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Airstrike Kills Three Hamas Leaders; Are You Retirement Ready?; Secret Mission to Rescue Americans Failed; Holder Meets Community Leaders in Ferguson

Aired August 21, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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


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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hostilities between Israel and Hamas are back in full swing after peace talks collapsed. Overnight, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza killed three senior Hamas military leaders. Israel says it's responding to a barrage of rocket fire. Nearly 150 attacks over the last couple of days.

Meantime, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport is at the center of a new Hamas threat. CNN's John Vause is live in Tel Aviv with much more on this. What do we know about this threat, John?

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, Hamas said that international airlines should stop all takeoffs and landings here at Ben Gurion Airport from 6:00 a.m. local time today. That was more than eight hours ago.

The implication, of course, is that they would be targeted by those Hamas rockets. The Israeli military has told us that since that threat came into effect, only one long range rocket has been fired from Gaza towards Ben Gurion Airport.

It landed a few miles south of here in an open field, and so far today it seems pretty much business as usual. There's been one flight cancellation, reportedly out of security concerns. That was a Royal Jordanian flight from Amman, but the rest of that airline's schedule appears to be operating as normal.

So, too, the other international airlines here. They are taking off and landing as well. It does seem that Hamas was hoping for a repeat of what happened last month when the FAA banned or stopped U.S. carriers from landing here for a day and a half.

That was after a rocket landed nearby. European carriers quickly followed with the Americans. The Israelis though pushed back very hard against that. They said this airport is safe. We even saw the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, fly here on an El Al flight.

That ban was lifted after 72 hours also, but it was seen as a bit of a blow to the Israelis both economically and symbolically. Hamas claimed that as a victory. So far today though no victory for Hamas at least not one like that -- Kate. BOLDUAN: All coming against the backdrop of these peace talks that were happening in Cairo have really completely collapsed at this point. John Vause looking at it for us in Tel Aviv. John, thank you so much.

Let's take a look back at home and it's money time, chief business correspondent, Christine Romans. Many hats you're wearing today. What are you taking a look at?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Saving for retirement and the key to saving for retirement is actually saving. A study finds that most people spend more time researching, which car to buy or researching where to go on vacation than they do planning for retirement.

If that's you here are three things to do right now. Number one, get some professional advice. Many companies provide free online investment tools as part of the 401(k) offerings, use them. Others may provide free or discounted access to investment advisers.

Number two, research the fees. Over the course of your life, fees can suck as much as $100,000 from your retirement savings so focus on both the options.

And number three, don't fear risks. The younger you are the more stocks you should have in your portfolio. Subtract your age from the number 120. That means if you're 40 years old, your 401(k) should roughly be about 80 percent stocks. Talk to a professional about it first -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: I was doing the math right there. I needed a calculator.

ROMANS: More stocks.

BOLDUAN: All right, Christine, thanks so much.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, we are going to go back out to Chris in Ferguson, Missouri, but also up next inside the rescue mission that failed to save James Foley. We're going to break down what we know happened and what could the U.S. military -- could the U.S. military attempt another rescue to save another American still held captive?

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BOLDUAN: Welcome back. Stunning revelations this morning about a failed attempt to rescue American hostages held captive by ISIS. This is including James Foley, who was beheaded by the terrorists in a gruesome video that has been posted online.

When U.S. Special Forces reached their location in Syria, the hostages weren't there, and now there are reports that ISIS had demanded a ransom for Foley of more than $130 million.

Let's talk about all of this with CNN counterterrorism analyst, Philip Mudd, a former CIA counterterrorism official. So, Philip, what's your -- what do you make -- I've got a couple of questions obviously, many questions on the raid, but what do you make of this unsuccessful raid?

I asked this question last hour. I want to get your take. Do you think the intel was bad or does this just happen?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: No. I think what happened was somebody sat there and said in the White House, at the CIA, at the Pentagon, look, this guy's life is at risk. The risk of an operation in that we lose American lives in an operation or that the captors kill him during the operation is extremely high.

The intelligence might be wrong, the helicopter might go down. You might find more people with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades on the ground than you expected. So many things that could go wrong in this operation, and I suspect people who are making the decision.

The White House said, look, the risk that the operation goes south is less than the risk that this guy will be killed, and that's probably based on intelligence saying that ISIS was going to do something to him.

BOLDUAN: What then do you think is the impact or the fallout from the fact that this unsuccessful mission has come to light? We don't hear about this kind of stuff.

MUDD: You don't hear about it because, you know, obviously you're not going to tell the adversary what your options are when you are dealing with a situation like this. One of the fallouts I think is that ISIS is going to sit there and say, we're nervous and spooked. What do we do with these other hostages?

We talked about Americans, up to 20 journalists being held by ISIS these days. I think the adversary that ISIS is probably spooked. My guess is the threat to journalists goes up in this situation, and if you're sitting in the White House and the CIA and the Pentagon, you're sitting there saying we don't have very many options here.

BOLDUAN: So you think it makes their job harder?

MUDD: I think it does, but what happens in this situation, I was there at the White House, sometimes the press office calls. They call down when I was at the CIA and said, look, a newspaper journalist or a media journalist at CNN has a story. They tell you the story.

You say, look, that story is correct and unless we get out in front of the story, the media is going to own it. They are going to report some things that are incorrect, so you have a very difficult choice. You have the choice to say we're not going to respond to this story.

We're not going to respond to this leak and the media runs with it, or you do what the Pentagon and White House did and probably what I would have done, which is to say we're going to roll with the story ourselves.

BOLDUAN: And then what do you make then of this ransom that we're learning about that was requested, more than $130 million. We know that ransom requests and getting ransom is not unusual, especially when we're looking at an al Qaeda operation. What do you think that this says about the ISIS operation?

MUDD: Boy, this is a rough story. The Americans don't pay ransoms. Let me be blunt. The Europeans do. There's a short-term gain obviously. The Europeans have been successful in getting hostages out of places like Africa by paying big money, but word gets around jihadist circles.

All these guys talk to each other, and obviously there are some people coming from elsewhere in the Middle East to join ISIS who are spreading the story, and the story is if you take a hostage and ask for a lot of money, you cannot only get a major intake of funds, but you can get enough money potentially to fund the entire organization.

I suspect that people in ISIS realized based on the experience of extremists in Africa and elsewhere that people will pay not realizing that the Americans don't, so I think they made their demands based on a judgment that they could make not only a lot of money, but enough money to finance the organization.

BOLDUAN: The differing approaches sure don't help in this situation at all. I also want to get your take --

MUDD: That's right.

BOLDUAN: I also want to get your take on the fact that the United States at this point says that they don't know who this -- the captor was, the murderer in this video with James Foley. He has a British accent. A couple of questions I have on this is, how do we not know with all of the strengths of the national security apparatus of the United States and our western allies?

That we don't know who these folks are, but also raises the question, Philip, of how much of a threat is radicalization if we're looking at potentially a British citizen here?

MUDD: Boy, there's a good reason we don't know. There's 330 million Americans. There's hundreds of millions of Europeans. You can't stand at Dulles Airport, at JFK, at LaGuardia and sit there and say I can find every single person who is flying to Turkey, who is flying to Western Europe, who ultimately in his mind has the intention to travel into Syria.

The volume of people when you looked at the numbers, and I looked at the numbers when I was at the FBI, is too high to find every single person out of the millions of people, who are traveling to Europe or the Middle East every year who might go to Syria.

You've seen estimates of how many Americans are in Syria, 100, 200, we don't know because you just can't track in an open society the number of people traveling overseas who say they are tourists.

An answer to your second question, the amount of extremism that you're seeing in Europe as a result of the unrest in Syria and Iraq is extremely high. You think we've got a problem in the United States.

When I used to deal with my European colleagues before the Iraq problem that we've seen surge in the past couple of months, they sat on an amount of threat in European cities in Western Europe and the U.K. that was easily in the U.K. ten times as high as we sat on in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and Miami.

The reason is there are pockets of radicalization in cities in Western Europe that's more than we see in American cities, and obviously the access to the war zone is a lot easier geographically from a place like London than it is in a place like New York or Chicago. They have a tremendous problem in Europe, and as ISIS grows, the problem in Europe is only going to grow.

BOLDUAN: That's a terrifying thought and really brings to light the fact that it makes the question of what should President Obama do, what should U.S. policy be?

MUDD: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Makes it even that much more difficult. Philip Mudd, it's always great to have you. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

MUDD: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Let's take a turn now to Bleacher Report and get a check on your sports news. Andy Scholes has more for us this morning. Hi there, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, "BLEACHER REPORT": Good morning, Kate. Little League World Series in its final stretch and so far 13-year-old Mo'Ne Davis, she's been the talk of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. She even landed on this week's "Sports Illustrated" cover, but you know, as we know that's not always a good thing because of the dreaded "SI" curse.

Now a huge crowd was on hand last night to watch Mo'Ne pitch in a semifinals game. Early on, she was just mowing batters down. Mo'Ne struck out six in 2 1/3, but in the end the big bats from Las Vegas were just too good. They got the win, 3-1, to advance to the championship game. Mo'ne and her team from Philly will now play Chicago in an elimination game tonight.

Tony Stewart will not race in this weekend's NASCAR event in Tennessee. It's the third straight race Stewart has skipped since his car struck and killed 20-year-old driver Kevin Ward Jr. during a dirt track race earlier this month. The head of Stewart's racing team says he's grieving and isn't yet ready to get back in the car.

Finally, here's some great news to start your morning with, hall of fame quarterback, Jim Kelly is cancer-free. Kelly underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation in the spring for sinus cancer, and following a screening on Tuesday doctors found no evidence of remaining cancer.

And Kate, you know, the Kelly family, have been very public about Jim's battle with cancer, an inspiration to a lot of people and just great to see positive news for him this week.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Understatement to say the least. Happy news for them and good news. I love that Mo'Ne Davis, who doesn't. Everybody here, the entire crew, Andy Scholes, what did you say, Bruce, she is awesome and that's about all you can say. Thanks, Andy.

SCHOLES: All right.

BOLDUAN: See you later.

Coming up next on NEW DAY, Attorney General Eric Holder speaks to community leaders in Ferguson saying he understands racial tensions because he's lived them. What impact did his visit have on the community on the unrest that's going on there? We'll head back to Chris who is live in Ferguson, Missouri.

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GOV. DEVAL PATRICK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: I'm sick of unarmed black men being shot by police. I'm sick of the lawlessness on the streets. I think everybody's just tired of when are we going to get through with this kind of thing?

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Who isn't? Welcome back to NEW DAY. That was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick saying the obvious, reacting to the racial tensions here in Ferguson, Missouri, which are of course a reflection of things that happened many places in the country.

His comments came as Attorney General Eric Holder visited with Ferguson community leaders. He promises a fair investigation into Michael Brown's shooting death. He also took the opportunity to discuss his own experiences as a black man who has been racially profiled, he says.

So what will Holder's impact be on the case, and what will it do for Ferguson just to know that he's here? We're going to break it down with CNN "CROSSFIRE" host, Van Jones. It's not my question that was in the teleprompter.

My question, it's quieting down. Let's hope it sustains and wasn't just the weather last night. That's good for the people, bad for politicians, because they are what will decide whether or not change happens and things get better.

Deval Patrick is supposed to be finding a solution. The governor here in Missouri, one of yours, is supposed to be finding a solution. He hasn't even been here in any real way.

VAN JONES, CNN CO-HOST, "CROSSFIRE": Sure.

CUOMO: Where is the leadership? That's what creates change.

JONES: Frankly, I think the leadership is coming from the younger generation of people, we've shown them marching, we haven't shown them meeting. They've been discussing and planning on many of the young leaders that have been very concerned about the direction.

Not just here in Ferguson, but around the country, say listen, there are real solutions here. Number one, how about having cameras on the cop cars and making sure that when police do their work it is being monitored properly.

CUOMO: Found the money to get them all these fancy military stuff, where is your camera?

JONES: Yes, where is your camera. An issue we haven't talked about enough, if you're going to increase the military power of the police, you have to increase the oversight. Any human system that doesn't have adequate checks and balances will tend to get out of hand, that's why we have meat inspectors and building inspectors.

Not because you don't trust butchers or don't like construction workers, it's because any human system has to have checks and balances. If you have this much more power, you have to have oversight. That's why having Holder here was so important.

The top law enforcement in the country who is here saying, listen, we're going to meet this moment with more aggressive oversight. I think that was important. I don't think that's why things have calmed down. I think it was a natural ebb and flow to this.

Frankly that storm last night scared a lot of people home, but the question going forward is simply this. If they want change in Ferguson, I said this to the young people directly you got to vote. People say we can't wait until October for the results of this grand jury.

Listen, you have to think about November and the results of the elections. That's not been fully thought through.

CUOMO: Can you tell them to vote for your governor in the state right now?

JONES: Right now I tell them to vote for themselves. They need to come up with some candidates.

CUOMO: Being a politician and he hasn't even been here.

JONES: I think it's a shame he hasn't been here. Holder was here and we to walk a tight rope.

CUOMO: It's good that he came, probably not going to be able to make a case, just like Trayvon Martin, it's not his fault, it's high bar. This is local police that's a local issue, local government, but ultimately the state is the top of the food chain here.

JONES: True, let me say one thing that Holder can do, frankly that "USA Today" came out with an editorial saying he did not do a good job, nobody talked about this, Holder did not do a good job in New York, when he was working for the U.S. attorney there, overseeing these kind of cases. So people who are just expecting Holder to fix it all or afraid that Holder is going to come in and hurt the cops basically we have no idea what Holder is going to do. What we do know is this, when you have a situation like this, the governor, he is the guy who should be here. Holder had a tight rope to walk.

CUOMO: Right.

JONES: There was a concern that there was a racial bias at the local level for the cop. There was a concern if Holder came in, guns blazing, there would be a racial bias against the cop. Holder played it down the middle, he met with the cops and family and I think he got out of here without causing the administration harm, but now it's the governor's turn.

CUOMO: If there's no change and outward manifestations of change we'll have new policies, a community review board, we'll go over the training procedures.

JONES: Absolutely.

CUOMO: If those things aren't in place, it's all this.

JONES: Yes.

CUOMO: And all they do, now you're just adding to the list of people they have who have failed them.

JONES: And that is very, very, very dangerous, as you well know. You have a young generation now that is on the bubble. African-Americans, Latinos across the country who this summer this was a horrible summer. They saw street violence in Chicago. They saw police violence from other places. They say wait a minute, is America on my side?

Am I a part of this country or not? When they start to march, that's an opportunity for the governor to come sit down, talk with them, say we welcome your input. Some of you guys were doing bad stuff, the vast majority want this community to be better, needing some healing.

We have not seen any counselors. The governor should be sending counselors, should be sending people to help with the healing process, if you have a school shooting, you flood the zone with counselors. You had now a whole community they've been tear gassed.

They've seen police aiming weapons at them, even though they weren't firing, that's traumatic. The governor needs to be here holding hands. If holder can come here in Washington, D.C., I think the governor can get down here too.

CUOMO: It always comes down to leadership in situations like this. You can't depend upon the weather to create peace. You can't have a captain of the state police saying no Molotov cocktails, no tear gas, no shootings tonight, success, that can't be the bar. Can't give them a pass, man.

JONES: I'm not giving Nixon a pass and not giving Holder a pass either. I'm glad he was here. He played it down the middle, but when you look at Holder's record on prosecuting this stuff all the way back through his career, you see no evidence that Holder is actually delivered the goods when it comes to putting handcuffs on police and having them face a jury of their peers.

I think the community has to stay vigilant but we have to be fair. We have not gotten to the end of any investigation here. What we have are bad facts that alarm people and we had very low cooperation from the police getting the facts out.

That alarmed people. We have to move through that process that Holder has been talking about, but Holder needs to be held accountable and so does Governor Nixon.

CUOMO: Good to have you, Van, as always. Let's take a break on NEW DAY. When we come back there's more to tell you about in Ferguson about what's going on here. Accountability, leadership, who's in charge here? The governor.

Who who's in charge where we're standing, the mayor. The mayor of Ferguson, where has he been and what does he think on what's going on and what can be done with law enforcement? It's an accountability interview and it's coming up.

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