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Ex-CIA Boss Says Russian Meddling is an Attack. High-Profile Senators Wants Russia Probe; FBI, CIA Disagree On Russia's Election Hack Motive; Kremlin Speaks On Exxon CEO's Ties To Russia; Sources: Exxon CEO Likely Pick For Secretary Of State. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 12, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: -- figure out what it all means. It's time for NEWSROOM with --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: As we do every day.

CUOMO: You can tell people whether or not that was parody or that was reality.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK. I'm going to be thinking about that through my whole show. You guys have a great day. NEWSROOM starts now.

And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me this morning.

New fallout over the CIA report that Russia interfered with the U.S. election to help Donald Trump win. A former acting director of the intelligence agency delivering this chilling assessment. Mike Morell tells "The Cipher Brief," a global security platform, "It is an attack on our very democracy." He goes on to say, "This is the political equivalent of 9/11."

That bleak appraisal is quite at odds with the President-elect. Just minutes ago, Mr. Trump tweeted, quote, "Unless you catch hackers in the act, it's very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before the election?" Yesterday, Mr. Trump openly scoffed at the CIA's claims.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it's ridiculous. I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: A bipartisan alliance of Senators is pushing back, though, against Trump's dismissal and calling for an investigation, the lawmakers saying the claims of Russian interference should, quote, "Alarm every American."

Next hour, we'll hear from the Senate's most powerful Republican. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a rare news conference next hour. We are covering all of this this morning. Jason Carroll is live

outside of Trump Tower and CNN Senior Political Reporter Manu Raju is live on Capitol Hill.

Jason, let's start with you. Hi.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning. You know, it's very unusual to have this sort of public back and forth between the intelligence community and a president-elect, but this is what we have. The President-elect Donald Trump basically saying that, look, back in 2003, the intelligence community was wrong when it said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Donald Trump says, this time, it could be wrong again about Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, SENIOR ADVISER TO PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: We don't want intelligence interfering in our politics, but we also don't want politics --

TRUMP: I think it's ridiculous. I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it. They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. I mean, they have no idea really.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: So why would the CIA put out this story that the Russians wanted you to win?

TRUMP: Well, I'm not sure they put it out. I think the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: So, Carol, despite the intelligence community being very concerned that the President-elect seems to be ignoring their intelligence, you basically heard there Donald Trump saying that he believes and Team Trump also believes that much of what we're seeing here is politically motivated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONWAY: We don't want intelligence interfering in our politics, but we also don't want politics interfering with our intelligence. And that's what's happening here. If you look at some of these articles that are being written, they want the reader, they want the viewer, in fact, not to make that direct connection between interference and the election results. And, of course, these are leaked, unsourced, nonsources, if you will. That's what hearings are for and that's what investigations are for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Their feeling is that it is politically motivated. But a bipartisan group of Senators have now called for Congress to investigate the intelligence community's findings about Russian hacking to try to influence the American election. Team Trump, for its part, moving ahead with his transition efforts, moving ahead with naming new people to his administration. The newest name now, General John Kelly, named to be the man to head up the Department of Homeland Security -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Jason. Jason Carroll reporting live from Trump Tower this morning. So let's head now to Capitol Hill where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will hold that news conference at the top of the next hour. Manu Raju has more on that.

Good morning.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol. Yes, that news conference designed to talk about what McConnell wants to tout as the 114th Congress' accomplishments, the Republicans achieved here, but it will be dominated with questions about Russia and Russia's involvement in the elections and what Senator McConnell knew and his thoughts about these calls for a bipartisan investigation.

What we do know is Senator McConnell does get top secret intelligence briefings that most members of the Congress don't because he's a member of the Republican and his a member of leadership. And in September, he was briefed by multiple agencies. And some Democrats in that briefing, we are told by a source, briefed on the matter wanted to take an assertive approach at that September meeting and say that Russia was involved in this hack and was trying to steer the elections one way.

But in that September briefing, we are told by a source, that McConnell had some questions about that intelligence, did not want to make that assertion, thought it would be a political move to do that. So we'll see if he weighs in on that because so far, his office has declined to comment.

[09:05:05] Now, at the same time, there has been this bipartisan call for an investigation among some Republicans joining Democrats, including Senator John McCain of Arizona with Chuck Schumer this morning talking about why there needs to be an investigation. Here's what they have to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: They did hack into this campaign, and they did it, I think, with at least what seemed to be effective sort of every week or so, there was new information. And were they hacking the Republicans the same way? The Republican National Committee? And if so, why didn't they -- you know, there's a whole lot of issues out there. It requires an investigation.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: The fact that the CIA and FBI disagree shows the need for a bipartisan investigation that gets to the bottom of this. The investigation should be tough, strong and bipartisan, and should have access to all materials, classified and not.

(END VIDEO CLIP) RAJU: Now exactly what form that investigation takes shape still remains to be seen. We know that Senator McCain chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he's signaling that he would like to do it through there or perhaps the subcommittee led by his friend and ally, Senator Lindsey Graham.

But this comes, Carol, at the same time that some Republicans are joining Democratic concerns over Trump's likely pick to be Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, the Exxon CEO, because of his ties to Russia, including Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who sits on the senate Foreign Relations Committee raising concerns in a tweet over the weekend about Tillerson's ties to Russia. And that is so significant, Carol, because if he votes against Tillerson in a confirmation hearing in the Committee, that could be enough to kill this nomination.

So we'll see what happens here, but a lot of questions on Capitol Hill about Russia, Russia's involvement, and Trump's team's ties to it.

COSTELLO: All right. Manu Raju reporting live from Capitol Hill. In spite of what Senator McConnell might say later this morning, four powerful Senators, as you heard, both Democrat and Republican, are pushing for an investigation into Russian interference in our election. So let's talk about that.

CNN Justice Correspondent Evan Perez is here. Jill Dougherty joins me. She's a global fellow for the Woodrow Wilson Center and a former CNN Moscow bureau chief. And Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona, CNN military analyst and retired U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. Welcome to all of you.

Evan, I want to start with you because I want to be clear. Both the FBI and the CIA suspect Russia hacked into the DNC, the Democratic National Committee's computers and Clinton's campaign manager's e- mails. What the two agencies differ on is why. So give us the CIA's take.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Carol. Right now, there's broad agreement at the CIA and at the FBI and other agencies that the Russian intelligence agencies hacked the Democratic National Committee and that they targeted Democrats by orchestrating the release of these embarrassing e-mails.

Now the CIA, in a briefing a couple weeks ago, did tell members of Congress that it was also clear that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected. Now, the FBI isn't ready to go that far. They still are looking at a mix of motivations, but broadly, they think it was about undermining our democratic systems. Now, the CIA told lawmakers that they had new information from their sources, but really, even the CIA's deal isn't 100 percent definitive. A lot of this is circumstantial evidence.

Of course, Donald Trump is tweeting about all this this morning. As you mentioned, this morning, he says, why wasn't this brought up before the election? Well, the answer, Carol, is that it was brought up before the election. The President-elect would have learned a lot of this in his daily intelligence briefings, Carol. COSTELLO: Yes, it was brought up in last July.

PEREZ: Right.

COSTELLO: And then we talked about it all the way through the election, so I don't know where he's coming.

PEREZ: We talked about it a lot, exactly.

COSTELLO: Exactly. So Colonel Francona, Mike Morell, the former acting CIA Director says Russia's interference in our election is the political equivalent of 9/11. He says it's a direct assault on our constitution. Do you agree?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA (RET), UNITED STATES AIR FORCE: No, I think that's a bit overstated. I mean, of course, it's troubling that they're doing this, but you're looking at this from the Russian perspective. They decided that they were going to possibly back one candidate and conducted an information operation to that effect.

What we're talking about is hacking into someone's e-mail. We're not talking about manipulating the results of the election. We're talking about trying to influence the election, trying to influence how people vote. So we're not calling into question any Russian capability or attempt to change the votes.

COSTELLO: So just let me ask you this, Colonel.

FRANCONA: They're just trying to influence how people cast their vote.

COSTELLO: Let me ask you this, Colonel. If Russian computer hackers hacked into the Republican National Committee's e-mails, right, and then sat on that information but decided to disseminate the DNC's private information through WikiLeaks, does that make it different in your mind?

FRANCONA: No. I think that's exactly what happened, and I think it was a conscious Russian decision that says, we're going to try and embarrass the DNC. We're going to steer our efforts to influence people to vote for Donald Trump. That's if this is true.

[09:10:11] And you know, that's how they -- that's their calculus. That's what they thought, but I don't see any indication that the Russians actually hacked into machines or tried to manipulate the actual votes themselves. So this is what countries do, what intelligence services do. Normally, you're not as heavy handed about it as the Russians can be but, you know, this could be akin to like a president going to -- well, let's use an example, President Obama went to London and told the British population not to vote to exit the E.U. or there would be economic consequences. That was an attempt to influence that election. On a much larger scale, what the Russians are doing is very akin to that.

COSTELLO: OK.

PEREZ: Carol, real quick, let me just --

COSTELLO: Yes.

PEREZ: I just wanted to clarify real quick, we have no, and the FBI has no indication that the Russians did get into the RNC systems. What they did get into, we're told, is third party organizations that did have some access to RNC data. And so that's been a little bit of a misunderstanding over the last few months. We've repeatedly heard allegations that they did get into the RNC and perhaps sat on that information. Right now, the investigation is not showing that.

COSTELLO: OK. So thank you for clarifying. So, Jill, we're sitting here and we're talking about this. We're talking about Russia possibly influencing an American election and tipping the scales toward one candidate. So is Vladimir Putin sitting back and, you know, kind of laughing at the United States?

JILL DOUGHERTY, FORMER PUBLIC SCHOLAR, WOODROW WILSON INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR SCHOLARS: You know, I think, Carol, he's getting back at the United States for what he feels the United States did to him. I mean, he believes that the United States has influenced elections and the political process in Russia and actually other countries in the former Soviet Union, whether you agree with this or not.

I mean, he says, for example, Hillary Clinton literally gave the sign for demonstrators to come out on the streets of Moscow in 2012, and those demonstrators were demonstrating against elections but they were also about holding anti-Putin signs. So if you take it kind of as a personal approach, it could be that, you know, Putin really, we know, does not -- well, let's say, detest. He does detest Hillary Clinton and blames the United States for interfering. So it could be kind of this tit for tat.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So, Evan, a question for you. If U.S. intelligence sources and the FBI have all of this information on Russia, why haven't there been any arrests?

PEREZ: You know, Carol, that's actually one of the toughest things here, is that doing this, doing the intelligence work, is one thing but to bring a prosecutable case, that takes a long, long time. That's what the FBI is working out. That's one reason why they're a little bit more conservative about where they're at, in their assessment of the motivations here.

I think they're still working to try to figure this out. They still haven't been able to draw a direct line between Moscow and WikiLeaks, which is the website that published these e-mails. So that is something very much at the top of the minds of the FBI, and that's definitely what the investigators are looking at.

I think it's going to be very difficult to try to figure out exactly who did this. They do know, though, that it was Russian intelligence agencies that were behind them.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So Colonel Francona, Donald Trump is denying Russian involvement. He says this has become politicized. Both the CIA and FBI are doing this for political purposes. But the CIA Director, John Brennan, was a national counterterrorism director under Republican George W. Bush before he became the CIA Director, and the FBI Director James Comey is a Republican. So is it political?

FRANCONA: Oh, I don't want to speak for Mr. Trump on what's political but, you know, hacking into someone's e-mail is not that sophisticated of an operation. But I suspect that the Russians, if they were behind this, well, probably did it fairly easily.

I don't see why we're arguing about whether it was the Russians or not. I think it's more important that it was done. I think the investigation is important to find out exactly who did it and if they can. A lot of times, it's very difficult to determine exactly who did what in these kind of operations. And if the Russians left that much of a trail, then that wasn't a very professional operation.

COSTELLO: So, Jill, do you suspect, you know, from a Russian perspective, that they fear an imminent arrest on the part of the United States intelligence services?

DOUGHERTY: I don't think they fear that anyone's going to go over to Moscow and arrest them. But, I mean, looking at this, Carol, in kind of a big focus, they had succeed in undermining faith among many people in democracy, in the American way of democracy.

[09:15:05] They have obviously criticized Hillary Clinton. I mean, I watched the Russian media. There is no question that she was under attack by the Russian media.

And then, you know, did they do it to help Trump or did they do it to hurt Hillary? It kind of works in the same way in the end if you know what I mean. So I think the overall thing is that this is very damaging to the entire system.

And there is a mood that's been created which is as soon as there are reports in the United States of hacking, the system is corrupt, et cetera, et cetera, the Russian media begin to tweet and Facebook and disseminate all sorts of stories about that.

So there's kind of a close loop of all of this information which goes all over the world and undermines faith in the United States, it undermines faith around the world and confuses everything and that's the objective is to make it very confusing, and very -- look very bad.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It's interesting you say that, because Fox's interview with John Bolton, who is Trump's possible pick for deputy secretary of state ended on Russian state television just this morning. I have to end it there though. Evan Perez, Jill Dougherty, Lt. Colonel Rick Francona, thanks to all of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a man with close ties to Russia emerges as Donald Trump's favorite to take over the State Department. Details on the Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: All right, I want to take you briefly to the Trump Tower where moments ago, Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, the former congressman from Florida, was seen inside the Trump Tower. We presume he's there to talk to Mr. Donald Trump.

[09:20:05]We don't know exactly about what, but as you know, Allen West was a big supporter of Donald Trump through the entire election season. We'll keep you posted.

Rex Tillerson is the CEO and chairman of ExxonMobil, the world's most valuable oil company and sources tell CNN he is Donald Trump's pick for secretary of state. Trump, who was expected to make a formal announcement later this week, cited Tillerson's record at Exxon as one reason he'd be a good pick.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: Well, in his case, he's much more than a business executive. I mean, he's a world-class player. He's in charge of I guess the largest company in the world. He's in charge of an oil company that's pretty much double the size of his next nearest competitor.

It's been a company that's been unbelievably managed and to me, a great advantage is he knows many of the players and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company, not for himself, but for the company.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. So the kremlin, Russia, echoed Tillerson's business acumen. CNN asked Dmitry Peskov, a kremlin spokesperson, if Tillerson is a friend of Russia and he told us this, quote, "He's very professional. We planned a lot of mutually beneficial projects between our companies. Unfortunately, a number of them were left unrealized.

As to whether he's friendly to Russia or not, there's a huge difference between being a secretary of state and being CEO of big corporation." We should note that a few years ago, Tillerson was awarded Russia's Order of Friendship by Vladimir Putin.

So let's talk. Susan Page is here. She is the Washington bureau chief for "USA Today." Jason Johnson also joins me. He is the politics editor for theroot.com and political science professor at Morgan State University. Susan, should Americans worry about this pick for secretary of state?

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": Well, some Americans are expressing some concern, some important Americans, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, who yesterday said he was concerned about whether Tillerson would have too much of a tilt toward Russia.

And if Donald Trump goes ahead and nominates him for secretary of state, we know he's going to get some scrutiny in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for confirmation.

Marco Rubio, a member of that committee, expressed concern. Rand Paul is on that committee so is Jeff Flake. Those are some independent- minded Republican voices, who I think are likely to raise questions about Tillerson's history with Russia in general and Vladimir Putin in particular.

COSTELLO: Well, well, here's a concern, Jason, and I'm going to try to put it as simply as I possibly can. So Exxon, the company, wanted to build a lot of oil facilities in Russia. But then Russia invaded Crimea in Ukraine and U.S. imposed all of these sanctions on Russia which killed Exxon's dreams of expanding into Russia.

So, now you have Tillerson and Russia, they both want to work together on these oil fields. Russia would love those sanctions lifted because the economy is in the tank, right? So in that sense should Americans raise their eyebrows?

JASON JOHNSON, POLITICS EDITOR, THEROOT.COM: You know all we got to do is add Denzel and this is like a Manchurian candidate situation. I mean, that's how bad this is. Look, I believe that the president- elect has the right to pretty much pick who he and maybe one day she wants to be in their administration.

But in the wake of very clear evidence by the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI that the Russians had impact on this election were working in concert with President-elect Trump, it's a very bad idea for a national security to put someone who is not only inexperienced, but has incredibly close ties to the Russian government as secretary of state.

And here's the thing he didn't just get the Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin, if you look at the history of people who received that award, they've given it to double agents, they've given it to people who have betrayed their countries in favor of Russia I think this is a very dangerous selection. I have a lot of doubt it's going to pass the Senate.

COSTELLO: So Susan, how did it go from "I'm considering Mitt Romney" to this Exxon CEO guy?

PAGE: You know, here's the most amazing thing, could two figures have more different, more contrasting views of the United States relations with Russia than Mitt Romney and Rex Tillerson and they seem to be the two finalists for secretary of state?

Because Mitt Romney famously in the 2012 campaign said that there was no bigger foreign policy concern than Russia and Rex Tillerson has this history of business dealings with Russia. We should note that Rex Tillerson has some allies, some people who say he would be a good secretary of state.

There are reports that Bob Gates has spoken highly of him to Donald Trump, Bob Gates, the former defense secretary and that Condoleezza Rice has as well. So those are some powerful backers. But it's clear there are some concerns especially in the wake of this ongoing investigation by the Obama administration into exactly what it was Russia tried to do during our elections.

[09:25:02]COSTELLO: OK. So Jason, all of that's going on because there's maybe going to be a congressional hearing, who knows, but these four very powerful senators want one both Democratic and Republican.

Senator Mitch McConnell is supposed to make remarks at the top of the next hour. We suspect he will say, we don't need any congressional investigation. There's nothing to do this. There is no hard core evidence. Why waste out time?

And then Donald Trump says he might nominate another -- yet another person with ties to Russia.

JOHNSON: You know, Carol, in a historical context, this is called end of empire, right? This is how nations, you know, hand off t baton to the next great empire. Because when you get domestic leaders who are more concerned with power than the actual sovereignty of the nation? That is a problem.

Mitch McConnell was in the meeting with President Obama, and the FBI director, and the CIA director, two months ago when they said we need to have a bipartisan effort to do something about this, and he dismissed it then because it was more important that Donald Trump win than the United States not become a client state to the Russians.

This is a problem. And the fact that we have a president who doesn't want to pay attention to this is a problem. And I think every American, Republican or Democrat who cares about the sovereignty, integrity of this nation to be concerned about these connections to Russia. We've done this historically. Now we're on the receiving end. It's not a good place to be.

COSTELLO: OK, Susan, best guess. What do you suppose will happen? Will there be hearings? Will they take place before Donald Trump goes through his inauguration?

PAGE: I don't know. I think we should give Mitch McConnell a chance to speak before we judge what it is he is saying. I do -- I do agree that the idea that Russia would try to meddle in our election is something that should be of great concern and deserves investigation.

And whatever Congress decides to do we know the administration is going ahead with an investigation so it's not as though there is no scrutiny of this, but let's see what happens you know. Donald Trump is not yet president.

Obviously he's taken positions on Russia that that have dismissed some of the conclusions of the intelligence agencies about what happened. But I think maybe this is an issue that is still percolating and we need to see what happens.

COSTELLO: All right, Susan Page, Jason Johnson, thanks as always. We're just moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Alison Kosik at the New York Stock Exchange. Hey, Alison.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol. Good morning. I am expecting to see some caution when the opening bell rings in about 3 minutes from now. What a year it's been. The Dow is up already 13 percent. The Nasdaq up almost 9 percent and the S&P 500 up 10.5 percent.

But I'm seeing caution ahead of the fed meeting, which begins tomorrow and this decision day coming on Wednesday. So at this time last year when the fed met, members wound up hiking interest rates for the first time in almost a decade so investors this time around are expecting a repeat performance.

There's now a 95 percent chance a rate hike will happen. So that will make things like mortgages, credit cards, and car loans more expensive. But Wall Street's really going to be looking to see what the fed wants to do in the future. How often it wants to tighten those races in the coming year.

Also getting more expensive this holiday season gas prices because of a huge run-up in crude oil. Prices topping $54 a barrel for the first time in a year and a half and that will translate into higher gas prices next year -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Alison Kosik, many thanks.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a CNN exclusive from inside war-torn Aleppo. An update from the 7-year-old Syrian girl whose story captured the world's heart.

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