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President Obama Heartbroken By Foley Beheading; Obama Vows Justice For Those Who Harm Americans; Ferguson Grand Jury May Convene Today; Militarization May Make Things Worse; Ferguson Grand Jury; Mideast Ceasefire Shatters; Rockets Fired at Israel; Interview with Yuval Steinitz

Aired August 20, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: And that's what the U.S. intelligence community is already doing. They're looking at the video. They're looking for clues about who this was, trying to identify who the person was, who the people were behind it all. Trying to figure out a way to get at ISIS inside Syria. We have seen, in the past, counterterrorism missions often can take years. It can be years until they get the perpetrators. The president doing what is necessary to see justice done. Not putting any time line on a U.S. effort.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And no doubt, intelligence agencies in Western Europe, as well as the United States, trying to analyze the voice of the killer in the video to see if, perhaps, it matches any other voices they have on record.

I want to go to our terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank. Paul, there are a huge -- and we were talking about this with Nick Paton Walsh a short time ago, there are large numbers of western Europeans, French, British, Belgiums, and others, Germans, and even people from the United States. We know of one American from Florida who committed a suicide attack in Syria. How big is the threat, internationally, from ISIS?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: There's a very, very significant threat. Europe officials tell me that up to a thousand Europeans have joined ISIS. Hundreds have come back to Europe. The concern is these people could be trained by the group and sent back to Europe and even on to the United States to launch terrorist attacks. There's also concern -- the people who are back now in Europe who once fought with ISIS before could launch attacks on their own steam. And we saw, back in May, a French national carry out an attack on a Jewish museum in Brussels where he shot four people, Anderson. So, a concern that you could see more of this in the weeks ahead.

COOPER: Nick Paton Walsh standing by in Erbil. It does seem the United States have drawn the line, in terms of their involvement protecting Kurdish areas, protecting the Kurdish north which has been a good ally to the United States, which has been well run, which has been more stable and which has a fighting force which has been far more capable on the battlefield in Peshmerga than security forces, the Iraqi government in Baghdad.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) from this Kurdish area too. But, I mean, going down to the real nub of this. Has the United States decided ISIS is a threat too late in the day? I mean, if you look back six months ago just when they were getting underway, it was quite clear they would become an extraordinary radical threat. Their ideology was out there. These kind of brutal acts were already on video.

But it was quite clear that what has had no appetite to confront them inside Syria. They sweep into Iraq, certainly that changed things. And I think the recent moves against the Yazidis perhaps awakened Washington. And word is that they couldn't really sit by and do nothing at all. The case now it is how far can they actually go here without introducing ground troops in some way or another?

I should point out something interesting enough about the capacity for ISIS to attack Europe. We spoke to a man who was involved in running the Twitter account of ISIS that were used, in fact, initially, to seduce or entice potential foreign recruits from western countries. And part of that process was asking questions, et cetera. But he pointed out to us, interestingly, that once these foreign recruits arrive, their passports are taken from them and they were kept in a cabinet in a particular office in Iraq where in Syria the ISIS have their headquarters.

So, if you believe that, which we have no reason to doubt, there's a very clear strategy to regulate the ability of these foreign jihadists to go back to their homelands where they came from. And many who fear that, in fact, that's phase two of ISIS's plan. Yes, Syria and Iraq and creating what they refer to as their broader caliphate, all the way from Lebanon, I should point out, to Iran is where they really have an idea. Then, perhaps, after that, it's the west that's in their cross hairs -- Anderson.

COOPER: I want to play some of the sound of what President Obama said about James Foley, this young American journalist killed yesterday. Another American whose life is being threatened still, a journalist held by ISIS. But let's play what the president said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today, the entire world is appalled by the brutal murder of Jim Foley by the terrorist group ISIL. Jim was a journalist, a son, a brother and a friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And Paul Cruickshank, terrorism analyst, the way these groups operate, oftentimes, a journalist can be kidnapped by one group, even kind of a criminal gang, and traded or sold to another group like ISIS.

CRUICKSHANK: That's right. But I think the indications are, in this case, that they were kidnapped by one group and that this particular group is the same group now responsible for this dreadful execution, Anderson. Something that ISIS has put together I think no accident that they used a British fighter in this, somebody who spoke English. This really amplifies the message. And there's also a kind of implicit threat that this is a guy who would have a western passport and could travel back to the west and launch some sort of retaliatory strike there.

COOPER: Do we know, Paul, much about the funding of ISIS? I mean, there had been reports before about them raiding banks in Mosul. Some of those reports were later contradicted. But they have had access to oil fields in Syria. They obviously are well funded. They have a big technological effort. They, obviously, have been able to take a large armymans' (ph) high-caliber weapons, armored vehicles from Iraqi forces. But in terms of the funding, there was also a report in "The New York Times" about governments, largely in Western Europe, paying kidnapping ransoms. Not necessarily to ISIS but to Al Qaeda-based groups over the last several years. And that's become a major source of income for some of these groups.

CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right, that Al Qaeda and its affiliates have raised over $100 million, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, from kidnappings. European governments often paying ransoms. And this has given Al Qaeda and its affiliate's significant resources. ISIS a rich organization that has 10s of millions of dollars. It raises most of the money itself.

And that's a lot of the concern when you think about the 911 operation. It just cost half a million dollars to put together. This is a very cash-rich terrorist organization. They operate training camps across Syria. There's real concern if they wish to, that they could retaliate in the west with terrorist attacks.

COOPER: Michelle Kosinski, if ISIS believed that killing James Foley would somehow alter U.S. policy, the president certainly made clear, no change in the U.S. posture, right now, toward them. If anything, a strengthening of the U.S. posture towards them.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and that's what analysts have been saying as well, that that's really -- the U.S.'s one choice here, given what we saw on that video. And that sends a message to the world as well of the brutality of this organization. And I think we saw the president use remarkably strong words. Laying out, you know, kind of based on what we've done, what we will continue to do, saying we will be vigilant and we will be relentless. We must extract this cancer so that it will not spread and that we will continue to confront this hateful terror, he said, and replace it with hope. So, obviously, the U.S. involvement and the way that we have been involved will continue.

I thought it was interesting, too, to say, you know, this the U.S.'s stance and that's going to continue as strong, if not stronger, than it has been over the last week or so. But he didn't mention the journalist who remains in captivity by name. Of course, the U.S. doesn't want to do any kind of, you know, direct speaking to this organization through an announcement in the media. If there is any influencing to be done, at this point, that would have to be behind the scenes.

I think the statement was exactly what we expected. You know, those words of condolence to James Foley's family, talking about him as a person and also talking, in no uncertain terms, about the brutality of ISIS -- Anderson.

COOPER: Michelle Kosinski. We're going to have a lot more on the killing of James Foley as well as the situation here in Ferguson. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Hey, I'm Anderson Cooper. I want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and watching around the world on CNN International. I'm reporting live from Ferguson, Missouri. For weeks now, protesters here have been demanding justice. Today, the judicial process takes a significant step forward. A grand jury will begin hearing evidence in the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

As the local grand jury convenes, the nation's top lawyer has arrived in Ferguson. Attorney General Eric Holder is here to get an update on the federal investigation into the shooting. Critics of the county prosecutor handling the case are circulating a petition calling for him to be replaced. They say Robert McCullough has sided with law enforcement in criminal cases and has deep ties to police. Meanwhile, the streets of Ferguson were calmer overnight, crowds were much smaller, protests mostly peaceful until someone threw a water bottle at police. Authorities ended up arresting some 47 people in the confrontation that followed.

Now, even before he arrived here in Ferguson, Attorney General Eric Holder had a message for the people here. He wrote an op-ed in the "St. Louis Post Dispatch" today about the investigation into Michael Brown's death and the protests in Ferguson. And he writes, in part, at the core of these demonstrations is a demand for answers about the circumstances of this young man's death. A broader concern about the state of our criminal justice system. The people of Ferguson can have confidence that the Justice Department intends to learn, in a fair and thorough manner, exactly what happened.

Justice Reporter Evan Perez joins us. Evan, it's interesting, though, this grand jury process, this is going to take a long time, as will the federal government.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Right, and you should expect that the local investigation, the state investigation here by the county prosecutor is probably going to have to wrap up before the feds even take a move on what to do on the civil rights case. That's typically how it works. And that's probably something that he's -- that the attorney general is saying at this hour. He's meeting with community leaders here in Ferguson or just outside of Ferguson. And he's meeting with the Brown family, the parents of Michael Brown. And that's one of the points he's going to make is that this is going to take a long time. People need to have patience and, you know, justice will be done.

COOPER: And, obviously, patience is in short supply, --

PEREZ: Yes. COOPER: -- given what has gone on here. There has been a federal -- a federal government autopsy of Michael Brown. That also will not -- that information is likely not going to be released until the results of the investigation are released.

PEREZ: Right, that's typically how it's done. And, you know, one of the concerns that the attorney general and the Justice Department's had with this case is that some of this information is being leaked out while this case is still being investigated. That's one of the frustrations he has with how the local handling of this -- of this case has been so far. And so, one of the things he's trying to do here is to give people some reassurance that the federal investigation is going to be handled properly. And no matter what happens with the local investigation, they -- the federal government is going to -- is going to come back, behind the scenes, and make sure this is done right.

COOPER: Do we know much about -- I mean, has the federal government been concerned about some of the police tactics they've seen here?

PEREZ: Yes.

COOPER: Because I understood, they may even be sending somebody in to try to kind of give some advice on crowds.

PEREZ: Right. That is actually one of the big problems here is they feel that, you know, the militarization, the big armored trucks and so on that you see on the scene is really not the way to calm things down. And that is a big concern for the attorney general. It's separate from the -- from the way the actual investigation, the county investigation is going on. They have no -- they have nothing to indicate that that's not going to be done properly. But they do have a problem with some of the heavy handed tactics, the bringing out of the heavy gear when people are simply just throwing bottles and so on. You know, it's something that he's going to probably mention to some of the officials that he's going to be meeting with (ph).

COOPER: Right, pointing rifles at unarmed protesters -

PEREZ: Right. Exactly.

COOPER: Is not (INAUDIBLE) necessarily helps the crowd calm down.

PEREZ: Right. Exactly.

COOPER: In terms of the federal investigation, there are said to be dozens of FBI agents. I've heard as many as 40 FBI agents on the ground conducting interviews.

PEREZ: Right. They have. And they've been going house to house, door knocking, trying to get interviews. According to officials that I've talked to, they've gotten some interviews with witnesses that haven't even been talked to by the detectives from the county.

Now, obviously, the county has its hands full. They've been doing some of the police work to try to secure the streets here, so they also have some other issues at ahead.

COOPER: Right.

PEREZ: But one -- that's one of the things that the attorney general is going to be talking about is that, look, you know, we're already making some progress here, that will get us to a place where the family can feel good about what's happening.

COOPER: Evan, appreciate you being here as well. Thank you very much.

Obviously there is a lot -- there have been a lot of developments over the last 24 hours. The attorney general says he hopes an independent investigation will bring some measure of calm to the tensions in Ferguson. The question is, will his visit help and is there something more going on behind the violence and the protests.

I want to bring in CNN "Crossfire" host Van Jones.

You were with me last night out nearby where Michael Brown was shot. Generally peaceful, though it ended up a water bottle was thrown late in the hour, the crowd sort of changed, it became a younger crowd, slightly more aggressive. More than 40 arrests were made.

But you talked last night about kind of the street drama of it all, but behind the scenes there's actually a lot going on by community activists.

VAN JONES, HOST, CNN'S "CROSSFIRE": Absolutely. You know, I think we should give a shout out to some of the young people, the organizers, who weren't out there throwing bottles, who, in fact, were two blocks away to a meeting. They were strategizing. They were trying to figure out how to get Eric Holder to understand their concerns. You have organization that their names never get heard like the Organization for Black Struggle, like Color of Change, like Million Hoodies Movement. Young leaders like Pastor Michael McBride (ph).

COOPER: And some of these are groups which came up in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing.

JONES: Absolutely. So you have a whole generation now from Trayvon to this of -- they're in their 20s and they're realizing, you know, America's not working the way that it should for African-Americans and they're going to have to get more involved. This is a transformational moment. It's not just the clergy and it's not just the police. The real drama here is a young generation saw one of their own shot down and they're trying to figure out a way forward.

And many of them are moving forward peacefully, strategically. They want Obama to come. They have very smart ideas about how police cameras could be used on police cars. They also don't want to see the continued militarization of police. They also want money for education and jobs. These are young people with an agenda. They've not been the ones getting most of the attention. But the vast majority are not the few out here you see on TV, they're the ones that are meeting and strategizing behind the scenes. COOPER: So what you're saying really is that a lot of their goals go

beyond the -- what they would call justice in the case of Michael Brown.

JONES: Absolutely. You know, the sharp point of pain is that the officer should be arrested and should face a jury of his peers. No other American can shoot an unarmed person six times, including once in the head, and not at least face a jury of the peers. But that really is, Anderson, just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the concern. You do have a generation that feels, look, it's been a very bad summer. You've had four African-American men, unarmed, killed by police. You had many, many more killed by other African-American kids. You've had a lot of funerals this summer and suddenly you see a young generation stepping forward saying, you know what, we've got to get involved. Yes, we're going to march, but we're also going to come up with demands.

The Organization for Black Struggle now has demands posted. They want to influence Holder. They want to bring Obama in. And they want to set a new agenda for opportunity. This is not just about marching, about what happened yesterday, it's about fighting for our future.

COOPER: Do the -- does the continuation of marches, does that help or does it take away from -- and I talked to Ben Crump, attorney for the Brown family, you know, and there's some concern by the family that some of the -- I guess more the violence that we have seen has taken away from attention on what happened to Michael Brown.

JONES: Right. Now that is always a danger. At what point do mobilizing people in the streets does that bring more public attention and more sympathy? At what point does it begin to drive people away? I think you saw last night a turning point. First of all, again, let's make sure to applaud those young people who met all night, who were out here physically keep things safe. It wasn't -- the police --

COOPER: And the community leaders and religious leaders -

JONES: Absolutely.

COOPER: Who were standing between police and the protesters.

JONES: And some of the more rowdy.

COOPER: And who the police finally, it seems, are starting to work with.

JONES: Yes.

COOPER: And that's what we saw last night.

JONES: Look, I've been to a lot of protests in my life as a participant and as a, now more recently as a journalist. I have never seen the kind of provocative tactics from the police. But you finally have the right combination. The police were finally no longer leveling guns at people. You know that's provocative, when you're leveling guns at people. Somebody could sneeze or stumble, you got another strategy. That stopped on the police's side. But what stepped up was the preachers, definitely the clergy, but also the organizational skill and talent of these young people.

COOPER: Van Jones, appreciate it. Thanks for being here. We'll talk to Van throughout the day.

Still to come, an American beheaded by ISIS. We've been talking about him, James Foley. We'll look back on the life of James Foley. We want you to know about who he was, the life he led. We'll talk to a friend who travelled with him in Syria.

Also next, shattered truce in Gaza. What broke the latest cease-fire and the efforts to stop the violence? We'll go live to the region next as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: I want to turn to the deepening crisis in Gaza. Rockets are flying once again. Airstrikes have resumed and talks aimed at stopping the violence have fallen apart. I want to take you live now to Fred Pleitgen on the ground in Gaza City.

Fred, Hamas' military wing just issued a warning to airlines flying into Tel Aviv. What do you know about that and what have you been seeing in Gaza over the last 24 hours?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, hi, Anderson. They issued that warning, I would say, about a half an hour ago. There was a big statement by the Qassam brigade, the military wing of Hamas, and they warned any international airlines of flying into Ben Gurion Airport, which is, of course, the international airport here in Tel Aviv, start 6:00 a.m. local time tomorrow, they say an international airline both taking off and landing at Ben Gurion Airport could be subject to rocket fire. Of course we know that when the hostilities were going on the last time, a couple of weeks ago, there were a lot of international airlines that refused to fly in to Ben Gurion for a while. So it seems as though the Qassam brigades are trying to target that again. They also warned against public gatherings in Israel.

All of this, of course, Anderson, comes as the violence here is escalating again. What we saw today was hundreds of rockets that were launched towards Israel. The Israeli military says that 175 rockets at least were launched towards its territory. Some of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system. Others, however, appear to have fallen in towns like Eshcal (ph). There were some that apparently reached as far as Tel Aviv.

On the flip side of that, we also saw a lot of air strikes today. Some very, very big air strikes as well. And there was one that was particularly noteworthy because Hamas says that Israel tried to liquidate of head of the Qassam brigades, of its military wing, Mohammed Diab (ph). And they say one of the reasons why they're escalating their rocket fire is because of that assassination attempt, Anderson.

So, right now, it doesn't look as though a cease-fire or any sort of longer term truce is something that is in the cards. What we're seeing here right now is a lot of military activity, Anderson.

COOPER: Fred, let's be very clear, though, on that threat against Ben Gurion Airport. They don't really have the capabilities to aim and target airliners or to target the airport particularly effectively. They basically kind of point it in the direction of the airport.

PLEITGEN: Yes.

COOPER: We know there was some rockets that landed about a mile or so from the airport previously, which did stop some international flights for a while, for about a 24-hour period. But they're not really capable despite that threat of carrying out attacks on airlines at this point?

PLEITGEN: Well, and they're certainly not capable of carrying out targeted attacks at airliners but they do have rockets that have the capability to at least fly far enough to reach Ben Gurion Airport. And you're absolutely right, last time that the violence was kicking off, they did have some rocket parts that landed, at least in the vicinity a couple of hundred yards away from Ben Gurion Airport. So they do have the range to do this. What they don't, of course, have is the accuracy. The rockets that they use, they can fly very far, as we've noted some of them flying to Tel Aviv. Some of them flying all the way to the vicinity of Jerusalem. But they're not very accurate. And certainly when they fly that far, they don't have much of a payload either.

Nevertheless, this is a threat that's out there and it's certainly one that the Israeli military will take very, very seriously. And as we've seen here, the Israeli military really seems to be involved in the campaign right now to try and take out a lot of these rocket launching capabilities. A lot of the airstrikes that we've seen have been in sort of open field areas, which are areas in the past have been known to house rocket-launching facilities that Hamas and other extremist groups have been using. So the Israelis certainly seem to be taking the threats against them very, very seriously. They have planes in the air all the time. They have drones in the air all the time and they are trying to suppress fire that's coming from Gaza.

Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Fred, be careful there in Gaza City. Thank you.

Back to square one, it seems, in the efforts to achieve any kind of permanent ceasefire. Joining us now from Jerusalem is Yuval Steinitz. He's Israel's intelligence minister and a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr. Steinitz, I appreciate you being with us.

I want to ask you first about the statement today from the military wing of Hamas threatening the international airport, the international airlines, not to take off or land from Tel Aviv. Clearly they want to see a repeat of what they saw several weeks ago where international carriers decided to stop flying into Ben Gurion for 24-hours or so. YUVAL STEINITZ: Yes, I don't think that this is going to happen. Actually we have very good defense missile or rocket defense. The Iron Dome missile defense. And so far, at least in the country center, it's got almost 100 percent success. The only rockets that did land, you mentioned one rocket that did land on the ground in the past, not far away from the Ben Gurion Airport, was the ones that the system, the Iron Dome system, decided deliberately not to intercept because it was clear that it's going to land in the open field. So I assume that -

COOPER: I want to ask -

STEINITZ: Don't have the capacity really to attack the Ben Gurion Airport.

COOPER: I want to ask you about an Israeli strike that Hamas says targeted the head of its military wing. Was that, in fact, the target? Can you comment on that? A Gaza official say they killed the military head's wife and baby, but that the deputy head of Hamas' Politburo, was not killed.

STEINITZ: Look, I don't want to make any specific comment, but I can say generally that of course we are trying to intercept all terrorists and especially chief terrorists like Mohammed Deif. You know, Mohammed Deif, in the past -- 10 yearsago, he was involved in sending several -- many actually, plenty (ph) suicide bombers into Israel, killing hundreds of Israeli civilians. Then he was pushed to Gaza. From Gaza it's more difficult to send bombers into our streets, into our bazaars, into our restaurants. So instead of sending suicide bombers, now he and his people are trying to launch rockets, to attack us with rockets. But it's the same Mohammed Deif who in the past used suicide bombing tactic and now shifted his tactic to launch rockets. Of course we have the right, and actually the duty to intercept people like Muhammad Deif and similar terrorist leaders.

COOPER: Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has said Israel was not negotiating in good faith. They continued to demand the demilitarization of Gaza, were not addressing Palestinian desires to have more open borders, to have more control over their borders and their waterways.

STEINITZ: This is maybe the most fantastic, ridiculous claim I ever heard. Saeb Erekat is part of the Palestinian Authority. We got written commitment, signed on the White House lawn by Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen that Gaza and the West Bank will remain demilitarized forever, come what may. This commitment was signed by Abu Mazen, the Palestinian president on the White House lawn 20 years ago, that if Israel will withdraw from Gaza, Gaza will remain demilitarized forever, come what may. So to tell us now that it's dishonest to demand demilitarization of Gaza once more, this is ridiculous.

You know what, really, this is the core of the problem. Why we don't have to fight around Ramallah, only because the demilitarization of Ramallah, the West Bank, was not violated. Nobody has smuggled thousands of Iranian rockets into Ramallah. Nobody has launched thousands of rockets from Ramallah into Tel Aviv or Beer Sheva or (inaudible). So the only difference, the only reasons why we have to fight around Gaza, with a lot of suffering, both from Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza, is Hamas and the Palestinians has violated the demilitarization of Gaza, smuggled thousands of rockets into the demilitarized zone and launched thousands of those rockets into Israel, almost 4,000, only in the last few week. No Democratic government can accept such rocket attacks or suicide bombing attacks or internal incursions into its territory. Of course, we have to defend our people and to strike back, exactly like the United States when they're under attack from similar terrorist organizations, like al Qaeda and ISIS and Boko Haram, you name it.

COOPER: Palestinian groups will counter by saying, the occupation of Gaza -- though you have left the Gaza Strip, they believe it still continues because you control the borders, you control the access by water.

I appreciate you being on today. Thank you.

Up next, more on the execution of James Foley by the terror group ISIS and the brutal tactics of ISIS ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)