Awaiting Word on Fate of Hostages
BURNETT: Tonight, the world waits for word on the safety on two men held hostage by ISIS. The militants have said they would spare the lives of a journalist and a pilot if the Jordanian government turnover a convicted terrorist. It is been hours since that deadline, no word again on whether those hostages are alive or dead. Tonight, we're learning more though about that would be female bomber that they want in exchange for those men and the other high value terrorists that ISIS desperately wants to free. Deborah Feyerick is OUTFRONT.</s>DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For ISIS it is a new dynamic experts say demanding high value prisoners in exchange for hostages. And coincidentally or not, three prisoners ISIS wants back are women. A suicide bomber, an alleged bomb maker and a woman tied to the head of ISIS. The fourth is a child. Each symbolically and strategically important for the terror group.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MAN: By negotiating with ISIS, by recognizing them, by even having dialogue with them, it gives them the impression of acting as a state.</s>FEYERICK: And exchange for the Jordanian military pilot and Japanese journalist ISIS is demanding the release of failed Jordanian hotel suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi. The al Qaeda operative and her husband targeted a Radisson Hotel ballroom in 2005 killing three dozen wedding guests. Al-Rishawi is connected to ISIS through her brother once a ranking member of al Qaeda and Iraq which spawned ISIS. In exchange for American journalist James Foley and later Steven Sotloff, ISIS demanded the release of Lady al Qaeda, an imprisoned M.I.T. trained neuroscientist in the United States linked to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. She was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 carrying bomb making documents for a mass casualty chemical and biological weapons attacks against American targets including the Statue of Liberty in Brooklyn Bridge. It's ironic ISIS is demanding women prisoners given how they treat women terrorism expert Sajjan Gohel.</s>SAJJAN GOHEL, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTOR, ASIA-PACIFIC FOUNDATION: Women are seen as commodities. People who can be sexually exploited. And ISIS thinks that it can be justified. It's a disturbing dynamic of a group that effectively thugs, bandits and criminals that have created an ideology cloaks their true and nefarious agenda.</s>FEYERICK: One high profile prisoner who ISIS has not yet publicly demanded is this woman who maybe the wife shadowy ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi who fought with al-Qaeda in Iraq. Regional sources tells CNN Saja al-Dulaimi is herself a powerful ISIS figure arrested as a high value target as she crossed into Lebanon with this 4-year-old who the source identifies as Baghdadi's child. The source sells CNN since the capture in March 2014, Baghdadi has been calling to get his child released.</s>BURNETT: All right, Deb, thank you very much. And OUTFRONT now, Gary Berntsen, a former CIA officer who dealt with hostage situations, he was with the agency and retired U.S. army General Spider Marks. Good to have both of you with us. Gary, let me start with you. You were critical on helping to rescue two aid workers who were held hostage in Afghanistan. If there is an opportunity in this situation, for this 26-year-old aid worker to swap somebody that ISIS wants, one of those prisoners Deb was just talking about in exchange for this aid worker, should the U.S. do it?</s>GARY BERNTSEN, FORMER CIA OFFICER: I would say that the United States doesn't want to be in the business of doing swap. They've been done in the past. We want to do everything we can to use our covert capabilities, our military capabilities and we need to convince these people if they kill an American there as, you know, they beheaded people, that we're going to send 25 b-52s from, you know, North America and we're going to flatten Raqqa. I mean, we have to play hardball with these guys, if they want to play this way with us, we have to be very hard with them.</s>BURNETT: And to be clear though, obviously as you point out, Americans have been beheaded. The U.S. has conducted air strikes. So far has failed to take these guys out. It's not like they haven't tried.</s>BERNTSEN: No, no, not of the quantity that I'm talking about.</s>BURNETT: OK.</s>BERNTSEN: We send 50 b-52s over there and we destroy the city of Raqqa, they kill an American, I think they will stop killing Americans that way.</s>BURNETT: General Marks, what do you think?</s>MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, clearly this administration has not upped the ante as Gary has indicated, you know, the quid pro quo for something like this, it would include a much greater use of military force and essentially an air campaign of some sort. But clearly the issue Erin in my mind is as governance collapses and we're seen this very as broadly in the mid-east the ability of government to establish themselves legitimately and inarguably our government's inability to really maintain a leadership ability to influence activities and affect activities on the ground elsewhere, NGOs and businesses, non-governmental work and start to provide good services and activities where the governments can't. And so you end up with aid workers that are held hostage. So, the question becomes are these folks afforded the same type of protections as you would a soldier or service member who might be in a similar circle?</s>BURNETT: Well, that's a key question when you put it that way. Right? I mean, Gary, what do you say to that? Because obviously you just heard John Kirby from the Pentagon, you know, when he's talking about it he's saying, well, it's a sacred duty to rescue a prisoner of war from the United States military. If these aid workers are doing something the military for example was doing in Afghanistan but isn't here, should they be treated the same way?</s>BERNTSEN: Look, during the Afghan conflict, we had the shelter now international hostages there. Two of them were Americans. We pursued the rescue of those young women with the intensity that they were our daughters, sisters, wives or mothers. We did everything possible and thankfully we were able to execute all of the agency and the military together a recovery of them. But it required work on it every day. The agency myself and a team for a military forward every day working with our Afghan partners communicating with the other side running sources in. We did a number of things to make this happen. But you have to have an intensity and I was expected to do that by CIA. And the White House wanted to be briefed on that. Every day I was reporting back. And I knew it was going to the President.</s>BURNETT: So, here's the thing though. You know, when you're talking about, do whatever it takes and I know Gary in your view, you wouldn't do the swaps. But, you know, raids, things like that to try to help these people. So, I spoke with the former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill who killed Osama bin Laden, I asked him about this very situation, right? About when someone's in a place like Syria trying to do good, right? But they are there by choice. They know the risks of capture and death. They are there by choice. That person gets captured. American troops get sent in to risks their lives, to try to rescue this person. I wondered if SEALs ever feel resentment being told to go in and conduct raids to risk their lives to help people like that. And here's what he said. It was a pre-honest answer.</s>ROBERT O'NEILL, FORMER NAVY SEAL: It is upsetting. I've had a good friend that was in my team. He was killed tried to rescue an American doctor in Afghanistan. And part of our issue is why are you going there? I mean, obviously, it's noble and they wanted to do the right thing and they are good hearted people. Most of them are aid workers and journalist.</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>O'NEILL: The problem is you need to have a realization that there are people that don't like you based on simply being a non- believer or an apostate. They will kill you based on how you look.</s>BURNETT: General Marks, that's a pretty honest answer. But yes, there is resentment. Should the U.S. be conducting raids to save every American that goes into these places even if they are people with good hearts and good intentions?</s>MARKS: Well, this is anecdote one, this is one man's view.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>MARKS: And an incredible view of the activity.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>MARKS: I mean, he's been at the very tip of these engagements and he knows intimately what it's like. The point that were trying to make is, the United States will bring any power that it has to bear. They will galvanize everything they can. They will put folks at risk in order to solve a problem very precisely as Gary has described and that we've all been a part of. The fact remains is as our inability to work all elements of power. That's the diplomatic, the informational, the economic piece in a long term, kind of a long horizon engagement, you have to have a military capability in order to make this work. It is very demanding and it must be done.</s>BURNETT: Right. Thanks so much to both of you. And today Senator John McCain tore into prosecutors who swarmed the former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger while he was testifying before Senate committee today. The demonstrators are from a professional basically protesting group called code pink. They surrounded Kissenger. He's 91 years old. They held up sings accusing him of war crimes being Vietnam. Senator McCain was incredibly angry. He ordered Capitol Hill police to remove them.</s>MCCAIN: I've been a member of this committee for many years. And I have never seen anything as disgraceful and outrageous and despicable as the last demonstration that just took place. Get out of here you low life scum.</s>BURNETT: You think he was justified. Let us know. OUTFRONT next, the measles outbreak spreading in America. We'll tell you about a father's desperate fight to stop the anti-vaccine movement. And inside a cockpit of an airbus A-320 simulator. We're learning new details tonight about Air Asia. All details about those final moments of flight 8501