Transcripts For CNN CNN Tonight 20100108 : vimarsana.com

make orzak a nerdy cowboy? jeanne moos, cnn, new york. remember, i m on twitter. wolf blitzer, cnn. you can get my tweets whenever you want. up next, cnn tonight. tonight, the terror report is in, warts and all. president obama owns up, taking responsibility for intelligence mistakes in the christmas day bomb plot. the buck stops with me. the big question tonight, will there be a next time? also, it s cold. deadly cold. extreme weather socking it to much of the country. the icy forecast not looking good. how long will the deep freeze last? and twitter for cars? really? ford wants to let you tweet and drive at the same time. good idea? here now, kyra phillips and john roberts. president obama taking full responsibility for the terrorist mistakes of failing to stop the christmas day bomb plot. he has ordered aggressive moves across the board, changing the way information is dealt with. no one has been fired over the bosched case, but president obama made it clear he expects accountability from here on out. dan, does the president think if everyone had done their job right, this attempted attack could have actually been stopped? john, in fact, that is exactly what the president said tonight here at the white house, saying there was a lot of information out there, there were bits and pieces of information but there was specific information that could have been put together and could have prevented this suspect from getting on the airplane. so certainly, there was there were systems here that failed. the president pointed that out. but he did not want to point fingers at any one person or any one agency, saying this was a systemwide failure. the president, though, as we had been reporting, did take full responsibility for the failing, saying that, quote, the buck stops with me. now, what was the biggest thing that jumped out of these reviews today? i posed that question to the president s top terrorism adviser and to the homeland security secretary as well. take a listen. that you found as secretary you could do as well? the peninsula is an extension of al qaeda core coming out of pakistan. in my view, it is one of the most lethal and one of the most concerning. the fact they had moved forward to try to execute this attack against the homeland, i think this demonstrates to us that we had a strategic sense of sort of where they were going, but we didn t know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here. we have taken that lesson and now we re on top of it. i think, following up on that, not just the determination of al qaeda and al qaeda arabian peninsula, but the tactic of using an individual to formulate an attack as opposed to a large conspiracy or multi-person conspiracy such as we saw in 9/11. that is something that affects intelligence, it really emphasizes now with a renewed importance on how different intelligence is integrated and analyzed and threat streams are followed through, and again, it will impact how we continue to review the need to improve airport security around the world. now, going forward, the president says that the intelligence community needs to speed up the way in which they analyze information in which and the way that information is passed around to the various agencies and that all of the information needs to be treated, specifically these high priority cases, need to be treated with specific attention so that nothing else falls through the cracks. john? dan, how could the american people be assured that the steps the administration is taking will be followed through on? after the 9/11 commission report, the counterterrorism center was created. people thought that dealt with all the problems and we find out five years later that it was not dealt with. that is a good question, john. the white house is saying what happened today, and the reforms the president put in place is just the beginning of a very long process. that mr. brennan will stay on top of this, make sure the various agency heads carries out the reforms the president is putting in place. and in terms of who is going to be held accountable for this, the president is holding a review with the various agencies, that they take a look within to find out what broke down. he wants an answer back on that progress review in 30 days. thanks. president obama admitted today that too many intelligence clues about the plot fell through the cracks. the national terrorism center is the place this information is supposed to be pored over. we look into why the dots were not even connected. reporter: this is the brain that is supposed to synthesize and sort and make sense of the thousands of pieces of intelligence collected every day by agencies and departments all across the u.s. government. there is one place in the u.s. government where all information about known and suspended terrorists comes, which is the national counter-terrorism center. but the nctc, as it s known, did not see umar farouk abdulmutallab appear as a threat, despite multiple clues. rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already have. reporter: nctc was created after the 9/11 attacks to do exactly that, put together pieces of the puzzle to create a comprehensive threat picture. the nctc is small, with only about 600 employees. two-thirds of them detail from other government agencies like the cia or fbi. half of them are analysts that sift out the important pieces of information and put them together. a former nctc official says the volume of the tips and leads are so great that the center needs other agencies to flag important items. when someone in the field raises a concern and says, hey, i m concerned about this individual, can you at nctc can you put together all of the pieces that you have available regarding this individual in the data base and can you make an assessment on them? that s how the system can work very, very well and that s how it didn t work in this case. reporter: computers can work, but not enough, they say. the ntct has access to about 30 databases and other agencies. but different classification levels, legal issues and technological constraints make it difficult to do searches. we need to make sure the nctc has the tools they need to actually make sense of now the vast quantities of information, the dozens of databases they have access to so they can do their job. and now another nctc issue has emerged, the decision of michael lighter to go on vacation a day after the attempted bombing. this afternoon john brennan, the top terrorism adviser, said he originally told lighter to take that vacation with his son upon receiving assurances that the nctc would be fully staffed. back to you. new information tonight on what turned out to be a key mistake in trapping umar farouk abdulmutallab. the misspelling of his name is state department files. what do you got, jill? reporter: yeah, john, this is brand new information, because we did not know before about this misspelling. we were talking about senior officials just a few minutes ago. here s what they re telling us. remember when the father in africa came to the embassy and said that he was concerned about his son and gave more concerning information about the fact he was under the influence of extremists. okay. at that point, the embassy searches this guy s name, but there is a misspelling, and so they used a search engine that was kind of a limited one. it didn t ping a whole lot of possible spellings. so they said, we don t find that he has a visa. they don t find out that he has a visa until december 25th, after he has been arrested. now, when we talked with the state department, they said, in essence, this is no big deal. it s kind of a red herring because the big decision was being made back in washington by the nctc as to whether or not this suspect really was a terrorist. he was decided to be a potential terrorist, but not a terrorist. so i guess the bottom line here is, number one, we re getting information that we did not have before, and it really does c contradict information we were getting from the state department. and apparently the state department never really did follow up on this issue of the visa until it was very, very late, and that looks like they really dropped the ball on that, john. as the president said today, a lot of balls were dropped in this whole case. jill for us in washington. jill, thanks. we re just now getting a look at the surveillance video at the man who caused that massive security nightmare sunday at newark international airport. after the man walked the wrong way through a security passageway, officials had to shut down one terminal for hours and then rescreen thousands of passengers, and they never found the guy. susan joins us now live with more. i saw you, actually, in the newsroom. everybody was looking at this tape, trying to figure out what it meant, and tsa confirmed it and here we are. clearly, it shows what happened leading up to all that chaos and thanks to attorney general lawton fierberg, because he released the video hoping to see who he is. first you re going to see the man at a checkpoint in a light-colored jacket. then he is approached by a tsa uniformed officer who tells him to get on the other side of the rope. then about four minutes later, the tsa officer in the blue shirt walks away from his post. a homeland security official says he was distracted by somebody who asked a question. then about 30 seconds later, with the desk unattended, you are going to see a woman wearing a white coat approach the desk from the gate area. the man in question ducks under the security rope line and greets the woman with a kiss and a hug, and then the two turn and walk back into the secure gate area. and authorities found out about all of this from a passenger, and then there was a mad scramble to find the man. they never did, as you know. two sources tell cnn the man left using a regular airport exit, and he was gone about 20 minutes later. by that time the tsa was still trying to get its hands on its own surveillance video and found out the cameras weren t recording, then they had to get video from continental airlines, and all of that took almost an hour and a half. and as we all know, it took about seven hours to get everything back to normal. so what a mess. so what s the tsa s response? they re saying it s a good thing the video has been released, and they acknowledge that it was the actions of that tsa officer that led to all of this, because he left his post, and they add, quote, we will use this hard lesson to reinforce the sharp focus and tight discipline at all our stations across the country and ensure that we maintain the public trust. like everybody else, i was watching that video today, and i couldn t figure out she came up through the exit, met him and then they went back inside. what were they going back inside for is the question i had? was he meeting her there, was she coming in, was she in transit? we don t know. was the plan for her to come and say hi and go back. if they ever find this person, what are the potential penalties? he s in deep trouble potentially from both civil and the criminal side. civilly he could get up to a $10,000 fine. criminally if they can prove intent, they could charge him with security violations and he could face up to ten years in jail. if they cannot prove intent to cause harm, then he could still get up to a year in jail. so let s see if someone recognizes him, if they come forward or he mentions it to some friends. you know. let s see. he s certainly not forthcoming, that s for sure. we have no idea what he had in mind at this time. it could have been innocent or not. he may not even know we re talking about him right now until he flips on the news and sees the video. it just shows how important it is that you go through security, because if not, we don t know what that guy had in mind. he may have had something with him and that s what tsa is very concerned about. he may have had a weapon, who knows. thanks, susan. still ahead tonight, we ll go to detroit where the suspect in the airliner attack is seconds away from his first court appearance. the financial system bailout and billions of your tax dollars. wait until you hear this. relieves lka-ser your upset stomach, heartburn, indigestion and headache. so you re good to go in the morning. you re late. alka-seltzer brings you back. you hungry? 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(door crashes in) (broadview alarm) (gasp and scream) go! go! go! go! go! go! (phone rings) hello? this is mark with broadview security. is everything okay? no. someone just tried to break in. i m sending help right now. thank you. (announcer) brink s home security is now broadview security. call now to install the standard system for just $99. the proven technology of a broadview security system delivers rapid response from highly trained professionals, 24 hours a day. call now to get the $99 installation, plus a second keypad installed free. and, you could save up to 20% on your homeowner s insurance. call now - and get the system installed for just $99. broadview security for your home or bususess - the next generation of brink s home security. call now. new disclosures tonight that the federal reserve bank of new york pressured insurance giant aig in 2008 to limit public disclosures about payments to major banks. this came at a time when billions in taxpayer money was being used to bail out wall street and at a time the new york fed was headed by current treasury secretary tim geithner. lisa sylvester has the details for us. reporter: wall street companies like goldman sachs were saved by a major financial rescue in 2008 by u.s. taxpayers. aig was on the verge of going under and on the hook to pay billions to these financial firms for backing risky investments called credit default swaps that were quickly losing their value. the federal government assumed the obligation, shelling out $62 billion to wall street companies for these bad investments alone. representative darrell isa, a critic of the federal reserve, says it was a sweetheart deal for the banks. ultimately, this was money that didn t need to be spent and didn t go to stabilizing the market, it went toward stabilizing a financial community s key executives in and around new york that were friends of the people making a decision to pay 100 cents on the dollar. reporter: now according to e-mails recently obtained by representative issa s office, not only did the banks get paid back in full, the federal reserve bank in new york at the time run by secretary treasurer timothy geithner kept that information from being exposed to the public, referring to the debt obligations as sin thet i cans, a lawyer for aig which owed the bank billions, responded to a request from a new york federal reserve attorney that there be no mention of the synthetics in connection with this transaction. the federal reserve is too secretive and too cozy with members of wall street. they say there shouldn t be a rush to judge what the fed did or did not do given the context at the time. we have to remember looking back at it that at the time this all happened was a point when it looked like the financial system was melting, where every day you opened the papers or turned on the tv in fear that there would be some other major financial disaster. reporter: the federal reserve bank of new york issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, saying, quote, all information was, in fact, disclosed that was required to be disclosed by the company. there was no effort to mislead the public. the federal reserve in new york adds that the decision to disclose was one for aig to make. as for timothy geithner, the treasury department said he recused himself when he was nominated as treasury secretary in late 2008, but even before then, a treasury spokesman said he started, quote, insulating himself from these issues. still, the inspector general for the t.a.r.p. program says it s launching an investigation into all of this and they criticized the federal government in new york saying they transacted tens of billions of dollars from the federal bank. douglas holt econ from the national institute. doug, put it in perspective for us. how troubling is this? well, this is a troubling story for the nation, certainly for the obama administration and for secretary geithner. the public should be disturbed that there appears to be a deliberate effort to undermine the most basic transparency, that taxpayers know what is being done with their dollars. and the obama administration has to be concerned that it feeds a perception that policies are more geared towards wall street than main street, and secretary geithner was, in fact, the chief oversight official at the federal reserve for large entities like citigroup and now the secretary of treasury has to answer for both why they became so endangered and the kinds of steps that were taken at the time. so i think there is a lot to be looked at here, and we re going to hear a lot about it from congress. congress for barney frank has said he will likely hold his own investigation of the hearings before the financial services committee. doug, what is the treasury secretary going to have to tell congress about what went down a year ago? well, i think what he s going to say is that, number one, all of this fits the letter of the law, and the problem with that is the letter of the law is written with private sector money in mind. what do you disclose about private investor s money? this is the taxpayers. it s a little different question. the second is i don t think you need to question the motivation of the federal reserve in this. they were deeply concerned about the collapse of the financial system, they wanted to keep aig and other key components functioning and they took the steps they thought were the right ones at the moment. so this could be pretty damaging. let s face it, this is not the first time he s been entwined in something. he had the issue of not paying his taxes. at what point, doug, do you get fired? a secretary of the treasury serves the president as long as he can effectively push the president s agenda. with each additional episode of this type, secretary geithner becomes less capable of doing that, and at some point the judgment is made that somebody else could be more effective in that job. what about the cost to the taxpayer here, doug? there are reports that at the time the fed stepped in and said you are going to pay 100% on these defect swaps and insurance policies you ve handed out here, that aig was maybe negotiating for 40 cents on the dollar to goldman sachs. so when the fed comes in and says, no, pay back 100% with taxpayer money, how much is the taxpayer out here? i think the taxpayer should be concerned that money that was supposed to go in and fill clear losses was selectively put in. instead of filling only part of the loss, taxpayers got 100% of the dollar. this is a problem. we put 40% in quickly, it got up to $80 billion, and if you re putting 40% in, it doesn t look as large. taxpayers are losing out here, right, doug? absolutely. there s no doubt about it. doug, thanks. coming up, a big day in court tomorrow for the suspect in the christmas day airline bombing. and what cold are we looking at this weekend? stay with us. most of the country is bracing for another night of dangerously cold weather. temperatures will be plunging to record lows. the weather already is blamed for at least seven deaths. it s a miserable mix of snow and ice and it stretches from the midwest all the way to the deep south. and chad myers has been tracking it the last couple days. i don t see any end to it. this could go on for another week before we finally see some jet stream movement off to the east. snowing now in chicago. it was snowing in atlanta for a while, but kind of that atlanta snow where it never really can stick, anyway. rain showers in the east. temperatures are cooling down, though. look at these numbers. in the single digits or below in this entire area there. now i m going to really scare you and show you the wind chill factor. fargo, 29 below zero, winnipeg, 30 below. i was at my father-in-law s house in cincinnati last week. we could sit in one room and watch the curtains blow in the other one, the wind was blowing so hard. it does warm up eventually, so there is some light at the end of the tunnel, but that tunnel is still a week away because another cold front comes down tonight, and another one comes down for the weekend. here it is here, here s thursday, so we go for today and then it slides down into florida and keeps right on going all the way to cuba! i mean, this cold front will make its way all the way to havana. when is the last time you heard that? this is a front that we probably haven t seen in 15 years, i think, that will make its way all the way down there and make the entire country stay below normal, 10, 20, 30 degrees below normal for the next five days. i m thinking about the farmers. john zarrella was out there peeling oranges and saying, folks, we may not have these soon and the cost of orange juice. are the farmers already struggling? on friday because this is in my head on friday, eight pounds of strawberries wholesale in florida was $14. today, $24. so almost doubled in four days. already going up. and chad, we just had the copenhagen global climate conference, the controversy over those e-mails from the university of east engly, the climate center there, and the skeptics have to be saying, what about the global climate? it s cold oustside. where it s cold, it s warm somewhere else. it comes down like this. so the mass of the people that we see are here, and they re feeling the cold, but the people in the pacific aren t feeling the warmth because there s not that many people there. but there s warm and there s cold, and just because we re feeling the cold doesn t mean there s not record heat somewhere else, because there is. chad myers putting it in perspective for us. chad, thanks. the christmas bombing attack, what s in store for the suspect. pros packing heat and if they really need that kind of protection. thanks for coming. it was rea@dy nice to meet you, a.j. yeah, you too. a.j.? (alarm blasting) (screaming) (phone rings) hello? this is bill with broadview security. is everything okay? no. there s this guy - he just smashed in my door. i m sending help right now. thank you. (announcer) brink s home security is now broadview security. call now to install the standard system for just $99. the proven technology of a broadview security system delivers rapid response from highly-trained professionals, 24 hours a day. call now to get the $99 installation, plus a second keypad installed free. and, you could save up to 20% on your homeowner s insurance. call now and get the system installed for just $99. broadview security for your home or business the next generation of brink s home security. call now. the suspect in the christmas day airliner attack is due to make his first appearance in court tomorrow in detroit. as debra reports now, they have indicted umar farouk abdulmutallab on six charges, including the people on board that flight. the smiling face of umar farouk abdulmutallab is framed by the islamist flag of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. the group claims responsibility for the failed christmas attack which targeted a u.s. jetliner and which ultimately underscored serious flaws in airline security. the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way. authorities say the graduate student smuggled the bomb on the flight from amsterdam, hiding it in his underwear, intending to detonate it on the flight to detroit. one thing the government is good at is finding individuals that are susceptible to the idealogy. they will be patient until they find people to go on the airlineres to perpetrate an attack. where abdulmutallab was r radicalized is still to be seen. he wanted to study in cairo or saudi arabia, but his parents sent him to did yubai. in august, something changed. he texted his parents, saying he was leaving for islam. abdulmutallab was in gohana whee he allegedly flying to the u.s. with only a shoulder bag. when he was arrested, he allegedly told federal agents yemen is where he got the device and instructions on how to use it. his father did go to the u.s. embassy in nigeria in november, fearing his son had come under radical influences, the information was not circulated among federal agencies, and abdulmutallab was never put on a no fly list. i think al qaeda has really done a phenomenal job with their psychological operations. i think that for their recruiting, they need to show some successes, and i think the fact that the disruption that they caused our system for them is a win, because it shows that the david can once again throw rocks at the goliath here. abdulmutallab has been charged with using weapons of mass destruction along with attempted destruction of the u.s. jetliner along with attempted murder of the people on board that plane. this is the first time al qaeda has used u.s. interests outside their terror locations. experts say they believe this plane plot was well under way and operational. u.s. officials will not comment on that strike except to say that u.s. and yemenis share intelligence. and certainly operations in the arabian peninsula since this attack or attempted attack. thanks. joining us now, cnn national security contributor townsend. also with us, slad gordon of washington who was a member of the 9/11 commission. senator let me start with you. 9/11 showed us that we were not sharing information. this incident showed us that we were sharing information but not connecting the dots. so let me bring you back to the 9/11 commission, your commission, and the recommendations that were adopted. what happened to those. the 9/11 commission recommendations on ending the stovepipes on intelligence were pretty much adopted by the congress, and both administrations have done a reasonable job in seeing to it that the situation is better than it was then. but there were human failures here. there were also failures of the attitude that the administration took toward things, and i focused just on this, that the fact that the father of this man came into our embassy in lagos and said, my son is a danger, was not enough automatically to pull his visa and to put him on a no fly list. under the rules the administration had established. what i liked hearing from the president today was in the future it will be. so it wasn t a failure to gather intelligence, it was only partly a failure to share intelligence, it was very much a failure in having standards that don t really apply to terrorism of the nature with which we re dealing. fran, let s bring you in, because we were talking about this particular point the senator just made off camera. while the senator says the 9/11 commission regulations were adopted, are there fair questions out there as to whether those were fully implemented? the national counter-terrorism center, as we were talking about, was created for the specific purpose of integrating all of this intelligence of connecting the dots and doesn t appear to have done the job it was created for. john, i think that s right, and i think that some of the frustration you saw in the president and also in john brennan remember, john brennan earlier in his career was the director of the terror integration center which was the predecessor to the national counter-terrorism center, so he has a personal connection to that organization. it was designed to connect the dots. the president has been very clear, we gathered them, we shared them, but we didn t connect them. now, one of the issues is, we invested an awful lot of money and time in increasing collection. we have more human intelligence officers out there now, but, you know, the problem is, with more information coming in, it means there are lots of dots, and making the difference between what s important, what s not and prioritizing them is what didn t happen here. but you re right, john, it seems to me that should have been done at the national counter-terrorism center which was created to do the job. senator, you said something interesting about attitude, the right attitude wasn t taken. do you feel that the president maybe took his attention off terrorism because he s been so overwhelmed with the economy, with two ongoing wars, with a lot of pressure within the first year of his presidency? with all the mutual criticism and antagonism between the bush administration and the obama administration, each of the presidents made, in my view, the same mistake. for the eight months up until 9/11, terrorism was not a high priority for george bush. after, it was. and his actions were decisive. for the first eight or nine months of the obama administration, this was simply not a high priority. the president s eyes were on a different ball. now it is. i liked his response today. i don t think it went far enough. i think there were at least two major omissions in it, but what he did say and the changes he did say that we re going to make are the right ones. let me bring fran in on the particular point, again, that the senator made. fran, is this an obama problem? did the whole culture of intelligence gathering and integration change over the last 11 months, or was this culture in place previously? you know, these senators may have different leaders, but they are established bureaucracies. actually, john, even the national counter-terrorism center is a good example. john brennan was one of the few holdoefrz of t holdovers of the bush administration, and now he s the closest counter-terrorism advis adviser. many of the policies remain the same. is it fair to say this administration took its eye off the ball or were these ingrained constitutional problems? what you heard the president say, and i agree with him, these are systemic failures. it was something we battled when i was in the bush administration, it s obviously something we have to continue battling every day and remind the bureaucracy that just because we haven t had an attack in 8.5 years, we don t take anything for granted and we have to treat every day like it s the first day in the war. fran townsend, thank you for your time. thank you. coming up on campbell brown at 8:00 p.m., some former members accuse it of being a cult. one customer claims she was sexually assaulted. they deny it all. now there s a technique called brain wave vibration. here s a preview. it s promoted as brain wave vibration, pouring energy into your brain with exercises like this. its creator is a korean businessman named ilchie lee. these exercises, dahn yoga says, can control promote health and even control disease. campbell brown tonight, 8:00 p.m. eastern. coming up tonight, washington wizards star accused of bringing weapons sbut locker room. driving and tweeting. one car company making that possible, but is it safe? alka-seltzer plus. ford motors unveiled a new consumer technology. it unveiled e-mail, even your twitter account with your car, and internet. the big question now is, is it safe? reporter: ford is promising a major shift in the way drivers interact with their cars. introducing my ford touch, driver connect technology. reporter: this goes way beyond a bluetooth phone or a navigation system. later this year, some fords will be equipped with a dizzying array of touch screens, controls and state of the art technology that allows drivers to change the light of the cup holder to going on the internet. but what will this technology do for highway safety? some experts say you might as well let drivers drink a six-pack. i think it s wrong headed. interactive technology does focus attention away from the major task, which is maneuvering the automobile in a safe and prudent manner. the record is clear on cell phones. people who use cell phones with or without hands free have accident records equivalent to that of being legally drunk. reporter: ford s promotional material stresses that driving while distracted can result in loss of vehicle control. a company spokesman says ford s in-car technology is compliant with all industry guidelines on distracted driving and will enable drivers to be safer than if they were trying to operate hand-held mp3 players, cell phones or other devices. controls allow you to use the system without taking your hands off the wheel. it is directly in front of you helping you focus on the road. we think that s what the future of safety holds. it s not possible to type or text into a ford product. you can only receive text messages and direct audibly from the speakers. some features, such as the web browser will be disabled while driving. many states have prohibitions on texting while driving. next week, the transportation department says it plans a major announcement at future efforts to distract driving. they keep your hands where they re supposed to be, but what about your brain? and that s the big problem that safety experts say, that even talking on a hands-free cell phone or doing anything besides driving your car is a distraction and very dangerous. the automakers say the devices they re offering now are safer than what a lot of drivers are doing which is looking down at those mp3 players or cell phones or texting. we still see that on the streets of los angeles all the time even though it s illegal in california. it happens illegally with this guy all the time, casey. what are you talking about? mr. distraction. excuse me, but who is the one that wants to drive all the time? okay. casey, we ll see you. i think i ll stay out of that one. good idea, case. we re not distracted, we re talking about what s coming up. an nba player suspended for pulling a gun in a locker room. was it an isolated incident or just part of the professional sports culture? we ll have that coming up.