Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

36 Dead, 147 Injured in Istanbul Airport Attack; Is ISIS Behind Airport Terror Attack?; Trump Renews Call for Waterboarding after Terror Attack. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 29, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: To our viewer in the United States and around the world, this is NEW DAY. And we have new footage and information surrounding the terror attack at Turkey's busiest airport. At least 36 people are dead, more than 140 injured, in coordinated suicide explosions.

[05:59:21] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The airport was a scene of chaos and carnage hours ago. But it has already reopened to passengers. We have the breaking story covered the way only CNN can, so let's begin with senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir. She's live at Ataturk airport in Istanbul.

What is the latest, Nima?

NIMA ELBAGIR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We have some new details for you here. A senior Turkish government official has told CNN that they have begun the process of identifying the attackers. Their bodies are pretty blown apart. They're working with, at the moment, just the lower half of their bodies. But all indications, they believe, that these were foreign attackers, which of course, throws out so many questions about their ability to move in and out of the country. It is early days, but the focus of the investigation now is, who are they, where did they come from, and where is that broader network that supported them?

While the focus of the investigation is on the attackers' identities, for so many here and around the world, the focus is, of course, on those who were caught in the crossfire, in that siege in Ataturk Airport yesterday evening. Take a look at this now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ELBAGIR (voice-over): A horrifying scene of carnage and destruction at Turkey's busiest airport. Three suicide attackers carrying out a deadly siege on Tuesday night. The coordinated attack, captured by airport surveillance cameras.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just recognized the gunshots and then heard this huge explosion, and I knew immediately it was a bomb. And I just bolted as fast as I can.

ELBAGIR: Two of the terrorists opening fire at the international terminal before blowing themselves up. This amateur video shows just some of the injured laying outside on the ground before the first explosion. That sound from the first blast by the arrival hall on the first floor. Travelers seemingly unaware of the attack that is about to unfold.

Another surveillance video captures the chaos inside as one of the attackers runs into the airport. Then he's apparently shot by a police officer, his gun sliding across the floor.

Seconds later, another massive explosion, roof tiles falling, panes of shattered glass along the floor, and bullets perforating the windows and walls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't think it's real. But then people started running and running and running, so we clashed and fell over each other. It was total chaos.

ELBAGIR: The third attacker detonating a third explosion at a parking lot at Ataturk Airport.

Istanbul's airport is known for its heavily fortified security inside and outside the terminals. Turkish prime minister says the attackers arrived at the airport by taxi. He says all indications point to ISIS, bearing chilling similarities to the deadly bombings in March at Brussels airport and subway system.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ELBAGIR: Amazingly, the airport behind me has actually reopened, Victor. They're trying to return as quickly as possible to some semblance of normalcy.

But for those who have been describing to us those shattered panes of glass, the bloody footprints tracking out of that terminal building as people ran for their lives, it is just an extraordinarily difficult moment here in Brussels -- in Istanbul, of course. It's starting to feel like a continuum at this point -- Victor.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Understandable. From city to city, airport to airport, we're seeing this happen every few months now. Nima, thank you so much.

And as you just said there, Turkish and U.S. officials say the Istanbul Airport attacks carried the hallmarks of an ISIS-inspired assault. With suicide attacks on the rise in Turkey, was this the work of ISIS or potentially another terror group?

CNN's senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward, live in Washington with more. Clarissa, what are you hearing here?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, as you said, Victor, U.S. intelligence officials telling CNN that this does bear all the hallmarks of either an ISIS-directed attack or of an ISIS-inspired attack. Now Turkey is no stranger to terrorism. There have been at least six attacks in Turkey this year alone. The majority of them carried out either by Kurdish separatists, the PKK, or else by ISIS.

Now, what is slightly unusual is that, when it comes to Turkey, ISIS doesn't traditionally claim responsibility for its attacks. This in stark contrast from attacks that it has pulled off in the west, which it immediately likes to trumpet online.

So why do we think it's ISIS? Well, let's look at some of those hallmarks. The first one that jumps out, watching it unfold yesterday, is the fact that the attackers, the perpetrators were heavily armed. This fits the profile of the so-called Inhamazi (ph), the suicide warrior. These aren't just suicide bombers. They're suicide fighters. And the idea is that they go in there. They're heavily armed. They try to kill as many people as they possibly can using their AK-47, and only then do they detonate their explosive vest. This is exactly what we saw in the Bataclan theater in Paris.

Now, it's also important for our viewers to understand this is the last ten days of Ramadan. It's the holiest period of the holiest month of the year. Earlier on, we heard ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani. He came out and he urged anyone who is part of ISIS, who supports ISIS, who is inspired by ISIS, to come out and carry out attacks during this holy month.

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, stay with us, if you would. We also want to bring in Philip Mudd, a CNN counterterrorism analyst and a former CIA counterterrorism official; and Michael Weiss, a CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror." He is senior editor at "The Daily Beast."

[06:05:08] Michael, let me start with you. Why wouldn't ISIS claim responsibility for this?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: When it claims to Turkey, they don't like to do it, and I suspect it's because they want to create ambiguity. Who did this? Was it the PKK? Was it ISIS or was it some other faction? Because they operate so closely to the Turkish border and they rely upon Turkey, essentially, to keep that border as an open sieve so their fighters can go back and forth, they're looking to destabilize the Turkish government and Turkish society but not draw the ire and the fire from Ankara.

Turkey has prioritized the fight against the PKK traditionally. And that's across the Turkish security establishment, whether you're secular, nationalist or Islamist. ISIS does not want to rock the boat. Turkey has been shelling ISIS positions and locations with artillery...

CAMEROTA: So that's why they would hit. That's why they would hit Turkey

CUOMO: Well, because there is a concern. Turkey is a unique opponent for ISIS. They have the biggest military in the region. They have great intelligence and contacts. It's their will to fight on a larger scale that's been the issue.

But there's another aspect of this from the American perspective. Ordinarily, we don't care if it's ISIS or somebody who wants to be ISIS or somebody who is, you know, somehow perversely interested in ISIS. But here the analysis matters, because if it is or if it was PKK, well, then that's a different threat assessment for us back here in America, because PKK isn't targeting us. That's very specific to Turkey.

So we actually do want to know this time. Right, Phil?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Sure, and there's another aspect of this that's interesting and critical, in fact, from an American counterterrorism perspective. If you're looking at the people who are directed or inspired to carry out an attack like this, if you determine that they come from ISIS, they're going to be trained or inspired by the same people who send individuals to places like Paris, Brussels, or the United States.

So we're not just trying to figure out what is the network within Istanbul that might have supported this. I want to know, is there a center of activity in a place like Raqqa, the core operations area in Syria for ISIS that is also training to come attack us?

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, I want to show the video of the one of the attackers detonating his suicide vest. And it is very macabre. I mean, it's very, very disturbing. And we want to let people know.

But what is so striking about watching this is because we get to see it for the first time, sort of how it unfolds. He's been shot, it appears. And he's in pain or he's clearly debilitated. But the desperation. I mean, when I watch it, that he's -- that he's still desperate to detonate himself. It's just so, you know, obviously hard for us to kind of digest here in the west. What do you see when you watch that video?

WARD: Well, I mean, Alisyn, I think it's easy for our viewers to sort of forget this, but this is a cult. And these people who are trained for these types of operations, they desperately want to die. For them not to die in this operation would defeat the entire purpose of it. These are martyrdom operations. They believe that this guarantees them a place in paradise. Not only does it guarantee them. They're allowed to then intercede on behalf of their families. Essentially, they can bring their whole family to paradise with them.

If they fail to detonate, if they ended up being arrested by Turkish forces, then the whole operation has been a miserable failure. So it is striking to see him still detonate when he's lying there wounded on the floor.

And by the way, there's nobody else in that arrivals hall around him at that point. Presumably, they had all run away. So he doesn't even achieve his goal of trying to kill as many people as possible.

But we saw this again with the attackers in Paris at the Stade de France. That attack basically went wrong, but still those bombers, they blew themselves up. They barely managed to kill anyone but themselves. But for them, the whole purpose of this operation is to die in the end. If you don't die in the end, it doesn't matter how many people you killed; you didn't complete your operation.

CUOMO: And there is a meaningful distinction for you, Phil, for you, Michael, in the difference between a suicide bomber and a martyr in terms of what their motivation is and what their plan is. Alisyn's word is macabre. My word would be unfortunate that they didn't shoot this guy and kill him effectively enough, early enough so that he couldn't detonate himself.

But in terms of protecting yourself from this, does it matter if it's a straight suicide bomber or a martyr, how much preparation, whether they come with a weapon or not?

WEISS: Well, on the battlefield, I can tell you, ISIS guys, they come in with their AK-47s, their assault rifles. They shoot up as many people as they can. And then they will literally go up to the enemy and hug their and then detonate the bombs to take -- to take as many people as they can with them.

So you don't want -- like, ISIS has finite resources. They've got tens of thousands of people on the ground in Syria and Iraq, untold numbers of people, sleeper cells or networks, scattered throughout Europe and the Middle East. They don't want to waste these guys. Right? You can kill more people using a gun and bomb attack rather than just explicitly a bomb attack in that step. So that's why you call your bomber a martyr.

CAMEROTA: I'm just so struck by everything that you've said and that Clarissa has said. This is important for everyone to remember. They want to do -- they are deeply driven to do this. And we in the west need to understand that that's hard to combat.

WEISS: Well, one thing: I interviewed a guy who's in the ISIS security services who defected. And I asked him, "When it comes to suicide bombers, do you select these recruits, or do they volunteer?"

And he said very carefully, "No, they always volunteer, because we want people who are committed to die."

CUOMO: And I mean, look, Phil, guys like you have been telling, you know, reporters like me since 2001 that it's not about their numbers. Everyone on the other side is willing to die. They want to die for this. And it's a different psychology of warfare, because obviously, your goal is to be effective but stay alive.

Why now? When you look at this, there are a lot of different things you could be examining, whether it's Turkey taking up renewed relations with Israel, whether it's the anniversary of the caliphate that, you know, ISIS brags about; it's created a state. It hasn't. What do you see in terms of timing?

MUDD: I think a lot of times in these situations we try to create stories or narratives that don't exist. That is, is it an anniversary issue? Did they select a date? In my experience, that doesn't happen. You might you might see that occasionally, the anniversary of 9/11, for example, is a clear plot. Typically in these situations, it's more you have someone who has

access to the target. That person is trained by a cluster of people within Turkey or back in Syria. They go back. And the longer they sit around, the more vulnerable they are to Turkish security services. Go now because we have the training; we have the capability. I wouldn't read too much into the date.

CAMEROTA: So it's a crime of opportunity.

MUDD: That's correct.

CAMEROTA: So interesting. Thank you, all, for the expertise. Obviously, we'll be relying on you throughout the program.

Let's get over to Victor.

Alisyn, thank you. The two presumptive presidential nominees, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, both strongly condemning the terror attack in Turkey, but their approaches on how to respond to terror are starkly different.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now with more. Phil, walk us through.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, it is the ever- present element of this presidential campaign, terror. Whether it's Brussels, Orlando, Paris, now Istanbul, you have campaigns trying to figure out how to deal with it, candidates constantly talking about it, and voters increasingly uneasy about its existence.

Still, last night's attack underscoring once again that the candidates have very different strategies as they deal with this in the weeks and months ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We had another suicide bombing, Istanbul, Turkey. Many, many people killed.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): The airport attack in Istanbul leading presidential candidates to once again address terrorism on the campaign trail.

TRUMP: We better get smart, and we better get tough, or we're not going to have much of a country left, OK? It's bad.

MATTINGLY: Hillary Clinton refraining from any mention of the terror attack during a town hall in Los Angeles Tuesday night. Instead, releasing a statement, pledging that the "attack in Istanbul only strengthens our resolve to defeat the forces of terrorism and radical jihadism around the world."

Contrast that with Trump, who is again arguing for using torture in the fight against terror.

TRUMP: So we can't do waterboarding, but they can do chopping off heads. We have to be so strong. We have to fight so viciously and violently,

because we're dealing with violent people.

MATTINGLY: The presumptive GOP nominee coming under fire once again for his rhetoric.

TRUMP: The Transpacific Partnership is another disaster. Done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country.

MATTINGLY: Trump, provocatively vowing to rip up international trade deals, spending most of Tuesday laying out his economic plans and arguing that Americans need to take their country back.

TRUMP: Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very, very wealthy. I used to be one of them. It's left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.

MATTINGLY: Clinton saying she's sympathetic to people drawn to Trump's message.

CLINTON: They have lost faith in their government, in the economy, certainly in politics and most other institutions. I am not sympathetic to the xenophobia, the misogyny, the homophobia, the Islamophobia, and all of the other, you know, sort of dog whistles that Trump uses.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: And Alisyn, it's become very clear that Donald Trump, whether it's on economic policy or national security, is going to continue to target the uneasiness that exists kind of across the country right now. It was a clear component of his economic speech yesterday and as he spoke about the terror attacks last night.

That said, some differences we saw yesterday, his campaign putting out a rather muted statement when it came to the terror attacks. Uneasiness inside the Trump campaign by how they saw his numbers, poll numbers actually drop in the wake of his response to Orlando. We're seeing some shift in tactics there. How long it actually stays and whether or not it maintains in the weeks ahead is the open question -- Alisyn.

[06:15:03] CAMEROTA: That's interesting, Phil. We'll talk about that statement he put out coming up. Thank you for that.

So how are the terror attacks overseas and here in the U.S. affecting the 2016 race? That's next with our political panel.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Folks, there's something that's really, really bad, all right. It's bad, and we better get smart and we better get tough or we're not going to have much of a country left, OK?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. You are seeing and hearing an example of why people believe Donald Trump is the better choice than Hillary Clinton when it comes to fighting against ISIS.

A controversial call to renew waterboarding and to match tactics with ISIS in terms of how we fight the war on terror. Very different than the response from Hillary Clinton.

Let's discuss the different take and the impact with Phil Mattingly. We have CNN political reporter M.J. Lee; global affairs and economic analyst Ali Velshi.

So Phil, you know, you're very close to the Trump campaign in covering it. He had a big day yesterday with his trade policy speech. It was substantive. He had ideas. It's what the party wants. It's what the voters should need. We'll get to that.

This is what's going to get the headline, though. His saying we should match tactics. Now, who's he targeting with that? What's going to be the pushback?

MATTINGLY: Well, he's targeting, really, the electorate that he's targeted up until this point. And I think the question becomes, it's an electorate that already supports him, right? It's the Republican primary electorate that's for him.

The question I think is, first off, the idea of bringing back tactics that have been labeled as terrorism and have been banned by the...

CUOMO: Illegal.

MATTINGLY: They're illegal. They're quite literally illegal. It is unsettling to a lot of people still. But what it taps into is fear about kind of the broad picture that ISIS creates and that we as a country are not tough enough to deal with them. Isn't that at the core of Donald Trump's message throughout the last 13 months? Whether it's on economics, whether it's on national security.

We are not tough enough to deal with them. Bring back terrorism. Yes, of course, why not? They're cutting off heads. We should at least waterboard. It's been a consistent message from him. And you heard it again last night. The question becomes -- and I hinted at this a little bit earlier, after Orlando, that kind of bombastic congratulatory "I was right. We should be tougher" response did not play well at all. As a matter of fact, the most recent polling showed Hillary Clinton was favored in the response to Orlando by as many as 18 points.

That was unsettling inside Trump's campaign. You saw the difference in the statement they put out versus the public statement he made. How he can kind of walk that line going forward.

CAMEROTA: So they both put out statements, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And I just want to read one sentence from each that are the crux of their arguments so we can just save the contradiction here. He put out this statement. And in it, he says, "We must take steps now to protect America from terrorists."

So not specific. But, you know, just saying we should be strong.

Then she puts out a statement at the crux of which is, "We must deepen our cooperation with our allies and partners in the Middle East and Europe to take on this threat." OK, a little more specific. But again, not exactly how we are going to fight terror, Ali.

ALI VELSHI, GLOBAL POLICY AND ECONOMIC ANALYST: No, and ultimately, Donald Trump's lack of specificity on being tough and something really bad is kind of like his huge and amazing, none of which a campaign or a presidency makes.

The bottom line, and I've done a good deal of studying on how ISIS works, it's very different from al Qaeda, first of all. Secondly, Ali Soufan has been very clear. If you read his book, "The Black Banner," much of which has been redacted by the CIA, he speaks specifically about the only usable information they got out of interrogations was when they were not waterboarding. So...

CAMEROTA: That people will say anything when they're being tortured is the thinking.

VELSHI: Correct. And fundamentally, the reason it's not like al Qaeda is because it has a lot of money. They recruit people. They pay them. Most of them are part of an apocalyptic cult, but some of them are unemployed youth from western Europe who get a few hundred dollars a week by working for ISIS. So if you undercut them financially, the way you do that is get to Qatar, you get to Kuwait, you get to the gulf countries, you put pressure on Saudi Arabia, what we're doing.

CAMEROTA: So why aren't the candidates spelling that out?

VELSHI: Because Donald Trump doesn't enjoy specificity, and Hillary Clinton understands this stuff. You can't go and spit on your allies while you're trying to get their help.

CUOMO: But Ali, let's look at -- let's look at two sides of that proposition. One is he's going to get pushback from the military about we should match tactics. Not only is it a philosophical conversation about do you want to match the savagery of your enemy. That's your one advantage over these people is that they are perceived as savages, and you're not.

VELSHI: That is correct, yes.

CUOMO: And the military is going to say, "It didn't work for us." So you're going to have a problem with that statement. It plays, as Phil says, politically. It's not going to play practically. The trade, though. That speech he gave yesterday on trade was specific...

VELSHI: And dishonest.

CUOMO: Why? VELSHI: Highly dishonest. He claimed Bill Clinton brought NAFTA in.

Bill Clinton took over NAFTA, because George H.W. Bush couldn't get it done by January 19.

CUOMO: Hold on. Ali Velshi, let me do something against my best interest (ph). I get beaten up. I know you tell me not to do it. But I'm on Twitter on this issue all the time. I get beaten up like, you know, like any metaphor you want to apply. Because people say, "You got into it with Trump about NAFTA."

He said, "Clinton, Clinton, Clinton."

I said, "Wait, you can't blame that on somebody without blaming Bush. Bush 41 started it. He got it signed, but he couldn't get the votes to get it through." Is that true?

VELSHI: One hundred percent true. He desperately wanted to have NAFTA done before January, before the inauguration in 1993. He couldn't. So Bill Clinton added to side codicils to NAFTA to strengthen the rights of American workers. That was one of about seven lies in yesterday's speech.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, Ali.

VELSHI: There were seven points he made in his speech. There were four points, because China was three of them. Trade manipulation were two of them. Ronald Reagan, he talked about how Ronald Reagan imposed trade restrictions. He did it four times in his entire eight years, temporarily. Ronald Reagan was a major free trader. So if that's a substantive speech...

CAMEROTA: M.J., let's talk about Donald Trump's economic speech yesterday, which the chamber of commerce, among others, came out and said this isn't going to work. It's actually going to thrust the United States into a recession. What were the points?

[06:25:09] M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. I mean, I think it's difficult to overstate just how out of line Donald Trump is on some of these trade policies from sort of the Republican orthodoxy that have really led the party for many decades now.

You mentioned that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, I think in real time, right, was tweeting and releasing statements, saying this is not going to work; this is not good for our economy. So that contrast is really striking.

Why is Donald Trump doing this? Because this is a message and a rhetoric that worked for him very well during the Republican primary. And keep in mind: he is trying to target states in the Rust Belt, including a place like Pennsylvania, where he's going to be spending a lot more time, that have typically leaned to the -- to the Democratic -- Democratic Party.

And in order to win states like that and defeat Hillary Clinton, he has to win over some Democratic voters, and he knows that, especially if he wants to offset some of the trouble that he's going to have winning over states that have large Latino populations. He knows that he's damaged on that front.

CAMEROTA: He says that he's going to bring back manufacturing jobs. He's going to impose tariffs on all the countries that are cheating us, allegedly.

CUOMO: He was saying what he's going to do and he was saying how he's going to do it. Ali can make his case. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's what an election is about. It's a very different step for Donald Trump than saying Hillary Clinton is crooked.

I'm going to bring back the -- I'm going to bring back jobs. Hillary can't. She's crooked. This was a different day for him. And I know that he's changed his theme around. But this is the basis of a real election. Ali can make his case. You know, Clinton can make her case against it. But if she keeps doing this, David Chalian said he should give that speech he gave yesterday every day. Why?

MATTINGLY: Because first off, it showed that he was -- and I get what Ali's saying, but it showed that he was serious. He stuck to a script for the second major speech. He basically yesterday did what Republican officials have been asking him to do for the last couple of months.

He was in two swing states, southeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, as M.J. was saying, ideal targets for the Trump campaign. He was talking about policy. He was talking about economics. He was talking about jobs. That's what they want to focus on. That's what they think he can win on. If he's using detail when is he speaks about those issues, Republicans feel like that's his best chance. He was finally doing it yesterday.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you. Thank you very much for being here.

Let's get over to Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. More on the breaking news this morning. The U.S. condemning the deadly terror attack in Turkey. I'm sure you want to know what officials are doing here in the U.S. to make sure we are safe. A live report coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)