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Conservatives Win Resounding Victory in U.K.; Seismic Political Shift in Scotland; FBI Director: 'Thousands' of ISIS Followers in U.S.; NSA Collection of Phone Records Ruled Illegal. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 08, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shocking, historic, unprecedented.

[05:58:33] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Prime Minister David Cameron will keep his job.

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: My aim remains simple: to govern on the basis of governing for everyone in our United Kingdom.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: ; Hours before the attempted attack the FBI sent a warning to police in Garland.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This bulletin was prompted by his social media activity.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: FBI director James Comey telling reporters that perhaps thousands of extremists in the U.S. like Simpson being fed what he called ISIS poison.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tom Brady is firing back.

TOM BRADY, QUARTERBACK, NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS: I don't have, really, any reaction. We earned and achieved everything that we got this year as a team.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I realized the mist coming through the cabin was smoke.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The back of the plane was very, very dense. I really couldn't see.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota and Michaela Pereira.

CHRIS CUOMO, CO-HOST: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, May 8, 6 a.m. in the East.

An election shocker to tell you about. The U.K. proof the polls can be very wrong. Even the exit polls had this as a nail-biter, but in the end the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party winning big, handing significant losses to the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats.

So British Prime Minister David Cameron will remain in power. Now, what does this mean for the U.S.-U.K. relations? How about Britain's membership in the E.U. and the push for Scottish independence? So many questions. And we have this story covered the way only CNN can.

Let's begin with Richard Quest live on the streets of London with the latest. Tell us the reaction, Richard.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN: Good morning from the top of a big red bus that is now making its way across Westminster Bridge, Alisyn. Right on time you join us. Thank you for being punctual. It's 11 in the morning in the U.K. Big Ben is chiming the hour. And the M.P.s will be returning to the houses of Parliament. And it will be David Cameron.

Overnight as the exit poll came out this is how one of the national newspapers is doing it, "Cameron will hold onto power, says the exit poll." It was a shock. We had expected from weeks of exit polls that it would be a hung Parliament, that Cameron would be in trouble, that Labour would do well.

But in the end the bell tolled for the opposition. And it was David Cameron that is going to see the queen in just over an hour and a half to say he can form a government to be the next prime minister to remain in office.

CAMEROTA: Big Ben and Richard Quest, that's quite a live shot. So, Richard, what does this mean now for that referendum for the -- for Britain leaving the E.U.?

QUEST: Alisyn, I can do better than that. Have a look at that. It's the million-dollar shot. Look at that, right up the River Thames, the London eye, while I answer the question that you actually asked me.

Alisyn, what it means is that there will be a renegotiation. That Britain will attempt to renegotiate its relationship with the E.U., and there will be a referendum on that by 2017. It's going to be two years of should Britain stay in, should Britain leave?

And one other thing: Cameron has already said that he will not go into the next election in 2020 as prime minister. So the Brits know firstly there will be a referendum. And secondly, how long he's going to be there.

CAMEROTA: Wow. That packed a lot into one live shot. Richard Quest, thank you so much. We will see you later on in the show for more reaction. Thanks so much.

Well, the Scottish National Party came in a distant third place, but the party may be the big story of election day, the party soaring from six seats in Parliament to a whopping 56. So what becomes of the new momentum for the Scots? CNN's Erin McLaughlin live from Scotland's capital, Edinburgh, with more. Good morning, Erin.

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

That's right: people here in Scotland waking up to an absolute political earthquake. Keep in mind that the Scottish National Party is the very same party that was pushing for that referendum back in September, pushing for a breakup of the United Kingdom and for Scottish independence.

Now, they failed there, but they're absolutely victorious in this election, going from just 6 seats in Parliament overnight to an unprecedented and absolutely staggering 56 seats. The most this party has ever had, 11 seats, many saying that Scotland now sending a very firm message to the establishment that it wants to see change in this country.

Perfect example of that, the story of 20-year-old Mary Black, the SNP candidate who stunningly managed to unseat Douglas Alexander, one of the most seasoned Labour politicians in all of the land.

Now the question becomes what sort of influence will the SNP have over this government and what sort of concessions prime minister David Cameron is willing to make to avert what many are talking about here as a second referendum -- Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Erin, thank you very much. Let's bring in Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent, joining us from London. She was up all night following election coverage. And you had to be, Christiane, because this one became complete misdirection. How did the polls get it so wrong? What's the conventional wisdom from all those spin doctors this morning?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is no conventional wisdom, because the whole herd mentality set in good and strong; and everybody went with the herd. There were even predictions that Ed Miliband would win a majority. That was in some corners of the press.

So, yes, a real serious dissection of opinion polls, of the media, of this idea that, you know, you don't perhaps take into account that there were 40 percent undecided even a few days before the election. So all of that.

But the truth is that practically nobody predicted that Cameron or anybody would get an overall majority. And what he has is one short of an overall majority. He is going to see the queen at midday to say that he will be able to form a government.

So what happened here? People voted for continuity. People decided to trust him, that he would be the man to keep restoring the economy. They voted against change.

They did give a big win to the Scottish nationalists. The Scottish nationalists say they don't want another referendum. And to be very frank, experts say that, having lost the referendum in September, they don't want to have another one, because they would probably lose it again.

[06:05:08] Some have said the people went for the Scottish National Party so -- in such droves, because they knew they didn't risk another referendum. They knew they wouldn't risk breaking up Britain, and they voted their heart. So that's for that.

As for Europe, it is generally considered that, even though Cameron, under pressure from his right flank, Eukit (ph), did go for this referendum in-out, but that he would be able to do enough Houdini work with the E.U. to make sure that Britain stays inside the E.U.

And now we have to see whether Cameron can actually make Britain stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States again and really make Britain still remain a world leader. Because whether it's Cameron or Miliband, there has been a retreat from the world stage -- Chris.

CUOMO: So what does this resurgence of authority for Cameron mean in terms of his ability to shore up the U.S. relationship and share these goals in the war on terrorism, in the battle for what the global economic mandate is?

AMANPOUR: Well, the goals are shared; there's no doubt about it. The question is how much heft does Britain put into the fight?

For instance, yes, it is in the air fight against ISIS, but no, it isn't with a huge number of aircraft.

For instance, in the Russia-Ukraine crisis, where was David Cameron? Obviously, where was President Obama, as well? The people who we saw front and center negotiating with Putin were Merkel and Hollande, the big chiefs of Europe.

So there are all these questions. What does Britain do about its defense budget, which is way below the basic minimum of 2 percent that's required as a NATO force or as a NATO partner and therefore as a force in the world? All these things have to be looked at. And people have said that Britain has to have a long hard look at itself and decide whether it wants to remain a world leader.

But for the economy, Britain stands out in Europe as having a strong resurgence. Well, a decent recovery, let's say, from the crash; stronger than any other economy in terms of growth in Europe, employment at highest in Europe, and the kind of capitalism that people have described as more compassionate, for instance, than in the United States. So all of that is -- makes Britain a very attractive prospect for the rest of the world. And I think this continuity is going to reassure not just markets but allies and people around the nation, as well.

CUOMO: Well, he went from seeming to be pushed out, Mr. Cameron, to now almost ruling alone. And in combination with his promise to not run the next time, this gives him power and freedom, Christiane. So what do you think he's going to do with this?

AMANPOUR: Well, it does give him power and freedom. And, you know, people criticized him a lot for saying in an interview before the election that, "Actually, I won't stand for a third term if I win."

So I think what he says he wants to do is continue austerity to an extent, although a lot of unfunded promises were thrown around in the last desperate few days of the campaign. But continue to get what he says the economy back on a really solid level footing.

Plus, he has acknowledged that there was a problem with Scotland. And that is, in part, because Britain, all its major parties, did not follow through, again, with all these promises they threw around to the Scots in order to try to keep them from voting for independence, which they successfully did. They kept the union whole, but they haven't delivered so-called devo max, in other words devolving the power to Scotland.

And that's what the Scots say they want: "We're going to use our power in Westminster to make sure that England, et cetera, gives us the promises and keeps the promises that they made to keep us in the union." So there's that.

And again, as I said, Britain has to figure out how much of a role it's going to play going forward in foreign policy. Because, as we'd like to say, it has always punched above its way, but recently, it's been punching below its weight. And many around the world who are allies want to see Britain as a real world power and a force for good and for positive change in the world.

CUOMO: Apt metaphor there, Christiane. And for those in the U.S. who are waking up this morning and saying, "Oh, the U.K. elections, what does this mean for me?" You cannot underestimate the need that the U.S. has for the U.K. in the war on terror.

Thank you so much for breaking it all down for us this morning. Appreciate it -- Mick.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris. A chilling warning from the FBI director: thousands of Americans are in direct contact with ISIS right now. They're either being recruited or ordered to attack America. The terror group steadily gaining influence here in the United States with a rapidly growing number of online followers.

Let's bring in our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr. What's being done about this?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela.

Grim situation indeed. And a lot of people are looking at that attack in Garland, Texas, as a real barometer of this.

In fact, law enforcement officials telling CNN Elton Simpson, one of the men killed in that attack, was in touch with known jihadists overseas who were encouraging him to launch attacks. It gets to this question: are these attacks, are these plots inspired by ISIS or directed by ISIS in a very direct fashion? It may no longer matter. That's what the FBI is saying. That now that line is being blurred.

[06:10:20] FBI director James Comey meeting with reporters. I want you to just hear what he had to say about all of this. Let me quote directly, Comey saying -- and I quote -- "I know there are other Elton Simpsons out there. It's almost as if there is a devil sitting on the shoulder, saying 'Kill, kill, kill, kill,' all day long. They are recruiting and tasking at the same time."

Hundreds of people in the U.S. perhaps in touch with ISIS, a very difficult problem for the law enforcement community to approach. In fact, later today there will be a classified phone call, if you will, with the FBI, federal authorities and state and local officials. A routine regular call, but you can assume all of this is going to be a subject of conversation -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. We're going to be talking about it a lot on NEW DAY, as well. Barbara, thanks so much for that.

Also new this morning, a federal appeals court ruling on the side of privacy, saying the NSA collection of Americans' phone records is illegal. Pressure now building on Congress and President Obama to either end the NSA program or to change it somehow.

CNN's White House correspondent Jim Acosta joins us live. What has the reaction been there, Jim?

JIM ACOSTA, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, the White House is still reviewing this appeals court decision that ruled that the NSA's bulk phone data collection is illegal. While the court did not say the program is unconstitutional, these judges did say that the collection of bulk phone data at the NSA exceeds what was authorized by Congress and the Patriot Act.

Now, this mass collection of U.S. phone records started after 9/11. It's routinely authorized in secret by the federal surveillance court, but the disclosure of this program from NSA leaker Edward Snowden sparked an outcry among Republicans and Democrats and the new attorney general, Loretta Lynch, she told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the administration is looking forward to seeing some legislation addressing what is called this 215 program, as it's known here in Washington. Here's what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LORETTA LYNCH, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Given the time issues involving the expiration of it, we are also and have been working with this body and others to look for ways to reauthorize Section 215 in a way that does preserve its efficacy and protect privacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Now, there is a bipartisan effort underway in the House to reform the NSA's program under that proposal. The phone companies would store the data instead of the NSA. The problem is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell doesn't like that idea very much, and time is running out on this controversial program. It expires on June 1. But the debate over this practice has made for some strange bedfellows here in Washington, Chris, both the White House and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul want to see this program reformed.

CUOMO: The key is the debate over the priorities, and that means working together down in D.C. We know how that's been going. Jim, thank you very much.

ACOSTA: OK.

CUOMO: We do have breaking news. A Pakistani military helicopter carrying foreign diplomats, and their families crashing into a school in northern Pakistan, bursting into flames.

Six confirmed deaths, including the two pilots and two ambassadors. There were 16 people onboard. Why this happened in dispute. The Taliban claims it shot the chopper down. Pakistani military says technical issues caused the crash.

PEREIRA: More breaking news for you this morning. Another suspected Boko Haram attack in Nigeria. The Associated Press is reporting a business school in northeastern Nigeria was the target this time. Gunfire critically wounding at least five students. A suicide bomber detonating and killing only himself. A second bomb reportedly went off in a college dorm, but we are hearing that students were already in class at that time. We'll update you when we can.

CAMEROTA: Well, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady breaking his silence on Deflategate, speaking before a friendly crowd on the campus at Salem State University in Massachusetts. He declined to go into detail but said he's had to fight controversies before. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRADY: I think also as a public figure, you learn that there's not everyone's going to like you either. So good, bad, indifferent there's a lot of people that don't like Tom Brady. And I'm OK with that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Brady also says the controversy in no way tarnishing the Patriots' Super Bowl victory.

PEREIRA: Is this a like thing?

CAMEROTA: I didn't think so.

PEREIRA: I thought cheating didn't have anything to do with liking.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: Well, it comes down to how you're prioritizing this particular grade of cheating. PEREIRA: I think you're right. There's a scale, right?

CUOMO: There's stuff that goes on in that league, you know, whether it's dirty hits, whether it's what guys do with equipment. It's what they do off the field. There's so many bad things going on. All of a sudden this is like the biggest sin in the world.

PEREIRA: Should raise some of the other things up to improve the integrity of the game.

CAMEROTA: There's that, but he's also suggesting, "Hey, there's haters out there." But it's more than that.

[06:15:04] CUOMO: I don't know. It goes to how you want to prioritize this. We'll see what action they actually take against him, what they do in other cases. You know, you've got to remember the NFL now -- yesterday Christine Brennan was saying this is the new NFL. You see, they suspended Hardy for the whole season. We'll see.

PEREIRA: Is it the new NFL?

CUOMO: We'll see.

CAMEROTA: We'll talk a lot about this during the program. We'd love to hear your thoughts on that, as well.

So how well do you know your neighbors? A warning from the head of the FBI about homegrown terrorists. He said thousands of Americans are communicating with ISIS. We'll talk about that.

CUOMO: Take a look at this. A passenger captures smoke filling a Delta flight from Florida to New York. What went wrong? How did it turn out? Answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: A chilling warning from the FBI director. Thousands of Americans are in direct contact with ISIS right now. They're either being recruited or ordered to attack America. The terror group steadily gaining influence here in the U.S. with a rapidly growing number of online followers.

Let's turn to Phil Mudd to help understand all this. He's our CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA counterterrorism official.

Phil, great to see you this morning.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: It was the number that the FBI director said that took everybody aback. He said thousands of Americans are in contact online with ISIS. Did that surprise you?

MUDD: That's right. No, it doesn't. It's a simple explanation for how far this war has come. When we faced the al Qaeda adversary, we thought of them as a small group of people who staged a horrific attack.

[06:20:06] Their goal, though, was to create a revolutionary movement, not a group, a movement that went out to places like the Philippines, Indonesia. That happened in years like 2003, 2004, 2005.

What we are now seeing is that revolutionary movement is reaching American shores. And the whole concept of terrorism is changing. Not tight, secret groups, compartmented cells, sleeper cells, but instead a group like ISIS that says, "We don't have to be compartmentalized. We're going to be on YouTube. We're going to be on Twitter saying, 'Hey, all you thousands of people that want to join this revolution that was started 15, 20 years ago, go out and do your thing'." And that's what we saw in Texas.

CAMEROTA: So, Phil, you were the FBI's senior intelligence adviser for years.

MUDD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So today how would you advise the FBI to begin to deal with those thousands of people?

MUDD: You've got to break them down into baskets. The basket -- the easiest basket to deal with is the known bad guys. That is, if you've identified someone who's interested in committing an act of violence, obviously, you're going to go up and look at their social media.

Let's go to the other end of the spectrum. And what I think is a ticking time bomb, because Americans do not understand this. Americans believe that the government is scraping a bunch of data from Facebook and Twitter and filtering out that data to say, "Hey, who are the bad guys?"

Is Alisyn up talking about Garland, Texas, in a way that makes us uncomfortable. That is thousands of tweets per second that is protected data against Americans who are living in American states. I don't think there's an easy solution to determining how you boil down the ocean of social media data. We didn't even have that ten years ago. And to finding the right people.

The answer, I believe, is twofold. One, talk to the companies that are doing this instead of just serving them legal papers for data, talk to them about what the future looks like.

And second, jointly with those companies go to the Congress and say this is not an intelligence problem. This is a problem of American culture. Do you want to be secure? In which case we collect a lot of information about Americans. Or, do you want to be living free or dying? And that is letting people do what they want to do online unless we get a clear indication that they'll commit an act of violence. Basic question.

CAMEROTA: So you think that the decision yesterday by the federal court to stop the NSA program of collecting the metadata is illegal. I mean, you think that that will hamstring law enforcement. MUDD: I do. But let me not go too far here. Look, this is the

way people like me use that data. Somebody walks into the office at our 7 a.m. threat briefing at the FBI and says, "Chris Cuomo just cropped up as a terrorist, which is not an outlandish proposition in my world."

My first question is going to be obviously who is he and who does he talk to? Fifty years ago you might have had to say, "I've got to put foot surveillance on Chris Cuomo, people on the ground to say what's his network of activity? Who are his potential conspirators?" Very easy question today.

If I want to draw a web of understanding around a human being, I want to see who they're contacting by instant messaging, who they're contacting on e-mail, who they're contacting on phone. That is digital data that's available.

What the court is saying is you can't collect that just in the event that it will be useful over time. I understand the legal decision. I think the question is much bigger. And it's a question for the president, the Congress and the American people. Do you want the government to be understanding what's going on Twitter or what's going on e-mail messages so that you can stay safe or not? The court decision is a much smaller piece of that.

CAMEROTA: It is such a complicated equation for everyone to figure out in Congress and the president.

MUDD: It is.

CAMEROTA: But let me read to you an ominous quote from the FBI director, James Comey, yesterday. He said, "I know that there are other Elton Simpsons out there. It's almost as if a devil is sitting on the shoulder -- on their shoulder, saying, 'Kill, kill, kill,' all day long. They are recruiting and tasking at the same time."

MUDD: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So, again, for the FBI, how can they ever figure out who exactly is sitting in their basement, sitting and stewing and who's actually plotting?

MUDD: They can and they can't. The first thing you want to do in a case like Simpson is you have somebody who's already got a known history. That to me is an easy one. That's what we call in the intelligence business a known. The guy's already indicated that he's thinking about an act of violence.

What you worry about in my business is the unknown. Who is out there who has not cropped up on the radar that is among the tens of thousands looking at ISIS information or communicating via Twitter who should crop up on the radar?

Here's what will happen, I believe. There will be an event in this country where dozens or more die. And we will find a long social media trail about someone who was otherwise what we call a clean skin. That is who has otherwise not cropped up -- cropped up on the federal government's radar.

And the American people are going to step back and say, "Whoa, we thought you were looking at all this stuff."

[06:25:05] And my answer is let me tell you something: people in the government, despite what you think, are very nervous about looking at stuff like Twitter without a reason to do so. And that reason can't simply be somebody's interested in ISIS and they're communicating with them on Twitter; they're looking at a website. That is not enough information to say, "I really want to investigate John Doe."

CAMEROTA: Well, we sure hope all these conversations and decisions can happen without an attack having to happen. Phil Mudd, thanks so much for the insight.

MUDD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Michaela.

PEREIRA: All right, Alisyn. Five minutes of fear on a flight from Florida to New York. Smoke starts filling the cabin. Passengers were ordered to put their heads between their knees. What went wrong?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Well, here we go. You know it was going to happen. We have the first named storm of the season. It's going to batter parts of the southeast. In the Midwest, by the way, millions are still threatened by tornadoes.

Let's get right to meteorologist Chad Myers. Chad, this is an El Nino year.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes.

CUOMO: I thought that meant that we were supposed to get kind of a pass on the hurricane side.

MYERS: It doesn't mean pass. It just means maybe a lesser season than normal. And here's Ana, and Ana Ana Fo-Fana. She just can't get her...