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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

"Charlie Hebdo" to Publish New Issue Tomorrow; Searches at U.S. Airports Ramped Up; Dark History of Paris Terror Suspects; Illinois Teen Facing Terror Charges

Aired January 13, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Michaela Pereira. "LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

"Charlie Hebdo" won't give terror the final word, but that's not to say the terrorists are silent either. Al Qaeda's North African branch is vowing that France has not seen the last or even the worst of the attacks aimed at avenging French assaults on Islamic militants everywhere.

Elsewhere, at the same time, French authorities are scrambling to track down accomplices, connections and co-conspirators of the men who attacked "Charlie Hebdo" and a kosher market and killed a French policewoman in cold blood.

As for "Charlie" surviving, the staffers there, they have decided to print 3 million copies of the issue. And it's hitting newsstands tomorrow, exactly one week after the jihadi rampage that killed 12 people.

I want to dig into all of these developments right now with CNN's Hala Gorani, who is live in Paris. And also joining us from Washington, CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes, and also with us, retired Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Ray Moeller.

Hala, if I could begin with you and the news of the moment, and that is there are still ceremonies ongoing both in the country where you are, in Paris, and in Jerusalem. Can you just get me up to speed on what's happening?

HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL: Well, we had some very moving ceremonies, a funeral for the four individuals at the kosher supermarket who lost their lives last Friday and also for the three slain police officers here in the center of Paris at the police headquarters of the French capital. We had the French president, Francois Hollande, posthumously awarding them a medal of honor, the highest civilian award you can get in this country.

And, of course, it was moving because, in many ways, it was a cross- section of what France is. It is multicultural. One of the police officers who was killed outside "Charlie Hebdo" was a Muslim police officer. The police trainee killed, investigators believe, by Amedy Coulibaly was black. She was originally from one of the overseas departments, as they say, overseas regions in France. That gives you a sense there. And then the individual who was protecting the editor of "Charlie Hebdo" who was killed, a white man. So really, there you have it. Very moving in a sense because it showed what multiculturalism at its best is. And those individuals all losing their lives in the line of duty.

Ashleigh, I just want to say one quick thing. I just spoke on the phone with the lawyer for "Charlie Hebdo" and people have seen circulating online, perhaps you have as well, the new cover. He said that individuals at the office deciding what to draw, and we now know it's the Prophet Muhammad holding a "je suis Charlie" sign, said they - what they needed to do was to find something that would have honored their dead friends. That's what he told me. And they came up with this because they felt like this is the best that they could do for those who lost their lives for the freedom of expression that they were targeted for.

Back to you.

BANFIELD: And, Hala, as you're saying that, we're watching some of the pictures in them in the offices of (INAUDIBLE), the publication that allowed them to put this very quickly together and get this out by tomorrow.

Hala, before I let you go, get me up to speed as well on how fast this investigation is moving ahead. Where -- what they've got and how close they're getting to some kind of resolution on this.

GORANI: Well, let me bring you up to date with something that happened in Bulgaria. This is truly an international investigation. It has been confirmed to us by Bulgarian official that a man who left Paris, to Bulgaria, believed to be on his way to Syria, was arrested at the very beginning of January. Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, is reporting that that man, Fritz-Joly Joachin, may have had some sort of relationship with the Kouachi brothers, believed to have been behind the "Charlie Hebdo" massacre.

So he is being held by Bulgarian authorities. Of course, French investigators are very much looking into whether or not this individual may have helped plan, on any level, on any operational level, the attacks of last Wednesday that left 12 people dead. So that is the latest in the investigation, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, Hala, stand by, will you will, for one moment.

Lieutenant general, if I can ask you, 10,000 troops now apparently deployed inside France. It seems that this is the kind of war, and that's the word that many of the jihadis are using, war that's being waged that's hard for troops to attack and yet there are 10,000 troops out there. What can they do?

LT. GEN. MICHAEL RAY MOELLER, U.S. AIR FORCE (RET.): Well, it's interesting because France is different than the United States in that the Gendarmeries does have arrest authority and can, in fact, actually work some of the law enforcement issues as well. So I'm not sure of the different types of troops, but I'm sure that the French military has included counterterrorism experts, advisers and certainly an opportunity to cut across intergovernmental bureaucratic borders when it comes to information sharing and intelligence gathering.

BANFIELD: And I think that's the key that so many are talking about is the intelligence gathering, the informs sharing.

Tom Fuentes, I think Peter Bergen may have said this extraordinarily well just the hour that preceded us, and that is that sometimes killing the man, the perpetrator or the jihadist, is a lot easier than killing the idea. And, in fact, sometimes killing the man makes the idea grow. Is this a crossroads that we're in at this point in terms of trying to fight terror by maybe looking a different direction, maybe looking at a different tactic, fighting the psychological warfare as opposed to the actual perpetrators?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Ashleigh, that's true what Peter said, and, you know, we've both said this in the past, that you can quarantine Ebola but you can't quarantine the ideology of this extremism. You can't quarantine any ideology, good, bad or otherwise, anymore because of social media and the Internet. But the cautionary tale is, Nazism and neo-Nazi groups. Hitler's been dead 70 years. He didn't have the Internet. He wrote one stupid book and yet there are neo-Nazi organizations throughout Europe and in the United States alive and well. So if we have that from Nazism and Hitlerism, what does that say about this form of extremist for the next 100 years or so, let's say?

BANFIELD: I mean well put. Tom Fuentes, thank you for that.

Hala Gorani, thank you as well.

And General Moeller, if I can ask you to stick around, a couple of other things that we've got on the agenda today, the connection to bin Laden's al Qaeda isn't the only red flag. The two suspects accused of killing 12 people at a Paris satirical magazine planned to break other terrorists out of prison. And newly uncovered court documents also show they themselves were released from prison last year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: Some alarming new details about the lengths that the three terror suspects in France were willing to go in the name of jihad. Through police raids at their apartments recently and in years past, authorities found a frightening cache of weapons that were inside, proof of some very dark plans. But as senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin explains, the discovery really shouldn't have taken the French authorities by surprise.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They are court documents filed on December 20, 2013, just a little more than one year ago, which go into explicit detail of how a group of about a dozen French Muslims were plotting to stage a prison break and free a fellow terrorist in 2010. Two key figures in the plot? The same two now dead suspects accused of carrying out last week's horrific attacks in Paris. Cherif Kouachi, who with his brother staged a massacre at the offices of the magazine "Charlie Hebdo," and his close jihadist associate, Amedy Coulibaly, accused of killing a French police officer, then killing four more at a Jewish grocery store. Documents obtained by CNN show the attacks should have come as no surprise to the French.

JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD, FRENCH CENTER FOR THE ANALYSIS OF TERRORISM: These documents show that as recently as 2013, when they were condemned, convicted, these individuals could pose a significant threat to national security.

GRIFFIN: When French police investigated Amedy Coulibaly in 2010, he was described as a logistics expert, in charge of accumulating weapons and arms for the prison break plot. Records show Coulibaly was found to have illegally stored a huge cache of high-caliber arms, including some 240 cartridges for high-powered machine guns with the specific goal, the documents say, of seriously hurting people through intimidation or terror attacks. Also found in his apartment, computers with security and encryption, audio recordings of Islamic religious figures and even recipes written in Arabic for making poison, purportedly capable of killing a million people. And there were several photos showing Coulibaly dressed in Islamic garb, posing in front of a black flag with white Arabic inscriptions on it. Though convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, like other terror suspects, French officials allowed Coulibaly credit for time served, then released him sometime early last year.

We now know Coulibaly's terrorist ways never changed. After his death last week in this shootout, police again raided his apartment and again found a huge cache of arms. The court documents also revealed just how close-knit the terror group was through relationships forged in a Paris park and in prison.

Cherif Kouachi had apparently become even more radicalized following his arrest in 2005. He had met a well-known jihadist spiritual leader and terror recruiter in prison, a man by the name of Jamal Begal (ph). And once they were freed, visited the same well-known terrorist, even staying with him for days at a time. His companions on some of the visits? Amedy Coulibaly. Court records show Coulibaly's now-wanted wife, Hayat Boumeddiene, would join them as well. All visiting the man they called "the wise man." The documents describe a series of pictures dated April 2010 showing Amedy Coulibaly and his companion with an Islamic veil posing with a crossbow. That companion is believed to be Hayat Boumeddiene, now wanted and apparently on the run.

All of the connections to a terrorism game, plots and jihadist recruitment were known to police for years. The documents even detail how Kouachi and Coulibaly would make efforts to hide conversations by using code names over portable or disposable cell phones, sometimes even using pay phones. Both men remained under surveillance, but in a move that has not yet been fully explained, the surveillance ended just six months ago.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BANFIELD: The Department of Homeland Security has announced that searches at United States airports have now been ramped up. A government official saying that the measures actually began a few weeks ago but that they were just announced yesterday. CNN's justice correspondent Pamela Brown joining me live now from Washington.

Is there some specific information to point authorities towards airports or any particular airports in general?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the information that we've been told, Ashleigh, is that this is partly in response to a new "Inspire" magazine issue. And in this magazine, there's an article, of course, this is AQAP, the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which published this. And this article describes how to make homemade bombs with simple household products.

This apparently was released in late December. And so the article is encouraging would-be jihadists, people who could live in the U.S., to make these non-metallic bombs. These bombs that may not be detected through typical airport security if you don't go through a full-body scanner. So the big concern here, Ashleigh, is that, you know, some -- there are some smaller airports in the U.S. that don't have full-body scanners and, therefore, if there's someone with a non-metallic bomb, it perhaps may not be detected.

And so in response to this new article, Ashleigh, the Department of Homeland Security is, as you said, ramping up certain measures at airports across the U.S., including random bag searches and passenger searches, once they already go through security in or at the gates.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: But a random bag search, look, if we're talking about household products, lots of people have household products in their bags. So random bag searches, or something in addition to that, some sort of measures that maybe we don't know about yet, detecting the kinds of devices that they're talking about?

BROWN: Absolutely. Well, they're not going to want to give us all of their tricks that they have to detect these kinds of bombs, these non- metallic bombs. So they're -- this is just what they can tell us, that, look, we're going to be, you know, stepping up, you know, bag searches. But, of course, there's probably more to this that we shouldn't know about, Ashleigh, in order to protect national security.

BANFIELD: All right, Pamela Brown, thank you for that.

BROWN: Thank you.

BANFIELD: And just a quick note to our viewers as well, Pam's going to have more on this on "The Situation Room." That's coming at you at 4:00 this afternoon. And joining me now to talk a little bit more about this once again is

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes and retired Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Moeller.

So I'd like to put this to the both of you, gentlemen. As Pamela just said, they're ramping up, you know, measures at airports once again, but we have just covered yet again a non-airport and a non-traditional kind of terror attack which many people have said is the new modus operandi of jihadists and those who really with harm. Are we putting our eggs in the wrong basket? Tom, I'll get you to start.

FUENTES: Well, first of all, Ashleigh, we need to put our eggs in every basket. They keep changing all the time. And none of this is new. This is all - you know, if you went to their playbook, as if it was a national football league team and it has 200 plays, they pick out one today and maybe tomorrow they pick out a different one.

So the idea of attacking an airliner has never been far from the heart of AQAP and their principal bomb-maker, al Asiri, who specializes in PETN, an explosive which is almost undetectable. What the authorities hope for is detecting whatever is being used to detonate the PETN. It is like baby powder and it just doesn't show up on the machines. Now, it may show up in any container or it may show up if you have it in a baggie in your underwear or something, but that's very difficult to detect, if not impossible.

And their attacks have been -- the underwear bomber, 2009, the printer cartridge bomb that was destined for Chicago in 2010, which would not have been located in the airport in London, if Saudi Arabian intelligence had not penetrated AQAP and had the actual shipping numbers because the law enforcement officers in London checked that box and said, no, no problem. Our two sets of dogs say there's nothing wrong with this box. Saudi intelligence said, open the box. And then they found 80 grams of PETN in it. So that would have exploded in a Jewish community center in Chicago, Illinois, had Saudi Arabia not penetrated the particular shipment that was going out.

BANFIELD: And, General Moeller, I'm sure as Tom said, you've got to keep your eggs in all the baskets because who among us wants to see security loosened up at the airports? I mean it might make travel easily, but really, quite frankly, I think we're all rather comfortable knowing that people are working for us to be safe.

In the meantime, there are all these reports of how many people it takes to trail one bad guy. And if your manpower is that taxed, what's the answer here? Do we need to start really looking heavily at budgetary concerns when it comes to the amount of money we spend on intelligence, domestically and internationally?

MOELLER: Well, Ashleigh, I agree with you 100 percent. I think it's very important that we focus our available funding, both current and future, on making sure that we stay ahead of the terrorists, especially when it comes to the fact that I believe that their ability to plan these very sophisticated, complex plans is evolving.

A good example is, this was not a suicide bomb bombing attack, obviously. It was, in fact, actually a campaign plan, an attack plan that included escape routes for the terrorists. We're seeing that an example of in Bulgaria and we're seeing probably an example of that in Syria where at least two of the terrorists moved out of France.

This is different than it was before. And so ramping up security at the borders, both domestically and internationally, is incredibly important and we need to focus our funding on those technologies, as well as the manpower that can in fact actually stay ahead of the terrorists.

BANFIELD: Tom, can you just dovetail off the notion that it seems as though, post-9/11, fighting a war on terror has been like a deadly and expensive game of whack-a-mole and it doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot better. We still have these horrible attacks that are so surprising to us. Is this, in your estimation, not only an uphill battle, but is it a winnable battle?

FUENTES: Oh, not entirely by law enforcement or military operations. The ideology has to be defeated or I think it's just going to be continuing to be like what you're talking about. I mean if you go back and research all of the issues of "Inspire" magazine, I mean we talked about that magazine, their very first issue had "how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom." Subsequent issues have had how to attack a ferry boat, a railroad station, a subway train, a bus, airplanes, how to drive over people standing on street corners. One issue had, in Washington or New York, drive up on the sidewalks in the summertime. People will be eating outdoors and you can kill a lot of people and probably some of them might be important figures.

They've left out almost nothing when it comes to how to attack, where to attack, under what circumstances. We've seen the shopping mall attack in Kenya. We've just seen every kind of attack play out one time or another. And, like I said, from the playbook, it's - it just depends on which page they want to go to next time.

BANFIELD: All right, Tom Fuentes, thank you for that. And General Michael Moeller, thank you as well. We appreciate both of your insights into this.

And while the world's attention is focused on the Kouachi brothers and their involvement in terrorism, this morning in a courtroom here in the United States, in Illinois, an American teenager is been arraigned and charged with helping ISIS terrorists and trying to join their fight in Syria. We've got details on this case next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: While many Americans have been glued to their television sets following the terrorist attack in Paris, right here in the United States, a 19-year-old American is facing federal charges for attempting to join the terror group ISIS. The case is playing out in Chicago and it is yet another reminder that terror that you've been seeing on your TV screens can be close to home as well and often right under our noses. CNN's George Howell is on the case and he joins us live. So the interesting part of this story, if this story itself isn't interesting enough, George, is that this young man is not only accused of these awful charges, but he's also accused of trying to get his own siblings to sort of come along on his plots?

GEORGE HOWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, that is the case, Ashleigh. The siblings were with him at the airport when this happened. However, they were detained and released the same day. The charges are against Mohammed Khan, at this point.

The hearing today was relatively quick and short. He was formally arraigned. He entered a plea of not guilty. You'll remember, he was arrested, Ashleigh, back in October at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport with a round-trip ticket. His plans were to leave Chicago for Vienna, Austria, and then to transfer there into Istanbul, Turkey, to allegedly meet up with a contact there who would take him into territory that ISIS claims it controls in Iraq and Syria.

His attorney plans to argue a very technical defense here, basically that his client was not going to provide material support, not money, not supplies, but his body and technically his attorney believes that he has a defense by saying his client was not providing material support.

But there is evidence here. So when investigators were detaining Khan at the airport, they also searched his parents' home. And they found several things. They found handwritten notes that showed that he did support ISIS. His attorney says that this is a case of his client and many young people, how they can be brainwashed by the social media messages out there. His mother today, Ashleigh, had a very impassioned statement. Here's what she had to say. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As parents, we feel compelled to speak out (INAUDIBLE) unspeakable acts perpetrated by (INAUDIBLE) jihadist groups in the name of Muslims (ph). (INAUDIBLE) by these groups and (INAUDIBLE) and are completely (INAUDIBLE) with our Islamic faith. We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms. We condemn the brutal tactics of ISIS and groups like it and we condemn the brainwashing and recruiting of children through the use of social media and the Internet. And we have a message for ISIS, Mr. Baghdadi and his fellow social media recruiters, leave our children alone!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOWELL: She felt compelled to give that statement, given what happened, the horrific events in Paris, France. She just basically wants the people to know that what happened there, she does not condone, her family does not condone, as they go through this case, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: So I'm a little confused. Albeit, I couldn't make out everything that she was saying, George, but is she capitulating at all to some of the charges against her son or is she denying the charges and just saying, whatever's happening is terrible but it doesn't involve our family?

HOWELL: You get the sense that it's exactly that, you know, that her family does not condone this. Her family does not support it. In the evidence, there was evidence that showed that Mr. Khan invited his parents, wanted them to follow him, to travel there after he arrived. But clearly they don't condone this. And they want young children to stay away from these messages. So that's basically the message that she put out, given what we saw there in France.

BANFIELD: And, I mean, you know, I'm sure any mother watching would feel the same way. But the truth of the matter is, when you're 19, you are not a child and you can't be treated as a child and you're sure not tried as a child.