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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Attackers Tied to Jihad Ring; French Prime Minister Speaks; Flight 8501 Black Boxes Found

Aired January 12, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Jake Tapper in Paris. Welcome to a special edition of LEGAL VIEW here in Paris.

And, indeed, all over France, the focus is shifting today from the historic displays of solidarity that we saw in the face of the jihadi terror, to historic displays of security. The French government saying today that 10,000 soldiers will augment a force of more than 8,000 police officers to safeguard so-called vulnerable areas. Topping the list of vulnerable areas, more than 700 Jewish schools across the country.

One day after joining some 40 other world leaders on the boulevards of Paris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today visited the kosher supermarket where four Jews were slaughtered by a terrorist on Friday. Back in Washington, D.C., a senior U.S. official tells CNN that the kosher supermarket gunman, the terrorist seen here in a video posted on jihadi websites, had been in a U.S. terrorist database, quote, "for a while."

CNN has also learned that the man's companion and suspected accomplice, Hayat Boumeddiene, is likely in Syria now, having arrived from Turkey last Thursday. Turkish media say she arrived in Turkey from Spain January 2nd. She's in the white head dress on the right side of your screen.

Secretary of State John Kerry is in India today, but he says he is coming to France on Thursday. He is defending the absence of any top U.S. government officials at yesterday's march. That has not silenced the critics, of course, whose views may be summed up on the cover of this morning's "New York Daily News." The paper saying that the Obama administration, quote, "let the world down" by not sending any high level official to the march.

Connections between the brothers who carried out the "Charlie Hebdo" massacre last Wednesday and the ISIS foot soldier terrorist who stormed the Jewish supermarket date back a decade to a ring of jihadis who funneled French militants to Iraq. Let's hear that story now from CNN's Arwa Damon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The network was nickname after where its members worked out, this park in Paris, Bitshumul (ph), with an aim far from its tranquil setting, to send French nationals to fight American troops in Iraq.

Magail (ph), an investigative journalist formerly with France 3, spent month on a documentary delving into Bitshumul (ph) back in 2005.

MAGAIL SERRE, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: So three there in Iraq, you see.

DAMON: One of them, according to her reporting, in an attempted suicide attack against U.S. forces along Baghdad's notorious airport road. And that was Cherif Kouachi's aim, to be a martyr in Iraq. He, like the others, was not particularly religious, and yet drawn into, (INAUDIBLE) explains, radical Islam and then to war by this man, Farid Benyettou.

SERRE: He told them, you have to discover your identity, your roots. You have a - you have to know who you are, you know? And it's why they were listening him, you know, because he was like a prophet for them, you know? Somebody who knew more the Koran.

DAMON: Benyettou spoke about the abuses committed by U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib to recruit. Kouachi never made it to Iraq, detained along with six others, including Benyettou in 2005. All as seen in court documents obtained by CNN, in conjunction with (INAUDIBLE), charged with conspiring to commit acts of terrorism. The common link among them, Benyettou. According to the documents, three of the men had already traveled to Fallujah in 2004 when it was under the control of al Qaeda in Iraq's leader, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi. Kouachi told the court he was relieved he was detained and, according to Serre's interview with Kouachi's social worker, finished with so-called jihad. But in prison is when the real radicalization began.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were in prison with other hard liner, including a central figure in the al Qaeda networks in Europe, Jimal Degal (ph).

DAMON: Algerian born Degal, jailed for plotting to attack the U.S. embassy in Paris in 2001.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he in prison became the mentor, spiritual mentor, continued the work in some way initiated by Benyettou, and maintained these links between them in prison, radicalized them even more because his was in direct contact, we should not forget about it, he was in direct contact with the highest ranking members of al Qaeda at the time.

DAMON: This terrifying attack on French soil, carried out not by returnees from Syria, not by foreigners, but by two brothers born and radicalized here in France.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Now I want to bring in my CNN colleague, Christiane Amanpour. She's in our Paris bureau a few blocks away, and from Phoenix, CNN military analyst and retired Major General James "Spider" Marks. Thank you both for being here.

Christiane, good to see you again. You just interviewed the French prime minister. What did he have to say?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, more on the investigation, obviously saying that the crisis and alert remains very high. Looking for accomplices. Now, he said that and we've all wondered what exactly he means. He told me that they're not looking for a specific person that they might have in mind, but trying to figure out whether there was a bigger cell to all of this. Who funded, who organized, who instigated, who set up the cache of weapons that were found in one of the apartments over the weekend and what is the situation?

Prime Minister Manuel Valls told me he does not believe that this was a lone wolf attack. And he also admitted that intelligence, something went wrong. He admitted that he had tried, when he was interior minister, to reform intelligence and that needs to be stepped up and sped up. And he said that there is a parliamentary sort of committee that's being formed about this, which is very possibly likely to lead to some kind of parliamentary investigation.

TAPPER: Very interesting.

General, the French government today announcing that 10,000 additional troops, 8,000 police out there providing security at vulnerable points. I was outside a Jewish school outside Paris just earlier and it the jarring to see two men with semi-automatic weapons standing there outside the school, two soldiers. Do you think that this is for show or is this for real? In other words, is almost 20,000 for a country of more than 60 million enough?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well I think what we're seeing right now is there is probably some good intelligence that really links this activity to being anti-semantic, which we didn't necessarily see up front. And what we really were seeing was clearly a form of radical jihad which was, you know, terrorism against western society at large that was essentially radicalized locally and had been implemented locally.

I think, though, the issue probably is not intelligence gone bad, although the prime minister indicated that they wanted to have an additional look at that. Of course that's always what you do. There's a lot of green on that pool table between, you know, operational success and intelligence failure. I mean there's some distance that's now going to be achieved and people are going to be pointing fingers. Realize that what the French have done most recently is they did an organizational adjustment to their intelligence, their analytical arm, as well as their surveillance arm, and they combined those two so you'd really close the loop between intelligence and then opportunities for targetable intelligence and then action, doing something against it.

But clearly what we see right now is, there's probably some intelligence that's very precise that says, there needs to be some upended protections that need to be in place against or around and protecting the Jewish community. It looks like there's something else to this that we just haven't seen yet.

TAPPER: Christiane, you also spoke with a Muslim leader who appealed to the country of France? What did he have to say? What was his pitch?

AMANPOUR: Well, you know, Jake, as always after these attacks, the refrain is, where are the moderate Muslims to shout "not in my name"? We saw that yesterday. One of the successes of the rally was that the Muslims were in the street. The leaders of France's Muslim community were there in the front row of the marches. And you remember that very poignant girl that our Fred Pleitgen found, a Muslim girl, with a sign that said, "I am Jewish" today. And I asked that of the rector of the grand mosque, who's also the president of the Association of French Muslims, and he said we have to be incredibly vigilant now. We must have a reform inside Islam to rip out, rip out the heart of what we called this mutated form of Islam. Listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DALIL BOUBAKEUR, RECTOR, GREAT MOSQUE OF PARIS (through translator): Today, we want to appeal for a change in religious thinking in Islam. That we abandon political Islam. That we should not turn it into a policy, but to keep it as a religion.

A religion which doesn't ask people to kill anyone, nor to carry out anti-semantic acts or anything political. Islam is a religion of peace, a religion of tolerance, a religion in which people can live together, in which people can be brought up in accordance with the ethics and morals of democracy. And it should be an example of humanism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: He spoke also obviously about not just the "Charlie Hebdo" cartoonists, but the Jews who were killed at the kosher supermarket, saying that this was unacceptable. Ripped into the west for supporting nations like Saudi Arabia and others who have a very strong wahabi (ph), very hard line jihadi kind of Islam in their midst. And also the prime minister said, I will not allow this country to see its Jews leave. France is not France without its Jews and we will do everything to protect them.

Jake.

TAPPER: Indeed very interesting. It's been observed by some cynics in the French press that the Saudi ambassador's presence at the rally yesterday was a farce that the staff of "Charlie Hebdo" would have enjoyed.

Christiane Amanpour, thank you so much. Major General Spider Marks, stay with us.

There were calls for unity and solidarity and liberty yesterday at that very moving event. By the looks of it, leading from around the world were standing together as one against terrorism. But what about the U.S.?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Marching arm in arm to show solidarity against the terrorists attacks in Paris, 3.7 million people flooded streets across France yesterday, along with 40 world leaders. It was hard to find an image more powerful than this one. British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Together there was, of course, one glaring absence, the United States, which counts France as its oldest alley.

Who was the highest ranking U.S. official at the rally? A diplomat. Not President Obama. Not Vice President Biden. Not Secretary of State John Kerry. Not Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel or Attorney General Eric Holder, who actually was in Paris Sunday, but a diplomat, a former senior administration official who is very familiar with the security challenges of planning presidential trips said there would have been, quote, pretty substantial risks to sending the president.

OK, fair enough, but what about a cabinet member? The vice president? Eric Holder, already in Paris? What about a former president? Why didn't the U.S. send someone with some clout? To many it seems a little tone deaf.

Let's talk about this with CNN's senior political contributor and former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

Jay, good to see you, as always.

JAY CARNEY, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: You too, Jake.

TAPPER: Very simple, was this a mistake?

CARNEY: Look, I think in retrospect, you could say that a higher level representation could have been achieved. But I suspect that anyone short of the president being there would have still resulted in criticism from some. And I think you know, Jake, from having traveled with the U.S. president as much as you have, both this one and previous, that the enterprise of bringing a United States president into a public march like that does entails substantial risk and is also highly disruptive. And I think that you don't want this story to be about the American leader. You want it to be about the French people and the sentiment that they express by turning out in such great numbers with great diversity on the streets of Paris.

But I - look, I think - I think the issue of our relationship with France is what's key here. And I think we can demonstrate that as the United States with the assistance we provide, with obviously the statements that the president has made, the visit to the U.S. embassy and we'll obviously be watching very closely what Secretary Kerry says when he does arrive in Paris after his trip to India.

TAPPER: OK, look, I take your point on the president. But Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, somebody else from the administration? Chuck Hagel? I mean yesterday Fareed Zakaria said this is why God created vice presidents.

CARNEY: Well, again, I always say that had the vice president traveled, I'm sure there would have been criticism that it was only the vice president. Whether or not he could have, I'm not sure. I'm not there anymore. I don't know the schedules or what the conflicts might have been.

But I think this is a case where symbolism is important, but, you know, the substance of the relationship, the substance of the response to the terrorist attacks, the coordination between our two countries and our other allies is what really counts. And I don't think, given what our country's been through when it comes to spectacular terror attacks with high levels of fatalities, given what our country has been through in terms of the effort against Islamic extremism around the world and especially in the Middle East over the last decade plus, in coordination very closely with France and the U.K. and others, I don't think there's any doubt about the U.S. commitment or our alliance with France and other nations.

TAPPER: There may not be any question about the resolve of the United States and the alliance, and as has been pointed out by President Obama, among others, France is the United States of America's oldest alley. But you know who was the first world leader to visit the United States after 9/11? Jacques Chirac went to Washington D.C. and New York City. There is something special about this relationship, two country, two independent nations born around the same time, within the same decade. Certainly you'll grant the point that there's something wrong when, you know, this season's "The Good Wife" had higher Obama administration representation with a cameo from Valerie Jarrett than this very important rally, perhaps the most important rally in Europe in a generation, and it's being described here in France as the biggest rally in French history.

CARNEY: Well, again, I think that this is important, the symbolism is important and I think that the United States, the government, the administration has to demonstrate in the coming days the, you know, the broad and deep level of support and commitment it has to the alliance and to the efforts that we're joined in with France and other nation to fight this kind of extremism, not just in the Middle East, but in Europe and in the United States and elsewhere.

You know, I think - I would just urge -

TAPPER: Jay, let me - Jay, let me just ask --

CARNEY: Yes.

TAPPER: Let me just ask you -

CARNEY: Sure.

TAPPER: Because we're running out of time. I just want to ask you to provide us with an insider perspective. Right now Josh Earnest is preparing for his briefing. We will bring that briefing to our viewers live. I'm assuming he's preparing to field a lot of questions about this. It's not just smart aleck CNN correspondents asking about. It's the cover of newspapers. There are Democrats upset about it, et cetera. How is he preparing for it? What -- take us through that process. What is he prepared to do?

CARNEY: Well, I think he'll probably make the point that the president, on multiple occasions, publicly expressed his solidarity with France and spoke directly with President Hollande. He'll make the point that Secretary Kerry is on his way to Paris for high level meetings and will, obviously, have a public role to play there. And that the alliance itself is what matters here and the support we provide to France is what matters.

I think in these circumstances, and you know you've been there, that this is a case where there might be a lot of heat in the briefing around this issue, but -- and despite some of the examples you cited, overwhelmingly I think the American people are going to be more focused on what we're doing to counter terrorism, what we're doing to help France substantively to deal with this challenge in their nation and in Europe. And also broadly, as you know, they're going to be a lot more interested in the economy, as they principally are. And I'm sure that Josh and others in the White House and the administration will point out a story that's being -- not getting a lot of attention today, which is that we saw on Friday, you know, very good jobs number, another drop in turn employment rate and probably the best economic set of figures we've seen in a decade of late. And I think that when you look at the fact that the president's poll numbers have gone up, it's directly tied to economic performance.

TAPPER: Yes.

CARNEY: It's directly tied to the fall in oil prices. And it's probably not particularly tied to issues like this, which will probably die.

TAPPER: There's that pivot to the economy. I know it very well.

CARNEY: Yes.

TAPPER: Jay Carney, thank you so much.

Coming up, ISIS is calling for followers to attack from within and target soldiers, police and civilians in western countries. What you need to know about this latest terror threat.

Plus, the other big story we're following, new developments in that crash of AirAsia Flight 8501. Investigators are steps closer to figuring out what went wrong. The flight data recorder has been found and rescue officials believe the plane exploded after it hit the water. More details on that story just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

Two new developments in the AirAsia disaster. According to an Indonesian officials, the jet may have exploded when it hit the water. This coming after parts of the tail section of the plane were found. And searchers have also found the black boxes in the Java Sea. But, so far, only the flight data recorder has been retrieved. They have yet to bring up the cockpit voice recorder. Covering it all for us in Indonesia is CNN's David Molko from the capital city of Jakarta.

David.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID MOLKO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A major breakthrough here in Indonesia, the recovery of the flight data recorder from Flight 8501. That black box has now arrived in Jakarta and is now undergoing analysis we're told by Indonesia's transport safety chief. It should take two or three days to get the data off the box. It's in relatively good condition, we're told, which means that getting the data from it is akin to plugging a USB stick into a computer. It takes a little bit more time. The analysis of figuring out exactly what happened in the final moments of that flight, though, will take a little bit more time.

Out in the Java Sea, the search for the other black box, the cockpit voice recorder, continuing. Underwater currents, though, proving difficult for divers. In fact, they had to be pulled out of the water. The cockpit voice recorder, we'll told, they know exactly where it is. It is just a matter of time before officials are able to get it to.

We're hearing that they've found parts of wings, engines and other debris. What officials are not saying, though, is that they have found the fuselage from Flight 8501. It's believed that's where the bodies, more than 100 still missing, of the passengers and crew remain. Family members making a special plea to authorities saying, yes, we recognize how critical it was to find this black box, but please do not forget about us. The search and rescue chief making a special trip he says Tuesday to Surabaya to meet with those families and hear their concerns.

David Molko, CNN, Jakarta, Indonesia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Thank you to David Molko.

And now back to our other top story, the terror attack in France. While millions of people rallied in support of "Charlie Hebdo' over the weekend, media outlets in Europe experienced a fire bombing and threats. Despite all that, the editors of "Charlie Hebdo" plan to go ahead and publish the magazine this week. We're going to talk about that with a cartoonist who knew many of the staff members who were killed. That's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)