Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Berlin Attack Suspect was Known to Police; Trump Tackling Terror & Trade. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 22, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

CHRIS BURNS, JOURNALIST: That is the big question. Let's look a little bit more in our report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[07:00:06] BURNS (voice-over): German authorities under scrutiny this morning, amid the search for their country's most wanted man, Anis Amri, the fugitive walking free months ago despite concerns about his connections to extremism.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE), SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: One of the questions we're going to be sifting through to make sure that we understand how German intelligence failed to intercept this particular radicalized individual.

BURNS: Amri, a native Tunisian, arrived in Germany a year and a half ago, his father telling a radio show in Tunisia that his son headed to Cologne after spending almost four years in an Italian prison.

Italian authorities say he was convicted of damaging state property, assault and arson in September 2011. But they note he was considered a petty criminal.

In Germany he was quickly placed under surveillance, believed to be in touch with radical Islamists. In June his request for asylum in Germany was denied, even as he was unable to return to his native Tunisia, because he didn't have a valid passport.

Two months later Amri was arrested after being caught with fake papers but was released. He was still considered a risk by authorities, with known links to a radical preacher.

REP. WILL HURD (R-TX), HOUSE HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: The Germans are a very good service, and they're going to put all their resources to find this person and this killer and bring him to justice.

BURNS: Now police warning that Amri could be violent and armed, and offering an over $100,000 reward for any information leading to his arrest, after finding his I.D. in the truck that killed 12 and injured nearly 50 this Monday.

Authorities believe Amri is part of an extensive extremist network inside Germany recruiting for ISIS. Authorities say the ring leader of the network is this man, Abu Walla, arrested in November on terrorism charges. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNS: So a massive manhunt going on for Anis Amri with a reward on his head. Will they find him?

At the same time there's a lot of heavy guard going on. If you look over my shoulder, there's that Christmas market where the truck plowed into that on Monday. Well, it's reopened. You can see, perhaps, some of the lights on.

They put concrete -- huge concrete blocks around that market. There are police with guns now watching it. It's the kind of image they'd like to avoid from memories of 70 years ago, but they're forced to do that because times have changed -- Alisyn, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Appreciate it. Chris, do us a favor: stay with us to give us some more understanding in this discussion, and let's bring in CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA official Philip Mudd.

Phil, the big headline this morning is they knew him, and they let him go. Shame on them. Is it as simple as that?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I don't think it is. Look, we've been talking about the intelligence here and whether there's an intelligence misstep. I think this is a bigger question. And that is, there's a policy question about how you deal with illegal immigrants or immigrants who have bad papers and who get caught in the law enforcement net.

To transition for a moment, Chris, I think this is why the conversations about the president-elect and his morning briefings are important. You have to look at this situation, if you're going into the Oval Office, and overlay what happened in terms of the immigration process with this criminal with what happens in the United States and say, "Are there things that we could do differently at the Department of Homeland Security to address this?" That's why the president-elect needs to be talking to his advisers about events overseas.

I think this is a big question not about what happened with the intelligence but what about happens with immigrants when they make mistakes after immigration.

CAMEROTA: Well, sure, Phil. And I just want to stick with you for one more second, because "The New York Times" this morning is reporting that the U.S. also knew about this guy. Let me just read you their reporting.

They say, "He also appeared on the radar of the United States agencies, according to American officials. He had done online research on how to make explosive devices and had communicated with the Islamic State at least once via Telegram Messenger, said these officials, who spoke on anonymity because of the investigation. He was also on a United States no-fly list, the officials said."

So Phil, when U.S. officials get word that somebody like that is loose in Germany, what can they do?

MUDD: A couple things they should do. First a no-fly list, let's be clear, has a couple of categories. Selectee, that's a lot of people. If you actually no-fly somebody, that is prohibit them from getting on a plane, in my world that is a significant step. That means you have a serious player on your hands. I'd like to know whether he was someone that was designated for a pull aside at an airport or off an airplane.

Those characteristics you mentioned to me, Alisyn, that is communicating via Telegram, which means he's probably communicating encrypted, and the other activities he's involved in, would put him at the high end of terror suspects. That is not somebody who simply you look at occasionally, you check commercial databases, you look at whether he's trying to acquire a weapon. That person requires a level of intelligence scrutiny that's pretty much at the top end.

[07:05:06] So in my world, you do start getting to a question that says he's not just one of a firehose. What happened here? I don't have an answer for you.

CUOMO: As Alisyn often says in these situations, you have action and reaction. We're in that phase right now, Chris. What are you hearing from German authorities and, you know, the Berliners about what this motivates in terms of political response, especially with Angela Merkel and the elections that are coming up and her position of being embracing of almost a million refugees so far?

BURNS: Exactly. Well, Chris, that's the big question. Will one guy who drove a truck into a Christmas market turn the entire refugee policy on its head? We don't know yet. But we did see a lot of activity last night. We saw far-right neo-Nazis protesting just a few yards away. A huge counter demonstration against them, saying the refugees are welcome.

We saw also another protest by -- and this is probably something more worrisome, is the Alternative for Germany, Alternative fur Deutschland. They were protesting outside of Chancellor Merkel's chancellery right now. One of the leaders of that party is saying that those 12 dead in that market over my shoulder are Merkel's dead. They are trying to make political mileage out of this.

And as you say, there's a local election coming up in the spring, a national election coming up in the fall. Now, there had been, yes, four other terror attacks earlier this year. Merkel went down in the polls for a while but bounced back up. Will this be the same scenario? We don't know yet.

Phil, President-elect Trump has basically said that this is -- proves that he was right when he was asked about a Muslim ban. It sounds as though he's sort of reinforcing his call for that in the United States. I know that you are not a political pundit, but from a law enforcement standpoint, we have heard that that does more harm than good. Can you explain why?

MUDD: Look, we have an adversary -- that is ISIS and its predecessor al Qaeda -- who have a simple goal. They want to portray themselves among potential followers as peers with us on the military battlefield, on the political battlefield. They want to draw us into a fight so they can tell the rest of the Islamic world who doesn't believe in -- with them, "Hey, the Americans are our enemies. They invaded Iraq. They are in Syria. They're bombing our civilians. We are your defenders."

As soon as we say that, yes, we have the keep the entirety of the Muslim faith out of our country, ISIS will use this to say, "We told you so. We are the protectors. We are the only adversary fighting these people. Please align with us."

We can't allow them to have what they want. That is a fight of civilizations. That's the Muslim world against the Christmas world. It's not a political statement. It's a statement from me with a simple purpose. Don't give the enemy what they want, Alisyn. It's as simple as that.

CUOMO: Right. But it's a little bit of a feel-good policy here. People feel safe when they believe they're keeping -- being kept insulated from the threat.

Which leads to the question, how big is the threat? How many people are there like this guy, if you categorize him as someone who is known, who's trying to get into the bad game, and who winds up being in the radar of the authorities?

MUDD: Chris, the threat is modest. It's not that big if you put it in context. My question for people who get emotional and political about this, is if you want to have a fight, give me facts and give me numbers.

If you look at the state of violent crime in this country, which has been on the decline for years, if you look at why that violent crime happens and who commits it, that's gangs and drugs. If you look post- 9/11 at deaths from opioids. I'm going to visit a friend myself this weekend who lost a son to synthetic opioids a few weeks ago. Those deaths in inner-city America dwarf what happens with terrorism.

We will get more terrorism in this country. And my question would be, do you want to look at those incidents in isolation, or do you want to ask what is at threat to an American child? And as a counterterrorism professional, I'll tell you, with 10 nieces and nephews, I worry about gangs, drugs and synthetic opioids. And I don't worry about terrorism.

CAMEROTA: Chris, Chris and I were in Paris after the Bataclan attacks. I was in Brussels, as well, after the attacks there. And I was so struck by how life was going on. You know, we saw mothers out pushing babies in strollers the next day. People got back to their lives. What is happening in Berlin today?

BURNS: Well, Chris, that is really what -- I mean, I talked to some people here, and that's exactly what they say. Life goes on.

If you look over my shoulder you can perhaps see there are people on the streets. This Christmas market has opened again, with concrete blocks around it. But it's still open. So yes.

I saw some people with Santa hats, but I saw more people with flowers and roses to lay for those who died. So there is sort of a mix of a sense of mourning but a sense that they want to get on with their lives. They don't want to see a police state.

[07:10:12] Yes, there is a debate over how much more individual freedoms to perhaps compromise a bit more than in the past. I mean, just -- we saw in the -- Merkel's cabinet yesterday just approved more video surveillance for public places. That's a very sensitive debate in the parliament, among the socialists, Social Democrats, among the Greens. They're not going to be so easy to persuade on that, but perhaps after this attack, it might be more possible to clamp down a bit more on security and perhaps to clamp down a little bit more on -- on refugees coming in.

CUOMO: Yes, we marvel at the responses, but every time one of these things happen, it increases that tension between freedom for people like refugees and Muslims who are moving into communities, and freedom from those people who are moving in. That tension increases. You'll see it in Berlin.

CAMEROTA: We're having that conversation right now. Chris, Phil, thank you very much.

Well, President-elect Trump tackling both terror and trade. Two new names added to his administration in an effort to boost the U.S. economy, this as his transition team floats the idea of an early executive action to impose tariffs on foreign imports.

So let's bring in CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny. He's live at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

Good morning, Jeff.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Donald Trump making his first comments on that rampage in Berlin. He called it an attack on humanity. That's as he received his first intelligence briefing of the week yesterday as he met with national security advisers here at Mar-a-Lago.

But this morning, Alisyn, we are getting a clear sense of his new economic policy simply by the people he is naming to join his economic team at the White House.

First and foremost, Peter Navarro, a tough critic on China who says that, in fact, China is leading an economic war against the U.S. He will head a new trade office inside the White House. He's also joined by Carl Icahn, the New York billionaire investor who is going to be in charge of regulatory reform. So taken together, those two make clear that Donald Trump focusing front and center on trade in China.

But this morning we are also learning new information about a potential early executive action that Donald Trump is also considering. That would be proposing a 5 percent tariff on any foreign imports.

Now that is going to be incredibly controversial among business groups and pro-trade groups and members of the Republican congressional majority, particularly who are pro-trade. That is one of the early fights that will be happening in the administration.

But Alisyn, we also, just a few moments ago, got word that Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager for the winning Donald Trump campaign, is going into the administration. She's going to be named as a counselor to Donald Trump, a counselor to the president. She had talked about not wanting to join this administration, simply because of her young family and other things; but she will now be a counselor to the president, a sign that she will still be one of his top advisers when he takes office 29 days from today -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jeff, thanks for that bit of breaking news.

And we should mention that Kellyanne Conway is going to join us in about an hour to talk about her new title, what it means and the issues facing the president-elect less than a month before inauguration day.

CUOMO: All right. So who is President-elect Trump getting his intelligence information from? And only getting intelligence communications once in a while, is that enough? Our intelligence analysts discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:17:35] CAMEROTA: President-elect Trump says the terror attacks in Germany and Turkey this week have proven him right.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have intelligence right now. What's going on is terrible.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has it caused you to rethink or reevaluate your plans to create a Muslim registry or ban Muslim immigration in the United States?

TRUMP: You know my plans. I've been 100 percent correct. What's happening is disgraceful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. So let's bring back CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd to talk about this. Joining him is also former CIA director and former U.S. ambassador to the CFE Treaty, James Woolsey. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.

Mr. Woolsey, I want to start with you. You just heard -- I don't know if you could hear that audio very well, but basically, Mr. Trump was saying that he has been proven right about his calls for a Muslim ban; and he says, "You know my plans all along." Basically, they haven't changed.

We don't really know what that means, because his plans about the Muslim ban, first it was all Muslims. Then it was select Muslims. Then it was from some hot spots around the world. So his plans actually have changed.

But putting that aside for a moment, we've heard Phil Mudd say in our last segment this is exactly the wrong thing to do. To set up the "us against them" narrative actually only increases tension and crime and terrorism. What's your thought?

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Well, this is a difficult and complicated problem. A restriction on Muslim immigration might well run afoul of the first Amendment. I imagine there are cases on this. It's an interesting and important legal question. So you've got that issue just for starters.

Secondly, you've got the fact that we are at war with a subset of Islam. But certainly not with all of Islam. There -- if you look at Indonesia, for example, and the history of people such as Gus Doer, the late former president of the country, what a marvelous spokesman for civil liberties. And Indonesian Islam has generally -- not always, but generally -- been very libertarian with respect to other religious.

So you've got a complicated situation on the Muslim side of things.

I think what you have to do is set that aside and, based on people's behavior, infiltrate, like Giuliani and his colleagues did in New York right after 9/11...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

[07:20:10] WOOLSEY: ... you have to infiltrate groups that are potentially hostile. You have to go to the restrictions. You can't go past legal restrictions...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

WOOLSEY: ... and constitutional restrictions but you can do a lot more than we are doing now. You have to play offense.

CUOMO: What do you think we're not doing right now? When it comes to refugees, as I'm sure you know, is -- that's the most extreme vetting, to use the president-elect's term, that we have in our immigration system. They go through more layers of scrutiny than anybody else trying to get into the country.

WOOLSEY: Well, I don't believe they can use DNA in Germany without there being a criminal charge. So I don't know how that works in the United States. But if we have a restriction on DNA sampling, for example... CUOMO: Phil -- let's go to Phil. You worked with the policy. The

idea that we should do more than we're doing right now, or is what you're hearing from Mr. Woolsey and from the president-elect's team basically what we are doing now, with a political overlay of "let's be tough"?

MUDD: I think we're asking entirely the wrong question, Chris. I do not believe when you're looking -- if you go to JFK, Dulles, LAX, when you're looking at the number of people coming into this country that you can determine based -- with any certainty what's going on in the mind of a potential immigrant.

I would flip the question. When I looked at investigations at the FBI, once people are beyond the barrier and into this country, I thought we faced a fundamental problem. What rights do you give somebody who is not a citizen once they become involved in an investigation? Do you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that person committed a crime?

I think the conversation has to be, if someone trips a wire below the threshold of reasonable doubt in the United States -- that is they become involved on the Internet with an ISIS chatroom -- should that be enough to expel them from the country?

Let me be clear: The question is isn't how you vet people before they get into the country. I don't think it's doable. The question is what's the policy for people once they get here? I think that's a valuable conversation.

CAMEROTA: And what's the answer to that, Phil? While you're on this point, if they're on an ISIS chatroom, what can we do right now?

MUDD: My answer is pretty straightforward. There should be latitude for federal law enforcement to expel people before they've been proven to commit a crime. They should not necessarily go into a complicated legal process with a judge before we can throw them out.

I saw too many cases, we're spending too much time and money from your tax dollars to chase somebody who should not be given the same rights as a U.S. citizen.

I think we should allow immigrants from everywhere, including from high-risk countries, let me be clear. But I think, once they get here, our question should be, if you violate even a basic regulation about what activity you get involved in, you're done. Whether it's drugs, whether it's ISIS, you're out. That would be my view.

CUOMO: There will be some legal hurdles.

But back to you, Mr. Woolsey. What you're describing as the complexity and what you want to be careful not to do is very much in conflict with what we're hearing from the man THAT you advise, the president-elect of the United States. He does not want to be bothered with the complexity that you're talking about. He's saying this is simple. They're bad; keep them out. WOOLSEY: Well, it depends on who "they" are. For example, I don't

know of any restriction that would prohibit one from banning all immigration from, say, Syria. It's a tough and perhaps an unwise approach, but I don't see any constitutional problem with it, whereas banning Muslims from immigrating into the United States may well run into conflict, problems with the First Amendment. I think you need some good legal brief writing to figure out where you stand on that.

CUOMO: Right, but what I'm saying is how do you explain, because this is a man that you advise -- how do you explain his coming to such a different conclusion than your own with respect to what law...

WOOLSEY: Well, I...

CUOMO: ... he has to respect and whether it makes sense?

WOOLSEY: I have advised four presidents, two Republican, two Democratic. I never tell people what I say to them or they say to me, and I'm not going to start with you.

CUOMO: And that's fine. You should keep your own counsel. What I'm saying is that the president-elect has a conclusion that's very different than from what you're suggesting right now.

WOOLSEY: Well, draw whatever conclusions you want.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Woolsey, we also understand, as we've heard from the president-elect, that he doesn't think he needs to get the daily intelligence briefings. We hear from our Pentagon reporter, Barbara Starr, that on average, he's been getting about three a week. Are you comfortable with not getting them on a daily basis?

WOOLSEY: Well, it depends. Most of us can read a lot faster than we can listen. And President Clinton, who I worked for, didn't want to have the daily brief gone through for him. He wanted to read it. He would annotate it, write notes back to me and say, "Jim, this sounds like a chapter from Kaplan's new book. Don't you think?" You know?

CAMEROTA: He was still getting information every day. This is a little different.

WOOLSEY: Well, he'd get -- it depends on how the president wants to proceed. If he wants to proceed by having some things read to him, other things he reads himself, that's up to him.

CAMEROTA: I mean the -- the frequency. So he's not doing it every day, he has said.

WOOLSEY: Well...

CAMEROTA: Are you comfortable with that?

WOOLSEY: It depends on -- sounds like President Clinton, another matter. It depends on what "it" is.

If you -- if you get the information by some combination of talking with your top two or three security aides, by reading a paragraph or two here, by having your national security adviser or director sent from the CIA saying, "Mr. President, pay particular attention to paragraph two on that page," you can -- you can do this in different ways. You don't have to sit there and have somebody read a briefing to you every day.

CAMEROTA: OK. Got it. James Woolsey, Phil Mudd, thank you.

CUOMO: All right. So Trump's transition team is saying he may start his presidency with an executive order to impose tariffs on imports. Is this something he can do legally, and what should he do in terms of passing a tax that may hit you in the pocket? We've got CNN political commentator Michael...

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)