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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Hillary Clinton in Iowa; Fight Against ISIS; Government Agencies Not Securing Your Kids' Data; Does Nike Have an Image Problem?

Aired September 15, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Who's in? Who's out? The U.S. is pushing to form a coalition to take out the terrorist group ISIS after they beheaded another hostage.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead: ISIS has now taken the lives of citizens from multiple nations. But which nations will stand with the U.S. to degrade and destroy ISIS on this latest campaign idea? What are they willing to give? What are they willing to do? Will any put boots on the ground?

The money lead, Social Security numbers, court records, even your child's school bus route potentially exposed despite government's so- called security efforts. Hackers are finding these holes. But, this time, these hackers say they're the good guys.

And the politics lead. He cheated on his wife with her while he was governor. He called her his soul mate and eve asked her to marry her. When he broke up with her on Facebook, of all places, many were surprised, perhaps her most of all.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jake Tapper. Welcome to THE LEAD.

We will begin with the world lead, of course. Will the members of Congress who have called on the United States government to step up the fight against ISIS terrorists, will they put their votes where their mouths are? It's been an open question as to whether Congress will authorize a campaign against ISIS as spelled out by President Obama's strategy.

Now Congressman Adam Schiff, Democrat from California and a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, says he's introducing a bill that would effectively declare war on ISIS, authorizing action for a year-and-a-half against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.

As we wait to see what Congress will do, Secretary of State John Kerry is in Paris trying to get all these countries that supposedly support an operation against ISIS to sign on to a coalition to actually carry it out.

Let's bring in our chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto.

Jim, it's not clear who's in and who's out of this so-called coalition. But let's talk specifically about Iran, which says it rejected an offer from the United States to join in this coalition. Does that completely rule out any help from Iran?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, cooperation or coordination, that's a term the administration's used. Yes, they're not going to do that with Iran.

But communication, that is a different story. In fact, Secretary Kerry said today in Paris that he's open to back-channel communications with Iran over the issue in Iraq, and interestingly enough, even to back-channel communications, and he said there are ways to do this with Syria to, in the words of John Kerry, avoid mistakes, avoid disasters, but again with Syria, no coordination of strikes against ISIS .

But what's really interesting when you look at this broader coalition, those are our adversaries in the region. When you get to America's friends in the region and in the West, it's proving difficult even to get them to public specific commitments of help with U.S.-led military action.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO (voice-over): He is ISIS' third beheading victim in three weeks, Briton David Haines murdered for the world to see and, like Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff, by a British fighter.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're even allies with America.

SCIUTTO: Who U.K. authorities say they have now positively identified.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We have to confront this menace. Step by step, we must drive back, dismantle and ultimately destroy ISIL and what it stands for.

SCIUTTO: But even America's closest military ally has not committed to joining the U.S.-led military action against ISIS, the Obama administration's version of the coalition of the willing appearing if not entirely unwilling, at a minimum, uncommitted.

AARON DAVID MILLER, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS: You have a coalition I would argue of the semi-willing, the disabled, the self-interested and the self-absorbed. It's really going to be difficult, it seems to me, to get everybody focused on the same page.

SCIUTTO: Meeting in Paris today, some 40 countries have offered at least some support in the fight against ISIS. But a far smaller group has made specific and public commitments to join military action.

Australia vowing up to eight FA-18 and 200 military advisers. France, surveillance flights and airstrikes over Iraq. Canada, 50 military advisers. Jordan, intelligence gathering. Saudi Arabia, training Syrian rebels on its soil. And Turkey, blocking both funding and the flow of fighters to ISIS. This weekend, after a six-stop coalition-building tour through the

region, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke of private commitments for much more, including Arab participation in airstrikes and more surprisingly some countries offering ground troops, a step even the U.S. has ruled out.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We're not looking to put troops on the ground. There are some who have offered to do so, but we are not looking for that, at this moment anyway.

SCIUTTO: Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey sees a region still on the fence.

JAMES JEFFREY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: There is true international consensus and agreement that ISIS is a real problem that will have to be dealt with. But there's also particularly in the region great fear of getting too involved.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Let's get to these offers of help on American-led airstrikes and the possibility of ground troops.

On airstrikes, specifically, I'm told by a senior U.S. military official that more than one Arab nation has offered to do what they call kinetic action, which means actually dropping bombs, not just surveillance flights or refueling, but actually dropping bombs. That's on airstrikes.

As far as ground troops, I have spoken to the Pentagon and I have spoken to the State Department about this, they say what Secretary Kerry was talking about was not a foreign country putting boots on the ground, whether an Arab nation or a Western nation, but indigenous forces, so Iraqi forces or Syrian forces, so that really he's referring to trained Syrian rebels or possibly Iraqi forces, the Kurds, the Iraqi military, maybe Sunni tribes in Iraq, serving as a ground force in Iraq.

But you're not going to have foreigners sending boots on the ground to Iraq or Syria at this point.

TAPPER: That's not what it sounded like he was saying.

SCIUTTO: No, it didn't.

TAPPER: Jim Sciutto, thank you so much.

The mass killer in the video showing the beheading of David Haines appears to be the same man in the murder videos of Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff. In all three, he makes vile threats to the camera with a British accent.

Now British officials tell our national security analyst Peter Bergen that Prime Minister David Cameron has been told this man's identity.

Joining us now live from London is counterterrorism expert Will Geddes. He's the CEO of International Corporate Protection.

Will, thanks for joining us.

Why not release his name if the British government knows who he is?

WILL GEDDES, COUNTERTERRORISM EXPERT: Well, there are a number of very good reasons for that, Jake.

Fundamentally, they're probably drawing still on a number of intelligence assets around the suspect to try and determine his whereabouts. And much like many of these types of operations, the key thing will be to ideally locate and also recover the individual and confirm this before actually revealing their identity.

They will be somewhat guarded and they probably will be, until they have that further intelligence.

TAPPER: He is suspected to be a British citizen. If he is one -- and we don't know for sure -- what kind of jurisdictional barriers would that create between the U.S. and Britain? Who is responsible, who would be responsible, theoretically, for capturing or killing him? Would the U.K. object to the United States killing him?

GEDDES: Well, I think it will be a collaborative attempt. Certainly we know there are representations of special forces from a number of different nations, not only including the U.S. and the U.K., but from other allies that are assisting obviously in ground efforts, if you like, under this term of security or military advisers.

Fundamentally, it will be whoever is going to be closest or nearest to the target. And once they're in there, I think the objective of the mission will be to try and recover this individual alive and to be able to bring them back for justice. Now, who will actually then persecute or prosecute that -- sorry -- prosecute that justice is a difficult call.

Obviously, this individual is responsible for the death of not only U.S. citizens, but also a British citizen and potentially another British citizen. This will be no doubt a discussion that will be had between your prime minister and -- or your president and our prime minister to decide actually who is going to take primacy on that.

TAPPER: ISIS is now threatening to kill a second British hostage, Alan Henning. How much pressure is Cameron under to track down the killer, to find Henning, rescue him and what are the odds this could happen anytime soon, do you think?

GEDDES: Well, to answer your first question, he's under enormous pressure. For Prime Minister David Cameron, this is the most significant event to happen in his four years in term in office. And this is a very, very difficult and delicate situation, which will either be something he will take the lead on and obviously implement and instruct obviously military action on, or he will have to take to the Commons.

And then he will be looking at all parties trying to get a collaborative agreement. He tried this last year with airstrikes into Syria and was unsuccessful and was not backed and was quite embarrassed by obviously the Commons did agreeing to that action. It's a very, very difficult one.

And also the legacy of Tony Blair, he doesn't want to be seen to be taking the United Kingdom into a fight which potentially could result in the same sort of aftereffects we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

TAPPER: Will Geddes, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

While the threat of ISIS is surely weighing heavily on the mind of the British prime minister, it's not his only worry. He's also trying to convince the people of Scotland to reject a referendum on Thursday which would declare the country's -- or Scotland's independence from the United Kingdom.

Let's bring in senior international correspondent Nic Robertson in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Nic, if the Scottish believe that Prime Minister Cameron will commit British troops to a war against ISIS, could that impact this independence referendum?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it absolutely could. I was talking to one of the M.P.s today from the Scottish National Party.

That is the party that wants independence. He's also the M.P. from the constituency where David Haines, who was so brutally murdered over the weekend, where his family lives.

He told me that the Scottish National Party's view is they should take a more or that they would like to make in the future a peaceful contribution to situations as we see happening in Syria at the moment.

So they seem to be opposed to a more aggressive and robust position that David Cameron seems to be inclined towards that is potentially moving towards assisting the United States with airstrikes inside Syria. So it would make a difference. There are people in Scotland who feel London is out of touch with the people of Scotland and that's one of those areas, defense. It's very clear that a lot of people, maybe half of them here, would rather see a different, less aggressive, less kinetic approach, Jake.

TAPPER: Interesting. Nic, with all this talk of ISIS, I want to turn to a different focus of the war against terror and talk about your special, which is premiering tomorrow night. It's called "Double Agent: Inside Al Qaeda for the CIA." It premieres tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. Here's a clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Storm says he was a double agent, so trusted by al Qaeda terror leaders, he even fixed one up with a blonde European wife, a unique powerful weapon in the war on terror who says he got results.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have been responsible of 30 kills.

ROBERTSON: Thirty terrorist kills?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Nic, who is this man, Morton Storm, and who did he help the CIA take down, according to his story?

ROBERTSON: He's Danish. He was former boxer turned biker turned -- converted to Islam. Became a radical Islamist. Went around Europe espousing jihad, made connections in Yemen with top-level al Qaeda leaders, also in Somalia.

He helped the CIA, he says, take down American-educated Anwar al- Awlaki, the cleric who inspired the Fort Hood shooter, Hasan Nidal, when he shot down 13 fellow servicemen, inspired attacks in Yemen against the U.S. embassy, inspired attacks in London against the underground rail network and bus network there.

So this was a man who was high on the U.S. most wanted target list and this Morton Storm who became a jihadist and then became a spy, he says that he helped get Anwar al-Awlaki. There was a dispute over that in the end. But he says in his words that he helped take down 30 terror leaders over a number, a number of years -- Jake.

TAPPER: Fascinating. Looking forward to watching it. Our thanks to Nic Robertson in Scotland.

Don't miss the CNN special report "Double Agent: Inside Al Qaeda for the CIA." It airs Tuesday night at 9:00 Eastern.

Coming up on the national lead, it's unnerving to learn your credit card number might have been stolen, but imagine the private details about your children, even when and where they're dropped off by the school bus, available for anyone who knows how to hack into the system. That's our lead investigation coming up next.

Plus, Hillary Clinton trying to win over the same voters who rained on her presidential parade six years ago. Were Iowans impressed this time?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD.

The national lead now, what if a stranger could find out everything from your child's date of birth and Social Security number to when and where he or she gets picked up and dropped off for school? Well, it turns out getting that information is not only possible but in some cases frighteningly easy.

In a LEAD exclusive, some computer experts tell us how they uncovered a gaping security hole in one company's product, one that the company tried to fix two years ago, a hole that could make personal information about you and your children accessible to hackers with really just a few clicks on the keyboard -- a treasure trove to identity thieves or even more nefarious criminals.

And CNN has learned these breaches are not just theoretical, they have happened, and they could continue to unless your local governments, universities and schools not to mention the company involved, take more aggressive action at once.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER (voice-over): You might think that your government is vigilant about securing your personal information and that of your children. But you would be wrong. Look at what is out there -- children's school records, including detailed bus route information, arrest and prosecution information from a major Midwestern city.

Plus, the real names and ID numbers of intelligence agents visiting a major American port.

BRYAN SEELY, RHINO SECURITY LABS: Now, we're finding stuff that other people didn't see and it's playing in a national security arena.

TAPPER: Brian Seely and Ben Caudill say they have discovered one of the biggest potential security holes of the modern era, one that can lead your data and that of your kids exposed to any hacker willing to find it.

SEELY: Within a couple of minutes, we found Social Security numbers, dates of birth, private student records, transcripts, grades.

TAPPER: Seely and Caudill are so-called "ethical hackers", using their computer skills for good, to identify vulnerabilities in applications and networks.

BEN CAUDILL, RHINO SECURITY LABS: We take that information, privately disclose it to law enforcement, to the relevant parties and then work to get those issues remediated.

TAPPER: This month they found a weakness in Oracle software that the company discovered in 2012 and provided a patch was a provided for still remains a huge vulnerability to any customer that missed or ignored that news. Seely says at risk is the sensitive information from databases belonging to 20 government-related agencies, 100 schools K through 12 and 50 institutions of higher learning, affecting hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, he says.

SEELY: You could completely steal someone's identity and assume someone else and take money out of their accounts. You could file legal documentation. You could take out business loans. The sky's the limit.

TAPPER: They also easily accessed the records of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

SEELY: That is a department that had records of parents, the children, the situation of the living environment of the child, things that the child had gone through. Yes, it's a little rattling. TAPPER: In a statement to CNN, the department acknowledged not only

that the records had been vulnerable but that they were breached. Quote, "The database has been shut down and testing has found a limited data breach affecting fewer than 30 individuals. Anyone whose information was compromised is being notified and credit monitoring, identity restoration services will be provided at state expense."

Seely and Caudill are working with the FBI to alert the dozens of organizations representing hundreds of thousands of files that are still vulnerable and help patch their security systems. And even the most secretive organizations aren't immune. When 21 members of the Defense Intelligence Agency toured a major American port, they left critical information behind.

SEELY: Everyone assumes they're on the same page, and all of a sudden, your driver's license is blowing in the wind.

TAPPER: In a statement to CNN, Oracle said the issue was not because of a product defect but because of the configuration of how the security checks could be disabled. The statement went on, the patch that made the default setting secure, quote, "was issued as part of our regularly scheduled critical patch update customers know to apply every quarter. Oracle notified all of our customers directly that they should apply the patch."

SEELY: Could they call everyone? Probably. Might take a little while. But is it the right thing to do?

TAPPER: This incident comes on the heels of other major security breaches at Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase involving credit card information.

CAUDILL: Even though there's many fewer records here, only a few million, we're talking about Social Security numbers, date of births, everything you need for identity theft.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Wondering what you can do to make your information and that of your children more safe? Well, the sad reality is it is really out of your hands and up to these individual government agencies and schools and universities to improve their security flaws. And get in touch with Oracle and get that patch installed. And until that happens, that sensitive information will continue to be at risk.

Coming up, football star Adrian Peterson personally defending himself today against claims of child abuse as the Vikings announce he'll be back on the field this week. But will his sponsors, such as Nike, stand by him as well?

Plus, a strange end to the relationship Mark Sanford once called a tragic, forbidden love story. Now, his mistress-turned-fiancee is saying she read their break-up for the first time on Facebook.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

The money lead now. There is no better sign that an athlete has made it than to have that world famous Nike swoosh attached to his or her name. But when an athlete's career goes from just do it to just blow it, Nike is then forced to weigh the risks versus rewards of keeping a high-profile celebrity endorsement deal intact.

When this shocking video of Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice striking his then fiancee now wife went public last week, Nike made a decision to drop Rice. But the company still faced scrutiny.

One person tweeting after Nike made an announcement, "It took the video, huh, not the woman beating? Nice."

Nike could face even more criticism for its decision to stick by Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson who was indicted last week on charges of child abuse. These graphic photos released by TMZ allegedly show scars or marks of some sort left on Peterson's son after he was beaten with a switch.

Just moments ago, Peterson released his first statement in response to the charges saying, quote, "I have to live with the fact that when I disciplined my son the way I was disciplined as a child, I caused an injury that I never intended or thought would happen. I love my son and I will continue to become a better parent and learn from any mistakes I ever make."

Despite the controversy, Nike has not dropped Peterson from the payroll saying it would, quote, "closely monitor the situation."

So, how does Nike decide which athletes to drop and which to stand by?

Here now with more on that is CNN Money correspondent Cristina Alesci.

Cristina, good to see you.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Thanks.

Well, Nike decides what athletes to drop and which ones to keep basically by a mix of factors. It has very little to do with the severity of the allegations, the severity of the headlines. It has more to do with whether law enforcement gets involved, whether there's an actual commitment -- conviction, I should say, and whether the headlines keep coming very furiously as we saw with Ray Rice.

And with Pistorius, obviously we had a conviction. So, those were the elements that basically forced Nike's hand. But here's the thing -- with Nike, it's very interesting because when you look at the bigger names, it's very unlikely that they actually drop athletes.

If you look at what they did in 2009 with Tiger Woods, they kept him on where other bigger endorsement, you know, companies kept their endorsement with Tiger Woods.

Same thing with Kobe Bryant in 2003 when there was allegations of sexual assault with Kobe Bryant, they kept him on. They stood by him. At the end of the day, Nike does not want these athletes to go to

other companies. So, they'd rather stick by them through these very turbulent times if they are superstar athletes and if there's a lot of money on the line.

TAPPER: All right. Cristina Alesci, thank you so much.