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NYPD Stays on Guard for Terror Threat; March of Unity in Paris; Possible Connection between al Qaeda and Islamic State; Authorities Search for Woman Linked to Terrorists

Aired January 12, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now in the NEWSROOM.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: Je suis Charlie!

COSTELLO: Charlie.

CROWD: Expression! Liberte!

COSTELLO: Liberty.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: Unity, a country ...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, I'm not going to win.

COSTELLO: And the world --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We must demonstrate our determination to fight against anything that can divide us.

COSTELLO: Come together as new threats against America are being uncovered.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The target is to just go out and kill law enforcement and other officials.

COSTELLO: Investigators learning more about the people behind the attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With an ISIS flag in the background, this video appears to show terror suspect Amedy Coulibaly pledging his allegiance to ISIS.

COSTELLO: Many are asking where was the United States, Obama in the White House, Biden at home in Delaware, sharp criticism this morning. Should our president have been at the rally? Let's talk live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Ripples of terror and ramped up vigilance. The New York Police Department warns its officers to be on guard after a four months old threat from ISIS resurfaces. The video calls on radical followers to kill cops, soldiers and civilians. NYPD goes on high alert and the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issue warnings of their own.

In Paris, world leaders unite and age old hostilities fade. Israel's leader marches with its Palestinian counterpart, for one brief moment solidarity is the greater cause. So, why isn't the U.S. in the picture? I want to bring in my colleague Jim Sciutto who'll be joining me from Paris throughout this hour. Jim, I know you are outside of the Charlie Hebdo offices where the three days of terror began with that first explosion of gunfire. Tell us about the memorial behind you.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I tell you, Carol, in these last few days we've watched this memorial grow every day. People coming by to leave more flowers and to leave more tellingly, crowns, pens and pencils, a symbol of those cartoonists who lost their lives on this street to those attackers on that day on Wednesday or even just coming by to spend a moment to show their respect to remember the victims.

But I'll tell you, the dominant emotion, the dominant motivation that I felt in these last few days, I think most broadly demonstrated in that Paris march yesterday, is one of defiance and strength and courage. Paris went through enormous bouts of violence in these last few days, but people are showing that strength by living their lives. 3.7 million people turn out in Paris and around the country yesterday. More than 1.5 million here in the capital alone. A bigger public demonstration has never been seen before in France's history even going back to the end of World War II and in those numbers, in that defiance, in that strength, you are seeing what the dominant answer is meant to be here from France to this terrorism and that's a very simple one, Carol, which is we're going to stand up to this, we're going to live our lives, we're not going to be cowered by this, we are not going to be scared by this. But listen, there are still questions to answers. Answer here, investigators in Paris scrambling to learn more about those behind the attacks and France's prime minister says the terrorist in that kosher grocery store did not, he believes, act alone. CNN's Erin McLaughlin joins us now from our Paris bureau here. Erin, what more have you learned today about the investigation?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim. The prime minister of France saying that Amedy Coulibaly undoubtedly had an accomplice. That announcement on the heels of that ISIS video that mysteriously emerged on the Internet yesterday, in which Coulibaly pledged his allegiance to ISIS, and the prime minister this morning saying there is a very real threat facing France and they're increasing the security in this country as a result. Let me just take you through some of the numbers. 8,700 police officers on the street. 4,700 police officers at Jewish schools. And the Ministry of Defense here in France announcing some 10,000 more troops to maintain security here in this country.

But, you know, those really are short-term solutions and analysts I've been speaking to say there are some serious long-term problems, not just facing France, but Europe as well. Yesterday there was a meeting of European justice ministers as well as interior ministers on their agenda talking about greater cooperation within Europe, things like border - increasing border controls, increasing or adjusting the freedom of movement inside Europe because analysts I've been speaking to are saying that Europe right now has very porous borders and that's incredibly problematic when you consider, for instance, the influx of things like weapons into Europe from places such as Libya. They are really struggling to get control of this problem. The very same weapons controlled by criminal gangs, I'm told, that were used in those terrorist attacks. The question now, Jim, is what are authorities going to do about it?

SCIUTTO: You make a great point there. Many American viewers might not be aware of it, but across borders within the European Union, you don't even need to show your passport. It's like crossing state borders in the U.S. that makes those kinds of controls more difficult. One open question, Erin, is this, when the prime minister said today he believes there was another accomplice who may still be on the loose, he seemed to leave it open as to whether that accomplice is another person we haven't heard about or the woman, Hayat Boumeddiene, the partner of Amedy Coulibaly, who took that kosher grocery store, is the one that he's talking about. Have you gotten any clarity as to who they believe whether this is an additional person that they believe was the accomplice?

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, not at the moment, Jim. But I understand that Christiane Amanpour is going to be interviewing the prime minister later today and no doubt she's going to be asking that very question. But you're right. He wasn't clear about that. And a gain, I thought it was particularly interesting considering the timing of that announcement came on the heels of the release of that ISIS video yesterday. Which begs the question well, who released that ISIS video? Questions no doubt that authorities here in this country are trying to answer now.

SCIUTTO: No question, Erin. They also have questions looking back as to how the warning signs were missed on these attackers. A reminder the Kouachi brothers who killed the cartoonists here at the Charlie Hebdo officers, they were under police surveillance for a number of years. That surveillance was stopped last summer, Carol. These are real questions that have to be answered here. But, you know, I wonder if we put this in American context, France has an estimated 5,000 suspected terrorists. Imagine the security measures we might see on the place in the U.S. or just the level of fear we might see in the U.S. if the numbers were similar there.

COSTELLO: Hayat Boumeddiene. I want to put up a picture of her, because this is what we found, this is the past picture we don't know exactly when it was taken. But you can see her in a bikini. Can we have that picture put up? We're getting it. And, you know, we know so little about her, but it does make you wonder how a woman goes from this to a woman covered in a burqa and escaping to Turkey and into Syria and having a relationship with this extremist. So, at some point she was radicalized. And I'm sure the French authorities are looking into that as well, Jim. JOHN MILLER: I think New York City based on what Commissioner Ray Kelly built before Commissioner Bratton was here and based what we've continued, based upon what we've continued to build on top of has a capability within a municipal police department that is singular in terms of bandwidth. We also have the joint terrorism taskforce with the FBI, which is the first and largest JTTF in the country. So, it doesn't mean we don't run up against the same challenges. It means we have a few more layers to go against them.

COSTELLO: OK. I was asking Jim Sciutto that question. That was John Miller, the New York Police Deputy Commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism. And we're going to talk about that in just a minute. But Jim, going back to this woman, this woman authorities are looking for this woman. How she became radicalized and fell in with this man who held up that kosher grocery store.

SCIUTTO: It's a good question. This is something that police is trying to discover. A good deal of it came from her relationship with Amedy Coulibaly. But it's interesting, you know, see that picture there in a bikini, and wonder, how she could end up being such a devout Islamist? But so many of these terrorist suspects have an interesting path. Coulibaly, the Kouachi brothers talked about these people who drank. They used drugs, et cetera. They didn't start as devout Muslims. It happened over time. For several of them it happened during prison. They were radicalized in prison, which is not a phenomenon that is unfamiliar in the U.S. There are prison converts to Islam. Which is not a problem.

There's nothing wrong with it in itself. But the issue is when it happens to be a convert to radical Islam and that's something that U.S authorities are very conscious of. Certainly, European authorities. So, people can change over time. They can change in a remarkably short period of time and that's one thing that makes it very difficult for counterterror, officials and agencies, intelligence agencies, to make judgments on who is going to end up being the attacker. It's just a difficult thing to do. It is far from an exact science. And we saw that here in France. They had these guys under surveillance. At some point six months ago they decided they weren't a risk and took them off surveillance and six months later this happens.

COSTELLO: All right. Jim, stay right there. I'm going to bring in a CNN national security analyst Bob Baer in just a second. But first, I want to talk about a video message from ISIS or DAESH, as the Pentagon likes to call the terrorist group. This video encourages followers to rise up and kill intelligence officers, police officers, soldiers, and civilians. According to New York City police, it specifically names the United States, France, Australia, and Canada as targets.

Authorities are concerned because these types of attacks are low tech, low cost and high yield attacks. John Miller, the New York police deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism says New York is well equipped to handle such attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILLER: I think New York City based on what Commissioner Ray Kelly built before Commissioner Bratton was here and based on what we've continued based upon what we've continued to build on top of has a capability within a municipal police department that is singular in terms of band width. We also have the joint terrorism taskforce with the FBI, which is the first and largest JTTF in the country. So, it doesn't mean we don't run up against the same challenges. It means we have a few more layers to go against them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And Jim Miller also called these attacks as I said low cost. One of the terrorists in Paris actually thanked ISIS on video for providing the money needed to carry out the mission. It wasn't much money, was it?

SCIUTTO: No, it wasn't. And this is one thing that French authorities have said they're going to track very closely is how much money and how did they get their money, but the sad fact is that, yes, it requires some money and they had an incredible arsenal of weapons. Remember, they had explosives, they had a rocket propelled grenade, machine guns, automatic weapons. But think about that. That's - that's actually not that much particularly in a country like the U.S. where you have so many places where you can buy guns. The sad fact is, it doesn't take many people or many weapons to carry out a very deadly attack that attracts people's attention and that's one of the problems here.

You know, speaking to counterterror officials for some months now. They said that the threat from al Qaeda and al Qaeda type groups has changed over the last several years. Less one big international organization led by Osama bin Laden. More a number of small offshoots, franchises, et cetera, maybe with less ambitious attacks planned that require more money, more people, et cetera. But those smaller attacks, smaller groups of people are, frankly, harder to track and therefore harder to stop.

COSTELLO: Right. Bob, his video that was re-released by ISIS, it's more than propaganda, isn't it? It's a call to arms.

ROBERT BAER, NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It is a call to arms, Carol. And more than that, the Islamic state is in their terms successful. It has a capital. It has a military. The government in Baghdad has been unable to really have any good gains on it. The Kurds have stopped it. But it is a state of nearly 20 million people and it's not going anywhere and I think this is why Coulibaly has sworn allegiance to it. And I don't think we should exclude some sort of union between al Qaeda and the Islamic State. I noticed there is a lot of doctrinal differences, but at the end of the day they follow the same violent ideology, which is easily obtained on the Internet and the sheikhs that propound this are, most of them are out of jail and there's not much you can do about it. So, I think that the success of the Islamic State again, in their terms, is what is drawing adherence whether they are French Americans or whoever.

COSTELLO: It's interesting you say that, Bob. Because you always hear there's a war within extremists groups. Is there or isn't there? BAER: No, there's not a war. I mean I think our analysts like to

look at it that way. And, you know, one has a different strategy of going international and one is to establish the state, but at the end of the day, there's a whole body of Islamic thought that says that if politics don't work or words don't work, turn to violence. And this has been established for hundreds of years and this is what these people are drawing on. So, yes, they may have differences but at the end of the day they share the same agenda, which is a caliphate and to drive the foreigners out of Islamic countries.

COSTELLO: Of course, Jim, their mission is to spread fear so talk about the atmosphere in Paris today. Are people going about their business as usual?

SCIUTTO: They really are, Carol. I think we have to be enormously impressed as a New Yorker myself it reminds me in many ways of the reaction after 9/11 there was a, you know, almost a defiant sense that I'm going to live my life - we are going to live our lives after this despite the threat. You certainly see it here. Restaurants are full. Shops are full. Streets are full. Doesn't mean people are forgetting, and that's why you still have this crowd behind me paying tribute in effect to the victims of Charlie Hebdo coming by for a moment of silence to take some flowers, to leave behind pens and pencils, et cetera, as a sign of tribute to those cartoonists. But the city itself and the country itself is responding with strength. And that would only be the case if you could have 3.7 million people around the country go out in public yesterday for that march despite the fact that there's a continuing terror threat here.

COSTELLO: All right. Jim Sciutto, Bob Baer, I have to leave it there. Thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the "NEWSROOM," where was President Obama? That's the question being asked by many after he failed to attend yesterday's massive rally for unity in Paris, but French officials say the president was very present. We'll talk about the fallout next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: As millions of people swarm the streets of Paris this weekend, the image of one group dominated the headlines and generated some controversy too. Leaders of Europe and beyond linking arms and making a strong show of unity in the aftermath of the deadly terror attacks. More than 40 heads of state in all, but absent from that group, President Obama. And Vice President Joe Biden and other top White House officials. Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris, but he was not seen at the rally. He did, however, attend a security summit on counterterrorism and in an interview this morning with CNN, the woman who was there, the U.S. ambassador to France, Jane Hartley defended the administration's actions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JANE HARTLEY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE: And I met with Attorney General Holder in the morning yesterday. After that he spent a huge amount of time at the Elysee Palace and after that was in a key ministerial meeting with Minister Cazeneuve discussing how we could work even more closely together. And I want to tell you when I went to the Elysee palace and saw President Hollande, he pulled me aside and thanked me for the U.S. cooperation and particularly thanked me for President Obama going to the French embassy. So, I think if you talk to the French, they think that we have been unbelievably supportive. I don't really want to get into the attorney general's travel schedule.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Joining me now to talk about this, Edward Isaac Dovere, the senior White House reporter for Politico. Welcome.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, POLITICO: Good morning, Carol, how are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good. Glad you're here. You wrote this about President Obama's absence calling it "Barack Obama's French Kiss off." Ouch.

(LAUGHTER)

DOVERE: This was a decision that made a lot of people very confused. The president was not there. The vice president was not there. Secretary of State wasn't there. Even as you had 44 world leaders locking arms in a really stunning show of solidarity and unity. It's symbolism, sure, but it's symbolism that people took note of.

COSTELLO: We had a lot of people on the ground in Paris. Nobody in France seems to mind very much that a top White House official wasn't at this unity rally.

DOVERE: Well, that's, of course, what the ambassador to France from the United States said. She was the one at the rally. She was the high profile figure.

COSTELLO: I don't know. And official in the Hollande - the President's office in France, President Hollande, an official in his office said that too.

DOVERE: Well, this is something that people have taken issue with and there's a question of spin that comes after the fact. But what the U.S. argument here is, that number one, that there's a security concern it seems just in general of putting the president out in an open space and doing it on short notice and number two, that this wasn't meant to be about the president of the United States showing up and making the United States central to the question here. This was a world event, is the thinking about not having the president there and not an American event. That said, it made a lot of people take notice that there was not a higher level American presence than the Ambassador Jane Hartley. Even they had, as you mention in the run-up there, Eric Holder, the attorney general, was in Paris and he left before the march happened. We don't know why that was. The Justice Department just told us "He had to leave."

COSTELLO: I know. I'm trying to find an answer to that one too. And I just can't. It's just bizarre. So John Kerry is on his way to Paris later this week. Will that help? What might he say? I don't know.

DOVERE: Well, it's not clear what exactly he's going to do when he's in Paris. He obviously won't be part of the march. I'm sure he'll be meeting with some of his French counterparts and probably the French president as well. He dismissed the criticism over not going to the march and not having a bigger presence in the march as sort of quibbling. And of course, there was the march in Paris, there was also a companion march that the French embassy organized here in Washington yesterday and there wasn't much of an American presence in terms of high level officials there either. There's Victoria Nuland who is an assistant secretary of state, but again, this isn't someone who is a major American figure like the figures who showed up from their countries in Paris or even the ambassadors to - a number of other countries - from another countries to the United States that were at the march in Washington yesterday.

COSTELLO: OK. So, let's look at big picture. Because, you know, it does look bad. The big picture. Does it really matter?

DOVERE: Well, the White House would say no. The argument that they make is that behind the scenes there's been an enormous amount of coordination and collaboration between American and French officials over the last few days both in terms of counterterrorism, security, support, all of those things that they say are much more important than a photograph of where the president is or the vice president is. So that is their argument here. And it seems like that's where the French have turned to to say that they are very satisfied with the cooperation they are getting from the American government.

COSTELLO: All right. Edward-Isaac Dovere from - thanks so much for being with me. I appreciate it.

DOVERE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, new clues from the Java Sea. The first black box now with investigators. So how can it help determine if AirAsia flight 8501 exploded as it impacted with the water? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Could AirAsia flight 8501, could it have exploded as it hit the Java Sea? One Indonesian official says that shocking new theory might be true. He is suggesting the wreckage indicates the left side of the plane disintegrated, possibly from an explosion. But there are other investigators who say there's no data to support this theory. All of this comes as the first flight data recorder is pulled from the sea and is now in the hands of investigators. So, let's talk more about this with CNN safety analyst David Soucie, a former FAA safety inspector. Hi, David.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Good morning, Carol, how are you?

COSTELLO: Good morning, and I should also mention, you're also the author of the book "Why Planes Crash." I want to get that in for you, too. So, when investigators say the plane exploded, do they really mean the plane exploded?

SOUCIE: I don't think so, Carol. There's no evidence that shows anything about any kind of explosion. I think what they might be referring to if you look at the sides of the aircraft, it appears as though the top of the aircraft was opened up from the inside out, which would be indicative of a very hard, fast landing and it could have hit the water thereby, the differential pressure between the aircraft on inside and the outside would have caused the rupture, and rupture would be a much more adequate term to use than explosion, certainly.