American Woman Killed In Syria; Profiting Off White House Resumes
JAKE TAPPER, CNN: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We are keeping our eye on the storms over Oklahoma but right now, it's time for our world lead. An American woman dead on the battlefield in Syria. How Nicole Lynn Mansfield ended up there is a mystery to her family in Michigan, although her father said he had had concerns.</s>GREGORY MANSFIELD, FATHER OF NICOLE LYNN MANSFIELD: I went to the FBI with my concerns three years ago. Her passport needed to be revoked.</s>TRIANA JONES, DAUGHTER OF NICOLE LYNN MANSFIELD: I looked at her body, her feet and her hands, and her nose and her mouth and I just -- I just knew it was her. I know that she was talking to people online and that they told her about the project in Syria, and that she was interested in going over there to help, but she didn't think that it would be fighting. She told me there would be no guns or anything. She would never be involved in that. And they lied to her. They misled her. They took her and brought her over there probably paid for her ticket and everything and they kept her there.</s>TAPPER: Heartbreaking. The father and daughter of Nicole Lynn Mansfield talking about learning that she had been killed in Syria. Syria state run television said three westerners were fighting alongside rebels and were found with weapons. The State Department official told CNN that they were aware of the reports and were trying to get more information on Mansfield and what exactly happened. It's another complication when talking about these Syrian rebels. Who are they? Do they all share the same motives? Can the U.S. trust them? A good time for a segment we like to call explain this to me. Joining me now is Andrew Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who has traveled to Syria and met with the rebels. He is also author of "In The Lion's Den, An Eyewitness Account Of Washington's Battle With Syria." So Henry, thanks for being here. Again, explain this to me. We know that the Syrian rebels are not one uniform group, but how different are these different groups? How cooperative are the alliances?</s>ANDREW TABLER, WASHINGTON INSTITUTION FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Yes. Syrian groups vary by location in the country. They also vary in terms of nationalist ideology as well as more Islamist and sometimes Jihadist ideology, right. So it is a completely atomized structure. Many of the fighters fight on a very local level like minute men during the American Revolutions. So it is a very complicated situation and also extremely complicated to deal with them because there are so many voices among the opposition.</s>TAPPER: When Senator John McCain goes to Syria as he did this week and meets with rebels, who is he meeting with?</s>TABLER: Yes. Primarily he met with the head of the Supreme Military Council, which is sort of an association of the number of those in the opposition that had been vetted by the United States and Arab intelligence agencies and it is that body that has been used to funnel assistance in some cases weapons from other countries into Syria to support the rebels. It's the armed affiliate of what is called the Syrian Opposition Coalition.</s>TAPPER: Right. So these are the respectable oppositions.</s>TABLER: The ones we know about -- within the structure itself though it is complicated. Some of them are nationalists in the structure. Some of them are harder to deal with. We believe some of those that when the weapons are --</s>TAPPER: Extreme Islamists.</s>TABLER: Exactly, on the further right end of the spectrum. Sometimes weapons supplied via their unit end up in the hands of extremists.</s>TAPPER: And when you say extremist, do you mean the Al Nusra?</s>TABLER: Yes, the Nusra front.</s>TAPPER: And they are considered to be a front group or alias for al Qaeda in Iraq.</s>TABLER: That's correct. They actually join together with al Qaeda Iraq in April and now they are one unit and it is a rising force among the Syrian Sunni Arab opposition and is a real worry for Washington and makes arming the rebels much more complicated.</s>TAPPER: And the U.S. considers them as of December I think to be a terrorist organization.</s>TABLER: That's correct.</s>TAPPER: The U.N. Security Council, tough to get them to agree on anything, but they consider them to be an alias for al Qaeda in Iraq.</s>TABLER: Absolutely. There is a general concern. In each one of these different areas of Syria, regime controlled areas, Sunni air patrolled areas, we have not only terrorist groups which are present, but actually ascendant. Hezbollah in the regime controlled areas and the Nusra front in the Sunni Arab areas and then the local branch, the Kurdistan workers party and the Kurdish areas, very complicated.</s>TAPPER: It is complicated. I understand it a little bit better now, a little bit. But thank you so much, Andrew Tabler. Appreciate it as always for coming and trying to explain this very complicated situation.</s>TABLER: My pleasure.</s>TAPPER: Turning now to the "Buried Lead," that is a story we think is not getting enough attention. Something in the "Washington Post" this morning caught our eye. It was a story titled for Obama's ex-aides, it is time to cash in on experience and the story detailed the ways its former White House aides are making money from those in industry and from advocacy groups seeking to curry favor with the White House and the media. While President Obama has banned former aides from directly lobbying the government for two years after they leave the White House, there are other ways to influence beyond direct lobbying. There's the vague consulting loophole for instance and of course, after two years all bets are off the table anyway. But beyond what could be seen as a business as usual story for a president who once promise, the opposite, there was news in the story about a conference held this week in Azerbaijan, a country regarded by human rights activists as repressive and backward. A conference attended by former top Obama aides all of whom were well compensated for their travel and for the trip. Just what's going on? Well, it all has to do with oil, money, and influence.</s>TAPPER (voice-over): It's common in Washington, people leaving their government jobs and then cashing in for big, lucrative salaries. Those stories tend to make the news. Less publicized are junkets to foreign lands often ones with abysmal records when it comes to human rights and democracy such as the conference held Tuesday and Wednesday in Azerbaijan.</s>RACHEL DENBER, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: The government doesn't look very kindly upon dissent and in the recent crackdown there have been dozens of protesters and political activists, dissidents, government critics, bloggers who have been arrested mostly on bogus charges, thrown in jail.</s>TAPPER: Excessive restrictions on freedom of expression and freedom of religion, torture. And yet this week former government officials were treated to luxury travel and accommodations in a city where the Azerbaijani government's beautification campaign has meant, Human Rights Watch says, the forcible eviction of thousands of families and illegal demolition of their homes. When these former government officials speak as did former top Obama White House advisers Jim Mesina, David Pluff and Robert Gibbs, they are handsomely compensated tens of thousands of dollars. Republicans were in attendance as well according to the program online, former top State Department official from the Bush administration Paul Wolfowitz and former Republican Senator Dick Luger.</s>STEPHEN SPAULDING, COMMOM CAUSE: It raises questions about whether the public interest is always the number one interest when these folks are going abroad and collecting five-figure checks.</s>TAPPER: Current members of Congress were also listed as attending though they would not have been paid. Where is all the money coming from? Every day Azerbaijan pumps one billion barrels of oil through its new pipeline. So perhaps not surprisingly this week's conference was sponsored by oil and gas companies including BP, Conoco Phillips, Chevron, and the state oil company of the Azerbaijan Republic.</s>DENBER: Former high level officials convening for an event that brings the country prestige shows how important the country is.</s>TAPPER: In an e-mail one former government official who attended, but who requested to not be named tells CNN that there is another angle here, that one thing all these stories fail to mention is the alliance we have with Azerbaijan on energy, counterterrorism, and most importantly Afghanistan. Without their logistical and supply routes, we could not do what we do especially when we've had Pakistan shut things down.</s>SPAULDING: This, you know, could encourage dialogue. This could encourage progress, but certainly we would expect our government officials and we would expect our highest public servants to be good ambassadors abroad. But at the same time, we don't want at all the appearance of selling access.</s>TAPPER: The former government official also told me that for context it is not uncommon for, quote, "people like us, in fact, former presidents to speak in Russia, China, and many other countries with democracy and human rights progress to make and far less cooperation in other areas than Azerbaijan." Pluff, Mesina and Gibbs declined to speak to CNN on the record, but they told us that former White House Counsel Bob Bower checked out the invitation and the payment and said there was nothing inappropriate about the trip. They also say they brought up Azerbaijan's human rights record in their speeches. Urgent news as we warned earlier, the Storm Prediction Center has indeed just issued a particularly dangerous situation tornado watch for most of Oklahoma. That means a major tornado outbreak could happen very soon. We're watching it all. Still ahead, fellow earthlings it's been said we live in a cosmic shooting gallery. In this hour, the cosmos are about to fire another giant rock across our bow. Did I mention this thing has got its own moon flying shotgun? We'll tell you how close this asteroid is going to get to earth when it flies by just 20 minutes from now. Stay with us.