persons of interest who arrived in country the same day that jamal khashoggi did go missing. if the saudis do, in fact, come out with this statement, this could be their way of distancing themselves from what happened. and then, of course, what we don t know is what sort of burden of responsibility. whether or not individuals within the consulate itself will also be among those that saudi arabia decides to end up holding responsible. there had been prior to the announcement of this, some speculation. and we heard president trump speculating about this, as well, that perhaps there would be this narrative of rogue elements who did carry out this killing without the authority, necessarily, of the upper-most echelons of the saudi government. but this has been a story that has had so many different twists and turns. one really needs to actually wait and see what it is, what kind of statement it is that the saudis do end up coming out,
the diplomatic opening. senator, thank you so much. what is your takeaway? what could be going on here? first of all, andrea, thank you for shedding light on this story. i ve long been involved with its efforts. i m leaving the bill. safety of our diplomats is our number one priority. you know how they risk their lives every day going to serve our country overseas. so i want to know who did it. it could be rogue elements, it could be another country, we don t know that. so my whole focus is, one, continue this investigation to figure out what s going on, but we cannot completely derail the relations that we re building with cuba because we know that over 50 years of a failed policy isn t good for either of our countries and that the people in both the u.s. and in cuba are
it is a transfer. one problem with monitoring a transfer is making sure there is monitoring. that is why the united nations security council is allowing a vote to monitor the process. this process and evacuation broke down over the weekend because of rogue elements deciding to take matters into their own hands burning buses that are supposed to take civilians to safety. the hope is that won t happen and many more thousands of people will continue to be evacuated from the besieged villages from besieged eastern aleppo and some point get to a place where they are safe with medical care. if aleppo is cleared of refugees, it is the last rebel stronghold. i take it the end of the humanitarian crisis there is nowhere in sight? reporter: you know, listen, these refugees and evacuees,
but not in that area, not in that part of ukraine. vladimir putin is saying, listen, the whole reason that this happened is because they re fighting against him and fighting against the separatists. to me that sounded a little like an admission, that he knows it was the separatists and is trying to relay responsibility. but obviously that doesn t hold water. look, it appears at this point as if the most likely scenario may be that it is the separatists who pushed the button. but even if they were on their own without russian advisers, at the end of the day, putin would bear responsibility. would there be any reason for russian separatists to deliberately shoot down a civilian airliner? no. no. this was clearly you know, we saw in crimea a kind of special ops that went very well because russia had no fingerprints on what was essentially an annexation. but this is the dark side of using these rogue elements, people you don t really control. yes, the russians can claim
overly enthusiastic commanders or soldiers in the field and isis is very aware of the need to maintain a better, a more positive image. they saw the damage, the image, how we defected the last effort in iraq in 2006, 2007. and, therefore, they tried to show that they can handle those rogue elements. one of the things that distinguished isis from al qaeda is both the explicit territorial ambition and the fact they re now controlling territory and aspire to something like a nation state. they call it a calafate. do you think they are capable of it? can they hold the territory they have been taking? i m not sure that they can hold the territory. it helps them that the shiite government, iraqi government, at this point, the military, is uncapable of making much inroads and take back some of the a lot of the territory that isis