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New Day

Paris Attempted Terror Attack Examined; Campaigning in New Hampshire; North Korean H-Bomb Claim Questioned. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired January 07, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:32:59] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do have breaking news here in Paris. And it couldn't come at a worse time. Of course, today, January 7th marks one year to the day of the "Charlie Hebdo" attacks. The terrorism that started just a horrible year for french people, culminating in the November 13thattacks here. All 130 people killed here in November. You know that, we were here for that.

And now, here we are for the anniversary, and yet, another report of an attack. We have two people for the latest information to bring in. Joining us chairman for the Center for Analysis of Terrorism and CNN contributor, Jean-Charles Brisard and Stefan de Vries. He's a French journalist who's one of the first to arrive on the scene at Charlie Hebdo a year ago.

Let's start with what we know. Mr. Brisard, I'll start with you.

The earlier detail was someone went to a police station in north Paris certainly had a knife said "Allah Akbar" and then (inaudible) being taken out by police. There's a further threat that is a concern, what is it?

JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD, CHAIRMAN, CENTER FOR ANALYSIS OF TERRORISM: Well, the threat was that the person was wearing apparently what we believed at the time what the police believed was a suicide belt. So there were indications that this might be taken as a terrorist attack. And in fact, it turns out that the belt was indeed fake. But still, it triggered the police to shoot the individual on entering the police station, trying to enter with the knife.

CUOMO: Now, look, this is the concern, right, is that on an anniversary like this, we like to tell ourselves, well, this is the last time something like this will happen. But copycat threats, real or fake, are a threat?

STEFAN DE VRIES, FRENCH JOURNALIST: Absolutely. And the threat is really very serious. And we're still seeing that everyday. It's also the reason why the terror alert in France is still at the highest level. It's been maintained -- like that already since January, so almost -- well, exactly one year now.

And, yeah, of course, copycat, lone wolves, all kinds of people who think they should act now, because the society is being more and more secure -- well, theoretically, so they want to act now before it's too late because it's -- before it's becoming really impossible to commit any attacks.

[07:35:05] And, well, we don't know what the background of this guy, allegedly who were shouting "Allah Akbar" but still it could indeed be a copycat.

CUOMO: Copycat, he could be deranged, it doesn't matter. He presented a threat out of a polic station and they took him out. But it just a reminder on the worst day of how there's randomness to life now that many Parisians want to dismiss even after Charlie Hebdo. I mean nobody understands the story better than you, Stefen.

The point was that I picked up on was we're going to get back to life as normal.

Then after November, it seems they have to accept a new normal. Is that carrying through today?

DE VRIES: Absolutely. The restaurants and the hotels still this month is -- they're very quiet of the holidays, Christmas holidays, was much quiet in Paris than usual.

I took a flight last night from the Paris airport, it was very quiet at rush hour. So this all shows that people are basically -- well, they're traveling really. They're staying at home and they -- well, they try to give it a place and try to find a way to accept this new normal and I hope it's not a new normal, and it will be exceptional, but it's not the way people are dealing right now.

CUOMO: This is a heavy day to be sure. We have Atika Shubert near the scene of this police station where this happened in North Paris.

Atika, if you could -- you have us right now?

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

CUOMO: If you can hear us, tell us what you know from there?

SHUBERT: I can hear you, Chris. We are right near the scene of where it happened. That intersection up there is where the incident occurred. It's less than 100 meters from us.

You can still see a number of police there, some of them with riot gear. Many of them armed. Quite a heavy security presence here. They've asked residents to stay inside or stay away from the scene. So they've been asking people to just move indoors.

I think frankly out of abundance of precaution more than anybody else or anything else. It doesn't seem to be any sense of any immediate danger. But they do want to clear the area and make sure that if this man was working with anybody else, that they know about it. An also to make sure, of course, there was initially that fear that he may have had some explosives. They sent in a remote controlled robot to check and see. We have not had any confirmation from police at this point as to whether there were in fact any explosives.

But it is tense. They are trying to secure the area. Make sure they know everything about this apparent attacker. And as you can see there's quite a crowd that's gathered as well. Many people on edge especially one year after the Charlie Hebdo killings, Chris.

CUOMO: All right, let us know if you hear anything else from there. That obvious show of strength part of the new normal here. Authorities want to be able to say they've been on top of it. Giving very quick with information.

But now, Mr. Brisard, let's say it's a fake belt. That this guy was deranged. He is what he is. It points to the ability to deal with the threat. And one of the big points of accountability that many still feel unsatisfied about was did the November attacks have to happen? In the wake of "Charlie Hebdo," should the French authorities have been more prepared, monitoring these types of bad guys more closely than ahead of the threat? Fair criticism?

BRISARD: Well, it's very difficult to say that, because we're dealing with a threat that never happened in the past, leveled threat. And we're dealing also with individuals in the number that we've never faced in the past. And we also knew right after the November attack that the attacks have mobilized a lot of jihadists here in France or abroad.

And so, that type of action is not a surprise, unfortunately. We should also point out that it happened in the 18th district in Paris, a district which was meant to be a target in November, at least in claims of responsibility for ISIS. It never happened at the time. So this might be also symbolic in terms of targeting.

CUOMO: And what we're seeing right now, of course, Michaela, as we go back to New York. Stefen, thank you very much. Mr. Brisard as always.

We're showing you live pictures of the scene at this police station in north Paris, nor certainly from where we are right now in the Champs- Elysees. And Mik, this is the reminder, on this anniversary, of this horrible attack at Charlie Hebdo that set off this year of terror here in France, this is the threat, copycat, fake, deranged, not, it changes your lifestyle, it changes what you accept as normal. This is a horrible day for this reminder.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Sure it is especially when there is so much tension and fear. We understand schools in the area are closed. We're going to bring you more on that shooting. We'll go back to Chris live in Paris.

But also here, Republican candidate, Carly Fiorina and Jim Gilmore look to try and steal some of that spotlight awat from Donald Trump as they address the New Hampshire state house today.

[07:39:51] But what will they say? And will it make a difference when those voters hit the polls for the primary?

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ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Republican presidential candidates, Carly Fiorina and Jim Gilmore will be in New Hampshire today addressing the State House of Representatives. Fun factoid for you, New Hampshire has the largest legislative body in the country with 400 members. Also front runner Donald Trump still dominating the polls in New Hampshire ahead of the primary on February 9th.

Joining us to talk about all of this morning is Speaker of the New Hampshire House Representative Shawn Jasper. Speaker Jasper, thanks for being here.

SHAWN JASPER: SPEAKER, NEW HAMPSHIRE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE: My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: OK. So what are you expecting today from Carly Fiorina and Jim Gilmore? I mean, how do you expect what they tell you and the 400 members there to differ from their standard Trump (ph) speech?

JASPER: Well, I think that what we might hear is something a little bit more directly political. I'm not really sure. But they're addressing the chamber with 400 politicians. I think that's a little different than talking to your average audience.

CAMEROTA: That will be different. And maybe they will craft it for your audience. But here's the interesting part, your 400 members in New Hampshire are legally allowed to carry concealed firearms into the state house, and on to the state floor, and many of them do.

[07:45:12] That must pose a challenge, a security challenge, at least for candidates and the Secret Service.

JASPER: Well, I think it will for the Secret Service, and we really hadn't follow that until we saw Hillary Clinton come in with the secret service, and they actually sort of patted down our secretary of state before she signed up to be on the primary ballot. And that became the concern it was because it is a rule of the House which would have required a suspension rule.

And, clearly, that was not something that I felt was appropriate for us to even discuss it. It is our rule. These are our guests and if our guests decide to come in, that's fine, if they don't, that's fine, too.

CAMEROTA: OK, so in other words, you've extended an invitation to all of the presidential candidates and so far Ben Carson, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the ones who have secret service protection. And of course, the Secret Service doesn't allow guns at campaign rallies or speeches other than the ones they're carrying and the police.

So what does that mean? Does that mean that Donald Trump and Ben Carson, and Hillary Clinton will never be able to come into the State House to speak to you guys?

JASPER: Well, so far those three, as far as I'm aware of, only Hillary Clinton has declined to come. That she did decline the day after I made it clear that we weren't suspending the rules. And I have no idea whether that had anything to do with that or not. The other two, I understand, are still trying to work things out in their schedule, but we have not confirmed their attendance. CAMEROTA: The Hillary Clinton campaign said that she had a scheduling conflict. And that's why she can't come. But let's move on to what's happening in New Hampshire and how important everything is there. The latest polls, and these are dated, I mean they're from last month show Donald Trump with a runaway lead. Do you think that New Hampshire still might have a surprise up its sleeve?

JASPER: Well, New Hampshire is very often and very surprising. And I think what you see in New Hampshire is the people wait by enlarge until the last week or so to really make up their mind. So, I really don't pay much attention to the polls even at this point.

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump, as you know, is questioning Senator Ted Cruz's citizenship because Ted Cruz was born in Canada. And Donald Trump says that he's not sure that Ted Cruz can be defined as a natural born citizen. Is this an issue that is resonating in all with New Hampshire voters?

JASPER: You know, I haven't heard this argument at all in New Hampshire. I don't think that it is.

CAMEROTA: Do you think that Ted Cruz as a natural born citizen?

JASPER: I have to believe that under the constitution, he is. I think there are very clear situations where people born outside of the country are considered to be natural born citizens. And I have no reason to believe that he doesn't fall into that criteria.

CAMEROTA: So, you think this is a non-issue?

JASPER: I really do.

CAMEROTA: OK. Speaker Shawn Jasper, thanks so much for joining us. And we'll be watching what happens on the State House floor today. Thank you.

JASPER: All right. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Back to you, Michaela.

PEREIRA: Yes, you proved very interesting. All right, Alisyn, there's doubt about North Korea's claims that it detonated a hydrogen bomb. South Korea now plans its first major response to the test. How big of a security problem could all of this situation pose?

[07:48:38] We'll look at that ahead.

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CAMEROTA: The U.S. and world leaders casting serious doubts on North Korea's claims of testing a hydrogen bomb. And now South Korea said it's planning to resume propaganda broadcasts into the North Korea.

Joining us now is Gordon Chang. He is the author of "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World". He's also Daily Beast columnist. He joins us to breakdown what happens next. Gordon, thanks so much for being here. We always appreciate having your expertise.

So, 24 hours now that investigators have been trying to figure it out what North Korea did. What's the latest thinking?

GORDON CHANG, Author, "NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN: NORTH KOREA TAKES ON THE WORLD": Well, the latest thinking, of course, is that this was not a hydrogen bomb, but there is a little disagreement in the analyst community. And the reason is that the initial reports was that this is a detonation of six kilotons and that is the same as the detonation in 2013, which clearly was not a hydrogen bomb.

Some people are saying maybe the yield was substantially higher as much as maybe as 15 kilotons and that sort of puts it in the range where it could have been a very small or a failed hydrogen bomb explosion.

But right now there is no evidence. And the reason is this detonation was about 10 kilometers underground. Sorry, it was about six miles underground.

CAMEROTA: Yeah.

CHANG: And s, therefore, there's going to be no radiation leakage and that's going to be hard for our sniffer planes and our other monitoring situations to figure out what happened.

CAMEROTA: But even if this wasn't a hydrogen bomb, that's cold comfort, right? They did something.

CHANG: They did something and they undoubted improved their designs. You know, by testing a country can actually make a lot of progress, even when it fails. So, for instance, North Korea failed with this ballistic missile launches a series of them, and yet, it then had a number of successes because people learn from their mistakes.

And so it's the same thing with these warheads. They're probably miniaturizing them so they can then put them on a long range missile and that of course threatens not only the neighbors in the region but also the United States.

CAMEROTA: You said something chilling on our areas today that we haven't heard many other experts talking about. And that is that you believe that Iranian weapons specialists were there. Were on site. Why do you think that?

CHANG: Well, there has been growing connection between Tehran and North Korea. They've had this partnership now for about two decades. So, for instance, in 2012, the Iranians and the North Koreans announced a technical services agreement.

[07:55:03] And with that, Reuters reported that Iranians were being stationed in North Korea at the military base just south of the Chinese border.

There have been consistent reports that showed that all three prior detonations of a North Korean nuke, Iranians were on site and they have been seen in the Beijing capital airport on their to and from North Korea in connection with these tests. Also with ballistic missile tests. All of North Korea's long range ballistic missile testing have been witnessed by the Iranians.

Basically North Korea earns somewhere between $1 billion and $2.5 billion a year from its weapon connections with Iran.

CAMEROTA: So the larger significance of this is that in light of the Iran nuclear deal that certainly the Administration here hailed as a success, it's your contention as well as others that basically Iran is just outsourcing its nuclear development or its nuclear program to North Korea.

CHANG: That's right. And essentially, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors are probably going to find very little in Iran itself. Largely because the Iranian program is being conducted in North Korea.

Remember in September of 2007 when the Israelis destroyed that reactor in the Syrian desert? That was a reactor of North Korean design. North Korean technicians were reportedly on site and we know that Syria didn't have the money to pay for it. Everyone suspects that Teheran paid for the North Koreans to be in Syria.

So there's growing connections. It sort of like we (inaudible) given North Korean program and a Chinese program, and a Pakistani one, an Iranian one, well, probably we should be thinking about the connections among all of these programs because they are related.

CAMEROTA: So what should the U.S. do about that after much bigger issue?

CHANG: Yeah, we need to start looking at proliferation on a much broader basis. The United States for various reasons, some good, some bad has not interdicted North Korean shipments of ballistic missiles and nuclear shipments to Iran. And we need to start to think about this and actually take much more vigorous action because this is the world's most dangerous trade and it directly threatens the United States itself. And we for various reasons haven't done anything.

CAMEROTA: You're talking about vigorous action. I'm not sure that this applies, but tomorrow morning South Korea is starting their propaganda broadcast where they broadcast...

CHANG: No.

CAMEROTA: ... over the DMZ sort of anti-Kim Jong-Un messages. What does that do?

CHANG: Well, it enrages the North Koreans because, you know, they maintain or try to maintain this hermetic seal on the border so North Korean citizens don't know what's going in the South. And so the North Korean -- this is actually quite effective. Now this is one things the South Koreans do but they should be doing other things as well. But at this point, I think the most effective thing for South Korea and international community to do is to try to break this information barrier that North Korean maintains.

CAMEROTA: But how do they do that?

CHANG: You can circulate DVDs. Activists in South Korea put these DVDs on balloons. They float into the north. People in North Korea actually think that the South Korean videos are the most entertaining forums that they see. So, it's important for us to do that.

CAMEROTA: Wow. Gordon Chang, thank you so much. Great to have you here with all of the information. We appreciate it.

CHANG: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We're following a lot of news this morning so let's get right to it.

CUOMO: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is "new day." We are in Paris this morning. Alisyn and Michaela are in New York. But we're following breaking news.

A deadly shooting here in Paris exactly one year to the day. That's when Charlie Hebdo was attacked by a terror, a dozen people killed. And this morning, another report of violence here, a potential terror attack being investigated right now. A man with a knife approached the police station in northern Paris. He was taken out by cops but then they had to bring in explosive experts because he was feared to be wearing an explosive device.

Right now the reporting is that that vest was a fake. That that was not a real threat at the time but the authorities are taking no chances. They've closed down schools in the area. They've removed a car. And there is a huge presence on the ground.

We are also told by authorities that the man with the knife did shout "Allahu Akbar" as he went in which is of course this magical phrase of terrorists these days.

And again, this is all coming from the authorities right now about these fears of (inaudible). We have the story covered only the way CNN can. Let's get right to the scene. We have Atika Shubert there outside the police station. Any new developments? We heard about the car. How big is the presence?

SHUBERT: We're just trying -- they're just trying to keep people away from the scene at this point. But there is very a heavy police presence. You can probably see there that is where the incident happened but there are still riot police and riot gear, and also heavily armed in the area. They're trying to get people to stay inside, really out of precaution more than anything else.

[08:00:04] It doesn't seem to be any imminent danger at this point. It's mostly making sure that the area is clear and secured.

We now know of course that that vest that the man was wearing was not an explosive -- did not have any --