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Link between Paris Terrorists Uncovered; New Edition of "Charlie Hebdo" Ready; Israeli and French Officials Paying Tribute to Victims; CentCom Hack Defined as Prank; Second Black Box Recovered from Java Sea

Aired January 13, 2015 - 10:00   ET

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


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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

The feds ratchet up security as the French terror attacks raise concerns here at home. At U.S. airports, TSA officers will do more random checks of passengers and their baggage. Sources tell our Rene Marsh that the concern is over nonmetallic bombs that could escape detection going through the metal detector.

Supporters of the terror group ISIS also hacked into the Twitter account of the U.S. Central Command. The messages taunted the military and threatened American soldiers. The feed has now been restored. The Pentagon says no classified information was stolen.

In France, investigators uncover a common link between two of the three slain terrorists. A mentor who was once known as al Qaeda's top recruiter in Europe. We'll talk about that a little bit later on. But Jim Sciutto joins me again this hour from the "Charlie Hebdo" offices in Paris. The magazine is printing 3 million copies for tomorrow. That's 50 times its normal circulation and of course, the editors just held a very moving press conference last hour, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Carol. More than 3 million people in the streets on Sunday and now 3 million copies of this magazine coming out. Colleagues setting aside their grief at "Charlie Hebdo" ramping up a blockbuster printing of this magazine. That's 3 million copies. 50 times more than the normal printing and the same taunting irreverence that made it a target in the first place. These are new photos of the edition getting ready to ship. CNN will not show the new cover. It's our policy not to show potentially offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad. Here in France, a weary nation and its president honor the three police officers killed in last week's terror attacks. The brother of one victim, a Muslim, condemned what he called the killers' warped views of Islam.

Meanwhile, four French Jews killed in the siege at that kosher grocery store are laid to rest in Jerusalem. Israel's Prime Minister called on the world to unite against the common threat of terrorism. And French investigators still on the hunt for this woman, an alleged accomplice of the terrorists in that store siege. They now believe that she was not on site as they first thought but rather may have helped with the planning before the attack and just a quick note. The AP news agency reporting now that a Frenchman arrested a couple of weeks ago while trying to cross into Turkey was, in fact, in recent contact with one of the two brothers who carried out the attacks here at ""Charlie Hebdo"". The Bulgarian authorities who arrested him are now considering a request to hand him over to the French.

That's what we have now. Of course, this investigation continuing, Carol. The police here trying to find out if there were other accomplices. They say they are working under that assumption. They have not found them. They are looking for them. And that's one of the reasons why - one of the reasons why you have this tremendous police presence on the street. They want to make sure that any other accomplices still out there, still at large, do not carry out additional attacks.

COSTELLO: That's right. And Jim, investigators are also chasing down another acquaintance of the brothers. One who had contact with both of them? Investigators say he served as a mentor, but his main job was working as al Qaeda's top recruiter in Europe. CNN's Deborah Feyerick has been doing some digging on this. She joins me now with some very disturbing details, actually.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very disturbing. This is a man who was connected to gunmen at both the ""Charlie Hebdo"" attack, but also to the attack at the kosher market. He's identified as Jamal Beghal. He's a non-al Qaeda recruiter in Europe. You can see him there in the white jacket, tan slacks. He was connected to Cherif Kouachi. And he was released in 2009 on house arrest. And there's Kouachi right there. He was released from house arrest - on house arrest in 2009 despite being convicted of a plot to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris. Now, after Beghal's release, authorities collected more than 45,000 pages of wire transcripts and surveillance images. You can see several of them there. They include this 2010 photo of Beghal with Cherif Kouachi at a park. There are also - there's also a second photograph taken into 2010 and this of Beghal with Amedy Coulibaly who visited with Beghal back at his home as well as with the girlfriend.

Now, all three implicated that year 2010 - plots to free an imprisoned Paris subway bomber, and a Western intelligence source tells CNN that Beghal's ties to al Qaeda stretch back before the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In November of 200, Beghal traveled to Afghanistan for eight months and he was put in charge of a plot to attack the U.S. embassy in Paris, an attack eerily similar to the 1998 attacks against embassies in east Africa. This is also a man who clearly this plot to bomb the U.S. embassy took place just months before the attack on the World Trade Center in Pentagon. So, you can see the evolution to continue on - what's going on with al Qaeda. This shows that they are a very patient group. And it's not just al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but the ideology and the political mission of these people clearly stretching back a long way.

COSTELLO: All right, Deborah Feyerick, thanks so much. I appreciate it.

New enhanced security now under way at U.S. airports and it's linked to a new article in an al Qaeda magazine that details how to make bombs using household items that are not made of metal. Because of this, random searches of passengers and carry-on luggage will be increased at the gate after passengers go through security screenings. Only body scanners can detect these new types of explosives, but as you know, not all airports are equipped with those body scanners.

We're back, back with the first message from U.S. Central Command on Twitter after being hacked by ISIS sympathizers. The military's command center for the Middle East had its social media account suspended when ISIS sympathizers trashed its page. For a brief time yesterday that page said I love you ISIS and it had a message for American soldiers. "We're coming back. Watch your back." Now, the hack is most likely not the work of ISIS because ISIS doesn't actually refer to themselves as ISIS. The White House says it's nothing more than a prank.

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JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I can tell you this is something that we're obviously looking into and something that we take seriously. However, I just - you know, a note of caution to folks as they are covering this story, there's a pretty significant difference between what is a large data breach and hacking of a Twitter account.

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COSTELLO: Despite claims otherwise, the Pentagon insists hackers did not get any classified information. So, let's talk about this and actually much more. I'm joined now by CNN global affairs analyst Lieutenant Colonel James Reese. Welcome, sir.

LT. COL. JAMES REESE, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Good morning, how are you?

COSTELLO: I'm good I just want to ask you about this Twitter hacking. It's not serious, but it's embarrassing, right?

REESE: Yeah, Carol, absolutely. It is embarrassing. But, you know, what I look at is this is what I would call a phishing or was it a possible reconnaissance by some type of element that's looking to do other work into the CentCom, into their network. So, yeah, it's embarrassing. I heard a lot of other guests talk. It's only the Twitter account. You can go online and it shows you how to hack into Twitter accounts. But again, it is embarrassing. It is something we need to make sure our policies towards other of our systems are squared away so it should be a wake-up call for CentCom and the rest of DOD.

COSTELLO: OK, I would also like to talk about the TSA ramping up random searches at airports over concerns of these nonmetallic explosives. Are there really such things out there?

REESE: Yeah, unfortunately there are. And, you know, there is a lot of smart people out there. And remember, the Khorasan group which is up in northwest Syria, which is, you know, a break away from AQAP, you know, their senior bomb maker is a French guy, so - and he's very, you know, he's an engineer. He understands this stuff. And there is things you can do with very small parts of explosives. You put it next to your body and the body become what we call a tamp and if you put that next to, you know, the fuselage of an airplane, it could blow a hole in the side of an airplane. So, it's very concerning.

COSTELLO: OK, now that you've said that, it just - it just sounds scary along with all of the other things we're hearing. How afraid should we be?

REESE: Well, Carol, we have to continue living our days. We have been talking about this for 14 years now. We have to keep moving. We have to stay diligent, we have to watch what's going on around us, we have to pay attention and, you know, we've got to look at the social aspects.

And, you know, and the other thing is that politically, we have to quit, you know, right now we're still at a continuing resolution. We have to allow our law enforcement, our intel services to have the money and to have the budgets to deal with these things and not play politics with them.

COSTELLO: OK. So, let's talk about the investigation then. Because I want to focus now on the search for the accomplices of these Paris terror attacks. We have new video from the airport in Istanbul, Turkey. I want to - I want to put that up so our viewers can see it. You can see the girlfriend of the kosher market attacker along with another man. Can we put that video up?

Hopefully it will come up soon. Anyway, you can see both of them in Istanbul. This man with this woman. It's also a French citizen. Turkish officials say they stamped their passports because there was no warning from France so she along with this man have now disappeared. Is it possible to find them?

REESE: Well, Carol, they went into Syria, which the reports are saying, it could be very difficult. Is it possible, yes, but difficult. My question is this, why are we not pushing the Turks at the crossing points in Syria. If someone is coming up to a Syrian crossing point without a Syrian passport right now and there's just a complete civil war and anarchy in Syria, why are the Turks allowing folks from other countries to cross into Syria. It makes zero sense to me and especially as a NATO member we need to be pushing the Turks to stop the back and forth from Syria.

COSTELLO: Somebody had a lot of information about her. Because they have telephone records, right? And it shows she has this vital information about terror cells. So if authorities had all of this information, why was she able to leave France in the first place?

REESE: Well, Carol, unfortunately, it's a slip. And, you know, some people are saying did American intel services miss this? I would say no. The French intel services missed this. Let's be honest. This is hard stuff. This is Ph.D. level work right here that these intel analysts have to do every single day. And the problem is that people that manage these threat matrixes, they have to rack and stack and prioritize what they're going to cover every single day and they have to make a decision and it's not a science. There's an art to this and sometimes they get it wrong unfortunately.

COSTELLO: OK, we just saw the video that I was talking about. Do you think that this woman will turn up in propaganda videos for ISIS?

REESE: I do. I'm not sure it will be ISIS, but I don't think we really care if it that is ISIS, Khorasan, AQAP. I think the jihadist movements whoever decides to claim and has her will use them eventually and show her as a martyr and use it as propaganda, absolutely.

COSTELLO: All right. Lieutenant Colonel James Reese, thanks for your insight. I appreciate it. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, two countries and morning funeral services held for terrorists' attacks victims in France and Israel, plus the message leaders of both countries have for the terrorists.

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COSTELLO: In Jerusalem today, families in mourning joined with lawmakers from Israel and France during a state ceremony for the four men who were killed during a gunmen's attack at a Jewish supermarket in Paris. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the attackers at that store and "Charlie Hebdo" are not just enemies of Israel, but of the world and that the world must unite in order to in Netanyahu's words uproot them from civilization. CNN's Ian Lee joins us now from the grave site of those four men. Hi, Ian.

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. And yes, behind me are the four graves of those men and there are still people out here praying over the graves. We heard some very strong speeches today from Israeli politicians talking about the need to protect the Jewish community abroad, the need to fight extremism and terrorism from the international community and also if a Jew feels unsafe out there, Israel is ready to welcome them. But for me, today was about finding out who these four men were talking to the friends and family members and Philippe Braham's relative described him as a simple, hardworking, loving person who just wanted to do the best he could and get through his day. He described him as a very kind person.

And the eulogy from Yoav Hattab, the father, said that he knows his son is in heaven and he accepts God's judgment and it was behind me here that we heard from Yohan Cohen's father, he broke down into tears as they were laying the body into the ground, he said I'm very proud of you, my son. I couldn't ask for anything more. I will look after your sister for you. I love you. So, very emotional somber day. These four men who died together tonight have been buried together.

COSTELLO: Ian Lee, many thanks. Of course, a similar scene played out this morning in Paris. Let's head to France now and Jim Sciutto.

SCIUTTO: That's right, Carol. It felt like a state funeral almost. The President of France Francois Hollande leading a memorial today for the three police officers slain during last week's attacks. Saying the officers died so that "We can live in freedom." Hollande vowed as well that the nation would never give into terrorism. CNN's Erin McLaughlin has more. Erin, President Hollande in this ceremony bestowing a very special honor on these officers. Can you explain to our viewers exactly what he gave them?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Jim. Well, he placed medals on each of the three coffins and he said that these police officers died upholding the values of the republic, their professionalism, their courage. He said their sacrifice. He said that, you know, these three individuals really represented the unity and the solidarity of France and he named them one by one. There was Franck Brinsolaro, a married father of two who was killed in the ""Charlie Hebdo"" offices. He was shot and slain by the Kouachi brothers. And then he named Clarissa Jean-Philippe. A 26-year old police officer shot in the back by the kosher market killer on the streets of Paris and then he named Ahmed Merabet, he is a Muslim police officer. He was killed in the streets of Paris by one of the Kouachi brothers and Merabet's funeral, actually, was later in the day following the ceremony around 800 people attended. When a group of police officers arrived at the funeral, they received a round of applause. And many people here in France have been tweeting out the hashtag I'm Ahmed, really a sign of solidarity and unity for a Muslim police officer, one of three police officers that are being celebrated today for upholding the values of the republic. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, Erin, a powerful moment certainly to witness for you. You know, Carol, it's a sad fact that terror attacks have become a fact of life. But you see in these national funerals and in the national mourning that's taking place, in the march on Sunday but even as this memorial has grown here that this was something different. It was viewed as an attack on France, on French values, and you really get a sense that this is a country that's going to stand up to that and they're not going to be cowed by it. It's really admirable to watch.

MCLAUGHLIN: Yes, and it is drawing law enforcement officials together around the world. You ran into a group of police officers from the United States. Tell us about that.

SCIUTTO: That's right. We saw a group representing the NYPD, my hometown, Washington, D.C. police, the LAPD. There was a representative of the U.S. Secret Service as well. They came to the memorial behind me. They just spent a few minutes here, placed some flowers. So many people have done that as they visited. They've also went - they went down the street behind me where one of the police officers who was killed was shot to pay their respects. They told me that they flew in this morning purely to show their support, to show their respect. And I have to say as an American, as a New Yorker, as someone who lives in Washington, D.C. as well, it was a nice moment to see the people keeping us safe at home, back home, coming here to show that there really is solidarity across the oceans and that this is a common - it's a common fight.

MCLAUGHLIN: Jim Sciutto, many thanks.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, another discovery in the Java Sea as divers find a second black box from the doomed AirAsia flight.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COSTELLO: This morning divers recovered the second black box from AirAsia Flight 8501. The black box or cockpit voice recorder was discovered buried beneath the plane's wreckage in the Java Sea. Of course, it could contain major clues in understanding exactly what happened to the doomed flight. And that's not all. The fuselage or the main body of the plane might also have been found. It may contain some or most of the 114 bodies still missing from the crash. CNN's safety analyst David Soucie joins me live from Denver for more. Good morning, David.

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: So, of course, the cockpit voice recorder is important because it contains the last two hours of conversation between the pilots, right?

SOUCIE: Yes. It's extremely important for that. Carol, it also gives us a view of what the kind of the communication between the pilots was. Remember, we had two people whose main language was different. So, that can cause some problems in communication, especially during an emergency situation. So, it's going to be very educational and very informative for us to understand that relationship and use that to better the relationships between pilots in the cockpit. I'm not insinuating that that's the primary cause of this, but it's certainly something that we could probably learn from through that CBR.

COSTELLO: Interesting. We don't know the condition of this black box but they are pretty hardy boxes, right?

SOUCIE: Yes. They are very, very hardy and it's not unlikely that we'll find them undamaged. I've heard reports from people on the ground there, colleagues of mine that have said that it looks like the exterior of the box has not been breached so the water probably didn't get into the box. So, that's a good sign. And we'll just see what they come up with in the next few days.

COSTELLO: How long will it take them to get the information out of that black box?

SOUCIE: You know, Carol, it's a good question. Because the actual extraction of the information, the ones and zeros out of the box doesn't take that long. It would only be about a half an hour of a download process. Preparation and download. The difficult part comes in aligning the cockpit voice recorder with the flight data recorder to assure that it's very much in line so that we know when decisions were made and if there was communication between them and what the actual movements of the controls were doing and also what the pilot was seeing. The readings of the altitude and the angle of attack of the airplane and all of these things come into play with the decision making of the pilot at that time and how he faced whatever decision he had to face in the emergency situation. So it takes quite a while to do the analysis. But they have been very good and very forthcoming with information. So, I think the Indonesians will probably release this very quickly as soon as they have some kind of definitive information from it. COSTELLO: Of course, they still want to find the main part of the

plane, the fuselage, because that's probably where most of the victims remain, right? So they have spotted it now. What will they do? Will divers go down first and see what's inside and then they bring it up? How does that work?

SOUCIE: Well, yeah, typically what's difficult about this operation is the murky waters because what's done typically is that the bodies are the first priority. Getting the bodies up and out and back to the families. That's the first priority. Unless there's some clues that can be gained but those are documented as those bodies are being removed and taken care of. The real clues are going to come on the analysis of that main part of the wreckage, where it's located. I've done some basic drift calculations about the 1.7 miles they're talking about, or 1.7 kilometers. And it's a little confusing to me actually because the drift patterns unless there's some extremely high currents there, it wouldn't explain why the tail is so far from the fuselage, but yet it's not far enough away that would indicate that there was an in-flight breakup. So, there's a lot of questions are still lingering in my mind about what happened and again those flight - that flight data recorder is going to answer all those questions.

COSTELLO: All right, David Soucie, thanks as always. I appreciate it.

Let's talk about the markets because they're going crazy again. The Dow is up more than 200 points. Christina Alesci is here, with what's driving it up this time? Because it doesn't make much sense, to be frankly.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN CORRESPONDNET: No, it's really hard to determine what's driving the market these days. You know, we talked about how oil has impacted the market and sent the market lower on this idea that there's reduced global demand for very important commodity, but today stocks are up and that's really driven by what seems to be an upgrade on Apple this morning that has got investors enthusiastic about the tech sector. So, that's driving things up. What's different today than a couple of weeks ago is that we actually are going to get reads on corporate earnings? It's a very fundamental thing that investors and traders are going to look to whether or not companies are growing their top line and whether there's consumer demand for the goods and services that we so often talk about. And that's what's so important this week and in the weeks to come. You know, Alcoa unofficially kicked off earnings season, so we are going to see more and more about the corporate health of America and that's going to speak a lot to --

COSTELLO: Because the economy has gotten better over time, right?

ALESCI: You would hope. You would hope. You would hope, but a lot of this reaction is going to be top line driven. What's important to pay attention to is what the sophisticated investors are doing, right? And over the weekend there were some reports that a lot of the sophisticated investors out there like big hedge funds are actually reducing their positions in U.S. stocks thinking that this volatility could eventually just move lower.