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LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

ISIS Killer's Name Possibly Known; Kerry Works to Build ISIS Coalition; Rice to Appeal NFL Suspension; NFL's Adrian Peterson Accused of Child Abuse

Aired September 15, 2014 - 12:00   ET

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


MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: "Two people were briefly detained, but it was revealed that no crime had been committed."

My goodness. What a situation.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Decide for yourself.

PEREIRA: That's it for us @ THIS HOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman. "LEGAL VIEW " with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield, and welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

A pressing question facing dozens of nations today, how can the world handle the threat posed by the extremist group known as ISIS. An international conference is underway in Paris today, just days after yet another brutal beheading on film. This time, the victim was a British aid worker. Yes, an aid worker now. David Haines. His horrible death comes after the murders of two American journalists.

And now it appears Prime Minister David Cameron might actually know the identity of this masked killer on your screen. Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson joins me from Scoones (ph), Scotland, that's Haines' hometown.

What do we know at this point about the killer and what do we know the government knows about the killer, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The government's not saying anything. None of the other British media outlets are reporting a name. The government is not giving away any information it has at the moment. When I asked David Cameron this very same question just about eight days ago, he told me that he wasn't prepared to say, that they were making progress, that he is - Britain is sharing information with its allies, meaning the United States. So, at the moment, it does seem that they have information, they are sharing it, but they won't say publicly what it is.

There is a thought here in Britain that -- that while this killer is still -- is still at large, if you will, that there is the potential to get more information rather than swooping in on his family and alerting them. That is one school of thought at the moment. But what the British government knows and what it's saying are perhaps two different things, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Nic Robertson live for us. Thank you for that.

President Obama, for his part, says his strategy will degrade and destroy ISIS using air strikes across Iraq and Syria. So, does this sound like it's becoming yet another war? Secretary Kerry said yesterday this is not a combat troops on the ground war, but he said the U.S. is at war with ISIS in the same way it is at war with al Qaeda.

I am now joined by Alan Dershowitz, a professor of Harvard Law School. He has a new book out today, "Terror Tunnels: The Case for Israel's Just War against Hamas." He also has an op-ed series in "The Boston Globe" this week about the war on terror. I'm also joined by CNN senior legal analyst and dare I say a scholar of Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Toobin.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: True enough.

BANFIELD: Good to have you with us, Jeff.

And CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen in Washington, D.C.

Peter, you've written extensively sort of counter to what much of the media has been doing, talking about the terror, the threat, the fear, the onslaught, the juggernaut that is coming to be known as ISIS. You have taken another tack saying, it is not necessarily as much of a threat for this country as perhaps Congress is making it out to be and the media. Can you expound on that a little bit?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the number of people who have joined ISIS from the United States, Americans, is a dozen. Two of them have already been killed, by the way, Ashleigh. It's very dangerous to go to the Syrian civil war if you have absolutely no idea about how to handle yourself in the battle zone.

And we saw from - I mean a lot of Americans went to the Somali conflict and it's an interesting analog. It's not an exact analog but we were very concerned about that and then it turned out that about a third of those guys were killed in the war or committed suicide. Some of them just disappeared. None of them came back and conducted any kind of terrorist attack on the United States, which isn't to say that ISIS isn't a threat. The British assessment is, you know, at least 2,600 westerners, some of them from visa waver countries, who come to the United States relatively easily. You know, so those are -- that's also a threat.

But I think there's been a fair amount of hyperventilation. By the way, the predecessor preorganization to ISIS, al Qaeda in Iraq, never attacked in the United States. In fact, never attacked an American target outside Iraq except in 2005 when it attacked three American owned hotels. So the point is is that there is some kind of threat, but let's be real about what it really is, not all this hyperventilation we've seen.

BANFIELD: Seems like we've gone to the antithesis of the way things were in 2003 when the media seemed to be asleep at the switch prior to going into Iraq. Some present company excluded dare I say.

Professor Dershowitz, let me ask you this. You have written very cleverly about democracies having to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. And then along comes ISIS.

ALAN DERSHOWITZ, PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Uh-huh.

BANFIELD: And we still need to preserve and protect that notion.

DERSHOWITZ: Sure.

BANFIELD: Even when dealing with the monster we've never even encountered before.

DERSHOWITZ: Sure. We shouldn't ask the question, what would Putin do? We know what Putin would do. He would swoop down on the family of this killer. He would hold them hostage. And we know that the Soviet Union previously killed the relatives of terrorists in Lebanon and that ended the threat of terrorism against the Soviet Union. But we're not doing that.

BANFIELD: So a lot of people watching would say it's not a bad idea.

DERSHOWITZ: It's a very bad idea.

BANFIELD: OK.

DERSHOWITZ: We have to live within the rule of law. We do have to fight with one hand behind our back. But that doesn't mean we don't have the upper hand because we are a democracy and we can learn a lot from Israel. Almost everything that the president said in his speech, the prime ministers of Israel have said, one, targeted killing. That's perfectly appropriate when you're going after the leaders of terrorist groups, try to minimize civilian casualties. Second, degrade and destroy. We have to learn how to balance our civil liberties and even the rights of our enemies and enemy civilians against the need to destroy ISIS. I think we have a good beginning. I hope - I would hope the coalition would ultimately include England more forcefully and German more forcibly instead of having these smaller countries that are more symbolically involved. But, you know, in my book there are -

BANFIELD: How about anybody in the coalition with actually boot commitments.

DERSHOWITZ: Right.

BANFIELD: Because at this point no one is suggesting -- I want to jump into this democracy issue with you as well, Jeffrey, the notion that democracies fight with one hand behind their backs. They also have congresses, quite often. And for some reason this Congress seems to be somewhat muted in terms of the need to be a part of this on record with a vote.

TOOBIN: Well, you know, the Congress - the Constitution is very clear, that the Congress has the right and the obligation to declare war. That has become almost a dead letter in recent years. You know, the last time the United States Congress declared war was World War II. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq twice, Afghanistan were undeclared war. Now Congress --

BANFIELD: Keep going, Panama, Haiti, Bosnia -

TOOBIN: Right.

BANFIELD: The list is apparently about 200 actions that the presidents have used without having to actually declare any kind of war.

TOOBIN: That's right. And Congress has basically given up that responsibility because they could say any day, look, if you, the president, go to war without our approval, we're going to impeach you. But -- or they could say, we're going to cut off the money. They never do.

And, in fact, in politically dicey situations, like what's going on with ISIS, Congress would prefer to stand on the sidelines, criticize the president, talk about how they'd do things differently, but they don't want to take a firm stand and vote one way or another. So the president can essentially do what he wants under the authorization from 2001 after 9/11 that has been basically the boot strap for all these presidents, Obama, Bush, to fight the wars over these last 14 years.

BANFIELD: Peter Bergen, just quickly back to you, if I can. The notion that this coalition is starting to gel, how critical is it that either a grand marketing attempt is made to push the Sunni nations that have joined on so that other terror groups don't decide this is a crusader war and ultimately align with ISIS bolstering their numbers to, well, perhaps exponentially?

BERGEN: I think you've already seen some significant movement by the Saudis. They have criminalized going to Syria for their citizens. They've - there's been religious decrees about going to Syria saying it's against Islam. The government is also, you know, going to allow some form of military activity if we go -- go to war in Syria. So I - you know, I think that coalition is beginning to form already.

BANFIELD: Well, and it will be critical to see who is going to do what, either above board or beneath board. Jeff Toobin, Professor Dershowitz, Peter Bergen, if you would all stick around, there's a lot more to talk about with regard to this.

The United States has again nearly 40 nations agreeing to join in this fight against the ISIS militants. So who exactly is helping? What exactly is each nation going to do? Who's committing what to end this threat?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: The fight against ISIS cannot be led by the United States alone. Those are not my words. Those are President Obama's words last week. Today, a group of countries is now meeting in Paris. The secretary of state, John Kerry, said nearly 40 countries have agreed to contribute something to the fight, but he's not giving a full list. He's not giving full details of how or what or when or how much.

We know of several nations shown here that have already said they'll step in. They've done it so publically. Whether it's from the air or whether it's giving military equipment or training or humanitarian aid, maybe money. France says it began spy flights over Iraq today. And some countries still haven't given any of the specifics, maybe for pretty good reason. White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough would not give CNN's Candy Crowley other information about the coalition, but he did say this, the White House is focused on fighters in the region.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENIS MCDONOUGH, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The Syrian opposition wants to fight. This is their fight and we should facilitate them to do that. We've had a relationship with these fighters now for a couple years. They're getting better and more capable. And what's most important here is that the Syrian opposition on the ground fighting ISIL can count on American and coalition air power to supercharge their effort. That's important and that's ultimately going to be what is called for in this strategy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: To break down how complex this fight against ISIS really is and how difficult it may be to get other Arab nations to help in a significant way, I'm joined again by CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen in Washington, here with me in New York, Alan Dershowitz, professor at Harvard Law School and CNN military analyst Colonel Rick Francona.

Colonel Francona, I want to just bounce right off the words from Denis McDonough, and that is, the United States will be providing that air support to the Syrian opposition. The friendly Syrian opposition, which if you're fighting ISIS, maybe that's a great idea, but aren't they fighting Assad and does that mean the United States will be, in effect, at war with Assad?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, yes. The Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army, has already said their primary goal is to take an Bashar al Assad and remove him. And their only interest in the coalition is getting the equipment, the training and the money that's going to be provided. The only reason ISIS is fighting the Free Syrian Army is because they happen to be in the area that the ISIS wants to control. If it was somebody else there, they would take on that. So it's not like ISIS is ideologically going after the Free Syrian Army. They're going after the territory. The Free Syrian Army will be focused on Assad. Are they going to fight ISIS if they do it at our behest? I don't think it's been made quite clear yet.

BANFIELD: These are the guys that the coalition is counting on as the only boots on the ground, someone who's not even committed to fighting the actual enemy?

FRANCONA: It's because no one else - look, it's because no one else will sign up to be boots on the ground. This is the only players we have.

BANFIELD: It's the best you got. Is that what Donald Rumsfeld said? You got to war with what you've got, the army you got? Apparently that's the army that we got?

FRANCONA: That's it.

BANFIELD: Peter Bergen, if you could jump in on this, the Canadians perhaps are the only ones who've said, up front -- by the way, can I remind everyone, the Canadians never went to Iraq in the first place?

They went to Afghanistan, but they drew the line at Iraq. And they're now saying that they're going to send 50 special operations forces which made me think, how much of a secret war do you think this is going to end up being?

If we're not committing armies of boots on the ground from coalition nations, are coalition nations sending secret spec ops to do that job in a different way?

BERGEN: Actually we've already seen U.S. special operations happening in Syria already. We had a rescue operation that didn't work out for the hostages on July 4th. And we've seen other such operations back in 2007. So it wouldn't be -- the answer -- the short answer is yes.

And once you -- you know, the air power takes you to a certain point. You can destroy tanks. You can destroy other kinds of armored vehicles. But ISIS is a learning organization, and they're obviously going to imbed themselves in cities where it's going to be very hard to take them out from the air.

That will require intelligence on the ground. That's the only way to find them. What you do with that intelligence, that could yield to special operations if -- on a larger scale than we've seen hitherto.

BANFIELD: Then there's this notion of the ideological war that undoubtedly is going to be part of all this. There are already ISIS propaganda videos, you know, saying that this is almost like a new set of crusades.

Professor Dershowitz, I mentioned in the last segment that Sunni nations signing onto this coalition is a big push. This is something that's critical to the Americans.

But what about also the media notion? We saw the first execution of James Foley and the threat of the next victim. Then we saw the execution of Steven Sotloff and the threat of the next victim, Mr. Haines.

And now we've seen the execution of Mr. Haines, and we haven't necessarily seen the threat of the next victim. Is that taking the terror power away from people who wield it so easily otherwise?

DERSHOWITZ: One thing we know is that the media is a very important weapon. If you consider what ISIS is doing, showing beheadings on television, it's the mirror image of what Hamas has been doing in Gaza.

In my ebook, "The Terror Tunnels," I show that Hamas uses what I call the "dead-baby strategy." They want to make Israel be responsible for the children and women who are killed when they use them as human shields, and the media plays into their hands by showing only the dead civilians and not explaining that Hamas is responsible for them.

What ISIS is doing is exactly the opposite. They want to show not that they're good guys and blame anybody else. They want to show how brutal and horrible they are, and the media has to pull back a little on that. We can't allow the media to serve as a major weapon on this war on terrorism.

BANFIELD: Rick Francona, if I can just ask you, because clearly you've lived through both now, the two coalitions and how they are -- at least sound the same and how vastly different they might be, the coalition of 2003 heading into -- I call it -- Gulf War II and the coalition of 2014, and is this effectively another Gulf War?

FRANCONA: No. This is completely different. This is us trying to get other countries to fight the war for us. We're willing to provide the air power. We're willing to provide the logistics, intelligence, even funding, but we want other people to send their troops to fight.

BANFIELD: But no one's doing that. So ultimately isn't it also a big message to suggest look at all these other nations, Arab nations included, Sunni nations included, that don't want you and your Islamic State?

FRANCONA: There's no one that's signed up really to do anything that I can tell. Everybody's -- some nations have said they'll provide air power. But not one nation that I know of has signed up to put troops on the grouped.

I talked to a Saudi brigadier the other day, and he told me -- he says, when the United States is willing to stand up and put their forces on the ground, then we might be able to do the same.

BANFIELD: Maybe?

FRANCONA: Yes.

BANFIELD: It's a maybe still?

FRANCONA: Look at the threat. Riyadh is far, 600 miles, from where ISIS is, so they don't regard it as a threat yet.

BANFIELD: I still can't believe because that's one of ISIS's targets, that Saudi Arabia hasn't blown a gasket over the fact that don't you dare threaten Mecca, don't you dare threaten our holy sites, we will come for you where you are.

DERSHOWITZ: There's another thing that's going to happen because they're going to start embedding their fighters among civilians as we said previously.

BANFIELD: The report is that's already happening.

DERSHOWITZ: They're going to use hostages as human shields. And, so, again, they're going to have to learn how Israel dealt with this problem in Gaza.

It's not easy and nobody should be condemning Israel for doing what the United States is now doing. It's exactly the same.

BANFIELD: It's just the beginning of the conversation. Such smart voices, I thank you so much, Alan Dershowitz, Peter Bergen, Colonel Rick Francona. To you all, thank you so much.

We also have another big story that's developing right now, the NFL and domestic violence. Brand-new photographs have surfaced of the alleged abuse against a 4-year-old son of NFL player Adrian Peterson.

And we've just learned today that the team plans to put him back on the field in a matter of days. We've got the details right ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)