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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

At Least 49 Dead in Terror Attacks at New Zealand Mosques; North Korea to Suspend Nuclear Talks with U.S.; Attempt on Venezuelan President's Life in August. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired March 15, 2019 - 04:30   ET

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

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[04:30:00] MIKE BUSH, NEW ZEALAND POLICE COMMISSIONER: It's very grave.

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ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: Officials say three people connected to the attack are in custody. Police are not aware of others involved but cannot rule out the possibility more shooters are at large.

Let's bring in CNN's Anna Coren. She's monitoring the situation and she joins us live now from Hong Kong.

So I think what -- you know, the sheer numbers of people who've been killed here is shocking enough. But it's also shocking that it's happening in New Zealand because New Zealand doesn't see this kind of violence especially gun violence.

ANNA COREN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: New Zealand is a peace- loving country that welcomes migrants, welcomes Muslims, people who have sought refuge from warzones. It's a country with a population of five million people with very tight gun laws. People there do not have guns in their homes, they don't walk around the streets with guns. Perhaps if you have a farm or you have a hunting license, that is different. But otherwise it is impossible to get firearms.

So obviously police are going to be looking into how these three men managed to get hold of the semiautomatic weapons. You know, we have watched these 17-minute video that was streamed live from the helmet of the gunman, an Australian citizen aged in his 20s who's now being charged with murder -- mass murder and will appear in court in Christchurch tomorrow morning.

This video is chilling. It is one of the most horrendous things that I've ever seen in my life. You see this man so coldly and calculatingly just walk into this mosque armed with these semiautomatic weapons, mowing down people who were there for Friday prayers. You can hear them screaming, yelling out for help, moaning in agony. He goes into a corridor, reload, walks back out, and just mows these people down, hunts them down.

He then goes out into the pavement, starts shooting randomly at people passing by. He goes back to his car, gets more ammunition, walks back into the mosque and every single body that is lying there on the floor, he walks up to them at point blank range, he shoots them in the head. He then walks back out, is once again shooting randomly from the pavement. He sees a woman, shoots her from a distance. Walks up to her, she is saying, help me, help me. And he kills her. It is one of the most awful things I've ever seen. And to think that perhaps this is like a video game, a gunman on a shooting spree, but, no, this was real life and happening in Christchurch, in a little city of 400,000 people that is peace-loving, is welcoming.

And to think that this hatred, that this right-wing racist ideology managed to manifest there is an absolute complete mystery. But we heard from the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern a short time ago and she just said there is no place for this in New Zealand, we are not this. This is not New Zealand.

KOSIK: Cold, calculated and calm. Those are chilling words in such a tragedy like this.

You know, New Zealand, as I said, not used to this kind of thing. You know, this attack went on for at least 17 minutes because that's at least as long as this body cam -- this video that was live-streamed shows.

What do you think the security is like in New Zealand and, you know, as far as at mosques, I'm saying, before this shooting?

COREN: There was no concern. The security threat level in New Zealand was low. They don't have problems with Muslims. There isn't that tension or that undercurrent that you might find in other countries. Perhaps in certain pockets, but not, you know, not across New Zealand society. Certainly now Christchurch is still in lockdown. There are police, there are military, they have obviously arrested these three men, one has been charged with mass murder.

But they said that it would be wrong for them to think that there weren't others involved. So certainly everybody is going to remain vigilant. I should point out that the live streaming it lasts, that video, for 17 minutes. The shooting spree itself is six minutes. So that shooting spree continued for fix minutes. The gunfire was rapid, it was continuous.

And as you say, he was cool, he was calm. He got back in his car, he was talking to himself, he was laughing. This was the behavior of a deranged individual. An Australian citizen aged in his 20s.

KOSIK: The shooting lasted six minutes and he was laughing.

CNN's Anna Coren, thanks very much.

[04:35:04] DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Just a devastating story. And again from Australia where the gun restrictions are very tight. In New Zealand, however, they are fairly lax. They just didn't think they needed this type of gun restriction.

The terror level by the way has been raised from low to high, according to the prime minister. Here now is what one eyewitness to the attack told CNN.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We heard the firing and it was from the main entrance -- main entrance of the building. And everybody just ran toward the backdoors just to save themselves. We saw many injured. Bullets in arms. One woman just lied there. She was just lying in the road. And -- I don't know. A lot of people died.

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BRIGGS: Devastating. All right. Let's bring in Sajjan Gohel, international security director for the Asia Pacific Foundation. His specialty, ideology and doctrine that feed international terrorism. He joins us via Skype.

Good morning, Sajjan. If you can, then tell us a little bit about the mentality that does go into attacks like this that unfortunately have spread to a very peaceful country like New Zealand.

SAJJAN GOHEL, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY DIRECTOR, ASIA PACIFIC FOUNDATION: Rage, hate, the ideology of intolerance, unfortunately it doesn't matter which element we're talking about, whether it's jihadist or the far right, the motivations are the same, to provoke a clash of civilizations, to pit one group against another.

This individual didn't just want to kill people, he wanted notoriety, he wanted the oxygen of publicity which is why he was able to stream the attack. It's very important not to give this man any notice or attention after the attack in the sense that his video must not be streamed by social media. People should not watch it. Because we cannot save the people that have died, but by preventing others from seeing it, it prevents this individual from getting his ideology out.

And unfortunately, we've now seen one of the most grievous attacks by the far right which could potentially create further social tensions. And that is something that's very important for people across the world is to prevent this man's agenda from being carried through.

KOSIK: Yes. You worry certainly about copycats the more that this video is distributed and then there is the 87-page manifesto that's circulating online as well. What are your thoughts about his manifesto?

GOHEL: From what I understand about the manifesto is that it is effectively designed to encourage and incite others from carrying out copycat attacks, that effectively it's trying to incite a race war, trying to pit one group against another.

It seems to mirror the manifesto by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who'd carried out those shootings some few ago in Norway in which he killed dozens of young people in the country. And that was also designed to create a race war. In that incident Breivik actually attacked Norwegians themselves. This was designed to specifically kill Muslims and to try and provoke. And what worries me is that terrorist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda

may try now to take advantage of the situation to say look, this is how the West wants to treat Muslims. And it's very important that the authorities, government officials, try and show that this is one-off incident, this is not representative of one group, that this is a man who is himself single handedly trying to provoke a race war and he doesn't represent society as a whole.

BRIGGS: We do have some reaction from world leaders, Sajjan, this morning. Theresa May, the prime minister, "On behalf of the U.K., my deepest condolences to the people of New Zealand after the horrifying terrorist attack in Christchurch. My thoughts are with all of those affected by the sickening act of violence." She of course dealing with the Brexit crisis there.

And Scott Brown, of course the ambassador, former candidate for Senate, "We're heartbroken over the events in Christchurch today. We stand with our Kiwi friends and neighbors and our prayers are with you."

Sajjan, back to you now. If you could talk about the gun laws there in New Zealand which are lax in comparative at least to neighboring Australia. And what does this do to the threat level there in New Zealand?

GOHEL: Well, I can guarantee you that New Zealand's gun laws will now be reviewed extensively. We had a similar situation in the U.K. about 30 years ago when an individual with handguns went into a school and shot at school children. It had a massive ramification on the psyche of British society.

This will have a similar impact on New Zealand. They will review their gun laws. They perhaps are not as tight as, say, other countries, but nevertheless New Zealand does require permits and regulations for people to carry weapons.

[04:40:07] This individual was carrying some pretty powerful handguns and the question is how was he able to obtain them, what methods were used, did he purchase them through the dark Web, were they bought legally, has he been in contact with other individuals that gave him these ideas? There is a lot of things that the New Zealand authorities will now have to trace back to see how this plot was put together because it was very well planned, it was coordinated, and it was designed to attract maximum attention.

KOSIK: And it certainly seems like New Zealanders were caught off guard. I mean, I guess, you know, obviously you can't expect something like this to ever happen, but especially in New Zealand where our reporter Anna Coren described New Zealanders as fun-loving people and gun violence is rare.

What about security when these shootings happened?

GOHEL: Well, no one anticipated an incident like this in New Zealand. As you mentioned, it is a peace-loving country. It's famous for tourism. It's the location of the "Lords of the Rings" films which made the country even more famous. It's always had a very positive reputation.

Christchurch, the city itself, has had tragedy in the past because of earthquakes, but nothing which was manmade. This is the worst terrorist incident that the country has seen. It is going to have a huge ramification on the psyche of New Zealanders. I don't think they're going to recover from this for a very long time. And the authorities will want to try and ensure that social tensions do not implode after such a large number of fatalities and also people being injured.

BRIGGS: Anna Coren describes a peaceful and welcoming society there in New Zealand. Having spent several weeks there myself, I can confirm it is the most peaceful and welcoming country I've ever been to and it will never be the same.

Sajjan Gohel, thank you so much for your insight. We will check back with you throughout the program.

Also breaking overnight, North Korea announcing it may suspend nuclear talks with the United States. This is according to Russia's state-run news agency TASS. North Korea's Foreign minister telling reporters his country has, quote, "no intention to yield to U.S. demands from last month's Hanoi summit."

Let's go live to Seoul and bring in Paula Hancocks.

Paula, a couple of questions here. First off, would anything come out of the Foreign minister if it were not sanctioned by Kim Jong-un and should we trust anything out of the Russian state run news agency TASS?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dave, this was the vice foreign minister and you're right, this is going to be sanctioned by Kim Jong-un. Nothing happens in that country of this magnitude without him knowing about it and without him having signed off on it.

Now we do know that TASS, for example, has a bureau in Pyongyang. There's also other foreign media reporting this. They also have bureaus in Pyongyang. So we do have this from multiple sources. But what she said is that Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, is basically deciding whether or not he wants to continue diplomatic talks with the United States, also deciding whether or not he's going to keep this moratorium on nuclear and missile testing.

Now that was the one thing that the U.S. president pointed to after the failure of the Hanoi summit, pointing out that they did leave on good terms and also Kim Jong-un was not going to carry on testing.

She also went on to say, quote, "We have no intention to yield to the U.S. demands put forward at the Hanoi summit in any form nor are we willing to engage in negotiations of this kind." They specified once again that they didn't ask for all sanctions to be lifted which is what Mr. Trump said saying there was only a few that were concerned with the population. She went on to say the U.S. were too busy with pursuing their own

political interests and have no sincere intention to achieve a result. Now this could be seen as an ultimatum by North Korea. It could be seen as trying to encourage the U.S. president to get back to talks, and this is really no surprise. This is straight out of the North Korean playbook.

We heard from the South Korean Blue House saying you can't pin anything just on these statements alone. They're watching the situation very closely and trying to get the U.S. and North Korea back together at the negotiating table. The U.S. president had asked the South Korean leader to mediate -- Dave.

BRIGGS: Yes. And just so interesting to see this foreign minister also talk about this wonderful warm chemistry between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. We wait a reaction, likely a tweet at some point this morning from President Trump.

Paula Hancocks, live for us in Seoul, 5:44 p.m., thank you.

A CNN exclusive you do not want to miss, an attempted killing of a foreign head of state by drone. Who was the target.

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[04:49:02] BRIGGS: Now to this CNN exclusive, a commercial drone may have been used for the first time in a plot to kill a head of state. The target, embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. CNN learned the failed attempt happened last August. New videos we have obtained show the plot involved commercial devices bought online and prepared over weeks by army defectors.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has this exclusive.

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NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They thought it was fireworks first, but it was a drone bomb. A brazen assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The first bid to kill a world leader with commercial drone technology bought online, it could have killed everyone on the stage or dozens of civilians nearby if it missed.

The crowd scattered and Venezuelans began to wonder what really happened. Was it a fake? Even now the opposition leader Juan Guaido told CNN he condemned the attack and thinks Maduro staged it to get sympathy.

[04:50:01] "It ends up making them look like victims," he said. "I think this was something internal done by the government and so definitely no such options are not good."

CNN has tracked down one of the apparent organizers of the attack who supplied these videos seen here for the first time to prove his role in what he claims was a genuine assassination attempt. (On camera): Why did you plot to kill Nicolas Maduro? It's a

peaceful protest movement. Why did you think an assassination plot was necessary?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We have tried every peaceful and democratic way to bring an end to this tyranny that dresses itself as democracy. We have friends who are in custody, tortured. This was a hard decision.

WALSH: Were you not worried about potentially killing innocent people flying a drone with that much explosive straight at a crowd?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): That was the risk we had to take. We cared about that. As the Venezuelan people are always the ones feeling the consequences.

WALSH (voice-over): The drones they say were purchased online in the United States and brought over six months ago to this rented farmhouse somewhere in Colombia. We aren't showing you the details of how they say they made the bomb here, but they blew one up in a test and in the remote countryside they practiced the tricky bit.

Flying the drones high enough to not be seen and then down at a steep and fast enough angle to hit their target.

A guard intense here. They even tried it at night in case that's when the chance to strike comes. Later they say they dismantled the device to sneak it into Venezuela. Their videos show it being reassembled and then ready hours before the attack.

A presentation days after the attack by Venezuela's Interior minister confirms part of the attacker's story including the path of the drones which burned detonated prematurely. The cell signal blockers that protect Maduro from attack have been switched off, the organizers said, but suddenly came back on thwarting the attack.

The U.S. National Security adviser John Bolton the morning after thought it might have been faked.

JOHN BOLTON, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: A pretext set up by the Maduro regime itself to something else.

WALSH: But U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence have since concluded the attack was a genuine attempt gone wrong and separately the organizer said he met with several U.S. officials three times after the attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): After they set up three meetings which I imagine were to collect information to study the case. But it didn't go past that.

WALSH (on camera): And did they offer to help you try something like this again or were these meetings just about them finding out more about you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I think both. They wanted to get information and then we asked for things in return. They took notes on this and we asked if they would be able to help. Then they simply left with their notes and they never appeared again.

WALSH (voice-over): CNN could not find proof these alleged meetings happened. A State Department spokesperson would not comment on the claim but to say, "Our policy is support a peaceful transition in Venezuela."

Venezuelan officials said the plot which shook their capital was assisted by Colombia and the U.S. which both have denied. It unveiled a blend of lethality and ingenuity using technology that's terrifyingly simple to get.

Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Bogota, Colombia.

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KOSIK: Our first glimpse of the harrowing final moments in the cockpit of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed Sunday. The "New York Times" reports the captain called controllers in a panicky voice three minutes into the flight as the plane accelerated to abnormal speed. Someone who reviewed air traffic communication tells the "Times" the captain radioed this, "brake, brake, request back to home," and then asked for a route back to the runway.

BRIGGS: Controllers saw the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 was climbing and plunging hundreds of feet in just seconds. A clear sign something was very wrong. Today French officials say technical work is set to begin in Paris on the jetliner's black boxes, that unfortunately almost a week after this crash. The delay because Ethiopia didn't have the technology. Those black boxes were sent to Germany, they didn't have the technology, then on to France. Hopefully some answers come soon.

KOSIK: Yes, hopefully. All right. More on our breaking news next, 49 people killed as gunmen opened fire on two mosques in New Zealand.

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[04:58:47] KOSIK: More fallout from the college admissions scandal. At least three companies now distancing themselves from actress Lori Loughlin and her daughter Olivia Jade. The Hallmark Channel cutting ties with Loughlin. Hewlett-Packard has removed an ad featuring mother and daughter. And cosmetic giant Sephora ending a partnership with Olivia Jade, a social media influencer with millions of followers.

BRIGGS: Despite reports otherwise Olivia and Loughlin's daughter Isabella are still enrolled at USC. The university announced plans to use any money received in connection with the admissions scam to fund scholarships for underprivileged kids. And it turns out the guy who tipped investigators to the admission scheme was a financial executive.

Morrie Tobin was being investigated in a separate securities fraud case. He reportedly gave investigators information in a last ditch effort to get out of trouble. It certainly didn't work. Tobin pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing in that fraud case.

EARLY START continues with the latest on the New Zealand shootings.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

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ARDERN: -- who have lost their lives in this act of extreme violence.

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KOSIK: New Zealand's prime minister there. A terror attack targets two mosques in New Zealand.