Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

Manhunt Right Now For Two Terror Suspects; I.D. Left In Abandoned Car; Increased Police Presence Activity In Northern France; U.S. Officials Checking High Priority Targets; Checkpoints Set Up Near Paris; Lone Wolf Attacks; Terror Suspects Spotted North Of Paris; French Counterterrorism Officials Lost Track Of Suspect

Aired January 08, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer, 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 7:00 p.m. in Paris. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

We start with a manhunt for the two men accused of carrying out the brazen daylight attack on the French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo." Twelve people were killed, at least four others remain in serious condition. The men are brothers, Cherif and Said Kouachi. A third suspect, an 18-year-old who is believed to be a family member as well, turned himself in.

Meanwhile, police are investigating a robbery at a gas station in northern France. An attendant there reportedly says it was carried out by the "Charlie Hebdo" suspects and that they stole gas and food. Police haven't confirmed that it was, in fact, the brothers, but they have upped the threat level of the region and increased the police presence very visibly.

There was also another shooting in Paris today and it had similar -- eerie similarities to yesterday's killings. A French policewoman was gunned down by a man wearing all black just like the magazine shooters. It all -- it has also been ruled a terror attack by the French police and the French government, but officials say they've found, at least not yet, any direct link to yesterday's attack. They're investigating.

Also, several people have been detained in connection with the two brothers but there are no details on possible links to the actual murders.

The next edition of the magazine, "Charlie Hebdo," will be published next Wednesday on schedule. One of the magazine's writers told a CNN affiliate, and I'm quoting him now, "We can't let them win."

Police got their break on the identity of the suspects after finding an I.D. card in one of the abandoned getaway cars. Let's get some more now on the suspects, the flurry of police activity in northern France. Our Jim Sciutto, he's following the investigation. He's joining us from Paris. Atika Shubert is also joining us from the northern part of France where this gas station is. Atika, what's going on where you are? Update us on the very latest? ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, earlier, I was at that gas

station. That's about 12 kilometers from where I'm standing now. Where I'm at now is off the N2 highway, four kilometers from the village of Longpont. And that is where we have seen the heaviest police presence. You can probably see the flashing signal of a police car there. This is the closest they'll allow us to get.

Now, this is a very rural area, a lot of open fields, but also a heavily forested area. And we have seen, earlier in the day, helicopters circling. We've seen a number of heavily armed police teams actually go down that road towards Longpont. So, it does seem to be the area they are focusing their search. Now, they haven't given us any confirmation as to why they seem to be focused on this area, but it does seem to be where the center of this -- the manhunt is ongoing -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And, right now, these two suspects, let's be clear, they are on the loose. They're at large. The manhunt continuing. But these two guys are still hiding out some place?

SHUBERT: So far as we know. Now, the possibility is that they could be inside that forest. If that is the case, we're talking about an area that's thousands of acres wide. If that -- and it will take a long time for police to comb through it. We haven't seen helicopters at night with spotlights looking through that area yet. But we can assume that police are trying to close the net in on them and hoping that they're not going to escape.

BLITZER: Stand by, Atika. Jim Sciutto is in Paris for us. Jim, I know the French authorities, counterterrorism authorities, intelligence authorities, they are familiar with these brothers. Tell us what we've learned about them.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the sad fact is that these brothers were both known to police and at least one of them had been, in the past, monitored by police. That's the younger brother, Cherif Kouachi. And when you read his rap sheet, it's fairly alarming. Arrested and jailed in 2008 for attempting to recruit fighters to join the fight in Iraq. In 2005, he was stopped at the border attempting to travel to Syria to go on to Iraq himself to join the fight there against the U.S. occupation. That is just one brother.

His other brother, less known to the police, but he was also arrested in 2010 or examined, investigated in 2010, for the possibility of being involved in a jail break. And it is his identification card left behind in a car abandoned by the attackers after the shooting carried out on the street here behind me that helped lead investigators to these two brothers. So, the sad fact is the police did know about them and had one of them, the younger brother, 32-year- old Cherif Kouachi, under surveillance, in the past, but that surveillance had stopped.

BLITZER: And we're going to be learning a lot more about these two suspects in the coming hours. I want all of you to stand by. The Paris terror attack certainly has the United States reevaluating its own high priority targets.

Pamela Brown is joining us now. She's got some new information. What are officials here in the U.S. telling you, Pam?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, in the wake, Wolf, of these terrorist attacks in Paris, the FBI, DHS and intelligence agencies are scrubbing their data bases and evaluating high-priority targets living here in the U.S. These high priority targets include foreign fighters who U.S. officials believe have returned to the U.S. after fighting in Syria. Intelligence officials believe that more than a dozen U.S. citizens have returned to America after fighting in Syria.

So, right now, Wolf, U.S. officials are currently evaluating whether any of these tier one targets in the U.S. have any links to the suspects in Paris. They're also evaluating whether they should take any action against these high-priority targets by contacting them directly. You know, whenever you're investigating someone, you don't want to tip them off that you are investigating them, that they are under surveillance. But in certain cases, the sources we've been speaking with say that you may decide to do an interview with them and give them a head's up that they are on your radar to stop an imminent threat, to let them know you're watching if they are in the midst of doing something.

But I'm told, Wolf, that U.S. law enforcement intelligence officials are awaiting for more information on the subjects in Paris and the two recent terrorist attacks against a police officer today in "Charlie Hebdo" before moving forward with anything -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Thanks very much, Pamela Brown with that update.

Let's get some more now on the search, the suspects, the reaction to this terror attack. Joining us here, our Law Enforcement Analyst Tom Fuentes, a former assistant director of the FBI; and our National Security Analyst Peter Bergen.

Tom, how is it possible, these guys apparently carrying out a sophisticated operation in the abandoned Citroen, the abandoned car. They find the I.D. of one of these two terrorist suspects.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, that's the dilemma here, Wolf. Either they're so stupid that they left an I.D. accidentally in the getaway car, or they're so sophisticated, they wanted to leave a calling card. We did this. Come get us. And maybe they have a bigger gun battle planned for when the police close in on them at another location. You know, during this attack, they only encountered a couple of police officers, killing them, of course, but maybe they want to kill mores officers and have a big blaze of glory type battle.

BLITZER: And in the process, commit suicide? Is that what you're speculating?

FUENTES: Probably. Probably but take more people with them than just the people at this magazine. BLITZER: Does that make sense to you? You studied terrorism, Peter, for a long time.

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, we saw that, effectively, in Boston where they -- you know, one of the -- Tamerlan Tsarnev went out in a blaze of glory, were in a fire fight with the police, and Dzhokhar Tsarnev was severely wounded. And we also saw that in Madrid, Tom and I have talked about this, where after the Madrid attack, which is the largest terrorist attack Europe, 194 people dead, the perpetrators holed themselves up in a house and they blew themselves up when the police came to find them and took more people with them. So, that's certainly a completely plausible --

BLITZER: So, this what is law enforcement in France, they have to worry about this kind of maybe being lured into some place where there could be a lot of bombs or whatever and a whole bunch more police officers get killed in the process.

BERGEN: Sure.

BLITZER: So, I'm sure they're very concerned about that. The whole notion of why these two guys weren't under surveillance, what does that say to you? How they could get around without being watched. They both were clearly identified years earlier as potential terrorists.

FUENTES: That's right. That's the sad fact. And, you know, memo to Congress, memo to the president, no one in the U.S. government, Canadian government or any of these European governments have enough resources to follow everybody that's come up on their radar, as they say. There's thousands. Our tied terrorist watch list in the U.S. has 800,000 people on it. There are not enough police officers.

And I ran FBI surveillance operations in Chicago years ago, and when we were following gangsters, like Kol Santos (ph) members, around, it would take a squad, the entire squad, and all of our pilots to follow one person 24-7. It's just not possible.

BLITZER: Yes, and there's these reports, "USA Today," one of these reports suggesting that maybe they had actually been to Syria or returned recently from Syria. You've seen those reports.

BERGEN: Well, and we're -- I mean, we're confirming that, as Jim Sciutto said, I mean, we -- you know, this guy, Cherif, I mean, he was part of the foreign fighter network that was getting people into Iraq. He was going to go to Syria. So, even if the "USA Today" report isn't true, he was part of the nexus of people that were being recruited by Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is a parent organization, both of ISIS and of the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. So, you know, he's already plugged into that network even if the report that he went to Syria recently isn't being confirmed yet.

BLITZER: All right. I want both of you to stand by. We have more to assess on what's going on. Stay with us.

Also joining us, Congressman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee. He's going to be talking about what he knows. He's been briefed on who these individuals are. Stay with us for that.

Also, are lone wolf attacks a new wave of terror? Is this a lone wolf attack or was this a sophisticated cell coordinated by a terror operation? We're taking a closer look at that. One of the suspected gunmen may be getting help, we've been told, from Al Qaeda. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We're getting new details on the Paris terrorist attack. Our Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto, he's in Paris. He's joining us once again. You're learning more information. What else are you learning, Jim?

SCIUTTO: That's right, Wolf. This gets to the question of how did French police and authorities have at least one of these gunman under surveillance and then lose track of them. I spoke to the former head, a senior official in the French counterterror unit and he explained it this way. He said, in the simplest terms, and I'm quoting him, "There are too many of them. There are too few of us." And then, he went on to give details of what's required for surveillance. He says it's three to 10 agents per individual, 24-7. And, right now, France has some 5,000 suspected Jihadis on their terror list. You do the math there. You're talking very quickly about 10s of thousands of agents who would be occupied. And they just don't have that manpower as the former head of counterterrorism said.

And he said a particular challenge, Wolf, is when they go off radar. When they go silent, which he said happened with Cherif Kouachi. That after 2008, after he served time in prison for attempting to recruit fighters to go to Iraq, he went quiet, became less of a priority. You have other priorities. And then, lo and behold, he comes up, again, with the attack that took place just behind me here. That's the challenge they have. And it really gets to, you know, the bottom line here is that they did have him under surveillance. They lost contact. They lost track of him. But they're saying it's impossible for them to keep track of all the thousands of suspected Jihadis they have here now in France, including a thousand suspected fighters that are now in Syria and Iraq.

BLITZER: Give us a little flavor -- I know you've only been there a few hours. You were here in Washington with us yesterday, Jim. Give us a little flavor of what you've seen in Paris since getting there? How tense is the situation or maybe not so tense?

SCIUTTO: Well, I'll tell you, the moment we landed, we went right up to the area northeast of the city where they believe that these fighters are now holed up around that forest between two small towns just about 45 minutes from here. The police presence was everywhere. Every corner you turned, you saw them. Above our heads, we saw the helicopters flying.

But we also get the sense that while they have a general idea of where they are, they don't have a specific idea because attention will be on one town. We were in one town this morning. Then we moved to another town. Now the focus on that forest area. They have an idea, but they don't know for sure. It's difficult, as U.S. counter terror and police and authorities know, it's difficult to find one or two men in a big country. There are lots of places to hide and that's a challenge they're facing right now.

BLITZER: It certainly is. We're going to get back to you. Jim Sciutto, he's on the ground for us in Paris.

Let's bring back our panel. Also joining us, our senior international correspondent, Nic Robertson, along with our law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes and our national security analyst Peter Bergen.

Nic, you've covered these stories, as have I, for a long time. What's your initial gut instinct tell you. All of a sudden today, a separate terror attack. A guy dressed in all black, his face covered, the same AK-47, goes and kills a policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris. We don't know if it's just coincidental, if it's copycat, or if there's a connection to what happened at the magazine yesterday, but it's worrisome.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is and it's not unusual for one major attack to trigger perhaps not so much you might not call it copycat if you will because they might try to do something different, but an inspirational attack. Somebody who's been sitting there on the fence thinking, listening to this sort of ISIS propaganda, listening to the calls for them to go out and do something, you know, drive a car into a crowd, attack a police station. We've seen several of those in the recent months in France as well. Someone who's been sitting on the fence, they see this in Paris and say, OK, that's it, I've got to do it, I've got to act, I've got to be up there as well and they go out and do it. So intelligence agencies not just in France but across Europe will be ready for that.

This issue that Jim's talking about there of how stretched counterterrorism forces are, in the U.K., for example, just before Christmas, in the months leading up to Christmas, the chief commissioner, police commissioner for the metropolitan police in charge of counterterrorism in London and his deputy both said that they felt that they were short of the number of people that they need to oversee the scale of the terror threat posed by all these people returning. That it's a political issue. That it needs to be addressed.

And this is what terrorism officials in Europe live in fear of and they will be right now -- or live in concern (INAUDIBLE) fear. They've got their plans, they're ready, but they will be concerned about the potential for copycats or inspirational attack, Wolf.

BLITZER: And this is what's so worrisome, Peter Bergen. At least so far, while various terror groups have applauded what happened at the magazine yesterday, I don't think anyone has directly claimed responsibility yet, is that right?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, and that's kind of puzzling because typically you would, you know, you would expect a claim of responsibility, a credible claim, at some point relatively soon. We are only, you know, 24 hours plus away from the actual event. Maybe we will get one. BLITZER: But usually they do it pretty -- fairly quickly, right.

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes.

BLITZER: And they, in the process, release a video of at least one or both of these guys. I assume - and if - we were speculating earlier about maybe these guys want to go out in a blaze of glory, maybe they've already recorded some video that would be released afterwards, is that -- that's what's happened often in the past?

BERGEN: That has definitely happened often in the past. I mean if you think about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, when they failed to blow up Northwest (ph) Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, they came out with a claim of responsibility within about 36 hours. So I mean it's not normally immediate, but it's within a relatively short time frame.

BLITZER: The FBI I'm sure is working very closely, Tom, with the authorities in France, right?

FUENTES: Yes. And I'd like to say that the cooperation with the French authorities and the FBI has been tremendous going back preceding 9/11 when there was an attack plot uncovered in the summer of 2001 to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris. And that plot involved seven al Qaeda -- seven cells of al Qaeda in seven countries in Europe, plus a cell in Dubai, and that plot was thwarted the week of 9/11. Now, it didn't get any publicity here when those guys were arrested because we were covering 9/11 here, which did happen. So that cooperation.

France, I would like to say, was the first country in Europe to provide the FBI with passenger lists of inbound flights before any other country did it. So they have been cooperative with the U.S. government, and in particular with the FBI, the FBI's office in Paris, for more than a decade.

BLITZER: Very close collaboration.

Nic, I know that the video we've seen of what happened at the magazine yesterday is so compelling, but I'm also told there's a whole lot of other closed circuit TV video that authorities are going through right now trying to find some more clues. You're there in Europe. Paris, like London, like other major cities in Europe, they are totally wired, aren't they, with video cameras?

ROBERTSON: Yes. One of the issues, though, with video cameras is, you need people to watch them if you're going to prevent something in real time. The U.K., perhaps, has the highest number of surveillance cameras than any other city, any other country in Europe. But where they do come in, if you don't have enough people watching them to prevent an incident like this, certainly you can use it as -- in a chain of evidence afterwards. This -- the material would be useful in a court case if these people can be brought to court. It's certainly going to be useful in terms of figuring out exactly how they got in the building and some of the details of precisely what they did to try and thwart this sort of attack in the future. In terms of, you know, trying to figure out where they are right now,

closed-circuit television camera footage that may have come from the garage where they apparently robbed it, stealing gas, stealing some food, this sort of thing will, again, provide clues. Has any one of these men been injured? Are they, exhibiting any weakness in any way? You know, these sorts of things will provide useful clues.

But really what the police need to know and intelligence authorities need to know right now is, where are these men and how do they contain them? So the closed circuit footage that would have been gained around the attack is perhaps not going to be too beneficial there, Wolf.

BLITZER: Well, I'm sure they're going through a lot of video. There's probably a ton of video out there.

All right, guys, thanks very much. We're going to get back to all of you.

Just ahead, analysts say the attack in Paris highlights a disturbing shift in terror tactics. We're going to talk about that, why they're worried about predicting, preventing future terror attacks. Stay with us. Much more of the coverage right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We're getting some important new information on the U.S. response to the terror attack in Paris. Let's go to our justice reporter Evan Perez.

What have you just learned, Evan?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Wolf, we're hearing that the attorney general, Eric Holder, is traveling to Paris this Sunday for a ministerial level meeting that's going to be discussing not only this terror attack in Paris, but also the greater problem, the larger problem, of foreign fighters and how to deal with them, Wolf.

This is something that has been at the top of the agenda for Attorney General Eric Holder. He's gone to Paris. He's done meetings with European counterparts in the last few months. He's hosted them in Washington, again, in the last couple months.

And the big thing is, the Europeans have a lot of concerns about privacy, Wolf. And as you know, that's always one of the reasons why they don't share as much information as the U.S. would like them to do. Now we're going to see perhaps at this meeting on Sunday if some of that attitude changes in light of what has happened here because we do know that a couple of these -- well these two suspects were under some type of surveillance by the French authorities. The U.S. was aware of this. But the question is, whether more could have been done, maybe more could have been shared to try to prevent any of this from happening.

Wolf, you know, we know that after the attacks on the Canadian parliament in Ottawa a few months ago, the Canadians also changed some of their reluctance on sharing information with the United States again over the same privacy concern, right, because this is something that repeatedly gets raised on how to deal with this foreign fighter problem.

BLITZER: Evan Perez reporting the news that the attorney general of the United States will be heading to Paris this weekend for high-level meetings over there.

Thanks, Evan.

French authorities have extended their highest alert level to northern France right now in this massive manhunt underway for these two terror suspects. Earlier, authorities cordoned off a gas station in search of the two brothers. They've -- they're wanted in the massacre that killed 12 people at a French satire magazine, "Charlie Hebdo." An attendant reportedly says the suspects stole food and gas from the station.

For more on the manhunt, the attack, the suspects, let's bring in our CNN military analyst, the retired U.S. Army lieutenant, General Mark Hertling.

There are concerns, general, as you know, that the attack in Paris is part of a new phase in this war on terror. Shift away from maybe the really spectacular 9/11 type attacks, but clearly more significant than a lone wolf kind of attack. What are your thoughts?

LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Wolf, I think any time we deal with a terrorist organization, we're dealing -- especially with what we've seen over the last 10 years or so, a very adaptive organization. We have, I think, over the last 10 to 12 years, actually defeated the corporate structure of al Qaeda, but that doesn't mean we've destroyed al Qaeda at large. There is the possibility of these attacks continuing in the future. The large-scale attacks like we saw in 9/11, that's a little bit tougher. But I think as we see the combination of lone wolf attacks, which don't fall under the strategy sometimes of what al Qaeda wants to do, versus something like this, which is apparent they wanted to take down the offices of "Charlie Hebdo," there's a mix and match bag here of what you can do from the standpoint of the enemy to reach your strategy. And that's what we're seeing.

BLITZER: These kind of attacks, the ones that we saw yesterday in Paris, they're very, very difficult to predict and very difficult to prevent, right?

HERTLING: It is. And we're seeing all the results of that right now. As Tom said a minute ago, 800,000 potential attackers in the United States, how do you watch all of them? You have to wait to see which ones bubble up to the top. In this case, as you also reported, one of the attackers was on the radar screen and then fell off. What do you do about that? You can't watch everybody all the time, so you have to take the most extreme threat and make sure you're covering that. That doesn't account for everyone. So the predictability of these kind of attacks is extremely difficult. BLITZER: What was the number you just said about how many people are

out there potentially capable of committing a terror attack in the United States?

HERTLING: Well, I think - I heard Tom say 800,000, and that's from FBI files. I'm not familiar with that. It was a shocking number to me, but I know there's quite a few of them that people are watching for criminal activity, terrorist attacks, some type of crime. So all of those things stress law enforcement incredibly and it's just tough to watch these kind of operations.