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U.S. Official: Taliban Leader Likely Killed in Drone Strike; New Audio Released From Cockpit of EgyptAir Flight; Taliban Leader Killed by U.S. Drone Strike; EgyptAir, Terrorism, Keeping the World Safe; Clinton Speaks Out on Trump, Guns, NRA. Aired 5-6p ET

Aired May 21, 2016 - 17:00   ET

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

[16:59:46] JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: You are in the CNN NEWSROOM, I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.

I'd like to welcome our international viewers from around the world as well, and we have breaking news. On a U.S. operation targeting the leader of the Taliban. U.S. officials telling CNN a drone strike aimed at Mullah Mansoor has likely killed him at strike taking place early this morning, U.S. time. The Pentagon says that Mansoor was actively involved with planning attacks against facilities in Kabul and across Afghanistan, presenting a threat, not only to Afghan civilians, but to security forces as well as U.S. and coalition personnel. The drone strike occurred at 6:00 a.m. this morning Eastern Time.

It targeted two men in a remote area of Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan. U.S. officials say they are still assessing the results of this strike, but their assessment -- their initial assessment is that both men were likely killed in today's operation.

I want to bring in CNN senior international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh, she's on the phone from Beirut. Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, he's a CNN intelligence and security analyst as is Bob Baer. Bob Sexton, former CIA counterterrorism analyst and military analyst Colonel Leighton as well as CNN contributor Tim Lester. We have got a big group of folks here with a lot of experience in this part of the world.

Nick, if I could begin with you. What details are you hearing about how this operation was carried out?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on the phone): A minimum at this stage too. And I think we should have a very important caveat here, is the word if Mullah Mansoor is dead. At this stage Pakistan officials are saying, he was the targets of this raid by a multiple unmanned aircraft, but he was likely killed. As you said, at 6:00 your time, and a second man was traveling with him in a vehicle in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Now, that, in itself, gives you some indication at how difficult it may be for U.S. officials to get definitive proof that this man is dead.

If you're dealing with a strike from a drone, it probably means that you have a tip off or some kind of electronic intelligence suggesting the man inside that vehicle target indeed Mullah Mansoor, well, this is the head of the Taliban, one of the most secretive and hard to penetrate organizations for quite some time. Now, of course, the U.S. government were looking for some sort of physical proof that he is dead, that may take quite some time to both obtain and corroborate. But, still, this news, if it is eventually confirmed by Afghan officials too, will, I think, significantly disrupt the Taliban, and all the regions that's already being significantly confused and distracted by the death, or at least confirmed death of their leader Mullah Omar that actually it was known he died back in 2012.

They have been in substantial leadership struggle since then. That has caused a lot of internal dissent inside -- between groups of Taliban, and the Taliban that we knew, Jim back pre-9/11 has become more criminal at times, at times, younger, more radical, a much messier group than they used to be, and Mullah Mansoor if this proves that he is dead, has spent the last few months of his life furiously trying to show that he's more vigorous leader that presents progress on the battlefield. That is behind the progress we've seen by the Taliban in Helmand where they have taken a battleground back some of the Afghan security forces, is behind the horrifying death toll against civilians and Afghanistan in the past year or so and the early months of this year as well. And I think the significance will be now, how quickly this can be confirms and how perhaps that may enable the Afghan government to move forward to get peace talks going and what's left with the Taliban and what this means for Afghanistan right now -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: The U.S. is being careful here to say that they have not confirm his death, but they are saying likely dead, which would indicated they have at least some information intelligence that he was the man in this strike and when the strike took place convinced that the people who were targeted did not survive. Cedric Leighton, long experience in the region with intelligence. We have seen a serious with successful strikes in recent months not just in the Afghan- Pakistan region, but in Iraq and Syria against ISIS targets, in Yemen against al Qaeda targets, al Shabaab targets in Somalia. When you look at that, what is your read is to how the U.S. has manage carries this out? Is that an investment in intelligence? Is that -- do you see something interesting there in that string of successes?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, AIR FORCE COLONEL (RET.): Jim, I think it is very important to note that the granularly of the intelligence is absolutely key. So, what you're looking at is really the ability to have finite intelligence that is corroborated by multiple sources, and those multiple sources are the ones that are really putting everything together, so everything from electronic intelligence, to communications intelligence, all the way to imagery, all of those things become incredibly important, and as they put together that whole picture, they basically developed this pattern of life analysis, and that pattern of life analysis is what allows these kinds of operations to take place, and I think we're seeing the results of that not only right now with Afghanistan, and in this particular case, but also in Yemen and Iraq and Syria as you mentioned.

SCIUTTO: Patterns is a word I hear all the time from intelligence officials. They look at satellite imagery, drone images, and these patterns they're talking about, when does someone leave their home? When do they go to the mosque? Who do they meet? Who was their messenger? They bring that all together in overtime. Sometimes it appears they may here figure out where they are at the time and they can carry out a strike.

[17:05:18] Buck Sexton, if I could ask you, maybe hard for the viewers at home to imagine this because the Taliban already a horrendous reputation in record of killing civilians, et cetera. But under Mansoor's leadership, many have said, the Taliban has become even more aggressive, even more brutal going after soft targets. The U.S. blaming them for tens of thousands of deaths. Explain to our viewers what the Taliban became under the leadership of Mansoor.

BUCK SEXTON, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I think under Mansoor's tenure, and, again, assuming he's dead, whichever saying, it's not confirmed yet, it was clear to many that there was an opportunity to push even harder against the coalition. There have been losses in outlying provinces, places that because of the fact they lie along the Afghan border, there's some expectation, Helmand Province and others, that there would surges in Taliban activity. And, also, they would view this as an opportunity to try to frighten the local population into not supporting Afghan national security forces in their efforts to suppress this insurgency.

So, Mansoor has been going hard after those areas. But also in the heart of Afghanistan, itself, in Kabul, not just the capital city, but in the very heavy fortified parts of the city, they are difficult to get to. There have been some spectacular attacks, large scale, large casualty attacks involving a tremendous amount of coordination, suicide bombers, people getting through check points that have occurred in Kabul. That sends a ripple effect across the rest of the country. And this is just in recent weeks, so this, if it's true, is a very positive step at least in a propaganda sense and information operation sense for the Afghan government.

Because up to this point, the Taliban has been taking territory back. The Taliban has been frightening village elders and to not cooperating with Afghan national security forces and quite honestly, the momentum has been with the Taliban and it looked like he was going to be a very tough fighting season for the Afghan forces that we're really just in mostly a support role for.

SCIUTTO: Listen, it's a great point. This is a success from the air, a leader killed. But the fact is, on the ground, the Taliban has taken more territory, they have been able to carry out attacks virtually with impunity inside the capital Kabul, lots of civilians have lost their lives as a result of those attacks. Bob, you have made the point, that the Taliban, we've seen this before will quickly appoint a new leader, but leaders matter. I mean, is the Taliban organized so that no one person has that much importance, or will this have an effect on the group?

ROBERT BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: I don't think it's going to cause chaos within Taliban ranks and the political leadership, no question about that. There's going to be a fight over that, over the groups, but the problem is the military command, there's a lot of them, their names are unknown to us, and as we have been talking about, they're loyal to the Haqqanis, and the Haqqanis are capable of delivering car bombs and attacking cities whether it's Kondus or Kabul or the rest of it. And they have been on the offensive. It's just the problem we have is we can't get to the Haqqanis. And as I've said before and I can't emphasize this enough, Jim is they don't get up in the air. And it's very difficult to run them down or to figure out what they're planning next.

SCIUTTO: And Mitt Romney, anyways, as you said, the Haqqani network guilty of some of the most horrible attacks in Afghanistan. And Rick, today's operation took place on the Afghan-Pakistan border, possibly inside Pakistan. Does this mean the U.S. would have informed the Pakistani military in advance of a strike?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET.), FORMER U.S. MILITARY ATTACHE IN SYRIA: Yes. There's a protocol it has to be followed here. And I was reading the report there, and initially, we thought it was in Afghanistan, and now we found out it was probably inside Pakistan, and that brings up a whole new series of questions, were the Pakistanis advised of this, did they approve this? Because this is always been our problem in the past, and any time we work with the Pakistanis and want to conduct operations, we have to do it with Pakistani approval. So, basically, we're killing the Taliban with the Pakistanis want us to kill, when in essence we have our own list of people who want to go after. So, it will be interesting to find out, did the Pakistanis go along with this? Were they advised? Were they a part of it?

SCIUTTO: Of course, one of the biggest times we did not let the Pakistanis know in advance was the raid that killed Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan. Buck, a new CNN ORC poll finds that more than half of Americans think the fight against ISIS is going badly. ISIS, of course, different from the Taliban, but that's a general view that the fight against terrorism is going badly, that we as Americans are less safe. In a political context, we saw Trump and Clinton going at each other over the EgyptAir crash, this will certainly come up in debates. Will Hillary Clinton get some credit for this coming from the Obama administration, and seeing a successful strike against the Taliban like this?

[17:10:10] SEXTON: Well, I think that she may try to take some degree of credit, although of course she's been out of the secretary of state role for some time. And quite honestly, if you look at hot spots around the globe, particularly hot spots in the Middle East and South Asia, they have deteriorated markedly under President Obama's time in office, and some of that occurred whole Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. And with that over politicizing this, I don't think it's a difficult case to make that these kinds of strikes, for example, are just part -- really are just a tactic, not actually a broader strategy, and if people are trying to get a sense as to how the war on terror is going broadly, look at a couple of things.

External plotting, terrorist attacks abroad that result in mass casualties, and we've certainly seen those, we've seen it in Belgian, in France and we've seen it even here on U.S. soil. But I think a big change with this administration now is that they are a group that are seizing territory, holding territory, and seizing even more territory over time, they are continuing to have that momentum. The most recent numbers about ISIS taking back almost all the territory that has lost over the last six months, that's very negative stuff for the administration. And I think to the degree that Hillary Clinton will be tied to that will be actually tough for her, never mind Libya, which is a disaster that is entirely of this administration's making, you could argue, or certainly occur, under its tenure. So, it depends on how you want to go with that.

SCIUTTO: You make a good point. The Taliban taking back a lot of territory in Afghanistan that U.S. soldiers fought and died to protect years ago.

Tim Lister, I imagine folks at home might say you put ISIS, you put al Qaeda, you out the Taliban all in the same basket, but reality is ISIS and the Taliban are rivals rather than allies, aren't they?

TIM LISTER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely they are. The Taliban has very little time for ISIS. They have maintained, they have a very solid relationship with al Qaeda and there are even more antagonized by ISIS attempt to create its own province in Afghanistan. ISIS Corazon. So there is no love lost between those groups. They see the ISIS presence as one of those interlopers. But to the point being made earlier I think by Cedric, about the amount of information has to be gathered, analyzed, and so forth. The size of this war now from the West Coast of Africa all the way through the Pakistan and Afghanistan, you have Mali, you have Tunisia, you have Libya, you have Iraq and Syria, you have Somalia, Yemen where al-Qaeda is now resurgent taking territory again, and the Afghan Pakistan border.

It's a tremendous area to survey and to track people. With thought, for example, that Belmokhtar, the leader of AQIM had been killed in Libya, doesn't now appear to be the case. So, it's very, very difficult to get a sense of how successful these missions are, and as has been said, these are very opaque organizations. It's very, very difficult to work out how the leadership works, who is most important. So many challenges ahead -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Gentlemen, Rick Francona, Bob Baer, Buck Sexton, Cedric Leighton, Tim Lister, to all of you, thanks very much.

Coming up next, there are other breaking story we're following today, the latest on the search for EgyptAir Flight 804. Officials are not ruling out any potential causes as they pull debris and sadly body parts from the Mediterranean Sea. I'd like to say our viewers here in the U.S. and internationally, please stay with us. We have a lot more details right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:17:04] SCIUTTO: Hello and welcome to our viewers in U.S. and around the world. We're following two major breaking stories right now. One, the U.S. telling us that the U.S. drone strike in Pakistan along the Afghanistan border has likely killed the leader of the Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, this taking place just this morning U.S. time. The U.S. still assessing the results of that strike, but they believe that the leader of the Taliban has likely been killed. The other major story we continue to follow that on EgyptAir Flight

804 as the U.S. Navy scouring the Mediterranean Sea from the air, we are getting our first pictures from on board a ship as teams pull human remains, plane debris, life jackets, aircraft seats, and suitcases from the water. It's a sad display. We can also now play for you the first audio transmissions we have heard from inside the cockpit before the loss of that aircraft, you're going to hear now the pilot speaking to air traffic control, this is before the plane went down. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PILOT: Hello, hello Egypt Air 804 Flight Level 370, squawk number 7624 (INAUDIBLE).

CONTROLLER: EgyptAir 804 radar contact.

PILOT: Thank you so much.

CONTROLLER: EgyptAir 804 contact Padova 1-2-0 decimal 7-2-5, good night.

PILOT: Padova Control Egypt Air 804, thank you so much. Good day uh, good night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The airbus A320 were bound from Cairo from Paris, it went down from minutes after entering Egyptian Air space, this over the Eastern Mediterranean. It was, until that point, a routine flight. Here is what we know now. Moments before it plummeted from 37,000 feet, the plane sent automated warning messages indicating that smoke was detected in the front portion of the aircraft. The Egyptians standing by their early belief that this plane was likely brought down by an act of terror, but without those key black boxes, it is still impossible to know whether someone inside the cockpit might have steered the plane into the sea, whether the plane was blown out of the sky by a bomb perhaps hidden on board, or even this was simply a catastrophic midair mechanical failure, all those possibilities still open.

Our CNN reporters are working their sources and we have our teams fanned out across the globe. CNN's Becky Anderson, she is live for us in Cairo. Max Foster, he is in Paris where this plane departed. Becky, beginning with you, senior Egyptian official says they are confident, and we heard this just an hours after the plane disappeared, confident that this plane was brought down by an act now. Now, without those black boxes of course, and even without major pieces of wreckage, what makes them so sure? I know you spoke to the Egyptian foreign minister earlier today.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think in the hours after the plane disappeared, they said that it was more likely so far that they could tell, that this was terror related rather than a technical fault, but I think at this point as the hours have continued, there was never anything to substantiate. They admitted to that as did the U.S. and others, but I think as the hours continued and the plane debris is being found, clearly, the investigation continues, and they are keeping all lines of inquiry open at this point. I talked to the foreign minister just earlier on today in what was quite a wide ranging conversation, we've talked about the search, for example, that's going on at present, I asked him how long he thought that might take.

He said that just wasn't clear at this point. They are very grateful for the involvement of other countries and what is a massive coordinated search now for more debris from that flight, from that flight, and not least clearly. I mean, he said what was so important to find at this stage is the black boxes and data that would provide some clues or evidence as to why this plane came down, and so quickly clearly in those hours. And we also talked about the flames of smoke in the cabin ahead of the crash. He said that he can verify those claims. They would provide more for -- more for the investigation, Jim, and he said they provide vital clues to what is a jigsaw puzzle they are trying to compile at present. We also talked about the importance, and he stressed this, the importance of a coordinated investigation at this point. This is what he told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAMEH SHOUKRY, EGYPTIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: We have define where the plane has gone down and the depth of what it is, and, of course, our collaboration with various partners, all this offered and all of their offers have been most grateful accepted. The United States, the French, the British, and others. The Russians today in my conversation with the Foreign Minister Lavrov, we are eager to cooperate with all of them, not only to get to the bottom of it, but also in respect of closure for the families of the deceased.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[17:22:21] ANDERSON: Yes. Understandably so, Jim. Let's not forget, 66 souls on that plane, the majority of whom are Egyptian, French nationals, 30 Egyptian nationals, clearly, the foreign minister and officials here want to get to the bottom of what happened as he points out, and so not at least can provide some closure for these families -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question, also information to prevent a similar thing going forward. Max, you're in Paris where the plane took off from. We know that more than a startling number, 85,000 workers in Charles de Gaulle Airport there in France had access to secure areas where this plane might have been parked before takeoff. Are authorities tracking down those individuals? Can they track down a number that large and vet them at this point?

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The issue we've been told is that until Egypt causes a terror investigation and a terror related incident, then that sort of terror level of investigation can't be spot here either because Egypt is very much leading on this. But as you say, a huge amount of pressure on the French authorities to start looking at whether or not there was a weak point here, a weak link in the chain at Charles de Gaulle Airport because this is where the aircraft sat for an hour-and-a-half before it sets off to Cairo.

Was it sabotaged? Was something he put on the plane? Could one of those 86,000 people who had access to the secure areas here but planted something on there? These are extraordinary claims, but families want to know the answers. So, the families of the passengers, the French passengers on this jet, will meet with government officials today, also with aviation officials, they will know if this airport is secure, and concerns were heightened today after an interview on CNN where a former CIA director said, he would think twice about traveling from this airport.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: I think I'd think twice about it. But and especially during the forthcoming soccer championships. I think I'd be worried about it. I might still decide to do it. I just got back from flying to Europe not long ago. But it's something that people should start thinking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: This is sort of speculation, Jim, that the French authorities want to keep a lead on this. It's not what they want out there because they don't people put off from travelling here, of course, and they want some firm evidence to present to the families as well, and they have not got that yet.

SCIUTTO: Pretty remarkable to hear the former head of the CIA saying, he'd be uncomfortable flying out of Paris. Max Foster there in Paris. Becky Anderson in Cairo on the story as well.

Let's talk over with our latest news with our panel of aviation experts. We have Boeing 777 pilot Les Abend, he is also a contributing editor to Flying Magazine. We have former FAA inspector, David Soucie, he is author of "Why Planes Crash?" If I could begin with you first, David, you know investigations like this, no question, I wonder now, after that initial rush to conclusion as it were, the Egyptians saying it looks like it's terror, now you're in a situation where you got most of the wreckage on the bottom of a two mile deep Eastern Mediterranean. You have a little bit of incomplete electronic data. You have no claim of responsibility from a terror group. Are we now looking at weeks and months before we have hard answers?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION SAFETY ANALYST: Well, they need to do something. The clock started three days ago. We are at 27 days now. That's how much time they have Jim before the underwater locator beacons for these boxes stops pinging. If we talked more about pings after MH370.

SCIUTTO: Uh-hm.

SOUCIE: So, the clock is running and they have got to get some equipment out there right away, for those boxes might sit in the abyss for quite some time.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Les, I mean, I have got to shake my head here a little bit. Because you and I and David, we talked about this two years ago with MH370, why, with the technology we have today, isn't there more data coming out of these planes as things go wrong? Why isn't there a better way of locating something as essential as the flight data and the voice recorders? Why in the year 2016 are we still fighting these kinds of battles when it seems that the fixes, at least in terms of discovering what's behind a crash like this seem fairly easy?

LES ABEND, BOEING 777 PILOT: Well, I guess the answer is because it's 2016. These airplanes, Jim, were designed with sort of ancestor worship, even, you know, the ones that are being built today from the standpoint of this cockpit voice recorders and flight data recorders were there just for this particular circumstance, and it was never thought that we'd have the level of traffic that we have in this day and age that would, you know -- the basic design was to, you know, find this in a land mass situation, not necessarily in the water.

[17:27:21] You know, it was designed, what we call in the business, tombstone technology. This is after the fact type technology, so that really has not progressed the way we would like to see it probably at this point in time now that that technology of streaming is available. It costs money. And it's going to eventually slide down to a ticket price and really that's what comes down, you know, very often, that's sort of the bottom-line. But I think pressure today would probably get us to be able to stream that data. I mean, right now, airlines are using that digital flight data recorder to prevent accidents by downloading data, seeing trends that are occurring in their system as a safety measure.

SCIUTTO: So they are taking data in, you're saying, but they're not sending that out from the planes?

ABEND: Correct. They are pulling it off when the aircraft is parked, absolutely. But we should be doing it at this point at the same time.

SCIUTTO: Seems a remarkably simple fix. Les Abend, David Soucie, thanks so much as always. Still to come, more on our breaking news, and the other major story that we've been following, a U.S. official telling CNN that the leader of the Taliban likely killed in a U.S. drone strike today. What does this mean for the war, and, also, for the political battle here in the U.S. That's ahead for our viewers around the world, you can return now to CNN International. Thanks for joining us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:31:57] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. I'm Jim Sciutto, in Washington. And we've been reporting on a breaking news story. According to a U.S. official, speaking to CNN, Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, likely killed today in a U.S. drone strike in a remote part of Pakistan along the Afghan border. The strike happened early this morning, was authorized by the president to go after and target this man.

Let's bring in CNN political commentator and former CIA counterterrorism analyst, Buck Sexton; and Molly Ball, a political writer for "The Atlantic."

Molly, beginning with you, I imagine -- as all things today will play out in the general election, is this a foreign policy accomplishment that Hillary Clinton can claim, being part of the administration that took out bin Laden and the Taliban leader, political capital to be gained here?

MOLLY BALL, POLITICAL WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Well, look, in a narrow sense this is an accomplishment of the Obama administration, which Hillary Clinton has not been a participant of for some time, but the politics are complicated for Hillary Clinton in this election because there are still so many fires raging around the world because there are so many wars still underway that this administration vowed to end, and because the president had such a hard time extricating American forces from all the conflicts, he clearly did not want us to be a part of. The mere fact the Taliban is still a force in Afghanistan 15 years after the war began has left a lot of American voters deeply weary, and that's why you see a bizarre spectacle that unfolding of Trump sort of running to Hillary Clinton's left on foreign policy in this election.

SCIUTTO: Well, Buck, a question to you on that point, because on the one hand, Trump says I'll be tougher. The administration fumbled the terrorism challenge. On the other hand, he says I'm not wasting America's blood and treasure in the foreign wars. How does Trump balance that message?

BUCK SEXTON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR & FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Well, if he's going to do it effectively, I think he'd have to say that it would be essentially taking an approach that has a clearer objective, and what was seen with the Obama administration up to this point -- and we can look at this now because we've had eight years of it and see how his foreign policy team has done, is that they did learn a lesson, which I give them credit for. The lesson is if you withdraw troops precipitously from Iraq, for example, for domestic policy reasons, domestic policy perception reasons, you can have a disaster on your hands, like the Islamic State invasion of Mosul and holding of Iraq and Syrian territory. So they left troops in Afghanistan. They have almost 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, despite the fact that President Obama said originally he was going to be the president to end the wars. He has ended neither war. That's a very difficult talking point, I think, for the administration to get around. Neither war is over, and, in fact, the war in Afghanistan, everyone is going to realize, is worse than most people understand at this point in time. The Afghan fighting season just got underway now. And then when you add on top of that, Libya, which is a failed state with warring militias with an ISIS affiliate getting stronger and the Syria civil war sucking in proxies from beyond with over 400,000 dead, the Obama doctrine does not look good now. And Hillary Clinton's role in that is not something she'll be able to hold up as a means of trying to get more voters to her side come the general.

[17:35:30] SCIUTTO: What is the political magic formula here? I will get you out of the wars, but make you safer? How do they -- Molly Ball, connect dots on that? That seems to be where the American public is. They do not want costly foreign adventures, but it wants to be safer, but there's the impression it's less safe.

BALL: Most polls show people prefer Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump when it comes to handling foreign policy and national security just because of the experience she has. So I think that -- I think that for the Clinton campaign, they do expect us to be a strength because they are going to paint a picture of Donald Trump who does not know -- someone who doesn't know anything about foreign policy, doesn't have any experience with foreign policy or national security, and who is risky, who is erratic, whose judgments not trusted to be consistent from one moment to the next. He said this week, for example, he would not have gone into Libya, but he's on the record from before the invasion as saying that he would do it. So, you know, I think that the case for Hillary Clinton is less, you know, as a clearly hawkish or dovish point of view as one that is sort of pragmatic and informed.

SCIUTTO: Buck --

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: -- I've got to imagine you have a different point of view.

SEXTON: Well, certainly if you look at Donald Trump, the blunders he's made on foreign policy, if you call it that, are verbal. The blunders Hillary Clinton has made has cost lives, has been major mistakes on the world stage. Libya's the most obvious example of this, deciding you can break a country and not buy it essentially afterwards, that you can topple a dictator and see what happens, as though they didn't learn lessons from the Bush administration, which I think most conservatives and people from the right are willing to concede had very strong lessons that needed to be learned. So Donald Trump, I think, is going to be putting people in positions that allow them to inform him better on foreign policy. And President Obama was not a policy wizard when he came into office either. This is something that's hard to compare, a former secretary of state to a businessman. This is a place, I think, where you're going to have to see the Trump campaign hone in on its message, get a little stronger on foreign policy, but at the end of the day, he's also hammering home there's an understanding that he has the enemy is jihad radical Islam, and he'll actually say that. Hillary Clinton steps away from the terminology that makes voters uncomfortable. And I think the Trump campaign hits hard on that and they will say that Donald Trump will put Americans first. Whether that works or not, we'll have to see.

SCIUTTO: Molly Ball, Buck Sexton, thank you very much.

Up next, how do gains like this on the battlefield make the U.S. population safer at home? We'll talk about that effect right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:41:51] SCIUTTO: Welcome back, two breaking news stories we're covering this hour.

A U.S. official saying the leader of the Afghan Taliban was killed by a U.S. drone strike. And we're also following the story, the latest in the search for

EgyptAir flight 804.

You're seeing now our first look at debris recovered from the plane after it crashed into the eastern Mediterranean. This new video appearing to show mangled pieces of the plane, personal effects as well, including shoes. We see fabrics from seats, even an unwrapped life jacket. All these items pulled from the waters along with, sadly, the grim finding of human remains.

As for what brought the plane down, that remains a mystery. But France is confirming that on board systems detected smoke in parts of the plane moments before it plunged into the water.

These stories can seem very different, but in a global war against terror, there are links between these two, and we want to talk about the effort to make the world, our world, a safer place.

We're going to bring in CNN military analyst, retired Air Force colonel, Cedric Leighton; and as well with us now Buck Sexton, who is a former CIA counterterrorism analyst.

I want to talk to both of you. I mean, this connection here, I don't think it's an art official one. These drone strikes against a leader like we saw today, Mullah Mansour, the leader of the Taliban, as well as a series before this, leaders of ISIS, of al Qaeda, al Shabaab, they are intended to weaken these groups which threaten U.S., Americans abroad, Americans on the U.S. homeland, groups we know that want to strike us.

If I could begin with you, Cedric, because of your experience, your intelligence of the region, does a drone strike like this make us safer?

CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, in the short term, Jim, the answer is probably not. The reason for that is the reaction to drone strikes is pretty much a visceral reaction that a lot of the groups will have. Now, over the long term, a drone strategy of the type that the administration is pursuing can actually work, but it has to be followed up by things on the ground, and it has to be followed up by a concerted effort to really get at the root causes of the terrorism, as well as the way in which these groups are brought together or are constituted. There are possibilities of it working, but in the short term, it could be a much more dangerous place for Americans and for allied citizens than it is right now.

SCIUTTO: Buck, this is basically an example, another example of what's been the consistent Obama strategy, which is to fight these wars, not with big deployment of ground troops, as seen in the Iraq invasion, but with targeted surgical drone strikes. And we've seen a series of them over the last seven, eight years of this presidency. In your view, does that strategy work? Does that affectively weaken the groups so they cannot carry out acts of terror so if, for instance, flight 804 is determined to be an act of terrorism?

SEXTON: Jim, it's only useful as a broader strategy, as you other guest mentioned a moment ago. You can't rely on drones alone to stop external terrorist operations from being planned and occurring. When looking at the history of what can be considered HVT, high-value target strikes, through drones or any kind of military or intelligence operations, the fact of the matter is that there have been plenty of leadership losses by all the terrorist groups that you can name, and afterwards, sometimes we see a surge in terrorist activity. Keep in mind, any time one of the bad guys is taken off the battlefield, they become a martyr. The best example that comes to mind, and others as well, would be the head of al Qaeda in Iraq, the precursor organization to the Islamic State. After he was taken out in 2006, that's when the country went into the seventh circle of hell, the depths of despair. You h had a civil war, and al Qaeda and Iraq at its strongest afterwards, and you saw the rise of the Shia militias, the country looked like it was beyond repair. And there was the surge and stabilization of the country. But that was the head of that group, and it did not have the intended effect, which was to slow it down enough to change realities on the ground.

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: So if taking out leadership worked, it would have worked, I think, by now. It's just one tool of many tools, and the tool kit needs to be larger.

[17:46:17] SCIUTTO: I don't know that you can blame that killing for the civil war that followed there, but --

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: I was not blaming it, Jim. I'm just saying it did -- that the worst violence you saw in Iraq came after the head of al Qaeda in Iraq was taken off the battlefield.

SCIUTTO: And it's a fair point. And it was a precursor group to ISIS, and killing that leader did not prevent ISIS from rising and taking over parts of the country.

But, Cedric, back to you, we know that drone strikes often can radicalize more people, particularly if there's collateral damage, or if someone is killed, whether they're killed or not. That often leads members of their family to join that terrorist group to take their revenge. But on the flip side, Donald Rumsfeld said we don't know that we are killing them as fast as we create them. A big ground operation could be a recruiting tool as well. It's a difficult question to answer. Does the ground operation make you safer, or do these drone strikes make you safer from these acts of terrorism?

LEIGHTON: Well, Jim, I think it's one of those areas you have to bring both of those elements together. If you want your drone strategy to work, of course, you are using it in a lot of areas that are completely denied to us otherwise, Yemen, parts of Iraq, certainly the Afghan-Pakistan border. All of those areas are very difficult for us to get into, if not impossible for us to get into. So it becomes the weapon of choice. But ground operations are ones that certainly help if they are followed up with other things. And that's one of the areas where I think the current strategy is at its weakest because you're only using, in essence, one element of national power without bringing all the other elements to bear. And that's a very difficult area to get into because it's taking us a long longer than it needs to, to actually get something done and to actually get something accomplished from the perspective of safeguarding Americans and others in the world today.

SCIUTTO: Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you.

Buck Sexton, thank you as well.

LEIGHTON: You bet.

SCIUTTO: Another story we're following, Hillary Clinton will soon speak in an event hosted by the Trayvon Martin Foundation. That coming just one day after Donald Trump won the backing of the NRA. CNN is learning that Clinton is not taking that endorsement of Trump lightly. We're going to take you live to Florida. That's right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:52:30] SCIUTTO: Just days after declaring that she will be the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton is already moving towards the general election. In a little more than an hour, Clinton will give the keynote speech at the Circle of Mothers conference in Florida. The state has already cast ballots in its primary, but she must win voters in November in order to make it to the White House. That's not all. The conference Clinton is speaking at is hosted by the Trayvon Martin Foundation, and it comes just one day after Donald Trump's endorsement by the NRA.

CNN's Dan Merica is in Ft. Lauderdale where Clinton will speak.

Dan, you've gotten details about what she's going to say tonight on this issue.

DAN MERICA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Jim. That's right. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could not be speaking to two more different audiences this weekend. As you mentioned Hillary Clinton will be speaking at the Trayvon Martin Foundation, a fundraiser, $1,500 per ticket fundraiser. She's expected to speak about criminal justice reform, the need for criminal gun laws, and she'll make reference to Trump's speech when he spoke on Friday in Louisville, Kentucky, to the NRA convention where he bashed Hillary Clinton, her position on the Second Amendment.

Let's take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment candidate ever to run for office. And as I said before, she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to take your guns away. She wants to abolish it. Just remember that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MERICA: So the Clinton campaign did not take that lying down last night. They issued a statement saying that Donald Trump was peddling falsehoods, and they tweeted about it, saying that it was not correct, and linked to a number of fact checks that noted that Hillary Clinton never said she wanted to abolish the Second Amendment but she wanted to toughen gun laws, like a number of Democrats do. She's going to speak here and she's not going to -- she's going to take on Donald Trump, I'm told by an aide. She's going to note his speech at the NRA. She's going to note what the NRA stands for. And then she's going to respond to what he said on Friday.

SCIUTTO: Dan Merica, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where Hillary Clinton will speak within the hour. Thanks very much.

MERICA: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: And we'll bring you that speech live at 7:00 eastern time.

Hotels, golf courses, a winery and even an ice-skating rink, Donald Trump owns them all. What newly released financial forms reveal about the businesses of the man who wants to become president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:58:46] SCIUTTO: In Richmond, Virginia, not far from here in the nation's capitol, nearly 40 percent children live in poverty. This week's "CNN Hero" has become an unlikely father to them, teaching kids about mountain bike racing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO: What a lot of people can't see is that our kids have the equivalent of ten suitcases each of baggage that they're carrying on that bike. These kids can tell me to piss off at any time. Like what am I going to do. There are connections being made. This is a war to me. It's me against the circumstances these kids live in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: To see how Craig is fighting that war, go to CNNheroes.com to watch his full story. And while you're there, you can nominate someone you think should be a 2016 "CNN Hero."

I'm going to be back at 7:00 eastern with much more on our breaking stories tonight, the reported killing of the leader of the Afghan Taliban by a U.S. drone strike, and the investigation into EgyptAir fight 804. We'll bring you that at 7:00 eastern time.

[18:00:08] "Smerconish" starts right now.