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Campbell Brown
Guard Shot and Killed at Holocaust Museum; Too Tolerant of Hate?
Aired June 10, 2009 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CAMPBELL BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: (voice-over): Here are the questions we want answered. Are homegrown terrorists more dangerous than al Qaeda? Tonight, chaos in the heart of the capital, breaking news on the deadly shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just chaos everywhere. People were running towards me. Everyone was trying to just stay calm and exit the building.
BROWN: The alleged gunman, an 88-year-old white supremacist. His past? Prison time for attempted kidnapping. Twisted motive? Hate-filled rants against blacks and Jews. His venom online for anyone to see. The clues were there. Why were they missed?
Plus, tonight's "Great Debate": And are we too tolerant of hate- mongers?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a guy who clearly has been in the movement for decades, who has been raging and raging about the ills of people of colors and Jews and so on.
BROWN: Found out why some are saying, forget the First Amendment. It's time to crack down. Tonight, homegrown terror, the state of hate.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is your only source for news. CNN prime time begins now. Here's Campbell Brown.
BROWN: Hi, everybody.
We're digging deeper on the breaking news tonight. A white supremacist opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard. We want to know how this man got his hands on a gun and how many other dangerous people just like him are walking the streets tonight.
You're also going to hear from a former defense secretary who found himself in the middle of today's shooting. We're going to start, though, as always, with a special edition tonight of the "Mash- Up," a look at the must-see moments of the past 24 hours.
Fueled by hate, that is how people are describing the suspect, a lone gunman in yet another act, a deadly act, of domestic terrorism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KATIE COURIC, HOST, "CBS EVENING NEWS": And the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., says its mission is to teach visitors -- there have been 30 million so far -- about the dangers of unchecked hatred. Today, a graphic example burst right through the museum's front door.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And an ex-wife says the suspect was consumed, eaten alive with hatred of blacks and Jews.
PETE WILLIAMS, NBC REPORTER: Tonight, investigators visiting other targets that Von Brunn may have had in mind based on a note he had in his clear listing about 12 places, including the National Cathedral. But, so far, police and the FBI believe he acted entirely on his own.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: We are going to have a lot more details tonight about the suspect, but first a look how it all went down today.
It was 12:50 p.m. at the Holocaust Museum. This is, of course, one of the most visited sites in Washington. It fell into utter chaos there, tourists, students all running for cover. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These two tourists tell me that they believe there were five gunshots and that they were in -- that the gunshots were coming from inside the Holocaust Museum.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was a male, a man with a shotgun, who walked into the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, opened fire with a shotgun.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there are early reports, unconfirmed, that at least two, three people have been shot.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, both that security officer and the gunman have received gunshot wounds. My understanding is that two other security officers at the museum returned gunfire at the -- at the man that had entered the museum.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Members of the staff there telling everybody first to hit the floor when those gunshots were heard.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Some of the museum staff started yelling, get up and run. Get up and run.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And all of a sudden, I saw the body and I knew something serious had happened.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just terrible. I looked up and when I (INAUDIBLE) there was already a lot of blood on the floor. It was just heartbreaking, because I -- I spoke to that security guard earlier. He was very friendly. And it just -- it just hurts.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tom's going to show us exactly where the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is -- and what you saw and what you heard.
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The museum is right down in this area, the White House Ed just talked about, right up here.
So, you see, there's really a close distance, the Capitol down here. You've all seen it before.
PHILLIPS: We have now confirmed this name as well, this suspect, James Wieneke (ph) Von Brunn, 88 years old, from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, possibly connections to some hate groups, anti-government groups.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They believe he has connections with a white supremacist organization.
ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I walked in to that and told him there had been a shooting at the museum. Obviously, saddened by what -- what has happened.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On behalf of everybody at the museum, we just want to say that never take your guard force or your security people for granted. These folks are trained. They train all the time.
BLITZER: We now have an official statement from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, confirming, unfortunately, our worst fears.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And that, of course, was word that the wounded security guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns, had died. Johns' spent six years working at the Holocaust Museum. Tonight, his colleagues calling him a hero.
The suspected shooter, James Von Brunn, is in a Washington hospital tonight. He is in critical condition. In the hours after his attack, details of his bizarre life came pouring out. And they paint a picture of a man with a heart full of hate and the will to act on it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This man they have identified as James Wieneke Von Brunn, born 1920, who now lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
PHILLIPS: This is his Web site. So, in his words, he's talking about -- and he uses derogatory terms for African-Americans. He talks about being convicted by a Negro jury, Jew Negro attorneys. It's quite a racist Web site here.
Well, it says here, during World War II, he served as a P.T. boat captain, lieutenant, receiving commendation and four battle stars for 20 years. He was an advertising executive, a film producer in New York City, member of Mensa.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's a Holocaust-denier. He's an anti- Semite. He's been around for a long time. And he actually served -- served some time for a prior criminal event.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was some kind of trial for some sort of treasonous act, according to his own bio, and that things didn't go his way. He spent 6.5 years, according to his -- his bio, in a federal prison.
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: December of 1981, he decided that the Federal Reserve Board was a secretly controlled by -- quote, unquote -- "the Jews." He was going to go in there and force the governors of the board and Paul Volcker -- he was going to handcuff them and force them to admit all kinds of terrible things on TV.
And, by his own account, he went. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I'm sure you have been to the Web site, as I have, and read about this book. And it's just so many flags just waving so high up there, like this guy is a nut. He is just waiting to pop.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: Tonight, "The Washington Post" reports police recovered a notebook from Von Brunn and in it a list of Washington locations, including the White House. D.C. bomb squads are checking them out right now.
And that's tonight's "Mash-Up."
And that brings us to our first question of the night. Just who is this guy? How big is the white supremacist threat, more generally? The suspect in today's shooting is a racist who has been spewing hate- filled rants for decades. All the evidence we have suggests that he did act alone, but how many more out there are like him?
And here to talk about that, we have got Steve Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Project on Terrorism. He consulted in fact with the Holocaust Museum on their security. We have also got CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, in Washington, Fran Townsend, CNN national security contributor. She was homeland security adviser for President Bush. She's joining us. And, in Montgomery, Alabama, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, with us as well.
And, Mark, let me start with you, because you knew Von Brunn pretty well. He was well-known as a white supremacist. You had some files on him. What can you tell us about him?
POTOK: Well, basically, he's been a player and a fairly active player in the movement going back at least four decades, at least to the early '70s.
Back then, he was briefly at least an employee of something called Noontide Press, which at the time was the leading Holocaust- denial publishing outfit in the country. After that, at least by his own account, he had a lot of interactions with leading figures in the movement, people like Wilmot Robertson and William Pierce, and a number of other anti-Semitic and essentially neo-Nazi leaders.
It was really, though, with his attack on the Federal Reserve Board, his attempted armed kidnapping of the board back in 1981, that he really sprang to all our attention. He carried in a sawed-off shotgun, a hunting knife and a pistol in order to, you know, get the Federal Reserve Board to admit that they were really pawns of the Jews -- quote, unquote -- and all the rest of it.
BROWN: So -- so...
POTOK: So...
BROWN: Well, just to that point, Mark, given what you know about him, what did you think when you heard it was him today, when you heard his name first reported?
POTOK: Well, the reality is, he's been very quiet since getting out of prison in 1989. He's put a great deal of propaganda out on the Internet. But, beyond that, he was really not known as a guy who you saw at rallies, who had any real interactions with other leaders in the movement.
So, he's essentially been another one of thousands of Internet propagandists. Now, that said, some of his propaganda was pretty fierce. Let me read you a particular posting that he put up just a couple of years ago, two Mays ago, in 2007. He wrote on a particular white supremacist site.
BROWN: Right.
POTOK: He said: "What must Aryans do to survive. Is it too late? The house is a ablaze."
BROWN: Right.
POTOK: "We need firefighters. It's up to you. Stop talking, organize. Take action. Target. Swarm across the landscape. You know their murderous intent. You know who they are. Do it."
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: All right, let me -- let me bring Fran Townsend into this, Fran, because I want to get a sense for what is happening right now. And you have been there in this position before.,
Given what law enforcement knows about this guy now, what are they doing at this hour?
FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Well, there's no question. We know they found this notebook, Campbell.
But you can be sure they're looking at his phone records, his Internet records. They're searching his car, his home. They're looking to see are there other people he was affiliated with? Was he part of a larger group? Or did he -- can they in fact verify that he was acting alone? Did he have intentions or did he have plans against other facilities?
And if they did, the federal authorities want to work with those facilities to make sure they understand that their vulnerabilities are known and what they can do to close them. This is all going to be done as part of an assessment of putting together the investigative file to work with prosecutors to decide exactly what charges they will bring.
There's obviously a murder charge, but what additional charges, whether that's for actual charging or enhancement at sentencing as a hate crime.
BROWN: So, how many, to both of you guys, how many more of James Von Brunns are there out there? How big is the threat? Can we quantify it, Steve?
STEVE EMERSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT ON TERRORISM: I don't think it's possible.
First of all, there are lots of people who harbor extremist views. And that ranges from the left to the right to the jihadist viewpoint. The question is, how many people are willing to take that next step and to actually abusing the right of free speech, which is what they're advocating and what they're entitled to do, even with the extremist Web site, and to actually violate the law?
And I -- I sort of did some research today on the number of lone wolf attack -- we call them lone wolf attacks because they're individuals, we believe -- in the last decade.
BROWN: Right.
EMERSON: Fifty percent were carried out by jihadists. The other 40 percent were carried out by right-wing extremists, another 10 percent by unidentified ideological extremists.
So, if you look at the percentage of where it's coming from, still, the plurality is radical jihadists. But you also have...
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: But not by much.
EMERSON: Not by much, but, in terms of plurality of, let's say, the victims, in terms of the numbers, you will see a much greater number of victims having been the -- the target of radical jihadists.
Now, I'm not minimizing the threat today at all, because this is a guy that could have killed a lot more people if he wasn't so brazen when he walked into the entranceway of the Holocaust Museum. However, the fact is, as Jeffrey would note, he's entitled to his views, somebody who yells death to America.
I have been trying to report on Islamist terrorists for many years. And when I say this group says death to America, it's free speech.
BROWN: Right.
EMERSON: The question is, what happens when someone hears that and they say, yes, I'm going to carry out an attack against a recruiting center in Little Rock?
BROWN: Right.
Jeff?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR ANALYST: Think about how difficult the challenge is for law enforcement here, because the Internet, alas, is full of people spewing this kind of hate, the vast, vast majority of whom never do anything to act on it.
And what an unlikely person he is to have engaged in this attack? Yes, he had...
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: Eighty-eight years old.
TOOBIN: He's 88 years old. How many 88-year-old criminals are there of any kind? It's just -- it boggles the mind to think that that's what he decided to do at that age.
But the evidence is the -- the evidence of hate speech is a very poor predictor of -- of violent tendencies. And how you sort that out is a big challenge. And you know what? They're going to get a lot wrong.
BROWN: And that is the subject, we should mention, of our debate tonight. Tonight's "Great Debate," are we too tolerant of hate- mongers? Find out while some -- why some do say -- they disagree with Jeffrey here -- that it is time to crack down and to arrest people before they strike.
Also, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen caught in the gunfire today. He was on phone with his wife. They are tonight's newsmakers.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANET LANGHART COHEN, CO-AUTHOR, "LOVE IN BLACK AND WHITE": I lived in the Holocaust Museum every day for the last week or so. I -- I would see all the security guards. And I know we know the young man that died.
And I just want to say how sorry we are to his family. I am just -- I'm waiting for the moment that -- that we know his name and see his face.
Right now, we don't know which one it is. But I think it's a young man that served in the military when Bill was secretary of defense that stopped Bill all the time. And I'm just sorry -- I'm just really sorry for his family.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Ironically, when the gunfire erupted today at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, one of the visitors was a man once in charge of keeping America safe, former Defense Secretary William Cohen. His wife, Janet, was heading there, too. That's because she wrote the play that was scheduled to debut there tonight, which involves two historical victim times of hate, Anne Frank and Emmett Till.
After escaping today's terror, the Cohens joined our Wolf Blitzer and Tom Foreman in THE SITUATION ROOM to share firsthand what they saw today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM COHEN, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, I was on the phone calling Janet to say, "How far were you away?" because they're making arrangements out front to accommodate the car. At that point, I noticed there was a car that was double parked out in the street, which I thought was unusual.
(CROSSTALK)
FOREMAN: You're saying right here.
COHEN: Right. He was double parked out there. And an older man -- I didn't pay much attention to him. I was on the phone.
And then I lost concentration on him until I -- actually, I was an ear witness, because I heard the first shot ring out. And there was no mistaking on my part. I have heard many gunshots in the past, and it was clear what was going on.
BLITZER: How many shots did you hear?
COHEN: I heard about four in a row after the first one. And it was "Bam, bam, bam, bam." And it was clear what was going on.
BLITZER: About how close to this incident were you?
COHEN: I was about 30, 40 feet away.
And so, when I heard the shots, I immediately ducked down. I was with Arthur Berger, who is...
BLITZER: One of the spokesmen for the museum.
COHEN: For the museum. He and I were together. He saw actually the man lift the -- come in with a rifle. And so, when the shots rang out, we just ducked down and scattered and went up the stairs to the right.
FOREMAN: Up in this area over here.
BLITZER: Did you say a rifle or a shotgun?
COHEN: He had a -- it looked like a rifle.
BLITZER: It looked like a long rifle?
BLITZER: And so what did you do when you heard the shots? I mean...
COHEN: We ducked.
BLITZER: You actually dropped to the ground?
COHEN: We ducked down and took off, and ran up the stairs to get out of the line of fire. And we got upstairs and we didn't know if someone was going to come up behind us, so we had everybody who was naturally coming down -- we stopped them and said, "Don't go down there. It's dangerous."
BLITZER: And Janet, where were you at that time? You were still on your way to the museum.
JANET LANGHART COHEN, PLAYWRIGHT: I was on my way leaving home. We were just turning on to Nebraska Avenue in Chevy Chase. And Bill rang me and said, "There's been a shooting at the Museum." And I know he wouldn't joke about a thing like that, and I said, "What are you talking about?"
And he described to me what he just described to you. And my first concern was for him. He heard it. He and Arthur were right there, close enough to hear the sound just ring out.
And then I thought about the kids of my play. They're rehearsing. We have kids playing Anne Frank and Emmett Till. And my director was there, my whole staff was there.
I know that the Meyerhoff auditorium is down in the well. You can't even get a signal on your cell phone from there, so I thought maybe...
FOREMAN: The Meyerhoff is right down in this area, isn't it?
BLITZER: It's in the lower level.
(CROSSTALK)
LANGHART COHEN: Yes, in the lower level. You have to go down.
So they didn't hear a thing. They didn't know what was happening. Someone came in and said, "You've got to get out of here."
BLITZER: How worried were you about your husband?
LANGHART COHEN: I was very worried. I was worried about my husband. I was worried about the kids, because there's always kids, as you say, lots of kids in the Museum.
My team was there. And the museum, we know why this museum is sacred. We know why we have the Holocaust Museum.
And for someone to come in and desecrate it -- and our whole play is about hate, to eradicate hate, and this is an example of hatred.
And the guard -- I know I knew this guard. I lived in the Holocaust Museum every day for the last week or so. I would see all the security guards. And I know we know the young man that died.
And I just want to say how sorry we are to his family. I am just -- I'm waiting for the moment that we know his name and see his face.
Right now, we don't know which one it is. But I think it's a young man that served in the military when Bill was secretary of defense and stopped Bill all the time. And I'm just really sorry for his family.
BLITZER: We have been doing some research on the suspect in this case, James Von Brunn, Janet. And you will be interested to know, he's written extensively denying the Holocaust, denying it ever existed.
LANGHART COHEN: We all know the Nazis existed.
We know, in Europe, it's against the law in certain places in Europe to say the Holocaust never happened. Yet, here in America -- and I love this country and I love our freedom -- as a journalist, the First Amendment is important to me.
But what do we do about people like this who spread that kind of hate? Because it all begins with a word. Then it's a gun. And then it's somebody dead. What do we do? How do we reconcile the righteousness of not allowing this kind of speech and punishing this kind of speech in Europe, and allowing it, even protecting it?
Wolf, you know, they could march -- when I was in Chicago, the Klan could march in Skokie, Illinois, where the largest group of survivors of the Holocaust lived. And they're protected by police.
I -- you know -- you know, we have to reconcile which one of these saves humanity. Where do we get them? Where do we get these people?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BROWN: And we're following up on Janet's questions tonight.
The "Great Debate": Are we too tolerant of hate-mongers? Also, are domestic terrorists a bigger threat than al Qaeda? We will talk about that, too. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: Welcome back, everybody. Time to get a check now of some of the other big stories making news at this moment.
Erica Hill is here with tonight's briefing.
(CROSSTALK)
ERICA HILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And, Campbell, we have an update on a story you have been following, I know, very closely. A New Jersey man is actually one big step closer tonight to bringing his 9- year-old son home from Brazil.
In a unanimous ruling today, Brazil's Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court, which had already said Sean Goldman should live with his dad, David, here in the U.S. Well, his mother took the boy to Brazil back in 2004. She got there, she filed for divorce, and stayed. Goldman has been fighting for custody of his son since then.
Now, his ex-wife remarried. She died, though, last year. And the stepfather wants little Sean to stay with him in Brazil. It is an idea that his biological father outraged.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID GOLDMAN, FATHER FIGHTING TO GET SON BACK: It's a fundamental, sacred, natural, God-given right and bond for a child and a son to be together.
And what these people have been doing and -- and, up to this point, able to get away with, is -- is disgraceful. And it's a torture to my son.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: Now, despite today's ruling, this is not over. The lower court must first consider an appeal from the boy's step-family before Sean can come home.
No bail for a former State Department worker and his wife accused of spying for Cuba, a federal judge in Washington ruling that Walter and Gwendolyn Myers will stay in jail until their trial. The couple is accused of passing secrets to Cuban agents for almost 30 years. Both pleaded not guilty last week.
And Carrie Prejean back tonight, but no longer as Miss California USA. Today, pageant owner Donald Trump told her, "You're fired." It has nothing to do with her public stance against same-sex marriage. Trump says Prejean breached her contract by missing appearances, among other things. The new Miss California USA will be on "LARRY KING" at the top of the hour, Campbell.
BROWN: All right, Erica Hill for us -- Erica, thanks.
The shooting at the Holocaust Museum comes just after the shooting of an abortion doctor and the killing at that Army recruiting station. So, our next big question tonight, are we seeing a rise in domestic terrorism? And, if so, what's fuelling it?
Also, the "Great Debate" coming up: Are we too tolerant of hate? Find out what some of saying, that the police need the power to act sooner.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People started yelling, hit the floor, hit the floor. So, my wife and two grandsons and I hit the floor in a little kind of cutout in the hallway there, along with another young family. I don't know who they were. And we were scared to death. We got as low as we could get. We didn't know exactly what had happened, except that someone was shooting guns and everyone was screaming and excited.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BROWN: We are following tonight's breaking news, a security guard today gunned down at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and the suspect an 88-year-old, a convicted felon who is a known white supremacist, proudly advertising that fact on his Web site, which brings us to our "Great Debate."
Tonight's premise: The U.S. is too tolerant of hate-mongers.
And joining us to debate tonight, Michael Gross. He's a constitutional lawyer who says, no, we cannot forget about free speech. We also have Mark W. Smith, a conservative commentator and lawyer, who says, we can't let the First Amendment tie our hands.
We are going to have opening statements from each, 30 seconds on the clock for each of you.
Mark, again, the premise is, we are too tolerant of hate-mongers in this country. Make your case.
MARK W. SMITH, CONSERVATIVE COMMENTATOR & CONSTITUTIONAL ATTORNEY: Sure.
Although, of course, we have a First Amendment and free speech is extremely important, the fact is that you want to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor before the bombs start to fall. Likewise, you want to take steps that stops the violence that we saw today in Washington and the violence that we saw earlier this week when a Muslim convert gunned down a U.S. soldier in the name of Allah.
So, the point is, police and the CIA and foreign affairs need to be aggressive in stopping these sorts of hate attacks before they occur.
(BELL RINGING)
SMITH: And the best way to do that is through infiltration of the groups before any bad happens.
BROWN: All right, Michael, go ahead.
MICHAEL GROSS, CONSTITUTIONAL ATTORNEY: Nothing is as important to me in my life as the opportunity to exercise my freedom of speech.
Expressing my opinion is my opportunity to be who I am, to grow into myself, as every human being can in this country. This is a disease. It's racism. Don't trade freedom of speech for some false sense of security. You will live in a cage. It will not be freedom. It will be oppression.
We need freedom, not what the North Koreans call freedom. That's security. We need real freedom.
(BELL RINGING)
BROWN: Let me follow up with you, Mark, because I want to be clear here. You're talking about outlawing specific kinds of speech. And if so, what would you say would qualify as illegal? Be specific if you can.
SMITH: Yes, I don't think it's a question about outlawing the words per se. What we're talking about here is people can talk all they want about all sorts of ideas and metaphors and stories and the like and that's fine.
However, when the conversation turns to very specific plans and plots about, let's specifically go down the street and kill someone, let's specifically walk down the street on that day and blow something up, now it's crossed from free speech to perpetrating violence. And rather than waiting for someone to die and for the police to come up and, you know, draw a chalk line around the body, I say infiltrate these hate groups ahead of time.
And when you see people are planning and plotting to kill, step them there. Stop them before the bombs drop on Pearl Harbor, because otherwise people's lives over and it's too late. And I ask you this, when you're dead, of course, you have no free speech rights or any other rights or freedoms when you're dead.
GROSS: I would rather take me at my word, sir, I would rather die than lose my liberty. That's not a new concept.
Surely you remember from Patrick Henry. He wasn't kidding, I'm not kidding. It's that important. You have nothing in von Brunn's statement that is on his Web site or in his book that says to people, go out and kill somebody. If you did, he would be stopped.
SMITH: In the 1980s --
GROSS: Don't infiltrate organizations. Don't violate our freedom in the name of security. It doesn't work. I can defame you now, and you cannot stop me, because my opinion is as valuable in the marketplace of free ideas as yours is. SMITH: Sure. Surely to attack people. I mean, like today we see reports that President Obama's former adviser, Jeremiah Wright, came out and basically made comments that were negative about Jews. So people make negative comments all the time and that doesn't necessarily mean they go to jail. But once again, if you could see evidence that they're actually specifically talking about a specific plan to perpetrate violence, then you have to step in.
And my point is that you have to be in a position to hear those sorts of comments being made so then you can then act. And I agree, freedom is very important. And what we saw here today in Washington, is the fact that guns stop bad people from doing bad things and I thank the hero that unfortunately passed away from using a gun to stop the murder of more people and thank God for, you know, guns in America to protect bad people from doing bad things to good people. That's the kind of freedom that we need.
GROSS: Go and protect.
BROWN: All right.
GROSS: In D.C., where the people voted and their representatives passed a law prohibiting this very weapon being held and carried the way it was, and the Second Amendment writers, of course, feel that he should be allowed to carry it.
SMITH: He had no Second Amendment rights. He was a convicted felon. This crazy guy was not allowed to carry his gun...
BROWN: All right.
SMITH: ... because of what he did against the Reagan Federal Reserve in the 1980s with his crazy act back then.
GROSS: Right. But six years in prison, did you rehabilitate him? Did you do any good?
BROWN: All right, guys.
GROSS: Did you affect the disease of racism?
BROWN: Let me -- let me bring it back to kind of the focus here because we're almost out of time. But I want to -- I try to end every segment by hopefully finding a little bit of common ground between our guests when we do these segments.
And Michael, let me ask you, given what we saw today, what, frankly, we've seen over the last couple of weeks, a number of incidents. Is there anything that you think we should be doing? Is there another step we should be taking? Or is there any area where you might agree with Michael on that front?
GROSS: Yes.
BROWN: Or with Mark on that front, rather? GROSS: I'm also very conscious of the danger of racism. It is a disease. And we need to focus on what causes it and how to prevent it, not so much on the physical act. And I'm very, very sorry, of course, for the loss here, but we need to find out why people can think that other people are something that they are not.
What is this us and them that separates us so strongly? We have to understand that. We have to analyze it. We have to be beat that.
BROWN: All right.
GROSS: This, what happened today is a symptom of a horrible disease, racism, and it's infecting society and it needs to be stopped.
BROWN: All right. Mark, go ahead.
SMITH: Once you have to draw the chalk line around the body, it's too late. You want to act beforehand to keep people alive. And the way you do that is through aggressive pro-active law enforcement and allowing people to defend themselves with guns so when they encounter the evil we saw today they can step up and protect themselves and not be killed and lose all their freedoms.
BROWN: All right.
GROSS: And we'll all kill each other.
BROWN: Gentlemen, on that note, unfortunately, I know it's a very difficult subject and a tough area to find common ground. I appreciate you both coming on, though. An important debate, thanks very much for your time tonight.
Tomorrow night, we are going to debate the premise we had originally planned to tonight, the war on drugs is a failure. We postponed that discussion because of today's breaking news, so we will have that debate for you tomorrow.
Now the man behind today's attacks, a white supremacist with a dark criminal past. Drew Griffin of our special investigations unit is digging deeper for us. That when we come back.
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BROWN: The man accused of carrying out today's attack on the U.S. Holocaust Museum has a long history of ties to white supremacist groups and had a criminal record long before today's shooting. Drew Griffin of our special investigations unit is here to take us inside the world of James von Brunn -- Drew.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE UNIT CORRESPONDENT: And that criminal record, Campbell, that was back in 1981, he became known to police in Washington, D.C. like now. A new president, a recession.
James von Brunn was upset over interest rates and the Jews, he believed controlling the economy. In December of that year, James von Brunn made a bizarre attempt to kidnap the Federal Reserve board.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN (voice-over): He was arrested at the Federal Reserve carrying a pistol, shotgun and a knife saying he was angry interest rates were too high. Convicted on charges that included attempting to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board, he was sentenced to six years. He later blamed his prison term on a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys and a Jew judge. He wrote on his Web site "Holy Western Empire."
It was after that sentence he began appearing regularly on hate Web sites like "Holy Western Empire," where his book "Kill the Best Gentiles" is for sale. On the Web site, he writes about what he calls the Jew conspiracy to destroy the white gene pool.
Von Brunn is a longtime Holocaust denier and police say has long been associated with hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking him for years and compiling a detailed file on him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, unfortunately, there are quite a few people that are motivated by the chronic hateful beliefs as he has. He's an anti-Semite. He's a racist. He's a Holocaust denier, and sometimes these guys go over the edge.
GRIFFIN: And some of what we know about him comes from his own writings. James Wieneke von Brunn was born in 1920. He's 88 years old now. On his Web site, he claims during World War II he was a PT boat captain and that he's a retired decorated naval reserve officer.
CNN has asked the Navy to confirm these details. The Navy tells us it's checking but that it cannot confirm any of them yet.
His ideas of the world come from Web site posting attributed to him. "The Federal Reserve Act 1913 gave Jews control of America's money," von Brunn writes. "America is a third-world racial garbage dump, stupid, ignorant, dead-broke and terminal," saying, "prepare to die, whitey."
He says the Anne Frank diary is a fake and his book blames Jews for the distraction of white race. He is a Holocaust denier in the true sense of the word. He has written Hitler's worst mistake that he didn't gas the Jews.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRIFFIN: Campbell, we have been trying to find some sort of catalyst for today's events, something to explain why this really elderly man who appears to have been inactive for some time suddenly active. Just nothing yet, Campbell.
BROWN: All right, Drew Griffin for us tonight. Drew, thanks very much.
Today's shooting attack follows a similar incident at a Kansas church where a gunman killed a doctor who performed late-term abortions and a shooting in an Army recruiting center. So the big question is tonight, are we really seeing the surge in domestic terrorism and if we are, what exactly is fueling it? We're going to talk about that when we come back.
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BROWN: Just in the last two weeks, we have seen a doctor who performed late-term abortions gunned down in his own church. Two Army recruiters shot, one killed in their office, and now a white supremacist is the suspect after a deadly shooting at the Holocaust Museum today. So what is behind our nation's homegrown terrorists?
We want to bring back our panel to talk about this. Steve Emerson, Jeff Toobin, Mark Potok. Also with us now is Pat Brown, a criminal profiler as well. Welcome to you, Pat, and to everybody.
Jeff, I want to start with you, and just tell people about this report that came out from Homeland Security and the FBI talking about right-wing extremism and it became very controversial.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It was in April and it talked about how the Department of Homeland Security was keeping an eye on certain right-wing groups because they appeared to be on the brink of violence. And there was a very negative reaction in right- wing talk radio. Michael Steele, the head of the RNC attacked Janet Napolitano for this report. And, in fact, this report now looks quite fresh.
BROWN: I was going to say given what's happened. Mark, you've been tracking this and you found a number of factors that you think -- first of all, you do believe there is a rise in domestic terrorism. But you've been tracking certain factors that you think are fueling it. Explain.
MARK POTOK, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Yes. I very much like the DHS report. We said a couple of months early in our own year-end report that it seemed quite clear that several things were going on.
On the one hand, we had several years, five or six years of this movement essentially growing on its exploitation, the immigration issue. In other words, they played very heavily on the idea that nonwhite immigrants were kind of flooding into the country.
In the last six or eight months, though, the two important factors that come into play those are, of course, Obama, the election of a black man to the White House, and the crumbling economy.
Obama's election in particular has really set off a spade of incidents. You mentioned a number in your intro, but there had been some really quite amazing cases.
A man in Maine building a dirty bomb because he was angry about Obama's election. A Marine lance corporal at Camp Lejeune allegedly plotting to assassinate Obama for the same reason. It goes on from there. It's really been quite something. And I think it's also worth adding that as Jeff Toobin pointed out, I mean, the reaction of the right to that DHS report was quite amazing. And, you know, as it turns out, it was an absolute tempest in a tea cup. That report was a sober assessment of what was actually going on, but, you know...
BROWN: Right.
POTOK: ... the right had to sort of interpret this as an attack on all conservatives which it clearly was.
BROWN: You're trying to jump in here. Steve, go ahead.
STEVE EMERSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, INVESTIGATIVE PROJECT ON TERRORISM: Yes, I disagree here. One, the report was by DHS. All it was was a compilation of organizations that they said were right-wing extremists. It didn't say they're doing any surveillance because they weren't allowed to do a surveillance on them.
The reaction from "the right" was because the stated implication of the report was that they were recruiting naval and military reservists who are coming back from Iraq or coming back from Afghanistan. That's what the criticism came from, and there was no evidence to support that whatsoever in the report.
But the reality is, it was very easy for DHS to issue that report because they called on all right-wing groups. But if DHS had issued a report about jihadist groups or what we call Islamist terrorist groups, there would have been an outcry. And that's why DHS prohibit the use of the term "Islamic terrorist," which is one thing we're not mentioning here.
BROWN: All right.
EMERSON: The reality is we can identify right-wing extremists and anti-Semite by describing what they believe in. When we talk about a jihadist, we don't use that term. We just call them somebody who is a shooter or a terrorist.
BROWN: All right. But I want to keep it on domestic terrorism. And let me bring you into this, Pat. Because I guess where I get a little confused is, how do you differentiate between just a lunatic acting out versus who can really be defined, someone who could really be defined as domestic terrorist?
PAT BROWN, CRIMINAL PROFILER: Yes, exactly. I think that is the big problem. I think we're calling terrorism -- terrorism should be something that's supported by a terrorist group. In other words, there's action by a number of people promoting a particular assault on somebody.
We are talking about one lone nut case and this is what we've got today. We've got one lone psychopath who happened to target the Holocaust Museum and happens to say that, oh, I'm against Jews.
Well, if you're somebody, you've got to be against somebody. So you have school shooters, who are they against? Oh, bullies in school. If you've got a white Minnesotan, he might hate the Hamams (ph).
He's just got to pick somebody because it can't be him. He's got to be against someone. And he's going to go out and he's going to make his day in the sun. He's going to get his bright hurrah. He's going to pick on somebody.
So we're confusing the two things. One, a lone nut case with actual organized terrorist groups like, for example, a jihadist group. That's a big difference because if you have that as being promoted by a particular country or a huge organization, then you have an issue.
BROWN: All right.
POTOK: Well, it's easy to dismiss these people as "nut cases."
BROWN: Quickly.
POTOK: But the fact is there is a real movement out there. And if you simply treat a guy like this person as a sociopath who comes out of nowhere...
P. BROWN: He's one.
POTOK: ... you know, I think that betrays a complete lack of understanding of the fact that there's a real ideology out there.
P. BROWN: No, he is a sociopath. Did you read his biography that he wrote himself? It's the most grandiose biography I've ever read. It's absolutely ludicrous.
So he wrote that himself because that's the way he sees himself. But he is not being backed by any particular group. It's his own personal vendetta.
BROWN: All right, guys, stand by. We're going to have a lot more on this. Coming up, the panel sticking around. Stay with us.
We're going to go to Larry King, though, who is just minutes away with Miss California and her return to the headlines.
Larry, give us a preview.
LARRY KING, HOST, "LARRY KING LIVE": We'll go to that later. But Liz Cheney and James Carville are here, Campbell. And they'll have more than a few things to say about where the Republican Party is headed.
And Katie Couric is going to stop by with Ethan Zohn. They're standing up to cancer. It's all next on "LARRY KING LIVE," Campbell.
BROWN: All right, Larry. We'll see you in a few minutes.
In just a moment, the panel is going to be back with what may be the biggest question of all. Are we focusing on the wrong bad guys? In targeting Al Qaeda, are we ignoring a greater threat here at home? We'll talk about that when we come back.
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BROWN: And our question about today's shooting is, are we focusing on the wrong bad guys?
Consider this, if James von Brunn, the suspect had been spouting Al Qaeda rhetoric instead of white supremacist rants, chances are he would have been in custody a long time ago. But is domestic terrorism a bigger threat than Al Qaeda now?
Back with us, Steve Emerson, Jeff Toobin, Fran Townsend and Pat Brown.
Fran, you certainly have experience here. Let me just ask the question bluntly, what do you think, domestic terrorism competing for our attention?
FRAN TOWNSEND, FORMER WHITE HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: I think people would be surprised, Campbell. Actually, there are now over 100 joint terrorism task forces around the country.
These task forces have both all of the federal law enforcement agencies as well as state and locals who have the best handle on their communities. They have not only international terrorism groups that they investigate, but every one of those terrorism task forces has a domestic terrorism investigative unit. They monitor these groups. They infiltrate these groups.
But I will tell you, Campbell, the difficulty here is with the First Amendment protection on free speech, you can say any hateful, evil thing you want. It's crossing the line into violent action and it doesn't matter how much resources you put against it. It's very, very difficult to detect when that individual is going to cross the line from saying hateful things to doing violent hateful things.
BROWN: And, Pat, let me let Pat jump in on that point -- Pat.
P. BROWN: Yes. Well, that's one of the problems you really never know. Because when you're dealing with a psychopath, they're always against somebody. They always want to be the one that's right and everybody else is wrong. That's how they get their glory.
And we hear this with people, for example, with Columbine and with Virginia Tech when we had the student shooters. They would say, well, we heard them talk about stuff like that but we didn't believe them because we hear kids say that all the time. But then all of a sudden they go out and they shoot down a couple dozen children. And where did that come from?
BROWN: Is there a better way, though, to predict that moment when somebody is going to cross the line?
P. BROWN: Well, we can see developing psychopathy. And the problem is people tend to minimize psychopaths. They say, well, he's just talking stuff. Well, when they start talking stuff and they start accumulating weapons, put them (ph) two together, and I know a lot of the people who are pro-gun, and I am one of them, by the way, before I get the hate mail, say, oh, she's saying that all guys who have weapons, they're going to go out and kill people.
No, I say if you have psychopathy and you have an obsession with weaponry and hatred, you put all that together, then you've got somebody you want to watch.
BROWN: Jeff?
TOOBIN: Let me just go back to your original question. Is domestic terrorism or Al Qaeda the bigger threat?
Al Qaeda is the bigger threat. Al Qaeda has made repeated attacks across this country. They've killed thousands of American people.
Look, this was terrible what happened today. The FBI, law enforcement should look into these groups. But Al Qaeda is a major international organization that attacked the World Trade Center in '93, that attacked the World Trade Center in 2001.
You had the shoe bomber try. You had the plot to this -- the millennium plot to get the airliners. I mean, I think this is -- there is a magnitude difference between the two.
EMERSON: Campbell, I agree with Jeff. First of all, the anti- Semitic plots that have succeeded or have been interdicted over the last decade largely have been lone wolf people.
Number two, when we talk about domestic terrorists, we are now using a term that used to be applied only to right-wing extremists. Now it applies also to domestic jihadists. So instead, it confused the definition of that term.
Number three, if you look at the plot in the last five years, the Fort Dix plot, which they plotted to kill 500 soldiers. And Liberty City plot, which they plotted to kill a couple of hundred people. The plot in the Bronx two weeks ago and they were going to blow up two synagogues, larger numbers of jihadist targets would be killed by the jihadist ideology than by their right-wing anti-Semitic extremists.
Now, it doesn't mean we should take our eyes off the ball and not track the bad guys, but Jeff is right. You can't track somebody unless they conduct -- they engage in a criminal predicate. The bad guys are largely going to be the jihadists, and that's where the resources are.
BROWN: And guys, a great discussion. I wish we had more time. Many, many thanks to our panel. To Fran in Washington, to Pat for joining us, Steve, here and Jeff Toobin, as always, thanks. Appreciate it, guys.
That is it for us tonight. Stay with CNN for a lot more on this developing story.
"LARRY KING LIVE" right now.
