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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Hillary Clinton Distancing Herself From President Obama?; Aid Drops in Iraq; Unarmed Teen Killed; Alleged ISIS Sympathizer Arrested at JFK; Hillary Clinton Slams Obama Foreign Policy

Aired August 11, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Ride along with CNN this hour on a dangerous mission to save the lives of innocents trapped on top of a mountain by terrorists below.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead. They are the most intense images so far captured from this humanitarian crisis in Iraq. And you will only see them on CNN. Our own Ivan Watson straps in with the Iraqi air force flying over ISIS front lines in a desperate bid to save some of the thousands trapped on Mount Sinjar.

The politics lead, Hillary Clinton seemingly breaking publicly, very publicly, from her former boss on key issues of foreign policy. The potential 2016 candidate putting some amount of daylight between her and the president during his difficult second term. The big question, of course, will it work?

And the national lead, protests, looting, violence after police gunned down a black 18-year-old just outside Saint Louis. What led an officer to kill this unarmed young man? Well, now the feds want to know, too.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we will begin with our world lead. In a moment, we will put right in the middle of the dire situation atop Iraq's Mount Sinjar, as CNN joins a daring chopper mission to aid the tens of thousands of Yazidis, innocents, trapped there by ISIS terrorists bent on slaughtering team.

The Iraqi air force teamed with Kurdish fighters to launch missions like these. And now we're learning from U.S. officials that the Obama administration has shipped weapons directly to those Kurdish forces. The Kurds are on the front lines and they managed to retake the town shown here in red from ISIS jihadists.

Some might say since the Iraqi army imploded and since President Obama has said the U.S. will not send ground troops and since few other countries other than the U.S. seem willing to assist, even neighboring Arab countries, these Kurdish fighters may be the last best hope of stopping ISIS.

U.S. air strikes, of course, are also aiding the Kurds by taking out ISIS targets, but the Pentagon warned today those strikes have not broken the momentum of the terrorist group.

Meanwhile, to the south, in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is getting forced out after eight years in office. Iraq's president nominated someone new to take his job. The U.S. supports that move. But Maliki, well, he is putting up something of a fuss, raising the specter of a coup if he wants to remain in power. Maliki's government has so far been powerless to stop ISIS.

Joining me now with more on these dramatic developments is CNN military analyst Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.

Mark, good to see you.

We have this heart-wrenching rescue video captured by our own Ivan Watson from Mount Sinjar. Can you give us a sense how difficult this mission was from a tactical standpoint for Iraqi forces?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, first of all, Jake, I'm offering to buy both Ivan and his cameraman a beer when they get back, because this was a great mission on their part.

Very heroic for them to go out and watch the combined Iraqi air force with the Peshmerga fighters drop this. It's a tough mission. It's about a 60-mile flight over enemy territory, if you will. It's a small helicopter. They know they're going to be met with a lot of the people wanting to get on that helicopter when they get there. They had to fight some of them off. But they were able to extricate some of them.

It shows a couple of good things, first of all, that the Iraqi air force and the Peshmerga fighters are willing to go on offensive again. I think they have been given that courage by the fact they know they're getting some air support from the United States and they may be getting some resupply of weapons.

TAPPER: There is obviously political turmoil right now surrounding the nomination of a new Iraqi prime minister. Are you worried not only that Maliki might tried to stage a coup, but that ISIS could take advantage of whatever happens, whatever tensions there are surrounding this new nomination?

HERTLING: Yes, I'm not worried, Jake. I think it's a very good thing for the Iraqi people.

I believe that this could give them a nationalistic surge again to have -- a new Kurdish president nominating a new Shia prime minister with a new Sunni vice president and deputy prime minister. This gets back to the place we were a few years ago, when Iraq was pulling together and the people of Iraq saw a government that was looking forward their security.

You combine that with the fact that they're under a crisis. They have to do some things and they have to do it quickly. I think this will all push the Iraqi government to get into the game a little bit more, and I think the president's approach of holding back quite a bit until he saw this kind of governmental approach is a very good strategy to take.

TAPPER: General, stay with us, if you would.

I want to go to Ivan Watson. He's on the ground right now in Northern Iraq. General, we will come back to you.

Ivan, tell us what the latest is and tell us about this mission that you went through, which was just incredible.

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, what we found is that the Iraqi air force is flying helicopter flights daily to Mount Sinjar.

And this is in addition to the aid drops that the U.S. has done. And what we see is basically Iraqi air force and Peshmerga loading up kind of aging Russian-made helicopters with everything from water and food to baby diapers and baby's milk and even shoes, to give you a sense of what people need right now.

And then they make a dangerous trip from where I'm standing right here, about a four- to five-minute flight. And on their flight over the ISIS front lines that surrounded Mount Sinjar are machine gunners. They went to town. They were strafing the ground beneath us, strafing targets. They say that they are fired at every time they fly to and from Mount Sinjar, though we didn't see evidence of that.

But they certainly burned through a lot of ammunition. When they get to the mountain itself, that's where you start to see the people who have been trapped up there. Now, I would estimate that I saw hundreds. In some cases, they were clustered in a number of shacks and kind of half-built houses that seemed to have been protected by barbed wire.

In other cases, I saw them clustered under trees in the shade. And there were huge conglomerations of parked cars kind of at the base of the mountain which looked like they were the vehicles that people used when they fled their hometowns in Sinjar, when they fled the advance of ISIS militants.

Jake, the distribution of the aid was very chaotic. The Iraqi air force crew were quite literally hurling these boxes and bottles out of the door of the helicopter at heights up to 50 feet, to the extent that I was worried people were getting hurt below. But I did see people running at times with the food that they received.

They were waving. They were giving thumbs up. The evacuation of people was also very, very chaotic. It was basically first come, first served. And people swarmed the helicopter and were pulled on board. Not everybody made it. And the scenes, the looks on people's faces after we left, I would say, ran the gamut from shock and fear and exhaustion, eventually giving way to relief and even smiles. It was a very, very emotional couple of hours.

TAPPER: Ivan, it's incredible footage. And you're to be commended for your bravery in covering it. It really brings a human face to something that we haven't seen a human face of, although so many people around the world are moved by the plight the of the Yazidis and the other innocents being threatened by ISIS.

Tell us, what is going to happen to these people that we see in the helicopter and what is going to happen to the people who were left behind?

WATSON: That's a good question.

And what was striking is we were probably only in the air and kind of touching down for 10, 15 minutes in all over Mount Sinjar. And at some points, when we came down and the air crew tried to summon people, call them over to the helicopter to take them away, some people said no.

So, maybe there is some kind of a system there to let some of the more vulnerable get on the helicopter. The Kurds have succeeded in evacuating over a land route at least 6,000 families, a top Kurdish commander here tells me. But that is also a difficult journey. They have to walk on foot some 10 miles from the mountain to this nearby Syrian border and sometimes they come under ISIS artillery fire.

So that is dangerous and I would argue impossible for some of the elderly and the children that I saw clamber aboard this helicopter. So the big question, what about those people left behind? What's going to happen to them? They're getting some food. They're getting some water. But it is an untenable situation. And incredible that in the 21st century, you would have a situation like this of these people under siege.

And I saw one man with a gun during our tours. Everybody else, they were civilians.

TAPPER: Ivan, it's incredible. And I know you have said that you have never seen anything like this in more than a decade of covering some of the most horrific things that have happened on the face of the earth in the last decade. Thank you so much. General Mark Hertling, I want to go back to you because you have

conducted missions like this. We only have a little time left. What's the biggest challenge for a rescue-type mission where you're dropping food and trying to get as many civilians as you can on the chopper? It must, first of all, be heartbreaking that you have to leave people behind.

HERTLING: It is, Jake.

And I have been in that situation before with actually an Iraqi air force pilot. I think what Ivan has said about being so chaotic is critically important, but at least they're doing something. And this is the critical piece. They are doing something.

And I would suggest probably that joint operation center in Irbil is helping with this. There was probably some overhead fighters watching this closely. But the fact that it was an Iraqi aircraft with Peshmerga crew gives hope to the people that the government is doing something about this.

TAPPER: And still so few people were able to be rescued and relative to the number of people who need help.

Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, thank you.

And of course our thanks once again to Ivan Watson and his amazing crew for braving horrific conditions to bring those images to us.

Coming up on THE LEAD: an American arrested at New York's JFK Airport after his online activity in the support of ISIS caught the attention of authorities. Did he pose a direct threat to U.S. citizens?

Plus, protesters demand answers after an unarmed 18-year-old is killed by police in broad daylight in Missouri -- why witnesses say what they saw does not stack up to what the police department says is the official version of events.

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JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to THE LEAD.

Continuing with our world lead, the threat of ISIS, their crimes are nothing short of monstrous. I'm speaking, of course, of ISIS, the violent jihadists known for executing even children and slaughtering anyone standing in the way of their goal of building an Islamic caliphate, out of the huge chunks of Syria and Iraq that they now control. The fear in the faces of these civilians finally rescued by Iraqi air force helicopters after running for their lives from this growing militant threat gives you a sense of the true evil this al Qaeda offshoot represents.

There's been a concern for months among national security officials and experts that someone from ISIS, someone with a western passport could come to the U.S. and stage a terrorist attack, a horrific one.

Now, CNN's Pamela Brown reports, police have arrested a man at JFK Airport for allegedly aligning himself with these barbaric militants.

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BROWN (voice-over): U.S. authorities arrested an American at JFK Airport returning from Lebanon who they say is a sympathizer to ISIS, the jihadist group terrorizing Iraq and Syria.

The North Carolina resident, Donald Ray Morgan, was taken into custody on an outstanding warrant related to weapons trafficking. But Morgan caught the attention of U.S. counterterrorism officials after he posted several tweets showing support and fascination with ISIS. He is currently being held without bail after his initial court appearance in New York. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The question on the table was when the government

could schedule a dangerous hearing on its application that the defendant be detained as a danger to the community.

BROWN: Sources say there is no evidence at this point Morgan was actively plotting with the group but his case is just one example of how finely tuned U.S. officials are to any American potentially being influenced by ISIS, seen as one of the most well-organized and well- equipped jihadist groups in the world.

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: Every day that goes by, ISIS builds up its strength.

BROWN: U.S. officials say ISIS has been recruiting more than 7,000 fighters from all over the globe, touting it has fighters from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, other European nations and the Caucasus in its ranks.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: If you read what they are saying, we are the enemy. They want to destroy us.

BROWN: U.S. officials say more than 100 Americans have joined the fight in Iraq and Syria and the big concern is that they will be radicalized and sneak back into the U.S., with their clean passports. Just like this Florida man -- who came back to the U.S. from Syria undetected and returned to Syria, where he became a suicide bomber.

MCCAIN: This ISIS is metastasizing throughout the region and their goal as they have stated openly time after time is the destruction of the United States of America.

BROWN: So far, U.S. officials have arrested several Americans for their alleged association with ISIS, including 19-year-old Shannon Conley who was arrested in April for trying to board a plane en route to help the jihadist group fight in Syria.

Pamela Brown, CNN, Washington.

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TAPPER: Let's bring in Daniel Benjamin. He is the director at John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and was until 2012 ambassador at large and coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department, where he was a principal advisor to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Dan, good to see you as always.

What threat do you think ISIS poses to the United States?

DANIEL BENJAMIN, FORMER COORD. FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, STATE DEPARTMENT: An unproven threat. Certainly a long-term concern and given its international renown and the fact that it's drawing so heavily from Muslim communities around the world, it's something we certainly need to worry about. And with that very large safe haven that has opened up between Syria and Iraq really historic safe haven, it's a big concern.

But at the moment, there is no proven record of out of area activities, no demonstrated ability to carry out attacks. And if I had to say who the next attack was going to be carried out by, it wouldn't be ISIS.

TAPPER: Of course, there is, if it is providing a safe haven for terrorists which you would agree with I'm sure, then isn't there something of an existential threat in the same way that the Taliban was an existential threat preet-9/11? I don't want to make too big out of -- a thing out of it, if you think it's really not that big a threat. But I have been hearing concerns from national security folks for a long time in this year that the biggest fear is that one or more of these Syrian Islamist rebels with Western passports could very easily get into Europe or the homeland and stage an attack.

BENJAMIN: It is a big threat. It is a big concern. Existential means it's about the existence of our nation. And I think we shouldn't blow it up into that. 9/11 was a catastrophe but it wasn't existential.

I think that we have to recognize there is a new dimension to the terrorist threat. It is rooted in this very, very large area that incorporates large areas, large parts of Syria and Iraq. And because it has drawn so many foreign fighters, it will have -- ISIS will have a larger pool to draw on.

But right now, ISIS is very much an insurgency. It's about thousands of foot soldiers who have absolutely no experience conducting elaborate international conspiracies using secret communications, using transportation links, understanding how to use very sophisticated explosives, things like that.

It's something we need to watch. We need to I think inevitably we're going to take on ISIS in the theater, but I don't think that this means we should jump the gun on the president's strategy of forcing the Iraqis to get their act together and to do something themselves to take on ISIS. Remember, as long as Nouri al Maliki and his ilk are running Baghdad and we hope he's gone, then the radicalization will continue and the sectarianism will continue and we'll only be treating symptoms, not the disease.

TAPPER: President Obama told "The New York Times" that arming moderate Syrian rebels in Syria was a fantasy.

And in a new interview for "The Atlantic", Hillary Clinton says something quite the opposite. She says more should have been done in Syria. Quote, "The failure to help build a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against as Assad, there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle. The failure to do that left a big vacuum which the jihadists have now filled."

Dan, we obviously have no way of knowing for sure. But do you suspect that part of the world might be safer right now if President Obama had listened to Secretary Clinton?

BENJAMIN: Well, it's been well reported that there was a very, very deep debate, a very ardent debate in the administration with most of the cabinet actually disagreeing with the president on this and wanting to see the United States pick a horse in Syria and arm it and see how far it could go, and see if we could in fact get a kind of outcome with a moderate group that we wanted.

The secretary's been very clear about that. So has secretary Panetta. So has former deputy director of Central Intelligence, Petraeus.

The president didn't see any way that this was going to work. And that was a dispute between them. Personally, I thought we should have picked a horse and I'm not sure we are in a very good position now to run this run backward and to pick -- and to change the outcome of the course of events in Syria.

But this is just one of those unknowns that we're going to have to deal with for a long time. The track record of building up such actors is not great. So you know, it's an open question whether it would have succeeded or not.

Daniel Benjamin, director of the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

Coming up next, vindication for Hillary Clinton? Why pointing out President Obama's failure in Syria is pretty close to her publicly saying "I told you so". So, what would she have done different?

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