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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Tony Abbott Addresses Australia in the Wake of Terrorist Attack in Sydney; Lone Wolf Terror Threat On The Rise; Six Dead, Suspect On Loose Near Philadelphia

Aired December 15, 2014 - 16:30   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is speaking now. Let's take a listen.

TONY ABBOTT, AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER: Innocent Australians caught up in the horror of yesterday. Five other people, four hostages and a New South Wales police officer have been injured. State and commonwealth agencies are investigating.

Understandably, there is a lot of speculation. But it will take time to clarify exactly what happened in Martin Place and why.

What we do know is that the perpetrator was well-known to state and commonwealth authorities. He had a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability. We know that he sent offensive letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and was found guilty of offenses related to this.

We also know that he posted graphic extremist material online. As the siege unfolded yesterday, he sought to cloak his actions with the symbolism of the ISIL death cult. Tragically, there are people in our community ready to engage in politically motivated violence. The events in Martin Place also show that we are ready to deal with these people professionally and with the full force of law. I want to thank the New South Wales police and all the other agencies involved for their professionalism and courage.

Yesterday, the premier (INAUDIBLE) showed great steadfastness and Sydney citizens can be proud of their calm during what was a very difficult and testing day. Australians should be reassured by the way our law enforcement and security agencies responded to this brush with terrorism. There is nothing more Australian than dropping in at the local cafe for a morning coffee. And it's tragic beyond words that people going about their everyday business should have been caught up in such a horrific incident. Our hearts go out to all of those caught up in this appalling incident and their loved ones.

On behalf of all Australians, I extend my sympathy to the families of the two hostages who died overnight. These events do demonstrate that even a country as free, as open, as generous and as safe as ours is vulnerable to acts of politically motivated violence. But they also remind us that Australia and Australians are resilient and we are ready to respond. Now, I do intend to go to Sydney early in the afternoon to be further briefed by New South Wales police and other security agencies. I also intend to say thank you as best I can in person to New South Wales police officers and others involved in this appalling incident. I'll do more media there and I'll take questions at that time. When we do have a better idea of exactly what has happened.

Plainly, there are lessons to be learned. And we will thoroughly examine this incident to decide what lessons can be learned. But I do want now -- in the hours immediately after the conclusion of the siege to offer these words of comfort to those caught up in it and reassurance to the Australian people.

TAPPER: That was the prime minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, giving remarks, talking about the siege in Sydney earlier today saying that the shooter, the gunman was a politically motivated -- which I believe is obvious to anyone who's been following this story. CNN justice reporter Evan Perez has been in touch with his contacts all day. He joins us now. Evan, law enforcement right now combing over the crime scene, everything they can find in the Lindt Cafe. What else are they doing?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake one of the things that's very interesting about Australia, especially in recent months is they've seen instances in which there seems to be a network of people who are helping lure Australians to go overseas and fight in Syria and Iraq.

TAPPER: On behalf of extremist groups.

PEREZ: On behalf of extremist groups. And that's one of the things that the FBI is very interested in. It's something that we haven't seen as much here. We've seen a lot of recruitment online. And in Australia, they've seen some nascent signs of a network there. And that's one of the things they're really interested in this case to see if this suspect had any links with any of those people. Obviously, there seems to be a lot of indications of mental illness, of acting out. He was well-known to law enforcement there and even to our law enforcement. His name was known to us here in the United States according to people I've talked to today. What we don't know is whether or not he had any links to others.

TAPPER: And he had a big digital footprint. He was on Twitter. He was all over the Web.

PEREZ: Right. I mean he was all over the place posting on Twitter, posting - he had a website in which he kept posting pictures of dead kids and people who he said were injured in U.S. airstrikes against ISIS. And really just ranting about the U.S. Coalition, including Australia's own role in those bombings, Jake. And so that's one of the things that really seemed to be animating him. And you can see in the last few days as he kept striking out that there was something coming. You know you can see from some of his rantings that there was something perhaps under way.

TAPPER: And now, Evan, it's early, and so obviously I'm not going to hold you to this. But as of what law enforcement knows right now, is there any reason to think that this is anything bigger than a lone wolf attack?

PEREZ: No. I think early this morning, you know, we were talking to people in intelligence and with the law enforcement and they said they saw no signs of it, no signs of any links to - you know, wider links to extremist groups or any indication that this was part of a wider plan or plot connected to anything else. I mean obviously they're still looking. They especially want to see who he was communicating with and if there's anybody who might be inspired by his actions to do the same --

TAPPER: Like copycats.

PEREZ: Right.

TAPPER: Perez, thank you so much.

Suspected ISIS terrorists were arrested just months ago in Australia for plotting a public beheading. So was this gunman following orders from any terror group at all? Coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to "THE LEAD." I'm Jake Tapper. We are going to continue now with our breaking news. World lead, the hostage standoff in Sydney. It has ended thankfully but it is yet another example of what keeps law enforcement officials awake at night. It's called the lone wolf scenario, sympathizers of extremist ideology such as this man, Man Haron Monis. They become radicalized, they take it upon themselves to carry out attacks in the name of jihad. Here's CNN's chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The brazen hostage-taking at a downtown Sydney cafe ended with a risky police operation and bloodshed. The assailant, Man Haron Monis, though known to police, believed to have planned and carried out the attack on his own. U.S. officials have told CNN consistently that such lone wolfs are the terrorists most likely to strike on U.S. soil.

JEH JOHNSON, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: The new phenomenon that I see that I'm very concerned about is somebody who's never met another member of that terrorist organization, never trained at one of the camps, who is simply inspired by the social media, the literature, the propaganda, the message to commit an act of violence in this country.

MATTHEW OLSEN, FMR. DIRECTOR, NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER: I would say the most likely type of attack is one of these home-grown violent extremists or lone offenders in the United States. And the rise of ISIS and the number of people going to Syria whether they're fighting with ISIS or fighting just in the conflict there against Assad, the likelihood I think does go up.

SCIUTTO: The threat grew more grave with an alarming fatwa or Islamic Declaration in September by this man. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the senior ISIS leader called for lone wolf attacks against all members of the anti-ISIS coalition, including the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

Since then, investigators have traced the shooting of a Canadian soldier in Ottawa, a hatchet attack on police in New York and a failed plot to capture and behead a member of the public in Australia back to the ISIS fatwa. The unique danger of lone wolfs is they're difficult to police and prevent. They often do not enter the country from abroad where they could be tracked and caught at immigration. And they often don't communicate by e-mail or telephone with operational leaders, making them harder for intelligence agencies such as the NSA to track and capture them.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: While we're never going to stop these kinds of attacks, the good news is that they tend to have limited impact. There are fewer victims, there are fewer dead. And in the end, that may be the standard for success in this new era of terrorism.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: So, how do you police lone wolfs? Big emphasis now for U.S. intelligence law enforcement communities. It's working within Muslim communities. The U.S. is learning a great deal from the U.K. on this. Also important, undercover operations, as well as encouraging members of the public like us to report suspicious activity. But the fact is, it may be impossible to know what's in the mind of an Islamist sympathizer until he or she strikes. This is the real challenge for them. I mean when you have an intelligence trail, you can track them down. When you are just looking inside people's heads, you're going to miss people like this.

TAPPER: But this guy did have a trail. So, let's talk about that, Jim Sciutto, thanks, to discuss difficulty of identifying and disrupting lone wolves attacks are Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow with the Foundation of Defense of Democracies, and CNN terror analyst Paul Cruikshank. Thank you for being here. Paul, let me start with you. This guy had a criminal record, he was well-known to authorities. Was this an intelligence failure?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK: To some degree, yes. I mean seven years ago he was writing all these letters to the families of Australian servicemen who were killed in action. Very, very radical letters back in 2007. So, he's been doing this for some time, he's been on the radar screen for some time. Just last month, he pledged allegiance to the head of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi online. So, this is the guy with some form when it comes to radical extremism.

TAPPER: And yet, I guess, David, what do you do until he actually carries out - I mean you see him in these clips holding up sandwich boards on the street, he looks like just a crackpot.

DAVEED GARTENSTEIN-ROSS, SENIOR FELLOW FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: Yeah, that's one of the difficulties of going after lone wolf terrorists. That you can't conspire with yourself. So they have to have done something illegal to prosecute them for an act of terrorism. But there is two things you can do. That the United States has utilized, one of which is sting operations. Basically, see what somebody's intentions are by giving them the opportunity to act out a fantasy scenario. Controversial, but they do deal with the problem. A second thing is utilizing other pegs that you have. Kind of an Al Capone style of policing, Al Capone, of course, was a notorious bootlegger. He killed people, but he was ultimately convicted of tax evasion, and in this case there might have been pegs like the immigration system. Especially given the assault charges and the murder charge against him.

TAPPER: Right. I would think that those could have been used. Then Paul, also, I would think in this day and age of social media and the proliferation of really powerful propaganda by these terrorist groups online, it's very difficult to go after these lone wolfs.

You have instructions in "Inspire" magazine on how to build a bomb. You have all these slick videos from is. It must make it much more complicated.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: That's right. You don't have to go to a terrorist camp to learn how to build explosive devices. You can just go and buy a weapon. You know, one big question will be how did this guy manage to get ahold of a weapon in Australia -- he was on the radar screen of the intelligence services there. That's one of the biggest questions today.

TAPPER: And guns are banned in Australia, of course. What lesson can we learn, David? Is there anything we can see in this instance in Sydney? I know it's early yet. But that American intelligence officials or national security officials can say, this is what we do to prevent it from happening here?

DAVID GARTERSTEN-FLOSS, SENIOR FELLOW, FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES: We have to look at the pattern of attacks that have ISIS inspiration this year. If you count the beheading in Oklahoma, there are six of them, the two in Canada, the New York City ax attack, this attack among them.

In general, there's about -- over the past decade, there have been about seven attacks for all kinds of lone wolf terrorism across 15 different western states.

This year, there have been six for ISIS' inspired lone wolf terrorism alone. I think one lesson is that social media, in my view, is effective in taking that group function which normally exists in terrorism -- that is, people egging each other on and it can apply to lone wolfs.

So my concern and I think what law enforcement have in mind is that the pattern of lone wolfs and the pace of them may be increasing.

TAPPER: All right, David, Paul, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Coming up next, back here in the U.S., a manhunt for a shooting suspect who allegedly killed six people at several different locations in Pennsylvania. Police have identified the man they're looking for, but do they have any idea where he is?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. Now we're going to turn now to our National Lead, an armed and dangerous man on the loose right now in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Six people are already dead in at least three different homes. Police are searching for the killer whose rampage might not be over.

CNN's Susan Candiotti has all the latest developments on this Susan.

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Jake. And it's unclear where the suspect is right now. The source is telling me that this appears to be based on a domestic dispute. And everything started at about 4:00 in the morning involving three different locations.

Now a fourth scene is involved where the suspect might be. So in the middle of the night, there was a report of shots fired. Police respond and find the body of a woman there. Then they went to another location and found at least two more bodies.

And then a third location where more bodies were found, all of the victims, according to our sources, are said to be related to the shooter who is involved.

Now, at that first location, a neighbor told our affiliate that she saw the suspect leave the home with children in their pajamas. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I heard three or four gunshots and I heard the kids yelling, no, mommy, no. And he said, let's go, we've got to go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: Now court records indicate that the suspect in this case was divorced between 2008 and 2009 and our source tells us that one of the victims is his ex-wife.

Now, the suspect is being identified -- the man you see here, as Bradley William Stone. They are saying that he is still at large, looking for him, that he killed at least six people and seriously wounded at least one other.

That's what authorities are telling us. You see the picture of him. They're still on the lookout for him. They've been using a lot of flash bangs to try to force him out of a house. But we're not sure whether he's in that home at this time or not.

Jake, one more thing, we do know that he is a reserve Marine on standby, I should say. He served in Iraq for about three months in 2008.

TAPPER: All right, Susan Candiotti, thank you. When we come back, more on this breaking story out of Pennsylvania, how police are trying to track down this alleged killer after he's evaded them for hours. Stay with us. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: We're back with continuing coverage on our National Lead. The search for a gunman right now in Pennsylvania, presumed to be armed and dangerous. Police say he killed relatives in three different homes.

This is happening in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His name is Bradley William Stone. He is 35 years old. He is alleged to have killed six people today and wounded a teenage boy.

CNN law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes joins me now. Tom, police don't know where he is. They don't seem to know where he is. What tactics are they probably using to try to find him?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, the tactics would be normal fugitive investigations. In a case like this, try to contact anybody, whatever relatives are still alive that he hasn't killed yet, friends, neighbors, colleagues.

If he was receiving treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, we've heard accounts in the media about that. But we don't know if he'd been receiving treatment. Is he another one of the veterans that fell through the cracks when the V.A. wasn't treating the people they should be treating?

But it's going to be very dependent what they do when they find them based on what the location is, if they find him in a house, apartment building, out in the woods, whatever. But we're dealing with a trained killer who has now killed.

TAPPER: Right. Six people and wounded a teenage boy. Police trying to communicate with Bradley William Stone, what do you say to a gunman in a situation like this if you do find him and reach him to try to defuse the situation?

FUENTES: Well, it's very difficult because you can't say it's going to be all right if you turn yourself in. He murdered six people. You do the best you can in the negotiations to say it doesn't have to be any worse than this. We can help you, you know, something to that effect.

But frankly it's going to sound lame no matter what you tell him because he's already crossed this line and killed so many people.

TAPPER: I guess, the only thing law enforcement could promise to him is turn yourself in and you'll survive, it is really the only enticing thing. It's unclear if he wants that --

FUENTES: Exactly. He may want to do a suicide by cop and realize now that he's killed the six members of his family, he's probably going to get executed for doing it and take some police officers along the way with him.

TAPPER: These deaths clearly personal for him as we've heard from local reports, it started with his ex-wife this morning. How do you figure out his next move?

FUENTES: Well, it's very difficult because he obviously had a very contentious divorce situation with her and he killed her. He did not kill her current boyfriend or fiance because he wasn't there. So that might be a lead there to hunt him trying to hunt the fiance that he'd missed already this morning.

So that may be one, to try to locate him through that. But it's just going to be very difficult. Once somebody like this has crossed the line and already committed the murders, there's not a lot you can offer him especially if he doesn't want to survive.

He may not care about his own personal survival at this point. He may be so broken mentally that it would be fine with him to die.

TAPPER: In fact, it's a term people use all the time, suicide by cop, people who actually want to take their own life and seek the police to do it for them.

FUENTES: Exactly.

TAPPER: Tom Fuentes, thank you so much. Of course, just to remind you for viewers at home, Bradley William Stone is the individual who is wanted in Pennsylvania right now. He's killed six people and wounded a teenage boy. He is 35 years old. You see the picture of him right there.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter @jaketapper and also @theleadcnn. That's it for THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn you over to Wolf Blitzer. He's in Los Angeles where he has brought "THE SITUATION ROOM" with him -- Wolf.