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Iraqi Forces Closing In On ISIS-Controlled Mosul; Wikileaks Releases Transcripts Of Clinton's Wall Street Speeches; What Do Hacked Clinton Emails Reveal? Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 17, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: At this hour tens of thousands of Iraqi troops are embarking on an offensive to retake the city of Mosul from ISIS. The U.S.-led coalition is working closely to support this effort.

So let's bring in CNN military analyst and former Army commanding general, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. General, thanks so much for being here.

LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good to be here with you.

CAMEROTA: You know Mosul well. You yourself have conducted multiple patrols in that city. Tell us why Mosul is so important today.

HERTLING: Yes, indeed. It is part of my area of operations when I was a commander of multi-national division of Northern Iraq in 2007 to '09. It's a critically important area and city, Alisyn.

First of all, it has an unbelievable history. It is where Abraham was born. It has a population of 1.2 million. It is considered somewhat the unofficial capital of the north.

You know, Baghdad is truly the capital of Iraq, but Mosul is (inaudible) -- it is the capital of (inaudible) Province, but most people see it as really the central point of Northern Iraq because it has roads and access and the trade, both oil going out and food going in and all other kinds of supplies that Iraq needs.

But it also connects the eastern part with the Kurds and the western part with Syria. So it really is a centerpiece of strength in Iraq and more importantly, ISIS wants it.

[06:35:10]This is their caliphate capital as they proclaimed in Iraq and it's critically important to get rid of the ISIS fighters from this very important city.

CAMEROTA: General, I don't know if you have a monitor there in your studio where you can see this, but I want to show our viewers what has happened there in and around the area in Iraq in the past years.

So this was January of 2015 on your screen, and the red that you see there is the ISIS-controlled area. You see Mosul and you see that all the way to Tikrit as well as Falluja, Ramadi, and then Baghdad not obviously under ISIS control.

Now you look at this month, October, 2016, you can see the progress that has been made in terms of territory. Now, those two red splotches around the Mosul and just above Tikrit are no longer connected. There has been a break in terms of ISIS control.

Are you saying, General, that if it is successful today and in the weeks that follow that that red around Mosul will be gone?

HERTLING: Well, I'm not sure completely gone. It's going to take a while, Alisyn. This is going to be a very tough fight even though early indications are that most of the Iraqi insurgents inside the town, and I'm not talking ISIS fighters.

I'm talking those who are contrary to ISIS are doing a very good job in terms of getting intelligence out to the Iraqi Security Forces and also to the American air campaign that is contributing to this.

The Iraqi people want ISIS out of this town. That's what is important. But, yes, those splotches will eventually go away. Unlike others who say, this is death knell of ISIS in Iraq, I'm not so sure. We have a little way to go on that and I've learned some -- I carry some battle scars by saying it was the end of al Qaeda or Sadr when those rose up.

There is a lot of fighting left to do as we saw with car bombs exploding in Baghdad. ISIS will still be present and it will take a generation to get rid of these kinds of terrorists and this kind of ideologues.

CAMEROTA: General, standby. We will also want to bring in our CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS Inside The Army of Terror," Michael Weiss. Michael, is the Peshmerga prepared for how many ISIS fighters they will find in Mosul and what the situation is there?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think the Peshmerga is prepared in terms of military capability, what they're not prepared for is the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

There's been very good reporting done on this by Mike (inaudible) at Buzzfeed and "The Daily Beast" just ran a piece, an aide official saying if the worse-case scenario happens and you're talking about half a million flooding into the KRG, the Kurdistan Regional Government, this will be the worst non-genocide humanitarian crisis since Rwanda.

I think that is the real crisis here. Adding to which as the general pointed out, look, the real struggle is not to route from Mosul, although that is a concerted campaign, the Kurds estimate it could take as much as six months of house to house fighting.

So that's another half year before Mosul is declared completely cleared of ISIS. The real struggle is for the day after scenario. So you have a consortium of factions vying for control of this territory including but not limited to Shia militias backed by Iran, Turk man fighters who don't get along necessarily with their Arab brethren, Sunni tribesmen and the Turks which are training up their own in a military camp that the Iraqi government says they have no business being in, Kurdish Peshmerga, and then a rival Kurdish group, the PKK, or the Kurdish Workers' Party.

The chances that everyone is going to get along nicely once the terrorists are gone is slim to none. This poses the real challenge, right? The reason that ISIS was allowed to return to Iraq in 2014 with that lightning blitz across the desert into Mosul was there was a completely suicidal and political breakdown and the rise of the sectarian thug in Nuri al-Malaki.

Now the current prime minister has vast improvement on his predecessor, but they are internal challenges, including what is happening within the Shia political spectrum, right? I mean, there are those who are more loyal to Iran than they are to their own country.

And there are Shia nationals particularly in the form of al-Sadr who want to go to war essentially with the southern traction. So I'm not so sanguine about the coherence and the integrity of the Iraqi state post-ISIS. This is, to me, the bigger issue.

CAMEROTA: Michael, we can always count on you for giving us the larger context and letting us know just how complicated all of this will be. General Hertling, Michael Weiss, thank you very much for being here with us this morning. We obviously will cover this story throughout the day -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Sanguine, interesting choice of word, comes from the word for blood and this is going to be a bloody battle.

So did you watch the game last night? The Dodgers Clayton Kershaw showing his young stuff. Shutting down the Cubs, but was it enough to get his team even in the NLCS? We have the details in the "Bleacher Report," next.

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[06:44:15]

CUOMO: What a game, what a game. Dodgers ace, Clayton Kershaw, pitches a master piece to even up the series with the Cubs. Andy Scholes has more in this morning's "Bleacher Report." I gave away the headline, but it was too good to give it to you, my friend.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: It's OK, Chris. Clayton Kershaw has the reputation of being masterful in the regular season, but not so good in the postseason. But that certainly was not the case last night in Chicago. He took the mound for the fourth time in ten days and threw one of the best post-season games of his career.

Kershaw lights out. Shutting out the Cubs for seven innings nudging six strike out. Adrian Gonzalez got the Dodgers the only run they needed in this game with a solo home run in the second inning. Dodgers win 1-0, even the series at 1-1. Game three tomorrow night in L.A. The ALCS continues tonight. Indians and Blue Jays going to get things started at 8:00 Eastern on our sister station TBS.

[06:45:09]Most people turned off Sunday night football late in the fourth quarter with the Colts beating the Texans by two touchdowns. All those people plus the fans that left the game in Houston, this one great come back by the Texans.

(inaudible) two touchdowns in the final three minutes. The last couple with 49 seconds left to force overtime. Then in the extra period, the Texans would kick the game-winning field goal to get the win, 26-23. Incredible comeback for the Texans.

All right, finally, Giants wide receiver, Odell Beckham Jr. breaking out of his slump in a big way against the Ravens. He had a career high 222 yards receiving 66 of them coming on this play right here. This touchdown proved to be the game winner for the Giants late in the fourth quarter.

After scoring a touchdown, Beckham runs over to the kicking net and proposes to it. After the game he told reporters the net said yes. We wish them well. The Giants win that game, 27-23.

Alyson, you know, Beckham was not very nice to the net earlier in the season when things weren't going so well. But as you can see, things have changed.

CAMEROTA: A lot of net love there. Andy, thank you very much for all of that.

So Wikileaks releasing the hacked transcripts of Hillary Clinton's Goldman Sachs speeches. Could they damage the Democratic nominee? We look at what they actually reveal, next.

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[06:50:13]

CAMEROTA: Three men in Kansas are facing domestic terrorism charges. Federal authorities say the men were plotting to bomb an apartment complex filled with Somali immigrants. CNN's national correspondent, Ryan Young is live in Chicago with more. What's the latest, Ryan?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Really chilling details, Alisyn. These three men are accused of planning to use a weapon of mass destruction. The three men's names are Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright and Patrick Stein. They belong to a militia group called "The Crusaders."

What the plan was according to the FBI is they were going to pack explosives into several vehicles and then put them on the outside of this apartment complex. Four vehicles and then blow it up. All this was supposed to happen the day after the election.

But according to the FBI investigators, they started finding out that this group was compiling the weapons and they put a stop to it. You can see why people, obviously, would be scared about this.

The chilling details of the men who packed the weapons in Garden City, Kansas, and then go outside this Somali apartment complex and target it and blow it up. Something the FBI has stopped -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much, Ryan.

CUOMO: All right, Ryan, thank you very much. A new batch of e-mails released over the weekend by Wikileaks. Again, hacked from the inbox of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta's inbox. That means whoever did this committed a crime. But we do believe that there is a public interest in it. Let's see what's there and also how these e-mails may be being distorted.

We have CNN political analyst and editor-in-chief of "The Daily Beast," John Avlon. This is one of those tricky situations. You know this is the fruit of the poisonous tree that we're going through here.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's exactly right. Not only leaking, of course, documents is completely legal, hacking, as you pointed out, is criminal. The added element of U.S. intelligence agencies saying that Russian government officials instructed this hack in order to disrupt the election.

We do not know what, if anything, is doctored in these e-mails, as well. All that being said, to your point, we have an obligation at this point of the election to show what is out there in the spirit of transparency.

CUOMO: Now here is some of the interesting items that are being used a lot by Trump and his campaign, and not always accurately so let's go through them. The first one, of course, as John was referring, the speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs and other banks and transcripts out and we remember the allegation.

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DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary had no defense for her secret speeches to Wall Street and international banks that she hid from the public and which were exposed by Wikileaks.

And, by the way, just as I'm walking on to the stage, Mayor Giuliani said, you're not going to believe this. Look at this. We have all of these new charges. Did you see it? Just came down today. Wikileaks some brutal stuff. Just trust me, it's real bad stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: OK. There are no charges, obviously. These are just things that the e-mail suggest assuming that they are not doctored in any way. We have not heard from the people that they were hacked from. What do you pick up in these?

AVLON: First of all, it's fair to say that the Clinton campaign did absolutely resist releasing the transcript of these speeches particularly during the Democratic primer because she is playing to the crowd in these speeches.

CUOMO: And that means?

AVLON: She's saying that Dodd Frank, that's something she had to support politically, vaguely apologizing for the level of regulation in the wake of the great recession. That would have been political poison in a primary. But there is no smoking gun here.

CUOMO: But what about this, now, everybody can't help themselves. She seemed to be apologetic at the banks for regulating them. Is that the right posture that you want from a president? When people do things for the system for their own gain all the time and never get prosecuted?

AVLON: No, and that is the problem. She is playing to the paying crowd in these speeches in a way that really contrasted what she says publicly in terms of policy.

CUOMO: All right, now, you can see those for yourself. They're online. We don't know if any of the language has been changed or anything like that because it would have to be verified by the people that wrote them. We don't know. It's one of the problems with getting information this way.

All right, Juanita Broderick, this is the allegation from Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Struggling to get the media to pay attention to her for many, many years. So last night I decided we would expose the hypocrisy of the Clintons and the media.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Now what he's calling hypocrisy is they're going after my accusers, but not dealing with their own. Juanita Broderick has always been out there. She said something happened in 1978. She recanted twice, one during a trial, once in an affidavit, but then said I still did it. Kent Star looked at it and decided not to use her as a witness in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. What do you see in the e-mails?

AVLON: What this e-mail shows is that the Clinton campaign was concerned about the resurgence of Juanita Broderick. They knew that these problems would come back and they basically exchanged legal documents, Clinton's lawyer exchanges legal documents giving the background on Juanita Broderick. This is the legal record to begin preparing a defense for what they knew was coming.

[06:55:08]CUOMO: So you didn't see it as a smear. All right, now, the media, OK, we know --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They show how the media collaborates and conspires directly with the Clinton campaign. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. Good. Short and sweet. Look, the first thing, John, is people have to remember. We only have one side of the e- mails here. If we had the Trump side, reporters work with him all the time.

Maggie Haberman is here, we had a very good relationship with her over the years and killing it in this election. We had her tee up stories for us before and have never been disappointed. Nobody is more wired into the Trump campaign than she is.

AVLON: Maggie Haberman. That's part of the point here is these e- mails are showing one side of the conversation, but relationship between political reporters and politicians are as old as politics and newspapers itself. So these e-mails do show the reporters reaching out and campaigns working with reporters. But that's true on both sides of the aisle. Important to know.

CUOMO: Did you see anything in here? How about the Harwood, the CNBC guy, who is also a --

AVLON: I think where you can cross the line is when it appears that people are working with reporters are working with campaigns too closely or there is a degree of a little bit too much sucking up and trying to get an interview. That looks bad optically, but it doesn't really cross an ethical line unless you see collusion and none of these e-mails show that.

CUOMO: I can't tell you how many times I had discussions with Trump's people, why didn't he argue this, instead of this. Why is he pounding on this? Now, is that me giving him advice? No, actually asking questions. Just trying to get inside their mind of the campaign. We want to understand their motivation so we can pass it along to you.

All right, now the last one, this is the trickiest read if you are just going to look at it on Wiki. The allegation is President Obama was e-mailing under an alias with Hillary Clinton and this is a reason why Obama, the president of the United States, somehow stopped the DOJ from prosecuting the e-mails because he was on the threads.

AVLON: Right. So, this is where you really need the reality check especially. First of all, we don't have the e-mails. We do know there were apparently eight e-mail exchanges between the president and Hillary Clinton that were caught up in the Benghazi inquest.

Those were private due to presidential privilege, but they will be released according to national records eventually. The conspiracy theory you just said is that the president basically squelched the investigation for his own purposes. There is no evidence to that effect at all.

Moreover that is very contrary the way the presidents generally operate when there are special investigations. So, this is, this stuff can become sort of fodder for fever dreams, but this is not anything that we can see from these e-mails that shows any degree of collusion let alone getting involved in an investigation from the oval office.

CUOMO: John Avlon, thank you very much. As always I appreciate it. What do you think? Tweet us @newday. We'll be reporting on what Wikileaks puts out, but we'll try to make sense of whether or not it is being used accurately and is helpful to you. So, tweet us, post your comment on facebook.com/newday.

There is a lot of news. The election has taken yet another turn. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump has kind of started to go wilder and wilder.

TRUMP: We should take a drug test because I don't know what's going on with her.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This election is incredibly painful.

TRUMP: It's a rigged system.

MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We will absolutely accept the results of the election.

CLINTON: It isn't easy running against someone who is so negative, dark, and dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the last chapter of ISIS in Iraq.

CAMEROTA: Battle for Mosul begins.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe 1.5 million people at risk.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is a battle that promises to be very, very difficult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: This is a big day, a scary day. There is an ongoing assault of Mosul. Right now Iraqi forces aided by the U.S. and others being called potentially decisive moment, but it's definitely decisive for the million plus people trapped there.

CAMEROTA: We have our reporters on the front lines. We'll bring them to you momentarily.

CUOMO: Good morning to all of you. Welcome to your NEW DAY. He's been saying it for months, but now Donald Trump is intensifying his charge that the election is rigged.

Trump claiming Democrats and a corrupt media are conspiring against him. Trump's running mate, once again, playing cleanup breaking with Trump saying, they will, quote, "absolutely accept the election result." CAMEROTA: What effect is all of this having on the polls? Our new CNN poll of polls that's the compilation of all of them together shows Hillary Clinton widening her lead over Trump to eight points, 47 percent for Hillary Clinton and 39 percent for Donald Trump.

So much is at stake. There is only two days until the final debate, 22 days until Election Day. So, let's begin our coverage with CNN's Phil Mattingly. Phil, give us the latest.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. There have been no shortage of issues that Donald Trump has pushed throughout his campaign as rigged whether it's the media or the political establishment, the Iowa caucuses, but this -- pushing the electoral result --