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Anti-Terror Arrests Made Across Italy; Drone Strike Kills U.S. Hostage; Family Paid Money To Captors; U.S. Needs A Hostage Czar; The Drone Debate; Statue Of Liberty Being Evacuated; Obama Facing Renewed Criticism Over Drone Policy; Europe's Migrant Problem. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 24, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, 7:00 p.m. in Vatican City, 10:00 p.m. in Islamabad. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

We start with anti-terror arrests across Italy as police grab suspects who may have once planned a terror attack on the Vatican. Members of the group also have ties to Al Qaeda and specifically with Osama Bin Laden.

Our Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson is joining us live from London. Nic, where are these suspects originally from? What do authorities think they were planning?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Originally from Pakistan located in a number of areas of Italy, the center of Italy, north of Italy, the Italian island of Sardinia. All parts of this massive Italian operation to arrest these 18 men.

What Pakistani police and the prosecutor are saying is that these men were financing and, if you will, planning terror attacks in Pakistan. That they were using Italy as a base not just to -- not just to create those plans but were then going to Pakistan to follow through with those attack plans. One of the attacks, a very bloody attack on a market in Hazara (ph), in the border city of Pakistan, October 2009. More than 100 people killed.

But what really has Italian authorities concerned about this group was that, at one stage, 2010, early 2010, they believed that the group was planning an attack in Italy. And they believed that one of the possible targets, one of the possible targets, could have been the Vatican. And in the weeks and months immediately prior to that potential attack, this group brought in somebody, who can perhaps be best described as a suicide bomber, into Italy. And the prosecutor says that the plan was to detonate explosives in a very crowded place, create a very large number of casualties. The Italians say that they were monitoring this group since 2005, even had wire taps on them until 2012.

What we don't know, at the moment, however, is why the Italian authorities decided to go after them and round them up right now -- Wolf. BLITZER: Nic Robertson, that's a great question. If they've been

watching this group for so long, why now? What took so long? And, presumably, we'll get more information on that. Nic Robertson joining us.

We're also learning new details about failed efforts to free the American hostage mistakenly killed by a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan. A Pakistani source telling CNN that Warren Weinstein's family paid money to his captors. The source says after the money was paid, the captors began demanding that prisoners be released in exchange for Weinstein.

A source involved in the negotiations says the last proof of life the family received was back in June of 2014. It was a phone call directly from Weinstein to his wife, Elaine. And Weinstein's death raising serious questions about how the United States responds when Americans are kidnapped and held hostage.

Let's bring in our panel. Our Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto is with us, our National Security Analyst Peter Bergen and our Global Affairs Analyst, the "Daily Beast" contributor, Kimberly Dozier. Guys, thanks very much for joining us. What's the latest you're learning from your sources, Jim?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, on this ransom demand, it appears that the family may very well have been a victim of a scam here. For one, questions about whether the inter- locater was in touch with the actual group that was holding Warren Weinstein. Two, they took the money, this group took the money, the family gave it to them and then the group asked for more money and then they wanted a hostage exchange.

And, finally, it appears they were saying to the family, up until this past month, that Warren Weinstein was still alive when we know now that he was killed in this air strike which they would have known -- either they knew because they were in touch with the kidnappers or they weren't in touch with the kidnappers at all. Either way, they appeared to be lying to the family which show why the FBI, the administration, and others are up comfortable with and the risks associated with families trying to do this on their own.

BLITZER: Yes, it makes sense. As you know, Peter, Warren Weinstein's family called the government, the U.S. government's response inconsistent and disappointing and the Congressman, John Delaney, who represents his district, the suburban Washington in Maryland, he says what they need now is a hostage czar to deal with this. Listen to what Delaney said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JOHN DELANEY (D), MARYLAND: We don't have someone who wakes up every morning and can cut across all bureaucracy and can grab any resource at any agency and bring it to bear to help find these hostages.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: What do you think? Could that have made a difference?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I could not agree more with the Congressman. I mean, the problem right now is you've got a lot of different free letter (ph) agencies, some that -- you know, who have different roles. The CIA is interested in counter terrorism and drone strikes. The FBI is trying to get hostages back. And sometimes these conflict, as we saw in the Weinstein case. If somebody was in charge, they might have said to the CIA, we've got to be very careful when we take drone strikes in this area of North Waziristan where we almost certainly know Warren Weinstein is being held by Al Qaeda.

[13:05:04] That -- and so, right now, we don't have that person. He or she should be appointed by the president and be able to, basically, have the authority to make all the agencies play together in one direction.

BLITZER: Kimberly, you've covered this for a long time. Isn't the State Department, though, supposed to be the lead agency dealing with families of Americans being held hostage overseas?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, yes, but the FBI is also involved because when you have American citizens overseas, it's their job to track them down. I've spoken to U.S. officials who say this has been a very frustrating process for them because the White House has been involved with the families, sometimes overstepping the FBI. There's been real confusion.

Meanwhile, you have the CIA trying to run a counterterrorism operation inside Pakistan. And with every strike, just when then then Private Bowe Bergdahl was being held somewhere in Pakistan, with every strike, they had to consider, might they be in this location? There were strikes they called off, in the past, because they thought a hostage might be there.

BLITZER: And they, supposedly, Jim, were watching this location for months and months and months before they gave the order to go ahead and launch that drone and hit that target.

SCIUTTO: Hundreds of hours of surveillance. I've spoken to U.S. officials who explain why this is possible. The hostages would have been very high value, in monetary terms and in terms of leverage. And in those circumstances, they keep them very well hidden. It's very possible they never not just left the compound but never went outside.

I spoke with David Rode yesterday and I asked him when he was held along that boarder area, was he not taken outside? And he said, yes. And he said that his captors were convinced that the U.S. had technology from its satellites that if you looked up at the sky, facial recognition technology could pick you out. I mean, they have the outside sense of U.S. technology -- and the fact is, yes, we do have drones and you have satellites, et cetera. So, they might very well have kept him inside so the U.S. might very well have not known that the hostages were in there.

BLITZER: Because some people have suggested, Peter, maybe you know, Jim or Kimberly, that they would only let him out in the middle of the night when it was dark outside. It would be more difficult for a satellite or for a plane or a drone to spot them. But they would keep them inside during daylight hours.

DOZIER: What we know, from what Bowe Bergdahl told his debriefers afterwards, he was often held in basements for weeks at a time. So, perhaps, the same thing was done with Weinstein.

BLITZER: Then they never let him out, even at night, is that what you think?

BERGEN: Well, and also, this area of North Waziristan is almost, like, 75 percent of the drone strikes that have happened. And there have been hundreds that have happened in this area. So, this is an area where people are very concerned about, what the -- surveillance capabilities of the United States.

BLITZER: Do you think this is a major setback, though, in the war against terrorism? Because now, they are going to be more reluctant to launch these hellfire missiles from the drones?

SCIUTTO: It raises hard questions because in this one case, you have so many of those existing questions. One question is about the intelligence. There was an intelligence failure here not just kill the hostages but you killed two Americans that you didn't know were present. You have questions here about the Americans, right, because that's a whole legal process. Can the president order something like that? And then, it raises an issue, too, about how good our intelligence is on the ground in these places which is not just going to be on this border. Think Yemen, where we've pulled out resources, think Syria.

DOZIER: Now, it also raises, to that point, questions about the U.S. footprint inside Afghanistan. The footprint, at the border, has shrunk and, therefore, the Afghan intelligence operatives we were working with that went into Pakistan and collected fantastic intelligence, a lot of them have also shrunk their presence, gone back to Kabul. That is an intelligence black eye for us.

BLITZER: When you say footprint, meaning fewer U.S. troops.

DOZIER: Fewer U.S. troops on the border now with Pakistan inside Afghanistan. Most have gone back to bases. The Afghans who were co- located with them have also mostly left those areas. So, we have fewer intelligence resources, in terms of human intelligence, people who can blend in and see who's in the compound.

BLITZER: All Right, guys, don't go too far away. Stand by.

Up next, the hostage deaths have renewed criticism of the White House drone policy. We'll take a closer look at the role of drones in the fight against terror and whether they can be replaced.

Then, later, protests over the death of a man while in police custody. The mayor of Baltimore has promised an outside investigation. We expect to hear from her live this hour. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:12:26] BLITZER: We're just getting word into CNN that the Statue of Liberty is now being evacuated. Let's bring in CNN's Deborah Feyerick who is joining us from New York. What do we know, Deb?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, so far what we know, Wolf, is that around lunch time, a member of the park police with the canine dog was going through an area where there are lockers and the dog seemed to react to one of those lockers. And so, now, we have confirmed that the NYPD bomb squad is there just trying to determine what's inside that locker. We don't know what yet. We do know that the island has been evacuated. There are ferries that took people away from the Statue of Liberty. They are, sort of, in the area. They are -- they are just near the island, but nobody is on that island as they try to determine exactly what this suspicious package is -- Wolf.

BLITZER: So, we don't know, for sure yet, but we'll keep monitoring what's going on. We'll see what this package contains. Thanks very much, Deborah Feyerick, for that.

The Obama administration has come under renewed criticism for the use of drones in the wake of the deaths of the American hostage, Warren Weinstein, and the Italian hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto. The U.S. drone program is focused on four main countries. We're talking about Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia . But, so far, the most strikes have come in Pakistan. Estimates are that around 400 have been carried out and in Yemen, before the U.S. was forced out the Civil War, drones were certainly the main force against AQAP or Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

But the loud argument against drones now growing as a result of the number of civilian casualties. Let's talk about the future of the drone program. Joining us, Bob Baer, he's our CNN Intelligence and Security Analyst, a former CIA operative, joining us from Irvine, California. And in New York, retired Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, our CNN Global Affairs Analyst, former Delta Force commander.

Colonel Reese, how critical are these drones to the anti-terror effort?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RETIRED), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Wolf, good afternoon. They're very critical and the United States and the -- and the people of the United States have two choices. We can use unmanned drones that, what I would call, are semi-surgical. They are missiles. It's not a bomb so you get massive collateral damage. It's a missile and you get some collateral damage. The other option is you put boots on the ground. And when you put boots on the ground, it doesn't matter how good your plan is, there's always a chance of losing American soldiers in a fire fight during an operation in far- away lands. And so, the American people got to make up their mind.

[13:15:00] And so, the drone program is a great program to do this type of thing, and I think it's something we have to continue to work. And it's unfortunate when these things happen. We work through our systems, but this is a critical operation for our counterterrorism program.

BLITZER: As you know, Bob, the Pakistani government, they've been, at least publicly, very critical of the drone strikes in their area, mostly around the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. What's going to be the impact of this latest revelation that we got yesterday?

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Well, Wolf, these drone programs are very unpopular among Pakistanis. But on the other hand, the Pakistani military has been very supportive in secret. In fact, they pick the first drone strike, the first target, and they've continued to add names to this. They don't want to talk about it. We don't want to talk about it.

The fact is, as Colonel Reese said, there's a part of Pakistan that nobody can go into, including the Pakistani army. They stick to the main roads. And when they go off, they take enormous casualties. And we are not going to be sending U.S. troops into the tribal areas of Pakistani. That leaves us with drones. They've never been all that accurate. It's a 50/50 proposition.

The first drone strike was against someone we thought was bin Laden in February 2002. It turned out to be two guys collecting scrap metal. It just - it comes with the turf. And I just don't see us, as large parts of the world fall off the political map, the map we know, we haves to use drones, whether it's in Mali - Mali or Somalia, it just doesn't matter, or Yemen. We're not going to get rid of them and this is a horrible setback but it's predictable.

BLITZER: You think it's going to have a major impact, the revelation now, we just learned about it yesterday, Colonel Reese, that an American and an Italian hostage were inadvertently accidentally killed in the drone strikes?

REESE: No, Wolf, I don't. It's unfortunate and I guarantee you every operator, whether they're a predator operator, whether they're the folks - the intelligence folks who are working this, whether it's the, you know, the operation folks sitting in the jock (ph) somewhere making a decision and turning to that commander and saying, sir, we have actionable intel, everyone feels horrible when this happens. But, unfortunately, we're in a critical place. This is war. Whenever you want to call it, it's a bad place to be. And sometimes these things happen. It's part of the collateral damage. And my heart goes out to the Weinstein family and the Italian family, but it's what happens sometimes. But we have to keep these operations going to make sure that we continue to suppress and destroy al Qaeda worldwide.

BLITZER: Because these families are obviously very frustrated, they're very angry. They don't believes the U.S. government necessarily has been doing everything possible to save their loved ones. And, Colonel Reese, and I want Bob to weigh in on this as well, John Delaney, the congressman from Maryland, who says you need a hostage czar in effect, someone who is in charge, who can deal on a day-to-day basis with these families, not all these various representatives from different branches, different parts of the U.S. government. Colonel Reese, first to you, do you agree? REESE: No, I don't, Wolf. I think that's the last thing we need is

another level of bureaucracy on top of it. Let me lay it out for you. You've got several intelligence agencies that know all about these hostages. Both the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the FBI. They are working it, I mean nonstop, 24/7. They want to bring it back.

Then, you have the operational arm, which is called the Joint Special Operation Command. That is their charter is to go in and conduct, if need, a hostage rescue to go in. And all of these elements are working altogether. Then you have the State Department, you have the ambassador for counterterrorism. He has his own hostage working cell inside there and their job is to try to coordinate and make sure we're tracking all of the Americans that are out there around the world that are held in as hostage situation and they work this thing.

If we put another piece of bureaucracy on it, it slows it down. What we really need to have is a policy, what we're going to do, what are the different elements and ways to go after these people and bring these Americans back, and that the last force is, the force that goes in to try to conduct a hostage rescue. That's where I stand.

BLITZER: All right. What do you - where do you stand, Bob?

BAER: I agree. I mean the coordination is already good. I worked with Delta for a couple years. We had a Delta intelligence officer inside our station in Beirut. There was always good sharing of information, including with State Department. We don't need more bureaucracy. We need better intelligence and we need a more coherent policy that's clear because it doesn't seem to be working.

BLITZER: Bob Baer, James Reese, guys, thanks very much.

[13:19:43] Still to come, a very disturbing story we've been watching. Tens of thousands of people are risking everything to flee terrible conditions in Libya, nearby countries as well, but many of them never find the better life they are seeking. Stand by.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:23:25] BLITZER: Iranian ships that had been headed towards Yemen are now heading back towards their home ports. Among them were Iranian warships. You'll remember that the United States sent in additional warships of its own to the Yemeni coast out of fear that Iran was trying to resupply Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen. The aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt was among the U.S. reinforcements, but now the ship, the Iranian ship, is back in the Persian Gulf.

The man believed to be the captain of an overloaded fishing boat that capsized off Libya, killing as many as 900 migrants, was in court today. The man denied he was the captain of the boat which was carrying hundreds of African and Bangladesh migrants locked in the lower decks when it sank Saturday night.

We want to warn you, we're about to show you some very graphic video which some of you may find disturbing. Saturday's deaths are just a symptom of a much larger problem as thousands and thousands of migrants have been fleeing across the sea from Libya to Italy to try to find a better life in Europe. As CNN's Nick Paton Walsh shows us, for many, though, the trip is a dead end.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NICK PATRON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Europe's migrant problem seems small from the Libyan coast. These rare Libyan navy pictures showing the volume of those they save or stop and even how this man was pulled to safety directly above his sunken boat. Yet there are also those beyond rescue. Seventy killed in this one episode. The bodies often without names or pasts. Adding to a toll that's hard to count properly. Many fleeing wars that refuse to stop.

[13:25:05] WALSH (on camera): When asked how to solve this almost unsolvable problem, many European politicians have suggested destroying the boats that smugglers use. But in a coastal country where so many lives dependent upon the sea, where, frankly, would you start?

WALSH (voice-over): Outside Tripoli, 350 migrants are held here for what must seem like forever. A third here (INAUDIBLE) all, officials say, detained, trying to cross to Europe. They deny that and just want to go home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) prison to prison. Prison to prison. Now - now what I need, I want - if they want to deport people, let them, deport people. If they're not to deport people, let them live (ph).

WALSH (on camera): Does your family know where you are?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no, they don't know my condition now.

WALSH: No. What do they think has happened to you, do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They think I'm dead. I'm die. Maybe they think (INAUDIBLE). I don't know that.

WALSH (voice-over): Among them, so many pregnant women, we're told, because women choose to cross like that hoping their child is born in Europe. This Somali woman's journey to Libya took seven months. Her baby, Sabrine (ph), born just a week after she was arrested trying to cross. She told us, when she got on the boat, she knew she was in trouble, but had no choice but to go on.

The prison head admitted there is no system in place to send these people home or jail them or let them go. Life for them so hellish they were willing to risk it to flee, if instead see it pass them by here, caught between countries who don't want them.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Tripoli.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: A very disturbing report. Nick, thanks very much for that report though. Still ahead, a new book is raising some serious questions and many

want answers from Hillary Clinton. The scrutiny surrounding donations to the Clinton Foundation. Could it hurt her presidential campaign? Stand by. We'll discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)