude and it has this echo effect.

So I think we need to be able to do more from a government collection perspective but I think we also need to do more to have people arm them with the tools to be able to fight back and ultimately take on the narrative.

COSTELLO: And, Frank, I'd like to ask you this question because some people might be thinking, why are we focusing on social media? We need to get the military in tune and we need to go fight them on the ground in Syria and Iraq. How important is social media to ISIS and how important is social

media to fighting ISIS?

CILLUFFO: Well, clearly ISIS has emphasized the role of propaganda. These aren't kids on iPhones. They took over TV stations in Iraq and had very high production quality. But obviously the social media campaign is only part of our effort. Ultimately why the Fatah region, why the Sahel, why the Maghreb, and in this case why Iraq and Syria, because these are un and undergoverned spaces. They are uncontested.

So we need to use military instruments but part of that campaign has to include our efforts to be able to expose the ideology as well. We can't kill and capture our way to victory alone. We need to do some of the kinetic responses but obviously we need to look at it from all instruments of state craft.

COSTELLO: Frank Cilluffo, Jason Tanz, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

TANZ: Thank you.

CILLUFFO: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, we're learning more about the gunman who killed two people and wounded five others in Denmark. What he pretended to do to get closer to one of his targets.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The gunman who opened fire at a Copenhagen cafe and a synagogue may have pretended to be drunk to get as close as he could to his second and final target. Surveillance images showed the gunman staggering towards the synagogue on Sunday but his ruse did not work. He did not get inside the building.

CNN's senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is in Copenhagen with more.

Hi, Nic.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hi, Carol. What he was able to do is to get down the street close enough to the two policemen who were outside guarding the synagogue. There was bar mitzvah party going on inside and there was a guard, Dan Uzan, 37 years old. A very cherished and loved member at the Jewish community, a very active helping out in the synagogue we're told.

What the gunman was able to do was to be able to get close enough to those three men to be able to shoot at them. Police say that he had two pistols and that he was shooting with both of them, fired a total of nine bullets, and Dan Uzan was killed. His funeral was just a couple of hours ago. We attended at a very -- from outside a very moving service. Many people turning out for that funeral service. And we've learned other details from the police as well about this

gunman and the attack. Chilling details. A death toll could have been far higher. When he went to attack the cafe where the freedom of speech event was under way, he had an automatic weapon with him there. He tried to go in a side door and tried to go in a back door. If he had been able to get in there, he would have been able to kill far more people than just the one person he was able to shoot from the outside.

So these are the details we're learning from the police here. Very chilling. A man clearly intent on killing as many people as possible and using devious means to achieve it, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Nic Robertson reporting live from Copenhagen. Thank you.

One of the brothers who carried out last month's massacre at the French magazine "Charlie Hebdo" contacted the gunman who would later kill four hostages at that kosher deli in Paris. The French newspaper "Le Monde" reports that less than an hour before the "Charlie Hebdo" shootings occurred, Cherif Kouachi texted Amedy Coulibaly. We don't know yet what the text message said but just two days after the "Hebdo" massacre, Coulibaly attacked the market.

The paper also says the "Charlie Hebdo" assault was nearly called off because one of the gunman came down with stomach flu.

Checking other top stories for you at 18 minutes past, history being made in Oregon today. Kate Brown will be sworn in as the state's new governor later this morning. She will be the first openly bisexual governor in the country. She replaces John Kitzhaber who resigned amid questions about his fiancee's consulting work.

Alabama's governor now apologizing for the police use of force against an Indian man calling it excessive. The 59-year-old man was left partially paralyzed when Police Officer Eric Parker forced him to the ground. Parker has been charged with third-degree assault. He's pleaded not guilty.

Today is Ash Wednesday. It's the first day of lent for Christians around the world. Observers have put ashes on their foreheads in a form of a cross as a symbol of penance. The next 40 days they fast, reflect, pray and prepare for Easter.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the prosecution wraps in the "American Sniper" trial but it's the defense's first witness that's giving us a peek into the life of Eddie Ray Routh.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: The prosecution rests its case in the "American Sniper" trial, now it's the defense's turn.

So let's head to Texas and Ed Lavandera. We're seeing video that was shown earlier in court of the suspect being taken into custody.

Ed, tell us more.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is interesting video that was played before the jury yesterday, Carol. This was just moments after Eddie Ray Routh had led police on the high-speed chase and he was taken into custody and put in the back of a police car.

At one point the officer in the car asked him if he's OK and he starts talking about, quote, "I've been so paranoid, schizophrenic all day. I don't know what to even think of the world right now. I don't know if I'm insane or sane. I don't know what's even sane in the world right now."

You know, another one of those moments that prosecution in its part of its case in Stephenville has been showing so many of these dramatic videos. We're not allowed to play for you the audio on these videos. We can only quote from it until the trial is over. But really kind of an incredible glimpse into everything that unfolded that day.

But the prosecution has rested. The defense attorneys are now taking their turn. One of the first witnesses they called, Carol, was Eddie Ray Routh's mother and she detailed how he son changed dramatically after his services four years in the Marines and how he descended into psychological problems and in and out of hospitals.

She talked about how several days before the murders he had been admitted into the VA hospital in Dallas and was released, and she talked about how she begged them to keep him in. Also talked about the cocktail of psychological medications that he had been prescribed including nine different medications at one point.

So we'll continue to see that here in the coming days as the defense attorneys will continue to build their case and really go over the time line of all the psychological treatment that Eddie Ray Routh was under in the months leading up to the murders of Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield.

COSTELLO: All right. Ed Lavandera, reporting live this morning. Thank you.

Tonight CNN is taking a closer look at the movie that's made Kyle a cultural phenomenon. "BLOCKBUSTER: THE STORY OF AMERICAN SNIPER" airs tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, most military experts agree that killing ISIS fighters will not solve our terror problem. So why is the State Department spokesman catching flak for saying that?

We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: And Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. This morning, the global war on terrorism leads to the White House.

Sixty nations, 60 nations have dispatched top officials there for a summit on extremism. And specifically how those militants use social media to recruit the next generation of terrorists.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski is at the White House. She joins us with more.

Good morning.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

This is really interesting so far because I mean initially we had the White House announcing this big summit but not ever using the words "Islamic extremism". But as the summit is getting under way for a second day now, all of the programs that they're looking at are really focusing on Muslim communities around the country.