FBI Director Shares Information on San Bernardino Shooters.
BANFIELD: Breaking news to CNN. The man and woman who shot 14 people dead in San Bernardino, California, earlier this month, e- mailed each other, in fact, direct messaged one another on an Internet service. And before their deadly shooting spree, they pledged their commitment to jihad. That's right, they did it in advance. That straight from the director of the FBI, James Comey, who was speaking at a police headquarters meeting in New York City, just a short time ago. He says so far it does not look like Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were part of any organized cell of terrorists, but they are still investigating. That could be a possibility. And also Director Comey told reporters about long coming conclusions that he has made about another deadly shooting. That was when five U.S. servicemen were killed in Chattanooga, Tennessee, back in July. Evan Perez, our justice correspondent, is with us on this breaking story. Also Jonathan Gilliam, former FBI agent, is on this story for us. First to you, Evan, the details that are new out of San Bernardino. Can you just update me as to what the director is telling us?</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Ashleigh, one of the things he was trying to do was to push back on this idea that there were signs that Tashfeen Malik in particular was radicalized before, publicly visible signs that she was radicalized before she came to the United States. What he's saying is that the communications that they have now found were actually private communications or communications with her then future husband Syed Farook. This is even before they met. This is back in late 2013 that they were communicating and talking about martyrdom and about jihad. And so one of the things that he wanted to clarify was that there was really no way for them to know about this because it's only now, after the attack, that the FBI has been able to get a warrant to be able to get access to that communication. And really that was the theme of what - what he was here to talk about here at the New York Police Department, because he talks a lot about the difficulty in knowing when these people go from just being radicalized to actually wanting to carry something out. We have a little bit of sound from him describing the difficulty for the FBI investigators. Take a listen.</s>JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: If ISIL finds somebody online who is a live one, someone who might be willing to travel or kill in place, they will begin a Twitter direct messaging contact. If they really think this is someone who will kill on their behalf, they make another move. They move them from Twitter direct messaging, which we can get access to with lawful process, to a mobile messaging app that is end to end encrypted. And if that moment, the needle that we have been searching a nationwide haystack to find goes invisible to us.</s>PEREZ: And, as you might imagine, Ashleigh, this is exactly the problem that the FBI is confronting, he says, in a number of cases, including the Garland, Texas, attack in which a couple of gunmen tried to attack a Prophet Muhammad drawing contest. He wouldn't get into it in regards to the - the attack in San Bernardino, but he also made some additional news here today, mentioning, if you recall, that July attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He said that the FBI has now concluded that Mohammad Abdulaziz (ph) was carrying out that attack, a terrorist attack. That's the first time he's able - he's been able to say that publicly, and that he was - that he was acting on behalf of a foreign terrorist organization. We're told by sources, Ashleigh, that that terrorist organization, that propaganda that he was acting on, was messages and inspiration really from Anwar al Awlaki, the former - the Yemeni cleric who was killed in a drone attack by the U.S. forces. This is really one reason why you saw in the debate last night so much focus on national security, on surveillance and the ability of the FBI to be able to get to communications, Ashleigh.</s>BANFIELD: I'm glad you mentioned that, because specifically there is a fact check