Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

New Video May Show Teens Crossing Into Syria; What Makes The Terror Group So Attractive?; Clinton Expected To Launch Campaign Next Month; Con Artists Dupe Taxpayers Out Of $15.5 Million

Aired March 13, 2015 - 16:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Breaking today in world news, a new video that has been released showing those missing school girls, just 15 and 16 years old. You might recall they fled Britain to join ISIS and it may be too late to stop them.

It seems like recovering one of these stories each week or so, a young person from the U.S. or someplace, like it drawn to one of the most barbaric groups in recent history. Each time we ask ourselves the same question, what is going on in their minds?

Well, today we are finally getting a look from the pages of an ISIS teen, who may have been part of a suicide mission. Suzanne Malveaux joins us now. Suzanne, first these British school girls. Where have they surfaced?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So we are learning more about them as well because we have new video today and we have learned that two of them are 15, the other is 16 years old, and some of the reasons that are given by their friends and their relatives of these new teen recruits are a parent has died or another remarries.

They start to express some of the typical teenaged disdain against a perceived phony world, but how this actually leads to joining one of the worst terrorist groups in history is still baffling. But we are still learning more of the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (voice-over): New video today shows the three British teens, who fled their homes last month crossing into Syria, backpacks on and luggage handed off, the teens are thought to be headed into a life with ISIS, but who is helping them?

Turkey's foreign minister says his country has detained this Syrian citizen. They say he is a spy from inside the U.S.-led coalition who helped the girls get into Syria.

MAVLUT CAVUSOGLU, TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): He works for the intelligence services of a country that is a member of the coalition. It is a very complicated situation. MALVEAUX: They are far from the only suburban teens to leave their families for the black flag of ISIS. The terror group says this Australian boy blew himself up Wednesday and that there are others patiently waiting to do the same. According to the group, 18-year-old Jake Bellardi of Melbourne killed himself in an Iraqi suicide bombing.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: This is a horrific situation, an absolutely horrific situation, and it shows the lure, the lure of this death cult to impressionable youngsters.

MALVEAUX: ISIS posted these photos of the fresh-faced teen behind the wheel of a van that they say were snapped just moments before it exploded. Bellardi is said to be the author of this newly discovered blog.

In it, he described his journey to becoming a Jihadist. In a January post, foreshadowing his apparent suicide, he writes, "I put my trust in Allah and signed myself up for a martyrdom operation," adding that he is waiting for his turn to sacrifice himself.

Bellardi describes his transition from an atheist to supporter of Islam and finally to a radicalized Jihadist, writing the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan gave birth to my disdain for the United States and its allies, including Australia.

The more he learned about Jihad, its benefits, its importance and rewards for taking part in military operations to raise Islam in the land, the more I desired to join the Mujahadin.

He isn't alone. Just last week, two other Australian teens were arrested at Sydney's airport, suspected of trying to join ISIS. A CIA source estimates more than 2,000 westerners from various countries have gone to fight in Syria.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: An expert on radicalization says Bellardi's background, white, middle class, reportedly bullied at school and vulnerable following the loss of his mother to cancer, fits more to the profile of a typical school shooter than an Islamic terrorist, which illustrates, Jake, really the various profiles of all of these different teenagers, they still can't figure out whether or not there is just one particular kind. It just runs the gamut.

TAPPER: Baffling. Suzanne Malveaux, thank you so much.

Let's bring in CNN's terror analyst, Paul Cruickshank, he is the co- author of "Agent Storm." Paul, let's start with this blog, the 18- year-old blogging about why he wanted to join ISIS, his bigger goal, to join the caliphate or Islamic holy land. What makes ISIS so attractive for these young people?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERROR ANALYST: Well, I think the answer, Jake, is actually quite simple, though, they think it's their religious duty to go and join the caliphate. They believe this is a divinely ordained project, part of Islamic destiny. And that it's their duty to go and join this project and they will be rewarded in the afterlife in paradise. As soon as this Australian kid gets into Syria, gets into Iraq, he volunteers to become a suicide bomber.

TAPPER: He wrote in his blog that he did have a plan B to wage attacks in his home country, in Australia. This of course is what law enforcement all over the western world is most worried about right now, right?

CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right. In the blog he describes how he wanted to launch gun attacks, grenade attacks against shopping malls, against consulates in Australia, if he couldn't go and travel to Syria and Iraq.

Of course, he was able to get the contacts he needed to travel. But since the beginning of bombing by the U.S. coalition against ISIS, ISIS has called on Muslims overseas to launch these lone wolf attacks. This Australian teen actually traveled before that, Jake.

TAPPER: His case is really interesting for a lot of reasons, but also because he doesn't appear to have been recruited in any way. He was self-radicalized. Is that unusual?

CRUICKSHANK: A lot of it does appear to be self-radicalization, but he was also on social media interacting with other ISIS followers and they were encouraging him to go and travel to Syria. It was actually online that he was able to find a contact, who was able to bring him across the border from Turkey to Syria so he could join ISIS.

TAPPER: Let's move to that new video showing the three missing teenaged girls from the U.K. You can see a man on the video. I know we don't know who that man is, but there has also been information these three girls had contact with another British Muslim teenaged girl, who joined ISIS in Syria in 2013. Do we know anything more about her or her recruiting tactics?

CRUICKSHANK: One of the concerns is that she may have encouraged these girls to join. We have seen in so many cases that it's people who are already there who are reaching back to their contacts in the west to encourage them to join and facilitating that travel.

TAPPER: The teen from Australia wrote about his reasoning for joining ISIS. You say the motives may be much different for the girls.

CRUICKSHANK: Well, for some of these young men, they want to become holy warriors to get glory on the battlefield. For the girls, often they want to provide care to the Mujahadin. They want to become wives of these sorts of handsome, dashing fighters, which are put out in the propaganda on social media.

So there are sort of different roles these young men and women want to play. But the key common denominator is that they see it's their religious duty to go and join this caliphate and to support it and they will be rewarded in the afterlife. Not just them, also their families. TAPPER: All right, Paul Cruickshank, thank you so much.

It seems like only yesterday when we were on television discussing the shade of smoke billowing from the Vatican chimney. Today Pope Francis is beginning his third year as leader of the Roman Catholic Church. A year that he suggests could be his last.

The 78-year-old hinting in a recent interview that he might retire soon, such as his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who became the first pope in seven centuries to step down, not to die in that position.

The pontiff had opened an institutional door. He told Mexican TV he long for the days of anonymity where he could grab a piece of pizza without being recognized.

Coming up, just how did Hillary Clinton's team separate her personal e-mails from messages related to her work at the State Department? The process to search her inbox may have actually not been all that thorough.

The Money Lead, don't believe everything you hear, especially a recorded message that sounds like it's from the IRS. The phone scam out to steal your hard-earned cash coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I do a million of these a day so just give me five. Deep burn so deep, I can barely lift my right arm because I did so many. I don't know if you heard me counting. I did over 1,000.

(END VIDEO CLIP) T TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. That's Vice President Joe Biden getting -- doing his best Ron Burgundy impression, part of the first lady's give me five initiative to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the let's move campaign for better health. Still unclear if the vice president skips leg day.

But let's turn now to the Politics Lead. It's the controversy Hillary Clinton probably wishes she could send to a spam folder. Today there are even more questions about that private e-mail account she used during her time as secretary of state.

Earlier this week, Clinton said she turned over all work-related e- mails to the State Department and purged what she considered personal e-mails. But that's not quite accurate. Her office acknowledging that the way they determined, the lawyers, which e-mails were work- related was not by reading the e-mails.

But by doing searches for names and keywords like Benghazi or Libya and then deciding that the remaining 30,000 e-mails must have been personal and then they were deleted. Not exactly the thorough investigation as initially portrayed. Let's bring in our political panel, CNN senior Washington correspondent, Jeff Zeleny and Maggie Haberman, a presidential campaign correspondent for the "New York Times."

Jeff, I have to admit I was a little surprised to learn that this thorough review of e-mails was not actually a thorough review of e- mails.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: It sounds like it was not so thorough. This is the whole problem. She is policing herself and there is no one to oversee all this. It's kind of like internal affairs at the police department.

You have to take their word for it and it's even worse than that. This is just a couple days after she revealed this. So this story is far from over. We are still learning so much more. There were a lot of other things going on in the world at the time except Benghazi and Libya so much more.

I'm curious about so much more that was happening. She said we would be able to get an insight into how she conducted herself as secretary of state. With that limited of a scope I think that's hard to do.

TAPPER: Maggie, are Democrats calmed or are they even more jittery than they were?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK TIMES": Democrats are not thrilled with how the last two weeks went. They were very happy she finally said something. They were pleased by the press conference and it doesn't mean they thought she did fantastically during it but they were very happy there was something they could relay and understand and quote and for officials to say to members of their district and people they represent and so forth.

But I think most of them believe this is not going to be what voters vote on. There is probably something to that. However, this is dragging on. There has been a drip, drip, drip. At this point she basically needs to announce her campaign. That is going to be what makes this all go away, but this is not going to be over.

There will be fresh stories as soon as the e-mails are up and people will go through them. At the end of the day the message that I deleted 30,000 e-mails was never going to be a great one. It's not really a surprise that the press conference was not seen as a total success.

TAPPER: Jeff, I know you have some new reporting. This mess and how poorly it was handled has prompted her and her team to decide they really need to actually get going here.

ZELENY: That's right. I think it was happening anyway. The timing I'm told, I actually believe this, was not sped up or accelerated because of this. But it just showed the need, they actually needed to get on with this. It definitely added a lot of weight to the argument that April is the time. There still have been a few people saying why not wait. Now its April's the time. That was already decided. She is going to have her headquarters in Brooklyn and it's viewed as an attractive place for high tech workers and other things.

So that's where she will be headquartering her campaign and will announce sometime in April. The workers who are being hired are being asked to report at the end of March as soon as they can get out of their other jobs. There's a scramble for housing. Obviously New York is very expensive, as you know.

TAPPER: Brooklyn is just as bad, if not worse than Manhattan.

ZELENY: This is coming together. The Clinton ship is coming together. A lot of Democrats say it's about time because the only way to get beyond this is to get back to a little bit of offense.

HABERMAN: That's right. Also just talking about issues, she needs to say essentially what her campaign is going to be about. The way to get past process stories and at the end of the day her folks see the e-mail story as that, not everyone does but her folks do, is to talk about what she will do as president, what she thinks the issues are for the country. Getting the campaign under way is seen by many people as the best way to do that.

TAPPER: What has held them back for so long just no need to start before they need to because it subjects them to this kind of nonsense?

HABERMAN: There were two different schools of thought. There are two different things. On the one hand, there are still people who think she could have waited until later this year to actually announce. There's a difference between being a candidate and just being prepared. She was neither.

If you remember that she knew about these e-mails since last summer, they knew this was going to come up as an issue. The foundation stories about foreign donations, they knew those things would be asked and they didn't have a bench on press that could push back on these things, that could do rapid response.

Her spokesman was basically a one man band which was a tremendous amount of incoming and they couldn't just answer these questions very easily and we are still, as you are noting here, asking a lot of questions that are not yet answered.

So she had hoped because she had so much name recognition and frankly, I don't think she enjoys the lengthy presidential races that are run in this country. Her husband did not declare until October of 1991 which a lot of his allies often point to --

TAPPER: It was a long time ago.

HABERMAN: Long time ago. Even since 2008 it's a different world.

TAPPER: What about the other Democrats that might run, Martin O'Malley, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb? ZELENY: It's a good question. I thought this whole moment the beginning of the year would be a great opportunity for Martin O'Malley to go Howard Dean and basically move to Iowa or New Hampshire. That's what he did in 2003. And just sort of fill this void. But none of them have. None of them have jumped into this vacuum. I think it shows they are not all that serious about running.

HABERMAN: Absolutely.

ZELENY: They are going to run. She will have an opponent at some point. But so much time has gone by. Someone could have occupied the space. There is certainly a hungering out there among Democratic activists for someone else. We hear so much talk about Elizabeth Warren from everyone but Elizabeth Warren. But there is a demand for someone else. No one has stepped into the void.

HABERMAN: There's room on the left, but no one is stepping in to fill it.

TAPPER: Yes, absolutely. Maggie Haberman, Jeff Zeleny, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up, it's a terrifying phone call. The person on the other end claiming to be from the IRS demanding immediate payment, only this call is a rather sophisticated scam so far, thousands have fallen for it. What you need to know to protect yourself coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Our Money Lead today. Tax day, quickly approaching and that comes with an urgent warning from the IRS about a growing scam that has conned innocent Americans out of more than $15 million so far.

It starts with what sounds like an official phone call from the IRS and the frightening threat of jail time. CNN investigations correspondent, Sara Ganim, has been digging into this story. She joins us live with this eye opening report.

Sarah, these thieves are running a rather sophisticated operation. One victim even paid $500,000?

SARA GANIM, CNN INVESTIGATIONS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jake. It's a lot of money. Thousands of Americans from all different walks of life have lost money to these scammers. I talked to a pastor, to a businessman, and as you will see, I talked to a former NFL player who got swindled.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GANIM (voice-over): These days, former NFL Player Frank Garcia is a sports radio talk show host.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But it sure seems like he's leaning in that direction. GANIM: He's on the air three hours each weekday in Charlotte, North Carolina. But he is also one of tens of thousands of Americans who the government says have been duped out of their money in one of the fastest growing tax scams around. People pretending to be IRS agents call and demand money, threatening that if you don't pay immediately, you will end up in jail or worse. Listen.

ANNOUNCER: This is internal revenue services. Your address is under state investigation.

ANNOUNCER: The reason for this call is to inform you the IRS is filing a lawsuit against you.

GANIM: Last fall, Garcia got a call just like those.

FRANK GARCIA, SPORTS RADIO HOST: I had to follow specific steps in order to not be arrested, that the authorities had been in contact and in fact, are on their way and they will be there within 30 minutes and if you don't respond, one way or the other, they will arrest you. Many, many people are afraid when they hear from the Internal Revenue Service so they do whatever the caller says.

GANIM: Garcia says the woman on the phone sounded so authentic that he left the radio station in a panic.

GARCIA: The only thing running through my head is I'm going to jail, I'm going to be on the television in handcuffs for tax evasion.

GANIM: The thieves are incredibly convincing. They can detail their victims' financial histories down to the cent. They harness the same technology used to steal your identity to make you believe they are legitimate.

TIMOTHY CAMUS, DEPUTY INSPECTOR GENERAL, TREASURY DEPARTMENT: They determine where you bank. They can look to see what other stores are around the banks so they can direct you to a place to convert cash into a prepaid debit card.

GANIM: In fact, Garcia says he spent five hours driving to various stores around Charlotte, depositing $500 each time into a Paypal account set up by the woman on the phone, all the while, not hanging up.

GARCIA: Roughly around $4,000 that I was scammed for so eight stops.

GANIM: Federal authorities tell us this is by far the largest scam of its kind they have ever seen. Since it began in 2013, the Treasury Department says victims have been swindled out of more than $15 million.

CAMUS: We have tracked over 366,000 reports of contacts from these folks. It goes up 10,000 or 12,000 a week.

GANIM: Authorities believe the thieves are operating out of India using phishing technology to make it appear they are calling from a Washington, D.C. phone number. Treasury Department officials say if you get one of these calls, hang up.

For Frank Garcia the light came on when the woman on the phone asked for more money, another $8,000. He says he decided to hang up and wait for the arrest that she had promised which of course never came.

CAMUS: I feel taken advantage of. I felt small. I felt like I was naive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GANIM: Jake, when this scam started, authorities tell me that they targeted immigrants and the elderly. For example, my 90-year-old grandmother who came here from Germany, she got one of these calls, but she recorded it and sent it to me.

At this point, this scam has grown so much that as you saw in our piece, all kinds of people have been targeted, in fact, the Treasury Department investigator who talked to us, he got one of these calls and he says he told the scammers quote, "Your time is coming" and then he did what he recommends everyone does. He hung up.

TAPPER: An important warning. Sara Ganim, thanks.

Right now, we go live to St. Louis County, Police Chief Belmar speaking now.

JON BELMAR, POLICE CHIEF, ST. LOUIS COUNTY: I feel like that's the right thing to do because it's fair. We understand that we are not a burden on other law enforcement in the area but we want to make sure that we have a level of expectation in our community that they are going to be safe and in our protest community that they understand exactly what the rules are there.

So that is really the number one priority regarding this. You saw on TV last night that -- yesterday afternoon we looked at a house in the Ferguson area on a suspect search. Please appreciate the fact that we have a situation where many leads come in to us. There were several leads that came in to us regarding that specific house. We were able to investigate that.