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THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER

Manhunt Underway For Paris Terror Suspects; France To United States: Suspect Trained With Al Qaeda In Yemen; FBI: Blast Near NAACP Could Be Domestic Terror; World Mourns Victims In Terror Attack

Aired January 8, 2015 - 16:30   ET

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


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JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. You're looking live at images from outside the offices of the French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" where that brutal terrorist attack took place yesterday.

We are staying with our World Lead right now in Paris where police could be closing in on the suspects behind that massacre. The focus of the search right now appears to be a rural area on the northern French countryside. It's a heavily wooded part of the country and under the cover of night and even during the day it could prove to be a good place to hide.

CNN "NEW DAY" host, Chris Cuomo, is live near the scene of yesterday's terrorist attack. He has all the latest on the search. Chris, good to see you, my friend. What have you learned about how these men, these alleged terrorists, may have ended up in the woods?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": It's good to hear from you, Jake. We do have some new information for you. According to sources close to the investigation, the French authorities did have the men in a car in their sights from the air in helicopters.

They believe that the men were aware of the surveillance closing in and that they took to the woods on foot. That's the latest information that we have.

We also have reporting, Jake, that they did a very thorough search of these woods north of Paris and that they have finished searching those woods. The question becomes if they're done searching the woods where are the men.

That is where the trail ends right now. But there are some 88,000 men and women working on this manhunt from the intelligence to the ground applications and certainly all forces are heading to the direction of the area surrounding those woods -- Jake.

TAPPER: Chris, you've also learned more about the attack. Apparently, it wasn't just about taking on this one western target.

CUOMO: Yes, it's interesting. Hearing from some intelligence sources here in France and on the U.S. side, they said this was an obvious assault because some of these cartoonists had been on a wanted list for lack of a better expression, and obviously the killers make their intentions clear with their massacre yesterday.

However, the purpose of something like this goes beyond the intended targets. There's an assumption that Islam is at war only inasmuch as there is an extremist faction, but the extremist faction is at war with other Muslims as well, say these intelligence officials.

What they want with an attack like this is to drive the west away from Islam in general, even away from moderates, and by doing that it will feed the extremist narrative, which as you well know, Jake, is the west is against us.

So that French intelligence officials, U.S. intelligence officials are very keen to make sure that the response to this is limited to the extremist factions of belief, not about Islam, not about Muslims, some 1.2 billion people in this world, but just this small group that is bastardizing faith and has a perverse sense of what it is to be Muslim.

TAPPER: Chris Cuomo, fascinating, thank you so much live from Paris. If these gunmen are hiding out in the woods, what will it take for investigators to track them down?

I'm joined now by a former FBI counterterrorism agent, Tim Clemente, who was part of the hunt for domestic terrorist, Eric Rudolph. Rudolph was caught while trying to hide in the woods of North Carolina after his rampage, his violence.

Tim, thanks for being here. The fact that these two seemed to be in the wood, at first blush that seems like horrible news, that's a good place to hide, but it could go either way.

TIM CLEMENTE, FORMER FBI COUNTERTERRORISM AGENT: It certainly could go either way. Sometimes it's easier to find people when they are in a remote environment because, first of all, they won't be mixing with a lot of other people.

So any human being you see moving in there could be these suspects. I'm sure thermal imaging is playing a big part right now. They have helicopters in the air. So they are going to be looking forward with fleer, which will tell them heat signatures of of human beings or large animals.

And then they would concentrate on those areas to see if those suspects are in fact in that area. Thing that gets difficult is if they know the terrain better than we do like in the case of Eric Rudolph, it's not that easy for us.

Because he knew where to hide, he knew caves that he could hide, and he knew where the thickest brush was. He can move through. If these individuals aren't that familiar with the terrain, it would be to the searchers' advantage.

TAPPER: In addition to thermal imaging, helicopters going over, looking for body heat, what else can police do? What are they likely doing trying to catch these two? CLEMENTE: The other thing they're likely going to use is human scent dogs. You'll have dogs primarily bloodhounds are the best ones at that. They have the best sense of smell, the most distinct sense of smell. The human scent cannot be masked.

No matter what they're wearing and what they're doing. These are people that are in a condition of stress. The more stress a human being is under, the more the pheromones, the scent hormones are secreted by the body and these dogs will pick up on that.

Physical evidence in and of itself, broken twigs, footsteps in the dirt or in the snow, there's possibly snow on the ground in a rural area outside Paris so that's helpful. Those kind of physical evidences are things they'll be collecting and looking at very, very closely and trying to literally track them using human tracking techniques.

TAPPER: A lot of counterterrorism officials looking at the videotape of the attack yesterday said these looked like people who were trained, it was a very efficient attack, obviously not to praise it, but they did it with ruthless efficiency. What about the getaway? Was that also for want of a better word as professional as the attack itself?

CLEMENTE: I don't think so. I think the getaway probably was not as well planned out or thought out as the attack itself might have been. The fact that they had the car sitting out front ready to go, that shows they were planning to leave.

But their method of egress, having to carjack another car, obviously there were interruptions in that plan. I don't know if they had accomplices that maybe didn't show up and were supposed to do additional things for them.

It's kind of strange to me that they would get into a two-door car and one would take the driver's seat. I would have thought it would have been better planned out and save a lot of time if you had a third man waiting behind a wheel and the other two just climbed in and they took off.

So there was a little bit of a delay in getting out of there because the one guy went over to execute the police officer pleading for mercy, and then got in the driver's seat. That shows they hadn't thought that out completely.

TAPPER: What about stopping at the gas station where allegedly they stole gas and stole other supplies, but left the guy -- I'm glad he's alive, but they left him behind.

CLEMENTE: Leaving the witness. They may have been in a great hurry, didn't want to cause more bloodshed, which would leave shell cases behind and other physical evidence. They have a witness more of a tie to them exactly.

The reason I think they did that robbery is because, again, they didn't have that fore thought and planning. They did not have rations. They did not have an end game as far as where they were going to go. I think their plan was just to get out of Paris.

Maybe they had an intention to go somewhere, but a roadblock kept them from going in that direction or other police activity. Obviously they didn't have if you have of a support mechanism to carry this out all the way unless their intention was at some point in time to end up in a barrage of bullets with the police.

TAPPER: So you think they may have expected that they were going to die and maybe were even surprised that they survived.

CLEMENTE: That they got that far.

TAPPER: That's fascinating. All right, Tim Clemente, thank you so much, really appreciate it. One of the most important details both French and U.S. officials have been trying to pin down since this attack, did either of the suspected gunmen travel or train with a known terrorist group?

We have some breaking information coming into CNN right now on the travel history of one of the suspects and we will bring that to you next.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. We some breaking news on our World Lead, CNN is learning that one of these brothers wanted by French police for the terrorist shooting and killing of 12 people in Paris yesterday previously traveled to a hotbed of terrorist activity.

CNN's Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, is here with all the details. Barbara, what can you tell us?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Jake, two U.S. officials now tell me that French authorities have passed along intelligence to the United States that Said Kouachi, one of the brothers, in 2011 travel to Yemen, received weapons training there. That is a big concern.

Now, the picture's a little murky from this standpoint. The French justice minister said one of the brothers who she would not name traveled to Yemen in 2005. What U.S. officials are saying today is that the French have told them it was Said Kouachi.

He went to Yemen in 2011. Why is this so critical? Of course, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Yemen, a hotbed of terrorism, a top target of the United States because that organization has vowed to attack the U.S. It also has listed the "Charlie Hebdo" magazine as a top target.

They have wanted to attack that magazine. They have wanted to kill the editorial director who sadly was killed in the attack yesterday. If in fact one of the brothers received weapons training there, a big concern.

The open question officials tell me is now was al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda in Yemen? Did they inspire the attack or did they directly attack? Did they order the attack? Because of course the U.S. has long believed that that group did order the failed 2009 Christmas day underwear bomber attack in the United States.

So this is a big concern. The 2011 an interesting year for al Qaeda in Yemen, that was the year in September 2011 that the U.S. killed the leader of external leader of operations, the American-born cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, he was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2011.

So you see a pattern coming together here. It's still an open question. Our own Nick Paton Walsh being told one of the brothers likely traveled to Syria, possibly on to Iraq.

They're trying to piece together all of this international travel, trying to determine which terrorist groups the brothers may have been affiliated with, where they were inspired to carry out this attack.

But, again, what we know now is that the French government telling U.S. authorities that one of the brothers traveled to Yemen in 2011.

TAPPER: If it was AQAP, as you mentioned, they not only were involved allegedly with the failed underwear bomber, but Anwar Al-Awlaki had been in contact with Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood terrorist shooting there, the attempted bomb to be put in a printer cartridge in a printer that was going to be sent to Chicago, I believe. There's a lot of history of AQAP trying to attack the homeland in the United States here possibly, possibly trying to attack France.

STARR: Well, there is. And AQAP was well also in advance of ISIS in taking advantage of social media. They have long published online a very, very terrorist-oriented publication called "Inspire" magazine.

And terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers responsible for the Boston bombing are said to have looked at that magazine to determine how they made their pressure cooker bomb. This is a magazine that has been online available to jihadist with very detailed information about bomb making, about targets to attack.

Again it has also called for this French magazine to be in its crosshairs. So one of the brothers went to Yemen as the U.S. believes now, got weapons training there, not just on how to handle an AK-47, but possibly even bomb making training.

This is a big concern. This means AQAP still very active, whether they inspired or directed the attack. It's a critical question, but U.S. officials are telling me is increasingly -- they're looking at a mix of motivations, a mix of groups of different affiliations.

In today's world, these terrorist attacks may no longer fall into those easy labels that we've all come to understand. We may need to be starting to think of them very differently -- Jake.

TAPPER: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon with that breaking news, thank you so much.

Bernard Henri Levy, a best-selling author has contributed to "Charlie Hebdo," he joins us live from Paris. Thank you so much for talking to us. No rational person obviously would attempt to justify the murders. What's your response, though, to those who argue that the magazine's depictions of Islam were not just satire, they were racist? How do you respond to that?

BERNARD HENRI LEVY, FRENCH PHILOSOPHER AND AUTHOR: I respond that it is just obscene, that it is just unbearable. These gentlemen, these young guys were great guys, great journalists, and great cartoonists. They were doing a great job. They were continuing the work of Voltaire, of the enlightenment.

If it is true that we are facing a war, the results of this war, they were those of the new war against terror. So any way of insulting their memory is just indecent and obscene. They did their job and you cannot kill 12 people or ten people plus two brave policemen because they're doing some cartoons.

And even if these cartoons do not please these or those, they have to understand that in democracy, there is an absolute right to laugh at a religion, to laugh a decree, any belief. We have the right -- yes.

TAPPER: I just want to ask the magazine has vowed to publish again, speaking of that right. And you stand by that decision? Are you going to contribute?

LEVY: I am happy that the magazine continues. I am very proud to see that the survivors because they are the survivors of a great team, have still the heart to pursue the adventure and to honor the memory of their comrades. And of course if I can help in any way, I will definitely do it. Yes.

TAPPER: Bernard Henri Levy, thank you so much and our condolences on the loss of your friends.

LEVY: Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up, 12 people lost their lives in the Paris attack yesterday. Today, they're being remembered for their talent, for their passion. We'll look back on lives of the victims coming up.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to "THE LEAD." I'm Jake Tapper. In our National Lead, an act of possible domestic terrorism right here in the U.S. Investigators in Colorado are trying to determine whether an explosion outside the NAACP Headquarters in Colorado Springs Tuesday was, in fact, a hate crime.

No one was injured. The building sustained little damage, but an un-ignited gas can was found nearby. The FBI says they're looking at all possible motives. CNN justice reporter, Evan Perez joins us with the latest. Evan,

at this point, do authorities know if the explosion was specifically targeting the NAACP Building?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Jake, they don't know that exactly. They know this was intentional and because of where it was placed. This was as you mentioned an explosive that was placed next to a gas can, a gas canister.

The gas canister did not go off. It could have been a lot worse. There was only minimal damage to building, but it was placed between the NAACP office and an African-American hair salon, a well-known one at that.

So the question is whether the person who did this was targeting the NAACP office or patrons of this well-known hair salon there, well- known in that area. That's the question.

So as you mentioned the Colorado Springs police, the FBI, the ATF are all investigating this case. They're trying to determine whether this was a domestic terrorism incident or a hate crime.

TAPPER: Any information on the potential suspect or person of interest? I understand the person is still wanted.

PEREZ: Yes, exactly. The only thing they have to go on, Jake, is what an eyewitness said that they saw, a person leaving the scene, a white male, 40 years of age, thereabouts, balding, driving a 2000 or older model dirty white pickup truck.

Now that's a lot of people in the Colorado area, obviously, who might fit that description. So they're asking for tips to come into the FBI as soon as they can because obviously this is something that's very worrisome in that area.

TAPPER: Yes, 40-year-old white guy in a pickup truck doesn't exactly narrow it down in Colorado. Evan Perez, thank you so much.

I want to turn back to our breaking news now, the ongoing manhunt in France. Twelve innocent people murdered in Wednesday's terrorist massacre at "Charlie Hebdo's" headquarters, the deadliest terrorist attack in France since 1961.

To honor those victims, the Eiffel Tower, an iconic symbol of France's strength and resolve, went dark today as the search for those responsible continues. It's important for us to focus also on the lives lost and the loved ones left behind.

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TAPPER (voice-over): Their names were scrolled, small in the corners of "Charlie Hebdo's" outrageous even offensive covers, but their images made them giants of satire in the European cartooning world, penning reputations for defiance and provocation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): These men, these women died for idea of which they had of France. That is to say freedom.

TAPPER: Twelve people slaughtered in a terrorist attack on "Charlie Hebdo's" staff including some of France's most prominent cartoonists. In response, thousands raised their own pens, inking memorials to the fallen.

Stephane Charbonnier went by Charb. The editor was unafraid to mark his name on the magazine's most controversial comments.

STEPHANE CHARBONNIER: Without freedom of speech, we are dead.

TAPPER: In 2012, he explained his passion for expression to ABC News.

CHARBONNIER: I prefer to die than live like a rat.

TAPPER: His colleague, Jean Cabut, was the magazine's lead cartoonist and one of its original founders. Along with Cabut, fellow founder Georges Wolinski was killed when gunmen reportedly called out the cartoonist by name.

Wolinski had been drawing professionally since the 1960s and briefly held post of "Charlie Hebdo" editor-in-chief. Social media now flooded with honors for the fallen cartoonists perhaps none more wrenching than this Instagram photo of an empty art table posted by Wolinski's daughter, Elsa.

"Dad is gone, not Wolinski," she wrote. But for many these artists are not gone, their work continues their message.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We will go on and we will make an exhibition in the city hall with all the most famous news cover they made in the past so we will keep on fighting.

TAPPER: Also killed Wednesday, Police Officer Ahmed Maribae (ph), a French Muslim, and also Chab's bodyguard, Frank Brasoloro (ph), their comrades now marking the loss with black lines across their badges.

BERNARD CAZENEUVE, FRENCH INTERIOR MINISTER (through translator): Their sacrifice should remind us of the daily heroism.

TAPPER: They died defending freedoms and liberties like the liberty symbolized in this gift to the United States from our brothers and sisters in France.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: The 12 dead, a loss we're all feeling today. There are also 11 others who were wounded in this attack, four are in serious condition. They are fighting for their lives. We are all thinking and praying for them.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter @jaketapper and also @theleadCNN. That's it for THE LEAD today. I'm Jake Tapper. I turn you now over to Wolf Blitzer who is next door in "THE SITUATION ROOM" -- Mr. Blitzer.