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Palestinian Terrorist Attacks Civilians With Knife; Al Qaeda Strengthening in as Yemeni Government Collapses; NFL Determines Patriots Deflated Balls; Boehner Invited Israeli PM to Speak to Congress

Aired January 21, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Shocking new video of an attack in Tel Aviv, terrified bus passengers run for their lives as they are chased by a terrorist.

The surprises from the State of the Union, so whose moment is this anyway, the new Republican Congress or has the president seized the initiative?

And is it now the Super Bowl of cheating? New information on whether the Patriots broke the rules on the way to the big game, and what does the NFL do about this now?

Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman.

New this morning, al Qaeda militants may be strengthening their base in Yemen as that country's government teeters on the brink of collapse. Shiite rebels stormed the presidential palace attempting a coup against this critical U.S. ally.

The crisis is troubling to the West because Yemen is the home of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group behind a number of attacks, including, apparently, the "Charlie Hebdo" siege in Paris just two weeks ago, and there are concerns about the safety of U.S. embassy personnel in Yemen at this moment.

Meanwhile, shocking numbers from France, the prime minister there says there are 3,000 people with jihadist ties in France, 3,000 people who need to be under surveillance, the government now boosting its fight against homegrown terror by adding thousands more security forces and also, they say, better guns.

And dramatic new video just in to CNN shows a terrorist attack in Israel, a Palestinian man seen chasing victims as they run from a bus in Tel Aviv. The man had just stabbed nine passengers on that bus. Police did shoot the stabber.

Our global affairs correspondent Elise Labott joins us now from Jerusalem. Elise, give us the details here.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we're talking about a 23-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank city of Tulkarem. He stabbed the driver first and then started stabbing other passengers.

The driver veered that bus, which is really in the central -- in the heart of Tel Aviv during rush hour. He opened the doors. That terrorist ran out. Started attacking other people.

You can see this very dramatic video of this Palestinian man looking for a victim, stabbing a woman as she fell to the ground.

Now, two Israeli prison authority guards were on duty making an escort and they saw what was going on. They started running after this Palestinian man, shot him in the leg, cuffed him. Police then arrested him, interrogated him, and he's in the hospital in Israeli custody, John.

BERMAN: Elise, Hamas controls Gaza. What is Hamas saying about this terror attack?

LABOTT: Well, there's no indication at all that Hamas was involved in this attack. It looks like we're talking about a so-called lone-wolf attack, but Hamas did praise this attack, saying this is Israeli punishment for its treatment of the Palestinians.

And then, to that point, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu said it's this incitement against Israel and not just in Israel itself but the kind of anti-Semitism you see around the world, in Paris last week for instance, is what inspires Palestinians to go after Israelis in these type of attacks, John.

BERMAN: All right, Elise Labott for us in Jerusalem, thank you so much.

Elise mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is making some big news in Washington today, news that the prime minister will address a joint session of Congress next month. He was invited by House Speaker John Boehner to come to speak to Congress about Iran.

This comes as congressional leaders consider a proposal to increase sanctions against this country, something the president has said he will veto. Congress stands in opposition to the president. So does prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So this speech here, the fact of it, a very interesting development.

Meanwhile, all eyes on Yemen right now because the battle against al Qaeda could become even more complicated there if militants overthrow the U.S.-backed government.

At this moment, we are told that Yemen's president is still in power, but that's tenuous at best. Rebels have been in control of the capital, Sanaa, for days. So this critical U.S. ally sits right on Saudi Arabia's doorstep in the Gulf of Aden and is now very much on the brink of collapse with U.S. personnel there inside the U.S. embassy.

I want to bring in our national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto. Jim, how concerned are U.S. officials here in the United States about the safety of Americans in Yemen right now?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Very concerned, and you can tell that by the steps they have made to evacuate them if need.

To be clear, that's not a decision that they've made, but they're lining up the resources to do that. You have two navy warships off the coast there to carry out a potential evacuation by helicopter, V-22 Osprey, if necessary.

The preference if that judgment -- if they come to that judgment is that they drive to the airport and fly out commercially, but in a pinch, if the situation deteriorated so quickly and roads became so dangerous, they also have this military evacuation plan.

To be clear, they haven't made that judgment yet, but you know, John, they wouldn't line up these resources now unless they wanted to be prepared for that.

BERMAN: There's the issue of the threat to Americans in that country now, but then there's the issue of the threat to America from what happens in Yemen if it continues to descend toward chaos, great fear that it will become even more of a base for terror.

SCIUTTO: No question. You know, this is the thing. Terror groups thrive off mayhem. And you think of the number of countries in that category right now. You have Somalia, a great base for terrorists, no coincidence that al Shabaab thrives there; Yemen, a bit of a mess, a failed state in many parts of the country, AQAP thrives there; and al Qaeda thrived in Afghanistan, pre- 9/11, based in part on being welcomed by the Taliban, but also failed states, they attract them.

Yemen has gotten worse. Of course the irony is the group that's advancing on the capital, the Houthies, they're actually Shiites. They're against AQAP, but --

BERMAN: Sure.

SCIUTTO: -- let's be frank. A terror group will benefit when you have a government that's not able to control the country, and the government there that's being pushed back by this advance, they've been a big ally in the U.S. in fighting against al Qaeda.

BERMAN: Jim, let me give you a quick question about Iran right now and Israel. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, we just learned, coming to the United States to address Congress on the issue of sanctions to Iran, which he supports.

He'd like to see much greater sanctions. He'd like to see no negotiations on this nuclear issue. The Republicans and some Democrats in Congress agree with him. What's the significance of his trip to the U.S. Congress?

SCIUTTO: It's a pretty big bully pulpit for those, certainly in Israel, and the Israeli prime minister being one of the most vocal critics of a nuclear deal with Iran, but also the many Republicans and, as you say, Democrats, Robert Menendez, members of Congress who are against this, at a very sensitive time in the negotiations with Iran.

You have Secretary of State John Kerry and the Iranian foreign minister in Paris when we were there just last Friday, and they met. They met again. They've met a couple of days before, some signs of progress in those talks. So it's coming to a critical time.

Meanwhile, you have these very public voices, and trust me, when the Israeli prime minister speaks before Congress, he's going to make a very strong and spirited case against concessions to Iran. This debate is not over.

BERMAN: All right, Jim Sciutto for us, thanks so much for being with us. I really appreciate it, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BERMAN: So the Republicans may have dominated the midterm elections and seized Congress, control, complete control, from the Democrats, but you really would hardly know it from President Obama's State of the Union address.

The president declared victory over the economic crisis. He touted the end of the ground wars overseas and trumpeted his veto power over any challenge to ObamaCare and he even needled the majority party that was sitting right before him.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have no more campaigns to run.

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My only agenda -- I know because I won both of them.

At this moment, with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production, we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on earth.

America, for all that we have endured, for all of the grit and hard work required to come back, for all of the tasks that lie ahead, know this.

The shadow of crisis has passed. The state of the union is strong.

(APPLAUSE)

BERMAN: The president laid out what he called his plan to help the middle class over his final two years in office. In a few minutes, we're going to find out what conservatives think about these proposals.

All right, this morning there is a major controversy brewing in the NFL, questions about whether a team headed to the super bowl broke the rules. It happens to be my team, the New England Patriots.

ESPN reports the NFL has determined the Patriots used footballs that simply did not have enough air in them when the Patriots won the AFC championship game Sunday night.

A deflated ball could be easier to grip, easier to throw, easier to catch. Did the Patriots deflate these footballs intentionally? If they did, there is a word for it -- cheating. And the Patriots cheated if they did it on purpose, and with 11 out of the 12 balls below league regulations, it's difficult to see how they did not do it on purpose. I'm hoping from some kind of miraculous weather move that forced it to happen, but we'll see.

So what's my reaction to this if they did cheat? Blank them, and shame on me. Seriously. Shame on me. At this point in my life, I essentially do just about three things. I anchor at CNN, I help raise twin 7-year- old boys, and I root for Boston sports teams.

If I'm being honest, the one I'm best at is number three. And now the Patriots are making me regret all of my vast accomplishments in that area. How can you root for a cheater? How can you award malfeasance? How can you cheer a con? You can't. At least you shouldn't.

So what are we all now supposed to do with our Tom Brady jerseys, or worse, what do we tell our kids to do? All the sudden Tom Brady doesn't look quite as handsome today.

So do I want the Patriots to lose? No. I'm just not wired that way. But I feel very, very badly about that it. That's why I'm ashamed this morning.

So I have many more thoughts on this. Just go to CNN.com/opinions for my take. We're going to have much more on my existential crisis and, more importantly, what the NFL is going to do about it a bit later.

Next for us, the biggest surprise from the State of the Union and the biggest gripes this morning from Republicans.

And putting thousands under surveillance, dramatic new measures to keep people safe in France.

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BERMAN: All right, just in to CNN, we learned a short time ago that House Speaker John Boehner has invited the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, to come to Washington to speak before Congress on February 11th about the issue of Iran.

Now the prime minister of Israel and Speaker John Boehner agree that the United States should have harsher sanctions against Iran. They do not like the path of U.S. negotiations, nuclear negotiations, with Iran right now. It will be a very interesting speech.

Just a short time ago, our senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash caught up with the House speaker. Dana, what did he tell you? DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This really is --

we're not sure if unprecedented is too far down the road, but this is something that almost never happens. A break with protocol. The Speaker of the House inviting a world leader, somebody who is the head of a state that is one of the U.S.'s biggest allies, without talking to the White House about it. There is a very specific reason, as you mentioned, because they so strongly disagree on the Republican side and even some Democrats with the way the White House is going forward with negotiations, diplomatic talks, to end Iran's nuclear program. Here's what I asked the House speaker.

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BASH: Did you consult with the White House before inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu? And secondly, is this just a way to sort of poke the president in the eye on an issue like Iran where you know he very much opposes what you want to do?

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I did not consult with the White House. The Congress can make this decision on its own. I don't believe I'm poking anyone in the eye. There's a serious threat that exists in the world and the president last night kind of papered over it. The fact is that there needs to be a more serious conversation in America about how serious the threat is.

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BASH: Now we have more information on how this came about. Our Deirdre Walsh was told by a Republican source that this has been in the works for weeks. Having Benjamin Netanyahu come here and address the Congress well before the president said privately and publicly with his new Congress that they should not do anything with sanctions and pleaded with them, privately certainly, among Democrats last week not to do so. The other thing that we can tell you is that they didn't consult but we are told by an administration source and also now Republicans that what the speaker did is he placed a phone call this morning just to inform the White House that he invited the Israeli Prime Minister and leading up to this, John, there will be hearings and likely some votes about these Iran sanctions, pushing forward on sanctions ahead of Benjamin Netanyahu coming. And like we were saying, he supports what Republicans are doing and opposes the president.

BERMAN: That will be very interesting to see what tone the prime minister takes, how it affects the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and not to mention, the relationship between the president and Congress. Dana Bash, thank you so much.

On the subject of that latter relationship, this morning, here's a question. Have we turned the page in this country? That's what the president said in his State of the Union address last night. He didn't just say it, he declared it and boasted about it and he practically dared Republicans to dispute it. When people say he was defiant, listen to what he said about the minimum wage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) OBAMA: Everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this. If you truly believe you can work full time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest working people in America a raise.

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BERMAN: In addition to talking about the minimum wage, he really seemed to direct most of his speech about issues concerning the middle class. He proposed child care tax breaks, free community college, increasing the capital gains tax in order to pay for some of this. But really, there's not much, if any chance, really no chance at all, that any of this is going to get through the Republican Congress, which is interesting. Now the president takes this message on the road, primarily to some red states over the next few days, visiting Kansas and Ohio.

Joining me to discuss this, Peter Wallison, former counsel to President Reagan and author of "Hidden In Plain Sight" and Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Freedom. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being with us.

Grover, let me start with you. Let me start with the victory lap the president was trying to take last night. He made mention of the fact the stock market has doubled, the unemployment is way down, that gas prices are way down. That 10 million people who didn't have health insurance now do have health insurance. He went on to say to the crowd there, this is a good thing. Isn't all of that a good thing, Grover?

GROVER NORQUIST, PRESIDENT, AMERICANS FOR TAX FREEDOM: Well, I thought the speech was rather callous suggesting the economy is doing well. The growth since the bottom of this recession is so poor, growing at about 2 percent a year. When Reagan came out of his recession, you had 4.4 percent growth. If we had Reagan growth instead of Obama's French growth, 2 percent, we would have 10 million more Americans at work. There are 10 million Americans who don't have jobs, families who don't have a bread winner, and the president very callously couldn't care less about them and didn't have anything to say about the fact that this recovery is so poor and so bad that the unemployment statistics, one of them is better. Why? Because people are so in bad shape that they've quit looking.

The workforce participation rate is at historic lows. Jimmy Carter's malaise was the last time it was this good. And he runs around going, you should be happy. Why should people be happy? Why should the people who don't have jobs because of his policies be anything other than very angry that he wasted an entire speech about a wish list of tax increases that are never going to happen and that if he wanted to do, he could have done six years ago? He didn't. He played politics and there are people hurting in this country who don't have jobs, who would love to be in the middle class, but the president's policies have let them down.

BERMAN: Peter, let me -- I think both you and Grover come at this from the same side, so I will try to push the other side to make this discussion interesting here. You know, Americans are right now giving the president a higher approval rating than they have given him in a long, long time. It was 50 percent in the new ABC News poll. Consumer confidence is higher than it's been in a long, long time. I think there are a lot of people who wish things were better, but I think for the first time there seemed to be the data shows a lot of Americans who think things are getting better. Do you think that's the case?

PETER WALLISON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TO PRESIDENT REAGAN: Yes, that things are getting better. The question has always been, why did it take so long for things to get better? This has been the slowest recovery since the mid '60s. It's taken six years to recover basically where we were in 2008, 2007. So what we have to do is look for the reasons, first, that we had this financial crisis in 2000, 2008, and then why the recovery has been so slow afterward.

The reason for the second question, why has it been so slow afterward, I think is pretty clear. We have two major pieces of legislation, one was Obamacare, which has had a major affect on the kinds of jobs that people have. These are part-time jobs instead of full-time jobs. And secondly, the Dodd-Frank Act, which has imposed tremendous regulation on the financial system and has caused banks and others to pull back on any kind of risk taking, which means that it's very hard for new businesses to start. We have the slowest rate of new business starting in history. We're in a state now where we have to make major changes in our economic and financial policies and regulatory policies in order to restart this economy.

BERMAN: Peter Wallison, Grover Norquist, I appreciate you being with me. Some opposing views to the president's speech last night to be sure. Thank you, gentlemen.

A key U.S. ally in the war on terror may be falling now in a coup. Americans caught in the middle of this chaos. New developments this morning, next.

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BERMAN: Violence exploding in the capital of a critical U.S. ally. France announces exceptional measures today to prevent a repeat of those horrifying terrorist attacks in Paris. Both new developments today. Plus France's Prime Minister wants tabs kept on 3,000 people in his country whom he says have ties to Jihadists. Meanwhile, it's not clear at all who has control in Yemen right now. Rebel fighters have taken up positions outside the president's home. But an official says the president insists he's still in charge.

I want to talk about the latest developments with CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank. Paul, what caught my eye the most over the last several hours, this new video obtained by CNN from France that appears to show Amedy Coulibaly, the man who attacked the kosher grocery store, along with his girlfriend, Hayat Boumediene, and they're outside this Jewish institution in Paris presumably, maybe, casing the place.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well that's certainly the suspicion. And it's quite extraordinary because this was last summer. This was six months at least before the attack, suggesting that they had been thinking about this for some time. That's exactly the period, by the way, when the surveillance ends on the Kouachi brothers in and around June of last year. So one of the theories is that when that surveillance ends on the Kouachi brothers, that they start this plot in there, they're sort of conspiring together to some degree, that the Kouachi brothers bring Coulibaly into this. Interesting again that it's outside a Jewish site in Paris, given the fact that he launched an attack on the Jewish grocery store.

BERMAN: Appeared to be looking at a Jewish school also.

CRUICKSHANK: Absolutely. And that French female police officer that was shot dead in southern Paris, that was just 100 yards or so away from a Jewish school. So a lot of concern that that could have been the target that day.

BERMAN: So the French Prime Minister says there are as many as 3,000 would-be Jihadists in France right now that they would like to surveil. Can you do that? I mean, when you see this video of Coulibaly and Boumediene, it makes you think someone should have been watching them. But can you watch that many people?

CRUICKSHANK: Well you certainly can't do it 24/7 around the clock for that many people. But the French are massively increasing their resources for counterterrorism, half a billion more dollars, 3,000 new hires, including 1,000 people in the intelligence services. They're going to try and monitor as many people more extensively, intensively as they can. But you cannot monitor all of these people 24/7. That's absolutely impossible to do. The fear is always that some people slip through the cracks and you have got to every week, every month, you have got to attach priority to who you're going to go after, and that's more an art than a science.

BERMAN: Based on your conversations that you're having with officials and people who are working in Europe right now, do they feel like they are getting ahead of any current plots? Do they still fear that there are other things to hatch in Belgium, in France, for instance?

CRUICKSHANK: John, they tell me that it's the time of unprecedented threat, especially because they now sense that ISIS is pivoting toward launching attacks in Europe, specifically against the countries involved in airstrikes in Iraq, which is the U.K. and France and Belgium and Denmark and Holland, but also other European countries which are seen as part of this anti-ISIS coalition. A lot of concern about this. More than 500 people have come back to Europe from Syria in Iraq. Many of those people trained killers. There is concern that they could get weapons. I mean, we've seen in these past plots how easy it seems that they can get a hold of some pretty sophisticated heavy weapons, even RPGs, and concern that we could see more plots in the weeks and months ahead, John.

BERMAN: The fight goes on. The work goes on. Paul Cruickshank, I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

So a true NFL scandal next and it involves the AFC Champion New England Patriots. Reports say they cheated, perhaps, on their way to the Super Bowl. So what is the NFL going to do about this?

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