Obama Slaps New Sanctions on Russia; Man Claims He Was Assassin For Philippine President
VANIER: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Cyril Vanier. And you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. We're following a cease-fire in Syria that was brokered by Russia and Turkey which may have the potential to change the situation on the ground. Some rebel groups and regime forces laying down their weapons after nearly six years of war. We'll be heading live to the region in just a moment. But first, though, Russia is vowing to respond to harsh new U.S. sanctions, punishment for Russia's alleged interference in the U.S. election. The measures include the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats from the U.S. Russia foreign ministry issued a scathing response saying "It's over. The curtain is down. The bad play is over. The whole world from the first seats to the balcony is witnessing a destructive blow on America's prestige and leadership that has been dealt by Barack Obama and his hardly literate foreign policy team that revealed its main secret to the world -- that it is exceptionally masked helplessness. And no enemy could have caused more harm to the U.S." President-Elect Donald Trump seemed anxious to get past this incident saying "It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation. CNN's Jim Sciutto has more on how the U.S. is responding.</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Tonight, President Obama ordering strong and far-reaching retaliation against Russia for its unprecedented cyber attack on the U.S. election system. The U.S. is imposing sanctions against nine Russian individuals and entities including the Russian spy agency, the FSB and the Russian military intelligence unit the GRU -- both believed to be behind the hack. The U.S. is ordering 35 Russian intelligence operatives and their families in California and Washington, D.C. out of the country within 72 hours; and shutting down two Russian government-owned compounds, one in Maryland and another in New York. The President also declassifying intelligence on Russian cyber activity to help networks in the U.S. and abroad quote, "identify, detect and disrupt Russian cyber attacks". In spite of this and the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia ordered the election hacking, President-Elect Trump just last night continued to dismiss both Moscow's involvement and the importance of the hacking at all.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), U.S. PRESIDENT ELECT: I think we ought to get on with our lives. I think that computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what's going on.</s>SCIUTTO: Senator John McCain traveling this week with other senators in the Baltic region, where countries are most worried about Russian aggression responding today to Trump's nonchalant remarks with a sarcastic jab.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I agree with the President-Elect that we need to get on with our lives without having our elections being affected by any outside influence especially Vladimir Putin who is a thug and a murder.</s>SCIUTTO: In a statement before the announcement Russia promised its own retaliation saying, "If Washington takes new hostile steps, it will receive an answer. Any actions against Russian diplomatic missions in the United States will immediately backfire at U.S. diplomats in Russia." The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russian president Vladimir Putin personally approved of the hacking, in part to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign; this, according to intelligence, congressional and other administration sources. Earlier this week, Senator Lindsey Graham who is traveling with McCain told CNN in an interview that congress is planning it own pay back. What are you going to do, Senator Graham and Senator McCain if he doesn't change his tune in effect on Russia?</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: There are 100 United States senators. I would say that 99 of us believe the Russians did this and we're going to do something about it along with Senator McCain after this trip's over. We're going to have the hearings and we're going to put sanctions together that hit Putin as an individual and his inner circle for interfering in our election. And they're doing it all over the world, not just in the United States.</s>VANIER: Jim Sciutto reporting there for us tonight. Joining me now from Seattle, Washington CNN's former Moscow bureau chief, Jill Dougherty. Jill -- we were talking about this topic last night as we sort of knew that the announcements were going to made today. Now that we know what the sanctions are specifically, how significant do you think they really are?</s>JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think they are significant and also, you know, Cyril we don't totally know precisely the actions that the Obama administration is going to ultimately take. I mean we do know about the sanctions. We do know about diplomatic steps but there are some covert steps that the Obama administration can take that we may never know about and that's where it gets kind of complicated. You know, I think there is one part of this, too, that hasn't really been brought up. But these are the things that Obama is talking about, declassifying technical information about the way that Russia uses the web and uses cyber in order to carry out malicious cyber activity. And these are very interesting. I mean you could say that essentially what he is doing is he is giving the green light to, let's call them good hackers, to go after the Russian intelligence service hackers and that is very interesting, too. So there are a lot of aspects to this.</s>VANIER: Jill -- I'm looking at some of the other sanctions here. Potentially asset freezes or travel bans on the GRU, that's the Russian military intelligence chief. I mean symbolically that's a big deal but it strikes me that maybe that's not going to change a lot to how they actually operate.</s>DOUGHERTY: Yes. I don't think the head of GRU is vacationing in Miami. But I think even naming him and saying here's the man -- one of the key people who has carried out and organized this attack and these attacks is really big. I mean you just don't do that. It's kind of like Russia targeting the head of the CIA or something. It just isn't done. So I think they are doing that for a purpose and I do think that they're trying to get as close to President Putin as they can to deliver that message. And interestingly when you hear Lindsey Graham talking about Putin personally, McCain and Lindsey Graham talking about Putin personally, that's another step that is really almost like a nuclear option here. So this thing is moving very quickly forward with no one really understanding where it's all going to end up.</s>VANIER: Getting back to a question that I was asking you yesterday, do you think this is the kind of retaliation that is going to make Moscow, the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin think twice about undertaking the kind of hacking that the U.S. accuses them of having done next time?</s>DOUGHERTY: Well, you know, they're going to continue hacking -- hacking in the sense of getting intelligence information and certainly the economic hacking, you know, to make money. Russian hackers, et cetera. That's probably all going to go forward. But when you get into hacking into an election, I think that's where the Russians are going to have to decide how far they would want to push it. And that's an unknowable at this point. Because Obama finally is pushing back, pushing back pretty hard and the sign is "don't try it again". It's also, by the way, a message not only to Russia but it's to other countries that have the potential to do what the Russians have. But again we don't know where this is all going to go and whether President Putin will take it as another step that he wants to, you know, push the boundary even further and do something that ultimately could even be destabilizing.</s>VANIER: All right. Jill Dougherty reporting live from Seattle, Washington. Thank you very much for your insights. And I would point out to our viewers the importance of one of the things that you said. We only know a part of the story here because President Obama had made it clear that part of the retaliation wouldn't be made public. So we have to bear in mind we don't know the full story. Joining me now from Los Angeles -- political strategist Mac Zilber and Republican consultant John Thomas. Tell me -- I want you to tell me about what you think about Donald Trump's reaction to all this. Because this has all been laid at his doorstep, three weeks from take office and what is he saying? He says it's time to, quote, "move on". That's a direct quote. Now, for instance as a consultant, how does that score as an answer?</s>MAC ZILBER, POLITICAL STRATEGIST: Well, it's unacceptable, especially given his background. We forget, this is a man who stood up in a press conference and called on Russia to hack his opponent during the campaign and then later said that he had nothing do with it. This is an individual whose secretary of state designee is part of Putin's order of friendship. And so when he says we need to move on and not pay attention to one of the largest attacks on our democracy's integrity and our nation's history that answer simply doesn't cut it for most Americans.</s>JOHN THOMAS, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: Yes, how do you --</s>VANIER: Yes, sorry -- go ahead.</s>THOMAS: I was just going to say look, what's shocking here is that with 20 days to go now President Obama decides to take action. What about the last eight years? He tried to the reset, that failed. Allegedly the White House was hacked but no one really talked about that. China is hacking -- consistently hacking the United States. But Obama doesn't take action but all of a sudden when his party might not be in power he takes action. I think the tweet that the Russian -- I think it was the Russian embassy who called him a lame duck -- underscores the larger problem that Barack Obama has had over the last eight years and that is the rest of the world doesn't take the U.S. seriously like when Barack Obama told Putin to cut it out, Putin just laughs.</s>VANIER: Right. And I would point out the quote by the U.S. House of Representative, John Ryan who was saying -- Paul Ryan, beg your pardon -- who was saying precisely that, that the answer was adequate. He was happy that it came. And here it is, "While today's action by the administration is overdue, it's an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia." The thing is, isn't this going to -- and the end of the quote, "it serves as a prime example of this administration's ineffective foreign policy that has the left America weaker in the eyes of the world." And that's speaking to your point. But isn't this going to essentially curtail Donald Trump's action? He is giving us the impression that he was going to want to reset things with Russia but now, of course, he's going to inherit a situation where they've just attacked Russia, essentially. Cyber-attack as well as other sanctions.</s>THOMAS: I understand the President feeling the need to take action here but he has handed a whole bucket of troubles to -- both in Israel as well as in Russia -- to the incoming President-Elect Trump. And I think the reason President Trump is being hesitant to make a statement on this issue is what his chief of staff Reince Priebus said in another network tonight which is until the President takes office and is fully briefed by all the intelligence agencies on what actually is happening he doesn't want to weigh in on it.</s>VANIER: Right -- I'd like us to listen to just Kellyanne Conway, Trump's senior adviser. This is what she has to say. This is how she interprets the sanctions levied by the Obama administration.</s>KELLYANNE CONWAY, SENIOR ADVISER TO DONALD TRUMP: I will tell you that even those who are sympathetic to Barack Obama on those issues are saying that part of the reason he did this today was to, quote, "box in President-Elect Trump". That would be very unfortunate if that were the motive -- if politics were the motivating factor here but we can't help but think that that's often true.</s>VANIER: Mac -- do you feel that President Obama is playing politics with the sanctions?</s>ZILBER: I don't think it's politics to box in President-Elect Trump. I think it's a foreign policy imperative. When you have a President- Elect who has been signaling as dangerous as a policy on Russia as Trump has I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to box him in to where if he really wants to pull back and say that these 35 spies can come back into the United States then that's Trump's prerogative but he's going to be the one saying it and he's going to be the one going out there. I also want to put a point on the notion of Trump when he gets his intelligence briefings, he said today that he won't take his briefings on this issue until next week. Does he have that much important stuff to do between now and Monday that he can't take an hour out of his to get briefed on this critical issue?</s>VANIER: Yes, what's your take on that? You feel he is just buying time there?</s>ZILBER: I think it's either one, that he's buying time; or two, that he treats the presidency as something of a hobby. He doesn't want to give up his businesses. He doesn't want to give up being executive producer of "The Apprentice". And you know, he says bother me when there is something important to the intelligence agencies. Then when there is something important he pushes it off a few days.</s>VANIER: John.</s>THOMAS: I don't know where to begin. Obama has had eight years to tackle this issue -- Russia. This is not the first time and 20 days before it does smack of politics. And if this was such a big issue just handing this -- he should have consulted with President-Elect Trump as to how they want to tackle this together because it really is unfair. This is falling in President-Elect Trump's lap not Obama's.</s>VANIER: But wait, John -- I think the serious point that's being made here is that President-Elect Donald Trump has been pushing back, you know, despite the evidence that's been overwhelmingly presented by the intelligence community, he's been pushing back against the notion that Russia had interfered in the U.S. election process. And now he's saying, well, I will actually get briefed on the facts a week from now. Doesn't that strike you as a little flippant?</s>THOMAS: Well, not really because we don't know to the degree what hacking went on. We know the DNC was hacked and we know John Podesta's e-mails were hacked. We don't know that anything related to the elections actually were hacked. So I think President-Elect Trump just doesn't want to jump to conclusions here until he has all the facts and quite frankly, he is in control and can direct the agencies to do comprehensive investigation to find out actually what happened.</s>VANIER: All right.</s>ZILBER: Well, the report that the intelligence community released today had quite a bit of detail on the fact that it was likely Russia that perpetrated this hacking.</s>THOMAS: Ok. To the DNC and Podesta but that's not --</s>VANIER: Gentlemen -- we're going to have to wrap this up. This could go on and it will go on in future days. I promise, we'll continue this conversation. Thank you very much for joining us though right now from Los Angeles -- political strategist Mac Zilber and Republican consultant John Thomas. Thanks a lot -- appreciate it.</s>THOMAS: Thank you.</s>ZILBER: Thanks.</s>VANIER: Syria is under a nationwide cease-fire as the world hopes that this one may finally last. Plus shocking claims by a man who says that he killed for the Philippine president. How he says crocodiles were used to get rid of bodies. That's all coming up after the break.