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Americans Still Missing in Brussels; Forces Fighting to Retake Palmyra and Mosul from ISIS. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 24, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[09:00:16] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Sources telling CNN that a second man is suspected of taking part in the Metro station bombing here in Brussels.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: A third man who dropped his bomb off the Brussels airport and left remains unidentified and on the run.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: It's not clear who the man in the right is. Obviously concerned that he could launch some kind of follow-on attack, concerned that other members of the cell could launch a follow-on attack.

ASHTON CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: What Brussels tells us is that they have sympathizers.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The building that you see behind me was the named bomb making factory.

CRUICKSHANK: We're talking about an entire network who have been dispatched by ISIS to launch attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Some of the world's top terror investigators scrambling to unravel the Belgium attacks and racing to prevent the next ones. Right now an all-out manhunt for suspects who may have gotten away. Sources telling us this morning that there may have been a second bomber at that Brussels train station. Belgium's Public Broadcaster reporting that surveillance cameras captured a suspicious looking man holding a large bag but it is not clear if he was killed in the blast.

If alive he becomes a second focus in the hunt for this man, the third airport attacker. Police still have not identified him. But we now know the names of the attackers killed. Both at the Metro station and at the airport. On the far left is Najim Laachraoui, an ISIS bomb maker. Investigators believe a key figure in the Paris terror attacks. And this morning we learned that the prime suspect, Salah Abdeslam, is no longer cooperating with investigators in Belgium. His attorney is demanding that he be extradited to France as soon as possible. Our correspondents, experts and analysts are covering all angles of

this unfolding story. But we begin our coverage with CNN's Phil Black. He's at the Maelbeek Metro station.

Hi, Phil.

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Yes, so it was here underground of the Maelbeek Metro station where the most people lost their lives on Tuesday morning, the deadliest of the attacks. At least 20 people died in what investigators say was a suicide bombing. Now we understood that they had identified one person who was involved. One of the brothers involved in the overall operation, Khalid el-Bakraoui. Now today we hear that they are looking for another suspect. Someone who was apparently captured on security video in the moments before the blast with a large bag.

Now the language they're using here is interesting. They're talking about seeking this person. That doesn't make clear whether they believe that this suspect also died in the blast or whether he is now another member of this network that is effectively on the run and police are trying to catch up with him in that sense -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Phil Black reporting live for us this morning.

Now let's turn to the attack on the airport and the new links that investigators are chasing today. CNN's Nima Elbagir is in Brussels with that.

Hi, Nima.

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Well, we know that they are the seeking the man in the light colored jacket in the surveillance still camera -- surveillance camera still image that has been disseminated by authorities here. But I just wanted to remind our viewers of the other threads that are now becoming apparent in this investigation. Take a look at this, Carol.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELBAGIR (voice-over): Just two days after the deadly coordinated attacks on Brussels, investigators are scrambling to piece together the trail of clues on who the terrorists were and whether they have other accomplices. Authorities identified two out of three suspects caught on airport surveillance camera before two bombs went off.

On the left, Najim Laachraoui. Prosecutors say he's a bomb maker whose DNA was found in the home where the devices used in the November Paris attacks were made. Investigators say the man next to him is Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, the second suicide bomber. Last year he was deported from Turkey to Holland. Turkish officials say he had a criminal record but couldn't determine any links to terrorism.

The third man still unidentified and now the most wanted man in all of Europe. Investigators say he dropped off a suitcase full of explosives near the checking counter and fled. An hour later, a Metro station near several European Union facilities also rocked by terror. Investigators have learned that el-Bakraoui's brother Khalid detonated that bomb in the second car of a crowded train at rush hour.

[09:05:09] Before the attacks Interpol issued a notice connecting him to terrorism. But Belgian authorities say that until now these Belgian born brothers had been linked to violent crime, not terror. Khalid was arrested in 2009 for carjacking and sentenced to five years in prison. Ibrahim was sentenced to nine years in prison after shooting at police during a robbery in 2010.

This as we are getting another look at the horror that unfolded inside the Brussels airport moments after the blast. A taxi driver capturing this chilling video, filming as he runs into the departure halls to find his son who worked at the airport cafe. Thankfully he survived. He stumbles over debris, bodies buried underneath the rubble.

A baby cries in the middle of it all, alone. Her mother lays unmoving. Here a single rose lay crushed, possibly a welcoming gift for an arriving passenger, now a symbol of lives lost in this tragic terror attack.

Outside bystanders coming to the aid of the injured waiting for medical assistance. Those who are able comfort the wounded, though many inside did not survive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELBAGIR: We have some news just into us here, Carol. Belgium's Interior minister, Jan Jambon, has offered his resignation over his country's failure to detain Ibrahim el-Bakraoui when he was flagged to them by Turkish authorities. As we've been reporting the prime minister has not accepted the resignation. But it gives you a sense of the seriousness of these intelligence gaps and the ramifications of them.

COSTELLO: Nima Elbagir, reporting live from Brussels, Belgium this morning.

U.S. officials now telling CNN that they are seeing emerging signs that ISIS leaders in Syria may have helped the cell that pulled off the Brussels attacks.

Let's get right to justice reporter Evan Perez. He's live in Washington with more. Hi, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. What we're seeing -- what we're hearing from intelligence and counterterrorism officials again are those emerging signs that ISIS leaders in Syria had a hand in directing or at least facilitating the team that pulled off the attacks in Brussels. There is still a lot of investigation to be done and there's no hard evidence of a direct line to ISIS and external operations in Syria.

What we are talking about is more of a dotted line connection. The broader network behind this attack and the one in Paris shows a much more sophisticated planning operation than western intelligence agencies thought that ISIS was capable of. A year ago U.S. intelligence agencies had broad disagreement as to whether ISIS even had the external operations capabilities. That the group was more focused on taking territory and building its caliphate in Syria and Iraq. What they didn't know at the time, Carol, was that ISIS was already sending trained bombers to Europe. The Paris attacks certainly put those questions to rest. And ISIS appears to have more of a loose control over these attacks.

The bombers have some autonomy over when and where they are going to attack. Now investigators are racing to try to figure out the support and the money system that these attackers have in Europe and where ISIS is looking to strike next -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Evan Perez reporting live from Washington for us.

Authorities in Belgium under scrutiny, as we've told you, in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. Many questioning whether officials have missed major warning signs, just months after similar coordinated attacks were carried out in France, in Paris.

I sat down with the U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter to talk about it.

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CARTER: It is not enough that we defeat them in Iraq and Syria. What Brussels tells us is that they have sympathizers, people who are Belgians or French who live there already and, therefore an important part of the fight is also going to be a homeland security and intelligence and a law enforcement fight.

The other thing I think that the Brussels event is going to further signify to Europeans is that they -- as we have been accelerating our campaign to defeat ISIL in Syria and Iraq and elsewhere, they need to accelerate their efforts and join us. Now --

COSTELLO: Why aren't they? Because the attacks in large part are happening there.

CARTER: They're doing a lot more -- that's exactly right. And the European countries are doing a lot more.

[09:10:05] Now in many cases they don't have the military capability that they used to have. And certainly not the military capability that we have and that's fine. We can do a lot of the military job. Where we need the Europeans and also the Gulf states and the rest of the coalition is, for example, rebuilding these places that have been destroyed. Helping them to be governed. Because remember, our strategic approach in Iraq and Syria is to help local forces to take back territory from ISIL because after all they have to live there afterwards.

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COSTELLO: Let's talk about this. I'm joined by CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank, he's co-author of "Agent Storm: My Life Inside Al Qaeda." I'm also joined by political commentator and contributor for the "Atlantic," Peter Beinart.

Welcome both of you.

So, Peter, that surprised me when the Defense secretary said that Europe needed to accelerate its fight against ISIS and terrorists because you do wonder like Paris happened. So why isn't it?

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think there is a good story in the "New York Times" today about the difficulties of coordination. Right? And we know how difficult even in the United States sometimes there's been coordination between parts -- different part of the United States government. Here you are talking about a continent with a lot of different sovereign governments. Right? The "Times" said that the Europeans don't even have a common way for transliterating Arabic names. Right? So the coordination problems between so many different security agencies it seems to be were underscored here in the difficulty of Belgium getting the information they needed from Turkey to be able to trap this guy.

COSTELLO: So, Paul, what does Europe need to do now?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, I think one of the things that Ash Carter was referring to was the actual war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq and apart from France, most of European countries are making very modest contributions to the anti-ISIS coalition efforts. Britain has very few combat aircraft in operation. A country like Belgium does have some aircraft that are bombing ISIS in Iraq. But they have limited capabilities.

European countries have not been spending much on defense. Their defense budgets have gone down. They are losing frankly some of these capabilities to launch airstrikes that they may have had a generation ago. And so they need to contribute more. Because as long as ISIS has that safe haven in Syria and Iraq, this terrorism is going to continue. This terrorism is going to accelerate. This is one big terrorism safe haven. There are thousands of Western recruits who have gone in. And they need to get rid of that as a hugely urgent task.

COSTELLO: Well, it is urgent. Especially in light of what Evan Perez just reported, right? I mean, if things are being orchestrated from Syria and they are sending these people into Europe, these bomb makers and, you know, organizers of these terror attacks, why does -- I mean, I understand that Europe's been through a terrible economic time and they probably don't have the money to invest in a lot of, you know, military equipment. But as Ash Carter said they can do other things. They can still do other things.

BEINART: Sure. Look, this has been a long-standing complaint by the United States that the Europeans don't invest more in their military -- in their militaries. And I think you're right. The fact that Europe hasn't rebounded as well as the United States has from the financial crisis means that it's harder to have the budgetary capacity to do that.

I think we're in a particularly dangerous moment now because there is some evidence that as ISIS is losing territory in Syria and Iraq, they are trying to make an extra effort to attack in Europe and elsewhere in order to show their relevance, in order to show their supporters that they're not -- you know, that they're not losing. And so we're in this dangerous moment where the very success that we are starting to have in the Middle East is in the short-term, maybe not in the long-term but in the short-term potentially making ISIS an even greater threat.

COSTELLO: Well, that's a scary proposition. I want to center on the United States for just a second because Ash Carter told me there is a difference between, you know, the terrorists that are carrying out these attacks in Europe and some of the terrorists who have carried out attacks here in the United States. So I'd just like you, Paul, to reiterate the difference and why Americans perhaps needn't worry as much as the Europeans have to.

CRUICKSHANK: Carol, as simple matter of arithmetic. About 200 Americans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the various jihadi groups. Around 6,000 Europeans. So 30 times more Europeans have traveled than Americans. And you can roughly translate that into a terrorism threat which is at least, at least 30 times as big but actually much bigger because there are other radicalized -- greater radicalized community in Europe.

It's nearer the conflict zone. So this is a vastly greater threat in Europe. And the threat in Europe, the biggest threat is ISIS directed this attack was make no mistake about it, ISIS directed this. This was the same cell as the Paris cell. They were given their marching orders from ISIS. They filmed an elaborate propaganda video before the Paris attacks where almost all the attackers appeared in. And this was coming from the very top of ISIS.

COSTELLO: So it's no surprise the Belgian Interior Minister wants to resign, right? I mean, that's what that says.

Paul Cruickshank, Peter Bergen -- or Peter Beinart, thanks both of you. That is my other terror pal, right? Thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the excruciating wait for information about missing Americans in Brussels.

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[09:20:00] COSTELLO: The State Department says U.S. embassy personnel in Brussels are among the dozen Americans still missing. Now we don't know if any Americans were killed in the attacks, but consular officials are going through hospitals, trying to identify victims.

The task gets complicated by the sheer enormity of the explosions, many people desperately hoping their loved ones are being treated in Brussels hospitals with identities unknown. One of them is Emily Eisenman, whose boyfriend Bart was last heard from on his way to the Brussels airport. She talked this morning with CNN about how she's coping.

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EMILY EISENMAN, BOYFRIEND MISSING IN BELGIUM: It's been absolutely devastating. It's been -- my mind wanders into the dark places. But then I -- I just see a glimpse of hope. I just hold onto the relationship I have with Jesus and knowing that Bart, he is very strong in his faith as well with Jesus, that I just keep looking to that. And that is just -- that is the most comfort that I've been receiving.

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COSTELLO: CNN's Brynn Gingras has been on what's being doing to locate and identify the missing, but I want to start with international correspondent Frederick Pleitgen. He's at what's called now the airport morgue. Hi Fred.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi Carol. Yes, and the morgue here at the airport in Brussels is of course the place that pretty much all of the bodies that were -- that the people who were killed, after the bombing at the Brussels airport, were brought to. And they have been ever since that bombing took place.

And the most recent information we've gotten from the authorities here is that even three days, or the third day after this attack took place, there still hasn't been a single body that has been identified with absolute certainty. And that's certainly something that is obviously very troubling to people who are still missing loved ones, who are still missing friends, who are still possibly missing family members. But of course it's always is very troubling to the authorities as well.

Nevertheless we know from the people who work here and also from those who work at other morgues around the area of that metro station that was hit, that of course the people here are really working around the clock. They're trying to identify the bodies. But in many cases, you know, these were very, very powerful explosions that hit that area, and so it is very difficult for them to say with certainly who -- the identities of many of these people.

COSTELLO: All right, Fredrick Pleitgen, reporting live from Brussels this morning. So Brynn --

GINGRAS: Not an easy one.

COSTELLO: No, it's not.

GINGRAS: It's not. And as Fred said, I mean, the issue is we still don't know those names with certainty. And that's such a painstaking feeling for these families who haven't heard from loved ones and are just wanting some sort of answers as to what happened to them.

So we do know, as you mentioned, that the State Department is reaching out to any sources that they have out there. We have people from the consulate in Belgium actually going to hospital, trying to cross names off the list of people who are injured. But again we don't know the people that have died in these enormous blasts. Of course, we just have a list of people missing.

So we have these families reaching out on Facebook, reaching out on any social media possible, to try to get some answers. And we have those two siblings, of course, we've heard about, that they were last speaking with their mother when that phone went dead. We found out that actually one of them was engaged to an American and now her father and their family is going over to Brussels. They were on a flight last night, saying, you know what, we've got to get over there, we've got to find out some answers, we've got to talk to people, and we also need to support the Pinczowski family, that's Alex and Sascha of course.

COSTELLO: I can't even imagine. I just can't.

GINGRAS: It's heartbreaking.

COSTELLO: Brynn Gingras, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the fight to retake Mosul from ISIS. Iraqi forces battling for control right now.

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[09:28:18] COSTELLO: Forces fighting to retake two major ISIS strongholds this morning -- Palmyra in Syria, Mosul in Iraq. Syrian TV reporting that government forces have entered the historic city of Palmyra and are poised to retake it from ISIS militants. This one day after forces captured a hilltop on the outskirts of that city. ISIS has been in control of Palmyra since May and has demolished many of its historic treasures.

The Iraqi army just now launching new operations near the ISIS stronghold of Mosul for that city is in Iraq. Forces have taken control of several villages south of Mosul. That city, Mosul, has been under the terrorist group's control since June 2014.

And in an exclusive interview with Defense Secretary Ash Carter, he told me Mosul will be crucial in the fight against ISIS.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: When you say accelerate our efforts, are you talking specifically about retaking Mosul?

ASHTON CARTER, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The two critical is cities, if you're thinking in sort of World War II maps of the battlefield sense, and think of two arrows, one headed towards Mosul in Iraq and one headed towards Raqqa in Syria. Those are the two key cities. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, next to Baghdad. It is the city that ISIL has taken control of and we need to collapse its control there and restore it to the (INAUDIBLE).

COSTELLO: But some Americans might say why don't you just bomb Mosul out of existence?

CARTER: Well, we are bombing very considerably in Mosul, but we're doing it -- we're bombing ISIL targets. We're not bombing the city out of existence.

We do tremendous amount of air strikes on leadership, command and control targets, their use of energy infrastructure, their ability to move forces.

[09:30:01] You don't see ISIL forces riding down big convoys waving flags, because we destroy them when they do.