Interview With Maine Senator Angus King; Orlando Mass Shooting Investigation; Source: Killer Told Wife about Interest in Terror Attack; Obama Blasts Critics Demanding He Say "Radical Islam".
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Did she know? Investigators are focusing in on the killer's wife and whether she had provided any help for the attack or had knowledge that could have prevented it. We're getting new information right now. Living through hell. Survivors share new details about the slaughter in a gay nightclub, including the gunman's crazed laugh and how he calmly stepped over bodies. And radical response. President Obama unleashes a blistering comeback to Donald Trump, accusing him of dangerous yapping and dismissing his emphasis on a term to describe the terrorists.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's no magic to the phrase radical Islam. It's a political talking point. It's not a strategy.</s>BLITZER: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in</s>THE SITUATION ROOM. ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.</s>BLITZER: The breaking news tonight, we have new information about what the Orlando attacker's wife knew about the murderous plans before the slaughter at that gay nightclub. A law enforcement official now telling CNN she noted violent changes in his behavior and he talked with her about interest in carrying out a jihadist attack. Authorities have seized evidence from inside the couple's home and they're learning more about the killer's preparations, including surveillance visits to the Pulse nightclub and to another potential target, a Disney entertainment complex. Survivors now sharing horror stories about the killer's actions during the massacre, including how he continued to shoot victims even after they were dead. Others revealing that Mateen was a regular customer of the club long before the attack. His ex-wife now acknowledging the possibility that he may have been gay and hiding it. All this as President Obama takes reaction to the shooting to a new level. He offered his angriest, more forceful reaction yet to Donald Trump and other critics of his handling of the war on terror. A top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Angus King, he's standing by live. I will ask him what he is learning about the investigation. And our correspondents, analysts and guests, they will have full coverage of the breaking story. First, let's go to CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez. Evan, you're learning more about the killer's wife and what she apparently knew about the attack. Tell our viewers what you know.</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. Sources tell me tonight that the wife of the Orlando gunman knew more than they initially thought. We have learned that she has told investigators that she noticed violent changes in his behavior and that she says that he talked to her about his interest in possibly carrying out a jihadist attack. Law enforcement sources tell me that they do not believe the wife, Noor Salman, who you here on screen, was a co-conspirator. In other words, they don't believe that she was involved in plotting this attack. But, tonight, we have learned that she has told the FBI that she tried to convince him not to do anything violent. And, Wolf, she has told apparently the police she did not know anything about his plans to carry out this attack on the Pulse nightclub. Now, the wife -- the shooter's wife, Salman, also told investigators that when he left their home on Saturday, which was hours before this attack, he lied about where he was going. But there's a twist here. She did travel with him when he visited the Pulse nightclub and the Disney Springs complex in early June. Our sources think that that trip was to case those locations for possible attacks. Wolf, they're now looking at everything she has told them and comparing it to evidence and trying to figure out whether she should be charged with everything, specifically a charge called misprision of a felony for failing to report what he wanted to carry out, some kind of a report -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: I assume she has legal representation. She has a lawyer. Is she cooperating with the FBI, fully cooperating?</s>PEREZ: She is. She is cooperating with the FBI. She's provided these interviews. It's just a matter now of trying to check what she's telling the FBI against all the other evidence that they have gathered, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: I'm sure this investigation is only just beginning. We're getting more information. All right, this is a big, big development. Stand by, Evan. I want to go to our justice correspondent, Pamela Brown. She's in Orlando. She's getting more information on the terror investigation. What are you learning, Pamela?</s>PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, we just spoke to the sheriff of Orange County. And he said it is clear through the course of the investigation that this gunman was looking at several possible targets here in the Orlando area in the days leading up to the attack. But why he settled on Pulse nightclub is still unclear to investigators.</s>BROWN (voice-over): Tonight, authorities now believe the gunman's wife, Noor Salman, visited the potential target with her husband in advance of the attack at Pulse nightclub. They're trying to determine if she knew he was planning an attack.</s>QUESTION: Did you know your husband of going to do this?</s>BROWN: Sources tell CNN she's been providing helpful insight to investigators. For the first time, we're seeing inside the couple's apartment. Clothes and children's toys can be seen shattered on the ground. Investigators have seized items and searches of this home, and those of the shooter's relatives, including a Dell computer, smartphone, digital camera and related media. Sources tell CNN Omar Mateen was consuming large quantities of jihadi propaganda online, including ISIS beheading videos.</s>OBAMA: The killer took in extremist information and propaganda over the Internet. He appears to have been an angry, disturbed, unstable young man who became radicalized.</s>BROWN: One of the survivors today revealing what she heard the gunman tell 911 dispatchers.</s>PATIENCE CARTER, SHOOTING SURVIVOR: The reason he's doing this is because he wants America to stop bombing his country. And from that conversation from 911, he pledged his allegiance to</s>ISIS. JERRY DEMINGS, ORANGE COUNTY SHERIFF: He was simply making statements about who he pledged allegiance to and other statements that was in a language believed to have been Arabic.</s>BROWN: As authorities piece together clues painting a picture of the shooter's life, CNN is learning more about his movements in the hours leading up to the attack. Investigators say they used cell phone tower data to determine that he spent several hours the day before the shooting at Disney Springs, a shopping and entertainment center in the Orlando area, before the attack at the Pulse nightclub Sunday morning. Law enforcement sources tell CNN he also visited Disney Springs and the Pulse nightclub at the beginning of June. Investigators believe the visits were intended to conduct surveillance of the location.</s>DEMINGS: He came with plan of action. He had multiple rounds of ammunition. He moved through the facility fairly fluidly. So everything that he did indicates that he had given forethought to what he was doing.</s>BROWN: A performer at Pulse nightclub tell CNN Mateen visited the club dozens of times, averaging a couple visits a month over three years. CNN has learned that the FBI is now looking into claim Mateen was on gay dating apps such as Grindr. But it's unclear what his intentions were on those apps.</s>BROWN: So, this investigation still very active. But at this point, investigators believe that the gunman acted alone. However, if his family and friends such as his wife knew about his plans in advance and didn't come to authorities, that is a different story. Of course, Wolf, that would be a crime -- back to you.</s>BLITZER: Certainly would be, Pamela Brown in Orlando for us. We're getting this new information, and we're going to have a lot more on the role of the wife. But there's other important news that is breaking as well. President Obama's fiery defense of his record in this war against terror, he took on his critics, most notably Donald Trump, with a mix of cold hard facts and raw emotion. It was part of a one-two punch aimed at Trump, with Hillary Clinton delivering the second, somewhat less powerful blow. Let's go our chief political correspondent, Dana Bash. Dana, this was a pretty remarkable moment for President Obama.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It sure was, Wolf. Today will go down as one of the most memorable events in a very eventful 2016 campaign season, the day President Obama dove head first into the fray. A senior administration official told me that it was yesterday afternoon that the president was absorbing all that Donald Trump was saying about Muslims. He told his aides he wanted to say something and the results today was actually months, maybe in his case years of pent-up frustration.</s>OBAMA: We are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mind-set and this kind of thinking can be.</s>BASH (voice-over): A rhetorical explosion, rare for any president, especially one who prides himself on keeping calm.</s>OBAMA: We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from emigrating to America. We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence. Where does this stop?</s>BASH: Tearing into Donald Trump with visible anger and disgust.</s>OBAMA: That's not the America we want. It does not reflect our democratic ideals. It won't make us more safe. It will make us less safe.</s>BASH: The power of his words amplified by the stagecraft, a commander in chief coming out of a counterterrorism briefing standing with his top military officer, a four-star general.</s>OBAMA: We have gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it. We don't have religious tests here. Our founders, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights are clear about that. And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect.</s>BASH: And what really got him going, the GOP refrain that he's weak on terrorism because he refuses to use the term radical Islam.</s>OBAMA: There has not been a moment in my 7.5 years as president where we have not able to pursue a strategy because we didn't use the label radical Islam. Not once has an adviser of mine said, man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around, not once. So someone seriously thinks that we don't know who we are fighting?</s>BASH: All that as the candidate Obama endorsed delivered a more measured version of the same message.</s>HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He is fixated on the words radical Islam. Now, I must say, I find this strange. Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that, once uttered, will stop terrorists from coming after us?</s>BASH: Hillary Clinton continues to use Trump's response to the Orlando massacre to define him as too volatile for the White House.</s>CLINTON: Yesterday morning, just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists.</s>CLINTON: Now, just think about that for a second. Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.</s>BASH: Now, both Hillary Clinton and President Obama were quite deliberate in not just going after Trump, but putting the onus on Republican rank and file and leadership to decide whether they support Trump's rhetoric and prescriptions, knowing full well that most don't. Now, as for Trump himself, so far, he has been uncharacteristically limited in his response, staying off Twitter so far. Here's what he said -- quote -- "President Obama claims to know our enemy and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies and for that matter the American people. When I am president, I will always -- it will always be America first," rather. And I should say, Wolf, that we do expect Donald Trump to be live at an event at the top of the hour. We suspect he will elaborate on that just a bit.</s>BLITZER: I'm sure he will. All right, Dana, thanks very much. Joining us now, Senator Angus King, independent of Maine. He's a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator, thanks very much for coming in. We will get to all of that, but, first, the new developments that this wife, the second wife of this terrorist may have had knowledge of his plot, his plans to slaughter all these people at that gay nightclub. I know you have been well-briefed. Tell us what you can.</s>SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: Well, we just had a briefing this afternoon with the Intelligence Committee. And essentially it's what you have been reporting. Number one, there is a second wife. Number two, she's cooperating, being interviewed. Number three, it appears she had some knowledge of what was going on, visiting some of the other sites. We don't know whether she was involved and knew about the purchase of the guns, which took place, by the way, only about a week before the attack. But she definitely is, I guess you would say, a person of interest right now and appears to be cooperating and can provide us with some important information on who this guy is, what his motivations were and what his plans were.</s>BLITZER: So, basically, what I hear you saying that she may have known about his desire to kill people, but not necessarily at that gay nightclub at that specific operation? Is that what I'm hearing?</s>KING: Well, we don't have any confirmation of that. We do know that she was apparently with him at that club at one point, but apparently was also with him at the Disney facility. So whether she knew that they were casing the place when they were doing that, I think that's what is being discussed right now. I think the important thing is that she is talking to the investigators and hopefully will share some information that will help us get to the bottom of this.</s>BLITZER: Is it your information she is fully cooperating?</s>KING: Yes, sir.</s>BLITZER: But she has legal reputation, I assume?</s>KING: Yes, I assume that.</s>BLITZER: And was is unusual though that he would take that woman, his wife, his second wife, to a gay nightclub?</s>KING: Well, I would think that would be unusual, but maybe he was saying, look, let's just see what's going on here, what this is like or something like that. Or he may have shared with her an idea that this is a place that I think is -- needs to be wiped out. We don't know yet. We don't know to what extent she had knowledge of what he had in mind.</s>BLITZER: Because, to me, she was supposedly a religious Muslim, he was a devout Muslim. To go to a gay nightclub in Orlando, that seems to be against everything they would believe, as observant or devout Muslims.</s>KING: Absolutely. And that would lend credence to the idea that they knew -- she knew that they were casing the place. But that's what hopefully we will find out in the next day or so.</s>BLITZER: Is there any information that others, anyone else may have had wind of what he was perhaps thinking of doing?</s>KING: Not that I have heard thus far, Wolf. And of course that's one of the things the FBI is really focusing on, is, are there other people, was it a plot? So far, that does not appear to be the case.</s>BLITZER: When he went to buy that AR-15 and a pistol, do you know if she went with him to purchase those weapons?</s>KING: We don't know that.</s>BLITZER: And was that OK with you that he could buy these kinds of weapons, an AR-15, even though he had been investigated, under surveillance by the FBI, he was on an FBI watch list? There's a problem there potentially.</s>KING: There is. And I think that's a place that -- it's a problem we need to fix. It's ridiculous to me that you can be prevented from getting on an airplane, but you can't be prevented from buying an AR- 15. So, that's something we're going to be looking at in the Congress over the next few days is trying to craft a no fly-no no-buy policy, if you will. I think it's important that such a policy have a constitutional escape hatch for people who may be wrongfully on the list. But in this case, this guy was on the list for a while. Then he was off. Then they investigated him again. And I think we really need to clarify what puts you on the list, what it entails. But clearly if you're on one of those lists and can't fly, to me, it's just common sense. You shouldn't be able to buy.</s>BLITZER: But the argument has been that some people are inadvertently put on the list because their names sound like someone else's name.</s>KING: And that's why there should be a process whereby they can get themselves off the list, if it's proven to be a mistake or without sufficient basis. There are people that are very dangerous out there. And if they're on that list, they're there for a reason. And as long as they have a process by which they can in a sense prove they're not -- shouldn't be on the watch list, I think it makes sense to limit their ability to buy a gun.</s>BLITZER: And this terrorist clearly was one of those people. All right, stand by, Senator. We have more to discuss, more on the breaking news we're following, the role of this second wife in this plot, if you will. What was her role, if any? We will stand by for more information.