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Moment of Silence Observed in France; Active Scene in Belgian Neighborhood; Authorities Searching for Eighth Terror Suspect; Obama to Speak at G-20 Today. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 16, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:01] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: There's a moment of silence here and being reflected around the world. We're going to show you it and observe it right now.

(MOMENT OF SILENCE)

CUOMO: We're showing you pictures from around Europe. Obviously there is a very heavy silence that is being observed in respect of what happened here during the Paris attacks and also a reality of the future that we all share, united in the war against terror as well.

We've shown you President Hollande. We've shown you different versions of French mourning right now. There's been singing of the national moment coming out of this silence. And there are also big questions and concerns facing the French president. He's going to be speaking later today to address what has happened overnight both at home and abroad with French capabilities. And he's facing questions of what will this mean? What happened here now. He's been using very specific language, that this is an act of war against France. That is not just political hyperbole. It enforces and allows a state of emergency that we are told will last at least three months to get them through the holidays.

(APPLAUSE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And now you can hear everyone clapping after the moment of silence. There's something so poignant about the moment of silence being broken by applause and by the singing of the national anthem, as we heard President Hollande. You know, that's the spirit, the triumphant spirit that they say will come back here to Paris.

CUOMO: And we saw this after Charlie Hebdo as well. The French, they are the grandfathers of our own sense of democracy in the United States. They are uniquely beholden to the idea of personal liberty and freedom. It shows their resolve here but also their challenge going forward.

Let's go to Clarissa Ward. She is our senior international correspondent, obviously in Paris, following the investigation. Clarissa, you have been very frank in laying out the propositions before the French people in the seat of their own government, which is how do you deal with a threat that is growing fast every than your capabilities, faster than your ability to recognize it, as we saw here all too recently?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Chris. You can see behind me people here still observing this moment of silence. You could hear a pin drop during the last few minutes, everyone just trying to take a moment to process these horrifying attacks. People just quietly, respectfully bowing their heads, and trying to make sense of this senseless and horrifying crime.

Now, we've had a lot of information coming in over the last four hours. So I just want to get it right for you. France's interior minister has said that 23 people have been arrested in more than 150 raids early this morning. More than 100 people are now under house arrest. And this is on the heels of France's prime minister, Manuel Valls, who said that he believes that these attacks were, quote, "organized, conceived and planned inside Syria."

[06:05:01] We now know four of these attackers were French nationals. At least three attackers had spent time in Syria. And the focus here in France, and indeed across the European continent, is on finding that eighth attacker. You'll remember ISIS said that there were eight attackers involved. French officials had said that seven attackers had been killed.

And, really, the focus now is on a man called Salah Abdeslam. He is the brother of one of the attackers who blew himself up at the Bataclan Theater. He was detained briefly for questioning a few hours after the attack, reportedly driving towards the Belgian border. He is very much the focus, but certainly still a lot of questions here. People desperately trying to find that eighth attacker. Chris?

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, we do have breaking news for you and our viewers on that front. Because, right now, near Brussels there's an active standoff. Police have blocked off a street in the suburb of Molenbeek. It's an area that has become a hot focus in this Paris attack investigation. It's home to several of the suspects and perhaps the eighth terrorist who fled.

So we want to go right now live to CNN's Nima Elbagir. She is there in that neighborhood. What have you learned, Nima?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, I'm going to step out of the shot because I want you to see what's going on behind us here. We see anti-explosive robots. We've seen bomb squad officers. They're heading towards the house that seems to be at the center of where those officers are standing.

The reports we're hearing is that Salah Abdeslam is the target of this active standoff. He's the target of this manhunt, that eighth attacker. You can see that it's a pretty intensive police presence, a lot of balaclava-ed plainsclothesed officers in addition to the reinforcement. A little closer to that house. We've also seen sniffer dogs and ambulances and a fire truck slightly further back, Alisyn. This is one of two active incidents going on in Brussels. The

European Commission has evacuated its offices closer to downtown Brussels, where there is concern there is also a situation that might involve explosives. Belgian authorities have sent the bomb squad to there as well.

It is absolutely becoming very clear, Alisyn, that all active roads, all active lines of investigation, in the Paris attacks are leading back here to Molenbeek, an area that has been long a point of concern, not just for authorities here in Belgium but for authorities across Europe. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Nima, and obviously the caution that we're seeing in the scene behind Nima is a reflection of this information, that this eighth terrorist could be similarly equipped with a vest. That is a big point of concern here, one for personal safety, which is why they're being cautious, but also investigatively.

These vests were made of a highly volatile chemical composition called TATP. It was easily made locally, literally ingredients out of a supermarket. But why it's relevant is that it had to be made locally because it doesn't transport well. And that fed an understanding that this plot was done here locally as well as externally. And now this look for the mastermind not being someone who was killed in the attack is of equal concern.

And here's what's most important. What happened here could happen anywhere in the world. That's not to scare you. That's to kind of wake us all up to the reality, and certainly world leaders understand that. Ad at the G-20 summit right now, the agenda that was planned has been scrapped. President Obama was seen huddling specifically with Vladimir Putin during a break, their heads bowed in obvious intense conversation about what needs to be done next. Putin then came out saying the world needs to unite in this fight against terror.

Let's get to CNN's Michelle Kosinski. She's in Turkey, the site of the G-20. What's the latest?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, we'll see how much coordination there is there. I mean, the U.S. and Russia seem to have very different ideas of whom to target in Syria.

But yesterday we heard from the president's deputy national security adviser, who said that the Paris attacks do demand more urgency and more resources from the international community in response. Now, more is what the U.S. has been looking for from the other countries in the coalition for a long time now. But this also includes the U.S. So what can we expect to see from the U.S. response? More air strikes, we're told, as well as more targeting of leadership. We have seen that step up in the last week or so, but we're told that that will increase because those are the individuals who have the capacity to direct attacks abroad, similar to what we saw in Paris.

When you look at what happened overnight with the French bombing Raqqa, we know that the U.S. has been helping them coordinate over the last two days what exactly to target. And every day the DOD sends a list of what was targeted overnight. And so when we looked this morning, we saw there was one U.S. air strike in Raqqa overnight.

[06:10:00] But what was interesting, too, was the targeting in Syria of more than 100 ISIS oil tankers. That's something we really haven't seen before, but we know it's part of a new effort to really get at ISIS's funding. That was a plan in place, though, before the Paris attacks. But, again, from the administration, we're told we can expect to see more.

Will the strategy itself, though, shift? Or is it kind of more of what we've been seeing? We're expected to hear from President Obama today and surely he's going to face that question and many others. Back to you.

CUOMO: All right, Michelle, obviously, this isn't just about the awareness of the risk. It was about the political will. That's been a big part of whether or not we have what we need to do more in Syria. We being the United States and the coalition. Now with the inclusion of France, now with what we saw here, not just as a threat to Paris specifically, but this could be a major city in many different places. ISIS has outlined that threat; the vulnerabilities are clear. So that is leading to a new political reality and we're seeing that reflected in bombings overseas and we're seeing them in terms of how people steel themselves at home themselves.

Let's bring in Paul Cruickshank for more of a discussion about this.

CAMEROTA: Paul, we understand you have new reporting about what's going on in Brussels. Tell us what the latest is.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, this comes from Eric Pallite (ph), he's a journalist at "Le Parisien" newspaper. He's a friend of CNN; he's often collaborated with us.

And the information suggests that Salah Abdeslam, the suspect at large they've issued this arrest warrant for, is probably in Belgium because he drove back to Belgium the morning after the attacks. He was actually picked up in Paris by his brother who drove all the way from Belgium to Paris to pick him up and take him back to Molenbeek in Belgium. So it may be that this standoff we're seeing in Molenbeek right now, that may be him that they're trying to get. It's unclear at this point, but the information from "Le Parisien" newspaper suggesting that he's back in Belgium. That was his last known whereabouts.

CAMEROTA: And what about reports that they were stopped by law enforcement but somehow slipped through?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, one of them was stopped about three hours after the attack as he was driving back from here to Belgium. I mean, the thing is, at that point, they didn't know that he was a suspect. A few hours later, as it would turn out, they would identify from fingerprints that one of his brothers was a suicide bomber I believe in the Stade De-France attack. They didn't know at that point. So in retrospect --

CUOMO: So it's more that they could've gotten lucky, not that they missed.

SCIUTTO: Exactly. In that case. But I will tell you this, we now know that at least two of the attackers were known to police before these attacks. One from 2010, he was known to have been radicalized. They didn't know he was involved in terrorism necessarily. The other was, for a time, on a terror watch list.

Now this gets to this larger issue. We've talked about it a lot. We talked about this in January with Charlie Hebdo. Some 5,000 suspected jihadis in this country. Impossible, from a resources perspective, to monitor all of them. And all of them are on a sort of sliding scale from being close to people who are radicalized to getting to the point where you might make a judgment that they're about to carry out a terror attack. That's a judgment call they have to make all the time. Fact is here, their judgment was wrong. But can anyone get that all -- that right 100 percent of the time? Not possible.

CAMEROTA: Paul?

CRUICKSHANK: Just to add to what Jim was saying, the information from "Le Parisien" suggests that Salah Abdeslam, the guy on the run, participated in the attacks in Paris. They actually picked a guy that looked very close to him in resemblance to him up on CCT participating in the attacks. He's thought to have participated in the attack on the restaurants. At a certain point, he's believed to have dropped his brother off, Ibrahim, who blew himself up at the restaurants.

But for some reason, he didn't detonate his vest. Either he chickened out, so to speak, or it didn't work. He then calls his brother up in Brussels, come and pick me up, I need help. They eventually actually managed to trace that call after the fact. So they've established the fact he called his brother. The brother then drove all the way from Belgium, they picked up the car up on CCT on the motorway going to France at about 3:00 in the morning after the attacks. He picks him up, brings him back, and at 9:00 a.m., according to "Le Parisien" newspaper, they're stopped, these routine stops coming in from the Belgian border from France. At that point, they don't know he was involved. And it's only when they did that later examination on the car outside the Bataclan, the black Polo (ph) outside the Bataclan, that they realized that he actually rented the car and they've just stopped him and they've just let him go.

So they tell the Belgians, you've got to go in, move fast, arrest these guys. That's why we saw all the arrests in Belgium. But by that point he had escaped presumably somewhere in Brussls. Maybe this guy (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: I don't think we can underestimate, if it is true that they captured this eighth -- what they suspect might be the eighth attacker -- what value that is to the investigation, to have an attacker alive. Because the big question here is how did French authorities, considering the terror alert level that they have in this country on any day, but particularly following Charlie Hebdo, missed what is turning out to be a massive international and complex ring involving France, Belgium, ties back to Syria, presumably communications among those places, physical movements. [06:15:13] Many opportunities --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: You know, one of the big things is we're all hearing from the military community here and the police community here as these vests are huge key to how this was planned and by whom and where. Because, again, this TATP is something they believe had to be made locally. Could be made with ingredients found in a supermarket but you have to know how. It can't be transported because of its volatility. This guy should know the answers to that, right?

SCIUTTO: You know, one point about that being -- you and I have dealt with the New York Police Department, the NYPD. The ingredients for a TATP explosive, they monitor purchases of that, like in hardware stores, things like acetone and so on. They've got a division that's looking for that because they know that's one use for it.

Now, that's very hard to do. There are a lot of stores that sell this kind of stuff. It's something -- it's like basically nail polish remover, right? So how do you do it? But that's the level of alert you have in a city like New York.

CRUICSHANK: Just one thing to add on the suicide vest, that abandoned car in Monterey (ph), they believe that belonged to Salah Abdeslam, that he was driving that car. They didn't find any suicide vest in that car, so there may be a missing suicide vest. Obviously there's concern he may still have those explosives. He's still at large, still dangerous, perhaps involved in that standoff in Brussels right now. But a missing suicide explosive vest, investigators believe.

CAMEROTA: All right, Paul, Jim, stick around. Obviously we'll come back to you. There's so much breaking news from here, from Paris that we want to bring to you. There's also headlines in New York. We want to get back to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris, Alisyn, we appreciate that.

Hundreds of mourners came out in California to remember the college student who was among the 129 people killed in Paris. Friends, family, faculty, and community leaders filling the student union building at Cal State Long Beach to honor Nohemi Gonzalez. A candlelight vigil was held outside after the ceremony. Gonzalez was a senior design student. She was spending a semester abroad in France. She was killed in one of the restaurant attacks. Another vigil will be head tomorrow at Wittier High School, outside of Los Angeles, California. She graduated from there in 2010.

American flags across the U.S. will be at half-staff most of the week out of respect for the victims in Paris. President Obama ordered the flags at the White House and federal buildings lowered until Thursday night. U.S. military outposts and embassies around the world will also fly the Stars and Stripes at half-staff.

Those are your headlines from here. Let's go back to Paris, Chris and Alisyn.

CUOMO: All right, Michael,a there's so much happening right now with this investigation, there's so much recognition of pain and sharing of that, behind us and around the world, but also of a new reality of the threat. This could have happened anywhere. What can be done to stop it? We have new information about the investigation and new questions. Stay with us for a discussion ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:21:49] CUOMO: We have breaking news on several fronts in the situation surrounding the Paris attacks. And we have all of them covered for you. There is information about bombing overnight in Syria and Iraq. That is obviously France-led as part of the response to what happened here just days ago. There are also raids overnight here, discoveries overnight here, arrests and an active police situation right now in Brussels where they believe they are dealing with who might be an eighth attacker. There's also talk about the mastermind of this not having been killed.

So let's discuss it all. We have chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. We have chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto as well with us. So what we're hearing, let's start with the urgency of what's going on in Belgium right now, Christiane. What is the perspective?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDNET: Well obviously there's this guy who's been on the run, the eighth attacker at least, and they let him slip through their fingers the first night as he left here and went to Belgium. He wasn't officially a suspect yet; they didn't really know. And now they need to hunt him down. He's considered one of the major people still to be caught.

Now, here in France overnight, they did something that they haven't done for a long time. They have dozens and dozens, hundreds and hundreds of people known to them, many petty criminals, many radicalized jihadists. They've got 104 at least under house arrest. They've got 23 under arrest. They've got 19 heavy weapons have been cleared out from these houses.

CUOMO: Sounds like a rocket launcher was found at one point.

AMANPOUR: Yes, a rocket launcher, at least heavy machine guns, ammunition, all of that kind of stuff. And again, the -- all the authorities say we are at a state of war.

CAMEROTA: You know, Jim, the attackers were believed to have been wearing these suicide vests, and that most blew themselves up. But he ran away. So interesting that they might be able to get him and connect some dots.

SCIUTTO: This is a real focus of the investigation, one on that suicide vest, because there is one missing suicide vest. Either it didn't work or he chose not to use it. That's a possibility. But as you say, they now have -- assuming they get him and assuming their assumptions are correct -- they have the eighth attacker, right, alive who they could then ask questions about how they managed to put this all together.

I think the other point I would make is basically what they're doing with these raids overnight, they're doing preventative detention. Right? I mean, they're rounding up anybody with a connection. And there are folks in this country who have argued that they have to do that in advance. Now, the trouble is, you can't do that in a free society. You can't round people up when they haven't done something wrong. But the number of folks that are -- that they have to track here, really virtually impossible.

AMANPOUR: Well, the thing is they have done something wrong because they're holding weapons that are not allowed by law, plus many of these people who they raided, again, are known because of radicalization. They've been --

SCIUTTO: But they haven't committed a -- not all of them have committed a crime.

AMANPOUR: Right, not in -- except for many of them have committed petty crimes, like drug trafficking and stuff like that. And the French are now saying the link between petty criminals, certainly in our country and jihadism --

CUOMO: What they called banditry in the press conference.

AMANPOUR: -- is absolutely clear.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: But that doesn't mean you can go into their homes. They have strong search and seizure laws here.

AMANPOUR: But under a state of emergency they can.

CUOMO: That's right.

AMANPOUR: Under the terrorist laws, they can.

CUOMO: And that's why Hollande and the interior minister were very careful to use this language, we are in a state of war. That gives them operative legal effect.

Now, they have a bigger threat here than they do in the U.S. They have a bigger population that they're dealing with that could be radicalized. Fair.

[06:25:00] However, you have reported that at least two of these guys who died here in Paris were known to them. Define that for us and then explain what the insistence is that we have to do more.

SCIUTTO: At least two and it may turn out to be more. One was known to have been radicalized in 2010. What does radicalized mean? I means he was in touch with people via jihadi forums, et cetera. But at that point they made a judgment -- not a nexus to terrorism. He hadn't made a decision to go to terrorism.

Another one of them though had been previously under investigation for terrorist activity. So a step beyond that, right?

Now -- but, again, this goes to those judgment calls. You can have committed a petty crime but not terrorism. Right? You could have been in touch with terrorists, but they don't know for sure that you're going to take the next step and go into terrorism. That's the judgment call they have to make. And I always think of this, think of the states, 5,000 here, we don't have anything close to that number. It's numbered in the dozens, perhaps hundreds. This is an order of magnitude larger of a problem.

AMANPOUR: And one of the big issues, obviously, is that we're learning that almost half of these people who they've identified that were involved in these attacks have been to Syria. And that was always the blow-back fear from our intelligence services all over the United States and Europe.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

AMANPOUR: People who have gone over with their passports, come back undetectable, because they have national passports.

CUOMO: All right. Breaking news right now.

CAMEROTA: It says that the Belgian raid fails to capture the eighth suspect Salah Abdeslam. Special operation forces made an arrest, but failed to apprehend the man that they were looking for, that they believe to be the eighth attacker.

CUOMO: And, look, we've been hearing from intelligence officials this morning when the first news of the raid came out that they didn't expect to get this lucky this soon. Here's the plus/minus on it. They believe that obviously when someone is heavy on the lam like this, and people are in hot pursuit, there will be people less likely to give shelter, less likely to protect. So they believe they have an advantage. That said, they believe there is a population in Belgium, and here and in and around Paris, that is involved with these kinds of activities and they are up against a larger threat. So that man is going to continue. He couldn't be more important than he is right now.

AMANPOUR: And, you know, per capita, the most number of jihadis going to Syria come from Belgium.

SCIUTTO: And this is the other point. There's a lot of talk about closing the borders to refugees. We know that at least one of these attackers hid in that influx coming through. You know the political sensitivities here of the refugee issue. But the fact is, when you look at this, we know that a number of the attackers were French. They were from France. So that the idea that you could sort of put up a wall, that doesn't get rid of the problem, because you have a home- grown population here. You talk about not just the attackers themselves, but a support network around them.

CUOMO: Yes, you just put your finger on the hot issue for the United States in terms of its political election, its popular concerns. Refugees. We know that there's an infiltration now. What will that mean? What does that mean for the threat that you face at home in America?

We're going to discuss that when we come back on this special edition of NEW DAY. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)