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FBI: ISIS May Expand Efforts to Attack; Paris Square Temporarily Evacuated; New Poll: Cruz Now Trump's Chief Rival in Iowa. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 24, 2015 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:01] PEREIRA: With a diet of a doughnut a week.

CAMEROTA: Right.

PEREIRA: Every Friday.

CAMEROTA: Amazing. You're amazing.

PEREIRA: That's amazing.

CAMEROTA: Congratulations.

CUOMO: You're not happy for me.

PEREIRA: Strongest man in news.

CUOMO: Carol Costello, it's time for "NEWSROOM" Carol Costello.

PEREIRA: Strongest man in news.

CUOMO: They're not happy for me.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I have some office coffee for you in a paper cup as my congratulations.

CUOMO: That makes as much sense as anything.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: I'm the strongest man in news.

COSTELLO: Have a great day.

PEREIRA: Strongest man.

COSTELLO: Have a great day. NEWSROOM starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

COSTELLO: And good morning, everyone. I'm Carol Costello. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. We do begin with breaking news. The French president at Andrews Air Force Base right now. His plane

just touching down. He's headed to the White House for what could be a tense meeting over Russia, Turkey and ISIS.

All over the video you are about to see. It is chilling. Vladimir Putin calling it a stab in the back. Take a look. A Russian warplane streaks across the skies over Turkey is engulfed in flames and igniting a new diplomatic crisis at one of the most tense regions of the world.

Turkey says the plane invaded its air space and ignored 10 warnings over five minutes. Turkey responds and the Russian jet nosedives. You can see it there. You'll see it burst into flames shortly. There it goes. You see the flames shooting out the back now.

Two pilots did eject from this plane. You're going to see that shortly. You're going to see them highlighted. There you see the jet crashing into the mountains of Turkey. The pilots eject. They parachute to the ground. But not necessarily to safety. This territory largely held by Syrian rebels, the very group that Russian airstrikes are targeting.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, lashing out as helicopters canvas the rebel hot spot.

Turkey, a key U.S. ally and a fellow member of NATO, the Western alliance holding an emergency session this morning. And global concerns rising over whether this conflict will derail the coalition building against ISIS.

We are covering this story with the vast resources only CNN can marshal. Our correspondents covering all the angles from the region, from Moscow to the White House but let's get right -- let's get right to it with CNN's Matthew Chance and Ben Wedeman, with the opposing perspectives. We begin with Matthew Chance in Moscow.

Hi, Matthew.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. That's right. Well, the Russians have basically come out extremely angry obviously at this incident. The downing of this Russian warplane. They've confirmed first of all that it's taken place. They have also confirmed that the two pilots on board ejected themselves and that their whereabouts and the state and the condition of those pilots has still not been confirmed to us.

But the Russians are strongly objecting to the Turkish allegation that that war plane entered into Turkish air space. They're saying that did not happen. Vladimir Putin appearing on Russian television a few moments ago, about an hour ago now, saying that the plane was hit when it was one kilometer, half a mile or so, away from the Turkish border. The plane went down more than two miles inside of Syria in extremely hostile territory.

And so that's something that the Russians are deeply concerned about now, the fate of the pilots. But Vladimir Putin having extremely harsh words for the Turks, saying this was a stab in the back by terrorist accomplices. He said that the plane was downed over surface -- over Syrian territory by air-to-air missiles from Turkish F-16 interceptors. And so he says it could have serious consequences for the relationship in the future between Syria -- sorry, between Turkey and Russia.

COSTELLO: All right. Let's go to Ben Wedeman now with a Turkish perspective because Turkey said it recently, warned Russia not to have its aircraft flying into the Turkish territory. But Turkey says that's exactly what happened.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, indeed. Well, in fact in early October, not only Turkey but NATO warned Russia about Russian aircraft entering Turkish air space. Now this incident happened at 9:24 in the morning when, according to both the Turks and the Russians, this plane crashed. Now obviously the narratives are completely different with the Turks saying that they warned this Russian SU-24 10 times within five minutes not to enter Turkish air space.

The Turks have in fact put out a path analysis map in which they insist it shows that indeed this plane did enter briefly into the Turkish territory. Now since then the Turkish Foreign Ministry in Ankara has summoned the Russian ambassador obviously to get a bit of something off of their chest.

Now we did see, for instance, a tweet from Serdar Kilic, who's the Turkish ambassador to Washington, in which he says, "Understand this. Turkey is a country whose warnings should be taken very seriously and listened to. Don't test Turkey's patience. Try to win its friendship."

[09:05:09] Now that friendship very much in tatters at the moment. This despite the fact that there is a huge amount of trade going on between Turkey and Russia. Turkey is a very popular destination for millions of Russian tourists every year. But at this point, that friendship very much in danger -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. So, Ben, these two Russian pilots who ejected, do we know their condition? Where they are? If they are being held?

WEDEMAN: Well, what we've seen is a fair amount of video posted on social media allegedly by rebel groups who say that they have, at least one of them, it appears he's dead. We did hear from one of the rebel groups in the area saying that their men fired on one of the pilots as he was parachuting to earth. And certainly from those videos it appears that he received multiple gunshot wounds.

In the case of the second pilot his fate is unclear. Where he went down is just a few kilometers from an area controlled by the Syrian government but no word on his fate at this point -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Matthew, any word on the pilots in Russia?

CHANCE: There's still -- I mean, we're still very much dependent, Carol, on information coming to us from the ground and the Russians are in the same situation. The Russian government even. And so we're seeing all these videos that have been making the rounds on social media apparently showing pilots or a pilot at least dead as Ben was mentioning there. There are other unconfirmed reports as well that the second pilot may not have survived either. But the speculation on the Russian media is that look, you know, it is going to be absolutely awful.

It's going to turn very ugly indeed if it turns out that either of these pilots, whether dead or alive, find themselves in the hands of ISIS or any other Islamist group that is bitterly opposed to Russia. But, you know, we're just going to have to wait and see. The information is still very sketchy. We're gleaning whatever we can at the moment.

COSTELLO: All right. I'll let you both get back to it.

Ben Wedeman, Matthew Chance, many thanks.

Of course you are looking at President Hollande's plane just landing at Andrews Air Force Base. At any moment of course President Hollande will get off the plane and he'll be on his way to the White House to meet with President Obama.

In light of what happened over Turkey, though, NATO will hold an emergency meeting in two hours with Turkey explaining exactly why it shut down an ally's plane. Before NATO gathers as I've said President Obama will sit down with the French President Francois Hollande. On the agenda, a united front against ISIS, one that includes Russia, France and the United States. But now that appears unlikely.

CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is in Washington with that part of the story. Good morning.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Right. And Turkey's relationship to this, its role in this, has really been complicated from the start. So this conversation today between French President Francois Hollande and President Obama is bound to be complicated as well and wide-ranging.

I mean, questions that have dogged the coalition are, are there enough resources to really operate effectively? Is the coalition working at all? And can all these extremely diverse interests -- I mean, you have Russia, Iran, Europe, America, Middle Eastern countries, all in the mix there. Can they cooperate effectively?

That really remains to be seen, although this has been going on now for more than a year. And some of these questions have been there from the beginning.

Francois Hollande is on a kind of tour trying to step things up. Ramp up action against ISIS. Improve its own national security. Once the U.S. has continued help in that and that is something that the White House is absolutely prepared to give.

As for what concrete developments are going to come out of this meeting today, though, that remains to be seen. That's something the White House isn't really talking about at this point. But there is going to be a press conference. Both leaders are going to be taking questions in just a few hours. And to make this more complicated and more interesting is that after this meeting, Francois Hollande will then travel on to Moscow to meet with Russian president Vladimir Putin. I mean, that was something that was planned before this shoot down of the Russian fighter jet.

But, you know, there's been speculation that Russia is going to try to convince France to lift some sanctions against Russia for what's been going on in Ukraine in return for more cooperation against ISIS. Russia is framing this as a step towards a coalition as against ISIS. We all know that coalition already existed led by the U.S.

[09:10:02] The White House says this isn't some kind of competition and those sanctions against Russia will remain in place until Russia changes its behavior in ukraine. And still the U.S. says it welcomes Russia's cooperation against ISIS so long as Russia plays by the same rules as everyone else and is indeed targeting ISIS -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Michelle Kosinski, stand by. Thanks for that.

As we await President Hollande to step off that plane and be whisked to the White House, I want to head to Brussels now and check in with Alexandra Field for this, quote, "extraordinary meeting" about to be held by NATO.

Tell us more, Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, so this is something that Turkish officials actually called for. You know, we've referred this morning to the fact that they're putting their case out there for why this Russian plane had to come down, showing that map that showed the incursion into the air space. Also talking about the 10 warnings that it made to the Russian aircraft to get out of the air space.

So these are the findings that they now want to present to their NATO allies in this special meeting later today. This follows a pattern of what happened the last time that Turkish officials said that a Russia aircraft made an incursion into their airspace. At that time there was another emergency meeting for NATO and they put out a statement following that incident. This is from NATO, at the time they said, "Allies strongly protest these violations of Turkish sovereign air space and condemn these incursions into it in violation of NATO air space." Allies also note the extreme danger of irresponsible behavior. They call on the Russian federation to cease and desist and immediately explain these violations."

So that was sort of, Carol, the sum total of the response from NATO the last time that Turkey came here and presented their findings. We will have to see later this morning what the response from the council is after the emergency meeting. At this point a spokesperson for NATO tells us only that they have been closely monitoring the situation and --

COSTELLO: All right. As you can see, a little technical problem from our shot in Brussels with Alexandra Field. I want to switch back to Washington now. As we await President

Hollande to, you know, get off the plane and walk down the steps.

Michelle Kosinski, I know that President Hollande was trying to be sort of a mediator between Russia and the United States. France very much wants Russia and the United States to be on the same page, but you know that Turkey is the U.S. ally and Russia and Turkey don't exactly get along.

KOSINSKI: Right.

COSTELLO: So this really does complicate matters.

KOSINSKI: Yes. What a tangled web. I mean, in a sense we had one there to begin with. Now it's gotten more complicated and more dangerous. More volatile. There we see President Francois Hollande descending the stairs from the plane there on his way now to the White House to meet in the Oval Office with President Obama.

I think what's going to be very interesting possibly add a lot to the story here today is when they take questions from the press immediately after their meeting. So we're going to hear from them both around 11:30. It's not going to be a lot of questions, but, you know, people are going to try to try to squeeze in as many as possible there.

Yes, it's interesting to see him kind of on this tour, talking to different leaders who are part of the coalition, and then Russia comes next. In fact just yesterday we saw Hollande meet with the British prime minister who is now vowing to go back to parliament and ask again for airstrikes over Syria. And that's something that parliament denied the first time around. So that is going to be another aspect of this.

As Hollande tries to build support for stepping up action against ISIS, who is going to jump in and contribute more? And you know, that's something that the White House has been asking for, for a long time and something we heard them emphasize many times over the last few days as President Obama has been traveling. You know, what additional resources are others going to contribute to the fight against ISIS? They think there's plenty of room there for allies to do more but when the White House has been asked, you know, by the same token what more resources is the U.S. going to contribute to the fight against ISIS?

They've been somewhat vague. They have said that intensification and additional resources are absolutely a possibility including on the part of the U.S. but how exactly those will come into play we're going to have to wait and see.

COSTELLO: All right.

KOSINSKI: That's part of what this conversation will entail today, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Michelle Kosinski, reporting live from the White House. Do keep us posted as President Hollande makes his way to Washington, D.C. and President Obama.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, just in time for holiday travel, a worldwide travel alert. What the State Department's warning -- what the State Department is warning about you?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:38] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A frightening warning for Americans traveling this holiday season. The FBI is concerned that terrorists will try replicating the deadly Paris attacks right here in the United States. The State Department issuing a new global travel alert for Americans, warning them to be on guard when traveling over the holidays.

CNN's Jim Sciutto live in Washington with more on this.

Good morning.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol.

So, now you have the FBI with a domestic warning and the State Department with this international warning.

The FBI, to be clear, it's not based on any credible specific threat. More, the general concern that what they call homegrown violent extremists or HVEs may try to duplicate what we saw in Paris.

In particular in this FBI bulletin, it is encouraging local police forces to retrain for active shooter situations. That's one thing. And also, to keep their eyes on the lookout for people doing surveillance of possible targets, taking picture, taking videos, this kind of thing. You know, it's pretty general, but it does show their level of concern.

I just want to quote one line from the FBI warning. They say here, "We assess homegrown violent extremists, again HVEs, either inspired or directed by Syria-based external operatives represent the most likely ISIS threat to the homeland."

So, that's concerning, and I've heard this from U.S. intelligence, counterterror officials for some time that that's what they consider the lone wolf kind of threat inspired from afar, the most likely one.

[09:20:10] The thing is now, Carol, you have this State Department threat that tells Americans traveling anywhere in the world to be on the lookout for this kind of thing, particularly in the kind of targets we've seen in the last couple of weeks -- sporting events, aviation services, flying, et cetera. Nothing specific in the threat -- rather in that warning but a more general "be aware" kind of message there.

COSTELLO: OK. So back to the FBI warning because it's so broad. So here I am living in New York City, Thanksgiving Day parade is right upon us, right? It is going to happen on Thursday. I ride the subway every day. What am I supposed to look for?

SCIUTTO: You know, it is a great question. I got kids. I'm thinking the same thing. What do you do? You know, I talk to C.T. -- counterterror folks all the time. And I'll even ask them personal questions. I'll say, hey, what are you doing, you know, with your kids? That kind of thing. I talk to U.S. law enforcement official in Paris, they said, listen, I'm still taking my kids to school.

You know, the general message you hear is keep living your life, right? And just be more aware, which is kind of frustrating advice because, you know, you go pick up a gallon of milk, you got to be aware. You go to the Thanksgiving Day parade -- that kind of thing. It is tough but the fact is Carol it is the world we live in.

And the thing is, these guys could attack anywhere anytime. But chances are, they are not going to, right? And chances are you are going to be safe. It is just a difficult balance all of us is going to have to strike as we deal with this going forward.

COSTELLO: All right. Jim Sciutto reporting live from Washington -- thanks.

See how intelligence agencies are in a fierce fight to keep the world safe when CNN brings you exclusive looks inside the war on terror. "Targeting Terror: Inside the Intelligence War." That airs tonight, 9:00 Eastern on CNN.

Also, this just in to us: German police have now joined the intensive manhunt for the surviving Paris terror suspect.

CNN's Clarissa Ward live in France with more on that.

Hi, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.

Well, we're just getting this information in now, the German police are now involved in the search for the eighth attacker. Salah Abdeslam, you remember, he has been on the run since Paris attack.

He was last seen approaching the Belgium border just a few hours after those attacks and we're hearing in a statement from German police that they have received a tip-off that he may be at an address known to police in Minden. That is in northwest Germany, reportedly an extensive search is ongoing. We'll keep you up to speed with that the minute we hear anything else.

But here in Paris, anxiety is still running very high. Just about an hour ago, we had this entire square behind me, the Place de la Republique is where all the journalist have been based out of, and many Parisians, of course, coming to pay their respect to that memorial. But behind me, everyone is evacuated from this area by police. All the metro stations around this area were shut down because of an alleged bomb threat.

That doesn't appear to have materialized anything more substantial, but it certainly speaks to the heightened alert that people here in Paris find themselves on. Now, on the investigative side, focused very much right now on this suicide vest, explosive suicide vest that was found in a garbage can in the Paris suburb of Montrouge last night.

And according to BFM TV, which is one of CNN's affiliates, that suicide vest was stuffed with TATP, which is the very crude explosive that the attackers used in all of their suicide vests, as well as metal bolts. So, clearly designed to do maximum damage.

And what's even more interesting is that according to French media reports, the cell phone of Salah Abdeslam, the eighth attacker who was still on the loose, was tracked to that very area, Montrouge, just hours after the attacks. The question now, was he the one -- was that vest belonging to him? Did he dump it in the trash can?

And, of course, investigators are optimistic that because the vest hasn't been detonated, Carol, they might get a treasure trove of DNA information from that vest, not just about Salah Abdeslam, but about who the bomb maker was because it's believed that that bomb maker may still be alive -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Clarissa Ward, reporting live from Paris this morning -- thank you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM: Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson trails as another political outsider surges. Up next, who's running neck and neck with Donald Trump in Iowa?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:28:57] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me.

Say hello to a new surging Republican candidate. Not Rubio. Not Bush. But Senator Ted Cruz. A new Quinnipiac poll has Cruz running neck and neck with Donald Trump in Iowa. Trump still leads when it comes to handling terrorism though, 30 percent of Iowa caucus-goers say they are all in for Trump on that issue.

The front runner ramping up his rhetoric on waterboarding at an event last night in Columbus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I'd approve it. You bet your ass. In a heart beat. In a heart beat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: But Ted Cruz is hot on Trump's heels. The political outsider earns the highest marks on foreign policy. This is the man who Senator John McCain once called a wacko bird. Cruz embracing the term on tee shirts and according to Yahoo, he even has a black whacko bird hat in his office. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When I came back to Texas, grassroots supporters went and printed up baseball caps with Daffy Duck on them. It said "Wacko Birds". And if the grassroots, to this day, people make t-shirt saying they're a proud wacko bird.