Profile Of A Terror Leader
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And now, the White House is firing back. CNNs Diana Magnay is in Moscow with that. Good morning, Diana.</s>DIANA MAGNAY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine. Yes. It's interesting. This manifesto of truth Edward Snowden says he has done the world a public service effectively to have brought the issue of unchecked mass surveillance into society's demand into the hands of the global citizenship. And he singles out GCHQ, the NSA and GCHQ, which is its British equivalent as the worst offenders of sort of criminal activity by the intelligence agencies. And he also says that some governments have engaged in a kind of witch hunt to try and suppress journalists or people who wanted to expose the activities of these kinds of agencies. I'll just read you out a quote from that editorial. He says, "The debate they wanted to avoid is now taking place in countries around the world and instead of causing damage, the use of this new public knowledge is causing society to push for political reforms oversight and new laws." And this follows, obviously, Christine, that meeting he had last week with a German lawmaker where he basically told him that he wanted to testify before U.S. Congress, but that he wanted to see the charges of felony in the U.S. dropped -- Christine.</s>ROMANS: How is the U.S. responding to this, Diana?</s>MAGNAY: Not particularly well. The White House hasn't issued any kind of formal response yet, but there have been some voices out there who've said this won't happen and it's unacceptable what he's done. Let's take a listen.</s>SEN. DIANE FEINSTEIN, (D-CA): He had an opportunity. If what he was a whistleblower to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say, look, I have some information you ought to see. That didn't happen. And now, he's done this enormous disservice to our country. And I think the answer is no clemency.</s>MAGNAY: You know, one of the conditions for Edward Snowden's asylum here in Russia as per President Putin is that he doesn't disclose any more information that could further damage U.S. interests and there are calls for him to testify in Germany and he's saying, I'd like to testify but only if you grant me asylum and the Germans aren't very keen on that. So, he's in a very tricky situation here. Russia, as a whole, as a state, doesn't really marry with his values of sort of open government without any kind of surveillance. But for now, this is where he is stuck -- Christine.</s>ROMANS: A bit of irony, isn't it, that he is in Russia trying with his manifesto. All right. Thank you so much, Diana Magnay.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thirty-three minutes after the hour. And jail member of a now famous Russian punk rock band has gone missing.</s>BERMAN (voice-over): That's according to her family. Nadia Tolokonnikova (ph) was scheduled to be transferred to a new penal colony on October 21st, but her husband and family say they have not received any information about her whereabouts since then. The 23- year-old musician was sentenced to prison after insulting Russian president, Vladimir Putin, last year.</s>ROMANS (voice-over): A Texas woman is recovering this morning after a brutal attack by an army soldier. Thirty-one-year-old Rachel Poole (ph) was nine months pregnant and video chatting with her husband, Justin Poole (ph), who's currently deployed overseas when her attacker, 19-year-old Corey Moss (ph) begin to viciously stabbed and beat her while her husband watched helplessly on the other end from Asia. Rachel managed to call 911, was taken to an El Paso Hospital in critical condition, successfully delivering a healthy baby girl.</s>BERMAN (on-camera): So feared and</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Known as Ikrima, he rocketed from obscurity to global terror threat in just a few years. He did it with the help of the CIA. CNN can reveal how and why they even hooked him up with al Qaeda in Yemen before they tried to kill him.</s>MORTON STORM, FORMER CIA SPY: I was offered a million Danish Kroner which is occurring to $200,000 if I could lead the Americans to kill him.</s>ROBERTSON: Ikrima (ph)?</s>STORM: Yes.</s>ROBERTSON: Storm, a former Danish biker turned jihadist turned double agent says he was working undercover when he first met Ikrima.</s>STORM: I met him in 2008 in Nairobi. I was working on a mission from the Danish intelligence and the British and the Americans --</s>ROBERTSON: The CIA?</s>STORM: And also, the CIA and the British five (ph).</s>ROBERTSON: Ikrima was not a fighter. He was to rise through al Shabaab's ranks with the help of Storm for the intelligence agencies he worked for. (on-camera) This is one of the places they used to meet, a shopping mall in the heart of Nairobi, a nondescript hotel tucked away inside. Storm, he says, handing over material to Ikrima, material he says that intelligence officials knew all about.</s>STORM: He'd been asking me for money. He'd been asking me for equipment and I had been giving him what he asked for.</s>ROBERTSON: Why?</s>STORM: That was to gather intelligence information and to maintain our network in Somalia.</s>ROBERTSON: And this essentially builds him up because he has money he can provide?</s>STORM: That's right.</s>ROBERTSON (on-camera): Money and equipment wasn't all Storm gave Ikrima. He was introducing two major al Qaeda franchises.</s>STORM: This is Ikrima (ph) since the 23rd of February, 2010, where -- and where our rookie is asking me to pass on an e-mail to Ikrima.</s>ROBERTSON: These e-mails and dozens of others, Storm says, evidence he connected Ikrima to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, to the American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki killed in a U.S. drone strike last year. Together, he says, Ikrima and Awlaki plotted attacks on the west.</s>STORM: Ikrima and Anwar al-Awlaki had been in touch and had agreed to send people from Somalia to Yemen to receive the training and then AQAP in Yemen would arrange the traveling to the west. That would be for terrorist attacks over there.</s>ROBERTSON: Storm lost touch with Ikrima last year when he retired from spying, but he blames intelligence services for building him up and leaving him at large to, perhaps, be involved in the Kenya shopping mall attack.</s>STORM: I could really frustrated to know that Ikrima had been maybe involved in Westgate's terrorist attack and also is a high rank person within that organization, it frustrates me a lot, so --</s>ROBERTSON: Because he could have been stopped?</s>STORM: He could have been stopped.</s>ROBERTSON: Stopped, if western intelligence had fully understood who they were dealing with. Nic Robertson, CNN, Nairobi, Kenya.</s>BERMAN: And our thanks to Nic for that report. The CIA has declined to comment on this story to</s>CNN. ROMANS (on-camera): A Cirque Du Soleil performer remains hospitalized this morning after falling during a show in Las Vegas. The male artist whose name has not been released yet was performing in the wheel of death act Friday night. He slipped and fell off the wheel. The show was stopped. The performer taken to an area hospital where he's listed in stable condition. They pulled the curtain quickly and then the show did go on.</s>BERMAN: Yikes. All right. Time for a check now on the weather. Karen Maginnis live at the weather center for us in Atlanta.</s>ROMANS: Good morning.</s>BERMAN: Good morning, Karen.</s>KAREN MAGINNIS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, John and Christine. Yes. If you are wondering just how cold it feels outside, yes, it feels like it's in the 20s to 30s, which is way below where we should be for this time of year. Look at this, in Buffalo 25 degrees there. Syracuse is 24. Montpelier is 16 degrees! Now, you go a little bit further towards the east and those temperatures in the 30s, but these are a good five to 10 degrees below where it should be for this time of year. And Albany, 25 degrees should be around 34. In Boston, temperatures not even at the freezing mark, but typically, for this particular day, we would see temperatures right around 41 degrees when you wake up in the morning. Into the southeast where temperatures took a nose dive over the last several days, but we'll start to see them increase as we go through the workweek. In Atlanta right now, 43 degrees looks pretty nice at the Hartsfield- Jackson International Airport. Now, you may have gotten up early enough in the morning on Sunday to see the hybrid partial lunar eclipse or solar eclipse. Take a look at this. This is out of New Jersey. Now, the reason why you don't see a total eclipse is because, typically, you would see all of the moon and the earth and the sun would all be aligned, but they weren't. But essentially, it looks like it was just a nick out of the sun. So, we didn't see a total eclipse, but they did in the southern hemisphere. John, Christine, back to you.</s>BERMAN: Thanks so much. There are known write (ph) songs about a partial eclipse of the heart. Did you ever notice that?</s>ROMANS: All right. A horrifying scene Friday night at the Denver Nuggets And Portland Trail Blazers NBA game. That's Rocky, the Nuggets' mascot. He's being lowered from the rafters just before tip- off, looking limp and lifeless because the man inside the costume was unconscious. He fainted on the way down and collapsed in heat on the floor. He's OK, eventually, walking off under his own power, later tweeting feeling much better.</s>BERMAN: What a weird, weird night between the mascot, NFL head coaches, Cirque Du Soleil.</s>BERMAN: Must be hot.</s>ROMANS: And a terrifying attack at a South Florida beach. How two strangers helped save the life of a six-year-old boy who was about to be pulled under again by a five-foot shark.