U.S. To Spy over Syria
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you for joining me. The United States one step closer to possibly launching air strikes against ISIS inside Syria. President Obama has authorized reconnaissance flights over Syria, a mission that could start at any time. The terror group solidified its presence in Syria on Sunday by seizing a key airbase in the province of Raqqa. Now concern is growing in Washington. CNN's Athena Jones is at the White House this morning. Good morning.</s>ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You know the big question here is just how much of a threat ISIS poses. Do they pose a direct threat to the U.S. homeland at this moment in time? That's part of the big discussion going into whether to call for these air strikes. And there's some difference of opinion. You have Republicans in Congress who are saying that ISIS is determined to strike the homeland. They want to see swift action from the president. We heard from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel saying last week that ISIS is beyond anything they've seen. They pose a threat to every interest we have. But we've also heard from General Martin Dempsey, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said through a spokesman just yesterday that ISIS is a regional threat that will soon become a threat to the United States and Europe. So he doesn't make it sound like it's as much of an eminent threat. But asked about the ISIS threat last week, General Dempsey said that can they be defeated, can ISIS be defeated without targeting them in Syria? No. This is what White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said when he was asked about those comments by Dempsey yesterday. Let's play that.</s>JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think what the chairman was saying is that, yes, obviously you have to make gains against ISIL in Syria in order to defeat ISIL. What you should necessarily do is jump to the conclusion that that means robust American military action is required in Syria to further or accomplish that goal.</s>JONES: There you heard Press Secretary Earnest using ISIL, that is what the White House calls ISIS. But what -- the point here, Carol, is that it's still unclear whether folks like General Dempsey and others believe that immediate action is necessary and immediate military action to be more precise. Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right, Athena Jones reporting live from the White House. In the meantime, U.S. and British analysts are pouring over the ISIS video that captures the moments before and after American James Foley is beheaded. And in an odd twist, there's a growing suspicion that the masked terrorist shown, the man with the British accent, is not actually the person who killed Foley. For more on this let's turn to an expert. Peter Neumann is director of the Study of Radicalization and the president of Security Studies at King's College. He joins us now from London. Well, sir.</s>PROF. PETER NEUMANN, KING'S COLLEGE: Thank you, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: I'd like to show our audience specifically what I'm talking about. So when you take a look at this video, and we have still images from that video to show you, you can see that they - that this video actually depicts two men. One is larger and one appears smaller. You see the one on the left appears smaller. So it appears to be different people. I mean what do you make of this?</s>NEUMANN: Yes, so there are different theories. There's also an important fact that of course they're not showing in that video, the actual execution. They are blacking out just when he's putting the knife to the - to James Foley's neck, and then they're showing the severed head, which suggests that perhaps there were difficulties with the execution, that perhaps they needed to bring in someone else, that perhaps the knife was too small. I've seen many of these execution videos, unfortunately, and often the knives are much, much larger. I would imagine it is kind of tough to behead someone with a knife that looks as small as the one that we saw in the video.</s>COSTELLO: And it's interesting, you bring up the knife, because the knife that one terrorist appears to be holding is different from a knife found on the ground. We have those image.</s>NEUMANN: Absolutely.</s>COSTELLO: So there's the knife the man is holding. But you can see, it's a completely different knife. How difficult will this make it for authorities to identify who's responsible?</s>NEUMANN: So it does make it difficult, but it is still very likely that the person who was speaking in the beginning was part of the group that eventually -- that contains also the person that was doing the beheading. So if you get him, you are likely to get the others who were actually responsible. There's a lot of theories around that now, but it's very clear that this is a cluster of people and that some or one of them did it, and, you know, they are the ones that are currently being chased.</s>COSTELLO: There's one more image I'd like to show our viewers and it shows this holster that one of the terrorists is wearing and it appears that in one image that the alleged killer, if you will, is left-handed and in another image it appears he's right-handed, according to the position of that holster. And I show this just to show the inconsistencies in this video because last week one British government official says, hey, we're really close to identifying who the terrorist was that killed James Foley, but it appears they're not very close this week.</s>NEUMANN: Yes, and I think the name that was mentioned in a number of newspapers, for example "New York Post," I always had severe doubts about that because the rapper - the British rapper that they identified as the likely person to have carried out the beheading is actually right-handed, not left-handed. That's a clear inconsistency with the video. So I think there are a lot more questions to be answered and I really hope that the authorities know more than you and I do at this point.</s>COSTELLO: Oh, I hope you're right about that. Peter Neumann, thank you so much for your insight. I appreciate it.</s>NEUMANN: Thank you, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, handing out cars, cash and guns. ISIS makes a social media pitch to Americans and other westerners to join its ranks. We'll talk about that, next.