Page 4 - Peter Bergin News Today

Against isis, its affiliation with russia. moving forward what this does for isis is create an enemy. they have the iranians, syrians, the turks are on board. it tightens the turkish cooperation in a way. isis is causing a lot of tragedy in turkey. in the long term theyve created so many enemies that this will be the beginning of the end for them, too many enemies for them to defoet. >> some people think, peter, turkeys government appears unable to deal with these terror attacks. it doesnt know ...

If you look at the geography in this situation, if this individual who did this killing, assuming its one person, did any planning beforehand, he should be across the border into syria already. im not sure well ever see this person again. if we dont have some sort of positive confirmation, lets say, in three or four days, id start to worry. >> peter, isis has claimed responsibility for this attack. it says a soldier of the brave caliphate struck where christians were celebrating their holiday. m...

Effort, not a recovery effort, they are still holding out hope. one counselor i spoke to said thats the hardest thing, wolf, that as these hours slip by, human nature, you my belief there is some tiny hope your loved one is alive out there somewhere. until they have that closure, they are in limbo, this terrible limo, hours of agonizing waiting. so theyre not even thinking about the why. right now they just want to know what happened to that plane. >> our heart goes out to all those folks over t...

Peter bergin, joining us from washington. peter, we have seen these theories pop up before in other aviation disasters. how do these square with reality once the facts are actually known? >> well, often, they dont, wolf. of course. you recall twa 800, which fell out of the sky in the atlanta shortly after leaving jfk airport. a another people saying they saw missiles going up hitting the plane, turned out to be unreliable eye-witnesses. peter sallinger, jfks press secretary said a navy ship, and...

And i think that the president probably stopped short of where some people internally wanted him to go. >> he mentioned edward snowden twice, by name, peter, in his remarks. would the president be making these proposals today if edward snowden had never leaked all those documents? >> of course not. simple. i mean, we wouldnt be sitting around this table, not -- you know, theres -- without these revelations, we wouldnt be having this discussion. >> so where does that put edward snowden in this co...

Trust their intelligence agencies to do the right thing. i understand we need a balance between liberty and our national security. but -- and i dont want to hold all of this metadata, but, by the way, im going to ask somebody else for the decision about just what we do with all of this large pile of information that we collect. so he raised all the problems, and it was a great speech that way. i think he did some things by executive order, but he did leave a lot of these decisions up to congress...

Call from san diego to a known al qaeda safe house in yemen. nsa saw that call. but could not see that the call was coming from an individual already in the united states. the telephone metadata program, under section 215, was designed to map the communications of terrorists, so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible. >> all right. so when you heard that, peter, youre an expert on this subject. what did you think? >> you know, the real problem in this case was this kha...

Point, hey, listen, if i want to hear what angela merkel thinks -- >> there is a big loophole there if they want it open -- >> an enormous loophole and he made the point very firmly saying, hey, we have the most capabilities and im not going to apologize for that. and im not going to rein it in. he said were not going to do unilateral disarmament on this, because we know others are doing similar spying. >> i was fascinated when he said -- peter, youll appreciate this, gloria, you, as well, when ...

Given the understandable attention that this issue has received, i have made clear to the intelligence community that unless there is a compelling national security purpose, we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies. and ive instructed my national security team, as well as the intelligence community, to work with foreign counterparts, to deepen our coordination and cooperation in ways that rebuild trust going forward. >> all right. le...

0 right now, too far, not far enough. reaction pouring in about president obamas speech about spies. and a drought emergency. some cities see annual rain amounts 30 to 40 inches below normal. the danger is growing as wildfires spread. and right now with an aarp card and a dance party, the first lady of the united states, michelle obama, marks the big 5-0. hello, im wolf blitzer, reporting from washington. we start with president obamas big announcement of sweeping changes to american surveilla...