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Orlando Mass Shooting Investigation. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 14, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGEL COLON, ORLANDO ATTACK SURVIVOR: And I can just see him shooting at everyone. And I can hear the shotguns closer. And I look over, and he shoots the girl next to me. And I'm just there laying down. I'm thinking, I'm next. I'm dead.

So, I don't know how, but, by the glory of God, he shoots towards my head, but it hits my hand. And then he shoots me again and it hits this side of my hip.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, also, in the wake of the massacre, President Obama and Hillary Clinton hold two separate events with one target, Donald Trump and Republican critics. We will play the fiery messages ahead, Brooke.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Also ahead here, a major development today in the killer's possible motive.

We are hearing reports that not only did he visit Pulse nightclub here multiple times, but a law enforcement official says he cased out Disney Springs. That's a resort social essentially on Disney World property not too far from here, one week before the nightclub shooting.

Let's begin the top of this hour, though, with CNN justice correspondent Pamela Brown. And I have Bob Baer here with me, CNN intelligence and security analyst and former CIA operative.

And, Pamela, just beginning with you, on the angle of this wife, I know she's being cooperative with authorities. I know they have lots and lots of questions for her. What exactly are they looking for?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're looking for what she knew before this attack and whether she knew enough to know he was going to carry out this mass shooting, and didn't come forward to authorities.

Of course, that would be a crime and she could be charged for that. And at this point, authorities are investigating her, are looking into that. They have been talking to her. She's been giving helpful insight. It's believed that she went with her husband to one of the potential targets.

But at this point, they're sorting out whether she knew that that would be a target for a mass shooting, but she is providing helpful insight. This is the woman, Noor Salman, that the gunman married back in 2011. They had a son together. So there's a lot to learn about their relationship and what she knew.

And we are learning as well, Brooke, about his movements in the hours and the days leading up to this shooting. In fact, we have learned that he visited Pulse nightclub before, that he was doing pre- operational surveillance, according to law enforcement sources we have been speaking with.

And he also visited that Disney Springs area that you had just mentioned. He apparently visited the day of the attack for several hours, according to cell phone data tower that investigators have been looking at.

And then around the time that he bought the guns in early June, he also went to this Disney Springs area, about 20 minutes away from the nightclub.

So, of course, the question is, was he trying to decide what his target would be? Officials do believe he was casing, scouting it out, trying to figure out what he would do to carry out the attack. And so that is something officials looking at as we speak, Brooke.

BALDWIN: And, also, it was all during these gay-themed celebrations, right, Disney Springs, or even this nightclub here in Orlando during that particular week this year.

Pamela, thank you.

Bob Baer, on the wife, how do they get her to talk?

BOB BAER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, she...

BALDWIN: She's being cooperative.

BAER: Yes, but we don't know if she's going to tell the truth, first of all.

BALDWIN: That's my point.

BAER: In so many of these cases, the wives are brought in. There's no such thing really as a lone gunman, unless somebody just flips out.

And 90 percent of these shootings involve telling family or a cleric or at least getting some sort of implicit approval to fight jihad. And this is what they have got to find out.

But we don't know that yet. She may be entirely innocent. But I really don't trust family members after a horrible thing like this. They tend to make things up. They tend to invent things. So, you have to be very patient with them when you question them. BALDWIN: I remember we talked about this a lot in the week of Boston,

as those pressure cooker bombers were being made, and how could someone in that home in Cambridge not have seen all the different pieces together in that kitchen? And I would imagine the same would go here, if you're bringing home AR-15s and whatnot, whatever he had bought in, in the weeks leading up this.

We know that he was apparently also on these gay social media apps. He had been to this nightclub multiple times. He was befriending other gay nightclub owners. We don't know why if he was indeed, as investigators are saying, casing out the place. What does that tell you?

BAER: I think you have to case it. If you're going to cause mass casualties, you simply don't walk in with a gun and hope for the best. You have to know the routine of a club.

It's good to know the bouncer. It's good to know the bartender.

BALDWIN: After last call.

(CROSSTALK)

BAER: Last call.

BALDWIN: A lot of people.

BAER: How many police are there? Can you -- are there any police at all? In any target like this, you really have to spend weeks looking at it. How close is the police station? What are the exits? How do you block the exits?

[15:05:01]

This was well-planned. The police said this from the beginning. Buying the weapons, his trying to buy ceramic plates tells me he was ready for a shoot-out. He was ready to die. He was a martyr. This isn't the act of somebody totally insane.

BALDWIN: Some of the different terror groups that he was pledging his allegiance to are enemies of one another. It feels like a terrorism grab bag, for lack of a better word.

BAER: It doesn't matter. Just -- they reduce it to the West or crusaders in the Middle East. They're killing us. I have an obligation to fight back. And it's here. I'm going to do it.

And, you know, going from al Qaeda to the Islamic State and even sometimes the Hezbollah, which is a Shia group, happens all the time, and -- or even in smaller groups we don't even hear about.

BALDWIN: All right. Bob Baer, thank you very much.

BAER: Thank you -- Anderson, to you.

COOPER: An extraordinary political moment today. Both President Obama and Hillary Clinton holding two separate events

in two separate locations, one clear agenda, firing back at Donald Trump over their refusal to blame the massacre on -- quote -- "radical Islam." Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: For a while now, the main contribution of some of my friends on the other side of the aisle have made in the fight against ISIL is to criticize this administration and me for not using the phrase radical Islam.

That's the key, they tell us. We can't beat ISIL unless we call them radical Islamists.

What exactly would using this label accomplish? Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.

Not once has an adviser of mine said, man, if we really use that phrase, we're going to turn this whole thing around. Not once. And if we fall into the trap of painting all Muslims with a broad brush and imply that we are at war with an entire religion, then we are doing the terrorists' work for them.

We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from emigrating to America. We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence.

Where does this stop? This is a country founded on basic freedoms, including freedom of religion. We don't have religious tests here.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump wants to be our next commander in chief.

(BOOING)

CLINTON: Yesterday morning, just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists.

(BOOING)

CLINTON: Now, just think about that for a second. Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Well, Donald Trump has since responded to the president, saying -- and I quote -- "President Obama claims to know or enemy and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies and for that matter the American people. When I am president, it will always be America first."

Want to bring in chief political correspondent Dana Bash and CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

Douglas, I mean, the president was certainly emotional, forceful. What stood out to you?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, how much he ridiculed Donald Trump not by name, but as the presumptive Republican nominee.

He really wanted to squash the idea that we should be using the terms dealing with Islamic fundamentalism. The president's worried about mainstream Muslims. He's worried about 1.6 billion Muslim people in the world and what they're thinking of the United States.

So I thought the president wasn't just talking to...

COOPER: Hey, I got to jump in. Bernie Sanders is making a statement. Let's listen in.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (VT-I), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... thousands of Burlingtonians who, like people all over this country, are appalled and disgusted and grieved by what happened in Orlando.

It is impossible for any of us to understand what goes on in the sick mind of someone who commits an atrocity like this. Was he motivated by the ideology of some fanatic Islamic organization which believes that it is somehow heroic to mow down innocent and defenseless men and women?

Was he motivated by homophobia and hatred of the gay community? Was he motivated by some kind of hatred of Latinos? Was he suicidal and wanted to end his life by taking others with him?

[15:10:10]

We may never know the answers to those questions. But this is what we do know and what we must never forget. We know that one hateful person committed this terrible crime, not an entire people or an entire religion.

The Muslim people did not commit this horrific act. A man named Omar Mateen did. To blame an entire religion for the acts of a single individual is nothing less than bigotry. And that is not what this country is supposed to be about.

Our goal as a nation must be to bring people together to prevent violence, to prevent hatred and to create the nation that we know standing together we can create. Our goal must not be to allow politicians, Donald Trump or anyone else, to divide us up based on where our family came from, the color of our skin or our religion.

We also know that it is imperative that ISIS be destroyed. This is a barbaric organization which has caused massive suffering to hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East. And let us not forget that most of the people who are suffering and dying as a result of ISIS are Muslims.

And, by the way, it is Muslim troops on the ground today who are taking the fight to ISIS as we speak and pushing them back and defeating them in Iraq and Syria, Muslim troops.

We also know that we must do everything possible to improve local, state, federal and international cooperation to prevent further lone wolf type actions like we recently saw in Orlando. This is not easy, but we must accelerate our efforts to prevent the kind of mass murders that we saw in San Bernardino and now in Orlando.

Further is, I have believed for decades we must rethink the idea that assault weapons, like the one used last Saturday night, which was legally purchased by the murderer, by an individual who was investigated by the FBI for possible terrorist connections who walked into a gun store and legally purchased that weapon, the idea these types of weapons designed to do one thing and one thing alone, kill people by the dozens, the idea that they should be sold and distributed in this country seems to me to be terribly wrong.

Those types of weapons should be banned. Let me now say a word about my views about where we go with regard to the Democratic Party. And let me be as clear as I can be that I think the time is now. In fact, the time is long overdue for a fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party.

We need a party which is prepared to stand up for the disappearing middle class, for the 47 million people in this country who are living in poverty, and take on the greed of the powerful special interests that are doing so much harm to this country, who have so much power over the political and economic life of our country.

We need to be spending time bringing working people and young people into the political process, not spending all kinds of time and energy raising money from wealthy individuals and large corporations. The American people are hurting and they are hurting badly. They want real change, not the same old, same old.

While the very wealthy become richer and corporate profits soar, real unemployment in this country, not unofficial unemployment, real unemployment, is close to 10 percent. Youth unemployment in inner cities and in rural communities is often 30, 40 percent or even higher.

Most Americans are working longer hours for lower wages. And despite the successes of the Affordable Care Act, tens of millions of Americans still have no health insurance or they are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments.

[15:15:13]

And millions more are unable to afford the outrageously high prices of the pharmaceutical industry, who charge us more for our medicine than the people of any other country.

Life expectancy -- think about it -- life expectancy, how long we live, for millions of Americans, is today in decline, in decline. People are dying at younger ages than their mothers and their fathers did. We have more people in jail today, 2.2 million, than any other country on Earth. And we all know that our immigration system is broken.

Young people are sick and tired of going deeply into debt, for what? Simply to get a college degree at a time when we need the best educated work force in the world. Climate change is a major crisis facing our country and our entire planet, and yet we have not done anywhere near enough what we have to do to take on the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system away from coal and oil and gas in order to save the planet.

COOPER: That's Bernie Sanders giving a talk in Washington, D.C.

We're back with our Dana Bash and also presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

Dana, it's interesting that, on the same day -- I don't know if it's coordinated, but you have President Obama, you have Hillary Clinton and now Bernie Sanders all coming out making statements about the incident here, but -- the killings here, but also about Donald Trump.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

And you have the Democrats coordinating in message, coordinating in theme, and then you have Republicans in a state of discord. And I don't think that that is an accident. In fact, one of the many, many things I thought about -- that was fascinating about the really extraordinary speech that President Obama gave earlier today was the fact that he was clearly trying to continue to divide Republicans by poking at Republican leaders, others, saying, are you really going to stand by this? Are you going to support this?

And that, of course, prompts -- not that we weren't already doing that, but prompts even more questions up on Capitol Hill today from our team, elsewhere around the country to Republican leaders asking that very question. And you know what? They're turning around and walking away. They don't want to go there.

And Democrats know that. And that's a big reason why they said what they said and saying it how they're saying it in a pretty powerful way. And I don't know about what Doug thinks about this, as a historian, just real quick, just the idea that President Obama used the stagecraft of not just the East Room of the White House, but having a four-star general there talking about what it takes to be commander in chief.

COOPER: Well, Douglas, that, but, also, I want to response -- I also just want you to -- there is now a different -- Secretary Clinton has -- I think she gave a statement yesterday, a call-in, saying, look, I will use whatever the terms are. It doesn't matter what the terms are. It's what the actions actually are. But she has sort of tried to make a distinction between herself and President Obama in using the terms radical Islam or a variety of terms that she's actually used.

BRINKLEY: Yes, she certainly did, Anderson.

I think the key for President Obama here is, he's talking to the world community also. Donald Trump now isn't just a candidate a few months back who was talking about banning of Muslims to the United States. He's got a lot of momentum and everybody in the world is looking at him. Could this guy be president?

So, President Obama wanted to make it clear that the United States government, the federal government, says no to what Donald Trump is suggesting, this it's hateful bigotry and that the White House isn't going to tolerate it.

And I thought the president stood up very forcefully today defending his administration's policy. There was fire in his eyes and sarcasm in the way he went after Trump.

COOPER: Dana, you talked about some of the Republican response. They haven't been holding back either on criticizing Trump. Let's listen to some of that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. REID RIBBLE (R), WISCONSIN: I think it was a ridiculous statement to make. I think it's an unconstitutional and in many respects un-American statement to make. We don't ban an entire religious construct from entering into the country.

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R), ILLINOIS: I think it was very tacky to call on that the day of the attack. I'm sure politics will always come into something like this. But let's give it a day or two on the front end of that. I don't think he deserves praise for it.

[15:20:00]

Like I said, I hope in the process over the next few months he realizes that in order to actually win this war, you're going to need people that he has already alienated.

REP. CHARLIE DENT (R), PENNSYLVANIA: We need to make sure that Muslims in America feel like they can talk to officials about the radicals who may be within their congregations in some cases.

So, I think we need to have a much more nuanced and sophisticated approach to dealing with the Islamic community, not simply try to target them or to scapegoat them, but to try to work with them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Dana, I also want to point out we also have a statement. The RNC put out a statement, not naming Trump, but slamming the president and Hillary Clinton. BASH: That's right. And that is, of course, their job to do because

they're now responsible and working hand in glove with their Republican nominee or the presumptive Republican nominee.

Manu and our colleagues, they were able to get those sound bites and those remarks on camera from people who are already skeptical at the very least and pretty much anti-Donald Trump of that very strongest of that spectrum within the Republican Party.

Bob Corker, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, very -- has been very much behind Donald Trump pretty early on. He didn't want to answer questions. Same goes for the speaker of the House.

So, you definitely see that the people who are talking are the most comfortable, because they have been out there. The people who , it's because they just don't want to go there at all.

COOPER: Right.

Dana and Douglas Brinkley, I appreciate both of you being with us.

Coming up, he was on the job -- he was on the job for just three weeks. We're going to talk to the bouncer and Marine vet who was working at Pulse the night of the attack, what he did when he heard the shots rang out.

Also, survivors speaking from their hospital beds describing the moments, terrifying moments as they hid in the bathroom, and the moving tributes coming in from around the world. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(SINGING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:26:35]

COOPER: Hey, welcome back. I'm Anderson Cooper, live in our continuing coverage of the massacre here in Orlando.

As the survivors of the horrific shooting continue to recover from their injuries at the hospital behind me, we're now beginning to hear some of their stories of survival, their stories loss and even in some cases guilt.

Here are two of the shooting survivors in their own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGEL SANTIAGO, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: Everyone in the stall where we were was -- we were all trying to just be as quiet as possible. We didn't want to attract attention. But the gunfire kept getting closer and closer.

That's when bullets start going through the stall wall towards us. So, I can't recall exactly how many bullets, but it sounded like whoever -- it sounded like he unloaded, essentially. And I was hit in my butt, my left foot, my right knee.

I thought I was shot a third time, but it ended being a graze. My friend who was with me was hit as well. And his injuries were worse than mine. I mean, overall, there was just a lot of blood. A lot of people were hit, and even some fatalities which were apparent almost immediately. But I'm just grateful to be alive, because there's -- after seeing what occurred, I don't even know how I'm alive today.

PATIENCE CARTER, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: The guilt of feeling grateful to be alive is heavy, wanting to smile about surviving, but not sure if the people around you are ready.

As the world mourns the victims killed and viciously slain, I feel guilty about screaming about my legs in pain, because I could feel nothing, like the other 49 who weren't so lucky to feel this pain of mine.

I never thought in a million years that this could happen. I never thought in a million years that my eyes could witness something so tragic, looking at the souls leaving the bodies of individuals, looking at the killer's machine gun throughout my right peripheral, looking at the blood and debris covered on everyone's faces, looking at the gunman's feet under the stall as he paces.

The guilt of feeling lucky to be alive is heavy. It's like the weight of the ocean's walls crushing uncontrolled by levees. It's like being drug through the grass with a shattered leg and thrown on the back of a Chevy. It is like being rushed to the hospital and told you're going to make it, when you laid beside individuals whose lives were brutally taken. The guilt of being alive is heavy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Indeed, it is.

I want to bring in senior chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. I want to more about the hospital staff.

We have been having nurses and doctors just coming out while we have been out here. I mean, they seem exhausted, but they're all really pulling together.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Many of them worked, you know, for the first essentially two days almost without going home.

There was 26 operations, as you know, performed in just a few hours after the shooting occurred. Also, the EMS folks -- you know, we heard a lot about patients bringing themselves in, but there's no question there was paramedics, EMS people who went on the scene.

And you just hear from these stories, this lasted for a long time. You and I have covered lots of these tragedies.

COOPER: Right.