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New Day

Officials Fail to Capture Eighth Suspect in Belgian Raid; Last Suspect At Large, Possibly Armed; Interview with Sen. John McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham; The Path Ahead in the Fight Against ISIS. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 16, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We heard huge gunshots, lots of glass coming through the window.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've seen 20 to 25 bodies lying on the floor.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Across this country, police carried out a series of anti-terror raids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An arrest warrant for a man whose brother was one of the dead terrorists.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This could quite possibly be that eighth attacker.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They believe that these attacks were planned in Syria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: French fighter plans revving up their engines. Their target: ISIS outposts.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their spite is getting closer and closer to the homeland.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've been told flat out they are here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a moment of silence here and being reflected around the world.

[07:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm not scared but I'm just shocked.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We should go out and keep living.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: To our viewers in the United States and around the world, you are watching a special edition of NEW DAY from Paris. There's a heavy uncertainty in the air here. Behind us, you see in the Republican plaza, people are here to mourn what happened in the past, but also to try to come together to figure out what will happen in the future.

There's breaking news about attacks abroad by French authorities. And also investigations and raids within this country and in Belgium.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So that is where we start. The officials are wrapping up. Just minutes ago, special forces had spread out in this neighborhood just outside of Brussels, but they failed to get the elusive eighth suspect in Friday's terror attack in Paris.

CUOMO: French authorities are conducting over 150 anti-terror raids overnight. 104 people are under house arrest, 23 people in custody actually; weapons, I.T. equipment seized.

CAMEROTA: Now the French retaliating for the attacks with force. They have launched air strikes against ISIS in the Syrian town of Raqqa, the U.S. providing intelligence to help them for that air campaign. But ISIS says that everything that was hit, they claim was already abandoned. And in just the last hour, there was a moment of silence here across this city, and across all of Europe, to honor the hundreds of victims who were killed and wounded during Friday's terror attacks.

CUOMO: We've got this situation covered only the way CNN can, with correspondents in every place that are relevant all over the world. Let's begin with CNN's Nima Elbagir. Now she's in Brussels where that raid was ongoing. It has to follow a new set of leads now because, Nima, they didn't find who they wanted to in the house behind you. What are you hearing about what's next?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the standoff continues here, Chris. A few moments ago we had what sounded like a controlled detonation, and just before we came to air, we saw an explosive squad, officers fully suited, fully visored, and heading towards the house that continues to be surrounded by police. We don't as yet have a sense of who it is that's inside that they are trying to bring out here, who it is they're looking for. But for now, we are still here. We're waiting and we're trying to confirm reports of where exactly that eighth attacker is.

CUOMO: All right, Nima, and it's about who or what they're looking for. We're hearing from intelligence officials this eighth vest, they believe that this eighth attacker may have had what the other seven had, which were these explosive vests. They don't know where it is. It hasn't been recovered. It wasn't in the car that they found. That's the reason for caution. Could be why they are using preventative explosions to get into that house. We'll wait and see.

CAMEROTA: OK, Nima, thank you. Meanwhile, France's prime minister says the Paris terror plot was actually hatched in Syria.

Senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward is in Paris. She has the latest on this investigation and more. Clarissa, what have you learned? CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning,

Alisyn. Well, a lot of information coming in to us in the last few hours. France's interior minister says that roughly 150 raids were conducted overnight and early this morning. 23 people were arrested, more than 100 people now under house arrest. And heavy weapons, including a rocket launcher, were found during those raids.

This comes on the heels of France's prime minister, Manuel Valls, announcing that he believes these attacks were orchestrated and planned inside Syria. We now know that, of the attackers, at least four of them were French nationals, three of the attackers believed to have spent time inside Syria. And the focus here in France now is on this massive manhunt for the eighth attacker. You'll remember ISIS said there were eight attackers involved, French authorities only knew of seven attackers who have been killed. So the focus very much now on this eighth attacker.

And the subject, the primary subject of this investigation and this manhunt appears to be a man called Salah Abdeslam. He is the brother of one of the men who detonated his explosive vest inside the Bataclan theater. And he was actually stopped by police and questioned a few hours after the attack, driving towards the Belgian border. That now very much the focus of this investigation. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, help us understand these arrests and the 104 house arrests. Are these people that they believe had some sort of connection to Friday, what happened here? Or are these just people who were on law enforcement's radar that they now want to keep a closer eye on?

WARD: I think, Alisyn, at this stage, police are leaving nothing to chance. They want to try to find anybody who has had any history of affiliation with Islamist groups, dangerous Islamist groups, of traveling to Syria and Iraq. They are not leaving any leads unfollowed.

It's difficult to say at this stage whether these arrests and these house arrests are specifically related to Friday's attacks. I think what you're seeing here, French authorities want to question everybody.

[07:05:01]They watch the to follow every lead and they want to make sure that nothing like this happens again. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Clarissa, thank you for that update. Meanwhile, the Paris terror attacks forcing a big agenda change at the G-20 summit. President Obama, you saw there huddling with leaders including Russia's president Vladimir Putin. We are expecting to learn more about the U.S. assistance that they will offer to the French air strikes today.

CNN's Michelle Kosinski is live in Turkey with much more. What have you learned, Michelle?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn. Yes, we also want to hear more about strategy. A deputy national security adviser told us that, yes, the Paris attacks do demand more urgency and more resources from the international community in response to what happened there.

And two key words we keep hearing from the administration over and over again are "redoubling" and "intensifying" the effort. And that does include the U.S., but when you look at the strategy itself, it seems like what we can expect to see is more of the same. They're telling us more air strikes and more targeting of ISIS leadership because they're the ones who have the capability to plan, launch, and direct attacks abroad. And that seems like that's exactly what we saw with the Paris attacks.

So in terms of where we go from here, we expect to hear more from the president today, in just a couple of hours when he has a press conference. And he'll be taking questions from the press there. I mean, questions that we've been wanting to ask for a long time. So he could lend a lot more detail.

But when you look at what happened overnight with the Paris -- the French bombardment of Raqqa, we know that the White House has been involved with that. They've been helping them direct those targets, direct the bombings to specific targets over the last two days, coming to fruition last night. But in addition, the U.S. launched its own attack in Raqqa also. There was one air strike that the U.S. conducted. But what really stood out was the targeting of more than 100 ISIS oil tankers. Now that's a plan of more targeting of how ISIS makes its money that went into place before the Paris attacks. But it looks like we can expect to see much more of that as well. Chris?

CUOMO: Now, of course, Michelle, everything that we're seeing right now is being looked at through the lens of what has come before it. President Obama has a lot to justify to the American people and the global community about what's been done against ISIS and terrorism in Syria and beyond, up to this point. Because many are looking at it now as simply not enough, or failure. He's going to speak this morning at 10:30 Eastern local time in the U.S., and he's going to be able to address this situation in the context of these new challenges.

Now two men who have heavy criticism for the president and heavy concerns about the present are Senators John McCain, who of course is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican presidential candidate, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee as well.

Senator McCain, you say, yes, this happened in Paris, but it is a wakeup call to the United States as well. Do you believe this could happen just as easily in a major city there? And what does that mean about what needs to be done, sir?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Well, I think it is obviously a threat to the United States and has been for a long time in light of the lack of strategy which has characterized the Obama administration's approach to this growing threat, which Senator Graham and I have predicted for years. And their various steps along the way, a failure to address this issue, which has resulted in this and Beirut and the Russian airliner with tragic loss of 224 Russian lives as well. So, unfortunately, we have predicted that we were not defeating ISIS

and they were certainly not contained, and we need boots on the ground and we need to have a strategy, not just more of the same. More of the same doesn't get it, Chris.

CUOMO: Well, we are using the words from the White House of redoubling the effort. Senator Graham, that is not enough to you. You say more needs to be done. You've said that another 9/11 is coming and it's coming from Syria. What do you think needs to be done? Make the case.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, walking faster in the wrong direction is not redoubling your efforts. It's just going the wrong way. To the French president, my heart breaks for you and your country. You declared war on ISIL. You did the right thing. But twenty -- ten planes dropping 20 bombs is not the adequate response.

To the French, to the American president, we should rally the entire region. They're there to be rallied, to go in on the ground and destroy ISIL. In World War II, we went to Tokyo. We went to Berlin. We should go as an international force led by the region, the Arabs and Turkey, to destroy ISIL on the ground in Raqqa. We'll have to be part of that international force. But if we don't change our strategy and come up with a ground component, there will be another 9/11.

CUOMO: But as both of you gentlemen know, there's been great resistance to that among the American populace.

[07:10:05] Just for a point of American parallel, Senator McCain, here, yes, they're in shock --

GRAHAM: I don't buy that at all. I don't buy that at all.

CUOMO: You don't buy what, sir?

GRAHAM: I don't buy that the American people are reluctant to destroy ISIL. The American people are willing to send American forces to Syria and Iraq to protect the American homeland. When people say that, they don't know what they're talking about. The American people are ready to take on radical Islam because they see it for what it is, a threat to our homeland and way of life.

MCCAIN: Chris, could I just add --

CUOMO: But, Senator Graham, it comes as no surprise -- absolutely, but Senator McCain, just let me give you some context for it. I'm not making this up. As you well know, there are many polls that show the American people don't want American women and men put at risk abroad. Do you believe that's changing or do you believe it's time to just make that decision as a point of leadership?

MCCAIN: I think it's rapidly changing. This has to have had a significant affect. And also the fact is that this president has not led. It takes presidents to tell the American people about a threat. And as tragic as this is, it is certainly predictable when you look at the decisions made by this president, beginning in 2009 -- his failure to address Syrian violation of the use of chemical weapons, refusal to arm the Free Syrian Army, and measure after measure where the president has not led. But the American people have been awakened. And these people, by the way, could have easily bought a plane ticket to the United States from Paris.

CUOMO: So, Senator Graham, when you look forward in terms of things that have to be done as a man who wants to be President of the United States, a big point of concern will be refugees. The U.S. leadership had been moving in the direction of letting in more. Now you see what happened here and the investigative findings about at least one, if not more, had been infiltrating through the refugee process. What do you think is the right balance, sir?

GRAHAM: Well, there are people on my side of the aisle who say that if you stop the refugees from coming to America, that fixes the problem. There's about 20 different ways to get to America. Refugees are just one of 20 lanes. Shutting that lane down does not protect us.

So anybody coming to America needs to be vetted and vetted well. But we can't shut off Syria. People being raped and murdered. But, yes, ISIL can intermingle among refugees. They're doing that. But there's other ways for them to get here. So my advice is that eliminating the refugee problem doesn't involve the problem. You've to go in on the ground and hit them there.

I'm looking for an away game when it comes to ISIL, not a home game. I want to fight them in their backyard. So shhutting off refugees doesn't destroy ISIL. I have a plan to destroy ISIL. Use the armies in the region, which are large and professional. Integrate our forces among those armies with the French and other NATO nations. Have an air campaign supplemented by our ground campaign of 80,000 to 100,000 ground forces of which we'll be about 10 percent. And going on the ground and destroy these people before they hit us here at home and continue to do damage.

There is no other way to defeat this enemy other than a ground component of which we will have to lead and be part of.

MCCAIN: Chris, could I just add, the refugees --

CUOMO: Well, as you know -- go ahead, please, Senator.

MCCAIN: The refugee problem is the symptom of failure. It's not the cause of failure. The refugee problem would not be there if it hadn't been for a failed foreign policy, a lack of strategy, a lack of addressing this issue seriously. So of course we don't want anyone coming to the United States who might do damage in the United States. But the fact is, until you address the problem of ISIS, you're going to continue to have refugees.

GRAHAM: And can I just add one thing? ISIL, when we put 50 special forces on the ground, that reinforced the view of ISIL that Obama is not serious about degrading and destroying ISIL. And if all the French do is drop a few bombs, that reinforces ISIL that we don't have stomach for this fight.

And I'm running for president. But we don't have until January 2017 to deal with this. I offer my services to my president as a Republican to rally my party, along with Senator McCain, to a different strategy, a more robust response that would require a ground component. I stand ready to help President Obama because we need to do this quickly or they're coming here.

CUOMO: Senator Graham, as you know, members of the military say a suggestion of 8,000, 10,000 troops, which simple math is the number you're suggesting right now, won't be enough. That you need a huge U.S. military presence on the ground there, akin to what we saw in Iraq, if not Afghanistan --

GRAHAM: That's not what I've heard.

CUOMO: -- to push back ISIL there in any effective way.

GRAHAM: I don't where --

CUOMO: Well, then, look, the idea that there's just one opinion on this would be simplistic. But certainly many in the military, as I'm sure both of you gentlemen know, think you need a bigger presence.

[07:15:04] But then the question becomes, well then what? If you push them back as you did with the al Qaeda forces and the Taliban, how do you hold that land? How do you deal with the political change that needs to happen? Because you're fighting an idea, not just a ground force. What about those concerns?

GRAHAM: Real concerns. The regional force that I'm talking about would be large. You've got Saudi Arabia and Egypt and Jordan and Turkey have large armies. They're ready to fight ISIL because ISIL is a threat to them. Bush 41 had a coalition.

The good news, from my point of view, according to General Keane is that about 10 percent of this 80,000 to 100,000 force needs to be American. But you're right, we need to hold the ground. We're down to 10,000 people in Afghanistan. If we keep them there, they will hold. If we'd left the 10,000 in Iraq, we'd have been OK. So you do have to hold. This is a generational struggle. But you have to destroy these guys militarily and that means an American ground force, about 100,000 people in my view.

MCCAIN: Can I just finally add, if the president had any sense at all, he would call in David Petraeus, Jack Keane, General Mattis., all these guys that made the surge work. The surge worked. We had it under control. Call in those people that are really the most respected in America, in the world, and they'll give him a strategy. They've talked about it publicly. And I'm confident using those people instead of -- instead of the feckless statements like we heard this morning from the president's spokesman.

We can succeed. American is still the strongest nation on earth and ISIS is not invincible. It's a matter of whether we have the will to do it. CUOMO: Senator McCain, Senator Graham, thank you very much for your

perspective on this. This conversation has to continue. Every time there's a new piece, like what happened with these attacks, there becomes a new priority. Thank you, gentlemen, both.

Let's get back to Michaela now in New York.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris, thank you for that. We want to take you to California where hundreds of mourners came out to remember the California college student who was among the 129 people killed in Paris. Friends, family, faculty, and community leaders all filling the student union building at Cal State Long Beach to honor Nohemi Gonzalez. A candlelight vigil was held outside after that ceremony. Gonzalez was a senior design student. She was spending a semester abroad in France and was killed in one of the restaurant attacks. Another vigil will be held at the high school she attended, Wittier High School in California. She graduated from there in 2010.

If you were watching football on Sunday, you probably noticed some of the tributes to France and the victims of those attacks. Moments of silence, French flags on Jumbotrons, fans holding signs -- some of the expressions of solidarity from the NFL. One of the most moving tributes was this in Baltimore. Morgan Cox of the Ravens ran out onto the field carrying the French flag.

A raid in Belgium apparently unsuccessful in bringing in the surviving suspect in Friday's Paris terror attack. Where do investigators go from here? We'll have the latest on that, next.

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[07:22:02] CAMEROTA: Welcome back to a special edition of NEW DAY. We live in Paris, a city reeling from Friday's terror attacks. The manhunt for the eighth terror suspect outside of Brussels, police there had fanned out but they have apparently come up empty.

Joining us again is CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour and CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank. So in just the past hour, there was this big manhunt, there were SWAT teams that had fanned out in this neighborhood outside of Brussels. What's happened?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, it's possible that the's suspect is still at large. Salah Abdeslam is still there in Molenbeek. And we know Eric Pelletier (ph) of "Le Parisien" newspaper who's been sharing details with CNN that he got back to Belgium the night after, the day after the attack.

CAMEROTA: Where he lives?

CRUICKSHANK: Where he may live in Molenbeek. And there was CCTV footage from Paris the night of the attack showing that he was here in Paris, suggesting that he was participating, that he was driving a car around, that Fiat that they eventually found abandoned in a suburb of Paris. He had his brother with him they think in the car. His brother became a suicide bomber. But for some reason he didn't end up becoming a suicide bomber. So he abandoned this car. He calls his other brother, a third

brother, up in Molenbeek in Belgium, come and get me, he says. I need you to come and get me. The brother then drives all the way from Molenbeek into France, 3:00 in the morning. They pick it up on CCTV on the motorway, his car coming in to Paris. Picks him up and gets him out.

And they actually, the French police stopped the two brothers as they were driving back, but didn't know they were suspects at that point. They let them go. They eventually realized after they examined another car outside the Bataclan that he rented that car in Belgium. All of a sudden they knew they had to get in fast. They told the Belgians arrest them. But by the time that they launched all those arrests in Molenbeek, he'd got away. And there's a suicide vest that's missing. It's possible he may still have it.

CUOMO: That's a key point. So a chance of good fortune was missed when they detained this man, interviewed him as part of their border issue. And then he went on his way.

This vest though, them having not found it in the car, that's why we're seeing such caution as they approach the house. It's also a key piece of evidence for them to figure out who made it. Right? Because that will expand this team of influence.

CRUICKSHANK: Who's the bomb-maker in this case? Who has got the skills to make TATP, which is a very high explosive, very volatile, a lot more powerful than what we saw in the Boston bombings. It's pretty tricky to make. You can get all the substances, but to be able to make it without blowing yourself up, you need some skills. And we've seen in almost all the cases, there's a terrorist who have managed to make it, they've got training overseas. That was the case with Najibullah Zazi. Remember that plot in New York? He trained in Pakistan to make it.

So we're looking at the idea of a bomb-maker perhaps still at large in Belgium, in France, in Europe somewhere, able to make these devices. That's alarming to the authorities given the fact that more than 1,500 European extremists who fought in Syria and Iraq believed to be back here, and that's just the ones we know about. This is an unprecedented scale of threat.

[07:25:00] CAMEROTA: So Christiane, what is President Hollande doing today?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he is getting together this sort of joint session of Congress, you might call it, here in Versailles. It's only the second time since 1958. And he is expected, according to our political sources, senators, to once again reiterate to the political parties and the classes and the elected officials that this country is in a state of war.

This has been the language used by the president, the prime minister, the interior minister over the past three days. And clearly it is designed to justify the heightened powers that they're now using. We saw these 150 different raids all over France in the overnight hours, the wee hours of the morning. The enormous numbers of house arrests they've made. The two dozen or so arrests that they've made. The enormous number of weapons they've seized, including heavy weapons. I mean, we can't believe -- a rocket launcher, heavy machine guns, ammunition. Plus a lot of drugs. They're seeing the nexus between radicalization and petty criminals.

And also the fact, as we've been reporting, at least half of the attackers on Friday 13th in Paris had been to Syria. And this is the center of intelligence fears right now -- the blow back. Go to Syria, come back with your own passport, slip in as we know undetected, you know, join up with Syrian operatives. As we know one of them has come from Syria, infiltrating the refugees. We reported that yesterday.

So this is -- this terrible new scare whereby it's not 9/11, but it is hit and run on a mass casualty, separate casualty event to try to stretch police, stretch authorities, and hit civilians. This is, you know, now what ISIS is doing abroad.

CUOMO: And you're believing we'll see another first. This extension of a state of emergency is supposed to be 12 days. President Hollande is going to ask for three months. This now comes with some new information we're getting from Reuters, which is that ISIS hasn't just put out imminent threat reports to France but also to the United States. That they are saying specifically they'll attack.

Now, Paul, you were saying this was the re-issuance of a threat we've heard before, but still adds to the immediacy.

CRUICKSHANK: Yes, they're exploiting all the media attention right now to put out a series of threats, apparently threatening Washington, D.C. Unclear if this is just sort of words or if there's something kind of specific that they have in mind. But they tend to put out a lot of threats, threatening all sorts of countries, all sorts of places, calling --

CUOMO: It has more teeth after this, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: They're threatening people and countries who are taking part in the coalition strikes against them. And they've already carried out their threats. Paris, Russia with the aircraft -- and this is incredibly serious. And France overnight did an unprecedented number of air raids in Raqqa and elsewhere. They're saying 10 to 12 fighter jets. They're saying 20 bombs. That may not sound like a lot, but they're saying it's a lot. And they're moving the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Persian Gulf.

But at the same time, they are saying -- and I've had all the people who I've interviewed in the region, the prime ministers and presidents of regional countries -- who say, this is not going to until the Syria war ends. And this is not going to be over by air strikes. That's the judgment of world leaders.

CUOMO: It takes a big commitment of troops on the ground then.

AMANPOUR: Yes.

CUOMO: You know, because we haven't seen that.

AMANPOUR: Well, no, but we have to arm and train people to do that. You have to help the Peshmerga --

CUOMO: Or send your own.

AMANPOUR: Or -- but there's still no appetite in the west to do that.

CUOMO: Well, we're hearing some talks now about what the U.S. is going to do, that the France may be -- French may be more amenable. So maybe this is a real pivot point.

CAMEROTA: Yes, Christiane, Paul, thank you for all the latest information. Great to have you here.

CUOMO: All right, so we're dealing with this situation here as it's going forward. But let's not forget what happened here. People at a cafe, at a concert hall, at a sports stadium all targeted for death. Now, when we come back we're going to talk to a witness of the carnage about those moments and about how it will last in their head, in their heart, individually and collectively, for the rest of their lives.

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