5 p.m. saturday evening, eight american helicopters were carrying as many as 100 u.s. special operations forces. iraq and flew for 70 minutes across syria. the pilots flew low to avoid detection but came under fire during the flight returning fire as they went. their destination was a compound in western syria. according to president trump, the area had been under surveillance for a few weeks. we learned today an informant inside isis told the kurdish led syrian democratic forces that the elusive isis leader was hiding out and provided a piece of underwear and a blood sample that was used in a dna test to confirm his identity before the raid took place. the aim was to capture him and if we couldn t capture him, then of course we were going to kill him. reporter: when they arrived the helicopters began firing on the buildings allowing the soldiers and their canines to
and video from the raid. bill: what a story, jennifer griffin, thank you. team fox coverage continues. fox news can confirm that the agent inside the operation who informed u.s. special ops was living inside the compound. benjamin hall continues the coverage, live in northern syria. benjamin, hello. good evening from syria. we had a long interview with general mazloum abdi today, commander of the stf. he made it very clear that the raid would not have been possible without the help of the kurds and in particular the stf informant you are referring to. they say they had details of the location on may 15. that s when the sdf passed it to the u.s. and from then they set up a special cell to monitor him. there were three americans in the cell on the coordination continued. the informant inside isis gave details about the tunnel.
security analyst evelyn farkas, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense. and larry pfeiffer, also here. he is the director of the hayden center at george mason university and a former senior director of the white house situation room. larry also served as a chief of staff to the cia. the evelyn, i want to start with you. i just asked matt this, i think it s worst asking you again, the big concern is that these isis fighters and the families, as mat. was just describing, will escape and try to reconstitute the caliphate. the president was asked about this and he seemed to brush it off and said, well, they would escape to europe. yeah. i mean, katy, it s absolutely irresponsible what s happening now. the fact that we would allow this to happen, you know, the president threatened to do this last december and this is why secretary mattis quit, then secretary of defense, quit. in addition to the envoy to the region. what s going to happen is not
dead hands. and that s going to be a very terrible fight. because we re talking about, like i said, hardened jihadis that aren t exactly going to sit by and become pawns in a great power game between the kurds and the turks. so, al hol refugee camp and all these other points where isis fighters are holed up and their fall lis, about 48,000 women and children who are also hardened idealog idealogues, they are also in northern syria and they are also ready to escape and rekoconstit. where are they going to go? are they willingly going toe go into turkish hands and be ceded from one enemy to the other? this is all a chaos that s just getting worse and worse and worse and is going to become worse and worse in the coming days. it s a maelstrom that the u.s. has simply turned its back on and is now wouking away from. and you cannot put the toothpaes back in the tube. thank you, matt bradley. we appreciate it. and joining me now, national
in the president s ear and have him change his mind on this, or is it already too late? is there a way to mitt game sig of the con consequences going forward? there s potential to mitigate. we ve seen it happen in the past where he has reversed course or he has softened his language, which has allowed the defense department, state department, to then begin to take actions to to help the situation. what do we do in the future, evelyn, when we need help again fighting against isis? well, i think it s going to be really hard, katy, to convince kurds or other forces to work with us, to help us achieve our objectives, if we are shown to be unreliable, and by the way, this is not going to be an issue just fur stateless fighters like the kurds, because you look at our allies in israel and elsewhere, israel, first and foremost, because they re close, getting nervous. you know, what kind of ally and partner is the united states