Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Tonight

U.S. Drones Hacked; International Custody Battle; San Antonio Custody Battle; Copenhagen or Bust

Aired December 17, 2009 - 19:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Tonight, watching us watching them, insurgents hack into predator drones. High-flying terrorist killers exposed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If you are a bad guy and you are trying to evade either capture or attack, it's a lot easier to do that when you know exactly when and how you're being watched.

ROBERTS: How bad is the collateral damage?

And it's not over after all. An international custody battle back on. A Brazilian court says a 9-year-old American boy will not be coming home, yet. Justice delayed or denied?

Also, President Obama heads to Copenhagen, plunging head first into the hot debate over climate change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they're coming here with an empty pocket and empty promises then they should stay at home.

ROBERTS: Can a deal be made?

Plus, "California in Crisis", can green jobs save the state from financial ruin?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN TONIGHT live from New York. Here now John Roberts.

ROBERTS: Good evening and thanks very much for joining us tonight.

A frightening breach in security that jeopardized a key weapon in the war on terror, those predator drones the government says are so valuable at hunting down terrorists, well it turns out the military wasn't the only one watching those video feeds. Insurgents were, too, and all it took was a $26 software program.

The remotely flown planes have been the military's eyes in the skies a high-flying terrorist killer in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The situation was discovered last year. Drone videos were found on the laptop of an Iraqi militant. Officials say the flaw has been fixed, but as Elaine Quijano reports now the damage may already have been done.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The software in question costs as little as 25.95 made by a Russian company. The SkyGrabber program allows users to take advantage of unprotected communications links. And as "The Wall Street Journal" first reported and a U.S. official confirmed to CNN, insurgents used the program to intercept live feeds from U.S. military predator drones monitoring targets in Iraq.

ALAN PALLER, RESEARCH DIR., SANS INSTITUTE: What was surprising was that the military computers, the military drones weren't using hardened technology.

QUIJANO: A senior defense official did not deny the breach, but insists the problem is an old issue for the military, one that's been addressed and fixed. Yet anther official said this is sometimes a risk the military is willing to take because encrypting slows down the real time video feed when multiple people need to watch simultaneously. Still one expert says this is exactly what happened in Bosnia years ago and should never have happened in Iraq.

P.W. SINGER, AUTHOR, "WIRED FOR WAR": We assumed that our enemies would be dumb. We assumed they wouldn't catch up to our technology. We assumed because they were in a place like Iraq or Afghanistan, they couldn't pull it off. Well, what happens when you assume?

QUIJANO: In fact, a 2005 CIA report notes Saddam Hussein was suspected to be doing the same thing, monitoring U.S. installations after Iraqi hackers located and downloaded the unencrypted satellite feed from military drones. As for these latest breaches, a U.S. official says no American troops or combat missions were compromised, but P.W. Singer, author of "Wired for War", says the breach should serve as a wake-up call.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are other potential adversaries out there that have much, much bigger budgets. Certain large nation states and the kind of things they're going to do make this look silly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

QUIJANO: Now one of the highest profile uses of drones has been in Pakistan where they've been used to hit al-Qaeda and Taliban targets on that side of the border, but informed sources tell CNN that those drones are not vulnerable to this software because they do have the latest encryption technology and because those drones are used in a much more limited capacity than the military drones -- John.

ROBERTS: One potential bright spot in all of this at the very least -- Elaine Quijano, thanks. As Elaine just reported, insurgents in Iraq monitoring video feeds from predator drones would know exactly what is under surveillance. It could give them enough information to avoid attacks from U.S. forces. Well just how much of a victory is this for insurgent forces? Joining me now to talk more about this, national security expert Gabriel Schoenfeld. He's a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and CNN senior international correspondent Nic Robertson.

Gabriel, let's start with you. What does it say about U.S. national security, that a $26 software program can download the video feeds from these drones?

GABRIEL SCHOENFELD, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE: It shows a certain degree of complacency in our Pentagon because this became -- the flow -- the theoretical flow (INAUDIBLE) far back as the 1990's. They assumed that local forces (INAUDIBLE) would not be able to do this. That assumption was wrong and it did probably cost us intelligence over the last year as long as they've been hacking into these systems.

ROBERTS: You know terrorists certainly have gotten a lot better at using the Internet. We see that with al-Qaeda, these messages from bin Laden that are coming out. Al Qaeda has got its own Web site, its own production facility. I mean to not assume that they would be capable of doing this with the flaw was discovered, as you said, 10 years ago in Bosnia, what does that say?

(CROSSTALK)

SCHOENFELD: And this is a $26 piece of software that's being used by relatively unsophisticated forces. What happens when a state uses its resources to try and break into our communications networks? If we're complacent in this way about these low tech things, are we doing well against the high tech threat? I wonder about that and it's one of the questions raised by this report.

ROBERTS: Nic Robertson, this software was designed to pull movies and satellite radio down off of satellites (INAUDIBLE) they're flying so high up there above the earth in space, it seems to work very well as we found out for pulling down anything that comes off of satellites including military feeds and it's not only just predator video that's coming down. There's lots of other things that the military is bouncing off of the satellites, isn't there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well one of the things that the drone offered the Air Force and the U.S. military in general is the fact that they were relatively cheap to build and the design time was very short compared to an F-35, which took decades to get ready, cost billions of dollars in research. You don't have that with the drone. But what happens is you're buying off the shelf components and when you buy off the shelf components, when you don't (INAUDIBLE) them in security terms, encrypt them, if you will, then it does make them vulnerable.

And there have been many examples, as we've just heard, where this has been done in the past. The military was (INAUDIBLE) when it was rushing these, as it still is, rushing them into service. Obviously, those drones operating over Pakistan are not beaming signals down to troops on the ground, but where they've been used in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's what they're doing and that's where the intercepts are coming, putting those soldiers who are fighting the battles physically on the ground putting them in harm's way.

ROBERTS: You've spent a lot of time in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Nic. When I say (INAUDIBLE) there's a lot more information coming down off of the satellites than just the drones looking for terrorists, I mean aren't they conducting video surveillance for troops on the ground as well as they're moving through certain areas?

ROBERTSON: You know, if you're a soldier on the ground and you've got a UAV above you, you feel good. I mean we've talked to troops out there and they feel good -- you've been there too -- they feel good because they know there are eyes on them that are watching out for insurgents in buildings on the road ahead. Imagine knowing now that the insurgents in the building ahead may be watching you coming towards them.

You thought you had the advantage and now, you're in their gun sight and it is -- it's not clear entirely here exactly are the insurgents using a (INAUDIBLE) satellite dish, are they using a radio antenna, because it's those signals that are designed to go down to the troops on the ground are the ones that are being interrupted, of course (INAUDIBLE) different than taking control of UAVs and drones, which is what nation states would do. When we focus on drones this summer, the Air Force told us they were trying to develop them so that other governments couldn't take control of them so that the drones could fly without this remote link, if you will. You could send them off preprogrammed, they'd do their job and come back so nobody else could hack into them.

ROBERTS: Gabriel, what do you think inevitably will be the ultimate upshot of all of this? Do you think this will it its way to Congress? Will there be hearings? Will people want to get to the bottom of how the Pentagon knew that there was this vulnerability and yet continued to operate those drones.

SCHOENFELD: I think in the first place there will be intense pressure to fix this problem now to the extent it still remains, but yes, I think if it turns out that the military knew about this flaw for a long period of time and didn't act to address it, that would raise a lot of questions about complacency in the government and I think Congress would want to have a look and certainly the public would be concerned about how careful we are being with intelligence systems (INAUDIBLE) we've had a hard time keeping secrets in this country and this is a pretty dramatic example of that.

ROBERTS: All right, Gabriel Schoenfeld from the Hudson Institute, Nic Robertson, thanks very much. Appreciate you coming in tonight.

The military is dealing with another serious security breach, a laptop computer with personal information about thousands of soldiers and their families. It was stolen over the Thanksgiving weekend. The Army says more than 42,000 people connecting to Fort Belvar (ph) may be affected. The laptop was lifted from the Florida apartment of a Fort Belvar (ph) employee. Officials state that it was a crime of opportunity and that the thief was not after any specific information.

Coming up tonight sunny California's cloudy, financial future, can the new green economy turn the golden state's fortunes around?

And a custody battle flip flop, why did a Brazilian court stop a 9-year-old American boy from finally coming home? His father has been waiting five long years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: A stunning reversal tonight in the international custody battle for 9-year-old Sean Goldman. Following yesterday's long awaited court order returning the boy to his father, David Goldman arrived in Rio de Janeiro today in hopes of finally bringing his son home to the United States, but just hours ago Brazil Supreme Court stepped in, delaying Sean's return once again. Ines Ferre has the latest breaking details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

INES FERRE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What was supposed to be a trip to bring his son back to the U.S. became another disappointment for David Goldman. Brazil's top court delayed a ruling on the return of his son Sean. The court said the 9-year-old must stay in the country while it considers a request for Sean's testimony to be heard. The boy's maternal grandmother says the boy wants to stay in Rio. Goldmans moved (ph) to Rio after an appeals court unanimously said the boy had to be returned to his biological father in New Jersey. He has won past rulings only to be scuttled by Brazilian courts.

DAVID GOLDMAN, SON ABDUCTED TO BRAZIL: This day is ridiculous. And everyone knows what's going on. Everyone knows the abuse that my son is being afflicted by and it is very, very sad.

FERRE: It's been over five years since Sean was taken to Brazil by his mother for what Goldman says was supposed to be a vacation. She never returned. She remarried and died in Brazil last year. Her family argues it would be traumatizing to send the boy to the United States after living with them for so many years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FERRE: Court goes into recess tomorrow. Today's ruling means the boy will likely stay in Brazil at least until February. How this whole saga affects the boy's mental state has been brought up time and again by both sides. Psychologists we spoke with say any way this ends, it will be difficult, John, for this child.

ROBERTS: You can only imagine and what about David Goldman -- is he just going to get on a plane and come back? Will he stay there for a while? Do we know?

FERRE: Yes. Right now we don't know what his exact plans are. He was going to speak to his lawyer and really this just is another setback for him.

ROBERTS: So many trips he's made down there and...

FERRE: And so many times that he's had to come back.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERTS: All right, Ines, thanks so much. Yet another international custody battle to tell you about tonight. This one involving a San Antonio boy snatched from a crowded school bus. Police say 10-year-old Jean Paul Lacone Dias (ph), the terrified child that you see in this video, was abducted by his own father two months ago. Authorities believe Jean Philip Lacone (ph) had custody of his son in Mexico, but they have since discovered that he lost those rights after taking his son away to France back in 2005. Now the father and son are missing and Philip Lacone (ph) is wanted for kidnapping. KABB reporter Yami Virgin first broke the story. She joins us now with the latest. What are we looking at, Yami?

YAMI VIRGIN, KABB REPORTER, SAN ANTONIO: Well we are all looking at the same screen that everybody across the country's hearing, a little boy begging that he does not want to go with his father. He denies his father. I've talked to a lot of law enforcement agents here in San Antonio, not only local, but federal. And to them, when a child denies that someone is their father, that's a red flag that something is wrong. This video was obtained by the mother from the school bus and as you're about to see, Jean Paul at one point is grabbing and you really can't tell the face, but you can tell he's grabbing something or someone. That someone is his 5-year-old brother.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONSTABLE: We're not going to let him do anything to you.

JEAN PAUL: I want to stay with my mother.

CONSTABLE: We're not going to let him do anything to you.

JEAN PAUL: No, please. No, no, no, no, no. Someone help me please. Someone help me please. Someone help me please.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VIRGIN: Difficult video to watch there. We've been getting a lot of e-mails from everywhere in the United States and thanks to CNN and the national media hopefully someone will be able to find Jean Paul. Now, again, the documents that first started this, they are in question because they seem to have been misrepresented or incomplete.

Now, there is a lot of back and forth between the attorneys, what happened here, how could it happen here. It's political season here in San Antonio. It's coming up. Politicians are watching this. Something needs to be done. As a parent, I know that I sat there watching this and it was very hard to watch. To hear a child screaming and screams that no one really heard apparently.

ROBERTS: What are the authorities, Yami, who are involved in actually taking that child off of the bus saying about the fact that they aided the father and then the father fled the country with his son?

VIRGIN: I want to be fair to them. The constable did call me and basically what they're telling me here, they get the orders. They have to carry them out. Normally, these orders would have said for the child to be taken to the court or to a third party. These were unusual. They asked for the child to be given to a father. No one asked him for a passport. No one asked him for his billfold and that was the last time he was seen at the courthouse.

ROBERTS: All right, Yami Virgin from KABB reporting for us tonight -- Yami, thanks so much.

Two international custody battles, both triggered when a child was snatched by his own parent and according to the U.S. State Department these international parent/child abductions are on the rise. Reported cases are up 60 percent in the last three years, 40 percent since 2008 alone. Joining us now with more on this alarming trend and the tangled legal issues at the heart of the Goldman and Lacone (ph) case is CNN legal analyst Lisa Bloom.

First of all, Lisa, let's get your thoughts on this Jean Paul Lacone (ph) case, the fact that authorities were apparently duped by the father with a document that may have been a Mexican arrest warrant. The judge didn't know how to read Spanish apparently. Thought it was legit, said OK, here's the order to go get the child. The authorities go on the bus before the surveillance camera and take this kid off.

LISA BLOOM, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, it's absolutely devastating. I agree with Yami. It is extremely difficult to watch. And I consider myself a pretty tough correspondent at this point having covered crime and justice stories for a long time. When you see a little boy screaming, saying he does not want to go with his father, when you hear him saying, my father hits me a lot that should have triggered something in the police officers frankly.

Why not take him to the police station? Take him to a neutral place away from the father and the mother and sort this out. Unfortunately, that's not what happened. He was given to his father and he's now been missing for two months. Also I do think the constable in this case has some questions that have to be answered.

For example, we know that the father has a history of abducting this child. He has done it in the past, so when presented with this order, by one side, by the attorneys for the father, why not call in the mother and the attorneys for the mother and give them an opportunity to object and to be heard and surely at that point they would have objected that this so-called court order was a fraud or was incomplete.

That did not happen. I do understand that as an ordinary matter of course these international orders come in. The judge enforces it because under international law they're supposed to. But because there was a history here, I think someone should have woken up and seen what was going on or at least gotten suspicious, take the child to a safe, neutral place and sort all this out. ROBERTS: Let's talk about Sean Goldman now. Get your reaction to the fact that David Goldman goes down there for the umpteenth time, thinking that he's going to get his son. They file an appeal with the Supreme Court in Brazil and they issue a stay, saying we want to wait to see what the decision is going to be over whether or not this 9- year-old will testify in this custody case.

BLOOM: Outrageous. The child has already talked to three psychologists about his wishes. In most courts, the wishes of a 9- year-old are not going to be dispositive (ph). A judge might hear what he has to say, but we all know that a 9-year-old is almost never going to want to go to a foreign country with a parent that he has not lived with for five years.

I mean if everything is reasonably good at home, that's where the child is going to say he wants to stay. And to wait three months to make this thing that's already been delayed for five years be delayed another three months is inexcusable in my view. If they really think this is so important, call a special session of the court tomorrow or on Monday and get this taken care of. To wait until February is really appalling.

ROBERTS: The family with whom Sean Goldman is living at present is pretty well connected in Rio de Janeiro. What influence might that have on this case in the way that it's been unfolding?

BLOOM: Well you know I can only speculate and well connected families often have an in with the court, whether that's in Brazil or in the U.S. I mean we had a decision yesterday, John that the child was to be returned to his father, David Goldman that's why he got on the plane. All of a sudden, there is a stay of that decision for three months? That's very fishy to me. I mean really does the court need to take a three-month Christmas holiday? I have never heard of such a thing.

ROBERTS: Your thoughts on the eventual outcome in this case?

BLOOM: Well I think under the Hague Convention the international law governing child abduction there's no question that David Goldman should prevail. The child was abducted without his consent. He's been fighting it and fighting it. The problem is not the law. The law is good and the United States, Brazil, France, Mexico, all the countries we're talking about today are all signatories to the law. The problem is the courts. And the courts are administered by human beings and the courts sometimes fail us. And I think that's the common thread in both of these stories

ROBERTS: Lisa Bloom tonight -- Lisa as always, thanks so much.

And coming up, "California in Crisis", the state faces a recession so deep how can it possibly dig out from it? Tonight, some hope for the golden state and it comes in the form of green.

And a climate gamble in Copenhagen, President Obama takes a high stakes trip. Can he get a deal or will he come home as he did the last time from Copenhagen, empty-handed? (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Welcome back and you're looking at live pictures right now of Air Force One. President Obama leaving Andrews Air Force Base aboard his private aircraft heading for Copenhagen, Denmark. Due to arrive there at 7:00 a.m. local time to join world leaders at the controversial Climate Change Summit. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and adviser Valerie Jarrett also accompanying the president on the trip. President Obama's much anticipated speech will happen tomorrow between 10:00 and 11:00 in the morning Eastern Time. Our Ed Henry is in Copenhagen, where the president may be putting considerable personal prestige on the line.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED HENRY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Obama headed here to Copenhagen on Friday for the final 24 hours of this U.N. Climate Change Summit, really trying to break a deadlock that has developed between the U.S. and China that could scuttle an accord during a critical stage here of this summit. Basically ahead of the president's visit Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the ground here in Denmark, basically reaching out to China, which wants the U.S. and other rich nations to step up and help fund the efforts of developing nations as they try to deal with the effects of global warming.

So what Secretary Clinton said is that the U.S. will in fact contribute to a $100 billion fund to help out the developing nations, help out these poorer nations, on two conditions. Number one, there has to be a broader agreement here so that the major leaders of these countries in the final 24 hours agree to cut emissions, cut greenhouse gas emissions number one. And number two, that China agree to be more transparent and show the U.S. and other nations that they really are fulfilling commitments to cut those emissions. And I spoke to some members of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's congressional delegation already on the ground here in Denmark and among them, Congressman Ed Markey, a Democratic in Massachusetts, a real power player on this issue in the United States said he believed that a deal can be worked out.

REP. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I think this is the moment. I think the world has come together. I think they want the United States and China to be the leaders. That's what this conference really wants more than anything else and if the Chinese will accept more transparency, in the way in which their commitments that they are making at this conference are in fact monitored, then I think we have the makings of something that will go a long way towards protecting the world against the most catastrophic effects of global warming.

HENRY: Now, the stakes for President Obama are enormous. Originally, he was supposed to be here in Copenhagen at the beginning of this two-week summit. Sort of low-risk quick visit at the beginning perhaps just a photo op, but a couple of weeks back when the White House got an inkling that there could be a major deal here in Denmark they decided to have the president come in on the final day of this two week summit, thinking that maybe he could push the deal along, get some political credit along the way.

Of course the flip side is that if a deal falls apart despite the president's lobbying efforts, he could really take a hit on this, on the national stage, sort of like the last time he visited Copenhagen, a last ditch effort to pitch an Olympic bid for his home city of Chicago. That failed and the president does not want a repeat of that episode.

Ed Henry, CNN, Copenhagen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTS: And coming up taking a message from Copenhagen, California stakes its economic future on new green technology and green jobs. We'll have the latest and last in our special series "California in Crisis".

And from California to Maryland, running water taken to an extreme. We'll have that story coming up for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROBERTS: Four people, three from one family, were found shot to death at an apartment on Manhattan's upper west side. Police said three bodies, a man, his son, and his grandson were found in the apartment. Another member of the family, a woman was wounded in the shooting. The fourth fatality was found in the backyard, in alley way behind the building. Police suspected that he may have been the gunman and fell to his death trying to flee the scene. The shootings took place in a residential neighborhood near Central Park and The American Museum Of Natural History of the '80's of the Upper West Side.