joining us now is michael weiss, senior editor for new alliance magazine, the co-author of isis: inside the army of terror. michael, thank you very much for being here. for the audience who doesn t know, what is isis-k and what is its relationship with the taliban? so isis-k was formed in 2014. many of its top ranking members were actually disaffected members of both the afghan taliban and the pakistani taliban. these are guys who think that the taliban who now rules afghanistan was too cuddly for their liking. the taliban has always been seeking to establish a so-called emirate to control the nation state of afghanistan. isis s mission is deeply more ideological. they look to establish their so-called caliphate throughout the world. they will not stop, as they have said repeatedly, since even before 2014, when the u.s.-led
michael, thank you so much. again, that was michael weiss of the daily beast, co-author of isis: inside the army of terror. and, again, breaking news at this hour. the white house has announced that president trump will make a major announcement at 9:00 a.m. on sunday, and nbc news has now confirmed the likely topic of those remarks, a u.s. military operation that targeted isis leader abu bakr al baghdadi. i d like to bring back courtney ku kube, our pentagon correspondent. courtney, what can you tell us about the details of this special mission? so we don t know a lot of details of the mission yet. we know that in recent days, some u.s. intelligence gathered what they called actionable intelligence about where baghdadi may be. they spent some time confirming that intelligence and then the mission was launched late saturday night, early sunday morning local time here in iraq, into a place in northwestern syria. it s one of the areas that is
but there are still thousands of isis fighters here in this region. and frankly, around in other parts of the world as well, they are trying to spread out into parts of asia and parts of africa. even into afghanistan. there is a pretty strong and dangerous isis cell in eastern afghanistan. so the organization itself is by no means defeated. and beyond just that, the unknown thousands of numbers of fighters around the world, the heart of isis is far from defeated. so the message, their ability to recruit, to earn money, you know, to bring in fighters and to have fighters carry out attacks on behalf of the organization is by no means defeated. courtney, thank you so much. that was courtney kube, pentagon correspondent. also joining us we have michael weiss on the phone of the daily beast. he is the coauthor of isis:
without a doubt the white house is going to be pressed on this issue here in the next hour. we ll be watching with you. caitlin collins at the white house. joining me now michael weiss, coauthor of isis inside the army of terror and steve warren, spokesman for secretary of defense james mattis. you have heard colonel that senator john mccain is not happy and feels like he s not getting the information he needs. when you look at that, how do you think the administration is handling this? well, they have moved too slowly simply. there s enough information out there on day one that they can say something. now, there s often reasons that they will want to stay quiet for the first 24 or 48 hours. perhaps it was because they knew that sergeant johnson was missing and they were searching for him, didn t know his status. i could understand staying dark during that window.
secretary of state rex tillerson is in the uk today trying to calm the nerves of this very important ally by taking responsibility for investigation leaks to the media. meanwhile, new arrests in the raids in manchester today. eight people now in custody and, according to reports, a suicide bomber, salman abedi, had just called his brother over in libya 15 minutes before the attack in that concert. let s bring in cnn investigative reporter michael weiss, the co-author of isis: inside the army of terror. welcome back. thank you. the fact that he picked up the phone and called his brother from that manchester arena in libya, what does that tell you? oftentimes the jihadi networks are populated by members of the same family. the reason being, it s simply easier and you re more likely to