Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

Possible Break in Eric Frein Search; Fighting ISIS for Kobani; Biden Apologizes to Turkey, UAE Over ISIS Comments; Supreme Court Will Not Hear Same-Sex Marriage Appeals

Aired October 06, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

We have breaking news out of Pennsylvania. There's a possible break in the search for a suspected cop killer. The suspected cop killer being Eric Frein. Authorities say they have now found a letter they believe was written by Frein with details of what happened last month when one Pennsylvania state trooper was shot to death and another state trooper was wounded.

CNN's Alexandra Field has been following the manhunt. She's joining us from New York.

What did he say in the letter and why do they believe it's authentic?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sure. It's being considered a significant development. We're hearing from a senior law enforcement official who has confirmed the details of this letter that this letter is being considered a confession. In it, the suspect, the author, believed to be Eric Matthew Frein, details the shooting of two Pennsylvania police officers. He then goes on to talk extensively about the escape. In this letter, authorities are reading everything about how he got away, how he managed to stash various items in the woods and maybe most importantly how he's managed to evade police who have been surrounding him in the woods for the last 3.5 weeks. He talks about hiding out.

Wolf, remember, authorities have been looking for Eric Frein since September 12. This letter doesn't give any details outlining a motive for the shooting. It doesn't talk about why he has pursued this elaborate escape plan. But it does indicate, again, he's been leaving these items in the woods. This is not the first thing that the officers and investigators have found. They also found an A.K.-47 which they believe belongs to Frein. They have found various belongings that the suspect has left. It's not clear if he's intentionally leaving these things behind or if he's managed to lose them on the trail. Police continue to believe that the suspect is playing some kind of game with them. He wants to be on the run and he wants them to continue to pursue him -- Wolf?

BLITZER: And they are pretty convinced, I assume, based on what we're hearing and our other reporters have hearing, is that this letter is, in fact, genuine. It's not just somebody pretending to be Eric Frein.

FIELD: They are not telling us when or where they found this letter but they say the details are so specific it has led them to believe that it is the suspect, Frein, himself, that it isn't some kind of imposter who has left the letter behind. It goes into extensive details, not only about the escape and about the hideout, but about the shooting which prompted this manhunt.

BLITZER: All right, Alexandra, thanks very much. It's concerned a lot of folks not only around Pennsylvania but around the country.

Thank you very much, Alexandra Field, for that report.

Coalition forces are launching more air strikes on ISIS targets near the Turkish border. But as the city of Kobani, in Syria, not far away from Turkey, remains under siege, are those air strikes enough? We're going to ask a former NATO commander when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Let's get an update now on the breaking news.

An American teenager, a 19-year-old, has been arrested for allegedly attempting to join the terrorist group ISIS. The 19-year-old from the Chicago, Illinois, area was taken into custody over the weekend at Chicago O'Hare's International Airport. He appeared in court this morning. These are sketches from that first court appearance. Mohammed Hamzah Kahn was charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Federal agents found documents at Kahn's home expressing support for ISIS and a lot more. We're going to stay on top of this story. A very worrisome development, indeed.

Meanwhile, ISIS fighters are on the verge of capturing the important city of Kobani right on the Turkish border. Just within the last two hours, at least two different ISIS flags were spotted on top of key buildings inside Kobani. Kobani has been besieged for days. Kurdish fighters are trying to hold off the tanks and heavy artillery.

Joining me in Washington is retired U.S. Army general, George Joulwan. He's a former NATO supreme allied commander.

General, these air strikes that the U.S. and other countries, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, are they having much of an impact? ISIS is moving against Kobani and maybe elsewhere in Iraq as well. It doesn't look like --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: -- a whole lot of difference.

GEN. GEORGE JOULWAN, U.S. ARMY, RETIRED & FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Well, we're learning a valuable lesson here. Without some follow-up on the ground, it's hard to see how effective those air strikes are. What has to happen here is where, in this case, Turkish or Kurdish or some other ground force, Iraqis in Iraq, marry up in a coordinated way with air strikes. Air strikes are not going to do the problem.

BLITZER: The only ground forces in Syria, for example, right now, do they have any power in Bashar al Assad's regime? The ISIS forces, the al Nusra Front, a terrorist organization deemed by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. government, and the so-called Free Syrian Army, which are moderate Syrians opposed to Bashar al Assad, who want to work with the U.S., but have very limited capability right now. Maybe 5,000 will go off for a year's training. What is that going to do?

JOULWAN: Well, I really think the key to this -- and you've been saying it all day today -- is Turkey. Turkey needs to get involved. I've watched them go across -- particularly in northern Iraq against the Kurds, and if they feel threatened -- and I think they do feel threatened -- that's why the no-fly zone has come up. I think there's a way to work with the Turks. The Turks could be very helpful here. I don't think we're going to find what we need in the Free Syrian Army but I think it's going to have to be Turkey.

BLITZER: You're a former NATO allied supreme commander. Turkey is a key member of NATO. It has a huge military right now. If they wanted to send in a few divisions, they could go in and clean out that area around Kobani without a lot of difficulty, right?

JOULWAN: Right. But what I think we need to do is have a political and diplomatic and economic strategy. You've got to work the diplomat tech and political side with Turkey. That's extremely important. They are a member of NATO. They've been a very productive member. They helped when I went into the Balkans -- as did the Russians, by the way, and that's another problem. But I would include the Russians in trying to stem a threat that's equally dangerous to them as it is to us. But Turkey -- I believe, when they want a no-fly zone, I believe Turkey can be brought into the team to take on ISIS.

BLITZER: When I was at the U.N. a couple of weeks ago, I interviewed the out-going, now former secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and asked him why isn't NATO, 28 allies, why, as an organization, involved in dealing with this threat? NATO got involved in dealing with the threat against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Why isn't NATO, as an organization, silent?

JOULWAN: Because it takes - it was 16 nations when I was there. It's now 28 nations -- to get consensus to do that. That takes an enormous amount of effort. And the U.S. must lead. We must lead that alliance to that consensus if that's the outcome we want. I think it can be done. And I think sooner rather than later, before ISIS continues to get this momentum, how to stop the momentum. And that's what I think the air strikes are about. But you need to have some sort, I think, of ground presence on the ground by some nation that's willing to follow up.

BLITZER: I don't see NATO getting involved in Syria as an organization or in Iraq, for that matter. Unfortunately, correct me if I'm wrong, the Iraqi military, personnel, they basically have gone MIA in this fight against ISIS, at least so far. JOULWAN: The other thing about this, though, is Turkey. There is an

air base which is less than 100 miles from where Kobani is. And there you have Turkish-American-NATO aircraft that can be brought into the fight quickly that can have an impact on a no-fly zone. So I really think, as a former commander, you've got to look at all of those assets and say, how do you create the best conditions for success? Turkey is key to that, but you need to have a strategy that's more inclusive than we have now.

BLITZER: And there's a limit to what air power, though, can do.

JOULWAN: Exactly.

BLITZER: Every day I read those releases, public affair announcements of the U.S. military Central Commander out of Tampa puts out, saying that more U.S. planes went in, UAE planes, Saudi planes, and then I read what they destroyed, a car here, a tank there. That's a lot of air power to destroy a vehicle or an armored personnel carrier or a tank.

JOULWAN: We need to weigh the effectiveness on the ground. There needs to be a success for whatever forces are going to be involved. The Iraqi forces in Iraq, forces of some sort in Syria. Turkey could be a game changer here. They are -- they are threatened here and we need to help them. If they need a no-fly zone, we ought to consider that.

BLITZER: As Christiane pointed out, Turkey has absorbed more than a million refugees --

JOULWAN: Right.

BLITZER: -- from Syria over these past three years. So they're doing a lot, but, militarily speaking, they're still a work in progress.

JOULWAN: We've got to work the diplomatic and political side as well. By the way, I'll come back again -- I think Russia needs to be brought into that equation. Even though we have a problem with Ukraine, Russia needs to be brought into that equation.

BLITZER: That would be awkward but we'll see about that.

(LAUGHTER)

Thanks very much, General George Joulwan, a former NATO supreme allied commander.

Just ahead, the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden -- get this -- he has apologized now to two key allies in the fight against ISIS. We'll hear what he said that got him in trouble. But was he actually right in what he had to say, and why did he need to apologize? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The vice president of the United States Joe Biden certainly known for his blunt talk but recent comments about the fight of ISIS rattled two key U.S. allies, and now the vice president has apologized publicly to the leaders of Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. All this stems from a comment he made in a speech to students at Harvard University.

He said, "Middle Eastern allies were partly to blame for the strengthening of ISIS."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni/Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being -- who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's bring in our chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto. He's been doing some checking.

Maybe politically he shouldn't have said it, but factually, I think there was a lot of substance to what he was saying.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: There is some truth to it, no question, with some caveats. A couple of things, one, the money, and two, the fighters.

Let's start with the money. There's certainly a lot of money coming from Arab nations to the extremist groups in Syria. But it's private money. But the accusation is that the governments are not doing enough to stop it, they are turning a blind eye. But again, you have countries doing a much better job than others. Kuwait has come under a lot of attention for being a key transit point for some of this financing. And criticism from some of its own Gulf allies pointing the finger and saying, hey, we're doing our best to stop it and these other guys are not doing much to stop it.

Then you have the flow the fighters. You look at a country like Turkey, right on the Syria border and Turkey's agenda was to get rid of Assad. The accusation there is that they let a whole bunch of fighters go in, not distinguishing which group they were going to fight for, whether it was a moderate group like the Free Syrian Army or some of the other groups.

There is the impression from people I've talked to that they are getting better at policing this kind of thing. But there's some truth to the fact that these countries, at a minimum, weren't doing enough to stop it.

BLITZER: Because they were so interested in getting rid of Bashar al Assad they wanted to help the opposition and, turned out, some of the opposition were terrorists like ISIS or other elements of al Qaeda. SCIUTTO: Even if the money or weapons started with one of the more

moderate groups, say the Free Syrian Army, there's lot of movement between these groups. They're not signed on for life. If one group does better than the other, they are moving around and changing allegiances. You can fund one group and that money and arms can go to other extremist groups. That's one of the reasons the Obama administration was reluctant to arm these rebels because they had real questions as to where those weapons would end up.

BLITZER: The Turkish president, Erdogan, he took Biden's comments at Harvard University very, very seriously. He was threatening, Biden is toast or history, if, in fact, he said those kinds of things about Turkey.

SCIUTTO: It's a really difficult and damaging thing to say particularly when you're at war alongside some of these countries. There are jet planes from Qatar and from United Arab Emirates and from Jordan in the air right now. Pilots risking their lives, like American pilots are, attacking ISIS positions. So timing-wise, it's just about the worst timing you can say something that frankly officials have been talking about privately for some time.

BLITZER: Whatever Biden said at Harvard, I have heard from other U.S. officials for not just weeks but months, but to say it publicly to irritate potentially strategically important allies is politically a problem.

SCIUTTO: At a dangerous and sensitive time.

BLITZER: A very sensitive moment.

Jim, thanks --

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BLITZER: -- very, very much.

Other news we're following here in Washington, the United States Supreme Court makes a major decision today not to take on the issue of same-sex marriage. We'll tell you what it means. We're taking a closer look at when same-sex couples could have legal weddings now in a majority of the United States. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The United States Supreme Court here in Washington has now decided not to hear appeals on same-sex marriage, which, in effect, means, at least for now, same-sex marriage is legal in 30 states in the United States as well as the District of Columbia. Today's delay affects five largely conservative states, Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana, Utah and Wisconsin, where the way is now clear in those states for gays and lesbians to have legal weddings.

Let's bring in our senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.

By not deciding to hear those appeals is a major decision by these nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: When the Supreme Court decides not to hear a case that's always very important meaning the lower court rulings stand and lower court rulings in all five of the states said that those states have to allow gays and lesbians to get married. So as of today, these states are going to allow gay marriage.

BLITZER: We just got word that, for example, in Utah and Oklahoma, same-sex marriage now, for all practical purposes, is legal. People can start getting married in Utah and Oklahoma. Also in Virginia, as of an hour or so ago, same-sex marriage is legal. And they say that the federal appeals court for Indiana and Wisconsin is going to allow same-sex marriage in those states as well. Even though the legislatures in those states rejected same-sex marriage, the federal courts ruled that those laws were unconstitutional because they violated the rights of same-sex couples and they said you have to let these people get married. And now the Supreme Court, by not overruling those decisions, say those courts were right, the legislatures were wrong.

TOOBIN: Right. The facts on the ground start to matter. Now we are in a situation where 30 states have same-sex marriage. Approximately 60 percent of the American people live in a state with same-sex marriage. And it just -- the momentum, when you have that many people living in a world where same-sex marriage is legal, makes it inevitable, it seems, that the rest of the country will follow. Now when that is, we don't know. It's hard to imagine anything going backwards.

BLITZER: The only way to turn it around, is if there were a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage but that's, for all practical purposes, impossible.

TOOBIN: Right. Now it is true that some of the other circuit courts, including the Sixth Circuit, which is a more conservative court, have cases pending. It may be that the Sixth Circuit says states may ban same-sex marriage, and then there would be a conflict between the circuit courts of appeals and then the Supreme Court may yet take this case, probably next year but it could even be this year.

BLITZER: It could be this year if they were to hear that argument.

TOOBIN: Late in the term possibly.

BLITZER: You know all nine of these justices. Is it likely they would take this case? What do you think?

TOOBIN: They almost have to. If there's a split in the circuits with differing views, they would probably take that case. Although, given the way the circuit courts work, it could be not until next October. So --

BLITZER: Almost a year from now.

TOOBIN: Almost a year from now, which would mean again more states having same-sex marriage. And it becomes more practical than difficult to enforce a ban on same-sex marriage if that much of the country has it.

BLITZER: At least for now, in these states, not just New York and California or Maryland, which has same-sex marriage, but in these new states, like Utah or Indiana or Oklahoma, it's going to go on. These couples are going to get married?

TOOBIN: There's nothing standing in their way unless the Supreme Court takes a case and overturns it, which is clearly many, many, many months away. The right to same-sex marriage is now solidly in place in all 30 states and will remain that way for the foreseeable future.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens to the other 20 states and we'll have more news obviously. We'll watch this story.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Major decision by the U.S. Supreme Court today by not deciding -- a major decision -- of not taking up the appeal.

Thanks very much.

That's it for me. Thanks for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

And for viewers in America, "Newsroom" with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thank you so much.