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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Was New York Next Stop for Bombing Suspects?; Russia Raised Concerns about Bombing Suspects' Mother
Aired April 25, 2013 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Erin. Thanks very much. You were live in Times Square. I'm here in Boston. The big question tonight, where you and I are both standing, was New York next or was a deadly sequel to the marathon bombing already planned for people here in Boston?
At this hour it is a very open question, we should point out. Top officials now weighing in on both sides, starting this afternoon with this press conference.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK: Last night we were informed by the FBI that the surviving attacker revealed that New York City was next on their list of targets. He told the FBI apparently that he and his brother had intended to drive to New York and detonate additional explosives in Times Square.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: New York was next. Now the suspect reportedly said so in a second round of questioning with interrogators. He says that is -- that's where he and his brother were heading, not to party, as he first reportedly said in the first interrogation, but to use their remaining explosives where they'd do the most carnage.
Now that's one view and it's apparently shared by the New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. Now that said the other comes from someone also in a position to know things, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Republican Mike Rogers. Here's what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MIKE ROGERS, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: What we know happened is that we do believe they had a plan for another attack. They had actually built the devices and not used them, but from the investigators I have been talking to, they believe it was going to be probably more likely in the Boston area. They needed to generate some cash, the hijacking, the theft of the credit -- or the ATM cards and that kind of thing, the robbery, all of that was designed to get them ready, we believe at this point, to go to New York.
It's not clear to me that they were actually going to set those devices off even though they had them with them. So it certainly would make it a plausible thing to have happen, but it's more plausible to me that they were going to do another event in the Boston area and they were hiding out in New York City was their plan.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Chairman Rogers also said there are, quote, "persons of interest that we are very concerned about," talking in the present tense. Whether that means here or in Russia, where the suspects have roots, he would not definitively say. He suggested that some of the focus would be here, where the two suspects obviously lived.
When asked point-blank whether these persons of interest are either here or in Russia, the conversation turned toward cooperation with Russia and suggesting that authorities there are not providing cooperation with the American counterparts.
Now also in Russia, late word that the suspect's father has been taken to the hospital. He was supposed to travel here today or tomorrow, but again, a lot of the statements being made by the parents are pretty unreliable and contradictory.
The mother, meantime, called a press conference, called it all a setup, says her sons did not do this. She later sat down with CNN's Nick Paton Walsh for an interview. She had more to say about the shadowy man known only as Misha, his influence not only on her son but also herself.
We'll dig deeper on that on the Boston or New York question, whether the surviving suspect was read his Miranda rights prematurely there by shutting him down. Jeff Toobin and Mark Geragos are going to weigh in on that a little bit later tonight.
And Sanjay Gupta looks at what life is like now for all the people who lost limbs in the bombing. The fresh steps they take as they try to learn to walk again. In the case of Adrianne, as you just saw there, to dance again.
Another very full night starting with Mary Snow in Times Square in New York.
Mary -- Nick Paton Walsh is also in Russia, in Dagestan, former Massachusetts Homeland Security advisor, Juliette Kayyem, she is currently a "Boston Globe" columnist. And on the phone, joining us, is former Homeland Security advisor Fran Townsend, who currently sits on the Homeland Security and CIA External Advisory Panels.
Appreciate all of you being with us.
Mary, Mayor Bloomberg isn't the only one saying that Manhattan was a target for the brothers. Who else?
MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Correct. Ray Kelly, the police commissioner, as you mentioned, both of these New York City officials were briefed by the FBI about this, and with the information that they were given, Anderson, they've said they were told that there was talk about targeting Times Square and the way the police commissioner described these discussions, he said that these were spontaneous discussions that came about apparently from the information that the FBI relayed to them is that the brothers had talked about this after they were said to have hijacked that Mercedes SUV.
And you know, it's a very different account than what the police commissioner gave just yesterday. He relayed information saying that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had said that he was going to head to New York City, in his words, to party, and asked about why there's such a dramatic change between one day to the next, the way he described it, he said he was told that there were two rounds of questioning and that the suspect had given this detail about Times Square during that second round where he was described as being more lucid and giving much more detail -- Anderson.
COOPER: Mary, there are also pictures showing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in New York, but they seem to be just sort of him with a bunch of friends, correct? Obviously New York officials still want to learn more about it.
SNOW: Right. You know, and you know, there's no indication at this point according to officials that there's any link, but officials are investigating this further, and what the police know is that he came to New York twice last year, in April of 2012, and then again in November of 2012, and they have obtained that picture.
The NYPD is investigating his past trips here and people he may have been with, and they say they have identified some of the acquaintance in that picture. Again, not sure if there's any link, but they are investigating this.
COOPER: Right. Juliette, I mean, does it surprise you at all that there are these competing narratives you have from Mike Rogers, you have from New York officials?
JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Not at all. I mean, I think what we knew after such a long fire fight, in fact such a long week, that there would be different impressions of what happened. It isn't that someone is lying and someone is telling the truth. It is there are so many different inputs so the commissioner is hearing from one group of people, the mayor, another.
I actually think these stories are probably not as inconsistent as we think. It is very likely, and this is what I've always thought, that they did plan on doing something more in Boston. There was no other explanation for why they stayed here. They then panic, because they're identified, they try to get a car, they try to take the money through the ATM card, and they come up with some scheme, OK, let's get to New York. It's possible that both stories are true.
COOPER: New York officials do acknowledge that the whole New York story is -- was sort of an impromptu thing.
KAYYEM: Right.
COOPER: Not something that they believe was preplanned. KAYYEM: Right. And so the fact that he's becoming more lucid, willing to tell things, may have something to do with he's sort of realizing, I have between, you know, choosing the death penalty or possibly a life sentence. So this may be the consequence of these interrogations, and this is going to happen for weeks to come.
I mean, we've seen this in crises before, that the story evolves, that you can't say that person was lying or that was false. It's literally the information comes out more clearly over time.
COOPER: I want to go to Nick Paton Walsh in Dagestan.
Nick, we're also learning new details about the mother. Apparently she was also placed on the CIA watch list. What do you know about this?
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, she not actually referred to that herself at all, of course. But I mean, we can imagine the context in which it may have happened. It is clear that she and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, her eldest son, the alleged Boston bomber, chose a path towards a more devout strand of the Muslim faith, round about the same time.
She told me, in fact, she was influenced by him to cover up her hair and in fact, both felt a sense of shame when this character Misha, a family friend in Armenia, their lives converted to the Islamic faith and whose life came to their house. He was so much more devout and he seemed to have, quote, "opened their eyes to the pure nature of the Islamic faith they should have been following." So a definite time when they both moved in the same direction.
And then we have the FBI turning up at some point and she recounts to me being absolutely clear that they're concerned about Tamerlan's radical nature of his belief, that's her own words, and saying that he should be monitored. So, obviously, a switch there towards the devout Muslim faith, interest from the FBI and these both seem to tally with both the son and the mother at the same time, choosing to go in that direction of their religion -- Anderson.
COOPER: And it seems not just more devout, we know because of a blog posting from a young woman who actually was getting facials in that home from the mother and had been for years, who said the mother started spouting conspiracy theories about 9/11 and who was really behind it, and said that they came from her elder son, who had gotten them off the Internet.
Fran, it does seem like U.S. officials were suspicious of this family, this list that Tamerlan and his mother were on, you say it's really just a place holder. I mean, how significant is it that their names are on this list? Because last I heard from Tom Fuentes there is something like hundreds of thousands of names on this list.
FRAN TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Many hundreds of thousands, Anderson. And oftentimes what the list has become, the size of it really tells you something. This is a -- this is a list of names of people that the FBI or other law enforcement agencies are interested in learning more about, especially travel patterns. Are there -- are there suspicious travels to various countries, for what length of time.
This is a means -- having them on that list is a means of gathering additional information and insight into the individual. Who did they travel with, where did they go, how long did they stay, so that they can begin to sift through what's important, what kind of facts, where should they look for additional information.
The fact that they were both on there is concerning, and it's clear that the FBI wanted to gain additional information on both of them on whom they had concerns, the mother and Tamerlan.
COOPER: Right. Chairman Rogers also said about the investigation that the Russians are not cooperating which is something our Nick Paton Walsh has also been reporting on for quite awhile. I just want to play a little bit of what Rogers said. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROGERS: There are persons of interest that we're very concerned about, and again, the Russians can be very, very helpful, we think, in helping us make that determination about who they talked to there, who they may have communicated there, who they may have then communicated with back in the United States.
So that -- we're still working on that piece of it, the investigation is. I argue we can save ourselves a lot of time if we can get the Russians to cooperate fully and I hope they do that. I think it would be the right thing to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Juliette, from your time at Homeland Security, does that surprise you, that they wouldn't be cooperating?
KAYYEM: Not at all. And what the United States government have to be careful of now is that we're not doing Russia's bidding. Right? They have a Chechen problem. We want to make sure we don't get involved with their own internal dynamics. So the fact they're not totally cooperative is not surprising. It's happened in the past. Many countries say something publicly but privately they're not cooperating.
Look, this is a country that when we passed the statute about human rights violations, they decide that they're not going to send any of their orphaned children to adoptive families here in the United States. This is a rough relationship between the United States and Russia. And not clear that this is going to solve it.
COOPER: Right. All right. Juliette, appreciate it. Fran, Nick, Mary, appreciate all your reporting. Juliette is going to stay with us.
I want to talk next about the questioning of a friend of the younger suspect and what that may mean. Drew Griffin has got late word on that. And also, the arrest of two other people, we'll tell you what we know and how we know it.
Later, the first responder who tried to keep Martin Richard's family alive. Martin Richard's sister, badly wounded -- part of her leg was missing. He ran, he was off duty, this is Matt Patterson, a firefighter and a paramedic, he was having a drink with his girlfriend when the blast went off. He ran, he saw the little girl, and he saved her life.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MATT PATTERSON, HELPED BOMBING VICTIM: I don't know if it was just tunnel vision or fate or whatever it was, but I just looked and focused and I just saw this one child in the middle of the street, just sitting there with this dazed, shocked look.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Hey, welcome back. We've got a lot of breaking news tonight. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is casting doubt on the notion that Times Square was the alleged marathon bombers' next target. He also suggested there are more people of interest in the case.
Now we don't have an answer to that tonight. We do know that authorities arrested two people in the area last Friday and have questioned a 20-year-old who tweeted with the younger suspect.
CNN has learned that at least five FBI agents talked to him over the weekend. Drew Griffin has learned more about him as well as the two others who were arrested last Friday and actually remain in custody.
What are we learning?
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT: I think this speaks to the exhaustive nature of the investigation going on. We discovered a tweet exchange between a high school friend of Dzhokhar and this man talking about fireworks back in March. By the time we got to this teenager's house, he's actually 20 years old now, his father told us that days ago, five FBI agents came to the home in Chelsea, questioned his son about these tweets and said they were questioning many high school friends about them.
We also know that many of the college friends have been questioned extensively about every tweet, every phone call, every movement they know about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
COOPER: And overlooked in all this is these two other people who -- are they still in custody? They're from Kazakhstan originally. What do we know?
GRIFFIN: There's been a lot of speculation on who these guys are. Not a lot of information. Now we know that last Friday when there was a very, very, quote-unquote, heavy-handed raid at this apartment at the University of Massachusetts near Dartmouth, that they thought Tsarnaev was there, and they had very good reason to believe that, because Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and one of these Russian speaking Kazakhstan students, shared the same cell phone, Anderson. So they believed they had a ping, they had located him through this cell phone.
Those two students have been arrested on immigration charges, are being held in the abundance of caution. We're told so far they have nothing to do with this plot, but they are kept in custody until they can drill down and find out exactly what they know about the movements of these two Tsarnaev brothers before and after the bombing took place.
COOPER: Do we have an idea how long they're going to be held or what happens if they're on immigration charges, do they get deported?
GRIFFIN: We don't. You know, immigration charges are not a big deal. They should be out by now waiting whatever kind of hearing they might have. But we're told that this is somewhat of an exception. There is, again, abundance of caution is the phrase that we're learning from the government official.
COOPER: Right.
GRIFFIN: And they're just going to hold on to them until they get as much information as they need for the investigation of the Tsarnaev brothers and also to make sure they had nothing to do with it.
COOPER: I want to -- I want to dig deeper now into the influences on the older and younger suspect as we know them, how they may have become radicalized, particularly the older brother. Who if anyone might have helped along the way here or back in Russia.
Our other breaking news, by the way, their mother has now been added to a federal terror data base. Juliette Kayyem is back with me here in Boston. Also joining us is Maajid Nawaz, a former leader in the Global Islamist Movement and now a human rights and democracy activist, and former CIA officer Bob Baer join me as well.
Bob, the fact that these two students from Kazakhstan continue to be detained, again, sources telling CNN that they are not believed to be linked to the marathon bombings, but that they knew the younger suspect and are still being held and questioned, what do you make of that?
ROBERT BAER, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, the more I hear about this case, the more it's apparent that they didn't act alone. You look at the explosive devices, they're more sophisticated than we were first told. They may have been detonated by phones and a special app, micro circuitry, the fact that the FBI is expanding its detentions. They're looking for accomplices and they're certainly looking for accomplices in Russia.
You know, we have to look at the FSB, who first notified the FBI about them. It's typical for the FBI, you know, to get a note from the Russians but never getting a follow-up, that doesn't mean the Russians aren't concerned. It's just their habit. They have been doing this way back to the '90s.
We also have to consider the possibility the Russians know a lot more, for instance, a lot of people are speculating whether they approach Tamerlan when he was in Dagestan and had some sort of connection with him, told the Russians don't worry about it, same thing he told the FBI, fooled them. So, you know, it's just the mystery seems to deepen rather than to get clearer.
COOPER: Maajid, is there a common path toward radicalization that we have seen in other people who have attempted terror attacks in the United States or around the world? I mean, is there a sort of commonality in experience or events that lead them down this path?
MAAJID NAWAZ, DIRECTOR, QUILLIAM FOUNDATION: There's no one fixed formula. But what we can say is that there are certain factors which are very easy for us to identify. And I say factors, not causes. Those factors begin with a sense of grievance, whether real or perceived. They move on to what I call an identity crisis. In this case, the Tsarnaev brothers would have decided to question their American-ness and decided to affiliate more with what they believed was the global concept of the Islamic ohm, of a global Muslim community. Their allegiance primary was then owed to that.
And then the third factor that I talk about is charismatic recruiters, in the plural, whether they be online or in the -- in the real world. And I'm quite certain that the older brother during his extended trip to the North Caucasus met with some of those charismatic recruiters. And the final one is the global jihadist ideology and really crucially it's that ideology that moves a potential recruit from being initially agitated by a local grievance to beginning to internationalize, globalize his cause, and most importantly, define his target as global.
Let's keep in mind that the real enemy of the Chechens are in fact the Russians, not the Americans. But it's only by adopting that ideology does the target become truly global and strategic in that sense and it becomes -- it becomes more important to then attack America or the West, because of course that's the so-called real enemy of this global war between Islam and Muslims as they like to believe exists.
COOPER: Maajid, I mean, you have a fascinating history, and obviously, as you point out, one of the many remaining questions is what the older brother was doing when he was back in Russia for those six months. And there's a lot of that timeline we simply don't know. Before disavowing your Islamist beliefs, you actually spent time in a prison in Egypt with a bomb maker from Dagestan.
How -- what did you learn? I mean, what do you make of this guy spending six months in Dagestan? What are the big red flags to you?
NAWAZ: Well, you see, this man that I spent time with had traveled from Dagestan through Afghanistan to Egypt so that he could cross the Rafa Crossing and go to Gaza to train Palestinians in how to make bombs and set up al Qaeda cells in Palestine because of course they are very weak in that region of the world. And what I learned from this man in my discussions with him is the similar pattern, the same pattern we see with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and that is that somebody adopted a globalist outlook, somebody who fundamentally went through a shift in identity, who though he was initially motivated by a local cause, no longer cared for the grievance that belonged in Chechnya against the Russians, and so we've got to recognize that though we are able to.
And I believe that President Obama's policy of increased drone strikes at a frequency far higher than President Bush ever attempted, I believe that's -- it's misplaced because though we're able to take up the leadership of these groups, unless we recognize that the real target should be this ideology that convinces young people to upend themselves and travel across the world and attack people that have got nothing to do with them on behalf of people that have got nothing to do with them.
The younger brother, let's remember, said in his interview that he was fighting on behalf of the Afghans and the Iraqis. He's probably never visited those two countries, yet somehow, he felt that he owed more allegiance to Iraq and Afghanistan than to the very country that adopted him. And unless we recognize that the target must be these ideas and not the men leading the ideas, we'll fall for this age-old problem that every terrorist we kill, we're creating and replacing them with 10 more.
And I think the issue is we must begin to encourage and popularize a counter narrative on the grassroots that truly places the facts before the eyes of these young Muslims, the facts such as that more Muslims have died from Taliban attacks in Pakistan than from American drone strikes.
COOPER: Yes.
NAWAZ: But unless we start recognizing that, we won't -- we won't be able to popularize this idea that there is no global war against Islam and Muslims, that the real challenge we have is in pushing back the terrorist ideology.
COOPER: Juliette, that is one of the frustrating things, when you hear, you know, somebody like Dzhokhar Tsarnaev talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean -- more Muslims are being killed by Muslims in those countries than -- and you don't hear a young jihadist talking about that.
KAYYEM: Right. That's exactly right. And so I think everyone agrees that those six or seven months in Russia are significant to find out what happened because there's now two different story lines we've been talking about a lot. One is that he met up with international groups and planned an attack on a U.S. city.
The other is that he became more radicalized, came back here, and met with his brother, worked with his brother to plan the attack here.
I want to make -- both are scary. There's no question, both are scary. But the solutions are different. So if one is a foreign -- you know, a foreign terrorist organization, we're going to have diplomatic concerns, we're going to have CIA concerns, all sorts of different tactics to deal with it. If it's a domestic homegrown issue, then we have a lot -- we have to figure out what's going on here, that this is -- that this is happening. So both stories are now out there. Russia is key, what happened in the six or seven months, I'm less certain than Bob that it clearly is one way or the other. I just want to put both of those out there because the solutions are different.
COOPER: Bob, it is -- just very briefly, it is interesting, Bob -- I mean, do you believe family dynamics play a role in radicalization for somebody here in the United States? I've read a study that said often there's a precipitating event within a family, perhaps in this case it would be the divorce of the parents, that often kind of -- is the trigger point that sort of sends a younger person kind of down a more radical path.
Do you buy that? Do you buy that family dynamics play a role here?
BAER: Oh, absolutely, that whole family was alienated from American culture. I mean, they were embraced by it, they were asylum seekers, and they were -- lived off the state but the fact is they weren't going to make it, what they thought, they didn't have the same significance they would in Chechnya.
And going back to Maajid's point, there is a charismatic leader probably where -- in the chain. You just -- I've never seen anybody from the get-go pick up ideology from the Internet. They want to hear their opinions validated by somebody who knows what they're talking about, whether it's this Armenian convert or somebody in Chechnya or Dagestan.
And it is a family dynamic and I think that this Dzhokhar is probably protecting somebody in the family. That's why his story is jumping around and said, I did it on my own, you know. He's sedated. I don't think he's entirely telling the truth.
COOPER: Bob Baer, good to have you on. Juliette Kayyem as well. Maajid Nawaz, it's great to have you on the program. We definitely want to have a longer discussion coming up.
Coming up later tonight, the case against the bombing suspects. The chairman, as I said, of the House Intelligence Committee says that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stopped answering questions once he was read his Miranda rights and he wants to know more about whether the legal proceeding prematurely cut off the answers that federal authorities were getting.
We're going to get into those legal issues with Jeff Toobin and Mark Geragos next.
Also tonight, ahead, I'm going to speak with one of the heroes, an off duty firefighter and paramedic who saved a 7-year-old girl, the sister of Martin Richard who died in the attack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PATTERSON: I ran over to this little girl who initially I thought was a boy. I knelt down, I, you know, expressed, you know, hi, I'm Matt, I'm here to help you. I'm a paramedic. I was, like, you know, we're going to be all right, we're going to be OK.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking for more information about the timing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's first court appearance, which happened Monday at his hospital bedside.
Now before the judge came to the hospital, federal agents had been questioning him without reading him his Miranda Rights, as you probably know under an exception to the rule that kicks in when authorities think there's an imminent public safety threat.
On "THE SITUATION ROOM" with Wolf Blitzer today, Representative Mike Rogers said he's concerned about why that process was stopped and he wants more information. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPRESENTATIVE MIKE ROGERS, CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: He's arrested Friday night. The magistrate, the judge, intervenes into what is a legal activity, the interview that was deemed so by a U.S. court decision, and that is the public safety exception to Mirandizing.
So you have to think about it. He's going through, he's obviously seriously wounded. He's losing a lot of blood. He has to get the medical attention as early on in that weekend, the judge calls out and says I'm going to show up for this particular event. That is highly unusual.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So the question is what could this mean for the case against the suspect? Joining me now is CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin and also criminal defense attorney, Mark Geragos.
Jeffrey, what do you make of Congressman Rogers suggesting that Tsarnaev, that he received his Miranda Rights too soon? Should Mirandizing him have been held off for more questioning?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: You know, Anderson, we have one legal system in this country and it was a good enough legal system to convict Timothy McVeigh and Charles Manson and Zacarias Moussaoui. It will be good enough to convict Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
I'm mispronouncing his name, but you get the idea. The idea that he thinks you have to create this whole new exception just for him is absurd. He was treated the appropriate way. He was questioned to see if there was any imminent threat to anyone out there in the world right now, and then he was given his Miranda Rights. That's normal. That's appropriate. There's no reason to think it should have been done any other way.
COOPER: But Jeff, the congressman is suggesting that since he was Mirandized, he has not cooperated with authorities. Now, that is in fact the case the most important information he gave was before he was Mirandized, none of that is admissible in court, correct?
TOOBIN: Well, not necessarily. Under the public safety exception, the court will weigh whether that statement was voluntary, and that's a complex inquiry and I don't know how it will turn out. But yes, it may be true that he stopped cooperating after he got his Miranda Rights, but you know what, this is the United States of America.
We don't force people to talk if they don't want to talk. They have certain constitutional rights. He's an American citizen, he was arrested within the United States, and if he doesn't want to talk, we're not going to waterboard him.
We're not going to torture him. We're just going to prove our case some other way, and there certainly seems to be an abundance of evidence to prove the case that this guy is guilty, so I don't see what the problem is here.
COOPER: Mark, as a defense attorney, what do you make of -- I mean, it's got to be an uphill battle for the public defenders who are assigned to Tsarnaev's case. How would you even go about defending someone like this with all the apparent physical evidence, the photographic evidence and the like?
MARK GERAGOS, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Look, I've got to echo first what Jeff just said. This is -- the idea that this congressman is on the intelligence committee and displaying such a lack of intelligence is mind-boggling. This is an American citizen on American soil committing crimes allegedly against other Americans.
You know, take a look at the results in Guantanamo. They haven't exactly been spectacular for the prosecution in the results that they've had. And take a look at the district court and the results they get where people go away forever or get the death penalty and it's very quick.
You get appointed a public defender and as you just said, Anderson, this seems like an uphill battle, yes, because they have a mountain of evidence. Now, what is the Miranda Rights and what does reading the Miranda Rights really mean?
It means that if you don't do it, then what is said may or may not be admissible. Well, they don't need that. They don't need that to convict him and I will tell you something else. The lawyer who represents him, mind you, it's going to be a public defender. The public defender is going to try and save his life.
This is going to be a mitigation style case. This isn't going to be somebody, unless this is Richard Jewell Redux who is saying you got the wrong guy, the way they'll try to do that is to try trade information so that they take death penalty off of the table. That's what's going to happen.
This kid is 19. There are some mitigating factors. Was he under the influence of his brother and by the way, as an Armenian, I do want to comment that all of this speculation about some recent convert named Misha, which by the way is not an Armenian name is insulting to Armenians everywhere who by the way is the first Christian nation.
So rather than have some uncle on who passes for somebody who knows what he's talking about who hasn't seen this guy in three years, I think we should be a little bit more critical of some of the information that's being passed around as gospel at this point.
COOPER: Right. And Wolf, actually in the interview with the uncle, did come out that that uncle has not seen these kids or kids, these adults, these young men, as you said, in two to three years.
GERAGOS: In two to three years.
COOPER: How he knows --
GERAGOS: Right. And all of a sudden, he's all of a sudden insulting Armenians everywhere as if there's some Armenian convert to Muslim. Remember, the Armenians and this week, the Armenians celebrated the commemoration of the genocide where 1.5 million Christian Armenians were wiped out by Muslim ottoman Turks.
So the idea there's some convert from Christianity to Muslim who's doing this, who doesn't even have an Armenian name is ludicrous to begin with. Somebody needs to give this uncle a field sobriety test because I think this guy was under the influence of something.
COOPER: Misha is a nickname for Mikhail, which is Russian for Michael. Jeffrey, the prosecution, they don't even need a confession in this case. I mean, they don't need to prove intent, do they?
TOOBIN: Well, there are so many ways that they can prove guilt here that we have spent so much time understandably talking about Miranda and whether his statements can be used against him, but it may be simply irrelevant. The prosecution may simply decide we don't need to litigate whether this statement was admissible --
GERAGOS: Exactly.
TOOBIN: Look at the evidence in this case. Look at the photographs from the scene. Look at how he behaved afterward. Look at his apparent confession to the car, the driver of the car they hijacked. They have all this evidence that is completely admissible without any question.
So you know, yes, it was understandable that given that this was a terrorist act, they wanted to find out immediately if there was something more, but once they found out there was nothing more, there was no reason to continue the interrogation. COOPER: I got to go. We're way over time. Mark Geragos, appreciate you being on and Jeff Toobin as well.
Just ahead, you're going to meet a firefighter paramedic who is just a remarkable guy. He saved the life of a 7-year-old girl who is badly injured, could have easily died in the wake of the bombing. Matt Patterson is his name. He only recently got his paramedic certification. He was in the right place at a bad time and knew exactly what to do.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I get up, I run back to the sidewalk. There happens to be a gentleman standing there. Just couldn't tell you who he was, spectator. I need your belt, I need your belt. Without hesitation, this man ripped off his belt, gave it to me, took the belt, ran back over and applied a tourniquet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Over the last two weeks, we've been focusing obviously a lot of our coverage on the two suspects allegedly involved in this terrorist attack. It's got national security implications, criminal implications, societal implications, political implications.
We've been trying to understand as much about them and piece together as much as we can about them as possible. But we have in our coverage really tried to focus also on the victims of this, the people who are right now facing the loss of a limb, who trying to rebuild their lives.
And also tell you the stories of the heroes who rose that day, who ran toward what many were running from. We talked to SWAT team members, first responders, firefighters. Today I had a chance to speak to another one of those heroes, a firefighter paramedic named Matt Patterson.
He was off duty the day of the attack. He was near the finish line near where the first explosion was. He was in a bar near the finish line with his girlfriend when he heard the blast. He ran into the street. He immediately saw a child he would later learn that it was this little girl, a little girl in this picture, 7-year-old Jane Richard.
Her brother is 8-year-old Martin Richard, standing in front of his father there. Martin, of course, died from his injuries. When Matt reached Jane, he saw that most of her left leg was gone, gone above the knee.
He knew he had to act quickly to save her life. She could easily have bled out in a matter of a minute or so. I talked to him earlier about how he saved this little girl's life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) COOPER: So it's really the second blast when you realized --
MATT PATTERSON, FIREFIGHTER/PARAMEDIC FOR LYNN FIRE DEPARTMENT: The second blast, yes. That took all doubts out of my mind. I immediately started running towards the front, yelling for people to get back, get to the kitchen, get away from the windows, you know, not pushing people back, but at the same time, I was making it known that I was going forward and they were going the other way.
I get out to the patio and I don't know if it was just tunnel vision or fate or whatever it was, but I just looked and focused and I just saw this one child in the middle of the street just sitting there with this dazed, shocked look. Even from where I was, I could tell this child was hurt.
COOPER: You could see her face.
PATTERSON: Yes. I could just tell. Like I said, that's why I don't know if it was tunnel vision or what, I zoomed in. Call it training or intuition or whatever. Something was horribly wrong.
COOPER: Because it's pandemonium.
PATTERSON: It is. You know, it's hard to explain, but it is pandemonium. But once you get something in your mind and once you focus on it, like that's the task at hand. I don't know if it's training or if it's just the fact that I was distracted by just this one child, but it had my full attention.
COOPER: So you ran over to this little girl.
PATTERSON: I ran over to this little girl who initially I thought was a boy. I knelt down, I expressed, you know, hi, I'm Matt. I'm here to help you. Dad was there, I'm a paramedics. We're going to be all right. We're going to be OK.
COOPER: She was with her father?
PATTERSON: With her father and older brother. Neither one of them looked injured. I asked her name. The reply I thought I got back was Shane. Turns out it was Jane. Like I said, the answer was irrelevant.
The fact that she could speak told me that she had an airway, it was patent and she was conscious and alert to at least what was going on. She just looked in a state of shock. She just had this emotionless look and I only remember her saying once or twice that her leg hurt.
COOPER: So was she crying?
PATTERSON: No. Nope. No crying. She looked me straight in the face and answered the question. What's your name? It turned out to be Jane but Shane. You can imagine with the chaos and the noise, Shane, Jane.
COOPER: Right.
PATTERSON: It was just --
COOPER: What did you do first?
PATTERSON: So once she spoke, I realized her air was good, looked down, I realized that she had a full left leg amputation. So I get up, I run back to the sidewalk. There happens to be a gentleman standing there, couldn't tell you who he was, spectator. I need your belt, I need your belt.
Without hesitation, this man just ripped off his belt, gave it to me. Took the belt, ran back over and applied a tourniquet. I look left, I look right. I know that we need to get this child moving. She was in serious condition. Nothing was going to save her life at this point besides surgery.
COOPER: It was critical to get the tourniquet on to stop bleeding.
PATTERSON: Yes. The tourniquet was crucial. Without the tourniquet, she would have bled out.
COOPER: How quickly could someone bleed out?
PATTERSON: A child that size, I mean, it really varies on the injuries and you know, if the wound cauterizes or it's an artery, about 30 seconds to a minute, a child that size, yes.
COOPER: So you got the belt, you ran back.
PATTERSON: After the tourniquet was applied, another gentleman who I later found out Michael Chase, great guy, ran up to me, asked me what he could do. I said listen, we have to move this kid. I said this child needs transportation and you know, medical help like real medical help, like a doctor.
I heard the familiar sound of sirens which is good. Looked up and down Boylston Street and I saw two fire engines and a medic truck coming towards us. Immediately scooped up the child, told Michael no matter what, don't let go of the tourniquet.
We ran in unison down the street, I guess, with the father and the son following. Didn't notice Michael ended up staying and talking to them afterwards to calm them down.
COOPER: You're running holding Jane and Michael --
PATTERSON: Is running with me holding the tourniquet on. Just to keep it cinched down because it's a belt, it's not made -- it's not designed for that kind of pressure and that kind of tension. So yes, he had to run with me. His job was to hold the tourniquet and I was just supporting her weight while he held that on.
It was crucial. Like without him or I, it wouldn't have worked. It couldn't have been done with one person. You can't. You needed -- both of us had to be there at that time and able to do what we did. I ran back to the scene. I get upon another child who I noticed that CPR's in progress.
I don't know who was doing it, but I did notice that CPR was being done. Got up to the child, I notice it's a boy. Could have been between 8 and 10 years old, small little child, severe injuries as well, lower extremities and abdominal. So I moved my way to the head.
At this time, there is some medical personnel on scene so there's a first in bag, an EMT or basic bag, and I administered two breaths to the child, let the CPR go, two breaths to the child, checked for a pulse, there was no pulse.
I knew at that point that it's never a lost cause with a child or anything like that, but the situation depending and especially that situation with the amount of injured we have and the severity of the injuries, that there was nothing that -- there was nothing more that we could do for this boy.
COOPER: That was Martin Richard.
PATTERSON: That was Martin Richard. I was like that's the boy we tried to save and ended up just having to triage and move on to someone else that could be saved.
COOPER: That was Jane's brother.
PATTERSON: That was Jane's brother. Yes.
COOPER: What's that like, I mean, you're with these people in the most horrible moment, in this intimate moment and to not even know who they are and then to see on television the picture of this little boy when he was alive.
PATTERSON: During the event and the tragedy, you know, you don't really have a connection and it's not personal. I don't make it to sound like we don't care, because we do but it's a very --
COOPER: You've got to be focused.
PATTERSON: It's very methodical. This is what we have to do. This is who we can save. You have to assess each injury and each victim separately without bias and it's purely based on what can I do to save this person's life or help, and can it be saved.
COOPER: Have you been able to talk to the family? Is that something you ultimately would like to do?
PATTERSON: Ultimately, it's up to the family. That family has suffered more in a day than anybody should in a lifetime. I would like an update. I would like to know that we did make a difference and it's one less person that they didn't get, one less life that wasn't robbed.
COOPER: You saved a life. PATTERSON: Yes. That's ultimately what it's about. You just happen to be in a really bad situation, but you were there, you were put there for a reason and you had the knowledge and you know, the guts or whatever you want to call it to run in there and make a difference.
COOPER: You just became a medic.
PATTERSON: I did.
COOPER: I'm very glad you became a medic.
PATTERSON: Me, too.
COOPER: Thank you.
PATTERSON: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Very glad indeed, a remarkable guy. Matt Patterson for Lynn Fire Department, a lot of hard-working people there.
Coming up, stopping the next attack by building a better bomb- sniffing dog.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Before the first runners crossed the finish line of the Boston marathon, bomb-sniffing dogs swept the area twice according to the "Boston Globe." Now the type of bombs used in Boston, though, could have been hard to detect, but at Alabama's Auburn University, researchers are training what are being called the ultimate bomb- sniffing dogs. Randi Kaye went there to report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RANDI KAYE, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine if the Boston bombing suspects had left a trail, a trail of vapors in the air that smelled like a bomb, vapors that only a specially trained dog could detect.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay. Stay. Stay.
KAYE: A dog like these, now being trained at Auburn University. Researchers here call them "vapor wake dogs."
(on camera): The point of a vapor wake dog is to detect the vapor of the bomb, if you will, before it's actually placed somewhere where it might explode, catch it before that?
DR. JAMES FLOYD, AUBURN UNIVERSITY: Exactly correct. Your standard bomb dog, your explosive detector dog, is primed on looking at an object, a backpack, that's placed somewhere. A vapor wake dog's ability is to detect the odor coming off of that backpack on the back of someone as they carry it. KAYE: Amazing.
FLOYD: And to follow that plume of vapor.
KAYE (voice-over): Auburn University Professor Jim Floyd says vapor wake dogs are the ultimate bomb-sniffing dog. They can follow a plume or bomb vapor stretching several football fields. A skill so unique, the university hopes to patent it.
This video from the university shows a vapor wake dog in action. Once he catches the odor in the air, he never lets up. We did our own experiment at this Alabama Mall with the help of Auburn's canine handlers.
They give the man in the red shirt a knapsack loaded with explosives inside a pressure cooker, just like the bombers in Boston. Watch as the dog catches a whiff and just like he's trained to do, when the suspect stops, the dog stops, too, then sits down, alerting his handler to the bad guy.
In a crowded mall or on a city street, this technique is crucial. These dogs can potentially stop a would-be bomber before it's too late.
(on camera): You think that if you had a vapor wake dog in Boston, they might have detected the suspects before they were able to place those backpacks down?
FLOYD: Had one of our dogs been in place on that corner with those two guys walking there with those backpacks, I think they would have alerted on them.
KAYE: Their training starts early, even as early as these puppies, which are just about three weeks old. At this time, they're held a lot and socialized and then by the time their formal training starts when they're about a year old, they're used to people and loud noises and they don't get spooked so easily.
(voice-over): Auburn has its own breeding program for bomb- sniffing dogs. They rarely use Shepherds and traditional breeds, but lean more on Labradors and Spaniels. Paul Hammond, whose company IK9 is working with Auburn to train and deploy vapor wake dogs explains why.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need a dog that fights into the public profile, the public will walk past and ignore as if it's a domestic pet.
KAYE: Auburn's bomb dogs are being used in airports, on Amtrak trains and by police departments, too.
(on camera): What is it about a dog's nose as compared to ours that they are able to pick up something like that?
PAUL HAMMOND, IK9: Well, the dogs' olfactory system is actually 220 million scent cells compared to a human's five million scent cells. That gives you a real comparison. Where we might be able to smell a woman's perfume walking by, the dog will not only smell the perfume, but the clothes, the material she's wearing, the shower gel she washed with that morning.
KAYE (voice-over): In addition to vapor wake training, these dogs are also able to detect explosives in the traditional way. Paul shows us by hiding explosives in the tire well of this car.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good job!
HAMMOND: It is a game to the dog. If the dog thought he was looking for explosives he probably wouldn't do it.
KAYE: What may be a game to these dogs could mean the difference between life and death to the rest of us.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good job!
KAYE: Randi Kaye, CNN, Aniston, Alabama.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Yet another reason why dogs are awesome. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Before we go, we want to show you the cover of "Boston" magazine just out today. Take a look at this. There you see it, a heart made with running shoes. In the middle it says we will finish the race.
After being here for nearly two weeks now, having the privilege of seeing the strength of the people here, the determinations had not be defined by this attack. They are exactly right. They will finish the race there's no doubt about it.
That does it for us. Thanks very much for watching.
