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Interview with Representative Jim Jordan; New Information Reported on Possible Terrorist Attack in New York City; Interview with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; Terror Suspect Talking With Investigators. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 01, 2017 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] REP. JIM JORDAN, (R) OHIO: -- Bill Clinton meet on the tarmac. And if it was just golf and grandkids that they were talking about, why in the days after an email communication with the public relations people did she use the name Elizabeth Carlyle. I am focused on the facts did the DNC --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: You are more interested in the Hillary Clinton facts than President Trump. And I just want to ask you one question.

JORDAN: Because there has been no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, but there's all kinds of evidence showing links between the Clinton campaign and the dossier, and the maybe dossier became the catalyst for the surveillance and stuff done on the Trump campaign.

CAMEROTA: Congressman, Paul Manafort had three different passports with three different numbers. He applied for 10 passports --

JORDAN: And you know what, if he did things wrong --

CAMEROTA: Hold on, congressman. Over the course of 10 years -- he was the Trump campaign chairman. One person who was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his relationships and associations with Russians. Why don't those get your attention?

JORDAN: They got everybody's attention. They obviously got your attention. If Mr. Manafort did something wrong, he will be prosecuted for that and he'll have to serve the sentence.

CAMEROTA: I understand that, but the nexus between Manafort and the Trump campaign is what we're talking about. The Trump campaign hired him as their campaign chairman. Talk about extreme vetting. It sounds like the president believes in extreme vetting for everybody except his own staff.

JORDAN: And then he got rid of him a few months later, and there's been an indictment going back to 2005 through 2015, none of that was during the time when he was involved in the Trump campaign. It all deals with tax evasion and not filling out forms properly and not giving information to the federal government, and he should be accountable for that if in fact he committed some wrongdoing, which it looks like he may have. So that's all fine and let's do that. But tell me where the link is with Russia?

CAMEROTA: Congressman.

JORDAN: There is none. But we do know Hillary Clinton's campaign paid for Fusion GPS to produce this dossier, and it looks like this dossier became the catalyst for surveillance and wiretapping --

CAMEROTA: We have so much breaking news. We know the Trump campaign kept setting up meetings and trying to get dirt from Kremlin-backed Russian operatives on Hillary Clinton. You seem to be just omitting that part which is always head scratching. But listen. We have so much breaking news we have to leave it there. Congressman, thank you very much for being on with us this morning.

We are following a lot of breaking news including the details about the terror attack in New York City. Let's get right to it.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Here we are at the site in lower Manhattan, New York City, where we have now had the deadliest terror attack since 9/11, eight people lost their lives, a dozen have been injured, maybe more. Authorities are saying some may have self-evacuated after coming into contact with this murderous, now presumed terrorist who used just a pickup truck, hopped a curb, and went about a mile taking out people along the way. It didn't end until he hit a school bus in front of a high school just behind us.

This act would be terrible no matter where it happened, but there's a significance additional to it because of where we are. This is the World Trade Center. We are literally in its shadow. This is a place that is a symbol of the resolve to fight terror, to not be hardened by it. And yet here we are once again despite all the law enforcement. But there's new information. This man is being somewhat cooperative with police. They were able to take him into custody. He was shot in the abdomen by a police officer from the first precinct after running away from the vehicle when he hit that school bus.

They are all over his home in Patterson, New Jersey. We have live pictures of that, as well. And they have been found, we are finding, we are told, information that is ISIS related on his computers. And again, he left a note saying this was ISIS inspired. And he said "Allah Akbar" is the report when he exited the vehicle.

For more on what happened here, the worst kind of history of make in the terror category, we have Jean Casarez with the latest. Jean?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, the hustle and bustle of New York City has begun this morning, people on their way to work with the realization that this was the worst terror attack since 9/11. We are so close to the World Trade Center. Nineteen people were victims in this attack, 11 injured and eight lost their lives.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've got multiple casualties. CASAREZ: Terrifying moments in downtown Manhattan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Traffic is shut down on the Westside Highway at this time. It's going to be a crime scene.

CASAREZ: A pickup truck barreling down a busy bike and footbath for nearly a mile, the carnage ending just blocks away from the World Trade Center.

[08:05:03] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just out of nowhere I see people running and screaming, and just multiple gunshots one after another.

CASAREZ: Police say the suspect, 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov was shot in the stomach and remains hospitalized. A law enforcement source says a note was found near the truck saying the attack was done in the name of ISIS.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, (D) NEW YORK: There's no evidence this was just a wider plot, a wider scheme. We will be vigilant.

CASAREZ: Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan, came to the United States in 2010. In 2014 he married a young also from Uzbekistan in Ohio. The occupation listed on his marriage license, truck driver. Law enforcement sources tell CNN Saipov is connected to a residence in Tampa, Florida, but most recently he lived in Patterson, New Jersey. Uber confirms to CNN that Saipov worked for them for the past six months and passed their background check. The company says they are cooperating with authorities.

Saipov was arrested in Missouri in 2016 after failing to appear in court for a traffic violation. Police say Saipov rented the pickup truck from this Home Depot store in New Jersey just before carrying out the attack.

At 3:05 p.m., the truck entered the bike path driving south along New York City's river front on the west side of lower Manhattan, plowing into cyclist and pedestrians for nearly a mile, bodies and mangled bikes strewn across the path.

EUGENE DUFFY, WITNESS: I see two gentlemen laying right there in the bike lane with tire marks across their body, and you can tell that they are not here no more.

CASAREZ: The truck eventually coming to a halt after crashing into a school bus outside Stuyvesant High School. The attacker caught on camera running from the truck brandishing what appeared to be two guns.

RAMON CRUZ, WITNESS: He was dragging his foot a little bit and he was screaming in the street. He looked frustrated, panicked, confused.

CASAREZ: Police later discovering that Saipov was holding a pellet and paintball gun. The suspect was shot by a 28-year old NYPD officer Ryan Nash. One World Trade Center and Empire State Building lighting up in red, white, and blue Tuesday night. Despite the attack, the Halloween parade going on as planned with tighter security. MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, (D) NEW YORK: New Yorkers are strong, New

Yorkers are resilient, and our spirit will never be moved by an act of violence and an act meant to intimidate us.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CASAREZ: We are beginning to learn a bit more about the victims that lost their lives. Five of them were citizens of Argentina. They were here together celebrating their 30th high school reunion. Another victim that we know of at this point was a Belgium national. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Jean, that is so tragic thinking about them celebrating and now not being able to go home. Thank you for the reporting from the scene there.

Joining me now is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Good morning, governor.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO, (D) NEW YORK: Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: So we understand that this suspect who survived is now speaking to cops. Do you have any sense of his background or better sense of his connections?

ANDREW CUOMO: We have as much as you just reported. He is -- all the evidence we have is that he was, quote-unquote, a lone wolf model. There's an evolution of tactics for the jihads, right? It's no longer about the training camps in a geographic area. They now have a global platform with the internet and you can download material. And they have a very simple template, rent a car, rent a truck, create mayhem.

He has had several run-ins which were basically minor vehicular traffic. New York state police actually ironically once helped him and his truck out of a ditch.

But look, he is a depraved coward is what he is. And he was associated with ISIS, and he was radicalized domestically, and he's a depraved coward. And they tried to create terror. It's not the first time. It's a global phenomenon now. It's all through Europe, et cetera. It happened to New York first in 1993, the World Trade Center bombing. My father was governor. Six people died. Then obviously 9/11, and we expect it to continue.

CAMEROTA: And governor, when you say he was radicalized domestically, what does that mean? What do you know about that?

[08:10:02] ANDREW CUOMO: The evidence shows -- again, it's only several hours and the investigation is ongoing, but that after he came to the United States is when he started to become informed about ISIS and radical Islamic tactics. We have no evidence yet of associations or a continuing plot or associated plots, and our only evidence to date is that this was an isolated incident that he, himself, performed.

And again, ISIS has gotten it down to a simple formula that they can put on the Internet, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to rent a car, rent a truck. But they are cowards, and they are depraved. And I resist the temptation to delve into who they were and why. We know why. They hate America, and New York is a target. Let's be honest. We have the Statue of Liberty in our harbor holding the torch that says freedom and democracy. It's repugnant to them.

And that was the World Trade Center bombing, that was 9/11. I was there for that. That was the hardest blow this nation has taken with the associated attacks. And they failed. They have a 100 percent failure rate. New York got up, we got up stronger, we got up bigger, we got up better, and that's what yesterday was also. It was a failed attempt. Yes, we lost eight lives and we cry and we pray, but last night we had our Halloween parade. And I marched, Alisyn, not because I had a great costume, but because my point was we are here, we are going on, we are celebrating, kids are going back to school today. The terrorists failed once again.

CAMEROTA: Listen, governor, it's so striking, OK, it's so striking that the Halloween parade with children coming out and parents went on hours after this terror attack. And so how do you explain that? Is this New York's new normal? Is this the country's new normal? Are New Yorkers somehow either hardened to this or taken this in stride?

ANDREW CUOMO: Well, hardened. 1993 was the first incident. It has been 25 years. If you live in this world, Alisyn, it's almost every couple of weeks there's an incident somewhere, right? But it's not hardened. I think -- we have hardened society from a policing point of view, protection, et cetera. I think it's defiance.

I said all yesterday afternoon, I will see you at the parade, I will see you at the parade, I will see you at the parade. You can't let them win. The only way forward is to defeat them. Now, can you defeat every depraved coward who wants to rent a car and drive into a crowd? No. We prevent dozens for every one that happens through intelligence and policing, but it will happen.

Don't let them win. They are called terrorists. They want to impart terror. They didn't. They killed eight innocent people in a very cowardly way with a truck hitting bicyclists and pedestrians from behind. That is the definition of coward. But you did not impart terror.

A great parade last night, as soon as people got the information in the middle of the afternoon, people were anxious because they didn't have information, but once they had the information, I encouraged people to come to the parade, join me at the parade. And you are right, it was remarkable -- children, costumes. You would not have known going down that parade that anything happened in the afternoon.

CAMEROTA: So governor, listen --

ANDREW CUOMO: That is victory for New York.

CAMEROTA: Agreed. But listen, this weekend is the New York marathon, OK, 50,000 runners, people lining the streets for 26 miles. That is -- look, we know what happened in the Boston Marathon. So about these soft targets, a bike path is a soft target. [08:15:00] These 26 miles of people lying in the streets. What can you do to fortify those soft targets?

CUOMO: You can do everything you can do, Alisyn. We -- I've spoken to the secretary of the Homeland Security, we have federal forces. We're coordinating with the FBI. We have state police, we have National Guard, we have the New York Police Department, which is one of the finest police departments in the country.

We're coordinating with the mayor. We are coordinating with everybody. And you do everything you can.

Now the implications of your question is, you can't make the entire route safe. You're right. You are right. You cannot have concrete barriers in front of every possible location. You're right. You do everything you can. You have the best police force you can, but when and if an incident happens, you make sure it's not successful.

Successful then was not killing eight people. Success was the attempt to instill terror and they failed. They have a 100 percent failure rate. They're depraved cowards who fail. They failed yesterday and they'll fail every time they do it. And the best attack they had, 9/11, we got bigger, better, stronger than ever before.

You didn't instill terror, you made New York stronger at the end of the day. That is the only way to do this.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

A. CUOMO: It's the only way to ultimately win is to frustrate their objective.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

A. CUOMO: And that's what we've done. We did it brilliantly yesterday and that's going to be the New York tradition going forward.

CAMEROTA: Governor Andrew Cuomo, we really appreciate talking to you on that note. Thanks so much for being with us.

A. CUOMO: I like talking to you, Alisyn.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: I hear you loud and clear, and I will relate that to my co- anchor. Thank you.

So the terror suspect is talking to investigators this morning. What is he saying? What have they learned from him? We have the latest CNN reporting for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:21:22] CUOMO: All right. We have new information into the investigation. For that let's get to Shimon Prokupecz. He's our reporter and producer. You've got the latest. So what do we know?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right, Chris. So overnight we've been told that investigators, the FBI and the NYPD have been with the suspect. He was intubated at some point, and after that he was talking, somewhat cooperative, these sources are saying. You know, they're basically saying he wasn't uncooperative. So it's not exactly clear what information he's providing, but whatever it is they have so far found it useful.

We're also told that authorities have been able to link social media accounts to the suspect. These accounts weren't necessarily in his name, but through their investigative means and through searches, they have been able to link these accounts to him and what they have found are ISIS related materials on these accounts.

And so they're sorting through them, and the key now, Chris, is to find out when he was radicalized, you know, as the governor just said a short time ago, he was -- they believe that he was radicalized while in the U.S. And now the question is when, and because it goes to theory, to motive, how quickly did he become radicalized is because they want to know when did he decide to launch this attack.

There appears, according to sources I've talked to, there's some evidence that he may have been planning this for some time, but they're still working through that. And finally they're really working to make sure that he's not connected to anyone else.

CUOMO: Yes, that's an important distinction that they're still looking into, right, Shimon? About whether or not he radicalized himself, you know, as an aspirant, as they're saying, or whether he was inspired by somebody else while here in the United States. So you're tracking that down for us. Appreciate it.

All right. So let's bring in the panel. There's a lot to process here. We have Asha Rangappa, former FBI now professor at Yale, and we have CNN law enforcement analyst, Joe Giacalone and James Gagliano, a professor at St. Johns University, professor at John Jay.

All right. So, Asha, let's start. With what you've heard so far in terms of the architecture of the investigation and what they need to know still, where are we?

ASHA RANGAPPA, ASSOCIATE DEAN, YALE LAW SCHOOL: We are still in the beginning stages. The fact that the attacker is likely to survive will be helpful in getting the kind of information to determine what kind of attack this was. Was this a part of, you know, some kind of network or was it a lone wolf? And that's going to make a difference because it will make a difference in terms of how to analyze this kind of attack and if it is a lone wolf, right now what's coming out is that there's no evidence that this was connected to a broader plot, that he was self-radicalized, as we just heard, in which case it's part of a trend where it's going to be incredibly difficult to prevent these kinds of independent lone wolf attacks on soft targets like these sidewalk crash. CUOMO: Right. So, James, let's bounce the idea, though, of not just

a random mad man, right? Because he had to know where to jump that curb. You know, for people who aren't from New York City, it's not a completely soft target. You can't just drive on to that bike path wherever you want, but you can where he did it.

JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Sure. And we know he probably had to case it out. And to do this prior to the attack, every square inch of New York City, Chris, just about is covered by cameras.

[08:25:02] So to the point we spoke about before, there's two types of intelligence working and harvesting right now. Asha spoke about the human intelligence, interviewing him after he came out of surgery. That's critical.

The other piece is sig-in. Signal Intelligence. And that's going to be the easy path that was used. That's going to be the cameras. That's going to be trying to piece together all these pieces so that you take what we know from the human intelligence to signal intelligence, put it together and paint a better picture. There are going to be some changes on the West Side Highway, I think.

CUOMO: So let's talk about that. Joe, you're going to go, you're going to have your students, a lot of them will wind up being in law enforcement, if they're not already, they're going to say, we can't stop this. This is a guy who rents a truck and just drives into a place, and you know where we are.

I mean, look, it's always worth it. Remind people where we are. We're in the shadow of the trade center here. You've got the Joint Terrorism Task Force, you know, on one side. You've got police headquarters on the other. You've got cop presence all over this place all the time. He still was still able to do it, you can't stop it.

JOSEPH GIACALONE, LAW ENFORCEMENT TRAINER: Right. Well, we want to -- you know, we want to be positive, right? We don't want to ever say that, you know, it's a lost cause and we're just going to forget about it. So we still want to come up with new and inventive ways, use physical barriers to try to stop some of these things. Maybe we see -- we find a couple of loopholes now, and a couple of things where, you know what maybe we need to change this around a little bit.

We saw it in Times Square, right, after that -- the guy was drunk and drove into the crowd so -- and then they changed everything then, too. So it's unfortunate that this event has occurred but I think it will actually help with physical security going forward.

CUOMO: But also it gives you part of the reality, and why do I say it that way, Jim? The reason I say it that way is look around us. Right? People live their life anyway.

GAGLIANO: Right.

CUOMO: They don't think they're going to be able to stop things like this. What's changed in our time since 9/11, you know, and again, it means something that it happened here. The symbolism is real, the pain returns quickly for people who were here that day, and the phone calls of what is going on in the west side.

GAGLIANO: Right.

CUOMO: I can't find so and so. My kid goes to that school, so-and-so is on that bike path every day. We remember what that was. That had to go into this guy's calculus. But they wanted the parade last night even though they don't think you can stop everybody with a truck. They're going to work this morning even though they don't think you can stop everybody with a truck.

GAGLIANO: Chris, part of it is personal awareness. And we live now in the modern post 9/11 world, especially in New York, in big cities. There's a thing called "Coopers Colors" in law enforcement which says that the average person walking around who's oblivious is in condition white. You can't. As you move forward, yellow, orange, red, and red is a heightened -- really heightened sense of awareness.

We have to move people from white into the yellow or orange just to be more aware, and as the FBI has been putting out now for the past couple of years in preparation for things like this, if you have an active shooter, or you have a terrorist attack somebody with a vehicle like this, you always have to remember in this order, run is your first thing. Hide if you can't run away. Fight if you must. And the last thing, the most important, Chris, tell.

Last night out here on set-out location, a number of folks came up to us with cell phones, showed us pictures, we directed them to the cops and said hey, make sure law enforcement has those. That's an important piece of the intel.

CUOMO: Asha, when you look at this situation, what are the points of interests for you?

RANGAPPA: The points of interest for me are how these attacks are relating to our broader counterterrorism strategy. Homegrown radicalization, which it looks like this is the case here, is the fastest growing threat in the United States. And by homegrown radicalization, these are people who are already here and deciding to -- affiliating themselves with some sort of ideology to carry these out.

And right now we have under the Trump administration we have a citizen-based travel ban, we're on a third iteration now. It does not include the country that this person was from. We also have, you know, immigration policy that is targeting people who aren't the ones that are necessarily committing these crimes. And so I think there needs to be more study of how are these people coming here, becoming alienated, getting on social media, and finding that this is the way that they are going to fit in -- you know, some sort of group because they are not fitting into American society.

CUOMO: Right.

RANGAPPA: So I think -- and I think the social media piece is very important here, too.

CUOMO: Right. Look, I mean, the good news is this, you've got to talk about this stuff in the moment. Right? We made that mistake in Vegas. Right? There we got to pushed back by the politics. You don't want to talk about the bump stock right now, we don't want to talk about mental health and how we deal with it right now. Let's -- that's disrespectful to the victims.

And we all know what that was about. All right. At least now they're talking about these things because the reaction, Joe, people hear about this, they say it's the Muslims. This guy is a Muslim. They are out to get us. Now that's demonstrably false. Of course you have a radical element and it is Islamic. It's the bastardization of it. It's perverse, it's actually extreme Islamism.

But the distinctions are lost on people. When they hear this, there's a reason that the president goes right to entry into the country. What do you do on that level of how you identify the threat and how you get the American people to perceive what the threat it?

GIACALONE: Well, it's about really getting the guys on the -- the guys and girls on the ground, right? This investigation that the social media aspect of it. But you know what, with all the information that we --