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Intense Manhunt Underway; Europe Faces an ISIS Threat; Airport Aftermath Video. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 24, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back, 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "The Situation Room."

The news continues right now right here on CNN.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Here we go. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you so much for being with me here on this Thursday.

Breaking news. An intense manhunt underway right now for these two suspected terrorists from the Brussels attacks. One of them truly just a mystery, believed to be part of the attack on that metro that left this devastation and killed at least 20 people. Authorities are looking for a man caught on surveillance video carrying a large bag. Where that individual is, if that individual is even alive, authorities do not yet know. Security forces are also on the hunt for this man. We talked a lot about him over the past couple of days. They believe he is on the run after leaving the largest bomb at the airport.

Meanwhile, we are learning more about the others who carried out these attacks. Authorities believe an ISIS bomb maker, the man you see on the left side in this image from the airport, was killed in that attack. But it is the man next to him who is the subject of some controversy today. In a shocking revelation, Turkey says it warned European authorities about him last summer when they arrested him and deported him. Belgium's interior minister is admitting today his country may have, quote, "missed a chance" to stop this attacker. He and the justice minister have offered to resign because of this.

These attacks have just taken a terrible toll. We have at least 31 people who have been killed and the Belgium Crisis Center has just raised the number of injured to 300.

Let's begin our coverage with my colleague in Brussels, Erin Burnett, with the latest there.

Erin, tell me what you're learning.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: All right, well, Brooke, you know, here on the ground you have this intense manhunt going on. At one point earlier, you know, there were a couple of raids, you know, and everyone is running to the location. It kind of brings back those memories we all have of being in Paris.

As you were saying, Brooke, very much a race against time as they're trying to find these two men. They don't know, have they gone down together, are they regrouping, do they have more explosives, in addition to the 30 pounds of TATP that were found in that apartment. Thirty pounds of TATP, of course, is a massive amount that could kill 500 people a bomb expert was telling me last night.

I'm here with Michael Holmes, who's been reporting on this.

So, you know, you do have that feeling. Yes, it's a city that is going about its business in many ways, but - but there are a lot of stores that are closed in certain neighborhoods. Certainly I was out in Molenbeek where a lot of these men who go to Syria live.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Yes.

BURNETT: It was very muted there today. There were additional raids. And it is, at this time, a race against time, especially if the noose does tighten on those two men that they're looking for, will they strike again and soon?

HOLMES: And that is a concern. And, of course, we heard from Belgium prosecutors yesterday that there could be more than these two. They - you've got the guy that is the supposed second bomber or second involved person at the metro station. Then you've got the man in the hat, the man in that white jacket and the hat at the airport -

BURNETT: That's right.

HOLMES: Who left a suitcase full of explosives, it didn't go off and he left. So that's two they know about that they're looking for. But the Belgium prosecutors are saying there could be more. There's several people that they think could be out there who concern them.

BURNETT: Right. And, of course, you know, going through that neighborhood, you know, you talk to people, they're not surprised that people harbor these people, that people are hiding these people. They say of course that's what they're doing. And people are providing them money, people are providing them food, and all of these things are happening.

But the second - the big development today is that this manhunt is now - they're looking for a lot of people.

HOLMES: Yes.

BURNETT: And they're desperately even trying to figure out the names. But one of the people they're looking for was in the metro station, a bomber there. And you actually spoke to somebody who saw that man.

HOLMES: Yes. And we have checked out his story. And it seems to be very credible. We spoke to him today. His name is Eric Panina (ph). Now, he was in the metro station and says he came across a man with a big black bag, sweating profusely, waiting to go in - down into that metro station, and he said he was worried about him as soon as he saw him. Now, listen to part of what he had to say to me today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ERIC PANINA, WITNESS TO METRO ATTACK: Two minutes later, explodes the metro. I heard the explosion, a big explosion. I saw people on the way with all - all the blood - all the blood everywhere.

HOLMES: Blood and injuries, yes.

PANINA: Injuries everywhere. And before that, I go outside, I tried to go outside, but I saw - before - when I come down, I saw some guy, 25, 24, 30, I don't know the age exactly, age. He was with this bag, with a big bag on - on - he was very nervous. You - you saw -

HOLMES: Sweat?

PANINA: Sweat. He was very nervous. And he was back and forth in the - in the metro hall, back and forth, back and forth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:05:02] BURNETT: Nervous, sweating, going back and forth, going back and forth.

HOLMES: Uh-huh. And what happened then, the guy goes downstairs with that bag. Our guy, Eric Panina, hears the explosion. He's still upstairs. He sees the same guy comes back out. Now he looks calm. Everybody else is panicking, running around, blood everywhere.

BURNETT: Wow.

HOLMES: And this guy just walks away. Now, Eric was interviewed by the police. He did a - gave a description and they came up with a composite drawing. And that's the composite drawing that police initially released, that drawing.

BURNETT: This is his - what we're looking at -

HOLMES: So this rings true.

BURNETT: Is the description of this man.

HOLMES: The man.

BURNETT: You spoke to Eric, of the - this is who he saw?

HOLMES: Exactly. And then he went back in today. He says he had a meeting with police. He was shown a variety of photographs. He picked one guy out of that and the police were pleased when he picked that one guy. Now, the police aren't commenting, because they're not going to try to tip this guy off.

BURNETT: Right.

HOLMES: But Eric is now convinced he saw that second bomber.

BURNETT: And we don't yet know that second - the second bomber's name, of course.

HOLMES: No. Uh-huh.

BURNETT: Of who that might be. But it does show, not just how quickly moving this situation is today -

HOLMES: Yes.

BURNETT: But, again, this is a desperate race against time.

HOLMES: Yes.

BURNETT: Because, as you said, all right, their - one - there were two brothers, one suicide bomber at the airport, one at the metro station.

HOLMES: Yes.

BURNETT: Now all of a sudden days after the attacks, they say, wait a minute, there was someone else on the metro station who is now on the loose.

HOLMES: Yes. And Eric Panina says he saw him.

BURNETT: But they did not know that.

HOLMES: They didn't know that until they saw - until they spoke to Eric. And then they looked at surveillance video. They've seen this guy now on surveillance video, the guy they're looking for, who had the bag, that Eric says sweating profusely, wouldn't let him - he tried to get by the guy and the guy said, get away from me.

BURNETT: Right.

HOLMES: Goes down stairs, explosion, comes back up, no bag -

BURNETT: Incredible.

HOLMES: Calm, walks away.

BURNETT: And, you know, Brooke, it's incredible what Michael's describing, but also going to the neighborhoods, you know, where they have been conducting these raids, looking for these men where they found Salah Abdeslam, you know, muted but business as normal. The giant market in the middle of Molenbeek, the fruit and vegetable market, business as normal today. They are not shutting down these neighborhoods. They are not going down door to door. They are not doing that, which is, again, still a bit shocking, I think, for many around the world watching and watching the clock on this, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Michael Holmes and Erin Burnett, thank you so much. Erin, we'll chat again in just a moment.

But I want to bring in who I think is really one of the best of the best, Ali Soufan, former FBI supervisory special agent. He has served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force, has carried out a number of high- level negotiations. He's also the author of "The Black Banner: An Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al Qaeda."

So, Ali, welcome back to you.

ALI SOUFAN, FORMER FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: Always great to be back.

BALDWIN: First of all, as I'm - as I'm watching all this play out in Belgium and beyond, I'm mindful of Abdeslam, this eighth Paris attacker who was taken last Friday.

SOUFAN: Yes.

BALDWIN: And I'm wondering, as he's being integrated and apparently not being cooperative sort of suddenly, would he be told, would he be made aware that this attack perhaps that he was hoping to be a part of was carried out?

SOUFAN: Well, this is an assessment by the interrogators. I mean nobody can tell them about the dynamics inside the interrogation rooms. Nobody will have a better assessment, actually, than them. So sometimes, for example, when I was integrating suspect - terrorism suspect, sometimes I told them what happened because I thought that can help further bring them to where I want them to be mentally and psychologically.

BALDWIN: Why?

SOUFAN: I'll give you an example. 9/11.

BALDWIN: Yes.

SOUFAN: For 9/11, a perfect example. Bin Laden's personal bodyguard, right, he knew that 9/11 happened but he did not know any more details about the people who were involved, the suspected hijackers at the time. We were not sure they were hijackers. And he went on a rant saying that this is the work of the Mossad and it's not the work of Osama bin Laden. So when we played a poker mental game with him where he start identifying people who we did not know that they were hijacker because he wasn't aware of all these things, we told him that all these people were involved in 9/11, that bin Laden actually went crazy, and he did 9/11. And that was a moment where he totally broke down and he opened up.

BALDWIN: That's fascinating.

SOUFAN: So there are so many different dynamics in the interrogation rooms that you have to play this mental chess game with these individuals.

BALDWIN: In this mental chess game, and if you have this person in front of you and he is the sole survivor of the horrendous coordinated attacks November 13th of last year, what is your priority list?

SOUFAN: Well -

BALDWIN: What is, you know, top one, two and three items that you want to get out of him to stop this from happening? SOUFAN: Number one, is there anything else being planned? Where is the

safe houses? Where are the people who were involved in these kind of things? Number two, map the threat. Anyone he knows of, not only in Belgium, but also across Europe, who was with him in Syria and came back as part of a cell. Now, there's a possibility that he knows, but there's also a possibility he only knows about his own cell. He probably only knows about the people who were involved in the operation that he was to be - he was supposed to be killed at, you know, November 13th, him and his brother.

Now, there's a possibility that he know a little bit about this cell, but possibly not about the details of the operation. There are two brothers -

[14:10:07] BALDWIN: He would purposely be kept in the dark?

SOUFAN: There's a possibly about that.

BALDWIN: Yes.

SOUFAN: Nobody would know that more than the officers, no more than the people who are investigating this. The evidence will lead them, the forensics will lead them into understanding what's going on and putting the puzzle together.

BALDWIN: You mentioned safe houses. We know that they're raiding these safe houses in these different neighborhoods within the - Brussels. What is the role of a safe house for the terrorists?

SOUFAN: Well, it's a place to hide. It's a place to operate. It's a place to keep - you know, to plan things. You know, it's basically exactly what it is.

BALDWIN: What do they keep in the safe houses?

SOUFAN: Well, you know, sometimes, you know, we had incidents, for example, where the safe house was nothing but a place to keep the suicide bombers until the operation happens. We have another place where the safe house was a place to meet and to gather and to plan. Some other places, we had situation where a safe house was a place where they made the bomb and prepare the suicide bombers or prepare the - to carry out the operation. We had a case in Africa where the safe house was a place where they had the long - the last breakfast together before they go - before they went and conducted the terrorist attack. So, you know, they - it's a place where they operate and they feel safe when they are operating.

BALDWIN: On solutions, you wrote a piece in "The Guardian" and you sort of gave us a preview of it the other day when you were sitting right here and said, you know, the issue in Europe is that terrorists are more free flowing than information.

SOUFAN: Sure.

BALDWIN: And so how do we - how do we fix that? SOUFAN: Well, you know, the threat in Europe is very different than

the threat in the United States. It's - comparing the threat in Europe to the threat in the United States is literally comparing apples and oranges. It's both a fruit, but it's two different type of fruit.

BALDWIN: Got you.

SOUFAN: So in Europe, you have a situation where you have about 5,000 citizens of western countries who went and joined -

BALDWIN: Went over Syria, yes.

SOUFAN: ISIS, or different groups in Syria and Iraq. Twenty to 30 percent of them came back. So this by itself is a huge threat. You have a situation where small intelligence services cannot cope with covering all these individuals who came back. So they need to pool their resources together. They need -

BALDWIN: Why didn't they do that after Paris?

SOUFAN: Well, you know, that's - that's a good question because what happened in Paris, they met, the ministers of interior of the E.U., after the Paris attack, and we thought they're going to make some legal changes in their internal laws to better share information with each other.

BALDWIN: And have they?

SOUFAN: In Europe, for example, they are not allowed, because of the legal system, to share information about their citizens with each other. So I'll give you an example. The shooter at the Holocaust Museum in Belgium, he's French. He was known to the French services. He went to Syria. He didn't come back to France because he will most probably be stopped at the airport. He went back to Germany, and then he went - conducted the terrorist attack in Belgium, and then went back to France. So, in this way, he came back to the continent virtually undetected.

BALDWIN: But it sounds like they are communicating. I mean I guess this is sort of my final thought and you'll have to come back again. But, you know, the fact that one of these bombers apparently was arrested and deported, was arrested in Turkey, and the Belgium interior minister is now saying, wow, we might have missed our opportunity. We could have prevented at least this individual from being involved in the attacks. So there was some sort of communication there. To be continued, Ali Soufan. Thank you so much, as always, for your time.

SOUFAN: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Invaluable.

Coming up next here, this taxi driver trying to find his son in the airport films the horrifying moments after the attacks. You will see with your own eyes what exactly he discovered. Plus, it's called the Mother of Satan, and experts say it was used in

these coordinated attacks as it has been in attacks past. Who's building these bombs? How sophisticated are they truly? And American families, they're still waiting for word about their loved ones in Belgium.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's been the worst days of my life. I just - I guess I didn't know how much one person can love another.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:09] BURNETT: I'm Erin Burnett live in Brussels.

It's been called a ticking time bomb. A country no stranger to terror. But in the wake of a pair of brutal attacks here in Brussels, news that some 5,000 Europeans have been radicalized, traveled to Syria, may, in fact, be here, be home, planning. In an interview with the BBC, the chief of Europol saying the threat from ISIS is even more urgent now, warning that the threat is much, much bigger than France, much bigger than Belgium.

Ryan Heath is the senior E.U. correspondent for Politico.

You know, that is a pretty terrifying thing to say. We know that a lot of Europeans have gone. We know that here in this country, as a proportion of the population, more young men have gone to join ISIS than any other country in Europe, and yet he's saying he thinks 5,000 of them are home and could be planning attacks. In fact, they say it's a much bigger threat than France and Belgium.

RYAN HEATH, SENIOR E.U. CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: And except in countries like the U.K. that have very strict laws in place, the case is, we don't actually know where most of those people are. There's no system to track them. There's no system to find out what they've come back to do, why they've left the other people behind in Syria, how they become radicalized in the first place. There's literally no monitoring to a large extent and that's the scariest thing of all because we need to ask ourselves, what are they doing at this moment in the immediate aftermath of this attack? Who are they joining up with and what are they planning?

BURNETT: Which is - which is, of course, now, with this - literally this race against time as they're conducting these raids throughout this city, but, you know, these two men that are on the run and obviously there are more.

HEATH: Yes.

BURNETT: And many more perhaps even in just this cell, that they could be planning something imminently.

You know, today I was in Molenbeek and met a young man. You and I were just talking about this. You know, he has the same name as one of the Paris attackers, which he says is causing him to be able to get a job.

HEATH: Yes.

BURNETT: He has 10 to 15 friends who have gone to Syria to join ISIS. He says that when you try to tell the police - he says don't criticize us for not telling the police.

HEATH: Yes.

BURNETT: We have our reasons for that because they - you know, we're discriminated against in this country. But when we do tell them, they don't care. They don't care. They say, we don't want to hear about it.

[14:20:01] HEATH: Yes. So -

BURNETT: They don't care when you go to Syria.

HEATH: So the nature or the cause of that is the - the thinking was, we want this off our plate. So if people who are going to be radicalized -

BURNETT: If they go to Syria, they won't come back.

HEATH: Exactly. And so that's a - it's a one-way street, but actually we're dealing with a two-way highway in this situation. And so I've heard stories as well of a mother who knew her son was going to travel to Syria, she knew when he was going to travel. She essentially turned him into the police and they said, he's an adult, he's a free individual, we can't stop him from making these choices. He's now dead in Syria. So luckily he wasn't able to come back and cause any further damage.

BURNETT: Yes.

HEATH: But you have to wonder, when does it become negligence when the police have that attitude.

BURNETT: Well, it is - it is shocking. And, today, you know, they offer their resignations over the fact that they were alerted and did nothing and then the resignations aren't even accepted.

HEATH: Yes.

BURNETT: I mean, you know, if this were not life and death, you know, people would say it was a bit of a farce in some ways. It just doesn't seem like this is really happening.

HEATH: And that's the feedback I get when my sources contact me, what I'm looking at on Twitter, is people sort of feel like this is going from the ridiculous to the more ridiculous at some levels. What is different today is that the ministers have actually been fronting up to the cameras. So I think that is some level of dialogue, some level of improvement.

BURNETT: And accountability. There's some - HEATH: Yes, exactly. I look around here at this square. I look at all of the TV setups that are here, and I didn't see any ministers here yesterday explaining what they were doing to fix the problem, what they had done to limit the problem in the first place, and that worried me. There's a little bit of a turnaround today. But you do have to wonder, what were these resignations about?

BURNETT: Yes.

HEATH: The people resigning didn't push very hard to walk away.

BURNETT: No.

HEATH: And the prime minister certainly didn't decide that he was going to use them as an example to say that there is a price when the correct actions aren't taken.

BURNETT: OK. Well, Ryan Heath, thank you very much.

And, Brooke, you know, later on, we're going to hear the full interview with this young man that I met, but, you know, it's interesting and I asked him why haven't you joined ISIS. He said, well, because I have ambition. He said, I understand, I want to fight for my brothers in Syria and in Palestine, as he said it, but I don't want to do it that way. I don't think that I - that killing people is the solution. But he said, I do understand why people go. A very sobering and chilling conversation.

BALDWIN: He does understand, but he's choosing not to.

Erin Burnett, we'll look for that. Thank you so much.

Meantime, coming up next, he could hold a treasure trove of information. CNN learning the Paris terror suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who spent four months on the run before being captured last week, no longer is cooperating with law enforcement. Why he's gone quiet and what his defense attorney is now revealing, next.

Also, it is apparently the bomb of choice among some of these terror cells, explosive TATP. Its nickname, Mother of Satan. It has now been found in the hideout of at least one of these suicide bombers there in Belgium. What that says about the capability of these terrorists.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:27] BALDWIN: Back to our breaking news, taking you back to our coverage there in Belgium.

You know, the prime minister there took to social media just to describe how his country is in shock and how the quote/unquote "apocalyptic images" of the terror attacks are now seared into the world's collective memories. It is especially true of the gruesome scene inside of the Brussels

airport terminal. It was a taxi driver, he rushed inside, he recorded the aftermath while he was actually in there looking for his own son. And John Berman walks us through the chilling scene. But I have to warn you, what you're about to see is extraordinarily disturbing. Here you go.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first thing you hear are the screams.

Presumably the wounded crying for help.

Debris is everywhere, making it hard for rescue workers to get around.

Fires still burning from the blast. Bodies buried under the rebel. And this, a baby in the middle of the wreckage on the floor next to his mother, who appeared to be dead. The horror doesn't end here.

Frightened bystanders still trying to make it out of the building.

[14:30:08] The taxi driver who shot this video reaches the food stand where his son worked, only to find it deserted.