Who Funded Paris Terror Attack?
PEREIRA: As investigators in France begin to unravel the plot behind the terrible terror attack in Paris, questions remain about how the suspects were funded and why the Kouachi brothers chose to launch the attack three years after traveling to Yemen. I want to bring in one of our guests that is great at analyzing these things, CNN terrorism analyst, Paul Cruickshank. Good to see you. Obviously, so much to this investigation, kind of -- it's mystifying, all of the areas when you see. But let's start here and talk about the fact that if we talk about the connection to Yemen, this has been such a focus. This young man is said to have traveled there, we know that he received some $20,000 from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, talk about this. What more can we know and what can we glean from this information about getting this funding?</s>PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Yes, the U.S. believes that al Qaeda in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki specifically, gave this guy, Cherif Kouachi, $20,000 seed money for this terrorist plot against "Charlie Hebdo" magazine. He then travels back to France, and appears that the brothers eventually burn through that money, because they have to borrow money from Coulibaly. And Coulibaly reveals this in the video, had to give the brothers some money so they could finish buying their weapons.</s>PEREIRA: We'll get to Coulibaly in a second. One thing we know he gleaned, he traveled, Cherif traveled under his brother Said's passport. Significance there?</s>CRUICKSHANK: Well, he was under control in France, he had his passport confiscated. So, this was the only way he could get into Yemen. Get into these camps.</s>PEREIRA: All right. Let's talk about the brother, or not the brother, the accomplice, but then again, we want to know, accomplice, a known person to the brothers, Amedy Coulibaly, who you mentioned before, was borrowing his own money. Some $7,000 loan, which couldn't have been a flag in France, necessarily. But now, we find out there was this loan. Talk about the significance here.</s>CRUICKSHANK: Yes, he went to a bank in northern France and applied for a 6,000 euro loan. Perhaps so that he could get money to give to the brothers so they could buy weapons. Perhaps to give it to his companion, Hayat Boumeddiene, so that she could travel to Syria. It's not clear at this point. But we've seen these kind of fraudulent loans in a bunch of other terrorism cases before. You know, in New York, in 2009, there's Najibullah Zazi plot in the subways, he suspect got $50,000 for credit card loans which he used to travel to Pakistan where he got training. There's a track record of these guys using the Western financial system against itself.</s>PEREIRA: And let's talk about the tracking, because, you know, we put together this map of the characters and the suspects and the people involved in this plot. The two named -- the Kouachi brothers we know, obviously, they're going to be looking at all of their points of contacts. And how do they determine? Somebody they knew, somebody they might have been very close to and somebody who was a contact they were close to or could have been an accomplice or involved somehow.</s>CRUICKSHANK: You know, that's absolutely right. It's a giant spider web of connections that they're looking into. And this is very clear to the viewers, this is a network. This is not like the Boston bombers, a couple of brothers working on their own, don't really have connections.</s>PEREIRA: A cell perhaps?</s>CRUICKSHANK: This is a network, a cell. A lot of these guys had connections dating back to 2005, when a lot of them wanted to fight in Iraq to kill American forces over there. One of these guys, Djamel Beghal, I mean, this guy is part of the al Qaeda setoff in pre-9/11 Afghanistan, he actually went to bin Laden's house in Afghanistan where a senior al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, tasked him with an operation to launch an attack against the U.S. embassy in Paris. So, some really interesting historical ties here.</s>PEREIRA: And, of course, we've seen the video of the two, Hayat Boumeddiene, who said to be the partner of Amedy Coulibaly. We saw video or a still image of her traveling with this man. What do we know about this individual?</s>CRUICKSHANK: We know very little about him.</s>PEREIRA: The shadow figure at this point.</s>CRUICKSHANK: He's suspected of radicalism ties to this group. What we're seeing is a whole bunch of people getting out of dodge in the weeks before this attack. We've seen this guy Joachin, arrested --</s>PEREIRA: In Belgium.</s>CRUICKSHANK: In Bulgaria.</s>PEREIRA: Oh, Bulgaria, pardon me, that's right.</s>CRUICKSHANK: In Bulgaria, trying to get over into Turkey. You know, on his way to Syria. Some of these guys in Syria already, the groups over there, whether it's Nusra or ISIS, are going to roll out the red carpet for them.</s>PEREIRA: What's really interesting is that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is said to have said, yes, we take full responsibility and we financed the Kouachi brother's activities in Paris. But they point to fact that Coulibaly was merely a coincidence, they said we congratulate him, but he was merely a coincidence. What does that tell you?</s>CRUICKSHANK: It tells you, one of the hypothesis here is that al Qaeda in Yemen recruits these two brothers, and these two brothers recruit their friend, who they've known for the last five years into this plot. And so, there's this coalition on the ground, in France, between an ISIS sympathizer, and people who were recruited into al Qaeda in Yemen. Back in the Middle East, ISIS and al Qaeda in Yemen, they can't stand each other right now. Think there's little chance that this was a formal joint operation between the two groups. But on the ground, these friends who have been connected in plots in the past, all of these three guys, were involved in a plot to break an Algerian terrorist from jail in 2010, they cooperated again. They clearly felt they could trust this guy. They could get money from this guy, because he was a hashish dealer. He was able to raise money that way as well.</s>PEREIRA: Paul Cruickshank, of course, the concern is who he then inspired, who is still around. And who they haven't made contact with. All right, Paul Cruickshank, great to have you here. Thanks for walking us through this. Chris?</s>CUOMO: Obviously, Mick, if we're talking about terrorism, you got to talk about politics, because they go hand in hand. And the Republican presidential field already crowded for 2016. Is that a win for democracy? Or a sign that nobody is that strong? We'll tell you who's in and out, and guess how much it will cost to be president.