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Amanpour

State-Sponsored Computer Hacking Alleged; Journalists in Danger Around the World

Aired February 22, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Hello, everyone, I'm Christiane Amanpour, and welcome to the special weekend edition of the program, where we bring you two of the big stories we covered this week.

In a moment, journalists in the crosshairs, reporters becoming targets in their quest to tell us the world's most important stories. But up first, has computer warfare finally become a reality between the world's two most powerful nations? This week we learned that some of the Chinese hackers who've been targeting hundreds of American companies appear to be working for the People's Liberation Army.

And even more alarming, evidence that hackers may have key infrastructure in their crosshairs, things like oil pipelines, the power grid, air traffic control. China hotly denies the charges.

But the White House is raising the pressure and the specter of trade sanctions looms to protect trade secrets. Chinese military involvement would take that hacking threat to a whole new level. It's something U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned about in a speech last October.

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LEON PANETTA, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The collective result of these kinds of attacks could be a cyber Pearl Harbor, an attack that would cause physical destruction and the loss of life, an attack that would paralyze and shock the nation and create a new, profound sense of vulnerability.

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AMANPOUR: In other words, war. It's long been reported that the United States itself launched cyber-attacks, in particular, on Iran's nuclear program. But in a major report, "The New York Times" traced a group of Chinese cyber-warriors to the doorstep of this building, a 12- story office tower in Shanghai that's the headquarters of a special military cell called Unit 61398.

I spoke about this ominous new twist with David Sanger, who wrote the story for "The Times," and he joined me from Harvard.

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AMANPOUR: David Sanger, welcome to the program.

DAVID SANGER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Good to be back with you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: And an amazing story you've got on the front page of "The New York Times." I mean, in a nutshell, all of these suspicions that we've had about cyber-attacks and cyber-warfare, you know, stealing trade secrets and all the rest of it, now you're saying that a new group has traced it back, what, conclusively to the Chinese army?

SANGER: I would say that they have made a very strong circumstantial case that it is coming from a PLA unit called 61398 that's located in a 12- story building in Shanghai; my colleague, David Barboza, was -- wrote the story with me, along with Nicole Perlroth.

He went out to the building last week. It dominates a sort of rundown neighborhood in Shanghai; it's got thousands of people working in it.

The group that did the trace back of the attacks done by a group called Comment Crew, which is probably one of the largest of the Chinese hacking groups, they were able to take most of the digital forensics right back to the gates of this building. They couldn't take it inside for all kinds of reasons we described in the story.

But if it's not coming from this building, then you've got to believe it's coming from the noodle shops and restaurants that surround this building.

AMANPOUR: So, David, what exactly are they doing? What is the purpose, if it's true that it's the PLA, doing?

SANGER: Well, there are two elements of this. There's espionage, which is most of what the world has seen Chinese hacking groups do. And then there's infrastructure attacks to take over infrastructure.

Deal with the first. Many American corporations have seen their intellectual property stolen. That's pretty classic industrial espionage. But if it's being done with state sponsorship, then the question is, is China turning its covert and its military forces over to help state-run industries or even, perhaps, non-state-run Chinese industries?

The more worrisome kind of attacks are the infrastructure attacks; that's when you go in to learn the code work or the software to take over an oil pipeline or an electric plant or something like that. And on this, remember, Christiane, American hands are not clean. That is how the U.S. got into the Iranian nuclear program.

AMANPOUR: You just mentioned Stuxnet and the big story, of course, which you broke, and you've written a lot about it, is the cyber-warfare against the Iranian nuclear facilities.

The U.S. is doing this kind of stuff as well. So what kind of a relationship does the U.S. have with China when it comes to cyber-warfare?

SANGER: You may recall that, when I reported on Stuxnet and Olympic Games, which was the code word for the U.S. program, that President Obama said to some of his aides in the Situation Room several years ago that he was worried that, once the U.S. went down this road, other countries might use it as a pretense to launch their own attacks, presumably not within the -- with the discipline and the rules the U.S. has.

Well, I think that's probably pretty much exactly what's happened. Since Stuxnet got out, not because of any revelation of mine, but a operator error that resulted in the program getting free around the Web, the Iranians have started their own cyber-corps. And they're believed to have been responsible for the destruction of about 30,000 computers at Saudi Aramco last summer. (Inaudible) --

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AMANPOUR: That's the big Saudi Arabian oil company?

SANGER: That's right. It's the largest of the Saudi Arabian oil companies and they didn't actually get into the pipelines or refineries, but they did get into the computer systems and did considerable damage. That is an indication of where all of this may well be going.

AMANPOUR: So, David, now the U.S. has to figure out how to counter all of this, and we read in your article and elsewhere that they're trying to formulate responses, both offensive and defensive, as you say, both in cyberspace, but also diplomatically.

Apparently, they're going to say something to the Chinese, that they're not going to specifically mention this group and the PLA, because that might have broader implications for the general relationship.

How much of a conundrum is the U.S. in in just trying to confront this?

SANGER: This is diplomatically, I think, one of the most complicated problems out there, and I think you got a sense of that from the State of the Union address, which you quoted, because the president spent, what, two or three paragraphs on cyber.

And I think, Christiane, it struck me -- probably struck you as well - - he spent about a sentence each on the Iranian nuclear crisis, on Syria and on nuclear proliferation. So it tells you where his head is.

And it's been made pretty clear to me that the U.S. plans to go to the Chinese leadership and say, look, this used to be a sideshow. This used to be an annoyance. Now it's at such a level that it is beginning to threaten the underpinnings of the U.S.-Chinese relationship.

AMANPOUR: David Sanger, thank you very much indeed for joining me.

So what does the United States do about this? I want to now turn to former CIA official and chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Sweet. He is CEO and cofounder now of the Chertoff Group, a global security firm.

Mr. Sweet, welcome to the program.

CHAD SWEET, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: Thank you for having me.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you, then, you just heard David Sanger. What is being said in the corridors of national security in the United States today after this report?

SWEET: Well, I think you put your finger on it earlier. The key issue is the issue of a lack of a doctrine of attribution and retribution. And by that, I mean, if you look at what's going on, we're essentially facing a new Cold War, a cyber Cold War.

And in this war, it's a high-stakes game; whereas David said the United States is essentially being relieved of billions of dollars of intellectual property and also threatening our critical infrastructure.

And so make no mistake about it, in the corridors of power here in Washington, the question is, how do we move forward in a lack of leadership in the Congress on being able to set forth a doctrine of attribution and retribution?

AMANPOUR: So how does one? I guess my question is -- you mentioned the Cold War -- you know, nuclear Armageddon, but of course, no nuclear missiles were fired. Here, you've got cyber destruction possible. What is the destructive level and capacity of this cyber Cold War?

SWEET: The destructive capacity, Christiane, is equivalent to that of a nuclear warhead. If you think about it, the ability, in this case, to essentially extract a devastating attack on critical infrastructure, which could result in the loss of thousands of lives, is possible.

But what makes it more sinister than the nuclear age is that there's no easily identifiable plume -- if you launched an ICBM from Moscow, our NORAD NORTHCOM sensors could detect it within seconds. And then we could triangulate exactly the location of the launch. Therefore, a doctrine of attribution and retribution was possible.

And this new paradigm, it is extremely difficult to actually get attribution and it is even more difficult to identify how you will actually extract retribution. So the old mutually assured destruction doctrine, which you will recall, is quite difficult to implement in the modern age.

AMANPOUR: It is. And the imagery you've just posited is very dramatic. I mean, to equate it to a nuclear attack is dramatic. And I want to know, then, how? You're former CIA; you've been, you know, studying precisely responses to this kind of thing. How does the United States respond? And what leg does the United States have to stand on, if it's engaged in the same kind of operation?

SWEET: Well, first on the second part, the United States is not engaged in the kind of broad-based espionage that China is in this sense. And, again, I'm not speaking now officially in a capacity for the United States government.

But if you look at the breadth, the scale and the -- and the duration of these attacks, they're targeted towards critical infrastructure.

Again, the targeted effort, which I can either confirm or deny that the United States did against Iran, if it did do so, was targeted exactly for that purpose, which is to take out the centrifuges that were developing enriched uranium for a nuclear program, not for disabling critical infrastructure that thousands of civilian lives depend on. And so that's a very clear distinction.

The second point, though, to your broader question of how do we -- how do we actually put forward a doctrine in this environment, the key thing to note is that the private sector controls 85 percent of this critical infrastructure.

So it's not the government, really; it's at the end of the day, the private sector needs to be able to attack this problem. And the best way to attack a network that's attacking you is to have a network.

And so right now, there's been an executive order issued by this administration, that Congress has not done anything to move forward on cyber-legislation.

What the private sector needs now is for the government to set the ground rules to enable it to fight a network with a network and then get out of the way, let the private sector be able to address this threat in the best tools they have available to them.

AMANPOUR: Chad Sweet, thank you so much indeed for joining me.

SWEET: Thank you for having me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: While cyber-warfare may be upon us, journalists must still venture into the very real combat zones and, increasingly, are becoming targets. I'll talk to one brave photographer who was under attack and lived to tell about it, when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program. And now we turn to journalists in the crosshairs. For generations our colleagues have risked their lives and given their lives, covering wars and human disasters and uncovering important, ugly crimes and secrets.

Over the past several years, the targets of these stories have started to turn their guns on the truth-seekers. They really want to kill the messenger.

Exactly one year ago, veteran foreign correspondent Marie Colvin, a legend in our profession, was killed by a shelling attack in Syria. French photographer Remy Ochlik was killed alongside her.

Marie always sought the very human side of war. And the night before she died, she called into CNN with this horrifying story from Homs in Syria.

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MARIE COLVIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The baby's death was just heartbreaking, possibly because he was so quiet. One of the first shocks, of course, was the grandmother had been helping -- completely coincidentally -- helping in the emergency room, and just started shouting, "That's my grandson, where did you find him?"

And then the doctor said there's nothing we could do. And we just watched this little boy, you know, his little tummy heaving and heaving as he tried to breathe. It was horrific. Just -- I mean, my heart broke.

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AMANPOUR: Who can forget the picture that she painted with those words? And so many more people, children included, have been killed in Syria in the year since Marie died.

British photographer Paul Conroy, who survived that attack, says that he is sure all of them were specifically targeted for their stories. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that 70 journalists were killed in 2012, a 49 percent increase from the previous year; 232 are imprisoned around the world and 35 journalists are missing.

A new campaign called A Day without News is trying to raise awareness and bring penalties to those who target journalists. A leading voice for that campaign belongs to "The New York Times" photographer Lynsey Addario.

Covering the Libya revolution back in 2011, she was abducted with three colleagues and held for six terrifying days. She joined me from London just back from a risky recent assignment in Syria.

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AMANPOUR: Lynsey Addario, welcome to the program.

LYNSEY ADDARIO, PHOTOGRAPHER: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Lynsey, yet again these shocking statistics about how deadly this year has been for journalists and photographers such as yourself.

What do you think is happening in the field? Why is it getting so much worse for us?

ADDARIO: I think increasingly journalists are being targeted, especially on the frontline. I think with the Arab Spring, there are regimes in place who don't want our coverage to get out. And it's very clear that we are becoming a target in a way that we were not in the past.

AMANPOUR: You have just come back from Syria. Were you on the frontline or what was your aim this time?

ADDARIO: I was not on the frontline. After what happened in Libya in 2011, when I was kidnapped by Gadhafi's troops with three other colleagues for "The New York Times," I've sort of had a slow reentry back in.

And I wanted to -- I've been wanting to cover Syria but in a way that I felt comfortable doing it. And I felt like I didn't want to go directly back into combat. And that -- but I wanted to tell the story of how civilians were living on the frontline -- or being affected by the war more.

And so I went in and I went to Aleppo province and went to villages and really wanted to see how people were suffering shortages and what the situation is on the ground, really.

AMANPOUR: That then leads me to make this conclusion, that these direct attacks on us as a profession do have a chilling effect.

ADDARIO: Of course they do. There are fewer and fewer journalists going into Syria; if you look at Libya, there were dozens of journalists on the frontline, roaming all around eastern Libya, people who had never covered war before, people who had years and years of experience. That has changed exponentially, even in the last two years.

There are only a handful of journalists who are covering Syria because it has a lot to do with the killing of Marie Colvin and Remy Ochlik. It has a lot to do with Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington's deaths in April of 2011. It is being -- it is very clear that it is much more dangerous now to cover Syria than it has been to cover war in the past.

AMANPOUR: Well, you were kidnapped, along with your colleagues in Libya. I want to play part of an interview that you did on CNN with Anderson Cooper shortly after you were -- you were released.

So this is you and Anthony Shadid talking.

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ANTHONY SHADID, JOURNALIST: I remember one of the soldiers was yelling at me, "You're the translator. You're the spy."

And then soon after that, they forced us on our stomachs. And I think we all had that very sinking feeling that this was it. It's hard to describe, other than calling it resignation or emptiness that, you know, that the moment's drawing near. And you're kind of waiting for it.

ADDARIO: Well, there's nothing you can do. You can't -- you're literally captive and you know that any move you make, they can shoot you. So it's almost easier to just not move and say, OK, I might die right now. And you're resigned to the fact that this can be the end.

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AMANPOUR: What do you think when you hear what you said a couple of years ago?

ADDARIO: I think that that is the truth. I think that that when -- I've been kidnapped twice now, once outside of Fallujah in 2004 and once in Libya. And both times, you realize that you have absolutely no power, that you're -- the most -- your best use of power is to stay quiet and be as submissive as possible because people will do ultimately what they want to you. And so there's no point in fighting.

But I think what's very important in that -- in that clip that you just played is sort of what wasn't said. And there was a moment when they lied (sic) the four of us on our stomachs and it was Tyler Hicks, Steve Farrell, Anthony Shadid and I. And they lied (sic) on our stomachs and they were -- they had their rifles to us. And they were deciding whether or not to kill us.

And Anthony then translated for us later on, saying, "Shoot them."

"No, you can't shoot them because they're Americans."

Now I think part of this campaign has to do with we're trying to get out the fact that you can't shoot them because they're journalists. It should be that journalists are exempt from targeted killings, that we should be understood as being a neutral observer who is there to document both sides of the conflict.

AMANPOUR: So Anthony Shadid, of course, did die; he died of a massive asthma attack, which was probably brought on by the terrible stress of being inside Syria. And this was a year ago. And it's really heartbreaking, actually, to see -- to see that interview.

And also you mentioned Marie Colvin, who died a year ago as well. And her -- the survivors of that attack are Paul Conroy, for instance, strongly believes that Marie and Remy Ochlik were targeted; that building that they were in was specifically targeted, which goes to your point about targeting journalists.

ADDARIO: That's exactly why we're starting this campaign. "The Sunday Times" has already announced that they will not take work from Syria from freelancers. Now that is unprecedented, I think, in our profession, because traditionally freelancers have been the ones who go into the most dangerous places and then come out and sell their material. It's how I started; it's how many people started.

AMANPOUR: Well, indeed.

ADDARIO: Now if it's -- yes. And if a war is too dangerous that an organization doesn't even want to take responsibility for giving the impetus for freelancers to go out there, then that speaks volumes about where we're at in terms of respecting journalists and letting them do their jobs.

AMANPOUR: You just mentioned the campaign. This is obviously A Day without News. Sum up for us what precisely it means. What should somebody who's never heard of this understand from that phrase?

ADDARIO: A Day without News is literally -- the name was giving because you're supposed to imagine what would it be like if we actually didn't have any journalists in a situation, and there was literally a day without news. And it's a campaign to bring awareness to the fact that there is a rise in targeting of journalists.

And we want to make -- create a forum where every time a journalist is targeted, that information is brought forward and there -- it is -- and that there is a chance for the person who committed that crime to be persecuted. As of now, there are dozens -- I think 132 journalists were killed last year alone.

All of these journalists, no one is prosecuted. There is no -- no one pays the price of killing journalists. So it makes it very easy for journalists to get targeted.

AMANPOUR: You're right. I've been to Russia, many other places, where there's virtually no investigation, no prosecution and no accountability for those who kill journalists.

Are you looking for what, though? I mean, how do we make that happen? Who is going to police that cause?

ADDARIO: I think right now in this stage of the campaign we want to get the word out there. We want as many as people as possible to understand what's happening on the frontline, that more and more journalists are getting targeted and fewer journalists are able to cover major international stories like Syria.

And at that point, eventually it is a war crime already to kill a journalist, because we are counted as a civilian. Now that's a war crime. But have you ever heard of anyone ever, like, being accountable for killing a journalist? No. So we want to get to the point where people are actually held accountable for killing journalists.

AMANPOUR: Lynsey Addario, thanks very much, and we'll continue to watch the campaign, A Day without News.

ADDARIO: Thank you so much.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: A day without news is a phrase that's meant to grab our attention. But a world without journalists is a real and frightening possibility. When we come back, we'll pay homage to those who paid the ultimate price to seek out and tell the truth.

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AMANPOUR: And finally, we've just been talking about the high price of doing business in our profession. Now imagine a world without journalists. It's every dictator's dream, at the top of every tyrant's wish list. And as we've seen, in far too many parts of the globe, it is a terrifying reality.

The names of those journalists killed in 2012 and those still missing form a roll of honor. As you read them, imagine the stories they might have told.

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