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Hatchet Attack not Terrorism; Girls Lured by ISIS; Interview with Sen. Patrick Leahy on NSA Reforms; Interview with Rep. Andy Harris on A Travel Ban; Jesse Matthew to Face Charges for Separate Crime

Aired October 24, 2014 - 09:30   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, that breaking news concerns the New York hatchet attack. Authorities say based on everything they've seen so far, there is no indication that Zale Thompson, the man who wielded the axe, was tied to any radical Islamic group. Alexandra Field is tracking that story.

Why do they think that?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, this is something they've been looking into based really on some FaceBook postings and general questions about, you know, the possibility of lone wolf attacks in the U.S. given what we sew in Canada. So over the last day they have been looking at this possibility, whether he could have any radical ties. At this point they are coming out, New York City officials telling us, that he does not have any ties, that he is a convert to Islam, not clear when he converted, but they do not believe that this attack was motivated by any kind of extremist belief or affiliation.

In fact, they say, they still don't have a motive for this attack. What they are doing now is looking into his mental health history and they are looking for more clues about Zale Thompson by studying his social media activity. They say that there are heavy anti-white sentiments that he expresses there. But, again, underscoring the point that they do not believe that this was motivated by any religious extremism.

So they are trying to determine why this man wielding a hatchet would go after these four officers, rookie officers, who were standing together, had just posed for a photograph. Still a lot of questions in this case, but at this point authorities are able to tell us that they appear to have ruled out that it was motivated by that.

COSTELLO: Alexandra Field, thank you so much. I know you're going to continue to investigate, so come on back later.

We're also finding out more information about three teenaged girls who were planning to join ISIS. U.S. officials say they were flown back to Denver after landing in Germany on their way to Syria. These girls will not face charges, that's because police say they're teenagers. CNN's Ted Rowlands has more for you.

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TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As friends describe it, sisters, just 15 and 17 years old, along with their 15-year-old friend, were so determined to join ISIS, they were halfway to Syria before they were stopped, thanks to the father of the 15-year-old who discovered their plans after looking at his daughter's computer. He called authorities and also contacted his friend, Colorado State Representative Daniel Kagan.

REP. DANIEL KAGAN (D), COLORADO: She had been tweeting to her friends and discussing this plan to go to Syria and strike a blow for justice, as they saw it.

ROWLANDS: Authorities say when the girls were stopped at Germany, they had their passports, some clothes and about $2,000 they'd stolen from their parents. The girls were sent back to the United States and are now home with their families.

KAGAN: She's 15 years old. She has completely understood now what she just had no notion of before of what she was getting involved in.

ROWLANDS: Both sets of parents have declined interview requests. At the apartment complex where the sisters live, neighbors say they're concerned about the possibility that the girls will do something against the U.S., since they weren't able to fight for ISIS.

CATHERINE WILLIAMS, NEIGHBOR: If they knew what they were doing, yes, I'm really concerned.

KEVIN DERUSHA, NEIGHBOR: Oh, yes. I mean, they could just pick up arms any time now, you know, and go around to the schools or wherever and show up at school and just start killing people.

ROWLANDS: These aren't the first Colorado teens with aspirations to join jihad. Nineteen-year-old Shannon Conley was arrested in April on her way to Syria. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide materiel support to a terrorist organization.

The three teenagers are not expected to face charges, in part because they're minors. Kagan says he believes the girls were recruited online. ISIS and other groups use videos like this to lure westerners to join their cause. According to intelligence estimates, more than 100 Americans have joined ISIS to fight in Iraq and Syria.

ROWLANDS (on camera): Is there a concern that one or more of these girls will do something down the line?

KAGAN: Well, that's a legitimate concern and this is why the FBI is going into extraordinary depth as to how this came about, what has happened since they were apprehended, what -- how much do the girls involved feel an affiliation with this corrupted ideology that has been peddled to them.

ROWLANDS: None of the girls has returned to school. Both sets of parents are cooperating with authorities as the investigation continues.

Ted Rowlands, CNN, Denver.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Well, thank goodness the girl's father looked at her computer or she and her friend could, well, be in Syria right now. But this case does illustrate how difficult it is to track down Americans who become radicalized and want to fight with ISIS. That's why lawmakers like Senator Dan Coates are criticizing any drastic change to the way the NSA operates. Coates is worried Senator Patrick Leahy's bill to curb the NSA's power will endanger the country. Leahy disagrees. He says his bill would require the government to be more specific about which records it wants, and that means narrowing down the list by names or addresses instead of entire cities or zip codes. The NSA would also have to show how any information it wants is linked to a foreign terrorist and the government would be forced to disclose how much data it collects. Also, privacy advocates would be allowed to argue before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court, or FISA. Right now, only the government can lay out its case before those judges.

Joining me now on the phone is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the bill's sponsor, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Good morning, sir.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT (via telephone): Good morning. It's good to be with you.

COSTELLO: It's good to have you here this morning. Senator Dan Coates says your bill goes too far at a time the U.S. needs as many tools in its arsenal as possible. In other words, ISIS is inspiring these lone wolves who are notoriously hard to stop. Is this the right time to curb the nation's spy agency?

LEAHY: Of course it's the right time. And I - you know, I understand Dan Coates has his feelings, but he's wrong on this. I think the reason why there are so many people that sponsored my bill, they go from the right to left, and I'll give an example. Ted Cruz of Texas to Chuck Schumer of New York.

The -- but more importantly, it's backed by the director of National Intelligence, by the attorney general. Most of the high-tech companies know that if we don't have something like my bill, they're going to lose tens of billions of dollars in business overseas because people will stop trusting the United States. My bill is just a common sense way of saying collect information, but do it in a way where you protect the interests of innocent people.

COSTELLO: Uh-huh.

LEAHY: You know, if you collect everything, in some ways you have nothing. The director of NSA started talking about stopping 50 terrorist cases by their massive collection. But when you have to test by an open hearing where you have to follow the law and test via (ph) accurately, that came down to possibly one case. In the meantime, though, their own system was so laxed, they let a 29-year-old subcontractor, Edward Snowden, walk off with every embarrassing secret they had.

COSTELLO: Well, I'm glad you bring him up, senator, because Matthew Olson, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, says terrorists are changing how they communicate to avoid surveillance because of Edward Snowden's disclosures about NSA methods. And critics argue the NSA need latitude at this time because of Edward Snowden to refigure their methods without congressional interference. Do they have a point?

LEAHY: No. And, in fact, if they had followed some of the rules that we talked about, you never would have had an Edward Snowden. I mean this was pure carelessness on the part of the NSA. They talked about how well they protect everything. They couldn't even protect their greatest secrets from a subcontractor.

What we're saying is, make sure you go after the real targets. Make sure you do it in the way that we can follow through. I think that's why the director of National Intelligence supports my bill, but so do groups from the right to the left. The companies that have to actually carry out this mission, they do it. But most importantly, we have some way of knowing if our government is doing the things it should to keep us safe, and not doing things like just spying on us for the sake of spying on us.

Those of us who lived back in the time of J. Edgar Hoover realize how tyrannical our government could be if it was allowed to spy on everybody with no checks and balances. We -- you're always going to find something that people say, oh my God, look at this. We've got a terrorist attack in Canada. We forget one of the biggest terrorist attacks in this country was Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City, a retired military person, church-going American, and nothing that they talked about in all of these possible pieces of legislation would have stopped Timothy McVeigh from carrying out a horrific murderous attack on Americans.

COSTELLO: Well, Senator Patrick Leahy, I have to leave it there, and thank you so much.

And we did extend an invitation to Senator Dan Coates to come on and that invitation still stands.

Thank you so much, Senator Leahy. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, an American doctor returns from Africa and becomes the first Ebola case in New York City. Would a travel ban have prevented this new scare in the nation's most crowded city? I'll talk with a lawmaker who says it's time for swift action.

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COSTELLO: All right, you're looking at live pictures from Capitol Hill right now. A national nurse's group will be testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak. Of course, we'll keep an eye on the hearing and we'll bring you any updates.

I think we're going to dip in and listen to the ranking member, Congressman Elijah Cummings. He's giving his opening remarks. So let's listen for just a bit.

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), RANKING MEMBER, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: To protect our health care workers, many of whom are here today. And to those health care workers, on behalf of a grateful Congress and a grateful nation, I thank you for what you do every day.

I want to express our thanks to Nina Pham and to Amber Vinson, the two nurses from Texas who contracted Ebola when they treated Mr. Duncan. By now, we've all seen their pictures -- two brave, young women who risked their lives to simply do their job and to feed their souls, just like nurses across this country every single day, 24/7, 365 days a year. I understand that Ms. Pham's condition has been upgraded and Ms. Vinson has now been cleared of the virus. We thank them for their bravery and their commitment.

This new case in New York should also demonstrate that we can no longer ignore the crisis in West Africa. We can no longer ignore it. Nearly 10,000 people have died from this disease or are battling with it as we speak, many in the most gruesome conditions imaginable. I firmly believe we have a fundamental moral and humanitarian obligation to address the crisis in Africa. We are the richest nation in the world and we have the resources and expertise to make the biggest difference.

However --

COSTELLO: All right, we're going to hop out of this. But you can clearly understand how Congressman Cummings feels about this issue, but let's talk more about this.

Officials here in New York are trying to tamp down public concerns after learning that that the first case of Ebola popped up in the city. Dr. Craig Spencer is in a hospital in isolation today. He returned last week from the West African nation of Guinea where he had been treating Ebola patients.

My next guest believes there should be a travel ban from those countries hardest hit by Ebola. Maryland Congressman Andy Harris is a medical doctor and he's a member of the Republican Doctors Caucus. Welcome, sir.

REP. ANDY HARRIS (R), MARYLAND: Good to be with you this morning.

COSTELLO: It's nice to have you here. Thanks so much.

A travel ban, though, would it be enough? Because most flights from West Africa have connecting flights that would be difficult to ban from flying into the United States. Are you really talking about visa restrictions?

HARRIS: Well, at the hearing last week, Customs and Border Protection made it clear that they could know who flying on the connecting flights originated in one of the three countries and a travel ban could be in effect. We would probably capture 90 percent to 95 percent of people attempting to enter the United States, even if they come through Europe.

COSTELLO: So you're talking about visa restrictions, ultimately.

HARRIS: That's right. Of course, if it was an American citizen returning, then I think what we need to do is we need to have supervised quarantine and I think the doctor in New York, I think that case proves that. He obviously came in without a fever but he was a carrier and thank goodness it seems that it was caught in time without a large threat of infecting other people. But there are other people who enter this country who might not be as diligent about taking their temperature or reporting back to authorities.

COSTELLO: In your mind, what should this doctor have done when he returned from West Africa?

HARRIS: I think our best policy really should be supervised quarantine for people returning. And we could build the quarantine facilities; they wouldn't have to be harsh facilities. But in return for being allowed to come back into the country from a place where a deadly disease is endemic, you'd have to enter a quarantine facility and be supervised for 21 days.

COSTELLO: I know it's hard to talk -- I don't know what the proper term is -- it's hard to talk logically about Ebola because it's such a scary virus. But I just want to lay this by you. A group of infectious disease specialists conducted a study and found less than three infected travelers would get on a plane and less than one would actually come into the United States. If that's true, wouldn't a travel ban just make a marginal difference?

HARRIS: Look, Mr. Duncan and this doctor both would have been caught up in a travel ban. We would have gotten them. Both of them entered the country, neither of them febrile when they entered the country, and it just indicates -- I don't care what the study says -- two patients have come in, with our current systems in place, and have entered the country as carriers of Ebola. And it is a scary virus. We should do everything we can to make sure we contain it to a smaller (sic) number of people as possible.

COSTELLO: And of course, as you well know, the government did put new restrictions into place. All travelers from West Africa have to come into five airports. There is enhanced screening. Those people are supposedly monitored for 21 days. So is that effective at all in your mind?

HARRIS: You know, it's -- look, it's self-monitoring. Again, if you're diligent like this doctor was, then self-monitoring might work, but the vast majority of people who are coming in are probably not going to be as diligent. They may mistake their temperature. They may go 12, 24, 36 hours being infectious, not knowing that they're infectious, if they ultimately do self-report and turn themselves in before they're very sick like Mr. Duncan was. COSTELLO: I understand. And, you know, we always like to be

responsible in our coverage of Ebola and you're a doctor. If you were in New York City, would you ride the subway today?

HARRIS: Oh, I would ride the subway today. But I'd also wish that the government would take further steps to make sure it doesn't happen again.

COSTELLO: All right, Congressman Andy Harris, thank you so much for being with me. I appreciate it.

I'll be right back.

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COSTELLO: Jesse Matthew, the man suspected in the disappearance of UVA student Hannah Graham, will now face charges for a separate crime after a Virginia judge issued a bench warrant for his arrest. The warrant is for an alleged attempted murder and sexual assault that police say took place in 2005.

Joining me now, CNN's Brian Todd and HLN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson. Good morning to both of you.

Brian, I'd like to start with you. It isn't just this 2005 case. There's yet another case that had a conviction but is now being reopened as officials try to discover if Jesse Matthew had anything to do with that. Walk us through that.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. That's the case of Alexis Murphy. She was a 17-year-old who went missing in August of 2013. Her body was never found, but her abandoned car was found in Charlottesville.

Now, officials here tell myself and our colleague Jean Casarez that there is DNA testing, foreign DNA testing, from her car that's being done at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia. Testing to determine whether that DNA matches Jesse Matthew's DNA. So even though a body was never found and there is a conviction, a gentleman named Randy Taylor was convicted in that case of murdering Alexis Murphy, they are still testing this car to see if there are any signs of Jesse Matthew's DNA in that car.

COSTELLO: Joey, what do you make of that? It seems like that would be a difficult task for police.

JOEY JACKSON, HLN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you know what, Carol, there's a couple things. First of all, obviously the family of that particular victim, they deserve a fresh look, of course. and the defendant himself, right, deserves a fresh look.

However, I think that we have to have pause here for a couple of reasons. The county attorney is pretty confident, Carol, that they got the right guy. The family is pretty confident that they got the right guy, and for good reason, because the person who was convicted, there was, of course, a bloody shirt of the victim found at his home. The cell phone of the victim found at his home. Hair extensions of the victim found at his home. And the eyeglasses of the victim -- or at least the, excuse me, the eyelashes of the victim found in his home.

And in addition to that, we also know that the defendant in that particular case tried to get out of it by giving a description of another man, saying he had cornrows. Of course, we know Jesse Matthew has -- not cornrows but he has dreadlocks. And there's been other misinformation given.

And so while they should take a look anew, I think the police are pretty confident and the D.a. is pretty confident, that the right guy has been convicted in that particular case.

COSTELLO: OK. Well, let's go back to Hannah Graham. And I'd like to talk to you, Brian, a little bit about the skeletal remains found in southern Virginia and how long it might take for police to identify them.

TODD: Well, Carol, we were told it would take a few days. Experts have said everything from maybe two days it would take to identify those remains to maybe 14 days, so it really could come any time now. The most common refrain we've heard is that it could take anywhere from 7 to 10 days. That would put it as possibly as making an announcement tomorrow on Saturday, possibly next Tuesday.

But they're being very, very careful. They kept the rest of the skeletal remains on the site for a few days so that they could just comb over every possible detail. They needed to go underneath those remains to see if DNA had kind of seeped into the soil. They had to test all around those remains to see if there was any other trace of DNA. So they're being extremely careful, Carol. So we may not hear maybe for a few days.

COSTELLO: And, Joey, I'm just wondering. Let's say police do identify these remains as Hannah Graham's. Will they immediately charge Jesse Matthew in the case?

JACKSON: Well, what happens is this, Carol -- the fact that there's a body now, we know he has been charged with abduction with intent to defile, which is essentially a sex abuse charge, which is very significant, OK. But we also know that that charge could be upgraded in the event that this is Hannah Graham, most unfortunately, to murder.

And in the event that happens, it's significant, the finding of the body, because of the evidence they're looking for. And so the time frame they used to do it will depend on when they feel it's right, when they feel they have enough, when they feel that it's the appropriate time to upgrade the charges.

But just remember, in the event that this is the body, there is a treasure trove of DNA evidence that will be very compelling that will link whoever did this to that particular crime.

COSTELLO: And also, Brian, you went to Jesse Matthew's apartment. What did you discover?

TODD: Well, there wasn't much left there that Jesse Matthew had left behind. There's a new tenant in the apartment and most of the stuff there is the new tenant's. and we saw what we believe Jesse Matthew left behind there, was a black footrest that was smudged with white paint and a rolled up exercise mat.

The apartment itself is kind of dark and a little bit dank and it's on the ground floor of a walk up, of a brick walkup in Charlottesville, that's all we can tell you. But most of Jesse Matthew's belongings have been taken away.

COSTELLO: All right, Brian Todd and Joey Jackson, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

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