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Trump vs. Cruz; Terror Investigation. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 24, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:05]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Again, law enforcement looking for that individual who he describes looking back and forth, looking panicked at the metro station. Again, this is the race against time.

Security forces are also looking for this man. They believe this is the man who is also on the run after leaving the largest of all the bombs at the airport just two mornings ago, so two very dangerous men on the run.

Let's turn to the others. Authorities believe an ISIS bomb-maker, the man you see on the left of this image, when they're all carrying those -- pushing those baggage carts at the airport, he was killed in the attack, but it's the man next to him who is the subject of controversy today.

In a shocking revelation, Turkey says it warned European authorities about him last summer when they arrested him and deported him. Listen to this. Belgium's interior minister is admitting today his country may have -- quote -- "missed a chance" to stop this attacker. He and the justice minister have now offered to resign.

These attacks have taken a terrible toll. At least 31 people are dead and the Belgian Crisis Center says the number injured is now at 300.

Let's begin our coverage this hour live in Brussels with two of our senior international correspondents. I have Nick Paton Walsh standing by in Brussels. I have Fred Pleitgen in the community where we have seen him throughout the week in Schaerbeek.

But, Nick, to you first. Talk to me about the latest on the search for these two men we just saw in these photos.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely.

We know the man in the white jacket from the airport has been long sought. It's unclear who he is at all. There's the slimmest of possibilities, given of the distance of time between the airport blasts and those at the metro, that he may perhaps be one of the same individuals. That's a slim possibility.

That dramatic sketch you have just seen there now shows they are really closing in on what appears to be the accomplice, if you listen to that testimony there, perhaps somebody who did, in fact, survive the explosion itself, and they have to of course now assess where this man is.

Does he relate back to the apartments, which were searched only yesterday, and that's where the El Bakraoui brothers live. Now, the history of those brothers increasingly under scrutiny. Ibrahim El Bakraoui, as you said, was back in June 2015 deported by Turkish authorities back to Holland, not Belgium.

You're allowed to choose where you're sent. Dutch authorities have since said, well, when he was sent to us, we weren't told what the problem with him was. It was only after his arrival they got a call from the Belgian authorities. A lot of holes here to be concerned about, and, of course, as you know, Brooke, Holland had had an Interpol notice mentioning the word terrorism out against him, we now know, since the 11th of December of last year.

So, a lot of occasions here in which authorities had a potential tipoff about these men, and bear in mind, too, the third man, they had information on, Najim Laachraoui, was already known to have been very heavily involved in the Paris attacks. So much dropped here. This is what the interior minister said when we caught up with him earlier on today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAN JAMBON, BELGIAN INTERIOR MINISTER (through translator): Given the facts, I think it is justified that people ask questions, that people ask how is it possible that someone was released early and we missed a chance when he was in Turkey to detain him?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: So gaping, frankly, have been the admissions here, he offered his resignation. But I think it's testament to the political crisis here and the sense I think of Belgium being on its back foot that it wasn't accepted. He's staying in the role, said he wouldn't leave the job at a time of war, but really the recriminations already starting here, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nick, stand by.

Fred, to you. We talked to you, last time we saw you 24, 48 hours ago, we saw those helicopters flying above ahead, a lot of activity in the Schaerbeek community there near Brussels where we talked about the raids, the searches, and you have described what has been found. Is there any activity there right now?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there has been activity in the Schaerbeek area and surrounding areas pretty much throughout the entire day.

And it's like Nick said, of course, at this point in time, the police is not only trying to find these men who they believe are still at large. That of course is their main priority, but at that same time, Brooke, they're also trying to see whether there are still other people at large who might have helped them, whether there is some sort of wider web. And one of the things that the authorities have done is, they have

linked the Paris attacks that happened on November 13 and the Brussels attack. There are people who appear to be linked to both. Salah Abdeslam is one who seems to be one of those linking figures.

Najim Laachraoui seems to be another one. He is that ISIS bomb-maker that you were talking about who right in this very building behind me built those explosive devices, and he created a lot of TATP explosives, which, of course, is very high-powered. You can create it at home, but it does require a certain amount of expertise. And that very ISIS bomb-maker actually went to school less than a mile from where we are right now in the Schaerbeek area.

[15:05:01]

I was able to speak to his former principal, who said, listen, when he was at our school, he never had any issues. He graduated from there in 2009, then went to a technical institute here, where he learned electromechanical engineering, which seems to indicate why he's so well-versed in creating things like explosives.

He certainly is someone who seems to have some sort of technical and mechanical expertise to go with it, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Pieces of the puzzle coming together. Fred Pleitgen, thank you so much. Nick Paton Walsh, awesome reporting, as always.

Let me bring in now two terrorism experts. Scott Stewart is a vice president of tactical analysis at Stratfor and a former U.S. State Department special agent. And with me, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank, editor in chief of the "CTC Sentinel."

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Got it loud and clear. I hear your message, so we won't do that.

But let me begin with you, Paul.

As Nick perfectly laid out, the different people that they think they're looking for and who knows how wide this net really could be. You have been reporting that officials found surveillance video of a nuclear plant that was found in one of these safe houses. I feel like we haven't talked enough about that. Can you share what you know about that?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Yes, a couple of weeks after the Paris attacks, they arrested a key suspected planner behind the Paris attacks, Mohammed Bakkali, a Belgian national, a Brussels resident.

And when they went inside his residence, they found over 10 hours of video footage, video surveillance footage, of a Belgian official working at a nuclear site in Belgium, creating a lot of concerns. Why would this Paris conspirator have this video surveillance of a nuclear expert working at one of these sites? (CROSSTALK)

CRUICKSHANK: Was it because they wanted to attack a nuclear site in some kind of way? Was it because they wanted to gain access or gain materials from that nuclear site by filming him in some kind of way? They don't know. They do not know what the plan was.

But they were very alarmed by this. And when the attacks happened a couple of days ago in Belgium, they evacuated nonessential staff from two nuclear facilities in Belgium. It seems like they're trying to just keep essential staff there, the people who have got the biggest security clearances, and then the people who are not quite as vetted, not allowing them to sort of stay during this very, very sensitive time.

Clearly concerns that there may have been other plans afoot from this cell to launch that kind of plan, either to get the materials from the nuclear site or to attack a nuclear site.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But, bottom line, we know the plans were accelerated because of the arrests of Abdeslam, so who knows what the grand plan was? We obviously already saw the terror wreaked at both the airport and the metro station.

Scott, let me bring you in, because I think it's also important to underscore the numbers here. Thousands. Europol is reporting thousands of jihadists may have returned to Europe after going to Syria to train. And a lot of those, you know, countries, they're not keeping tabs on them.

We were just reporting one of these bombers apparently, you know, even had been, you know, arrested and deported in Turkey. They, you know, rang the alarm bells. He was sent to Holland. There was no just communication. Nothing happened back in Belgium.

SCOTT STEWART, FORMER U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT SPECIAL AGENT: Yes, that's the problem, is there's just so many of these individuals running around that really the system is oversaturated.

And especially when we look at the smaller countries like Belgium, it just doesn't have the resources as far as law enforcement and intelligence services that a larger country, even like a France or a Germany has.

BALDWIN: How can they get the resources? It's such a simple question. But if we have been talking for so long about these communities and this sort of hotbed of terror, these networks clearly embedded in these communities, why isn't there more law enforcement?

STEWART: Quite frankly, you physically probably can't put on enough law enforcement people. It takes a large number of agents just to conduct surveillance on one individual 24/7.

Once you think about three shifts a day, breaks, vacations, the technical people that will help monitor, you know, teletaps, interpreters, sometimes air assets, so we could be talking dozens of people just to cover one individual. And when we start looking at hundreds of individuals, the problem quickly spirals out of control.

BALDWIN: Paul Cruickshank, back to you here on U.S. officials telling CNN there's emerging signs that ISIS leader, ISIS H.Q. in Syria are directly involved in these attacks. The significant of that is what?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, the significance of that is that this is part of an overall effort by ISIS to launch accelerating attacks in Europe.

[15:10:03]

They have the manpower. There's an unprecedented number of European extremists that have joined their ranks in Syria and Iraq and many, over 1, 500 jihadis who spent time there from Europe have come back, so they have everything they need to launch this escalating series of attacks in Europe.

The intelligence picture is one where, as they lose ground in Syria and Iraq to some degree, they have lost about 20 percent of their territory in the last year, that they're accelerating those attack plans.

They want to be seen as winning, not as losing. This sort of changes the conversation and it encourages their supporters.

BALDWIN: I'm also curious, as we talk about perhaps directed back to Syria, and how huge this network would be. Would Abdeslam -- we know he's apparently now not cooperating.

But he could totally be in the dark. He may be just highly localized. And he thought he was going to carry out, A, in Paris, B, perhaps in Brussels, but he may not even know. I'm just trying to think of information he would be able to give up to law enforcement. He may not know as much as they would be hoping for.

CRUICKSHANK: He won't know the complete picture of everything they're planning in Europe. He won't know that.

But Belgian investigators believe he absolutely did know what they were plan to carry out in Brussels, this terrible attack. And not only that he knew, but he was going to be part of it. They believe that there were two attack teams. And when one of attack team got rounded up, either killed or arrested last week, including Abdeslam, including the overall ringleader of the group, the rest of the cell, the second attack team then accelerated their plans and moved forward with an attack, which would have otherwise taken place perhaps in several weeks.

It was smaller than what it would otherwise have been. There might have been either one bigger attack later or a series of attacks late. They had a huge amount of bombs, a lot of TATP.

BALDWIN: Extra suitcases, according to the taxi driver.

CRUICKSHANK: They couldn't fit it all into the car.

BALDWIN: They couldn't fit it all in the car.

CRUICKSHANK: There are too many bombs to go around.

And they expected to have double the size of attack team. But Belgian authorities thwarted half of this plot. Unfortunately, they weren't able to thwart the other half of it in time, with tragic consequences.

The concern now, Brooke, is that the remaining people at large will want to go out in some kind of blaze of glory. There are at least two still at large, one of the airport attackers who, for whatever combination of reasons, abandoned ship. He fled the airport.

This other suspect that was seen by the metro stop where one of the brothers carried out the attack, he had a big bag. I mean, and they're very worried that, inside that big bag, like those other suitcases, there could be explosives.

This cell, they have been extremely determined, they have wanted to carry through with attacks. In Paris, this same cell were planning a follow-on attempt just a few days after the Paris attacks, including the ringleader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. And they wanted to launch an attack when the whole world's media were congregated in Paris. And you can imagine the impact of something if it would happen in the next couple of days in Brussels.

BALDWIN: That's right. Don't want to imagine that.

Paul Cruickshank, thank you so much, as always, for your reporting. Scott Stewart, thank you as well.

Next here, a taxi driver trying to find his son works at the Brussels Airport actually filmed the horrifying moments after the blast went off. We have the video. It's tough to watch. It's the reality that so many of those people faced.

Plus, it's called the Mother of Satan. This is the nickname for the chemical combination, this fatal chemical combination made for these bombs that was used in these coordinated attacks. Who's building these bombs? How sophisticated are they truly?

And back here in the United States, moments ago, Senator Ted Cruz standing up to Trump like you have never seen before over their wives and tweet that is getting Trump in a lot of trouble today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:05]

BALDWIN: Welcome back. You're watching breaking news. I'm Brooke Baldwin here on CNN.

Right now, obviously, it's a city, it's a country on edge, but it's also really become quite known for its role as a recruiting ground for jihadi fighters. When you look at the recent statistics actually from the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Potential Violence, the gray bars here, you will see through this chart, actually the one on the far left, reveals that Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters per capita in Syria of any nation in Western European.

That is stunning. Also today, a top European security official is warning that threats from ISIS are even more urgent now and the thousands of radicalized Europeans who have traveled to Syria, many of them are now back home.

So, joining me live from Brussels, Tara Palmeri, reporter and columnist in Belgium for Politico.

So, Tara, thank you so much for being with me.

And let me just begin with Politico's reporting here. This was just handed to me about how Politico's getting news that that eighth terror suspect from Paris who was taken in a week ago was talking for just one hour prior to the attacks where you are. Tell me more of what you know.

TARA PALMERI, POLITICO: Exactly.

He only spoke to investigators for an hour after he was captured on Friday. This is shocking. And the excuse from our intelligence officials is insane. They say that because he was shot in the leg, he was tired and he wasn't in good enough shape to give them information.

In addition, they started from the beginning back in the Paris attacks and they didn't get far enough into the interview to find about the future and what's coming next. On top of that, there was some information that was -- that came out in the media about how Salah Abdeslam planned to blow himself up at the stadium in Paris during the Paris attacks.

And the Belgians felt this had caused the attack this past week to happen even sooner, the fact this information had leaked. And it was a message to the other -- the people in the cell to act quickly because Salah was speaking and he was telling prosecutors -- at this point, he's not speaking at all to prosecutors and has asked to be moved to France for his style.

[15:20:15]

BALDWIN: It is stunning to think. We can't know what he would have given up, if anything, had these interrogators started on imminent plots.

But the fact that because they started questioning him chronologically, starting with back in November in Paris, they didn't quite get to what was most alarming.

PALMERI: No, exactly.

And the Belgian Crisis Center admitted that they didn't have enough information to raise the terror level from three to four after he was captured. It was sort of like a celebratory moment in Brussels where everyone was talking about what went right, how they were able to capture him and how they had gotten Europe's most wanted man.

But, in that meantime, there was plotting and colluding happening, and a feeling of let's get this done. Let's do the attack that Salah Abdeslam, our sources tell us, was supposed to be involved in, this attack this past week, if he wasn't captured.

BALDWIN: Wow. So, that's what you all have.

Let me just talk about -- we have talked quite a bit about this, first when Paris happened and now this, the open borders in Europe, where -- I was talking to Ali Soufan, who was an interrogator in his past life, and he was saying to me, Brooke, terrorists move more freely in Europe than information.

And so it seems to me -- and this was an issue here after 9/11, where intelligence agencies were not quite talking to one another like they should. That changed here. Why hasn't that happened? Why hasn't that changed in Europe?

PALMERI: It's really a difficult situation in Europe. You're absolutely correct that the flow of information is not great and especially between Belgium and France.

And on top of that, Belgium, their own intelligence services are so fragmented, and there's a reluctance to share information with the Belgians because of the fact that they have just within Brussels 19 different communes with 19 different mayors who have 19 different police forces.

And my sources say that if they give information to the Belgians, they fear that it will leak out to the local level and that they can't control any good leads, so there's a reluctance to even share information with them.

And then there's also suspicion from them about getting information from other parties. So there really needs to be better organization between Europe and just within the countries themselves.

BALDWIN: Tara Palmeri, thank you so much, reporter and columnist for Politico, in Brussels for us tonight.

Back to our special coverage in just a moment. But, right now, we have to talk about Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz right now is absolutely unleashing on Donald Trump and this whole feud over their wives. Listen, Cruz is angry after Donald Trump retweeted someone mocking his wife's appearance, Cruz calling Trump a -- quote -- "sniveling coward."

This has just escalated. You will hear him next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:27:32]

BALDWIN: We will get you back to our breaking news out of Brussels here in just a moment.

But, first, Ted Cruz, he just went off on Donald Trump in this feud over their wives. Let me explain. This whole thing started with this anti-Trump super PAC ad essentially showing a scantily clad Mrs. Trump, Melania Trump.

That then was followed up by Trump tweeting essentially, you know, lying Ted, watch out or I will spill the beans on your wife, which then somehow there was all this back and forth. I'm essentially telling you that in the end, Trump retweeted someone else with -- I'm not even going to show you the picture because it's just appalling, really just demeaning to women.

I don't know if it's a my wife is hotter than your wife kind of thing. But, basically, in the wake of that, Ted Cruz said this. Do we have it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's not easy to tick me off. I don't get angry often. But you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that will do it every time. Donald, you're a sniveling coward, and leave Heidi the hell alone.

QUESTION: Will you support him as a nominee?

CRUZ: I'm going to beat him for the nomination. He is not -- I am answering the question. Donald Trump will not be the nominee.

QUESTION: He's leading right now.

(CROSSTALK)

CRUZ: Donald Trump will not be the nominee.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Wow. So, incredibly forceful response from Ted Cruz.

Let me bring in Susan Page, Washington bureau chief "USA Today."

Listen, we're going to talk politics and terror, and I promise we will do that in a second, but we just turned around this sound, Susan, from the Texas senator. And my goodness. A, have you ever? B, do you think that this will hurt Donald Trump at all?

SUSAN PAGE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "USA TODAY": A, no, I have never heard a debate like this, especially at the presidential level, maybe student council.

BALDWIN: Seventh grade.

PAGE: But this is new ground in choosing the next commander in chief.

What we have seen in the past six months is that these kind of disputes do not seem to really hurt Donald Trump with his core supporters. But he's at a point where he's trying to pivot to a broader audience to make sure he reaches enough Republicans to get the nomination, and then in a general election be able to reach out to swing voters, including a lot of women.

So I think the people who are happiest about this exchange, they would be the Democrats.

BALDWIN: Right. They would be.

But when you look at, you know, the tremendous Trump support thus far, he has a lot of support from Republican women. And we will be curious to see if that erodes at all based upon this -- this sort of silliness.

Let's talk about substance.