secretary denied knowing anything about that. she said she wasn t aware of anything on that front. have you ever heard of something like this before? yeah, in russia. it sound like something vladimir putin would do, to gather dirt on his opponents. that s something right out of putin s playbook. we don t know who paid for this, obviously, but it sound really strange to me, and i know ben rhodes and colin call. i worked with them in the government. they are very honorable people who served america well. you can disagree or agree whether the iran deal is a good deal or not, but to do this as a way to undermine the deal, i think, is truly unamerican. russia is at the center of so much happening on the globe as far as us trying to meddle in people s elections politically, obviously. their influence is playing out at the center of american politics. are things as bad as they seem, russia s interference when it comes to american politics and trying to fool with other people s elections,
around the world. but the president campaigned against the iran deal, and he did just bring on the fox news channel s most vociferous proponent of war with iran, as his national security adviser. so the dollars to donuts bet tomorrow is that president trump will be announcing that the u.s. is withdrawing from that landmark deal. and alongside the anticipation of that announcement we got an absolutely bizarre story today about some shady covert private detective-style nonsense apparently targeting people who have advocated that the u.s. shouldn t pull out of that deal. colin call is not a household name. you might recognize him from seeing him on tv or maybe reading an oepd, maybe. colin call was the national security adviser to joe biden when joe biden was vice president. before serving as joe biden s national security adviser mr. call served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense, specifically focusing on the
of the trump administration with policy positions like this is whatever the internal decision-making process is. some of them, in moving away from positions the obama administration took, there is a public campaign. how they were planning on n establishing contact, it s just not clear. i will note this. at the same time this outreach was being done that said sebastian gorka, adviser to the president, he was making public comments about ben rhodes and colin call as well. so there s been a consistent public message from this administration about the iran deal but also about the people, including john kerry, involved in the deal. as i said, a lot more reporting needs to be done to get to the bottom of this. thanks very much for that, jim sciutto. remember alabama.
officials, colin call included, they have no direct knowledge that this is tied to trump aides or the trump campaign or the trump administration. but in retrospect, what they re finding is odd outreach at this time from this firm that bears the hallmarks of previous outreach by the same group. clearly there is a lot more reporting that needs to be done to come to the bottom line. the president, meanwhile, he s got to make his decision by saturday, and he s now going after john kerry, the former secretary of state, who helped negotiate this iran nuclear deal in 2015. the president tweeted this. the united states does not need john kerry s possibly illegal shadow diplomacy on the very badly negotiated iran deal. he was the one that created this mess in the first place. i m assuming he s referring to a meeting that kerry had with the former minister of iran. and also european officials and diplomats, because the europeans were partners in this deal. and the europeans, as you know,
waiving sanctions on iran as part of the deal. ian, what reports are these detailing? reporter: this is a case of international espionage that the observer and the new york are saying they hired an intelligence company to dig up dirt on ben rhodes, obama s national security adviser, colin call who is an aide to president obama. it is also reported in intelligence agency was hired to dig up dirt on calls and rhodes wives. there is a lot being said here. the observer and rhodes or sorry the observer and call are saying black cube was hired to dig up dirt. black cube, you may remember, is the israeli intelligence agency