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Amtrak Restores Full Service After Crash; FBI Inspecting Train's Windshield Damage; FBI: Hacker Claims to Have Controlled Flight's Engine; Iraqi City Falls to ISIS; U.S. Special Forces Seize Digital Trove in Raid; Nine Killed in Biker Gang Shootout. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired May 18, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Amtrak's Northeast Corridor back open for business this morning.

[05:59:00] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Technicians installing speed controls on that curved section of the track.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A possibility that shortly before it derailed, the train was hit by an unknown object.

ROBERT SUMWALT, NTSB BOARD MEMBER: We're going to look at everything at this point.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The city of Ramadi falls to ISIS fighters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a disaster.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A daring raid by American Special Ops in Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was the intelligence value worth this kind of risk?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He told them that he had managed to hack into aircraft while he was on board.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know that this can still be breached.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: At least nine are now dead and nearly 20 more injured.

SGT. W. PATRICK SWANTON, WACO POLICE: These are very dangerous, hostile biker gangs that we are dealing with.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, and Michaela Pereira.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CO-ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Monday, May 18, 6 a.m. in the East. The good news: that Amtrak is restoring full service this morning just six days after that derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight people and injured more than 200.

The bad news: the railways are still not up to snuff. And we're staying on who's responsible. We have new information on the crash and what happens next, and we'll be tracking these first rail journeys since the accident.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN CO-ANCHOR: The exact cause of last week's deadly crash still unknown. The FBI now examining the train's windshield after the engineer told the NTSB that something struck it before the crash.

We have this story covered from every angle, starting with CNN's Alexander Field. She is waiting for the first Amtrak train to arrive and then leave from Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. What are you seeing, Alexandra?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Alisyn. Commuters are here; they're ready to go. They're ready to board this train. And they were visited first by Philadelphia's mayor, Mayor Nutter. He came out here to the station. He said he wanted to greet these passengers who were going to get on this first train, making the trip back from Philadelphia to New York, first time in nearly a week now. He wanted to encourage people, let them know that this is perfectly safe, that Amtrak has been out there doing repairs.

He says that he, of course, needs to be in Philadelphia today. He has no plans to travel to New York City, but that if he was going to travel to New York City, he would be taking this train along with everybody else.

We have spoken to people who are riding the train. It should pull into this station here in just a few minutes. They say that they've been making other arrangements over the last week, trying to roll with it, either driving to work, driving through their commute, driving to other train stations like Newark, New Jersey, and getting on other lines. But everyone is feeling relieved to be back here today.

We know that extensive work has been done to repair the track. Amtrak tells us that 300 crews worked over the course of the week and through the weekend to make the repairs that were necessary, including activating those speed control measures that have been ordered. So commuters taking that first trip back to New York in just a few minutes -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right. So we'll be tracking the timeliness and integrity of the system. And we will stay on the question of safety. What kind of safety measures did they just put in place? Is it what they're supposed to do? We'll stay on that.

Now, specific to Train 188, FBI investigators just joined the NTSB and local authorities on the scene of the crash to examine this train's windshield. Was it hit by a projectile before the crash? That's the big speculation. CNN's Erin McLaughlin is live from the crash site, picking up that part of the story.

Erin, what do we know?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Chris. The mystery of Amtrak 188 continues to deepen. Today the FBI expected to take a look at a first-sized circular marking on the left-hand side of the train's windshield as the NTSB continues to investigate the possibility the train was struck by some sort of projectile prior to the crash.

But there are new doubts about information from the train's assistant conductor. She had told investigators that prior to the crash, she thought she heard 32-year-old train engineer Brandon Bostian tell the radio dispatcher that Amtrak 188 has been struck. But the NTSB says they have evaluated all radio dispatches from that night, and they say there is nothing to suggest that.

Meanwhile, new information from the train's black box. Investigators say the data shows that Bostian manually pushed the train throttle forward, which could have led to that deadly acceleration that caused the crash. The question remains why -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Erin, thanks so much for all that background. Let's bring in now Mary Schiavo. She's the former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation and a CNN aviation analyst.

Good morning, Mary.

MARY SCHIAVO, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: So Mary, can you explain this connection? If this train was struck by a projectile, why would it then accelerate to 106 miles per hour, twice the double limit?

SCHIAVO: Well, the only way it could explain it is if the engineer was distracted by whatever struck the train, if it was very loud, if it sounded like a gunshot, if he thought the windshield was shattering, and maybe dove or accidentally put it forward as he got out of the way. You know, that's unfortunately a question that only he will be able to answer, since it's not on the information from the black boxes. But it could explain an engineer distraction and allowing the train to go so fast and so -- at such a deadly speed into the curve.

CAMEROTA: OK. So that theory is that maybe he was so rattled by something striking the windshield. I mean, one theory is that it was a bullet. Maybe he was trying to get out of there quickly?

SCHIAVO: Exactly. And people don't realize, I mean, it's just utterly ridiculous that this goes on. But this kind of thing: throwing rocks at, shooting at, vandalizing trains, cars on trains, cars in motor carriers, this kind of thing of vandalization [SIC] of transportation goes on a lot. And it goes on all over the country.

So you know, presumably, it would have been very startling to him. I mean, I've been on trains where other things have happened in the past. And a friend of mine was on a train where a door came open. And that rattled the engineer. And the engineer actually said it. So you just never know what it could have been until the engineer recovers his memory, which can happen. I've worked many cases where right after a crash, PTSD and other problems, causing memory difficulty, and they do come back on occasion.

[06:05:09] CAMEROTA: That's interesting. So how is the FBI going to figure this out?

SCHIAVO: Well, you know, the FBI has pretty good ways to figure things out. And I have worked on cases where the crazing (ph) of windshields or the shattering of windshields can be very significant. And the FBI can examine that particular pattern and the pattern of lines emanating from the impact point; and they can get an idea of the shape of the projectile, the force with which it was coming. Since it's kind of an uneven crazing (ph) pattern, that particular impact is probably not a bullet.

But their forensics lab is pretty good about analyzing those sort of things and what happened. And they will talk to the two other trains where it happened, including one where there was an impact on the side, not the front, which would make you think it was not a drop from an overpass.

CAMEROTA: So Mary, over the weekend, speed controls were added to this stretch of track that now has had two deadly accidents. If it was so easy, why wasn't this done years ago?

SCHIAVO: Well, Amtrak had an explanation for that in -- in the press release or an explanation to the media. And they said that they had put it on one way on the train. It was called automatic train control, as opposed to positive train control. And they put it on one way, because they thought operationally, it made sense one way but not the other because of the speed at which one would be traveling over that particular track.

But automatic train control, the thing they said they have now put on the track, is very old technology. It's been around for perhaps 40 years, 30 years. It's been on the Japanese bullet train since the early '80s. And that has a series of just warnings, and it will tell the engineer if the train is in over-speed and in some variations of automatic train control will stop the train if, then, the engineer does not react.

Where a positive train control uses computer systems and sensing on the tracks to see, you know, if there are other -- is there traffic on the tracks, something going on, on the tracks? What has to happen? Where it's a much more in-depth system.

CAMEROTA: So is automatic train control, this old technology, on lots of portions of this highly-trafficked route?

SCHIAVO: It's on most of it. It's on most of the Northeast Corridor and on most -- or I should say many -- passenger rails. The government had long ago insisted there be some sort of speed controls and this older technology. And so when the Federal Rail Administration over the weekend ordered them to get something on there now, this was available, and it's been available for many years. And it is on most passenger rail lines, but not on the freight lines.

CAMEROTA: Mary, very quickly, what's your latest thinking on what probably happened here?

SCHIAVO: Well, I think the finding of the strike on the windshield would be a very disturbing and very distracting event. And given that, headed into this curve, the engineer, now we know from the black box information, had to manually push that train into the faster speed heading into a curve, the exact opposite of what you do. I am -- I am guessing that the strike, the impact on the windshield, distracted him, and that's what occurred. He maybe dived to get out of the way and pushed the throttle forward. And I'm hoping that the memory comes back, because it's a very important piece of what really happened.

CAMEROTA: That would be really helpful. Mary Schiavo, thanks so much. Great to talk to you.

SCHIAVO: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Well, the FBI is looking at some other transportation concerns. They are investigating a possible new threat that could affect air travel. A computer expert says that on several occasions, he hacked into computer systems aboard a commercial passenger plane and was able to control an aircraft engine during a fight.

CNN's Evan Perez is in Washington with more. Is there any reason for us to be skeptical of this report?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, we'll see, Michaela. You know, good morning.

Chris Roberts is a cybersecurity research who says modern planes have a huge vulnerability from hackers. He says that there's a security hole in in-flight entertainment systems aboard three types of Boeing aircraft and one Airbus model. Apparently, he says that hackers can control these aircraft.

Now, the FBI says it's investigating him for potential computer crimes aboard flights. This is according to a search warrant application filed in court.

Roberts told the FBI in February and March, that he's hacked into planes up to 20 times, including at least once making a plane do a lateral move.

Now, no one has verified whether Roberts actually did any of this, and he's not been arrested. Boeing says there's no danger. The IFE system -- this is what they say: "The IFE systems on board commercial airplanes are isolated from flight and navigation systems." And Roberts says the FBI is all wrong. He says -- he tweeted

over the weekend, "Over the last five years, my only interest has been to improve aircraft security. Given the current situation, I've been advised against saying much" -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Evan. We'll stay on that. Thank you very much.

[06:10:3] ISIS terrorists taking over the key city in Iraq of Ramadi. This happened over the weekend. Officials in the U.S. and Iraq vow the fight is far from over. We'll give you the reality on the ground first.

We have senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh live in Beirut with the latest. Nick, what do we know?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, 500 lives lost, it seems, in this final onslaught that ISIS put into play over the weekend to Ramadi.

This is an absolutely vital city. It is the capital of Anbar Province. That makes up a third of Iraq's territory. And it is predominantly Sunni.

What seems to have happened is ISIS have kept their cards quiet for the past month and then launched this suicide bomber frenzy that got them into the center. Now Iraqi security forces, as these pictures show, withdrew.

We don't know quite how this long-telegraphed assault (ph) wasn't adequately fortified on their part, how they managed to simply be exhausted or run out of ammunition, some reports say, and had to withdraw.

But now there's a whole new concern. This is turning increasingly sectarian, many fear. The Iranian defense minister flying into Baghdad. The Iraqi prime minister calling up Shia militia to lead the fight back.

The U.S. has said well, Anbar, Ramadi is not centrally key to the fight against ISIS. But they're very concerned at this stage. Here's what John Kerry had to say in Seoul.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: It is possible to have the kind of attack we've seen in Ramadi. But I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that will be reversed. A large numbers of DAISH were killed in the last few days and will be in the next days. Because that seems to be the only thing they understand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Now of course, the key issue is how do you turn that tide around? Coalition air pact (ph) will do some of it. Shia militia have a pretty dodgy track record on the ground, in terms of atrocities. Many concerned you could see replication of that here.

And now ISIS very much on the march forward. They have a lot of abandoned Iraqi armor that the Iraqi security forces left in their wake. Worrying times, not just for Anbar but also for Baghdad, to which they're increasingly close -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: So Ramadi, Nick, was a big loss. Thanks so much for that.

Also, a big gain to tell you about for the coalition fighting ISIS. We're learning more about that weekend raid in Syria involving U.S. Army Delta Force that killed a top ISIS commander and captured his wife. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty is live from the White House with more. What do we know about this, Sunlen?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, the administration is characterizing this kill as a serious blow to ISIS. The National Security Council calling the man that they refer to as Abu Sayyaf a senior ISIS leader, someone who had a role in overseeing ISIS's oil and gas operations, and his wife, Um (ph) Sayyaf, referred to as Um (ph) Sayyaf, captured at the mission site, as well, who might have information on ISIS's hostage operations. She seems detained and interrogated right now.

Now U.S. officials also say there was a lot of intelligence, reams of data, they say, including a computer that was captured at the mission site that could have valuable information: how ISIS operates, how they communicate, and how they are funded.

But there are, of course, still a lot of questions about this mission. At the most basic, of course, who Abu Sayyaf's real name actually is, and was the risk worth the reward? Many lawmakers, Michaela, on Capitol Hill starting to ask those questions, and they will receive briefings from the White House this week -- Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, Sunlen. Thank you so much for that.

Breaking overnight, a U.S. Marine was killed in Hawaii after a training exercise went horribly wrong. The Marine Corps says an Osprey aircraft made a hard landing, and it caught fire at Bellows Air Force Station on the Hawaiian island of Oahu Sunday. That crash injured 21 other Marines on board. Some of them were injured critically. The Marine Corps says the accident is now under investigation.

CUOMO: Did you hear about this? A massive shootout in Texas. At least nine people are dead after this gun battle between rival biker gangs at a restaurant in Waco. This morning, we're learning police knew trouble was coming well before it happened but, obviously, couldn't stop it. CNN correspondent Nick Valencia is live in Waco with the latest.

Sounds like a "Sons of Anarchy" episode there.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Chris. Still a heavy police presence here at the strip mall where the

shootout happened less than 24 hours ago. As you mentioned, police knew that there was going to be a meeting between motorcycle clubs here. They anticipated trouble, which is why they were in place when the shootout happened. They say that right now the fight, they say -- there's a press conference going on off-camera right now. They're giving more details. They say the fight started inside the Twin Peaks restaurant, escalated quickly and spilled out into the parking lot.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SWANTON: These are very dangerous, hostile biker gangs that we are dealing with.

VALENCIA (voice-over): Erupting in broad daylight: close to 200 members of rival biker gangs broke out in a deadly fight Sunday. First, fists, chains, a club and knives, escalating into a fierce gun battle.

[06:15:01] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was really, really scary. We didn't know if somebody was going to come back.

VALENCIA: One hundred miles south of Dallas in Waco, Texas, at a Twin Peaks restaurant, as many as five criminal motorcycle gangs started fighting over a parking issue, according to police. You can see some of the groups names, like The Cossacks, on the back of their jackets. The gang meet-up, known to police for weeks, members of the SWAT team were already monitoring the scene when the brutal fight began.

SWANTON: We were in marked cars. They knew we were here. It matters naught to them. That tells you the kind of level of people that we're dealing with.

VALENCIA: Police also exchanging fire with the bikers. The parking lot filling fast with law enforcement officials to secure the scene. At least nine are now dead and nearly 20 more injured. Some customers and employees taking cover in the restaurant's freezer.

SWANTON: There were a lot of people. A lot of innocent people could have been injured today.

VALENCIA: Police say they recovered more than 100 weapons at the scene, a frightening indication that this may not be the end to the deadly rivalry.

SWANTON: We have been getting reports throughout the day that bikers throughout the state are headed this way.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VALENCIA: Law enforcement officials have established a perimeter around this area, only allowing media inside. This is still an active crime scene -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: What an incredible story. Nick, thanks. Well, tragedy at Yosemite National Park to tell you about.

Authorities say legendary rock climber Dean Potter was one of two men who died after reportedly attempting a 3,500-foot base jump in wing suits into Yosemite Valley.

Potter and Graham Hunt were reported missing after their jump on Saturday. And park officials say they tried to clear a gap in the granite cliffs, but they smashed into the rocks. Base jumping is illegal in Yosemite.

Last year, Potter was here on NEW DAY, after this video of him jumping with his dog named Whisper went viral. We'll show that you in a second. And this is what Dean told us about that jump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN POTTER, ROCK CLIMBER: I've been climbing and wing-suit flying and tightrope walking for the last 27 years, and I always like to bring my dog and my best friend with me. And so the idea of this came from not wanting to leave my dog in the house or car. You know, I want to bring my best friend with me everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Well, marvelous the crazy risk these guys take. But there's a very real risk of losing your life. It's horrifying.

CAMEROTA: It's so sad.

CUOMO: I know, but it's part of the exhilaration of the experience for them. That's why people judge it. Either you think that this is crazy and you shouldn't do it; it's dangerous. Now he's gone. But for a lot of these guys and women, this is what defines their feeling of being alive.

PEREIRA: I know.

CAMEROTA: I understand. I get it.

CUOMO: That's a harder question. Here's an easier question for you. What's going on in this war against ISIS? Who's winning? The terrorists just took over the city of Ramadi. They used bulldozers and suicide bombers. We have military analysts that are going to give us some answers on the state of play.

CAMEROTA: And should the U.S. have invaded Iraq in 2003? That question keeps tripping up Republican presidential hopefuls, first Jeb Bush, now Marco Rubio. Where exactly does the Florida senator stand? We'll debate that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:22:04] CUOMO: Here's what we know: Ramadi is now in the hands of ISIS after this fierce assault. It's a key city, if only because the terrorists really want it. Now, does this mean the coalition is now losing the war, and did the coalition just take out a key ISIS commander or not really? Let's get some perspective on these big questions.

Michael Weiss, co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror." He's a CNN contributor. We also have retired Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, CNN global affairs analyst; was a U.S. Delta Force commander

Gentlemen, good to be with you this morning. So we'll start with you. What do you think, Colonel? If they take over Ramadi, does this mean that they are winning now in what was supposed to be their pulling back in the situation?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RET.), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, Chris, they have right now taken Ramadi, as we look at it from a military perspective. But just like Secretary Kerry said, I believe now this is a wake-up call for the coalition. We've been pinging them with air power. The air power could continue on, and that is the deciding factor for the Iraqis. ISIS does not have the air power. We will continue to pummel. And it will be a back and forth aspect, just like we saw in Tikrit in the springtime.

CUOMO: And even though people are following this in a very cursory way, I know that it would be a disservice to say what happened in Ramadi? "Oh, this is like another Mosul." I get it. I get that there are different levels of assets and intensity going on, on the ground.

But on the outside, you know, the colonel says this is a wake-up call. It seems like the fighters, the coalition fighters have gotten so many wake-up calls they should never go to sleep, Michael.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, look, put it this way. When we went to war, June 2014, after the fall of Mosul, ISIS had control of two provincial capitals. Now they have control of three. So I don't see how the Pentagon can say that the degrading and disruption of ISIS is proceeding apace. Look, this puts ISIS 60 miles away from Baghdad. Ramadi has great strategic and symbolic importance, not just in this world but in the previous one, the occupation of Iraq. In 2006, it was the center of the locusts for a major ground swell of Sunni tribal support against al Qaeda in Iraq, which is the predecessor to ISIS. There's a major recruitment drive at a glass factory, which AQI targeted that year.

So to say -- to dismiss this as some kind of, you know, tactical setback or mere skirmish in a long road to the ultimate extirpation of ISIS. I think we have to. As the colonel said, this is some time for some serious inventory taking about how we're conducting this war.

CUOMO: Well, you said from the beginning, the fundamental frustration is you can give all the help you want. You're not doing the fighting on the ground, and that's where these battles were won and lost. So what is the rosy picture to be painted here?

REESE: The rosy picture, as you've seen, the Iraqis and the leadership from al-Anbar, they are now bringing up the PMU or some of the Shia militia that have fought very well up in Tikrit, helped take Tikrit down. They got brought back down, got rearmed, refitted. And now they're going to push out to the west to help the Iraqi security forces.

What I think we need to be very careful of is, you know, we have a habit of talking about this Sunni-Shia friction between them. I'll tell you, for the month I spent there, I was just back over there two weeks ago. I did a quick in and out. It is a common enemy for the Sunnis and Shia. They're fighting together.

[06:25:04] Are there some problems sometimes? Absolutely. But we have problems sometimes, and our ground folks, they go a little bit crazy.

So I don't think we should be pushing that away. I think the PMU is going to come out there and help the ISF with coalition airstrikes, and we'll take this back.

CUOMO: So the big division here between you two is whether or not this is a short-term fix or a longer-term fix in terms of getting back this ground, all right. Fine. We'll see what happens on that.

The other issue: the coalition is saying, "We just killed a really bad guy, a top ISIS commander. Now we have his wife. We're going to get her for all this intelligence that they have there." Do you buy that, this is a big take?

REESE: Absolutely. This is a spider web of a network. And we've been doing this now since 2001 when we started this thing. And the joint Special Operations command, that's their job to take down these high-value targets, are the best in the world, this thing.

Now, granted, this guy might not have been on the radar screen of everyone who's watching this and paying attention at kind of the mid- level. And at the strategic level, people know who this guy was. And the beauty is you have -- because we don't have the home field advantage like we did while we were in Iraq, you've got it. When you have a chance to get one of these guys, you've got to go after it.

CUOMO: And you're qualifying it, because you know there's been a little stink cast on this. This guy was like a money guy. It's not that big a deal. You've got his wife. You know, what are you celebrating?

WEISS: I actually hear that the component to focus on the human trafficking one. He played a very prominent role, I'm told, in some reporting by ABC News. And others have borne out in the captivity of Kylie Mueller, the last American hostage who was then brutally executed or killed several months ago.

So I think the importance is on that factor, more so. Look, I mean, we've heard this guy referred to as the CFO of ISIS. Well, the CFO of ISIS wasn't on either the Treasury or the State Department sanctions list. So he's not one of the top five or even top ten guys in the organization.

CUOMO: They're also trying to justify taking him down by saying we freed a slave. That's not usually how you value a high-level target. WEISS: It could also be the case, Chris, that were going after

much higher level targets that they thought he would be in the same complex of the same area as this guy. And these guys had fled or weren't there. And so they took who they could get. There is -- I think they were specifically targeting Abu Sayyaf. But again, I'm a little bit skeptical about just how senior in the ISIS hierarchy this guy was.

REESE: Yes, but don't get caught up in the top five. I did it for years, and I still continue to watch it. The top five, there's 20 to 25 below them in this chain of the web that, when you find a chance, you've got to get them. You pull them out. Whether you want to capture them. But if can't, you kill them. The treasure trove of intelligence they'll be able to pull out with his wife will lead us to other...

CUOMO: Why the confidence in the wife as a treasure trove?

REESE: We saw this with the Ba'ath Party. The women, they know what's going on. They know what's going on. And we did this exclusively over in Iraq is we would separate the women, and we'd sit down and talk to them. The children. We'd feed them and just like they have this high-value interrogation team there. They will sit down and they'll talk to this woman. She knows a lot what's going on, especially like Michael said, the human trafficking. I think a lot will come out.

CUOMO: All right. And I push it, because to the outside, the uninitiated, you see the women there as being completely undervalued, devalued, and yet, is it true that, you know, often they know a lot more just by being present?

WEISS: Look. ISIS has female fighters in their ranks, so you know...

CUOMO: She could actually be instrumental and not just a bystander.

WEISS: There's another, separate issue to this. Is when we think of terrorist organizations or jihadi cells, we tend to put too much of a premium, I think, on this sort of structural -- the orb charts, the nature of the beast. A lot of this has to do with what I call Rolodex pragmatism. People know other people. They have contacts; they have networks. As the colonel said, a wife of a mid- or, let's say, high-level ISIS commander will know a lot of the guys that were aggregating or congregating around her husband and therefore, as he also said, can lead back to bigger scouts later in the future.

So to my mind, this might inaugurate a future form of warfare kind of campaign where you have these teams going in, and snatching guys in both Syria and Iraq. So there's going to be a ground component by U.S. forces. And I think this is the beginning of something rather than the end.

CUOMO: All right. Michael, James, thank you very much. As always, appreciate the perspective -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Chris. Was it a mistake to invade Iraq in 2003? That question keeps tripping up GOP hopefuls, first Jeb Bush, now Marco Rubio struggles to explain where he stands. Our political pundits here next.

PEREIRA: And Taylor Swift kind of owning this show, the Billboard Music Awards. One star, very well-known star, though, also making headlines because he was censored. Take a guess who that was. We'll tell you ahead.

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