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Russia envoy: Show me the evidence on Syria
The Russian ambassador to the European Union condemned any use of chemical weapons, but said the UN Security Council had yet to see any evidence of an attack in Syria.
“I understand that there has been a lot of talk by Western leaders about undeniable evidence,” Vladimir Chizhov told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday. “But none of that has been provided to the Security Council.”
Click above to see Amanpour’s full interview with Chizhov.
Italian FM Bonino warns of ‘selective intelligence’ on Syria
By Mick Krever, CNN
Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino on Wednesday injected a heavy dose of scepticism into the debate over whether the West should intervene in Syria in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
“Selective intelligence has already been a cause of some other intervention, which didn’t prove very positive,” Bonino said, referring to the war in Iraq.
“I strongly believe that chemical weapons are a crime against humanity and what happened is really unacceptable, and the responsible have to be brought to be accountable,” she said, but added that it is not “wise” to intervene without United Nations Security Council approval.
“It’s also worrying that people are already preparing a coalition of the willing even before tabling a resolution at the UN,” she said. “Frankly, I don’t know what they – this coalition is really willing to do. Punish Assad? Ending the conflict? I don’t know. It’s totally not clear to me.”
Former Israeli intelligence chief: Trust Kerry on Syria
By Mick Krever, CNN
Former Israeli intelligence chief General Amos Yadlin told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday that the world can rest assured that any American claims that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons are accurate.
“The American intelligence community is very, very careful after Iraq, 2003. And I know personally most of them. I know personally General Clapper, with the DNI,” Yadlin said from Jerusalem. “When I hear the determination of Secretary Kerry, I know that the intelligence is very solid. When he says that Assad has done it, I think that the American public and the international community should trust that this is a very reliable intelligence.”
Before the alleged chemical attack outside Damascus last week, Israeli intelligence overheard Syrian military commanders discussing moving chemical weapons to the area of the attack, CNN learned from diplomatic sources. That intelligence was shared with the United States.
Rusbridger: Order to gut drives came ‘on behalf of Cameron’
By Mick Krever, CNN
The senior British official who asked the Guardian to destroy hard drives containing leaked information about the NSA was “acting on behalf of the prime minister,” David Cameron, Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger said on Wednesday.
Rusbridger said that the official, whom he said has now been identified as Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, first contacted him in mid June.
“He said he was acting on behalf of the prime minster,” Rusbridger said. “For a period of a month, it was a cordial conversation.”
But by mid-July, Rusbridger said, “it became an explicit threat of legal action if we didn’t either return the disks or destroy them.”
The Guardian complied, physically destroying the hard drives – Rusbridger has even tweeted a photo of a dismembered Macbook Pro.
“The point, which I explained to the British officials, was that Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter, lives in Brazil,” Rusbridger told CNN’s Hala Gorani, who was sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. “He has a copy, and we already have another copy in America. So destroying a copy in London wasn’t going to stop us from reporting.”
Will U.S. respond to alleged Syria chemical attack?
"The president has been clear, the secretary has been clear, that the use of chemical weapons is absolutely unacceptable," U.S. State Department Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki told CNN's Hala Gorani on Wednesday.
It now seems as though that red line in the Syrian conflict may have been crossed, again, this time outside the capital, Damascus.
Psaki said the U.S. was calling for "unfettered" access for an investigative team to look into the incident, but also said that she did not "want to look into a crystal ball" and predict what the U.S.'s response might be should the use of chemical weapons be confirmed.
"We’ve been clear that boots on the ground is not part of the options being considered, but all options remain on the table," Psaki said. "I'm not going to outline those here."
Click above to watch Gorani's full interview with Psaki.
Muslim Brotherhood: We aren't torching churches
Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is not responsible for the torching of Christian churches, Ahmed Kamal, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing, the Freedom and Justice Party, told CNN's Hala Gorani on Wednesday.
"We do not accept any accept any attack that is being subjected to any house of worship," Kamal said on the phone from Cairo, "whether that is for Muslims or for Christians."
Click above to watch Gorani's full interview with Kamal.
Expert: alleged Syria chem. attack ‘has to have been a military’
By Mick Krever, CNN
It is “more and more likely” that chemical weapons were used in an attack outside Damascus, a Chemical, biological, and nuclear threat analyst told CNN’s Hala Gorani on Wednesday.
“Initially what I thought is that it could well be a concentrated riot control agent,” Gwyn Winfield said. But “as the footage has sort of gone on, it looks more and more likely that some kind of organophosphate – so that is some kind of nerve agent – has been used.”
Survivors, portrayed in videos posted online, are “showing more sort of typical chemical warfare agent signs and symptoms.”
Winfield was not able to identify what type of agent may have been used, but said that it did not appear to be a “pure weapons-grade” attack.
Did UK government target journalist?
Was Glenn Greenwald, the reporter for The Guardian who broke story of secret NSA surveillance, targeted by the UK government? His partner, David Miranda, was held for nearly nine hours at London's Heathrow Airport on Sunday.
CNN's Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour, discusses the question with Brooke Gladstone, the host of NPR's "On the Media" in the U.S.
U.S. atop shifting Middle Eastern sands
What do the shifting sands of Middle Eastern power – especially in Egypt – mean for U.S. influence in the region?
Both Dimitri Simes, a Russian policy analyst, and Michele Dunne, a former senior State Department official, agree that U.S. influence is waning, and it is time for a shift in policy.
“It’s not just a decline in American power – it’s also a serious problem with the Obama Administration foreign policy,” Simes told CNN’s Hala Gorani on Tuesday. “It doesn’t seem to have a roadmap.”
Dunne said she may have a different prescription for the waning power than Simes, but agreed that the U.S. hasn’t always taken the right approach.
“The United States hasn’t stood clearly by the principles that President Obama himself articulated at the time of the Egyptian Revolution that the United States would support the growth of democracy there.”
Click above to see Gorani’s full conversation with Simes and Dunne, and hear whether they think the U.S. should cut off aid to Egypt.
Egypt govt.: Removal of Morsy was ‘creative democracy’
By Mick Krever and Claire Calzonetti, CNN
The arrest in Egypt of the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, is “proper” and not just “vindictive,” an adviser to the interim Egyptian president said on Tuesday.
“I wouldn’t say just a victory from a vindictive standpoint, but from the standpoint that we are restoring law and order in a country which has its own sovereign rights,” ElMostafa Hegazy told CNN’s Hala Gorani, who is sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Hegazy, speaking from Cairo, said that the military ousting of Mohamed Morsy from the Egyptian presidency was necessary because Morsy “and his group, and his militias, has been terrorizing Egyptian, I would say at least emotionally.”
“Maybe it’s a kind of creative democracy that we haven’t seen,” Hegazy contended, “but because we didn’t have the process of impeaching the president through a parliament, we had to do it the way that we’ve done it.”
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