Vegas Shooter May Have Cased Other Festivals; Country Music Reckons with Gun Rights Debate; Catalonia Crisis
ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Ahead this hour, investigators believe Stephen Paddock considered other targets in the days before his deadly shooting spree on concertgoers in Las Vegas.</s>SESAY: Plus the Catalan crisis deepens after Spain blocked an attempt by Catalonia to declare its independence.</s>VAUSE: And an already devastating hurricane season isn't over yet, another tropical storm taking aim at the</s>U.S. SESAY: Well, hello and thank you for joining us. I'm Isha Sesay</s>VAUSE: Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now. Authorities now believe the Las Vegas gunman may have considered other music festivals before his deadly rampage in Las Vegas. A week before he opened fire on country fan music -- country music fans, I should say -- Stephen Paddock rented a room at a Las Vegas condo complex overlooking the Life is Beautiful festival -- a much larger event than the one he targeted on Sunday. On any given night it could be more than twice the size.</s>SESAY: Paddock may have also booked a hotel room near one of the country's biggest festivals, Lollapalooza in Chicago. A man named Stephen Paddock made a reservation for the same time in August and officials are trying to find out if he's the same man behind the massacre in Vegas. Well, investigators also say they think Paddock had every intention of surviving his attack. The Las Vegas sheriff didn't offer specifics but said Paddock put effort into an escape plan. Well retired FBI special agent Steve Moore joins us now. Steve -- always good to have you with us.</s>STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to be here.</s>SESAY: So these details of Paddock scouting other locations, possibly other sites for attack, unconfirmed but this is the working theory right now. What does it say to you?</s>MOORE: It's orthodox. Every mass shooter case that I've been involved with, there is a questioning -- self-questioning. What target do I want? When Buford Furrow came to Los Angeles and ultimately machine-gunned a class of kids because they were Jewish, his first target was the Holocaust Museum, the Museum of Tolerance. He then went to several venues around Los Angeles before he settled basically on Plan D or E. And so they frequently chicken out of the first target and force themselves later to suck it up and go after the less vulnerable.</s>SESAY: Ok. There was a note found in Stephen Paddock's hotel room. It wasn't a suicide note, according to Sheriff Lombardo of the Vegas police. It's a note that had numbers on it that -- help us understand how the FBI would go about trying to ascertain its significance or interpret it. I mean what's going on behind the scenes?</s>MOORE: There are people at Quantico who do nothing but this -- do numerology codes, encryption, ciphers and they will most likely find out what these numbers are. He's an intelligent -- Paddock was an intelligent man but likely he hasn't gotten a code that's going to be more sophisticated than the FBI can undo.</s>SESAY: Ok. FBI going through all his electronic devices -- phones, computers; by this stage where we are at now, this happened Sunday night, would they have completed that search by now?</s>MOORE: No. No. They may have completed the harvesting of the information --</s>SESAY: Ok.</s>MOORE: -- but you cannot just sweep through this like a Cliff Notes book. You have to go through every web page. And what I found in some of the cases where I worked, the only indication that would be available to the outside world that this person was spinning out of control were the websites they went to. And so I am going to be fascinated what websites he was on. What chat rooms he was communicating with. The treasure trove is just being, unlocked.</s>SESAY: You talk about the electronic footprint that they're hoping they discover. People also looking to the live-in girlfriend, the human intelligence, Marilou Danley --</s>MOORE: Oh yes.</s>SESAY: She is back in the United States, has already been interviewed, still considered a person of interest but she's not in custody. So how does this work typically in these situations? Would it be a case where you bring her in several times over consecutive days? Would you put an agent with her? I mean what's the rhythm of interviewing someone like this? Because I'm sure it's down to fine art, right?</s>MOORE: It is a fine art but it's a very quickly evolving fine art. They are going to call audibles. They are going to make decisions on the fly as to how they deal with her. They may even change their mind halfway. But what is known for sure is if they had lost interest in her, if she had completely answered their questions to the FBI's satisfaction, she would be back on her way to the Philippines. There is something as an FBI agent I can list three or four questions right now that absolutely would keep me awake at night if this were my case until I got it answered.</s>SESAY: What are those questions?</s>MOORE: The first question is just something obtuse. When she's in the Philippines and she hears that her husband has become a huge mass shooter in the United States, a friend or a relative calls her and says, have you seen the news? Anybody else in that situation, I think, would have been terrified, would have been grieving, would have been and would have wondered what the future held for them.</s>SESAY: How do we know she didn't do those things?</s>MOORE: The Filipino authorities are saying that her communication, her response back was, "I've got this, I did nothing wrong and we're going to take care of it." To me -- and I could be wrong. I mean it's just as likely that she's completely innocent but that statement indicates to me that there was something pre-thought out.</s>SESAY: A kind of awareness. Is that what you're saying?</s>MOORE: An awareness and "I've got a plan". How do you have a plan unless you knew something was happening beforehand? Again, I could be wrong. FBI agents are wrong and that's the beauty of the FBI, I hope that we admit when we are. But we have to follow trails like that.</s>SESAY: Ok. Sheriff Lombardo, without providing any evidence to support it, says he thinks he got help. He thinks Paddock got help. Does that strike you as credible given what you know of the planning, the cases that he would have had to carry into the hotel, everything he acquired over time.</s>MOORE: I don't understand what he bases that on. The cases that I have worked where there was mass shootings people always seem to think that one person can't put it together. But they really can. And so I will give Sheriff Lombardo the benefit of the doubt because I'm sure --</s>SESAY: He may be privy to something we don't know.</s>MOORE: -- exactly. He didn't get where he was by being dumb. However I don't -- I'd have to see the information that he based that on because I don't see it just patent in front of me.</s>SESAY: Steve Moore -- always appreciate the insight, really interesting. Thank you very, very much.</s>MOORE: Thank you very much.</s>VAUSE: In recent days, some of the biggest names in music have taken to social media demanding tougher gun laws. Artists like Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Moby (ph) -- the list goes on. But for the most part mainstream country artists have remained silent -- a stark contrast with the industries long and cozy relationship with America's gun culture. From Johnny Cash in 1957 and "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" --</s>VAUSE: -- to Miranda Lambert's the 2007 hit "Gunpowder and Lead".</s>VAUSE: -- country singers know their mostly conservative fan base like their guns and are passionate about gun rights. But as Dianne Gallagher reports now from Nashville many in the country music capital are having -- are talking at least about gun violence and tougher laws aimed at stopping the next mass shooting.</s>DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: When Stephen Paddock opened fire on the Route 91 harvest festival Sunday night, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds in Las Vegas, his bullets also pierced the soul of the country music community in Nashville, Tennessee.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't want (inaudible) than that. I only want to play guitar.</s>GALLAGHER: 1,800 miles from the scene of the deadliest shooting in modern history, music city is grappling with grief. It didn't happen here but it happened to their people.</s>KELLY FOND, NASH PM: More than just a genre, it's a family. It really has put a whole cloud over the city for I don't even know how long that will last. Probably a very long time.</s>GALLAGHER: And the grief is playing out on morning radio.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's an attack on everybody.</s>GALLAGHER: This week the DJs on the nationally syndicated "Ty, Kelly and Chuck Show" had been doing a lot more listening than talking.</s>TY BENTLI, NASH PM: That's where we think for us, is that that's what radio is kind of. It's like live therapy.</s>GALLAGHER: And when they do talk the topics have become a bit more controversial. In the hours after surviving the massacre, Caleb Peter, the lead guitarist of the Josh Abbot Band who performed at the concert posted a message on his Twitter account saying, I've been a pro-opponent of the Second Amendment my entire life until the event of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was. Enough is enough. We need gun control right now. T.J. Osbourne who performed on a different night of the Route 91 Festival called in to the show to talk about his changing feelings on the issue.</s>T.J. OSBOURNE, COUNTRY MUSIC ARTIST: I'm sorry. It's just gun control -- I mean it is out of control. It isn't controlled, you know, for someone to be able to legally a ki1ling machine like that it seems as though he did it lawfully to this point, it just shows that that's not enough.</s>GALLAGHER: But those artists have received some backlash. With a fan base that leans conservative. It's an industry with close ties to the National Rifle Association which even sponsors the popular concert series.</s>FORD: I think people are so afraid of getting political that I don't expect a ton more artists to do that. That was pretty bold.</s>GALLAGHER: But the conversation is happening.</s>SHAWN PARR, LEGENDARY COUNTRY DJ: Whatever side you're on it's opened up a discussion that's like, hold on a second, I was in that scenario. Let's take a minute and look at how this happened and what can we do to prevent that?</s>GALLAGHER: Right now, though, Nashville is focused on how to heal.</s>ERIC CHURCH, COUNTRY MUSIC SINGER:  UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tha night, something broke in me on Sunday when that happened.</s>GALLAGHER: And it seems Music City plans to do that by doing what it does best.</s>CHURCH: The only way I ever fix that's broken in me is with music.</s>GALLAGHER: Now, of course, those musicians, those artists want to help their fans heal as quickly as possible. But look, the music industry is worried about the artists and those who work-around them as well making sure that they are working through exactly what happened in Las Vegas. An organization called Music Cares already on the ground here in Nashville holding listening and therapy sessions so they can make sure that their artists and the people who surround them are also processing exactly what happened. Dianne Gallagher, CNN -- Nashville, Tennessee.</s>VAUSE: Kris Daniels is a radio host at 102.7 in Las Vegas, a country music station. And she was backstage at the concert on Sunday night. Chris -- thanks for being with us. It must have been a pretty tough few days. You're also a therapist. Tell me how you and your husband are coping right now? KRIS DANIELS, COUNTRY MUSIC RADIO HOST, 102.7</s>LAS VEGAS: You know, we're doing really well. I think it really hit us Monday after -- we hadn't really watched a lot of the news. And then we started watching the news on Monday. And for myself at least, that's when I started really processing what was going on. But, you know, I've been trying to help people since. I've been counseling. We've been counseling each other or I've been counseling him so we're doing a lot better. Thank you for asking.</s>VAUSE: You know, I had one person saying, thank God this was a country music concert because that meant there were a lot of ex military, ex-servicemen, off-duty police who were in the audience and they kind of sprang into action.</s>DANIELS: Yes. You know, what was incredible was just -- first of all, you never think this is going to happen obviously to you. You never think this was going to happen anywhere, especially a country concert. But everyone was helping everyone. It was just -- looking back now, it was just amazing to see how everyone was just coming together. We didn't even know half the people. They didn't know us. And that was something that can be said for that. And there were a lot of military there as well.</s>VAUSE: Yes. Country music fans are known, you know, for mostly being conservative and liking their guns and their gun rights. Someone like you who spent 20 years in the country music industry, do you think this will change any attitudes towards guns and gun laws?</s>DANIELS: You know, because it's so weird to be in a situation like this, because you never expect to be in a situation like this, I think everyone -- well, I can't say everyone, I can only speak for myself -- but I'm still processing what happened. And I'm more concerned about the mental health of a lot of my friends or people that reached out to me that they're like can you please just help us with therapy? And I'm like absolutely. You know, I've offered free therapy for those in need who were there because I understand. I was there and well, obviously, you know, I'm a therapist as well. So I haven't really -- I haven't even thought about going in the politics direction or the gun direction, you know.</s>VAUSE: Well, eventually, I guess the conversation will come to that but right now, it seems many in the country music industry are maybe avoiding talk about gun violence, for example this -- in Billboard. Billboard reached out to more than two dozen country music acts and executives asking them if the October 1st massacre led them to reconsider their gun views. Most declined to comment. So as you say, it could be too soon to start this conversation or are they worried about a Dixie Chick-like backlash that was -- you know, the group spoke out against the Iraq war in London in 2003. This was the moment.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As usual, I didn't plan anything, but I thought I'd say something brand new and just say, just so you know, we're ashamed of the President of the United States --</s>VAUSE: You probably remember better than most that, you know, they were shunned for years, that no one bought their tickets, no one bought their albums. They did manage a comeback but it took a very long time. You know, there are similar concerns if country music artists come out and, you know, start talking about well, we need some sensible gun reform here?</s>DANIELS: You know, I can't speak for the country artists but I can tell you this. The country artists are amazing. They all have -- they're great to their fans and that's why everyone as country music fans come together and stuff. But I think that -- I think there's some pretty strong personalities out there that if that's how they feel they would maybe phrase it a little different because that wasn't necessarily on guns that was against the President at the time.</s>VAUSE: Yes. You know, it's interesting because there's always been this argument that, you know, guns are there. If people had guns, they could defend themselves, you know, a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun. But in a situation like you went through, this guy was on the 32nd floor, and there wasn't a lot a good guy with a gun could do.</s>DANIELS: Yes, that's true. And you know, this was a very sick individual that unfortunately for whatever reason did something that 22,000 people are going to have to deal with for the rest of their lives and not only that but the rest of the nation. You know, would you feel safe going to a concert?</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>DANIELS: You know, that's a kind of a thought. And the thing is though we can't let this stop us going to concerts.</s>VAUSE: You know, I've got a 13-year-old daughter. She loves going to concerts. We're terrified as I guess a lot of people are as well. I'm glad you're doing well. I'm glad your husband is doing well. And I hope, you know, the healing and the process continues. And thank you for sharing your story. We appreciate it.</s>DANIELS: Yes, thank you. Pray for Vegas.</s>VAUSE: Ok. Well, Anderson Cooper will host a special dedicated to the victims of the Las Vegas massacre. "LAS VEGAS LOST", it's commercial-free on Saturday, 9:00 a.m. in Hong Kong. You can watch it at 5:00 a.m. in Abu Dhabi.</s>SESAY: We're going to take a quick break now. And next on CNN NEWSROOM, the Las Vegas massacre may motivate Congress to take action on at least one gun control issue. We'll explain what they might do.</s>VAUSE: Also ahead, a new tropical storm pummels Central America -- not done yet. We'll have details after the break.