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President Obama Delivers Oval Office Speech to American People on San Bernardino Terror Attack and Battle Against ISIS; London Terror Suspect Tried to Behead Victim; Friends of San Bernardino Victim Speaks Out. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 07, 2015 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] MUSTAFA KUKO, DIRECTOR, ISLAMIC CENTER AND MOSQUE OF RIVERSIDE: -- our mosque, also to get back to our communities and, also, try and focus on the strategies that we have followed after 9/11. When we discuss things with our youth at the mosque and try to focus and highlight the good nature of the human beings around us, you know, and the communities that are living with them. We need to be good to them, as they have been good to us. And we need to be peaceful and caring and loving toward everyone. That's Islam. That's the way we should preach Islam, and that's the way it needs to be in the minds of our youth. And that's why our youth in the schools are not engaged. And this is something we feel good about as Muslim communities in America.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Doctor --

NAZAAM ALI, NEW AND PRAYED WITH SYED RIZWAN FAROOK: Can I add something quick, as well?

CUOMO: Please.

ALI: I just want to mention that I would like to extend my -- I would like to commend the president of the United States for taking that stance. It really shows the balanced approach, compared to what other people are taking it and trying to make this -- divide the nation and say that all Muslims are bad. I think this is what we need in this country. We are a great nation. We have been built -- we are built upon this freedom of religion and this is what makes this country so great, that we're one nation under God, indivisible and, therefore, I believe this is a time to unite with the nation and put aside the differences and become one and show the world how we as a country are going to remain as one and then stick to that American spirit.

CUOMO: To be sure --

KUKO: Islam wants that, you know.

CUOMO: Thank you very much, Doctor, appreciate you being on NEW DAY.

KUKO: Thank you.

CUOMO: All right, there's a lot of news, so let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was an act of terrorism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A challenge to Congress to step up and debate how this war should be going.

OBAMA: We will destroy ISIL.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump tweeting, "Is that all there is?"

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't care what the president says. I don't care about language. I care about action.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to keep a clear connection to Muslim American communities and Muslims all over the world.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST, "THE SITUATION ROOM": In touch with people being investigated by the FBI for international terrorism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On Facebook, a pledge of allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The central question for investigators is how this husband and wife became radicalized.

CUOMO: The Justice Department will soon launch an investigation into how the force operates overall.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did it take 13 months when they had video cam footage of the incident?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The accounts of other officers and the sergeant don't match the video.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo, Alisyn Camerota, and Michaela Pereira.

CUOMO: Good morning. Welcome to your new day. It is Monday, December 7th, 8:00 in the east now. And critics are pouncing on President Obama after his primetime Oval Office address. The president calling last week's massacre a terrorist attack, pledging to wipe out ISIS with a smart campaign.

CAMEROTA: But the president's opponents demanding to know what that campaign looks like, how it is different. This is a new CNN poll, revealing for the first time that a majority of Americans want ground troops committed to the fight. Let's go live to the White House and bring in CNN's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns. Good morning, Joe. JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. A

relatively short address from the president of the United States in the Oval Office, confirming that those the acts in San Bernardino were acts of terror. However, offering no major new policy ideas to deal with the overarching problem. The president, in the process, firing up his critics, who say the administration is not doing enough.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OBAMA: The threat from terrorism is real, but we will overcome it.

JOHNS: President Obama speaking passionately to millions in a rare Oval Office address late Sunday, strongly condemning ISIS and calling Wednesday's mass shooting in San Bernardino a terrorist attack.

OBAMA: It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization. So this was an act of terrorism.

JOHNS: Obama doubling down on his four-point strategy to defeat the terrorist group.

OBAMA: The strategy that we are using now, air strikes, special forces and working with local forces fighting to regain control of their own country and won't require us sending a new generation of Americans overseas to fight and die for another decade on foreign soil.

JOHNS: At home, Obama putting stronger screenings on people arriving in the U.S. without a visa and insisting on more gun control.

OBAMA: Congress should act to make sure no one on a no fly list is able to buy a gun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What would you do as president to prevent the mass shootings?

JOHNS: The policy GOP presidential hopefuls are calling insufficient to tackle the evolving threat. Donald Trump tweeting, "Is that all there is?" And re-tweeting, "He needs to stop all visas, not look at them." Jeb Bush proposing his own, more aggressive strategy, and calling the fight against ISIS the war of our time.

[08:05:09] OBAMA: There's a real problem that Muslims must confront without excuse.

President Obama ending his 13-minute speech with an appeal to Muslims to root out extremist ideology while also calling on Americans to reject discrimination.

OBAMA: Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes. And, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.

JOHNS: Senator Marco Rubio pushing back. SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Where is their

widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims, and the refusal to call this for what it is, a war on radical Islam. Not only did the president not make things better tonight, I fear he may have made things worse.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: And next week, the international approach to extremist groups is expected to get a closer look when the finance ministers of U.N. Security Council countries expected to meet in the United States to talk about cutting off the money. Michaela?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Joe. Meanwhile, will it require a change in U.S. military strategy? And is the president willing to address his course? Barbara Starr is live at the Pentagon for us. Barbara, good morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela. The president making it clear there in that speech there will be no massive deployment of U.S. ground troops, but there will be ground troops. Make no mistake about it. The Pentagon preparing to send special operations forces to Iraq and into Syria. Their job will be to stage raids, to capture terrorists, to gather intelligence. The feeling now is that the most successful strategy forward is this essential fix, put some troops on the ground. The best way to find out what ISIS is up to is to put special operations with them.

A lot of concern here. It will be very risky. If they are going to capture terrorists, they will be detaining them and interrogating them. That is going to be a fundamental change. The U.S. of course has not done that in some years. All of this comes, though, as there is a new report from the U.S. intelligence community underscoring that ISIS is expanding its reach around the world, now inspiring potential attacks in places as far away as Bangladesh and Indonesia. It's not the ISIS on the ground anymore in Syria and Iraq that is the sole concern. It is this global spread of people who are adherents, who are supporters of ISIS. Chris, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Barbara, those findings are different than what the president had been saying. Thank you for all of that background.

Let's talk about this now. Did the president's speech go far enough last night? Here to discuss is CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger and CNN senior political analyst and the former advisers to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, David Gergen. Great to have both of you here to go over the president's speech. David, Let me start with you. Do you think the president's speech went far enough last night?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: If you believe that we've been on the right course and we're winning, the president's speech was fine last night. If you believe we're on a course that's not winning, as Hillary Clinton argued yesterday, then I think the president's speech fell short. Reassurances are not enough. I think people were looking for

more concrete actions. We have the makings of a new policy in the decision to send special forces in. I think the defense department under Secretary Ash Carter is going to be on top of this. But I did think the speech fell short in terms of providing any real sense and, indeed, a concrete, credible plan, to get us there. It's as if we're going to do a few things. But you walk away with the impression last night this president is not trying to win on his watch. He's leaving it to the next president to win. He's going to do some things to try to contain it, but it's the defense department report that said, right now, we're not containing it.

CUOMO: Gloria, the question to you is, that's highly disputed, the last part of the evaluation from David. All of the thinking is part of the logic, but they say they're making progress, it's just not fast enough. They say there are lots of different indications for it, they keep popping out the reports about it. So the question become how do you correct the optics with the reality of a real plan is, because, as you know, Gloria, the White House says they do have a plan.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, obviously, it's hugely difficult. This is a president -- and we saw it last night -- who is playing a long game against ISIS. He laid out what his strategy is. He's saying we're not going to get back into war. So he's playing a long game. What people are saying to him, including some people who used to work for him and his own former secretary of state, that perhaps we need to be more disruptive right now in this game.

The president believes his strategy is working. There are people who are saying, look, maybe it's working to a degree in the long-term, but you also need to fix it right now because 81 percent of the American public believes that ISIS terrorists are here, 68 percent of Americans believe you're not doing enough to combat ISIS.

[08:10:15] So short of a ground war, what else can be done rather than stay the course and tell the American public that, yes, you're passionate about it and, yes, you pledge to defeat ISIS and, yes, you call them a cult of death? I think when you give an address from the Oval Office, perhaps there needs to be something beyond kind of an explanation of what we're already doing, when the American public doesn't think it's working.

CAMEROTA: To that point, Gloria, I know you just mentioned some numbers. We do have a poll we can put up. This is from the latest CNN/ORC poll in terms of whether Americans believe that the president is on the right track. How is Obama handling is, it asks. Only 33 percent of Americans, David, approve, 64 percent disapprove. So David, if you were advising this president, what would you tell him to do in terms of an announcement of a new plan or devising a new plan?

GERGEN: Listen, it's been widely reported that after Paris he asked his advisers to come up with new options. One of the options that they chose was the special forces, 200 people. And that's good. It's not very much. And so he himself has been pressing for options. I would have advised him, why don't we come up with the option

first, agree on what we're doing, come up with a plan that really is harder hitting, and then go on television, especially in primetime. If you don't have your options ready, you're not ready to do that, then don't go on primetime, which raises the bar, raises expectations, puts you in a position where that's the commander in chief normally makes strong declarations about what the United States will do and follows through. Don't go on the air in primetime and do that unless you have something that's hard-hitting, that is going to convince people we're going to turn the corner on this and we're going to win it.

CUOMO: David, let me ask you something else about perspective. What do you think the president should call this threat? And do you think that he should call on Congress if they're so upset about the state of play to meet and debate and take their responsibility back under the constitution?

GERGEN: Well, I think the congressional show is a sideshow, and I think putting blame on how this war is going, whether it gets something through the Congress or not, doesn't really get you very far, because after all, on the question of what they're going to authorize, the Republicans and the Democrats have very different views of what to vote on. The Republicans want to give him a lot of authority. Democrats don't want to do that. And so that's what the hang up is here.

But I do believe that there are other things that could be done to make this more reassuring. I do think that this is a form of radical Muslim thinking, and we ought to call it as it is. At the same time, ask the Muslim leaders in America, 99 percent of whom are terrific and really deserve all the respect of the president, bring them to the White House. Ask them for help. We need help in these mosques. If there are people going off the tracks, spot somebody like that, help us find the Farooks of the world before they strike. We need to integrate the Muslim community into the broader American community. They are good people, and we have to find ways to do that. And I think that takes extra steps, extra presidential leadership.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Gloria.

BORGER: I think the president last night, in a way, was arguing for patience, that he didn't say, my strategy is working, but that's what he meant to say. And I think you have an American public right now that is anxious, that is not patient, and that hasn't been asked to do anything either on its own, to sort of be vigilant, you know, keep on the lookout, et cetera. The president is in the middle of a huge political debate here in this country. The fault line is our own safety and our own security. And he needs to convince the American public that, short of doing all the things that Republican presidential candidates are talking about which he disagrees, that he will be keeping Americans safer and that we all have a part to play in this. I'm not so sure if we do a poll today, for later this week, that he will have succeeded in that.

CAMEROTA: Gloria Borger, David Gergen, thanks so much. Great to get your perspectives both. Thank you.

GERGEN: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Michaela.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Is there any way to stop lone wolf terror attacks before they strike? Is there even a strategy to track them? We're going to ask our experts ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:30] CUOMO: We're going to be talking about San Bernardino and what can be done? What is the lesson? But we do have new information about the latest threat out of the U.K.

Let's bring in Phil Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA counterterrorism official. And Paul Cruickshank, CNN terrorism analyst and the editor-in-chief of the CTC Sentinel.

Paul, I'll start with you. What have you heard about the U.K.?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Hey, Chris. Well, British authorities have just revealed that the knife attacker on Saturday night, who stabbed a member of the public at a British tube stop, it appears that he was actually trying to behead his victim. He was kicking him, punching him, wrestling him to the ground. And then was -- had a knife and then was using a sawing motion on his neck when the police intervened.

They also found a lot of pro-ISIS propaganda on his phone. So it suggests that this was an ISIS-inspired attack that we saw play out here in London over the weekend, Chris.

And, of course, a big difference between that attack in the United States, in San Bernardino, where the perpetrators had guns, access to very powerful guns, much more difficult to get access to those guns in the United Kingdom. This is a point the president was making. That in the United States, it's easier for these terrorists to gain hold of very, very powerful weapons.

CUOMO: Right.

CRUICKSHANK: If this guy had had a gun, an automatic weapon in the U.K., I mean, he could have killed 20 people potentially.

[08:20:09] CUOMO: Understood. So we have the issue of the means, but you know, more tricky is the issue of what to do about the motivation, Mr. Mudd.

Look, I am the world's fear of exactly this, lone wolf, one offs, inspired, radicalized not, however they arrive at the crazy, they then act. You can't stop it. You can't keep us safe. That's the fear.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: That's right. You can't stop it because we live in a society where we say it is illegal to be a member of ISIS. It's illegal to provide financial support. The Europeans are ahead of us on saying, well, if it's illegal to support the group in terms of joining, is it illegal to speak about them?

We have a question in this country, a free speech question, that says, should we tell people? You also can't tweet pro-support ISIS on to Twitter, on to Facebook? There are questions about travel.

CUOMO: Would that stop it, by the way?

MUDD: That's going to stop some of the messaging. It's also going to expose people who are re-tweeting messages, for example, from ISIS supporters. We have some of the most extensive ISIS support on Twitter, of any country on the planet here in the United States.

CUOMO: So how big a deal is that, Mr. Cruickshank? If we were to censor -- you know, how do we deal with this threat? How do you find out what's going on in somebody's mind? How do you police their activities? What do we know that actually works?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, we don't live in a police state so there is a limit to what you can do in terms of --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: But even if we did, is there any proof that censoring works? If there was a new rule, you can report on it. Whenever one of these things happened, don't talk about it. Let's silence it. That will squash any of the copycat, any of the novelty.

Is there any proof that that would help?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, I mean, if you were in a theoretical world, we're able to stop all this ISIS propaganda. I'm sure that would make some kind of impact. The propaganda is influencing people. ISIS basically telling American followers that it is their religious duty to carry out these kinds of attacks.

So, sure, it would make a difference, but that's just not going to happen, because we live in this society. As we do, we want to carry on living in the society as we do. So this is going to be a huge challenge for the FBI, for European counterterrorism services moving forward.

I speak to European officials here. They know some of these people would come back from Syria. But the trouble is they just can't always prove it. They can't always charge people so there are cases of people coming back to countries like Belgium or France. They know through the intelligence they've been to Syria, but all the evidence says that they can show is they've been to Turkey. And they can't actually charge them. And that's obviously a very big problem. But it's just the function of the kind of societies we live in. Rule of law, evidence and that kind of thing, Chris.

CUOMO: Mudd, you were -- we were talking before the show...

MUDD: Yes. CUOMO: ...about a lot of things that we can't discuss on television. One of the things that we did discuss as I said, so if we're at war, why aren't they debating it in Congress? And you said, who said we're at war? You may use that language, but not only is it not legally in that place, you say it's not operatively in that place either.

MUDD: It's not in that place for a couple of reasons. Number one, war is the use of all instruments of national power -- diplomacy, the budget, the military. We don't have the military deployed for war. Our budget isn't deployed for war. Our people aren't deployed for war.

I would also say and I know this will irritate about 99 percent of the American population. The activities of ISIS in the United States are not a predicate for war. If your judgement about what to worry about is how many people are affected by ISIS, I will tell you, we have what? 8,000 to 10,000 violent deaths in this country within what, six, seven days since the attacks. Five to six days, we probably had dozens of people killed in gang violence.

If your metric is how many Americans die by groups that are radicalized, I'd say worry about what goes on in America's inner cities first because those desk far outstrip anything we'll ever see from ISIS.

CUOMO: But why isn't it apples and oranges, where when you are dealing with terror threat, you have a group that is galvanized in its desire to kill American, where all these other things, on a vague reason -- poverty, inner city education problems, there's whole host of issues that lead to homicidal behavior. This is different. This is about intentionality.

CRUICKSHANK: It is different, but when you get down in the trenches, there are two things that matter to federal officials, where's the money and where's the people?

If you're managing a program, in this case counterterrorism program that dwarves some of what you might do against violent crime. My question is as a counterterrorism guy, I'm happy with the money. I don't understand why we value an individual who's killed in a terror attack more than we value a kid who's killed in a gang attack.

CUOMO: Interesting question. Part of the answer, of course, revealed by what Mr. Cruickshank reported here on NEW DAY that there is information out of the U.K. now that this man went on a stabbing spree or tried to on Saturday was in fact screaming about ISIS and that this was payback for Syria.

Mr. Mudd, Mr. Cruickshank, thank you for the reporting and the analysis.

CRUICKSHANK: Thank you.

CUOMO: Mick?

PEREIRA: All right, the people of San Bernardino are trying to come to grips with last week's terror attack.

Up next, we're going to have a conversation with a woman who worked in the office where that massacre unfolded. We'll hear her thoughts on the loss of her friends, the co-worker who turned into a terrorist.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:29:00] CAMEROTA: New details from law enforcement reveal the male San Bernardino shooter had looked into contacting terrorist groups overseas and supported ISIS ideology. But those who knew him and worked with him still cannot believe it.

Joining us now is Jenni Kosse. She's worked at the San Bernardino County Health Department for 25 years. She was friends with several of the victims. She also knew the terrorist who was responsible. She joins us this morning, along with her husband, Ray Kosse.

Thank you so much, Jenni and Ray, for being here.

Jenni, you worked there as a receptionist for 25 years. You knew most, if not all, of these people. It's just hard to sort of get our minds around the magnitude of the loss for you.

JENNI KOSSE, FRIEND OF SAN BERNARDINO VICTIMS: Yes. It is very devastating. It's hard not to think of all of them, where they should be, in their normal lives as I remember them.

CAMEROTA: Ray, I know that when all of this was happening, you were searching -- when you started hearing the news reports, you started trying to find and get a hold of Jenni. Tell us about those moments.