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Belgium Plot Disrupted; Anti-Terror Sweeps; Capitol Plot Attack

Aired January 16, 2015 - 14:00   ET

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


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Wolf Blitzer, in Washington. We want to welcome viewers in the United States and around the world.

We're following the breaking news. We're just getting word an 18- year-old woman has been arrested in the U.K. on suspicion of terrorism offensive. A tweet from London's Metropolitan Police says the woman was arrested at an airport near London. We'll bring you details as they come in. But stand by for that. Another very worrisome development.

But there are other developments happening right now. Authorities in Belgium say terrorists may have just been hours away from unleashing a plot to gun down police officers, but they stopped them before they could strike. Police killed two suspects, arrested a third. Twelve more suspects were arrested in raids overnight and four people are now being held by France.

There could be as many as 20 terror cells ready to carry out attacks in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. That according to a western intelligence source. The source says those cells could involve between 120 and as many as 180 people. Authorities in Paris have detained at least a dozen people in connection with last week's terror attacks. The Paris prosecutors says they've suspected a - they're suspected of providing what are described as logistical support for the attacks.

President Obama and the British prime minister, David Cameron, they spoke about the terror threat during a lengthy White House meeting today and then the two leaders announced a new plan to fight cyber- attacks. The president also pledged the steadfast support of the United States in fighting the terror plots and the attacks in Europe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now, much of our discussion, obviously, focused on the continuing threat of terrorism. And in the wake of the vicious attacks in Paris, as well as the news that's surfacing out of Belgium, today we continue to stand unequivocally, not only with our French friends and allies, but with also all of our partners who are dealing with this scourge. I know David joins me when I say that we will continue to do everything in our power to help France seek the justice that is needed and that all our countries are working together seamlessly to prevent attacks and defeat these terrorist networks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We want to get more details now on the terror plot and the arrests in Belgium. Our senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen is joining us now live from Brussels.

Fred, authorities say the plot was imminent, possibly hours away from being carried out. What exactly were the suspects planning to do and how did the police stop them?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the police stopped them by those massive coordinated raids that happened here throughout Belgium. The most violent of those happened in a town called Verviers, Wolf, which is about 40 miles outside of Brussels. Two suspected jihadists were killed in that.

What the police says is they went into a house. All of a sudden the jihadists opened fire on them. The police fired back. The gun battle lasted for about eight or nine minutes and that's when these jihadists were killed, Wolf.

BLITZER: And the - obviously, the operations are still going on right now, is that right, Fred?

PLEITGEN: The operations certainly are still going on. There have been searches that took place well into the night, Wolf. There were searches in 12 other places here in Belgium. The key thing for the police officers is, in these searches, they arrested several people, they found weapons, they found ammunition, of course, they found communications equipment, but they also found police uniforms. And when they found the police uniforms, they realized that this was part of a large jihadist cell that most probably was going to kill police officers here in Belgium.

The way that the Belgium prosecutor puts it, that he says that they wanted to kill police officers both on the street, as well as in police departments. And so, therefore, the threat level, of course, has been increased, the police posture has been increased a lot as well. The police officers no longer allowed to walk around alone. They have to walk in groups of several police officers. They have to wear bullet proof vests at all times and they have to carry their guns with them all the time as well.

Belgium is also doing something that so far has been unprecedented. They're allowing their military to conduct operations inside of the country. Troops are going to be deployed as early as tomorrow morning to guard a Jewish neighborhood in the town of Antwerp. So certainly this is a country that, at this point, is on high alert, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, that's -- those are the signs we're seeing, not only there but throughout Europe right now.

Let me bring in Jamie Dettmer. He's a "Daily Beast" contributor. He's joining us from Istanbul in Turkey right now.

Jamie, have you seen any shift in what's going on in Turkey over the past few days since what happened in Paris? Because there's been a lot of criticism, as you know, of the Turkish government for letting that border with Syria be relatively open, allowing westerners to simply fly into Istanbul and then drive across the border into Syria and get connected with ISIS and other terror groups.

JAMIE DETTMER, CONTRIBUTOR, "THE DAILY BEAST": No, there hasn't been a considerable change in the last few months here. There's been some tightening. We're seeing some oil trucks being stopped. You know, as you know, ISIS is smuggling oil from 60 percent of the oil fields in Syria they control. But, no, people can go backwards and forwards relatively easy.

The Turkish leadership keeps saying it's very hard to police this border, but it is very noticeable that if you're on the eastern side, the Kurdish side, of Turkey, the boarder's pretty much wrapped up. It's very, very hard to slip backwards and forwards. On the western side, in the center, no. We're seeing Sunni militants being able to cross quite easily. Jihadi brides from Europe as well. And the estimates are that about 1,000 foreign fighters a month, since the caliphate was announced in the summer, have been traveling into Syria.

BLITZER: Let me ask Mike Rogers, why doesn't Turkey do more? It's a NATO ally. That border, as you just heard Jamie describe, it's relatively open.

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Well, this has been a point of contention for months. One of the problems they have is the Kurdish operations on the border. They've had problems with some of the Kurdish organization units there being affiliated with terrorist activities that happened in Turkey. So there's a huge psychology border, a barrier, that they have to get over in order to start engaging on that side of the border.

BLITZER: You know, Gloria, I know you've been doing a lot of reporting on why the president didn't go, the vice president didn't go, the secretary of state didn't go.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BLITZER: No really high level U.S. official went to Paris for that rally last Sunday.

BORGER: One was in Paris, Eric Holder.

BLITZER: Eric Holder, the attorney -

BORGER: Right.

BLITZER: He was there, but he didn't attend either. The president was not asked, although our own White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, shouted a question to him. The president ignored it as he was leaving the East Room of the White House.

BORGER: Yes.

BLITZER: But what is the sense - I mean you've been checking in with your sources over there. BORGER: I have. I have.

BLITZER: Why did that happen? Because the White House itself admits they made a mistake.

BORGER: The White House said it pretty quickly. I know you'll be surprised to learn that there's a lot of passing the buck here on this particular situation. And I think, if it were up to the administration, they would probably lay the blame, according to my reporting, at the State Department, maybe at the ambassadorial level, that this -

BLITZER: The U.S. ambassador in Paris -

BORGER: That this was an event -

BLITZER: She is relatively new on the job.

BORGER: This was an event that grew organically and I think there was some feeling that they were surprised. My question is, why were you surprised when everybody here knew about it and if you read anybody's Twitter account, you could see the list of luminaries that were going.

I think there was also some sense that Eric Holder might have gone. We still don't know the answer to why he wasn't there.

There also was, I might point out, there was a demonstration of solidarity with the French in Washington at which there was no official representative. I'm told Torre Newland (ph) of the State Department participated and it was there, but there was no sort of official speaker in Washington, which was also, I would argue, an oversight. I asked whether the president was angered by this or the vice president was angered by this, and nobody would kind of characterize their reaction.

But they do admit that this looked bad. And they didn't realize how bad it looked until they saw the pictures of all the leaders linking arms. Although, I would argue, when you see the list, you have to assume that there was a big holding there where the U.S. should have been.

BLITZER: Yes. I think, John, it's clear, if they had a do over, they would have done it differently.

BORGER: Yes. Yes. Yes.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And it's embarrassing. And the questions to ask now is, why didn't it get high enough up at the State Department -

BORGER: Right.

KING: And high enough at the National Security Council that somebody got to the chief of staff -

BORGER: Exactly. KING: Or, you know, somebody got to a high level and said, hey, look, maybe this thing did blossom from minor event to major event pretty quickly. But, you know, we all know where Andrews Air Force Base is. We know how quickly they can gas up a jet. We know how quickly they can respond if they want to respond. They dropped the ball. They're embarrassed. Is that going to affect any policy going forward? No. But it's embarrassing. And it shows you there's a lack of communication. Some holes in the (INAUDIBLE).

BLITZER: And it's a side issue compared to the real issue right now -

BORGER: Sure.

BLITZER: Which is the terror threat which seems to be escalating dramatically.

KING: And that's the point that the chairman and I were talking about this during the last break. And if you see what's happening here, number one, there's been some steps here in the United States, they seem to be precautions. They don't seem to be a response to any specific, imminent intelligence here. They seem to be precautions.

But if you look at what's happening in Europe, more arrests in France, still a very high police and military presence. Our Fred Pleitgen's just talking about arrests in Belgium and for the first time the military being deployed within the country. The prime minister of Great Britain talking about at the news conference that they are at their second highest terrorist threat there. That they believe it is very likely they will be attacked in the U.K. They don't see imminent or they would go higher. But when you see that, it's somewhat reminiscent of how we felt, a different scale of what we've seen in Paris, but how we felt in the days immediately after 9/11 when the conversation was, will there be follow on attacks, what's next?

BLITZER: All right, guys, we're going to leave it right there. But important developments, breaking news that we're following. We're going to stay all over it.

That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. Eastern in "The Situation Room." "Newsroom" with John Berman, he's in Paris, and Brianna Keilar, will start right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman, live in Paris, along with Brianna Keilar in New York.

We are following breaking news as the manhunt for terrorists sweeps across Europe. We're getting reports of raids and terror arrests, anti-terrorism police thwarting attacks and storming sleeper cells. An 18-year-old woman has just been arrested at Stansted Airport outside London. She is now being held on suspension of, quote, "preparation of terrorist acts."

Here in France, the terror threat is widening. At least the investigation is widening. Twelve people were arrested near Paris overnight, all connected to the shootings at the kosher supermarket. Individuals believed to be connected to Amedy Coulibaly.

Then, today, two people caught in a tunnel trying to cross from France into Italy. The nation of Belgium is now asking for their extradition with both of those individuals believed to be part of the jihadi cell in Verviers. That is where anti-terror raids killed two people yesterday. Belgian police, who were fearing an imminent attack, raided cells across that country, also arrested some people in France as well, made a total of 17 arrests.

CNN has reporters spread across Europe and elsewhere following the latest on these operations. Right here in Paris to Belgium, Istanbul and Yemen as well.

First, though, I want to talk to my next guest right now who has an interesting assessment of the threat posed by ISIS and also by al Qaeda. Aaron David Miller is vice president for new initiatives and a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

And, Aaron, I want to talk specifically about the threat that all of this poses to the United States. We just heard from the president talking about the terror threat at the White House moments ago. Given the situation in Europe right now, Europe really on edge, what specific concerns should the U.S. have?

AARON DAVID MILLER, ADVISED STATE DEPARTMENT FOR 20 YEARS: Well, I think we have to set it in perspective. Last year the State Department reported that there were 17,895, I think, global fatalities to terror. Sixteen of those were Americans. Thirty-three people are killed every year or last year in lightning strikes in this country. So, like the Ebola problem, we can't blow it out of proportion. However, you can't trivialize it. And the reality is, we figure centrally, in the jihadi narrative, there's no question about it that we are an object. 9/11 is clearly an indication of that.

But, remember, we have not -- there's not been an attack against the United States, directed by a foreign terrorist organization since 9/11. I think it's the risk of inspiration rather than direction that should concern the United States. And here I think the issue is less ISIS and much more al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And in this respect I think we have to be pretty sober. If you asked any of your FBI counter terrorism specialists or the agency counter terrorism specialists, terrorism specialists, they'd basically say that the most imminent threat to the United States right now is not ISIS in terms of an operational threat, it's AQAP or an affiliate of al Qaeda. And in 15 years, even though we've dismantled the al Qaeda core, killed Osama bin Laden, most of his key lieutenants, the derivatives of al Qaeda, old business, not ISIS, still represents the most imminent threat to the United States, both in terms of inspiring additional attacks and directing them.

BERMAN: You talking about inspirational attacks. That's something like we saw in Boston with the Tsarnaev brothers, or at Fort Hood with Nadal Hassan. People who looked to Anwar al-Awlaki and his teachings and then killed American citizens on American soil. Different, you say, than al Qaeda planning some kind of attack from Pakistan or Afghanistan or Syria or - you know, even in Yemen, and sending people in to stage these attacks.

You mentioned though what intelligence officials say they worry about. And we do hear from intelligence officials in the United States and in Europe that there is concern about these western fighters going to fight in Syria and then going back. Whether it be mostly right now to western Europe. That is what happened in Belgium. Some of these people are believed to have come to Syria and wanted to stage attacks there. Could that not happen in the United States as well?

MILLER: Yes, absolutely it could happen. It could happen tomorrow. It could happen later today. There's no question about that. But, again, perspective is important here. Europe represents a special case in the sense that you have a perfect storm building there. The European right is gaining ground. You have anti-immigration and nativist sentiment building. You have a large and potentially aggrieved and alienated Muslim community. In many respects, Europe (INAUDIBLE) and you have proximity to the region and ease and lack of restrictions on movement within the continent itself. We're a much harder target. Not impossible to be sure. We've seen it, not impossible. There's no question about that.

But, again, I think we've got to strike the right balance. Vigilance, 100 percent. Panic, no. And we don't do ourselves a service by panicking. I'm afraid that Europe and the -- with the proliferation of these new discoveries of cells, you really do raise the risks and the dangers of overreactions also by local - by local citizens and a backlash against Muslim communities. I think we're really in, Europeans for sure, for a rough ride in weeks and months ahead.

BERMAN: Well, there's no doubt this is a continent very much on edge this evening.

Aaron David Miller, thank you so much for being with us. Always appreciate your perspective and your incite.

Brianna, let's go back to you.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: John, thanks so much.

Just moments ago, the American man accused of plotting an attack on the U.S. Capitol in the name of ISIS appeared in court. We're told his father shouted out, "don't trust anyone." I'll be speaking with one former FBI agent who questions the kind of takedown operation that foiled what authorities are calling this plot.

Plus, a man who created the "Charlie Hebdo" magazine is now blasting its slain editor. We'll speak live with an exiled cartoonist who knew the journalist known as Charb. This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: This just in. A judge in Ohio has ordered an accused ISIS sympathizer to be held without bond. The hearing for Christopher Lee Cornell just ended minutes ago. In the courtroom his father cried out, quote, "don't trust anyone, Chris," while his mother shouted, "we love you." This image shows Cornell's takedown after investigators say that he bought two rifles to use in his alleged plot to bomb the U.S. Capitol building and then go on a shooting spree. The FBI says that he was doing this for ISIS. So, how did the cat loving, former high school wrestler allegedly turn into a wannabe jihadi? His father is pinning it on the FBI informant that Cornell allegedly thought was his partner in crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN CORNELL, FATHER OF CAPITOL PLOT SUSPECT: I believe he was fed all this and maybe brainwashed into believing some of this stuff through this informant.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: But this is Cornell in 2013. Police say that he disrupted a 9/11 ceremony with a sign that said 9/11 was an inside job.

I want to bring in now Michael German. He's a former FBI special agent. He knows very well how this all works. And he works as a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice as a public advocate for groups unfairly targeted by government officials.

So, I know that you've had some skepticism about how informants are used and maybe there's still a lot of facts to know about this case. But this is what the father is alleging here. And in cases where informants are used, what kind of roles do they serve and how are they recruited?

MICHAEL GERMAN, FORMER FBI AGENT WHO INFILTRATED EXTREMIST GROUPS: Well, one of the first things you learn at the FBI academy is, you are going to make your career or break your career by the way you handle informants. They're necessary to law enforcement. But at the same time, they're useful to you because they're betraying their friends and now they're becoming your friends. So you have to be very careful that these very manipulative people aren't also manipulating you and using whatever benefit they're getting for dealing with the government to bring you something -- someone who's not necessarily as serious a criminal as they are. So you don't want them to get the benefit.

KEILAR: They could -- in your experience with informants - because let's say - for this one, for example, and I assume this is the case with many informants, the benefit, as we understand it, is that the informant has a criminal record. So you would assume he or she is getting some sort of relief from something that they are facing, charges or they're already serving time for in some cases, right?

GERMAN: Exactly. What was --

KEILAR: How often does that happen?

GERMAN: What was unusual in this complaint is that they laid that out right in the complaint. Usually that comes out much later that this was somebody who was getting a benefit in a criminal prosecution that was pending against them. But that is very common that you arrest somebody and you want to move up the chain, find somebody more dangerous. But what you don't want is them agreeing to cooperate and then just finding some gullible dupe in the neighborhood that they bring to you to get the benefit without really solving a serious crime problem.

KEILAR: How often does that happen?

GERMAN: It happens, unfortunately, too often. You know, a lot of law enforcement is very statistics driven. And agents and law enforcement officers need to show arrests. And a good informant that can bring you a lot of arrests is somebody you want to protect. So, unfortunately, the relationship gets twisted a little bit to where the agent or the officer is protecting the informant more than he's actually seeking the criminal justice goals.

KEILAR: But how important are informants and how often are they actually really delivering the goods?

GERMAN: Very often. You have case where the case could not have been made absent somebody in the room. And typically, particularly when you see somebody with a serious criminal record, what you want to make sure is that when they're involved in the criminal activity, they're not the worst criminal in the room and that they're actually helping you solve a problem that exist rather than creating it.

KEILAR: OK. And just really quickly, the father says he didn't have enough money to buy the weapons. Is it OK for the informant, maybe through the FBI or the police, to supply money for things to be purchased?

GERMAN: Certainly it's OK to do that under certain circumstances. Where the government is simply assisting a person in committing a crime they had already been predisposed to commitment, that would survive an entrapment claim. It does raise the entrapment issue, though. And what will be in question is whether the inducement overrode the person's will in order to get them to commit the crime.

KEILAR: They wouldn't have done it without that inducement?

GERMAN: Right. And to my perspective, that they couldn't have done it without the inducement.

KEILAR: Yes.

GERMAN: What we've seen in a lot of these other sting operations is the FBI targets people who are low level criminals or have some mental health problems, but are not serious terrorists and then use an informants to exaggerate the crime. In one case, a criminal informant had offered $250,000 to a bunch of non-violent criminals to engage in a terrorist plot and then provided them with a surface to air missile to make it seem as if this was a serious terrorist plot when, in fact, it was all manufactured by the government informant.

KEILAR: Wow, that is a lot of money.

GERMAN: Yes.

KEILAR: All right, Michael German, thanks so much for your insight. GERMAN: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: And let's head back now to Paris where John Berman is.

John.

BERMAN: Thanks so much, Brianna.

A founding member of "Charlie Hebdo," the magazine headquartered right behind me, is criticizing the magazine's slain editor for what he describes as, quote, "overdoing it." We're going to speak with a cartoonist who knew the editor, Charb, who was laid to rest today. That's coming up next.

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