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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Paris Official: Three Suspects May Have Been Arrested; Paris Deputy Mayor: Suspects Have Been Identified

Aired January 07, 2015 - 16:30   ET

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

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: What they're doing by this constant promotion in "Inspire" magazine is they're leading people to get further radicalized and to inquire about what that might look like and who they can find to help them do an attack like this. And that's what is so concerning.

And so now you see again their propaganda machine is alive and well, and active and engaged. "Inspire" magazine being a part of that and they have other activities they use to inspire people to commit acts of violence.

This is concerning. So now you see this event and many who believe the way these three believe will see this as a great victory for them and we fear that you'll have more people inspired to do that.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Stand by. I want to go to Evan Perez, our justice reporter, who is live in New York and we have breaking news and I want to get some breaking news. What are your sources telling you? Can U.S. officials confirm any of what we just heard from the deputy mayor of Paris?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Jake, just not yet, but we do know that the French have shared some names of individuals with the FBI and now what's going on behind the scenes is the work begins for the analysts, both at the FBI and with every single U.S. intelligence agency, which can lend its assistance.

One of the things they're looking for, Jake, is anything that they can find in the email, internet traffic, telephone, anything that the U.S. may have on the names that the French have passed along.

One official described this as something akin to a big haystack that the U.S. has, and one of the things is that France has been an area of concern because not only do you have a huge number of foreign fighters, people going to Syria and Iraq to fight, and then returning, Jake.

But you also have a very large community there that is disaffected and that you've seen a number of attacks in recent months that has caused concern for the U.S. officials, as well.

Again, they're going through what's akin through a big haystack looking for anything that they can find on these individuals. They suspect that there was something there that was missed earlier, perhaps on the French side, but that they can now try to use to figure out what exactly happened here.

TAPPER: Evan Perez, live in New York, thank you so much. Let's go back to Mike Rogers, CNN national security correspondent, former analyst and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

I want to ask specifically about the fact that this magazine seems to have been very directly targeted. This is not an act of terror at a random coffee shop. This is not an act of terror at a random monument as we saw in Australia and as we saw in Ottawa, both of which were horrific attacks.

But seemed somewhat random, these were individuals and you heard the deputy mayor of Paris tell us that they shouted out the names of these individuals, these cartoonists and the editor and these journalists before they killed them. This was a terrorist assassination.

ROGERS: Clearly. This was a very, very targeted attack. So much like the terrorists went after the Twin Towers on more than one occasion, 1993 and 2001 they wanted that particular target set to be their big event was.

Same with this, they were inspired because in the same tone that the Danish newspaper cartoonist was killed, this is the same way. So obviously, they took time. Obviously, they did their research, but this was clearly their designated target for some period of time.

What is interesting is that it appears that they went to the wrong place first and then finally got to the right location and if in fact that pans out as true it tells you that this is a broader conspiracy.

There are likely other individuals who were involved in the attack either planning or logistics or inspiration in the folks that actually radicalized them and helped them put this plan together and they just got their information a little wrong.

TAPPER: When you saw some of the reports we had earlier, I don't know if you saw Tom Foreman's report, this was a remarkably efficient attack where the individuals really, they were trained, they were good shots.

I don't want to make light of it, but it's not easy, necessarily to be a good shot to fire at police and hit them 16 times in the windshield. These have all the marks of individuals who have been trained somewhere else.

ROGERS: It's clear, and if you watch some of the video you will see that some of these individuals at least one that I identified had some level of discipline or training in the way he was conducting himself out on the street.

They had a little less discipline, but when you look at the patterns on the vehicle, you are firing at a vehicle that has the possibility of returning fire, that tells you that was someone who has had that experience before and this was not their first rodeo. So that is obviously has to be very concerning to the French police knowing that we've had this call from fighters in Syria and Iraq knowing that they've wanted to go back. They've wanted to have an attack in the west. You can't rule it out.

It doesn't mean that necessarily happened and I don't think there's evidence to say that and it's clear that all of that work investigatively you'll see happen next. We'll try to find out those ties. Is there other plots going on in Paris today?

Are there other plots around France today or anywhere else in Europe or even the United States? That's why the FBI is there and trying to neighbor sure that they can get every piece of information to track back to make sure we don't have that same problem, someone sitting in their garage right now preparing to do an attack.

TAPPER: You're a former FBI official. What is the FBI helping the French with?

ROGERS: Well, they'll coordinate with any information that we might have. So every little scrap of information they can come up on these individuals, the FBI will be able to go in and say well, we can tell you who they're associated with.

We can tell you where they've traveled. Any small, little piece of information will help both the French and us candidly and other law enforcement agencies across Europe to start nailing down how big is this, is it just the three people? They did it on their own. They did all their own surveillance. They did all their own targeting.

TAPPER: That's very hard to believe.

ROGERS: Hard to believe for me. I look at this and this is there are more individuals involved, but how big that is, we don't know. And I'm certain they don't know yet, but all of that information will be used.

Every little piece of information they can find, if it's a vehicle, if it's a phone number and if it's an email address, all of that they'll -- the FBI can help run down and magnify both the speed of which the French can get out to do and help us here back at home.

TAPPER: When you talk about their associates that these three individuals, who may have been arrested for this terrorist attack, are you talking about information that the FBI might have because of the infamous meta data, the idea that the United States and the British intelligence and other intelligence agencies are able to track who these individuals have been in contact with because of their cell phones?

ROGERS: Well, we used to be able to take that phone number and have them apply it to a big database and check to see if that number was related to anywhere in the United States. It's a little higher. It's more difficult to do that now, unfortunately.

But they'll have to go through that process to make sure if they can check any phone numbers that they may have called to the United States. You'll want to know if someone radicalized to the point of shooting somebody.

Were they talking to someone in the United States? Were they planning another attack? Who is that person and can we do further background investigation on that person?

That process will happen. Unfortunately, again, it's been changed so it will take longer to get to that meta data place. That information won't help the French, necessarily and the things that the FBI can show, is we know by that name and the individual of that name maybe had been in contact with another terrorist.

Somebody that we've identified to be a terrorist who is associated with these three or four different people and that could be invaluable in an investigation like this.

TAPPER: All right, Mike Rogers, former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, new CNN contributor, thank so much. Appreciate it.

When we come back, breaking information, the deputy mayor of Paris telling CNN that three suspects may have been arrested in the terrorist attack. We are continuing our breaking news coverage next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Breaking news in our World Lead, the deputy mayor of Paris telling CNN that French authorities have identified the three individuals they believed to have been the terrorist who carried out the attack in Paris.

Earlier today, these hooded attackers who staged a very carefully orchestrated a slaughter in the heart of Paris right around noon local time. The deputy mayor told me you may have heard earlier in the show that he believed the suspects may have been arrested.

But he called back to clarify and correct himself saying to CNN that the suspects have not been arrested, but they have been identified. CNN is not naming the suspects because we have not been able to individually confirm their identities.

Per the deputy mayor these three suspects are 34, 32 and 18 years old. They're from the suburbs of Paris. Two of them are brothers. He also says they all escaped together. Police are hunting for them. One of them may be previously known to police from a different prosecution.

The carnage that these three terrorists left in their wake is unthinkable, 12 dead, eight journalists, two police, two others, the largest terrorist attack in France in nearly two decades and according to the deputy mayor of Paris, at least one of these men as I said was already known to authorities and had previously been prosecuted.

It is unclear if any of these three individuals were involved with any foreign terrorist groups, whether ISIS or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but let's move on. No one has officially claimed responsibility.

U.S. intelligence officials, of course, are closely looking at several terrorist groups including as I mentioned, ISIS, al Qaeda and Yemen and the core al Qaeda group in Pakistan.

Let's bring in our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, now. Barbara, what can we learn from the tactics used by these terrorists?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've talked to a number of officials and analysts during the day, Jake. They are looking at this video that we've seen frame by frame. What they see is they hope some clues that these are very well-trained, very methodical, very brazen and very calm killers.

They are there in essentially quasi-military gear, black, tactical gear. They have AK-47-style weapons and their faces are covered and they move very methodically. They at one point on the video one of the assassins cover the fire basically of the other assassin.

They work in tandem. This is an indication that these people had some training. They knew what they were doing and perhaps most importantly, that getaway car. These guys were not suicide bombers in the middle of Paris at midday in broad daylight they had every intention and capability to get away to make a clean getaway.

The hunt is on for them, but they were not going in to die. They were going in to kill and to fight and they were able to get away. That's something very different than the sort of lone wolf-type suicide attack that we have seen in so many places.

TAPPER: Is there any evidence, Barbara, that this attack was forewarned in any way? That any intelligence may have been missed?

STARR: Well, they're also looking at that. Now the publication has certainly come under threat in the past. Everyone is aware of that because of their record of just unchecked satire. That is what they do. So it was known that they were under threat and they had been threatened before.

Officials are saying, U.S. officials are saying no recent threats directly tied to the magazine, but look, they are now going back, all authorities, through all of the intelligence they have, intercepts, imagery, reports, talking to people, talking to agents and seeing if they can come up with anything that they might have missed. So far, no indication of it -- Jake.

TAPPER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you so much.

Let's dig deeper into today's attack, let's bring in CNN terror analyst, Paul Cruickshank and Farah Pandith, a former special representative to Muslim Communities for the State Department. Thank you both for being here.

Paul, let me start with you. There are reports and obviously videotape when you can hear these terrorists talking and they seem to have legitimate French accents. How significant is that? PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERROR ANALYST: It appears that they're either French nationals or people who live in France given the fact that it looks like perhaps they got some training. These are people who trained in Syria. French officials believe there are 400 French nationals fighting with ISIS and other jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq right now.

Two hundred on their way back and 200 already back in France. That's of huge concern and impossible for them to monitor all of these people 24/7.

TAPPER: Farah, let's talk about the challenge of this for the French government and for Muslim French leaders in that area and obviously, for whatever reason some of these extremist groups, ISIS, al Qaeda have an appeal to some of the, I don't know if they're disaffected, disenfranchised, and mentally unstable, but hundreds of French Muslims are going to fight in Iraq and Syria. How do you stop that?

FARAH PANDITH, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE TO MUSLIM COMMUNITIES: It's all about the ideology and this is not something that's only about France. This is about a narrative that extremists have been using for decades in pulling in and seducing young people. I think it's no surprise that these kids who are suspects are young.

They're millennials. They have grown up in an era of a post-9/11 world in which they're hearing about how to be a quote, "true Muslim" and so the bad guys are using their narrative to push and pull on their identity crisis that they're having.

This is happening with Muslims and Muslim majority countries as well as Muslims living as minorities. Today, we're looking at France. We're looking at the 5 million to 6 million people, who are French citizens who call themselves Muslim and saying there's something about France that's the problem.

What we have to be thinking about is policymakers and others is what's happening ideologically around the planet that is affecting young kids. How are they getting recruited and what can we do both as government and non-government to stop them from being susceptible and moving in towards their narratives that the extremists are putting out there online and offline and that's the key issue.

TAPPER: Paul, is there any indication, again, it's early and we don't have all of the details and three of these individuals have allegedly been identified and not yet arrested. Is there any indication that they may have ties to any bigger, foreign, terrorist group, ISIS, al Qaeda?

CRUICKSHANK: Until we know the names here at CNN I don't think we can get into that too much, there are also names circulating, but we have not confirmed those names at the moment. The fact that they were identified so quickly, however, suggests they were already perhaps on the radar screen of French authorities.

TAPPER: And you talked about how some of the individuals that came back from fighting abroad in Syria and Iraq were known to French authorities and perhaps there were two of them.

CRUICKSHANK: It's certainly possible. We've seen a string of plots and attacks involving French ISIS fighters in recent months. We saw that shooting of the Jewish museum in Brussels allegedly by a French ISIS fighter and we saw a plot in February in Cannes where a French ISIS fighter allegedly came back.

He was found with a kilogram of high explosive. So the worries is that it could be that type of attack, but it could be a lone wolf attack, somebody inspired by the message we saw just before Christmas. A terrorist lone wolf attack in the center of France where someone stabbed a police officer and was then shot dead.

TAPPER: So much breaking news in this hour. I'll have to cut it short. I'll have to have you both back and talk about the challenge I want to talk about with you about how to stop this extremist ideology from taking hold.

Farah and Paul, thank you so much. We have to take a quick break. As we've been reporting, the Paris deputy mayor tells CNN the three suspects in the Paris attack have been identified by police. We'll have much more on this breaking story coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We continue to learn new details about the Paris terrorist attack earlier today that left 12 people dead. The deputy mayor of Paris telling me earlier in the program that the French authorities have identified the suspected three terrorist, but police do not yet have them in handcuffs.

The three suspects laid siege to the office of a satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier today, shooting, killing, and murdering 12 people in total. CNN cannot yet name the suspects. We have not yet been able to independently confirm who the terrorists are.

Also according to the deputy mayor, the suspects are 34, 32 and 18 years old. They hail from a suburb of Paris. Two of them are brothers. The deputy mayor also says they all escaped together. Police continue to search for them. They're presumed to be armed and dangerous.

Now let's talk more about that French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo. It's never been one to shy away from controversy. It's a left-wing periodical born in 1969 named after Charlie, the Peanuts character Charlie Brown, but the similarity stops there.

The publication was once banned by the French interior minister after the publication made light of the death of Charles De Gaulle and the deadly nightclub fire. Since then, time after time it has stoked the fires of controversy through outrageous satire.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: For years the editorial director of the French magazine, Charlie Hebdo, Stephane Charbonier adamantly defended the "in your face" satire of his publication and what he thought should be its right to free speech.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We do provocation. It's been 20 years since we've been doing provocation.

TAPPER: It was a philosophy of freedom that the weekly took full advantage of with scathing cartoons and headlines mocking politics and religion, and the freedom it seems at least ten of its staff may have died for today.

TOMAS HIRST, REPORTER, "BUSINESS INSIDER": It was about them making a statement that they wouldn't be intimidated and wouldn't be cowed.

TAPPER: Not cowed, but not shielded either. Among the 12 killed today including two police officers were Charb, and three other famous French cartoonists, Ganad Vilac (ph), George Wolinski (ph), and Jean Cabu (ph).

Charb had received death threats and was under police protection. He was once named as a target in "Inspire" magazine, a newsletter published by al Qaeda.

The publication had been threatened before. In 2006, after a Danish published 12 cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad, worldwide protests erupted along with a debate over freedoms of the press.

Charlie Hebdo reprinted the cartoons in response to Muslim groups called the drawings racist and sued the publication for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims. They lost.

In 2011, the publication was firebombed for another depiction of Mohammed, who had mockingly named "editor-in-chief."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can't make everyone happy and we know that.

TAPPER: The cartoonists stood firm.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next week, there will be another Charlie Hebdo.

TAPPER: Indeed each attack seemed to empower the staff to press forward, undaunted, unafraid.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): One has the impression that everyone is driven by fear and that's what the small handful of fundamentalists that doesn't represent anyone who wants to do, govern by fear.

TAPPER: In 2012, Charlie Hebdo's cartoons lampooning Islam through protests and those protests drew Charb's ire.

STEPHANE CHARBONNIER, EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, "CHARLIE HEBDO" (through translator): We the impression that three idiots who demonstrated in the streets represent all of Islam. One has to mock them using humor, disarm them using humor and not give them any credit.

HIRST: It shows exactly where they want to position themselves on the side of people who believed in free speech at any cost.

TAPPER: Today many wonder if the cost was simply too high.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: We are seeing all kinds of tributes after today's deadly attack. Here is the magazine's homepage right now. Visitors will see the message reading "Je Suis Charlie," which translates to "I am Charlie." The same message is trending as a hashtag on Twitter right now.

Others have posted caricatures to express their moods. Here is a cartoon from a Dutch cartoonist with pencils as the Twin Towers. It's almost 11:00 at night in France and crowds are gathering to mourn the victims. Many are holding up pens as tributes to the cartoonists killed today.

CNN correspondent, Frederik Pleitgen is monitoring demonstrations now in Paris.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, thousands of people came out here to Plaza Lerepublique and they are really protesting for freedom of expression, for freedom of the press and of course, for liberty in general, which are of course, core values here in France.

And it really is a mood of defiance, if you will, on the one hand they're chanting in support of this publication of Charlie Hebdo, that magazine, but they're also saying that their way of life, their lifestyle is not going to be changed in any way, shape or form by terrorism.

At the same time many people here have a very heavy heart. A lot of people are lighting candles and laying down flowers and thinking of those people who were killed in this tragic event. The interesting thing also, Jake, about this is that there really isn't an air of fear whatsoever.

People say they're not afraid to go out here. People say their hopes are still high. People say that France is going to get past this and the other thing that we haven't seen at all at this protest is any sort of anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic sentiment.

In fact, I talked to two gentlemen earlier and one of them was of Arab descent and the other of European descent and both said that France will get through this together, that Jews, Arabs and Christians in France will stand together against extremism from all sides -- Jake.

TAPPER: Frederik Pleitgen for us in Paris. Thank you. That is it for us. I'm Jake Tapper. I now turn it over to Wolf Blitzer. He is right next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Wolf.