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U.N. Official: At Least 3 Dead in Mali Hotel Attack; House Passes Bill to Halt Flow of Refugees. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired November 20, 2015 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:07] DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Here's what we know, Chris, at around 7:00 in the morning local time, two or three gunmen according to the U.N. arrived at that hotel with diplomatic plates on their cars, and Kalashnikov rifles. Witnesses on the scene say they heard several rounds of gunfire and explosions ongoing for some time.

There's also sources telling us that a local and international through the U.N. forces moved in at around, maybe two, to two and a half hours later, into the scene, and at least 20 or at least scores of people were able to flee that hotel. Three U.N. officials have managed to escape. There are a multitude of nationalities there.

This is a hotel, Chris, that is popular with foreigners, including Europeans, Americans and others going through Mali, conducting business as well as expats in the country. So, a very key targets for these terrorists.

We don't know who they are yet, but there's a history of Islamic terror history in Mali and there is word from the U.S. embassy that U.S. nationals should hunker down, lay low, don't move outside and listen to media for updates that might be -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, David, and, again, there is supposed to be a good security environment within this capital. How did they get in? Well, there are reports from the U.N. that these gunmen showed up in plates that are diplomatic on their vehicles. Was that the way they avoided detection?

In any event, they're in there now. There's an ongoing operation.

Let's get back to New York and Michaela with other headlines -- Mick.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, we have some more breaking news overnight, Chris. Jonathan Pollard, an American, who spy for Israel, has been released from a U.S. prison after spending 30 years behind bars. Pollard was arrested in 1985, convicted of selling U.S. intelligence secrets to Israel. Pollard, who is now 61 years of age, will have to spend the next five years on parole and is barred from leaving the U.S. without permission.

An American Yeshiva student is among three people killed in the latest Israeli/Palestinian violence. Israeli defense officials say a West Bank attacker shot at a group, then rammed them with his car, killing 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz from Boston and two others. Earlier Thursday, in Tel Aviv, two Israelis were killed in a stabbing attack.

The FBI is taking a closer look at dozens of people they believe pose a terror threat following those attacks in Paris. FBI director James Comey says the concern is the potential for a copycat attack in the United States. Law enforcement officials say there are no specific credible threats to be concerned about, however, at this time.

Well, the House defies the threat of a veto, passing a bill to restrict the flow of Syrian refugees in the United States. Now, the presidential contenders are weighing in. We'll discuss that ahead right here on NEW DAY. Stay with us.

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[06:36:58] CUOMO: We're following breaking news. There's an ongoing terror situation in Mali right now, in northwest Africa. At least 160 people are inside that hotel. It is already turned deadly, and that takes us to another part of the world.

Remember, we're here in Paris because of what happened here just a week ago. And yet there are all of these spider attacks going on, and different operations throughout Europe, and the reverberations aren't just here, but also in the United States. This has increased the attention to the war against ISIS, to domestic safety, and to what we do with refugees, specifically Syrian refugees.

This has become such a flash point in American politics. You have GOP coming forward in the form of governors saying, we don't know who these people are. They cannot come in. That momentum matches the mood of the country. A recent poll says over 50 percent of Americans are worried about allowing Syrian refugees into the country.

The president is taking the other side of this. He is rallying Democrats to his cause of supporting what he says is the soul of America in allowing in these people who are running for their lives from Syria. However, not all Democrats agree. The House just passed a bill with Democratic support, a significant number, saying you have to pause the program until you can guarantee the vetting.

All right. Let's discuss the political, the policy implications of this. We have two of our best, CNN political analyst and presidential campaign correspondent for the "New York Times," Ms. Maggie Haberman, and CNN political commentator and political anchor for New York 1 News, Errol Louis.

Maggie, I'll start with you. You can't say it's pure partisan bickering when you have the American people weighing in heavily as well. What is the state of play?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's an absolutely accurate assessment. This was a difficult blow for the president on this House bill about refugees. There were 47 House Democrats who voted with Republicans, many of them who basically made clear they don't think this is politically worth it. You had one congressman say essentially, we have existing systems that work better than what we're talking about here, and as you say, when the national mood is not in favor of what the president wants, that makes it very, very difficult.

This is a moment in time, it may not look this six months from now, but right now there is a real fear in the country about what is going on. There is a real concern among Americans that there's going to be an attack again here. There obviously was major one in 2001. There has not been one since.

But that is very much roiling the political landscape and the way that people are talking about what otherwise in another scenario would be a refugee crisis where people would be welcomed. But that's not what's happening right now.

CUOMO: Errol Louis, we see the two top contenders on the GOP side for now, Dr. Ben Carson, Donald Trump, playing this to advantage. How so?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, they've been almost competing to see who can say the most outrageous things. Where you've got Donald Trump calling for, you know, registration of Muslims and so forth.

[06:40:02] You've got Ben Carson also saying that we should not take any refugees in whatsoever that we should create some kind of a system for tracking them, comparing them to rabid dogs and so forth. This is not going to win them votes. I think they're going to discover that the hard way when the actual voters go to the polls starting in about 70 odd days.

But this is the way the conversation has gone. It's not going to be seen I think in retrospect as a great moment for either of their campaigns, because as Maggie points us, this all could look very, very different even just a few months from now, when we start to see who's actually coming in and we see tht it's not hard-end fighters, you know, clutching AK-47s as they arrive at the airport, but it's grandmother, it's orphaned children, it's people who are sick. It's people who need medical care.

I think the whole question is going to be different. One suggestion I would have is that anybody who wants to demagogue on this issue should first be asked to find Syria on a map, and show exactly what they do know about this. I think it's very, very little.

CUOMO: Well, look, people are always entitled to opinions, despite their basis, but, Maggie, if we look at the political forensics of this, you have a lot of facts on the side of what Errol is suggesting. The actual demographic makeup, the gender makeup, what we know about the arrests of Syrian refugees in the United States and abroad, the complexion of ISIS in the United States. All of these things go in favor of giving refugees a shot, especially given the layers of vetting they undergo, which is more than most other immigrant populations get.

And yet, that case has not been made effectively by the administration, which is in part empowering the resistance.

HABERMAN: That is absolutely true. Look, there are a number of Democrats, congressional Democrats and their aides who said yesterday that they just did not find the sell from the administration on this bill to be convincing. They didn't find it a way to give them political cover, going forward. They didn't find a way where they could sort of blunt as you're seeing very loud, as Errol said, criticisms from Donald Trump and from Ben Carson, certainly.

Let's be clear. This started with governors. You have governors in this race. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey who said he would not even admit, you know, orphans, children refugees into the country. And so, when you have that as a tenor, you're not seeing a lot of pushback.

As Errol said, it may cost them votes but right now, it's not, because right now, there's a real sentiment against -- the overwhelming sentiment, not the -- not the vast majority, but certainly a majority, is trending in this direction. And so, where the Republican primary has been fought for the last nine months, actually even more than that, going back to the 2014 midterms, you have to remember, there was a lot of talk about immigration. There was a lot of talk about yoking immigration to terrorism. You saw that in 2014.

Donald Trump has blasting that message essentially with a megaphone if not terrorism specifically, suggesting illegal immigration is some kind of a security threat and this is just an evolution of that.

CUOMO: Well, look, the left isn't going to like this last point here, but here's the reality -- that the reason that this is going on in part is because there's a challenge of authority. Republican governors saying they're not going to let people in their state has no basis in law. They can make it difficult, they can stop funding, depending on their contract with the federal government with respect to Medicaid, but they don't have the legal authority but they're taking it anyway because of distrust of the administration.

The vetting is in place, but people don't trust it, because they don't trust the government ability to vet. That's part of this as well and that falls on the administration to make its case and flex its muscle a little bit differently than it has so far.

Maggie, thank you very much as always. Errol Louis, appreciate the perspective.

So, here we are in Paris, just one week since the horrible attacks here, and the concerns are ongoing. All of these operations, all of this police activity, that's good. But now, is it going to create a backlash, more attacks, more feelings of Islamophobia here in France? We'll take you through that just as important as any other part of the exercise is how this society heals after what happened.

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CUOMO: Here is a major aspect to what's going on in France that doesn't get enough attention. Give it now. There's a very large Muslim community here in France, specifically in and around Paris, and the relationship between the French and French Muslims is real and relevant to what's going on from a terror perspective. There are feelings of phobia. There are a lot of Muslim leaders feel they're being blamed with something they have nothing to do with. There's a lot of the community who looks at them for more of what they've done in terms of condemning terror.

This is an important dynamic. One of the people involved with it is Yasser Louati. He's the spokesman for the collective Muslim leadership here against Islamophobia here in France.

Yasser, thank you for joining us here on CNN.

From your perspective, what going on in France today with respect to the Muslim community?

YASSER LOUATI, SPOKESPERSON, COLLECTIVE AGAINST ISLAMOPHOBIA IN FRANCE: Right now, we are sharing our feelings between deepened grief, outrage and now total scare. The government now is treating us as the enemy within instead of us victims of terrorism and the first ally in this war against terror.

As I'm speaking to you right now, we're seeing on two raids terrorizing families the past two nights. One of them saw a 6-year- old child, receiving bullet fragments in her neck, and then the police walked away saying, sorry, wrong house. We have the police rushing the mosque, walking away without saying why they came in here first. We have over 100 people put under house arrest, again, because a certain emergency allows the government to act with such brutality without justification.

COUMO: But how -- well, the justification, they were just attacked by people who said they were doing it in the name of Islam.

[06:50:00] And that's why they're looking at these communities, that's where they found these terror teams in Saint-Denis, in a largely Muslim enclave there. There is a reasonableness why they are looking in the Muslim community, isn't there?

LOUATI: They should be looking in the fetters of our intelligence service and do you honestly think you can win a war against terrorism by terrorizing everyday citizens? The very same victims of terror?

We keep condemning, we keep saying that radicalization does not happen in our homes nor our mosques, our schools. It's the government's job to look out for these criminals, where they are in clandestine circles, and unfortunately, again, I keep saying it over and over again, every suspect was identified. I saw yesterday pictures of one of suspects, she had nothing to do with Islam. In pictures almost half naked and she was known to be someone like (INAUDIBLE) from alcohol and parties.

CUOMO: So, what do you do when someone says I'm Muslim, and I am attacking the West or attacking whoever in the name of Islam? If they say that, they have to be believed as that, even if from your perspective as a Muslim they are not Muslim. Do you understand the dynamic? They say they're Muslim.

LOUATI: OK. CUOMO: They are in and among Muslims, the authorities even believe

they may get protection from the larger Muslim community. What's the balance?

LOUATI: Which city are you from, sir?

CUOMO: Say it again?

LOUATI: Which city are you from, sir?

CUOMO: I'm from New York City.

LOUATI: If I go to New York City and raid a bar and kill 40 people, and said, I'm doing this in the name of France -- is my claim legitimate? No, it's not. Of course, Muslims are being killed by the same terrorists all over the globe and here are now --

CUOMO: More so, more Muslims are killed than anyone else by Islamists.

LOUATI: Eighty percent of victims are Muslims and hitting us here in the West because we refuse any connection with them. The problem is that the government is raging its war against terror with simply rhetoric. I thought the war against terror was declared a war ago after the January attacks. Now, they're declaring a war on the Muslim community as a whole, unfortunately.

CUOMO: I understand why you're angry. You don't want to be blamed as a Muslim for the acts of a few. It makes sense. It isn't easy because this government is playing catch-up.

What needs to happen to make it better for the larger Muslim community and to find the bad guys who are hiding among you?

LOAUTI: Let's first look at the claims made by the Daesh groups. What they say, they are blaming our foreign policy, first of all. Second, when they started killing people at the Bataclan concert hall, they said, we are doing this as retribution for what your president is doing. Muslims have nothing to do with this, but again to show the cynicism, they are using our internal social problems as a false pretext saying you are persecuting Muslims in France and therefore this is revenge for them.

And, unfortunately, we have major underlying issues leading to terror. We cannot win terrorism by just working towards the end results. Let's look at the machine behind it.

You know, one of your famous men, John Foster Dulles, he said, the measure of success is not whether you don't have a problem, it's whether you are not facing the same problem you had ten years ago.

And now, we are facing the same problem we had in the early 2000s, in the '90s, and '80s. And unfortunately we are not addressing the whole mechanism leading to radicalization, but just to prepare the upcoming elections, the local ones in December, and in one year, the presidential election. President Francois Hollande is preparing for his reelection in next year, and Prime Minister Manuel Valls wants to put himself on a list, as someone as a tough guy against terrorism.

CUOMO: Well, and given the context what's happened, that's why it's giving them political traction, because they need to keep their people safe.

Just to be clear, to end this part of the conversation, you condemned what happened here. You say that is not Muslim or Islam and are against what happened as anyone else?

LOUATI: Sir, I just came back from a funeral prayer of a Muslim victim. That's why I got late here, and I'm going back to a mosque to attend a prayer saying we have nothing to do with this. We can't do anymore than that. If the state fails to protect its citizens they cannot be minorities responsible for their failures.

CUOMO: Yasser Louati, I know that this is a frustrating, I know it is angering to you, but thank you for coming on to condemn what happened here and to ask for more unity in France. We'll stay on this story.

LOUATI: Stay safe.

CUOMO: All right. So, this is a big part of what's going on here, and now there's another part of the battle about, well, how much can you do to stop terror? How far can you go? The government, should they have access to these encrypted messages that allow terrorists to go dark? Is there a privacy issue there?

We know terrorists use this to speak, but now this privacy issue is going to come up again specifically in the United States. An expert will tell you what the state of play is, what's legal and what may change.

Stay with us.

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[06:57:37] PEREIRA: The terror attacks in Paris may have been plotted with the help of encrypted messaging allowing terrorists to communicate in ways much harder for intelligence authorities to track. Is it time for government to get better access to encrypted systems? What would that look like? What would it mean?

Let's bring in former White House cyber security czar, Howard Schmidt. Good to see you.

CNNMoney correspondent Laurie Segall is here as well.

Laurie, I'll start with you with this new reporting that we understand ISIS has been using some of these chat apps that are encrypted, things like Telegram and maybe educate us on what that is, to communicate, and maybe perhaps even plot. We don't know that they were directly linked to Paris, but there was conversation about what they were using.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNNMONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: Sure, we're just hearing about Telegram, which is an app that terror analysts are telling me ISIS is broadcasting propaganda on, they're planning direct messages and offers into encryption, making it very easy to do. In the last week, Telegram actually said they're taking down ISIS propaganda channels.

I'll say this -- you know, after what happened with the Snowden revelations on how much oversight the government had, you had a lot of companies, a lot of companies in Silicon Valley, and all around the world say we want to make the encryption easy for anyone to use. We want to build tools that anyone can be able to communicate security will on.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, encryption helps with our bank accounts. Encryption helps dissidents be able to communicate in a secure way, but it does good and oftentimes as we're seeing here, allows for secure communications for terrorists.

PEREIRA: However, then it becomes, Howard, an issue of all sorts of privacy issues that come up and it's interesting to get your perspective, because you not only were the cyber czar for Obama and Bush, but also you were at Microsoft. So, you've been on both sides of this, this debate over how we keep these systems secure for companies and regular citizens like ourselves, but also allow government to track and keep these terrorists from furthering their propaganda.

HOWARD SCHMIDT, FORMER CYBERSECURITY CZAR, BUSH AND OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Yes, it's interesting. When I was a federal agent, I've really, really wanted to ban encryption, because it affected us and our ability to investigate a case. Then I went to Microsoft thinking, boy, look at all the affects that it has on this if we allow it to happen.

Then, you start adding in the issue about, OK, we're an international company. So another country will ask us, now, we want the keys to that, and we go on and on and on.