Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

ISIS Operative Killed in Raid; Wife of ISIS Operative Captured; New Report Indicates Amtrak Trains Struck by Projectiles Before Derailment; House Committee Votes to Cut Amtrak Funding. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired May 16, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:05] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: So glad to have you with us. I'm Christi Paul.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell. You're in the CNN Newsroom. We want to welcome our viewers here in the U.S. and joining us from around the world.

First up, the breaking news, U.S. special operations forces have killed a key ISIS figure in Syria. CNN was the first to report that Abu Sayyaf is dead. The plan was to capture him, but he fought back in hand-to-hand combat and was killed in the raid. That's what we're learning from the Defense Department.

PAUL: His wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured and is currently in military detention in Iraq, and she is believed to have been involved in human trafficking and hostage taking. And we also know at least 19 ISIS fighters were killed in in the coalition bombing raid this morning.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring in Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh. We also have with us national correspondent Sunlen Serfaty and CNN military analysts retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling and retired Major General James "Spider" Marks.

And let's start with Barbara Starr, who broke the news this morning for us. Tell us what we know.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Well, it was a commando raid overnight deep into Syrian, ISIS-held territory. U.S. army special operations forces, and that means Delta Force, went in by helicopter, under orders to try to capture this man. But apparently a firefight broke out, hand-to-hand combat. He resisted. He was killed in the firefight along with other ISIS fighters there, his wife captured and taken back to Iraq.

The big question, why this guy? Why was it worth risking so many U.S. military lives to go after him? What we are being told is he was an ISIS leader, if you will, in their oil and gas operations. So that's very key because of the financial impact, the financial benefit to ISIS.

But perhaps more serious, even, there had been a sense by the U.S. that he was increasingly involved in ISIS command and control and ISIS operations. And U.S. officials are beginning to indicate there may have been a reason to believe he might have been in contact at some point, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the very reclusive leader of ISIS, the guy the U.S., of course, wants to get.

You put that whole picture together, what we're beginning to understand, including from our sources on the ground, this man had been very heavily involved in ISIS communications. So if they could have captured him, they hoped to interrogate good deal about the communications of ISIS, leading to potentially be able to track down other leaders. But they did capture communications equipment at the site and other intelligence that they will now go through. They can interrogate his wife.

So they do believe they got a good intelligence haul, if you will, from this raid. All U.S. forces returning safely. Not to put a light note on it, but we are told, one U.S. killing back with bloody knuckles from the hand-to-hand combat. Back to you guys.

PAUL: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, I want to get you in the conversation here. You've been bringing up a question all morning about who is this man that was killed and what really was his worth. A little bit about what Barbara was saying there. But you're live in Beirut, tell us what you're hearing there not just about what you're hearing about him, Abu Sayyaf, but about his wife and her significance.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very little, frankly, and it's entirely feasible that given the black box sealed nature of ISIS leadership that this man had a substantial role in the eyes of U.S. intelligence that they were willing to put this amount of risk down to try and prevent.

We're hearing from one long-term observer of ISIS the real name of Abu Sayyaf, which just means the father of Sayyaf, kind of a nom de guerre, if you like. Umm Sayyaf means the mother of Sayyaf. His real name is Nabil Saddiq Abu Saleh al-Jabour. That may not be accurate. That's what we're hearing at this stage. Not a key figure, not featuring in the top four or five wanted individuals that the U.S. requested substantial rewards for.

Perhaps according to experts we've spoken to in regular contact, ISIS spokesperson Hamid al Adnani, that's one potential reason why this target may have been high profile. But also, as Barbara was alluding to, maybe in regular contact too with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

You have to ask yourself, as Barbara was saying, such a huge amount of risk placed on the table here. This is one of the most fortified places that ISIS has. It is a huge oil field infrastructure, heavily fortified, said to be a three to five kilometer perimeter secured around it into which people cannot go. It seems to have been softened up after midnight according to witnesses by airstrikes, and then in went this Special Forces unit. But they must have been aware of how complex and dangerous that particular operation was.

[10:05:14] So there's lots of particular reasons they may have chosen to do it that weren't to do with finding Abu Sayyaf there. You have to also question whether or not the capture mission was really viable. ISIS at the core of their creed seem to worship self-extinguishing suicide bombing, et cetera, so you might have thought it would have been a tough ask for ISIS to give themselves up to Delta Force commandos.

So you have to ask if there was another target that they didn't get with Abu Sayyaf actually has a much higher place in the ISIS firmament than people seem publicly willing to discuss. And also bear in mind, too, this is said to be trying to interdict their ability to make money out of oil smuggling. Now oil infrastructure for ISIS, they took a lot of it, made a lot of money early on when they struck across northern Iraq. That's been badly hammered by coalition airstrikes. And most admissions are that they've significantly reduced their revenue inflow from oil.

So a lot of questions really being asked now, I think after this White House explanation as to why this extraordinarily risky raid was taken in the first place. You remember in the past, U.S. Special Forces have gone in to look for U.S. hostages, or in the interests of bin Laden, try and actually bring back the body of a man whose identity they had to be 100 percent sure of to make the huge, stark claim. You have to imagine within Barack Obama's administration a lot of debate was made before taking this risk. They must have thought the U.S. public would have understood why they were willing to stomach the potential for this going wrong.

Thankfully, it didn't, no U.S. troops injured, and one Yazidi woman saved as well. We shouldn't forget. But a confusing operation I think to say the least for many observers here.

BLACKWELL: Nick, let me ask you about Umm Sayyaf. She has been captured now in Iraq, almost certainly being interrogated. We've talked a lot about the effort to recruit women into ISIS. But at that level, at the top, maybe middle management of the hierarchy, is it credible to believe that she has a lot of organizational knowledge about ISIS and would know all of the intricacies of that level?

WALSH: In the shortest answer is no, really. We do know that ISIS' notion of where woman's place in society is not particularly 21st century. We know some women are attracted to that ideology. We know there are women who promote them on social media, that women do have a role in their organization. But it's not in the leadership.

So I think the notion that she was a fully functioning deputy with operational knowledge of everything that Abu Sayyaf would have known, given the secretive nature of ISIS as a whole, I think that bears further scrutiny certainly. We don't know her real name. We don't know where she's from. Umm Sayyaf means "The mother of Sayyaf." It means little else at this stage.

But it is important to notice how the one captured person they have from this, this female, is now being interrogated. If I remember rightly, not a lot was gained at the interrogation of bin Laden's wives. It wasn't like he brought them into the family business to give the phrase so to speak.

So I think, yes, a lot of scrutiny will be upon Umm Sayyaf at this stage. But then I think it's also reasonably sensible to limit your expectations as to what intelligence she may be able to yield. It may well be more of a case of the cell phones perhaps they found on Abu Sayyaf, computers, other things around him that may be part of that kind of hour-by-hour frantic search you often get after a hit like this for further intelligence they can actually act upon.

It does appear that a lot of local witnesses began tweeting about this. Syrian state TV put out a statement about an hour before this suggesting that in fact was their forces who had killed the ISIS oil minister there. So it seems like this operation was beginning to go public. Maybe that's why the Pentagon had to speak rather than continuing to pursue any intelligence they may have got from executing this raid.

BLACKWELL: All right, Nick Paton Walsh joining us there from Beirut. We have Barbara Starr as well. We'll get to Sunlen Serfaty and our generals, retired general are with us in a moment. But I know there are people waking up and seeing the breaking news, and even those who closely follow the reporting on ISIS and know the leaders, they hear the name Abu Sayyaf and are not familiar with that name. But the fact that the U.S. had him under close watch indicates that he was a valuable target.

PAUL: Yes. So let's bring in CNN military analyst and retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling for more, because, Mark, I think it's true a lot of people are looking at this and wondering how significant this man was, especially knowing, as we know, a senior administration official told CNN today the mission was to capture him. But because he fought back, he was then killed. I'm wondering if we look at whether, how successful this was, it was successful because no U.S. troops were killed, but now that he's dead, will they really be able to extrapolate the Intel they were hoping for?

[10:10:00] LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Absolutely. Christi, I've conducted many operations like this. And first, if I can go back to your question about the well-known nom de guerre of Abu Sayyaf, we seem to publicize the operational commanders across the boards, the ones that actually conduct the fight. But I'll tell you at the operational and strategic level of conflict, you really have to target not just the operational commanders, but the chief financiers, the ones that provide legal advice, the ones that provide religious advice, the informational operators, because all of those contribute to the defeat and the destruction of the eventual organization.

The operational leaders are important, to be sure. But truthfully, with this organization, with the amount of money they spend in offering funds to foreign fighters to come to their promising a good life, promising a home, promising wives to the foreign jihadists that are coming there, literally Running communities, paying for people to haul in trash, the budget aspect of ISIS is crucial. If you get the guy who is running that, the equivalent of our U.S. Department of Treasury and Commerce combined and say we've now taken that guy and killed him and we now have access to his books, you have a treasure trove of information of how the organization works not only from a financial standpoint but perhaps recruiting information and even operational.

And the question did Abu Sayyaf meet with Baghdadi? Of course he did. You're going to have a CEO of a corporation always meeting with the CFO to see how the organization is running. So that's how you fit all of those things together. This was a critically important raid. This was an important individual and it's going to have an effect on ISIS as an organization.

BLACKWELL: General, the reporting from Barbara Starr is that this was in some ways hand-to-hand combat on troops really there on the ground attempting to capture Abu Sayyaf. We've seen in other instances where airstrikes, drones were used. There's a report from the Iraqi military that al Afri, the number two from al-Baghdadi, was killed, the Pentagon not confirming that. But now this is going on the ground to get these leaders. Do you see this as a turning of the tide or change in strategy? And we'll see more of this?

HERTLING: No. I think it's a different approach, Victor, and this happens all the time. There are some leaders that you kill or capture and, oh, by the way, the al Afri reported killing has not been confirmed yet. You know that. We've reported that over the last several days, and that's one of the detriments of dropping a bomb on someone. You really don't know if you hit them or not. You don't know if he's dead. The same thing with al Dhuri. We know for a fact that these were special operators engaged with a couple of targets. They know they killed them. And more importantly, they have the intelligence that's associated with it. That's critical. You always fight for intelligence. It's important to, to kill the leaders, yes. But it's also critical to fight for intelligence so you can conduct more operations in the future.

PAUL: All right, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, thank you so much.

BLACKWELL: All right, so let's learn now what the president is saying about last night's raid on ISIS.

PAUL: Don't go anywhere. We're headed live to the White House right after this. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:16:42] BLACKWELL: We're following breaking news this morning, U.S. special operations forces have killed an important ISIS figure in Syria.

PAUL: It went into Syria overnight to try to capture Abu Sayyaf. He resisted, therefore was killed. CNN national correspondent Sunlen Serfaty is joining us from the White House. What is the president saying this morning in light of all of this? SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christi, no direct

reference to this by the president. We do not expect him to speak on this. But the National Security Council has released a statement in which they characterize President Obama's views on the mission. They say as commander-in-chief the president is grateful to the brave U.S. personnel who carried out this complex mission as well as the Iraqi authorities for their support of the operation and for their use of facilities which they say contributed to its success.

Now, we know according to a senior administration official that the president was regularly briefed by his national security team on this mission overnight as it was carried out. Christi, Victor?

BLACKWELL: And the decision to carry this out we know was supported by the president's top military and national security advisers.

SERFATY: That's right. The National Security Council says it was unanimous recommendation by the national security team to the president to make this decision. But in the end it was the president's own discretion, his call that actually makes this happen. We know from a senior administration official also that, and you guys were having this conversation earlier, is how high profile was Abu Sayyaf? How connected was he within the ISIS leadership? We know from a senior administration official that he was a senior leader overseeing the oil and gas operations. But then they also add it would be likely that he would have interacted in some capacity with al-Baghdadi. So that is indicative of how they believe how high up in the leadership he had contact with.

PAUL: What about his wife? I mean they've been talking about how significant this, that she is, and the fact that obviously she is now in custody and they are interrogating her. But what do they really hope to garner from her?

SERFATY: That's a key question. She is being detained right now in Iraq according to the National Security Council and will likely be interrogated. But the question is how much intelligence does she have? Now a senior administration official tells us that they are working to determine whether she had any information about hostages, including American citizens held by ISIS. So the question is, is that actionable intelligence that the U.S. can take? How big of a role did the wife have? And will they have any information that gleans new information as they take the fight against ISIS.

PAUL: All right, Sunlen Serfaty, thank you so much, appreciate it.

I want to read a statement from Defense Secretary Ash Carter that's come in, saying that "The operation represents another significant blow to ISIL. And it is a reminder that the United States will never waver in denying safe haven to terrorists who threaten our citizens and those of our friends and allies. I think the extraordinary men and women in uniform who executed this complex and challenging mission, along with all of those who supported it, their professionalism, dedication, and valor are a deep source of pride and inspiration to us all," as someone was just referencing.

BLACKWELL: Absolutely. Let's bring in CNN military analyst, retired Major General James "Spider" Marks.

[10:20:04] We've been talking this morning about not just the killing and the capture of Abu and Umm Sayyaf, but the operation, the decision to use special operations forces. What do you think about that decision to do this in that way, but not with a drone strike, or not by airstrikes?

LT. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Victor, that's a great question. Clearly when the national security team, as it's been reported, has unanimity in terms of the decision to use special operators on the ground to go after the target, that tells you something extremely important, and that is the targetable intelligence, the confirmed intelligence that says Abu Sayyaf is at this location with this type of capability around him, and we can confirm right now that this is where he is.

That's a series of intelligence collection operations that have taken place from all contributors, the National Security Agency, from the Defense Intelligence Agency, from human intelligence on the ground. There were folks that probably confirmed that this is where he was located. All of that has to come together.

And then the decision is made, are we willing to run the risk to go after this individual at this location, or are we going to take some other option that's available? It's not just a drone. There are other capabilities that we could use to go after him. But clearly this was worth the effort because of the value that he provides in terms of intelligence and all of the financial aspects of how ISIS gets its money, uses its money, sources of money, and how they then distribute those funds. Activities by ISIS would dry up if you could go after the source of their funding.

BLACKWELL: Retired general James "Spider" Marks, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

PAUL: Thank you, sir.

MARKS: Thank you, Victor.

PAUL: So the big question is, what will the figure's death do to the ISIS leadership here?

BLACKWELL: We'll talk to our next guest about the larger implications of the death of Abu Sayyaf.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:51] BLACKWELL: All right, pushing forward on the breaking news of the morning, key ISIS figure Abu Sayyaf was killed during a U.S. special forces raid in Syria. Now the operation took place at the president's direction, and Sayyaf's wife Umm Sayyaf was capture and is currently in U.S. military detention in Iraq.

PAUL: We want to get some more insight on these new developments from CNN contributor Michael Weiss. He is also the co-author of "ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror." Michael, good to have you with us. First of all, wondering, one, a lot of questions about Abu Sayyaf, whether that is his real name. Do you know what his real name is? And secondly, do you believe that he was indeed the target of this raid?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well no, Abu Sayyaf is nom de guerre these ISIS fighters adopt. His real name is -- (INAUDIBLE) -- covering this conflict have not heard of him. His name has come across some radars once or twice, but the idea that he's a key figure or has command and control capability, this is news to many people. It leads me to believe, I've had at least one Iraqi specialist on ISIS confirm that he wasn't the intended target. Allegedly the intended target was Abu Mohammad al Adnani. Now that is a very significant ISIS figure. He's the official spokesman for the group. He is also suggested to be one of the top contenders for caliph in the event that Abu Bakr al Baghdadi is killed.

So it wouldn't surprise, let us say, if the U.S. sends in Special Forces to go get Adnani, kill or capture him, and then realize he wasn't there and then settled on the guy who was and now to play this up as a sort of major victory.

The timing of the operation, too, is interesting, isn't it, because ISIS is just all but taken Ramadi, a city that months ago didn't look like it was on the verge of falling to them. They're strongly contesting -- sacked a major oil refinery in a province that just changed hands multiple times throughout the course of the war, and they've marched on Palmyra in Syria. So these are three major operations ISIS has mounted concurrently, all of which suggests that the strategy is not succeeding like gangbusters, contrary to the White House.

So this could be very well designed to say, hey, look, we can still you know, kick butt and take names. It's also not the first time, by the way, Special Operations forces have gone into Syria. I don't just mean the abortive or unsuccessful, unfortunately, rescue attempt for James Foley last year. I mean in 2008, JSOCS, Joint Special Operations Command launched a raid very similar to the bin Laden Abbottabad one, to kill Abu Gadiya. Abu Gadiya was what you might call a border Emir or a runner for the so-called rat lines of jihadis coming in from Syria to Iraq. He was killed after numerous attempts of trying to convince the Assad government to hand him over. They didn't, and we went in a similar style or fashion as to this. It was also in Deir ez-Zor, by the way, which is an area that's easily accessible to U.S. forces given that it's mostly hinterland.

BLACKWELL: So Michael, you know, it's interesting that you say that the intended target at least according to one of your sources was Abu Mohammad al Adnani, the spokesperson.

WEISS: That's a theory. I'm not saying that 100 percent. To me something about this doesn't quite seem right.

BLACKWELL: And that's where I was going to go with it, because we note that ISIS leaders are no fools, either. They look at this with the momentum that they are building in Ramadi. They see that the U.S. government is come in. They thought they were going to get someone, instead celebrated someone that the country, maybe much of the world has never heard of. Does this reverberate through and embolden ISIS? And what then is the symbolic and value as we talk about propaganda?

WEISS: Well, look, the U.S. government has not confirmed that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS has been injured in an air strike that took place in late March, accidental. You know the U.S. didn't know they had hit a convoy that he was a part of. Everyone I know who studies this, including sources in the Iraqi government, sources inside ISIS say this is not even an open secret anymore. There's consensus he has a spinal cord injury. The use of his left leg has been immobilized, that's not to say he's completely incapacitated and can't still control the organization. He can.

[10:30:08] But in the wake of the injury that he sustained, he vowed total vengeance against the United States. They got him, so now he wants to get us.

There's another component to this, too, which is why then would the Pentagon or CENTCOM not want to come right out and say we did hit Baghdadi? I've heard also that they don't want to let on that they know where he is because they want to mount another operation to go and get him as well.

So again, the official line from the Pentagon is, yes, we got the intended target. We had hoped to capture him, but he fought back, so we killed him and we got his wife instead. It seems a little too tidy to me at this point. I think, again, as many of your correspondents and analysts have been pointing out, putting American lives, boots on the ground at great risk in a hostile country to go after a guy that most people who study this organization for a living had not really heard of or didn't consider to be a ranking or senior official in the terrorist army, it seems odd. You know you could have gone and got after an oil man with a drone strike or some other method. So I'm still waiting to hear more on this. I think there's more to the story than meets the eye.

PAUL: All right, Michael Weiss, so appreciate your insight. Thank you so much for being here. Stay with us, though, because we do have Nick Paton Walsh who is live for news Beirut as well. Nick, you've been asking a lot of the same questions this morning.

WALSH: Certainly. Yes, it is deeply confusing that you would see this level risk for this relatively -- I don't want to say minor figure. The problem about ISIS leadership is it's not something you can necessarily explain on a completely comprehensive flow chart. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the information we're receiving is not laid out with a spinal cord injury. It is a very confused picture about his position and not one that U.S. officials are willing to discuss or confirm in any way. And in fact those I've spoken to say they believe there's the potential for that to make sense, but that's through their analysis of the situation rather than a smoking gun piece of paper they have in their hands, an actual piece of evidence.

So a lot of about his position is to some degree speculation at this stage. And I think the question you have to ask yourself is, why would you put all of those individuals at risk, those Delta Force operators, highly trained men. Imagine, God forbid, had this gone wrong, the mess that Barack Obama would have had to try to explain to the U.S. public. Deep inside ISIS held territory, flying into one of the most fortified things it seems they have in Deir ez-Zor, a massive oil complex, the military base for ISIS with a five-kilometer-strong perimeter of security around it, very complicated indeed. So they must have been thinking that the person they were going to get at the end was potentially a more substantial figure than Abu Sayyaf.

I haven't heard a convincing real name for that man at this stage. You would normally expect were he high up on a target list that you would get Abu Sayyaf, yes, which is his nom de guerre, but also his real name. We are being told that his name is Nabil Saddiq Abu Saleh al-Jabour. That could be incorrect. A lot of this is extraordinarily obtuse and hard to dig through to get to the real trust. That's how ISIS funtions. They have some public figures and then they have some figures that you never has heard of who run this business.

There is another issue too. The main reason it seems for going for him was oil. Well, oil is not a big revenue source for ISIS anymore. The Pentagon has said that themselves. So it is a confusing picture. The notion that he was somehow a gateway to Baghdadi or to Adnani, that is plausible, too. That may be more what's going on. And the other times we've seen U.S. special forces deployed in this way is when there is an absolutely inviolable reason why they needed to be on the ground, like a hostage rescue or in the bin Laden case, a retrieval of the body of that key target to prove identity.

There may be more information to emerge as to why this occurred, and perhaps Abu Sayyaf's death and the capture of his wife are being trumpeted by the Pentagon now as a good reason they say, in hindsight, that came out of it.

Bear in mind, too, we have this one Yazidi woman who was effectively a slave there, it seems, has been rescued. Her life massively changed by being reunited with her family. We're hearing also I have to say from the National Security Council that Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, these aren't real names, they're just nom de guerre, they mean "father of Sayyaf" and "mother of Sayyaf." That's what Umm Sayyaf means. She is currently being debriefed at this stage and is believed to be in Iraq. So she may yield information, but then too there's a discrepancy here. It's not necessarily common to hear ISIS leaders to bring their wives into the business models. Women don't play a particularly key or coherent role in ISIS' operational day-to-day things. Certainly in social media they're certainly part of the extremist group, no doubt. But they don't figure widely in the leadership like they do, for example, in their Syrian Kurdish opponents, who we've seen them fight against.

So a lot of confusion, frankly, about the White House story at this stage from I'm so what I'm seeing on this side of the Atlantic. I'm sure more details will emerge.

[10:35:05] BLACKWELL: Nick, not just this story, because there is or could be this narrative that's built. We talked about al-Baghdadi. Was there a severe spinal cord injury or was there not? We did receive that audio message. There's the report from the Iraqi military that al Afri was killed, and the Pentagon says then no that they have no confirmation there was a high-value target. And now this, possibly going after what they call a key figure, most people who study this don't recognized name. Is this attributed to the opaqueness of the leadership of ISIS? Is this poor Intel from the U.S. that this is now possibly the third instance of a lack of clarity as it relates to these leaders?

WALSH: Well, I think you have to -- human intelligence is extraordinarily complex thing. You need human beings to be available to talk to you about what they've learned from inside the circle you're not supposed to be inside. So you have to forgive the U.S. dealing with the organization frankly journeyed to fighting against the United States.

Remember, so many of these guys were involved back with the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Qaeda in Iraq before it, fighting the U.S. as an insurgency during the U.S. military presence in Iraq. They have a lot of experience at keeping their secrets.

I think, tough, you have to pursue it perhaps in a much more broad White House communications strategy here. What if this had gone terribly wrong? How would you justify the decision to send these men in? I think would you really struggle at the level of Barack Obama to fashion a narrative where an oil man or not being in the industry which makes ISIS so much money, an oil man rising up the ranks need to be captured from inside one of the key ISIS lines, then strongholds, deep inside Syria by some of your best special operators. I really think that would be a tough sell, had God forbid, this gone wrong.

So I think there may be more information to emerge in the days and hours ahead, and it may also perhaps show us quite how complex it is to penetrate ISIS key leadership, because we know some public figures, they put themselves in social media videos, they put themselves on display quite willingly. But there also individuals too like Qaduli, for example, had just been named a $7 million reward for his whereabouts by the U.S government. Mustafa al Qaduli, otherwise known as al Afri, he's effectively thought to be the number two of ISIS. Not a figure who you necessarily would have heard about a lot. He had been on U.N. sanctions list in the past years as part of an Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was out there certainly in the extremist firmament. But he wasn't somebody you would regularly see in social media videos. Not like the other two men recently announced with rewards on their head by the U.S., Omar al Shishani and al Adnani, the spokesman. Shishani had been all over social media, Adnani a key spokesperson. So a lot of questions still to answer here.

PAUL: All right, and Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much, Michael Weiss as well.

I want to go to Sunlen Serfaty who is outside the White House. Sunlen, you've probably been listening to part of this conversation and some of the questions coming out about how significant Sayyaf really was or perhaps was not. What is the White House saying?

SERFATY: Well, I think we can learn, Christi, a few things from what the National Security Souncil sent out in their lengthy statement. Just picking out a few key things, really a defense of why President Obama took his deliberate call to make this mission. They say in the statement that he was involved with the group's

military operations, in reference to Abu Sayyaf, and that he was overseeing the oil and gas operations. But we are also, as we start asking these questions, was it worth the risk, what more is there to this, we are getting some push-back from a senior administration official who adds that it was likely that Abu Sayyaf would have at some had interactions with al-Baghdadi they say in some capacity, Al- Baghdadi being a key ISIS leader that the U.S. has been chasing for a while.

So really starting to push back and provide a little bit more information on why President Obama made this decision. Now we know that this decision was made with unanimous recommendation from his National Security Council, and they say they had sufficient intelligence to make the call with confidence that this mission could be carried out successfully. We know that President Obama according to a White House official, was briefed regularly on this mission overnight. Back to you.

PAUL: All right, Sunlen Serfaty, thank you so much. We appreciate it.

And I want to just let you know about something here. Tomorrow, this Sunday, CNN is taking a real unique look inside ISIS. Who are they? What do they really want? Fareed Zakaria hosts "Blindsided: How ISIS Shook the World." That is tomorrow night, Sunday night, 7:00 eastern right here on CNN. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:43:42] BLACKWELL: We'll get more on the breaking news throughout the morning, but now turning to another major story. A new twist in the investigation in the derailment of Amtrak train 188. The NTSB has now called in the FBI forensics team to help determine what happened here. You see in the red circle here that white impact mark? Well, the head of the NTSB believes that that mark came from a projectile that hit the train before the derailment. And now look at this. It may be one of three trains that was struck on Tuesday night.

Erin McLaughlin is following the investigation live from Philadelphia. What have you learned this morning, Erin?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Victor. Well, in addition to the windshield you were just describing there, investigators are pointing to another piece of key evidence that suggests some sort of projectile may have hit Amtrak 188 prior to the crash. They say that yesterday they interviewed an assistant conductor who says that moments before the crash she overheard a radio transmission that took place between the Amtrak dispatcher and the engineer of a SEPTA train, a separate train that was nearby. That engineer, according to the dispatcher, that his windshield had been hit by some sort of projectile. She says that following that she heard from Brandon Bostian, the Amtrak 188 engineer, and he said that his train had also been hit.

[10:45:08] Now authorities say they are following up. They plan on interviewing the SEPTA engineer as well. Meanwhile, deepening the mystery, we're hearing from passengers of a third train that was in the area around the same time, an Amtrak Acela train. We heard from one passenger by the name of Kam Desai. He said that he was sitting in one of the cars and he saw a projectile hit a window just in front of him about 15 to 20 minutes prior to that Amtrak 188 derailment. He said he was terrified. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAM DESAI, PASSENGER ON STRUCK ACELA TRAIN: I think all of us were a little bit definitely alarmed. And we never heard that loud of a sound on the train. We take the train pretty often between D.C. and New York. So it was definitely frightening, and we didn't really know what was going on. But as soon as we stood up and we saw that there was this glass shatter, but it hadn't gone all the way through, and the conductor made it sound like it wasn't too big of a deal. So we really didn't think anything of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCLAUGHLIN: Now authorities had initially discounted the reports of projectiles hitting other trains in the area as unrelated to Amtrak 188, but obviously investigators reevaluating that. We have heard from SEPTA, who confirms that a projectile did hit one of their trains that night. But they also added that it is common for projectiles to strike trains in the area, saying that it is, that children actually frequently, children or kids frequently throw projectiles at the trains.

BLACKWELL: Erin McLaughlin following the investigation closely with the latest developments there for us from Philadelphia, thanks.

PAUL: Let's bring in CNN transportation analyst and former inspector of the Department of Transportation, Mary Schiavo. Mary, it's so good to see you this morning. What is your reaction to these reports that objects or projectiles are hitting trains? And can they really derail a train?

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN TRANSPORTATION ANALYST: This seems to be, if all this is correct, it seems to be a piece of the puzzle we have been missing, because we have an engineer that people have reported as conscientious, wasn't on a cell phone, wasn't on drugs. There's no indication he was sleepy. But somehow, and we know he had to put the train into that speed. Trains just don't run away like in the old- fashioned movies. He had to move the throttle into that speed, and then he had to have his foot on the dead-man switch. And then he threw the emergency brake. So what we couldn't figure out is, if he's actively running the train, cognizant, not on his cellphone, what distracted him? This could be the distraction.

But the good news about this is the FBI and their forensics labs, I have seen this kind of thing where we have bird strikes, bullet strikes, all sorts of things on transportation. And they'll be able to tell from the crazing marks. In other words, how the glass is crazed or chipped or broken, what hit it. And generally what hit it. Is it a bullet, is it a rock, is it a bird? I don't think it's a bird. I think it's probably a bullet. I don't know.

PAUL: You think it's a bullet?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think so, because of the third train. Now the first two trains were hit in the windshield. The third train was hit on the side and with a force that alarmed the passengers. If it was someone throwing the rocks, that's very difficult. And it's difficult, it would be difficult to move around in those areas to get close enough to the trains to do that. It doesn't have the classic bullet crazing pattern. That's very distinct, and there's a very sharp, round hole and it crazes out from that area. You see cracks going out, you know, in a radiation form. So it does look like a rock strike. But that third train is kind of significant that it came in on the side and not from the front. This would be like kind of a thing would be like a rock off of an overpass.

PAUL: OK, real quickly, we talked with Karl Edler, the chairman of the Washington branch of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen earlier today. And he talked about the fact that Bostian had only an hour of rest in between train trips, and most of which was probably taken up by switching trains, filling out paperwork, and doing equipment checks. Is that a real problem?

SCHIAVO: Well, ordinarily, I would say yes, you need to get significant rest for any mode of transportation. It's hugely important. But here, from we, from the radio transmission, he had his cell phone off, it's clear that he was awake and alert. He hadn't fallen asleep on the job, which would be what you would assume if somebody had put the train in this high-speed, double the speed it should be, and then didn't brake until the very last minute. But with him on the radio talking about the train, the strike on the train, it doesn't seem to be the problem of being asleep.

PAUL: All right, Mary Schiavo, so appreciate your insight as always, thank you.

Well, the day after the Amtrak train crashed, a House committee voted to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from Amtrak's funding. Well, now a fight may be brewing on Capitol Hill. We'll talk to a top Democratic congresswoman next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Classical music, we're told, are in crisis. Fewer record sales, concert goers, and an aging audience, it's led some to predict a requiem for this form of music. But not everyone is so downcast.

On this edition of "Ones to Watch" we'll to South Africa's Soweto township where classical music is changing the lives of young people, and a musical superstar introduces us to a talented 10-year-old with a big future in his hands.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to see possibilities to always bring new audiences and to see hey, look, guys and ladies, we're actually doing something, I think we'll fit in your lifestyle as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Early next month the House will take up the annual transportation bill. And that's of course, more relevant now because of the Amtrak crash that happened on Tuesday. Now, the day after the derailment, a Republican-led House committee voted to slash Amtrak funds by nearly $252 million. Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur joins us now, and she serves on the House Appropriations Committee. First, food to have you this morning.

[10:55:04] REP. MARCY KAPTUR, (D) OHIO: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

BLACKWELL: You've heard the arguments from opponents of increasing funding for Amtrak, that the country shouldn't be in the business of a nationalized train system. It's throwing good money after bad. Maybe it should be privatized. Your response is what?

CAMPER: Well, to use the expression, they're dead wrong. And our hearts go out to the families who lost loved ones, to all the injured, some of whom are still recovering from the terrible crash. And I would say I'm very proud to be a member of a party that believes in passenger rail modernized, the best in the world, moving toward that, and also a modernized freight rail. I come from a part of the country where it's part ever our spine. We can't get along without it.

BLACKWELL: But to do that the way you're describing and to I guess have the U.S. train system, the rail system meet what we're seeing in Europe and in Asia, is going to cost, according to a 2012 estimate, more than $100 billion. Where is that money going to come from?

KAPTUR: Well, you know, in our part of the country rail traffic has gone up by about 48 percent. You see double stacks of all our major carriers going through here with freight. So my first answer is from the users as well as from the public of the United States, because this helps contribute to our national strength economically.

On the passenger side we've had a real struggle here in Ohio. I was part of a group that passed ledge slays to put $400 million into places like northern Ohio. And we have a governor who isn't from northern Ohio who gave the money back to the federal government. So sadly, unlike the east coast where you have separated passenger and freight rail, here our passenger and freight rail go into the same track. And that means that only 2.7 percent of passenger trains reach their destination on time. They have to get off the track to let freight go through, freight has priority.

So this has to be a partnership between the private carriers, between the government of the United States, and frankly our states to help us embrace the future and not live in the 19th century.

BLACKWELL: All right, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, I thank you for joining us this morning and we continue to have this conversation in the wake of that derailment, what next for Amtrak and how we fix this system. Thank you so much.

KAPTUR: Thank you.

PAUL: And we want to thank you so much for spending part of your morning with us. It has been a busy one. We have had a lot of give- and-take here and a lot of developments, and we are always happy to bring that to you, but always grateful for your company. Go make some great memories today, by the way.

BLACKWELL: And of course we're going to continue to move forward on the breaking news, the announcement of the special operations, the Special Forces going in and trying to get and killing Abu Sayyaf. We pass that off to Fredricka Whitfield who is leading the next hour of the CNN Newsroom. That starts after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)