[Blitzer:] U.S. officials described him as a Tunisian, a key money man for ISIS, but still questions over the importance of the commander known as Abu Sayyaf. He was killed over the weekend during a raid in eastern Syria. This graphic from the Rand Corporation published in "The New York Times" gives you a sense of how ISIS makes money. Most of the terror group's funds come from extortion or taxes. A smaller portion from the sale of oil and kidnapping for ransom operations. Let's discuss this and more, the impact of Abu Sayyaf's death, what will be the impact on ISIS finances. Joining us, our national security analyst, Juliette Kayyem; and our CNN contributor, the co- author of the book "ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror," Michael Weiss. Juliette, you wrote an excellent article on CNN.com saying the death of Abu Sayyaf represents, in your words, "a good kill." Tell us why?
[Juliette Kayyem, Cnn National Security Analyst:] Well, look, I think everyone agrees no single death is going to end is. They are so flat- lined and think about succession plans so we shouldn't say it's done now that we got him. Everyone knows that. An important aspect of how the White House disclosed information or actually, more specifically, the Department of Defense was to make it clear to is that we have intelligence agents or we have people close to them who are disclosing the whereabouts of mid-level leaders or high leaders. I think part of what happened this weekend was that administration wanted to sort of mess with ISIS'head and we call that propaganda, saying we're in there, we are getting intelligence from your own people, and the goal of that is to make them all so paranoid they actually either go after each other or begin to focus on themselves. It's an old cold war intelligence tactic and I think it's part of what happened this weekend.
[Blitzer:] What's your assessment, Michael?
[Michael Weiss, Cnn Contributor & Author:] I agree with everything Julie said but a bit of stature inflation for Abu Sayyaf. The idea he was the chief financial officer of ISIS, I wrote a book on these guys, most of the analysts that study ISIS, a lot of people inside ISIS, either hadn't heard of him or heard of him but thought of him as a marginal or mid-level commander. The minister of the minister of finance is called Abu Salah. If he's the minister of finance, how does this guy become the CFO? I think the aspect to focus on, apart from the idea of black population, that's how we have to play it against ISIS because they played against us in a direct fashion. But the real value, I'm told, and it's been reported by "ABC News" as well as my colleague at "The Daily Beast," this guy played an integral role in the capture of hostages, particularly Kayla Mueller, the last held by ISIS, confirmed killed by ISIS. There's an emotional payback element of this, too. The president authorized this mission. He wanted to capture Abu Sayyaf alive, bring him back to the United States, and probably have him stand trial, sort of a public reckoning with the fact that these guys have gone after American civilians. It's an important step in this coalition effort, raids against the mid-level target that result in the collection and confiscation of silence that lead to higher targets, we did this in Iraq innumerable times. And in Syria, a guy responsible for running jihadis into Iraq from Syria to kill soldiers. I've had credible information that that wasn't the only time a Special Operations force went into Syria before the Syrian revolution kicked off in 2011. The idea is this might inaugurate further raids in Syria and Iraq by U.S. forces for exactly this purpose of discombobulating the ISIS senior command.
[Blitzer:] And, Juliette, we know Abu Sayyaf's real name, Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi. Is that a big deal, now that his identity has been revealed?
[Kayyem:] It is just for intelligence purposes and for even sort of more traditional law enforcement purposes. Just simply having the accurate name if it is the accurate name is all investigations are you have the bull's eye, concentric rings around the people affiliated him, people that may have known him, people that may have worked with him, to simply just get what we might call intelligence atmospherics about him. That is also particularly true for his wife who is alive. We had the same issue with the bin Laden wives. What do you do the wives? Some are more culpable than others. They're all guilty. What you'll see is intensive interrogation, a return to her native country and probably not hear from her much. We do not want to make her any sort of martyr or victim or kidnapping victim. Just let them go away.
[Blitzer:] Michael, he identifies himself as al Tunisi, the Tunisian. What does that mean as far as the fact other than he's originally from Tunisia?
[Weiss:] Tunisian is the one country that the so-called foreign fighters who populates the ranks of ISIS at the mid or lower levels come from, so that doesn't surprise me. But most of the people in the senior command are typically from Iraq. As you pointed out in the prior block, a lot of them have backgrounds in Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. This guy didn't, obviously.
[Blitzer:] Michael Weiss, Juliette Kayyem, thank you very much. Thieves in London pulled off a $300 million heist. Police have made arrests. We'll tell you what has happened.