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Raid in Syria Kills ISIS Leader; Biden Meets with Mayors on Gun Violence; Winter Storm Slams South and Midwest. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired February 03, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Thursday morning to you. It is a busy news morning. I'm Jim Sciutto.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Bianna Golodryga.

We begin this hour with breaking news.

The leader of ISIS is dead. This following an overnight counterterrorism raid conducted by U.S. special forces in northwest Syria.

The Syrian Civil Defense Group says at least 13 people were killed, including six children and four women.

SCIUTTO: It was the largest such operation the U.S. has conducted since the previous ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, was killed in 2019. These are difficult, complex and dangerous operations. At this point we are told, thankfully, that all U.S. personnel involved returned safely. President Biden is expected to address the nation in just moments. We're going to bring you those comments as they begin.

GOLODRYGA: But we have a team of reporters and experts covering this from all angles.

Let's begin with Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

And, Barbara, we're now hearing that it was the target himself who detonated a bomb that killed members of his own family. What more are you hearing on this front?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, several sources, administration officials are telling CNN, that the initial assessment they have from the ground is, in fact, the leader of ISIS, al Qurayshi, the target they were going after, blew himself up as U.S. troops were approaching or entering the building where they thought he was and that these 13 people were killed, including six children, when that happened. And now, of course, the military will look at this and review it as part of a standard after action review. There are always concerns about civilian casualties.

That said, this mission was one of the most dangerous the U.S. military can undertake. Special operations forces went in, by helicopter, and it is our understanding from additional sources that these were members of the Joint Special Operations Command. That is the most elite. They conduct the most dangerous missions. That can include the Army's Delta Force, Navy SEAL Team Six. We don't know exactly what troops were on the ground, but we know that this was a very difficult mission for them.

In these kinds of operations, they go in very quick. They go in very hot. They want to spend the minimum amount of time on the ground to minimize their own risk and get out safely. They would have also kept eyes on this target. Once they got the intelligence that the person they were looking for was there, there would have been continuous intelligence, monitoring the area to make sure the person hadn't moved, hadn't left, to make sure they had as good an understanding they could of where civilians might be in the target area.

So, again, very complex, very dangerous. We expect to hear more in literally the coming minutes from the White House, from President Biden, on how all of this unfolded.

SCIUTTO: And it requires an enormous amount of intelligence prior to make sure you know where those targets are.

Just quickly before we go to Arwa, Barbara, it is our understanding at this point that no U.S. personnel killed or wounded in this operation.

STARR: That's right. We have asked repeatedly just to make sure everybody apparently -- everybody did come back safely.

SCIUTTO: OK. That's good news. These are dangerous operations.

Arwa, just across the border there in Turkey, this war against ISIS in Syria has continued, somewhat, out of the spotlight, but with some real fire fights. Most recently you had ISIS fighters take over a major prison in Syria. How has that fight been going? And, in your view, how significant an operation is this one?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, we've been seeing ISIS carrying out small scale operations, both in Syria and also across the border in Iraq. That attack that they carried out on the prison in northeastern Syria most certainly their most significant operation to date.

And there have been growing concerns that many analysts and experts on the ground and on the global stage have been warning about, that ISIS does still maintain this capability to regroup, resurge, re-emerge and that the U.S. needs to be keeping a bit more skin in the game when it comes to that. But one thing that the U.S. has learned in the battles against ISIS is

that the vast majority of the time, when they do go after these ISIS targets, there are civilians in the area, and quite often there are civilians in the very same building. Eyewitnesses to the raid that took place -- that took out ISIS' leader say that there were helicopter gunships overhead for hours, firing, explosions were heard. If you look at the footage from the scene, you see that it's not just the main target house, or what is allegedly the main target house that was damaged.

[09:05:04]

A number of other buildings, structures in the area also had what seems to be damage from explosives or from bullets. So, the U.S. is going to have to answer a lot of questions if enough pressure is actually put on them, on the administration and on the U.S. military as to why they went in with such a level of lethal force. And if this ISIS leader was under such surveillance, did they not know that he was living inside a building that also had families? And was the calculus made that it was OK to put those women and children, no matter who they might be related to, at risk. When you talk to people on the ground in Syria, they say that it was a terrifying experience for them and they also want to know why, why was the U.S. so willing to go after a target like this, and so unwilling to take any sort of concrete action when it came to stopping Syria's civil war.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, no doubt a huge risk undertaken by this administration.

Natasha, it was just 24 hours ago that we were covering a Pentagon briefing following the announcement that several thousand U.S. troops would be sent to eastern Europe.

At the time, was there any indication that this separate operation was also in the works?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: There wasn't, Bianna. And it's really interesting, obviously, because this is a president who has wanted to end the forever wars, who has wanted to bring troops home. Obviously we saw that in Afghanistan. He wanted to end that war. He's wanted to end, for the most part, these kind of combat operations overseas.

But Syria has been a major exception to that. And I think a lot of Americans would be surprised to even know that the U.S. still has troops on the ground there that have been helping, for the most part, the Syrian democratic forces fight ISIS over the last six, seven years there. Those operations have continued. And despite efforts by the Trump administration to pull out U.S. involvement in Syria, that is continuing and that is something that the Biden administration has said will continue because they see it as a very important mission there to kind of stymie the Islamic state in Syria.

Just a couple weeks ago we saw that -- even more recent than that, we saw that ISIS took over a compound in northeastern Syria and U.S. troops had to be brought in to kind of help the Syrian Democratic Forces get out of that situation.

So, a lot is still happening in Syria. I think a lot of people might be surprised to know that. But this is not a mission, I think, that the Biden administration is going to be changing anytime soon, especially since they seem to have gotten this very high value target.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's a much smaller footprint. And that's been the model in Syria of several hundred U.S. forces as opposed to several thousand or even tens of thousands. Of course, they peaked in Iraq and Afghanistan, helping to buttress local forces, in this case Kurdish fighters in Syria.

Cedric Leighton, with groups like ISIS or al Qaeda, you kill a leader, they name a new leader. And this leader who was killed just in this operation, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, replaced, of course, al Baghdadi in 2019 when he was killed. Soon we will hear an announcement of a new leader of ISIS, no question. Is this a blow to an organization like this, a significant blow, or one they can recover from?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Jim, it is a -- yes, it is a significant blow because what you're looking at is a -- you know, basically cutting off the head of the snake. But it's, you know, kind of like the old Greek mythology with the hydra, there are going to be many different possibly ways in which ISIS can regenerate its leadership. They will have a council meeting where they will actually discuss who will be the next leader. And that will happen probably fairly quickly based on what happened after al Baghdadi was killed. So with the death of al Hashimi al Qurayshi, they will meet either virtually or in person to select a new leader and will, in all likelihood, announce that leader just as a means of declaring that they're still here, that they're still relevant, and that they're still able to carry out their missions and their terrorist acts.

GOLODRYGA: Barbara, talk about the threat that ISIS still poses on the U.S. and our interests around the world. A reminder to our viewers it was ISIS who was responsible for the murder of 13 U.S. Marines and during the hasty evacuation back last summer from Afghanistan.

STARR: Well, I think that actually underscores what the challenge is with ISIS right now. By all accounts they really have morphed into various organizations in various locations in Afghanistan, in parts of Africa, of whether they still really have -- the kind of centralized command structure that they did under Baghdadi may remain an open question because these affiliated groups around the world certainly have shown an ability to conduct operations. And that's a challenge for the U.S. to figure out how to get the best intelligence, and where, how and when to go after them.

[09:10:10]

In the kind of raid that we saw overnight, now, we're still trying to get the absolute details. I want to say that. These are first reports. But, typically, what U.S. forces will do in these raids to protect civilians is they at least will try and call out and say, send out women, children and civilians, and many times these terrorist targets, of course, simply won't do that.

So, again, we're going to have to see what bears out on exactly how these civilians were killed. The military well knows that there is a good deal of skepticism about their efforts to protect civilian casualties. And even just several days ago Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a new policy trying -- trying, at least, to bring more attention to it and get to make sure that this is accounted for in these operations. It's a very tough problem. We'll have to see how it all sorts out.

SCIUTTO: Well, remember, you look at the bin Laden raid, right, some members of his family did survive that late raid, were later captured in that.

Cedric Layton, describe the intelligence here, tracking down an ISIS leader who I'm sure went through enormous effort to try to hide his location here. What goes into the advance work to an operation like this?

LEIGHTON: Jim, the advance work from an intelligence perspective is extremely extensive. What you end up doing is you end up getting as much detailed knowledge as you can about the target. And I think as Natasha mentioned, it's a high value target.

This is a -- you know, one of the critical elements that was developed in great detail after 9/11. But we had antecedents before that with the drug war in places like Colombia where we started to go after targets like Pablo Escobar and those kinds of things that you needed to get into were very, very detailed. So the intelligence preparation of the battle space as it's called, and the jargon of the intelligence community, really involves knowing things like, you know, which way the door handles go in a specific building.

You, of course, have to find out where the person is and how long they're going to be there. You know, are there women and children in that building? You know, who are they related to? You know, do they know that this person is wanted by the U.S.? Do they understand this? Are they fellow travelers from an ideological perspective? Are they family members? All of those things become part of it.

They also want to know things like the escape routes. Where is this target going to go? And they -- they also establish before they actually create the target package, they decide what the pattern of life of that individual actually is. And that's -- that's really the key thing. It's a pattern of life assessment.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

LEIGHTON: And it's really an effort to get very detailed look at how -- who that person is, how they live, and whether or not it's worth taking them out.

SCIUTTO: And even the layout of the place, if you look at the bin Laden raid, for instance, they built a scale model of the bin Laden compound and trained in that scaled model.

LEIGHTON: Yes.

SCIUTTO: We don't know if they took or were able to have the preparations for this kind of raid, but those are the kinds of things that go into a raid like this beforehand.

LEIGHTON: Exactly.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, really meticulous detail and planning going into this, especially when you have commandos on the ground there.

As Barbara alluded to, we are likely to learn more information in the coming minutes and hours.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Everyone, in the meantime, thank you so much.

And, again, we are expecting to hear from President Biden as he's expected to speak about this raid just moments from now. Stay with us for a live coverage of that.

We're also watching some dangerous winter weather that stretches from Texas to Maine. The snow and ice making many highways impassable. Just take a look at that. More than 40 percent of flights have already been canceled at a dozen major airports.

SCIUTTO: Also ahead, the ex-Chicago cop convicted of murder in the shooting of Laquan McDonald is expected to walk out of state prison today. This after serving less than half of his sentence. Now the NAACP is calling for federal charges.

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[09:18:45]

GOLODRYGA: President Biden will unveil his administration's renewed push to prevent gun violence during his trip today to New York City.

SCIUTTO: CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond and crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz with us now.

Jeremy, first to you.

The numbers have been disturbing in many cities around the country. The administration knows the political implications of this as well. What's their plan?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you framed that exactly right, Jim, because there are political implications to this certainly. And the White House has taken notice of those rising crime numbers in certain cities and particularly as it relates to gun violence. And that is where the White House believes it can and should focus its efforts as it relates it crimes, specifically on gun violence.

The president today will announce a series of new initiatives being led by the Justice Department to expand some of those crime prevention initiatives that he announced over the summer. Particularly one of those is targeting ghost guns, which is something that this administration has laid out a focus on previously. That will be done through training prosecutors and law enforcement officials additionally on prosecuting crimes as it relates to ghost guns, cracking down on the iron pipeline, which is the flow of guns sold in the south, then transported to the East Coast, as well as a series of other initiatives. Also pushing, of course, Congress to continue to move forward with trying to pass some common sense gun reforms, which we know is difficult if not impossible, particularly during a midterm year.

[09:20:10]

But, really this comes in the context of those midterms that are fast approaching. Republicans have sought to paint President Biden as soft on crime. And this is an opportunity for him to unite with the like- minded Democrat in Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, who they will be touring together the New York Police Department headquarters, as well as the public school in Queens to talk about community policing measures, making very clear that this president and the mayor of New York City are very much not in the defund the police camp, but instead want to take additional steps to fund law enforcement activities and, again, specifically as it relates to gun violence in major cities in the U.S.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, and, Shimon, I mean, Mayor Adams says this is what he was mandated to do by voters when he was elected mayor.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: He has made address crime a pillar of his first few days and weeks in office.

How is he combatting the issue? We've seen some two very emotional now speeches at funerals for two fallen police officers.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: What more concrete measures are we seeing from him?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Right. And one of the things that the mayor hopes by the president visiting here, here at police headquarters, look, they could have done this meeting in Washington, D.C. They could have done this meeting at city hall. But instead the mayor is choosing to do this at police headquarters following the death of those two officers. He hopes that this serves as a morale booster. But also what police officers all across the country, and especially here in New York City have been saying is that they need the politicians to support them. They need that for politicians, elected officials, to have their back. And this is what some of what Eric Adams has been talking about. Certainly, this morning he talked about the help that he needs from Washington, D.C.

Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK: We're saying to Washington, D.C., SOS, we need your help. We have to stop the flow of illegal guns in our city. Six thousand guns removed off the street last year, close to 400 since I've been in office, yet they keep coming from gun dealers throughout this entire country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And one of the things that the president is going to be here -- people he's going to be meeting with are executives here at Police Plaza that are part of this task force that was set up between local police officers and state police and investigators, and Das, but also the federal authorities, such as the ATF and the DEA and the U.S. attorneys. They are trying to use stricter measures, tougher punishment, to try and get guns off the street.

And also one of the issues, of course, is bail reform. This is something that the mayor has been saying, that legislators need to change some of the bail reform, some of the way people who are getting arrested are getting released. They're coming in, and within hours they're being released. So this is something that we're going to hear from the mayor certainly.

But the thing is, Jim and Bianna, what they really wanted, they need the federal assistance because they need more help. They need more resources and they need tougher measures, which they can possibly get from the federal authorities.

SCIUTTO: And New York cops talk a lot about that iron pipeline, right?

PROKUPECZ: That's right.

SCIUTTO: Guns coming into the city from states with lax gun laws.

Shimon Prokupecz there in New York, Jeremy Diamond at the White House, thanks so much.

Turning now to a dangerous winter storm that is slamming parts of the U.S. Experts warn a triple whammy of heavy snow, ice and sleet that is already making travel just miserable in parts of the country, leaving many without power. The Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport shut down completely moments ago. That's a big hub. Across the country, at least 4,000 flights have now been canceled.

GOLODRYGA: We are covering the storm from all angles. Meteorologist Derek Van Dam is in Indianapolis, and CNN's Pete Muntean is at Reagan International Airport. And Chad Myers is in the CNN Weather Center.

Derek, first to you. What are you seeing there right now?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, you know, downtown Indianapolis here at Monument Circle, we have vicious winds and blowing snow drifting over this area. The snow is hitting my exposed skin on my face, just feeling like these pellets almost exfoliating your face in a sense.

You know, last night we drove in from South Bend, a couple of hours to our north on a good day, but it took double that time just to get to Indianapolis. And we watched that transition from snow to freezing rain to rain as we entered into the city. So that precipitation, that was all liquid last night, as these temperatures plummet and we go below freezing, has now frozen on the surface. I want you to see this because it's an indication of just how bad and how slick the roads actually are. You can see how I'm sliding across this sheen of ice on Monument Circle. That's what the roads are like. And the ice here is bad at the surface. Now we have snow piling up on top of it.

But, if you think this is bad, think about what's taking place in the Ohio Valley, in the Mississippi Valley. We have a full-fledged ice storm taking shape near that battleground where our cold front is just slowly sagging south.

[09:25:03]

We've got cold air from the north, and warm air from the south interacting, and that's creating just chaos in terms of precipitation.

Schools are closed here in Indianapolis. People have been warned to stay off the roads. And that is the general idea here. That's what people are listening to authorities as this winter storm, this second part of this winter storm barrels in.

It's nasty here in Indianapolis. I also know it's difficult going at -- in D.C.

We'll send it to Pete at Reagan International Airport.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: You know, Derek, thankfully just rain here at Washington National Airport, but not so good across so many parts of the country. In fact, this is the worst day for flight cancellations we have seen in the last year. The numbers, according to Flight Aware, just keep going up. Four thousand one hundred flights canceled now nationwide. This is the biggest number we have seen since that big ice storm that hit Texas around this time last year. In this case, dozens of major airports impacted, including some of the biggest hubs for the airlines.

Just look at the breakdown here. Dallas Love Field, that is the headquarters for Southwest Airlines, about 85 percent of all departures there canceled. Austin, about three quarters of all departure canceled. DFW, the biggest hub for American Airlines, about half of all departures canceled. And a quarter of all departures canceled at Chicago O'Hare. The list goes on. Cincinnati, Columbus, St. Louis, where Southwest suspended operations just yesterday.

A bit of good news here, though. Airlines are proactively canceling these flights, getting the word to passengers before they show up to airports and that causes more and more frustration. They have also issued travel wavers so that folks who want to change their flight and are impacted by this storm can free of charge.

But we know, Chad Myers in the Weather Center, this storm hardly over just yet.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: You know, Pete, you know, you may be sitting in Phoenix and you're saying, what's all this fuss about? It's just the Midwest. But if your plane was coming from one of these hubs, it's not going to get to Phoenix. That's why we're -- these numbers just keep going up. Nice job there.

We will see the sleet continue. It changes from rain to freezing rain to sleet and then to snow. So as Derek had, we had the layer of ice under the snow that's covering up the ice so you can't see it when you're driving and you will feel it when you're shoveling. The snow still continues here across Indianapolis. Indianapolis, you won't even get above freezing until Sunday. So this isn't going to melt by itself.

Little Rock, you're in the middle of an ice storm. So is Memphis. So is Louisville. Just to the south of Cincinnati. Northern Kentucky, Independence there, just getting heavy, heavy rainfall and temperatures are in the upper 20s. Those two things don't go very well together. The snow is to the north. The rain is to the south. But this entire line, as we move you into Friday morning, continues to slide to the east. There could even be some ice in the tristate around New York City and Connecticut and New Jersey, but mainly to the Boston area tomorrow morning, that's where your ice is going to be the heaviest. So I suspect the Mass Turnpike, I-95, all those areas will get some very big slowdowns tomorrow. High impact event across a lot of the U.S.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And Boston just got hit by snow a few days ago. Goodness gracious.

Chad Myers, Derek Van Dam, Ed Lavandera, thanks so much to all of you. We continue to wait for the president's comments on a raid in Syria that killed the ISIS leader.

Coming up, I'm going to speak live with a congressman who just returned from a trip to Ukraine. What he makes of the order to send more U.S. forces to eastern Europe.

GOLODRYGA: And we are just moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Stock futures are down this morning, particularly the Nasdaq, after some very disappointing news from Facebook's parent company Meta. Their shares are plummeting after revealing Facebook lost users for the first time in its 18-year history. Investors also watching the weekly jobless report out this morning. The number of people filing for unemployment dropped for a second week in a row to 238,000.

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