CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: On ISIS Hostages and Arms to Ukraine

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BLITZER: Jim Sciutto, thanks very much.

Let's talk about both of these wars in Ukraine, as well as the Middle East, the war against ISIS. Senator Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, is joining us. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee.

Senator, thanks very much for coming in.

I want to get your analysis, first of all, on this new video that ISIS released today, showing John Cantlie, this British hostage. He is supposedly in Aleppo. And he says these ominous words. This is the last film in the series, last video in the series that he is going to be releasing. What's your analysis of what all of this means? Because there's a lot of concern this might mean they're going to kill him.

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: It certainly Sounds that way, or at least it could be, although if you watch the video, he doesn't look like he's under great duress. He is just basically talking and acting like a reporter.

But you don't know how long he has been there, how much pressure he has been put under. But it doesn't sound good. And he is one of the last Western hostages. And one of the rules of dealing with hostages and these kinds of situations is, you really can't -- you shouldn't put a lot of credence in what people say, because they have been under such tremendous duress.

We don't know whether he's been tortured or what he has been through in order to get him to make what amounts to a very slick propaganda video.

BLITZER: Yes. Clearly, ISIS has got some propaganda interest in releasing a video like this. And we will see what it means, if anything.

Do we know how many Western hostages are still being held? Cantlie obviously is still being held. And we know this 26-year-old American woman, they claim she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike. No evidence to back that up. But do we know how many hostages are still being held by them?

KING: It's a relatively small number. I don't have an exact number. But I think we're in single digits. At least that's my understanding.

BLITZER: And any -- no other Americans beyond Kayla Mueller, assuming she's still alive? And we hope she is some.

KING: Not that we know of. And we certainly hope she is.

As a parent, I can't imagine what her family has been through.

BLITZER: There's no evidence at all to back up ISIS' assertion that she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, right? There's no evidence to back that up?

KING: None that we know of. And they have been known to misrepresent these kinds of things. They represented to the Jordanians that the pilot was still alive. They were negotiating. It turned out he had been killed a month ago. You can't put a lot of credence in what they are putting out.

BLITZER: Is there still hope, realistically, that this young woman might be alive?

KING: Well, there might be.

Apparently, they treated her a little bit differently. They communicated to her parents that they were treating her as a guest. And, you know, I think they made a major miscalculation last week with that gruesome video of the Jordanian pilot being burned. And they may -- maybe they realize that killing a woman, particularly in a public way like they have these prior hostages, would just be -- just further inflame public opinion and particularly opinion in the Arab countries in the Muslim world against them.

BLITZER: Because public opinion is really turning against them. And you see Jordan really stepping up, the United Arab Emirates now sending a squadron of F-16s to Jordan. I assume other Sunni moderate Arab countries are going to step up their campaign as well. KING: I have never seen anything like the way that action unified the

Muslim world, in Egypt, even in Iran, all over the Muslim world. It was condemned. It was condemned in mosques. Like I say, I think it was a major miscalculation. And it really sort of outlined for the Muslim world what we're dealing with.

BLITZER: Because it seemed almost like they are taunting the world with that gruesome video of this young Jordanian fighter pilot in a steel cage doused with gasoline and then burnt to death.

KING: And if they thought that was going to intimidate the Jordanians -- it just happened I was in a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan within an hour of that video being made public. And he was anything but intimidated. He was furious and resolute, I think would be the right word.

And, certainly, that's public opinion in Jordan, but throughout the Middle East. And, Wolf, that's the only way this problem is going to be solved. We can't solve it. It's got to be solved by people on the ground in the region who say, enough is enough, we're not going to tolerate these people perverting Islam and simply brutalizing their own people.

BLITZER: Senator King, we have more to discuss, including a suggestion by one of your colleagues from the Senate Intelligence Committee that ISIS may be moving beyond aspirationally going after American targets in the United States, but actually beginning to implement some plots.

Stand by. Much more coming up with Senator Angus King of Maine right after this.

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BLITZER: We're back with Senator Angus King of Maine. We're talking about the new ISIS video, threats from the terror group, to the hostages, to the United States.

You are a key member of the Intelligence Committee. Senator, let's talk a little bit about one of your colleagues, one member of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Risch, told me the other day. He said that there's indications now that ISIS may be moving from an aspirational desire to hit targets, American targets, in the United States to an actual plot, if you will, to go from desiring to do it to actually planning on doing it. What are you hearing about that?

KING: I don't think there's much doubt that if they could strike us, they would.

BLITZER: In the United States?

KING: If they could. I think right now, I don't think they have the means. We have got them pretty well pinned down.

And I think the airstrikes, which, by the way, over 2,000 airstrikes, have really diminished their physical -- their infrastructure, if you will. But -- and it's not only them. My father used to say you can't tell the players without a program. We have got AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

BLITZER: They are in Yemen.

KING: They're in Yemen. And then we have got al Qaeda generally. We have got ISIS, al-Nusra in Syria, Al-Shabab in Africa.

These groups -- and they are all thinking about how to make a big splash. One of the things about these videos that ISIS keeps producing is, that's how they recruit. They want to show they are tougher and meaner than anybody else. And believe it or not, apparently, there are young people throughout the world that are excited to join these organizations that show how brutal they can be. The appeal is lost on me.

BLITZER: Who is the greatest threat to the American homeland? Would it be core al Qaeda? Would it be ISIS? Would it be AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, any of these other groups?

KING: I think the greatest threat to the American homeland now are some obscure bomb-makers who are developing bombs that will go through airport security.

BLITZER: That sounds like AQAP in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian -- they have got that master bomb-maker, if you will.

KING: That's one of the things they are working at.

That's one of the difficulties, Wolf, is that we don't know really where the threat is going to come from. That's what keeps me up at night is the small -- a plot, you can deal with, because there's intelligence and you hear communications and those kinds of things. It's the small group, like the guys in Paris, two guys, apparently.

And they are pulling off an attack or somebody in America that's self- self-radicalized through the Internet. We have got to be vigilant on all fronts.

BLITZER: How close are they to building a bomb that would not be -- that would be -- you could bring it through the metal detectors at an airport and board a plane with a hard-to-detect bomb like that? They have these master bomb-makers who are working on it.

KING: The short answer is, pretty close.

BLITZER: They are close to it? Because that sounds like an enormous threat out there if they could get away with something like that.

KING: It absolutely is. And it's -- we have just to keep -- we have got to keep developing our capacity to detect these things.

BLITZER: How do you detect a bomb if it's not detectable?

KING: Well, it still has some physical characteristics. And I'm not going to go into the specifics. But just be it known that we're working on the protection and how to deal with these kinds of threats.

BLITZER: But that's a realistic, credible threat that the U.S. is deeply concerned about right now?

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KING: Yes, it is.

BLITZER: I'm deeply concerned hearing about that.

The other concern -- we heard this from one of our terrorism analysts, Paul Cruickshank -- that they are getting information that ISIS in its own desperation to get more hostages could go ahead and kidnap Americans who may be in neighboring countries, whether Jordan or Lebanon, and bring them back to Syria or Iraq and use them as pawns, if you will. Have you heard about that threat?

KING: Hostages are coin of the realm to these guys.

We don't pay, but a lot of countries have paid pretty handsome ransom to get their hostages out. And they're actually making -- this is one of the ways ISIS makes money is by ransoming hostages. I wouldn't put anything past them.

And they are operating -- they have so much territory that's really ungoverned and ungovernable in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq that they could go up toward some of those refugee camps. And I think that's something again that we have got to pay attention to. They are being squeezed down.

And cornered rats are the most dangerous. And there's no question that between the airstrikes and the Peshmerga in Kobani and pressure that's coming from other directions, I think they are feeling some pressure. Also, internally, Wolf, these guys can't govern. They are controlling a city of Mosul, two million people. They have got to pick up the trash and provide schools and keep the electricity on.

And my impression is that they're not doing a good very job at that. So, internal pressure, they could implode just by not being able to deliver to the people that they are supposedly governing.

BLITZER: Let me get your thoughts on Ukraine right now.

Should President Obama authorize the sale or dispatch of lethal military equipment to the Ukrainian military in the face of what's going on in Eastern Ukraine with Russian aggression?

KING: I think it's a terribly hard question.

My inclination at this point would be no, particularly because the European allies don't want us to do that. And the other question that you have to ask is, OK, if you provide arms, what happens then? We don't live in a static universe. Putin is going to respond. And you're going to have an escalation.

It's a very tough question. It's Hitler in the Sudetenland when we didn't respond and he kept going. Or it's the danger of stumbling into World War I, the Guns of August. There's no clear answer. There is no risk-free alternative here.

BLITZER: You are with Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, right now. She's reluctant. She's opposing basically any dispatch of lethal aid to the Ukrainian military, fearing that would only make a bad situation even worse.

KING: Well, I'm inclined in that direction. But, you know, I think it's something we have to assess on an hour-to-hour basis.

The people of the Ukraine are brave, they are fighting, they are fighting for their lives. But, you know, how do you distinguish between defensive weapons and offensive weapons and, as your correspondent said, how do you be sure they are not going to fall into the wrong hands?

But the big question is, OK, so we arm the Ukrainians. What does Putin do next?

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Is he rational, Putin, right now? Because you're on the Intelligence Committee. You hear these assessments that they give you.

KING: I think he is coldly rational.

I think he's coldly calculating and makes these decisions. There's some people that say, well, when Russians start going back to Moscow in body bags, that will change the calculation. I don't think so. I don't think he's going to be responsive to that.

He sees this -- and sometimes, you have got to put yourself in the other guy's shoes. He sees Ukraine as part of the ancient Russian sphere of influence, and the U.S. and Europe are trying to invade or they are trying to threaten Russia's borders. So, he sees this as a very high-stakes game, whereas for us, it's a distant country.

I think you have to think about him and what he's going to do. And he's not going to just say, oh, the American send in arms, that's nice, we will keep on where we are. That's why you have got to -- whenever you make a strategic decision like this, you have to think two, three and four jumps ahead and deal with the consequences.

BLITZER: Senator Angus King of Maine, thanks very much for coming up.

KING: You're welcome.

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