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Iraqi Army Retakes Tikrit From ISIS's Grip; Russian Opposition Leader Gunned Down In Moscow

Aired March 02, 2015 - 15:30   ET

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


ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: This could be the biggest test yet for the Iraqi army retaking the city of Tikrit from the grip of ISIS. The Iraqi army, alongside both Sunni and Shiite militiamen, are now attacking ISIS strongholds near the city, all part of a wide-scale offensive. And this is why this is so significant. Tikrit fell under ISIS control back in June after the capture of Mosul.

Meanwhile, new propaganda photos released by ISIS show the terror group fighting back against Iraqi security forces in and around Tikrit.

Let me bring in retired U.S. army brigadier general Anthony Tata. He is the author of "Foreign and Domestic."

And General, you're joining us now. 30,000 fighters are taking part in this offensive. Why do you think Tikrit is so important?

BRIG. GEN. ANTHONY TATA, AUTHOR: Ana, it's great to be here.

Tikrit is important for a lot of different reasons. Of course, you mentioned its Saddam Hussein's hometown. There's some level of significance there. Last June, there were about 800 to 1,400 Iraqi army soldiers massacre there by ISIS. That's significant. I think that may be part of the motivation behind a lot of the factions that are participating in this fight. There's Sunni, there's Shia, and many of those massacred were Sunni and Shia. And so, I think that's part of it.

But most significantly from a military standpoint is that to get to Mosul, you have to have Tikrit. And so, that's a logistics-based jumping off point if you will to be able to get up to Mosul to have that attack. You can't go to Mosul and leave your rear flank exposed with the enemy hold in Tikrit. So that's the big reason. You have to have Tikrit before you get to Mosul. So this offensive has started. And hopefully it's a combined arms campaign with aviation, with jets, with artillery, with intelligence communications and that we have good command and control synchronizing this fight so that we can destroy this enemy, move them out of Tikrit and get set for the drive to Mosul.

CABRERA: CNN's Fareed Zakaria sat down with Jordan's King Abdullah and asked about how the world needs to handle ISIS. Listen to this and we'll chat on the backside.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS: How should the west handle this? Should the response to ISIS be essentially an Arab response, a Muslim response or should the west be in the lead?

KING ABDULLAH II, JORDAN: This has to be unified. I mean, I've said this to leaders both in the Islamic and Arab world and to the world in general. This is a third-world war by other means. This brings Muslims, Christians, other religions together in this generational fight that all of us have to be this together. So it's not a western fight. This is a fight inside Islam where everybody comes together against these outlaws so to speak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Some strong words there. Do you agree, General? Are we on the brink of a World War III?

TATA: Ana, you know, I've been saying this for weeks, if not months now, that we need a coalition. It's got to involve the Arab nations. It's got to involve the west. This is a war against the west by ISIS. I believe that ISIS would like to make it global and it will become global if we do not stop it where it is right now. They're already recruiting from the United States and other countries in the west. You see the recruits coming in from Great Britain and France and the United States.

So, yes, I think we are on the brink of something really bad happening on a global scale unless we get this under control. And I think this advance on Tikrit is the first step to try to do that. And what I have been saying is that we've got to leverage all of our elements of power, our political power, our diplomatic power, to build the coalition. Our economic power to shut down countries that are buying black market oil from is such as Turkey.

And then our military power, of course, in the form of communications and signals and electronics and intelligence and being able to facilitate very accurate fighting and targeting so that the coalition can advance, and it's got to be the Arab nations that are leading this much like you saw Secretary Baker do with the desert storm building that coalition of all those nations lined up because they knew that Saddam Hussein violating Kuwait's sovereign rights was an attack against the rest of them. This is very much the same type of thing in a much more decentralized way.

CABRERA: All right, General Tata, thank you for sharing your experience and your expertise and helping us to understand what's happening in Iraq in the Middle East right now. Thank you.

Up next, a murder mystery, a Russian opposition leader gunned down in Moscow, and the key witness, his 23-year-old girlfriend. And now she's speaking out. We'll hear from her.

Plus, Kremlin critics are demanding justice, but aren't sure they'll get it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CABRERA: It's the murder that has shaken Moscow and one that's raising a lot of uncomfortable questions. Boris Nemtsov, a high profile critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin was gunned down right outside the Kremlin Friday night while walking with his girlfriend. Now Putin's critics are furious even questioning his possible involvement. He has condemned the shooting. He has ordered an investigation.

Now, Boris Nemtsov's girlfriend is the only witness to this crime and she spoke to a Russian TV network today about what she saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER (through translator): Where did Boris' killer appear from?

ANNA DURITSKAYA, BORIS NEMTSOV'S GIRLFRIEND (through translator): I don't know. I didn't see because this was happening behind my back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER (through translator): And by description, did this person react to your request immediately or started calling?

DURITSKAYA (through translator): When I turned, I only saw a light- colored car but I didn't see the make or number of the car that was leaving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: Buck Sexton is joining me now. He is a former CIA counterterrorism analyst.

Buck, Boris' girlfriend says she didn't really get a good look at the gunman. She spent pretty much the weekend meeting with Russian police and investigators. She's afraid and wants to leave the country now. Is she being treated more like a witness or a suspect?

BUCK SEXTON, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I think she's part of the theater that the Russian authorities are putting on at this point. It's been clear from the get-go that they have a very specific narrative that they want to essentially put out there for everyone to see. And what her recollection of this is actually support what we have already know from the beginning which was that this was a very precise and highly professional assassination that could have occurred so quickly that the assassin in this case could have actually gotten into the vehicle before she even knew what happened. It goes to show you the level of planning and the trade craft that was involved here.

And so, her treatment at this point I think is going to be very much dependent on what the Russian narrative, the state media narrative of this is going to be.

CABRERA: The message that they're trying to put out there. You brought up a really good point on how quickly this happened. Yes, we have seen pictures of a car that may have been involved. We heard the president, president Putin say that he is going to get the bad guy, he's condemned the killing, he's ordered all these investigations and there were multiple cameras apparently on this bridge where the killing happened. Are you surprised there isn't a suspect or somebody in custody at this point?

SEXTON: No, not at all. The Russian government is in-charge of this. And obviously, that means that they have full control over the information that we're going to be able to see. And really, the state media has been giving us a sense, a series of conspiracies and coincidences at the same time.

The conspiracy in this case being that some outside entity wants to defame Putin essentially, wants to make the Russian government look bad and so they did this because to the outside world, the obvious narrative is that somehow this is the fault of somebody at least operating from Putin's side of the political spectrum, not necessarily from direct orders from Putin but somebody who's a supporter an believes in sort of Putin's new Russia.

So there is that conspiracy side of it. And by the way, this is widely believed inside of Russia from everything we can see. And then there's the coincidences like for example, some of the cameras may have been turned off for maintenance just at the moment that this assassination happened. That same night, those same cameras may have been off.

And now there's reporting they weren't, in fact, off, but the FSV, the Russian federal security service may have this information. Are we going to get to see it? They're in control of all the cards, all the pieces here and the only thing they are absolutely certain of at this point is that no one who supports Putin's government, no one tied to the government had anything to do with this. Everything else is still in play except for that theory which I think tells us a lot.

CABRERA: You're not buying it?

SEXTON: I'm not buying that based on the facts we see so far. When you look at who benefits from this and you look at some of the other coincidences, by the way, when Nemtsov was supposed to go to this rally and he was suppose to talk more about Ukraine, it seems to me to defy any rational belief that, for example, ISIS, which was a theory they actually put out there over the weekend. I think that one has died down. That some outside entity, at some foreign intelligence service would do this as a false-flag operation. It's an insane conspiracy theory but unfortunately has some credibility to the constituency that Putin cares about the most which is Russians.

CABRERA: I want to play you sound from Nemtsov, himself, when he talked to Anthony Bourdain last year. He foreshadows the danger he, himself, would be facing and he talks about a rise in corruption in Russia. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BOURDAIN, CNN HOST, PARTS UNKNOWN: We're supposed to be dining at another restaurant this evening and when they heard that you would be joining me, we were uninvited. Should I be concerned about having dinner with you? BORIS NEMTSOV, RUSSIAN CRITIC: This is a country of corruption. And

if you have business, you are in a very unsafe situation. Everybody can press you and destroy your business. That's it. This is a system.

BOURDAIN: Critics of government, critics of Putin, bad things seem to happen to them.

NEMTSOV: Yes. Unfortunately, existing power represent what I say Russia of 19th century, not of 21st.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CABRERA: So Nemtsov obviously knew he was in a risky business. How do you think his death, his murder is going to affect opponents of Putin's regime?

SEXTON: Look, clearly, it's going to have a major chilling effect. And when you look at the fact that we're probably not going to find out who was actually responsible for this based on previous political assassinations in the country, people are going to believe how this is handle. I think it's very clear Nemtsov was more than just an opposition figure. This is somebody who in a sense represented a different direction that Russia could have gone in. And he was at one point considered to be a successor of Boris Yeltsin, and then it went to Putin.

And so, the fact that he has been eliminated in this matter, obviously, he is going to send a very clear message irrespective of who actually pulled the trigger or who gave the order to all opposition in Russia. And if you stand in Putin's way, you're likely to be crushed, you are likely to be killed and this is very dangerous and dark times for that country.

CABRERA: All right. Buck Sexton, we will have to leave it there. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Now, disaster strikes a sky diver. A medical emergency leaving him helpless and plummeting toward the earth. We'll explain how he was saved next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Well, just watching this next video might give you an adrenaline rush because an Australian man launching his fifth sky diving jump, 12,000 feet above Australia near Perth, his mid free fall and has an unexpected health emergency. You've got to see what happens next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA (voice-over): This is not Christopher Jones' first sky dive. He is halfway through his accelerated free fall training, meaning he can jump alone and not in tandem but only at the same time as a highly qualified instructor. That instructor, Sheldon McFarland. With a camera strapped to his helmet the two take the plunge. At

first it all seems normal at around 9,000 feet, McFarland instructs Jones to make a left-hand turn. Suddenly he turns over on to his back and begins to spin, something is wrong.

Jones who reportedly has epilepsy is having a seizure. He told local media he had been seizure free for years. He spends the next 30 seconds in free fall, completely unconscious.

When sky diving, a parachute is typically deployed at around 5,000 feet. Running out of time, McFarland rockets through the high winds to his student and pulls the rip cord. At 3,000 feet, Jones regains consciousness, just in time to make a safe landing. Although this dramatic rescue took place in November, Jones just shared it with the world via You Tube on Sunday. And in just 24 hours, the video has received more than four million views. Jones describing it as possibly the scariest moment of my life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: How amazing is that? Joining me now to talk more about this is Craig Stapleton, a skydiving instructor who knows well the dangers of the sport.

Craig, I know you made headlines back in 2013. You survived a skydiving accident of your own where you hit the ground. That's at 30 miles per hour after both your parachutes failed. So what was your reaction when you saw this new video?

CRAIG STAPLETON, SKYDIVING INSTRUCTOR: Well, I love it. I love seeing, you know, skydiving can have some real success stories that make the news and can make people interested in the sport.

CABRERA: And it's unbelievable when you watch what's happening that the instructor here thought so quickly, knew exactly what to do, and yet I imagine this doesn't happen all that often, right?

STAPLETON: No, actually it's like lifeguarding. It's something you train for all the time and you very rarely get to do. Most student instruction jumps go off pretty unexciting. So it's the thing you train for and hope you never have to do.

CABRERA: In addition to your own accident, I know you have had a student lose consciousness on a dive. And I believe you brought a parachute with you. How are instructors trained to deal with a scenario like this?

STAPLETON: Actually, when the instructors are going through training classes learning to be instructors, some of the instructor examiners are still actually pretend to be unconscious or almost be combative or uncooperative. So the instructor learns to see signs of students having trouble and to plan ahead for those things.

CABRERA: If you have your parachute there with you, explain and show to us, if you can, I mean, how accessible it is for an instructor thinking in the last minute to be able to get to that other individual and essentially do the jump for them, pulling the rip cord.

STAPLETON: Right. The rip cord's mounted on the bottom of the parachute. So if the student's on their back, they can reach around across them. Some of the students rigs have extra handles for the instructors to get to that are on the chest. So they just have to be able to get to the student and find the handle and they actually do practice that maneuver while they are learning to be instructors.

CABRERA: OK. I think the question on so many of our minds is there are these reports out of Australia that the diver was diagnosed with epilepsy, apparently he had had a seizure in four years prior and the doctor signed a waiver, but is that common? I mean, does it matter if people have health conditions? What are the requirements?

STAPLETON: You need to be somewhat healthy to skydive. It's a very high stress sport. It's somewhat physically demanding and extremely mentally demanding. So you have to be able to handle stress. And obviously, this person hadn't had enough stress or things to induce a seizure until he was in the air.

CABRERA: All right, Craig Stapleton, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.

STAPLETON: Thank you.

CABRERA: Coming up at the top of the hour, all eyes in Washington on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, except one pair of eyes, President Obama. He didn't watch the speech today. In fact, he says he won't watch the one tomorrow, either. Are things a little tense in the west wing? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CABRERA: Time now for CNN heroes and a young inventor with a very big idea.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My grandfather has Parkinson's disease causing him to shake. He spill all the time. So I decided to make the kangaroo cup. I came up with the idea when I was around eight or 9- years-old. I wanted to put legs on the cup because I figured that it wouldn't be as likely to spill. The original cup was made out of porcelain. We decided to make a plastic version so it can be used by anybody like little kids, people with mobility issues. I have a design team, and they really do help me so much. Color-wise, blue?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lily has sold about 11,000 cups total. So many of her classmates and teachers do not even know what she's doing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like the next big thing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Really do keep the kangaroo cup talk to a minimum.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I remember reading about it. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now, the word is spreading around school, like,

lily did what? She did what? She invented this cup? Oh, my God.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is so cool.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, Lily, how are you doing?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Good.

My cup changed my grandfather's life because that's the only cup he uses now, like, once the kangaroo cup came, the other cups that he used, they were just out of the picture.

One day, I wanted to give money from the kangaroo cup to Parkinson's research and hopefully they'll find a cure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: And cheers to you. We will end up on positive.

Thanks for joining me. "THE LEAD" with Brianna Keilar starts right now.