CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: North Korea and Syria

Interview

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I want to bring in Congressman Adam Schiff, he is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: You bet.

HARLOW: I want to get straight to the great news for these families, for these two men coming home. Can you tell us if you have been briefed at all by the administration, the State Department, any details that you're getting other than what we have at this point?

SCHIFF: I imagine we're going to be briefed later this week. In fact, I think the Congressional leadership itself wasn't notified until Director Clapper was on his way to the region. That's not surprising. These deals often come together very last minute and I'm not even sure deal is the right word. But plainly North Korea wanted a high-level emissary from the United States and they usually do. Although if someone mystifying what that really means to North Korea, it obviously isn't going to mean much to the rest of the world that we have to send someone and I'm not sure what domestic political impact it has or whether Kim Jong-un really cares. But nonetheless, it is great news that these two Americans are coming home.

I wouldn't read all that much into it, Poppy, because the key word with Kim Jong-un is erratic. At times we see very recently a high- level North Korean delegation go to South Korea and we think, OK, they're opening up the way for a dialogue. And then shortly thereafter we see new hostilities along the demilitarized zone. Similarly, we have the release of these now three Americans in addition to that release earlier but I wouldn't be surprised to see rocket tests coming up or for further work on miniaturizing nuclear weapons to sit on long-term rockets. So, it's a very opaque leadership and hard to read too much into it at the moment.

HARLOW: Right. But what do you make of the timing of this? The fact that it comes just, you know, a few weeks after Jeffrey Fowle was let go? The fact that we now know the President, President Obama, sent a handwritten letter with James Clapper to give to, you know, Pyongyang's leader. What do you make of those developments that we're learning and the timing? Should we read anything into the timing?

SCHIFF: Well, the only thing I would probably read into the timing is I think that the North Korea really is reacting to this United Nations report, potential referral of Kim Jong-un to the international criminal court. I think that really rocked them. They've reacted to that development in other ways and I wouldn't be surprised if they are trying to what they would consider make this diplomatic offensive to head off a referral to the criminal court. It also may be a prelude to their wanting to have discussions with the United States. Well, we should know in the relatively near future whether that's the case. The final thing I would mention is, I think they've had an increasingly strained relationship with their benefactor and that is China, so this may be as much a message to China as it is to the United States that they want to emerge somewhat from the incredible isolation they're in.

HARLOW: Yes. That's a very important point to make. I appreciate you coming on, Congressman and what a good day this is for those families and for the defense.

SCHIFF: Absolutely.

HARLOW: Thank you very much for sharing some time with us this Saturday.

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Let's bring back in California democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. He is the senior member of the House Intelligence Committee. Thanks for being with us. Appreciate it.

SCHIFF: You bet.

HARLOW: Let's talk about this. We just got this statement within the last few hours from Centcom saying, we were targeting these ISIS leaders. We cannot say if al Baghdadi was among them. Do you know anything outside of that at this point in time? Because that would be huge.

SCHIFF: At this point I don't. But I do think that the strike that we saw in Syria that went after this French bomb maker, the strike after this convoy does indicate that our intelligence is getting better in terms of where the leadership may be. In Iraq it may be a different story because you had a large convoy of vehicles and we are very much on the lookout for large military formations that we can go at where there isn't going to be a lot of collateral damage or any collateral damage, so it could have been just a strike of opportunity against this massing of forces or it may be that our intelligence has improved to the degree where we knew some of the leadership may be in that convoy.

HARLOW: Right. So the air strikes, I mean, a lot of analysts have said to me this week is the fact that we got this course on bombmaker shows us the intelligence is getting better and the air strikes are working more. But clearly, it's not enough because this week the Obama administration announced 1,500 additional U.S. troops going to Iraq to advise the Iraqi military there. Do you agree with that move?

SCHIFF: I do agree with the move. I think that we can use that level of troops to better train and equip the Iraqi forces. We can scale them up more quickly this way. We can make more progress on the battlefield more quickly. In terms of whether it's enough, you know, a lot of what we're talking about is how long is this going to take.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCHIFF: Certainly the air campaign by itself is not going to be enough and certainly it's going to take quite some time to get the Iraqi forces to be able to retake places like Mosul. And I think this will help accelerate that timetable but we still have a very long, hard road ahead of us.

HARLOW: One questions that I thought was interesting brought up by a journalist at the Pentagon briefing yesterday where Rear Admiral John Kirby addressed this is, how do we know it's going to be different this time when we spent so much time, so many resources, so much money, so many lives training the Iraqi army to see many of them, you know, really drop their arms and run away in the face of ISIS, how is it going to be different this time? And the Pentagon saying, it will be different, you know, Iraq is ready for this we've seen the signs that this is the right thing to do. At what point does this amount to actually having boots on the ground? The President makes a difference between these aren't combat troops, but at what point is there really a difference?

SCHIFF: Well, I mean, these are two really good questions. The first is whether this will make a difference or not, whether this will be different than the last time will depend if whether Iraq makes the political changes that it needs to that will help bring the Sunnis on to the side of a national government that will help reinforce those Iraqi troops with professional leadership, not just people that are loyal to the regime, not just Shia leadership, so that will determine whether this can be sustained.

HARLOW: Right.

SCHIFF: And whether we can recapture this ground. And I think at this point it's too early to tell. Al-Baghdadi is saying the right things. He is doing some of the right things but whether the Shia leadership will go far enough to get the Sunnis back as a part of the organic whole of Iraq is still very much an open question. That getting to your second point about boots on the ground, I mean, these are quite literally obviously boots on the ground but the question is, will they be engaged in a combat mission? Are they going to be directly confronting in combat ISIS as part of their mission not just if they're attacked and need to defend themselves. And the President is quite adamant that this is not why they are being sent. They are be sent to train, they're being sent to advice, and yes, they will be at risk. You can't be in the theater of war without being at risk. But he's not sending them to take the place the Iraqi soldiers and I think it's very smart of the President to limit their role in that way.

HARLOW: Adam Schiff, I appreciate you joining us, Congressman. Thank you very much.

SCHIFF: Thanks, Poppy.

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