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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Canada Defiant After Deadly Terror Attack; New Details of Ottawa Gunman; Army Reservist Killed Was Father, Dog Rescuer; Dogs Subdue White House Fence Jumper; FBI Instructs Field Offices to Be Vigilant

Aired October 23, 2014 - 11:00   ET

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


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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm John Berman. Michaela Pereira is off today.

This morning, grief and defiance in Ottawa. The proud capital of a proud country now facing questions about how a lone gunman came so very close to its leaders, and whether there is something bigger at work with possible connections to radical Islam.

There are questions in the United States as well about possible new threats to American security. But before these questions, a remarkable moment to recognize a hero.

This morning, members of parliament honored the men -- you can see him right here -- Kevin Vickers, credited with ending yesterday's deadly rampage that unfolded in the very heart of Canada's parliament.

(APPLAUSE)

A proud, proud man brought to the brink of tears, Kevin Vickers after decades in law enforcement, now the chamber's sergeant-at-arms. He carried the ceremonial golden mace, a symbol of authority. The parliament there returned to work.

It was Vickers who fired the fatal shot that brought down Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. Police say he was killed inside parliament after fleeing Canada's war memorial.

That is where the man the prime minister is calling a terrorist shot dead a 24-year-old father and army reservist, Corporal Nathan Cirillo. He died standing guard before the tomb of Canada's unknown soldier.

Earlier this morning, Prime Minister Stephen Harper laid flowers at that site. And from there, he went to parliament where he insisted that Canada will not be intimidated by an enemy that, as he puts it, "enslaves women, tortures children, and kills anyone who opposes its radical ideology."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN HARPER, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: We'll vigilant, but will not run scared. We will be prudent, but we will not panic.

And as for the business of government, well, here we are in our seats, in our chamber, in the very heart of our democracy, and our work goes on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Quite a moment in Ottawa this morning.

CNN, all over this story with reporters in Ottawa, also on Capitol Hill, and at the White House, I want to go straight away to national correspondent Deborah Feyerick who is in Ottawa.

Deb, you've been working your sources about the shooter, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. He is a man who Prime Minister Stephen Harper in no uncertain terms called a terrorist and said they are now investigating whether there are other suspects as well.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, there's no question about that. They are going through his background very, very carefully.

They're very interested in finding out who he was in contact with, whether he was radicalized online, whether this is what's called "sudden jihad syndrome," where all of a sudden he decided he was going to do something.

We do know that his passport was confiscated because he had shown authorities that he wanted to go overseas to fight, join the terrorists, join jihad. However, they flagged that passport and so he was unable to leave. So whether that turned him to do this act, to commit this act, they're looking at that very closely as well.

He's 32 years old. His name is Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. He also went by Michael Joseph Hall. But he was also going by the name Abdullah as well. So clearly sort of this metamorphosis of this man going through these various personality iterations.

One thing that's clear is that he was designated a high-risk traveler, and therefore, he was being monitored by Canadian authorities. And, John, I spoke to a number of lawmakers today, this morning, and they said, look, all of that is going to have to be under review.

They've got to look at whether it's enough to confiscate a passport, enough to keep somebody under surveillance, whether there needs to be a change in policy, whereby, if somebody is considered a threat, more needs to be done, maybe even in the form of an intervention. So all of that is under review.

The parliament building there just behind me, they're meeting there. You can see a soldier's presence there because there is a clear statement that Canada is not backing down.

This was an act of a lone individual who decided to commit this atrocity, but the lawmakers are firm, the law enforcement is firm, soldiers, the troops, all of them remain in place. Nothing has changed.

And, John, I just want to take you back. You can see this is the national War Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier that you referred to, and a steady stream of people have been coming to pay their respects, to give honor to this young corporal who lost his life.

Canada is in mourning, but Canada is really strong and they're making it very clear don't mess with us, John.

BERMAN: You're seeing the hash tag all over the Internet right now, #Ottawa Strong, Deb, and I think that really does ring true.

Talk to me about the environment in Canada over the last several days and weeks. There has been a heightened concern over terror chatter. And just Monday there was an attack where a man who is believed to have been radicalized ran down a soldier in a car.

FEYERICK: That's exactly right. On Friday, Canada raised the threat level from low to medium. And really what that means is there was an increased vigilance, that perhaps something like this could happen.

ISIS had put out a statement calling on these people who are jihad- oriented to basically do these lone wolf attacks. Those are the ones that kind of undermine a situation because obviously you can't really plan for them. You don't know when they're coming. People may or may not be on the radar. And the element of surprise is crucial.

But, also, on Monday, another man, Muslim convert, he was radicalized online. He, too, had wanted to go overseas in order to fight and join the terrorists, fight jihad. He used his -- his passport was confiscated.

He used his car as a weapon to run down two soldiers. One of them died; one was injured. The reason this got so much attention is because of the spectacular way it played out at the end.

And, look, nobody is backing down, but you can bet, John, that ISIS and other terrorist groups are going to be using this again as part of their propaganda to try and recruit people who are simply predisposed to committing these kinds of atrocities, John.

BERMAN: Was there a connection between the incident Wednesday and the one Monday? Is there a connection between the shooting in the capital and Islamic radicals? We don't know yet. That is what is being investigated.

Deborah Feyerick in Ottawa for us, thank you so much.

What we do know is it was a tragedy and there was a victim, a young army corporal murdered who is now being remembered as a strong man and a kind man, a loving father who leaves behind a little boy who just started kindergarten.

Nathan Cirillo was an honor guard on duty at Ottawa's National War Memorial when he was shot. The 24-year-old died shortly after the attack despite frantic efforts to revive him.

He was a personal trainer, a bouncer. He rescued dogs in his free time. Supposed to be a wonderful, wonderful guy. Friends say his smile would just light up a room.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARISSA PERRON, VICTIM'S FRIEND: I just didn't want to believe it. He was such an amazing person, amazing father, amazing friend. He rescued dogs. He was just an awesome person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: A tragic unnecessary loss.

Cirillo was holding a rifle at the time he was shot, as all honor guards do, but these rifles are not loaded. They are ceremonial.

Also today, as we've been talking about, the shootout could have been much, much worse. Remember, legislators -- that country's leaders -- were meeting nearby. It would have been much worse, perhaps, if not for the actions of that one man we just showed you just minutes ago, Kevin Vickers, the sergeant-at-arms of Canada's House of Commons.

He led a procession into the parliament chambers this morning. He is a hero after what he did in that shooting, after he took down the lone gunman. Colonel Vickers is 58 years old. He has been in law enforcement for a long, long time. He spent 29 years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police where he rose to rank of chief superintendent.

Vickers's brother spoke to Anderson Cooper about the family's reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN VICKERS, SERGEANT-AT-ARMS KEVIN VICKERS' BROTHER: Well, you know, from a family perspective, there's just a lot of concern to hear that gunfire and then hear my brother's name mentioned over and over again.

Certainly was just real concerned about his well-being. And as the day progressed, it was an extraordinary relief to know that he was OK and at the same time very, very proud of what he had to do today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: An entire nation is proud of him right now.

We are told, despite Kevin Vickers' lengthy law enforcement career, yesterday was the first time he ever exchanged gunfire with anyone.

And just hours after all that chaos in Ottawa began, there was a new security breach in Washington at the White House. An unarmed man jumped the fence there. This time, he barely made it into the north lawn before he was taken down by two police dogs.

The father of Dominic Adesanya says his son is paranoid, hears voices. The 23-year-old man faces charges that include making threats and assaulting the dogs, the K-9 troops that took him down. He suffered bites to his arms, his back, his chest, and knee.

The incident marked the second time in the past month that someone scaled the fence. We should tell you those dogs did go to the vet. They are both back on duty.

Nine minutes after the hour for us right now, we're going to talk terrorism. The attack in Canada has the United States now on heightened alert. We will speak about new concerns in the United States over lone-wolf attacks.

Plus, trapped in a room while a murder runs the halls, what was it like to be inside that building while the Ottawa shooter tried to kill? We will speak to a member of parliament.

And teen girls play hooky from school and try to join ISIS. So how far did they get, and what can be done to stop the next group of kids with similar ideas? That's all ahead, @THISHOUR.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF CHARLES CORDELEAU, OTTAWA POLICE: You're going to see in Ottawa an increased presence from police officers and other safety partners. And that's the -- I think that's reality within the next little while.

When you have that lone-wolf individual, it's a challenge to be able to identify and predict, but the best we can do is to continue to work with our partners at the RCP (inaudible) to identify those potential threats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So the shooting in Ottawa just 60 miles from the U.S. border follows a hit-and-run attack on Canadian soldiers just 40 miles north of the New York line, that attack by a Muslim that authorities say was radicalized.

Both these attacks have raised concerns, serious security concerns, in the United States, the FBI alerting its field offices nationwide to stay vigilant.

Want to speak with this with our chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto. Jim, thanks so much for being with us.

Now, we still don't know the motive of what went on in Ottawa, but even before this attack, your sources were telling you about fears of people self-radicalizing, fears of lone-wolf attacks.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question, John, in many ways, the number one fear.

I spoke with the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matt Olsen, on Tuesday, and I asked him what he thought were the most severe threats. He said that the most likely threat in his view to U.S. soil was lone-wolf attacks.

And one of the reasons for that is the point that the RCMP police chief when he was speaking to Chris Cuomo at the start of the segment, saying it's the "lone" part that's difficult. Typically, they work in small groups.

It may be only that individual who knows what he's intending to do. So that cuts off all the ways that counterterror officials and intelligence normally predict, and can prevent an attack. Whether it be communication, say, with some operational leader in Pakistan or in Syria or Iraq, or other kinds of preparation. So -- or entering, say, the country, someone who was on a terror watch list. If you're acting alone, and you're already in that country, you cut off two of the principle ways that you're tracked and prevented from carrying out attacks like this.

BERMAN: What is interesting, though, in this case, Jim, clearly they had their eye on him. They had, essentially, frozen his passport, which would prohibit him from leaving the country. We do know that this man, before his passport was frozen, had been to the United States, four times. The most recent in 2013. What are U.S. authorities now doing to track his movements and possible contacts here, if any?

SCIUTTO: They're doing a couple things. One, his physical movements, but also his communications. The U.S., in conjunction with Canadian intelligence, looking at who he emailed, where he was on the Internet, which phone calls he made to try to expand that web. When anything like this happens, they want to see if you're connected to anybody else that they know about, and that will get to motive, was he speaking to other Islamic extremists, etc., but also, connected to people that they don't know about so that they can further track down others who might be thinking of doing the same thing. I asked Matt Olson, again, the former NCTC director, on Tuesday, the level of his concern with both the southern and northern border of the U.S., and he said, listen, it's something they watch, but it's not something that they have great nervousness about.

You know, John, that there's been a lot of talk in the political sphere here about the southern border, threat of ISIS criminals coming across, even infected with Ebola. I mean, you've heard all of those stories. He said they have no particular intelligence about a threat coming across the southern border. And I asked him about the northern border, as well. And he said, you know, watching it, but not a particular area of concern. You have to think and believe that two attacks like this raise that concern.

But I'll tell you, John, they already have that concern about potential attackers here in the U.S. In other words, you don't need them to come across the border because they're concerned that you might have lone wolves operating here or thinking about carrying out attacks in the U.S. already.

BERMAN: The fact is, Jim, and I think sometimes we forget this too easily, we already have had lone wolf type attacks in the United States. The Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev's, in a sense, they were lone wolves. Nidal Hasan of Ft. Hood, in a sense, he was a lone wolf. Yes, he had contact, it seems, with Yemen, but these are people acting alone in the United States. We know it has happened, so we know that it can happen.

SCIUTTO: No question. Absolutely. And there was even this killing, this beheading in Oklahoma City, just a couple of weeks ago - a few weeks ago, it hasn't been called, in so many words, a terror attack, but that killer, he had posted, for instance, ISIS black flags on social media, et cetera. So there is some nexus there. Investigators haven't established a hard connection., but you do have signs like that.

The difficulty here, John, is it's sadly, easy to do. You just need one person with one gun or one Internet recipe for a bomb, like the Tsarnaev brothers with the Boston bombing. And particularly, if they're not communicating with many people or making themselves visible, it's easy to do this without being caught. And that's why intelligence officials here in the U.S. are concerned.

BERMAN: So, we're going to talk about how, even with those difficulties, what can you do, coming up. Jim Sciutto, thank you so much for being with us. I appreciate it.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BERMAN: So ahead for us, how could a guy who was such a threat that his passport was frozen, how could he still get so close to the Canadian Prime Minister? Tell us what you think about that. Tweet us @THISHOUR.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARPER: Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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MICHEL JUNEAU-KATSUYA, FORMER CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: ISIS is sending its jihad, it's international jihad, to attack with all the means that they have. A matter of fact, a month ago you will recall, there was a video threat that was sent worldwide and they were saying, take a rock and bash their head, take a knife and stab them, take your car and run them over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Take your car and run them over. Indeed, that did seem to happen Monday near Montreal when a Canadian soldier was attacked in a hit and run. The driver had been watched for his possible terror connections. You know, it's also reminiscent of an attack last year on another close U.S. ally when two Islamic militants mowed down a British soldier in a London street and stabbed him to death. @THISHOUR, British authorities are reviewing security measures in

central London as a response to the attacks in Canada. The Prime Minister is telling the public to maintain permanent vigilance.

We want to bring in our Terrorism Analyst, Paul Cruickshank, we also have our Law Enforcement Analyst, Tom Fuentes. And gentlemen, I want to bring up a new picture we have in of the shooter, of this murderer, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau. This is the man who killed Nathan Cirillo yesterday and went into the Canadian Parliament, firing before he was shot down. He is now dead. This is a photo of that man. Was he an angry, disturbed guy with a gun? Was he radicalized? We simply don't know.

But Tom, this fear over lone wolves, it is a fear because of what they can accomplish. And the big question is, can they be stopped?

TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well John, you know, we're always shocked and astounded when a lone wolf case comes up. Two years ago, the Heritage Foundation here in Washington issued a report citing 50 cases of homegrown terrorists that were stopped in the U.S. alone since 9/11. Every time one of these cases come up, everybody is shocked and outraged and acts surprised..

2006, the Toronto 18 case, a suburban resident of Toronto from Mishawaka, starts up this group, learns how to make bombs, practices, learns it well. He's in the process of purchasing three metric tons to use in Toronto, which would have been triple the amount used by McVeigh in Oklahoma City, and part of that plot was to kidnap and behead the Prime Minister of Canada. That was 2006, these guys are in jail now for that plot.

BERMAN: You bring up a great point, Tom and Paul, I want to bring you here in because, you know, I have friends here in the United States and I have Canadian friends now voicing this notion, this is Canada, this doesn't happen here. I know journalists that used to try to travel on Canadian passports because Canadians were looked at as different than Americans, they were not seen as targets for terrorism. But there are now concerns in Canada, serious concerns.

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Well, there have been concerns for quite some time. Over the last decade, there have been a string of terrorist plots in Canada, notably this Toronto 18 case in 2006 where they planned to storm the Canadian Parliament and behead politicians. There's a significant degree of radicalization. In Canada, there are about 30 Canadians believed to be in Syria and Iraq, fighting with jihadist groups. There are about 90 Canadians on other jihadist fronts. Overseas, about 80 Canadians back in Canada who have been fighting on other jihadist fronts overseas. They're monitoring about 90 right now, so the numbers are high. There's a lot of concern in Canada. I don't think this should be a surprise to anybody.

BERMAN: There have been direct pleas for recruitment by ISIS. Two people in Canada, as well. And Tom, law enforcement here. I want to get back to another issue that has been raised. This man, who we're looking at still, this killer, he had his passport frozen because he was deemed such a threat to travel. The idea that he would get on a plane, was deemed such a threat to the Canadian National Security, his passport was frozen, yet he got so close to the Prime Minister and legislators in Canada with a gun. So, is there some kind of breakdown there?

FUENTES: I think so. I mean, even in Canada they increased their threat alert level just a week ago, based on what they were hearing and intelligence they were gathering, and monitoring characters like this guy, and yet, here is somebody that manages to get through the door of Parliament and into the building before he's shot dead. You know, and we were astounded. We were astounded last month in Washington when somebody managed to run through the front door of the White House and have to be tackled in the East Room of the White House. So, you know, apparently all of these alerts just don't quite get down to the ground level where you actually have the security guards at the door guarding these facilities.

BERMAN: Paul, in your mind, new border concerns for the United States, the northern border this time?

CRUICKSHANK: Well, there are obviously a lot of concerns, concerns that somebody already in the United States, an American citizen -

BERMAN: That's true, we don't need them to come from Canada, do we?

CRUICKSHANK: -- lone wolf attacks. There have been concerns over the years about the border. Back in 1999, you had an arrest of an al- Qaeda operative, Ahmed Ressam, who was planning to bomb LAX airport. More recently in 2013, a jihadist plot from Canada, which was aiming to derail a train moving from Toronto to New York. So there have been concerns. But as you say, these people could already be in the United States, could be inspired by ISIS's message, which is to launch lone wolf attacks in the United States.

BERMAN: Which is why law enforcement everywhere in the country now is vigilant and will remain so. Paul Cruickshank, Tom Fuentes, thank you so much for being with us.

Ahead for us @THISHOUR, grief and defiance this morning as the Parliament in Canada meets to face the reality there of homegrown terror. Up next, we're going to go live to Ottawa for the latest on the investigation and the aftermath.

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