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At This Hour

Are Police Closing in on Paris Terror Suspects?; U.S. Cities on High Alert; Cartoonists Show Solidarity with "Charlie Hebdo"; Some Say Satirical Magazine was Asking for Trouble; Interview with Rep. William Keating

Aired January 08, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. We've been covering the events in Paris, of course, and in France. We do have breaking news on the political front. California Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat, just announced she will not run for re-election in 2016. Senator Boxer announced this online in a video message. She's been a Senator from California since 1993. She was in Congress for 10 years before that, a fixture in Washington, a fixture in California politics. But she will not be running for re-election and will leave an open seat in now heavily Democratic California.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: A game-changer and also interesting to see many are making these announcements on social media instead of other traditional channels.

Breaking news in the Paris terror attack. Heavily armed police are amassing on a country road leading to the village of Longpont about 65 miles northeast of Paris. Authorities have just extended the highest level of security alert to that area for the first time. The question is, are they closing in on the suspects? Both men reportedly were spotted at this service station north of the capital. Police set up checkpoints around the gas station. French media say the suspects robbed that gas station overnight.

BERMAN: Authorities have identified these men, these suspects as brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi, both men in the early 30s. On the run since killing 12 people at the offices of the magazine "Charlie Hebdo" yesterday.

Want to bring in our terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank.

Paul, there's another development overnight. There was another shooting outside Paris in the south of the city. The prosecutor's office said they are treating that as a terrorism case as well. A police officer was killed at a traffic stop by someone apparently wearing all black, using a semi-automatic weapon. It's either connected or a copy cat killing or an awfully strange coincidence, Paul.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERROR ANALYST: French authorities are not yet saying they're connected. I think there's certainly a possibility that they are connected. This shooter this morning was described as having North African appearance. He had a bulletproof vest, all these weapons. He got away. He's still at large, still a threat. The fact that it happened just one day after this other attack could suggest that he was perhaps in on this, what could be a wider conspiracy by a group of militants in France to launch attacks. That's not clear yet. As you say, it could also be a copy cat style attack as well.

PEREIRA: Paul, I want your expertise on analyzing what we know about these two young men, both in their early 30s. We were talking more about them. In terms of what you know and what you know about what's going on in France, very, very large Muslim population, a very large Algerian French population. And the neighborhood they were from, said to be a fair amount of poverty and disenfranchisement. Seems like a perfect storm if you're looking for people to find an outlet for their rage.

CRUICKSHANK: That's absolutely right. There's an unprecedented threat to France right now. The French prime minister, just before Christmas, said his country had never experienced a greater terrorist threat. Probably the Western country that is most threatened by Islamist terrorisms. There are 400 French nationals fighting right now with jihadist groups like ISIS in Syria and Iraq. 200 more are on their way, 200 are already back in France, and also some of them pose a security risk. It's not clear whether these brothers fought in Syria. There have been some reports of this, but the French interior ministry has not confirmed those reports at this point. People will be looking very closely at whether they fought in Syria, perhaps developed connections there with groups like ISIS or al Nusra or even the Khorasan group, this al Qaeda A Team, which has a number of French individuals in their ranks, including a bomb maker who has been trying to recruit Europeans for attacks back in Europe. The investigation is going to be looking at all these kinds of things. It's still possible, though, that this is a kind of sophisticated lone-wolf attack by people who did not have connections to overseas terrorist groups. All these things are still possible at this hour -- Michaela?

BERMAN: Just some of the questions we're asking, Paul, as we know that there's a huge law enforcement presence right now north of Paris in the village of Longpont. Authorities now involved in some kind of operation in and around that town. We'll get an update on that as soon as we can.

Paul Cruickshank, thanks so much.

PEREIRA: Also ahead here, cities in the U.S. on high alert. Police ratcheting up security. What is the reaction here? Are people on edge in the U.S.? We'll take a look.

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PEREIRA: Right now, there is a big police presence, a big police operation just outside of Longpont, where we find our Atika Shubert.

Atika, I understand there has been some developments, some movements. What are you seeing right now in this on going manhunt?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm right off the N-2 highway, which is the highway the suspects are believed to have taken. You can see there are some police. That is the country road that leads to Longpont, about four kilometers down there. That's where we saw the SWAT teams, heavily armed police going towards a few hours ago. In the meantime, we've also seen helicopters circling the area. It looks as though they're searching for the suspects.

To give you context, this area very rural. You can probably see there's quite a bit of open fields, a farmhouse behind me. There's also a very heavy forested area in that direction. That may be where police are searching for the two suspects. They haven't confirmed that to us. But it is a very large area to search. It's several thousand hectares wide. It's going to take a lot of time to comb through it. If anybody was looking the hide in there, that would be a good place to do it.

That's the latest we have at the moment. We haven't seen an increase of the police presence since we've been here. But we do expect the police to stay here through the night.

BERMAN: It's nightfall. There's a forest there, as you say, near a village as well. Plenty of places to hide.

We should say, also, the terror alert level has been raised to its highest level in that region. That is a new development. Atika, give us a sense of how far this is from the gas station that a gas station attendant says was robbed overnight at gunpoint by these suspects and how these two locations might be connected.

SHUBERT: What you see behind me here is the n-2 highway. That appears to be the highway that the two suspects took. Now, the gas station is roughly about 12 kilometers southwest of here. We were there earlier. And what we know is that the two suspects, at around 10:30 this morning, that's where they held the gas attendant up at gunpoint, taking fuel and food, and then leaving, he said, in the direction of Paris. Now, they seem to have obviously turned around and taken the highway up here. Now, we're a fairly short distance from that gas station, so they didn't get very far if this is, indeed, where they are. One of the things we've been told is they may have been trying to avoid the major highways and keeping to back roads. This is actually not that big a highway. As you can see, that small country road there is exactly the kind of back -- country routes that they might have been trying to take to avoid detection.

PEREIRA: We obviously don't want to give away any of the tactical information or broadcast that in any way. But Atika, are you getting a sense that these security forces are well equipped to deal with searching, especially given nightfall?

SHUBERT: I certainly think that they're bringing out as much, as many, as much equipment and the kind of material they need to conduct this search. We've seen police coming out heavily armed, in riot gear. We've seen heavy tactical equipment being brought in. A specialty vehicle, for example, with a number of ladders on it. All kinds of equipment have been brought in here. It's clear they want to make sure they have everything they can to try and narrow down the area where these suspects may be. But we do not have an indication at this point that they have pinpointed their location. They may still try to be closing in on them, as we speak.

BERMAN: We do know there have been checkpoints set up all around there, approximately a 12-mile diameter or so from the gas station. Perhaps that will be extended to where you are.

Atika Shubert covering for us covering the situation, an intense police presence in the Longpont area, north of Paris.

We'll be right back.

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PEREIRA: Reminding you of what we're watching in Paris. We've just spoken with our Atika Shubert about increased police presence in the area where she is outside of Longpont. An intense security presence, an intense search. She's heard helicopters as the manhunt continues. We know the security threat level has been raised to its highest level in that area north of Paris.

Meanwhile, here on our soil, U.S. officials are obviously concerned if there will be an attack here.

BERMAN: New York City, other cities say they're on high alert. NYPD officials say this city is prepared.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN J. MILLER, DEPUTY COMMISSION, INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERTERRORISM, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Based on yesterday's picture, we moved the critical response vehicles to certain French-related location in the city. We did a deployment to a number of media places that we keep in kind of a standard plan when the threat shifts that way. We have heavily armed teams called the Hercules Teams. You just saw one of those on your screen where they'll show up with heavy vests, heavy weapons, and show up without notice. You don't know where they'll be or how long they'll stay. Part of that is just keeping people who might be thinking about or planning a potential attack off balance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Want to bring in Congressman Bill Keating, from Massachusetts, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Congressman, you on that committee. I'm curious if you've been briefed, any reason for heightened alert, any connection to any possible terror threats in the United States right now?

REP. WILLIAM KEATING, (D), MASSACHUSETTS: There's no actionable threat right now. However, as I'm listening to the description on your show, John, about what's happening, it's so hauntingly familiar to an attack that did occur here in the U.S., and that's the Boston Marathon bombings. As we're speaking, they're empanelling jurors for that trial.

But the similarities, two suspects, radicalized brothers, the manhunt that's going through the suburbs with the helicopters that were there in Watertown with the infrared capability to search maybe through the woods as darkness approaches there and find where there could be individuals hiding, the carjacking that occurred, even -- although it might be unrelated in France, the police officer that was killed subsequently. So I'm looking at these things feeling like we've actually lived through this in this country before. And my feelings for the Parisians that are involved, as Boston was strong, you see the resilience of Paris. You see the resilience of France coming forward. But we do see the dangers back here at home because we've reasonably, in proximity, been through this.

PEREIRA: Congressman, we appreciate your reflection on Boston because we, too, see the similarities. We see this threat. We understand we've already experienced our own version of it here. What more can we do? You've been part of these congressional conversations about these jihadists that get radicalized and the foreign fighters even returning to their home soil. What more do we do?

KEATING: Today, national security officials will be briefing law enforcement and leaders from our major cities to try and once again set up a network of information sharing. The breakdown that we saw in 9/11, the breakdown that we saw in the Boston Marathon bombing, was a lack of information sharing.

Now, what's occurred here in Europe, from my committee's standpoint, could be a game-changer because there's been stalled action plans for increased security in Europe because of some of the countries involved, their privacy concerns. There's been a plan to take airplane listing of passengers, sharing that information. It's been stalled in the parliament, the E.U. parliament since 2013. I think this will change that because the arguments that those officials were saying is, well, it's not that great a danger here in Europe. Unfortunately and tragically, this week's event has indicated that that is, indeed, the case, that there is a great danger.

What does that mean back home for us? It means this, if they increase that information sharing for passengers among the E.U. countries, if they take their external E.U. borders and make them stronger and harmonize the criminal legislation they have among those countries -- we have a situation where those E.U. citizens come to the U.S. without having to go through a visa process, just showing their passports, so that we will be safer here in the U.S. if they make those changes in Europe. And I think, sadly, it took these events to bring that message home. I think you will see those changes in Europe, and they'll make Europe stronger and safer, and it will make the U.S. stronger and safer as well.

PEREIRA: Well, the fact is we share this world together.

Representative Bill Keating, with the House Homeland Security Committee, thanks for your time. Our hearts are heavy along with yours.

KEATING: Thank you very much.

BERMAN: We are watching a major police operation north of Paris in the village of Longpont. Police moving in on something. The terror alert level has been raised. We'll bring you the latest update on that.

Plus, a key question of freedom of speech, the freedom to express yourselves, cartoons, the idea the pen can be mightier than the sword. Ahead, we'll hear from one person who says that the blasphemy that led to the Paris attack -- the "blasphemy," in quotation marks -- is something we all need to embrace.

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BERMAN: The expressions of grief we have seen for "Charlie Hebdo" have been powerful and creative as well. Cartoonists around the world have been publishing drawings to show their solidarity with the French magazine and their respects for the cartoonists who were murdered and their support for free speech.

PEREIRA: Earlier today, on "New Day," I spoke with a cartoon editor of "The New Yorker," Bob Mankoff, who said, while he's not a fan of "Charlie Hebdo," you don't have to like a magazine to support its work.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB MANKOFF, CARTOON EDITOR, THE NEW YORKER: Cartoons often cause outrage and resentment, and also people wanted retribution so if you had a name that wasn't your actual name, it made it difficult.

PEREIRA: A level of protection for you.

MANKOFF: Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that's been coming up a lot is about freedom of expression.

PEREIRA: Yes.

MANKOFF: And these cartoons are provocative and offensive. And you want to know something? I'm not a huge fan of "Charlie Hebdo's" cartoons. Freedom of expression is for expression we don't like. You don't need it for freedom you do. Some of the cartoons are fine. We've never published those cartoons in "the New Yorker." The most important thing is supporting not that you like, but that you don't like. That's why I think everybody is united.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The staff at "Charlie Hebdo" plans to publish next week, despite losing so many of its staff. Donations from Google and French newspapers publishers have been pouring in. There's reports the magazine hopes to print a million copies, a million copies. They usually only put out about 60,000.

PEREIRA: You heard Bob Mankoff say he may not be a fan of "Charlie Hebdo's" cartoons, but others have criticized the magazine for baiting Muslim extremists, basically asking for trouble. Some critics feel like "Charlie" should have drawn a line on blasphemy, especially given that it knew the risks.

BERMAN: Ross Douthat is a columnist for "The New York Times," has an op-ed that captures the crux of this discussion. Ross writes, "If a large enough group of someone is willing to kill you for saying something, it's something almost certainly needs to be said."

Ross Douthat joins us right now.

Ross, I know why I love your column. And I love that statement right there. But I wonder if you can explain what you mean?

ROSS DOUTHAT, COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Sure. And it goes to something in the way that Bob Mankoff was talking about in the interview. You guys just showed, which is that, look, it's totally reasonable to look at "Charlie Hebdo" or any other publication that crosses lines and offends a lot of people and, in a vacuum, say, I didn't like that cartoon, I don't think they should have run it, it was offensive to my religion, my political views and so on.

But once violence or in the threat of violence, something that this magazine was living under, going back years, once the threat of violence is injected into the discussion, then the debate about, you know, whether this is appropriate or not often just becomes beside the point. If somebody is threatening violence, if there is a gun on the table, basically -- to use a line the late Christopher Hitchens used -- then the argument about whether something is appropriate or not has to wait until the gun comes off the table. That's what we're dealing with here. If there wasn't a threat of violence against these cartoonists and this magazine, I think there could be a really interesting discussion about whether this is in good taste, whether that isn't it in good taste and so on.

That discussion can't happen as long as people are being killed. As long as people are being killed, the people doing the killing need to be challenged.

PEREIRA: So it's not hypocritical to say then, basically what you're saying, I can say, I don't like cartoons about religion, I find them offensive, but also still say, thank goodness those cartoonists have a right to draw them, we have that freedom of discussion.

DOUTHAT: Right. Also, the context, the political context matters. Something is a braver political statement in a situation where it might get you killed than in a situation where it might not. You know, this has -- if I go out tomorrow and draw a cartoon, you know, making fun of the Buddha in north west Washington, D.C., I'm going to get an angry -- you know, an angry response from a local -- you know, a local Buddhist temple or something but I'm not putting myself in danger, and I'm sort of posing as brave by doing that. But so that -- I would say doing something like that is worth criticizing more than actually putting yourself in danger by drawing an image of the Prophet Muhammad.

BERMAN: It is the threat. It's the threat almost.

(CROSSTALK)

DOUTHAT: It's the threat that makes it worth doing. BERMAN: You know, in general, in the macro it's not a simple issue,

Ross, is it. In France and Germany, there are laws that ban certain kinds of holocaust, for instance. Again, I am in no way equating that with what went on in Paris yesterday, but gets to the point that in democratic societies, free speech is not always universal.

DOUTHAT: No, but it also gets to the point of why we're fortunate to have the First Amendment in the United States. There's nothing -- I agree, there's nothing politically natural about freedom of speech, and it's something in most societies throughout human history has been, you know, a value that isn't upheld. And even in most Western societies, there are more limits than there are in the U.S. But I think basically, you know, there free speech in the U.S. isn't absolute.

But the more absolute line we take is correct. Germany's laws against holocaust denial, while understandable in historical context, are a mistake. And I think the attempts to impose larger hate speech laws in European countries, more expansive laws we've seen lately, are more of a mistake. I'm glad to be here in the U.S. where protections are more absolute, even again, for speech that I might disagree with and think would have been better off not published in some cases.

BERMAN: Ross, it is ironic, not only have the attacks cause the more people to see the offensive cartoons in the minds of these terrorists than would have seen them before, but they may have, in fact, justified the publishing of them to begin with.

Ross Douthat, thanks so much for being with us.

PEREIRA: And powerful to think that if and when it does publish next week, a million copies could be printed instead of the normal 60,000, that they would issue of that magazine.

Great conversation. Thanks for joining us @THISHOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira.

BERMAN: And I'm John Berman.

The conversation and the coverage of the attacks in Paris, and now perhaps moving to the north, continues right now with Ashleigh Banfield.