Comments On Texas Affirmative Action Case; California Shooter Possibly Tied To Convicted Terrorist; Police In Geneva Searching For Five Suspects; Questions Raised About Terrorist Marriages; John Kasich To Talk About His Pledge
JOEY JACKSON, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: -- certainly is one that has been --</s>ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And --</s>JACKSON: -- told to be not true.</s>BANFIELD: And it looks like those arguments are pointing towards affirmative action being wiped out. But you know what? We've been wrong before by listening to just the arguments. Gentlemen, thank you so much. Appreciate it, --</s>JACKSON: Thank you.</s>BANFIELD: -- Paul and Joey. Thanks for watching, everyone. Brianna Keilar is sitting in next for Wolf who's on assignment. They start now.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar. Wolf Blitzer is on assignment. It is 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London and 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem. Wherever you're watching around the world, thanks so much for joining us.</s>ANNOUNCER: this is CNN breaking news.</s>KEILAR: Up first, we have breaking news. More pieces of the puzzle surrounding the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. The FBI is looking at a possible connection between shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook, and a convicted terrorist. Investigators now believe Farook had ties to a radicalized group that the FBI arrested in nearby Riverside, California. And we have CNN Justice Reporter Evan Perez joining us live now to talk to -- to talk about this. So, walk us through this link here that you're seeing, Evan, between Farook and then this recruiter for this group.</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, the key here, Brianna, is the fact this group was rolled up in -- they were arrested in 2012. Now that they've -- they're investigating Farook, the FBI is looking back. They're now going back and figuring out where he has ties. And one of the things that they have found is that he had ties to one of these members of this group that was arrested. There was four men arrested, charged with attempting to travel to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda in Riverside, California. And, in particular, one of them, his name is Sohiel Kabir. He actually was in the U.S. military, at one point. And he was a charismatic recruiter who radicalized this -- the rest of the group that was arrested back in 2012. There were actually five of them that were being investigated. Four were arrested. And Kabir was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year. And what the investigators have now found was that Kabir and Farook were in the same social circles, and they want to know more about that. They want to know whether or not there were tentacles already there, linking Farook, at that time. And who else was involved? Perhaps there are people who might be part of a wider network that might explain what happened in San Bernardino. This is still very early in this investigation. But this is an amazing clue to find now because now they believe that this could help us explain, again, some of the links with radicalization that explains a little bit of what Farook was up to in 2012. And, keep in mind, 2012 is also around the time Farook and his friend, Enrique Marquez, were allegedly coming up, dreaming up this plot that they --</s>KEILAR: Well, so, yes -- so, they were dreaming up that plot and they abandoned it. Is there some link between that and what happened in San Bernadino?</s>PEREZ: Yes, they believe --</s>KEILAR: Wow.</s>PEREZ: -- according to Marquez, this is what he's told FBI investigators, that the reason why they didn't go through with it was because of the arrest of these four men. And now, that explains it a little bit more, right, because they knew each other. At least Farook knew some of these people that were arrested.</s>KEILAR: Wow. And you know this is a story where it feels like you're pulling back the layers and there's going to be much more in the days and weeks ahead.</s>PEREZ: Exactly.</s>KEILAR: All right, Even Perez, thank you so much. There is a manhunt that is underway in Geneva, Switzerland for five suspects related to the terror attacks in Paris. That is coming to us from a source that is close to the investigation. CNN Terrorism Analyst Paul Cruickshank is tracking these developments from London for us. So, Paul, tell us what about these suspects that police are searching for? What do we know, at this point?</s>PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: Brianna, we know a number. They are looking for five people in the Geneva area. We know there's a specific concern that they pose a specific threat in Geneva. And we know that there's a suspected link to one of the recruiters from one of the attackers in Paris. One of those who blew himself up at the Bataclan. He was recruited by an individual called Murad Faraz. And this very same Murad Faraz, who's formally from the Lake Geneva area believed to be linked to these five people they're looking for in Geneva. So, one step removed from the Paris attacks. Not a direct link but one step removed. They're, clearly, very concerned about this. They're ramping up security at the airports, at the U.N. and international organizations there. There was a key meeting on Syria between the Russians and the Americans that was going to take place in Geneva tomorrow. Local media now saying that is being moved now to another location and they're not revealing where that location is going to be. They clearly don't have that much of a handle over where these people are otherwise they wouldn't be releasing this information to the public. They'd just go and arrest them. And that, of course, is quite alarming, given what we saw play out in Paris just a few weeks ago.</s>KEILAR: Yes, it certainly is. All right, Paul Cruickshank for us from London. We know you'll keep following this story. I do want to go back now to this fight against ISIS in the San Bernardino terrorist attack. The question that is now being asked, were lapses in intelligence a factor in this attack? Could authorities have done something more to prevent it? I want to bring in Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana. He is a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence. He's joining us now from Capitol Hill. Senator, thanks so much for being with us. And perhaps you can shed some light on this. We've learned now that the FBI is looking at possible ties between the shooter, Syed Rizwan Farook, and a radicalized group. Is this something that intelligence should have picked up on? Was this a failure?</s>SEN. DAN COATS (R), INDIANA, MEMBER, U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE: Our biggest concern has been groups that are self- radicalized, that are sleeper cells. We have a number of cases, many, many cases, where the FBI is in surveillance of individuals that we are attempting to watch to make sure they're not going to do an evil act, like what happened in San Bernardino. But we can't -- we're almost overwhelmed, in terms of providing the necessary surveillance. We've compromised some tools, frankly, which I, and a number of us on the Intelligence Committee, opposed. But, unfortunately, we lost those tools that would give us the opportunity to better find out what these connections were, not after the attack but hopefully before, so that we could prevent that. So, I think Congress has some work to do and the administration has some work to do to beef up and provide the resources to both the FBI and our intelligence agencies to, hopefully, prevent these types of things. But they're out there and it's a reality that we have to deal with.</s>KEILAR: Senator, when you talk about tools that you no longer have, are you talking about the Obama administration's adjustments to, really, the degrees of information and communications that they are able to really seek from people in the U.S.?</s>COATS: Yes, I am. And what we're finding out here postmortem, those tools are reaching back several years, now to even 2012. We've compromised that reachback to two years under this plan that was supported not only by the president but by several members of -- enough members of Congress to pass this. Also, the possibility to get this information very, very quickly. Think about Boston. We use that ability to track a phone number which allowed us to learn that that person was not talking to a foreign terrorist and the threat we thought was going to take place in New York we could eliminate. So, it is a tool that can be very, very helpful in times of both quickly learning whether or not something else is going to happen and also giving us the information that -- who is talking to terrorists? What are they saying? And this is not a breach of people's privacy. If you're talking to a foreign terrorist, this tool can be very, very helpful.</s>KEILAR: But do you --</s>COATS: If you're talking to your grandmother or friend --</s>KEILAR: -- I'm sorry to interrupt you on this, Senator, because I want to really -- I want to pin this down. Do you have definitive evidence that because of some of those adjustments in surveillance, that is the reason why clues were missed here in this specific case?</s>COATS: No.</s>KEILAR: OK.</s>COATS: No, we don't. It is one of many tools that we have. The question is, how do we -- should we be compromising ourself and putting ourself at more of a disadvantage in learning these kinds of things? And I think this is something that Congress and the Executive Branch has to re-examine based on the votes and the mischaracterization of how these tools are used. They are not used to invade anybody's personal privacy. They are used to find out if they're talking to people who are known terrorists.</s>KEILAR: OK. And I do want to ask you about something that Senator Lindsey Graham said. He raised questions about the marriage of this husband and wife team. Let's listen.</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Is there any evidence that this marriage was arranged by a terrorist organization or terrorist operative or was it just a meeting on the Internet?</s>JAMES COMEY, DIRECTOR, FBI: I don't know the answer to that yet.</s>GRAHAM: Do you agree with me that if it was arranged by a terrorist operative of an organization, that is a game changer?</s>COMEY: It will be a very, very important thing to know.</s>KEILAR: So, you, as a member of the Intel Committee, do you think that this was a marriage arranged by terrorist leaders? And, if so, what are the ramifications beyond this, if that?</s>COATS: Well, there were ifs in that statement and we don't know, for sure, whether this is the case. But I agree and I think our intelligence community would agree that if it is a provide -- arranged effort through a terrorist organization to create the situation where it looks like this is a normal couple trying to have children, raise their children as a family, be responsible citizens, that is just yet another detriment to our ability to detect something that's happening here. We're -- a lot of people watched "24" and "Homeland" and so forth. And so, we're are aware of the fact that people are -- whether they're citizens of the United States that have been self-radicalized or whether they are connecting through social media with ISIL, they pose a threat to us. And I think the more we can learn about their methods and tactics, the better chance we have of trying to prevent these things from happening.</s>KEILAR: Senator Dan Coats, we really appreciate your time.</s>COATS: Sure.</s>KEILAR: Thank you so much.</s>COATS: Thank you.</s>KEILAR: And coming up, Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is speaking out, for the first time publicly, about his nearly five years in Taliban captivity. We'll have his explanation for walking from his post and why he's comparing himself to the movie character, Jason Bourne. And then, later, Republican presidential candidate, Governor John Kasich, is going to join us live. We are going to ask if he has any regrets about signing that pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee now that Donald Trump is widening his lead.