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Manhunt Continues for Suspects in Terror Attack; White House's "Charlie Hebdo" Judgment in 2012

Aired January 08, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Chris Cuomo here. We are live in Paris, France, just outside the offices of "Charlie Hebdo." Of course that's the French satirical magazine, the victim of a horrible terrorist massacre yesterday. The two men, the alleged suspects behind it, they are now the target of a massive manhunt. France has been using its military, its intelligence, its police resources, pouring them into this effort.

There is information coming out about these two men. It's thought they had escaped early on. They've been sighted recently. We're going to give you a live report about that. There are as many as seven detentions, not the word "arrest" hasn't been used, but in connection with the investigation into finding these men.

There's been a second shooting in south Paris this morning. We don't know that it's connected to what happened here at the magazine but it is raising a lot of suspicion and a lot of the same issues about how you deal with the emerging threat of terrorism.

But the latest is that there was a man at a gas station in northern Paris who saw these two alleged suspects. So let's get you right to Atika Shubert. She's on scene there. Atika, what do we know?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that man, the gas attendant says apparently according to local media they came at around 10:30. They held him up, stole food and gas. Now I'm at this gas station. French police haven't confirmed those details to us independently. However I'll step out of the way so we can zoom in a little bit. Forgive us if the picture breaks up slightly, we're on a live view. But you can see actually plain clothed policemen inside the shop at the gas station, they've been sort of gathered around the cash register in particular. We don't know what they're looking at but we do know that there is CCTV outside of this gas station so possibly they're looking at that kind of video.

There is also a forensics van parked right in front of the shop there. They've been taking materials in and out of the van. So clearly they are collecting as much information as they can about the suspects and where they were headed to next. Now, we don't have any more details from police --

CUOMO: All right, we just lost Atika's shot. There's a lot of rain, a lot weather moving through this area right now. It's complicating things on the ground for authorities and also obviously for communications. But what you heard there is that the witness at the gas station says

the two alleged suspects came in, wanted money, wanted fuel to keep moving. What does that tell us about the picture of how organized they were? On one level it's very troublesome. They seem to have had some training and ease with the weapon, and ease about killing, literally executing people. But then one of them dropped his shoe, one of them left their identification, and now they're knocking off a gas station trying to get out. Very boneheaded for lack of a more, you know, classic term of expression in these types of investigations.

So what kind of people are we dealing with? That's part of the challenge for investigators, to figure out exactly who these men are and who may be trying to help them. Now, Fred Pleitgen looked into that for us. Here's a report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Breaking overnight, police say they know that these are the faces behind the mayhem after reportedly discovering an I.D. belonging to Said Kouachi at the scene of the attack. France's prime minster added Said and his brother Cherif Kouachi were known to the security services prior to unleashing terror at the magazine offices, and one of the brothers known to U.S. officials.

Overnight police detained seven people in the manhunt for the gunman according to AFP, but the two still remain at large. Analysts now scanning every frame of this amateur video noting that it shows a marked difference from previously lone wolf attacks.

SEN. RICHARD BURR, (R) INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: The way they carried the weapons, the fact they had their faces covered, these were individuals that were there to commit murder, not to be identified, to get away, not the typical lone wolf.

PLEITGEN: Investigators also point to this video to explain why it's too soon to know whether the suspects were acting alone. In the video you see one of the gunmen approaching his getaway car and raising his finger in the air, possibly signaling others who may have played a role in the attack an intelligence source tells CNN. Police also impounding a black Citroen similar to the attackers reported getaway car, investigators planning a complete DNA workup on the car including soil signatures that might suggest where the gunmen came from.

French authorities also scouring travel records from previous weeks to see if any of the attackers entered the country. U.S. intelligence agencies now running names through databases and mapping the relationships of these suspects.

BURR: Our intelligence folks I can assure you are scrubbing everything we can find to try to figure out whether we can go back and see anything that might have indicated this attack.

PLEITGEN: Counterterrorism agencies also looking at a number of terrorist groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, who might be behind the attack. REP. MIKE MCCAUL, (R) HOMELAND SECURITY CHAIRMAN: The dual threat is

a homegrown violent extremist but also the foreign fighter that can travel overseas, be trained, and then come back.

PLEITGEN: Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: OK, thanks to Fred Pleitgen for that report.

So who are these men? Who made them who and what they became? And what do you do about it? Those are the three challenges facing the French authorities right now. The obviously most urgent is finding these two men.

Let's bring in two people who can help us forward this conversation. We have Fabrice Magnier, a former French Navy SEAL. Currently you're running a security company. You are very familiar with how French authorities deal with these investigations. And, of course, Hala Gorani, thank you very much for being with us, CNNI's own, of course, one of our best anchors certainly, out here in the field.

So let's discuss these issues in front of us, shall we? The first one, these men, we've been showing this video all along of them moving around. To the uninitiated I don't see the signs of madmen, people who were mentally unstable. I see people comfortable with the weapon, who seem comfortable with killing and moving around in a somewhat coordinated fashion. To your trained military eye what do you see?

FABRICE MAGNIER, FORMER FRENCH NAVY SEAL: As I have seen on the video, those guys are not real military guys.

CUOMO: Not real military?

MAGNIER: No, because we can detect some kind of gesture when they move in the street which doesn't make me feeling that they have highly trained. Those guys for sure received some kind of weapon training.

CUOMO: They've gotten some training but not former military.

MAGNIER: No, because we can see the guy when he executes the police officer on the street, he is holding his weapon very strange way. When he killed that police officer, doesn't stop, he runs very slowly, shot, don't stop, go again. The military would not act this way. He would stop minimum, flat, move, do it again, look around, move again back. It's different.

CUOMO: So you have some training. But then, Hala, we look at the other clues that Fabrice was filling me in on earlier -- drops a shoe, leaves an I.D. there, holds up a gas station on the way out. Not very methodical.

HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: But there's some question about whether or not maybe perhaps that I.D. was left on purpose as a means of claiming responsibility. All of these questions are still swirling out there. We only have a few pieces of this very, very large puzzle.

What we do know, however, is that France went from being a country, essentially they had just gone through Christmas and New Year's and everything was going as normal, to being now a country where you have men basically massacring 12 people in a newsroom out on the street with automatic weapons. And then you have a shooting as well today in a suburb of Paris where a female police officer was shot and killed. These are essentially acts of war in the streets of a western capital. This isn't, and this is one step up from a lone wolf attack such as the one we saw in Sydney, for instance, in Australia. So it does point to perhaps a more worrying pattern of copycat attacks, which is the one we saw in a suburb of Paris today, which we don't know necessarily is linked to this one.

CUOMO: Now while the authorities have been dealing with external threats, Mali and what we see around the world, internally and the recognition of the French people that they are at war with terror right where they live and work, do you think this is a wake-up call, Fabrice?

MAGNIER: I think it's a wake-up call because French people do not understand why we are fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, whatever. And now they discover we have people who are ready, who are at war really, they want war. They treat us, they want to kill people in our cities. And people have to know we have maybe 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 guys from France who flew through Syria, Iraq, to be like jihadists, and those guys sometimes are coming back in France.

CUOMO: That's the concern. And they may fit your profile, not military, but somehow trained.

MAGNIER: Of course.

CUOMO: Then you have this question of OK, so what do you do, though? Because there's a unique aspect to French society, Hala. You have seven percent, 7.5 percent, eight percent Muslim population.

GORANI: The largest Muslim population in Europe.

CUOMO: Certainly in western Europe, second now to Catholicism in terms of religion.

GORANI: That's correct.

CUOMO: How do you articulate here that we're only dealing with a small slice of people who arguably aren't even practicing Islam in their extremism. How do you deal with it in terms of assessing the threat?

GORANI: By all accounts these suspects weren't even very devout Muslims in their past, petty criminals, certainly not very observant in terms of alcohol and other types of things. So really it's a question of framing the message this way, that this is not about Islam. It's said over and over again that this is about something else. It's about another malaise that allows these young men to be recruited into these networks and commit what are essentially criminal acts. This is what's going on.

How do you address that? France has a huge problem with that, reaching out to its Muslim community. Just now I was driven by a Muslim cab driver, Arab Muslim cabdriver of Arab origin born in France, who says, you know what, I asked him, what do you think is the explanation as to why some of these individuals are radicalized to such an extent that they become mass murderers? He said, ask the authorities, ask the authorities how they treat the Arabs and the Muslims. There is a frustration here from this community, and part of the answer has to be also how authorities respond to the frustrations of these communities.

MAGNIER: I agree with this, and I have a petition out to explain very well to our people, to French citizens, there is a major difference between Islam in France, I mean 7.5 percent of the population, and this minority of radical extremist people. And in order to avoid, I would say like big mess in France, like maybe a civil war, we have to make a huge difference between those two communities, OK? And our politicians have to take some major decision to reinforce security measures to attack it so this specific minority in order to protect the major community of Islam in France. Otherwise we'll have mixed and people will not understand from both sides what's going on.

CUOMO: One of the things you have to do right away is catch the bad guys. And that's not just an obvious statement because they're terrorists and they're on the loose, but it sends a message to society about what the nature of preparedness and resolve is. What do you know about the investigation in terms of the amount of resources that are being focused on chasing these two?

MAGNIER: I think they put everything.

CUOMO: Everything?

MAGNIER: Everything. All their major intelligence parties, special units, SWAT teams, intelligence network have been activated day and night. Everybody's working very hard, and they will do everything they want to catch those guys to get information from everywhere.

CUOMO: Because Hala, as we all know in covering this, two things wind up being a chilling effect on more acts like this. One is that they get caught, and that they get prosecuted, and they get forgotten. That's important. It's also important to show something else, as we give it back to you in New York, obviously, thank you, Hala, thank you, Fabrice, for this, is that what we've seen is a beautiful demonstration of the strongest muscle against terrorism -- people coming out and saying we want "Charlie Hebdo" here. We want them to publish. We believe in our freedom, Je Suis Charlie, "I am Charlie," that they are not afraid. That's the most powerful medicine for the French people. And they seem to be giving that in large doses this morning as we go back to you, Michaela and Alisyn. The French people seem very unified. There have been political meetings here, big rallies last night. There are more planned for the weekend. They seem very intent on sending the message we are not afraid.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Exactly the opposite of what the terrorists had hoped for. They are not silenced there today.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: And cartoonists uniting, sending out their own satirical cartoons paying homage to the cartoons that were lost, a really beautiful tribute. Should we take a look at more of our headlines this hour?

All right, the president is headed to Phoenix today as part of his three-day tour pushing his economic agenda. He will talk housing and the new initiative on lowering mortgage rates for first time homeowners. The president then heads to Knoxville Friday to speak about plans to make college more affordable.

CAMEROTA: And crews will likely have a hard time getting the tail of AirAsia flight 8501 out of the water, that because it is upside down and partially submerged in the muddy floor of the Java Sea. Divers readying the tail to be lifted today were forced out of the water because of bad weather. Wednesday's find could be huge since the tail could hold the plane's black box recorders.

PEREIRA: Most of you, most of us, all of us it would appear are waking up to bone-chilling cold and expect a frigid day ahead. The National Weather Service says close to 90 percent of the country is going to see below freezing temperatures this morning. Whiteout conditions are being blamed for this deadly 18-vehicle crash on a Pennsylvania interstate. It involved nine tractor trailers. At least two people were killed, dozens others were injured.

CAMEROTA: Comedian Bill Cosby back on stage performing, though more than a dozen protesters shouted outside "Shame on you" at ticket holders as they entered last night's show in Ontario, Canada. Inside the audience gave Cosby a standing ovation. Meanwhile, the comedian's former costar Phylicia Rashad is breaking her silence. She's blasting the media, claiming Cosby has been treated unfairly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHYLICIA RASHAD, ACTRESS: He's a genius. He is generous. He's kind. He's inclusive. What has happened is declaration in the media of guilt without proof.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Three more women have come forward accusing the comedian of drugging and sexually assaulting them in the 1980s and 1990s.

PEREIRA: Police are vigorously hunting for two prime suspects in that Paris terrorist attack. Are they closer to finding this dangerous pair? We'll be back to Chris in Paris live in just a moment.

Plus, years ago, the White House seemed to criticize the magazine's decision to publish the controversial cartoon that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad. We'll ask the president's former press secretary, Jay Carney, if those warnings should be heeded.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY CARNEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We are aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the Prophet Muhammad. And, obviously, we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this. We know that these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney in 2012 responding to a firestorm over cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad. They were published by "Charlie Hebdo."

In light of yesterday's terror attack, should the satirical newspaper have exercised different judgment in publishing offensive cartoons?

Let's ask Jay Carney today. He is now a CNN political commentator.

Jay, nice to see you. So --

CARNEY: Nice to see you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: You know, look, this is a dialogue we have all the time. There is a fine line between satire, even offensive satire and hate speech. Where are you on that line today?

CARNEY: Well, I'm firmly on the side of freedom of speech and in our country, defense of the First Amendment. There is no question that a publication like this has every right to publish images like this, to satirize anything and anyone, and there's never a justification, as I went on to say from the podium back when I was press secretary, there's never justification for violence in response to being offended by free speech.

But I think that we also have to acknowledge that some of these representations in this magazine and elsewhere, including, remember in the video produced in the United States, that represented Muhammad and was offensive to many Muslims that there are risks associated with that and that that kind of offensive representation could be provocative.

But I think it's important especially after what happened in Paris to make it clear that there's never justification for violence.

CAMEROTA: Of course, of course.

CARNEY: And there's no excuse for what happened.

CAMEROTA: Of course, and no one could ever make the justification that terrorism can rightly happen as a result of a cartoon.

Still, you seem to be suggesting in 2012 and you're not alone, that "Charlie Hebdo" should have pulled back a little bit, that they shouldn't have published cartoons that were as offensive or as pornographic and vulgar as what they were doing. CARNEY: Well, I think that's right, and that's a judgment call in the

sense that -- if you're trying to combat through a form of media, print, cartoons, TV, extremism or ideas that you think are damaging, in this case those propounded by Islamic extremists, what is the best way to do that? And was this the best way to do it? Did this further the cause in the effort to tamp down and beat back Islamic extremism or did it just provoke negative reaction and make a lot of average Muslims who would never resort to violence feel offended? And was that a useful and a way to go and was that a use of good judgment?

The thing is, in our country, the First Amendment, in a democracy like France, the defense of freedom of the press, freedom of expression -- you know, those foundations to our laws are there to protect negative speech, to protect offensive speech, to protect the speech that we don't like and makes us feel uncomfortable. It's not there to protect the conventional speech or acceptable speech.

So, that's why we have the society we have and, you know, we have to be OK with that, with being offended and --

CAMEROTA: I mean, look --

CARNEY: -- not resort to violence and response to it.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the editor who sadly lost his life yesterday, standing up for this principle, what -- the way he justified it, you have to be able to lampoon sacred cows. He believed there were too many subjects that were taboo and he felt that Islam was one of those subjects that was taboo, and that's why in particular he lampooned it.

So, the message today, I'm not sure what it should be, to pull back and not lampoon Islam or to keep pressing forward?

CARNEY: Well, I think the message today has to be not about the content of the satire that sparked this reaction but the right of all of us to stand up in France and in the United States. France is our oldest ally, for a defense of freedom and defense of our way of life and whether or not you find the cartoons offensive, whether or not you find them in poor taste or in bad judgment, as many others might, you have to defend the right to publish, defend freedom of expression, defend the need for an uncomfortable reaction.

And the way to combat that is in the public space. If you're offended by something, publish something that attacks with words not with violence or with images, you know, what was offensive and why it was the wrong thing to do if you believe that. And I think that's what makes democracies unique and something that we cherish and it was incredibly heartening to see the reaction of the French public to the violence yesterday.

This publication is a publication that was not widely read, that got most of its attention because of its inflammatory images of Muhammad, but there was a great solidarity among the French people and the people of Paris in response yesterday and around the world. And that's very heartening. CAMEROTA: I mean, look, even in this country, you know, we have this

expression you're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded movie theater because some people might be injured. There are some things that are so inflammatory that you know before you do it people might be injured.

So, what is the future of political satire and even religion satire today? Does this have a chilling effect?

CAMEROTA: Well, I think we'll have to see. I -- this is the perfect question at what point does satire become the equivalent of because it's provocative and inflammatory shouting fire. The problem with that analogy is that it suggests at some point, the kind of reaction that happens when you shout "fire" in a crowded theater is justified in reaction to words or images, and I don't think it ever is.

And I think we're likely to see more provocative publications respond to this in solidarity with "Charlie Hebdo" and certainly we'll have to brace ourselves or positive, possible reaction to it among extremists. But I think that this is so embedded in Democratic society is the idea that we can say whatever we want, even if it's offensive, that you'll probably see more of it sooner rather than less.

CAMEROTA: And in fact that is happening. We're seeing it go viral. Seeing the cartoons on social media go viral in an attempt not to have it stamped out.

Jay Carney, thanks so much for having this philosophical discussion. Interesting to talk to you.

CARNEY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: OK.

CARNEY: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's go over to Michaela.

PEREIRA: Great discussion there.

The urgency right now in Paris remains on the fact that two suspects are still on the loose in the Paris terrorist attack. We're going to bring you the latest developments. Chris is live in Paris.

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