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ISIS Commander Killed in U.S. Raid; Interview with U.S. Congressman Ed Royce; Amtrak Ordered to Beef Up Technology; Amtrak Liability Might Grow; U.S. Operations Killed ISIS Top Money Man; Aired 7-8p ET

Aired May 16, 2015 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:05] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it is a fascinating study, and I encourage people to look at it.

Nathaniel Hendren, thanks so much for joining me to talk about it. It's an important issue. Appreciate it.

NATHAN HENDREN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Thanks for having me.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

HARLOW: Seven o'clock Eastern, you're in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Poppy Harlow, joining you live from New York.

And we are following breaking news here in CNN. The military mission that killed a senior ISIS commander deep inside of Syria. The Pentagon telling us that elements of the U.S. Army Delta Force swooped in on a building with orders to capture the man who controls ISIS's flow of money and funding.

Also, they gathered intelligence about the terror group. We are told that the ISIS commander is a Tunisian identified as Abu Sayyaf. That he was killed when he resisted capture, about a dozen ISIS fighters were also killed in this mission. We're told no Americans troops were hurt in the overnight raid and firefight.

Congressman Ed Royce joins me now from his home state of California. He is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressman, thanks for being with me. I appreciate it.

REP. ED ROYCE (R-CA), FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Look, we are just getting details that are trickling in to us from different government sources, the White House talking about this as well.

In your position, what intelligence do you know in terms of why the decision was made by president to personally green-light this mission, and what factors made him -- make the call that it was the right move to risk American lives to do this and carry it out? ROYCE: Well, it was the unanimous request or decision made by the

national security team on this. And especially with the individual we are talking about, Abu Sayyaf -- this is an individual who was involved in kidnappings in a pretty big way, as well as oil and gas, sort of the revenue stream into ISIS, and in particular, if you will recall, we lost two journalists, Foley, Sotloff, we also lost a young humanitarian, Kayla Mueller. And their deaths at the hands of ISIS, I think, put on the premium on the thought that if we could get the individual in charge of oil and gas and of kidnapping and indeed, the revenue stream that comes from many of the kidnappings of the Yazidi and the Christian women who were then sold into sexual slavery, this really was a focal point to the take him captive.

Now, he wasn't taken captive, but at the same time, his wife was, and we got, as I understand it, quit a treasure trove of information there with the laptops, the communications equipment, the cell phones that might allow us to find out who offshore is also funding ISIS when you hear about other money coming in from other countries into ISIS.

HARLOW: That's important. I do wonder, sir, how much do you know at this early hour about how much intelligence we got, right? It's one thing to take the laptop computers, to take the cell phones, et cetera, but are you saying they've already been able to dig into them, and determine that, yes, they have gotten a significant amount of intelligence?

ROYCE: I've had -- I have been through a couple of briefings, but no, I cannot tell you a couple of the particulars of the intelligence they have obtained.

What I can tell you more about is the operation itself, and these several dozen Delta Force commandos who really carried this out with a precision that should make us all very proud, because they were able to separate the women and the girls from -- in one of the firefights, four of these terrorists on the ground, and even in the hand to hand combat, we're able to separate the two, kill the terrorists and rescue these young women, and the young Yazidi woman actually had been taken, you know, from her community and was a slave there. So, she'll be returned, and this girl is going to be returned to her family.

But the fact that it was done without loss of life on the U.S. part or without civilian casualties I think shows the training and precision of the Delta Force, and we should feel very good about that.

HARLOW: Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And our thanks to all the men and women who carried this out.

Michael Weiss, one of our -- one of our ISIS experts here at CNN, a contributor, said that he's not convinced that the mission was always targeting Abu Sayyaf, that perhaps there were other high target -- high profile ISIS figures that were targets. Do you know if this mission was solely to go after Abu Sayyaf or were there others?

ROYCE: No, we do not know that. At this point, I have not been informed. I have been informed a little bit about how they suspected the high ranking personnel was there. I think he was expected to be there.

[19:05:02] I think they believed that they would take him, and the reason they wanted to take him into custody is because of the information he could provide for the funding of ISIS, and that is, of course, a key issue right now is, we know how they got the money when they took the central bank of Mosul, but in terms of what they're doing on oil and gas, and what they're doing on the kidnapping and, you know, human trafficking, that's -- that's a question that we would like to get some of the documents related to that or information.

So, we got the documents. We don't have him, but we do have his wife. And supposedly, she has been involved in some ISIS activities, herself, and so if she decides to cooperate, there might be more human intelligence, you know, that is produced through whatever she might tell our interrogators.

HARLOW: So, we've been told that she is being interrogated right now. Obviously, you are more tuned in because of the briefings that you get in your position, to whether she's cooperation or not. Do you know at this hour if she has said anything to the U.S. forces, to our interrogators?

ROYCE: No, no.

HARLOW: You don't know?

ROYCE: I don't have that information, no.

HARLOW: Can you give us a sense of how high up, how critical Abu Sayyaf is within ISIS? Because, interestingly, he was not on the list recently released by the government of the top ten ISIS figureheads.

ROYCE: Right. So how important that you get the chief accountant or you get the mayor (INAUDIBLE) operation, you get the finance guy, you know? I think it is critical importance, because it's the financing of the operations that really provide the fuel to help in the recruitment. You know, they pay a very large stipend to their fighters, and they also have to frankly govern a lot of these areas they have taken over.

So, if you manage to take down the individual who is responsible, you know, for the financial operations, and you take him out of the equation, that is key, but it is also key that we have taken out somebody who had a role in kidnappings, because that sends a message as well.

And, lastly, it will be very interesting, as I indicated, to find out some of the sources, are there major families, you know, major sources of money that are going into ISIS from around the region, outside of Syria, and outside of Iraq? Getting to that answer has been long been of importance to our intelligence agencies.

So, we may now have very good leads. We may have in those ledge ledgers, some direct evidence of the cash flow. So, I'd say this is an important operation.

HARLOW: Congressman Ed Royce, appreciate your time this evening. Thank you, sir.

ROYCE: Thank you.

HARLOW: The U.S. officials say, as the congressman just said, that Abu Sayyaf and his wife may have had pretty important knowledge about the hostages being held by ISIS, such as who those hostages are, and where they may be located?

This past Tuesday marked 1,000 days since U.S. journalist Austin Tice, seen on the right, was taken captive near Damascus. Now, there is hope today that useful information about Tice and other hostages may be found in those computers or those cell phones that were seized in this raid or in the interrogation as we talked about of Sayyaf's wife.

Joining us to talk more about it, CNN global affairs analyst and "Reuters" investigative journalist, David Rohde.

David, thank you for being here. I appreciate it.

DAVID ROHDE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: How -- well, first of all, just a set up for our viewers, you were taken hostage back in 2008. You were held hostage for months by the Taliban. You were able to escape in 2008.

When you hear about this raid, and the fact that this is a man and his wife who may have intense knowledge of ISIS hostage operations, how hopeful are you that this could lead to actionable intelligence for hostages that are being held?

ROHDE: I'm hopeful. You know, you always have to be hopeful. And it's a big step forward and I would actually agree with Congressman Royce. This is an impressive intelligence achievement. There were intelligence attempts to rescue hostages, and they got to this locations too late, but they were too late. This wasn't a hostage rescue attempt.

But the fact that they were able to get in there, get at least a mid- level commander, get all these documents, it shows that the U.S. might have a growing network of informants on the ground in Syria, and that also shows that people there are hopefully at least some of them turning against ISIS. So, maybe that will lead to lead for the freedom of the hostage in the future.

HARLOW: Do you agree with the congressman's assessment of how sort of key this man Abu Sayyaf is within the ISIS network? Because again, he was not on that list of sort of top ten figureheads that the U.S. government released and put a bounty on?

[19:10:03] ROHDE: No, I would -- I agree with you that he is not in the top ten and I think he is a mid-level official, and I think, in a sense, maybe the documents with him, and any computer drives or anything else that they got, might be more valuable than taking him out himself.

He does sound like he was involved in the financial issues. That meant that he could have been involved in the negotiations for the captives. It's been talk about many times, but there were several captives taken, and the Europeans were ransomed and the European government paid ransoms to free those prisoners, but the American and the British captors died.

The United States and Britain does not pay ransom, and those families, and some of them went through hell trying to save the Americans. So, it is a difficult situation, but there could be again valuable information they found there.

HARLOW: And you know better than anyone what that's like, right? And what your family went through when you were being held. Did you believe that -- do you believe that they will be able to get any information, and they are able to flip his wife who they have taken hostage? And if so, how much she would have been privy to as a woman within the system?

ROHDE: Well, it is hard to know. She may not know much at all, and again, the documents may be much more valuable, she may have heard, though, more about John Cantlie, the British captive, he's definitely in the hands of ISIS. He has been coerced into doing a series of videos with them.

I'm not -- I have talked to the Tice family once. The sense is that he is being, Austin, by militia loyal to the Syrian government, and that he is not held by ISIS, and that may change, it's very fluid. But, again, yes, it would be great if there were information let John Cantlie, this British the hostage, potentially they could find him or restart negotiations. He is the only remaining Western hostage that I know of that's in ISIS' hands.

HARLOW: Yes. And it's important to point, we did talk about Austin Tice leading into here, that it is unclear who is held by, and as his family said, they believe that he is held by the sympathetic to the Assad regime.

Thank you so much, David. Good to have you on the program.

ROHDE: Thank you.

HARLOW: Just ahead, how ISIS has turned the Internet into a weapon against the United States. What the U.S. is trying desperately to do to stop it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:15:00] HARLOW: Even with today's successful military operation inside of Syria, the rise of ISIS has perplexed and at times surprise many military strategists in battle and especially on the Internet. The terror group has mastered the use of the dark web to recruit and inspire sympathizers using this corner of the Internet that is almost impossible to penetrate.

Here is CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): ISIS, still undefeated after months of bombing, has entered a new phase, using the cyber world as a weapon.

The recent ISIS-inspired attack in Garland, Texas, was carried out after gunman Elton Simpson publicly posted this tweet on the Internet using #TexasAttack.

And now, new online threats are forcing the Pentagon to confront a secret internet most of us never see in a place most of us have never been, the dark or deep web.

The U.S. believes ISIS and others are now using the most covert part of the online world to recruit fighters, share intelligence and potentially plan real world attacks. Think of the entire Internet as an iceberg.

LILIAN ABLON, RAND CORPORATION: Everything above the water is what we would call the surface web, or what can be indexed by Google. But below the water, that hug iceberg, that's the deep web, that's the part of the Web that's not next. There is so much of the web that we can't Google for.

STARR: Making it tough to crack, but the researchers are finding portals to get inside.

IDO WULKAN, SIMULATION SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGY: What we have found is a Web site on the dark net, one of the references on the website that says, a few of the references was that it's an ISIS-funding Website.

STARR: the Pentagon scientists plan to go in and chase the ISIS down.

CHRIS WHITE, DARPA PROJECT MANAGER: We need a technology to discover a way to that content is, making it available for analysis.

STARR: That military technology known as MEMEX acts as a unique search engine, seeing activity on the dark web and web sites not available via traditional route like Google or Bing.

WHITE: MEMEX allows you to characterize how many Web sites there are and then what kind of contents on them.

STARR: Hiding on the Web has become easier with tools like Tor, a browser that bounces communications around the world, keeping anyone from knowing what site you visit, and where you are located, basically making you invisible.

ABLON: You can use Tor either to go to normal Web sites, like CNN.com or those you would call special, hidden services.

STARR: An ISIS militant could be in Texas, but a message is routed to Paris, to Istanbul, and then finally to Syria, making it difficult to track users.

WHITE: Young people are posting about ISIS related topics. STARR: MEMEX will start by tracking the places where ISIS is active online, a difficult hunt through unchartered territory where terrorists have been lurking far too long.

(on camera): And, of course, if ISIS can master the dark web, they can potentially plan attacks faster than the U.S. can track them down.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Fascinating report. Barbara, thank you very much.

Let's talk more about it with Bob Baer, former CIA operative and CNN intelligence and security analyst. Also with us, Kimberly Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst and a contributor to "The Daily Beast".

Bob, let me start with you. Is the government good, strong at combating the enemy on dark web?

BOB BAER, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: They're very good. I mean, the National Security Agency, and that private contractors that are all brilliant. The problem is, Poppy, the Islamic State is moving just as fast as the federal government. For instance they started to communicate with the satellites hot spot, where they can hit a satellite, deliver a message somewhere else, somewhere part of the world will take it down and it will have disappeared. What do you -- you can't really combat that. They are doing other things like using the odd languages like Uzbek or Chechen to communicate over HF frequencies and the rest of it, and they're using the sites and apps even that are difficult like Wicker, it can't be tracked.

HARLOW: Kimberly, there is a big difference between finding the true ISIS sympathizer and someone who is actually going to try to act, and someone who is just sort of spouting things online, but isn't really going to do anything. How does the U.S. government differentiate and then go after the people who are the real risk?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, that goes to what Bob said. There's such a proliferation of all these messages on the web, thousands a day. That means there's a lot of chatter out there, more with every passing week for U.S. intelligence analysts to try to sift through.

So, one of the advantages that U.S. officials hope to get from the material seized in this raid in Syria is maybe they can get some of the passwords, see some of the mechanisms on these laptops that they've seized to figure out how one of the top leaders of ISIS is communicating.

[19:20:15] Who knows what they could find in terms of the keys to -- you know, there are a lot of the encrypted ways to communicate which ones that they are using. They now have the physical hardware to figure some of that out.

HARLOW: Do you have a sense, Bob, of where and how ISIS got so good at this?

BAER: Well, they picked it up from the West, Poppy, mostly. It's so many people in Europe and the United States have showed up with technical skills, that are really generational, and young. But I think that one other thing is that this is more than a terrorist group. The Islamic State is a defense of Sunni Islam. So, a lot of these people going there don't go as a terrorist, they go there to defend the traditional Ummah.

They may become terrorists once they get there and come back and the rest of it. So, what I'm trying to say here, this is not a small group that you can o destroy by decapitating it goes away, because it is much larger, and makes their technology much harder to defeat, because it is so many people sympathetic to the Islamic State in the sense that it's a state or the caliphate.

HARLOW: Kimberly, one of the thing that, you know, the big headline today with ISIS is the fact that the special operation forces of the United States was able to the take out Abu Sayyaf, basically the head money man of ISIS, right? And they're hoping that by taking his computers and phones, that they'll be able to get to the bottom, as Congressman Ed Royce just told, to get to the bottom of who may be finding ISIS from outside, what sympathizers from outside. Are they able to fund raise effectively on the dark web?

DOZIER: Well, a lot of the fund-raising across the Islamic world is done person to person, and through a system called Zecat (ph), where you talk to somebody in a place like Saudi Arabia, you give that person $10 and then he makes a phone call to someone in Lebanon and they hand $10 to whoever you wanted to deliver that to at the other end, and whereas no money actually physically was transferred, it's a trust-based exercise.

So that makes tracking the money difficult. One of the things though that this CFO of ISIS, if that is truly what he was, may have on his laptop is records. These guys keep very good records of who they are recruiting and who are paying. So, that could be a boon for intelligence officials. Maybe there are going to be names on there that they could then go back and check their databases of the people who are traveling in and out of Syria, in and out of Turkey, and saying, hey, that guy who just went back to the Paris, his name is on this ISIS list as being a paid member.

HARLOW: Right. Right. Kimberly Dozier, and Bob Baer, thanks to you both. Appreciate it.

DOZIER: Thank you.

HARLOW: Coming up next, we are keeping a close eye on the weather, as you can see the ominous skies there across three states. Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, all in the path of the potential tornadoes. A live report, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Five days after eight people were killed in a horrific Amtrak train derailment, Amtrak is now being ordered by the federal government to make immediate changes. Today, the Federal Railroad Commission basically that oversees this demanding that Amtrak beef up its technology by installing circuit controls -- circuits to control the speeds along the Northeast corridor. Trains also now must be equipped with a safety feature that applies the brakes when the train is exceeding certain speeds. We know this train was going 106 miles per hour at that turn.

NTSB investigators believe those safety features would have prevented the crash on Tuesday. The CEO of Amtrak also saying that they would.

A short time ago, Amtrak issued this response. Quote, "Amtrak's overarching goal is to provide safe and secure rail passenger travel. We will immediately implement the Federal Railroad Administration's directives to further improve passenger safety along the Northeast Corridor."

Meantime, investigators have made a stunning discovery around Tuesday's deadly Amtrak derailment. One of the three engineers interviewed by the NTSB yesterday said that the locomotive engineer on board that train reportedly had his windshield struck by some sort of object. Passengers aboard an Acela train, which is a separate train, and another separate train called SEPTA, on that same corridor, on that same night had similar things happened. You see all of them on your screen there.

We know eight people lost their lives, more than 200 people were injured. Amtrak has already been hit with one lawsuit. More are likely to follow.

So, let's talk about this with criminal defense attorney, Brian Claypool.

Thanks for being here, Brian. I appreciate it.

BRIAN CLAYPOOL, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Sure. Great to be back with you, Poppy.

HARLOW: You know, Brian, we know that the engineer here has been cooperating with the NTSB. They say he has been very cooperative. They say also though he cannot recall anything about the crash.

If he is sued, and his memory does not come back, would he able to use a lack of recollection as a defense in court?

CLAYPOOL: Well, yes, he would be able to use lack of recollection because he genuinely can't recall what happened leading up to the train derailing. And I think that would defeat any type of criminal prosecution as well.

Remember, you got a civil aspect of this, and then a potential criminal prosecution for manslaughter. The fact that he can't remember what happened would be devastating to the prosecution trying to charge him with manslaughter.

And then you got the issue of the positive track control. I mean, I don't think that they can prosecute this engineer, because his argument would be in the criminal case, hey, but for the fact that positive traffic control was not implemented, this accident would have never happened. So, you have a causation issue.

HARLOW: Just so our viewers know what you're talking about, positive traffic control, that is something that's implemented on some ports, part of this rail line, not here, and it's something that automatically can slow down train, and actually it is mandated to be implemented on all parts of the track by 2020. It just hasn't happened yet.

You said that, Brian, one of the critical things that is not getting enough attention is who owns this portion of the track. Why is that so key?

CLAYPOOL: Right. Well, nobody is looking at this issue, Poppy, and this goes to potential civil liability, because as it stands right now, there is a $200 million cap on the single train disaster. So, here we got eight folks who have tragically died. You got countless,

[19:30:00] close to 170, 180, other folks who have been injured. $200 million, Poppy, is not going to come close to compensating these individuals.

Now, if this track is owned by a private freight company such as Union Pacific or a company named CSX, then the claimants in this case can sue in addition to Amtrak, the private company, and guess what? There is an agreement in place between Amtrak and all these private freight companies where Amtrak would absorb all of the financial liability. So let's say --

HARLOW: Which means in part the taxpayer?

CLAYPOOL: Absolutely. What that means, Poppy, is that the there would not be a $ $200 million cap, and if this curve where the derailment happened was owned by a private company, there is no $200 million cap. Amtrak would be on the hook for the entire amount.

HARLOW: If a person did throw something at this train, because one of my experts last hour was saying a rock flying up from the ground does not dent a windshield like this, it has a special glaze over it. This likely wouldn't be a rock. If someone threw something at this train, what does that do to the liability of Amtrak?

CLAYPOOL: Well, I think that's a good question and the other guests you talked to, the engineers -- he made a good point about the -- if you look at the glass that is cracked there, and I have dealt with cases dealing with bullets, if that's just a rock, I don't think you're going to get that deep of a fracture in the windshield. I think there was something else but I don't know if it was a gun you would possibly retrieve the bullet but I think the issue is that Amtrak would still be liable for this incident.

There would be an argument made by Amtrak, oh, there is an intervening cause, and they would argue well it wasn't the engineer's fault here, it was an intervening act that really caused the train to derail, but I think that would be a really, really weak argument, because you still have to explain how the speed increased so quickly, and then the best argument is to defeat Amtrak using that as a defense is.

Look, you have known for 20 years about the positive train control which you talked about, where the brakes would have automatically come on once the speed goes too high. That truly was the cause of the incident. In other words, had PTC been in place, this accident still does not happen. So I think Amtrak will be liable civilly with or without this rock or bullet.

HARLOW: Well, Amtrak's own CEO said that if PTC has been in place then this wouldn't have happened. It's a pretty astonishing act actually that it hasn't been mandated already to be put in place. Brian, we're out of time. I'm sorry. Hold your thought. We'll talk more about it.

Thanks for being on here, as always.

CLAYPOOL: Thanks for having me, Poppy.

HARLOW: Fierce battle for the Iraqi city of Ramadi. The fight has forced the United States to rush weapons to the battlefield. Now the tide may be turning in that key city against ISIS. We are live from Iraq, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:36:01]

HARLOW: All right. There has been a tornado spotted in Oklahoma. You're looking at live pictures out of Elk City, Oklahoma. Very dark ominous skies there. Lets' go to Pedram Javaheri. He is tracking all of this at the CNN Severe Weather Center.

Have we confirmed that one tornado did touch down there?

PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely.

Yes, Poppy. This tornado, a wedge tornado actually. We're talking about to be wider than it is tall, an impressive tornado. Radar signature really impressive as well when you take a look at what we call a hook echo, right across this region. Tornado likely on the ground, just south of Snyder, if you're in Snyder (INAUDIBLE) population of about 2,000 people. Tornado is on the ground.

This particular storm actually touched down just north of Tipton, Oklahoma where we know large barn equipment was scattered about in the region. So certainly a dangerous storm system with a potential for significant storm damage over this region. This expires here for 7:00 p.m. local time across areas of southwest and south central Oklhoma are watching that storm carefully.

In fact, Poppy, so far, 14 reports of tornados to tell you about, with a couple of them as far north as Minnesota, but another (INAUDIBLE) also of tornado warning has been issued in Fairview in north central Oklahoma, enid is in line here of this storm system inside the next few minutes, potentially as it migrates off to the east, and some 300 people in the path of the tornado warning right now, but notice again the line of active weather, notice the big city ahead there of OKC, and we are watching this for the storm to move through later on tonight say after 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. for Oklahoma City, and eventually Tulsa as well. Poppy.

HARLOW: All right. Pedram, thanks, keeping an eye on it, remarkable images next to you -- you can see the hail hitting the car in this tornado watch zone as we speak. Wow. Pedram, thanks. Appreciate it.

We're also getting new details now about the U.S. special operations mission that killed more than a dozen ISIS terrorists and also killed a top ISIS commander. It happened deep inside Syria overnight. It was a dangerous raid, the U.S. official telling CNN the troops from the army's delta force began fighting with ISIS on the ground. They blew a hole in the side of a building, they then entered the building and they found more ISIS fighters in there, and a black hawk helicopter took fire and t was able to take off, that is a U.S. Army helicopter. U.S. forces also came across some ancient artifacts including an Asyrian Bible and coins being held by those ISIS fighters.

The senior ISIS figure is named Abu Sayyaf, he was the one who was killed and his wife also believed to be a member of ISIS was captured. She is being interrogated and the U.S. government says there were no American casualties.

Former CIA operative Bob Baer joins me again. Bob, give us a reality check on how high up this guys was?

ROBERT BAER, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: I don't think he was that high up, Poppy. He was not on a list. We know there's -- we look at it this way, for the first raid in Syria, the first serious raid, they would have preferred to have grabbed somebody more important, and whether it was Baghdadi or one of his lieutenants, but I think our intelligence on the Islamic state is still weak. We are still looking for targets, and they stay off of the air.

I think it is good news that they did hit an ISIS target, but on the other hand, I am pretty sure at this point they would have wanted somebody more important, and higher up to say, "look, this stuff really works, and especially with the way things are going in Ramadi, we need a victory.

HARLOW: Do you think that U.S. forces would have had to have had some help on the ground to know enough about this target to the feel confident going in that they could go in and execute, get out with everyone alive?

BAER: I think that they are looking at these things with drones, high altitude drones, and you know, the human sources in places like this in (INAUDIBLE), impossible to run them, you can't trust them. So they're looking at technical means, telephone intercepts, and still at the same time this makes these operations dicey. The Delta Force is one of the best trained forces, the most experienced forces in the world.

[19:40:02] They went in, with a lot of guns and overwhelming power but that doesn't mean they necessarily hit the right target. This will take time. It could take years before we really get a fix on what targets we have to go over, get in, and even the hierarchy of the Islamic State we are not quite certain about it.

HARLOW: They have his wife now, and they are trying to interrogate her. How effective have they been in the past to flip any ISIS member they have captured?

BAER: I don't know if this woman is a true believer, and she probably is, and it would be difficult to get her to talk. She may not know anything. I think it is going to be more productive to go through the hard drives, through address books, through the pocket litter they picked up because it would give you a good idea of the command structure of the Islamic state and I think that is the kind of intelligence which really helps the CIA and the joint special operations command.

Look at Pakistan, it took us years before we really could break the backbone of Al Qaeda. That they are simply because intelligence was so hard to get but over time, you do accumulate a good database.

HARLOW: Thanks, Bob. Appreciate it. Good to have your perspective as always.

For all of you watching, you're not going to want to miss this. "Blindsided How ISIS Shook the World," Fareed Zakaria reports, Sunday night, 7:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only right here on CNN.

Coming up next, the business model of ISIS. What is it? How do they make so much money to fund these operation, and how could this raid and this killing of an ISIS figure hurt their operations on the ground. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:45:00]

HARLOW: ISIS has lost the man who controls their money stream, killed in a U.S. special operations raid overnight inside of Syria. Kimberly Dozier, our global affairs analyst joins me now. She's also a writer for the Daily Beast and she is working her sources on this story. Kim, thanks for being here. I appreciate it.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Good to here, Poppy.

HARLOW: Tell me what it means that he is their financier, if you will. He's the guy who has an eye on all of the money. But how critical is that for ISIS to keep operating day to day here now that he's been killed?

DOZIER: Well, ISIS has been referred by U.S. officials as the sort of General Motors of militant groups. They're very well run in a corporate but decentralized style. They keep very specific records about payrolls, who gets paid, what for which activity. They keep the money going to the various different cities under their control to keep the water on, to keep the electricity going. So this is a major corporation that has to pass through million dollars a day. It's got to keep a number of troops in the field -- all of that in an enterprise that gets written down and recorded on a lot of the laptops, for instance that just got take in this raid.

HARLOW: What is the difference for the United States as they try to battle ISIS on this front, in the funding front than Al Qaeda because it seems like you're talking about two very different animals here in terms of how effectively they're run and funded. It seems like ISIS is funded better.

DOZIER: Well, at this point, ISIS is the more popular of the two but both organizations rely on a system of -- I used the wrong Arabic phrase earlier, it's called hoala (ph), (INAUDIBLE) the third pillar of Islam that requires Muslims to give alms to the poor.

But hoala (ph) is a system if you are someone who wants to back ISIS or Al Qaeda somewhere in the Gulf State, you can give that to a hoala (ph) lender and then they will in a system of trust, in another capital where you'll have an Al Qaeda or ISIS operative give that same amount of money to that operative. That's one of the things that drives both organizations but the thing is at this point ISIS has been getting the lion's share of the publicity and therefore more of the recruits and more of the money. It is a competition.

HARLOW: Congressman Ed Royce told me at the top of the hour here on the program that he's very hopeful that from the laptops, cell phones they've been able to seize in this raid, that they'll be able, the U.S. intelligence will be able to track down some of the outside funders of ISIS. Do you think that that is likely?

DOZIER: You know, they're going to be exploiting every scrap of intelligence that they can get off of the cell phones, the computers, and also questioning both the wife and the Yazidi slave who were taken from that compound to try to figure out are any of the people who have been passing through that compound, are they somebody that is part of a, say, courier who goes to and from Al Baghdadi, the ISIS leader's compound, wherever he is hiding.

That's the kind of information they can use to stage possible future raids by U.S. or by other forces in the area. And start taking apart the network and making them look a little bit more vulnerable to all of these followers who are flocking to them.

HARLOW: All right. Kimberly Dozier, good to have you on tonight. Thanks so much for being with us.

DOZIER: Thank you.

HARLOW: Ahead, next, presidential politics in the race for the White House. Jeb Bush is in Iowa, saying he is not officially a candidate but he's certainly making the rounds and he's trying to put what he said about the Iraq war this week behind him. It has dogged him all week. We're going to take you live to the Lincoln dinner in Des Moines, next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:52:02]

HARLOW: Jeb Bush is making the rounds in Iowa trying to regain his political footing after spending part of the week talking about the invasion of Iraq and his brother.

Today he made stops in several stops in several events across Iowa. Right now, he is joining 10 other potential Republican White House hopefuls in Des Moines for the state party's Lincoln Day dinner where we find CNN political reporter Sarah Murray.

Sara, the dinner's getting under way. What are you seeing there? How important is this for someone who is thinking about a run for the White House?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: So Poppy, first of all, this is just a big fundraiser for the Iowa Republican Party but it's also a chance for voters here in Iowa to get to see these candidates and perspective candidates up against each other one after another. And if you are one of the candidates, it's a chance to size up the competition and even get a dig in at some of your rivals.

We actually just heard from Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and he used his speech to do just that, he could not help but bring up the Iraq issue, saying one of the contenders brought it up this week, and it is a valid question. We should be talking about it. So it seems like Jeb Bush cannot escape this issue, no matter where he goes in Iowa today.

HARLOW: It seems like Jeb Bush is now sort of been very clear now after this week of back and forth on whether he would have invaded Iraq, knowing what he knows now. He laid it out really straight to a voter there in Iowa.

MURRAY: Yes, -- he absolutely did get the question, one of the first things he had to address when he got to Iowa today. One thing that I will say, he does seem to be finding his footing on this issue. He's openly saying, "hey, I messed up," but let's take a look at what he said to that voter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFED MALE: We got to watch you the other night on "Megyn," the interview with Megyn Kelly, we did not see the misstep, I'm sorry, that created --

JEB BUSH (R), FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Obviously I didn't either. But I misstepped for sure. I answered a question that wasn't asked.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, Poppy, people are saying, why didn't he have this answer a couple days ago? Why didn't he go further and say, look I wouldn't have gone to war in Iraq, knowing what we did now. But it took him days to come up with this answer, and I think that's part of his learning curve of being out of the public eye for so long.

But also part of the learning curve of his staff who has now said look we need to be more responsive, we need to make sure we deal with this stuff immediately instead of letting it dog our guy for an entire week. Back to you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Yes. All right. Sara, thanks so much, appreciate the reporting live from Iowa tonight for us.

Stay with us, because after a quick break, we're going to have another check on the weather. The tornado watches across the midwest, one touching down in Oklahoma. A live report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:58:03]

HARLOW: An update for you on the severe weather you're looking at live pictures out of Snyder, Oklahoma. We are told that at least four tornadoes have touched down in Oklahoma, and in Texas.

Pedram Javaheri joins me from the CNN Severe Weather Center. What else do we know?

JAVAHERI: Poppy, the numbers are going up pretty quickly. You know, the number actually going up to 15 in the last few minutes, as far as tornado reports across the country. About eight of them out of Texas, Oklahoma. But you take a look at the perspective.

This is out of Wichita, Kansas, and a tornado reports really beginning to pop up again in the last few minutes, east and also south of Amarillo, notice they're kind of encroaching in on western Oklahoma and Oklahoma city and Tulsa in line for the severe weather.

Again, this particular one you're seeing on your screen there, near Snyder, a wedge tornado being reported, essentially wider than is it tall. Pretty impressive feature there in line with the storms. And again this is the concern as we head into the overnight hours, the sun beginning to set in the next couple of hours, it becomes a very dangerous situation.

Again, this is a tornado warning in Snyder, population across this warning, 1600 people. Comanche, (INAUDIBLE) some of the counties there in line for the active weather. This might migrate off to the east. I want to take you farther to the south, because just north of Wichita falls on the Oklahoma and also Texas border, we do have another tornado warning for near 4,000 people, Tillman, Wichita, and Wilberger, some of the counties impacted by this. Again, it's a great time to get to the lowest portion of your home, away from windows. We often say having a helmet handy, perhaps one of your bicycle helmets to put on, having shoes on, just in case property damage is done and you have to step outside on top of that. Of course, we know tornado debris, one of most deadly things when it comes to these storms.

To the north, around Helena, about 1400 people at Alfalfa (ph) county dealing with a tornado warning as well. The tornado watches now, for about six million people across the country today, Poppy. We'll follow this into the overnight hours here.

HARLOW: Wow. 15 tornadoes touching down, getting more and more by the minute. Pedram, thanks so much. Appreciate the update.

Thank you all for joining me. I'm Poppy Harlow. I'll see you back here tomorrow night. Have a good Saturday evening.