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Bombing Suspect Charged with Attempted Murder; How was Bombing Suspect Captured?; More Details Released on Ahmad Khan Rahami. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 20, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the guy. This is the guy.

[05:58:31] JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The prime suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings is in custody.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are looking to see if this man has been operating alone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's hiding in plain sight. You would have never known.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We do not and never will give in to fear.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He will be taken care of by some of the best doctors in the world. He'll probably even have room service.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: Welcome to America. You have a right to counsel. You have a right to hospitalization. That is our system.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is a sobering reminder that we need steady leadership in a dangerous world.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, September 20, 6 a.m. in the east.

Up first, we have new details emerging about the man suspected of setting off that series of bombs in New York and New Jersey. A trail of clues leading authorities to capture Ahmad Khan Rahami within hours of releasing his photo. A New Jersey bar owner recognized him after seeing his picture on CNN.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: So the big questions remain are was he alone, did he have help, was he part of a larger organization? He certainly didn't have an exit plan. The bombing suspect was captured only miles from his home after a gun battle with police. He is now charged with attempted murder of police officers.

We have every angle covered for you. Let's begin with CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez. Morning, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Now, the man the FBI believes was behind at lean ten bombs at four locations in New York and New Jersey was uncooperative in the first few hours after his capture. But investigators are beginning to put together a picture of what may have driven the 28-year-old to carry out these bombings.

Now, a note found on the unexploded pressure cooker bomb on 27th Street in Manhattan contained hand-written ramblings that made references to past terrorists. And that includes the Boston bombers. That bomb, as well as one on 23rd Street, which did explode and injured 29 people, bears similarities to the ones that were used by the -- in the Boston Marathon bombings.

Now, law enforcement officials say that the suspect was seen on surveillance video near both locations, hauling a duffel bag. A surveillance video along with fingerprints and records of cell phones that he bought were the key pieces of evidence that led to the arrest of the suspect.

Now, at this point, investigators believe he was a lone bomb maker, but they are still looking into whether he received help from others.

Local prosecutors in Union County, New Jersey, filed the first charges yesterday for attempted murder of five police officers after the shootout that led to his arrest. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan and New Jersey are now building their case for charges that are expected in the coming weeks. The case has already led to some in Congress to renew their argument that U.S. citizens charged in terrorism cases should be charged as enemy combatants -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right. Thanks so much, Evan. We'll talk to you more about all these new investigative threads.

Ahmad Rahami was captured just four hours after police identified him and released his picture. There was a treasure-trove of surveillance video, as you just saw, to fingerprints. There was DNA at the bombing scene, and it led investigators to him. So the last break in the case coming from a New Jersey bar owner.

CNN's Ed Lavandera joins us now from the scene of Saturday's blast in New York City. Tell us the latest, Ed.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, 23rd Street here in Manhattan reopened to traffic. This was the site of where the bombing happened on Saturday night. But it was the bomb that was found four blocks north of where we're at which has provided most of the most important clues for investigators, including a hand-written note, written by Rahami, as well as a fingerprint. And it was that fingerprint that led investigators to identify Rahami as the suspect, which then led to that 7:30 a.m. release of his picture yesterday and a short while after that, the alert that went over to millions of people's cell phones across the New York City area.

And then it was that phone call from that bar owner in New Jersey, very close to where Rahami lived there in New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

And all of that unfolding rather quickly, ending in a gun battle. You can hear in this video some of the gunshots that unfolded there on the streets of New Jersey as Rahami was captured.

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LAVANDERA: So intense moments there on the street. Two New Jersey officers wounded, not with life-threatening injuries. So it sounds like they will be OK. And as far as we understand, Rahami being treated in a hospital but not cooperating with investigators -- Chris and Alisyn.

CUOMO: All right. Still early in that process, though, Ed. A lot of tools at investigators' hands that can get him to talk. We'll check back with Ed in a little bit.

So who is this guy? What's important about him in terms of this investigation? Before the bombings in New York and New Jersey, we do know that he was not on the government's radar as someone who might be radicalized.

A law enforcement official tells CNN that this would-be murderer did spend extended periods of time in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including an area that is a stronghold of the Taliban. So for that part of the story, let's get to CNN's Jessica Schneider live in Elizabeth, New Jersey. What do we know today?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Chris, Rahami lived right here with his family. In fact, their apartment on the second floor just above the fried chicken restaurant that they run.

We know that Rahami is a naturalized U.S. citizen, but he spent significant time overseas both in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he was born.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over); This is 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspect behind a series of bombings in New York and New Jersey.

JAIME REYES, FRIENDLY WITH FAMILY OF AHMAD RAHAMI: I saw him like two weeks ago. I said hello to him. I spoke to him: "How you doing? How's your daughter? How's everything?"

He looked a little stressed out but nothing of concern. SCHNEIDER: Born in Afghanistan, Rahami traveled back and forth from

that country and neighboring Pakistan multiple times.

REYES: His father wanted him to go back there and get to know his roots.

SCHNEIDER: Most recently, he took a year-long visit to Pakistan from April 2013 to March 2014. While there, a Facebook photo shows the suspected bomber and his brother, Mohammed, relaxing in traditional clothing.

[06:05:00] In 2011, Rahami spent several weeks in Quetta, Pakistan, a Taliban stronghold. It was there he married a Pakistani woman, the U.S. approving her entry into the country in 2012, but it's unclear whether she ever made it to the U.S.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was a very friendly guy. You'd never suspect this. Terrified. He's hiding in plain sight. You would have never known.

SCHNEIDER: Rahami underwent secondary screenings upon returning to the U.S. because of the area he visited but was never flagged, according to a law enforcement official.

The bombing suspect had a run-in the law before. Rahami was arrested in 2014 on weapons and aggravated assault charges, though a grand jury declined to indict him.

His family came to the country seeking asylum decades ago. Now they own a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and they live above it.

MAYOR CHRIS BOLLWAGE (D), ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY: This place has been in operation for many years. We've had issues with this location regarding code enforcement issues.

SCHNEIDER: The Rahami family claimed to be the victims of discrimination and harassment in this 2011 lawsuit against the city of Elizabeth and its police department. This suit alleging that a neighbor told them Muslims don't belong here and that they were threatened and harassed by police officers.

BOLLWAGE: There was a lot of congregation going on, a lot of people hanging out. The city council was getting complaints from the neighborhood.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And federal agents have raided the Rahami family apartment as well as their restaurant. And as you can see, still quite a police presence out here in Elizabeth -- Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, thank you for all of that background.

So let's discuss all the new threads with CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official, Phil Mudd; CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto; and justice correspondent Evan Perez. Gentlemen, thanks so much for being here.

Jim, let's talk about what this guy's capability was. Ten bombs. That's a lot. But what do you think that his level of skill was in making them?

SCIUTTO: This is the question. The key lines of investigation now are when you have this overseas travel, which by itself is not incriminating in any way -- he had family there -- did he have contacts of concern there were he might have learned something? They don't know that yet, but they're looking into it.

Also, did he have communication with terrorist organizations? They don't know the answer to that question yet. They're looking. And encryption poses a possibility. He may have, and they may not be able to find it.

But you look at him. He was able to build two different kinds of bombs. That's significant. It's hard to make these bombs work just by looking at the plans online, but his trade craft wasn't exactly brilliant here. And this is something I've heard from a lot of counterterror officials. He's not superman.

He didn't put the bombs in particularly good places. You know, not high-casualty places. He put one under a Dumpster. One didn't go off. He put the other on top of a garbage can, the one that was found later.

And he was found sleeping in the entrance of a bar. Right? I mean, so he's not superman. I think that's part of the context here. But then again, you don't have to be, to be successful as a terrorist.

CUOMO: Now, that's a point that you often make, Phil, is that the big threat isn't the hardened and well-trained foreign fighter. It's the dope who decides that he wants to be radicalized and kill people who can basically stumble through a situation and almost be deadly effective.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: That's right. I mean, yesterday's dope is today's murderer. We saw that in Oklahoma City 20 years ago. I mean, someone you would have said a month before is a bit off murdered so many people.

The problem in this case is, when you get an individual, if we find out there's not a conspiracy, from an intelligence and security perspective, you have to find a vulnerability. Talk to the wrong person, e-mail the wrong person, text the wrong person. I need something to grasp onto.

Individuals are harder to find because that vulnerability doesn't exist. The question here will be, I think, not whether there's a conspiracy but whether somebody else knew about this who should have been -- alerted authorities to say, "Find this guy."

CAMEROTA: Evan, people are trying to figure out his motive, of course, if he was radicalized, if he was just an angry guy. He had domestic violence issues in his past. He did a few small stints in little jails.

About this note that they found. Are there any clues? I mean, I know you reported that it was rambling. What did he say in there?

PEREZ: It was just basically rambling reference to previous terrorists that, you know, we've had in this country.

CAMEROTA: Boston bombers.

PEREZ: Boston bombers and others in their last few years. Now, that may be the first sign of what his motivation was. We do know that the devices, at least two of the devices did -- were similar to the ones that were used in Boston. So was that his inspiration?

We know that these guys do look at bombers and get inspired by previous terrorists. So that may be part of the story here.

As Jim said, though, I think one of the big points of focus for the investigators is going to be this travel in recent years. Was he getting some kind of training there? Before you build these types of devices, you probably have some kind of dry run to see whether or not they work. And that's the big question right now.

CUOMO: Amazing investigative work here. They turned this around very quickly. Now...

PEREZ: And luck, too.

CUOMO: Well, you know what? It's good to be lucky.

MUDD: No, no, there's no luck. To get this right.

CUOMO: Oh, I'm sorry. There's luck on our side in being in the right place to report on it at the right time. The investigators did it all through skill.

But they have the surveillance video. They did quick forensics. They used this new alert system of putting his face out all over the place. That was great.

So now they're faced with what do we do with him. Lindsey Graham -- Senator Lindsey Graham says yesterday he should be treated as an enemy combatant. What is that?

If you are a U.S. citizen and you take up arms against America, in the war on terror or any other military conflict, the law of war says we don't have to treat you like every other citizen. We can't treat you like a straight foreign fighter and do you through a military tribunal, but they could do that with him. They could keep him there. The big upside is you don't Mirandize the person. You can question them without counsel for a long time.

Do you think that will happen here? They've already charged him with things. But they'd probably get another bite at the apple.

SCIUTTO: He's already in the civil process here. Let's be frank. They've had success charging and prosecuting terrorists through the U.S. criminal justice system. Right? There are a lot of terrorists in prison.

PEREZ: A couple hundred years of success.

SCIUTTO: Absolutely. Let's go back in history. But even currently, in the last ten years.

CUOMO: So you don't think they need to do it?

SCIUTTO: I mean, it's not my judgment to make, but I think just to remind people that, yes, you have cases where -- listen, we have a president in office who killed an American overseas with a drone strike. Right? Anwar al-Awlaki. So that has happened over there.

But on domestic soil, you have successfully prosecuted terrorists who are currently in prison in the U.S., dozens of times successfully with the civil criminal justice system.

PEREZ: This is -- this is a political fight that breaks out after every one of these cases. And the truth is, I mean, there are procedures in place right now. There's the Quarles exception, as you know Miranda, which allows you -- which allows the investigators to -- to question these suspects before administering Miranda.

Now that means you probably can't use that -- that evidence in a criminal trial, maybe, depending on what the judge decides. But there is that capability there, and it is being used.

In this case, the suspect is not being very cooperative. He was scheduled for multiple surgeries yesterday, so that might have affected it. We still have a few days to see whether or not this produces any kind of intelligence and what -- really what intelligence is there to get?

CUOMO: Mudd is giving the unhappy head shake.

MUDD: Look, we are dancing around this. Let's cut to the chase with Senator Graham. Are you kidding me? Two messages here. No. 1, the adversary that is ISIS, Taliban, al Qaeda want to be considered a military adversary, not a criminal enterprise.

This is a crime. It's murder. The question to people like the Taliban is not whether we can participate with us in a war. It's whether we prosecute them as murderers.

The second thing is terrorism, I hate to tell you, in this country, is a chump change problem. If you frame this in terms of violent crime and how many people are killed in inner cities like Chicago as a result of gangs and drugs, chump change.

So before we consider turning America on a dime to put somebody in a military location, I'd say, No. 1, why give the adversary that advantage?

And No. 2, why elevate terrorism to a level that it's not at? SCIUTTO: Well, I will say when I speak to intelligence officials, I

always ask them to rank their threats. And not to minimize the threat from terrorism, because we know that it's real. But when they rank them, they put China, Russia, cyber, and then terrorism below it in terms of existential real national security threats to the U.S.

CAMEROTA: I'm glad you guys are saying this, because it is actually comforting to hear it put in that perspective, because it is so scary. The idea that 29 people out on a Saturday night can just be strolling down the street and be injured because a bomb goes off.

But there are a lot of heartening things to take away from this one in particular. How much progress we've made since 9/11. I mean, now there's surveillance cameras all around New York. And that video that we're showing this morning of him dragging this duffel bag with the pressure cooker in it, you know, there were so many clues that allowed the police to make fast work of cleaning this up, because we have learned things from 9/11, Phil.

MUDD: That's right. The problem -- and you put your on it -- that people don't focus on is they confused word "scared" with the word "threatened." Americans across the country today are not threatened by terrorism in the cities that I typically travel to, if you do this by the numbers.

If you do it by emotion, people are going to say, "I see something that I can't explain, something that's random. I see people who are injured. And therefore, I think I'm threatened." Don't make that mistake. If you would he sat down on September 12th of 2001, and you would have said, no major attack, I'd say I'd take that bet.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you. Great to get all of your expertise.

Coming up in just a few minutes, we will talk to the woman who found the pressure cooker bomb in New York City, as well as the bar owner in New Jersey that led investigators to their suspect.

Also in the 8 a.m. hour, we have Governor Andrew Cuomo to join us live with all of the latest.

CUOMO: Up next, the terror bombings are putting national security in the forefront of the presidential race and rightly so. The nominees are sparring, but what we need to hear is what would they do that is different than what's being done right now, next.

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[06:18:45] TRUMP: These attacks and many others were made possible because of our extremely open immigration system. Immigration security is national security.

CLINTON: We must remain vigilant. This is a fast-moving situation and a sobering reminder that we need steady leadership in a dangerous world. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: The facts would suggest you are not threatened where you are today by terrorism here, but boy, is it scary. And that makes it very effective in politics. And we're seeing it in the presidential race.

The nominees are dealing with it differently. They have different ideologies and different plans, but it is right front and center in the debate right now.

Let's discuss what terrorism means in this race with political reporter for "The Washington Post," Philip Bump and CNN political analyst and host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast, David Gregory.

David, terrorism also always matters, especially to the media and the political dialogue. It's usually not that high on people's lists of what they're going to vote about. But what we just saw here in New York and New Jersey certainly creates heightened expectations. What are we seeing in the race?

[06:20:00] DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I don't think we've seen an impact in the race yet. Although, we know that this is going to play to some of Trump's strengths among his supporters, which is a feeling of vulnerability, a feeling that the administration has failed in the face of mounting terror threats.

I mean, if you go back to 2004 where there is a demonstrable impact that, when Osama bin Laden made a tape days before the election to try to interfere in the election, that it kind of raised awareness and heightened fears about al Qaeda and terrorism. But that was 2004. That was the re-election of George Bush. And you had a time of heightened fear and vulnerability.

Here, I think there is a question of vigilance versus doing the kinds of things that Trump is talking about, changing the immigration system, keeping Muslims out, having a religious test, the kind of things he's talking about with regard to building a wall.

This is going to have to be the subject of a real debate about what you do that's not being done when you have something that's both scary -- an individual becomes radicalized and pulls off an attack, and very hard to track and apprehend before the fact.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil, there it is. I mean, therein lies the rub about their approach. One is -- has a sort of sober, understated approach. And one has a kind of a guns blazing approach. And different voters can respond different ways, obviously, but in terms of -- you know, Donald Trump says, "We're going to get them."

PHILIP BUMP, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Right.

CAMEROTA: "We're going to get them. We're going to get ISIS." At some point, maybe in the debate, are his feet going to be held to the fire about what does that mean, exactly how?

BUMP: Well, people have tried to do that, and he comes up with the excuse that he doesn't want to say what he's going to do, because he doesn't want to tip off the enemy, which, you know, people can evaluate on its merits.

You know, I mean, I do want to isolate what David just said there. The key phrase there is for his supporters. This is definitely something that motivates Trump supporters.

Quinnipiac had a poll last week that showed 70 percent of Trump supporters feel that they or their families will be victims of terror attacks, whereas only 30 percent of Clinton supporters feel that, right? So this was a definite advantage to Trump in a Republican primary, because those folks are worried about this issue. In a general election, I think that's less of a fact.

CUOMO: Now, this piece that you did about what Donald Jr. said, not Donald Trump, his son. OK? So not the man running, but his family has become more than just their kids. All right, they're surrogates.

So he comes out and says, "If I told you that there were three Skittles in a handful that would kill you, would you want that?" This is getting a lot of criticism and rightly so.

One, it's dehumanizing these Syrian refugees who come here. Put up that picture of that Syrian refugee boy that we should think about every time we talk about who we're talking about. We're not talking about Skittles; we're not talking about candy. We're talking about families who are fleeing for their lives. And there are a lot of kids like this. We didn't cherry pick the one kid who's been a casualty of this war. So they're not candy. So let's put the humanity to the side and just deal with the numbers.

This is what the campaign is trying to do, scare you. These kids are -- they don't look like that; they're killers. What's the reality?

BUMP: So yes, the point that Donald Trump Jr. is trying to make is obviously you have this pool, and in that pool are some bad apples, so to speak. Right? But the problem is scale.

And I actually looked at the numbers last night. There was data that was done by the Cato Institute, which is a Libertarian institute.

CUOMO: Koch Brothers.

BUMP: Koch Brothers. Exactly, right. And they estimate that it's essentially the odds of being killed by a refugee in a terror attack, about 1 in 3 billion annually. One in three billion. So essentially, you'd need is -- you'd need an Olympic-sized swimming pool and another half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool filled with Skittles. And there's three Skittles in there that are the poison. So you can eat hundreds of thousands of handfuls of Skittles and not have a problem.

And that's the -- that's the point. The point is that this is -- to the point that was made in the previous panel, this is not something that really is an existential threat on a daily basis to most Americans. People may feel that way, but the Skittles analogy is a bad analogy, because it is -- it is a much more vast population that you'd be picking from.

CAMEROTA: And yet, David, there are mistakes made, as we've seen, in our immigration system as well as who gets citizenship. I mean, at the same time that this is happening, we find out about this gross mistake of making something like 800 people citizens who had actually been pegged for deportation. There are mistakes, and Donald Trump can seize on those.

GREGORY: There's no question that he can, and the larger question is, is America still on a war footing? Because war can take different forms, right? I mean, law enforcement can target crime. You can have a conspiracy here that we may not know fully yet about other sources, other people he might have been working with.

But what we also know is this is -- this is an American who traveled to a part of the world that is -- that has radical elements, and when he returns home to the United States, in our reporting you pointed out, he got secondary screening. You don't come from Quetta, Pakistan, and they say, you know, "How was the trip? Was it professional or personal?"

You know, they're going to say, "Why were you there and who are you?" And yes, there's all kinds of profiling that goes on. Hopefully, it's not just racial, not just religious, but it's a combination of factors that would peg you as somebody that you want to keep a close eye on.

[06:25:03] But if you talk to law enforcement officials, they will tell you the danger of this kind of terrorism is how difficult it is to track. When it's individual, when it's not part of a larger plan.

CAMEROTA: Right.

GREGORY: So the argument in a debate is how do we stay, as a country, on a war footing and be true to who we are? Because there are going to be gaps in a free society when individuals want to do bad things.

CUOMO: Let's put up this -- what could arguably be the picture of the day. Let's put up...

CAMEROTA: Facebook photo.

CUOMO: All right. So that's Bush 41 that we have right there. Now, there's this speculation that we have on the screen:, is George H.W. Bush voting for Clinton? What do you make of this, Bump?

BUMP: You know, I think one of the things that I took away from the conventions was Hillary Clinton got up there, and she had Bill Clinton, obviously, and Barack Obama advocating for her. Jimmy Carter had come out and supported her.

And there are no former Republican presidents that have come out for Donald Trump. Obviously, George H.W. Bush, it's personal for him. Trump has said that George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11. He has, you know, mocked Jeb Bush from here to eternity. So I get that there's that personal aspect to it. But one of the things that people look at when they're making

presidential choices, people who have done this job, where do they land on this thing? And I think that that could potentially be significant for Hillary.

CAMEROTA: OK.

GREGORY: I do think they'll be shy about saying it publicly. They don't want to help Trump, but I'd be shocked if H.W. Bush is not voting for Hillary Clinton.

CAMEROTA: David, Philip, thank you very much. Great to talk to both of you.

All right. Dash cam and helicopter video raising questions about the deadly police shooting of an unarmed man in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The disturbing details and the video that everyone's talking about, next.

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