Australian Police Stop Major Terrorist Plot; Kerry, Hagel to Testify Before the House; Interview with Rep. Jim Himes
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Australian police stop a major terrorist plot. They say ISIS supporters planned to target a random citizen, behead him or her in public, and then drape a black ISIS flag over the headless body.</s>MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Decision day in Scotland. Will there be a messy divorce if voters decide to leave the United Kingdom, or will there be reconciliation?</s>BERMAN: And, he has conquered the stage and screen dressed as a man and a woman. And now he's coming after your computer. Neil Patrick Harris, changing art, changing technology, and best of all, visiting us here live @</s>THISHOUR. BERMAN: Hello everyone, I'm John Berman.</s>PEREIRA: I'm Michaela Pereira. Those stories and much more, ahead @</s>THISHOUR. BERMAN: And we do begin with a horrifying terror plot with ties to ISIS discovered by authorities in Australia before the alleged conspiracy could unfold.</s>PEREIRA: Yeah, a pair of suspects are in custody in what officials are describing as a plan by extremists to carry out a public execution. The grim details are driving home fears that Middle Eastern terrorism could find its way throughout the world and to the West. Our Senior International Correspondent, Ivan Watson, has the very latest.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela and John, as the Obama administration works to gather a coalition to combat ISIS, a key American ally, Australia, announced that it foiled an alleged home-grown terrorist plot that it says was linked to the ISIS militant group.</s>WATSON: Pre-dawn raids across Australia's largest city. Authorities are calling it the country's biggest ever anti-terror operation. Armed with dozens of search warrants, Australian security forces detained at least 15 suspects. The Australian media reporting disturbing details. The suspects allegedly planned to film the public beheading of a random individual and then drape the body in the black flag of</s>ISIS.  COMMISSIONER ANDREW SCIPIONE, NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA POLICE: It raises serious concern that right at the heart of our communities, we have people planning to conduct random attacks. And today, we've worked together to make sure that that didn't happen. We have, in fact, disrupted that particular attack.</s>WATSON: Among the suspects detained, a man named Omar John Ozari, who appeared briefly in a Sydney court, charged with a terrorism-related offense. He did not enter a plea. His neighbors, shocked a suspected terrorist lived next door.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I never thought I would see anything like this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's actually quite frightening, my heart is actually pounding.</s>WATSON: Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, says he believes at least 60 Australians are fighting alongside ISIS and other militant groups in the Middle East. He's repeatedly voiced fears these Australian Jihadis could pose a threat if they ever come home. Australian Intelligence revealed ISIS was urging home-grown sympathizers to carry out attacks in Australia.</s>TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Quite direct exaltations were coming from an Australian who is apparently quite senior in ISIL to networks of support back in Australia to conduct demonstration killings here in this country.</s>WATSON: Last week, Australia raised its threat level to high for the first time in the country's history. Warning a terrorist attack is likely.</s>WATSON: The Australian Prime Minister on Thursday addressed Australian troops that are headed to the Middle East. He argued that by fighting ISIS, they would be protecting the Iraqi people and by extension, the people of Australia. Michaela and John?</s>BERMAN: That is chilling. We'll have more on that in a little bit. Meanwhile, here at home, President Obama's strategy to battle ISIS front and center on Capitol Hill. @THISHOUR, House lawmakers will hear from the two men leading the nation's defense and diplomacy. Secretary Chuck Hagel starts testifying in about 10 minutes from now. He'll speak for the House Armed Services Committee. And at the bottom of the hour, Secretary of State, John Kerry, will testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. We'll bring you the key parts of both of these hearings, live.</s>PEREIRA: Now all of this comes on the heels of a House vote, authorizing the U.S. military to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to combat ISIS. The Senate could vote on the measure as early as today. So lawmakers in both parties are certainly divided over the president's plan. We saw it in the House vote.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This vote the yeas are 273, the nays are 156. The amendment is adopted.</s>PEREIRA: More than a third of the representatives voted no. 71 of them Republican, 85 Democrats, including our guest, Congressman Jim Himes, he's a Democrat from Connecticut, and a member of the House Intelligence Committee. He joins us now. Good morning. Thanks for joining us.</s>REP. JIM HIMES (D), CONNECTICUT: Good morning, Michaela.</s>PEREIRA: Sir, I want you to maybe outline for us, why exactly it is that you oppose the arming and training of Syrian rebels. What exactly are your specific concerns?</s>HIMES: There are a bunch of them. I should state upfront that like most of my colleagues here, I'm in favor of an aggressive approach against ISIS. I, for example, favor the air strikes. There have been almost 200 of them in the last couple weeks that have seriously knocked them back on their heels. But when you're talking about essentially creating a proxy army of so-called moderate Syrians, that's a very different calculation. So what are the concerns? Number one, these are young men, and I've met some of them, as a part of my role on the Intelligence Committee, who are seething with hatred for President Assad of Syria. We call them the opposition, opposition, of course to Assad. So it's unclear to me and has been unclear how you take these people and say we know you really want you to go after Assad, we want you to take on these people next to you here, ISIS, because that's the threat to us. That's a very, very complicated mission. Then you've got issues about how much do we control them? We're gonna arm them, we're gonna train them, we're gonna send them into a place where we cannot go. There's a possibility that weapons wind up in bad hands, human rights violations get committed. So on balance, and this is not an easy one, but on balance I did not think that plan was sufficiently detailed and was sufficiently likelihood of success to support it.</s>BERMAN: So Congressman, the question becomes if you don't support these folks going in to fight ISIS on the ground in Syria, who does the fighting? Do you support the use of U.S. ground troops?</s>HIMES: No, no. And look, take a big step back here, while ISIS and ten other groups like ISIS are a threat to United States and the West, the underlying conflict here, the conflict between Sunni and Shia, the conflict between extremists and moderates, between Syrians and Saudis, between Saudis and Iranians, these are not our fights. And so we shouldn't think, that the presumption is that we need to be out front on everything. It is up to the players in the region to, while we can lead with air strikes and we can organize international coalitions, they have to solve the underlying problems. If they don't solve the underlying problems, we'll be talking 20 years from now, talking about whether we should increase air strikes or increase the support we're giving to whatever group of rebels at that point happens to be aligned with our strategy.</s>PEREIRA: You talk about the challenges of all this. But you well know, as we do, that air strikes aren't always without their problems as well. They're hard to do in Syria when you think about how the fact is, this is not -- like we've talked to generals and colonels here about the fact this is not, you know, there are barracks of ISIS fighters. There aren't front lines of ISIS. They're within the population. You talk about the potential for humanitarian crisis, we could see civilians in the cross hairs here.</s>HIMES: We need to be very clear with the American people about what it is that we mean when we say victory. The facts are there to see. Air strikes can knock a foe back on its heels. You know, ISIS is in a lot worse place than it was four weeks ago. We can force them to disperse. We can take out their armor, because we can find it. But, air strikes alone simply means that they go into caves and villages. No you get to troops on the ground. Troops can enter caves and enter homes. But look, we had hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan for ten years. What we do when we do that and when anybody does that, is you simply put a lid on the underlying problems. You take those ground troops away and those problems are still there which is, of course, what we're seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan which takes me back to the need to address those underlying problems.</s>BERMAN: Congressman, how hard was it for you to split from the president on this vote in arming and training the Syrian rebels yesterday? He's the leader of your party. What more do you want to see from the president in terms of leadership?</s>HIMES: You know, he is a member of my party and I support him on most things. I'm profoundly aware of the fact that my role is one of Representative. And my role is one, if you read the Constitution, of acting as a check and balance on executive authority. First and foremost, I am a Representative, a member of the United States Congress, whose mission, really, is to make sure that power is not concentrated in any one hand. It wasn't that hard. Obviously I want to support the president. I think he's taken some really brutal and unfair attacks. That doesn't mean that you just line up when you think something he's proposing may not be a good idea.</s>PEREIRA: That's a fair point. We appreciate your candid comments. Thanks so much for joining us, Congressman, we appreciate it.</s>HIMES: Thank you very much.</s>PEREIRA: From arming rebels in the Mid East to battling terrorists. Intent on attacking the West. Ahead at the hour, our military national security analysts weigh in on threats to the U.S. homeland.</s>BERMAN: And then changing gears, Scotland voting on parting ways with the U.K. We'll tell you why this 307-year-old relationship could finally end and end ugly.</s>PEREIRA: Plus Doogie Howser, Barney Stinson, whatever you prefer to call him, we call him actor and Tony winner, Neil Patrick Harris. Or NPH, as I like to say. He's joining us in studio to talk about his newest role. It's a good one. That's ahead @THISHOUR.