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Wife's Shooter Pledged Allegiance to ISIS; ISIS Study Radicalization Can Take Just Weeks; Terror in America: ISIS Calls California Shooters "Supporters". Aired 4-5p ET

Aired December 05, 2015 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: 4:00 Eastern, I'm Poppy Harlow joining you in New York. Thank you for being with me.

We begin this hour with the latest on the investigation into the San Bernardino massacre that killed 14 people and wounded 21 others. President Obama's national security team meeting with him today, briefing him, telling him again so far there's no indication that this husband and wife shooter team were part of a larger terror network.

Looking at an image of the female shooter's Pakistani identification card, it was issued before 2013. Perhaps the best clue so far of what their motive could be, though, is from ISIS, the terror group in a radio message today saying Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were ISIS supporters but did stopped short of calling them official members.

CNN's Stephanie Elam is live for us in Redlands, California. She is outside where the couple - where they were living, apparently plotting all of this, raising their six-month-old daughter at the same time. Why is this I.D. card, Ttephanie, of Tashfeen Malik, why is that important?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, we're learning a lot more about Tashfeen Malik and there weren't a lot of images of her once this news broke and we heard the identities of these two shooters, so now we're getting to know more about who she was and knowing that she was residing in Pakistan and also solidifying her age, according to this document.

This is a state obtained government document that she would have here representing she was from Pakistan and it shows she was there prior to 2013. It also shows us that she was - would have been 30 next year, and there's a lot of questions surrounding Malik, simply because of the issue of the fact that Farook - he grew up here, her husband, he worked here, he went to college here.

This is an environment where he had spent his life. So we know that he was American. The question is, did he get radicalized because of who he married, and there's also this issue of the Facebook post that we believe Malik posted just before the attacks happened here in San Bernardino pledging her support to the leader of ISIS and this is the reason why we believe she was, you know, a follower but not necessarily a direct report of ISIS here.

So this is why we're trying to build more of a picture here about her potential relationship and her belief system and how it may have impacted the decision this couple made to do what they did.

HARLOW: And Stephanie, it was the Facebook posting, right, that she made according to law enforcement that has led the FBI to now call this a terror investigation, is that right?

ELAM: Right. And it was under a different name, and it was posted and taken down by Facebook, but this investigation around that exact wording of saying that we are supporters and we give our support to this leader of ISIS, so that is the reason why the tone of this investigation has changed now to a terror investigation.

HARLOW: All right, Stephanie Elam, thank you very much, live for us in Redlands, California.

I want to examine closer what we do know, what we don't know about why this massacre was carried out.

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem is with me, live from Boston. Let's talk about that, I mean, the FBI now says in the last 24 hours this is a terror investigation. You were with Homeland Security. Walk us behind sort of how that determination is made and more significantly, how that changes how they investigate it.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, so the decision that it is a federal terrorism crime means that the FBI will be lead investigators, and it means that the entire sort of tool box that the FBI has, much more so than a California Police Department, means that they can reach out to the CIA, they can reach out to foreign intelligence agencies, sorry, I'm losing my ear piece, and that they can do a much more extensive global case.

What it also means, though, is that they clearly have motive as it regards what animated this and that the motive may have been political in nature. None of this should come as a surprise given what we now know about the evidence. The decision to go after them for terrorism is really gives the FBI primary jurisdiction.

HARLOW: And look, because they are both now dead, all of what they said and wrote beforehand is critical. The Associated Press today reporting that the NSA surveillance program that was shut down just a few days before these attacks, right, means that investigators have only been able, Juliette, to obtain two years of phone records instead of five years. Is that significant, in your opinion? Because she's only lived here for two years.

[16:05:05]

KAYYEM: That's exactly right and I think it's significant only to the extent that it just is a coincidence that four days after the NSA program ended that there's now this new sort of legal regime that requires the federal government to now ask AT&T or, you know, other telecommunications companies for information. There is, though, I want to make this clear because this will be a huge political debate, right now there is just simply no evidence that even with two years or five years, that they were under any surveillance whatsoever. So the big question isn't whether they could have figured this out under a bulk surveillance rule. The question is, how did no one pick up anything if, in fact, they were being radicalized by outside groups.

HARLOW: You're right. He had no criminal record, there were no red flags, not on the radar of authorities at all. There was a very disturbing new report out from George Washington University focusing on extremism and what it shows is this unprecedented level of support for ISIS within the United States.

We're talking about several thousand U.S.-based sympathizers. You've got more terror related arrests in this country in 2015 than any year since 9/11. You're looking at the map where the red states, Minnesota, New York, highlighted with the most sort of ISIS-related arrests in the country. That number's at 56 this year.

What do you make of these numbers, and why triple the amount of ISIS arrests this year than last year? Is it just better law enforcement or is it a bigger problem?

KAYYEM: I think it may be a combination of both. I think right now, and for the last year when we've started to see some of these cases, the FBI's attitude is simply if you sort of play with ISIS, if you are interested in ISIS, if you're curious about ISIS, we are opening a case. So what people have to remember is that the increase in cases is essentially because the FBI, you know, is now looking at these cases and saying there's no such thing as flirting with these people or sort of toying with them online.

It is also as importantly a message to the outside world. If in the long term, because we have to think long term now, how are we going to minimize the threat, if in the long term we want to make it clear to members of any community that might be interested in ISIS or members of the Muslim community that might be looking at what ISIS is doing, what the FBI is saying by being so public about these investigations is, we are watching.

And I actually think that's a good thing. I mean, you want the FBI to serve as not just the people that come in after something bad has happened, but also as a deterrent, so those numbers may look shocking in isolation, but they actually reflect a strategy by the FBI and the overall United States government about how they are going to approach these cases.

HARLOW: That's a great point. Juliette, thank you so much, as always, for coming on.

KAYYEM: Thanks.

HARLOW: Still to come, ISIS in America. Who is ISIS recruiting in this country? How is ISIS recruiting? The author of that study, Juliette and I just talked about, will join me next. Live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [16:11:32]

HARLOW: The FBI now says the slaughter of 14 innocent people, the 21 others that were injured by a California husband and wife maybe the first mass attack in the name of ISIS on U.S. soil. It is raising fears that this killing if it turns out to be officially labelled terrorism maybe be just the beginning.

Joining me now, Seamus Hughes, George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. He's the author of a new study on the rise of ISIS in America. It is fascinating, incredibly timely, incredibly troubling what you found, looking at extremism. I want to look at the findings of your study and looking at the number of ISIS recruits and arrests in the United States has tripled this year. We're looking at this map, right. You got Minnesota, New York highlighted with the most arrests.

You got 56 total this year, why?

SEAMUS HUGHES, CO-AUTHOR OF STUDY ON ISIS IN AMERICA: It is a variety of reasons. The fact that ISIS has an actual state is something that people are being drawn to. The other reason is ISIS is very adept at using social media. They've used it very well. They're going where the demographic is. We looked at 7,000 pages of legal documents to figure out, you know, who these people are in the legal system. A third of the cases there were 21. It makes sense it uses social media to recruit and radicalize people.

HARLOW: You've said that that this radicalization process is "highly Individualized" and what I find interesting is well, we had law

enforcement officials telling our Jim Sciutto here at CNN that radicalization is now much more quick, that some people are being radicalized in this country and in Europe in two to three weeks. Is that what you found?

HUGHES: We have seen the radicalization process shortened from what used to be a few years to a few months and even sometimes a few weeks. Now each person is different and humans by their very nature are very complex.

But with the use of social media you are able to essentially get your information, your propaganda, on demand. If you want to listen to a lecture, if you want to listen to the latest ISIS video you can just type on a keyboard and be able to get it very quickly. So that time is shortened. What is also shortened is you are able to essentially reach a radicalized recruiter on line. The bar for being able to reach an ISIS recruiter has been lowered.

HARLOW: Let's talk about that map again. And let's talk about Minnesota. I am from that state. I've studied this. I've spent time there. You got an issue with some Somali community being targeted there by what was Al Qaeda and now ISIS. But you have also have a big group of the parents there and community members trying vehemently to combat that. Talk to us about that as a case study.

HUGHES: Yes. So in 2007 to 2009 you had about two dozen kids that went from the Minneapolis area to Somalia to join terrorist group, Al Shabab. And a lot of that was relationship built. When you look at it now, it's building off that same relationship. So the individuals that went to Somalia prior, there brothers, sisters, roommates, they're still a relationship.

What we saw in this case was, the first wave went over to Syria and then they call back their friends through Facebook and said, come join us.

HARLOW: So, is it being effectively combatted in a case like Minnesota?

HUGHES: It's very difficult to do. This is the million dollar question, you know, what do we do on the front edge, what is the prevention effort here? When I was in the national counterterrorism center, I did encounter extremism. So we do community engagement. I spent a lot of time in Minneapolis, meeting with family members of people that had joined Al Shabaab who had died over there, and they're just trying to wrap their heads around what do you do when you have a kid that you're worried about, the current efforts are you do nothing, you hope it's just a phase and they grow out of it, or you tell the FBI and potentially talk to your loved one through a prison bar for the next 20 years.

[16:15:15]

We need to figure out that middle space so we may be able to bring those kids back into the fold.

HARLOW: Absolutely, no question about it. I mean, the average age of the recruits, you said, was 26 years old. What about the other characteristics that you think they share?

HUGHES: Yes, so that's the biggest take away from the report, is there's a diversity in terms of the profile. They are old, they're young, they're rich, they're poor, there's high school kids, three individuals from Denver, there's college-aged kids, not necessarily a profile when it comes to ISIS. They tend to be male, 40 percent were converts when you looked at the legal system when the general population, American Muslins is 23 percent, there's a little bit off on that, but for the most part there's not a profile other than they tend to be younger.

HARLOW: And 86 percent male, right?

HUGHES: Yes, absolutely. We've seen examples of women that are joiningg terrorists groups, 10 this year alone.

HARLOW: Ten this year alone. All right. Seamus, thank you very much, fascinating report. I'd urge everyone to take a little bit closer look at it out of George Washington University. Thank you for being with me.

HUGHES: Thank you.

HARLOW: Coming up next, the very latest on that breaking news out of Miami Beach. Today a deadly police shooting all caught on tape. The target, an alleged bank robber, we will show you the disturbing video, tell you what police are saying in response, next live from Miami. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:20:10]

HARLOW: We've got breaking news this hour. Police officers involved in a shooting of a man in broad daylight today in Miami Beach. It was all caught on cell phone camera. A warning, what we are about to show you is very graphic, it's very hard to watch.

Our Alina Machado is there on the ground, in Miami Beach. You've been poring through the video. You've been talking to police. So twofold question here, what do we know about the shooting?

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: (INAUDIBLE) this all started with a holdup alarm at a Bank of America that happened, just down the street from where the shooting took place. The caller told the dispatcher that the suspect was armed with a bomb and that he had passed a note to the teller before he left the scene. When police arrived on the scene they were told that the suspect was just down the street.

Here's what the Miami Beach police chief said happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF DANIEL OATES, MIAMI BEACH POLICE: He went inside the barbershop, he was urged to come out. After a period of time, he had armed himself in the barbershop with a straight-edge razor and after a period of time he came out, took his shirt off and came out. And he was challenged by the officers in the street, and at some point during that confrontation he did raise his hand with the straight-edge razor in it, and he was shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACHADO: Now, the man who shot that disturbing cell phone video says that police appeared to have been trying to calm down the suspect for about five minutes before they fatally shot him. The officer who discharged his weapon is a six-year veteran of the force.

We know that there is police body camera video available, but police at this point are not releasing it. Poppy?

HARLOW: Alina Machado, live for us in Miami Beach, thank you very much. As soon, of course, as we have more information on this shooting or more video angles, dash cam video, we'll bring it to you, of course.

As we just saw there, police departments around the nation often do have these assault style rifles like the AR-15. It is the weapon that is frequently used also by shooters in mass vicious attacks like what we saw in San Bernardino, California. Fourteen people killed. Their families now in agony wondering how they can carry on without their loved ones.

I was in San Bernardino this week covering the deadly rampage. The AR-15s were found on the shooters after they were killed in that shootout with police, also AR-15 style guns were used three years ago in the mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado, and in Newtown, Connecticut.

CNN Money Cristina Alesci with me now to talk about the business behind them, they are incredibly popular. Not only are their sales soaring, gun sales across the board.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Totally across the board, not only are the AR-15s popular, but they are also available. If you look at the major national gun retailers like Cabela's, Bass Pro, Gander Mountain, those guys advertise AR-15s right on their website and one analyst that we spoke to says, "listen, even if the national retailers stopped selling those guns, about 80 percent of these assault-style rifles are sold by small mom and pop shops."

So it's so dispersed and so popular that it's going to be really tough to take - ever really talk about taking them out of our system.

HARLOW: And the front page editorial of "The New York Times" today calling for a lot more gun control actually suggests and says these weapons shouldn't be sold and people who have them should return them. To the government, incredibly controversial, but you had this fascinating interview with the CEO of Walmart and talked about the major change they were going to make, now they've made it.

ALESCI: They've made it. He was very specific when I interviewed him about the kind of customer that Walmart wants to serve. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DOUGLAS MCMILLON, CEO, WALMART: Our focus as it relates to firearms should be hunters and people who shoot sporting clays and things like that, so the types of rifles we sell, the types of ammunition we sell, should be curated for those things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALESCI: So about two months later Walmart comes out and says no more assault rifles on our shelves. Now, interestingly, Walmart said it had a lot more to do with slumping demand than any political.

HARLOW: They weren't selling? ALESCI: That's what Walmart says, but, of course, it won't release

the data, which we asked for.

HARLOW: Of course, because everywhere else noted they are selling. CNN Money had a fascinating article this week about FBI background checks. I think the number was somewhere around 20 million FBI background checks for guns this year, which is a pretty good indication of gun sales, somewhat near a record. ALESCI: Yes, you're absolutely right, we're on track to hit a record

this year and as you point out, FBI background checks are a proxy for gun sales. Not only that, Poppy, black Friday this year hit a record for the most background checks in a single day. It outpaced the last record that was hit in 2012 just a week after Sandy Hook, because a rush of people went out to buy guns thinking that President Obama's gun reform would actually pass Congress.

[16:25:06]

HARLOW: That's what we see, isn't it, time and time again, that sales go up after mass shootings.

ALESCI: Yes, it's really disturbing and sad, but very true, and this year - look, we don't even need to look at background checks. If you look at Wall Street, these stocks are on a tear, the manufacturers of these guns are some of the best performing stocks out there this year. Wall Street is not stopping backing these guys. We'll have to see, Mayor Bill de Blasio coming out and says - saying we should divest from these holdings, so maybe that will have an impact.

HARLOW: See how long that takes or - how long that takes (INAUDIBLE) I mean we've seen how long -

ALESCI: Forever.

HARLOW: How long that takes. Cristina, thank you very much. Much more on CNN Money.

Next, we're going to talk about how are these guns actually changed, because that's what we saw in this attack in California. Law enforcement now says one of the semiautomatic rifles was changed into a fully automatic assault weapon. How does that happen? Former CIA official joining me, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: All right, bottom of the hour I want to talk about how the use of AR-15 rifles like Cristina and I just talked about, how that use by murderers impacts law enforcement, the men and women who risk their lives day in and day out to protect all of us.

Joining me now, former CIA operations officer and counterterrorism adviser Joshua Katz, thank you for being with me.

JOSHUA KATZ, FMR. CIA OPERATIONS OFFICER: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: Really disturbing to learn that these two AR-15s that were used by the shooters in California this week were altered, altered law enforcement says, from sort of semiautomatic to fully automatic weapons. I didn't even know you could do that. Walk us through sort of how you can do that, how easy it is, and what additional threat that poses to law enforcement.

KATZ: Well, Poppy, I think it's important to say that the attackers, these terrorists, they tried to alter them, they tried to change a semiautomatic league weapon into an illegal automatic weapon.

[16:30:11] They were unsuccessful in doing that, and I think what that goes to is, it goes to the intent here. They had really planned this out and they had -- this attack was so incredibly personal, so incredibly planned, that they even went to the lengths of trying and they were not successful of altering that weapon.

HARLOW: Can you do that? Can you alter them successfully?

KATZ: With the right training, with the right equipment, you can do just about anything. You can in certain instances, but it takes a trained gun smith in order to make that work, and there's very few people -- you can't just do it in your kitchen, although people try and it is absolutely illegal. It's illegal for a very good reason.

HARLOW: Over -- this is a new Government Accountability Office report, right, just came out this week. What it shows is over 2,000 terror suspects on the U.S. terror watch list have legally purchased guns in this country from 2014 to 2000 -- from 2004 to 2014, so in the last decade.

What's your reaction to that? These are people on the no-fly list by the government but they bought guns legally.

KATZ: Right. And so, we have to revisit the fact that the no-fly list, unfortunately, really needs to be revamped because there's really no -- there's no due process there. It's really -- it's not a formalized process. So, you or I could be on the no-fly list for a lot of different reasons, none of which actually makes you or I terrorists.

But we need to have a better communication plan for how we deal with people that are on lists like that and who want to buy firearms if they are going through the process. We need to take a look at them, do they deserve to be on the no-fly list or not, but if you're on a list like that, you -- as long as the list, and we're doing the best things that we can to ensure only the bad people are on that list, we need to prevent people from gaining weapons and just blanketly.

HARLOW: Is there a frustration amid the rank and file that these weapons, these high powered assault rifles, are on the street?

I ask because when I was in California the first night after that attack and standing in Redlands, California, in front of the home of the shooters, I mean, there was -- it looked like a tank pretty much that the Redlands police department had that they were driving finally away from the scene. They have sort of military grade equipment to deal with what frankly civilians can now have when you're talking about these rifles.

KATZ: Well, I think that the police are really looking for the training and the equipment to be prepared for anything. So the main frustration and worry for law enforcement now is what is the situation that they are walking into? What can they do, because their first action has to be to protect the civilians and innocent people there and they risk their lives every day? We just need to make sure that we are giving them the intelligence and the tools in order to be able to counter whatever it is that they come across.

HARLOW: Joshua, what do you think it says about the state of the world today and the country today that we have police that need to be armed with this kind of military style equipment on the streets of, you know, suburban Los Angeles?

KATZ: Well, I think that the threat has been changing, and the threat is, especially in Los Angeles, we see there's a lot of gang violence. Gangs have a lot of different tools at their disposal, so police all the time have to counter that lots of different threats.

And again, what I would go back to and say is that the training is the most important part. If we're giving our law enforcement the training and the background that they need in order to quickly respond, they will be safer, and in a lot of times the equipment, the gear, is really secondary and should be secondary to the training.

HARLOW: Joshua, thank you very much, Joshua Katz, former CIA, appreciate the expertise. Thank you.

KATZ: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: Still ahead, new details we have gotten about the woman, the wife who took part in the San Bernardino mass shootings. Her name and the FBI looking into whether she was the one who radicalized her husband. What we know about their relationship, how they compare to other couples that have been inspired by ISIS.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Soon after the San Bernardino shootings, investigators started looking at possible ties to ISIS. And now, ISIS is claiming that this married couple were, indeed, supporters. The terror group making that declaration today on their official radio station, and if the shootings are determined officially to be a terror attack by the FBI -- well, they would be the worst terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

[16:40:08] CNN's Brian Todd looks into how ISIS inspired radicalization is happening in America right now and its growing appeal to women.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 27-year-old female attacker was born in Pakistan and later traveled to Saudi Arabia at least twice, according to a Saudi official. She met Syed Rizwan Farook there, then travelled with him to the United States on a fiancee visa. Farook family lawyers say she was a typical housewife, but traditional, often wearing a burqa.

DAVID CHESLEY, FAROOK FAMILY ATTORNEY: She did maintain certain traditions from what I understand, in terms of fasting and prayer five times a day, she chose not to drive voluntarily.

TODD: In online dating profiles thought to be his, Farook expressed his desire for a girl who wears a hijab and said he enjoyed target practice in his backyard. The FBI asked directly if it was Tashfeen Malik who influenced Syed Rizwan Farook.

DAVID BOWDICH, FBI'S LOS ANGELES OFFICE: I don't know the answer if she influenced him or not.

PROF. NIMMI GOWRINATHAN, CITY COLLEGE OF NEW YORK: I very much believe she influenced him. We look at female fighters, female recruits to the Islamic State, we tend to read her through the men around her, whether it's a boyfriend or a husband or a cousin, you know, that is a reason for her support for the Islamic State or any other political movement. And with this case we're being forced to sort of re-examine that.

TODD: The couple wouldn't be the first Bonnie and Clyde inspired by terrorists. Hayat Boumeddiene, the widow of Paris supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly was, according to his former lawyer, the more radical one in the couple. Boumeddiene is now believed to be with ISIS in Syria, as is Sally Jones, she's the widow of a top ISIS operative Junaid Hussein, believed to have inspired the only ISIS instigated attack so far on American soil, the foiled attempt in May to shoot up a Prophet Mohammed cartoon drawing contest in Texas. Jones is now believed to be a key recruiter for ISIS.

In a sobering new report on ISIS sympathizers inside the U.S., Lorenzo Vidino at George Washington University says many of the supporters are women who are adept at social media.

LORENZO VIDINO, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Jannah Bride, Jannah means paradise in Arabic. So you do see women are more prolific than men, they tend to write more, they tend to post a lot of things, they tend to have a lot of accounts.

TODD (on camera): Those accounts Vidino says are used for propaganda and for the recruitment of other women, but it's not clear right now who might have radicalized Tashfeen Malik. A source close to the Saudi government tells CNN she was not on any Saudi watch lists or under suspicion by the Saudis of any extremist activities.

Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Brian, thank you very much.

Joining me now, CNN contributor and criminologist, Casey Jordan.

You just heard what Brian said, not on a Saudi watch list, the couple was not on any U.S. watch list or radar, frankly, at all. You said about Tashfeen Malik, she may have been the one who was driving this bus out of control. Why do you think that?

CASEY JORDAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, kind of she's in the driver's seat literally and figuratively.

HARLOW: Right. JORDAN: You know, women don't want to believe that another woman could be capable of this, but all indices are -- remember, she's the one who was foreign born. Syed was born here. He's born in Illinois.

HARLOW: We've seen that before.

JORDAN: We see that before, but we see that he gets a mail order bride and as soon as she arrives, he quits going to mosque. That's the last time people saw him. So, his life seemed to change once she arrived.

And there is conjecture maybe this was a part of a long-term date bait on her part. For years, she was thinking I've got to find a man to get into the U.S., I got to look normal and I got a baby, that way I can stay off the watch lists.

HARLOW: What do you make of the fact they dropped off their 6-month- old daughter? This child will grow up with no parents because of this. They dropped her off at grandma's house before carrying this out. What's the mindset behind that?

JORDAN: Without parents and a legacy of knowing who her parents are and what they did. This is why I talked on the internet with tons of women and asked is there a mother out there who could do this to her child, no, she clearly had zero maternal instinct.

You can chalk that up to the flux of hormones to postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. You really can't. I mean, this is clearly -- they decided to spare the child's life, but the plan or the plot had to have been in place probably before she was born.

HARLOW: Well, they tried to escape. They were trying to get away with it, frankly.

It seems to be increasingly difficult to identify these radicalized people because of how they blend in. I mean, I was in California on the ground, a neighbor told me they were, quote, "so normal." The landlord who rented them this townhouse described them as timid.

JORDAN: Yes. And that's probably their true nature, because people who are radicalized usually have a huge void in their life, either emotional or psychological, they feel alienated or alienate themselves and the void needs to be filled somehow.

[16:45:03] So when they find somebody else like minded, this is America, this is the American dream, we're not getting ahead, they feed each other and that's how it blows up in their head, we can get this done together as a partnership and that's what makes it possible. We've never seen anything like this before, but we probably will again.

HARLOW: What about the working theory among some law enforcement officials that this was a hybrid attack? Meaning, yes, there was a radicalization component, but also this workplace sort of grievance component. Do you think the latter part should be given any -- JORDAN: Yes, actually instigated that before I knew anything, because

I'm very careful and responsible about not jumping to conclusions. The indicators were at the very beginning, it was a workplace attack. We do not see -- first of all we thought it was three people, we didn't know the last name of the shooters and so on.

I still think that's the million dollar question, why his colleagues? That you don't see much. You don't see terrorists picking on the people they know personally. It's usually the symbol, the symbol of the American dream. Why not go to a big box store or the Statue of Liberty? Why go --

HARLOW: They knew this was a soft target, only building of the three that didn't have a key pad to get in.

JORDAN: I actually think they had a different target in mind, others have said this.

HARLOW: You do?

JORDAN: Yes, you got the rental car and had the bombs, but the bombs were at home, unsophisticated. I actually think that some altercation, I've heard somebody insulted his beard at the party and that's when he went home, got his wife, dropped the baby off, and came back, but left the bombs there.

The bottom line is, he got offended and decided it happens here, it happens now, it happens today, and it's happening against my colleagues because somebody deeply offended him.

HARLOW: Casey Jordan, thank you very much, taking us into the mind, some how, some way of these killers.

JORDAN: And we'll never know the truth.

HARLOW: You're right. We won't. Thank you.

Coming up, a closer look at the victims, the victims of this shooting rampage. The most important part of this entire story are the 14 faces you see on your screen, who they were, how they lived their lives, their family, loved ones, their children left behind to grieve, next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rico Abreu was born with achondroplasia. It's a bone disorder that's the most common type of dwarfism. But that hasn't quelled the race car driver's competitive streak.

RICO ABREU, RACE CAR DRIVER: I don't think my stature has affected, you know, my driving style or what I do on and off the racetrack. In anything I've ever done, I've wanted to win.

GUPTA: And win he does. Abreu won nearly a quarter of his races in 2014 and grabbed his first ever NASCAR victory in July. ABREU: Got the lead with numerous laps to go and then lost the lead

again and got the lead back with about ten laps to go and ended up winning the race.

Crossing the checkered flag when you win, there's not much more of a feeling than that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the celebration getting ready to get under way as Rico crawls out of the car.

GUPTA: At just 4'4", Abreu has his cars adapted to fit his height and wants to inspire others with dwarfism to find a way to do what they love as well.

ABREU: A lot of people come up to me and say how inspiring I am. I really feel that you can push yourself to do what you love.

GUPTA: After all, on the racetrack, it's not about how tall you are.

ABREU: Everyone's the same size when they race. It's just about having the biggest heart.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:52:51] HARLOW: Instead of making plans for the holidays, 14 families are now making funeral arrangements to say good-bye to their loved ones killed in the attack this week in San Bernardino, California. Nine men, five women, mostly colleagues at the county's department of public health, all of them being missed terribly just days before the holidays.

Jake Tapper reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They were cherished family members, best friends, parents, 14 people between the ages of 26 and 60 who spent their final day celebrating together, kissing their loved ones goodbye in the morning, never believing they wouldn't come home.

RYAN REYES, BOYFRIEND KILLED IN SHOOTING: The thought running through my mind was just, no, no, no. This isn't true.

TAPPER: Ryan Reyes drove his boyfriend Daniel Kaufman to the regional center Wednesday as he did most mornings. Kaufman ran a coffee shop there where he trained disabled employees. Kaufman was taking a break on a bench outside when he was killed.

REYES: He meant the world to me. He meant the absolute world to me. Yes. Sorry.

TAPPER: Many of the victims were parents, leaving behind at least 18 children whose worlds are now changed forever.

JOLENE, MOTHER KILLED IN SHOOTING: Overall, she was like an amazing person. Like, she was so nice. Like, she always supported me in everything I did.

TAPPER: Bennetta Bet-Badal had three children. Her family and friends say she came to America from Iran at age 18 to escape religious extremism.

KEN PAULSON, FAMILY FRIEND: We find it is sadly ironic and horrible that a woman that came to the country under these circumstances would find herself gunned down by religious extremists.

TAPPER: Michael Wetzel leaves behind six children and his wife Renee. A friend speaking for the family told CNN how Renee learned of his murder.

CELIA BEHAR, FAMILY FRIEND: The large group of survivors came out and he wasn't in it. They told her that if he wasn't in there, then he was gone.

TAPPER: Robert Adams had always wanted to be a dad. He and his wife welcomed a little girl just 20 months ago.

[16:55:01] On the fundraising page set up for his family, a friend posted, quote, "He was 100 percent in daddy land." His family says he cherished every moment with his daughter.

Twenty-seven-year-old Sierra Clayborn and Yvette Velasco were cherished daughters as well. Yvette was an intelligent, motivated and beautiful young woman, her family said in a statement. On Facebook, Sierra sister wrote, quote, "My heart is broken. I'm completely devastated."

The family of the youngest victim is, too. Aurora Godoy was just 26. She leaves behind a husband and a 2-year-old son.

This community and the families of all the victims will need tremendous strength to move forward, a trait many learned from their loved ones.

JOLENE: I'm doing OK because what else can I do? I have to stay strong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Five o'clock Eastern, 2:00 p.m. in San Bernardino, California. I'm Poppy Harlow, joining you in New York.

We begin with that massacre in San Bernardino this week. We have now learned that investigators will only be able to access two years of phone records instead of five for the couple who carried out the attack. That is because, coincidentally, the NSA's mass surveillance program gathering information expired four days before the attack. President Obama's national security team advised him today the

investigation so far has not turned up evidence this couple was part of a larger terrorist web.