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Brussels Investigation; Hillary Clinton on Counterterrorism. Aired 15-15:30p ET

Aired March 23, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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


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HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Right now, many European nations don't even alert each other when they turn away a suspected jihadist at the border or when a passport is stolen.

And Turkey, a NATO ally, still has more work to do to control the border, where most foreign fighters cross into Syria. After the Paris attack, France and Belgium pledged to move forward together on reforms. But that's difficult without the European Union.

In January, the E.U. announced a new integrated counterterrorism center. But intelligence cooperation still lags, and the E.U. keeps delaying a vote to share traveler information between member states. It's actually easier for the United States to get flight manifests from E.U. nations than it is for E.U. nations to get them from their own neighbors, thanks to an agreement that the United States negotiated when I was secretary of state.

There also has to be a special emphasis on identifying and investing in the hot spots, the specific neighborhoods, prisons, and schools where recruitment happens in clusters, as we have seen in Brussels. And it's time to make good on the promise of establishing a new unified European border and coast Guard to strengthen the continent's external borders, which are under unprecedented pressure from refugees and migrants.

Now, this is a heartbreaking crisis. Last year, the world was horrified by the photo of a drowned toddler lying on a Turkish beach. In the months since then, hundreds more children have died trying to reach safety. We have seen Europe and Syria's neighbors in the Middle East struggle under the weight of this challenge.

It's too big for any one country or even continent to handle alone. I'm glad that the E.U. and Turkey are now working closely together. And the United States should do whatever we can to support that. The only truly effective answer is to go to the source, end the conflict that is displacing all of these people.

So we have to support and maintain the cease-fire in Syria. And we should also work with our coalition partners and opposition forces on the ground to create safe areas where Syrians can remain in the country, rather than fleeing toward Europe.

In the meantime, it would be wrong to shut our doors to orphans or to apply religious tests for people fleeing persecution. That's not who We are. But, of course, we have to be vigilant in screening and vetting everyone. We can't allow terrorists to intimidate us into abandoning our values and humanitarian obligations, but we also have to be smart and vigilant about how we process people into our country.

It would be doubly cruel if ISIS cannot only force families from their homes, but also prevent them from ever finding new ones. And that brings me to my third point. In our fight against radical jihadism, we have to do what actually works.

One thing we know that does not work is offensive, inflammatory rhetoric that demonizes all Muslims. There are millions of peace- loving Muslims living, working, raising families and paying taxes in this country. These Americans are a crucial line of defense against terrorism. They are the most likely to recognize the warning signs of radicalization before it's too late, and the best positioned to block it.

Last year in Minneapolis, I met parents, teachers, imams and others in the Somali American community who are working with law enforcement and mental health profession to intervene with young people at risk of being radicalized. Efforts like that deserve more local and national support.

Since 9/11, law enforcement has worked hard to build trustful and strong relationships with American Muslim communities. As the director of the FBI told Congress, anything that erodes that trust makes their job more difficult. We need every American community invested in this fight, not fearful and sitting on the sidelines.

So, when Republican candidates like Ted Cruz call for treating American Muslims like criminals and for racially profiling predominantly Muslim neighborhoods, it's wrong, it's counterproductive, it's dangerous.

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As a spokesman for the New York Police Department pointed out last night, that kind of blanket bigotry would treat the city's nearly 1,000 Muslim police officers as threats. "It's hard to imagine a more incendiary, foolish statement," he said.

Commissioner Bill Bratton of the NYPD was even more blunt this morning. He said, Senator Cruz doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

Demonizing Muslims also alienates partners and undermines moderates we need around the world in the fight against ISIS. There's been a lot of talk from both Republicans and Democrats about the importance of building coalitions with Muslim nations. Having actually done this, I can tell you, insulting allies and partners is not a good way to start.

Another thing we know that does not work, based on lots of empirical evidence, is torture. Many intelligence, military, and law enforcement experts have attested to this fact. It also puts our own troops and increasingly our own civilians at greater risk.

I'm proud to have been part of the administration that banned torture, after too many years in which we had lost our way. If I'm president, the United States will not condone or practice torture anywhere in the world.

Even when we're up against opponents who don't respect human life or human rights, torture is not the right choice. As Senator John McCain has said, the high standard to which we hold ourselves isn't about our enemies. It's about us. It's about who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be.

America is a great nation. And this is time for American leadership, smart, strong, steady leadership. No other country can rally allies and partners to defeat ISIS and win the generational struggle against radical jihadist terrorism.

Only the United States can mobilize common action on a global scale in defense of our people and our values. America doesn't cower in fear or hide behind walls. We lead and we succeed.

Throughout our history, we have stared into the face of evil and refused to blink, whether it was fascism, the Cold War, or hunting down Osama bin Laden. And we will defeat ISIS, too. No enemy or adversary should ever underestimate the determination of the American people.

I will never forget what it was like to arrive in Brussels for the first time as secretary of state in March of 2009. I was on my way to NATO. NATO headquarters was buzzing. Hundreds of young people at the European Parliament had stood and cheered, not for me, but for the idea of American leadership, for the promise of an alliance that delivered unprecedented peace and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.

That's what we need to remember today. Americans cannot, and I believe will not, turn on each other, turn on our allies or turn away from our principles. We're in it for the long haul. And that means we are going to work together, and we're going to prevail.

This may be another one of the long struggles that we have confronted from time to time in our history. But, like all the rest of those, if we can forge a bipartisan consensus, if we can bring our people to understand what this struggle means to us, if we can maintain our alliances and our partnerships, we will be successful.

And that will benefit not only our country, but the world. And that, when you boil it down, is what American leadership has to be about.

Thank you all very much.

(APPLAUSE)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Former secretary of state, current front- runner on the Democratic side, wants to be the next president of the United States there, Hillary Clinton, wrapping a -- really a pretty significant moment here in the wake of what has happened in Brussels, Belgium, addressing counterterrorism efforts, point number one, addressing how this latest evolution of sort of terrorism, how they are nimble and we need to be nimble in responding to them.

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To defeat them, we must reinforce other allies. And then, finally, subtly, perhaps not too subtly, taking some hits at a couple other Republicans who would like to be president. Specifically, she quoted New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton this morning as he was directly saying -- and I quote -- "Ted Cruz doesn't know what the hell he's talking about" on response to Senator Cruz saying essentially you need to patrol -- his quote -- areas where there are higher incidents of racial Islamic terrorism in the United States.

Talked about Donald Trump as well. She talked about how she was proud to be part of an administration that outlawed torture. Donald Trump has come forward and said essentially he would be fine with water- boarding, particularly that eighth Paris terror suspect who they just arrested Friday, if that means getting more information.

That said, those are the highlights from the speech.

Let me bring in two very smart voices.

Juliette Kayyem is still with me. And Peter Bergen is joining us as well, CNN national security analyst.

And, Peter Bergen, what did you make of Secretary Clinton?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I thought that was a sustained attack on a lot of rather poor ideas that the Republican candidates have come out with about how to deal with terrorism, whether it's building walls.

I think Hillary Clinton very correctly said, how does that keep the Internet out? After all, if you look at the 60 cases last year, Brooke, which are in the United States, they were almost all generated by online content. The idea that somehow building a wall would solve the problems -- also she poured cold water on the idea of turning our back on NATO, saying that that would create Christmas in the Kremlin is what she said.

She also pointed out that patrolling Muslim neighborhoods, as Ted Cruz has suggested, would essentially be unconstitutional amongst -- and then, by the way, the NYPD last had to settle a lawsuit on this very issue in the previous pre-Bratton administration under Ray Kelly because New York police officers were going into Muslim neighborhoods. And that was deemed, you know, essentially something that wouldn't sustain legal backing of the Constitution.

She also said, you know, carpet-bombing ISIS in Syria and Iraqi cities, which is a Ted Cruz idea, would be enormously counterproductive. You would have hundreds of thousands of civilians left dead in the street. So, I think it was a well-executed indictment of a lot of the ideas

that are being set forth by both Trump and Senator Cruz and other Republican candidates. And she also said, for instance, that applying a religious test to Syrian refugees would essentially be un-American.

After all, we have heard Republican candidates saying that we will take Syrian refugees, but only if they are Christian, a fundamentally un-American idea.

BALDWIN: Peter, stay with me.

Juliette, you were sitting here and listening to her speech with me, sort of nodding along and taking your notes. What were your takeaways?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So, a couple things, to pick up on what Peter said.

So, clearly, she was throwing shade at Cruz and Trump, as she should. And she did it in the context of not that we are a good democracy and we are liberal and we don't do these things. She said it's ineffective as a security measure. She got into their lane, which is really important, because Democrats are often viewed as not serious about security.

In my mind, that was a different sort of tactic by her, and very important. The second is, she clearly focused on the E.U. in a really important way. There are about -- a quarter of the speech was about the European Union.

Europe has a problem. I know we talk about Syria and foreign policy. These men who are attacking Europe are Europeans. It is a European problem to the extent that something has gone terribly awry. Of course, they are getting trained abroad. But in some instances, they are not.

But she focused on the E.U., really understanding that they had to own what was going on in Europe. And then the third thing I wanted to point out what she did when she opened. She did something that the president actually is accused of not doing. She very much sympathized with the sense of unease that many Americans feel in terms of the sort of series of attacks we have seen in the next -- the past eight or nine months.

I think that was important for her to do, in the sense that I get that people are nervous. Right. I get this.

BALDWIN: It's emotional.

KAYYEM: It was emotional in a way you often don't hear from her and which the president is sometimes accused of not doing as it regards terrorism.

Look, Peter and I will be the first ones to tell you it's not an existential threat, the terrorist threat. On the other hand, people are feeling it in a way that they didn't, say, even a year ago. BALDWIN: Juliette Kayyem and Peter Bergen, thank you both very much.

Let me just say, if you are just joining us here, I'm Brooke Baldwin. You are watching CNN's live coverage here.

Authorities in Belgium there on high alert, they are issuing a dire warning today that at least one of the suspects in the bloody attacks in Brussels and the terror cell behind it are still at large. As far as what we know right now, two of the suspects have been identified as brothers.

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The man you see there on the far right, he was the metro bomber. He was the suicide bomber at that metro station near the E.U. His brother, seen in the black in the middle there pushing the baggage cart, he targeted the airport.

We do have new details on this bomber here in just a moment. Meantime, police are looking for this man. This is the man we were talking about all yesterday, light-colored coat, black hat, at the airport. He is the one believed to have placed the heaviest explosives, the largest suitcase or bag, if you will, at the airport before taking off.

So he is still on the run. He is alive.

Let me take you straight to Brussels to my colleague Erin Burnett, who is watching the latest on this investigation.

Erin, what are you learning?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Hi.

So, Brooke, what's amazing here is we're learning right now obviously you have got this frantic manhunt under way for the man with the light jacket that they believe is somewhere here in Brussels. They have been conducting raids, but they didn't shut the city down.

And, of course, they are also looking for the bomb-maker that they believe was involved in this and the Paris attacks. And they still, though, Nick, I think the key thing we are learning right now is, they are not sure who is who in terms of the identities here. There is a lot of questions about who is dead, who isn't dead, who is on the run.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are gaping holes, frankly, in their knowledge.

And I think the key image in people's minds is that shot of three men in the airport check-in areas wheeling those particular trolleys. We know that one of them, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, is dead. That's a fact. And we know interestingly from Turkish authorities speaking today that he was deported from Gaziantep, a city in the south of Turkey full of Syrian refugees, back in June of 2015, and the Turkish warned the Belgians about him. That obviously wasn't enough for him to be arrested. But we don't

know who was the other man in black who is dead in that picture and who is the man in white who is on the run. Another question, Khalid El Bakraoui, the brother of Ibrahim, who caused the blast in the metro station, did he act alone? Or did he, like the men in the airport -- the man in the white there was said to be a guide by prosecutors. Did he have someone helping him along on his journey?

BURNETT: That's right.

Brooke, as we talk about this hunt, manhunt that's going on, they don't actually know how many people they are looking for. Right? We know they are desperately for the man in the white jacket. But what we don't know -- and more people died in the attack in that metro station in Molenbeek station. We don't know whether there was more than one person involved there.

WALSH: Absolutely.

BURNETT: But I think the stunning thing you just raised is, yet, again, we see a pair of brothers, in this case, the Bakraoui brothers, one at the airport and one at the metro station.

Turkey warning Belgium, as you just said, about one of them, that they were concerned he was a radical, warning Belgium. And both of these brothers had served time in jail. One of them had been sentenced to nine years for trying -- a police officer, trying to kill a police officer, the other for armed weapon possession.

So, they had that. They had sentences of, what, nine years and five years. And Turkey raises the red flag. Still, they weren't in custody. They weren't being followed.

WALSH: I think there are two issues here. One is volume.

There are so many, apparently, warnings from Turkey to Belgian officials.

BURNETT: They can't track them all.

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WALSH: They can't track everybody.

This country in particular, the most ridiculous proportion of people who have gone to Syria to fight who return here, really disproportionate, frankly, owing to the size of the population here. That's one issue here, the volume.

The second issue, you really find is exactly what do these brothers do when they go to Syria if they go, what they learned there? What is this evolution in them, for example? They are thought to have been men mostly involved in organized crime, but somewhere in the mix, this radical ideology fits in.

Is that a new path for them in their minds? There's another interesting moment here, Erin, too, where we have to look at the Interpol warning put out about Ibrahim El Bakraoui.

Now, many Belgian officials suggested this is a man they were most looking at because of his links to crime, but that Interpol notice talks about terrorism. That comes I think back to volume. How much information do you have?

BURNETT: Can't track them all.

WALSH: Exactly. How do you narrow it down to the main person you need to worry about?

BURNETT: Right.

Brooke, of course, the other thing, we talk about the frantic manhunt under way and a city that is supposed to be shut down, but very much is not, at least from what we're experiencing. You talk about Salah Abdeslam found alive just a few minutes' walk from where he was almost captured in a raid and from where he lived before.

It's pretty stunning. You have these men, they all say, fleeing back to this very neighborhood. They are not shutting that neighborhood down. They are not going door to door, right back to the heart of what Hillary Clinton just said in her speech. They are not targeting the neighborhood, they are not going door to door, they are not shutting it down until they find him.

A pretty significant statement they are making in not doing that tonight -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Erin, thank you so much.

Yes, it was this time yesterday we were watching those live pictures and talking to Fred Pleitgen as the police helicopters were honed in on one of those neighborhoods. They had found ISIS flags and screws and nails and chemicals all in some of these apartments as they continue to search.

The manhunt, as we keep saying, is indeed on.

Meantime, think about the families of the loved ones who were in the train area or in the airport. And they still haven't heard from their brothers, their sisters, their boyfriends, for example. A young American woman, her boyfriend is missing. She actually hasn't heard from him since the attacks. She will join me live on her emotional search.

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We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BURNETT: Breaking news from Brussels. At this moment, a major development, perhaps, in the wild, frantic

manhunt that is going on, as investigators are still searching for the third man in the airport, the man there in that jacket. They believe that they may have established the identity of another one of the men in that picture, one of the suicide bombers, they believe may be the bomb-maker, the bomb-maker, Najim Laachraoui, as one of the men in the dark shirt there who was pushing that cart and detonated that bomb in the airport.

I'm here with Nick Paton Walsh.

Start with the significance of this. There's a manhunt going on for several people, as they have been desperately searching for them. He was one of those men. Now they believe this may be him. They don't know. They have not conclusively established it.

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But if it is, this is the bomb-maker that made these bombs. This is the bomb-maker whose DNA was on the Paris bombs. This is someone who important, he has a skill. Why would he be a suicide bomber?

WALSH: Yes. He's the definitive link between Paris and Brussels.

You have to ask yourself if he is willingly giving up his life at this stage, if this information is correct, because they are still looking at fingerprints and DNA to establish it. This is a the hunch, the belief they have at this stage. But if he chose to give his life, he was that second man in black, then you have a real two options I think you have to look at here.

Did he feel perhaps his fingerprints were literally on too many devices, he was too exposed and decided it was time to end his role in this rather dastardly conspiracy, or are we talking about him being a lesser figure perhaps because, as you say, if you have that remarkable expertise, deadly, horrifying expertise, it's not something you necessarily want to give, or the organization he's working with isn't going to want to see given up too easily.

BURNETT: That's right.

I want to bring in Peter Bergen now into the conversation, our counterterror expert.

And, Peter, to emphasize again, this would be very significant if it's true. They are though still analyzing DNA to see if this is really the bomb-maker. But let's start with your take on this.

What would be the significance of this bomb-maker actually choosing to kill himself, when we know clearly from DNA that he has been very important in making the bombs for both of these horrible attacks?

BERGEN: It would be very significant for the following reasons.

The bombs in both Paris and now Brussels have been established are TAT bombs. They are very difficult to build. TATP is rarely used in bomb explosions because it's so unstable. The reason you use TATP is you can build the bomb from common household ingredients, principally hydrogen peroxide. It was used in the London 7/7 attacks in which 52 people were killed.

It was used in Paris, in which 130 people were killed, as you know, and now in the Brussels attacks. And it's become a signature first of Qaeda in the last decade or so, and now of ISIS. But building these bombs, I have seen them being built by skilled bomb-makers. They are very hard to build.

If you have somebody who is at the center of the cell who is building these bombs who has chosen to die, that would be a big victory for law enforcement because at the end of the day it's about building these effective bombs that has made this cell particularly deadly.

BURNETT: So, let me ask you, though, because obviously it would be incredibly significant if this is the case and a victory for law enforcement, as, Peter, you are saying. But when they went back to the apartment where the men left, where they came that morning with their suitcases, they say they found 15 kilograms of TATP in that apartment as well as chemicals.

Whether those were hydrogen peroxide, acetone, I'm not sure, but chemicals were in there. Peter, do you think it is possible he has trained someone else? He thought his name would come up, it would be impossible for him to hide, someone else was trained? I mean, he left a stash of 15 kilograms of TATP behind.

BERGEN: Yes, he could have trained something else.

But I will say, Erin, that when I -- I have seen these bombs being built by highly professional bomb-makers. I did it for a documentary that I was filming.

And we blew up the bombs in a very deserted quarry in Southern England. I mean, the level of skill to make these bombs, it requires many, many hours of preparation, getting the precise kind of toxicity of hydrogen peroxide to a particular level.

And, by the way, when people try and do this when they read it on the Internet and they try to do this as home, often, they kill themselves. We saw a case in Texas where two kids basically were blowing up these bombs just for fun. And they killed -- one of them was killed and the other one was severely wounded.

The point is, yes, he could have passed on his expertise to other people. But it is not an expertise that is easily just sort of handed over in the course of an afternoon.

BURNETT: All right, well, Peter, we have much more on this breaking news coming up.

Brooke, and, obviously, this would be a huge development, if true. But, again, they do not yet know if the bomber, bomb-maker actually is dead or not. They are still trying to identify that through DNA, including fingerprints, Brooke. BALDWIN: Erin Burnett, thank you so much in Brussels.

And as, of course, we're on top of the investigation, let's not let the victims be lost in all of this, the victims, the survivors, the families who are still looking for questions.

Among one of them is a young woman in Georgia. She is Emily Eisenman. She says her boyfriend, Bart (ph) -- and we will show you the photo of the two of them. Here they are. Bart was apparently headed to the airport in Brussels on his way to come to the States, to come visit Emily in Georgia and he was taking a train to the airport when Emily last heard from him had. She says he never arrived and neither she nor Bart's family have heard from him since those attacks yesterday morning.

So, Emily is joining me live from Atlanta.

And, Emily, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

EMILY EISENMAN, BOYFRIEND MISSING IN BRUSSELS: Hi. Thank you.

BALDWIN: So, tell me, when exactly was the last time you talked to him? And what was that conversation?

EISENMAN: I talked to him on the phone before he was going to get on his train to go to Brussels, which was a two-hour train ride.

And, you know, he promised me he would tell me once he got to the airport safely.