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Turkey Shoots Down Russian Warplane; Russian President Denounces Turkey for Warplane Incident; Interview with Congressman Steve King of Iowa. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 24, 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] BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the only factor that seems to be clear is that at 9:24 local time an SU-24 Russian warplane crashed in the mountains of Syria near the Turkish border. There the narratives split. According to the Russians the plane was flying all the time within Syrian territory, and that perhaps they say it was brought down by ground fire. As far as the Turkish government is concerned, they say that this airplane, the SU-24 was warned 10 times over the course of five minutes not to enter Turkish territory.

Now, they have put out a path analysis map that would show that indeed the Russian aircraft did cross briefly through Turkish territory. Now as a result of that, two Turkish F-16s were scrambled and they shot it down. Now, we've seen multiple videos of this SU-24 crashing to the earth in flame, blowing up over a mountainside. We've also seen video of two parachutes coming out of that plane. Now, we have spoken to our springer in Syria who is in contact with the rebel group in that area. They say that they shot with automatic weapons one of the pilots as he was coming down. We have seen video of a dead -- what appears to be a pilot. The fate of the second pilot, however, is still unknown.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Ben, thank you so much.

Russia meanwhile calls the downing of their fighter jet a very serious incident. President Putin speaking out, calling the incident a, quote, "stab in the back." For more let's go to senior international correspondent Matthew Chance who is live in Moscow. Strong words from president Putin.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And the Russians are understandably absolutely furious that this has taken place, potentially facing the loss of two pilots, a warplane as well, at the hands of Turkey. The Russian president for the first time in the past few minutes has given his reaction to this incident, this downing of the Russian warplane. As you say, calling it a stab in the back by Turkey, saying it will have consequences, serious consequences for the relationship between Russia and Turkey as well.

Vladimir Putin stressing again that did not believe this Turkish account that the Russian had violated Turkish airspace, saying the plane was hit one kilometer, that's 0.6 of a mile, inside the Syrian border, to away from the Turkish border, and it came down four kilometers, about two miles or so inside Syria. So the Russians there with Vladimir Putin leading this rejection, rejecting this suggestion that the plane was downed inside Turkish -- or violated Turkish airspace.

Vladimir Putin also expressing his anger that Turkey immediately called for a NATO meeting, as if he said it was us who had shot down their plan, whereas in fact it was them who shot down one of ours. And so Vladimir Putin obviously extremely angry, saying there will be consequences, again, calling this incident a stab in the back by Turkey.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Thank you so much for all that background. The Russian jet downed just hours before French President Francois Hollande is set to meet with President Obama to discuss the war on ISIS. White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski is live with how the agenda for today's meeting is affected. What have we learned, Michelle?

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Alisyn. Right, well, French President Hollande is sort of on tour to step up the fight against ISIS. Just yesterday we saw him talk to the British prime minister who now says he will again ask parliament to start air strikes in Syria. So it will be interesting to see how that works out since parliament rejected it the first time around.

Here in the U.S. Hollande will talk about ramping things up, improving national security once the U.S. has continued support on that, which the White House is fully prepared to give. As for what concrete developments will come out of this, though, right now the White House isn't saying. We're going to have to wait and see what happens in this press conference in just a few hours.

But making this even more complicated is the fact that Hollande after this visit will continue on to Moscow and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and already the Russians are framing this as a positive step towards a coalition against ISIS. There already is a coalition against ISIS led by the U.S., and there is already speculation that Putin is going to try to convince France to lift some sanctions against it over what's been going on in Ukraine in exchange for Russia contributing more to the fight against ISIS.

So the White House says this isn't a competition. The sanctions will remain in place until Russia changes its behavior. The U.S. welcomes Russia's contributions and cooperation against ISIS, but it has to actually fight ISIS and not just prop up Syrian president Bashar al Assad.

[08:05:00] Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has issued a global travel alert because of risk of more terrorist attacks which the State Department believes will continue. Back to you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Everybody always says it is not a question of if. It is of when. But, boy, did the leverage just change in this coalition fight against ISIS with this plane being shot down. We'll have to see how it plays out. Michelle, thank you very much.

We do have breaking details out of France, though, this other front in the war against ISIS. U.S. intelligence now suggesting the Paris attackers conducted surveillance at some of their target locations and showed signs of the military style training. This is key to figuring out who the enemy is and what they can do. A possible suicide vest was found near Paris Monday. There are suggestions it could have been tossed by a still missing terror suspect. The U.S. now reissuing a global terror travel alert because of these threats.

PEREIRA: A man in Belgium now charged in connection with the Paris attacks. Brussels remaining at its highest alert level as concerns mount about more terrorism. Senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen is live in Brussels for us with more. Frederik?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Michaela. You are absolutely right. There still is that terror threat level going on, and certainly that means that you still have the army deployed here on the streets of Brussels as well. I want to give you a quick shot of that. As you can see behind me, those are military vehicles, and the soldiers right now on patrol. There are some armored vehicles here in the center of Brussels as well.

There really isn't very much public life going on. And that is because almost everything is still in lockdown. The subway is not working. Schools are still closed. Both of those are set to reopen tomorrow. However, the highest state of alert is set to remain in place until at least Monday. All of that of course pending any sort of developments because the authorities, as you know, are still chasing that main suspect Salah Abdeslam. They believe he could very well be somewhere here in the Brussels area. But at this point in time after 48 hours of very intense raids at various locations, they still don't have him.

They do have one person that they have now charged for terrorism offenses in relation to Paris attacks. However, they are still searching for Salah Abdeslam. And the other thing they are still searching for is possible associates of his because one of the reasons why you have this high terror alert level is of course because they fear people close to Salah Abdeslam could be plotting attacks similar to the ones in Paris right here in Brussels. So the town is still pretty much shut down. The measures are still in place, and certainly the people here are beginning to get quite edgy, hoping that things will get back to normal pretty soon, guys.

CAMEROTA: It's just incredible to see how quiet the streets are behind you, Fred. Thank you for that.

For more analysis on all of this, we're joined now by Phil Mudd. He's our CNN counterterrorism analyst and former deputy director of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, and CNN military analyst and former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Cedric Leighton. Colonel Leighton, I want to start with you. Let's talk about what we've just seen, the breaking news this morning.

Turkey says Russia was flying over its airspace, Turkish airspace. Russia says no, we were over Syrian airspace. Turkey has just released a flight plan, a graphic, that they say illustrates their point that in fact, I believe it is the red circle you see on the lower part of your screen that shows that the Russian airplane was circling and that it was in fact in Turkey and over Turkish airspace. Colonel, what do you make of what happened today?

CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Alisyn, what we could see here is actually a different read of the radar picture. The Russians could have one view of the radar picture and the Turks another view. And the Turks of course are going to act on what they see, not what the Russians see. So there is a possibility that the Russian plane was actually over Syrian air space and that the Turks mistook it for flying over their airspace. However, we'll have to assess what the accuracy of each respective sides radar is and also what other sources of information tell us about where that aircraft was.

CAMEROTA: Colonel, the Turks say they issued 10 warnings to these Russian pilots over the space of four to six minutes. Should the Russian pilots have done something?

LEIGHTON: Normally what they do, Alisyn, is they respond to those warnings. They are supposed to respond to those warnings. What this tells me is that the Russians are actually operating under radio silence, possibly under a different frequency than what the Turks are using to communicate with them, and that there was no communication between the Turkish ground controllers and the Russian aircraft.

CAMEROTA: Phil, we just had Christiane Amanpour on to talk about how we've seen Russia sort of issue these provocations to other countries over the past year. How do you see what happened this morning?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I see it entirely differently. And I'm not sure the military situation and whether somebody violated the border by a couple kilometers counts.

The issue here is Vladimir Putin for the first time in eight or nine years is in Iran yesterday talking to the Iranians. There are two countries that have leverage in the diplomatic effort to figure out the solution to Bashar al Assad. That's Moscow and that's Iran. So eventually we're going to have to talk to them aside from these military operations about whether there's a diplomatic solution.

[08:10:04] In the midst of that tap dance the Turks decide that if someone violates their territory by a couple of kilometers they are going to cause a military incident with the Russians, a sideshow that I think pales in comparison to the importance of talking to the Russians about a diplomatic solution. I think the Turks are to blame in this one. I think they decided to shoot down an aircraft because they are irritated with the Russians. But there are bigger stories here that the Turks are ignoring, and that is can we get to the table with the Russians about the diplomatic solution in Syria?

CAMEROTA: Colonel, what about that? What about the theory that the Turks over reacted?

LEIGHTON: Well, I think certainly think there are a very strong overreaction in this case as well. What I was describing was the technical aspect behind it and how possibly things could have gone wrong what. What we're dealing with here is absolutely an elevation of the diplomatic climate here and a real danger that the efforts to bring together a coalition could actually collapse because of this incident. In essence what we're dealing with a lone cowboy on the Turkish side of the borer, and that's going to create some real problems not only for the coalition but also for the effort against ISIS going forward.

CAMEROTA: Phil, Putin has just put out a statement. He has called what happened today with this plane a stab in the back, and he has said, quote, "it will have serious consequences for ties with Turkey." What does that mean?

MUDD: I think the Turks have asked for NATO to come forward and talk about this. I would be surprised if NATO did this. The Turks have stirred this up. If I were NATO I wouldn't want any piece of this. They are going to have a conversation. I think the conversation should be tough and the message to the Turks should be, look, since the ISIS war escalated you guys have had difficulty controlling your border. Over the summer you announce you're joining the coalition for air strikes. The air strikes the Turks engaged in as far as I could tell were largely to go after Kurdish targets, not really to join in the coalition. And now in the midst of diplomatic conversations among the west including Secretary of State Kerry, the Turks have decided to shoot down an aircraft. If Turkey thinks talking to NATO is going to get NATO to say, hey, we'll back you against the Russians, I hope they have a surprise coming.

CAMEROTA: So Colonel, NATO, as we're talking about, has this emergency meeting to address this today. If it turns out that Turkey did overreact, what does NATO do?

LEIGHTON: NATO basically censures Turkey. And they will probably do it privately. But what they won't do is they won't go in and support Turkey. So that will be the public manifestation of this. What they'll do is they'll say thank you very much for describing this. And what they will also try to do is they will try to develop some kind of a coordination mechanism beyond what we currently have with the Russian air force in Syria. So that is really going to be the hopeful outgrowth of this so that this is de-conflicted and as much as possible incidents of this type don't happen again.

CAMEROTA: OK, so Phil, all of this set against the larger backdrop of all of these countries trying to have conversations and come together somehow to fight ISIS. President Hollande meeting with President Obama today. Does this incident over the skies in Turkey change something?

MUDD: I think it does. There are a couple things in the past few weeks that have changed this conversation. The backdrop is these obviously the huge refugee flows into Europe. In the past few weeks you have a significant change in ISIS. Just months ago we had ISIS passively saying to potential terrorists around the world, stay in place and do something. The incident in Paris indicates that now ISIS has changed. They are training people to come over to the west to stage attacks. And meanwhile, with refugees, with terrorism, you have the incident in

Turkey suggesting the likelihood of some conflict between a NATO ally and the Russians is increasing. I think the conversation between Hollande and Obama has to include not only what do we do about ISIS but how do we escalate conversations about a difficult diplomatic solution? Because the White House doesn't want to engage with the Russians on this, but the reality is there is one country has a clue to the future and a key to the future, and that is Moscow. The answer they're going to give is an answer the White House doesn't like. It's about continuity for President Assad. But at some point you have got to figure how to shut down the civil war. Otherwise this chaos is going to continue.

CAMEROTA: Colonel, what do you think will come out of White House today?

LEIGHTON: Well I think what we're going to see is the discussions between President Hollande and President Obama are going to result in some kind of an agreement to further intensify intelligence sharing. And I think that Hollande is going to be that mediator between Washington and Moscow. And I think Phil is right in this sense that this is going to be a key element of the next diplomatic efforts in this arena. What we have to do is establish a mechanism to survive in the Middle East and to have a basic structure, basic international that is developed out of all of this. And to do that the Syrian civil war must be put to an end, and that's where this has to come to.

[08:15:05] CAMEROTA: All right. Colonel Leighton, Phil Mudd, thank you so much for both your expertise.

MUDD: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right. A big part of that equation, the Syrian refugees. Now, the House has passed a bill to keep them out. The basis? Potential risk. And do the facts support that?

One lawmaker says yes, there are poisonous grapes in there. He joins us to make the case, next.

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CUOMO: Welcome back NEW DAY.

Syrian refugees -- desperate, innocent or terrorists in waiting. The House passed a bill blocking refugees effectively. Polling shows you agree. Now here's the question: does the fear match the facts?

Congressman Steve King represents Iowa and sits on the House Judiciary Committee. He joins us now.

Always good to see you, Congressman.

We get a headline today that Canada says, well, we're going to let them in. I mean, that's what it's about. We have a humanitarian spirit. There's risk in all things. We believe there's less risk here.

Why doesn't that logic carry through to the United States?

REP. STEVE KING (R), IOWA: Well, my objection to the bill itself is you cannot vet the people that come out of the terrorist sponsoring countries and particularly Syria and to a bit of a lesser degree Iraq. You can't do a background check on them. They don't have a legal existence, many of them in their home country. So, we don't have any database to check.

And on top of that we got sent down the wrong path on this.

[08:20:02] It isn't about whether we can vet them or not. We simply can't. But we know that if we bring in people from that part of the world, some of them will become terrorists. If they aren't when they arrive a number of them will be afterwards. So why should America take this on when it's actually cheaper to help them in foreign countries and they would assimilate better into the neighboring Muslim countries where many of them are today?

CUOMO: All right. Point to push back. One, we're only dealing with the overflow, as you know. The overwhelming majority of those who are fleeing Syria have gone to neighboring countries. We're taking but a fraction.

Two, if you are going to make the case that well if we can't vet them completely they shouldn't get in, then there are a lot of other populations you should start with before the Syrian refugees, because you have less vetting of other groups of immigrants and you have much less favorable statistics of what happens once they get here. You know Syrian refugees, you can almost point to not a single fact that has been shown to make them a threat in this country.

KING: Well, I would say instead of that, we have at least 72 in this country that have been convicted of or charged with terrorism that the administration refuses to give the Senate inquiry, the immigration information on them.

And we know that in the last three or four days, up to 14 Syrians have been caught trying to sneak across into our southern border, some of them with false identification papers. We know that ISIS has directed them to infiltrate into the refugees.

And, by the way, we also have the imams that are preaching in the mosques, including the in Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem for migrants to two flow into Western Europe, flow into the United States, build your enclaves there. Don't co-mingle with the broader population. And spread their version of civilization in these countries.

There's not assimilation taking place here. And no one has shown me an example of people from that part of the world that have assimilated into the broader society.

So, what we're about here is building a culture in America that honors Americanism. And people that want to come here to become American and then can co-contribute to country, we should welcome them. CUOMO: Seven hundred and eighty-five --

KING: But if we can't get them to show signs that they'll assimilate, they're not.

CUOMO: Seven hundred and eighty-five thousand refugees have come into the United States since 9/11. About a dozen have been arrested or removed because they were involved in terrorism. That's 1 in 100,000 chance of someone being affiliated with terror.

So, certainly, you do have refugees coming to do exactly what you call Americanism, which is coming here escaping the desperate situation, raising their families. I just don't see the factual basis for excluding an entire class of desperate people. Isn't there another way? Isn't there a compromise?

And if we don't do that and do what this bill suggests? Aren't you afraid that you're playing into ISIS's hands and showing you are afraid and showing that you are against these people who are desperate? Doesn't that help ISIS?

KING: I think it is the other way. No, we're not afraid and we can help them more in countries where they will assimilate better.

But here's a more important part of this -- first, Chris, I should say that I've gone into these enclaves, in places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Little Mogadishu that they refer to it as in Minneapolis. I've gone into the center of these enclaves all over Europe. From Stockholm to Netherlands to Brussels and walked through those neighborhoods and I've gone down to see the refugees out to the refugee camp just outside of artillery for ISIS, just within the last two weeks.

I've watched and walked with the migrant flow that is 6,000 a day coming out of Serbia and Croatia and into Germany. So, I see this.

But what we can do more so is, we need duty to end these civil wars, as we heard in the previous segment, but we need to more importantly than that, we need to defeat the caliphate and when that happens, create an international safe zone so that Assyrian Christians and Chaldean Christians and the Yazidis can go back home again and people can live in their native lands. And that is going to take a coalition of Kurd, Sunni Arabs in the al Anbar region, and it's going to take special forces, U.S. Special Forces on the ground and unlimited military equipment and supplies as far as all the Kurds think they need and unlimited air support.

This can be done. The map will be redrawn. But the people who live in those areas of their native lands can go back home. And that's the best thing we can do for them. It's the best thing we can do for stability in the world.

CUOMO: But hasn't the promise of America always been if you are looking for a better life, let alone if you are running for your life, that you can come here? And the vetting, as you know with these refugees, no group coming to this country gets vetted more than these Syrian refugees. Why can't they find a home here as well?

KING: Well, Chris they are talking about 10,000 out of maybe 4.5 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees and maybe another 10 million together, roughly 15 million was the largest number I've seen on this.

[08:25:05] It is a small amount. It is a drop in the bucket, but we're in a new world. We have global terrorism that wants to kill people who are not like them.

They believe it's their path to salvation in killing us, especially Christians, but -- the infidels as they say, and they believe that they go to heaven if the can kill us especially if they're killed as a martyr.

CUOMO: We understand the madness.

KING: We haven't dealt with this before.

CUOMO: We understand the madness. The question is, is the solution to blame the victims?

Representative, let's leave it there for now because we have some breaking news out of Paris. I appreciate --

KING: If you can identify the true victims, Chris.

CUOMO: Understood.

KING: Thank you.

CUOMO: Congressman King, thank you. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Appreciate having you on NEW DAY.

We have a quick programming note here and we also have some breaking news. Remember, tomorrow on NEW DAY live, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush will be here. OK?

So, over to you guys.

CAMEROTA: OK. Chris. Thank you. We do have some breaking news.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Alisyn, go ahead.

CAMEROTA: OK. This is coming -- the wires are saying that there's been a security alert, pretty significant. A number of metro subway stations in central Paris have been temporarily closed. Trains are passing through the station without stopping at this point.

We will have a live report. We're sure what has prompted this action, but we have our reporter, of course, is in Paris. So, we will get her up as soon as we can.

The Place de Republique has been briefly evacuated. That's, of course, where Chris and I were reporting from all last week. So, we will bring what has happened in Paris as soon as we have more information. Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin says the downing of the Russian jet is a stab in the back. While a Turkish official warns the world not to test his country's patience.

We have a latest on that escalating story, next.

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