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Police Conduct Raids Across Brussels; Did Belgium Miss Chance to Get Bomber?; "Mother of Satan" Explosives May Have Been Used in Attacks; EU Holds Crisis Meeting on Attacks; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 24, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We're monitoring two live events for you. The Belgian prime minister expected to speak any moment now outside of the parliament building as investigators hunt for terrorist suspects who may have slipped away.

And here at home the Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey expected to address those attacks in Brussels. At any moment now, you see the podium ready to go. Of course we'll bring you those events live when they happen.

In the meantime, some of the world's top terror investigators are scrambling to unravel the attacks in Brussels and they're racing to prevent the second one. Sources telling us this morning there may have been a second bomber at Brussels train station. Brussels' public broadcaster reporting that surveillance cameras captured a suspicious looking man holding a large bag. But it's not clear if he was killed in the blast.

If alive, he becomes a second focus in the hunt for this man, the third airport attacker. Police still have not identified him. But we now know the names of the attackers killed both at the Metro station and at the airport. The far left, he's Najim Laachraoui, an ISIS bomb maker and investigators believe a key figure in the Paris terror attacks.

And this morning we learned that prime Paris suspect, Salah Abdeslam is no longer cooperating with investigators in Belgium. His attorneys demanding that he be extradited to France as soon as possible.

Our correspondents, experts and analysts are covering all angles of this unfolding story. Let's start, though, with Phil Black. He's at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels.

Hi, Phil.

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. It was here at the Maelbeek Metro station that the most people died in Tuesday's carnage. This is where at least 20 people were killed underground in the station beneath our feet here. It was here that police investigators said they thought one person had conducted a suicide bombing. One of the brothers involved in the overall operation. A man named Khalid Bakraoui. Today we hear that they believe there was possibly another operative involved. Someone captured by security video in the moments before the blast carrying a large bag. Now his whereabouts are unclear. They say they're seeking him. What

that doesn't make clear is whether or not they believe he also died in the blast or whether he is now also on the run and being hunted in that sense by authorities here. As we know, one of the three attackers at the airport is now being hunted. The man who didn't die at that location but was seen leaving and the authorities are now seeking him as well.

You mentioned Salah Abdeslam, the person with the alleged involved in the Paris attack who was sought his arrest here last week really began the dramatic events here in Brussels. The authorities say they suspect that he was supposed to take part in the attacks that took place here Tuesday morning. That was the intention. But after his capture, the timetable for that attack was brought forward.

So what we are seeing here now are more emotional scenes on the street as Brussels returns to something of a normal existence. The streets here around the station are now reopened. There's heavy traffic, and here behind me, I just want to quickly show you, Carol, very quickly. This is a new makeshift memorial that's been opened here. We've seen people bringing flowers, candles, strolling messages of love, peace, and hope.

People standing here crying and weeping openly as this city, while trying to return to normal, also really grieves and deals with the suffering and the death that has been inflicted here -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Phil Black reporting live from Brussels this morning. Thank you.

As the manhunt intensifies, we're now learning new details about the bombers, including the brothers Khalid and Ibrahim el- Bakraoui. They were no strangers to authorities, that's for sure.

Let's bring CNN senior international correspondent Arwa Damon. She has that part of the story from Turkey.

Hi, Arwa.

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Well, Turkish authorities are saying that they actually detained and deported one of those brothers, Ibrahim el- Bakraoui from Gaziantep where we are right now in the summer of last year. What the Turks are saying is that even though Bakraoui was not on any sort of watch list, his actions they thought were suspicious. They believed that he had ties to terrorism and that he was in Turkey with the intent of crossing into Syria to become a foreign fighter most likely with ISIS.

They put him under surveillance, eventually brought him and then notified they say Belgian authorities that they have this individual in their custody. They say that a few days after they notified the Belgians, the response came that yes, Bakraoui was known to them, but that he only had a criminal record and they had not been able to solidify any known ties to terrorism or terrorist organizations.

The Turks then deported Bakraoui back to Europe, but they say that they specifically warned Belgian authorities about their very serious suspicions that this man had ties to ISIS and terrorist organizations.

[10:05:13]Turkey is growing increasingly frustrated with what it perceives to be a lack of seriousness on the part of various European nations when it comes to intelligence being provided by Turkey because it's not just when it comes down to Bakraoui. There are at least two other instances where Turkish authorities alerted various respective European nations about individuals in Turkey, individuals that had been deported in some cases and in one instance, an individual, a French individual, a French national that the Turks had actually flagged to French authorities who then ended up being one of the Bataclan attackers in that horrific massacre that took place in Paris of last year.

Turkey right now is saying that Europe needs to increase its cooperation with Turkey and that it needs to really consider Turkey as being its key ally when it comes to this war on terror. Turkey right now has compiled a list of some 38,000 people plus who are on a no entry list, who are on a no fly list, who are people that Turkey is actively surveilling. The country has plenty of intelligence Turks say it needs to be taken seriously -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Arwa Damon reporting live from Turkey this morning.

Belgian officials are actually under scrutiny as authorities scour intelligence to figure out if the Brussels attacks could have been prevented. I sat down with U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter and talked to him about the inner workings of ISIS' network of command.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: There is a sense, I think, on a part of many Americans that al-Baghdadi is like orchestrating all of this from Raqqa. Is that possible? Is he doing that?

ASHTON CARTER, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Well, they certainly get inspiration from the fact that there's an ISIL --

COSTELLO: Are there like direct orders, though?

CARTER: There are some instructions that go back and forth or at least urgings. Some of these people who are self-radicalized seek to make contact with the ISIL leadership. Sometimes they're successful. Sometimes we can see this communication. Sometimes we can't. So it's there, but we also need to recognize that some of these people are Belgian citizens. Disaffected, looking for whatever reason, for some cause and they find that.

We need to take away that cause which we'll do, but also there's an underlying problem here, and particularly in the European countries, they're going to need to confront that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: More of my exclusive interview with Ash Carter coming up later in the NEWSROOM. New video reveals that carnage and devastation inside the Brussels

airport after the attack. I want to warn you, the images you're about to see are disturbing, but they show the force of the explosives used. The video is from moments after the attack. As you can see, it looks like a war zone. There's debris scattered all around. You can see the smoke rising. A child screaming in the distance.

It's possible the bombers used explosives that contained something called TATP. On the streets the homemade explosive goes by name "Mother of Satan." The ingredients to make this bomb are cheap, but they're quite lethal.

Joining me now to talk about this and more CNN military analyst and former member of the Joint Chiefs of State, retired colonel, Cedric Leighton. I'm also joined by former CIA counterterrorism analyst Buck Sexton.

Welcome to both of you.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good to be with you, Carol.

BUCK SEXTON, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Nice to have you here.

Buck, those suitcase bombs, the bombers were just pushing them through the airport. I guess my first question would be, as a person who travels a lot, how could authorities stop that?

SEXTON: It's almost impossible to stop what happened. Once they got to this point in the airport, they're essentially -- they're pre- security, and so even if you have in place the kind of procedures that would be able to say -- to figure out that there are explosives that have been put together, by this point they're already at the point of detonation. So it wouldn't really make much difference.

This is a problem that you see with check points on roads and in areas like Iraq and Afghanistan. The military has to deal with this. Even if you can stop a bomber, say, from getting into the most crowded area or from getting into the central location, if they can get to that sort of first point of contact, they can do a tremendous amount of damage. And that's what we saw. It's almost impossible. And by the way, if they hadn't picked this target based on their explosives expertise and also their planning, they would have been able to find another soft target. All they need is a crowded civilian area.

And as was mentioned in the introduction these explosives are rudimentary. Once you have the basic training to put together triacetone triperoxide, it's not hard to do, and if you know how to wrap a shrapnel around it correctly, you can get a tremendously lethal effect from it and that's tragically what we saw occur in Belgium.

[10:10:09] COSTELLO: So, Colonel Leighton, the bomb makers, they're often learning their craft in Syria and in Iraq. So you know, the Defense secretary told me that the U.S. is accelerating the mission in those country, but are things going fast enough?

LEIGHTON: Well, one of the things you'll see, Carol, is that as the coalition and the U.S. forces move forward against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, you're going to see more of these attacks in Europe or in other places unfortunately. And what that means is basically ISIS is lashing out. They sense their power base is being affected. They are basically in an existential struggle and they have absolutely no qualms about doing what they did in Brussels or in Paris, and to great effect as Buck mentioned.

The other thing that I think you'll also see is that they will move or try to move their efforts from Syria and Iraq to places like Libya, and Libya is a lot closer to Europe than Syria is. So there's even more of a risk involved in all of this.

COSTELLO: Going back to Brussels for just a moment, Buck, and you know, they had this active manhunt going on right now, but the city is not on lockdown. I mean, compare that to -- you know, to Boston after the bombings happened there. Boston locked down the city so they could search for the suspect. Should Brussels do something similar?

SEXTON: I think that Brussels is trying to strike a balance between doing everything that they can and using the security services at their disposal to try to track down these individuals while also not sort of adding to the terror effect in the aftermath of this kind of a horrific attack. And shutting down the city, by the way, is a very difficult thing to do.

I mean, we're talking about the Boston marathon bombing situation, that was sort of all condensed into a number of hours. It took months for the authorities in Belgium, as we know, to find Salah Abdeslam, and he was hiding in a neighborhood known to harbor jihadist. And it shouldn't have been as difficult as it was. The Belgian security and police forces that deal with counterterrorism have not been looking particularly adept recently, but locking down the city is not even really possible, quite honestly.

They could do perhaps a bit more, but the most important counterterrorism work that's happening right now is a lot of what you're not seeing. It's tracing the leads, it's looking at cell phones. It's going deep into the hard drives of seized computers and also talking to human sources, people that you'll never hear about in the news but people who have a good sense of where to look for these very wanted killers. So that's the kind of stuff that actually brings this to a conclusion. Setting up checkpoints all over Brussels and treating it like an armed camp is quite honestly in many ways counterproductive.

COSTELLO: OK. And, Colonel, you said that ISIS is lashing out. Does that mean they sort of put their idea to create a caliphate on hold, and they're concentrating on training these bomb makers and sending them into Europe?

LEIGHTON: You know, they've never put the idea on hold of creating a caliphate, Carol, but what they want to do is they want to make sure that they can do that. So they are training the bomb makers and working with criminal elements that can deal with their ideology and are supporting their ideology like these two brothers that we've just mentioned here. And --

COSTELLO: Colonel, may -- Colonel, may I interrupt you? Because Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, is talking about Brussels. Let's listen.

LORETTA LYNCH, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Now before I begin, I know that at the forefront of all of our minds continues to be the terrible events that unfolded in Brussels earlier this week. And let me just take a moment to reiterate that the entire Obama administration and the American people continue to stand with the people of Belgium, with the people of all of Europe, and the world in condemning these appalling attacks and in offering our support and condolences in any way that we can.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their loved ones. But those who perished, those who suffered, all who are touched by this, and the Department of Justice is in constant communication with our counterparts in Belgium. We are committed to providing any and all assistance as we move forward together with unity and with strength.

Now I also want to make clear that while we have received no specific credible threats to the homeland, we will continue to remain vigilant in order to ensure that we can keep the American people safe from harm.

Thank you.

Now I am joined today for this announcement by FBI Director James Comey, by the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, Preet Bharara, and the assistant attorney general for national security, John Carlin.

We're here today to announce a major law enforcement action as part of our ongoing efforts to disrupt cyber threats and to protect our national security. Today we have unsealed an indictment against seven alleged experienced hackers employed by computer security companies working on behalf of the Iranian government including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

[10:15:00] COSTELLO: All right. We're going to step away from this. We'll continue to monitor this. We understand that this news conference will be open to questions a little later. We'll take you back to Washington when that happens. But for now we move on.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a show of solidarity and concern. Some of Europe's most powerful decision makers are holding a crisis meeting now. In fact two Cabinet members in Belgium have offered to resign their post. We'll be back in a bit.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right. We understand that police in Brussels are searching the homes of the el-Bakraoui brothers. As of now their search has -- they say the search was inconclusive. I'm not sure exactly what that means. But that's what they're saying right now. You see pictures of this. As you know, the Bakraoui brothers were the suicide bombers in the Brussels terror attacks. One set off a suitcase bomb in the airport, the other set off a suicide vest bomb at the Metro in Brussels. We'll keep you posted on this latest news in the investigation.

[10:20:12] On another note, as Europe struggles to contain the terror threat within its border, an incredible meeting is happening right now in Brussels. Security and justice ministers from all over the European Union are meeting for a crisis meetings to discuss this week's terror attacks and their shared concerns that more attacks are being planned.

CNN's Tim Lister and Frederik Pleitgen are following that part of the story for us.

So, Fred, what do we know about this meeting?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this meeting is set to take place in I would say about an hour and 45 minutes here in Brussels. And what these ministers are going to discuss is they're going to discuss obviously ways to make Europe safer but most of the measures that they're going to be discussing are things that were already set in motion but that haven't been put into legislation yet, if you will.

One of them is better sharing of information of air passengers. What they call a European wide air passenger list. If you believe it or not, something like that doesn't exist just yet. It's something that they have said they wanted to do, something that has been agreed upon but something that has not been set in motion yet.

Then it's all about general intelligence sharing. It's a big problem between agencies here in Belgium, between agencies in many other European countries but also between countries as well. And that's something where they're going to say they want to do a better job of intelligence sharing to make sure that people can't cross borders here.

It's one of the things that of course happened in the run-up to the Paris attacks is that some of the attackers there we actually ID'd on their way through Europe and still made it all the way to Belgium and some of them all the way to Paris as well. So there's more general issues, things that have already been identified, if you will, after the Paris attacks, but many things were maybe actually putting those into law and putting those into practice, has been somewhat lagging here in the European Union.

Now where of course they think that now there is more of a sense of urgency. Of course, there's also going to be displays of solidarity between all of the countries for Belgium at the beginning of that meeting. But there are also some serious topics that these ministries need to discuss because the state of European intelligence gathering, intelligence sharing is one that still leaves much to be desired -- Carol. COSTELLO: It's just -- it must be so frustrating for the people of

European.

And, Tim Lister, I'll ask you this question, we just heard from Arwa Damon, Turkey sent intelligence to Europe and said that it was virtually ignored. It's really upset about it. It's mind boggling. Why don't things move faster, especially in light of what happened in Paris?

TIM LISTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As Fred said, it's a question of sharing. Intelligence agencies by their very nature don't like to share. The Turks have repeatedly complained that they've sent information to Europe that's not been acted on. They told the French government about one of the Paris bombers months before he returned to Europe but didn't even get a reply. So this is a common refrain from Turkey. They're not getting the sort of assistance and response.

There's a European wide database that's sort of up and running but not working terribly well. The European parliament has blocked a lot of the security measures or delayed a lot of the security measures that would be in place because of privacy concerns. European governments during a recession have been unwilling to put up the money to improve external border security.

Hillary Clinton referenced all this in a speech last night she made in California saying Europe has got to do better. Its banks have got to be smarter about tracking terrorism financing. It's got to do better with its border controls, it's got to do a lot better with these databases that are acquired such as the one Fred mentioned for airline travelers.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Tim Lister, Frederik Pleitgen, thanks to both of you.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, federal criminal charges expected soon against hackers working for the government of Iran.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:28] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Belgian police intensified their manhunt this morning to find anyone in connection with this week's attacks in Brussels. All of this as the lawyer for the Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam reveals his client is no longer cooperating with police and he actually wants to be extradited to France. In light of all this going on in Brussels right now, the U.S. attorney general is holding a news conference right now to talk about the terror attacks and U.S. security. She's taking questions from reporters right now in Washington. Let's listen.

LYNCH: And also to make sure that they have the most recent information about other hacking activities so they can protect themselves. At this point, you know, we think that this case speaks for itself in terms of these actors. Obviously we remain vigilant in the future against not just dams but all of our infrastructure. It is indeed a serious concern for us and we think this is another example in which the public private partnership is really key.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: They often say attribution is incredibly difficult when it comes to prosecuting cyber attacks. Can you talk a little bit, give a little more detail as to how you were able to trace these actors?

LYNCH: You know I can't give you specifics on that because that would go into a lot of the investigative technique techniques. But what I can do is echo what you've heard from this podium today which is that an important part of our cyber security practice is to identify the actors and to attribute them publicly when we can. We do this so that they know that they cannot hide. You know, a large part of successful cyber security attack in the perpetrator's mind is in fact getting in and getting out without anyone knowing who is involved.