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Fireworks Fly at Syria Peace Talks; Snows Slows Down Busiest Plane Corridor in U.S.; New Interview with NSA Leaker Edward Snowden; Family of Bob Levinson Speaking Out

Aired January 22, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tensions are clearly high, tempers are flaring at the Syrian peace conference in Switzerland. The highly anticipated meeting brings members of the Syrian regime and the opposition face-to-face for the first time. Top diplomats from the United States and other world powers, they are also there. They're trying to help broker some sort of plan to end the three years of bloodshed. And as the conference began, so did the tough talk. Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear, the Syrian president, Bashar a Assad, has no place in any transitional government. And that didn't sit well with his Syrian counterpart. Watch this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: A transition government means that that government cannot be formed with someone that is objected to by one side or the other. That means that Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government. There is no way, no way possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern.

WALID AL-MOALLEM, SYRIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Mr. Secretary, nobody in the world has the right to get rid of the legitimacy of a president or a constitution or a law or anything in Syria, except the Syrian people themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The Syrian foreign minister also blamed the opposition rebels for a litany of atrocities. He accused the rebels of engaging in murder, rape and arson. The leader of the opposition coalition fired right back, accusing the Bashar al Assad regime of war crimes and pointed to newly released photos allegedly showing the torture of detainees at the hands of President Assad's forces.

Joining us now from these peace talks in Montrose, Switzerland, is Monzer Akbik. He is a key member of the Syrian Opposition Coalition.

Mr. Akbik, thanks so much for joining us.

What do you hope, if anything realistic, could emerge from these peace talks in Switzerland right now?

MONZER AKBIK, CHIEF OF STAFF, SYRIAN OPPOSITION COALITION MEMBER: Yeah, well, you know, we're going to do what we have to do, adhere to the very essence of this process. This process, as it is called by a security council Resolution 2118, has an aim, a platform, which is Geneva communique, calling for a transition, democratic transition in Syria, transition from the dictatorship to democracy, from tyranny to freedom. Now this is what we are hoping for. We hope that the process will stay the course of this implementation.

BLITZER: But as you know, the chances of Bashar al Assad giving up power are tiny, if any at all. You don't realistically think he and his military are going to give up power, do you?

AKBIK: Well, you know, we have said that from the very beginning. The international community has stated that it should practice the necessary pressure, the necessary for the process to succeed. Of course. If it is up to Assad himself, he will not leave power. Otherwise he would not have gone ahead and killed all of these hundreds of thousands of Syrians and destroyed half the country. We have 40 countries participating in this conference. There is international legitimacy in place that needs to be implemented by the international community.

BLITZER: But as long as he has the support of Iran on the one hand and Russia, for that matter, on the other hand, he's in a relatively strong position, right?

AKBIK: He is in a very weak position. As you know, more than 50 percent of our geography is out of his control. He is maintaining a very small location here and there. But he is practicing, of course, bombing from, you know, aerial bombardment and bombing from artillery. This is -- you know, he has that upper hand in the fire power, because the rebels, they know they have light weapons. But he is not at a strong position at all. Of course, you have noticed that he brought militias, terrorists of Hezbollah and the revolutionary guard of Iran. He brought also militias from Iraq, because he has apparent human resources problem. So the regime is weak. He is weak on the ground and also he is weak politically. He does not admit today at all to the Geneva communique, which is the platform of this process. He is still in the case of denial. So we are counting on international legitimacy and the support of our friends, whether they are in the West, United States, U.K., France and also in the region, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and many, many other countries supporting the political transition in Syria. We are counting to push Assad out of power and that nightmare in Syria.

BLITZER: You have seen these gruesome photographs alleging torture, brutality, that have just been released, showing war crimes, if these photos are, in fact, real. The Syrian government says they are fake, and they also says that these pictures are atrocities committed by your side, by the rebel side, including al Qaeda elements, who were opposed to Bashar al Assad's regime. What's your reaction to what they're saying, the government is saying about these gruesome oh, horrible photos.

And by the way, we showed these photos first here on CNN. Our own Christiana Amanpour got access to these photos, which are awful, as you know. AKBIK: Yeah, this is what we have been crying about for a very long time. The crimes against humanity is going on, whether in time of Bashar al Assad or his father, who died in the year 2000. The torture is systemic in Syria for a very long time and people are dying under torture. The United Nations issued the first report of the Syrian revolution that started late summer of 2011. And there were multiple accounts of crimes against humanity. The secretary general of united nations, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, he stated that Assad is -- has committed crimes against humanity. So we are having reports from, you know, parties like the united nations saying that he committed crimes against humanity. He cannot deny that. At the same time, today, for example, Assad's foreign minister stated that the West is actually helping al Qaeda or the extremism. So this kind of statement would show you how much this regime lies, you know, and rhetorical about everything he says.

The terrorism -- al Qaeda it itself, we are the ones fighting al Qaeda. The Syrian people are fighting al Qaeda. You know we are doing that in the north in Aleppo, fighting this ISIS group, fighting two fronts, al Qaeda on one front and the regime on one front. And both of them are actually terrorists. The regime is practicing state terrorism and al Qaeda, of course, the extremists that you all know. So it's a difficult situation for the Syrian people. But, of course, we are counting on the support of the people. We are having demonstrations against al Qaeda and Aleppo and many places in Syria. So I don't think that anybody is really taken for serious what the regime is talking about, terrorism.

BLITZER: Monzer Akbit is a top Syrian opposition leader, joining us from the peace talks outside Geneva.

Thank you very much, Mr. Akbit, for joining us.

AKBIK: Thank you.

BLITZER: Still ahead, millions of Americans at the mercy of a powerful winter storm. Flights cancelled, schools shut down. The latest when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: One of the busiest travel corridors in the United States is now in slow motion. Thousands of flights in and out of the northeast have been cancelled over the past 24 hours after a powerful winter storm dumped heavy snow over the region. So far today, more than 1,400 flights have been scrapped. The snow started falling yesterday, tapered off just about an hour or so ago. New England got hit the hardest. Some areas getting buried under 18 inches of snow. Schools and businesses are closed. States of emergency are in effect in New York, New Jersey and Delaware. Driving this storm, dangerously cold, arctic air.

Karen MaGinnis is tracking it for us at the CNN Weather Center.

Karen, just how low are the temperatures falling? KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Dangerously cold. Not just for tonight, but as we go into the next several days, there's going to be a reinforcing shot of cold air. Right now, Washington, D.C., it's 15 degrees. But it feels like minus 2. We did see record-setting snowfall amounts. Take a look at some of these pictures that we've got as far as the snowfall is concerned. Philadelphia, 13.5 inches of snowfall reported. But just want to point out, here is Camarillo, California. Probably wondering why I'm mentioning that. In association with Watertown, New York. That's because the temperature difference between the two of them, 121 degrees. That's because Watertown was minus 37 degrees this morning, and Camarillo made it to 84 degrees yesterday. That cold air is going to be filtering in across the Midwestern United States, double-digit temperatures below normal.

We'll have a little clipper system move through, still cold air across the northeast, single-digits below zero. But very dangerously cold. But watch what happens. There's going to be another system that moves out of the Arctic, probably by Sunday, then going into Monday. And we'll look at temperatures coming up for Thursday morning at minus 15, but could be minus 30 as we go into the beginning of next week.

Wolf, back to you.

BLITZER: Wow. That's pretty cold.

Karen, thank you.

A new interview with Edward Snowden. The admitted NSA leaker has a message for those who think he works for Russia. That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Edward Snowden, is he a Russian spy? That's what at least one key member of Congress is alleging. But in an interview with the "New Yorker" magazine, the NSA leaker calls that allegation laughable. He says, he, quote, "clearly and unambiguously acted alone with no assistance from anyone, let alone a government." He also points to the fact that he spent 40 days in a Moscow airport, adding -- and I'm quoting once again -- "Spies get treated better than that." And he said in other interviews -- Snowden, as he said in other interviews, Snowden also stressed that Russia wasn't his intended destination. Instead, he wanted to be somewhere in Latin America.

Let's discuss these allegations, Snowden's reaction. David Sanger is joining us, the national security correspondent for "The New York Times." He knows the subject very well.

Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, well- briefed by the U.S. intelligence community, he made the suggestion over the weekend suspecting that Snowden may actually have plotted this whole thing, may have been a Russian agent. Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was sitting on that same "Meet the Press" panel. She said she didn't know, but she wouldn't rule it out. What are you hearing? I know you've got good sources on all of this. DAVID SANGER, NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, clearly, Chairman Rogers probably wouldn't have said it if he hadn't seen something suggestive in the intelligence. But quite frankly, we haven't seen a shred of evidence yet to indicate that Snowden had been working for the Russians or any other government at the time that he was gathering up this data, when he was an NSA contractor working in Hawaii. After that, of course, he traveled to Hong Kong. He then moved on to Russia. As he indicated in that -- in that interview, he spent 40 days in the airport transit lounge, probably what many people stuck in the snow this week feel like they're spending their time in the transit lounge. But we don't know whether or not any of the data that he had actually went to the Chinese or the Russians. You have to assume that since they're pretty good at, excel at trading this stuff, if it was on him or he had access, he was accessing some of it in the cloud, they could have gotten at it, Wolf.

BLITZER: Because you had an article in "The New York Times" the other day that pointed out -- I didn't they this, pretty amazing when you think about it -- he doesn't even have to go online for the U.S. intelligence community to be able to monitor what's in that computer. And if the U.S. has that capability, what you're suggesting, and correct me if I am wrong, others might be able to have that same capability.

SANGER: That's probably right. The irony here is that the documents that we base that story on, Wolf, came from the trove of documents Mr. Snowden left with. What it described is a program that dates back to 2008 in which small devices, including on a thumb drive, that the NSA was having manufactured and implanting, to emit a radio wave up to eight miles away, where the NSA could, through a relay station, pick up data from a computer that's completely walled off from the Internet. And we have talked before on your show, Wolf, about the operation against Iran, the Olympic Games that we tried -- reported on a year-and-a-half ago. And that is the technology we believe was used, at least in part, to get the information into and out of the computers in Iran that were attacked by the U.S.

And Israel as part of that operation. So it's very possible that Mr. Snowden could over time be victim of the same technology that his own documents revealed. But we don't know it. We simply don't know what the Russians and the Chinese have.

BLITZER: Well, very quickly, I know a lot of U.S. intelligence officials, they just assume that everything he has, everything he stole, everything he took out of the NSA, the Russians already have had access to all of that stuff. You buy that?

SANGER: You know, they do assume it, but we don't know on what basis they do. Mr. Snowden obviously knows a lot about how you encrypt things, how you keep them from outside hands. We assume -- and again, this is an assumption -- that a lot of his information is up in the cloud. We don't know how well-protected. So it's very hard to know exactly how much the Russians, the Chinese or others might have. Or whether or not he either cut any deals or unknowingly gave them access to some of this information. He certainly denied it in that interesting "New Yorker" interview.

BLITZER: We're going to be speaking with Jane Mayer, the journalist from the "New Yorker," in "The Situation Room" later today. She's the one who had that interview with Snowden.

David Sanger, thanks very much.

SANGER: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Up next, he went missing in Iran several years ago. Now the family of American Bob Levinson is speaking out, demanding the Obama administration finally bring him home.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Now to new developments in the case of Bob Levinson, an American who disappeared in Iran seven years ago.

Here's CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRISTINE LEVINSON, WIFE OF BOB LEVINSON: He was doing what he always did, which is working for the United States government and investigating criminal activities. And the U.S. government has not taken ownership of it yet.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The wife and son of retired FBI agent, Bob Levinson, speaking out for the first time since it was publicly revealed her husband was arrested in Iran doing undercover contract work for the CIA. He disappeared in 2007.

DAN LEVINSON, SON OF ROBERT LEVINSON: I kept thinking this can't be happening. This is such a nightmare.

CANDIOTTI: To this day, the government denies he was a government employee. The State Department said it's doing everything they can to bring him home. But the family is outraged, saying the CIA lost eight months after he vanished, lying about spy work to them and the Senate Intelligence Committee, until the family turned up crucial records to prove it. The agency has now apologized and paid a $2.5 million settlement. The CIA won't comment publicly, but fired three people and disciplined seven others.

DAVID MCGEE, LEVINSON FAMILY ATTORNEY: It's immoral. They've denied Bob's relationship with them, not out of principal, but to protect themselves and not to protect Bob.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): You feel he was abandoned.

CHRISTINE LEVINSON: I feel he was left there. He was the man left behind.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): To bolster their case, the family is now sharing with CNN documents they received from a source in Iran that appeared to prove Levinson's arrest. Neither the family or CNN can verify whether they are authentic and his name is only partially right, but according to a translation given the family by an FBI, it reads, "A member of the U.S. federal investigation or maybe CIA, Robert Anderson, is here as an undercover tourist taking pictures and gathering information. Since his spying activities have been established, arrest him immediately."

CNN has also obtained an e-mail intercepted by the family's lawyer between Levinson and CIA handlers just before he left for Iran. It reads, "An individual has agreed to meet with me. This meeting will take place either in Dubai or on an island nearby."

CANDIOTTI (on camera): Why didn't you say what you knew at the start?

CHRISTINE LEVINSON: There was risk to Bob. I didn't know what the risk would be.

DAN LEVINSON: We were told by the U.S. government, by revealing what he was actually doing over there, would have been harmful to his safety.

CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Susan Candiotti, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: The Levinson family is not alone when it comes to a family member being held overseas. Kenneth Bae is among several Americans being held abroad. Bae was detained in North Korea in November, 2012. A North Korean court sentenced him to 12 years of hard labor for allegedly committing, quote, "hostile acts against the state." American subcontractor, Alan Gross, has been in custody since December of 2009. Cuba authorities say Gross tried to set up illegal Internet connections. The family of Army Sergeant Bo Burgdahl, the only American prisoner of war in Afghanistan, got proof from the U.S. military that he is still alive. Burgdahl was taken captive and he's believed to be held by Taliban-aligned groups. The American Christian pastor, Syad Abadeni (ph), is being held in Iran. He was sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of attempting to undermine Iranian government authorities.

Setting the record straight. Up next, an exclusive interview with the Seattle Seahawks's Richard Sherman as he defends his epic post-game rant.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: People are still talking about the end of the Seahawks/49ers game and the rant from the Seattle defensive back, Richard Sherman.

He sat down with our Rachel Nichols to talk about the rant and his regrets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL NICHOLS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There was the moment on the field when you made the play, there's the choke sign, there's the interview on the field post-game, and then there is the press conference interview. What do you regret about all of that and what do you not regret about all of that?

RICHARD SHERMAN, SEATTLE SEAHAWKS DEFENSIVE BACK: There is not much about it I regret. Mostly, I regret I guess the storm afterwards, the way it was covered and the way it was perceived and the attention it took away from the fantastic performances of my teammates. That would be the only part of it I regret, the way it's covered. It is what it is. What I said is what I said. I probably shouldn't have attacked him. I don't mean to attack him and that was immature and I probably shouldn't have done that. I regret doing that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: See more of the interview with "Unguarded with Rachel Nichols," Friday night at 10:30 p.m. eastern here on CNN. Also, Sherman holds a news conference around 3:40 p.m. eastern. CNN will share that with you live.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. See you at 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

NEWSROOM continues right now with Brooke Baldwin.