Breakfast today, president obama says isis is betraying islam. We see isil a brutal vicious death cult that in the name of religion carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism. Good day, im Andrea Mitchell in washington. Right now secretaries of state kerry is wrapping up a critical trip to ukraine, a full day of crisis meetings focused on the renewed violence in donetsk and possibility of u. S. Arming troops. He also had a message for Vladimir Putin. Far from meeting the commitments, russia and separatists are seizing more territory, terror sizing more citizens and refusing to participate in serious negotiations. Let there be no doubt about who is blocking the prospect of peace here. Joining me now is former u. S. Ambassador to russia. Thank you very much for being with us. The kremlin said there are no russians on the ground in ukraine and secretary kerry and Prime Minister were asked about that and i want to play some of their answer. I would ask him simply mr. Prime minister is it true that as the kremlin just said today there are no russians on the ground in it seems to me the only country who strongly deny clear russian boots on ground is Russian Federation and personally president putin. If they need i can give them my glasses. Michael mcfall, youve got pretty good vision. You were there in moscow and had an interesting tenure. Whats your response . I think president poroshenko is right, the overwhelming consensus is that there are russian weapons in Eastern Ukraine. Russian soldiers there, even if we call them volunteers. They have been there for some time and even in fact russian officials have said they are volunteers. They are soldiers that are on holiday in Eastern Ukraine. This is a proxy war that president putin is conducting in Eastern Ukraine. And kerry has just said the u. S. Is itdoes not want to conduct a proxy war. If we arm ukraine, were not going to get involved on the ground in any other fashion. Theres a big argument against arming ukraine, ukraines military is corrupt, notoriously corrupt, that they could resell the arms to the highest bidder, including bad characters in the region. And they are not trained to use these weapons. Those are legitimate concerns. And in addition i would add to that if the United States does deliver new arms different kinds of arms to ukraine, putin will respond and escalate. No doubt in my mind. That said i think the principle here is important. Ukraine is a sovereign country. The entire world recognizes ukraine as a sovereign country and it has the right to defend itself as other sovereign countries do. At the end of the day, i agree again with president poroshenko when he said its our choice. I believe thats right and we should proceed with it in a very smart way, starting with nonlethal real emphasis on defensive weapons so ukraine has the right to defend its territory. But we should do it with eyes wide open that there will be a response for moscow. But you would concede that ukraine is not in americas strategic interest and not a nato ally obviously so theres a limit to how much the u. S. Should engage . Absolutely correct, i agree with that. And most certainly, it should be very clear that theres no chance whatsoever that American Military personnel will be involved. I think thats another fear of the critics. They say this looks like another vietnam. I dont see it that way, precisely for the reasons you describe but i think we should make that as clear as possible. Especially make that clear to our partners in kiev. You alluded to the fact that we dont know how putin would respond, whether he would take any arming of any defensive weapons to ukraine to double down. He in recent weeks has doubled down. They violated the mins k agreed and his own economy is cratering from the sanctions and oil prices. Prices are back up a little bit but still at historic lows yet he does not seem to be engaging. Theres talk there should be a back channel to him. How do you describe his behavior . I think hes decided that ambiguity is good that time is on his side. And most recently i think hes decided to go for further gains in Eastern Ukraine and then settle for peace again after theyve won on the ground settled for peace with the new borders and New Territory that has proxies have taken. Thats what it seems like to me. So far hes been able to achieve that because of the balance of power on the ground favors him and his proxies. Secondly, hes not interested in a settlement. I think thats something we need to understand that for him, the ultimate goal here is the fall of the government and kiev. And instability in ukraine as a whole serves that goal. So unlike us were eager to have a deal and want to settle it tonight. I personally think thats right. We want this war to end. I dont think putin has the same set of objectives right now. Now, as the former ambassador in a top Decision Maker before that in the nsc, you clearly saw Background Information and intelligence briefings, if you will on whats going on with putin and what motivates his behavior. Usa today through freedom of information act gotten a hold of a pentagon funded study by a pentagon think tank that suggests he could have some neurological, aspergers or some other syndrome. I dont want to talk about things i shouldnt because i dont know whats classified and not. Its obvious let me just state, something more generally, of course we were deeply interested in all kinds of information about all leaders around the world and in my portfolio both at the white house and in moscow information about mr. Putin, i cant verify or not whether thats true. Im not an expert. But we had a deep interest in knowing as much as possible about putin in part because he doesnt meet with many foreign leaders. We didnt have a lot of interaction with him. We were often guessing and tried to use whatever information we could obtain. Mike mcfaul, ill take that as a yes. Thank you very much, sir. Good to see you. There could be clearly a clinical explanation to try to understand better Vladimir Putins behavior. As we just suggested a freedom of information act request by usa today uncovered studies from an expert in Movement Pattern analysis theer rising that the russian president may have aspergers syndrome putins Neurological Development was significantly interrupted in infancy. Ray locker broke this very provocative story and joins me now, on the front page of usa today in the print version. Ray, fascinating stuff. We know this is thee receiptical and these analysts dont know putin per se. But this is the kind of stuff that our intelligence agencies and pentagon do all the time. Its government funded pentagon is saying well it wasnt study by the highest levels of the pentagon, the defense secretary never looked at it but clearly, tell us what you know. So they had been studying putin for a long time and other World Leaders from a program called body leads. Done in Newport Rhode island through an internal taxpayer dollars. Taxpayer dollars, of course. As the a. M. Bass dore mentioned, we do all sorts of things but dont necessarily see it. To actually see the report one done in 2008, that suggested aspergers and another in 2011 that talked about putin and medvedev medvedev. The top of the report has the caveat of those studying but this informs behaviors. I know from having covered the white house many years president s when they travel to visit a foreign leader they get an intelligence debrief which says this is what this leader has done. These are his family problems. This his background. He might have this disease or that disease. We studied Saddam Hussein and gadhafi, all of these things are written up. One of the people i talked to yesterday said he had been involved in looking at three people osama bin laden, Vladimir Putin and kim jongil, the former leader of north korea to have looked for certain tells in their behavior and facial patterns, et cetera. This is the kind of study that will say, does he have Kidney Disease . How long might he live . How long might we have to deal with it . In this case you dont have to be an arm chair psychologist to see Vladimir Putin takes his shirt off and does crazy things and rides bare crested through the forest. What is he trying to project . In the report it says he wants to have a controlled environment, which is something that they have seen with other people like that like bin laden and kim jongil. They want to control everything they do and everything around them to kind of shape what they can do how the government works, how people can react against them et cetera. And this one of the recommendations was hes better in small meetings rather than in large groups where he might be compelled to perform more. Might get a better response from him one on one or in a smaller group. If you had him in a big group with a lot of people that wanted a piece of his time or attention, he might get distracted and might not react well. Its better if you have him in a smaller quieter environment to deal with people more on a one on one basis. Tell me about andrew marshall, a form aide to Henry Kissinger is still in charge of the program . Hes supposed to retire this year. I dont know if he retired or not. He has run the office of net assessment since the 1970s and helped kissinger deal with arms control issues. There are a number of documents that i found over the years that show that he was exerting a lot of pressure on the cia to push back other estimates the famous team b. Mid1970s, yes. Fascinating stuff. Did this office by any way project that Vladimir Putin would steal and keep bob krafts super bowl ring . The 2008 report does mention that incident. It does. What does it say . That it was evidence of some of his quirky behavior and whether that fits in with the other things they loorked at. Somebody should have told mr. Kraft. Hes got another one now. Thank you very much. My pleasure great to be here. We have important breaking news, john boehner has Just Announced this pope francis will visit capitol hill during his trip to the u. S. And the first pope to address a joint meeting of congress on september 24th. As weve reported in addition to washington the pope will also be making stops the first stop in philadelphia and go to new york city. This is an enormous highly anticipated event, obviously. In sharp contrast to the other visit, the joint meeting that boehner invited, of course Prime Minister netanyahu without first telling the white house or anyone else at the state department. This will be a very big deal indeed. September 24th on capitol hill. Ahead, right here the panic and chaos inside that crowded commuter train after tuesdays deadly crash outside new york city. Well talk to one of the passengers coming up. And next retaliation, why experts say isis has messed with the wrong king. Can this decadent, fruit topped pastry. With indulgent streusel crumble, be from. Fiber one. Fiber one streusel. [ kevin ] this is connolly cameron, zach, and clementine. We have a serious hairball issue. We clean it up, turn around and there it is again. Its scary. Little bit in my eye. [ michelle ] underneath the Kitchen Table underneath my work desk weve got enough to knit a sweater. [ doorbell rings ] zach, what is that . The swiffer sweeper. The swiffer dusters. Its some sort of magic cloth that sucks in all the dog hair. Its quick and easy. Pretty amazing that it picked it all up. I would totally take on another dog. [ kevin ] really . Female announcer save up to 300 on beautyrest and posturepedic. Even get three years interestfree financing on tempurpedic. Keep more president s in your wallet. Sleep trains president s day sale is on now your ticket to a better nights sleep welcome back in jordan the video of him being burned alive by islamic militants. Jordan has started to take revenge. U. S. Officials tell nbc news as many as 20 f16s launched targeted strikes today. Joining me general mccaverty. These are highly coordinated strikes and jordan is not going off on its own. What are the options for revenge . The king has his country behind him, previously divided because of the alliance with america, its controversial there. This isis burning alive of a pilot was so revolting to the people that it has brought them together behind the king. What can he do . First rate armed forces and excellent intelligence service. Jordan itself doesnt have the military power to go after targets through this giant area where essentially isis fighters and embedded in a huge city of mosul and downtown raqqa across desert terrain. They have the air Power Package to run commanding control and intelligence and Space Operations so there are going to be an important player because they are an arab country. But this is a u. S. Operation. Is there anything more that jordan can do . Its struggling with this crisis of 800,000 refugees from the syrian civil war. Theyve got economic challenge just to handle this 21 of their population, yet the king a combat pilot himself for many years is vowing a military response. I do think weve made gestures on too many of these fronts. We clearly need to up the anty in terms of direct support to Kurdish Military forces to jordanians and iraqis. The jordanians are getting a billion dollars a year but thats probably inadequate given the front line status and their willingness to take part in these operations. At the end of the day, as you know better than most were in this quan dri where weve become a defacto ally of iranians and assad trying to focus on this murdererous group of 30,000 isis fighters. We have to sort out our strategic objectives then i think the white house has to not micromanage the military force that they are willing to use. In fact arab allies are complaining that the militarys hands are being tied by the white house by the hesitation the concern were getting into iraq another afghanistan, dont want to go there. Not what the president wants. That is why im told the uae did stop flying missions in december when this jordanian pilot was captured because the nearest search and rescue mission was all the way in kuwait. They want a forward based search and rescue mission which could conceivably get to save one of their pilots. I think uae is right. If you use u. S. Air power you need to let them design the package on the ground. May mean ranger battalions boots on ground if we need to pick up one of our pilots. We see this in places like the ukraine, defensive weapons, lethal weapons. These are all over intellectualizing, are we going to stand behind people in the right of selfdefense, yes or no . If youre going to do it lets do something substantial thats likely to achieve a result. Former deputy cia director testified yesterday it would take 100,000 troops to really degrade and defight isis which is the president s stated goal. I think it would be huge mistake to put Ground Combat forces into action against a terrorist group in desert areas, doesnt make any sense at all. What it really requires is us to have a longterm focus on supporting our friends in the region, the saudis and egyptians and jordanians the iraqis for whatever thats worth, directly to the kurds. And trying in the long run to wear them down. But this isnt we have no direct National Security interest that are vital in the region with isis. Thats the other problem. This is primarily Homeland Security threat to us. A few dozen americans are there. They are going to come home and be a threat. Several thousand europeans, this is a significant challenge to Homeland Security. General, thank you, as always. Ahead right here on Andrea Mitchell reports, up all night the controversial play call that has been giving sea hawks fans nightmares this week. What about coach pete carroll . Im sleeping some. I wake up and cant stop thinking about it. 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