Return to Transcripts main page

Don Lemon Tonight

NYPD Investigating Bomb Threat At CNN Offices. Aired 11-12p ET

Aired December 06, 2018 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:00] (AC360 REPALY)

[23:18:33] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: --John Vause at the CNN center with the breaking news. CNN's offices and studios in New York have been evacuated this happened just a short time ago, because of a phoned in bomb threat. New York City's police department is there, on the scene investigating right now. CNN's Don Lemon who was on the air at the time when the threat came in, he joins me now. Don, I want you to tell us? What's happening there right now? What do you know?

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: John, I'm standing outside of the building. We've been here since close to 10:30 Eastern Time. And from what we understand about an hour ago, a call was made from the south. That is all we know meaning the southern part of the United States into the CNN offices in New York saying that there were several bombs. As many as five bombs inside of the building.

Immediately we were -- the alarm went off. We were told to evacuate the building and to do it as soon as possible. We grabbed what we could, and got out of the building and now we're standing out front. There is a whole host of emergency vehicles and emergency personnel here from the NYPD, the New York City Police Department, the bomb squad arrived just a short time ago. That is what I'm told the latest information. You can see the New York City fire department out front, as well. There are detectives. There are people in tactical gear right now in front of the building. And many people are just standing on the sidewalk.

[23:20:00] All of the employees, all those people who were out -- in the building at the time as we were doing our live broadcast, they're all out of the building of the Time Warner Center now. Either lined up on the sidewalk or in a myriad of the businesses located around the Time Warner Center, but it is cold outside. It is 40 degrees and we were pushed out into the cold by someone who called it a legitimate bomb threat.

Either way or a hoax bomb threat, but either way, it's terrible because it's disrupted the way we conduct business and it's also disrupted the entire neighborhood in this area of people who live in this area and there are many people and people who work in this area either can't leave or businesses being closed or cannot go home because they live in this area.

So the sidewalk are closed off. The whole radius around the building is blocked off. And now we're sitting and we're waiting. We were told that we would possibly be able to go back into the building. I'm going to see if I can find my colleague Brian Stelter who I understand is standing out here outside of the Time Warner Center, as well. Brian, I want to bring in Brian Stelter now, our senior media correspondent. Brian, where are you? Where's Brian? Here he is. Brian, can you hear me? Brian I'm on the air now.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: I'm here. We're -- (inaudible).

Don.

Yes, we hear you fine. We hear you loud and clear. We've got the three of us here outside.

LEMON: You guys hear me? Sorry, we were disconnected here standing outside with Brian. If you guys can hear us, Shimon and Brian -- (inaudible) there were several bombs.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: So the call that was placed said that there were about five bombs placed inside the building. And as a result (inaudible) -- going into the building, searching, they have not found anything yet. Given what we've been through already.

LEMON: because we know on October 24th, there was a guy down in Florida and some of the bombs -- and then there was another bomb threat in Atlanta, as well.

PROKUPECZ: That is right.

So the police here right now just going through the building floor by floor it's our understanding. Trying to make sure there's nothing inside. Pretty big response. Given the location, I think that is why that has happened.

LEMON: If you just turn around, you can see -- if you will just -- if you guys I'm not wearing a microphone, by the way. If you guys just turn around, I'll speak louder, you can see they're bringing barricades in, that truck, the NYPD, those are barricades. And so there you go. It's kind of a repeat situation of what happened back in October and these are the times that we're living in where you're having bomb threats, you know, called into media companies and called into offices and disrupting people's lives. This happened shortly after a tweet.

STELTER: There was a tweet.

LEMON: We don't know if it has anything to do with it, but certainly after -- at 10:15.

STELTER: And I sure hope that has nothing to do with this, Don.

LEMON: Absolutely.

STELTER: Just because the President posts hateful speech on Twitter that should not cause anybody to do anything stupid. Obviously, we're in the real world here. CNN, "The New York Times," and many other media companies have been targets. For many years. And the targets of this outlets has been increased in the last year.

LEMON: We don't know, the timing is suspicious. We don't know.

STELTER: The assumption here is that this is bogus. Don, I used to live on this street. I used to live nearby. I was at whole foods in the basement of the building here when I started to hear the sirens. Unfortunately you hear sirens in New York all the time. There's no reason to assume this is anything more than a false made-up threat, but it is wonderful to see the police here in the city taking this so seriously and make sure they're taking action. A couple of my colleagues at CNN business evacuated like did you and they're not working off site.

[23:25:00] As I know, and all those working in restaurants, working in grocery store, working in CBS across the street, doing whatever we can.

LEMON: Yes. And again, we don't know, but the timing is suspicious. These are the times we're lining in and we know what the situation was with the last person horn did something similar.

STELTER: That is the responsibility of the criminal. That is not the responsibility of anybody else. Always think about the tone that is created and the tone that is created is important. I think it's important to say, people call in bomb threats, people who send bombs in the mail as happened in October. That is the responsibility of the criminal. Right now we have no evidence that anything is actually here. This is surely a false alarm. It's a disturbing false alarm. There's thousands of people who are not able to go home right now, not able to go to their hotel rooms right now, not able to go to their residences, their businesses. That is a problem bigger than this company, bigger than CNN.

LEMON: I got a call from the people who work in the restaurants here. Stand by please. I got a call from one of the people who, works in the restaurant here and they said their restaurant is being closed. There's a mall right here.

STELTER: Right. I was out there in Whole foods when it happened.

LEMON: There are literally thousands of people affected by this, but again, we don't know. The CNN center, the Time Warner Center which is where we do our business here in New York City in front of us -- evacuated, was evacuated shortly right after we got a call. The only thing that we know now from the NYPD is that we got a call from somewhere down south. Someone saying that there were five bombs in this building. And immediately, we were evacuated. We were in the middle of a live broadcast. The alarms went off and they came over the intercom and said everyone should get out of the building and get out of the building as soon as possible.

And that is exactly what we did. Once we got down to the sidewalk, they told us where we should go. We should be either right here near the police tape or be in any of the businesses who are here surrounding the building, but an entire block now has been shut down. The perimeter of this building shut down with emergency apparatus. All over. Including the bomb squad, the NYPD. And here's where we are.

STELTER: About ten minutes ago. Inside our building. You know, Time Warner Center. It's a very big -- it's part of this complex. A lot of other offices. A lot of other spaces for all the workers. So even though we are talking 11:00 p.m., no matter what time of day, this is a busy area. Joe Biden was here. He was at an event. You get a lot of folks inside this building. It was very busy tonight. We don't know this is part of CNN (inaudible).

LEMON: Time of year it is because it is Christmas time. A lot of people (inaudible) -- traffic is backed up at 8th Avenue. Traffic is backed up at 9th avenue. Has caused -- here at this.

STELTER: For the moment. As you been saying, Don.

LEMON: No one will be able to go back.

STELTER: Probably due to a false alarm. Yet these false alarms will still create the impact. I do not recall, Don in, many years being here at CNN we've been kicked off air by a bomb threat.

PROKUPECZ: NYPD does not normally evacuate buildings, -- they don't normally evacuate buildings especially CNN on something like this.

(Inaudible)

PROKUPECZ: Didn't want to take any chances. It's not normal to evacuate.

STELTER: You're saying normally when there's a bomb threat, it doesn't provoke an immediate response like this.

LEMON: Right.

STELTER: But because of what happened in October, it did tonight?

LEMON: I need you guys to stand by. John Vause, are you still there? Can you hear me?

VAUSE: Yes, Don, I'm still here.

LEMON: OK. I can't hear you from the other thing. I just want to make sure -- are you able to hear us and see us?

VAUSE: Yes, you're still there. The audio is a little rough, but we can hear what you're saying. Yes, it's all good, Don.

LEMON: If you can move this I think they're getting the audio from here. If you can tell the control room, if you can hear me, I am also dialed into my phone.

STELTER: We're using my iPhone. We're using my iPhone off a wireless phone signal to give viewers a sense of how this works, when there's an evacuation, we don't have satellite trucks.

LEMON: Can you hear me now through my phone? Is the audio better? VAUSE: Yes. I think we've got you loud and clear now, Don and Brian,

as well and Shimon.

LEMON: You guys can patch me with John Vause through the phone, that would be a big help. I just want to tell again, people just tuning in wondering why you're seeing me on Skype, why there's such technical difficulties, it's because we have been taken off the air because a bomb threat was called in to CNN -- the Time Warner Center which is where we do business here, which is where our studios are in New York City.

World headquarters obviously is in Atlanta, but again the bulk of our prime time shows and weekday shows are done in this building, this giant high-rise in the middle of midtown right at Columbus Circle. And we are standing out on the sidewalk with everyone else. Our studios are up there vacant.

NYPD is going through our building because someone called in and said there are five bombs in the building. Immediately we were evacuated and we don't know we know as much as you do. We have just told you. And we're standing out here and waiting for -- if you can look, those are a couple of police officers who are in tactical gear. They're lined up down the block here.

We are just a couple of maybe about 100 feet from the entrance to our building. If you see that -- pan this way. Right on other side of where it says 24 Columbus Circle, that is the entrance to our building. Above it, it says the Time Warner Center. Right now that building is empty except for -- we don't know when we're going to get back in. It's a big building.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: It is a big building. The first alert that I saw, Don, was for the apartment building. That's the initial address I saw. But we don't know what address the bomb threats were called in. We don't know.

Focused on our office buildings. To give you a sense of this building, there are two towers in this complex. There's a hotel. There's a big apartment building. There's a big office building. There's a mall. There's a grocery store, I happened to be downstairs in the grocery store when this happened.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Continuing to be concerned. Not come across anything suspicious.

LEMON: Continuing to search but --

PROKUPECZ: He's continuing to search. So far they've not come across anything suspicious. But obviously, we're still going through the offices.

STELTER: This reminds me the evening The New York Times received a package that was not anything explosive, but there was a dramatic response by the police. There was a scare in The New York Times. It's not just CNN that's been threatened this way, but obviously CNN has been a significant target in recent weeks.

LEMON: So I just want to say, I want to keep resetting because I want you guys at home to know exactly what's going on here. I'm sure you're probably tuning in now. This is not what you normally see on CNN. Usually we're in a studio and prepared and ready to go to guests and have our conversations.

But right now, we have been thrown off the air, so to speak, in our normal capacity and we're standing outside of our building reporting from the cold, 40 degrees out here, temperature dropping, with a whole lot of people who live in the area and who work in the area. They can't get to their respective places of business. They can't get to their homes. They are stuck on the opposite side of a police barrier and police tape where they can usually just go to their homes.

It is a very busy night in New York City. Very busy time because a lot of people come here for business. People bring their kids to go Christmas shopping and look at all the festivities. We may have to move. There's a car coming. Stand by.

Now we are standing out here and all we know is that there's the potential five bombs being inside of the very building that we're in, called in tonight around 10:15, between 10:15 and 10:20, called into our New York headquarters, our New York studios to the Time Warner Center from somewhere down south. That is all they're telling us.

Brian said -- we're hoping that this is some sort of hoax, but we don't know that for sure yet.

STELTER: The whole point is that something like this is able to disrupt CNN's broadcast, your broadcast, a mall, a hotel, a shopping center, apartment buildings. That's the broader problem for this kind of behavior. Hopefully, it is nothing more than a false alarm. That is the hope and that is the expectation.

LEMON: I'm being told to switch phones. Can you hear me?

PROKUPECZ: They're continuing to search the building saying -- here with the bomb squad. So far they've not -- they have not found anything suspicious. I'm being told they've not substantiated a threat but obviously the search is still ongoing.

STELTER: We're working on the technical parts of this. Don't worry about us. We don't want the story to be about us, by the way.

[23:34:58] This is the least desirable situation for a television network when we would like to be on the air in our building. But I know it was kind of abrupt at 10:35. Going on to taped programming. I had to e-mail what happened, Don, and now you know.

LEMON: It was actually before 10:35. It happened about -- 10:15 is when the call came in. By 10:30, we were already out and had been evacuated out of the building.

STELTER: You went to a local hotel or a restaurant and just waited.

LEMON: We stood in front of the building initially because there was no guidance. It's not that people don't get bomb threats and evacuated out of their buildings every day.

STELTER: That's right.

LEMON: Initially they brought us down. We stood in front of the building. The NYPD officially came over and said we need you to clear the building, we need you to you go across the street. They told to us go across the street to one of the restaurants or the hotel and that's exactly what we did. And then they started moving people back. They put up the police barricade. Here we are. Again, we're standing outside of the Time Warner Center. People.

STELTER: I did see police officers enter the building as part of the search about 15, 20 minutes.

LEMON: Look down the street there and imagine. This is a giant city block in New York City and it has been completely evacuated of people at the street level. At the street level. If you're in your apartment, in a restaurant, you have to stay there. Pretty much have to stay there.

If you're on the outside of this barricade, you have to stay there. So you can't get home, can't get back to the business. But it was just in October that we went through the same thing. Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto were on the air one morning.

STELTER: When the fire alarm went off.

LEMON: The fire alarm went off. It was interesting because we were in a commercial break when the fire alarm went off. They said, well, it's a good thing we're on a commercial break. They're going to get all of this fixed and we'll be able to go back on, you know, onto the air after the commercial break. But as it turns out, it was -- it was real and they did not fix he alarm and get back on the air.

But If you're just joining us, I'm Don Lemon. Normally I'm on the air right now usually between 10:00 and midnight here eastern time in the United States and we're broadcasting around the world, as well to our affiliates around the world. I'm here with Shimon Prokupecz who is our justice correspondent --

PROKUPECZ: Crime and justice reporter.

LEMON: Crime and justice reporter. Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent. These are the times that we're in. Usually we're reporting on other people who are dealing with situations like this. But never -- not usually a media company.

STELTER: This is the last story we'd like to be covering. We would not like to be on the air in this circumstance. Don, I'm hoping that my cell phone has enough battery to keep you on the air right now. That's the situation we're in. Let's remember, we're talking about a called in bomb threat, the threat of numerous bombs. Probably a hoax. By some terrible person.

Let's remember the consequences here. When there are actual mail bombs sent to a number of individuals in October. That person was arrested. Similarly within days there were a number of phone calls made to CNN, threatening staffers, and that person was arrested in November. So I think it's important to remember, this is -- this has real world stakes, even if it's just a hoax tonight.

LEMON: Brian, you keep saying it's a hoax. We don't know.

STELTER: We don't know.

LEMON: Those were real. One that happened back in October and later the one that happened in Atlanta. Those were real devices. Crude but experts, officials said they could have caused major harm.

STELTER: The harm would have been caused to the postal workers, to the staffers, to the aides who open the mail, to the others who are on the front line. That is why this behavior cannot be tolerated. And I think there is widespread understanding of that. You look at the folks out here around us tonight, some of them surrounding us, they just want to get back to their office or their apartments or their hotel.

And that's true no matter the circumstances. But once again, for the second time in two months, we're seeing that CNN may be one of the targets. We don't know who was called in. We don't know where this was called in but we know it was to the building that houses CNN.

PROKUPECZ: No doubt given the location, this is why the police --

LEMON: I'm still here. Can you hear me? I want to bringing in Samantha. Can you get closer? Samantha Vinograd, who is on our air and talks about these issues and has expertise in security. Samantha, talk to us, what is going on here?

[23:39:56] SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: The first thing I want to say, Don, as I was on my way up here, I was struck by the fact the president did tweet minutes before this event happened using language that we know has inflamed violence in the past.

From a national security perspective, it is clear that at least in the president's Twitter feed, there is this language that is really trigger language for violence that has occurred in the past several weeks. If you look at the macro picture here, it is very clear that the United States is now really becoming a battleground.

The number of bomb threats we have in this country is really starting to resemble countries around the world where people aren't comfortable traveling, seconding their children and going to study. And so at this point we have to wonder what the risk assessment is for the United States based upon all these bomb threats that we're seeing.

LEMON: Samantha, again, I just want to reiterate, the timing is suspicious. But you don't believe in coincidences? You don't think that --

VINOGRAD: I know that the president's tweets before and his language before have led past perpetrators of violence to target Americans. Whether it be CNN, government officials or otherwise. While this tweet itself may not be directly linked to the bomb threat, we can't rule it out at this point.

LEMON: Samantha Vinograd often joins us to talk about issues of security and has expertise. You served under the --

VINOGRAD: I served under the Obama administration, yes, from the National Security Council, when we used to really assess the threat outlook for countries where there were bomb threats happening and where there was massive gun violence. Honest to god, I never thought that would be in this country. That's what we're seeing today.

LEMON: Yeah. So what I want to tell you at home again, and we are -- folks tuning in and who are wondering exactly what was happening, why was Don Lemon off the air, why am I seeing Anderson right now, and we were on tape. They don't usually see Anderson -- it's usually me and -- and Anderson after.

What happened was we were doing our broadcast. What happened was we were on the air doing our business as usual. We were on a commercial break. Fire alarm went off. We thought it was, you know, maybe a mistake, they would take care of it, and we would continue on with doing the show. Over the loud speaker, they said this is not a test. You need to evacuate the building. There is as emergency situation.

Very quickly, the control room came to my ear and said we need you to go to your office if you can, quickly grab your coat and get out of the building. And that's exactly what I did. Everyone got out of building. We got -- we did it in orderly fashion. We loaded as many people into the places where we were supposed to get out of the building as many folks as possible and we got out of the building.

Very quickly, we found Shimon Prokupecz who is our crime and justice reporter. He had been doing business and speaking with the police about this and tell us what the police are telling you.

PROKUPECZ: The latest is that they're inside the building. It's --

You've got to get close to you.

Emergency services unit, other units are going through the building, sweeping, searching, trying to see if there's anything in the building. Right now, they haven't found anything concerning them. We don't even have a bomb squad here at this point. They have not found anything that concerns them. Bomb squad is on standby but not part of the search I'm being told.

So it's just emergency service units and some of the special response units that the NYPD has that is heavily armed officers we often see in sensitive areas. They're inside, going floor by floor. Saw a couple of police officers come out. There's not been a whole lot of activity.

LEMON: Here's the interesting part. You may be wondering why no camera, because we do all of our business from here. We have what are call drops along the building where we can set up anywhere along this building, where we can set up -- the camera person can plug in and we can go live from anywhere around the building. The building is evacuated. We're not able to do that or get close to the building. As a a matter of fact, I'm actually surprised they're letting us stand this close. Usually they will have pushed us back at this point. The rest of our headquarters is in Atlanta. Our international headquarters is in Atlanta and all over the world. But there are no cameras. We can't even go back into the building to get our cameras.

And so that's what happens when you have these sorts of situations. It really takes off. It's business not usual. Unusual business. And it really puts --- institution in this country, the media institution, the media business that should not be happening.

VINOGRAD: That's exactly right, Don. We're literally under attack. This was against CNN or something in the area.

[23:45:03] The fact of the matter is we have to have to take these threats seriously whether it's a prank call or not. We know that there have been politically-motivated violence. There has been serious attack on the freedom of the press over the the last several weeks.

While we wait to find out what's happened, any threat that comes in at this point, working with members of the police department, coordinating with other media outlets in the city to find out if they received any threats at the same time, take those seriously.

LEMON: Here's the thing. We shouldn't pretend. We're CNN. It's not the first time that this has happened. So, there's something behind it.

VINOGRAD: There is something behind it and there is a reason why (INAUDIBLE) United States has really plummeted dramatically over the past several years. It is because of the attacks on the press. For security perspective again, you have to look into all these threats with the utmost care and to make sure that we're not the only ones who's received the bomb threat tonight, make sure that nobody else around the city as we did the last time several weeks ago is looking to see if any other threats were received.

PROKUPECZ: The person who did this, as you can tell --

LEMON: Let's get closer to you.

PROKUPECZ: The person who did this, who made this threat is getting exact response that they want. The idea that CNN is -- phoned in bomb threat, that does not happen. That -- this is abnormal for the NYPD to respond this way to something like this. It's because of the location and what's happened to us previously and the history and also the climate. The climate that the media --

LEMON: They gave us specific numbers. There are five devices in the building, we are told. Does that say anything to you?

VINOGRAD: Well, if there are five devices in the building, that told me it would be somewhat similar to what we've seen in the past. A coordinated set of attacks against CNN or against certain political figures. This would not have been just a run in the mill prank call. This is not the first time CNN has gotten a prank call. This is not the first time members of a former administration received suspicious packages in the mail. At this point though, again, we have to fully investigate everything.

PROKUPECZ: It's because -- can't forget the NYPD here does not want to take any chances.

LEMON: Yeah.

PROKUPECZ: And so this is the response and it's --

LEMON: If you have this response from the NYPD, obviously they're taking it seriously.

PROKUPECZ: Very seriously.

LEMON: Do you have any information?

STELTER: There is a little more we can share, Don --

LEMON: Get closer to me.

STELTER: -- about how this happened. The call came in at 9:47 p.m. That's the call into the building. After that, of course, the police had to be called. The response had to happen after that. Give you a sense, this is something that was called in at 9:47 p.m. We've seen this response during the 10:00 p.m. hour. Now, it's two hours later, 11:46, the entire block still shut off. Hopefully the NYPD will give us an update very soon to clear this.

PROKUPECZ: The NYPD supervisor received ultimately the call for the building to be evacuated.

LEMON: At this hour, you would think, you know, it's 10:00 at night, that the building would be empty. No, there are still people working on my show, there are people who are working -- working on the morning show on New Day. There are people working in other businesses who are in the building.

STELTER: As I mentioned earlier.

LEMON: Other services in the building. People's lives are affected. It's not that the building is empty. Go ahead.

STELTER: There's an event in the event space here upstairs, a big fund-raiser upstairs. Of course, lots of shops in the mall. I want to give people a sense it's not just that the network is affected. It's many others. Obviously there's been a string of events as you said, Sam, targeting CNN. That I think is why the NYPD took this so seriously.

LEMON: Absolutely.

STELTER: If they received a call about a random problem in a random apartment upstairs, they would not react this way, but because there's been this threat against news outlets across the country, this is being taken very seriously.

LEMON: Yeah.

STELTER: I'm grateful for that. We need to show that these kinds of threats are not going to be accepted. They're not going to be tolerated. In this country, we cannot have situations where television networks are knocked off the live air because of a threat. That is not acceptable in 2018 or 10 years ago or 10 years from now.

LEMON: Yes.

STELTER: So we can talk about rhetoric from politicians, talk about rhetoric from others, but it's not acceptable.

LEMON: Yeah. Listen, this has gone on for well over an hour.

STELTER: Right.

LEMON: The NYPD has been in there inside for quite a long time. Let's hope they find nothing. The media is starting to gather here. Let's hope they find nothing. But for the NYPD to have this many personnel, this many people out there, and to be inside the building that long --

PROKUPECZ: That's a long time.

LEMON: Yeah, that's a long time. That is a long time. And it's got to be serious.

[23:50:00] Shimon Prokupecz joins me. Brian Stelter joins me as well, as well as Samantha Vinograd, who talked to us about security. You see this? Many folks out here, Samantha. Talk to me about that.

VINOGRAD: What I'm seeing right now is obviously as this is being investigated here, I want to stress again that I would imagine that the NYPD and other aspects of the federal government working with local enforcement are going to be identifying whether there's any other threat throughout the city or other media outlets throughout the country.

We saw this unfold during the attack a few weeks ago. While we see all this happening right now, we should assume that similar exercises are taking place. And while we wait to see if any devices were found here, there's a chance that there are copycat calls that are going to be called into other media outlets as this becomes more of a story.

And local law enforcement and FBI are looking into whether there are any other similar threats. To Brian's point, this is also should be viewed as an intimidation tactic as well. We were taken off the air live, Don. But at what point do people start to worry about coming to work because these bomb threats become such a proliferation?

LEMON: Yeah.

VINOGRAD: And that's, I think, could be part of the motivation behind this. LEMON: Again, this is what happened and I'm getting more information coming in. The caller made the threat to CNN that there were five bomb devices in the building. That's according to law enforcement and that's what I've been told from law enforcement as well. The call came in originally where we thought it was 10:30 tonight, it was 9:47. Bomb squad is on standby at the scene. We are being told -- hand on a second.

STELTER: Don, all clear.

LEMON: We just got the all clear and that is also from the NYPD. So what we're going to do is get back to our building, back on the air, and broadcast from the studio inside. The mall is actually right there. So we are here. We're going to walk back into the building. We'll stay on the air as long as we can as we walk into the building. I don't know where my bag is.

OK, so I have to stay out here until they're ready to go upstairs. Again, we are live out in front of the building. We're waiting until we can get back in the studio. Our personnel and our studio crews all have to be set up and they have to get ready and then we will get back on the air and we can explain to you better.

I really hope someone has my back. I don't know where it is. It's in this crowd somewhere. So someone please get it for me. Again, if you're just joining us, we just got the all clear from the NYPD that we can go back into the building, our building that was evacuated certainly after 10:30 tonight. I'll get the new information that is coming in from the NYPD. Thank you very much. There's my bag.

From the NYPD, they said -- NYPD bomb threat and then said five devices are inside the building. Around 10:35, a bomb threat was called, but that was earlier. At 9:47 now as we understand the bomb threat was called in.

Again, let's just show the folks here, you see the police cars, that is where we were standing earlier. This is an entire city block and they're starting to let traffic flow in one direction on the street. And if you look back this way, they're just starting to open that up.

There are still NYPD personnel out on the street here. Most of the folks who are in tactical gear have all left. That is a good sign for us. We are glad that has happened. Not happy to be standing out here and not happy reporting a bomb threat.

Someone who thought it was OK, maybe a joke to call in and say that there were five bombs inside of our building here in New York City. The interesting thing is that we have to take it seriously. This has happened to us not once but twice. Once when pipe bombs were sent to this building and another time when a pipe bomb was sent to our headquarters in Atlanta but was picked up by a postal facility.

So these are the times we're living in right now. We're still out here on the street. It's cold, a lot of people have been displaced. Take a look at the NYPD officers who have to come out and do this as their job tonight instead of doing other things and protecting the city, the citizens of New York.

So here we are outside in the cold weather. Once again, I can remember my colleagues, Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto, standing outside of this very building back in October when those pipe bombs came into our mail room here.

[23:55:05] And now here we are in a very similar situation. We're very lucky that this time, there were no bombs inside of the building as there were before. But here you go. It's still a mess and it's still sad. These are the times we're living in. I don't remember anything like this happening especially to news organizations in my lifetime in the years that I've been on the earth, but there you go.

The police are trying to get folks to move out of the streets and away from the building and away from traffic. I'm going to walk a little bit closer just to give you an idea of what it's like inside of the building. Here we go. Christmas decorations here at this time. That security area here. And you have your bags and your coats or whatever have to be scanned. They're all standing there as well as members of the NYPD who are all inside of the building now.

So it's -- there are other units. A bomb truck still on standby. There we go. It has to be in front of my face. A bomb truck we're told on standby. The bomb unit, NYPD bomb unit on standby. Let us hope that's all been released now. We've gotten the all clear and again we're waiting to get back on the air.

And here's what's interesting, the people who are going into the building now all have to be checked and double-checked. Even though we've been standing out here for more than an hour, the folks out here, they've got to do it because in this situation we don't know exactly what's going to happen, exactly who poses a threat and who doesn't.

So let's walk back out here and tell you the situation. I'm going over here to where we are. Are you guys ready? Are we on? Are we up and on the air? Can you see me in front of the camera? You can see me now in front of the main main camera or am I still on Skype? You got me. You got me.

OK, all right, so here we go. We can put the Skype camera down and we're on the big camera now. Shimon, thank you for doing this. Shimon is our crime and justice reporter. Shimon, what an hour it has been. About an hour and a half here when we got the call and we had to evacuate the building.

PROKUPECZ: Yeah, and ever since we've been right outside here for more than an hour now. It's exactly how they're probably going to respond to these things going forward. It may perhaps seem a bit -- you know, it's not standard practice for them to respond this way to these kind of phoned in bomb threats, but we're living under very different times now.

And given what we've been through here at CNN, we're going to see this kind of response, unfortunately, when things like this happen. And it's going to cause evacuations. You think about the buildings next to us here where there are restaurants and stores that were all evacuated, money that was lost tonight.

It's pretty scary, and certainly I think for the people who work at CNN to have to go through this again is frightening. But thankfully, you know, they found nothing and we can kind of get back to work.

LEMON: So initially, they said that the bomb unit was on standby.

PROKUPECZ: Yeah.

LEMON: And they had officers inside the building and units inside the building checking and looking.

PROKUPECZ: Yeah, they went floor by floor. They went through our offices looking through everything, making sure there were no devices. To remind people, there were a phone call that was made of a person claiming to have placed five devices in the building. And so the NYPD responded, took it very seriously.

They went through everything. They went floor by floor. They searched. It was the emergency services unit, the special response teams, several dozen police officers going through our building looking for anything that could possibly be suspicious.

LEMON: OK, what do you guys need? What are you looking for? OK, I have it right here. I'm just going to be honest, they're trying to fix it where I can hear and they want to put my hearing device on. They want me to call back in? Is that what they're saying? OK. So, again, standing by live, we're live outside. Hopefully you guys can hear me. It's not as easy as you think because we keep getting knocked off and I can't hear anything.

[24:00:02] So I'm trying to dial back into the control room and hopefully they can talk to me.