. >> let's talk more with national security analyst and former cia operative bob baer. welcome. >> thank you, carol. >> is senator mccain right? >> he's absolutely right. torture doesn't work and i say that, having watched other governments use it over the course of my career, 20 years and it simply doesn't work. those services which use torture systematically always had the worst intelligence. i think it was a mistake, we went down this road. it was ad hock. i understand the context why we did it and i think at the end of the day if the senate report is right and it was based on documents, we didn't get what we expected to and it was rightfully stopped. >> there's one concrete example of that in the report and i want to read it to you now. the senate report says abu zubaydah was kept in isolation for a month, kept in a coffin-like box for 11 day, waterboarded two to four times a day. still he gave up no new information. in fact he gave most of his information to cia interrogators before he was put through these abusive tactics. so again, i ask -- but republicans still

i want you to bring bob baer into this. mike rogers was very forceful yesterday on "state of the union" right here on cnn saying that releasing this report will be very, very dangerous. listen to this. >> our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths. our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths. >> we also know that john kerry personally phoned dianne feinstein, the chair of the intelligence committee, saying don't release this report right now. the timing could be awful for the u.s. what are you hearing from your former colleagues there at the cia? >> well, they don't believe, wolf, that it should be released at all. they believe it should be a secret program set up at the white house department of justice, they did what they were told to do and the details should never have gotten out. if anything, it's a military tri tribunal and whether it's going to cause death and violence, that's unknown at this point but it's going to look bad for the united states g

situation room," we have retired lieutenant general mark hurtling and cnn national security analyst bob baera former cia operative. bob, i'll start with you. why is it proving so hard for the u.s. to target these factions? >> the problem is that bigger and bigger parts of the middle east are falling off the known political map. they're failed states, like yemen. yemen is in the middle of a civil war. there's absolutely no central government we can rely on to put on an end to this. so you have the sunnis in the south moving into the hills, they're almost impossible to get to. and you've got the shia that have taken over sanaa and they just kidnapped the deputy intelligence chief there. even in places like mali and somalia and the rest of it -- libya is much worse than all these countries, there's nobody in control. they're failed states. and they breed terrorism. >> there's a vacuum and it tends to be filled. general hurtling, one of the things that we've seen here over this week a couple of days ago "inspire" came out. for people unfamiliar with it and probably haven't ever looked at this. i

let's bring in bob baer and peter beinart. bob, what is the most likely response to north korea?i think the north koreans are going to come back at us. the pentagon's taking defensive measures, but it's american businesses that can't defend themselves. they haven't spent enough on cyber security. the north koreans can hit us when they want and there's not much we can do. and the embargo is already very tight. if the chinese aren't going to step up, our response is very, very limited at this point. >> when the president says there will be a proportional response, what does that say to you, bob? >> i think an attack on the commuters, but that's not going to be enough. remember, the north koreans to be an enormous risk in attacking sony like this. they knew there would be a response and they still did it. at the end of the day, this is an irrational regime and no one in this country can tell you what they're going to do next. >> what kind of response, peter, do you anticipate? >> i think bob makes sense. it's probably likely there will be a response, unless maybe the chinese are pre

joining us, bob baer. phillip mudd, and tom fuentes. our national security analyst peter bergen. phillip, how unusual is it that the gunman forced hostages to actually post messages to these various social media sites? >> boy, i remember back -- wolf, you'll probably remember those attacks in mumbai, going back six or seven years, when people in the attack group from pakistan and india were using smartphones to broadcast live. it was incredible the power then of social media to transmit those messages. i think the question we're going to have after this is how do we give police the tools to shut down somebody's phone, to shut down somebody's social media access on site. so these kinds of people can't get access from a site like we saw in sidney today. >> tom fuentes, the congress, the chairman of the house homeland security committee spoke with me earlier about these radicalized terror threats being posed online. how do you combat against these online threats and also the inspiration for these individuals to go ahead and engage in these

. >> i want to bring in tom fuentes and bob baer. tom, the concern had been if they show this film, there were threats presumably from this group that hacked sony pictures, that there would be terrorist threats, if you will. how concerned should people be who are going to see this film on christmas day, whether in austin, atlanta or anyplace else? >> i don't see how they could carry out threats all over the country. and right now, they'd be hard-pressed to find the theaters that are going to have it well enough in advance to do something. and these theaters will have securities i.t. quick lly went from sony trying to protect itself. it turned into patriotic fervor for, how can we let this guy censor our media and what we want to watch at the movies? it turned into a patriotic almost demand that that movie be released and people get a chance to see it. >> what is your reaction when you hear this news, bob? what do you think? >> i agree with tom. i don't think there's much of a threat of violence. the north koreans aren't known to have

i want to bring in former cia operative and cnn intelligence analyst bob baer. rst of all, what do you know about this james mitchell? >> james mitchell was a contractor with the cia, a psychologist. he was brought in after 9/11 when the decision was made to do hostile interrogations. he's an expert on so-called sere, and that's military training, where recruits are waterboarded and things like that to show them what it's like. he himself has never done any interrogations. >> okay, so did the cia supposedly pay him and his partner $80 million to come up with this plan? >> $81 million. it seems pretty expensive to me. this is the whole problem with contracting. the cia didn't know what it was doing so it went out to look for experts and mitchell is one of the ones they found. i think it was a huge mistake because the military itself knows about interrogations and that's the way they should have probably taken this program over in the first place. >> so the "washington post" is reporting mitchell seized on a controversial concept known as "learned helplessness." th

personally i'd say no. >> bob baer, thank you so much. barbara starr as well.really appreciate your analysis. happy holidays. >>> president obama ending the year actually in an upswing. hear why more americans are giving him high marks on his job performance. that's next. i have the worst cold with this runny nose. i better take something. dayquill cold and flu doesn't treat your runny nose. seriously? alka-seltzer plus cold and cough fights your worst cold symptoms plus your runny nose. oh, what a relief it is. >>> president obama wrapping up 2014 on a high note. his approval rating has taken a significant jump. take a look at the brand-new cnn/orc poll numbers. 48% of americans now they say approve of the way the president is handling his job. that's the president's best showing since may of 2013 when he had a 53% approval rating. there was a major shift just in the last month. you see his approval numbers jumped four points since november. joining me now, ron brownstein. ron, talk about this bump, if you will. one of the things that i noticed was in the last

joining me with insight on all of this, cnn national security analyst, bob baer, jamie detmer, a contributor for the "daily beast." thank you for being here. bob, let me begin with you. there's been so much talk about who the group is, the gop group of hackers, whether they're directly in cahoots, if you will, with the north korean government or independent of it. a lot of people tieing it to north korea. what's your take. >> first up, i've got to say i have an interest with this because i have two contracts with sony related to movies. once we're through that. this sounds like it's very sophisticated. it looks like it's revenge for this movie coming out. this -- it was done -- it was launched from multiple locations. sony has a very good cyber security. they saw this coming four, five months ago and they tried to improve their security and these guys are good, whoever they are. >> interesting we got this letter this afternoon, or "the new york times" received a letter, cnn has not yet, from sony -- from the attorney for sony warning media outlets telling them, jamie, they should not report

barbara starr, bob baer, merry christmas to both of you. >>> still ahead, trouble at the centers forease control. the agency says one of its own technicians may have been exposed to ebola. that is a big uh-oh, and it's just the latest in a strung of uh-ohs in a place that shouldn't have so many uh-ohs. so why is that happening? the story is next. you don't need to think about the energy that makes our lives possible. because we do. we're exxonmobil and powering the world responsibly is our job. because boiling an egg... isn't as simple as just boiling an egg. life takes energy. energy lives here. >>> here we go again. cdc announcing that a technician in one of the agency's atlanta labs may have just been exposed to the ebola virus. the agency said in a written statement that a small amount of material from an experiment accidentally got transferred from one lab to another by mistake. that's right, mistake. joining me, senior washington correspondent joe johns hopefully with some answers. i know the phones usually aren't answered on christmas. this is a pretty serious breach. how did

. >> and as bob baer, the cia operative on our program said, you know, his friends, many of them in therogram, objected to it. >> absolutely. so you've got to believe that almost everybody -- no one goes -- these guys might have gotten rich but people go into the cia, they don't go in there to get rich they'll become investment bankers if they want to be rich these are people who want to serve their country. >> absolutely. it is a fascinating report. again, go to the daily beast to read the luxury homes that torture and your tax dollars built. thank you as always. we appreciate it. >>> coming up next, after a decade of guilt, a texas court clears a young woman's name, ruling that general motors' defective ignition switch is to blame for her boyfriend's death in a crash, not her, as they thought for a decade. the details, next. ♪ (holiday music is playing) hey! i guess we're going to need a new santa ♪(the music builds to a climax.) more people are coming to audi than ever before. see why now is the best time. audi will cover your first month's payment on select models at the season of a

michael daily, lauri segal and bob baer. michael, is the president right?take here? >> i think so. you know, the mistake was making the movie with an ending like that but given that mistake, you got the movie, i don't know how you let some bunch of hackers threaten you and commit you not to release a movie. i mean i just don't get it. >> although i imagine that beyond just trying to stand up for a nation, for the right of freedom of speech there was a business decision made here and lauri let me ask you, what's the reaction from sony through all of this. >> i think when you talk to sources inside sony and also in hollywood, there's this sense of vulnerability. i got off the phone with someone who said we're waiting. we don't know what's out there. we don't know if something else will be leaked. we're using our personal emails because we're scared to use our corporate emails. i spoke to an insider in hollywood will this affect censorship, will we be self-censoring ourselves in the future and her answer was 1,000%. nobody in hollywood is using emails and gett

michael, robert, bob baer, thank you for being with me.on cnn, moments away, "smerconish." michael, what do you have lined up for tonight? >> hey, poppy. controversy continues to swirl around the campus of uva, because of that "rolling stone" piece about an alleged case of rape. we'll explore that and do it from a men's perspective with a very interesting guest. >>> also, new revelations pertaining to bill cosby and former head of the bin laden unit it at the cia here to talk about what he says wasn't torture. ♪you better pledge ♪ your allegiance♪ ♪you're not the only one ♪listen up forefathers ♪i'm not your son ♪you better help the children ♪let them have some fun ♪some fun ♪some fun. into one you'll never forget. earn triple points when you book with the expedia app. expedia plus rewards. >>> after serving in afghanistan, our cnn hero of the year said about reuniting soldiers with the animals that they had come to know and love during their service. here's ben forthing. >> congratulations. you've been named cnn hero of the year. were you

. >> bob baer thanks for joining us this morning.reciate it. >>> still to come in "the newsroom," a new ferguson grand jury document, a lot of documents released, and one very notable one is missing. it's not there. the fbi interview with this man, the eyewitness, dorian johnson, michael brown's friend who was with him, when he was shot and killed. why? we'll discuss, next. twhat do i do?. you need to catch the 4:10 huh? the equipment tracking system will get you to the loading dock. ♪ there should be a truck leaving now. i got it. now jump off the bridge. what? in 3...2...1... are you kidding me? go. right on time. right now, over 20,000 trains are running reliably. we call that predictable. thrillingly predictable. try zyrtec-d® to powerfully clear your blocked nose and relieve your other allergy symptoms... so you can breathe easier all day. zyrtec-d®. find it at the pharmacy counter. >>> emotions ran very high last night in st. louis. look. . >> hands up! >> don't shoot! >> hands up! >> don't shoot! >> hands up! >> don't shoot! >

. >> bob baer, do you think anyone here should be prosecuted? >> well, yeah, i think somebody should. laws were violated. i think destroying tapes of these interrogations when a federal court said don't destroy them, we need them and they went ahead. you can't destroy evidence meant for a trial. and against a judge's orders. you know, the department of justice investigates itself on this. and probably -- go ahead. >> go ahead. >> bob, let me weigh in here a second. okay. these particular instances that were referred by the cia to the justice department, there were three separate investigations, okay. done by the eastern district of virginia twice and then john durham, another prosecutor that were asked to take a look at this. three separate criminal investigations into what happened at these black sites. the justice department came close to bringing charges in two of the cases. but decided not to prosecute. these things have been thoroughly examined. i think we should all take a deep breath and probably understand that nobody's going to be charg

joining me from irvine, california, to talk about this, cnn intelligence and security analyst bob baer, here in washington, our global affairs correspondent. ahis, from the get-go here, i thought wow, poor sony but sony is a loser in all of this, put money into a move year, it's not going to pay off. now we're seeing the opposite of that and when it comes to, you know, geopolitically who are the winners a and losers here? >> some people say all publicity is good publicity, brianna, sony started off as the big loser here between the hacking, embarrassing e-mails, and then all of the threats and having to pull the film and then the rebukes from president obama to industry, now kind of forcing them really to do something and release the film. if this film does really well, obviously, you know, that's good publicity for them. but i think on the whole they didn't come up looking so favorably. even though they're releasing the film. now north korea, started off here as a winner. because this is what north korea loves to do. >> to force the hand -- make -- >> they love to get attention. and t

. >> >>> and now bob baer, formerly of the cia, former fbi agent tim clemente and gordon chang, authorh korea threatened physical attacks and they got what they wanted and now this is going ahead any way, what will they do? >> north korea is not going to take this lying down. they said not to get sony to get 2,000 fewer screens, but they wanted this not to play at all. i think they will go after the southern californian activists who want to put the dvd into north korea by balloons an probably after the u.s. government. maybe not on u.s. soil. but somewhere. remember the north korean regime is unstable. we've seen executions already. we'll probably see much more in the way of sony fallout in pyongyang. >> and to anyone who is able to see the story in north korea, in the power circles at least, this is a big loss of face for that regime, bob. when i spoke to you last week, you said north korea was capable of doing something like throwing a grenade in a theater. do you still think it could happen? >> i think it could happen. i think they will react to this irrationally but we have to kee

. >> bob baer speaking with me earlier. even the fellow militants in afghanistan are condemning it.fghan taliban released a statement that some might see as deeply hypocritical but take a look it reads "deliberate killing of innocent people, women and children is against the islamic principles. every muslim organization and government should consider this. the taliban has always condemned the killing of innocent people and children." >>> now, it's important to note that the pakistani and afghan taliban are technically allies but operate completely independently. jim sciutto breaks down the differences. >> reporter: they focus on attacking international security forces there including u.s. forces and driving them out of the country. the pakistani taliban focused on attacking the pakistani government. brings it down and establishing sharia law in the country. to that end they've been responsible for some of the most horrific terror attacks in pakistan, an thatting on a market in it 009 that killed more than 100 people and an attack on a protestant church and the assassination of the f

. >> so, bob baer brought up in the last hour, former cia operative, he says, look, france is paying not for their hostages and is complicating the entire thing for america and for others. >> look, i think we ought to step back here. we've been at this for 13 years and ask simple questions. forget about the national security side. there are families in america who are losing children to beheadings. i'm not talking about the potential of paying money to a terror group, but do we want to have conversations, for example, as we did with beau bergdahl and the taliban prisoners. >> about a swap. >> about a swap. that's something the white house should consider. >> when you're talking about civilians, not soldiers. >> that's correct. >> bergdahl soldier. >> correct. the civilians, protection, journalists in syria, they might be a better way. again, 13 years into this, i would not support trading prisoners for money, but there might be a whey to trade prisoners for prisoners in a war that's 13 years old. >> so you say you would not suggest still paying a ransom? >> no. >> i wonder if you can

analyst, peter bergen and joining us from telluride, colorado, the national security analyst for cnn, bob baer also formerly served in the cia. senator dianne feinstein pushed back on the cia's claims that its enhanced interrogation techniques helped find osama bin laden. here's what the senator told me last night. >> what helped find bin laden was human intelligence, was signals intelligence, was information from certain people before they were interrogated with enhanced interrogation techniques. that is what we found. >> let's get reaction first to bill harlow. what do you say to the senator who said the torture, if you will, had no role in helping the u.s. find bin laden? >> well, i wouldn't say torture, but i would say, read the minority report, read the senate minority report which explains that. also read the cia's rebuttal, which is online but nobody seems to be referring to. there's an op-ed in "the washington post" today by john mclaughlin which also gets into this. there's not one thing that leads to a success like getting bin laden. she's right, there are a lot of threads that go in

. >> bob baer, former cia operative told us last hour he thinks the fallout from this is going to be political. that it's not going to be any retaliation from our enemies overseas. do you agree? >> i generally think this is a political issue. all the things that are basically ahead in the report has already come out. already t tough interrogation techniques, the cia inspector general report actually came out with something in 2004 which was declassified in 2008/2009 that detailed exact play the cia did for the most part whoobd they did it to. so the fact there might be violence somewhereover seas against u.s. facilities suggests that there were plans ahead of time, much more independently of this report itself. >> you were a cia analyst under the last bush administration and interestingly i was reading what you've written lately and you said it is more effective to build a rapport with someone you want information from rather than to beat them up. you're basically saying tactics like this don't work. >> well, professional interrogators all state -- and this is from the federal up to

joining us, our cnn law enforcement analyst, the former fbi assistant director, tom fuentes, and bob baernd peter bergen. bob, how should members of the u.s. military respond to this latest warning, if you will, should they hide their affiliation, wear only civilian clothing when they're walking around in public? what do you think? >> well, i take this threat seriously, wolf. it's a logical threat for isis. they want to redefine the conflict that they are fighting, we are the so-called crusaders and hitting people in military would give them a lot of propaganda value. they should avoid congregating, they should avoid getting online, as they've been advised not to do, coming out of base, they should be watchful. and the fbi will be looking through social media and the rest of it looking for potential attackers. but, again, this is the strength of weak links, these people are unknowns to the fbi and those are most likely the ones to get through. >> peter, do you agree with that analysis and should members of the u.s. military, even if their personal, private postings online with their faceb

let's bring in cnn's law enforcement analysis tom fuentes, our intelligence and security analyst bob baerr. let's talk about this statement, you've been reporting on the message that sony received from this hacking group, presumably north korea. what's the likelihood sony will capitulate to these latest demands? >> the threat from the hackers last night, wolf, was sent to a couple dozen sony executives that landed in their e-mail boxes. some of these executives did not open it. but what we know the message said is essentially you did the right thing, you did the wise thing. now don't you dare release any portion of this movie. the hackers even said, take the trailer offline. we don't even want to see the trailer online. but so much has changed. we know that sony is in new talks with digital distributors to get this movie online. netflix are not denying the possibility. in the next few hours or days, wolf, we may hear this movie is coming out. >> that's interesting, brian. tom, if the movie doesn't come out, what message does that send to aspiring hackers? >> it says we've caved and we'll

baer. syria on a was adapted from his seat in the double. bob is one of the most accomplished operatives in each is history. he has won the career intelligence that i'll speaks eight languages. he spent much of his 21 years at the cia and the middle east and one of his most notable assignments of which there are plenty was attempting to assassinate saddam hussein. he is currently national security affairs analyst for cnn and one of the world's foremost authorities on the middle east. he takes us on a lot of venture through the history of assassination in his latest book, substitute. and think about who the perfect fit would be to interview tonight, obviously we need someone with the appropriate prophesies and experience to date knowledge of complex cia and political history and clearly we also needed someone for trade by a major movie star in a movie based on their work. so we are deeply honored to have lowell bergman here to interview bob. lowell is that the investigative reporting at you see berkeley where he is the where he said davidow can d

bob. >> reporter: good morning. just in an hour, each city will get an hour to present starting at 8:00. l.a. goes first, followed by d.c., s.f. and then boston. giants ceo larry baerxpected to pitch on behalf of san francisco. baer expected to sell san francisco's beautiful skyline, which of course includes the golden gate, alcatraz, coy tower. the proposal calls for them to be. >>> now, it is quite possible the usoc might decide not to present a candidate city to the international olympic committee, in part because of the billions of dollars needed to put on this competition. they're expected to address that during a news conference at 4:00 this afternoon. it would still be several weeks before they would announce their u.s. candidate city and then the ioc, the international olympic committee would make the decision on which city to host the 2024 olympics. they would be making that decision in 2017. the head of the usoc is also the head of electronic arts, which happens to be located in redwood city. >> we'll see how it goes. >> a lot of things located right here. thank you, bob. >> 6:55. many nbc shows will soon be screened online. >> the wall street journal rep