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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Interview with Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Two Terror Suspects Killed in Belgium Raid; Belgium "Major Imminent Attack" Foiled

Aired January 15, 2015 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We begin today with that breaking news in our world lead, striking video from a police raid in Belgium that ended with two people dead, a third in police custody, all of them suspected terrorists.

Take a look. That was the scene earlier today in Verviers, Belgium, a little over an hour away from Brussels. There, Belgian security forces blitzed an alleged terror cell with direct ties to ISIS, according to local authorities. Belgian officials say this cell was operational. They say an attack was imminent.

It is unclear just what kind of terrorists -- these supposed jihadis were allegedly planning, but Belgian officials say they were armed with Kalashnikovs, the same kind of automatic rifles used by the Kouachi borders in the "Charlie Hebdo" slaughter a week ago in Paris.

A spokesperson for the Belgian federal prosecutor told reporters this afternoon that police in Verviers had this group under surveillance for the last several weeks, they had tracked its members to and from Syria, that country, of course, the operational home for the terrorist group ISIS. The fanatical jihadi group swore to wreak havoc in Europe and the United States.

And we now see examples of those attempts to do so.

Let's go to Chris Burns right now. He's a journalist for Euronews. He's on the phone from Belgium.

Chris, what can you tell us about this raid?

CHRIS BURNS, EURONEWS: Well, hello, Jake.

The police are rather tight-lipped about exactly the details, but what we are getting from Belgian media is that the police have been -- yes, been surveilling these suspects for some time after they came back from Syria and that the police moved in just hours after there was a link connected to what had happened in Paris a week ago, the terrorist attack there, that some of the weapons that were in those attacks were actually bought here in Belgium.

Police stepped up their operations today in a number of cities, a number of places, and they moved in on that house in Verviers. The police say that the suspects began to open fire with war weapons, as they identified them, and handguns, and the police fired back, killing two of them and arresting one of them.

And we have just in the last few minutes seen in Belgian media reporting that a second intervention has happened in Verviers in another street in another house. Details -- no further details on that, but just that police have taken action in another part of Verviers today, this evening.

Some 10 searches going on today in the Brussels area and some towns nearby. Not a lot of details on it, but we did hear one about one in Anderlecht, which is a neighborhood in Belgium, in Brussels, that there were explosives found in a building, but that their suspects sought, the people who were living there, weren't there. So, the police are trying to track them down. It could be a long night, Jake.

TAPPER: Chris, have Belgian security forces said that they have been able to establish any connection at all between these suspected terrorists and any of the individuals who took part in last week's activities, terrorist activities in France, either Amedy Coulibaly or the Kouachi brothers or the woman, Boumeddiene, who is reportedly now in Syria?

BURNS: So far, they are not saying, but it is interesting that during the press conference that the prosecutor -- federal prosecutor gave just a few -- couple hours ago, said that we do not want to jeopardize, undermine our investigations. We will have more information for you tomorrow.

And so they did not want to give up any more information, but it has been established by authorities that Coulibaly had bought arms here in Belgium before those attacks, so there could be a link at least with Coulibaly to elements here, Islamic extremist elements here. But it is not clear whether the Verviers action that the police took was linked to Coulibaly. That is not clear yet.

TAPPER: Chris Burns on the ground in Brussels, thank you so much.

Let's go now to CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto, who is live in Paris.

Jim, the claim by the Belgian government is that an attack from this cell in Belgium was imminent. What are your sources telling you about that? What does that mean, imminent? Days, weeks?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They haven't given a time frame, but certainly some of the details from tonight's operations are telling.

One, of course, when they encountered one of these groups, that they immediately opened fire, according to police, and that that fire lasted for several minutes -- that led to that exchange of fire. But, remember, there were 10 different searches under way tonight in four different cities as they tried to find all the different parts of this cell, and they found other things.

At another site, they found explosives. One of the apartments they searched was very close to Brussels' main airport, all worrisome signs about just what these attackers were intending. But of course it is in that one location in Verviers where it went violent and gunfire followed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO (voice-over): Gunfire erupting again on the streets of a European city. This is Verviers in Eastern Belgium tonight, as anti- terror police raid the home of suspected terrorists recently back from Syria.

Inside, sources tell CNN, suspects directed by ISIS armed with Kalashnikovs and planning to attack the local police station.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): At Verviers, the suspects immediately and for long minutes fired using war weapons and hand weapons, before being neutralized. Two of the suspects died and a third was detained on the site.

SCIUTTO: Flashlights visible through the windows as police fight their way up the stairs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This was within the framework of investigation looking into an operational cell made up of people, some of whom were coming back from Syria. The investigation made it possible to determine that the group was about to carry out major terrorist attacks in Belgium imminently.

SCIUTTO: Soon, anti-terror operations are under way in several other Belgian cities. Earlier, police in Belgium detained an arms dealer who is now suspected of selling weapons to Amedy Coulibaly, including the guns he used to storm the kosher market in Eastern Paris last week.

Coulibaly allegedly sold him a car and also took out a loan for 6,000 euros from a nearby bank. With Europe on high alert, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Paris, the highest-level U.S. official to visit France since violence rocked Paris.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: My visit to France is basically to share a big hug with Paris and express the affection of the American people have for France and for our friends there who have been through a terrible time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: In their public statements, we should be clear that Belgian police are making no tie between tonight's raids in Belgium and the attacks that took place here in Paris. They say that these groups have been under surveillance for some time and they acted tonight because of concerns about these terrorists, suspected terrorists acting on an imminent plot.

And, again, to be clear, Jake, as well, so far, the lines here in Paris being drawn back to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. We have that claim of responsibility this week, whereas these arrests in Belgium tied to the group ISIS in Syria, an example of what has been a long-term concern here in Europe, is that the front lines of the war in Syria and Iraq brought home to Europe those returning fighters attempting to carry out jihad on Western soil, European soil, following training and experience on the ground in Iraq and Syria -- Jake.

TAPPER: Absolutely, although, of course, Coulibaly expressed allegiance to ISIS. It's all kind of a confusing mess. Jim Sciutto, thank you so much.

Let's bring in former Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush Michael Chertoff. He's also the founder of The Chertoff Group, a global risk management advisory firm.

Secretary Chertoff, thanks so much for being here.

So, this is -- this was the big fear that's been talked about ever since ISIS was born, is that these foreign fighters going over there from Europe, from the United States would come back. And, obviously, there is still so much we don't know, but at least according to Belgian authorities, these individuals went to Syria, came back and were plotting something.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, FORMER U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We have seen for months now a steady flow of Westerners going to Syria and Iraq and fighting there, and then coming back.

And that's been a pattern literally over decades where people go to fight in hot spots. Back in the '90s, it was Chechnya. Then it was in the Balkans. And then some of them come back and become operational in their home countries. And that's why monitoring the travel and communication between the U.S., Western Europe and what goes on in the Middle East becomes very important.

TAPPER: I guess the question probably a lot of viewers have is if you knew these guys went to Syria, and fought for ISIS and came back, why are they just walking around? And the same could be asked about people in this country, because I have heard of individuals -- there was that jihadi from Florida who fought with al-Nusra, came back to Florida, then went back to Syria and died there.

Why not just arrest them when they come back?

CHERTOFF: Well, so there are a couple issues.

One is, do you have a basis to arrest them? If you can prove in court that they went to fight, that may be in fact sufficient to give you basis to arrest. At a minimum, you want to surveil them. There are resource constraints. If there are literally hundreds of people going back to Western Europe, the ability of the police to literally sit on everybody becomes problematic from the standpoint of having the manpower.

That's why some of the electronic surveillance issues that have been controversial really become critical, because if you can monitor whether people are communicating with others in the Middle East or other plotters, that can help focus you on people who are a real threat.

TAPPER: But -- well, do we have enough here in this country? Do we have -- do we not have the manpower? Because, obviously, in France, that was an issue. They had Coulibaly. They knew about him. They knew about the Kouachi brothers, and then ultimately -- and we don't know exactly what happened, so I can't say that intelligence dropped the ball, but something went wrong.

Either they believed them when they shouldn't have or they didn't have the manpower. Do we have the manpower?

CHERTOFF: I think, generally, we do. We have obviously the FBI and Homeland Security. We have very well-trained local police forces, particularly in the cities.

And, frankly, I think the number of Americans who have gone to fight overseas have been much fewer than you have seen out of Western Europe. What we have seen in this country is not so much foreign fighters, as people getting radicalized over the Internet, like Nidal Hasan or others of that kind.

But as time goes on, we are going to see more people coming back from that theater and that means we are going to have to put the effort and the resources into making sure we have coverage, both surveillance electronically and even physical surveillance.

TAPPER: Do you think it's just a matter of time that we have something like what we are seeing here? Obviously, we had Nidal Hasan, self-radicalized. Obviously, we had the Tsarnaev brothers. There have been other individuals arrested going over there.

But do you think it's just a matter of time before we see an attack in the United States like we are seeing in France and like what could have happened in Belgium?

CHERTOFF: I think the risk is going to increase over time.

Now, one thing we have not seen in this country is a homegrown attack of the sophisticated nature that we saw in Paris and that we saw in Mumbai in 2008. We have rather seen kind of one individual or a couple of individuals maybe getting radicalized over the Internet and then doing a homegrown plot.

If we got to the level of what you saw in Paris or what we saw in Mumbai, you could have a much more consequential plot with a lot more loss of life. So this is I think at the top of the list of what concerns Homeland Security and police officials here in the United States.

TAPPER: Yes. In fact, Jeh Johnson, your successor in the Department of Homeland Security, was here a few weeks ago and I asked him about an entirely separate issue, what he was concerned about, and he said he was concerned about lone wolf attacks. This was his big preoccupation.

Secretary Chertoff, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

As we have been reporting, the terror suspects killed and detained in that raid in Belgium had reportedly recently returned to that country from Syria. They had been under surveillance for weeks. Who did they meet in Syria? How many other potential suspects might be on police radar? We are not leaving this story.

We are going to be back with more about this breaking news next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We're going to continue with our breaking news in the world lead. Terror raids in Belgium, two suspects dead, a third in custody after police disrupted what they describe as an operational terrorist cell with ties to ISIS that they say was preparing to carry out, quote, "a major attack". They say it was going to be imminent.

Joining us now is CNN terror analyst Paul Cruickshank, author of "Agent Storm: My Life Inside al Qaeda and the CIA."

Paul, thanks for joining us. How significant is this latest operation and the unfolding terror picture we are seeing in Europe?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERROR ANALYST: This may be a big game changer. I spoke to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official. They have been monitoring this group for some time, gathering intelligence on them, and they suspect that this group, the group in Verviers, was tied to ISIS, connected with ISIS in Syria and were directed by ISIS to launch a terrorist attack in Belgium, a terrorist attack in Europe, in retaliation for the air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

And now, Belgium is part of that anti-ISIS coalition launching airstrikes, Belgium is launching airstrikes against is in Iraq. That would be a game changer because ISIS up to this point has not orchestrated any terrorist plots in the West. There have been some ISIS fighters who have come back but they have launched plots on their own steam. For example, last spring with the Brussels museum shooting.

So, this would be a game changer because of all ISIS' capabilities in Syria and Iraq, their huge cash reserves, training camps, and up to 3,000 Europeans who have made the trip to Syria and Iraq and about 1,000 Europeans believed to be with ISIS right now. I'm told more than 500 extremists have returned from Syria and Iraq to Europe. That's a very, very big number, indeed.

I'm also told this threat is not just about Belgium tonight, but it's also other European countries as well, this concern in the U.K., concern in France as well. I was told that by European counterterrorism officials that this cell may have connections in other countries, too, so very, very worrying times indeed, Jake. An unprecedented threat on the streets of Europe. It may be that ISIS is now taking its war right into the heart of Europe. TAPPER: Paul, I know it's early yet, this story is just developing.

Do we have any idea what this major terrorist attack was supposed to be, according to Belgian police?

CRUICKSHANK: There are some indications that they wanted to go after multiple police stations. Not exactly clear if there were other targets as well but these were men who were well armed. When police went in, they had Kalashnikovs, they had automatic weapons.

The Belgians feared they were about to launch a massacre somewhere on the streets of Belgium just a week after we saw another massacre in Paris. Concern that this group may have accelerated its plans because of what they saw play out on the streets of Paris. And if indeed they had a link back to ISIS, then there's a kind of one-upmanship with AQAP. AQAP perhaps being behind the Paris attack. Well, now, ISIS trying to launch a major plot in Brussels potentially from what I'm hearing from European counterterrorism officials.

This is still a very fluid situation. It's not over. They are trying to round up all these guys at once in different locations in Belgium and Brussels. There is concern that some gunmen might get away and be able to carry out attacks. There was an incident on the Brussels metro today where a man was arrested after shouting "Allahu Akhbar", it's been widely reported in the Belgian media. He had a gun, also being widely reported in the Belgian media.

There's a lot happening very quickly in Belgium right now, very concerning times for Europe.

TAPPER: Paul Cruickshank, thank you so much.

Just to remind our viewers, the museum event you were talking about was in May, when a gentleman with Algerian roots attacked innocent people at the Brussels Jewish Museum and killed four innocent people. We're going to take a very quick break and we're going to come back with more on this breaking news.

Coming up, new details on this plot and the raid in Belgium. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We're going to continue covering the breaking news in our world lead. Belgian special forces raiding a suspected terrorist cell believed to be directed by ISIS. That's what Belgian authorities are saying, at any rate. Officials say that the police swooped in just in time and attacked. It was supposed to be major and it was supposed to be imminent.

How many more would-be terrorists are still out there remains an open question.

Let's bring in CNN global affairs analyst, Lieutenant Colonel James Reese. He's also a former U.S. Delta Force officer. Also joining us from New Hampshire is Ambassador Daniel Benjamin,

former State Department coordinator for counterterrorism and he is currently the director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.

Colonel, let me start with you.

The terrorists in Paris, according to authorities, well-trained and the Belgian cell had recently returned from Syria, where they potentially were fighting with ISIS. How do you combat that threat?

LT. COL. JAMES REESE (RET), CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS: Well, Jake, it's difficult. You know, one of the things security services are good at doing is tracking these people coming in. The tough part is you're starting to get so many of them coming back, that threat matrix becomes bigger and bigger, and the folks that are the ones that manage this have to start making decisions on where to put their assets to cover these, because we don't have enough assets for all the people that are doing this.

TAPPER: Ambassador Benjamin, give us an idea of how much authorities likely know about these individuals, because often they fly to Turkey and then just kind of vanish, they cross the border into Syria later on, after there's an incident or after there's an arrest, we tend to hear oh, they traveled to Syria as we did with the brothers traveling to Yemen, the Kouachi brothers.

But is that known in real time?

AMB. DANIEL BENJAMIN, FORMER STATE DEPT. COORDINATOR, COUNTERTERRORISM: Frequently, it is known. There are persons of interest who are being tracked the whole time. We are in a period now where U.S. and other authorities are doing their best to build up their ability to collect intelligence inside Syria so that we have a better idea of who has gone there and who might come back, but it's spotty and, of course, the flow of fighters to Syria has been going on now for many months and I think that there was probably a lag between the time that that was taken off and the intelligence collection began.

So, there are going to be some holes, there are going to be some challenges and we also have not the strongest border security between Europe and points farther to the east.

TAPPER: Colonel, officials in Belgium say that these men had been under surveillance for several weeks and they say they have not been able to discern any connection to the attack we saw in France last week.

Does that indicate that we really don't know how many jihadist threats are actually out there?

BENJAMIN: Well, no, I don't think we actually have a hard number. I think several of the analysts and the folks that work in these operation intel centers have a pretty good understanding but nothing hard. But I agree, I don't think this has anything to do with the Paris piece but just like we talked about before, you have our side that's probably looking, hey, we need to ramp up our operations to start neutralizing these threats and now, the cells that are out there looking, hey, we want to follow this wave of what happened in Paris so let's execute now.

TAPPER: Ambassador Benjamin, what do we need to do to prevent this from happening in the United States more than it already has happened, of course, with the Tsarnaev brothers or Nidal Hasan?

BENJAMIN: Well, Jake, of course, increasing your intelligence collection, searching your resources in that direction is vitally important. We have very good border security. It's actually the case that we have a lot more to collect on when people are coming in this direction even from Europe, even from, you know, countries that have visa waiver programs.

So, we are able to do a lot of winnowing and a lot of assessment that our European partners can't do. The main thing right now is for us to continue to be vigilant about what's going on within communities in the U.S., and to ensure that we have a bead on anyone who is becoming radicalized at home like the individual who was arrested just yesterday coming out of Ohio.

TAPPER: That's right. We'll have more on that later in the show.

Colonel Reese, Dan Benjamin, thank you both so much.

Our top story today, terrorist raid in Belgium ending with two suspects dead, one in custody. Officials say that this terrorist cell was plotting an imminent major attack and that the cell fired on Belgian police when they arrived.

Now, former Prime Minister of England Tony Blair was the prime minister when that terrorist cell attacked the London subway system in 2005. He'll join me next for an exclusive interview to talk about the terror threat throughout Europe and how to combat it.

Stay with us.

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