bob baer, one more question on this front. the senate intelligence committee says it will investigate these alleged ties or conversations or contacts between the trump campaign during the election and russian officials, russian operatives. one person who hasn't answered whether he will investigate is james comey of the fbi. he's dodged that question specifically. bob, you're an intelligence guy. i'm wondering if you can tell by the way he's answering whether or not you think there is an fbi investigation. >> well, it was a reluctant fbi investigation. this story about the moscow trip, trump's moscow trip in 2013 goes back at least a year. i heard it, i didn't necessarily believe it. it's been out there. the fbi didn't look into it. but then comey, right before the election or ten days before, comes out and announces a new investigation into hillary's emails, which is arguably affected the election, just as putin's hacking did. so i don't know what's going to come out of this. i know that the fbi and the department of justice w

bob baer is a cnn intelligence and security analyst and a former cia operative. welcome to both of you. matthew, i just want to start with a simple question. what does it take, if someone has a legally licensed gun, what does it takes to get that begun away from them for good? >> in this case the fbi made a determination after speaking to him that something just wasn't quite right. so they took possession of the gun pending a medical examination. after the examination was accomplished, they had to reason to keep it. unfortunately they had to give the gun back. >> how difficult is it? i'm just curious. >> it's very difficult. as you know, many people, if you look at the aggregate number of people we've seen be victim of mass casualties from people involved in mental health, there was always a point where people thought something wasn't right. but getting them adjudicated mentally ill is a whole different ball game. >> bob, the suspect, santiago, told the fbi that the voices in his head were being controlled by the cia and forcing him to watch isis videos. does tha

plenty to talk about with bob baer and steve hall and jeffrey lourd. bob, you were an officer in the field reporting from "the wall street journal." what do you make of the idea of more officers in the field, few iranaly fewer analysts and everything stateside? >> i agree there are too many people at langley. you have more people in the field, streamline your operations, restore the director of operations. i know some of the people advising the trump transition team and they're right and they guarantee me there's going to be a bloodbath at the cia and dshgdni, director of national intelligence. i think it's a sideshow to citing somebody like assange, a mouthpiece of russian intelligence or taking the word of vladimir putin whether he hacked or not. i find this extraordinary that trump would side with the russians in any sense or russian agent of influence. it's "the twilight zone." another thing, this isn't a war against the cia. most of this information about the hacking is coming out of the national security agency. they've gotten into frock fiber-opt

also with us, bob baer, former cia operative. u, you heard the president there speaking about torture. you also hear about this memo circulating where the president may be directing agencies to look into reopening black sites, look into the possibility of reinstituting enhanced interrogation techniques. your reaction, bob. >> john, it's not going to go over well at the cia, for one, nor at the military. the cia, the general consensus was, if you look at the inspector general's report, the senate report, is that torture is not effective in getting information. the president didn't say what it was useful for. it's useful for intimidation. but i don't think that's what he meant. the black sites have caused the cia enormous amount of trouble all around the world. and it's unlikely a lot of these counies, now that it's all been exposed, will let us reopen these. this is a tall order, to go back into the torture business. >> that is a key question, bob. senator, just a little while ago, at the republican retreat, senator mcconnell, paul

>>:bob baer: "coming in with speed, surprise, maximum violence, shooting the police at the door, tells me that - this is a guess - somebody who's fought maybe in syria, or iraq." >> reporter:a statement posted on an isis propaganda site called the killer a "heroic soldier of the caliphate" targeting "christians celebrating their pagan feast." in fact most of the victims were from other arab countries, including lebanon, jordan and iraq. p turkish authorities say they have the shooter's fingerprints, but have not been able to identify him. they think he may be from kyrgyzstan or uzbekistan, or possibly a muslim region of western china. about 17=thousand police officers have been deployed throughout the city. they have detained eight people with possible links to the attack. but. the killer is not among them. last year turkey was the scene of multiple terror attacks, including the assassination of the russian ambassador last month. with at least 275 people killed in 2016. turkey can now compete with iraq and afghanistan in terms of the frequency of terror attacks and the intensity of cas

bureau chief, also here in studio criminal defense attorney and constitutional attorney page pate and bob baer is back with us as well. a lot has transpired, mainly about hamid darwish and now his release. how do you expect this might symbolize a real problem with how this executive order is going to be carried out. the heard that the attorney say it was already being exercised in an arbitrary fashion, given that his family was able to get through but hamid was held up for 17 hours. >> one of the lessons of this episode is what happens when you issue executive orders and haven't given guidance to the relative agencies to know how to prioritize and carry out these orders at various points of entry within the united states. i think another thing to watch for is whether or not this is extended to people who hold green cards. right now the thought would be if you hold a green card, would you venture out of the united states without having written down how this executive order will be carried out in a uniform way. i think we're seeing a day of uncertainty because of the way it was rolled out. befor

julia kayyem, and former cia o operative, bob baer. a and bob running the marathon this evening. thank you all for joining us. david, welcome to the panel. i'm going to start with bob, he's been doing some heavy lifting tonight. the declassified version of the intelligence report on russian hacking has been released and among the conclusions, it says, we assess russian president vladimir putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the u.s. presidential election. russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the u.s. democratic process, denigrate senator clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency. we further assess putin and the russian government developed a clear preference for president-elect trump. our intelligence community is confident that russia did it and they did it in part to help donald trump. what kind of evidence do they have? >> they've got a lot of evidence. they've got code. it's traced back to russia, the kgb. to the gru military intelligence. they've got metadata around the hacking. they've

steven hall joins us from the cia, former cia officer bob baer and michael durand author of "america's rise to dominance in the middle east." mike, cnn is reporting u.s. intelligence officials identified digit counsel fingerprints pointing to the russian government. yet president-elect trump says the hacking could be somebody else. is it possible trump knows something that the president and the entire intelgence ngrey a members of co who get intelligence briefings don't know? >> i think this is really more a question of domestic politics than any kind of assessment of russia. this claim about russian hack or these allegations about russian hacking are taking place within a very specific context suggesting that somehow the trump election wasn't legitimate. and i think the easiest way for him to just avoid that whole discussion and shove it aside is to say look, we don't know what ppened the oer thing is he doesn't want to be botched in in his relations with putin by president obama. he wants to engage with putin in his own time and his own way. this is a way of delaying the whole thing.

bring in jim sciutto and bob baer. jim you first.ay president-elect donald trump received briefing on the russian hacking. what are the key findings? >> the headline issue here delivered in stark terms by the most senior intelligence officials in the country, directly face-to-face with donald trump, russia interfered in the election, the intent being to help you mr. trump win the election. that's the headline finding of this report. we knew that before but this has been released and see in the starkest terms. that's one. second, the cyberattacks targeted both parties, democrats and republicans but the releases of the stolen information only targeted one of those parties. that's the democrats, democratic candidate hillary clinton, and effort finds the u.s. intelligence community, to denigrate her and reduce her chances of winning and increase donald trump's chances of winning the presidency. >> bob to you now. intl intel chiefs say they have high confidence but donald trump said today while these are consistently trying to break throu

patrick healy is it a "new york times" editor, aaron lewis, and bob baer, now a cnn intelligence and security analyst, good morning to all of you. mr. trump is still unwilling to blame russia for the hacking, he says he knows things others don't. sean spicer was on "new day" this morning and was passionate about russia perhaps not being involved in hacking the u.s. elections. >> the idea that you're asking anybody what their reaction should be to a nonconfirmable report is unbelievable. >> hold on, sean. >> no, not hold on. the idea that we are asking people and making assumptions on a report that's not final is unbelievable. >> so in other words, lindsey graham and senator john mccain are also unbelievable and irresponsible? >> they're not the ones who instituted the sanctions. it's -- >> they're planning hearings about it. they believe that -- >> stop. hold on. listen to what you just said. they're planning hearings. they are actually trying to get it right. >> okay. so errol, you heard sean spicer, and you heard mr. trump say he knows things others don't. so what are the american

"out front," bob baer, former cia operative and jeffrey lord, former reagan white house political directorou heard elise there as she was giving the overall headline that this is now a matter of subtle law, right? this passed. trump is saying tonight he's spoken to people at the highest level of intelligence they agree with him that waterboarding and torture work. does it? >> not according to the senate intelligence committee, it doesn't work, ineffective, in fact causes people to be more radical, groups to be more radical using it. i've seen no good case that anyone's used waterboarding since 2001 and 2002 that it saved american lives, and that's according to the documents, internal cia reports from the inspector general. and it's flatout illegal, the u.n. geneva convention. as mccain said, the law is the law and we can't do it. >> jeffrey, bob's been on the ground, there in the field. >> which decidedly i have not. i would say, though, that as a civilian listening to rob o'neill, the man who killed osama bin laden, he ip cysts it does work and that's what enabled him to get to osama bin

that's just one of the shall we say misstatements, coming from the incoming administration because bob baerd high confidence. but this is the official statement in part from the trump administration. while russia, china and other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of the governmental institutions, including the democratic national committee, there was absolutely no effect on the election, including no tampering with voting machines. it's not exactly true. page six says we did not make an assessment of the impact that russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. the intelligence community is charged with assessing the actions and doesn't analyze u.s. political processes or public opinion. so what's the truth here? david? >> listen, i don't think -- i think we do know that the basic truth here is this report has taken us further than anything else we've seen so far. pins responsibility directly and personally on vladimir putin for ordering a massive interference is american elections, trying to den agrate hilla

let's get more on this with pamela brown and bob baer. pamela, first to you. this exclusive reporting on cnn that these digital fingerprints. what does this mean? >> this is another piece of evidence, new evidence, that is bolstering confidence among u.s. intelligence officials that russia is to blame for the election hack. essentially through an analysis of data of documents, officials were able to trace the hack to specific keyboards with text. the russian alphabet on the keyboard. they believe these keyboards were used to make the malware code that was used in the hacks during the election. and as one official said, though, this is just one piece of evidence. there are many pieces of the puzzle that the u.s. intelligence community has looked at in making the determination and giving them the high level of confidence that russia is to blame, and this is part of that. >> the kremlin responded to that. a spokesman told cnn, i don't understand what this means but cyrila characters can be used anywhere. i reject that russia can be involved in any way. so, bob, w

bob baer: "coming in with speed, surprise, maximum violence, shooting the police at the door, tells mehat - this is a guess - somebody who's fought maybe in syria, or iraq." a statement posted on an isis propaganda site called the killer a "heroic soldier of the caliphate" targeting "christians celebrating their pagan feast." in fact most of the victims were from other arab countries, including lebanon, jordan and iraq. turkish authorities say they have the shooter's fingerprints, but have not been able to identify him. they think he may be from kyrgyzstan or uzbekistan, or possibly a muslim region of western china. about 17=thousand police officers have been deployed throughout the city. they have detained eight people with possible links to the attack. but. the killer is not among them. numan kurtulmus/ deputy prime minister of turkey: wherever you are in turkey, wherever you are in the world, we are going to come and find you in your dens, and we will crush you with all the national capacity we have. last year turkey was the scene of multiple terror attacks, including the assassinat

joining us, bob baer. mike, cnn's reporting that the u.s. intelligence officials have identified digital fingerprints, fingerprints pointing to the russian government, yet president-elect trump says the hacking could be somebody else. is it possible trump knows something that president obama and the entire intelligence community and members of congress who get intelligence briefings don't know? . >> i think this is really a question of domestic politics than it is any kind of assertion of russia. this claim of russian hacking are taking place within a very specific context, suggesting that somehow the trump election wasn't legitimate. and i think the easiest way for him to just avoid that whole discussion and shove it aside is to say that hoolook, we don't really know what happened. the other thing is he doesn't want to be boxed in, in his relations with putin by president obama. he wants to engage with putin in his own team atime and in his o. >> what do you think about this? >> i think it's going to continue to complicate his initial relat