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Officials: Metrojet Flight Brought Down By Bomb; The Hunt for the Terror Mastermind; Interview with Jean-Charles Brisard; State Governors Refuse Syrian Refugees. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 17, 2015 - 06:00   ET

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


ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[06:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. You are watching NEW DAY. Michaela is in New York for us; Chris and I are live in Paris. We'll get to the latest developments in the terror attacks here in Paris in one moment.

But we want to begin in Russia. That's where the officials are saying that the doomed Metrojet flight was brought down by a bomb. ISIS has claimed responsibility for that attack that killed 224 people in Egypt's Sinai.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: And of course there's a common link here, both connected here in France and with the Metrojet to ISIS. President Putin of Russia saying he will find and punish those responsible and once again acknowledging in a broader sense his desire to use Russia with the coalition of the willing to fight the terror group. We have all of the angles covered only the way CNN can.

Let's begin with senior international correspondent Matthew Chance in Moscow with the latest developments. Matthew?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, thanks very much. Well, this is the first time that it's been confirmed that it was a bomb that took down that Metrojet airliner at the end of last month, killing all 224 people on the Sinai peninsula, was people on board. The head of the Russian FSB, the former KGB, telling Vladimir Putin on state television that a search of the luggage and fragments of the plane that's been recovered has found traces of foreign-made explosives. They believe it was a bomb on board, a terrorist act, a bomb with at least a kilo of TNT, or the equivalent, contained inside it. He aid that would account from the fact that the debris from the fuselage had been spread across such a wide area.

So, this again, the first time that it's been confirmed that it was a bomb that caused the crash of that Metrojet airliner in Sinai at the end of last month. Vladimir Putin was swift in his response, speaking on state television, saying of the culprits we will search for them everywhere. No matter where they're hiding, we'll find them in any place on the planet and we'll punish them. So Vladimir Putin vowing revenge and saying that revenge will take them wherever the culprits are hiding from the Russians.

Also talking about Russia's military campaign in Syria, remember, ISIS wasn't directly blamed for this by the Russians in name, but they have said they will now step up their air strikes against ISIS in Syria. "Our operation in Syria will not just simply continue," Vladimir Putin said. "It will be intensified so that the criminals understand that revenge is unavoidable." So Vladimir Putin there by de facto blaming ISIS for carrying out this attack.

CAMEROTA, OK, Matthew, thank you so much for all of that breaking news.

Now we get the latest on the Paris terror attacks. The Department of Homeland Security raising red flags about this alleged mastermind earlier this year, and CNN confirming that western authorities were determined to kill the 27-year-old but were unable to track him in Syria over the past few weeks.

So let's bring in our CNN chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto. Jim, more information about this mastermind seems to come out ever hour.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question. Yet more missed warning signs in effect. So Abdelhamid Abaaoud, that's the picture you're seeing there on the screen right now, we reported yesterday that French believed he was the mastermind, believed in fact that he's tied to the ISIS leader al-Baghdadi. But in addition to that we're learning now that the Department of Homeland Security had warned about him some six months ago in May for being involved not only in a plot in Belgium in February to kill police officers, but for working on the capability for some mass casualty attack in Europe. Lo and behold, we saw what happened here on Friday.

But one more -- just one more note, another plot that they believe he was behind, remember that attack on the high-speed train that was thwarted by those three brave Americans just a few weeks ago?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

SCIUTTO: He's also tied to that plot as well.

CUOMO: That's what I was going to ask you about. But knowing what he does, knowing who he is, is very different than figuring out where he is and how to get him.

SCIUTTO: No question. And to be fair, again, you talk about missed warning signs. Listen, you or I, would we do a better job in that? I mean, they have great surveillance capabilities but they also have enormous volume of suspects and leads on any given day. So imagine what's coming across their desk. This one of dozen, hundreds of leads they have to follow.

I will say this, though, that the number of leads and connections and warnings they had about this plot is at least worrisome. Because it lets you know that despite all the assets being focused on Europe right now, including with American help on surveillance, and the warning signs they had, this managed to go ahead under that radar. And that's worrisome. Because as John Brennan, the director of the CIA, said yesterday, there are more plots in the pipeline. So what confidence do we have that they're going to be able to prevent those?

CUOMO: Whether you know not enough or too much, you can often wind up in the same place, which is not being able to act.

Stick with us. Let's get a look at what's going on investigatively in Belgium. For that we have senior international correspondent Ivan Watson.

[06:05:00]

Obviously, this is about a manhunt, Ivan. They're looking for at least two men they believe are at large in connection with these attacks, the so-called eighth attacker for sure, looking for that suicide vest that they still haven't placed. What do we know?

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, a lot of the attention is focused on three brothers, and of course one of them, Abdeslam, is believed to be one of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks last Friday. His brother, Salah, a 26-year-old rom Belgium, born here, is the focus of this international manhunt. His name, his photo has been posted by French and Belgian authorities. Escaped the French dragnet and is at large at this moment.

Now, a third brother, Mohamad, was briefly detained by Belgian police and questioned and then released. And he took a moment to speak to journalists yesterday and defended his two brothers. Take a listen. .

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOHAMED ABDESLAM, BROTHER OF TWO SUSPECTS (via translator): You also need to understand in spite of the tragedy, my parents are in shock. We do not realize yet what has happened. My family and I are affected by what happen. We found out by TV just like many of you. We did not think for a moment that one of our brothers was related to these attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: Chris and Alisyn, the French president has said that this series of attacks was planned in Syria but then organized from here in Belgium. And the Belgian justice minister, he told me that in fact some of the suspects in the attacks had been on a kind of Belgian watchlist, that they believed -- they were believed to have gone to Syria to be volunteer fighters, and then that some of them smuggled themselves back into Belgium and were effectively living underground. So the authorities missed these people before they engaged in the operation.

And of course there's that other Belgian national, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, at large right now, from the neighborhood I'm in, Molenbeek, the same neighborhood that one of the bombers and the fugitive at large are also believed to have come from. Chris and Alisyn. CAMEROTA: Ivan, thank you. Stay with us. We want to bring back in

now CNN's chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.

As we say, there are developments every minute with all of these stories. Let's begin with the Metrojet that was downed. Associated Press now reporting that there's a $50 million reward offered by Russia for the people responsible for bringing down that jet.

SCIUTTO: That figure is also -- seems there's some meaning behind that. Usually the top U.S. reward for top terrorist suspects is $25 million. So it's interesting to see the Russians double that. But it does show the real focus they have here.

And look at this, as we look at this regionally and globally, you'll remember the president's, let's say, unfortunately timed comments on Friday morning talking about ISIS being contained. Now he was speaking about in Iraq and Syria specifically, but I thought it was notable to me yesterday that Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democratic member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in fact the opposite. She said it's not contained, it's expanding.

And we have that evidence here. So you have them bringing down a jet, a passenger jet, these bombs in Beirut, and these attacks here in Paris in the span of just a few days -- showing that regional global scope of this organization. It really is -- I mean, there's a lot of rhetorical talk about we're at war, this kind of thing, you hear it from the president. But that's not hyperbole at this point. There is substance to that. And there are many fronts to this war, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the streets of Paris, the streets of Beirut.

CUOMO: War has many different fronts also.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CUOMO: So on the one hand you have militarily on the ground what's going on in Syria, in what they're calling the Levant. And there's meaning to that. But then you have what they're dealing with here, and the more raids they do, the more we get feedback from French intel saying we are overwhelmed by how much we have to deal with in terms of detection. And they say the biggest challenge is prevention. So how do you put the pieces together in what they call a cohesive strategy?

SCIUTTO: The bottom line is you can't stop every one, right? You can't. It's the old saying that they only have to be successful once. I mean, you could stop -- I mean for instance, the British announced yesterday they have stopped seven. They've thwarted seven plots in the last several months. And you'll hear this from U.S. officials. They don't like to advertise their successes. The fact is they do have many successes. But the volume is so great. And, again, we just can't emphasize enough that the volume here in France is an order of magnitude bigger than the number of threats you have in the States. And, frankly, they have fewer resources to try to control those. The figure, again, we talk about this, 11,000 - spoke to a senior French security source yesterday. The figure is 20-1. You need 20 people to keep you under surveillance 24 hours a day. You can't do that. You'd need 200,000 agents. CAMEROTA: Ivan, we've heard Jim just say that the order of magnitude

here is so much larger than the U.S., and the order of magnitude in Belgium is even larger, it sounds like, than France.

[06:10:03]

WATSON: That's right. This country has the dubious distinction of being one of the largest supplies of foreign fighters going to Syria. It's got a population of only 11 million people, but more than 400 Belgians are suspected of having gone to Syria to join in the ranks of ISIS and other jihadi groups.

It's led to a lot of soul searching here. Why is Brussels in particular a recruiting ground and specifically this neighborhood of Molenbeek? And there are a number of reasons and theories that have been raised. One of them has to do with political divisions within Belgium, that you have a French-speaking community here, a Flemish- speaking community, and you have police forces that are divided. In Brussels alone, at least six different police forces, in some cases divided by language. And you've got top officials saying here we've got to do a better job on having them coordinate them better.

You also have a large immigrant, a large Muslim population; skyrocketing youth unemployment, around 40 percent in this neighborhood alone, that's led to a sense of alienation from part of the population here. The justice minister telling me that this neighborhood has problems with falsifying documents, fake passports, and weapons trafficking as well. And that has contributed to what has clearly been a problem of militant, violent Islamic ideology, Islamist ideology, that has taken root in places like this neighborhood.

A big challenge for the law enforcement groups here who have not, clearly, been working well enough together. Alisyn and Chris?

CUOMO: Ingredients we see in Belgium, ingredients that we see here in France, and frankly in many other places in Europe and magnified greatly in the Middle East. So obviously you're going to be fighting on many fronts for a very long time. But right now, there's a lot of focus on the energy of this manhunt and figuring out what happened here as a way of connecting it to later plots.

Jimmy, thank you very much. Stay with us. Ivan, we'll check back with you in a little bit. There's other news this morning. So let's get to Michaela in New York. What are the other headlines, my friend?

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, let's do it, Chris.

Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit are expected to condemn the Paris terror attacks in a planned statement, according to the associated press. Members of the 21 leader forum, including President Barack Obama, say the attacks in France demand a united voice. They say, quote, "We stand in solidarity with France and all victims of terrorism elsewhere."

Hundreds of protesters angry over the fatal shooting of a black man by police in Minneapolis shut down a section of the I-94 freeway Monday night. 51 people were arrested. Police say 24-year-old Jamar Clark was shot by officers responding to a domestic dispute last weekend. The city's mayor has asked for a federal civil rights investigation.

Boy, we've got an incredible story here for you. A Mississippi firefighter has undergone the world's most extensive face transplant. Patrick Hardison was badly injured fighting a house fire back in 2001. Third degree burns of his head, neck and upper torso. Since then, he has lived in excruciating pain until the family of a BMX racer who died in a bike crash agreed to donate his face. Hardison's doctors at NYU say he is doing well three months after the surgery. He's getting back to daily routines.

It's just an incredible story about medical technology and what we're able to do now. I thought you guys would like that, especially given all the events in the world, Alisyn and Chris. It's nice to see somebody getting a new lease on life.

CAMEROTA: Just remarkable. And the pictures are remarkable. Wow. That is truly a breakthrough. Michaela, thank you.

CUOMO: And also recognition of the value of life. You know, we try so hard to sustain it and improve it on some levels, while others are totally bent on destroying it.

So we are trying to figure out the military balance, the political balance, the intelligence balance. And there's been big developments on all fronts. The major one is that U.S. intel is now saying that they've been warning Europe for months that this suspected mastermind was at work planning attacks. So why couldn't it be stopped? Where were the holes and what are the lessons? Answers ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:24]

CAMEROTA: The manhunt for the surviving Paris attacker is still active here in Paris and also even more so in neighboring Belgium. But there's an even possibly bigger target and that's the mastermind of these attacks. We're learning that a U.S. homeland security assessment months ago raised a red flag about this mastermind.

Let's bring in Jean-Charles Brisard. He's chairman of the Center for Analysis of Terrorism. Jean-Charles, thank you for being here. It's so vexing to know so much about this mastermind three days after the attack as opposed to the day before the attack. But what do we know about him?

JEAN-CHARLES BRISARD, CHAIRMAN, CENTER FOR ANALYSIS OF TERRORISM: Well, he is clearly a ringleader in Belgium since years now. He contributed to the recruitment and travel of several hundreds of Belgiums to Syria. And we know he was heading a training camp inside Raqqa that was targeted by the French airplanes in October. They tried to kill him in October already. So -- and we know he was in contact with most of the plots that were uncovered, that were carried out in Europe, including the Nemush (ph) plot in Brussels.

CAMEROTA: And including the train attack that we know so much about in the U.S. because the American heroes thwarted it.

BRISARD: Of course, of course.

CAMEROTA: That seems completely different in terms of sophistication. That was one terrorist with a gun who seemed sort of haphazardly trying to do something and the three Americans were able to take him down. This, the organization of what happened here Friday night, is quite different.

BRISARD: We see that this organization is evolving, adapting also to the security measures.

[06:20:01]

They try everything they can to target, including the (INAUDIBLE). It's not -- it's different of course in size but the modus operandi is different but the intention is the same.

CAMEROTA: It's comforting to hear that they were attempting to get him and attempting to kill him before this. So it's not just now they're connecting the dots and he slipped through their fingers; it's that they were actively trying to get this mastermind but just weren't able to target him.

BRISARD: We don't discover the men now. I mean, all of the members virtually of this network were known already by the French intelligence or Belgian intelligence or other services abroad. So that means we have no problem identifying those people. We have a problem to follow them, put them under surveillance. It raises legal issues here in our country. There's also some measures that need to be taken to really increase our ability to trace these individuals once they travel abroad. This needs still to be done.

CAMEROTA: One of the interesting things about this mastermind is that he was featured recently in this Islamist magazine called "Dabiq", where he was bragging. There were pictures of him. I mean, he was hardly flying under the radar.

BRISARD: Exactly. He was clearly appearing in different propaganda videos. He was interviewed by French TV. So, yes, he was not hiding. He was acting in plain view and this is also part of the strategy. I mean, they want to, again, by this they want to raise more attractiveness to this Islamic State and have more youngs (sic) coming to reach Syria.

CAMEROTA: One of the confounding things about what's happened here is that there's this eighth attacker who is on the loose. There's this now global manhunt for him. But that's just one person. I mean, we've heard during the course of this there are possibly thousands of people in France with suspected terror ties. We're focused on this one person, but that may not be the most dangerous. There are other people in Paris who may be here and planning something.

BRISARD: We have 5,000 individuals in our watchlist but there's nothing we can do against them because we have no evidence. Otherwise they would be prosecuted. They're simply on watchlists simply because we have nothing on them. So we try to get more information through the borders, through the various controls that we impose to them. But virtually we cannot do anything about that.

CAMEROTA: President Hollande had made -- had a big speech yesterday in which he said France is at war. So what does that change? How does that change what the strategy is to go after them?

BRISARD: I think we'll increase the strikes on the ground, and we've already seen that in the past hours.

CAMEROTA: When you say the strikes on the ground, you mean the air strikes?

BRISARD: The air strikes, unfortunately, not on the ground. Yes, the air strikes, of course. We've targeted again, probably recruiting centers and training camps used, including by -- about the targets in Europe.

CAMEROTA: Jean-Charles, it's always helpful to get your expertise. Thank you for being here on NEW DAY with us.

All right, meanwhile, more than half of American governors now say that Syrian refugees are not welcome in their states. But can they do anything to stop them? We have the latest with what's going on in the U.S., next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:37]

PEREIRA: There's expanding backlash here in the United States from news that at least one Paris attacker slipped into Europe among Syrian refugees. The list of governors saying they don't want Syrian refugees settled in their states is growing. The total number now stands at 27. All but one Republican.

Let's bring in CNN's Martin Savidge for the very latest. Martin.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Michaela. Yes, this is an issue that really took off yesterday. The United States, according to the Obama administration, has committed to taking about 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. This is what has a lot of Republican governors, especially, very, very upset in light of what's happened in Paris.

Let's take a look at the map that gives you a breakdown of what states are basically declaring what. At least according to the survey that CNN has done, you've already pointed out, 27 states say they are opposed. The latest to come on board against taking Syrian refugees the state of Nevada. It was the governor of Texas in his letter to President Obama saying that his state no longer wants to take Syrian refugees that summed the feelings of the most of the these states, and essentially that governor said that neither the President of the United States nor could any federal official guarantee that Syrian refugees will not be a part of any terroristic activity. You've already pointed out there was one state that politically kind

of bucked the trend, and that is New Hampshire. They have a Democratic governor. It should be pointed out that there are seven states that have said they are still willing and allowing Syrian refugees to come in.

But many people have asked, well, can they do that? And the State Department came out yesterday, was rather noncommittal. But there are legal experts that have said no. Essentially when it comes to saying who does and does not come into the United States, that's a power on the federal level. However, many states would provide the services that Syrian refugees would likely need. And since the governors control the purse strings of those services, well, they can make life difficult. So it looks like that they would have to go to either states that are still willing, or there's going to be some real negotiating on the part of the State Department here.

Lastly, it should be pointed out that New York is among the states that are still rather noncommittal here. That's understandable given the sensitivities to terrorism and the past history. Chris?

CUOMO: Well, everyone's going to have to make a choice going forward. You're right. It is within the federal authority, but the states play a financial and also a governmental role.

[06:30:02] Remember, just because you say your state doesn't want them, these people are accepted as citizens when they come, and not full citizens but they have the right to travel that all the rest of us do, so they could simply go to a state anyway. Complicated problem, Martin. Thank you for reporting.