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Calls For Clemency Grow For Texas Death Row Inmate; Israel Attempting to Confirm Potential Death of Hamas Leader. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired October 17, 2024 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[11:34:32]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: All right, back now to the breaking news, Israeli officials in the process of determining whether or not the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by IDF forces in Gaza earlier today.

I want to go straight to the former IDF spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus. He's also a senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy.

Jonathan, good to see you, as always.

What's your reaction to this news? And what's your sense of things right now? Might we be in the process of just getting to the point where the Israeli prime minister will make the announcement? Is that essentially what we're waiting for at this point?

[11:35:08]

LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, FORMER INTERNATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES: Yes, Jim, I think it is.

Good to see and hear you again...

ACOSTA: Yes.

CONRICUS: ... on what could be a very, very positive day for Israel and for Gaza.

I think, as with all positive news in the past, the prime minister has this tendency of wanting to deliver it himself, not so much with the negative news. So I think that we will have to wait for that kind of a press conference and for official Israeli acknowledgement that it is indeed a DNA match.

The DNA is based on the fact that Yahya Sinwar was a convicted terrorist and spent quite many years in Israeli prison. And, as such, Israeli security forces have his dentals and DNA. And it hasn't been made official yet, but I hear that there's very, very strong confidence in the DNA indeed being a match.

But we will wait for the official notice. I think that this could be a very important strategic moment. It may not immediately symbolize or signify an end to the war, but I think that two things are possible from here.

One, the chances, I think, of a hostage deal or of a safe return of at least some, hopefully all of the 101 Israeli hostages, I think that rises and elevates because, based on the information I know, Yahya Sinwar, first of all, he stood between a deal and the hostages being brought back home. Now that he may be out of the picture, that could be a good step forward.

And then the second very interesting thing that will happen now is, will Hamas be able to scramble and regroup and who, if Hamas is out -- if Sinwar is out of the picture, will take his position? Will it be his brother Mohammed Sinwar, or will it be one of the low-level military commanders that are left and have not yet been eliminated by the IDF?

That's probably a big question. And, of course, how well can Israel, the U.S. and regional powers leverage this moment in order to end the fighting and turn the page?

ACOSTA: Yes, Jonathan, you bring up so many good points. I mean, I guess one of the questions I have -- and it's based on the experience of the U.S. taking out Osama bin Laden and how al Qaeda had a very difficult time. It was not able to reconstitute itself ultimately after the killing of bin Laden.

Has Hamas essentially been crippled in the same way or in a similar way, do you think?

CONRICUS: Before the war, Hamas was a very decentralized organization that had a lot of, I would say, operational flexibility, in the sense that it didn't have one center of gravity that you could strike and take out the organization.

But as the war went on and more and more military and political leaders of Hamas were killed by Israel in part of the fighting, everything kind of got centralized around Yahya Sinwar. The political overseas leadership of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh and others, one was eliminated and others have become less significant.

And that concentrated almost all of the executive and political power with Yahya Sinwar. And that's a dangerous thing for a terrorist organization to do because, if and when he is taken out, which he eventually would be, then that leaves a very big void. And now there's a challenge for Hamas and for all of the terrorist organizations in Gaza, but specifically Hamas, how to deal with it and what kind of succession they can put in place.

Communications are very difficult. Command-and-control is very limited. They do not have freedom of movement above the ground. And underground, it's difficult to do these things, especially when there's Israeli troops above and below ground hunting for them.

ACOSTA: Right. CONRICUS: So it's a challenging time. And what I hope is that Israel

will be smart, leverage the opportunity here, get hostages back and hopefully turn this into a war-winning moment, so that we can start rebuilding in Israel and for the Palestinians as well and build a better future for all of us.

ACOSTA: All right, fascinating, and a note of optimism there as well. I'm sure a lot of people share that view.

Jonathan Conricus, as always, thank you very much for your time. We appreciate it.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:44:03]

ACOSTA: All right, welcome back to the breaking news.

Israeli officials now in the process of trying to determine whether or not the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in an operation in Gaza. What we're hearing from a variety of officials and experts is that it is looking very likely that that in fact is the case, and we're just awaiting an official announcement from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on all of this.

But let's go to some more experts on this, former CIA officer Bob Baer and CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger.

And, Bob, your response, your reaction to what we're seeing so far.

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: I think this is unlikely to lead to a truce.

Look what happened in Lebanon after the assassination of Nasrallah. Israel is determined to take out the upper echelons of all these groups, including Hamas. And so there are other commanders that are still underground operating capable of attacking Israeli forces.

[11:45:01]

And I just don't see how Netanyahu at this point can call a truce, either in Lebanon or in Gaza, with armed fighters on the ground threatening Israel.

And that's from an Israeli standpoint. I would like to see him take a truce offer at this point, but I doubt it's going to happen.

ACOSTA: Yes, David, I mean, one of the things I'm reminded of is when President Biden reportedly said to Prime Minister Netanyahu "Take the win" after the Iranians failed to land much of any kind of a missile attack on the Israeli people earlier this year, back in April.

And you wonder if this is another one of those, will you take the win kind of moment. What's your sense of it? DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it

could well be.

Look, Jim, as you and I have discussed before, we have been in an odd position for a year with Sinwar, which is there have been these negotiations under way in which the United States through -- operating through others in the Arab world have been basically sending out proposals to Sinwar and waiting to see his reaction, while they have been helping the Israelis try to figure out where Sinwar was, so the Israelis could kill him.

And so that has sort of never worked, as you could understand.

ACOSTA: Right.

SANGER: If indeed it turns out this is Sinwar, and I have to warn everybody that there were four previous moments where they thought they had gotten Sinwar or might have -- this time, this one seems to have a little more air of certainty to it.

ACOSTA: Interesting.

SANGER: That, in this case, it's not clear who they'd be negotiating with even to get a truce from the Hamas side, because Netanyahu is not going to agree to this if Hamas doesn't agree to this.

And I'm not sure who in Hamas they would be talking to for a number of weeks or months.

ACOSTA: And, Bob, can you speak at all to, I mean, how all of this went down? It sounds as though there were Israeli forces doing sort of routine patrol in that area and happened upon this.

We don't have the full ticktock. But talking to John Miller in the previous hour, it sounds as though Sinwar was essentially basically living in the shadows, in the tunnel network in Gaza and so on, trying to avoid capture, and it may have just been a stroke of luck here.

BAER: Well, I'm not sure.

It's persistent surveillance is what is giving Israel the advantage. In Lebanon, this is how they wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah. This is how they hit the initial targets. So they have a target matrix which he could have wandered into, which is tunnels. And any indication, whether it's cell phone calls or whatever, and they give it a try. Their intelligence is not perfect, but it's a lot better than it's been in previous conflicts in Gaza.

So they pretty well know where the tunnels are. And they have also captured Palestinians who describe Sinwar's movements. And maybe they got lucky this time.

ACOSTA: So, David, is it a little overcranked to think that Hamas has been crippled here? I mean, there's been some optimism expressed on this program earlier that that's the case, but might that not be the case? SANGER: It might not be the case. I mean, look, we -- the United States took out the leadership of al Qaeda. Al Qaeda still exists. It's not capable of doing what it did on September 11, we think, but it hasn't been completely destroyed.

Same thing for ISIS, which has cropped back up in many different forms. This might well cripple Hamas, but, remember, it's not as if we're back at October 7. I mean, in the interim time, Israel has conducted a pretty massive bombing that has killed 40,000 or so Palestinians in Gaza. A good number of those were fighters, but many were not.

And that probably created a new class of future terrorists, as these things usually do. That was certainly our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

ACOSTA: All right, David Sanger, Bob Baer, thank you both very much.

And Israeli officials, we are told, at this moment looking at fingerprints and dental records of the body believed to be that of Sinwar. That's according to a person familiar with the matter talking to CNN's Kevin Liptak. He's reporting that.

Much more news coming up on all of this, as Israeli officials continue to look at whether or not the Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, has been killed.

We will be back after a short break. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:54:07]

ACOSTA: All right. At this moment, advocates for Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson are anxiously awaiting to hear whether or not the Supreme Court and the Texas governor will intervene in that case with just hours to go until he's scheduled to be executed.

He was convicted for the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, but his attorneys say a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome more than 20 years ago was wrong.

CNN's Ed Lavandera has the latest from Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Jim, Robert Roberson is scheduled to be executed sometime after 6:00 p.m. Central time tonight in Texas.

And there are extraordinary efforts being made to spare his life. A state House committee investigating the case has issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify no earlier than next week, after the scheduled execution. One of the lawmakers on that committee told me this is an unprecedented and historic move in a death penalty case here in Texas.

[11:55:03]

This comes also as Roberson's lawyers are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to spare his life and pleading with Texas Governor Greg Abbott to issue a 30-day reprieve, so that the medical evidence in this case can be reexamined.

Essentially, what Roberson's lawyers are arguing is that the shaken baby syndrome cause that medical experts at the time of his trial had used to convict Roberson is essentially a misdiagnosis. Roberson's lawyers argue that his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, who was killed in January of 2002, died of double pneumonia and that had progressed into sepsis.

And she had a long history of medical troubles as well. What Roberson's lawyers want is more time for courts to be able to reexamine that medical evidence. But, at this point, time is running out, and there are just hours before Robert Roberson is scheduled to be executed -- Jim.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: All right, Ed, thank you.

And Roberson's lawyers aren't the only ones pushing for clemency. A bipartisan group of more than 80 Texas lawmakers have also voiced their support for his case.

Thank you very much for joining me. I'm Jim Acosta.

Stay with us. "INSIDE POLITICS WITH DANA BASH" starts after a short break. More on the breaking news out of Israel in just a few moments.