Return to Transcripts main page

WOLF

Who Can Best Keep U.S. Safe; Justice Scalia Audio Released; Terrorist Warnings for Geneva, Toronto, Chicago as Suspicious Phones Purchased. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired December 11, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:34:09] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: The terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, highlights a major issue in the presidential race, who can best keep the country safe. This is the focus of the Republican debate next Tuesday, hosted by our very own Wolf Blitzer, and it is also an issue that members of Congress are grappling with.

We have Senator Angus King, an Independent, from Maine. He serves on the Intelligence and Armed Serves Committee.

I want to ask you, Senator King, about ISIS creating the fake passports, because it appears that we are told by the officials that they were able to obtain a Syrian passport machine and blank passports.

SEN. ANGUS KING, (I), MAINE: Yes. Apparently, part of the territory they took over had a building where the Syrians had fake passports, so they have blank passports and the means to print them and fake them, and this is another level of concern that we have to pay attention to.

KEILAR: It sounds very alarming, but where you come at this with your experience on Intel and foreign relations. Is this really terribly alarming or what you would expect? Something that should make people feel more unsafe or really not?

[13:35:17] KING: Well, it should not make people necessarily feel more unsafe, but we are already on track to go towards the passports with the chips in them, and the biometric data that cannot be faked. So this is telling us to the accelerate doing that. But in the world of threats, of course, this is one of them. But, there are lots of other things that we have to attend to as well.

KEILAR: There have been closed door briefings with the FBI and the other officials, talking to you and other Senators on this San Bernardino investigation. Is there anything that you can tell us about these briefings that you have been getting or some information that you can share?

KING: Well, we had one late yesterday with Mr. Comey, the head of the FBI, and the people from Homeland Security and Department of State. Right now, what we have are more questions than answers. For example, what happened in the four hours between the attack and the time that these people were killed? Something -- they did something in that period. And secondly, the big question is, who else were they in touch with? They destroyed the cell phones, and we don't have any evidence that they were in touch with a cell or other terrorists around the country or the world, but why did they destroy the cell phones and the computer hard drives? Those are unanswered questions.

The other question that concerns me is that, was this woman someone that we should have picked up on a check when she got her check, the fiance visa, in Pakistan. Here is the gap. We check the databases, and she had to go through the database for a watch list, terror watch list, but the question is, do we have access to other people's database? Pakistan? Saudi Arabia? Jordan? Lebanon? In any of the countries. Are we sufficiently sharing data with other countries to enable us to pick up people that we with would not get in our own database. It is not going to help to search it if it is incomplete.

KEILAR: And on the briefing you mentioned, there is a concern about the husband and the wife terrorist team being in touch with other people, and they have destroyed the evidence. Having destroyed some of the evidence, is there a way that you are learning from Mr. Comey that there is a way for them to pull some threads and see some other people that are connected that we are not aware of at this point?

KING: Well, I cannot give you a detailed answer. I hope you understand. What I can tell you, but it is being pursued with all of the tools at the disposal.

KEILAR: You mentioned the wife, but the husband in the case, Syed Rezwan Farook, was linked to a group of jihadis in 2012. Should he have been on the radar of investigators?

KING: That's another good question. The question is, to what extent was he linked or involved. And what are our resources to follow every single link. This is a big country. The problem is we don't want a policeman on everybody's front doorstep, and so we are trying to find a way to do that. And an investigation like this takes enormous resources. And one of the questions yesterday is, are we diverting so many resources in the FBI and the law enforcement community to this that we are ignoring other significant threats to our security. So --

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Like what other threats are being neglected?

KING: Well, drug dealing. And in my state, heroin is an epidemic.

KEILAR: Sure.

KING: That is one, and organized crime. And the FBI was doing things before these kinds of issues came on the scene. I am not saying we -- it maybe a question of what are the adequate resources that the FBI has, because they have arrested -- a lot of people don't realize this, but last summer the FBI has arrested over 60 people in the U.S. for some type of terrorist-related plotting. And there are over 900 investigations going on in every state in the union. And the FBI is working overtime. But can they capture every one of these kinds of dangerous individuals? KEILAR: Yes, and we hear that they may not be able to, and probably

won't be able to.

Senator --

KING: And this is a case where being 99 percent right may not be good enough.

KEILAR: Some may have fallen through the cracks.

Senator King, thanks so much.

KING: Thank you.

[13:39:23] KEILAR: And join us next Tuesday for the final Republican presidential debate of they year. National security and terrorism will be the focus of the debate. And of course, it is moderated by our very own Wolf Blitzer.

We have new audio in which a Supreme Court justice under fire for making recent comments that many consider racist. We will play it for you next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We have breaking news, and just getting the audio from controversial comments by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. This was during a hearing this week on affirmative action when Scalia questioned whether some African-American students belong in elite colleges and universities. This is audio just released from the court.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ANTONIN SCALIA, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them going to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that, that most of the black scientists in this country don't come from schools like the University of Texas.

(CROSSTALK)

[13:45:01] SCALIA: They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they're being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them. This court -- I am just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer or maybe it ought to have fewer, and maybe some -- you know, when you take more the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, it turns out to be less. And I don't think it is stands to reason that it is a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible. I just don't think so.

MR. GARRE, ATTORNEY: And this court heard and rejected that argument, Justice Scalia, in the MaGrudder (ph) case, the case our opponents have asked this court to overrule. If you look at the academics performance of minorities admits versus the top 10 percent of admits, over time, they fair better. And, frankly, I don't the solution to the problems with student body diversity is to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to the separate schools, but they're going to inferior schools. What experience shows that Texas, California and Michigan, is this is not the time and this is not the case to roll back the student body diversity in America.

Thank you, Your Honors.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's bring in Sherrilyn Iffil, president and director of Council for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

You were in the chambers, Sherrilyn, when this happened, and so tell me what your reaction was like it to, and how other people in the chamber were reacting to this?

SHERRILYN IFFIL, PRESIDENT & DIRECTOR, NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE FUND: Well, I was sitting in the section with the lawyers. I did not hear anybody gasp. The language of the lesser schools and the slower track language had some of us, and especially those of us who are African- American attorneys pause for a moment, but these are arguments that we have heard and read the brief submitted in the case, and this is the second time that the case has been in the Supreme Court, and we have read about the arguments of the mismatch theory. Are African-American students being mismatched at elite universities, and the theories are debunked and it shows how well African-American students do when they go to the best college they can get into, and challenged by the environment, and rise to the occasion. And so this is debunked and yet what happened in the courtroom has reactivated this argument of mismatch that you heard Justice Scalia articulate.

KEILAR: And Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon, says that Justice Scalia should recuse himself from this case. What is your perspective on that?

IFFIL: Well, no, I don't believe that Justice Scalia has to recuse himself, because he believes what one of the author s of the amicus brief wrote in the case is wrong, and he is one justice of nine. And it was a vigorous comment, and maybe that comment was the most inflammatory, and there were good questions and exchanges in the discussion. We continue to feel that the University of Texas has a strong program that meets the constitutional parameters that were set out by the court.

KEILAR: Being there in the chambers, you heard obviously what Justice Scalia said, and other justices said, but walking away, you have a sense of where the case may be going, and what is your sense?

IFFIL: I walked away feeling that the arguments set out did nothing to upset the current state of affairs. This court just heard this case two years ago and the MaGrudder (ph) case two years ago and it has upheld the use of race by a university to achieve diversity. And the University of Texas is trying to do something modest. 75 percent of the students come into the university because they graduated in the top 10 percent of a public high school, and only 25 percent of the students are subject to the whole legalistic review, and it is a very exciting part of who they saw, and it is just one factor of a factor of a factor to bring this review. So it's a modest program. But it's meant to bring diversity to the university to assist not just black students or Latino students to have opportunity to the pipeline of leadership, but to help all of the students to learn in a diverse environment. Texas is educating the future leaders of the state of Texas, and they know, that and they know that the state already is 50 percent African-American and Latino, and they have to educate not just black student, but Latino student, and white students who know how the work in diverse teams, and know how to lead in a diverse opportunity, and that is part of the educational mission. Ad my sense is that the court understands that, and will be looking for a way that the Supreme Court has said they can do in the MaGrudder (ph) case and others.

[13:49:50] KEILAR: We'll be waiting to see in the months to come.

Sherrilyn Iffil, thank you so much --

IFILL: Thank you.

KEILAR: -- for talking with us.

This ahead. Geneva, as home to the second-largest United Nations center in the world next on ISIS's hit list? Security is high after a terrorist threat is uncovered. Next, we'll talk to our security panel about that and the suspicious purchase of dozens of throw-away phones that is setting off alarm bells in the U.S. We have that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Switzerland is heading into this weekend on high alert. Police there are on the hunt for four men linked to the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, which happened four weeks ago now. And this is a new alert that is coming from a CIA tip that named Geneva as the next possible target.

Here with me to talk about this, we have former FBI assistant director, Tom Fuentes; as well as CNN contributor, Michael Weiss, the author of "ISIS, Inside the Army of Terror."

Tom, do you anticipate at this point Geneva is going to stand in this heightened state of alert for days and days to come like we saw in Belgium?

[13:55:00] TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: I think so, Brianna. The hardest thing with these alerts is when to call them off. If you pick up chatter, you pick up source information that individuals or a group of individuals are intending to do an attack on some facility or in some city or country you can put everybody on alert. When do you take them off of alert? Because how do you know when they're not going to do it?

KEILAR: Michael, what do you think about these communications? Because the FBI also intercepted some that not only mentioned Geneva but discussed the idea of launching an attack on Chicago. Do you know anything about that?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, no. I mean if I did, I'd either work for the CIA or inside ISIS. I mean, I think what's happened is essentially they've intercepted signals, communication likely coming from the so-called caliphate, so Raqqa, Mosul, you know, Syria and Iraq. And this has been part of the ISIS strategy all along, perpetrate as many simultaneous or near-simultaneous attacks as possible, striking the West. So you saw prior to the sort of shutdown of Geneva, Brussels for 72 hours, I mean, was in complete lockdown with a heightened alert about an imminent terrorist threat. Also on the back of that, they were still chasing suspects from the Paris attacks. There's also -- it's not a coincidence to my mind that the three countries most affected now in this dragnet, France, Belgium and Switzerland are all Francophone countries. ISIS has a very strong Francophone contingent. They have all Katibas, or they used to, of French-speaking jihadis, many with European passports, who are easily dispatched back into the continent to either recruit and establish these sleeper networks or, indeed, to carry out gruesome attacks such as we saw last month in Paris.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: So in the --

(CROSSTALK)

WEISS: Yeah, I'm sure that -- sorry, go ahead.

KEILAR: Sorry.

I was going to say, Tom, when you hear what Michael is saying there, but how seriously then should officials in the U.S. be talking this idea of an attack on Chicago? Did they look at it and say, that's not as serious as one that is being discussed in Europe?

FUENTES: No. They don't look at it that way. What they look at is what's the basis of the discussion? What is the context? Is it code? You know, it could be. And sometimes this chatter is nothing more than digital gossip. So, is it chatter where they're talking about, hey, the guy in San Bernardino, Farook, was from Chicago? He was born in Chicago. Is that the reference to Chicago? Maybe being discussed of, wow, maybe they should do an attack in Chicago. So sometimes it's really hard to tell what they're talking about when a city's name comes up or when a specific location comes up, if that's what they mean. Are they talking about attacking there or discussing other events?

KEILAR: What do you think, Michael, about this report that the FBI is investigating about several suspicious purchases of prepaid cell phones from Walmart stores in Missouri, we're actually told that these purchases occurred over the past week, that they total more than 100 disposable phones, all were paid in cash. You hear about that and is that something that concerns you?

WEISS: Sure. I mean, you know, ISIS has got very good over the past, remember they started as al Qaeda in Iraq where U.S. Special Forces were Hoovering these guys up because they were nincompoops. They were talking on their cell phones, easily traced, geo-located and Special Operations forces would go in and either kill or capture them. Since then, they have evolved. They understand the nature of signals intelligence and surveillance. They have read the reports disclosed by Edward Snowden about how the NSA essentially listens in on, collects metadata and listens in on phone communications. There was a report in "The New York Times" several months ago, that when Abu Bakr al Baghdadi meets with the council, the main decision-making body of ISIS, everybody puts their phones in a lead-lined box before they're allowed to enter the room. This is exactly the kind of M.O. Pay in cash, no paper trail, no credit card sort of trail leading back to the person doing the buying, and take a phone that can easily be burnt and destroyed, you know, so that nobody knows where sort of, you know, the electronics footprint came from. I say all that, but then again, you know, the fact that people are buying prepaid cell phones so close to the holidays and using cash could also just be that we're in this time of year where these are the kinds of things that are happening.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: OK, Tom, what do you think, tom, when you hear about something, you hear about a purchase like this? What do you think?

FUENTES: Well, I think it's nothing new. I think, you know, my experience in the FBI, we had gangsters and drug dealers making those kinds of purchases decades ago. So the idea of getting multiple phones, use it once or twice, throw it away go to the next phone, is nothing new. Or, you know, I don't think it's on their Christmas shopping list. So I think it's obviously a bad intention to buy that many phones.

KEILAR: Tom Fuentes, Michael Weiss, thank you guys so much. Really appreciate you discussing this with us.

That is it for me. I'm going to be back here at 5:00 eastern. I'll see you from "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our viewers in North America, NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

[14:00:08] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Brianna Keilar, thank you so much, my friend.

Great to be with all of you on this Friday.