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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

ISIS Connection in Shooting; Media Sees Killers' Rental Home. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 04, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: More of the breaking news coverage, the shooting at San Bernardino. Anderson Cooper picks up right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And thanks very much for joining us. I'm Anderson Cooper, live in San Bernardino, California.

I want to welcome our viewers in the United States and watching around the world to CNN's special coverage of the California shooting massacre.

Breaking news here on CNN. In just the past few minutes, we've learned that investigators have drawn what they feel is a clear line connecting the mass killing in southern California to ISIS.

I want to go straight to CNN's Jim Sciutto, tracking these new details from Washington.

Jim, what's this connection?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, this is what we know. Multiple officials telling CNN that Tashfeen Malik, she's the wife and the second shooter, of Syed Rizwan Farook, that during the attack, as the attack was underway, she made a posting to Facebook pledging allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This in a Facebook account under a different name. Investigators have not told us which device she used to make this posting.

This is leading investigators to further firm up the explanation that terrorism was involved in this. To be clear, they are now looking at this as an ISIS-inspired attack. They have not yet established that this was directed necessarily by ISIS. One official telling my colleague, Pamela Brown, this is looking more and more like a case of self-radicalization.

I also want to mention, because we've talked a lot about a workplace issue as possibly being involved. Investigators still looking into the possibility that another issue was a workplace issue centered around his religion, that that may have played a role in this dispute. But to be clear, the news here is establishing a direct connection to ISIS with the wife, Tashfeen Malik, posting, making this Facebook posting, pledging allegiance to ISIS, to the leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the attack was underway. I also want to make clear for context that there is precedent for

that. You may remember the Garland, Texas, shooting in May of this year. The other ISIS-inspired attack we've seen so far on U.S. soil. The shooters in that attack made a similar social media posting prior to the attack. It is something that ISIS asks its followers to do, demands of its followers as they are carrying out acts of violence.

But again, there, this is - this is something I'll tell you, Anderson, that U.S. law enforcement official, counterterror officials have been warning me and others for some time, their concern about ISIS being able to inspire an attack on U.S. soil, that is of grave concern now because there is evidence that that's exactly what happened in San Bernardino two days ago.

Anderson.

COOPER: And, Jim, I mean, what's of greater concern to law enforcement, somebody who actually has contact to an ISIS or ISIS affiliate overseas, or somebody who doesn't and is able to do this just by watching their videos and deciding to kind of self-radicalize?

SCIUTTO: They're both of equal concern, frankly, because they both have the intended effect, sadly, which is carrying out acts of bloodshed. In Paris we saw a direct connection, some direction from ISIS home base. Here, not clear there was direction, but at least inspiration. And I will tell you, Anderson, it's arguably more difficult, more scary to have no connection, to have it be completely self-inspired -

COOPER: Right.

SCIUTTO: Because there's no trail to detect before the attack, a communication, a call, a social media posting, an e-mail or a direct message from someone in say Syria to someone here in the U.S. If they do it entirely on their own, then much harder to prevent.

COOPER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: To be clear there, in this case though, we do know that while these attackers were not known to the FBI before these attacks, they have now discovered after the fact that they were in communication with people known to be ISIS sympathizers before the shooting took place.

COOPER: All right, Jim, appreciate the late breaking details. Thank you.

I want to go to our panel. Paul Cruickshank is here, our terrorism analyst. Also CNN contributor Michael Weiss, who co-wrote a book about ISIS. Also Anthony May, a former AFT explosive expert.

Paul, let's start with you. When this latest information, that the wife had pledged loyalty to al Baghdadi, it's clearly a direct link that leads this to the terrorism angle. What do you make of it?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Yes, and it leads perhaps - you know, it arrives at the terrorist angle with that. That this is looking like an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, which would be the first deadly ISIS-inspired attack on U.S. soil, and also the deadliest Islamist terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. So this is a very significant moment, unfortunately. ISIS are going to take ownership of this, I would believe, in a big way. They'll use it to try and inspire other attacks. I think there will be concern now with over 900 investigations in the United States of ISIS-inspired radicals that some of those with what they saw playing out in Paris, with what they saw play out in California, will now be inspired to move forward.

[12:05:17] These are worrying days the United States now faces because of this ISIS threat. ISIS are instigating these kind of attacks over the social media, reaching out to people directly in the west to encourage this form of violence. It remains to be seen whether there was any communication between these two and ISIS when it comes to that, but certainly this is now an ISIS-inspired attack. Very worrying.

COOPER: There's some sound that CBS has from a man who knew the couple. I just want to play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that he was radicalized?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, by the wife. I think he married a terrorist.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He married a terrorist?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Michael, I mean is this a kind of a dream scenario for ISIS. A man and woman go on a killing spree, pledging their allegiance to ISIS -

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

COOPER: Even if they don't have any direct connection to that group?

WEISS: Absolutely. I mean, look, they've got two sort of arms of their foreign operations. One is to dispatch their agents and their sleepers and their operatives from, you know, the caliphate into Europe or to have them just remain in Europe and further radicalize people and plot the operations that you saw such as in Paris.

The second arm is a kind of army of invisible soldiers. You know, the propaganda or the abjectprop (ph), as it should be know, is designed to do exactly this, you know, have people essentially declare allegiance or pledge their loyalty to the caliph, Abu Bakr al- Baghdadi, without even ISIS senior officials knowing, and then go off and perpetrate these attacks. I mean these people don't matter to ISIS. They're cannon fodder. They're expendable. And that's exactly the point. Better we don't even know - hear from you. better we don't have communications because we know that that can be interdicted by, you know, signals intelligence. So this is - this is what I think is much more worrying to counterterrorism officials. It's like, you know, we don't even know how many, you know, of these people exist all throughout the world. You don't - you don't find out about them until they carry out some dastardly deed.

COOPER: And, Michael, the fear of that exactly plays into ISIS' hands, because what they want is to create divisions between the U.S. population, the non-Muslim population, and the Muslim population in this country. I mean they would like nothing more for there to be fear, for there to be distrust of the mainstream Muslim population in the United States because that would further create greater divisions and potentially greater resentment and potentially newer recruits.

WEISS: That's right. I mean in addition to killing as many people, inflicting as much harm as possible, there's a sort of - I wouldn't even call it a secondary goal. I mean it's somewhat riding shotgun with the primary goal there, which is what the KGB used to call reflexive control, putting out information, trying to engineer the west response to your activities.

So, for instance, after this attack, I guarantee you, Anderson, you're going to see an entire class of punditry, politicians talk about the threat posed by, you know, fifth columnists and radical Muslims living in the United States. There will be calls like Donald Trump's, you know, national registration cards for all Muslim, things like that. That plays directly into ISIS' narrative because they, as you point out, they - for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi put it himself in his Ramadan (ph) sermon in 2014, there are two camps. There is no third camp. There is no third way. There's the camp of the true believers, Islam as we interpret it, and then there's the kufar (ph). So you're either with us or you're against us. And they want the west to be against them and to declare that they're against them in this clash of the civilizations.

COOPERS: Anthony, in terms of the bombs, the explosives found in that garage, how much training and materiel is needed for something like that? I mean can somebody do that? Can this couple have done this on their own? Would they need a bombmaker or is it stuff they could figure out from reading stuff online?

ANTHONY MAY, RETIRED ATF EXPLOSIVES EXPERT: Well, Anderson, the devices that I've seen just from the photographs seem kind of rudimentary and amateuristic in design. And the photographs say a lot. But to kind of piggy backing on what Michael just said, using his phrase of the army of the invisible soldiers, they may be - they may think they're invisible, but the gist of the logistics of massing the pipes, the materiel, the ammunition, they're leaving signatures. People should be noticing these things and - and it's - and, you know, law enforcement can't do this on their own. They're going to need the public's help in this. And if they see something - see somebody amassing a large bag of pipe such as this - I mean they're buying these things, they're leaving a trail. And that needs to be reported. And I guarantee you law enforcement has no problems looking into that.

[12:10:09] But now back to the pipes, that bag of - a yellow bag full of pipes. What that tells me is quite a bit. What I'm not seeing in that bag is what's most important. I'm not seeing any built-up of those pipes. I'm not seeing any drill holes. I'm not seeing any fusing mechanisms. That could be just a bag of materiel that was presented to our shooters. And if that's the case, then certainly there are logistical people involved here that are providing the supplies that they're needing. That the device left at the - at the center, where the shootings occurred, that yellow car sitting in front of the three pipe bombs taped together, my - just looking at that and looking at the wiring from it, and talking with some folks that I know, that - that device would not work as designed. And I don't want to go into their design flaw because -

COOPER: Sure. Of course.

MAY: I don't want it to be corrected.

COOPER: Paul Cruickshank -

MAY: But, you know, there's a lot to be said here that they could not have done this on their own.

COOPER: Yes. And it's an important note about people seeing something and saying something. Anthony May, thank you. Michael Weiss, Paul Cruickshank, stick around. We're going to take a short break.

Up next, digging deeper into the apparent connection between the massacre here and ISIS. What turned a husband and wife into killers and terrorists, and how many others like them are there out there? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:40] COOPER: And welcome back.

I want to show you some pictures outside of the apartment complex where these killers were living. A scrum of reporters outside. Not exactly clear what's going on there right now. Our Stephanie Elam is on the scene. We're trying to get some information from her and we'll let you know as soon as we can.

I also want to bring back Paul Cruickshank, our terrorism analyst. Also here with me is Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation. He also worked for the Redlands Police Department for more than three decades, including serving as chief of police. And also Michael Weiss is joining us.

Jim, just in terms of this late information now of pledging - this woman pledging allegiance to ISIS apparently during the attack. We don't know exactly what device she used to do this. From a law enforcement standpoint, it's almost more difficult, as we were talking to Jim Sciutto about earlier, that you don't have people who - who as far as we know at this point, are making international connections to a terror group.

JIM BUEERMANN, FORMER REDLANDS CHIEF OF POLICE: Right.

COOPER: It's easier to track them if they do. If they're just self- radicalized or maybe have local contact.

BUEERMANN: Right.

COOPER: So as a law enforcement challenge, what needs to be done moving forward?

BUEERMANN: Well, I think local policing has got to do several things. Not only get smarter about what we are now starting to see, but after this event, I would hope that every police chief and sheriff in this country are trying to make connections with the leadership of their local Muslim communities and saying, we've got to work together, you know. And fundamental underpinning of community based policing is this notion of coproduction. The police and the community work together - working together to make the community safer.

The people within the Muslim communities in any of our towns are going to know when somebody who's self-radicalizing and only connection might be within that community, the police are not going to figure this out unless they make a mistake or they do something to get up on the local police radar. The best bet I think for any police department is to have that positive, very healthy relationship between their community members to say, look, we can't do this alone. We've got to work together and we're all pulling on the same end of the rope. And that's not going to happen if we don't have those relationships.

COOPER: And because - I mean the vast majority of Muslims in America are law abiding and cooperative.

BUEERMANN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

COOPER: And so they are really the front line of defense.

BUEERMANN: Right.

COOPER: And so it's critical that there not be a division between law enforcement and - and - and Muslim leadership.

BUEERMANN: It is - it is fundamental that there has to be a sense of trust and confidence in the police from any of our communities, right, but specifically this one because if people don't trust the police, they're not going to tell them when they have a suspicion. They might - even if they don't trust the police, they might pick up the phone and call 911 if they think there is an attack imminent, but if they just have a suspicion and they don't like the police, they don't trust them, they have no confidence in them, they're not going to call them. And so this notion about police reform today and the trust and confidence in the police is really also about the security of our homeland. It's really about homeland security in its own way.

COOPER: I have Paul Cruickshank, who's also joining us, our terrorism analyst.

I mean, Paul, we have seen this also internationally. I mean one of the things - and we talked to Michael Weiss a little bit about this earlier, is that ISIS wants is to draw division and create further divisions between mainstream Muslims in Europe, in the United States and the rest of the populations in the United States. They would like nothing more for there to be distrust and fear and actions against Muslims, law abiding Muslims in this country, because that would drive a wedge further. That serves ISIS' end, no?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, that's exactly what they're trying to do. But, Anderson, they're going to find it a lot more difficult to do in the United States than they're going to find it in Europe. I spoke about those 900 investigations in the United States of ISIS-inspired radicals. While those numbers may sound big, but they are much, much smaller than the numbers in Europe. To give you a point of comparison, in France, they have opened surveillance investigation files into more than 10,000 suspected Islamic extremists just in France. And then if you go continent wide in Europe, you have a multiple of that.

The American Muslim community, the vast, vast, vast majority absolutely reject anything close to this ISIS ideology. They are well integrated. They are playing extremely productive roles in the United States. They are doing well economically compared to Europe. There are a few pockets in Minneapolis and elsewhere which resemble a little bit more the dynamics we've seen play out in Europe.

[12:20:13] But the threat is so much larger in Europe than the United States. So many more European extremists have traveled to Syria and Iraq. Many of them joining ISIS. Up to 6,000, compared to the United States, just a couple of hundred or so, and perhaps dozens just joining ISIS. So the scale of the threat lower by many degrees in the United States.

I think one of the big concerns is some of these European extremists recruited by ISIS could come into the United States and you could see the bigger scale terrorist attacks from that, Anderson.

COOPER: I want to go to our Victor Blackwell, who is in Redlands.

Victor, explain what is going on there at the apartment?

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Well, Anderson, the owner of this apartment, again this was rented, showed up with a crowbar and took the board off of the front door. There are about 50 members of the international media here inside the home. I'm going to give you a description of what we see.

Most interesting, in the living room area, there are three sheets from the U.S. Department of Justice here listing all of the items that were seized from this home. That's on a low table here. There are four sheets written in pencil here. It's dated for 12/3/2015. On another table, there's a small copy of the Koran and there is as well the owner here who is kind of pacing through.

I'll describe this home. It's a mixture of, you know, small carpets and rugs in the living room. A quite typical kitchen here, although the window has been broken out as the investigators came in. I see the front door, half of it here as it was broken through.

I'm going to be heading upstairs now. Hopefully that doesn't play with the cell phone signal. But, carpeted green steps up here. Again, what you are hear in the back room - the back here are dozens of people who are here taking pictures.

I see my colleague Stephanie Elam upstairs who's following that angle, so I'll stay here where she isn't. But there are two pairs of shoes here by the door. Holes in the wall, which we see from, of course, from the effort to get in. There is a small sign here that's made of cloth on the front wall with some writing in Arabic. Not speaking or reading Arabic, I cannot tell you what that says.

But there are also what you'd see in a home of anyone with small children. There's a play area for their six-month-old daughter, who we know was taken - or left, rather, with his mother. There's a treadmill in the front room and some toys for this child. So a few elements that obviously show that the - the raid that happened here. But some elements that also tell you about a family with a young child and things one would expect to see.

COOPER: Victor, stay there. I will - I do want to bring in Stephanie Elam, who I think is on the - the second floor.

Stephanie, if you are there, explain what you're seeing there.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): Yes, Anderson, I am on the second floor and I was the first with into this back bedroom upstairs. And when we came in, there was just sort of disheveled in many ways because of the ransacking that went on after the investigation here. But on the bed, most notably, were a bunch of credit cards and I.D.s. But I believe they belong to the mother of Farook that are on the bed based on the ages on the I.D.s that I can see.

A lot of what you see up here is pretty normal, what you would expect to see in a home. You know, the clocks, the dressers, going in the closet, looking at the clothing that is here, all of this looking normal, except for the fact that you can see that they ripped into the ceiling in the closet to make sure that they were looking for any clues anywhere.

Lots of signs of that. I see one family picture that's put away in the back of a closet here. But when I first came in, I could see it before everybody else, since I was the first one into this room, and there's a lot of luggage packed over to the side in the corner. A bed with - on a frame, but just sort of a not - the normal (INAUDIBLE) like a bed frame or anything that you would normally see - a headboard that you would normally see here.

But taking a look at what has been left, a lot of what you would see here are like files down here at the bottom as well that have been left. So these are things that look like they belong to the mother of Farook based on some of the things that I'm seeing here. Just normal, everyday items and receipts from (INAUDIBLE) and stuff like.

COOPER: OK. Stephanie, do you know the -

ELAM: But when you look at it overall, it looks normal.

COOPER: Do you know - has the landlord opened up the garage or is law enforcement still - still out working in the garage?

[12:25:03] ELAM: The last I heard is that they were looking at the garage, but I have not physically been out there since I came straight upstairs once the door was broken into.

COOPER: OK. All right, we'll -

ELAM: But up here you can see - you can definitely see the signs of all that has been happening here because there is - what is that, the ceiling tiles, you can see them all over the ground, broken up where they'd broken in to see if there was anything hidden, it looks like, the investigators, that's what it looks like here.

COOPER: And also I just want to go back to Victor Blackwell, if we still have him, who's downstairs.

Victor, have any of the family of these two come by at all to claim any property, or they're all - or have they not shown up?

BLACKWELL: No, we've not seen any family members here. But, Anderson, I just picked up one of these sheets from the FBI on what has been seized. Let me read for you the description of some of the things that were taken from this home. We've got listed here three remote controlled cars. Of course we know there was a remote control car in that bag that was inside the IRC and a remote in the car. A solid brass torch, switches and tubes, three torches here, notebooks, a thumb drive was taken, a gun cleaning kit, Rolodex, two wired Gateway notebooks, a laptop, three letters addressed to Syed Farook, his birth certificate, his I.D. card, some clothing here as well, a .22 caliber rifle, ammunition, a Verizon sim card.

So a lot of intelligence obviously is going to be derived from some of the electronics that have been here. There are four pages here, if you'd like me to, I can pick up another page and kind of read - continuing what was taken here. Fourteen boxes of .23 caliber bullets, 13 boxes of 50 rounds each of .22 caliber, audio cassettes, the micro sim card from a Toshiba, aerosol cans, bolts here as well, a rifle scope, notebooks, nine bullets here, a scope of an air rifle, and it goes on and on and on for four pages, the details of what was taken from this home. So initially what we've got was kind of a vague overview of lots of bullets, lots of tools, but we're seeing that there were lots of electronics as well, and some specifics about what was taken from this home.

So it kind of builds out the picture of this being more than just a small family's home despite the boxes of diapers here and the play space for the six-month-old girl. Still a venerable stacktary (ph) of bombs and weapons in this home.

COOPER: And, Victor, just standing by. I want to bring Jim Bueermann in, who's standing by with me as we continue to look at those images of the outside of the apartment.

You know, Evan Perez last night was reporting that two smashed cell phones had also been found. Also I believe a hard drive that had been tampered with. Someone tried to destroy it as well. Those are all critical pieces that if they can get information off of -

BUEERMANN: Right.

COOPER: Will be potentially huge for law enforcement to try to establish any kind of network of connections.

BUEERMANN: Absolutely. I think that's one of the things that locally the police are most concerned about right now, are there other actors out there that were working in concert. If so, is there some other attack sometime out in the future that they can intervene in and prevent. So they're going to be really interested in what they've got there. And this is very typical, the receipt that he's talking about is very typical of these kinds of cases and the things that the police would seize.

COOPER: Right.

We're going to take a short break. We are going to continue to monitor developments at the apartment. It will be particularly interested to see if the garage is accessible. We'll find that out shortly. But we'll take a short break and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)