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U.S. Intelligence Gathering on Terrorist Groups Profiled; Teenaged Girls Attempting to Join ISIS Stopped in U.S.; "Washington Post" Editor Ben Bradley Dies; Freed American Jeffrey Fowle Reunites with Family

Aired October 22, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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


JAY CARNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, that's an excellent question. I think that one reason may be that Kenneth Bae has been sentenced and he's serving hard labor, which is tragic, and Mr. Fowle wasn't. But, you know, it's hard to know because it's such an inscrutable regime. There's no place on earth more opaque than North Korea and Pyongyang and the reasoning behind the leadership. We have very little direct information about what happens and why decisions are made.

I think coming on the heels of some speculation about the North Korean leader's health, and coming on the heels of questions about his disappearance for some period of time until recently, until last week, I think that's interesting, too. I think North Korea watchers will wonder whether there's an aspect of this that has to do with the leader himself. But we don't know that much about what happens there.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. Richardson, I want to bring you back in. You have dealt many times with the opaqueness of North Korea. How would you now go about -- go about trying to get the other two out?

BILL RICHARDSON, (D) FORMER NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR: I would follow the same procedures we did with Jeffrey Fowle, one, that we not dangle a special envoy, that we not say that we're going to bring a diplomatic star to get him out, that we continue through normal channels.

I think the North Koreans are trying to say, look, we have a legal process, too. The other two have been sentenced. I don't believe the second one has totally been sentenced. Once that is completed then they can move forward with a potential pardon, as Kim Jong-un apparently has done.

So what I would do is tone down the rhetoric that we have. I think the White House is correct in basically saying this was a positive gesture. But continue through the Swedes to work on the two others, cool down the rhetoric. Try to do something to get North and South Korea to start talking about issues like family reunification. Try to avoid potshots being shot at each other literally between north and south. I don't know if we can do that ourselves. But continue pressing and separating the issues of policy differences, denuclearization, and humanitarian gestures. Kenneth Bae, for instance, he's been there for two years, he's got a

family, his health is deteriorating. The other individual, the young man, you know, obviously needs some medical assistance, too. So continue separating politics from humanitarian issues. But use the channels that we've used, the Swedes, normal channels without bringing a megastar to try to get them out.

CAMEROTA: Former ambassador, Bill Richardson, thanks so much for your insight and expertise as we watch this beautiful scene on our screen of Jeffrey Fowle reuniting with his family and the group hug that they just did. We can only imagine how happy they all are at this hour. Thanks so much.

Let's get over to Michaela because there is some other news this morning.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Another big story we're watching, and you talk about the family there, other families dealing with their own crisis. Three American teens, 15-17-year-old girls, were stopped, were prevented from reportedly trying to join ISIS in Syria. This, as our Jim Sciutto spoke with the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matt Olsen who says so called lone wolf attacks are a serious threat facing the U.S.

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's been one month since the U.S. targeted the Khorasan group in Syria, warning it was in the advanced stages of plotting an attack on the U.S. Air campaign, however, says the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center has not degraded that threat.

Is that threat still imminent?

MATTHEW OLSEN, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER: Be everything is see I think the threat is still in the same place it was before. And that is, this group was in a position to train, you know, without any sort of interference. They were able to recruit operatives. We saw that they were looking to test explosives. So they were in the advanced stages of plotting. And again, they had the intent and the capability that put them into this nearing an execution face of an attack.

SCIUTTO: Is there any evidence that the first night of strikes damaged that capability?

OLSEN: I don't think you know, there's any realistic likelihood that some limited air strikes even just for a period of time will degrade that threat altogether.

SCIUTTO: Still, the most likely threat is here at home, so-called lone wolf attacks by radicalized Americans such as the Boston marathon bombers.

Is the risk of a Boston-like attack greater today with the rise of is? OLSEN: I would say the most likely type of attack is one of these

homegrown violent extremists or, you know, lone offenders in the United States perhaps. And the rise of ISIS and the number of people going to Syria, whether they're fighting with ISIS or fighting just in the conflict there against Assad, the likelihood I think does go up.

SCIUTTO: Tracking known terrorists at home and abroad, however, is proving much more difficult due to the revelation of Edward Snowden of once-secret surveillance program.

Have we lost some of it as a result of that?

OLSEN: Yes, we've lost collection against some individuals, people that we were concerned about, we are no longer collecting their communications. So we've lost insight into what they were doing.

SCIUTTO: Does that include AQAP and Khorasan group?

OLSEN: I'm going to tell you it's people we were concerned about.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: There are 100 Americans who have gone to fight in Syria or tried to go there, Michaela. So I asked Matt Olsen, how do they keep track of them? Are they keeping track of them? He said he knows where they are to some degree. What does "to some degree" mean? For some of them they might have a name and location, for others maybe it's just an alias or part of a name. And that's a real concern that they might lose track of some of those Americans returning here. And of course it's the ambition of ISIS to try to extend to bring the war from Syria here to the homeland.

PEREIRA: The ambition of ISIS and also the concern, we want to talk about Khorasan as well. So gentlemen, I ask you to stay with us. I want to bring in our counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd. He is also a former CIA counterterrorism official. And also joining us political commentator Jay Carney. Gentlemen, thank you so much.

Jim, I'm going to stick with you and talk about this because you talk clearly about this lone wolf aspect. And I also want to talk about how concerned Matt Olsen is with Khorasan. And their concern is that Khorasan has a mission to target the United States domestically.

SCIUTTO: No question. I started by asking him what are the most severe, what is the most severe terror threat to the U.S. And he said immediately the Khorasan group and AQAP. AQAP Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula we're very familiar with. They've attempted to get explosive devices on airplanes with success. The underwear bomber, thankfully that one didn't light off. But they know that they have that capability and that ambition.

Khorasan group is the other one. These are hardened Al Qaeda alums, so to speak, using Syria as a base. And you remember when those air strikes started a month ago today, we were told by U.S. officials they targeted the Khorasan group in Syria because there was an imminent plot to attack the U.S. in the advanced stages of planning. So Matt Olsen told me those U.S. air strikes have not diminished that threat at all since then. That's a real concern going forward. So that threat just as dangerous today as it was a month ago before the start of U.S. military action in Syria.

PEREIRA: Jay Carney, Jim brings up a good point that we haven't really heard about Khorasan since the air strikes that first night. Why is not sort of seemingly to the American public's knowledge, a case of mission that needs to be addressed by U.S. air strikes?

CARNEY: Well, you're right that we haven't heard a lot about it. And I think that's because we haven't got the profile that ISIS has or the profile that AQAP has. I think that what Matt Olsen said was that he couldn't be confident that the Khorasan threat was degraded entirely. I think there is no question that sustained air strikes of any kind are going to have some impact and at least force a group like Khorasan or a group like ISIS to deal with the immediate problem of air strikes from the United States. These things are long-term propositions, and no one night or one week of air strikes is going to push back the threat permanently.

But I think Khorasan is an issue. It remains a problem for the United States specifically because they have expressed designs on the United States. Their focus is not as ISIS' is right now on Syria and on Iraq. It's on the west.

CAMEROTA: Phil, I wanted -- go ahead, Jim.

SCIUTTO: To be fair to Jay, Matt Olsen, he's correct to say that Matt Olsen did not say that air strikes did not destroy the threat completely. But he said specifically did not diminish the threat measurably, that those air strikes if his view, did not make a difference as far as making the threat any better today than it was a month ago. And one reason Matt Olsen said we haven't heard of more air strikes in the months since the strikes started is because they haven't had the intelligence to strike Khorasan there. They haven't had a good opportunity to go after them. And part of the reason for that is that Khorasan has gone underground. They've gone to ground so they're harder to find.

CAMEROTA: One thing we're all having difficulty pinpointing, and Phil Mudd, I think to talk to you about this, is this notion of the self- radicalized people. We talked about the lone wolf with Jim Sciutto just now. In fact we just saw this play out sadly and tragically in Canada, a man who was being monitored by law enforcement in Canada essentially ran down two Canadian soldiers, killing one of them. He was shot and killed. These people are harder to track.

PHIL MUDD, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: The problem you have in this case is I remember sitting around the threat table a decade ago, and you have this strategic threat of Al Qaeda that conducted the 9/11 attacks. That's a significant threat because of their operational training, their sophistication. But they give you a nerve center to target with intelligence resources. You can run human informants at them. You could work with foreign government service. You can target their communications. The problem with lone wolves, they don't have the capability obviously of Al Qaeda. But think of it, what kind of vulnerability are you going to target with a 15, 16, 17-year-old, which is what we've seen over the past day or two out of Denver? They don't give you a profile to target. That's what you worry about at night if you're with the FBI.

PEREIRA: And we've seen another situation of a 17-year-old who has made his way to Syria and is fighting alongside ISIS from Australia, very much a concern. Phil Mudd, Jay Carney, and Jim Sciutto, our appreciation to you. Thanks so much.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, another big story we're following this morning. Ben Bradlee, the legendary "Washington Post" editor, has died at the age of 93. Bradlee cemented his legacy while overseeing the paper's coverage of some of the most important stories in our nation's history, including of course the Watergate scandal, which led to the only resignation of an American president, President Nixon. And Bradlee was one of the few people who actually knew the identity of the Watergate source Deep Throat and supposedly never told a soul, rare discretion in the modern age of media.

Joining us now are two legends themselves, the journalists who broke the Watergate story and many others while working with Ben Bradlee, CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein and associate editor of the "Washington Post" Bob Woodward, of course the authors of "All the President's Men." Gentlemen, it's a true honor to have both of you on with me at the same time. I appreciate you taking this opportunity especially.

Ben "Crown and Shield" Bradlee, the middle name really is perfect for him to kind of depict his character. As investigative reporters, as somebody who needed an editor to have their back, what was it about Ben Bradlee that you think made him different than so many others?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: His middle name could have also been Popeye, because he had this incredible ability to operate from the top and understand all the way down to the bottom. He was a unique editor and a unique person. He viewed the world like the young reporter he started as. And he had this great delight in what he did. And he understood both newspapering and the people that were covered.

BOB WOODWARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, "WASHINGTON POST": This was more than four decades ago. We were very young. He was very experienced. And if you try to get to the core of how he edited it, he raised the standards. He was always asking us not what the White House spokesman said, but how about people on the scene, like the treasurer for the Nixon campaign, the bookkeeper, people in the FBI who were investigating this. And there was a sense of an interrogation, where he -- it was an interrogation.

BERNSTEIN: And we were interrogated a lot.

WOODWARD: By him, and there was no water waterboarding, but it was close. What did people say? What did they mean? Did they witness this? Are they reliable? Do they have an axe to grind? So he, he was our ultimate teacher.

CUOMO: Did you remember -- did you recognize at the time or do you see it more clearly today just how brave it was of him? You two were certainly very brave, but you were young and ambitious, and reporters on the trail are often driven by that. But for him to take on an institution like the presidency at that time in our history where people just didn't do that, at the time did you understand just how much faith he was putting in your reporting?

BERNSTEIN: We understood how much faith. But what we didn't understand was how much he understood what was on the line and how dangerous it was for him and his institution. And Bob and I were reading over an interview we did with him in June of 1973, still in the middle of Watergate, and we did it for "All the President's Men," our book. And he says in there, remarkably, he was afraid that the whole ship could go down.

And we never -- he was like a great general. The military cliche analogy holds here. He was so calm under fire that we were able to do our jobs. And it was not just support. It was a kind of leading the troops in a way that you knew you could get to the other side of the battlefield because he was, he was leading you.

CAMEROTA: So Bob, why did he have the guts to let you guys run with that story when there was so much on the line?

WOODWARD: Part of it was just instinct. And I think trust. He knew we were working at night, going and seeing the people who knew the details of this. And, as he said later on, we were the runs assigned to work on the story and we were coming up with stories. He was - you know, an editor of a newspaper or producer here at CNN is in the production business. Let's execute. Bring us the stories.

We were -- neither of us was married at the time. And we've often talked about how he gave us running room, but it was within the rules of journalism. And he would never let us slide one by. He would say, hey, wait a minute, let's work on this story more.

CUOMO: You don't have it yet. Ben said, at the time, he - one of the checks on the confidence that he had on the story or the ambition of the story was where is everybody else? Why are we the only ones doing that?

CAMEROTA: Sure.

(AUDIO GAP)

BERNSTEIN: He talks he talks about how we were out there alone. "The Washington Post" and he uses the expression, joyous day. When the other newspapers and other news organizations finally got on to the Watergate story And reduced the risk to the institution of "The Washington Post".

WOODWARD: And it was particularly Seymour Hirsch of "The New York Times" who jumped on the story, The most aggressive skilled reporter in the business In many ways. and Hirsch would come up with stories and there was a deep sense of relief. And it wasn't just support, but again, he, Hirsch would have the detail.

CAMEROTA: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, it's so great to hear your memories of Ben Bradlee and how all of this came to pass, that of course became part of our great American history. Or at least our American history, even if it was an ignominious chapter.

Thanks so much, guys. Always great to see you.

Wow, I mean it's so lucky to -- when you have a boss and an editor who has the spine to let you run with your instincts. I've been blessed to have that and it's just a great journalistic gift that they all - that triumvirate of men were together at that time in history.

CUOMO: Very rare. Especially at that time. Again, today, you have all these commercial pressures on the media and it's a very litigious society. Then, it was even more daunting, because no one had ever done it. And Ben Bradlee often said in later years -- where is it today? Where is it? And hopefully with his passing, it will be a reminder of what that mission is. Because, boy, did he live it to the fullest.

CAMEROTA: All right, we are following breaking news for you -- Jeffrey Fowle, one of the Americans held in North Korea, is now back on U.S. soil. This happened moments ago. He gets to hug his family for the first time in five months. Watch this emotional reunion. We'll have a live report in moments.

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CAMEROTA: Emotional reunion. This is American Jeffrey Fowle. He is hugging his family for the first time in five months. He's seeing his children and wife for the first time in five months. He has been detained in North Korea, and his family says they didn't know that he would be released today. They thought that he might be detained for years. But, suddenly, North Korea for reasons we're not quite sure of decided to send him home.

And this is the moment, this hour, that he landed at Patterson Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio, and saw his family. There he is getting off the plane, carrying his own carry-on bags, as we've noted. He runs down the stairs. He plops them down and his children run across the tarmac to greet him.

CUOMO: Alex, Chris and Stephanie. 13, 11 and 9. Can you imagine kids that age not knowing when Dad is going to be home? They couldn't even wait for him to get into the hangar. That's where they and his wife, Tatiana, were supposed to have their reunion. They couldn't wait. And here comes his wife. Beautiful.

CAMEROTA: It was a great moment. We got to watch it live here on CNN moments ago. And we had Ambassador Bill Richardson on with us and it's unclear why the north chose today to release him.

Our own Miguel Marquez was at the Air Force base for this emotional reunion. Miguel, tell us what the scene was like before he arrived and then as he touched down. MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, here's one thing you will

not believe. John Duvalier, he's the Commander of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, says that the children were brought here today. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know that their father was coming home. They didn't know why they were brought here so early in the morning.

And then when the plane pulled up and the parents got excited, his mother was here -- or the wife and their mother was here, and a brother was here. When that plane pulled up, they came out to the tarmac to see what was going on. The stairs came down and then, very quickly, within minutes, Mr. Fowle came down those steps and you saw that unbelievable reunion there.

The scene here was chaotic. The Air Force putting this together at the request of the State Department very quickly. He got out of Pyongyang, he was in Guam; then he was moved from Guam to Hawaii. And then the 737, or C-40 in Air Force speak, came from Hawaii all the way here. Had to stop once to refuel.

But he is home. The family still inside the main hangar here at Wright-Patterson. They will presumably go home, have a great breakfast, and then do a heck of a lot of catching up. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: It's so crazy and surreal for them, I can imagine. Because we had just read that they were preparing, they said, for years, because the north is so opaque, as we've heard. They didn't know if he would ever be released. They didn't know when he would be released. And they said that they were mentally preparing for him to be gone for years. And then to suddenly get this phone call that he might be on his way home, we can only imagine how it threw them into tumult.

MARQUEZ: Yes, well, look, this is a guy who, the last time we spoke to him on September 1st, the CNN, the only network in the world to speak to him on September 1st, just recently, he said, look, I am preparing for trial. I'm afraid that if the trial goes forward, I'll be convicted and I'll be like Kenneth Bae and this other young man who is there. Kenneth Bae now in a labor camp for two years. His family worried about his health and whether or not he's going to get out. The family had literally no reason to think he would ever get out.

North Korea's state-run media releasing a statement from Kim Jong-Un today saying that the criminal has been released because of phone calls from President Obama himself, so this is something that was very personal between Kim Jong-Un and President Obama, clearly making a statement that this was the president's own hand in making this happen. The family, I think, couldn't care less. They're happy to have their father back. They're in a reunion right now and it's going to be a great day for them.

CUOMO: Yes, that's for sure, Miguel, and one that's months in the making. They had fallen on hard times. He's a civil servant, Jeffrey Fowle, and he was released from the payroll of his job because they didn't know when he would be back. And it raises a lot of issues about what the American government should be doing for these people who are held.

Let's bring in Will Ripley. Will, you spoke to Jeffrey Fowle. Did he have any clue that he would be getting out any time soon, let alone before the others?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, he was very nervous, Chris, when I spoke with him and repeated how desperate he was to get back to his wife, to get back to his young children. He missed their birthdays while he was in custody in North Korea. He talked about his wife, her part-time job as a hair stylist, how they were having a hard time paying the bills, in danger of possibly losing their home.

And he knew that he had the support of his church community. Of course, his crime that he admitted to was leaving a Bible, simply leaving a Bible in a club in North Korea. And that had the potential to put him in the situation that Kenneth Bae is in right now, 15 years hard labor. It had the potential to put him in a situation where Matthew Miller is serving six years in North Korea because of his crime for tearing up his tourist visa.

Fowle thought he could be the next one. He could spend years or decades in that country, and he was so, so desperate to see his family and to hold them again. And to see the moment happening just within the last hour, it really is remarkable, because when I was with him, I could sense, talking to him, I could see in his eyes as he was tearing up, just how much he missed his family. And now he's back with them.

CUOMO: I'm sure, I'm sure. Will, thank you very much.

Just for a moment, those months melded away when he felt those kids, I guarantee you that. But now a lot of hardship to deal with going forward, and a reminder for all of you that there are two other men who are not with their families, who the United States believes should not be where they are in North Korea, and we don't know what their fate will hold.

PEREIRA: I wonder if this gives them hope or if it's painful. Do you know what I mean?

CAMEROTA: Yes, in fact, Kenneth Bae's sister did talk about that and she's said happy for them, but she sure wishes that her brother were on that plane.

CUOMO: Yes. I hope that -- you hope for more, but you just don't know, because the situation is in such disarray in terms of the two countries.

So we'll stay on that. As we get more developments for you, we'll bring them to you.

But we also want to tell you, really hot night in several mid-term election debates last night, including North Carolina, where one candidate -- get this -- the candidate just decided not to show up. What's going on with that? John King is going to be here and explain all the shenanigans on INSIDE POLITICS.

Stay with us.

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