Who is Responsible for Obamacare Website Fiasco?; Report: Terrorist Attacks & Deaths Hit Record High
BURNETT: Welcome back to the second half of OUTFRONT. President Obama hacked. Some of the president's 39 million followers clicked on the link of a "Washington Post" story today and instead of going to "The Washington Post", they got a propaganda video about Syria. The Syrian electronic army, you may have heard of them, they attacked new sites, for example, like "The New York Times". They support the Bashar al-Assad regime, and they've claimed responsibility. Organizing for Action, which is the group which controls @BarackObama tried to downplay the incident. But CNN Money reporter Laurie Segall obtained these screen shots which show the hacker group broke into the president's Twitter account and hacked into a campaign staffer's e- mail. Well, Penn State University is paying nearly $60 million to settle claims from 26 victims of Jerry Sandusky. Now, it's not clear to us at this moment when those settlements were made or how the money is being divided among those 26, but what it means is that they aren't able to sue anymore. An attorney for the man known as victim five told CNN his client isn't necessarily happy about the settlement, but he is relieved. Sandusky, the former assistant football coach, was convicted last year of 45 counts related to the sexual abuse of young boys. He is serving 60 years behind bars. Well, an amusement park ride used as a deadly weapon. Put that in the list of things you would never have thought before. But after five people were hurt on a ride at a North Carolina state fair, ride operator Timothy Tutterrow has been charged with three felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Witnesses said the called the Vortex stopped, and as people were getting off, it restarted. Some riders falling from at least 20 feet in the air. The 911 calls depict a frantic scene.</s>CALLER: We're at the state fair and the ride turned upside down and dumped everybody out. There's people who are bleeding really bad.</s>BURNETT: Investigators determined the ride safety devices had been tampered with. Now, an attorney for Tutterrow said he was devastated and that Tim would never intentionally harm anyone. Well, concerns about Apple's growth are growing. First the good news, earnings released today showed sales and profits were better than people were looking for. And apple sold about 35 million iPhones, which is a million more than people were looking for. That's according to Colin Gillis of BGC Partners. But, now, the bad news. Profit margins which is the be all and end all here are shrinking at Apple. And the refreshing of the iPhone and the iPad may not reverse that. There are though other ways to solve this problem. With more than 100 billion in cash on hand, Apple can pretty much buy whatever it wants in terms of growth. And in a letter, the CEO Tim Cook, one investor is calling on Apple buy this -- Tesla -- which is now valued at about $20 billion. You might think, whoa, strange, right? But cars these days are run by computers. And they're really the last the frontier to be completely iPaded up. Well, all in the family, in an interview with out Jake Tapper, former Vice President Dick Cheney says the Republican Party needs help and his solution is his daughter, Liz Cheney, who is looking to be the next U.S. senator from the state of Wyoming.</s>DICK CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: First of all, obviously, I'm a big supporter of my daughter.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Sure.</s>CHENEY: But I really believe the Republican Party is in trouble. You know, we've lost the last two presidential elections, and we badly need I think to bring along a new generation of talent.</s>BURNETT: A new generation of talent. He didn't say it, but women. Cheney touted his daughter's credentials, two tours at the State Department and a mother of five. He also said the man she's running against, incumbent Mike Enzi, is, quote, "not a bad guy." And now, our fifth story</s>OUTFRONT: Another Obamacare Web site failure. A malfunction crashed the site yesterday, just the day after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius praised the very same component that crashed as a model of efficiency and security. Ouch! Well, that particular malfunction was fixed, but it is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg and no one has been taking responsibility for all that has gone wrong with the website. The question is -- and there must be an answer to this at some point -- where does the buck stop? Tom Foreman has been trying to figure it all out. And, Tom, you know, it would seem like an easy question to answer. But it isn't. How did it go so wrong?</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it would seem that way, would it? You know, we know this. The Obamacare girl who was on the cover here, smiling young woman who graced the federal Web site, has disappeared. We don't know why. Maybe she's not smiling amid all these problems. But it's just as well, because too many people were involved with this from the start. That's what we're learning as this goes on. How did this go so wrong? In a perfect world, most would agree that the Web site should have been developed like this. The White House, President Obama, would establish some outlined some outlines, some goals. The Department of Health and Human Services under Kathleen Sebelius would come up with a plan to reach those goals. An agency, in this case, the centers for Medicaid and Medicare centers would hire computer programmers to make it all happen. And voila, there is your fully functional Web site. But from the beginning, it appears there was a political, as well as a practical side to this effort. As the policymakers dreamed up things for the Web site to do, programmers weren't always in the loop to discuss if it was possible. Furthermore, you saw a few of the big companies hired for this job in front of Congress being grilled on what went wrong. But there were, in fact, dozens of subcontractors down here running hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. Testimony indicates some had little knowledge of how their work would coordinate with the work of others. They faced changing demands as political fights over this program raged and communications between them were all sketchy. So, you ended up with this incredibly tangled web of lines going on between here and between the White House and between everyone. And in the end, plenty of commands were being given, but no one person was clearly in charge, including the president, who, as his own officials now say, was unaware that this tangled mess was building down here, Erin. So the problem in finding who to blame is to say someone had to be responsible. And effectively, everybody in the chain was saying, no, somebody else was in charge of this part of it. That's why it's hard to pin it on one person.</s>BURNETT: Right. And, of course, the program will be, well, do they try to do that and pin it on a person that no one heard of? Or do they say look, ultimately, the buck stops, say, at the Kathleen Sebelius level? I mean, that's going to be the big question, and, Tom, because it gets worse, right? This isn't like let's just go untangled the web, which in it of itself would be very, very difficult to do, right? They're actually saying you might have to start from scratch. Rewrite millions of lines of computer code to fix this. I mean, should they just possibly scrap the whole thing and start again as some in Congress have suggested? Or no?</s>FOREMAN: You're absolutely right. There are some out there who say shut it all down, start all over. That's the way to solve it, especially after things like this weekend. But the administration basically says no. Considering this Web site has already cost more than $300 million. And parts of it are working despite all of these troubles. So, the White House has now put one guy in charge, Jeffrey Zients with one company acting as the general contractor, trying to get back into this clean line of command that they should have had from the beginning and they hope that if they can do this, they can have the Web site off the critical list by the end of November. But, again, Erin, if you see more things happen like happened this past weekend, you will hear more calls from people saying scrap the whole thing, throw away the money, start over, even if you want Obamacare to work. And some, of course, don't want it to work -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: Right. Well, it's a fair point. Some don't. But even some that do are coming around to that point of view. We'll see. Tom Foreman, thank you. And our sixth story OUTFRONT tonight, an exclusive</s>OUTFRONT: terror is on the rise. This is a stark assessment. And it is obtained exclusively by CNN. It is found a stunning rise in terrorist attacks around the globe, and according to this new report, the attacks are becoming even more deadly. Chris Lawrence is OUTFRONT with the exclusive.</s>CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESONDENT (voice-over): It's not your imagination. Terrorists are launching more attacks like this deadly assault on a Nairobi mall. And it's likely the world will see even more violence next year. CNN obtained exclusive access to an upcoming report from Stark (ph), a group that tracks terrorism around the world. It found there were 69 percent more terrorist attacks in 2012 than the year before. There was an 89 percent jump in deaths. And with well over 5,000 attacks in June of this year, the future looks even deadlier.</s>DANIEL BENJAMIN, FORMER COMMISSIONER FOR COUNTERTERRORISM, STATE DEPARTMENT: And I expect we'll see that reflected in even more violence in 2013 and even higher numbers.</s>LAWRENCE: Dan Benjamin was the terrorism coordinator at the State Department. He says many of today's militant groups judge success by the number of people killed, including civilians.</s>BENJAMIN: The old red lines, the old barriers are all gone.</s>LAWRENCE: Six of the seven deadliest groups are affiliated with al Qaeda, including Afghanistan's Taliban and Nigeria's Boko Haram, which is going after Christian targets. The targeting of other religions or Muslims of a different sect is driving the casualty rate higher.</s>BENJAMIN: It's much more like warfare, it's warfare using the tools of terrorism.</s>LAWRENCE: But the violence is more concentrated than you might think. Three countries: Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan suffered more than half the attacks and the casualties.</s>LAWRENCE: Now, the flip side to some of those numbers is what's happening here in the United States, the threat to civilians in the U.S. and Western Europe and even parts of Eastern Asia actually may be declining, which is good news for the citizens that live there -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right, Chris, thank you very much. Good news. And, again, everyone, that brings us back to our question of the night. Does changes in the NSA and the spying, will that change that or not? Rapper Jay-Z says he is being unfairly demonized for teaming up with the high-end retailers Barneys. So, two of the store's customers who are black say they were racially profiled at Barneys after they were detained by police when they bought expensive things. Since then, a lot of people, hundreds, have taken to Twitter, more than 16,000 have signed an online petition end his partnership with Barneys. And this puts Jay-Z in a rather awkward position. He's about to launch a collection with Barneys, clothing and jewelry and even decorate one of their famed Christmas windows. The money from the deal is going to a charity. It's not like he's keeping it for himself. The question is, will sticking with Barneys hurt his brand as a rapper? Now, the truth is probably not. He and his wife Beyonce have had a number of income streams, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics, even sports team. Jay-Z is worth $500 million. And when you add that to his wife, they have well over a billion dollars. Which brings me to tonight's number: 3.6 million. According to the Luxury Institute, that is the average net worth of a Barneys shopper. Jay-Z and Barney shoppers are incredibly wealthy. And even though he may not like Barney's behavior, there's probably no protests or boycott powerful enough to him change his plans. Well, still to come: Russia, just 100 days away from the start of the Sochi Olympics, but is the site of the Winter Games too dangerous? And new developments in the case of a 13-year-old boy shot to death by police. They thought his toy gun was real. He was shot seven times. And tonight, we know why the FBI is investigating.