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The Lead with Jake Tapper

ISIS Strategy; Mystery in North Korea; Alleged ISIS Wannabe Goes to Court; Stopping Ebola Before it Arrives

Aired October 09, 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 ANCHOR: ISIS on an ally's doorstep, and dropping bombs doesn't seem to be doing much of anything to stop them.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead, a key city burning. A total bloodbath at the hands of ISIS could be next. And coalition airstrikes are not turning the tide. What does that say about the U.S. strategy in Syria?

The national lead. Experimental drugs may have saved two American doctors, so why did Thomas Duncan not get an Ebola serum sooner? His family now demanding to know if he was given a fair shot at survival.

The buried lead. We haven't seen him for more than a month, not one basketball game, not a single propaganda photo of him looking at stuff. Could today be the day we finally find out what has happened to North Korea's dictator?

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

We're going to begin with some breaking news in our money lead. You hear the sound of the bell there. The markets just closed, and the Dow after its biggest trading day of the year, has now fallen off a financial cliff, plummeting more than more than 330 points.

Let's go to CNN business correspondent Cristina Alesci.

Cristina, it's been a topsy-turvy two days for markets, to say the least. What is behind today's massive slide?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's not one thing that you can point to, but volatility is definitely in the markets.

And when you start a cycle like this, it's very hard to stop. Jake, you have to keep in mind that out of this month alone, there have been five days that the Dow has moved over 200 points. You're talking about a very nervous market.

Now, just to take you through what has happened in the past two days alone, yesterday, we had the Federal Reserve come out and say, look, we still think the economy needs more help. So it seemed to indicate to investors that they are going to stick with this low- interest rate policy. That gave investors a lot of optimism. We saw a big rally. And now investors may be wanting to take

some money off the table, maybe hedge their positions and that's why you have seen a little bit of slide. You also have to keep in mind that the number of trades happening are very low. So when you don't have that much trading going on, the moves tend to be way more dramatic, Jake.

TAPPER: Cristina Alesci in New York, thank you. Appreciate it.

We turn now to the world lead and another sad and emotional plea from a mom asking the leader of ISIS to spare her son's life, Paula Kassig taking to Twitter to try to reach the terrorist mastermind behind ISIS's barbarism, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. ISIS has already beheaded four men and threatened to make Abdul-Rahman Kassig, an Army veteran turned humanitarian, its fifth victim.

Meanwhile, just miles away from the Turkish border, bombs and bullets are still tearing through the Syrian town of Kobani. U.S.-led coalition airstrikes eliminated another 23 jihadis from the battlefield, the Pentagon says, but the terrorist group now controls one-third of the Syrian city of Kobani, putting it at the doorstep of U.S. ally Turkey, Turkey, which has been noticeably absent from the intensifying fighting on the ground.

Turkey's top diplomat says its soldiers will not be setting foot in Syrian territory any time soon.

CNN correspondent Phil Black is watching it all unfold near the Syrian-Turkish border.

Phil, what is happening in Kobani right now? Is ISIS going to continue advancing and inevitably rout the city?

PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is looking that way, Jake, yes.

It appears to be a fact in waiting really. What We saw today was a B-1 bomber in the skies over Kobani again, big explosions on the outskirts of the city, but fewer of these airstrikes today than in recent days, we think. And the city itself, it is almost constant small-arms fire, close-quarters fighting, because that's where local Kurdish militia are desperately trying to hold off ISIS.

They have done OK over the last few days. They actually took some ground back last night, but had to give it up again today because they simply don't have the numbers, the firepower to hold the ground if they do take it back and they say that ISIS has received huge numbers of reinforcements over the last 24 hours, making their fight even tougher.

The facts on the ground, they all seem to suggest it's only a matter of time until Kobani falls, Jake.

TAPPER: Phil, are you seeing any stepped-up activity at the border? BLACK: From Turkey, we are. We are seeing a greater Turkish

military presence that's been stepping up for some weeks now. That's what we have seen both right at the border and some distance back.

A lot of Turkish armor, tanks in formation behind hills just out of the line of sight from the Syrian side, but they are ready to go. They are just not doing anything just yet. And, as we know, the Turkish government wants a ground operation. It just doesn't want to go it alone. And the international community isn't signing on.

What the Kurds in Kobani is for Turkey to open the border crossing to allow them to receive some new supplies, fighters, ammunition. They believe if that happens and the airstrikes continue, they can hold out a little longer -- Jake.

TAPPER: Phil black at the Turkey/Syrian border, thank you so much. appreciate it.

Let's get right to former NATO supreme allied commander, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and author of "The Accidental Admiral: A Sailor Takes Command at NATO," Admiral James Stavridis.

Sir, good to have you back. I enjoyed the book. Congratulations on that.

JAMES STAVRIDIS (RET.), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: You, as the former supreme allied commander of NATO, you have dealt with Turkey.

STAVRIDIS: Indeed.

TAPPER: Turkey says it's not realistic to dispatch ground troops to hold back gains made by the coalition airstrikes.

Turkey, as a member of NATO and as somebody that shares a border with Syria, seems I think surprisingly, in many Americans' view, surprisingly reluctant to get involved in this fight, despite the fact that it directly affects that country more than the U.S. What's the deal? Why don't they want to get involved?

STAVRIDIS: Jake, I'm surprised also.

And I think we're going to see General John Allen, who is the president's envoy, talking very seriously with our Turkish colleagues. The second place that I'm surprised we're not seeing traction is from NATO. This is a NATO border in every sense. So I think the Turks are conflicted, because what they really want is the downfall of the Assad regime, but I think it's donning on them that it's time to go.

TAPPER: Sure.

STAVRIDIS: I'm hopeful we will see more from Turkey in the days ahead.

TAPPER: I'm sure you know James Jeffrey.

STAVRIDIS: I do very well.

TAPPER: He was a former deputy national security adviser to President Bush. He was also President Obama's ambassador to Turkey, President Obama's ambassador to Iraq. He says that the Obama administration, when they downplay the strategic importance of Kobani, they are wrong. But what do you think?

STAVRIDIS: I agree with Jim Jeffrey, who I think understands that region better than almost anybody.

And I think that the strategic effect here is going to be the media. It's going to be the fall of this city and it's going to give real momentum to ISIS. And that's not what we need at this point.

TAPPER: In your book, which I read and enjoyed, you write about Syria -- now, this is before the rise of ISIS, I believe, when you wrote it. It was during when the Syrian civil war was really going on.

STAVRIDIS: Exactly.

TAPPER: But you wrote: "I'm very pessimistic about how things will turn out. The potential for chaos and more bloodshed and a very dark landscape seems high. Syria's best hope is intervention by the United States."

Are you still pessimistic? What's your take on the Syrian mess right now?

STAVRIDIS: I even more pessimistic because of ISIS.

At the time I wrote that, the real concern was Assad and what he was doing to his people. Now, on top of that, we have ISIS, which is really a regional threat. We're not seeing the reaction we need from NATO. We're not seeing the reaction we need from Turkey. We're doing the airstrikes, which is good, but we have not yet closed the switch on a coherent campaign that will ultimately put ground forces there. That's going to have to happen.

TAPPER: If you were advising President Obama, would you say, look, you have to bite the bullet, U.S. ground troops and NATO ground troops are needed in Syria itself?

STAVRIDIS: I would, with the following caveat.

I would go first to get the Peshmerga from the north, the Iraqi security forces from the south, then get Turkish and NATO coming in from the northern part of Syria. If you put ISIS under a kind of a three-front war, Jake, I think we'd see that they are not 10-feet tall. We would need U.S. ground troops as stiffeners in all of that, so not 150,000, but let's say 10,000 to 15,000 troops.

TAPPER: Your memoir comes out at the same time as the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's memoir. Your memoir very engaging, very interesting, not what I would as a tell-all in terms of your private criticisms of presidents.

Some people say Leon Panetta and others who write books that are critical of their former bosses, their leaders are being disloyal. Do you agree?

STAVRIDIS: I feel like every author who sits down to write a memoir has to put a vision that is comfortable for him or her.

I tried to tell the story from the inside, what it is like to be in a job like the NATO supreme allied commander. But in terms of going back and rehashing the battles, that was not something I wanted to do.

TAPPER: Do you think it's disloyal to do that?

STAVRIDIS: I don't. I think it's honest.

And it's certainly appropriate in the sense of trying to get history to tell its story. And in order to get that, you need books like Secretary Gates' and Secretary Panetta's book.

TAPPER: All right. Well, the book is "The Accidental Admiral." You are the first admiral who was the head of -- the supreme allied commander of NATO. And we appreciate your coming here, as always. Thanks for your perspective.

What about the continued threat of ISIS here in the United States? A teenager in a court today accused of trying to join the terrorist group. His family says police arrested an innocent man. We were inside that courtroom today and that's coming up next.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD.

In the national lead, a young man allegedly on his way to fight for the terrorist group ISIS never made it out of Chicago and instead could face the next 15 years in a federal prison; 19-year-old Mohammed Hamzah Khan faced a federal judge today in Chicago, charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Federal agents picked him up at O'Hare Airport over the weekend. And they say he was on his way to Turkey and then he was going to Syria to join the Islamic State, AKA ISIS.

Our Ted Rowlands is outside of the courthouse in Chicago -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, this was to be a detention hearing to see whether or not out Khan could be out on bail while his trial progressed, but it ended up being continued by the judge.

But after the hearing, we heard for the first time from Khan's lawyer. And he spoke with the media with Khans' parents right behind him. And he said, this is a young man, a teenager, who has very strong religious beliefs, but he argues that this young man has done nothing wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS DURKIN, ATTORNEY FOR MOHAMMED KHAN: If nothing else, he is someone who takes his faith very, very seriously. And whether *

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But after the hearing, we heard

for the first time from Khan's lawyer and he spoke with the media with Khan's parents right behind him and they said, this is a young man, a teenager, who has very strong religious beliefs but argues that this young man has done nothing wrong.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THOMAS DURKIN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: If nothing else, he is someone who takes his faith very, very seriously. And whether anybody would agree with how he sees things is a different issue, but that's his right. And in my opinion, ISIS is not a threat to the United States and there are a lot of people who share that view. So if ISIS isn't a threat to the United States, I don't know how he could be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROWLANDS: That was his big argument, Jake, that ISIS is not a real threat so if he was going to join ISIS, he wasn't really a threat to the U.S. The judge in this case has asked the prosecution to file a brief on a specific issue pertaining to the detention. Khan will be back here in federal court in Chicago in 11 days.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Ted, explain to me how this works precisely. The kid had not yet done anything. He was boarding a plane to Turkey. He had a round trip ticket to Turkey. He had inflammatory literature at home.

Is that enough under the law to be illegal?

ROWLANDS: Well, the federal government believes that he was going to provide material support to a terrorist organization and ISIS has been designated as a terrorist organization which makes it illegal for him to do if, indeed, they can prove that he was going to provide that material support. That's the big question.

He didn't get outside of Chicago, as you point out. His lawyer says there's just not enough there. We'll have to see what else the federal government has in terms of surveillance leading up to his arrest at O'Hare. That likely will be where the evidence is.

TAPPER: All right. Ted Rowlands, thank you so much.

Joining us now to discuss the ISIS threat in the U.S. is Philip Mudd, CNN's counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA and FBI counterterror expert.

Phil, good to see you. Thanks for being here.

We just heard Ted Rowlands telling us about the argument that the family is making, that the federal government went overboard. All he had was the inflammatory literature, and the round trip ticket to Turkey. You're disagreeing with the family, I'm guessing?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: No, actually, I don't. I witnessed a lot of this and the family doesn't know. There's a simple story here. A lot of time, the kid is doing this in secret. He's communicating online. He's not talking to his mom and dad because he knows what they will think.

Four months ago, for the first time in my life, I met one of the families that we prosecuted as a bureau -- one of -- the families of one of the kids that we prosecuted at the bureau when I was there. That kid was 19. He got 15 years.

That family came into my house, mom and two sisters, still years later, we're now six, seven years later, did not believe that their son ever did anything. That indictment was far more troubling than this one. So, the message is, I don't debate what the family says. They have just lost their kid potentially. They don't know what he was doing, in my view.

TAPPER: Is what the federal government -- what we know, is that enough, the idea that maybe he was going to go to ISIS and he had inflammatory literature? Surely, there's more that the FBI has, one would think, right?

MUDD: Sure, they haven't revealed what they know so far. Inflammatory literature is what we call in this country free speech. But what they've been doing, I'm going to bet you, is not only looking at this kid over a period of time, but looking at the network of people he was in contact with, for example, what we use to call facilitators, people who might help him travel through Europe to get to Turkey. So, I'm going to believe that there's a mountain behind what they told the courts so far, that suggest that there was a conspiracy here.

TAPPER: There's another group in Syria that we've been told by the government is potentially even more dangerous to the U.S. homeland than ISIS, this Khorasan group, supposedly made up of former al Qaeda leadership. There's a report that the strikes didn't do enough necessarily to cripple the group which, according to the government, was planning some sort of an attack on the U.S. or a western asset, maybe a plane.

Is that what you as a former CIA and FBI official are most concerned with, Khorasan group? Or are you concerned with these ISIS lone wolves or whatever you call them?

MUDD: Look, this is about the most complicated counterterrorism problem I've ever seen. You've got two parallel issues here to deal with. Remember, al Qaeda wasn't a very large group in broad terms, compared to ISIS for example when we faced them in Pakistan and Afghanistan even 10 years ago. But the fact that they had an element focused entirely on the United States obviously was a tragic problem. That's sort of a parallel to what we see with Khorasan. Not the breadth of ISIS, but the focus on America that's troubling. By contrast, when you look at ISIS recruiting hundreds of

Europeans, 100-plus, for example, North Americans and you face at the bureau the prospect of not missing a single one --

TAPPER: Right.

MUDD: -- that's tough.

So, both of them, in my mind, are problems. Just different kinds of problems.

TAPPER: Philip Mudd, as always, thank you so much for your expertise.

MUDD: Thank you.

TAPPER: I really appreciate it.

Coming up, can Ebola patients be stopped from entering the United States before they even realize that they are sick? New screenings already started in London are about to begin in American airports. Will it be enough?

Plus, Democrats hoping for a Hail Mary in a Republican state. But will some major Republican money dash one of the Democrats' hopes of holding on to the Senate?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Also in our world lead today -- more unsettling reports today about Ebola. 200 airplane cabin cleaners walked off the job at LaGuardia Airport over fears they could be exposed to the virus.

Overseas, British officials confirm they are investigating the death of a British citizen in Macedonia who may have had Ebola. And in Spain, eight people are being monitored after coming into contact with the nurse's aide who is being treated for Ebola.

And London's Heathrow Airport, passengers arriving from Ebola stricken countries now they face the kind of enhanced screening procedures that five U.S. airports will be using soon.

CNN's Jim Boulden joins us now Heathrow.

Jim, what has changed for passengers arriving from West African nations?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what the British officials have decided to do is to have medical personnel at the airport here at Heathrow, also Gatwick, south of London, and to the Eurostar tunnel Eurostar terminal where the train comes in from France or from Belgium.

What they're going to do is they're going to ask them their travel itinerary. There's no direct flight from West Africa to Heathrow. So, they need to find out where people have come from, where have

they been and have they been in West Africa in the last 10 or 15 days. They also want to know where these people are going to go if the answer is yes. They want to be able to follow them in case these people present with Ebola later, and also, they want to make sure if there's any medical question, they want to have medical personnel on site to do assessments right away.

So, they're not going to be blocking people from coming in. But they just want to get a lot of data, fill out a form, know who's who, know where they come from to make sure, if they present 15 or 20 days down the line, they can find these people -- Jake.

TAPPER: Jim, this looks like a bit of a reversal on the part of the British government. Just this morning I believe health officials were saying that the screenings were not need and yet here we are. Why the U-turn?

BOULDEN: Well, they decided earlier today that they were probably not going to do this enhanced screening but the medical professionals have said that they should be doing more. Now, some people say this is politics. This is to assure that they are doing, quote-unquote, "all they can." Some people have said, actually, it's not going to make much of a difference, because if you come here and look healthy, they are going to let you go. You could still have Ebola and not present it for a week or two.

So, some people are saying it's just a way to reassure the public that the British government is trying to do something here on the ground -- Jake.

TAPPER: Jim Boulden, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Still, more questions are being raised about the first patient to die of Ebola in the United States. Could he have been saved if doctors had recognized his symptoms the first time he went to the hospital? Thomas Duncan's family wants an investigation. Their pastor joins me, coming up next.

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