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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
ISIS Video Warning; Attacks Planned in Syria; Bombing Raqqa. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired November 16, 2015 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:00:28] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. Good evening from Paris, where it is 6:00 in the evening. I'm Poppy Harlow live for you here tonight.
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Ashleigh Banfield in New York. It's 12 noon Eastern Time. Welcome to a special edition of LEGAL VIEW.
France is at war. In an historic speech to both houses of French parliament in Versailles, French President Francois Hollande blamed ISIS for the attack that killed at least 129 people in Paris on Friday and he promised more air strikes on Syria.
Right now there is a worldwide manhunt for this man, Belgian born, a French national named Salah Abdeslam. He's believed to be involved in these attacks. French police are warning that he is dangerous and not to be approached.
Earlier today, Belgian special operations forces zeroed in on a neighborhood in Molenbeek, an impoverished suburb of Brussels with a history of links to terror plots. They make one arrest, but they did not find Abdeslam. And speaking of arrests, 23 people are now in custody, 104 others are under house arrest. The result of more than 150 police anti-terror raids in cities across France.
This as we are learning, according to CNN French affiliate BFM, six of the attackers, six of them, spent time in Syria where French President Hollande says the attacks were planned. And as ISIS claims responsibility for these attacks, brand-new threats emerging in a brand-new video, promising to, quote, "strike America in its own stronghold Washington, D.C. CNN cannot independently confirm the authenticity of that video.
But also this morning, in an emotional news conference at the G20 Summit in Turkey, President Obama defended his strategy for going after ISIS, saying sending a large number of U.S. ground troops to fight in Syria would be a mistake.
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: My only interest is to end suffering and to keep the American people safe. And if there's a good idea out there, then we're going to do it. I don't think I've shown hesitation to act, whether it's with respect to bin Laden or with respect to sending additional troops into Afghanistan or keeping them there if it is determined that it's actually going to work. But what we do not do, what I do not do, is to take actions either because it is going to work politically or it is going to somehow, in the abstract, make America look tough or make me look tough. And maybe part of the reason is because every few months I go the Walter Reed and I see a 25-year-old kid who's paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I've ordered into battle. And so I can't afford to play some of the political games that others may.
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BANFIELD: In the meantime, after a moment of silence for the victims, this morning, the French president there in the middle of your screen anything but silent when it comes to who he says is responsible for these attacks. Francois Hollande going after ISIS right from the start in what can only be called an historic address to a joint session of the French parliament just a short time ago.
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PRES. FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, FRANCE (through translator): France is at war. The acts committed in Paris on Friday evening, these are acts of war. They caused at least 129 deaths and many injured. And they constitute an aggression, an attack against our country, against its values, against its young people and against its way of life. They were done by a Daesh group who are fighting because France is a country of freedom, because we are the motherland of human rights.
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[12:05:27] BANFIELD: A video purportedly released by ISIS is promising brand-new threats against the United States, and specifying Washington, D.C. It also praises the attacks in Paris. Evan Perez is joining me live now from Washington.
What more do we know about these threats and these tapes?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Ashleigh, we know that the U.S. government is taking it very, very seriously. This is one in a flurry of videos that we've seen recently from ISIS and its supporters praising these attacks and also promising more to the come. Obviously, these are the countries - the countries that are bombing ISIS' homeland and territory are the countries under are under threat, including France, the United States. And here's one part of the video and the threat that was made.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We say to the countries that participate in the crusade or campaign, I swear to God, a similar day that France went through, you will go through. I swear to God as we struck France and its stronghold Paris, we will strike America and its stronghold Washington with God's will.
(END VIDEO CLIP) PEREZ: And, Ashleigh, we know that, obviously, the United States and Washington is among the top targets for ISIS. We know that - we know that that is one of their - at the top of their list. We have a statement from the FBI that we received this morning. "At this time there is no specific or credible threat to the United States. We will not hesitate to adjust our security posture as appropriate to protect the American people."
We also just got a statement from the U.S. Capitol Police. One of the things that they've done is increased visible security around the U.S. Capitol, which is just a few blocks from here, Ashleigh, and it's one of those things that people are going to be able to see. Everywhere they go, they're going to see more security presence because of the threat that's been made.
BANFIELD: Makes you wonder what specific and credible threat means when you have a guy actually saying it like that on tape, but there is a grave difference between the two.
Evan Perez in Washington, thank you very much.
I want to take us over, because as all of this is happening, France is still reeling in the aftermath of the horror. And that's where our Poppy Harlow is live in Paris.
Hi, Poppy.
HARLOW: Hi, Ashleigh. They absolutely are.
What's unfolding behind me, you have two priests that have come here from the United States to the Place De La Republique, and they are meeting with people, praying for the lives lost, helping in the healing. This is a global healing underway centered here in Paris.
I want to talk more about the developments that have happened here on the intelligence side in Paris. Let's bring in CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto, also CNN's terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank.
The immediacy of what we've just learned, a 28-year-old, a Belgian with ties to al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. His name, Abdel Hamid Abaaoud. What do we know about him? Is he the ring leader?
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I've spoken to a source very close to the French investigation, a French source, and he says that they believe that Abaaoud is the ring leader of these attacks. That this is a well-known ISIS operative. He is back in Syria. He's believed to have directed the attacks, and dispatched these attackers to the streets of Paris.
Now, what's particularly interesting about him is that he is close to the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And it is the view of French authorities that he would be unlikely to carry out such an attack without the approval of al Baghdadi. In addition to that, we know that this fits with Baghdadis' vision, which is establish the caliphate, you have your home base in Iraq and Syria, and then bring the war to the west. And that's what we're seeing here. And then you see that further highlighted in the threats we see out today, not only attacks in Paris, but threatening attacks in Washington, D.C.
HARLOW: Absolutely. And, Paul Cruikshank, to you.
We heard President Francois Hollande in that historic address, only the third time a president has addressed parliament here in France since 1848 saying this attack was planned in Syria, it was organized in Belgium, it was carried out here in France with internal complicity here in France. Talk to me more about, at 28 years old, how this person could have gained such authority to get young men to kill themselves in the name of this?
PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, Abdel Hamid Abaaoud left from Belgium to Syria originally in 2013 and he sort of moved up the ranks within the organization, had a reputation for extreme brutality. That might have sort of attracted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's attention. There was already growing circumstantial evidence that he was involved, that he may have been the brains behind this plot because he was a long-standing friend of the guy still at large, Salah Abdeslam (ph), who an international arrest warrant has gone out for. They were actually part of the same criminal case in 2010. And so they've known each other for some time.
[12:10:04] And Abaaoud was the ringleader of that very serious plot back in January in Belgium, a gun and bomb plot with TACP (ph), the same form of explosives.
HARLOW: Right.
CRUICKSHANK: They went in. They launched a raid in eastern Belgium. They took out the gunmen. They arrested another one of them. And he was communicating, Abaaoud, from Greece with these plotters in Belgium and the Belgians tried to bring in the CIA to try and help locate him. but they didn't manage to get him. he managed to evade the international dragnet (INAUDIBLE) back to Syria. So there's been a lot of concern that he's been involved in a string of terrorist plotting against France. And, in fact, in August, it's important to mention, in August there was a French ISIS fighter who came back, according to "Le Monde," who was interrogated here and said he just backed out of a plot to launch an attack against a concert hall in France. Who did he say the ringleader was? Abdel Hamid Abaaoud.
HARLOW: This man.
CRUICKSHANK: The very same guy.
HARLOW: What's - what's amazing to me, Jim, it how much we know about him and his ability to fly under the radar. News broke yesterday from you about this encrypted technology and the ability for them to go dark and go completely undetected. Young people are even more strong in that ability.
SCIUTTO: This has been long term concerns of U.S. and European intelligence officials. And, again, speaking a source close to the French investigation, he said French officials are concerned that these attackers did use encrypted communications so that they could do this under the radar.
In addition to that though, there were more ways that they were aware of them. So this is Abdel Abaaoud is someone that they - the authorities were aware of. Several of the other attackers, at least two at this point, but we believe that others will have been on the police radar screen, one for terror offenses, another for having been radicalized. So the thing is that even with the use of encrypted communications here, or the presumed use, they had other knowledge of them.
HARLOW: Right.
SCIUTTO: They had other vision on them and yet they were able to carry out this plot.
HARLOW: Paul.
CRUICKSHANK: And they had - just echoing Jim's point, they have strategic warning of it because, according to "Le Monde," that French ISIS fighter who came back, what did he say, he said Abdel Hamid Abaaoud is plotting more attacks against France like -
SCIUTTO: Including on concert halls.
CRUICKSHANK: Including on concert halls like the one I just backed out of. So they had strategic warning of this but, of course, the sheer scale of it with up to 1,000 French extremists having traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, hundreds coming back, those are just the ones they know about.
HARLOW: Right.
CRUICKSHANK: It means it's difficult to monitor all these people all the time. They only have the resources to monitor a fraction of them.
HARLOW: Yes.
CRUICKSHANK: And then you add in the going dark thing that Jim was just talking about -
HARLOW: Right.
CRUICKSHANK: The French and the Belgians, they don't even have the resources the Americans have to look at all these communications.
HARLOW: Sure. And not to mention the fact that one of them only came to this country a month ago having traveled through the Greek island of Leros, through five eastern European countries to make it to France and he's only been here for a month and he carries it out.
SCIUTTO: Yes. The ratio you hear is 20 to one. If I want to keep you under surveillance 24 hours a day, I need 20 people to do it.
HARLOW: You need people. Incredible.
SCIUTTO: The estimate of the numbers of suspected jihadi sympathizers radicalized in France is 11,000. Do the math, that's 2 million operatives you would need to do it.
HARLOW: Absolutely.
SCIUTTO: It's just not possible.
HARLOW: Absolutely. Jim Sciutto, Paul Cruickshank, thank you very much.
Coming up next, we will return with how this country is striking back against ISIS. A series of bombardments in ISIS' de facto capital of Raqqa last night. What will we see on a global front as the president of France calls this war, next.
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[12:17:34] HARLOW: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am Poppy Harlow coming to you live with my colleague Ashleigh Banfield from Paris.
This evening, just a short time ago, President Obama spoke to the G-20 Summit in Turkey about his strategy to take the out ISIS. He harshly defended his plan not to send ground troops into this battle. Here's a big of what the president said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The strategy that we're pursuing, which focuses on going after targets, limiting wherever possible the capabilities of ISIL on the ground, systematically going after their leadership, their infrastructure, strengthening Shia - or strengthening Syrian and Iraqi forces that are - and Kurdish forces that are prepared to fight them, cutting off their borders and squeezing the space in which they can operate until ultimately we're able to defeat them, that's the strategy we're going to have to pursue. And we will continue to generate more partners for that strategy and there are going to be some things that we try that don't work. There will be some strategies we try that do work. And when we find strategies that work, we will double-down on those.
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HARLOW: Senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, live for us tonight from Irbil, Iraq. Also in Phoenix we have CNN military analyst, retired Major General Spider Marks.
Nick, to you first. Look, we were live on the air last night when Raqqa, the de facto capital of Syria, was getting bombarded with these 20 bombs from France. My question to you after ISIS comes out and of course says they didn't kill a single fighter, take that with a grain of salt, what is the reaction on the ground in Syria? What impact did that have?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we are reliant on activists called Raqqa Stole (ph) Silently (ph) for information and they, of course, are anti-ISIS. But they say ISIS did suffer some casualties. They can't say how many. But mostly the 24 strikes or so, including some coalition ones, hit around the outskirts of the suburbs of Raqqa and two key buildings in the middle, they're called the stadium and the museum. Those are, in fact, not what they're used for any more. They're headquarters and jails. But a full assessment of the damage will be tough to do, of course, because ISIS hermetically control that area. And you have to ask yourself too, suddenly these targets became readily available despite the U.S. having been in the skies over the (INAUDIBLE) period of time. So it may have been more political messaging than military effectiveness at heart.
[12:20:02] Poppy.
HARLOW: What about - what about the fact that now you look at the article five, right of the NATO treaty and you look at the agreement between countries aligned through NATO that if one is struck, that the others will step in and can use force to help them. This begs the question, does this truly turn into World War III? What's your take?
WALSH: It's - I think the pope suggested it was World War III by piecemeal. But I think your problem really here is, this is low-grade proxy warfare that spawned an international terrorist movement. Some actually say initially wanted to create their caliphate in Iraq and Syria and their first goal was not to attack the west. It's become that since the air strikes have come in and, frankly, they're under military pressure inside. So perhaps the lashing out at the west through these horrifying acts of terrorism is a symptom of that.
But, yes, we have a whole region here in complete turmoil. Nothing like it's ever seen in the past few decades. And we have a west which is realizing that it's direct, forceful intervention may exacerbate the problem. Bear in mind all the fighting groups in this particular arena now, from a very small exception, a lot of them, apart from the Kurds, are pretty anti-western. They don't want to see foreign troops suddenly turn up and try and tell them how to run their country. And, frankly, the west doesn't really know, as it saw in Iraq, how to administrate vast parts of the Middle East, too.
So, yes, we're seeing an increasingly engulfing conflict. It seems to get worse and worse and worse every single month in ways that were previously unimaginable. The issue really is, are you turning it into World War III by throwing extra nations into it with greater firepower and is stepping back, perhaps, away to let it tire itself out and find its own solutions.
Poppy.
HARLOW: All right, Nick, thank you. Stay with me.
And, General Spider Marks, to you. We just heard from President Obama speaking at the G-20 in Turkey. And when he - he said, when we find a strategy that is effective, we will double down on it. For many people I think it's disconcerting to hear "when we find." He is insistent that the strategy from the air, these aerial bombardments, are the way to go. Do you agree?
MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: No, I don't. And I - and I must say, I'm tired of the narrative that there's causality between what the western powers are trying to achieve and what ISIS wants to try to achieve. We're not exasperating anything. It doesn't matter what we do. We could sit back, we could try to negotiate, we could clean their teeth and we could issue MREs and fresh fruit, they would still hate us and they would go after targets in Paris. They would go after targets in Rome. It doesn't matter. We have to be able to really constrict the area within which they can operate.
And what the president has described, Poppy, it really aspirational. We've not been able to contain ISIS. We've not been able to resource. We've chosen not to resource the strategy that our administration has put forth, which is to defeat ISIS. We're not doing anything to defeat ISIS. We're trying to contain it. That's not working very well. So we have to move forward to the next stage. We need to be able to the put ground forces in very specific targets to eradicate that ability for ISIS to recruit and eliminate the appeal.
HARLOW: Right.
MARKS: There have to be images of ISIS suffering inside Iraq and Syria, not the glorified images that are going forth and online, this great recruiting tool.
HARLOW: Sure. Absolutely. They have been very effective in the propaganda war, there's no question about that. But I think, general, you're coming from a perspective of an American public that, in some part, is very difficult for them to stomach the thought of more American lives lost, more ground troops after Afghanistan and Iraq. Given that, you have pointed to Russia, and said there is actually quite an opportunity here for some sort of alliance between the United States and Russia. What would that look like?
MARKS: Yes, that's a - that's a great point, Poppy, and I - and I don't know that I would call it an alliance at this point, but, absolutely, we have, with Russia, we have a confluence of interests here. ISIS has demonstrated - and this form of radical Islam, it's just not ISIS. It happens to be the face of radical Islam right now that we're talking about. But they're - they've been very ecumenical in terms of the targets they're going after. They are pissing off the world to including Moscow.
So we have an opportunity to engage in a very fulsome conversation with the Russia, and we might be able to create an alliance of some sort, a partnership of some sort, that will allows us to really create as a first step maybe a real smothering air campaign that does what the president is saying we should be doing, and then from there moving it to the next stage. But you can't control the ground by hovering above the ground. You are to be able to get on the ground and hold it. You can strike it, but then you have to hold it.
HARLOW: That's what we're been hearing increasingly from military experts like yourself. General Spider Marks, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.
[12:25:07] MARKS: Thanks. HARLOW: When we return from Paris, coming up next, who are these terrorists who struck this beautiful city of lights. Where did they live? Where were they trained? And why is America different than Europe when it comes to being so vulnerable to these type of attacks? We're back in a moment.
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[12:29:37] BANFIELD: These are killers with fantasies of glory. Those are the words used by President Obama to describe the Paris attackers today. All of this as heavily armed police are hunting down terror suspects in France and in Belgium. And this from the former top counter terror judge in France, saying to our Jim Sciutto, that the suspected ring leader of what happened in Paris on Friday night was a man named Abdel Hamid Abaaoud. He is very close to ISIS' leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And he, at this point, would be whereabouts unknown.
