CIA Clarifies Director's Russian Meddling Claim; Raqqa Liberated from ISIS But Left in Ruins
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So this morning the CIA is setting the record straight after remarks made by CIA Director Mike Pompeo correcting him, frankly.</s>POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Really immediately because at this National Security summit the director of the CIA said that Russian meddling in the 2016 election did not affect the outcome of the election, but a correction immediately released by his own agency. Shimon Prokupecz is here in New York, with us, who has the details. Significant.</s>SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, pretty significant, Poppy. And the reason why they have to issue this correction was because in January when the Intelligence Community issued their report about Russian meddling they did not go there. They did not make any assessment as to whether or not it affected the election, whether it affected the outcome of the election. So it was important for the CIA to issue the correction. Now what Pompeo said yesterday was, quote, "The Intelligence Community's assessment is that Russian meddling that took place did not affect the outcome of the election and that shortly thereafter a spokesperson for the CIA issued this statement saying, quote, "The intelligence assessment with regard to Russian election meddling in January stated the Intelligence Community did not make an assessment of the impact of that Russian activities had on the outcome of the election." So it was important for the CIA to go ahead and correct. You know, and Pompeo has been criticized for somewhat politicizing the CIA in some way with regard to Russian meddling. So it was important for the CIA to go ahead and correct the record.</s>BERMAN: Yes. I mean, he said the CIA found something, the Intelligence Community found something, which they specifically said they had no findings on.</s>PROKUPECZ: That's exactly right. And the FBI has said so, the DNI has said so and everyone, and people even through the Obama administration have said so. The only other thing that may be relevant here is that Jeh Johnson, when he was the head of Homeland Security, did say that they did not find that any of the meddling affected any of the votes. They could not find any of that.</s>HARLOW: Right. Right.</s>BERMAN: The vote tallies.</s>PROKUPECZ: The vote tallies. Exactly.</s>BERMAN: All right. Shimon Prokupecz, great to have you with us. Thanks so much.</s>HARLOW: Thank you. There is if you can believe it dancing and singing in the streets of Raqqa today because ISIS has officially been driven out of what they once declared their self- -- their own capital in Syria. Kurdish forces led, declaring they are now in charge, but getting back to normal, that is going to take a long time.</s>BERMAN: Yes. People who lived in Raqqa are being warned not to go home until the area is cleared of mines and ISIS holdouts. CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh was just in Raqqa, he joins us now from Syria. Nick, what did you see?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Remarkable, though, to speak of the idea of people going back to life in Raqqa, John and Poppy. There's very few buildings there really standing apart. We only saw one, the National Hospital, and that seems to have been left not completely gutted because it's actually where they held human shields for quite a period of time. While we were there ourselves, though, it's the stadium that had a lot of attention where the celebrations occurred, but beneath it there is an extraordinary series of cells where they held prisoners and torture chambers, too. And in fact in one of those cells strangely enough, it seems to be where ISIS held their people that they suspected of being spies. We could tell that because on the wall in English there was a very strange series of instructions that basically said you're here because we caught you red handed or maybe you left the GPS locater on, on your Twitter account when you tweeted, or maybe the police just caught you in the street because they found you doing something wrong. Strangely people had written in many different languages their names, often their nom de guerre along with a number of days they've spent inside that jail. A very eerie place to stand. It gives you also a sense of how international an effort it was. And to that effect, also, too, John and Poppy, we met an American in that basement area, a man called John, a computer engineer actually, from Colorado, who five months ago had obviously had enough of that life and set out here, expected to spend much of his time sat in the desert drinking tea but found himself right on the front line of the fighting against ISIS in Raqqa. Now he described it is not as intense as he had expected, remarkable given the damage we saw all around there, and he's a man with no military experience, who actually doesn't even intend to go back to the military now, but someone who said he wanted simply to fight ISIS himself. This is the kind of international efforts here. I should point out just in the last few minutes or so, the coalition, the U.S. backed coalition, CentCom, and the U.S. State Department have come forward to congratulate the SDF, that's that Kurdish force with U.S. backing that kicked ISIS out of Raqqa. But this is a pretty hollow victory really because Raqqa was never really was a Kurdish town. Never really was the SDF's. They were used to kick ISIS out. It's been absolutely damaged beyond recognition now. Sadly the issue is, who can rebuild, is there enough American attention and money to make that actually happen? And potentially is there a risk, the Syrian regime, not so far away, may try and take it or could those local populations who had some sympathies with ISIS end up coming back here and allow jihadists there to have some sort of foothold again? Huge questions but also absolute total devastation for that city. We did not see one civilian in the entire time we were there. Just the SDF fighters who kicked ISIS out -- John, Poppy.</s>BERMAN: A tragic violent past but a precarious future.</s>HARLOW: Yes.</s>BERMAN: Nick Paton Walsh for us inside Syria. Thanks so much, Nick.</s>HARLOW: A perfect 10, that is how the president rates himself when it comes to the response to Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico. The mayor of San Juan, she has a different number in mind.