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New York Press Conference; Anchors Talk about CNN Package; Suspicious Devices sent to Clintons and Obama. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 24, 2018 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00] JOHN MILLER, NYPD DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF INTEL AND COUNTERTERRORISM: On a field test, package it up safely for remove and deacon that area and anybody who came into contact with it.

JAMES O'NEILL, NYPD COMMISSIONER: I'm going to take -- just keep in mind, this just happens a couple of hours ago. It's still ongoing. So I'm going to take some questions. I'm not going to be able to go too deep into it.

Yes.

QUESTION: Can you talk about how concerned you are about the seeming political connection between these targets, people who have been criticized by the president?

O'NEILL: Well, take a look at who was being targeted here right now. And that's -- that's why we're doing this proactively. We're reaching out to people throughout the city, checking with the people who do their security and making sure that their mailrooms follow proper protocol. So it is of concern to us and that's how come we're reaching out to the right people.

Yes.

QUESTION: Could you describe --

O'NEILL: Hold on.

QUESTION: The mayor -- the mayor and governor, earlier this week, the president commended the now sitting congressman for assaulting a journalist. There's been all sorts of threats to journalists (INAUDIBLE). Do you have a particular message to President Trump in light of what happened at CNN and to critics like John Brennan and like (INAUDIBLE)?

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK: Look, I'm just going to say something broad, because at a time when there's a lot of hatred and division, it does not make sense to exacerbate it. Let's just say this to all public officials of all partisan affiliations, don't encourage violence. Don't encourage hatred. Don't encourage attacks on media. You can disagree, but you have to show respect for people and air your disagreements peacefully.

So, unfortunately, this atmosphere of hatred is contributing to the choices people are making to turn to violence. There's no question about it. And the way to stop that is to turn back the other way, to bring down the temperature, to end any messages about the use of violence against people we disagree with. And that has to start at the top.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: The -- this is a -- this is a political year. It's a political season. We are weeks from an election. And that's obviously in the air. And that's and obvious factor. But we've been through many political seasons. And we have political differences. And that's actually good for democracy.

What is not good is overheated rhetoric, extremism that pushes people to violence. And at the end of the day, we may have political differences, but this is one country, we're all Americans, e pluribus unum, out of many one, and keeping the debate and the dialogue civil is very, very important. And for elected leaders, who in many way set the tone, it is especially important.

(CROSS TALK)

O'NEILL: Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Right there.

QUESTION: Can you describe what the device looks like that was found?

O'NEILL: John.

MILLER: Sure.

Brian Paarmann from FBI JTTF.

So far the devices have been what appear to be pipe bombs.

BRYAN PAARMANN, FBI SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE: It -- if I could, I'd like to make a statement.

I know that a lot of the public right now is scared and concerned and there's a lot of confusion surrounding this. I want to assure you that the reason we are here, because the totality of the federal, state and local authorities will investigate this thoroughly and follow every lead and every -- we will turn over every rock, we will turn every corner and we will talk to everybody that we have to in order to mitigate this threat.

The mission of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and -- is to protect the American people and uphold the constitution. The utilization of violence in order to further one's own political agenda is unacceptable to us and we will not rest until we find this and stop these hazardous devices from being mailed and bring the individual or individuals to justice. We have no better partners in the NYPD, the New York State Police, and the entirety of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. We will be on this until the day that we find this individual and bring him to justice.

I'd like to thank NYPD and our partners on the task force, as well as the United States Secret Service, as well as the U.S. Capitol Police, as well as the Westchester County authorities for the cooperation and collaboration that we have thus far. And with that, I'll turn it back over to the questions.

QUESTION: Mayor de Blasio, you mentioned that --

QUESTION: Commissioner, may I ask a question?

QUESTION: Mayor de Blasio --

O'NEILL: Hold on a second.

CUOMO: The -- as you've heard, there is a number of devices and there's a pattern apparently to the number of devices. We wouldn't be at all surprised if more devices show up.

[13:05:09] A device has been sent to my office in Manhattan, which we were just informed about. And that device is also being handled.

So, again, this is the situation. A number of devices have been sent. They're being handled. We wouldn't be surprised if additional devices are sent. And the device that has been sent to my office has been identified and is being handled as we speak.

QUESTION: Governor, is it related to these other bombs? Are they related?

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) related and what (INAUDIBLE)?

CUOMO: Terrorism-related, right? Terrorism is an attempt to strike terror, an attempt to strike fear. Obviously these devices are an attempt to strike fear, hence terrorism. Are they domestic? Are they international? These are all questions that would have to be handled by the investigation.

Yes, it was a terrorist attempt. It was a terrorist attack. And as you said, what's the intent? To strike fear. And when they strike fear, they win. That's when they are effective.

Who controls that? We control that. We control that. This is not the first time we have been through this. We have been through this many, many times. Literally, as I mentioned before, it goes back 25 years to the first World Trade Center bombing.

This is New York. It is part of who we are and part of our profile. So we refuse to be intimidated. We refuse to allow them to make us afraid of going through our daily lives. We have the best law enforcement agencies. We're all working together. We're all here. And we're going to go about our daily lives enjoying this beautiful city and state. And we're not going to let them win, period.

(INAUDIBLE), you had a question.

O'NEILL: More questions, guys?

QUESTION: Commissioner, was anything written on the packages? What was the return address? O'NEILL: Yes, (INAUDIBLE), I'm not going to go into what exactly was on the package, OK. It was -- it was consistent with the other packaging, though.

Listen, we have to go back to work, so we're going to give you updates throughout the day. I just want to remind everybody here and all New Yorkers, any tips, any leads, call 911 or 1-888-NYC-SAFE.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

(CROSS TALK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

We just heard from law enforcement and the political leaders in New York City and New York state saying these were acts of terror, acts of terror. And we've also just heard from the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, saying that a suspicious device was just found addressed to his New York City office as well.

Suspicious devices at George Soros' residence outside of New York City, Hillary and Bill Clinton's residence outside of New York City, Michelle and Barack Obama's residence here in Washington, D.C., the CNN New York bureau, the Time-Warner Center, a suspicious device that has now been removed. It believed to be some sort of bomb. It's been taken to a security facility. That was addressed to the former CIA Director John Brennan, care of CNN.

There are other developments unfolding right now. I quickly want to go to our correspondents and our anchors who were at the CNN bureau in New York. Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto were anchoring coverage when all of a sudden the alarms went off that something awful was about to unfold.

Walk us through -- first of all, give us, Poppy and Jim, your reactions to what we just heard from law enforcement.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEWSROOM": Well, there was a lot of news there, Wolf, in that press conference.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR, "NEWSROOM": Yes, a lot.

SCIUTTO: First of all, confirming it was a live explosive device sent to CNN. An just something we've been noting all morning that made its way into the CNN building, right, all the way to the mailroom.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: And that in addition to that live explosive device, an envelope that contained white powder -- they haven't identified that powder yet, but, of course, as you know, as often happens with these, the concern, what could that powder be.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Could it be biochemical weapons, something like that. So out of an abundance of caution, they're looking into that. And calling it out for what this was --

HARLOW: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: An attempt to terrorize. This was an instance of terrorism on the streets of New York City.

HARLOW: And as our colleague Jake Tapper so aptly put it, an attempt at mass murder, because that is what it is, here at CNN, at all of these other locations.

[13:10:07] We have emergency vehicles behind us, obviously.

But, again, a live device with white powder made it to CNN. We know that the call to the NYPD was made this morning at 9:58 a.m. It was shortly after the top of the 10:00 a.m. hour that the alarm went off and we immediately went off the air and came outside.

What struck me is what we heard across the board from officials, Jim. It was Mayor de Blasio, who at the beginning of that press conference said this is terrorism, this is an effort to terrorize. And it was echoed by New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill who said, look, you can disagree but violence should never be a part of it. And he said notably, Jim, it starts at the top.

SCIUTTO: It did. I mean that was the New York commissioner of police, O'Neill, saying very explicitly, don't encourage attacks on the media. That contributes, he said, to choices people are making. There's no question about it.

That's quite a reprimand, you might even call it, from the commissioner of police in New York to the kind of rhetoric that we hear in public, not just the media in the targets, but public officials and so on. And that's a law enforcement official who takes these things very seriously --

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: And no city -- no police department in the country knows that better than the New York Police Department.

HARLOW: And it is not a partisan comment. He is stating the facts. You look at the facts of who and -- to what entities and what people these explosive devices were sent to in the last 36 hours. And then you look at, from the governor, to the mayor of New York City, to the police commissioner saying, this is the world we live in. This is the tone. And the tone and the rhetoric comes from the top.

BLITZER: Just, you know, Jim and Poppy, you guys can't go back in, I take it, into the CNN -- the CNN bureau at the Time-Warner Center because of the suspicious powder that was located. They're still dealing with that. Is that right?

SCIUTTO: That's right. That would be a good assumption. The explosive device has left. We reported that.

HARLOW: Right. SCIUTTO: That was live on the air nearly an hour ago. The white substance, you have to assume, standard procedure would be, get the bomb sniffing dogs in there after the explosive devices is removed --

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: To make sure there weren't other devices that are similar. White substance question, if it was exposed in any way, distributed in any way, that's another thing you have to confirm is safe before you allow folks back into the building.

HARLOW: And, again, CNN is housed on multiple floors inside. But, Wolf, as you know, this is a big complex, the Time-Warner Center. You have a huge apartment complex that is built in. A lot of corporate offices. A lot of our colleagues in different parts of the company there. A huge shopping mall with restaurants. There are a lot of people in and out of that building every day. So we actually have no idea when we're going back in, even internally, from internal CNN communication, we just don't know at this time.

SCIUTTO: And they will exercise, as you'd expect, an abundance of caution. They want to be 100 percent certain before we and the other folks who work in that building, or even who work on this street here behind us are allowed back onto the street.

HARLOW: And so just from a reporting standpoint, for the first hour that Jim and I were coming to you immediately in the aftermath of this, we were coming to you from a phone, from essentially a Skype- like program on the phone. And now we finally have our live capability up. But it takes a minute, when obviously you're evacuated so quickly.

BLITZER: Yes, and we're grateful that you guys, all of our CNN colleagues, in fact everyone over there at the Time-Warner Center got out as quickly as they did.

Josh Campbell is joining us right now, our law enforcement analyst, formerly with the FBI.

Josh, John Miller, who runs counterterror in New York, he says that the package that was delivered to Hillary and Bill Clinton's residence was nearly identical to the package that was delivered to Michelle and Barack Obama's residence here in Washington. And then he went on to say that there were multiple similar packages delivered and I suspect they're going to be discovering more. What are you hearing?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: That's right, Wolf. And, obviously, listening to officials there, we see a lot of familiar faces. We've seen, you know, a lot of these incidents obviously in New York City, a major terror target. So officials there have gotten, unfortunately, very good at this and laying out the facts. So I think the NYPD did a really good job there getting us up to speed.

I think, Wolf, if you look at two aspects here, you have the forensic side, obviously commonalities there. The Deputy Commissioner Miller had laid out that there is some type of similarities between some of the devices. So as an investigator you're going to be looking at that. OK, these are linked, now what.

Let's move to motivation, Wolf, and I'm going to say something -- I'm going to lay out a fact with, you know, people can look at it politically if they want. This is a fact that investigators will be looking at. If you look at the officials that were targeted, at least the ones that we know yet, there are certain commonalities. The first being, these are Democrats or people that are associated with progressive causes. Brennan is the outlier there, but obviously he's been, you know, the subject of a lot of wrath. But these are also people and entities that have been targeted by the president, by his allies. So, again, you know, folks can look at that through a political lens if they want. I look at it through an investigative lens. And that is an important distinction.

[13:15:03] If you look at, you know, Holder, if you look at President Obama, you look at Secretary Clinton, you look at CNN and Brennan, that's a commonality. And the reason that's important, not just so we can sit here and discuss it, but as investigators you're trying to get yourself into the mindset of the person who executed this.

This was an attempted murder. This was an attempted mass murder. And the person or persons are still out there. So in order to figure out what is inspiring this person, who this person might be, or group of people might be, you have to determine what the commonalities are. And we cannot lose sight that there are forensic commonalities and there appear to be, at least from a motivation standpoint, a lot of attributes about these people that are very similar.

BLITZER: That's a very important point. I'm going to get back to you.

Evan Perez, you're getting some more information right now and it's very, very disturbing, this commonality, the -- those who were attacked -- and it is a clear act of terror, all of whom have been very critical of President Trump.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. And we have a picture -- an image of one of the devices that's been recovered. And what you can see is clearly what scares the law enforcement officials who have been handling this is that it appears to be, and they are treating it as, a functional device. As the governor of New York and the mayor of New York just said, the one that was sent to the CNN building there at Time-Warner -- Time-Warner building in Columbus Circle in New York was a live, explosive device. And so this device, the one that you're seeing right there, could have hurt a lot of people should it have gone off.

So the question now is, what is happening? What's the commonality with all this? I think Josh pointed at a little bit of this. So far we know of at least five confirmed devices. We know about the first one that was found which was believed to have been placed at the George Soros residence in Westchester County, New York. That happened nearly 48 hours ago. And then in subsequent to that now we know that the authorities have intercepted devices that were addressed to the Bill and Hillary Clinton in New York, also in Chappaqua, New York, the Obamas here in Washington, D.C., as well as the one in CNN headquarters there in New York. And one that was addressed to Eric Holder, the former attorney general. It appears that that one was labelled. What happened was that was labelled as coming from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. And she apparently -- the reason why it ended up with -- back at her address is because it was addressed as coming from her. And so there -- the investigators believe, obviously, that she did not send this device to Eric Holder. So whoever sent it was trying to get this device back to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The address was incorrect, the one that was sent to Eric Holder.

So we now know of five devices, Wolf, that have been confirmed. As you heard the governor, Andrew Cuomo there in New York, said that they're now investigating another device, or another package, that was sent to his office there in New York. They haven't confirmed yet that that one is related, as you just mentioned a few minutes ago, Wolf. They're still trying to go through the scene there at CNN because of some suspicious powder that was found inside the package there of that device that has now been taken to a facility in the Bronx where they're hoping to disarm it, to be able to examine it, to try to see if they can get some clues.

And, again, every piece of this device is a clue. If they're going to be able to try -- they're going to try to retrieve fingerprints. They're going to try to see what kind of printer printed the labels that were used on there.

The one thing, the weird one, that really stands out to law enforcement, Wolf, is the Soros device, because it appears that that one was not sent through the mail, as the CNN one arrived via the mail. It appears that the one in the Soros address was actually placed there, believed by someone. So we don't know if the person responsible for all of these events, all of these devices, was the one that placed it there, but that is a huge clue for law enforcement as they try to investigate this.

Again, these are believed to be rudimentary devices. At least one of them examined has appeared to included shards of glass. So whoever was doing this was trying to exacerbate the damage, right, from the explosive, from the potential explosive that was in it. So what they're working with now is trying to make sure that they capture any other devices that might be out. That's a great fear right now is that there might be other devices that are en route to other places, and the commonality, again, appear to be Democrats, people -- or people who have been critical of this administration. So perhaps there's a political motive.

Again, it's very early in this investigation, so everything is still on the table, Wolf.

BLITZER: And I just want to put the address of that device that was sent to the CNN bureau in New York. Put it back up on the screen to show our viewers. You can see it was supposedly from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the congresswoman from south Florida, former head of the Democratic National Committee. But, look at this, it was addressed to John Brennan, Brennan misspelled there, the former CIA director during the Obama administration, addressed to Time-Warner, then in parenthesis, CNN, Columbus Circle, New York, New York. [13:20:16] And I'm sure that's going to be one of the clues they're

looking at, the misspelling, for example, of John Brennan's last name.

But, you know, Shimon Prokupecz is with us.

The suspicion -- the widely held suspicion, Shimon, is, yes, there were five or six of these devices, but there may be more out there.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That is what I think people need to understand, that the biggest concern right now for law enforcement is that there may be other devices, other threats. They are investigating other incidents, certainly the one that's at Governor Cuomo's office, but there are other locations as well that they are investigating suspicious packages. You know, we're going to see an uptick in these kinds of calls, but there are some more serious ones that could potentially be linked to what's going on in New York.

The other thing is, really since Monday night when the first device was found, and this was at George Soros' home, the authorities right away knew that they were potentially going to be dealing with something much bigger, and they started briefing other law enforcement agencies. The FBI began briefing the NYPD. They began briefing other jurisdictions about the potential that this could grow into something bigger because they knew right away that they were doing -- they felt that they were dealing with something that was politically motivated.

And, you know, you heard John Miller there in the press conference talk about that, how the FBI and the NYPD were working together. They had been briefed this morning about the packages that were sent to Obama and Hillary Clinton. And almost immediately they began stepping up security.

So one of the most fascinating things is how the NYPD bomb squad knew immediately that this was connected because they had already been briefed on what the other devices looked like. So they were able to come in and safely remove this.

And certainly this investigation, I can tell you, the FBI, there are now -- in these kinds of situations, what they do is they call and they stand up these command centers and the Joint Terrorism Task Force from all different jurisdictions around the country start working together. And there is going to be a massive, massive manhunt now underway for whoever -- you know, who knows how many people could be potentially behind this.

BLITZER: Yes, David Gregory, the suspicion is there are more of these kinds of devices out there. This is clearly an act of terror. But you take a look at those targeted, George Soros, Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Obamas, Eric Holder, the former CIA Director John Brennan, there's one commonality that clearly stands out.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and that these are all people who have been or are perceived to be critics of the president who have been the subject of his criticism very directly. Let's remember, we have a president who has talked for a couple of years now about imprisoning his political rival in Hillary Clinton, who has encouraged violence against the media. Just last week talking about the assault on a reporter by a congressman in Montana and saying that he's his kind of guy.

And I have to say something else that I think is outrageous in the initial response to all of this. You know, we have an obligation to be very careful and very circumspect in terms of what may actually be at work here and to defer to law enforcement as it moves forward. But you had the presidential spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, in her first response to this, condemn the attacks against the political figures, but to say nothing about the fact that CNN was targeted. That is outrageous, from an administration and from a president that specifically targets and attacks CNN. That is outrageous and is revealing of what their mindset is if that's how they react.

Also you had Sarah Trump, on behalf of the Trump campaign, condemn CNN two hours after this event happened. So there is an obligation on the part of the media right now, but certainly on the part of political figures to really tamp all of this down right now. And we're in a political season that's highly charged and an incredibly tribal political environment where we don't just disagree but we hate the other side too often in our country and everybody's got to step back and think about that.

BLITZER: Because a lot of people are going to be taking a look at the words that have been thrown out over the past many months attacking, first of all, CNN, the news media, enemy of the people, fake news.

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, you've been at those rallies. You've seen the anger that those kind of words generate.

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And, I mean, it's a staple of the rallies that the president goes after the media. He has the crowd turn and boo us and jeer at us and, you know, that's -- he enjoys that part of the whole performance very much. And certainly in praising the congressman who body slammed a reporter, he hasn't -- he hasn't shrunk from that at all.

But, more recently, you know, as Shimon mentioned, George Soros was the first person targeted in what appears to be this coordinated web of attacks. And, you know, the president suggested at a rally over the weekend that, you know, this caravan of migrants that's making its way north, that's still quite a ways south of the southern border of the United States, but that he's been talking about a lot at his rallies, was being paid by someone. And a lot of his allies have suggested that that was George Soros, which has been thoroughly debunked.

[13:25:15] But he clearly has been going after, you know, this group of people that we know has been targeted. We should make clear, the person that's responsible or the people that are responsible for this attack, or these almost attacks, are the people who actually, you know, mailed these devices. And we shouldn't lose sight of that. But the president certainly has encouraged this kind of rhetoric.

And what was interesting to me in the response from the White House today was not just that initially the media was not part of their condemnation of what's gone on here, but that the president himself didn't rush to get out his own response, his own statement, get to a camera and condemn these attacks himself. The vice president tweeted about it and said -- and he included CNN and the media in his -- in his response and said that this -- we condemn this. That the people will be brought to justice who are responsible. The president retweeted that and said, I agree wholeheartedly or something like that. But that is not the same thing as the president coming out and saying, you know, I'm the president, I take responsibility for, you know, the way this country is going to respond to this and here's what I think.

GREGORY: And we should point out too, Sarah Sanders later tweeted to include a condemnation of CNN being targeted, but that was not her first response. I also said Sarah Trump. I meant Lara Trump, who condemned CNN.

But I think what you say is also really important. What we don't know, I mean I think back to NBC being attacked after 9/11, when I was there in Tom Brokaw's office --

BLITZER: With the anthrax.

GREGORY: With the anthrax attack. You know, we're working in an environment here where the media and politicians are all part of this very heated conversation. And this is someone or persons working together to get a lot of attention with their -- which they're getting, and to launch this kind of terror attack.

Where it's coming from, we don't know. Identifying the sources of it, we certainly don't know. But we have to point out what the context is. And the broader context too. We -- what have we been talking about so often over the past couple of weeks is the murder of a journalist for "The Washington Post" overseas in Turkey. So this idea of violence against the media and certainly terrorist attacks dedicated toward or attempted against political figures is all in this context.

BLITZER: Evan Perez, you're getting some new information. What are you learning?

PEREZ: That's right, Wolf.

Now we are learning that law enforcement is now checking on at least one additional package, suspicious package, that's been intercepted at a facility in Capital Heights, Maryland. This is a facility that is used to screen mail that is going to the members of Congress. And so there's a package that's been intercepted. Law enforcement is checking it to make sure -- to see if it fits this pattern. Whether it's something like this or whether it's something else.

So, at this point, we know of at least -- at least one such package that's been intercepted at this facility at Capital Heights, Maryland. And, again, this is the facility that screens mail that is headed to members of Congress. And so this is stuff that, you know, before the mail ever gets to the Capitol and to their offices outside the Capitol, they go through a facility here to make sure that there's nothing dangerous, no bombs, no anthrax, no anything that could harm people. And so it appears that that system has worked in this instance. And now obviously the work begins to determine whether it's related to this -- what we now know to be at least five package bombs that have been sent to people here in Washington and in New York.

Wolf.

BLITZER: There's a lot of suspicion there may be others out there as well that have not yet been detected.

Anthony May is joining us right now. He's a retired ATF explosives investigator.

So walk us through what ATF, FBI, local law enforcement, others are doing right now to find out who is responsible for sending these kinds of bombs.

Anthony MAY, SECURITY AND EXPLOSIVES CONSULTANT: Well, Wolf, right now, the federal agencies are pretty much standing by, letting the local responders, the bomb squads, deal with the devices, making them safe. Once that occurs, then the evidence will be forensically examined to determine the similarities, to try to develop any leads.

I will tell you probably right now the Joint Terrorism Task Force is looking at the targets themselves to see if they can determine a trend and we've already talked about that. You guys have already talked about that trend and the commonality in all the targets. So these leads are already starting working, being generated. And the fact that these things are going through the mail, except for the George Soros, which was hand delivered, they're going to try to determine, based on the arrival dates, where these devices could have possibly been mailed from.

[13:29:56] BLITZER: The suspicion right now, all of these targets, as far as we know right now, all of them critics, really sharp critics, of the president of the United States. But when you have a former attorney general of the United States, a former CIA director of the United States, two former presidents of the United States.