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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Terror in Australia; Philadelphia Manhunt; Who Was the Sydney Gunman?

Aired December 15, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: As we all watch the drama continue to unfold in Sydney, an Australian official tells me -- quote -- "We are all in the crosshairs."

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The world lead: intense gunfire as commandos storm a cafe where an Islamic terrorist forced hostages to hold up his black flag. We will take you inside this terrifying scene.

Plus, he once called Australian service members Hitler's soldiers. New details on the alleged gunman's path to terror and why he was not exactly a stranger to police.

Also, in our national lead, six people are dead and their killer still on the loose. Breaking details on a manhunt outside Philadelphia for a suspected gunman who apparently went on a house-to-house rampage and may not be finished.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We are going to begin with the world lead. A brazen act of terror in the heart of downtown Sydney has officials on high alert, not just in Australia, but also right here in the U.S.

Two hostages are confirmed dead, a 34-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman, with four others in the hospital. The gunman, an Islamic extremist and criminal known to law enforcement, was killed at the scene.

At this very moment, investigators are scouring the crime scene, interviewing witnesses and poring over the digital footprint of the man identified as Man Haron Monis, also known as Sheik Haron, who turned cafe workers and customers into captives in the busy retail hub known as Martin Place in Sydney, Australia's most populous city.

Over the course of the 16-hour standoff, we witnessed scenes such as this one, horrified hostages forced to hold up the black Islamic flag. Five hostages actually managed to escape during the early hours of the ordeal with news cameras capturing them literally running for their lives.

The siege finally came to an end when Australian commandos stormed the cafe and a hail of gunfire erupted. And this new video shows the exact moment when the shooting started through the windows, as the nonstop barrage of bullets exploded.

This afternoon, police officially confirmed that the gunman, Sheik Haron, was dead. An Iranian refugee and self-described Muslim cleric, he seems to have acted alone, at least based on the facts as they are known right now. There are clear signs that Islamic extremism motivated his actions.

Kathy Novak with CNN affiliate SBS is live in Martin Place, where this all went down -- Kathy.

KATHY NOVAK, SBS WORLD NEWS AUSTRALIA REPORTER: Well, Jake, Australians had been watching this tense situation all of yesterday with these hostages holed up in this cafe.

And now they are waking up to the shocking news that the siege has ended, but unfortunately not without the loss of life. We hear, as you say, that the gunman has been killed, but so have two innocent people. The front page of the local paper says it all, "Terror Hits Home," a shocking story here in Australia, not something that people here are used to seeing.

Let's take a look at how these events unfolded.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NOVAK (voice-over): Police storm a cafe in Sydney, Australia, filled with hostages held for nearly 17 hours. Stun grenades are thrown into the building. Gunfire erupts and the battle lasts for almost five minutes.

Through the windows, flashes of gunfire and stun grenades exploding. In the midst of the chaos, hostages can be scene fleeing the cafe in groups. One man runs towards police with his hands in the air. An injured woman carried from the scene. When it is all over, paramedics rush in. At least three are dead, including the gunman.

ANDREW P. SCIPIONE, NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE COMMISSIONER: Two deceased amongst the hostages and six that were uninjured. We also have a lone gunman who has been shot and killed. And we have a male police officer who has been injured as a result of a gunshot wound to the face.

NOVAK: The gunman, Man Haron Monis, is an Iranian native and self- proclaimed sheik. He is well known to the police and is currently out on bail for a 2013 charge as an accessory to murder of his former wife.

The siege started when the gunman walked into the chocolate cafe just before 10:00 a.m. local and took 17 hostages, turning normally bustling city streets silent. During the standoff, some hostages were able to escape and run to safety.

He had hostages hold a black flag in the cafe window. He demanded an ISIS flag to replace it. Chilling images of hostages with hands and faces pressed against the windows shocked Australians. At one point, hostages were forced to record videos making demands for the gunman. A local radio host spoke directly with one of the hostages.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They phoned my program. Obviously, I didn't want to put them to air. So I took their calls off air and at the same time could hear the hostage-taker giving the young man who spoke to me, a 23-year-old, instructions on what he wanted to do.

NOVAK: Shortly after 2:00 a.m. local time, the gunman splits the hostages into two groups on opposite sides of the room, according to Australia's 7 Network. One group was able to escape, running towards police officers.

Moments go by and then a gunshot is heard from inside the cafe and a hostage goes down. Heavily armed tactical police stormed the building from two different directions. Monis is shot is shot and killed. There were at least nine people inside the building at the time.

SCIPIONE: There was a number of gunshots that were heard, which caused officers to move straight to what we call an E.A, an emergency action plan. And that caused them to enter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOVAK: So the siege over, but still a number of questions to be answered.

We know that this man was known to police, that he had been convicted on charges of sending offensive letters to families who had suffered the loss of members of their families who had served in the armed forces in Afghanistan. We also know he was bailed on a string of charges, including sexual assault and accessory to murder.

Why has it come to this? Why was this man who was known to police allowed to have it come to this point where he was holding up hostages throughout the day yesterday in this busy part of Sydney and it ended up in the loss of life?

TAPPER: All right, SBS reporter Kathy Novak, thank you so much.

The section of Sydney where the standoff took place is one that is usually bustling with shoppers and tourists and downtown workers, particularly at that time of day. So you can imagine what a challenge law enforcement officials must have faced particularly when they had no idea whether the sheik was acting alone.

CNN's Tom Foreman is in the virtual room.

Tom, tell us how it all went down.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, if you look at the lay of the land, you can see why this was such a challenge for law enforcement.

There is Sydney over there on the eastern coast of the country here. If we move in closer for a more detailed map of this area, you can see, yes, there is the famous opera house we have always known about, the U.S. Consulate not far away. I have been to this area of this town at that time of day. Yes, it is absolutely just full of people, teeming with people down here.

If you move in closer, you can see why. There's the consulate, the Lindt store, there's a TV network across the street, the Reserve Bank of Australia. This is a tremendously busy area. But I want to bring up a detail of the place that he tried to take and point out why this was also a challenging environment for someone who wanted to do something terrible like this.

Look at this building. The area he took over, yes, it had a ton of windows in which people could look in. This is the main entrance right there that we have been talking about this whole time. Over there is the entrance to the building. There appears to be another entrance into the Lindt shop here from the lobby.

On the other side, if you come all the way around here, you can see toward the back those black doors near the back there, that's yet another service entrance to this area. And there may yet be another one from above. These windows, by the way, may be pushing close to 20 feet tall inside if you get to the roof inside.

So you have maybe 2,500 square feet of area in there. Jake, all day long one of the big questions I think people have been asking is how is it possible that people were able to slip out of there? That is a lot of territory for one gunman to try to control a lot of people.

It is also a big challenge for the law enforcement people when they tried to go in with the flash bangs because they had to look over a big area and figure out precisely where this person was, where the hostages were as they moved in from numerous entrances. We know they came in numerous places at once. We don't know how many overall, but at least two. And to try to overpower this man, big, big challenging environment for everyone involved -- Jake.

TAPPER: Indeed. Tom Foreman, thank you so much.

This deadly siege comes months after Australia's government warned about the rising threat of so-called lone wolf attacks. Given the fact that the suspected hostage-taker had a well-known criminal history and openly displayed Islamist extremist figures, was anything that could have been done to stop him before he entered the cafe?

Let's bring in Fran Townsend, CNN's national security analyst and a member of the CIA External Advisory Board, along with Robert McFadden, former special agent in charge for NCIS and senior vice president of the Soufan Group.

Thank you both for being here.

Fran, let me start with you. Given what we know about this man, should he have been more closely monitored?

FRANCES TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Jake, I think we have to be realistic about the number of people that express these views.

I used to say when I was in the White House, what I cared about were people who were trying to kill us as opposed to people who just hated us. Right? You have limited resources and you have to use them very, very carefully.

It's unlikely that this guy, as crazy as he was, as awful as he was and as horrific as this crime is, would have risen to the level of requiring police and investigative resources. The one thing I will say is he was writing these really offensive, horrible letters to the families of soldiers who fought in Afghanistan.

That might have raised the bar for this guy. But I have to tell you, there are a lot of people who express those sorts of views that don't get law enforcement attention and resources. This underscores how easy this kind of an event is for a lone wolf and why the U.S. government is so concerned about it.

TAPPER: That's true, Fran, but he did -- there were criminal charges against him. We're still learning more. And we will talk more about this in the days to come. But it wasn't only that he preached hatred. He actually had committed acts of violence.

TOWNSEND: That's right, although what we know is there was the attempt -- we believe he's been charged in a case in the attempted murder of his wife, sexual assault cases, but nothing -- as bad as those are, Jake, those aren't the sorts of things that raise him on this sort of scope of counterterror forces.

And I think that's the difference here. As bad as this guy was and as much attention of sort of local law enforcement as he had, it wouldn't have necessarily brought him onto the screen of national counterterrorism forces.

TAPPER: Robert, how closely can we expect the U.S. to work with Australia in this investigation? How much does Australia need our help, for that matter?

ROBERT MCFADDEN, THE SOUFAN GROUP: You can expect it would be a very close working relationship.

When an event like this kicks off, besides -- right next to the safety of the hostages and ending it successfully and safely, is a deep dive, a full-court press to find out about his associates after you I.D. him, his co-workers, family members, to try to determine or rule out that there are co-conspirators of other plots afoot.

So the Australians have a terrific capability in that regard. But it's always working with the closest allies, the Five Eyes, to include the U.S., and even other regional states. Farther down the road as we're still in speculation, and the Australians are conducting investigations to try to rule out other plots, you can bet there will be a lot of information sharing and lessons learned.

TAPPER: Robert, obviously there have been successful homegrown terrorist attacks here, the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, Nidal Hasan in Texas. How likely that something like what we just saw happen in Sydney could happen here in the United States?

MCFADDEN: It's definitely within the realm of possibility.

See, we have a unique era we're in right now with the advent of social media and the way the Islamic State, for example, leveraged it, the shrinking global community, it's so much more a part of our lives and presence in our lives through media and other sources.

If you have an individual or small groups where they might be taking those constructive steps towards violence, there's a whole range of different motivations. It just seems overwhelmingly right now it's this bizarre form of Takfiri Islam. But there are other, though by less percentage, situations where, for example, far-right-wing extremism might be the tipping point to motivate an individual or small group to act out.

TAPPER: Fran, what's the next step in the investigation?

TOWNSEND: There's no question they're going to look to see if he had any other connections.

I'll tell you, Jake, sources are telling us now that this does look like it was a lone wolf, that he was sort of self-radicalized. But they will cover every avenue to make sure he had no links to other extremists, who they might have been. Remember, he had threatened there were three explosive devices in different places.

I expect they're looking to clear that and make sure that that's not accurate, that there's nothing that could harm civilians when they return to their normal lives today. And they will see if there's any international links. They will not only look at all of his social media, but they will work with other intelligence and law enforcement services to make sure he didn't have links into the Islamic State directly.

TAPPER: All right, more to come on that. Fran Townsend and Robert McFadden, thank you both so much.

Coming up, he was no stranger to police with a long list of charges, from involvement in his ex-wife's murder to sexual assault, and we're now learning the Sydney gunman railed against the U.S. online, posting what he claimed was evidence of American terrorism before this siege. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I am Jake Tapper.

We are going to continue now with our breaking news -- the terrorist siege in Sydney, Australia. A gunman ISIS sympathizers and self- proclaimed Islamic cleric named Man Haron Monis took more than a dozen people hostage for more than 16 hours today at a cafe popular with tourist and locals. Australian special forces, along with heavily armed police, stormed the cafe at 2:00 a.m. local time, killing the gunman. At least two hostages were also killed during this rescue attempted, four others were wounded.

So, just what do Australian and American officials know about the hostage-taker?

CNN correspondent Atika Shubert has been digging into his background and joins me now live from London -- Atika.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jake. This is a man with a very long rap sheet. He was even accused of being somehow involved with the murder of his former wife. And he was released on bail because the judge said he was not a threat to society. And, of course, that is now being called into question.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT (voice-over): Long before he walked into the Sydney chocolate shop with a gun, 50-year-old Man Haron Monis was well-known to Australian police. Various reports put his age at 49 or 50, originally from Iran. He settled in Australia, a self-described Muslim cleric and peace activist. He appears to have converted from Shia to Sunni Islam.

And in 2013, he was convicted of posting harassing letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. He was sentenced to 300 hours of community service.

MAN HAROS MONIS: This pen is my gun. And these words are my bullets.

SHUBERT: And he became a fixture of sorts, staging attention-seeking protests, chaining himself to a Sydney court. His poster board in this video claims he was tortured in jail. Police have refused to comment.

He began posting online videos as Sheikh Haron, giving lectures on Islamic law. And last year, he was also charged with accessory to the murder of his former wife. Most recently, he was charged with sexual assault dating from 2002 when he was operating as a spiritual healer outside Sydney, both charges he denies.

On his Web site and social media, Monis pledged allegiance to ISIS but there is no indication so far that Monis had any direct communication with ISIS leaders in Syria or Iraq.

(on camera): Now, he had a number of Twitter profiles, Facebook pages, also a Web site, sheikhharon.com. That has been shut down. But one of the last things he posted was this -- an open letter denying all the charges against him, also claiming that he had been denied access to his children.

Now, it paints a picture of a man under increasing pressure from the law, facing yet another court case in February. He also makes clear in this letter that he is not a member of, quote, "any organization or party," suggesting that his decision to take hostages was his and his alone.

(voice-over): In the days ahead, Australian police will likely reveal more details of what happened and why this so-called "man of peace" turned to violence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SHUBERT: Now, one of the things, of course, that investigators will be looking for is exactly the days that led up to this attack, what was the trigger moment that basically led him to walk into a chocolate shop armed with a gun. Those are questions that still remain to be answered, Jake.

TAPPER: CNN's Atika Shubert live in London, thank you so much.

Australian officials had tried to negotiate the release of the hostages with the gunman before storming the cafe.

Daniel O'Shea is a former Navy SEAL. He was a member of the Hostage Working Group in Iraq from 2004 to 2006. He joins us now live from Tampa, Florida.

Thanks so much for being with us.

What do you think made them decide to launch the rescue attempt after 16 hours or so of the hostages being kept inside the cafe?

DANIEL O'SHEA, FORMER NAVY SEAL: Well, we don't know what happened that prompted the guys to make the raid, to start throwing in flash bangs. But what I know and I watched it live via the Internet, that there was a rush of hostages that came out suddenly and as that happened, it prompted -- you heard gunshots. And it's been told that they breached from two entry points. So, that was probably a trigger.

Now, going back to the negotiation phase of it, this guy may have already had in his mind that, I'm going to do the martyr's death. You know, you call it in the states suicide by cop. That may have been his intention all along.

The negotiator probably was -- may have come to that conclusion to advise the on-scene commander that this guy is going out one way and one way only. And when those hostages had the chance to escape, it prompted something that launched the mission to go in and go rescue the surviving. And sadly enough, two of the hostages were killed in the process.

TAPPER: For those just tuning in and seeing the imagine on the right side of your screen, we are awaiting remarks from the prime minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, and we'll bring those to you live when he steps up to the podium. But I want to continue my conversation with Daniel O'Shea, former Navy SEAL and member of the Hostage Working Group in Iraq.

Danny, at least two people were killed. We don't know who killed them. But in hostage situations like this, sometimes it happens that the rescuers accidentally kill hostages. I remember it happened as far back as the raid on Entebbe. There's going to be second-guessing here. This must be a tough decision to storm the cafe.

O'SHEA: It's always the last option. To send in hostage rescue forces, it's the most difficult mission that you can operate. It has to be surgical, it has to be precise and the challenge of it, as you saw, as these hostages were running out and the guys were trying to make an entry point, you know, really the safest things hostages can do in that environment is to get down.

If you hear a crash bang, you hear gunfire, you need to get down because these gentlemen, these special -- the SWAT unit or the Australian special forces, we hear a combination of the two, they have to make a split-second decision. And even then -- and these guys are the best of the business in Australia. So, I'm confident that when things come out -- there wasn't the Hollywood movie where bullets are flying crazy. These are surgical procedures in shooting. But even in that case, bullets can hit innocents. And it happens.

That's why to go to this level and to launch that mission, that's generally the last resort. And certainly, it's not something -- it looked like their hand was forced and they had to go with it. In that dynamic seconds, sometimes hostages get killed. And that's why this is always the last resort for the on-scene commander.

TAPPER: The gunman made demands using the hostages, making cell phone videos. What does that tell you about him, if anything?

O'SHEA: Well, again, like ISIS has taken -- this whole new era of social media, he was posting live videos to YouTube. He had a hostage contact a local radio show. So, he had an agenda. And his agenda, again, this type of media, this type of exposure is what fuels this. So he was driving that plan.

And even with his lack of direct affiliation with ISIS, demanding in one of those demands that he wanted an ISIS flag, an ISIS banner in exchange for a hostage. You know, he had a calculated intent, knowing that even making the connection to ISIS was going to raise the stakes and the whole world's media attention has been focused on this story nonstop over the last 24 hours and will continue because he took the whole world hostage for the last 17 hours, if you will.

TAPPER: And it was a long, long process, I imagine, in a situation like this. Negotiators want it to drag out as long as they can to exhaust the individual, is that right?

O'SHEA: Absolutely. And that's why I'm actually surprised that it ended this prematurely, because obviously, you know, from all the intel that's comes in, it was a lone gunman. He could have gone another 24 hours probably about 36-hour mark would have really seen the cycle of him being so exhausted that you would have thought the mission they could have launched tomorrow night in the middle of the night.

But in this case, he was obviously under a lot of pressure and stress. But I think -- from what I'm gathering and it will all come out in the after-action, is when four or five of the hostages were able to escape, I think that's what prompted it. Then the officers had to make the call to go in and rescue the other hostages.

TAPPER: Reportedly, he grew irate after the escapes.

Daniel O'Shea, thank you so much. We're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back.

We're expecting a live press coverage from the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. That's coming up.

In addition, we're going to look at what role U.S. intelligence might have played in the rescue effort.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)