Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Terror in Paris. Aired 11a-Noon ET

Aired November 14, 2015 - 11:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:27] CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Christiane Amanpour, live in Paris for the special coverage of this breaking news: the terrorist attack that has devastated the city and this country.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman. We want to welcome our viewers in the United States, all around the world.

We want to bring you up to speed with the very latest about what we know because there have been developments just over the last several hours.

France under a state of emergency right now -- virtually unprecedented here; people, in fact, stunned that it has come to this. This follows the six separate terrorist attacks -- ISIS claiming responsibility so far. At least 128 confirmed dead -- that number almost certainly will change. 180 injured -- that, too, will change.

We are learning that Americans are among the injured. What we do not know at this point is just how many. French police, French authorities, not to mention the military, all out looking for suspects. Authorities have identified one of the attackers now as a French national.

Some 1,500 soldiers will be deployed around the country, I think primarily in Paris for patrols mostly at specific locations. Authorities say that two passports were found near the bodies of some of these people who committed these acts of terrorists. One of the passports was from Syria, one from Egypt, although they do say they could very well be fake.

This morning, French President Francois Hollande made a statement.

AMANPOUR: He did indeed. He declared that it was an act of war. We're just going to listen to how he addressed the French people for the second time since the attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, PRESIDENT OF FRANCE (through translator): It's an act of war committed by a terrorist army, Daesh, an army of jihadists against France.

(END VIDEO CLIP) AMANPOUR: And he said and he pledged to the French people that this would be met with a ruthless, merciless response by France both here in this country and abroad, he said. This was an attack conceived abroad but planned also with the complicity of people in this country -- incredibly coordinated as he said.

BERMAN: Planned abroad and acted out here by people. That is very important because it shows ISIS expanding its reach and its capabilities all around the world.

AMANPOUR: That's right. Particularly after suicide bombings they claimed in Beirut and the attack on the Russian plane. We have pictures of how this went down overnight. We want to warn you that some of the video is disturbing. It does have very, very difficult moments in there as you can imagine.

Cell video from a video phone showing survivors of the nightclub attack just behind us jumping from windows to escape the carnage that was taking place inside. Other victims rush out of the theater. First responders literally trying to drag people to safety.

Gunmen apparently walked in and they opened fire killing at least 80 people, we understand. Paris police say three of the four attackers were wearing explosive belts -- that's three of those who were in the Bataclan behind us. The other attacker was killed by they police when they conducted their raid to end that crisis there.

BERMAN: At the same time that was going on, explosions at the main soccer stadium in Paris, the northern part of this city. Explosions rang out. Video captured the very moment it happened. Listen.

(EXPLOSION AT STADE DE FRANCE)

BERMAN: And the people inside, they didn't know what was going on. Amazingly they kept on playing the game. At least four people were killed outside. French fans leaving the soccer stadium, though, they showed their solidarity, singing the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise". People I think coming together as best they can though clearly an atmosphere of fear and anger I think pervades the city right now.

AMANPOUR: And of those who were killed outside there, three of them were believed to be suicide bombers themselves. Those people who would have wanted to cause even more mayhem if they could have done.

BERMAN: I'll show you where we are right now. Just a block behind us right now is the Bataclan Theater behind those police vans. Tarps set up outside the theater. Not sure you can see them. That is because all morning here they were taking out many of the bodies that were inside.

Our Clarissa Ward, CNN senior international correspondent, she is also nearby where we're standing right now.

Clarissa, you're following this investigation. The worst attack in Europe since 2004. The worst attack in France simply ever. What's the latest on the investigation?

[11:05:00] CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, at the moment, what we know is that eight attackers have been killed. But we don't yet know what sort of reach, what sort of network they may have been cooperating with. We know that at least one of those attackers was a French national.

And we actually spoke to a father, John leader, and his 12-year-old son, Oscar. John Leader is an Australian national. He's lived in France for 15 years. He and his son were inside that theater, John, at the terrifying moment. They were up close and personal with the attackers. And they're some of the few people who survived to tell the tale.

Listen to what he had to say earlier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN LEADER, WITNESS: We heard this bang, bang, bang. Like everybody else we thought it was fireworks, all part of the show. And then I felt something go past my ear. I didn't know -- was it a bullet or something? I don't know what it was. And then I realized something's coming out, you know, something's going toward the stage.

And at that point I think everybody understood. Everybody threw themselves on the ground. It was still dark, it was a concert. It was only lit up on the stage. I stuck my head out from the desk to see what was going on. I saw the two shooters. One was changing his magazine. He had a whole lot of magazines in front of him. He had a big vest on.

WARD: What did he look like?

LEADER: He looked like a young fellow, someone you just -- nothing particular at all.

WARD: Did you hear him speak at all?

LEADER: I did. I heard him at one point he said something -- about Syria. I think you heard it better, Oscar.

OSCAR LEADER, WITNESS: He said you need to think about Syria but in French like -- there wasn't any accent or anything.

J. LEADER: Yes -- he obviously a native French speaker.

WARD: Native French speaker?

J. LEADER: Yes, yes. No accent. And I didn't want to mention -- maybe something like Allahu Akbar. As soon as I heard them talking about Syria, I realized, ok, this is what it's about. I could see with one of the guys was covering -- was doing crowd control, the other guy was executing.

There was no chance -- there was a terrorist incident some months ago here in Europe, a similar kind of scenario. There was no chance of anybody being heroes because these guys were organized. One was covering the crowd. The other one was doing the shootings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: And you heard there, no room for heroes. These men were organized. They knew what they were doing. They weren't going allow a situation where someone from the crowd might try to tackle one of the gunmen.

He also told us that he did see at least one of the men wearing a tan colored vest. He said it was made of a heavy material. John Leader had originally thought that it was being used to stuff magazines into. Now, of course, John, we know that that was indeed an explosive vest.

AMANPOUR: We're hearing obviously a lot -- of course, a source close to the investigation telling the network that officials did find passports on two of the attackers, one is a Syrian passport, one an Egyptian passport.

Are you hearing anything about that? We're also of course hearing that as in this early investigation, the early sort of information that those passports may possibly be fake.

WARD: I think the impression is that it's very possible the passports may be fake. They may be a red herring of sorts designed to sort of throw off the investigation. One has to ask one's self why would these bombers going out to perpetrate such attacks be carrying their passports with them -- it seems a little too convenient.

But at this stage, Christiane authorities here are really being very tightlipped about this investigation. There are still many more questions than there are answers. I think the primary question on people's minds is, are there more attackers at large, which network was supporting this.

BERMAN: You know, let's just get the latest on that -- Clarissa. Any information you are picking up. Earlier this morning there was the notion there was this car.

AMANPOUR: Well, French authorities were telling French media that surveillance cameras from outside the restaurants. Because it was a car that was used to machine gun the restaurants. That's how the dead turned up in those restaurants. That wasn't suicide attacks or bombs. That was a drive-by shooting.

And they're looking for a car which they said to media that they were worried that it could be Jerry rigged as a big explosive itself or that it could be being used by the attackers to get away or accomplices to use. We don't have more information on that.

BERMAN: Right. We just lost Clarissa Ward. Clarissa Ward's communications went down. Obviously Clarissa and you pointing out there is a search around the country right now for the possibility that more is going on.

AMANPOUR: And not only that we're getting all sorts of reports from officials in other countries, neighboring countries. They are also conducting searches and controlling their borders related to this attack.

BERMAN: And just one other key point that Clarissa brought up. The idea that passports could be faked on these terrorists -- they could certainly be from inside terrorists. The terrorists do not need to be from abroad. We saw in the Charlie Hebdo attacks that there is a presence inside this country.

AMANPOUR: That's absolutely right.

[11:09:57] But here's the thing. The game changer of these ISIS terrorists because of all the people who have gone over to meet them, the game changer is that they, many of them, can come over with their French passports again. They don't need to get visas and the things like, for instance, the 9/11 --

BERMAN: Which explains why Francois Hollande did the extraordinary act of closing the borders, the road borders right now because the airports aren't closed. I came in this morning.

AMANPOUR: And they're going rigorous checks -- though.

BERMAN: All right. I want to go to Nic Robertson right now. One of the sites of the terrorist attack was the stadium, the main stadium in Paris where there was a game being played France and Germany -- a friendly soccer match.

You heard the explosions a short time ring out during the game. People were very confused at the time by what was going on. But the French president, Francois Hollande, he was there watching. He was evacuated at halftime. Our Nic Robertson sanding by outside. Nic -- What's the latest there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that was one of the things that ISIS has proclaimed in its claim of responsibility for this attack. It said that it attacked the soccer game because it was a match between two Christian countries, that it able to perpetrate it right under the nose of the French president.

But the question being asked in the French media here is did Francois Hollande, the French president's presence here at this friendly soccer match with a crowd of an estimated 80,000 crammed inside the stadium behind me, did his presence help thwart the attack. Was there additional security because he was there that stopped these suicide bombers. There were three of them here who later set off the explosives in a coordinated fashion. Was that his additional security, the French president's additional security that stopped them getting into the ground.

What we know is shortly before the game ended, one of the suicide bombers detonated his explosives at the main gate just behind me. About 20 minutes later when people were leaving, some of them in panic trying to get away from the area, a few hundred meters away from me another suicide bomber detonated his explosives.

Another 20 minutes after that -- this would be the last of the attacks, the beginnings of the attacks at least in Paris yesterday evening. Last suicide bomber detonated his explosives at the west gate of the stadium. It could have been the death toll here was only four people. It could have been far worse if the suicide bombers had been able to get into the crowd.

Were they thwarted from that because of that additional security because of the French president? He was certainly whisked away very, very quickly. This points in the direction -- you saying with Christiane, just now we've heard the British prime minister saying today that ISIS is evolving.

It is trending now toward more complex and coordinated planning toward mass attacks. The British obviously extending their support to the French. That that's what we're seeing here at this stadium -- complex, coordinated plan toward a mass casualty attack.

BERMAN: You know, Nic, it's really interesting. Early on you said that one of the reasons ISIS gave for attacking the soccer match -- it was a match between two Christian nations. Both of these teams filled with Muslim players. Some of the best players on Germany and France are, in fact, Muslim right now.

So the idea that you're somehow just attacking Christians by attacking this multicultural city, this multicultural place these teams in fact that are filled with people who are in fact Muslim too is just mind- boggling on top of everything else that is so shocking.

Nic, talk to me about what happened in the stands among the people who stayed. After the game, what were they told, what was the crowd control? How did people know how to get from there, the site of one terrorist attack to their homes through what may very well have been even more terrorist incidents?

ROBERTSON: Well, the nihilistic narrative as you say that ISSI puts forward that is so utterly floored, of course, when the people were coming out of the stadium last night, they wouldn't have been aware of that. They might have suspected that the explosions -- one of which happened here when people began to move away after that, they might have begun to realize that it might have been some sort of radical Islamist attack.

But they certainly wouldn't have been prepared for the complex and coordinated attack that was confronting some of them as they left the stadium. That only four people were injured as they made their way away from the stadium is perhaps an indication and a tribute to the luck, to the security services, to the way that people moved away from the stadium.

One of the explosions took place -- one of the detonations -- a second one took place just outside a restaurant not far from here, a McDonald's. When you look today at that building, the damage isn't so heavy. When you look today at the damage where the first explosion took place here, the damage doesn't seem to be so heavy, so perhaps again people lucky because the amount of explosives those people had wasn't effective outside of a closely packed area -- John, Christiane.

[111512] AMANPOUR: All right, Nick. We're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to update you on a big security scare that happened in London today. See the latest on that.

And waiting to hear from the U.S. Secretary of state, John Kerry. He's expected to make remarks on these attacks at any moment. And we will bring you that live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: All right. You're looking at live pictures right now from Vienna. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, he is in Vienna meeting with foreign ministers from around the world right now. He's headed shortly to Turkey to be part of the big discussion there, the G20 and (inaudible) and Turkey.

John Kerry expected to speak any moment. We will bring that to you the moment it happens.

MEETING: And of course, the meeting in Vienna was about Syria, how to try to bring that to an end. Maybe this G20 in will have really focused everybody's minds. And he is about to come and talk to the press in a second. What's so interesting is that he will first be having a national security conference with the President by secure video before he gets on a plane goes to Turkey.

Now, of course, the French President Francois Hollande was meant to be amongst the G20 20 leaders. He immediately announced that he would not be going. Instead he is sending his foreign minister Laurent Fabius.

BERMAN: Yes but Jim Acosta we spoke to our White House correspondent, Jim Acosta who talked to White House officials who now say they believe the entire G20 will essentially be a war summit; that world leaders gathered to talk about the battle against ISIS.

John Kerry speaking right now. Let's listen.

(JOHN KERRY SPEECH)

[11:39:23] CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN ANCHOR: Directed at the French people saying that the United States stands shoulder to shoulder with the French people to provide whatever and any help that it possibly can and that this was not just an attack against the French people, but one against humanity itself.

He then went on to outline in English a very detailed wrap-up of the discussion that's he and other foreign ministers including the Russian foreign minister, representatives of the United Nations, all sorts of other foreign ministers who were in Vienna about their game plan for the future of Syria which involves a cease-fire within a few months, then a transition within six months, and then elections within 18 months, very ambitious.

[11:40:05]In the past, President Assad has not complied with any of these U.N. timetables or negotiations and he did not mention what would -- how does one defeat ISIS in the midst of all this because ISIS would not be bound or included --

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: ISIS is not a party to this. He made it all sound so clean.

AMANPOUR: So how does one defeat the main ISIS and also Assad, which most of the refugees and most of the violence has come from Assad in the last four-and-a-half years? It's still rather unclear.

BERMAN: Interesting, talking diplomacy in Vienna, they are talking Syria in Vienna while everyone here in Paris right now thinking about ISIS and the six terrorist attacks in six separate locations across Paris less than 24 hours ago. Terrorism is such a high concern right now across Europe.

We are just getting some new information, some breaking news about a police raid in Belgium right now. I want to bring in our senior national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, as well as our diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, both of whom are here in Paris. Jim, what do we know about this raid in Belgium?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Belgian police are telling CNN that this raid is tied to the attacks here in Paris. They haven't said how they are tied, but they say there is a connection. At least one raid underway there.

Keep in mind there was a shoot-out in Belgium a few months ago, a similar situation, attack. We know that Belgium like France has a pipeline to and from Syria for Jihadis. So that is another hotbed of this threat right now.

Keep in mind -- and you referenced this as you came into this, John, that this is a Europe-wide situation right now. You'll remember just a few hours ago, London's Gatwick Airport was shut down by an arrest. A French person was arrested police say with what appeared to be a weapon.

Whether or not that's true, the level of alert is such now that you have security being raised in countries across Europe, not just here in France where you have 1,500 soldiers deployed now but also in Belgium.

The Netherlands raising their terror threat level. You have the U.K. clearly very concerned, as well, and that's something to remind American viewers why Europe is a number of countries, but the voters are porous, people can move around very quickly.

And there was talk as well that some of the attackers involved here in Paris might have been Belgian. So you have that kind of international connection here. Therefore, as a result, that kind of Europe-wide terror alert at this point.

It's very concerning. I think it's something that Europe deals with to even a greater threat than the U.S. terror threat level is right now.

BERMAN: You say borders between France and Belgium, essentially non- existent borders --

AMANPOUR: That's the whole European project of free movement between all the European countries.

BERMAN: It's interesting. There were raids in the Belgium the week after the attacks against "Charlie Hebdo" in January. We saw very violent confrontations between Belgian police and suspected terrorists then.

At the time one of the things that was brought up, is that Belgium is sort of a hub for arms to come into Europe and then be dispersed. The AK-47s, we suspect they were used in the attacks here.

Nic Robertson, tell me the situation. Lay the groundwork for the situation in Belgium as compared to France. Are there as many people in Belgium who are going to fight in Syria and Iraq and then returning home to Belgium?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Per capita there is. If you look at the beginning of May, 2014, that lone armed gunman armed walks into the Jewish museum middle of the day in Brussels, guns down and kills four people inside the museum.

There was some evidence or questioning whether or not he'd come back from Syria, whether he'd had his weapons training there, where he'd got his weapon from.

The shooter we're talking about that came right after the "Charlie Hebdo" attacks in Paris a week, ten days afterwards. That shoot-out involved a large number of weapons. There were people trained in the use of the weapons.

These Belgian jihadists and who were prepared to get into an intense shoot-out with the police. So it certainly -- there are areas in Brussels where the police for perhaps close to a decade now have had difficulty going into before without going into in numbers.

Al Qaeda certainly ran recruitment cells from inside Brussels. There have been many arrests there over the past decade of people doing that, some of the sort of senior al Qaeda figure operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan coming from Brussels.

Now the young men from Belgium have been going to Syria and Iraq. The first female suicide bomber came from Belgium, as well.

[11:45:06]So there has been a history of trouble within the Belgian community of young people going off to join these fights.

The fact that Belgians are now potentially involved in suspicion in relation to the attacks here in Paris, perhaps no surprise. One European counterterrorism source I was speaking to earlier today suggested we look closely at Belgium, certainly somebody who lives there and has insights there.

So it's certainly the counter intelligence community, if you will, were already looking to Belgium in connection with the attacks here and clearly now the Belgian police moving on those suspicions -- John, Christiane. AMANPOUR: Nic, it's been a problem for months and years now, this radicalization that is proliferating at an exponential rate beyond the capacity or practically beyond the capacity. If you listen to Britain's MI-5 of the intelligence able to penetrate and stop this radicalization on line, we've heard the head of MI-5 say that it can happen within weeks.

And it's so fast, and the online community and the online capability have simply made it so difficult for them to intervene in good time. Nick Paton Walsh, our correspondent in Erbil, he's been also listening to all of this.

He's been embedded with the Kurdish Peshmerga, who have recently successfully along with U.S. air help taken back Mt. Sinjar from ISIS.

Nick, what do you hear out of the plan that Secretary of State John Kerry set forth for trying to resolve somehow politically this crisis in Syria?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It sounds nice I think on paper that you could, as this seems to suggest, get the regime and the Syrian opposition talking in the next few months, then maybe see constitutional changes months away from that. And then as I have always said under U.N. auspices, get elections going 18 months from now.

They also want a ceasefire within that, too. That's good obviously because we have the key players there. No Syrians but the key players there internationally agreeing on a structure here, but then it falls apart when you ask yourself the question, who is the Syrian opposition now?

The Russians are very publicly and perhaps some say calculatedly struggling to find Free Syrian Army people to talk to in Moscow. They've made a public issue out of that.

Many of the Syrian opposition, quote, "politicians," we've seen putting themselves forward. Well, they're very distant from these actually doing the fighting on the ground. This talk particularly of a ceasefire has to affect those doing the fighting inside of Syria.

John Kerry was very clear that a ceasefire would not include is or the Nusra Front, that's the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, or groups who happen in the period ahead of the ceasefire to align themselves with those groups.

Now that is a huge problem because those two groups, the ISIS and Nusra, are the most effective military on the ground and the Nusra is part of a group called the Victory Front, who despite some recent disputes are still holding together. They have a moderate group now increasingly seen as radical.

So a lot really here moving towards the potential for whatever is agreed in foreign capitals, not necessarily apply on the ground. And then you have a larger question, John Kerry's quite clear that all the backers of the various different groups in -- in this war will ensure they adhere to the ceasefire.

What does that mean that Russia and Iran who were assisting the regime will stop supplying the regime? Where does Hezbollah who some consider terrorists here, it's a real key question I think few can answer at this stage -- Christiane.

AMANPOUR: Nick, just in terms of what you've actually seen and what you've just experienced, you know, the world has been scratching its head trying to figure out how to stand up some kind of force against ISIS. You have watched now the Peshmergas do it and do it successfully. Can they do more?

What more do they need, and how much pressure are they under in terms of how much military they have, how many foot soldiers they have, ammunition, all the wherewithal that they would need if nobody else is going to be the ground force?

WALSH: It's very hard to know, weather we saw -- when we saw in Sinjar whether that was down to the number and the air power, coalition, ISIS didn't bother to fight for the town itself. We knew they wanted to hang on, they put some fight up.

They have in the past just withdrawn and used forces to strike elsewhere. They left behind a nightmare of booby traps. We don't know ISIS' thinking here. The key question is how do you find proxy forces to join the forces the others fighting the Kurds or others inside Syria?

[11:50:06]It's a phenomenal mess. It's hard to see how any NATO or western nation would want to insert troops into that. They would simply become a polarizing lightning rod, frankly, and you would have to ask, where would you insert them from?

NATO and Turkey, they have their own agenda against the Kurds and Iraq has a militia doing much of the fighting. This is an impossible question to answer -- Christiane.

BERMAN: Nick Paton Walsh, standby in Erbil in Iraq, give us a scope of this story right now. I want to bring in Deb Feyerick right now with some breaking news. We've been talking about a raid underway in Belgium.

A police raid underway in Belgium perhaps connected to the terror attacks here. Deb joins us by phone right now. Deborah Feyerick on the phone, what can you tell us?

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): John, what we're being told, a Belgium federal police force telling us that at least one raid is going on in Brussels. I've been talking to sources today, a western intelligence source telling me that there may be as many as three.

At least one, they do believe, is connected to the Paris attack. And this is going on in the suburb, the same neighborhood in Belgium where attacks, where preemptive assaults were carried out in January, connected to the "Charlie Hebdo" attack, of the magazine.

So we do know that there is at least one raid in Brussels, but others also, a western intelligence source, saying that it is connected to the attacks in Paris.

BERMAN: You know, it's interesting, the Germans are also now saying that a man was arrested earlier this month there, a 15-year-old man from Montenegro, who had a whole bunch of weapons, including Kalashnikovs, ammunition, pistols, two hand grenades, 200 grams of TNT inside his Volkswagen.

So again you have word of an arrest in Germany perhaps connected to this. You have word of raids going on in Brussels right now connected to this, Deb, any sense of the communication right now between the countries, between French authorities and authorities in Belgium, in Germany, not to mention the United States?

FEYERICK: There is no question that intelligence agencies across Europe are in tight communication with one another. The French, the Belgians, the Germans, all of them, because we saw it happen during "Charlie Hebdo," where everyone went back to look at their intelligence, what they had, possible links, possible people who were on different lists.

They keep lists of foreign fighters who have gone over to Syria in order to fight with ISIS. So, there is huge intelligence. It is exhaustive, but they're all talking to one another, to see specifically where these men may have come from, whether they were French nationals.

Whether they came from outside of France, to carry out this attack and most importantly, most critically, who built those suicide bombs, who built the -- who gave these people the capacity to essentially detonate themselves, killing themselves in such very public ways and very public places.

So that's one of the keys to all of this. Who built those suicide bombs? And all of that right now, it is in overdrive -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Deborah Feyerick for us on the phone. Of course, another question with all these countries talking right now, with this level about what just happened, perhaps they feed to talk more about how they spot it and keep it from happening in the future.

Paul Cruickshank, our terrorism analyst joins us by phone right now. Paul, you've got great sources in all of these countries including Belgium.

What do you think is happening right now with these raids in Belgium now, believed to be connected with the six terrorist attacks here yesterday?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: This new information is very significant, indeed. The Mullandbeck (ph) District of Brussels, it's an immigrant district of Brussels in the north of the city was the home of several of those plotters in January who are in a safe house in Eastern Belgium. There was a major gunfight between them and Belgium commandos.

Belgian and U.S. intelligence officials telling me that they were involved in a major plot in January in Belgium, a gun and bomb plot.

They had explosives and Kalashnikovs and they were directed to do this by the senior leadership of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. This brings up the possibility of a connection to that plot, which was also an ISIS plot in January.

There's been huge concern in Belgium about the number of travel flows. More than 300 Belgium nationals, they know about, who have traveled to Syria and Iraq, most of those joining up with ISIS.

More than 100 coming back for a tiny country like Belgium, those are really staggering numbers, and those are just the ones they know about. I've been in touch with Belgium counterterrorism officials in recent weeks.

They say that they've never seen a bigger threat. They're very worried. They just don't have the resources to monitor all these people, all the time.

[11:55:07]And they really felt that something like this was going to be inevitable.

BERMAN: We also have our chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto, with us. Jim, again, this raid in Belgium, more of an arrest in Germany that could be connected, any sense of why they're only discussing this now? What they may have missed in the days and weeks before the attacks here.

SCIUTTO: Why they're discussing the arrests in Germany because possibly, at that time, they didn't know the significance. Now they're looking as to whether something that precipitates the attack that took place here.

Look at these signs, you have at least one raid underway in Belgium right now, Paul and Deb have made the point before, and Nick, it's a hotbed of not just Jihadis but also of weapons supplies.

You have an arrest in Germany, a man from Montenegro. Listen to all these countries we are listing now possibly connected to the attacks here in Paris. A number of nationalities and of course we had the passports of a Syrian and Egyptian found on the attackers.

Whether they were actually Syrian or Egyptian is a question, but they were carrying those passports. That right there is half a dozen countries, possibly tied to the attacks here in Paris, European countries, as well as countries in the Middle East.

And that shows exactly the problem. Europe is many countries, but in effect, it is one, in many ways, as well, because those borders are open.

And the key border, the most important one here is really that border with Syria, because you have a pipeline from these countries in Europe, into Syria, going back and back and forth, and that is the most difficult thing for security forces here to handle. It's tracking them.

FEYERICK: OK.

SCIUTTO: It speaks to the challenge going forward.

FEYERICK: It is incredibly difficult. We are trying to get all our facts straight, as this very fast-developing situation, this crisis, really, this state of war, as the French president has said, unfolds.

We've heard from Secretary of State John Kerry. We are hearing from all these law enforcement and these raids in various places, such as Belgium, and we will be back at the top of the hour, as our breaking news coverage continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)