Syria Reportedly Has Used Chemical Weapons Against Opposition Forces; Tsarnaevs Apparently Planned to Attack New York City after Boston
BROOKE BALDWIN, ANCHOR, "CNN NEWSROOM": It is the red line that could mean boots on the ground in Syria. Today U.S. officials saying there is evidence the Syrian government has used sarin gas as a chemical weapon on its own people.</s>SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA (via telephone): I think there was that caveat in the letter, which I think is important, and I'm sorry to say may give them an "out" for not acting in a decisive fashion, because if they all agreed and they concluded it, then the president would have to act, because he has repeatedly described it as a red line that cannot be crossed.</s>BALDWIN: With me now is Christiane Amanpour, our chief international correspondent, and Fareed Zakaria. Welcome to both of you. Christiane, I want to begin with you, yesterday you spoke to the leader of the free Syrian army. Tell me what he told you as far as evidence and usage of this deadly chemical gas.</s>CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brooke, exactly, I did talk to him yesterday and today and he's in Syria right now looking to bring out more proof. Basically what he told me is that in April, March, and earlier, about three to four times, he has evidence, he says, and his forces do, of chemical weapons having been used in Aleppo, in Homs, in Damascus and they took blood samples and soil samples and he wants to bring those out, you know, to present them to the world. Already, as we know, the Israelis have talked about it, the British and the French. Also today, the U.K. put out a statement saying that they have evidence that this is happened and that, of course, it would be a war crime. So these bits of proof are coming out from the Syrian side, from the opposition side. The administration has, as you know, reported this letter, sent it to Congress talking about varying degrees of confidence that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, but their red line would come into effect, would kick in, when they have full corroborated proof.</s>BALDWIN: You bring up this letter sent to members of Congress. Let me read part of this intelligence letter. Quote, "This assessment is based in part on physiological samples. Our analysts must build on this evidence as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts." They are being very, very careful, clearly, Fareed, but how do they corroborate this evidence, and would this just be being extra cautious, or is this stalling?</s>FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": No, I think you have to be careful here. This is a very serious charge. The use of weapons of mass destruction is a very big deal, so, naturally, the administration is trying to figure out whether or not this happened. The way you corroborate this is eyewitness acts, you have victims you can test, you have physiological evidence. You try to get as many eyewitnesses as you can. Ideally, of course, you would find some captured soldier from the Syrian army who would tell you what happened, but it's very serious stuff, and the administration is properly proceeding with some degree of caution just to establish exactly what happened. What this tells us, Brooke, is that the regime may be more desperate than we realize. It also might tell us that they are being more foolish. They have been able to stave off international involvement, in part by not crossing this red line, and the fact they are crossing it might suggest a degree of chaos, disorganization, and desperation.</s>BALDWIN: Fareed Zakaria and Christiane Amanpour on this new intelligence, usage of sarin gas, chemical weapons in Syria. Thanks to both of you. As we told you earlier, officials say the Boston bombing suspects had planned to attack New York City, and the surviving suspect here told investigators that he and his brother had plans to detonate the remaining bombs, all six of them, in Times Square. Mary Snow, I want to go straight to you in Times Square. What more do officials and investigators know about this plot?</s>MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, what New York City officials are saying is they were told about this by the FBI last night and they were told that the plan was to drive to New York City, after the suspect carjacked that car last Thursday night, drive to New York, to Times Square, and detonate explosives. But the police commissioner made it very clear, this was something that he said, in his words, was a spontaneous plan, that apparently the suspect had talked about in that car and that they had then carrying six improvised explosive devices, one being a pressure cooker similar to the two that were used in Boston, and five pipe bombs. There were no specifics about the exact target here in New York City and Times Square. It was pretty vague, but they were told this information last night as part of this ongoing investigation.</s>BALDWIN: Let me back up, Mary, and ask you how this falls in the timeline, because we know according to investigators these two had carjacked someone, right? And it was the car that was low on gas, thank goodness, but that individual, they were speaking some language foreign to this person who was carjacked. He just kept hearing the word Manhattan, Ray Kelly mentioning something like they wanted to go up and party in New York, and now we have this news that they had planned to use these explosives.</s>SNOW: Right. That was the information that the New York City police commissioner was talking about yesterday. There was some indications that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was talking about something about a party in New York City, and the way the police commissioner described this is that there were two rounds of interrogation. In terms of the timeline, he said the first interview was between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, and according to the police commissioner, that is when the suspect had talked about partying in New York or something to that effect. Now, in the second questioning, the commissioner said took place between Sunday evening and Monday morning and he said he was told that the suspect at that time was a lot more lucid during that interrogation and gave more detailed information. And it was during that second period of questioning, according to the commissioner, is when this information was relayed about coming to Times Square.</s>BALDWIN: Mary Snow, thank you. More here on the Boston bombing, the investigation, and also the parents here. Coming up next, first, she said they were set up. Now she says, this whole bombing in Boston was a hoax. The mother of the Boston bombing suspects talked to CNN, and let me tell you, she's not holding back.