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Terror in Belgium. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 22, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: It was ISIS who carried out these suicide attacks both at the main international airport in Brussels this morning around 8:00 local time, and then one hour later at a busy subway station.

Right now, this massive hunt is under way for this man on the right side of your screen in the lighter jacket. And this photo is key. Let me walk you through this. So, this is surveillance footage. They have grabbed a freeze-frame of this piece of video.

And so you're seeing three individuals all with these baggage carts going through this airport. But what's curious, with the two in the darker sweaters, on each of their -- drop the banner -- on each of their left hands, they're wearing gloves.

We will get into what that could mean. The two on the left are the suspected suicide bombers. The one on the right is the wanted suspect. We also know this, that Americans are among the injured. At least 30 people are dead. That number is expected to rise, with more than 200 others injured, some of them fighting for their lives.

Video in the immediate aftermath of the bombing showing the panic as the smoke filled that airport departure hall, that chilling scene, those blasts at the airport around 8:00 local time. Hundreds of would-be passengers filled in the main check-in hall. Just about an hour later, as the airport grounded its planes, another explosion.

And at that subway station, the Molenbeek subway station in downtown Brussels, by the way, not too far from the E.U., the European Union, you hear, I don't know if that's a child, it's just gut-wrenching, the shrieks echoing through this pitch-black train tunnel as people are jumping on to the tracks and running towards safety.

Smoke billowing out on to the streets blocks from, as I mentioned, the E.U. and the timing of all of this, the timing significant, today's bombing -- bombings happening just four days after the capture just outside of this very same city of one of the world's most men, Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor among those Paris attackers, among those 10 men accused in last November's Paris terror attacks.

We are told that he is cooperating with investigators. He's talking. He's in custody and he's talking. But let's bring you back to the hot spot of this terror investigation right now.

Our correspondent there, Frederik Pleitgen, is in Schaerbeek there in Belgium, where these raids are taking place.

Fred, tell me what you're seeing and what they have found.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Brooke.

Yes, we have this chopper in the air. There was a second chopper and it's also in the air very close by. And I think if you look past that beam from that searchlight, you will be able to pretty well see that there's some a guy or sort of sniper with a rifle in the open door of that helicopter.

You can sort of even see part of the scope right now as he's sort of searching around. They have actually just turned the searchlight off for just a second. But that chopper has been here for the past I would say 20, maybe even 30 minutes hovering around that area.

There's been a lot of police activity in what was a very largely cordoned off area inside Schaerbeek, around the main railway station of Schaerbeek. It looks to us as though the chopper seems to be flying away now. Not exactly sure what is going on, but that chopper is now moving to somewhere else, seems to have its searchlight on once again.

We have seen several police vehicles get out of the cordoned-off area. We have seen an ambulance get out of there as well. It looks to us as though this is very much still an ongoing operation. And what we're hearing so far from the authorities is that it appears as though explosives have been recovered, as well as an ISIS flag, nails and chemicals as well in the area around here.

We have not gotten any information so far from the police officers here on the ground, but, again, a largely cordoned-off area in what seems to be a very, very big police operation in this, I would call a suburb of Brussels, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And where Fred is just a couple of miles away, as he was explaining to us last hour, a couple of miles away from where they found that eighth Paris attacker in that raid just four days ago.

So, Fred, do not go too far, please. We're staying on your shot and sort of hanging on your every word with these -- as these active raids under way there in Belgium.

But let me talk about all of this with Ali Soufan, former FBI supervisor special agent, Reuel Gerecht, a senior fellow at the Foundation of Defense of Democracies, Michael Weiss, CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," and Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Terrorism at the University of Chicago.

[15:05:05]

So, Robert, let me actually just begin with you. On a tactical side of things, when you're looking at these pictures here from this neighborhood, Schaerbeek, in Brussels, you know they're looking for something, someone. They found nails, they found chemicals, they found an ISIS flag. What are you seeing when you see these photos?

ROBERT PAPE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: What I'm seeing is lots of information that the local community very likely had or could have known relatively easily, and is probably -- the local community is probably simply suppressing or depressed to give that information and bring it forward.

And I think this is the price we pay for demonizing Muslims as a group in Western Europe. We have an area where there are individuals hanging out for not just weeks, but probably months. Lots of material that they're collecting to do us great harm.

The local community is what we need first and foremost to provide information, and if we continue to demonize them over and over and over again as they're just terrorists anyway, then why should they help?

BALDWIN: Ali Soufan, you know these parts of Belgium. You were saying before the show started, in Europe, terrorists travel easier than information. What do you mean by that?

ALI SOUFAN, FORMER FBI INTERROGATOR: Well, if you look at the terrorist attack that happened in Paris on November 13, right, this is still the same cell. We're dealing with the same people. But there are so many legal constraints preventing cooperation between the different European countries.

We're dealing with a totally different threat that whatever they had before, this is different. From Europe, we had 5,000, almost 5,000 foreign fighters who went to Syria and who went to Iraq. More than 30 percent of them came back. A small place like Brussels, a small place like Belgium, small country like Belgium doesn't even have the resources to deal with all these kinds of things.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But it's Belgium, it's European Union, it's NATO.

SOUFAN: Well, it is also Molenbeek and it is mostly 470 foreign fighters that went, and all of them almost come from Brussels. And all of them almost come from Molenbeek. They have a problem.

They have hotbed of terrorism. And they have a situation where people can rent a car and go to France, conduct a terrorist attack to France and come back.

BALDWIN: Go home.

SOUFAN: And go home. And it takes about three, four, five months to find them. So there are a lot of things the Europeans need to do today. Our hearts are with all the people in Belgium and with France.

BALDWIN: Of course.

SOUFAN: But there are a problem when we see that there is no connections, that there is no coordination between the different agencies, that they don't share information because of privacy issues about their own citizens to each other. And some of these laws need to change in order to deal with the threat of terrorism as it is today in Western Europe.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Michael Weiss, we were sitting here on Friday, we were talking about the coordination we were hearing really from Belgium self-congratulatory over the coordination and cooperation between France and Belgium in finding Salah Abdeslam, which was a huge get for them that they found him and that he's alive and that in fact he's talking.

Four days later, we sit here, at least 30 people have been killed at the airport and the subway. The timing is curious to me.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

Look, I have no doubt this was in the works for weeks, if not months, right? You don't just -- target scouts, build the TATP suicide bomb or several bombs and then wage these coordinated on the spur of a moment. The operation may have been accelerated, indeed probably, likely was accelerated, as a result of either the capture of Abdeslam, or, frankly, what's been reported in the media, which is that, as you mentioned earlier, he's talking.

If he's cooperating, he has a wealth of human intelligence. This was a senior operative in ISIS, the one surviving member of the 10-man massacre ring in Paris.

BALDWIN: But he didn't pull it off.

WEISS: He didn't pull it off.

But maybe his belt didn't go off. Maybe he chickened out. We do know though, Brooke, that he was not in ill order with ISIS. He returned back to his safe haven in Brussels. They caught him a block away from his childhood home.

It's like if Mohamed Atta, if he were a suicide bomber and he perpetrated 9/11 and survived somehow, then he moved back to Hamburg, you know?

BALDWIN: And it took us four months to find him.

WEISS: Yes. It took them four months to find him.

Look, I just interviewed several people, one of whom, Jean Charles Broussard (ph), who is a French counterterrorism official, said there's 535 Belgians who have gone to Syria, of which number 200 have returned. All of Belgium is a country of, what, 11 million people. That's a population size a little over the size of the city of London.

Each person you surveil, each terrorist suspect you surveil requires between 20 and 25 counterterrorism local law enforcement officials to monitor their activities. Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher marketplace massacrist, the ISIS-inspired

terrorist...

BALDWIN: Got his guns right there

WEISS: He had 20 different cell phones that he used to perpetrate his three gun attacks culminating in the most atrocious one of the kosher marketplace.

So that means for each phone, you needed a different team to kind of go through the signals intelligence. So giving the Belgians a little bit of their due, it's not entirely their fault.

[15:10:03]

That said, I spoke to a senior U.S. intelligence officer who said to me -- and I quote -- "Dealing with the E.U. in general when it comes to terrorism, they have had two decades to sort this out."

They have been fully infiltrated by radical Salafi jihadi clerics who have radicalized locally, but also by returning foreign fighters not just from Syria and Iraq, but from the Afghan-Soviet war. In fact, a cleric there was responsible apparently for radicalizing the Abdelhamid Abaaoud just Abdeslam brothers. He was known as Papa Noel because he was handing out thousands of euros for young mujahideen to go to Syria and join ISIS.

BALDWIN: I want to jump in on that, but I also want to -- as I'm listening to you, I want to show everyone this photo.

There's a surveillance photo. We have a freeze-frame of it here. On the left side of your screen, here we go. The two in the black long- sleeved sweaters, these are the two men believed to be the suspected suicide bombers. And the man on the right, this is a wanted man. This is who there's an active manhunt under way. We have been looking at the raids.

But this is the person Belgian and I'm sure international law enforcement community want to find. He is considered a suspect as well.

So, Reuel, when you look at this picture, especially the gloves on the left hands of those two guys on the left side of your screen, what do you see?

REUEL MARC GERECHT, SENIOR FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR THE DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Well, I mean, I don't think you see all that much.

I think you see individuals that would match typical profiles of folks who could be suicide bombers or aren't suicide bombers. I mean, I think the real issue now is whether you are going to have -- discover that these individuals actually were in the sights of British -- of French security and Belgian security services.

And if they're not, then they have got even a larger problem. If these individuals had been in their sights, and in fact, they were closing in on them, then this is a last gasp exercise. If, in fact, this is a different cell that they knew nothing about, then they have a problem.

I have to say, I think the Belgium national police -- and I lived in Brussels for a number of years -- they did a -- you know, a fairly decent job of informally covering the dicier neighborhoods, but they could only take so much stress.

Certainly, the Schengen accords allowed for a lot of folks to come into these neighborhoods. The neighbors are not that tight-knit anymore. Most of these individuals who are radicalized do not actually even attend mosques in these communities.

So, the ability for these communities to actually know what's going on and for the police who are monitoring the communities to know what's going on is quite limited actually.

BALDWIN: All right, Reuel.

Ali, you look at the picture, what do you see?

SOUFAN: I agree with what he said.

And it's interesting that each one of them is wearing only a glove on the left hand, which is -- it can mean so many different things. I don't want to read too much into it.

But also the other person behind them, I am sure that that picture is not the only picture that they have. It's quite probably from a longer CCTV, you know, video. And they have many reasons to believe that that individual is probably a handler.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: The one in the lighter-colored jacket?

SOUFAN: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: A handler is a word, you know, from time in Baghdad.

SOUFAN: We have seen that. We have seen that before.

BALDWIN: Explain what a handler does.

SOUFAN: Even for example, in the East Africa embassy bombing, Haroun Fazul, was the handler and he is a person who was involved in the operation, in planning the operation, in casing the target.

So he basically led the two suicide bombers who were not involved in any of the operational planning to their target, show them where to blow themselves up and he left.

So there's a possibility. We have seen that before with al Qaeda. We have seen that before with even ISIS and different plots. And there's a possibility that that individual, his job was to just show them the target, possibly.

BALDWIN: I want to have my panel stand by.

We're getting new information here on the investigation. We're also hearing from eyewitnesses both at the subway station and at the airport this morning there in Belgium. We will be right back, breaking news on CNN.

Back in a flash.

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[15:18:07]

BALDWIN: And we're back. You're watching live continuous coverage here of the breaking news out of Brussels, Belgium, at least 30 people killed this morning, 8:00 local time, first at the huge international airport and then an hour later at the subway station.

These three individuals, the two in the back there, are the suspected suicide bombers, presumed killed, pushing these baggage carts earlier this morning in the airport. The man in the lighter-colored jacket, this is the wanted man, according to law enforcement. They are calling him a suspect.

Perhaps he is, as Ali Soufan was explaining, the handler. This is the man perhaps who was with them saying, this is where you detonate, and then he ran away.

We're learning now of five Americans who were seriously injured in the explosions there at the Brussels airport. The first is former Oakland university basketball player Seb Bellin. According to his former coach, Bellin was standing in line just at the check-in counter at the airport when these explosions went off.

We're told he has a lot of shrapnel both in his legs and his hips. He has had one surgery thus far and is now in the intensive care unit. The other Americans are Mormon missionaries from Utah. The LDS Church says they range in age all the way from 19 to 66.

For one of them, Mason Wells, was not his first brush with terror. He was just two blocks away when that Boston Marathon terror attack happened just a couple of Aprils ago. Talk about unfortunate for him. The family spokesman gave us this update of the injuries the 19-year- old received in the Brussels attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD COLEMAN, SPOKESMAN: He is in the hospital, undergoing surgery. Nothing life-threatening. Had some burns, I understand, down to perhaps his face and his hands. But the biggest concern is about his foot. It sounds like his ankle and his heel was hurt the worst by some flying debris or shrapnel from the bomb.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:20:04]

BALDWIN: Let's go now to Pamela Brown, our justice correspondent.

Pamela, what new are you learning on the investigation on the investigation there in Belgium?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: I can tell you the big focus right now, Brooke, is on the identities of these three men we see in this picture. As you mentioned, authorities believe the man in the white got away and so right now there's a manhunt for him.

And officials here in the U.S., they're sharing this picture with their sources on the ground there in Europe and elsewhere, trying to figure out who he is, what his name is, what his background is, what country he came from, how he got there, what network he's part of, and also trying to figure out who these other two men are who officials believe were the suicide bombers.

One clue to lead officers to that conclusion is the fact they're both wearing just one glove on their left hands. They believe that was to conceal the detonators. Officials also have had intelligence that the same people behind the Paris attacks were plotting other attacks, and it's believed that that same network was behind this attack and that there is a connection, they believe, at this point, to Salah Abdeslam, who we know was just connected to the Paris attacks.

He was just arrested this past Friday. They believe that after his arrest, Brooke, there was an acceleration of this plot. They believe this was already in the works, they had already done their surveillance, picked out their targets and then after his arrest they accelerated it.

The concern now is there will be follow-on attacks. One official I spoke to said this is the new normal and Belgium, Brussels, is really the epicenter of this kind of activity, as we have seen with the Paris attacks, and now this.

BALDWIN: Pamela Brown, that is a frightening thought, with the follow-on attacks. Thank you so much for that information from your intelligence sources.

I do want to talk to someone here. The second of the two deadly Brussels attacks this morning taking place at the Molenbeek metro station, downtown Brussels subway location just blocks from the E.U. headquarters.

He is Steven Woolfe. He is a member of the E.U. Parliament, in Brussels for committee meetings.

So, Mr. Woolfe, thank you so much for joining me. And, first, let me ask just you. I understand you were in an apartment at the time of the blasts. Can you tell me what you saw and what you heard this morning?

STEVEN WOOLFE, E.U. PARLIAMENT MEMBER: Well, actually, I'm in that apartment right this second. My apartment is less than 50 meters away from the metro station. I

was in here, as I am now, when I suddenly heard a loud bang that, to me, sounded like the exhaust of a car exploding. But then the building rocked. After it rocked, I left my apartment. I went down the stairs. My neighbor below came out of his door. He said, did you hear that, did you feel that? And we did.

So, immediately, having been watching the news about the bombs going off in the airport, we understood this must be something similar. When we got down to the bottom of our stairs of our apartment, we opened the door, we looked across to our right; 50 meters away, we could see the metro tube station. Already, cars there had stopped. The horns were beeping. They were trying to turn Away as we saw people running around.

Immediately, we could hear the police sirens coming towards from the left and from the right. And then a very large police officer came around the corner and demanded that we move back into my apartment, which is what we then did.

BALDWIN: Were you seeing people running above ground who had been near we're looking at, near where those blasts went off?

WOOLFE: I think those blasts were actually inside the station. I can gather from where I was looking...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: That's correct.

WOOLFE: Running away from the entrance of that station.

And by the time the police officer came back, he pushed me inside. After 15 minutes, I decided to leave the apartment. I didn't want to stay in there. I was going to move to the European Parliament, which is only five minutes away, which is literally hundreds of meters away from this tube station.

This metro tube station is an area where people leave to go to the European institutions, the commission, the council and other buildings as well. So it was well known to those who bombed this that these people worked in the European Commission, the parliament and the council, which is the governing body of the European Union.

BALDWIN: Steven Woolfe, thank you so much in your apartment near that metro explosion. We're glad you're OK. Please stay safe. Obviously, all of our thoughts and hearts for people in Belgium tonight.

Let me bring my panel back in, Ali Soufan, Reuel Gerecht, Michael Weiss, and Robert Pape.

Ali and Michael, to you, back on the point a moment ago from Pamela Brown, saying from her sources they believe that were already attacks -- attacks were in the works. It was accelerated because of the capture of the eighth Paris attacker, and that there will be follow-on attacks. When you hear that, what does that mean? [15:25:00]

SOUFAN: That makes sense. Probably this has been planned for a while. I don't think they were able to just put a plot together in four days. But they decided to accelerate the operation and do it.

BALDWIN: Because why?

(CROSSTALK)

SOUFAN: For the fear of people like Abdeslam or some of the other people who have been arrested during the last two raids in Belgium, they probably can talk or say something.

It seems positive -- one positive thing that is coming out of the tragedy is what is on your screen now, that near bombing chemical, ISIS flag found, which means that law enforcement have some concrete leads and concrete evidence that they are working on.

Any explosive found in a situation like this is good news because that means a terrorist plot has been disrupted. It seems that the law enforcement now, and the intelligence in Belgium, is on the right track, targeting these cells, and trying to disrupt further plots from happening.

BALDWIN: As I'm listening you talking about that perhaps one piece of positive news, let me go take you back to this community, Schaerbeek, in the Brussels area where Frederik Pleitgen has been watching and listening for any bit of information as these raids have been taking place under now the dark of night.

Fred, what's your new information there?

PLEITGEN: The most recent information that we're getting, Brooke, is that again the police here say that they have found some sort of explosives, that they have found chemicals, that they have found nails and possibly also an ISIS flag somewhere in here.

Police giving us very little information beyond that. However, the chopper that we were seeing hover above for I would say well over half-an-hour that had its searchlight on as well has since then flown away. Unclear whether or not that means that the raids that are happening here have stopped or whether or not they have moved to some sort of different phase.

We can't hear that chopper or the other one. However, what we did have just a couple minutes ago is we had the military turn up here. And as you can see, there's some sort of police operation going on here. There's a few people who are standing in front of the cordon and it seems like one of them has just gotten into some trouble with the police officers out here.

Generally, the people here, I wouldn't say apprehensive towards the police, but certainly not very happy this police operation is going on. We saw a police van leave the area I would say about an hour ago. And that was met by whistles and angry people as the police drove out.

There has been a lot of action on the ground here. The chopper has been in the air. You could see that this operation was unfolding. A very large operation unfolding. Police vans going out. Now the most recent thing that's happened, just a minute or two ago I would say, is that a military personnel carrier came past here and drove into that neighborhood as well, Brooke.

BALDWIN: OK, Frederik Pleitgen, thank you so much there.

Reuel, I want to bring you back in, because you had mentioned a moment ago that you have lived in Brussels for a number of years. Can you tell us a little bit more about these communities, both where Abdeslam was found in Molenbeek Friday and then, of course, today, just a couple miles away in Schaerbeek?

GERECHT: Yes.

I mean, like most of Brussels, these communities are diverse. There's some areas of Brussels where they're majority Muslim. There are other areas where you have got a real gathering of folks from the Middle East, from Africa and other places in Europe. Brussels is quite mixed.

You have always -- the Belgian police have always had a problem tracking folks in these communities. The Belgian police force, national police force, say, unlike the French, have never had a legal, aggressive means of eavesdropping.

The French and the Brits, for example, basically bug anything that moves. The Belgians have standards that are closer to the Germans, which for civil liberties is quite good, but it does hamper counterterrorist practices.

So it's been difficult for the Belgians to penetrate these neighborhoods. They have tried. I have known some pretty talented Belgian police officials who were quite good at getting to know the communities and trying to keep an idea about who's coming in, who's going out, what mosques are radicalizing, et cetera, et cetera.

But these are very diverse communities, and it's extremely hard for the police services to know what's going on a lot of the time.

BALDWIN: It's a challenge. Sounds like it's been an ongoing challenge.

Reuel, thank you. Stand by.

You're watching continuous live coverage here in the wake of these attacks, both at the airport and the two -- the subway station this morning in Brussels, Belgium.

Coming up, NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo, he happened to be at the Brussels airport this morning. He's OK. I talked to him -- what he saw and heard coming up next.

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