Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

No High-Profile U.S. Official at Solidarity March; Search for Hayat Boumediene Continues; Oil Prices Continue to Tumble

Aired January 12, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Good to have you back with us here at New Day. Here is a look at your headlines, ISIS flags, detonators, automatic weapons, and other potential clues found by French Police in a Paris apartment. It had been rented by the gunman who slaughtered four hostages in a kosher grocery store before he was shot and killed. Officials are hoping to find evidence that will lead them to this woman the lone surveilling suspect. This morning we're hearing Turkish officials believed she made it to Syria last week.

Police believe explosives were strapped to a girl possibly as young as 10-years old, then detonated in a busy market in Nigeria. At least 20 people were killed. Boko Haram is believed to be behind the attack which came on the heels of what maybe the deadliest massacre in Boko Haram's history. Amnesty International reporting some 2,000 people were killed in the town in Nigeria's border with Chad.

Two daring climbers are on the verge of scaling El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. Kevin Jorgeson and Tommy Caldwell are less than a thousand feet from the tippy-top. They're close to joining forces once again after Jorgeson fell behind after getting seconds on to the most difficult section of the climb. The pair are using only their hands and feet in pursuit of this record climb attempting to be the first to free climb the Dawn Wall, they been up there since December 27.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: What was the difficult section just out of curiosity? Take out stuff...

PEREIRA: I know right. Hard to pin point exactly.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: ... put you on full pucker(ph) when you watch those guys, let them go for a second and they go sliding across...

CAMEROTA: Feels like in appropriate segue...

CUOMO: That's it right there...

CAMEROTA: ... to John King.

PEREIRA: Right.

CUOMO: Right, yeah. CAMEROTA: Another high water act, John King with inside Politics. Good morning, John.

JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: I'm always on the bad end of the Monday morning segue, there we go. Amazing what those guys are doing. Let's hope they make it all the way, that's an amazing feat. Since December, they've been up there. That is nuts, good for them.

Let's go Inside Politics this morning, a very busy morning and with me to share the reporting and their insights, Jonathan Martin of "The New York Times," CNN's Peter Hamby. Let's explore the question Alisyn, Chris and Michaela have started with all morning, why, why. You have this amazing world event yesterday, solidarity in Paris, an amazing picture of world leaders. Here's some headlines this morning because the United States sent no high profile official there.

Look at this headlines this morning, the Daily News says, you know, three -- 40 leaders marched, 3 million people in Paris should defy terror. None of these men showed up, meaning the leaders of the United States or the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State or Attorney General. The news says, "You let the world down."

The President of Iran saying his foreign policy would be built around new alliances and strengthen alliances. Why can't they send somebody? Why wouldn't -- if the President couldn't go, why wouldn't the Vice President couldn't go. If Joe Biden couldn't go, why don't they change Secretary Kerry's schedule? He says he had a critical commitment in India and he's going later this week.

They could have called Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton. Why not a big -- look at the -- just put picture back up of the world leaders. This is a pretty remarkable photo, you've got -- Prime Minister Abbasi and Prime Minister Netanyahu, two -- President Abbas, excuse me. Angela Merkel there. This is -- the King of Jordan.

PETER HAMBY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: King of Cameron...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: King -- why is the -- if the United States -- I mean forgive me, but if there's ever a picture that says our policies leading far behind, that's it.

HAMBY: Yeah. And to your point that it seems so obvious here, it seems like diplomacy 101. It's not just about, you know, showing solidarity with France. I mean other world leaders where there, you know, are probably looking at the United States saying, I mean what are doing here, you know, you should send somebody. You know, one of the -- Kerry's excuse was they were going to send him to India, you know, on sort of develop trade with that country. But look, I mean, India needs us more than we need them. I mean this is sort a unifying huge world event, and again to your point, this was Obama's sort of calling card coming into office, which is why it seems so shocking.

JONATHAN MARTIN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": And it (inaudible) show...

KING: Stubborn, tone deaf. I don't...

MARTIN: Well -- and the French twice, at American times of need, have rallied towards our side. I couldn't help, John, thinking when I saw those images when JFK was killed and Charles De Gaulle -- it was then still a lot of depression over in France. This imperious, sort of six foot four man, marching here in Washington D.C., at our moment of need. Very different obviously time, different events, but still to not see a high profile American presence there as they had here after JFK was killed, as they rallied to our side after 9/11. I think a lot of Americans are going to say, "What's going on there?

HAMBY: Our oldest ally my friends.

KING: Oldest ally, you just get -- the question I can't set aside. Who, you know, if the President of CEO of the operation. The Secretary of State's job is to make sure we do the right things diplomatically. So in someway, it's John Kerry's day job. And he decides this commitment in India is more important. Isn't he suppose to say well that if I'm going to keep this commitment, I have to make sure somebody who's a beacon of the United States is standing there in that front row.

HAMBY: Somebody. And look, they argued that Eric Holder was there, but...

MARTIN: ... working meetings, he wasn't...

HAMBY: Right.

MARTIN: ... as far, you know.

HAMBY: I feel like it has to be someone bigger than that and known.

KING: No offense, Ambassador Nuland was there, you know, U.S. Ambassador of European...

MARTIN: Right. She was in Washington actually at the march here with Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF. The highest U.S. official at the march yesterday in Paris was U.S. ambassador over there who was a big Obama donor, who got that job in part because of her (inaudible) to President Obama. So, there was really nobody in that parade at the sort of top levels of U.S. administration.

HAMBY: And I sympathize with the security argument.

MARTIN: Absolutely.

KING: You know, we covered...

MARTIN: Or President Obama sure, but...

HAMBY: Certainly -- absolutely. But again I mean, 40 world leaders there, they all have their security needs as well.

KING: Well, we'll see if there's any fall out from it. Secretary Kerry will be in Paris later at the week. He says "Maybe someone should have been there". But he thinks he did the right call. We'll see if he can make amends when he's there.

Let's move on to some domestic politics, all this weekend, the (inaudible) was buzzing. Republicans circles we're buzzing with idea that Mitt Romney walk into a meeting of donors on Friday, after months of saying "I'm not running, I'm not running, I'm not running" He walk into a meeting and said go tell your friends.

HAMBY: That's right.

KING: Mitt Romney walks in, "Everybody in here can go tell your friends that I'm considering a run".

What brought about this dramatic change and is it in two words, Jeb Bush?

HAMBY: Probably, yeah. That's it, that about right. Look, Mitt Romney. It's not a surprise that he want's to be President. He ran for President twice, I mean the guy wants to be a president. Look, there's a little bit of friction there, I'm not outright contempt. But, you know, Jeb and Romney aren't particularly close.

KING: Right.

HAMBY: I think that, you know, he saw Jeb, you know, waiting into this turf. Look, Romney has been running for president until he lose, he was running for president for six years.

KING: Yeah.

HAMBY: You know, he's sort of used to this. This is he's lane and he sees someone else there. Look, part of his -- and Romney...

MARTIN: Yeah.

HAMBY: ... has gone from don't do this again to I want you in there. In case of course he don't...

(CROSSTALK)

MARTIN: Once Jeb Bush being out there. It's Jeb Bush criticizing Romney over the course...

HAMBY: Over immigration.

MARTIN: ... of the last month on a variety of issues. My understanding is that Romney had said repeatedly last year in private. Look, I'm not going to do this. The only way I'll do it is late 2015, if somebody is going to get the nomination...

HAMBY: White Knights...

MARTIN: ... that can't win the general and the party comes to me and says, "We want you to do this." Then I'll consider it. What changed? I think he didn't believe Jeb was actually going to run. And we saw Jeb out there and saw Jeb criticizing him, he realized, "OK, if I want to do this again, I should move fast". And Jeb's moving so quickly

KING: And started getting phone calls and starting to get -- what Romney has is an amazing money operation.

HAMBY: Sure.

KING: From coast to coast, it has big donors, it has medium donors, it has bundlers, it's a very impressive organization. And the question was would be (inaudible) this at some point, could he be (inaudible) at some point. Those guys were all getting calls from Jeb now and a lot of them are sympathetic to Jeb. And so they're turning to Mitt and saying "Are you running, what should we do?"

MARTIN: It's (inaudible) of a money game, John. I mean the degree to which the primer, it's an early going release, are dominated by rich people in this country and their preferences is astonishing. But it's a political fact of life. No, to borrow the old phrase, this is a grassroots movement -- I'm urging from the grassroots of every country called America.

KING: But it'd have this, that would be a remarkable establishment rivalry between a Mitt Romney and a Jeb Bush and maybe a Chris Christie. And we'll get to Governor Christie in a minute, but you have premier establishment candidates there. You write this morning about an interview with Rick Santorum where he is going after Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio to a degree. But he says he doesn't think he's going to run. And Rand Paul and the other says he have conservative fight as well and Mike Huckabee saying they're just -- they don't have the credibility, they don't have the experience of what, bomb throwers.

MARTIN: So, they're basically two lanes now. And I talked to Senator Santorum last week and he was very aggressive going after Governor Huckabee who's a big challenge to him in Iowa, of course it was Huckabee who won there in 2008, on a raft of policy issues where he says Huckabee's going to have to enter to the right, but also taking aim at both Paul and Cruz saying that's the Obama syndrome, they were in the Senate for a couple of years, that's not enough experience and by the way, their bomb throwers and they are not experienced candidates.

HAMBY: And again, in a crowded sort of field, especially on the right, I mean Santorum who's run before never cut that out, has as much chance as anybody. I feel like, look, I do think that Huckabee if you took -- take Huckabee and Santorum in Iowa, I think a lot of these folks, you know, they're in love with Huckabee and in like with Santorum. But what you were just talking about is really interesting on the establishment side. There's usually sort of one anointed figure in that lane. And now...

(CROSSTALK)

HAMBY: You know, another reason -- Mitt Romney, you know, who's ran twice before, that's interesting but like maybe he's got as much of a shot as anybody if there's that many on the race.

MARTIN: That is...

KING: Uncertainty (ph). As we get back to New York, the winner of the football primer this week was Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin or Paul Ryan, the Congressman from Wisconsin, the loser, Mr. Cuomo, was at Chris Christie the governor of New Jersey time to retire the orange sweater. I guess you can see him on the sidelines here with Jerry Jones.

He hoped to bring more mojo to the Cowboys, there you see Paul Ryan and the stands with his kids, saying. "Governor Christie do you need a hug now." We'll see -- we'll see if this one just passes. But I suspect maybe the orange -- lucky orange sweater is going into retirement.

CUOMO: I would expect the governor has some choice comments about that call with Dez Bryant in what certainly look like a catch to me. Even to a Pats fan, I'm sure it look like a catch.

KING: That was a catch.

CUOMO: There you go.

KING: That was a catch and I'm glad my Patriots, so I'm still having exhales from the Patriots Ravens game but we get another weekend.

CUOMO: Yeah, good luck to you. See you later, John King.

KING: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: All right, we're going to take a break. When we comeback, an enemy no one was expecting, the female the Islamic terrorist. How do terror groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS go about recruiting women? And why do they seem to be having more success doing it? We'll discuss coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PEREIRA: This morning, police are on a hunt for Hayat Boumediene, the alleged co-conspirator and companion of Amedy Coulibaly who was killed during a police operation in his deadly siege at a kosher grocery store in Paris on Friday. Even if Boumediene wasn't at the scene as is believed now, her role in the attacks highlights a troubling trend, a trend of women being lured into extremism.

Joining me now is Mia Bloom, she's a professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, and she's author of "Bombshell: The Many Faces of Women Terrorist".

Professor, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

MIA BLOOM, PROFESSOR OF SECURITY STUDIES, UMASS: Michaela, thank you for having me.

PEREIRA: So we're talking about the fact that this young woman is on the run, still believed to be, have been in Syria at the time. Some people are really surprised that one of the suspects in this horrifying attack was a woman. Not a new face in terrorism as you highlight in your book, explain to us how big of a role women are playing in this organizations?

BLOOM: You know, when you look at the history of terrorism, you can't help but notice the fact that women have been involved with terrorist organizations from the very beginning, going back to the 19th century. So what really is surprising to me is that anyone is surprised when we see a woman.

I think the surprise in part might be that many people may have assumed that Islamic groups do not engage women as operatives and that's absolutely not the case. Since 2005, we've seen even Al Qaeda's affiliates using women as suicide bombers for propagandas, as recruiters online. And we've seen so many Western women going to ISIS.

PEREIRA: I want to kind of break down a lot of what you've said because they are very good points in all of this. First of all, what is it that draws women to the Jihadi movement in your research?

BLOOM: Well, women are motivated to join many of these terrorist groups for the exact same reason that men are. And it's going to be a combination of politics, how they interpret religion, personal experiences. I think the way we've previously assumed women are only involved in terrorism because of emotional reasons, I've disproven in my book.

But for the Jihadi groups, a lot of the women are drawn to the ideology, they are drawn especially to the notion of this Ethiopian Islamic State. And so, I think that especially women who have been mistreated because of Islamophobia or they're mistreated because they live under occupation, are drawn to these movements as a form of protest.

PEREIRA: Something that Peter Bergen points out. You know, Peter wrote for CNN.com, he reference this Ethiopian Society, that Ethiopian Society is one where women aren't allowed in education or a job, so there's a certain level of irony and it's hard for Western minds to get their minds around what would draw them.

You pointed out the fact that these women are on the front lines oftentimes but you've also said in your book that they are used differently within different terror groups. Talk about that a little bit.

BLOOM: So, if you look at women in some of the European terrorist groups in the 1960s and 1970s, we have women in possessions of leadership. And including until today, the head of the vast separatist movement is a woman. So the idea that women are only going to be second class citizens is definitely not the case.

Within the Islamic groups however, we have women that can be suicide bombers. We've seen this for example with the 10-year-old girl as suicide bombers on Boko Haram who are targeting markets. And so, especially when Jihadi groups are going after civilians, they're going to use an operative that blends in with the civilian population and that's where women are crucial.

PEREIRA: And you also point out in your book that the women are often more radical than the men, explain that.

BLOOM: One of the things that I described in the book was the fact that, again, we assume that women are only involved because they are reacting to the loss of a loved one or they're involved because who is a Jihadi, when in fact in many cases, it's the women who are the ones who are pulling the man in. And in fact, they make sure that the man stay in the organization. This is very different and a troubling innovation that in the past, marrying a male terrorist of, you know, having kids, a mortgagement (ph), he probably didn't have time for terrorism. Now, it's the women who ensure that the man stay within the organization, and they stay radical and then they raise that next generation to also have the same ideology.

PEREIRA: It really points to this is a being a prime example of the ever changing dynamic in confronting and fighting terrorism. Quick final thought on that point.

BLOOM: You know, I think that part of what we need to understand is that when the terrorist groups are trying to use operatives that will fall under the radar screen, they're going to use women, they're going to use older people, they're going to use children. We have to be aware that these are the kinds of operatives that are in the future and we have to figure out policies that are best way to protect against these kinds of operative because no one is expecting it, but we should be.

PEREIRA: Terrific perspective from you, Professor Mia Bloom. Thanks for joining us today on New Day.

BLOOM: Thank you so for having me.

PEREIRA: Chris?

CUOMO: All right. Now, the market is understandably got jittery because of the Paris attacks as well but the real threat to your wallet is oil prices. They're still tumbling and we have CNN Money Now coming up with a look at what happens with oil and gas in the near term. Time to pre-buy heating oil, we'll tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: That means it's time for CNN Money Now. Chief business correspondent, Christine Romans is in our Money Center with news on oil prices. What are you seeing?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. Oil prices sliding again this morning. You guys trading out about $47 a barrel. That price has been slashed in half since summer. That has pushed gas prices now to a six-year low, almost six-year low. The national average this morning, $2.13 a gallon.

"You can't kill an idea," that's what Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook overnight in response to those France mutiny marches. He writes, "As long as we are connected, then no attacks by extremists can stand in the way of history's act toward freedom and acceptance for all." One of the interesting comments from the big tech CEOs about everything that's happened over the weekend, guys.

CAMEROTA: It sure is. Christine, thanks so much. Meanwhile, does a Paris hide out hold clues on the whereabouts of the female suspect in last week's terror attacks? We'll tell you what the gunmen behind the grocery store siege left behind.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)