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U.S. Military Lab Ships Live Anthrax Samples; FBI Asks Local Police for Help Fighting ISIS; More Rain Targeting Flood-Ravaged Texas; Clinton, Fiorina Stump in South Carolina; Iran Talks Resume in Vienna. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 28, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: ... samples. The question now: how could this have happened?

[07:00:04] COL. RONALD FIZER, U.S. ARMY DUGWAY PROVING GROUND: It's a great question. And that's exactly why we brought in the Centers for Disease Control. And their investigators.

STARR: The Centers for Disease Control now investigating as officials reveal samples were shipped under less rigorous conditions since it was believed the bacteria was dead. NBC News reporting Fed Ex transported the samples. Fed Ex tells CNN they're working with officials to gather information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No known risk to the general public, and there's no suspected or confirmed cases of anthrax infection.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: The army thought when it shipped these samples it had rendered them essentially dead. They treated them the way they say they always do. Thought they were dead; they were not. Something went wrong there. And all of this comes less than a year after the Centers for Disease Control had a similar problem. It shipped anthrax under a program to several locations. It thought it was dead anthrax. It was not. It was live -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thank you very much, Barbara. Another story for you this morning. The FBI's having so much trouble keeping track of all the ISIS sympathizers in the U.S. that they're now asking other law enforcement agencies for help. This comes after the feds lost track of a suspect who went onto attack a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas. We have CNN's justice reporter Evan Perez ferreting out the details.

What do we know, my friend?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, the FBI says that there are hundreds of suspects ISIS supporters in America. And it says it can't keep an eye on all of them.

Now police departments, including here in New York, are stepping in to increase their surveillance of people who are potential ISIS terrorists. Law enforcement officials tell me the FBI surveillance squads are

tapped out. Not enough of them to track people who are using social media and talking to ISIS members overseas. The fear is those people could plot an attack here. Now, we asked FBI director Jim Comey about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: It is an incredibly difficult task that we are enlisting all of our state and local and federal partners in. And we're working on it every single day. But I can't stand here with any high confidence when I confront a world that's increasingly dark to me and tell you that I've got it all covered.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: Now, this change in strategy is part of the fallout from the foiled terrorist attack a few weeks ago in Garland, Texas. Two gunmen inspired by ISIS tried to attack a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest. Now, they were killed by police, but law enforcement officials say one of the gunmen, Elton Simpson, was under FBI surveillance. But it wasn't 24/7. FBI agents lost track of him for a few days. The FBI had no idea that he was on his way to Texas to carry out his attack.

Now, I just heard from the LAPD. And they're also doing the same increase in surveillance -- Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Evan, thanks so much for that breaking news and developing story.

We want to bring in now our CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official, Philip Mudd, to talk more about this. Hi, Phil.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: This is a troubling story. Because you know, in the general public we tend to think of the FBI as this sort of big omnipresent operation that has eyeballs on everything at all times. So to hear them say, you know what? We actually can't get the job done. It's unsettling. What's the problem?

MUDD: Look, let's do two points in time. Let's do 2005 and 2015. If you're sitting at the FBI in 2005, as I was, think of the al Qaeda threat at that point, not ISIS but al Qaeda, as a few sort of dots of ink on the map.

We're watching al Qaeda central in places like Pakistan, a small secret organization that might be trying to insert people from overseas into a few American cities. You can cover that. The word we use in the bureau is coverage. You can cover that if you're a federal security service like the FBI.

And then you're going to walk into the local police department in a place like Los Angeles or New York and say we've got a threat here. We might need a little help, but we think we can handle it. Isolated, directed from overseas.

Fast forward to 2015 and think of those spots of ink now as a spread of ink across the United States with different characteristics. The threat isn't coming from overseas. You can't collect on an organization overseas and determine who they're sending in to America. The threat is coming from kids, hundreds maybe thousands in American cities who are self-recruiting.

So you have two problems. How do you collect against that number of kids? And how do you collect when the threat isn't a point target for collection overseas; it's a bunch of kids just self-recruiting in American cities? It's the spread of a stain across the carpet. So you've got to go into police departments and say, "We need your help not only to identify where these kids are recruiting, but to cover the target, because we can't surveil all these people," as Evan Perez said.

CAMEROTA: And so, Phil, is all this a result of what happened in Garland, Texas, where basically the FBI, this guy, one of the suspects, was on their radar. They knew that he had this potential. But they lost track of him. And then we saw him attempt to open fire at the Garland, Texas, contest. So is that why they're sending up this flag now to local P.D.?

[07:05:08] MUDD: That's the trigger, I think, that led people to say how do we look at this problem more broadly and bring in police departments? But the broader issue, Alisyn, is the revolution in the way terrorists think.

Back when we were following al Qaeda after 9/11, al Qaeda would never have considered sort of crowdsourcing, which is what ISIS does. Al Qaeda would have said we've got to keep every recruitment secret. We can't afford to lose a recruit going into the United States, because there are so few of them.

ISIS flipped this entirely on its head. They said, "We're going to be out entirely in the open. We're going to be out on Twitter. We're going to be out on Facebook. If we have 2,000 people who self- recruit, and 98 percent of them either get disinterested or picked up by the feds, that means 2 percent are successful." That's a huge success rate for ISIS. So this is more a fundamental change in the way terrorist groups think about presenting their image to potential recruits in the United States.

CAMEROTA: So interesting timing today, right? Because just as the FBI makes this announcement, these key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire on Monday, including the bulk phone data collection. Are you one of these people who believes that that bulk collection of phone records really did stop terror attacks?

MUDD: Sure. This is misunderstood. People look at that bulk collection of data and do studies that say it did not -- it did not identify terrorists in a lot of cases. I would completely agree with that.

But let me give you this scenario. Somebody walks in the room. The FBI morning briefings are typically 7, 7:15, 7:30. Somebody walks in the room and says, "We just identified a new subject in New York City. That subject is talking to an ISIS recruiter in Syria."

The first question you're going to have is who is this person, who does he talk to, what has he bought off the Internet, for example beauty supplies that he might use to build a bomb? The way you identify those kind of connections immediately, going back to what that person was doing last month, six months ago.

In 2015 you don't put people on the street. You get all that data from phone companies, e-mail providers and say, hey, within 24 hours I have a pretty good understanding of what the spider web is around that spider.

If you tell me tomorrow that we don't have that data going back a year, going back six months, going back a month, you tell me how, when somebody walks in the room and says, "We have a new subject in New York City," how are you going to build a spider web of understanding around that person in 24 hours? It's not going to happen.

CAMEROTA: So, Phil, now that the FBI has admitted that they actually don't have the manpower to surveil everybody, how many people do you think we're talking about that requires surveillance here in the U.S. and our local PDs like the NYPD and LAPD up to it?

MUDD: There are very few police departments that can handle this threat. Not because they don't have tremendous capability, but because I think people misunderstand the resources you need to follow somebody around.

Remember, when you talk about surveillance, there are layers of surveillance. For example, I can check up periodically to see what you're doing on the Internet. That's a lot different than saying, "I want to be outside your house."

That's three rolling teams. You want to rotate them every, let's say, eight hours. They've got to move off after a couple days, because you're going to say, "Why do I keep seeing that guy on the corner?" So you've got to move out from different cities to rotate your teams in. That is a heck of a lot of people. You'd be surprised at how few surveillance targets, true surveillance targets you can have at any one time.

So the police department needs to help with that. The police departments, when you're talking about hundreds of targets across America.

But even with the police department help, you cannot surveil in classic sense -- that is people on the street watching somebody -- hundreds of people at a time. I don't care how many people you have. You can't do it.

CAMEROTA: All right. Phillip Mudd, thanks so much.

MUDD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Great to talk to you. Let's get over to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Now to the high-stakes battle against ISIS in Iraq. Iraqi forces are locked in a furious battle to retake Ramadi. But they're also squaring off over a key oil refinery.

CNN's senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh was granted rare access to the front lines in Baiji and joins us live from Baghdad -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, a troubling and very complex fight certainly in Baiji, the oil refinery. The up point is that they need that area cleared if they're going to move towards Mosul. And it's part of the strategy to attack Anbar and get ISIS out of that where Ramadi is located.

They need to secure the route that runs from that oil refinery down to Anbar. But the downside is that they can't use heavy weapons or just take the fight to ISIS in there because that nihilistic group could well just torch the place and leave an ecological disaster behind.

We saw some degree the black smoke on the horizon just a little bit of that place being on fire at the moment. And there are now Iraqi special forces there. They say they have the numbers. They say they have the ammunition. They wanted to show us their will to fight, to take the fight to ISIS. A lot of rounds during the period of time that we were there, but we also saw this is still an active area.

[07:10:04] We heard reports of Iraqi police being killed simply taking the wrong road, heading towards ISIS front lines. And I saw myself a body pulled out of the back of an ambulance there. It's deeply complicated, but it's also vital, and it perhaps reflects the issues faced around Ramadi, too. Complex territory to retake and also many different sides on the government of Iraq side, trying to take that fight to -- up by Baiji, too, there were Shia fighters alongside Iraqi forces. It's going to take time. It's going to be complex -- Chris

CUOMO: You've been making that clear for a while, Nick. Now you're seeing it firsthand. Again, this will not be quick and easy. We'll check back with you. Please, stay safe.

Back here at home dozens have lost their lives and more are in jeopardy, because more rain is in the forecast for parts of Texas. Nine people are still missing in areas that are just under water and almost impossible to access. With the rivers still rising, officials are urging everyone who lives anywhere near those areas to evacuate.

We have CNN meteorologist Jennifer Gray in Wimberley, Texas. There's just been no relief for the people there. It's not coming any time soon. So what is it like on the ground?

JENNIFER GRAY, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, you know, folks are really taking it seriously. When you have those flood warnings, you've got to seek higher ground. We talked to people yesterday who, you know, during the flood they evacuated. And so everyone was OK. But unfortunately, nine people still missing in this area.

There's the Blanco River. Just a couple of days ago, it was completely over these trees. It's hard to believe now that they were completely underwater. Now the water has gone down considerably, but still very fast-moving. And it's going to be hard for those searchers to get out with the current still very, very strong. You know, but stories are still coming out of what happened over the weekend. And it was very scary.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, no!

GRAY (voice-over): New dramatic video revealing the power of the deadly flash floods in Texas. The water from the Blanco River, swelled by the storms on Saturday, fills the entire ground floor of this vacation home in seconds. Authorities recovering the body of a child near its banks Wednesday as the death toll rises across Texas and Oklahoma.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's very thick and wooded in some parts, making the search much more difficult.

GRAY: Just south of Houston, the body of 73-year-old Alice Tovar was found by her brother-in-law after she was separated from her car, swept away by the ravaging flood waters.

RICKY AGUILAR, SHERIFF: I'm glad we found her. Didn't have to leave her out there. It's a relief.

GRAY: This as the frantic search for the missing continues. But the severe weather danger isn't over. A tornado hit an oil rig in northwestern Texas Wednesday, resulting in several serious injuries.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take the heed and the warning. Get out now.

GRAY: Residents just south of Houston now leaving on a voluntary evacuation as flash flood watches continue to span central and northern Texas up through Kansas until Sunday.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRAY: The rivers are filled to capacity. The soil is already saturated. Rain is not what residents want to hear, unfortunately, Chris, we are expecting more rain throughout the rest of the week and the weekend. This area about an inch or less, but areas to the north could see amounts even higher, Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right. I will take it here. Thanks so much, Jennifer.

And of course, stay here with CNN. We'll get you through all of that you need to know there for Texas and Oklahoma and beyond. The IRS believes a cyber-data breach that exposed the records of

more than 100,000 taxpayers originated in Russia. Officials say organized crime syndicates were able to access personal data and claim $50 million in fraudulent refunds.

In a 2014 report, an independent watchdog called cyber-security the agency's No. 1 problem. The IRS commissioner will testify at a Senate hearing next week.

CAMEROTA: Well, Hillary Clinton looking to pick up momentum in an early primary state with a visit to South Carolina. There was a GOP candidate, Carly Fiorina. She was there also, trying to steal some of the spotlight. How'd that go?

CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny is here with more. Tell us about what we saw yesterday in South Carolina.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning.

The Republican field is so crowded. The best way to break out of the pack is to try and distinguish yourself from Hillary Clinton. So that's exactly what Carly Fiorina was trying to do. I'm not sure she stole the show, but she perhaps borrowed a bit of the spotlight.

But Hillary Clinton did not pay much attention to Carly Fiorina. She was there for the first time since 2008 after that punishing defeat against Barack Obama. She wanted to reintroduce herself to South Carolina voters. And we heard a line we haven't heard from her before. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All our presidents come into office looking so vigorous.

By the time they leave, they're as white as the building they live in. Now, let me tell you, I'm aware I may not be the youngest candidate in this race. But I have one big advantage: I've been coloring my hair for years. No! You're not going to see me turn white in the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:15:20] ZELENY: If you think you heard a bit of a southern accent, you're right. Sometimes Secretary Clinton as other politicians in the south sometimes lapse into that, but she was making a point that she is going to bring up her age and her gender and her experience. She'll be 69 if she wins the White House. And she says that is an asset, guys.

CAMEROTA: Interesting.

CUOMO: And true.

ZELENY: No gray hair in the White House. CUOMO: It's true about the white hair. She will not have that

in all likelihood.

CAMEROTA: Right. But the southern accent is also an interesting twist to this. All right, Jeff. Thanks so much.

Well, nuclear negotiators from Iran and six world powers are back at the table in Vienna. The deadline for a deal is just more than a month away. So with all that's going on in -- with Iran in the world, is this deal still a good one? We'll talk about it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: June 30, that is the deadline for a deal with Iran. It and six other countries all agreed on a framework deal back in April, you'll remember. So what will it take to bring it all the way home, and is this a good thing?

Joining us now, Aaron David Miller. He's a former Middle East negotiator and vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center. Always a pleasure.

[07:20:00] So we just heard in the latest an Iranian official says, "I caution my friends at the table against making excess demands. I caution them not to ask for renegotiation."

And you have the ayatollah saying, "I will not allow any outsiders to look in our military installations." These are all bad signs, are they not?

AARON DAVID MILLER, VICE PRESIDENT, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER: Yes, they are. But standard operating procedure in a negotiation I suspect. I mean, I've been around Arab-Israeli negotiations for a long time. And there's an ebb and flow here. And a rhythm. My own assessment is this thing's coming. Good, bad, somewhere in between, there's going to be a deal. Whether by June 30 or several weeks after.

CUOMO: Why? Why does there have to be a deal? I don't like what you're doing with the Houthis in Yemen. I don't like what you're doing with the journalist, Rezaian. I don't like what you're doing in Iraq. I don't like that you have your military guys making fun of my president, you know, and saying that he hasn't done a damn thing to stop ISIS. Why would I give you a deal?

MILLER: Well, it doesn't have -- there doesn't have to be a deal. I'm only arguing there will be.

CUOMO: Why?

MILLER: Because you have a willful determined American president who's persuaded himself that the alternatives to no deal either is the end of the sanctions regime, if we're blamed for sabotaging it, or war. Now, whether that's an accurate assessment or not, that is the administration's assessment.

CUOMO: But what do you think? Is that really the way it shapes up? If you don't do a deal with Iran, what happens?

MILLER: I think there are bound to be more confrontation. I think Iranians will try to accelerate their program. Whether they'll try to break out and weaponize. Probably not.

But it's more than that, Chris. We're into legacy time. The administration has 20 months left. This president confronts a disorderly, to say the least, East -- Middle East. And I think he argues, although I don't think he's naive entirely, I think he argues that Iran offers a measure of order.

Look, you sign a deal. The prospects of war with the Israelis are gone. We don't have to use our military option to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. The Iranians will probably be quiet for a while.

CUOMO: Israel says don't do the deal. If we're doing the Israelis, to mollify that, that didn't work.

MILLER: And the Israelis have a compelling case to make. Because in the end, deal or no -- let's assume there is a deal. The reality is a decade from now, that's a long time, and there are no guarantees what's going to happen.

But a decade from now, I suspect you're going to be left with an Iran whose power in the region has increased, an Iran that's richer because of sanctions relief, and Iran that's now open for business. Iran that's left with a residual nuclear infrastructure. And an Iran that still will maintain a discretion to weaponize, should they choose to do so.

CUOMO: That's all with a deal.

MILLER: That's all with a deal. So no, there are no good deals here. There are no deals that will eliminate risks. There are no deals that will eliminate the prospects that Iran at some point could choose to weaponize. And that's the concern among those who are not wild-eyed critics, but those who argue that Iran is a rising power in a Middle East that is melting down and that ultimately, down the road, what we're doing is kicking the can down the road.

Ultimately, we're going to confront an Iran that's more dangerous, bigger, stronger with more influence in Iraq, presumably in Syria, maybe in Yemen. That's the argument against.

And to that the administration says, well, fine. That's one outcome. But consider the alternative. Maybe -- and that's the problem here, Chris. A lot of maybes. Maybe the Iranians now with an incentive to become part of the international community, maybe the Iranian public will grow used to sanctions relief. They'll put more pressure on the mullahcracy.

But I don't buy that because authoritarian powers -- former Soviet Union, China -- they don't give up their authoritarian control, even though they may open up economically. Iran is less a country and more a cause. And it is still an ideological, repressive state. Look at Jason Rezaian, the three other Americans who are there.

The Iranians may execute more people every year than the Chinese. All of these things are true. And it makes this deal one that's highly fraught.

CUOMO: It does seem to the outside viewer that the only thing you have on them is the sanctions. That squeezing them -- I know the other side will say they've done all this with the sanctions. So that's even more reasons. John McCain and others will say that's even more reason to turn the screws tighter on sanctions. And that, absent that, they do whatever they want, and it's almost always against U.S. interests.

If you abandon those sanctions, are you worried about what happens?

MILLER: Yes. Because I think you are going to find an Iran that has more money, even if it puts a fair percentage of that into economic reconstruction and doing things that actually benefit the quality of life for the Iranian public. They're still going to finance their adventures abroad in Yemen, Iraq and in Syria.

There's a reality, again: we have a rising Iran, an Iran that fashions itself a great power, It is, relatively speaking, along with Turkey and Israel. The three most important powers in this region today are the three non-Arabs: Israel, Turkey and Iran.

[07:25:01] CUOMO: It is all too common that the problems are obvious; the solutions are very mysterious. And we don't seem to have the best one here yet. But we do have you, Aaron David Miller, and I wouldn't trade you for anyone on the hour (ph).

MILLER: Chris, too kind. Appreciate it.

CUOMO: Mick, over to you.

PEREIRA: Love our conversations with him.

All right, Chris, thanks.

George Pataki is the next presidential candidate to declare in a crowded field of Republicans. We're going to take a look at a surprising new Quinnipiac poll handicapping the GOP race, "Inside Politics."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: All right. Time for "Inside Politics," with John King. Boy, that GOP field is getting awfully crowded, my friend.

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT/ANCHOR: It's getting crowded, Michaela. And there's -- you can say there are five leaders or you can say there are no leaders. So let's take a closer look. Back to you in a few minutes. Let's go "Inside Politics." With me this morning to share their reporting and their insights, Julie Pace of the Associated Press; Ron Fournier of "National Journal." Let's put up the top ten in the Republican field. Brand-new

Quinnipiac poll out this morning. Look at the top ten: Bush, Carson, Huckabee, Rubio, Walker at 10 percent each across the board. Then you've got Governor -- I'm sorry, Senator Paul, Senator Cruz, Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina. Drop to the bottom six, if you want. You've got Governor Kasich, Senator Graham, Governor Jindal, Governor Perry and Governor Pataki and Senator Santorum at the moment.