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At This Hour

Capitol Terror Plot Foiled; Europe-Wide Network Tied to Paris Terrorists; Paris Killings Not Lone-Wolf Attacks; Law Enforcement Faces Challenges with Lone Wolf Radicalization

Aired January 15, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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

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MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN CO-ANCHOR: An Ohio man, just 20 years old arrested after allegedly wanting to set up an is-like cell and attack the U.S. Capitol? Who is he and how was he caught? We'll look at that, ahead.

And following the tangled trail after the Paris terror attack, we'll take a look at who police are looking for now and what clues they have uncovered.

A whole lot of preparations go into a papal visit, but caging up children like animals? Reports out of the Philippines that little ones were rounded up in an effort to clean up the streets. We'll speak to a missionary who is there trying to help.

Good morning to you, I'm Michaela Pereira.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR: And I'm John Berman, live in Paris.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to arrive in this country in just a few hours, a very highly anticipated visit. He is arriving in a country where the investigation into the terror attacks that took place right behind me and also at a kosher market, that investigation expanding well beyond the borders of this country, including countries like Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Yemen, Syria, Turkey.

So much going on, Michaela. We'll get to that in a minute. But first, let's go back to you in New York.

PEREIRA: All right, thanks so much for that, John.

The FBI meanwhile is saying that a young Ohio man had the weapons and the will to inflict a terror attack in Washington apparently, and thankfully he didn't know his would-be partner was an informant for the bureau.

@THISHOUR, Christopher Lee Cornell is in custody. Authorities believe Christopher Cornell was inspired by ISIS and planning to detonate pipe bombs around the U.S. Capitol and then shoot people as they ran out of the building.

That alleged plan thankfully never came to fruition because the FBI was on to Cornell the entire time. His shocked father tells CNN he believes his son was set up and coerced into the plot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN CORNELL, FATHER OF SUSPECT IN U.S. CAPITOL PLOT (via telephone): Chris, I don't think Chris could hurt a fly. His best friend is our kitty cat. He's such a loveable, kind person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: Our Susan Candiotti has been following this story.

Susan, we hear the father talking there. How on earth did a mamma's boy like this kid from Ohio, a 20-year-old, no ties to Islam, a Caucasian kid from the Midwest, how did he get tied up in it, and how did the FBI get onto his trail?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly what his family is asking, those are many of those same questions.

Apparently the biggest mistake that this young man made was going on Twitter, using social media, and making comments, allegedly, in support of ISIS, of ISIL, posting videos and comments about that on Twitter.

Now, at some point, we learned from the FBI, that a confidential informant gets involved. Now this is someone who does haven't a clean slate. He's in trouble with the law. It appears, according to these documents, that he tries to cut a deal for himself or is cooperating in hopes of helping his own situation.

But, in any case, the FBI brings him in. The two men exchange messages online. There are actually two meetings. And during the course of this, Cornell writes, according to the criminal complaint, quote, "We should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves."

PEREIRA: It got all the way to the point where he was able to buy ammunition and weapons. However, he was not able to complete this, thank goodness. He got awfully close, though. And that's the part that's terrifying.

CANDIOTTI: And according to what authorities are saying, he got as far as discussing a plot to set off pipe bombs at the Capitol and then shoot people as they ran out.

But, yes, just yesterday he goes into a gun shop and buys two semiautomatic rifles and 600 rounds of ammunition. As soon as he walked out the door, the FBI took him down.

Now, we understand the gun shop owner was tipped off in advance by the FBI -- he's going to come into the shop; we want you to sell him the weapons.

PEREIRA: Law enforcement maintains that lawmakers were never -- that the Capitol, nobody was ever in danger. How do we know that for sure? That's of little comfort to some people who hear about this after the fact. Can we feel with confidence that that's the truth?

CANDIOTTI: I think so. The FBI obviously cut him off in midstream. There does not appear to be anyone else directly involved at this time, and our sources tell us that there is no indication at all that this young man was ever in any contact, directly or indirectly, with ISIS and ISIL.

PEREIRA: And, again, his parents shocked, they are visibly shaken. We're going to talk a little bit more about that -- Susan, thank you so much -- with Tom Fuentes. He's going to join us to talk to us about what law enforcement can do, what they should be doing, and the fact that they're up against kids who are radicalized in other own country. How do you combat that?

A lot to get to, though, with Paris. We want to turn back to John Berman who can bring us up to date on the latest developments there.

John?

BERMAN: Thanks so much, Michaela. New developments in the investigation here in Paris, pointing to the possibility of a Europe- wide network of jihadists tied now to these terror attacks.

There's a Madrid connection. Investigators say that kosher supermarket shooter Amedy Coulibaly and his partner drove from France to Spain in late December. Coulibaly returned to Paris days later to carry out his deadly siege. His partner, Hayat Boumeddiene, she went on to Turkey, and she's still on the run, believed to be in Syria.

So many countries involved her, authorities trying to determine where they stayed, with whom they had contact, whether they had any support in Madrid.

There's also a Belgian connection now. Authorities say that Amedy Coulibaly had been negotiating to buy ammunition from a man in Belgium. That man turned himself in to police.

All of this is happening as the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, is due to arrive here shortly. He will be the highest level official to come to France since the attacks now eight days ago.

We're going to cover all angles of this. I want to bring in our senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen. Fred is with me. He's down the street in our Paris bureau.

Fred, what strikes me is we had an arrest in Bulgaria a few days ago. We have a man who turned himself in in Belgium. We have travel to Madrid. We've got an Istanbul connection here, and we have al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen claiming credit. This is truly now an international web suspected of having some connection to these attacks.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. It certainly is. And if you look at the Spain connection, that's certainly one that is very interesting because, as you mentioned, Hayat Boumeddiene and Amedy Coulibaly drove down to Madrid from where she then, on January 2nd, took that flight to Istanbul.

However, the Spanish authorities are saying they are sure that there was a third person with the two. It's unclear whether or not that third person might be the man who was seen with Hayat Boumeddiene when she landed in Istanbul on that flight on January 2nd.

Remember that there was a person who was on a surveillance video there at the Istanbul airport. Those two of them of course were tracked all the way to the border area between Syria and Turkey.

Or whether or not that third person who was with them went back with Coulibaly to Paris. Because, remember, the authorities here are also seeking out another possible suspect because they found scooter keys in Coulibaly's apartment linked to another pefsh who might be an accomplice in all that. Some even believe he might be a man who might have driven Coulibaly to the kosher store that he later then raided.

So certainly right now the police are piecing all of this together. You're absolutely right. This is turning into a big international issue, a big international web right now.

One of the things, however, we have to keep in mind in all of this, John, is when you're talking about the European travel, the travel to Madrid, the travel to Belgium, that essentially is almost like going from state to state in the United States because there really aren't any border controls at all where you'd have to show your passport or anything of the like here in the European area.

BERMAN: That's such a crucial point, Fred. And they drove, Coulibaly and Boumeddiene drove from Paris to Madrid. It's like driving from, you know, Washington, D.C. to New York or something of the like. And there would have been no chance to pick them up even if they had been tracking them, which we know at this point now that they were not.

So there is also a suspect in Belgium now, Fred. The significance of all of this is it shows they believe there could be accomplices still on the run, still perhaps planning different versions of different attacks, still out there beyond these borders.

PLEITGEN: Yeah. Absolutely. It's very unclear who might have gone with Coulibaly to Belgium, but everything hinges on this weapons dealer that turned himself in to Belgian authorities on Tuesday. And this is really the track of the weapons and the track of the money that we're also talking about here.

Before going to Belgium, Coulibaly went to the border area between Belgium and France and took out a loan for 6,000 euros. That's about $7,000, and that's crucial because that amount of money, taking out that amount of money means that the bank didn't ask what he actually wanted this money for. They gave it to him after he showed him proper documentation as well as pay slips.

Then apparently he went to Belgium and at least attempted to acquire, probably did acquire, several weapons, among them possibly a Scorpion hand pistol -- it's an automatic pistol -- as well as a Tokarev handgun. That's also significant because in the video where he pledged allegiance to ISIS, he was next to a Scorpion pistol, so it appears as though he might have acquired it there. Again, a very, very interesting part of this. And we're probably going to find out more as this man who is in custody now talks to the officials there.

BERMAN: Indeed. And they no doubt are questioning him at this very moment.

Frederik Pleitgen, thanks so much for being with us.

Ahead we're going to have much more in the investigation here, and later the details are emerging on the alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Capitol and the man behind it. Is it conceivable that he could have ever even pulled off this deadly attack?

PEREIRA: And reports and images of homeless children being rounded up, caged, held in horrible conditions ahead of the pope's visit to the Philippines, we're going to take you there, ahead @THISHOUR.

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BERMAN: A cold, rainy evening here in Paris as the investigation continues into who staged the pair of attacks that shook this nation more than one week ago, and that investigation is expanding beyond borders now.

There's word from Spain that Amedy Coulibaly, the man who attacked the kosher supermarket, that he and his girlfriend traveled to Madrid the week before the attack. There's also word from Belgium, an arrest believed to have some weapons connection with Amedy Coulibaly. So this web grows ever more by the day.

I want to bring in CNN global affairs analyst, Colonel James Reese, also CNN terror analyst Paul Cruickshank. Paul also cowrote "Agent Storm" about the spy inside al Qaeda in Yemen who led the CIA to Anwar al Awlaki.

And, Paul, let me start with you here, because a security official or someone close to the security situation here in Paris whom I spoke with today talked about the significance of this travel to Madrid, and one of the key questions they want to know now is, were Amedy Coulibaly and his girlfriend there to meet with other possible terror cell members? Is there a cell or part of a cell in Madrid?

The reason they're asking that question is because that city, like so many others in Europe, has people returning from these war zones in the Middle East.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, John, I think the obvious explanation for why they drove down to Madrid is so she could get on this plane with a travel escort to get over to Turkey so that she could get across to Syria, that leaving from a French airport may have been too risky for her, given, you know, she might have been worried that she might have been on the radar screen, for example. So I think that's the simplest explanation for why they drove down to Madrid. It's just her way of getting out of Dodge. I don't think that there's any evidence so far that there's a network of extremists present in Madrid connected to this terror cell back in Paris, John.

BERMAN: That's a key point. Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumediene, they drove to Madrid, she flew onto Istanbul, he drove back here to Paris. So Colonel, talk to me about how difficult the borders here, the border situation, the connectivity in the European Union. How hard does that make it to track suspected terrorists? Now, we do know the French had taken their eyes off these men over the last several months. But even had they been watching them, what would these borders have meant?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RET.), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, John, actually the borders wouldn't mean anything. It's very much like driving from New York down to Washington, D.C. Within the European Union, you can drive, the passports for all of them, allows them to go. As you saw, when she went into Turkey, there was a little spike there at Turkey, but she was able to still leave Istanbul under surveillance, get down to the Syrian border. That's where it starts to -- you would think - start to be difficult, but it's not. She's able to cross into Syria and now she goes into the black hole.

BERMAN: Paul, I want to talk about the significance now of money in this situation. Because we have dueling narratives, it seems. We have reports that the Kouachi brothers received as much as $20,000 from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula when they left Yemen in 2011. So they were given money, funded in a way, if you will. Yet, the man who staged the kosher market attack, Amedy Coulibaly, we now believe he took out a loan here. A loan of about $7,000 that would have been enough to buy the weapons that he used in these attacks. So how much funding do these types of attacks really require?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, John, again, I think there may be a simple explanation for that is that Cherif Kouachi may have been given $20,000 when he interfaced with al Qaeda in Yemen in 2011. But over three years, the brothers ran out of that money, so they needed to borrow money from Coulibaly. In fact, Coulibaly, in this video he put out, or was put out after the attack, said that he lent the brothers money so that they could finish off buying equipment and supplies they needed to carry out the operation. It appears that Coulibaly raised some of that money from a loan application he made in the Northern French Bank. So I think that may all kind of fit together in that way.

BERMAN: One of the key points is, Colonel, that it doesn't necessarily take a lot of money to pull off these types of attacks. Given that -- Given, I suppose, the relative ease in funding, in planning, how do 10,000 troops -- the French have now beefed up to 10,000 troops on the ground to prevent terror attacks, 8,000 police -- Do those numbers really make a difference?

REESE: Well, John, initially, especially psychologically, they do make a difference for the feel-good attitude within France and Paris. It allows the people -- you're there. You know it. One of the biggest things in France is the tourism. So they want to get the troops out there. They want to allow the folks that are coming in to France to feel good. But as you know, that's non-sustainable. They will eventually have to bring those troops back to what they're doing on a daily basis, because all of them have been brought off task to do this new mission now to help secure the capital.

BERMAN: There's also a political element, politicians have to be seen as if they are doing something, even if it's only doing something that would last in a temporary way. Colonel James Reese, Paul Cruickshank, thanks so much for being with us. Michaela?

PEREIRA: All right, John. Up next, an Ohio man arrested for allegedly plotting an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Why did authorities let this self-proclaimed ISIS sympathizer get as far as to buy weapons? We'll discuss it ahead @THISHOUR.

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PEREIRA: Good to have you back with us @THISHOUR. Changes coming at the top of the Secret Service. Four senior officials at the agency are being asked to leave their jobs. However, they could end up staying at the agency. They had overseen protection, investigations, technology, and public affairs. The shakeup comes after several embarrassing security breaches at the White House over the last few months.

A 20-year-old man from Ohio, a young man, is in custody this hour accused of planning an attack on the U.S. Capitol with pipe bombs, guns, and a determination apparently inspired by ISIS. Not very long ago, Chris Cornell was still living at his parents' house.

Let's bring in our law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes, also a former assistant director of the FBI. Great to have your expertise on this, Tom. If what we're hearing is true and the charges are true, he kind of sounds like the type of young man that we have been told about and officials have been concerned about, not necessarily linked to ISIS, but inspired by ISIS, a kind of vulnerable loner who essentially self- radicalizes.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: No, that's right, Michaela. This makes him, in a way, the most dangerous kind because you're not going to be alerted to him by phone calls from terror cells overseas contacting him or those kind of connections. So unless he gets on social media or tells his immediate friends or classmates or workmates what he's got in mind and then one of them reports it to the authorities, he's not going to come up on the radar. That's the difficulty in these kind of cases.

PEREIRA: You'll probably see it a little differently, but from the outside view it seems a little frightening that he got all the way to the point where he was able to buy guns and ammunition, pardon me, and then was arrested in the parking lot of this gun store. This seems awfully close to seeing this thing through, or does that seem about how these things go down and how you net somebody in a situation like this?

FUENTES: Well, it really has to go down that way because if they arrest him any sooner, then you're going to have everybody saying oh, the FBI jumped the gun, he wasn't going to do it, he's just bragging or showing off or he didn't mean it. So what they did at that point, they would have already had him under 24-hour surveillance, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, and I've ran surveillance operations. You're talking more than 30 people to follow one individual 24 hours. They would have had him under that kind of coverage in case, somehow, he got access to weapons or explosives outside of the view of the FBI. So they're watching him. They hear him probably laying out the whole plot of what he wants to do already with the step of, I'm going to go buy these weapons now. And at that point, they do let him buy the weapons.

I understand that the FBI told the gun shop owner that he was going to come in, go ahead and sell the weapons, just to show that that's what he intended to do. The FBI didn't take him by the hand and force him to buy the guns. He wanted to do it. They let him do it. They watched him the whole time, and when he came out in the parking lot, time to take it down and end it.

PEREIRA: On "NEW DAY" today I spoke with a former Jihadist up from Canada, a guy that has changed his life dramatically. I want you to listen to what he has to say about people that are finding themselves radicalized.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUBIN SHAIKH, FORMER JIHADIST: Young kids, especially even up to 20, especially a kid who is described as a big mamma's boy, they don't listen to their parents. There's a huge disconnect with culture, especially, not just in white America, but in minority communities, as well. You have first, second generation who are here from wherever, their kids might not be feeling like they belong, they might not be integrating properly. There's usually a divide between the parent and children to the point where, yeah, you know, these groups and these networks of individuals, either social or in real life, they become your new family. It's no different than joining a gang or a cult.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREIRA: What's your sense? Do you agree with what he had to say?

FUENTES: Oh, yeah. Completely. That's exactly right. It becomes like a new gang or a new family, new cult. And we've seen so many cases of this where the parents don't have a clue. We've seen it in the Somali neighborhoods in the U.S. where parents came to the U.S. as refugees, wanted their kids to be all-American kids. Next thing they know, the kids are gone. They call the police, they call the FBI, do you know where my son went? Unfortunately, the son is in Somalia. You had the three teenage girls in Denver, their parents didn't have a clue, that's three of them, wanting to go be war brides in Syria. There's many, many cases like this that come up and the parents just don't have a clue.

PEREIRA: Tom Fuentes, it's really a challenge for law enforcement, for the communities, for these families. Thanks so much for chatting with us this hour. Ahead here, the Pope spreading peace in the Philippines. There are

reports, though, that say homeless children there, as young as 5 years old, have been rounded up and chained in filth to keep them off the streets. We have an eyewitness report ahead.

BERMAN: And tensions rise as the mayor of a major European city tells unhappy Muslims in Europe to, quote, "pack their bags" and "f*** off." So how is that sitting with Muslims in Europe and Muslims in America? That's next.

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