Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
ISIS Leader Killed; Trump vs. Cruz; Terror Investigation. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired March 25, 2016 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:35]
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me here.
Belgian officials have now arrested nine people in the course of the last 24 hours, hell-bent, on high alert, in the manhunt for at least two of these suspects and possibly a much larger terror network.
This afternoon, gunfire and explosions ringing out in the Schaerbeek region of Brussels. A suspect was wounded during a major police operation. And this is some of the video we have from a witness. There's this bomb disposal robot going in, approaching him, and then we know the police dragged him from the bus stop and arrested him. He is believed to be linked to what happened in Brussels Tuesday morning.
Meantime, authorities in France say they plotted a terror attack near Paris overnight, and they arrested a French national who is suspected of planning a -- quote -- "advanced-staged attack." French police also found a Kalashnikov rifle, more than four pounds of this fatal chemical combination TATP. This is the same explosive nicknamed Mother of Satan that was used in Tuesday's bombings, used in the coordinated Paris attacks last November 13.
And as we talk about, you know, the manhunt, it is very much still under way for, as I mentioned, these two suspects connected to the coordinated attacks in Brussels this week. A U.S. official tells CNN that based upon U.S. intelligence, they believe they know the identity of this man in the khaki jacket that was in the airport just a couple days ago with the other two suicide bombers.
They have communicated that information to Belgium. Belgium has yet to release the I.D. The State Department now confirms two Americans were killed in the bombings in Brussels. Of course, out of respect to those families, we're not releasing their names, they're not out yet.
Secretary of State John Kerry did recently talk to Erin Burnett, saying he believes the bombings were an attack on America. We will go to her live in Brussels in just a moment.
But, first, let me bring in my panel.
CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank is with us again. And Mike German, he's a former special agent with the FBI. He's gone undercover with a number of domestic terrorism groups. He's also the author of "Thinking Like a terrorist."
Welcome, gentlemen, to both of you.
MIKE GERMAN, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Thank you.
BALDWIN: Paul Cruickshank, we're talking here, we mentioned the French raid. Of course, we're talking arrests in Belgium and arrests in Germany. You have new information on that.
PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Arrests in Germany yesterday, Brooke, and one individual was taken into custody at the train station in Giessen near the Belgium border in Germany.
Local police there thought he was acting a bit suspiciously. He was around the other bags, so they checked his papers, found out he had been involved in robberies, wasn't meant to be inside the Schengen zone of Europe at all. And then they examined his cell phone and saw that there was a message in his cell phone with the name of call Khalid El Bakraoui, the metro bomber in Brussels on Tuesday.
And then there was another message at 9:08 a.m. of the day of the attacks, just three minutes before the metro bombing, saying simply, "It ends." They do not know whether the metro bomber sent that message, but they certainly are very interested in the fact it was in his phone. They also recovered a hospital bill suggesting that he had got treatment on March 18 inside Germany for some injuries.
And there's a school of thought within the German investigation right now that he might have got those injuries during a raid in Brussels last week. Of course, we know that there was a major firefight on Salah Abdeslam's safe house in Forest, so they're looking at all of that.
They also established with that man that he had recently traveled from Belgium to Germany. But also arrested another man in Dusseldorf who they established had traveled on the same plane from Amsterdam to Turkey to try to get into Turkey as the other brother, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, and actually been deported at the same time as the other brother, and so they're looking into whether he could also be possibly to all of this.
BALDWIN: Wow.
As I'm listening to you and I'm trying to keep track, Mike, I want you to weigh in, we're talking arrests in Germany and of course what happened in Belgium and the arrests there and the safe houses, and the raids there, what happened in France. This network, what does that tell you?
[15:05:05]
GERMAN: Part of it is we have to be careful that we're talking about bits of information that are leaking out, some of which may not turn out to be true at all or not related.
It's going by associations, rather than actual involvement in a particular conspiracy. I think it's very important that we be cautious in how we refer to all the different elements going on. But often what you see, there's this phrase of connecting dots. It becomes much easier once you know which dots were very important.
And obviously, after an attack, you know which dots were important so it's easy to move backwards and that's sort of the bread and butter of law enforcement and it's been part of how we have solved these crimes for decades.
BALDWIN: One very important dot being Salah Abdeslam, who they caught one week ago today and who we now have learned they interrogated for two hours, two hours, a couple of days before the attacks in Brussels.
I want to ask you about that in just a second.
But, first, let's get to Brussels to my colleague Erin Burnett is standing by. She talked to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry earlier today.
Erin, good to see you.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Brooke, Secretary of State John Kerry said it is an attack on America, these attacks, an attack against Europe and against Western values.
I want to bring in our CNN international correspondent, Nick Paton Walsh.
Nick, one thing I just want to start with everyone here, you know, it's early evening here. We were both at the scene of one of those raids or an operation today. But where we are, everyday, it's getting bigger here. You know people thought, oh, maybe every day it will get a little smaller but it's not. It feels like it's getting bigger. You have first-responders who are today to pay their respects here at this memorial. John Kerry came here today. It's becoming a bigger part of Brussels right now.
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's almost like while the manhunt, the investigation's under way, Brussels does want to remain the world it continues to live.
We have the weekend ahead of us here. I'm sure that sense of revelry, kind of disheartened really with all the violence that people have been trying to absorb, but still a sign that they will not be cowed. Perhaps part of the reason may be while they raise the terror threat down from the highest four to level three, perhaps that's also Belgium's way of saying they won't be so cowed psychologically, but a very strong signal here.
And, of course, this, as you and I saw earlier on, the issue, ongoing manhunts, meaning at any stage around the capital, you can suddenly hear gunfire and explosions.
BURNETT: That's right. They lowered that terror alert level even as they said an attack, the United States said an attack could be imminent, and that they're aware of the attacks in the final stages of planning.
They're very concerned. It is that race against time. In the past 24 hours, right, nine arrested. You have been at the scene of several of these raids, including that operation today that happened right out in the middle -- the trams here run in the middle of a two-way street. The trains come in the middle. Right there at basically a bus stop, the equivalent of a bus stop, a man is shot.
WALSH: So, witnesses saying that a man sat at the tram station, as you say, the tram relatively nearby.
The real question, why the police approached him? That's clear in amateur video. Shots are fired. Two. One hits the leg. An explosion heard shortly afterwards. Amateur video showing they're concerned his backpack may contain some kinds of explosives. A robot used. Bombs disposal support coming in.
There is clearly somebody younger, smaller than him sat next to him. Quite what happened to them is unclear. But police rescue them away from the scene and then his body is then dragged away behind a car where clearly he will get some kind of medical attention.
We don't know who this man is. We know he's related to the attacks and we know he's now in custody. But the sheer volume of attention and firepower brought to that scene must make you wonder quite how concerned the Belgian authorities were.
BURNETT: Right. It is. They are terrified of something else happening. I think it seems that they feel a real sense of responsibility, as they should. But, today, the prime minister saying we're doing the best we can.
But, of course, they have admitted to mass failures and to failures of the sort that could have prevented these attacks, as in knowing the names, knowing those people that they perhaps they should have taken them in. But do you have the feeling these raids are just going to continue like this because they do feel it's a race against time?
They have not, for example, as Brooke pointed out, found the man in the white jacket or the beige jacket in the airport. They still have the accomplice that they believe was an accomplice in the metro bombings is also still on the run.
WALSH: Well, mentioned in the last 24 hours, three arrests out of the prosecutor's office last night, they have since been released. A lot of them are still in custody at this stage.
We were at a raid last night where a room was gone through by forensic experts. Nobody was arrested during that. So they are having to follow every single lead they can. The failures have been so monumental that the interior minister himself offered his resignation yesterday.
You can't have a bigger statement about how the failings have been, but it wasn't accepted. I think, yes, this is a country doing everything it possibly can to keep itself safe, but realizing frankly perhaps the task could almost be insurmountable. There's so much information.
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: Good point. There were so much -- so many mistakes made that it becomes so difficult to actually deal with that at this point.
Nick Paton Walsh, thank you very much.
And, Brooke, let's send it back to you in New York.
BALDWIN: Erin, thank you very much.
I'm back with my Mike German and Paul Cruickshank. Just continuing our conversation.
[15:10:00]
You were making the point, Mike, about making sure you are connecting the dots and to figure out which dots are most significant. A very significant dot, the arrest a week ago from today. We were talking then, Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the coordinated Paris attacks.
My question is this. We have learned he was interrogated, he was cooperating initially. This was three days before what happened in Brussels. They interrogated him for two hours. Brussels happens. And he stops talking. Two hours, I'm not an interrogator, does that seem like a long time or nothing to you?
GERMAN: It depends on what is said in that two hours. It depends on what the government needed at that point, right?
I mean, there are many different investigative techniques that are being used at all at the same time. It may have been very small gaps. They were hoping his information would close or help them lead to the next gap.
It really depends on what happened in the room. And, again, a lot of this is based on leaks that I know during my own career you would hear something about a case that you're working on.
BALDWIN: You're cautious, I hear you, as you should be, as you should be.
On the -- Paul, the individual who left, whether he got cold feet, the guy in the white jacket from the airport, or perhaps he was a handler and it was his job to then bail, apparently, the U.S. knows who he is, according to U.S. intel. They have shared that with Belgium. Belgium hasn't shared it with public.
And I'm wondering is there strategy perhaps not to spook him, in not telling everyone who he is, so everyone can be on the lookout? Or what do you think?
CRUICKSHANK: Possibly. By not releasing all the information they have, by keeping their cards close, that can give them the advantage when they're trying to make these arrests.
If somebody knows for sure that the police are coming, then they may become desperate, may decide to launch some kind of attack. So it's a judgment call when it comes to the prosecutor's office in Brussels, which are really leading the charge on the investigation.
But, of course, by pulling another picture out, if they can establish the identity, they can engage with the general public to get their help for tips. It's a real balancing act about how much you release and at what time.
BALDWIN: I imagine that's a balancing act, but also in terms of all these other arrests that we have talked about, Belgium, Germany, France. The more these people are arrested, arrested, perhaps then plots in progress are accelerated, a la what happened this past Tuesday, correct, to either of you?
GERMAN: Certainly, that's part of the concern, that you don't want your counterterrorism efforts to actually be instigating more violence, rather than reducing the level of violence.
But any element that you are able to halt might bring you more information that might help in other investigations, whether they're investigations of attacks that have already happened or activities that are continuing.
BALDWIN: So delicate, right?
CRUICKSHANK: So delicate, and, Brooke, as we learn more from officials, we're just learning that this plot, this network, has an extraordinary number of tentacles in Europe in at least three European countries, in Belgium, France, also in Germany as we hear more now from officials.
This was a intricate network. And the real concern is they're now accelerating forward with attack plans, that Brussels was not the last plan. It was just the second plan After the Paris attacks.
BALDWIN: Paul Cruickshank and Mike German, we will leave it, we will talk again, thank you both very much.
More breaking news. We know that the number two within the ISIS terror network has been killed by the United States, what appears to be a ground operation. This is obviously an individual they would have liked to have captured alive. We have details on that.
Plus, the police taking down a suspect in Paris who had TATP on him as well. Was perhaps an attack there in France imminent?
And in this race for the president, some bizarre developments. Moments ago, Donald Trump responding to accusations from Ted Cruz that he and his people planted a story in the tabloids. We will go there, coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:18:22]
BURNETT: I'm Erin Burnett live in Brussels as the manhunt intensifies for the suspects in the bombings here.
Major news today from the Pentagon at the same time, the United States saying it has killed a high-ranking ISIS leader considered to be the terror group's number two in command.
Here's Defense Secretary Ash Carter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ASHTON CARTER, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're systemically eliminating ISIL's cabinet. Indeed, the U.S. military killed several key ISIL terrorists this week, including, we believe, Haji Imam, who was an ISIL leader, senior leader, serving as a finance minister and who is also responsible for some external affairs and plots.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: We're also learning the U.S. operation intended to capture the ISIS leader alive, but plans changed at the last minute.
I want to bring in our Barbara Starr. She's at the Pentagon working on the story.
Barbara, who was this man, what are you learning about this last- minute change, because, as we know, they wanted him alive?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Erin.
This is a guy the U.S. wanted so badly they were willing to send U.S. special operations forces into Syria. Very dangerous business. We're told that they went in by helicopter. They were targeting him. They wanted to be able to capture him alive. As ISIS' finance minister, he would have had a lot of intelligence, they believe. They wanted to take him back to Iraq, interrogate him, find out what he knew about the operation, where other operatives might be.
But it didn't work out. And the Pentagon not offering a lot of detail about this covert operation. We know that when the helicopters got overhead and were targeting the vehicle that he was in, something changed.
[15:20:10]
We don't know what that was. The helicopters could not land. Something happened and they had to open fire, killing him and others in the vehicle. So they believe very strongly they got him and that he's dead in that incident, and they will not say exactly what happened.
But I think it's really important to consider the risk that these U.S. troops went to, to go into Syria. There's no real friendly forces on the ground there. If they had run into trouble, it could have been very difficult, Erin. BURNETT: Barbara, I know we're also learning about an attack, a
horrible attack on a football stadium in Iraq, obviously civilians, people there. What are you learning about that?
STARR: Well, this is apparently an area in Central Iraq in a place called Babil (ph). Some people had gathered to watch a football game, ISIS claiming responsibility for this suicide attack at this area where the game was being played.
A suicide vest. Initial reports there are of a couple of dozen people who lost their lives, others injured. What this really underscores, of course, is what we all know, that civilians, whether it is in Iraq, Syria, Brussels or Paris or other places around the world, really bearing the brunt of what ISIS is doing -- Erin.
BURNETT: Barbara, thank you so much -- and now back to Brooke in New York.
BALDWIN: All right, let me stay on that. Erin Burnett, thank you very much and Barbara with this news of the number two ISIS leader killed.
Let me bring CNN military analyst retired Army Major General Spider Marks.
Great to have you on, as always, sir.
BRIG. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Thank you, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Coming off of Barbara's point, to me, the headline isn't even as much the who was killed, it's the how, right? It's the fact that, you know, not only obviously are we, the U.S. military and others, airstrikes and campaigns, but this was on the ground, something happened, as she was pointing out, with that helicopter and that vehicle.
But do you agree, it's the how they got him?
MARKS: It's quite phenomenal. Let's not be too quick to celebrate this one kill, albeit very, very significant. But it has to have hinged upon having some really phenomenal intelligence, actionable intelligence that is confirmable and that allowed these special ops folks to do this amazing operation.
So also bear in mind there's probably no causality between what occurred in Brussels and what we saw occur last night in Iraq. This mission in Iraq has been developing over the course of time. They happened to just coincide in time over the course of the last 48 hours. But we probably have, we the United States, these special operation forces, probably have some really good human intelligence sources that were willing to take risk to get into the level of detail, to coordinate with these sources and to provide intelligence that then led to this actionable operation.
Look what happened. We put a helicopter into Syria, and we knew where the vehicle that this guy was -- where Qaduli was traveling in, where it was going, what its intent was. And we were able to vector all of that together. That's quite phenomenal and speaks highly about our presence in the region.
BALDWIN: It is incredible, indeed. And to your point and to your Barbara's point, just the risk that they took, these ops folks, in going in and doing this.
My follow-up would be, how difficult is it? Obviously, you would want him alive, considering the treasure trove of information one could get. How difficult is it to try to take someone alive like this?
MARKS: Sure.
Well, it's very difficult. Every one of these missions has a kill or capture construct to it. The commander, the senior individual on the ground has the discretion, and it's a risk analysis that that individual goes through to engage, to capture or to kill. In this case, obviously circumstances, which are flying by like that, Brooke, you can only imagine the severity of the intellectual capability to keep up with all this stuff.
A decision had to be made not to put the team at risk and to go ahead and do a kill mission vs. a capture mission. Capture missions are very, very delicate, very precise. And circumstances were such where there had to be that decision, so, completely supportable. No second- guessing from anyone will ever occur surrounding this operation.
BALDWIN: Yes. General Spider Marks, thank you so much, as always.
MARKS: Thank you, Brooke.
BALDWIN: Just in to CNN, this whole, what do you want to call it, feud back and forth between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump just escalated by a couple of notches today, both campaigns now trading barbs over a tabloid report. We will discuss.
Plus, new details emerging about an advance stage terror plot unraveled in Paris, chilling evidence found in this one suspect's apartment, including the highly unstable explosive TATP. We will take you there live.
[15:25:09]
Also, CNN takes an in-depth look at the explosive nicknamed the Mother of Satan, why these ISIS terror cells use it and what it's capable of destroying.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Half past the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.
The feud between Cruz and Donald Trump escalating to a whole new bizarro level today. Senator Cruz has just responded to this new tabloid...
