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Russian Vowing Revenge for Bombing of Metrojet Airliner; Manhunt Underway for Eighth Attacker, Terror Mastermind; Interview with Secretary of State John Kerry. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired November 17, 2015 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00] MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the FSB, the former KGB, telling Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, on state television that traces of foreign-made explosions were found in parts of the fuselage and in the passenger's luggage. He said that a homemade explosive device had been planted on the aircraft with a power of something like 2.2 pounds of TNT. That accounts he says for the fact that parts of the fuselage were spread over such a wide area in the Sinai peninsula.

Well, the response of Vladimir Putin has been rapid. The Russian president saying of the culprits we will search for them everywhere. No matter where they're hiding, we'll find them in any place on the planet and punish them. So Vladimir Putin vowing revenge for that bombing of that Russian airliner and the death of those 224 people on board.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Matthew, thank you for all of that breaking news out of Moscow. We also have breaking developments now in the Paris terror attacks -- with the suspected mastermind on the loose in Syria. We are learning the U.S. homeland security raised red flags about this so-called mastermind six months ago.

So let's get to CNN's chief national correspondent Jim Sciutto. Jim, you've been tracking all of this, what have you learned?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well this is one yet more missed warning sign. So we reported yesterday that Abdelhamid Abaaoud was believed by French authorities to be the mastermind. He's in Syria, he's a Belgian national. But now we know the Department of Homeland Security knew about him six months ago in May, in fact sent out an alert, in effect, saying that they were looking for this guy.

They pinned one plot on him at that point, that was a plot in Belgium that was thwarted to attack and kill police officers. There was a shootout involved. Since then, they have tied him to other plots, including -- and you'll remember this -- the attack on the high-speed train that was thwarted by those three brave Americans. Abdel Abaaoud behind that as well. And of course now, sadly, in just greater magnitude, the attacks in Paris.

But it is telling; it speaks about how many leads they're trying to follow, but also something that has to be analyzed now, how such a complex plot in the streets of Paris where so many of the pieces and so many of the players were aware -- authorities were aware of them before, several of the attackers and now we know the mastermind, not just here in Europe but also in the U.S.

CAMEROTA: All so troubling. All right, Jim, thank you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And of course the understanding of the global war is informed by each specific attack. And that's why the manhunt is so important right now.

Let's go to our correspondent Ivan Watson; he's in Belgium. That has become the focus of the manhunt for the believed eighth attacker, two men believed to be at large. So what do we know now, Ivan?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, 26-year- old Salah Abdeslam, he is the arguable the most wanted man in Europe, hails from the neighborhood of Molenbeek where I'm standing right now in the Belgian capital of Brussels.

Now, the police have looked into three brothers from the same family. , Salah, who is at large, and a car that he was believed to have been traveling in from Paris after the attacks was actually found here in this neighborhood by Belgian investigators over the course of the weekend. His brother, Ibrahim, one of the suicide bombers who died in the Paris attacks, carrying out the attacks. And another brother, Mohamed , was briefly detained and then released. And he's spoken to jouranlists, speaking out in defense of his brothers. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOHAMED ABDESLAM, BROTHER OF TWO SUSPECTS (via translator): You also need to understand in spite of the tragedy, my parents are in shock. We do not realize yet what has happened. My family and I are affected by what happen. We found out by TV just like many of you. We did not think for a moment that one of our brothers was related to these attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Mohamed Abdeslam speaking from the family house, which is about 100 feet from where I'm standing now.

Now, another resident of Brussels, a French national known as Balil Hafdi, he is also believed to have been one of the suicide bombers. Also living here in Brussels. So that's part of why French officials say that this attack was largely organized, a lot of the logistics carried out, from here, with the mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud also a resident of this neighborhood of Molenbeek and at large at this time.

You have Belgian officials who have arrested two people here and charged them with terrorism over the course of the last several days. We do not know their identities yet. But the threat levels have been raised here in Belgium, with the Belgian justice minister telling me that some of the suspects were on a watch list but had evidently smuggled themselves back into Belgium after being volunteer fighters in Syria and escaping Belgian officials. The Belgian authorities have canceled a soccer match planned tonight amid these security fears.

[07:05:02] Alisyn and Chris.

CAMEROTA: All right, Ivan, thank you for all of that reporting. We want to bring back in now Jim Sciutto. We also want to bring in CNN senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward. Great to have both of you here. Let's talk about how it has definitively been proven, according to Russia, that Metrojet was brought down by a bomb and their retaliation seems to be swift. What's Russia doing?

SCIUTTO: Very swift. I mean, similar to the retaliation we saw from France two nights ago, which we know continued last night as well. But a series of air strikes in Raqqa, home base of ISIS and home base of the mastermind of these attacks here in Paris. A mix from Russia of sea launch cruise missiles as well as long-range bomber strikes.

I mean, this was a significant operation. And one thing I should add, I'm told by a U.S. defense official that the U.S. was alerted in advance. They were given prior notice. And they'll always say, listen, that's not coordination, we're not bombing together, we're attacking together. That was to help avoid accidents. But it does show you how many players are there now.

But also strategically, what was their response? Russia announces it was a terror attack, they drop more bombs. France has an attack on the streets, they drop more bombs. What we haven't seen yet is a fundamental change in the strategy on the ground in Iraq and Syria for challenging ISIS.

CUOMO: Well, it's -- they're multifaceted challenges. And often our reporting demands context. We hear about the bombing. That's seen as being effective. But targeting and finding the people that you want most, this guy who planned this stuff -- we call him a mastermind, probably giving him too much credit -- but it's not easy to find. And there's reasons for that, Clarissa. What have you learned?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Chris. So I've spent pretty much the last year communicating with a lot of different jihadis inside Syria, inside Iraq, many of them with ISIS. And I have to tell you, they're very technologically savvy. These guys don't just use their cell phones casually. They use surespot (ph), they use secret chats on telegram, and they're also very street smart. It's important to remember, many of them have criminal records. These are guys who many of them were street kids back at home. They know how to avoid the police, they know how to go under the radar, they know how to buy weapons. And that gives them an edge because you're seeing a hybrid between a common street criminal and a radical jihadi. And when you put those two things together, you get a very toxic brew.

SCIUTTO: And prisons are often a place where they're often radicalized.

WARD: Absolutely.

SCIUTTO: Both here and the U.S. And just those programs you mentioned, the surespot, that's a widely available encrypted communications app. I could put it on my iPhone right now, and those are the ones in -- John Brenner, the CIA director, reiterated this yesterday. Encrypted communications that the U.S. does not have capable surveillance. They effectively are dark; those are dark communications to even the great power of the NSA.

CAMEROTA: And we haven't talked about how they use gaming systems They used Playstation 4, they used all sorts of technology that we don't think of them as --

WARD: And they speak in code, Alisyn. They speak in code. You remember Amedy Coulibaly, who held up that kosher grocery store. He was speaking in code. He was talking about buying books when he was talking to other -- the other Charlie Hebdo plotters. So they're smart, they're savvy, they understand the criminal world. They've been dealing with the police for many, many years. They know how to outsmart them.

CUOMO: And also they play with no rules. And you're trying to defend against them in a system of rules. I mean, that is something that's really being confronted in real time in France right now with this state of emergency. And it does lead to the question that we're seeing back reflected in the United States as well, do the rules need to change to deal with the current threat?

SCIUTTO: It's a real debate. I spoke to a presidential candidate here yesterday, conservative party, saying that of those 11,000 we've talked about so many times, they haven't -- they maighthave committed petty crime but they haven't committed acts of terrorism yet, but they're considered risks. He's raising the prospect of something that's controversial, frankly illegal by most measures in open societies, which is preventative detention. In effect, put them on house arrest before they do something. And we're getting a little taste of that in the last 48 hours. They have a number of suspects under house arrest or have been detained, questioned, et cetera.

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, it's fascinating how you've been able to communicate with the jihadis using some of these systems that they do. We can assume that law enforcement can do that as well. But they don't seem to be tapping into it as much as they should be.

WARD: We don't know, honestly. I think we can all assume there are plenty of law enforcement officials from various countries posing as journalists, as would-be recruits out there, and talking to these guys. But they're also pretty smart about, you know, even I'll talk to someone from ISIS. They're not going to tell me, oh, this is what we do every day in Raqqa. This is what daily life is like here. Or this is where we have our meetings.

CAMEROTA: What do they share?

WARD: They share -- they want to talk a lot about the ideology. They want to make you -- what's interesting, Alisyn, they really want you to buy into their ideology. They want you -- it's frustrating to them that you can't see what is so clear to them. And they believe fundamentally that there's a war between Muslims and the rest of the world. And that's their story and they're sticking to it.

CUOMO: Well, look, it's hard for them to get it because they don't see anything else. Am I right? A big part of dealing with the intelligence of this is that there's such a closed-mindedness, when you take somebody who has the assets to be violent and not the understanding to go beyond their own experience.

[07:10:00] And that's what they prey upon in radicalizing people. They look for people who are physically capable and not mentally set up to battle with any kind of curiosity what they're being told.

SCIUTTO: A French security official told me something yesterday that I found alarming. He said that in the past it would take months to radicalize someone. He said that now it takes as short as one to two weeks. So that's what they're dealing with, and you're talking about how the leads pop up. One to two weeks, you turn a kid from the south of Paris into a potential terrorist. That's almost impossible to keep up with.

WARD: They put them in camps. The first thing, when you join ISIS, you don't go to the battelfield -- you go to training camp. And training camp is less about learning to use weapons than it is being inculcated with this toxic ideology day in, day out. And by the time you leave that camp you are buying wholesale into that ideology.

CUOMO: It's not different than what every other country does with its military. You have so first learn and understand why you're doing it, and then teaching you what to do is easily -- more easily facilitated.

But something that we're also hearing, and this is a big problem for us, Alisyn, is you have to be on the grounded to combat these things, not just with weapons but counterinsurgency, counterintelligence. And that leads to a question, who do you put on the ground? How many do you put on the ground? And what happens one they're there?

SCIUTTO: And there's an argument, you'll hear from the president, that you go on the ground and that causes more to join the fight. Right? I mean, you have that battle, too. So it's difficult to find a way to extinguish it. That's the problem.

WARD: That's exactly what they want. If you ask any ISIS member what they want, they want American ground troops on the ground inside Syria, inside Iraq again. Because they know how polarizing that will across the region and they want to create a context -- it's us against them.

CAMEROTA: Of course they say that it's Muslims against the world and that they're under attack. They -- Muslims were killed on Friday night. There were --

SCIUTTO: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: -- numerous Muslim victims.

WARD: Muslims reject ISIS wholesale.

CAMEROTA: Of course.

WARD: They call them hawaris (ph). They're heretics.

SCIUTTO: And al Qaeda -- it's interesting, all that you just described, us against them, the world bringing the attack to the far enemy. What does that echo? That echoes Osama bin Laden 14 years ago. And tThat alarms U.S. counterintelligence and security services because they feel that they're dealing something of that magnitude.

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, Jim, great to get your reporting. Thanks so much for being with us.

There's a lot here in Paris, many developments. But also in New York, we want to get more headlines. Let's get back to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we'll be back to you in a moment. Here are your headlines. Fallout from the Paris attacks reaching U.S. statehouses today. At least 27 governors now on record against administration plans to resettle 10,000 Syrians in the U.S. next year. Opposition to the resettlement plans exploded after it was revealed that at least one suspect in the Paris attacks slipped into Europe claiming to be a Syrian refugee. We are going to speak with the first governor on the record fighting the administration plan, Alabama's Robert Bentley. He'll join us next hour.

51 people arrested at a second day of protests following the fatal police shooting of a black man in Minneapolis. Hundreds of protesters shutting down part of the I-94 freeway for about three hours Monday night. 24-year-old Jamar Clark was shot by an officer apparently during a struggle as police tried to arrest him. The Minneapolis mayor has now asked for a federal civil rights investigation.

You'll recall this story, the Utah judge that sparked a public backlash for removing a foster child from the home of a lesbian couple is now removing himself from the case. Juvenile court judge Scott Johansson initially decided to place the 9-month-old with heterosexual parents instead, saying that the baby would be better off. Well, national gay rights groups, the state's Republican governor, many, many others criticized the ruling. There are even calls for Johansson's impeachment. Well, he later reversed his order.

13 minutes past the hour. Let's head back to Alisyn in Paris.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michaela, thanks so much for all of that. We do have new information on the Paris attacks for you so we will be bringing you those developments, how they were planned, who orchestrated them. We will speak live with one of the city's mayors, coming up next.

[07:14:02]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Secretary of State John Kerry speaking out this morning about how to combat ISIS after, of course, the Paris attacks. He sat down with CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. She joins us now to tell us more. Tell us about your conversation.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, he's been talking to a round robin if you'd like of the American networks. And basically his message was similar to President Obama's, that the strategy is working, he said. Well, I said if that's the case, there are some 352 civilians have been killed in the last ten days with the Russia jet, the Beirut bombings, and now Paris. Is that the new normal? And of course he insisted, no, that is not the new normal. We're going to fight them. We're going to fight back. Our strategy in the air is working and we're gathering a coalition.

So I said have we underestimated who they are? They're not just terrorists. Terrorism is a means. These are people with a totalitarian, fascist ideology. Is our response up to their threat and their global goals? And he admitted, yes, that these are modern day fascists and that all means have to be mobilized to combat them. And that's where he said, you know, we have a coalition. Of course, no acknowledgment that there needs to be boots on the ground.

And then he also said that he had a lot of hope in the peace pro -- well, the political process that they've started with the Russians, and he hoped that, in Syria, within a few weeks there would be at least a cease-fire as a start. That's what he hoped, within four to six weeks.

CAMEROTA: OK. So let's listen to more of your interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Mr. Secretary, welcome to the program.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Delighted to be with you.

AMANPOUR: Can you first confirm for us news of one of the terrorists suspected in this attack, Abdelhamid Abaaoud -- There are reports that the United States, France, and other allies wanted to target him, sought to kill him in Syria. He is apparently a top level Belgian citizen ISIS member.

KERRY: Well, I can confirm that he's an ISIS member and top level but I can't confirm whether he's targeted or not.

AMANPOUR: And hat about "Jihadi John," Mohammed Emwazi?

[07:20:02] Do you confirm officially that the United States did kill him in a drone attack?

KERRY: I can confirm officially that he's been targeted and we have certainly been after him and that we've, in recent days, taken some efforts to try to eliminate him from the battlefield. Btu I can't confirm yet the consequence.

AMANPOUR: You can't tell us whether he's dead or not?

KERRY: I can't confirm that at this moment. AMANPOUR: All right. Mr. Secretary, the president yesterday said that

the strategy is working and we're going to continue with more of the same and that ISIS is contained. However, in the last ten or so days, 352 civilians have been killed by ISIS, whether in the Russian plane, whether in Beirut.

KERRY: Sure, absolutely.

AMANPOUR: And now in Paris. The question is then, is this the new normal? Is this what we as citizens are expecting from our leadership, that this is now acceptable collateral damage?

KERRY: Absolutely not. No. This is not normal. It will not be normal. It will not become normal. This is an aberration. It is a reflection of what foreign fighters have been able to do going to Syria and then coming back and being able to spread their vile ideology to other people or even through the social media.

But when the president says that ISIS, Daesh, better name for them, Daesh, is contained, he was talking about and we are talking about within Iraq and within Syria, their territory has been reduced. They are now operating in 25 percent less territory. We have liberated Tikrit, 100,000 Sunni have returned to Tikrit. We've liberated Baiji refinery. We're now in the process of fighting to liberate Ramadi with the Iraqis leading that effort. We've liberated Sinjar, and we're currently moving on other communities nearby which will cut off the supply route from Mosul to Al-Raqqah.

Al-Raqqah is currently under increased attacks from the French, from the Russians, and the entire border of northern Syria, 75 percent of it has now been shut off. We are entering an operation with the Turks to shut off the other remaining 98 kilometers.

So there's a major effort taking place. The president has put additional American forces on the ground in terms of special forces to enable some of these operations. We are engaged in thickening our presence in Incirlik. More people flying, more missions.

So I believe the pressure is mounting on Daesh. I am convinced that, over time, and the president always said this will take some time. Now, we've always said there's also a threat of these attacks elsewhere in the world until we have gotten further down the road in this process and that is a risk. But more troops on the ground are not suddenly going to -- I mean more -- the invasion of the country or something -- is not going to solve the problem because you need something underneath it coming in that's going to secure those areas, that's going to show that the local population is invested in kicking out Daesh and helping to keep them out. That's what we're working on right now.

AMANPOUR: The liberated territories that you mentioned happened with ground forces, mostly indigenous --

KERRY: Correct. Absolutely.

AMANPOUR: And while you say it is contained, it's in fact spread to Libya, to the Sinai and we've seen it develop (ph) here in Europe.

KERRY: But he wasn't talking about whether it's been contained normally --

AMANPOUR: No. I'm asking you.

KERRY: Well, yes. Yes. And we're working on the Libya situation. In fact, very much preoccupied by it and engaged with various parties to try to bring people together and see if we can't get a governing entity in place that will allow us to begin to focus on Daesh there.

But what I think is happening is that there's a new awareness, people are coming together in this coalition which we built. I mean, the coalition has only been in existence for a year. One year. One year ago we didn't have a coalition. One month ago we didn't have a political process in place, which we now have with Iran and with Russia at the table, which gives us an opportunity to, perhaps, get a cease-fire in place within the next three, four, five weeks and then be able, with the political process, to work with other parties to, again, squeeze harder on Daesh.

So I think that the strategy is, in fact, real. It's several fold. It's one, focus on Daesh. Two, stabilize the countries in the region and, three, get the political process in place and move to get Assad transitioning, because he's the magnet for this terrorism, and then begin to focus on Daesh itself.

[07:25:04] And I'm convinced, ultimately, we're going to eliminate Daesh as a viable entity that's day-to-day terrorizing people in the way that al Qaeda did previously and can't today.

AMANPOUR: Mr. Secretary, terrorism, as you know better than I do, is a means, it's not actually an end and many are now saying that Daesh, ISIS, is in fact the 21st century eastern version of what we saw in the west in the 20th century, and that is totalitarian, fascist and extremist. Do you think that we've got it wrong so far, that we're waging this so-called war on terror but we haven't mobilized to defeat an ideology as poisonous and as vile as Naziism and totalitarianism?

KERRY: Well, it is -- I've said this myself many times, that this is a modern form of medieval fascism coupled with modern fascism. It's a very dangerous and volatile cocktail that's been mixed together there. At the same time, it's a barbarism without a real ideology or real platform or real future. I mean, what they do is kill the Yazidis because they're Yazidis.

AMANPOUR: But they have totalitarian, utopian, and imperial goals. They want to spread. Is our response up to their aims?

KERRY: We are going to defeat Daesh and we're going to eliminate Daesh as an entity that is threatening people the way it is today. I'm convinced of that. Every country in the region and in the world is opposed to Daesh, to what Daesh stands for, to what Daesh is doing. What we have to do now is mobilize the capacity, which is what we've been doing, to be able to systematically go after them and eliminate them. And I'm convinced we will. When you have Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi

Arabia, all of the major countries in that region, and Russia, and the United States, and Europe, all united in this effort, I would not want to be Daesh. And I believe Daesh is going to feel that pressure increasingly over the course of these next weeks and months. Every country is gearing up to do more and President Obama, you know, it's important for people to know, he didn't wait for Paris to up this. He decided himself several months ago that we needed to do more because he saw what was happening with Daesh in Libya and places. So that's when he ordered his own review. That's when he decided to put special forces on the ground and announced it. That's when he increased our strike capacity. That's when we put the operations together with the Turks. That's when we invited more countries to come in to Incirlik and fly. And that's -- and have pressed, I might add, on a number of other lines of effort that people don't see.

We're cutting off financing on a global basis. We're going after the ideology. We've created a center in Abu Dhabi that's on the social meter in Arabic instantaneously responding to their lies and discrediting them. We're taking the stories of disaffected former Daesh fighters who have come back and said life is nowhere near the paradise and the, you know, easy life and great life that they said that they're a bunch of lies. And they have killed people who try to leave. And they -- I mean, this is a group that is so ferocious in its barbarism that I believe, we, all of us, are going to band together and ultimately we're going to prevail.

Now you can fight over whether one thing or another is being done fast enough, but Christiane, you can't fight over the notion that we are committed to doing this and that each day our capacity is growing to be able to have a greater impact and to protect people. And I believe -- Look, you know, the terrible thing is, that if some individual in life wants to kill themselves, we have seen it in nonideological events in the United States, in a theater or somewhere else. In a shopping mall. If somebody wants to do that, they can do that, unfortunately. But I think the ability for -- you know, it's much harder for governments who have to get it right, not that one time that you try to do something bad, but they have to get it right every single day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Frankly, we've done an enormous amount of stopping many plots before they have been hatched. We have interrupted people in midstream.

[07:29:47] And I think we've done a very significantly increased effort of being able to penetrate and find out what's going on and act ahead of time and that, I think, now will only grow even more.