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Security Beefed Up for July 4th After Terror Attacks; Baghdad Bombing Death Toll Rising; Father Identifies Son as Bangladesh Attacker; Suicide Attack Near U.S. Consulate in Saudi Arabia; Clinton, Trump Face Political Firestorms. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 04, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Officials heightening security measures, including the July Fourth fireworks displays tonight.

[06:00:17] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You will see a very significantly enhanced police presence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Be aware and be vigilant.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: ISIS is now claiming three mass slaughters of innocent civilians in the span of a week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The suicide bombers struck central Baghdad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Scenes of chaos and devastation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A man blew himself up near the U.S. consulate in Jeddah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Tweeted an image resembling the Star of David.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This tweet originated in a white supremacist website.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: A tweet is a simple tweet. This is a simple star.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kickoff to Fourth of July begins. Could rain dampen tonight's big fireworks displays?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. That is a live look there at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor as the sun comes up here. It is going to be a beautiful Fourth of July. And welcome to your special Fourth of July holiday edition of NEW DAY. It's Monday, 6 a.m. in the east. Chris is off this morning, and John Berman joins me.

Happy Fourth. JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Happy birthday, America. Two hundred and forty years old. What do you get for a country that has everything, including Alisyn Camerota?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. That's a tough one. But you'll figure it out before...

BERMAN: I'll be shopping online.

CAMEROTA: ... these three hours are up.

Up first, we do need to tell you about the top story, because there is beefed-up security for the big Independence Day celebrations after several terror attacks around the world in the past few days.

BERMAN: This morning, the death toll soaring in Baghdad in the deadliest attack there in years. So what does all this say about the capabilities of ISIS, blamed now for three gruesome attacks around the world in less than a week?

We have this covered for you from every corner of the globe. Let's begin with Deb Feyerick, live along New York's East River. Good morning, Deb.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Morning, John. Morning, Alisyn.

Well, this is where the fireworks are going to be taking place this evening. And you can bet that police across the country are in very close contact with federal agencies to assess the latest intelligence stream. Everybody is concerned about a possible terror attack, even though there's no credible evidence.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK (voice-over): After a series of deadly attacks overseas, U.S. counterterror officials heightening security measures at so- called soft targets across the country, including the July Fourth fireworks displays tonight.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a pretty tight security plan for the Fourth of July.

FEYERICK: In the nation's capital, much of the dramatic increase in security will be hidden.

CHIEF ROBERT MACLEAN, WASHINGTON, D.C., PARK POLICE: We do have technology that folks will not see.

FEYERICK: The biggest fireworks show in America -- along New York City's East River, with an estimated 3 million spectators -- has the police in the big apple on high alert.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You will see a very significantly enhanced police presence in the city.

FEYERICK: Out on the water, officials patrolling the harbors around Manhattan and conducting security dives along the Macy's fireworks barges.

BILL DE BLASIO, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We are very, very vigilant. We'll have exceptional NYPD presence to keep everyone safe.

FEYERICK: The New York City mayor deploying 500-plus highly-trained, highly-armed officers, ready to prevent terror, the first Fourth of July that critical response team will be out in full force.

DE BLASIO: That sends a powerful message to anyone who might try and disrupt that we are ready to prevent that.

FEYERICK: Tensions already high...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sounded like a cannon.

FEYERICK: ... after a small explosion in Central Park Sunday left a tourist's foot mangled.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: His foot is all but detached. His friends claim he was just walking down the rocks and stepped on something.

FEYERICK: That something believed to be an experiment with fireworks or a homemade explosive set off after a young tourist accidently stepped on it, according to the NYPD.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We believe this could have been put here as some sort of experiment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FEYERICK: Now, there's no evidence, John, that this was actually terror related. However, the JTTF is investigating. They believe that this particular device, the explosives, were in the park for more than a day, and it was shock sensitive. But they're taking it very seriously. They don't believe it's terror-related.

Meantime, you can bet that everywhere there are so many fireworks, so many concerts, so many people who are going to be out celebrating this July Fourth that all police, all law enforcement agencies are going to make sure that this day goes off safely -- John.

BERMAN: Yes, obvious concerns because of what's been going on around the world. Deb Feyerick, thanks so much.

And we do have breaking news. A horrific attack in Baghdad. Officials there keep raising the death toll. They now say more than 200 were killed by a huge truck bomb at a busy shopping district. Once again ISIS is claiming responsibility.

CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman is live in Baghdad with the breaking details. And again, this attack in the Karrada district, Ben, the death toll just keeps on rising.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and in fact, they are still finding bodies in these buildings around me. And what was particularly devastating about this bomb, which we

believe was in a refrigerator truck just on the street behind me, was that when it went off, it set off fires in all the buildings around it. These buildings full of stores with clothing, perfume, other flammable materials.

So what we've seen since that bomb went off at Saturday midnight is that the death toll continues to climb. Still, many families looking for their children.

According to Iraqi security officials, of the bodies recovered, 81 of them are completely beyond recognition at this point.

And of course, people are very nervous. Just about half an hour ago, the police told everybody to clear out of there, because there was a car nobody knew who it belonged to, and they were afraid that it could have been a car bomb. So nerves very, very much on edge here.

Back to you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Understandable, Ben. Thank you for that reporting.

Also, we have some stunning new information to share about the terrorists in the bloody siege at that cafe in Bangladesh. The father of one attacker coming forward now to talk. Also, we're learning more about the 20 victims killed in that standoff, including three U.S. college students.

CNN's Alexandra Field is live in Dhaka with more -- Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Alisyn.

We are now learning from police that they have two suspects in custody. They say that both were injured during the attack at the artisan bakery just down that road behind me. One of them has been identified already by police as the sole surviving attacker. It is not clear who this second person is.

But we do know that police have identified all of these attackers as being Bangladeshi. They say five of them were known militants who they were out looking to arrest. These are men between the ages of 18 and their mid-20s. They are described as being upper middle class and educated.

I spoke to the father of one of the youngest attackers, Shamim Mubashir, just a short time ago. His son was 18 years old. The father says that his son had been missing from the family's home since February 29. They had been in touch with police. They were looking for him. The father says he was fearful that his son had taken up with an Islamist group.

He says that his son never showed any signs of radicalism or extremism, and he describes the young man as somebody who is immature and impressionable -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Alexandra. Thanks so much. We do have some new information this morning. A suicide attack just

feet away from the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia. CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson is live in London with the latest.

Nic, what can you tell us?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, John, this suicide bomber attacked and detonated his explosives. When police approached him, he was in the car park of a major hospital, was about ten yards away from the U.S. consulate in Jeddah. This is situated in the middle of the city there. Unlike Riyadh, where the embassy is behind multiple layers of security in sort of an ambassadorial type area, the consulate in Jeddah is relatively easy to get close to.

Now, this bomber, it's not clear what his intention was to target, but the very fact that he was so close to the consulate is going to raise concerns that that was the target.

It could have been much worse. Police discovered three more explosives in his vehicle. He detonated or was approached by the police and detonated his explosives about 3 a.m. in the morning.

So in the early hours of the morning, the police sent in a bomb disposal team with a robot. They took apart the vehicle, took apart the explosives, detonated those other explosives.

The consulate itself was targeted by gunmen back in 2004. No one has claimed responsibility for this attack yet. However, what we do know in Saudi Arabia is that there is a growing ISIS threat. More typically, recently it has been targeting Saudi security officers. Even members of families have been killing their own family members if they're -- if they're in the Saudi security services.

So that is a growing threat. No claim of responsibility here yet. It could have been much worse -- John, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Nic. Thanks so much for that.

So all of these attacks, of course, raise concerns here at home on this Fourth of July. Let's discuss what's going on behind the scenes with our CNN global affairs analyst and contributing writer for "The Daily Beast," Kimberly Dozier, and CNN contributor and co-author of "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," Michael Weiss. Great to have both of you here on this holiday.

Kimberly, I'll just start with you. We always hear no credible threats of anything here in the U.S., but I mean, how comforting is that, given that there was no credible threat before Orlando?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: That's increasingly the terrifying part of this, that ISIS has learned how to cover its tracks. And it's advising people who are inspired by it or directed by it, do not communicate in ways that the authorities can track. If you're going to say something about an operation, use an encrypted app. Or better yet, don't tell anyone. If you're in a place like the United States or Europe, keep it to a very small group of people or just keep it to yourself.

[06:10:21] That makes it that much harder for authorities to have any warning and give any warning to the public, which is why they're urging just vigilance.

BERMAN: You know, Michael Weiss, John Brennan and other U.S. officials making clear that, obviously, ISIS would attack the U.S. here in the homeland if it could.

When you look at the map of what's been blamed on ISIS or attributed to ISIS over the last week, you have Istanbul; you have Bangladesh; you have Baghdad just over the weekend. You know, what capabilities does ISIS have here? We saw what happened in Orlando.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: When it comes to the United States, it's more about the ISIS-inspired attacks. And if you look at this rate of, actually, ISIS-coordinated or ISIS-directed attacks, what I think they're trying to do is encourage people to go out and blow stuff up.

In the United States, because of the geographical expanse, you have an ocean that separates us from the Middle East. You can literally drive from Raqqah or Mosul all the way up to Calais in France, right? It's much easier to go to Europe and to conduct some kind of operation.

Here, it's about getting an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old watching these videos on YouTube and getting them inspired to go out and blow up, you know, a school or a cafeteria with a pressure-cooker bomb or to just spray machine gunfire into an open crowd.

So what ISIS likes to do, I call them the subeditors of the international news cycle. They want to hijack the narrative. If they lose ground in Fallujah, if they lose a village in Syria, they don't want you talking about that. They want you talking about this: They want you talking about Bangladesh, Istanbul, and wherever else they're going to strike next.

CAMEROTA: But Kimberly, let's talk about that. Because a lot has been made that they're losing ground, they're losing some of their physical territory, and they wouldn't be able to sort of have a base of operations any more in Fallujah, though of course, that's still in Raqqah.

Do they need a base of operations, given that they can just send out word and then, you know, a lone wolf can do something?

DOZIER: That's exactly what the CIA director and other intelligence officials are saying. It doesn't take much to carry out a terrorist attack. It costs maybe $500 for a single attack. So as they lose territory in Raqqah, they're already moving a lot of their operations and people with the expertise to train future attackers to places like Libya.

There are already training camps there, which U.S. intelligence fears will train cells to go to Europe, joining cells that they think are already planted there, either waiting for a signal or, if they lose communication with the headquarters in Raqqah, they can act on their own at a time of their choosing.

BERMAN: Michael, do you think this wave of terror, again, the three that happened overseas, perhaps even Orlando, that this is coordinated in the timing? Do you think ISIS wanted all of these attacks now? A lot has been made of the fact that this is Ramadan.

WEISS: Yes. Well, Ramadan is always the time in which there's an uptick in terror atrocities. And every year, ISIS, their spokesman, Mohammad al-Adnani, encourages Muslims to go out and to commit these attacks during the holiest, you know, period in the Islamic calendar.

With respect to a direct coordination, do I think that the guys in Bangladesh are in communication with the guys in Turkey, and they're in communication with the guys who just blew up, you know, the neighborhood in Baghdad? No, not necessarily.

BERMAN: By the way, that doesn't make them any less dangerous. It might make them more dangerous.

WEISS: No, I mean, look, with respect to ISIS, this is still an army that has got 20,000 to 30,000 active operatives and agents, you know, throughout Syria and Iraq. Abroad, we don't know the numbers. That's what's so dangerous.

With al Qaeda, it was only ever a couple hundred people. And that took, you know, over a decade to try and decimate their ranks. ISIS is more dangerous. When they have territory, they can lay claim to being a nation state. That is the key here. You have to shrink their so-called caliphate to deprive them of their resources but also the symbolic value of actually governing and controlling, you know, a large swath of land in the Middle East and all these people.

CAMEROTA: Kimberly, God, the details of these attacks are just so sickening. The one in Baghdad, I mean, 200 people killed, many of them children. These were people who were just in this middle-class neighborhood. They were just out celebrating the end of Ramadan, and they were at a market, at stores.

I mean, families also celebrating the end of their children getting out of school, you know, for the year. And so ideologically speaking, this attracts people? I mean, the idea to kill children? In what even sort of perverted ideology does that appeal to people?

[06:15:00] DOZIER: Well, what ISIS has tried to do is kick up a sectarian war. And it said so. It said, "We were aiming at a Shiite neighborhood." They want to spur the militia groups on the Shiite side to attack Sunni communities and kick off a war that you won't need ISIS fighting back and forth anymore. You will have ordinary citizens within Iraq fighting each other again, just like it was in the bad old days when the U.S. troops were there.

So what they tell their followers is the reason that children were killed, if they even ask, is, well, they were Shiite or they were innocents, so they'll go to heaven anyway. That's one of the excuses that's often given by terrorist groups for attacks like this. CAMEROTA: That's just incredible. And thank you for all of that

context. It's great to have both of you with us here this morning. Thank you.

BERMAN: Let's talk politics now, shall we? The two presumptive presidential nominees facing political controversy this morning. Hillary Clinton sat down with the FBI for more than three hours this weekend, facing questions about her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state.

And Donald Trump facing new questions about a tweet he sent this weekend that included anti-Semitic imagery.

CNN's Joe Johns is live in Washington with more.

Joe, let's start with Donald Trump and his Twitter account.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, that really heated up over the weekend, the images tweeted by Donald Trump of what appeared to be a six-point Star of David with pictures of hundred-dollar bills, calling the former secretary of state corrupt.

Now, it looked like a representation of a Star of David, was later deleted, replaced without comment by the campaign. Very similar to an image that had been posted ten days earlier on a fringe message board that carried anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, of neo-Nazi ideology.

Critics, including the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, calling the image offensive and alarming.

The campaign has not commented on the tweet, but Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said on CNN that the image was the same star that sheriffs' departments use, and that people were reading something into the tweet that was not there, calling it political correctness run amok.

A long-awaited, meanwhile, moment for Hillary Clinton and her campaign, an interview with the FBI lasting about 3 1/2 hours over the e-mail controversy that has dogged the campaign. She's been saying for months that she wanted to get this over with and said on MSNBC after the interview it was something she was eager to do. Though quite frankly, this comes at a very difficult time for her campaign, just weeks away from the Democratic convention. No details on what Hillary Clinton said to the FBI as that investigation continues -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: We will be talking more about that interview with the FBI in our program. Joe, thank you very much.

Also, more about that controversial tweet. What does it mean two weeks before the Republican convention? So our panel is going to be here to break all of that down next on this special July Fourth edition of NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [06:21:56] BERMAN: New questions this morning about Donald Trump, Twitter, and anti-Semitism. This weekend, Donald Trump sent out a tweet, not a retweet, mind you, but a tweet that used an anti-Semitic image that had been previously posted on a website that traffics in such material.

Now, Trump did take down the original tweet but has said nothing about why or how he used that image to begin with.

Joining us now, CNN political analyst and presidential campaign correspondent for "The New York Times," Maggie Haberman; and CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis.

You know, Maggie, this is tweetgate part nine or ten for Donald Trump. But this image went out. The campaign pulled it down. Obviously, they knew something was amiss. There was a reason why they pulled it down.

CAMEROTA: First they changed it to the circle.

BERMAN: They changed the Star of David to the circle. But they're not saying how Donald Trump ended up this with image to begin with, an image that had previously gone out on these message boards that traffic in, you know, anti-Semitic, you know, and other offensive material. How did Donald Trump get it? The campaign is not saying. Don't they owe an explanation to how and why they used this original image?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I saw what Corey Lewandowski said yesterday on "STATE OF THE UNION," former campaign manager for Trump. And he's echoing what the campaign does seem to feel.

CAMEROTA: Let's play it, just so that everybody hears exactly how he defended what this was. So listen to Corey Lewandowski yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEWANDOWSKI: Look, a tweet is a simple tweet. And the bottom line is you can read into things that aren't there. You know, this is a simple star. To make an accusation -- it's the same star that sheriffs' departments use across the country all over the place to represent law enforcement.

And to read into something that isn't there is -- you know what? I think, again, that's the mainstream media trying to attack Donald Trump for something that really isn't there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Take it away.

HABERMAN: First of all, when it started out as a six-pointed star for sheriffs' badges, it was a very specific reason. It was because that was the easiest construct with metal. The six-point star is also the Star of David. It was featured over a big pile of money. So that is why people looked at this and said, this feeds into stereotypes.

And then it turned out that the image didn't originate, I think, on that alt-right (ph) website. I think it actually started on someone's Twitter feed a couple of days earlier. But that Twitter user is also known for stating offensive views.

This is a pattern that we have seen with Trump over and over, where Trump does not want to apologize for anything. He does not want to say, "I made a mistake." He does not want to own this. So the campaign just shuts down and waits for it to pass.

But on this one, even if you take everything that Lewandowski said at face value, which is, you know, people are reading in, he didn't mean to do this, this is just an image, once you find out that, OK, but people are offended by this, the issue for Trump becomes not addressing it at all. And you have a pretty broad group of people now saying you have to actually say this is offensive and a problem in order to shut down those who hear this as a dog whistle. And that is what he has refused to do this whole time.

CAMEROTA: Errol, what does this say about the Trump campaign and their social media outreach and how they're finding things and what they're putting out?

LOUIS: To me it confirms what a lot of people feared, which is that the campaign and perhaps the candidate himself that they don't have a problem with kind of screwing around with some of these far-right elements.

[06:25:10] And when you read in "The Washington Post" today that some of these far-right groups have said, you know, "He's one of us. He's sending us the right signal. We like this. We're going to try and mobilize for this candidate," anybody in mainstream politics, real -- the world of real politics who isn't horrified by that, who isn't disgusted by that, who doesn't, at least privately, demand that the campaign clarify and speak up about this, I think is being so irresponsible as to take him into the realm where Hillary Clinton wants him to be, which is not really qualified for this job.

I think these are disqualifying kinds of actions, to not speak up and say, "It was a mistake. It was an intern. I don't know what this is about." Say something.

But to say nothing, and even as -- and again, it's in the mainstream press now. Even as the far-right groups are saying, "Go, Donald Trump, that's the signal we like to see," I don't know where they think they're going to take this country or take this convention or take politics with this, but I don't think it's going to work.

BERMAN: Two points. Again, just to be clear, someone had to go actively get this image. You know, Donald Trump didn't sketch this out himself. Someone in the campaign or Donald Trump himself went to this website or went to the previous Twitter account that had trafficked in this kind of material, cut and pasted into his own feed. So this was an active action that the Trump campaign needs to explain. Second of all, this happened on a weekend which should have been just

a no good, terrible, awful weekend for Hillary Clinton. She sat down with the FBI for more than three hours, answering questions about her e-mail server. You know, a presidential candidate had to face questions by the FBI. That, in and of itself, is a horrible story.

HABERMAN: And if you were Donald Trump, it would be what you wanted the focus to be on for several days. And it could have been for several days.

And while you will hear that Trump's people will blame the mainstream media and say this is all just a creation to try to get him, if any candidate -- think if Mitt Romney had done a single one of the things that Donald Trump has done and stirred outrage over in the last several months. He would have been pilloried and it would have gone on and on.

And so I think that you are seeing, basically, Trump's inability to change his own style is hurting him.

CAMEROTA: We're going to be talking to one of the top guys from the Trump campaign shortly in the program, so obviously, we will ask all about this.

But let's talk about Hillary Clinton's sit-down with the FBI. What if, Errol -- what if the worst-case scenario plays out? What if they do charge her with something? What's the contingency plan that the Democrats have?

LOUIS: I can't imagine what it would be.

BERMAN: Break glass.

LOUIS: And that is -- yes, that is a pretty devastating what if. You know, we don't know what the FBI is thinking about. We don't know what they're looking at. We don't know what problems there might be. You know, all of this is based on stuff that the public can't possibly know. Even the best sourced reporters, I think, can't really know what it is they're putting together.

But since you asked the hypothetical, the absolute worst-case scenario, conventions, as we've talked about, can name whoever it is they want. You know, I mean, it's all been going in one particular direction, but if you -- if we all end up in Philadelphia, and it turns out, for whatever reason -- you know, the candidate could get hit by a bus or something.

CAMEROTA: Heaven forbid.

LOUIS: If the candidate is not available for some reason, then you know, we'll all have a lot of extra work to do in Philadelphia.

BERMAN: That's the worst. Bad case scenario, is it's already killed her trustworthy -- honest and trustworthy numbers. You know, you look at the polls, the people already think there are issues there. Even without an indictment it is causing problems right now. CAMEROTA: All right. Maggie, Errol, thank you, have a nice holiday.

Fireworks shows will have thousands, of course, looking to the skies tonight. But will you have to look through some raindrops? Chad Myers is going to join us with the national forecast. We'll be right back.

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