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Belgian Continues Search for Terror Suspects; European and American Response to Terrorism Examined; Kurds Fight Ground Offensive Towards Raqqa; Interview with Congressman Bob Goodlatte on the Politics of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 23, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- they're saying that the man that everyone is looking for, Salah Abdeslam who is, of course, apparently one of those who also attacked those various locations in Paris last week, is apparently not among those who were netted in those raids.

But I want to give you a feeling of the city, because you're absolutely right. It is on absolute lockdown. I'm standing here right in the city center. What you see over there, that is the main Christmas market in Brussels. And as you can see, it isn't happening. That's the scene we're seeing here in the Belgium capital. It's full of soldiers. It's full of police officers. There are very, very few people who are actually going out on the street because, as you know, the city is in lockdown. There's barely any public transport, no subways, or very few busses. The schools are closed.

People we are talking to say they are absolutely concerned about the situation and they hope that it won't last very much longer. The authorities here are saying they are continuously evaluating whether or not to keep it this way as it is right now, as we see more military vehicles rolling into the center of the European Union, if you will, the center of the administrative capital of the European Union. Michaela?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Fred, thank you for giving us a look at what's happening there in Belgium.

In the meantime, France launching new air strikes this morning over Syria and Iraq from their aircraft carrier deployed to the Mediterranean. And now, after meeting with French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron is ready to make the case to parliament to have the U.K. join those airstrikes against ISIS in Syria. Senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward is in Paris with more on these developments.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela. That's right, French President Francois Hollande and the British prime minister David Cameron went together to the scene of some of the worst violence in the Paris attacks, the Bataclan Theater. They laid down flowers to pay respects to the dead.

And then afterwards, the president Hollande outlined some key steps that he thinks needs to be taken to present further attacks from happening and to really try to crack down on ISIS. Number one, he said, Europe needs to strengthen its borders. Number two, he said, there needs to be a major crackdown on the trafficking of weapons, particularly heavy weapons within Europe. And, number three, of course, there needs to be an intensification of the fight against ISIS on ISIS territory in Syria and Iraq. As you said, the British prime minister David Cameron expected to take that to parliament, to try to get them to agree to pass that.

And also we know that Hollande is going to meet with various other world leaders this week. He's meeting with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. He's meeting with President Obama tomorrow. He's meeting with the German chancellor Angela Merkel. That French aircraft carrier is positioned in the Gulf and strikes have begun from it onto Syria.

Here in France, meanwhile, authorities have released a photograph of this man. Take a look. He is believed to be one of the attackers who blew himself up outside the French stadium. He is believed to have traveled along the refugee route, alongside one of those other attackers who was traveling on the believed to be fake Syrian passports. So authorities really appealing to the public, putting out this photograph on the French police's Twitter account to try to gather some more information about who this man may be.

Here in France, still very much a state of high alert. Children going to school today were greeted by security officers. They had their bags checked. Parents have been told, don't loiter or gather outside the school when you're going to drop your kids off, when you're going to pick them up. We know that all schools will have two mandatory drills they have to carry out before school breaks up for the holidays. Also told, French authorities announcing they are extending a ban on any type of public gathering or demonstration until the end of the month now. Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Clarissa, thanks so much for that reporting.

Well, President Obama is back in Washington after his nine-day Asia trip. He returns to the country that is on edge here after, of course, the Paris attacks. But he's urging Americans not to overreact, and he's promising to destroy the terror group. CNN's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns is live at the White House with more. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. The president got back here right around midnight. It was a long trip, nine days to the Philippines, to Turkey and Malaysia. While he was on the road, he was subjected to some pretty harsh criticism on Capitol Hill from Republicans, even some Democrats, about the tone he has taken in addressing the attacks. In his last address in Kuala Lumpur, trying to bring all the threads of this terrorism issue together, talking a bit about the concern of Syrian refugees entering the country as migrants, also making his point that fear is the biggest problem. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) [08:05:04] BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

They're a bunch of killers with good social media. The most powerful tool we have to fight ISIL is to say that we're not afraid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: The president is expected to continue the terror talk tomorrow when French President Hollande comes here to the White House. Hollande will also go off to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin and talk more about the very same issues. One of the big questions, of course, is whether the United States and Russia can ever get on the same page when it comes to the end game for Syrian President Assad. Chris?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Joe Johns, thank you very much.

All right, let's get some more analysis. Let's bring in CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank and CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd. All right, let's look at what we have here, gentlemen. We have fear. The fear is real. There's two different levels of it that warrant discussion right now. One is, what is going on to hurt us, and what can we do to stop it? Then, how is that or is not personified by the Syrian refugee coming to the United States?

Let's start with the tactics. Everybody was consumed with the so-called planner. Where is he? How is he? They got him. That's great. It's over. You say not only is it not over, but that guy being in Paris is a reflection of an organization scheme before this point we never imagined.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Absolutely right. Abdelhamid Abaaoud was reporting to people in the ISIS hierarchy and one of those people was a French ISIS operative believed to be the senior ringleader behind this plot, behind a whole plot stream this year against France. He's in Raqqa, Syria. He's been working all year with Abdelhamid Abaaoud to send back recruits to launch attacks, to train them quickly, so they don't arouse suspicion from western security.

CUOMO: How do they do not arouse suspicion?

CRUICKSHANK: The idea is that they take a two to three week holiday in Turkey, get quick training, then and come back. And then they're not going to be suspected as much as people going away for months.

The other thing were seeing is people not even traveling into Syria, actually meeting with these French ISIS operatives in Turkey itself, in safe houses in Istanbul or in southern Turkey, and then being turned around from there. And we saw that with the plot against the churches in Paris in April, organized by the very same network.

CUOMO: And they're an app away from being able to talk to each other without being detected, right?

CRUICKSHANK: This is the extraordinary thing. The evidence coming from these past cases linked to the network are suggesting they are communicating through encrypted messaging apps. And there is an extraordinary amount of command and control coming from the Middle East, coming from Turkey and Syria, terror by remote control, where they're instructing these recruits what to attack, when to attack, but also where to go and find the weapons.

In that church plot back in April, the ISIS recruit who met with the ISIS operatives in Turkey and traveled back was communicating. And they told him, you need to go and get the weapons. You need to go get bulletproof vests in a specific car in a specific parking garage. The key will be on the front right tire. Pick it up, wear gloves -- very, very detailed instructions, step by step, from Syria, from Turkey, for these terrorist plots.

CUOMO: Philip Mudd, you are nodding in assent, as if this analysis is stuff that you have heard and you believe, as well. Why shouldn't I be paralyzed with fear? There's no way you can stop these types of plots with any type of frequency. Why shouldn't I be afraid?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Look, if you look at 15 years of operations against these guys, they're not winning in the past and they're not winning today. They lost in the southern Philippines. They lost ground in Indonesia. They lost ground over the past year and a half in Iraq. Remember in the summer of 2014, we're talking about whether ISIS will threaten Baghdad. The Kurds have made advances against them. Furthermore, they've galvanized the Europeans to a state of war when the Europeans criticize td Americans for a decade about conducting a war on terror. The Russians are involved. The Iranians are involved. So they've lost leadership, they've lost territory, and they've lost ground against this coalition of allies. There will be setbacks, but they're not winning, Chris.

CUOMO: They just terrorized Paris, shut down life there, shut down Belgium. It's a police state for all intents and purposes. And if the aim of terrorism is to scare, on the basis of very thin facts, you have the American people, the biggest-hearted people in the world, wanting to shut down an entire group of desperate humanity. How do you not see that as them winning?

MUDD: This is an emotional response, it's not a security response. If you look at the security threat from refugees and Syrians as a security professional, it's minimal. If you want to talk about security threats, let's talk about cartel members infiltrating because they're joining with the Mexican population of immigrants. If you want to talk about gang threats, let's talk about MS-13 from El Salvador. We have one specific issue --

[08:10:10] CUOMO: Those guys want to sell drugs. They don't want to chop my head off.

MUDD: That's not true. If you look at murders along the southwest border, a lot of those murders are from cartels. We're focused because of an emotional response from short-sighted politicians on one issue. We should step back and realize that the threat we have here is not just Syrians. If you want to talk about it, some of the plotters are Belgians and French. Why don't we shut down the borders to Belgians and French? It's a ridiculous conversation.

CUOMO: I'm still afraid, Cruickshank. I know you guys know more, and I understand you understand the situation, but we just had a guy that we're told in the Paris attacks that came there vis-a-vis a fake Syrian refugee route. I don't want it to happen here. Keep them out.

CRUICKSHANK: They could exploit the refugees and they did that in the Paris attacks. A couple of the people exploited the refugee processing system in Greece to get into Europe. But if you look at it more widely, there's only been a handful of cases where there's been a nexus between refugees and terrorism.

CUOMO: Any refugees, not just Syrian.

CRUICKSHANK: And there are hundreds of thousands coming in. So it's a tiny, miniscule amount where you have this link to terrorism. Phil is exactly right about this. And Phil is exactly right that there is progress being made against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. But here's the problem, with this current strategy, even if you escalate it, they'll be there for five or 10 years. And in that five or ten year period, you're going to see a string of terror attacks like Paris.

There needs, I think, to be a sense of greater urgency from all international leaders on this issue. It's intolerable that there is essentially a terrorist state on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, not only in Syria and Iraq but also increasingly in Libya right now. There needs to be much more concerted action. There needs to be a change in strategy more than just escalating air strikes.

CUOMO: Understood. Let's end this discussion with this, Philip Mudd. There is a big truth or urban mythology going on right now about after 9/11, Donald Trump heading it up. True or false, when the towers came down there were Arabs certainly in Jersey and all over the country celebrating that they went down. You were in the game at the time. Is it true?

MUDD: I saw some elements of that, but I saw a lot of elements of people saying, what just happened here? There is a tragedy of 3,000 deaths and now our community, that is the Muslim community, will be ostracized. I think you saw episodic moments where people did celebrate, but I don't think it was symbolic or representative of an entire community. I didn't see that.

CUOMO: Philip Mudd, Paul Cruickshank, thank you very much. Appreciate the perspective, as always, gentlemen. Michaela?

PEREIRA: A group of Syrian refugees turning themselves into authorities in the south Texas town of Laredo. A family of three, as well as two men, arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border Sunday. They identified themselves to authorities. They were turned over to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for temporary detention. Their arrival comes after two other Syrian families arrived at the very same border town last Tuesday. CUOMO: A landslide in Myanmar killed more than 100 people. More

are still missing right now. According to state-run media, it happened when a huge hill of waste soil from a jade mine collapsed, 200 foot high mound of dirt fell on to the mine workers' huts as they were sleeping. The military reportedly is helping with the rescue effort.

CAMEROTA: Well, One Direction, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift some of the big winners at last night's American Music Awards. But the most poignant moment of the show might have come from Celine Dion when she performed this beautiful song in French, her native tongue, to honor the victims in Paris. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(MUSIC)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: It was during Dion's emotional rendition of the song that pictures of Paris appeared in the background. Beautiful song.

PEREIRA: How touching. Appropriate.

On the front lines against terror, CNN gets inside Syria, as close to the heart of ISIS as we've ever seen. Are those air strikes working? We'll have the exclusive story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:55] PEREIRA: France launching new airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria this morning from their aircraft carrier deployed into the region. In the last few days, both France and Russia have ramped up airstrikes against ISIS targets there in Syria.

For the first time, CNN is getting a look at the situation on the ground there, miles away from ISIS stronghold in Raqqa.

CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh made that daring journey and he joins us with his exclusive report -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Michaela, it is remarkable to see quite how close the U.S.-supported Kurdish fighters have got towards the capital of what ISIS calls their caliphate Raqqa. But here, where I'm standing in northern Iraq, the airspace has been closed. The central government saying potentially because of what they anticipate might be issues involving cruise missiles, most likely Russians, once fired from the Caspian Sea, flights are not taking off again until Wednesday morning local time.

That gives you an idea of the escalation potentially in the air war here. And that is something palpable when you're on the outskirts of Raqqa.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): After Paris, the Sinai in the crosshairs is here, Raqqa. Lost in the haze, yet they can hear it. Loud thuds, heaviest at dusk.

"Three days ago", says Bahas (ph), "we saw 40 air strikes suddenly hit just nearby. And then the French said they started bombing. We'll do our best to avenge Paris."

He, like the other young Kurdish fighters here, have lost friends, but say fighting ISIS is a duty for humanity rather than vengeance, as they man a series of trenches and outposts about 20 miles from the city.

(on camera): We have just heard the distance thuds of what could have been two air strikes. From where we're standing, here is the Kurdish front line, the trench as far as we can see. All in this direction, flat, open land until you reach the outskirts of Raqqa, the capital of ISIS' self-declared caliphate.

(voice-over): Four Russian missiles hit Raqqa this day activists said, but otherwise, it's the silence of stalemate in the desert.

[08:20:05] Weapons here are scant. This man carries the AK-47 of his friend who died eight months ago.

Out here, in the flat, open ground, with ISIS in the next village, they still scorn ISIS' leaders with welcome help.

"If French, Russian or American fighters," this commander says, "come here to fight, we will cooperate with them, as we are all fighting to clean the area of ISIS for humanity."

ISIS left their mark on the nearby Ayn al-Issa, as has the fight for it. Even the mosque littered with mines.

(on camera): The silence here is breathtaking. This is directly the road down to Raqqa, and you can just hear the complete absence of human life.

There is little in victory left to fight for.

On the way out, we meet these guys that have looked much like white knights but that's what the Pentagon hopes they are. The Syrian Democratic Forces, getting American aid to explain they've secured the major defection of Sunni tribes inside Raqqa to fight ISIS.

"We weren't expecting this large number to join, but there are now 4,000 tribesmen," he says. "When we want to move, all are ready. We've already managed to sneak weapons to them. We're moving forwards."

Western leaders call this a global fight, but here, alone, do you feel the dust, death and determination.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PEREIRA: Nick, incredible, what access you got and what you were able to see and show us. Give us an idea -- I understand there were clashes near where you were. Tell us more about that.

WALSH: Well, in the last 24 hours, Michaela, we understand from activists that it must have been ISIS trying to move towards those positions. They seem to have attacked Ayn al-Issa.

At the same time, too, we know from coalition press release that they, in fact, hit four ISIS targets in the area around Ayn al-Issa. That gives an idea really of the advantage the Kurds have there. You saw the vast amount of open space between them and ISIS. They have air power assisting them in the event that ISIS tries to move.

We don't know if the upshots of the last 24 hours worth of clashes. But that area is still very much an active front line, Michaela.

PEREIRA: So, speak to us more about those air strikes. We know the French, they have launched new air strikes this morning, which would be later in the day for you. How effective are those airstrikes proving on the ground.

WALSH: Very hard to tell really. There are obviously videos released by ISIS, which claimed that they've been hitting redundant buildings or more civilian targets. But without a doubt, there's been a vast amount of fire power dropped on Raqqa.

Activists inside do refer to the targets being key infrastructure, some of the last few hours, called it al-Shabaab club, youth club, roundabout buildings, key, large buildings on roundabouts. Hard to really understand how so many targets suddenly become available in a short period of time for the French to hit, often with U.S. assistance in terms of targeting, given the U.S. had been monitoring the city for months now looking for targets.

Some say perhaps they're hitting old targets again, or as U.S. officials suggested, actually opportunities crop up when you don't expect them.

But real fears for the civilians inside the city. ISIS don't want to let them leave much of the time. And it's very hard to tell what's happened to them in the event the ammunition is being brought there on the kind of scale we're seeing now, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes, I can imagine. So, key to our understanding of what's going on there is your reporting. Thanks so much, Nick.

Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: All right, Michaela.

The Syrian refugee crisis becoming a big political issue on the campaign trail and on Capitol Hill. Now, a showdown brewing over the House bill ordering new restrictions. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:46] CAMEROTA: The issue of whether to allow Syrian refugees into the U.S. is becoming increasingly divisive in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. The Senate vowing to block passage of the American Safe Act, which was passed by the House and calls for stronger vetting of the refugees.

Joining us now is Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He supports the House measure.

Congressman, good so much for being with us on NEW DAY this morning.

Tell me exactly where you are on the refugee issue, because I know that originally, you wanted a moratorium on all Syrian refugees. But now, you've backed off of that somewhat and just want more strict vetting. So, do you believe in letting Syrian refugees into the country over the next year?

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R), VIRGINIA: Well, I think that we should hit the pause button. We should have a delay in admitting Syrian refugees until the FBI director certifies that the screening process works and that the legislation which the House passed calls for, the FBI director and the secretary of homeland security and the director of national intelligence certify that each refugee coming into the United States is not a national security risk.

I think that is a very common sense, practical approach to addressing this problem. I'm glad that the House had a very strong, very bipartisan vote.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GOODLATTE: By the way, the Senate itself hasn't deliberated on this yet. So I hope that the senators will actually vote to allow the legislation to go to the floor of the Senate for a vote, rather than simply as Senator Reid has threatened to do, block it from being even considered.

CAMEROTA: Well, as you know, the administration believes that this is overkill. President Obama says that Syrian refugees are the most vetted group of people let in. It takes 18 to 24 months of paperwork and vetting for them to get into the country.

So, really, what more do you want to have happen?

GOODLATTE: I simply want the FBI director to certify that the process works. He testified before the House Judiciary Committee in response to my question, that there are major difficulties with vetting people from Syria because of the disarray in the country and because of the fact that there is no feasible means of communicating with the government on the basis of individual refugees. Nor is there the ability to go in and interview neighbors and business associates and so on about whether people are indeed national security risks.