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New Details on Attack in Texas; UK Election; Deflategate. Aired 10-10:30a ET.

Aired May 7, 2015 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: That's for our retired General Ann Dunwoody sharing insights of what it takes to get to the top in the military. The next, our CNN Newsroom starts right now.

And good morning. I'm Carol Costello, thank you so much for joining me. The power of terrorism, in the perils of the Internet right now on capitol hill. Law makers will examine the alarming evolution of terrorist recruitment and the use of social media by groups like ISIS. Among those who testify CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.

Turning now to Sunday night, the attack in Texas, one of the slain gunmen returns home. According to local media in Kansas City, Nadir Soofi will be buried today. He's one of the two men who targeted the event that offend many Muslims by featuring cartoon images of the prophet Mohammed. And we're learning more about his accomplice Elton Simpson who apparently had online contacts with ISIS operatives overseas. CNN's Kyung Lah is in Phoenix where Soofi and Simpson shared an apartment. Good morning.

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. What we've been hearing all week from the people who know Elton Simpson is that they don't understand this. The Elton Simpson they know is measured and calm. He's not violent. So now we're actually getting to see the Elton Simpson they know. In a 2012 video where he reflects on faith.

ELTON SIMPSON: It recharges your (inaudible) as well when you come together and pray five times a day with your brothers.

LAH: For the very first time we are seeing and hearing from Elton Simpson himself, known as Ibrahim to his fellow Muslims speaking in a 2012 video to raise funds for his new mosque, reflecting on his faith.

SIMPSON: It provides you a form of weaponry to go out into the real world and use that weaponry to shield you against the tricks of Satan.

LAH: Or Satan or Satan. CNN is also learning, the FBI is calling in members of the mosque for what's described as friendly interviews, trying to find out why this seemingly soft-spoken man would take this violent turn. Vocab Malone believes he knows he's the pastor at Roosevelt Community Church. He also worked with Simpson for three years at a delivery company. Vocab Malone recalls arguing theology with Simpson for hours upon hours.

LAH: When you heard the news and you heard that it was someone you knew who did that, what was your reaction?

VOCAB MALONE, PHOENIX BASED CHRISTIAN: I was surprised but not shocked. I wouldn't put it past him because I understood the sincerity of his beliefs. And he had expressed to me admiration, specifically for Osama Bin Laden, and he used the word hero.

LAH: Why do you think he took that step?

MALONE: He was a student of Islam. The more he studied, I think the greater his intensity grew. My guess is he looked out at Islam close enough and felt that no one was doing anything to defend the prophet's honor, something must be done, he was the one to do it. And no matter - he I'm sure he knew he was going to die. My friend wasn't a fool. He certainly knew he was going to die.

LAH: And Simpson influenced the other gunman Nadir Soofi, says Soofi's aunt.

CAROLYN ROCHOW, NADIR SOOFI'S AUNT: I think it had to do with the other man that was living with him. I think he preached to him so much about this violence.

LAH: But no one else, not the mosque, not neighbors, friends or Simpson's families say they saw any signs.

KEVIN HAMILTON, SIMPSON'S NEIGHBOR: A big surprise to the family he converted to Islam. But they didn't know to how extreme or how detailed.

LAH: What makes Pastor Malone different? He asked.

MALONE: It would do us all well to understand Islam better, the multifaceted nature of it and overcome the fear and get to know some people.

LAH: And it's these conversations, Carol, both in the secular world as well as theological realm that are critical to prevent future attacks, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Kyung Lah reporting live from Phoenix. I want to go ahead to Baltimore for just a minute. The mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake will hold this news conference. Soon you can see many community leaders, including Congressman Elijah Cummings standing with her. And then I would suppose they are going to announce this one Baltimore initiative and talk more about it and of course, when the mayor takes to the podium we will take you back to Baltimore Live.

[10:05:00] Back to terrorism now, though. Senate lawmakers hold a hearing on social media and terror recruitment today. Fears are intensifying that a bigger ISIS attack could be in the works. Officials now trying to track down clues about this man, Junaid Hussain, an ISIS linked hacker in his early 20s who exchanged tweets with one of the Texas gunmen a former hacker Warren Hussain is extremely dangerous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I didn't think he was a threat at all up until a point where he was video chatting on Skype with me dressed as black power ranger holding up an AK-47 which I thought was an airsoft rifle but I quickly realized it was a real fully automatic machine gun. I think that, that guy is a very serious threat. He's extremely dangerous and he is not someone that should be taken lightly.

COSTELLO: All right. Let's talk more about this man and his online presence with senior and tech correspondent Samuel Burke. I'm also joined by security consulting and ethical hacker David Kennedy. Thanks to both of you for being with me.

SAMUEL BURKE, CNN SENIOR AND TECH CORRESPONDENT: Thank You.

DAVID KENNEDY, SECURITY CONSULTING AND ETHICAL HACKER: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Good morning. Samuel, I want to start with you. Tell us more about this hacker Junaid Hussain and how he operates.

BURKE: Well, there's more evidence emerging that Hussain was in contact with the two shooters via Twitter, the two shooters there in Texas. Now, he's a British hacker who is believed to have travel to Syria in 2013. And terrorist analyst tell us that he is one of the most accomplished hackers fighting for ISIS. Don't think that they only have boots on the ground. They also have an incredible online digital strategy. And many terrorist analyst believe that this man that you are seeing on the screen right now they suspect that he was behind the hacking of Sarah Palin's account, NASA, NATO, the United Nations, American and Israeli Banks.

COSTELLO: OK. So David, that's kind of scary because he is capable of hacking into all of these things. What else is he capable of?

KENNEDY: Well, that's right, I mean, you're seeing ISIS actually use social medial, it's a you know, as a massive recruiting campaign for people in different countries, different locations. And so you know, to mention, it's not just boots on the ground anymore, they are actively going on targeting U.S. Commerce hacked recently by ISIS as well as a number other social media sites. So this is kind of the new norm where you have terrorist organizations that have the capabilities of hacking into organizations and causing you know, a campaign where they can recruit additional people. We saw that happened in Texas, unfortunately, and it's something that's going to continue to happen.

COSTELLO: So Samuel, I know the U.S. government has set up this program where they are trying to you know, go on the offensive against the online recruitment. How is that working?

BURKE: Well, we are - there's always this argument about whether we put boots on the ground in Syria or not. And maybe the bigger argument we need to have is whether we need to have more even more boots on line. I think we have to talk about the responsibility of the social media companies to combat this. I want to read you what Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter said about how bad his platform is at fighting online bullying. And he says, quote, we suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. I'm frankly ashamed at how poorly we've dealt with the issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. So there he's talking about bullying. The type of people who go after kids in high school. But my question is, if he thinks they suck, those are his words dealing with bullying, how can we expect these online platforms like Twitter and Facebook to deal correctly with terrorism online.

COSTELLO: OK. So Mr. Ethical Hacker, David, why can't the folks that run - why can't they be more effective? What's the problem here?

KENNEDY: Things have changed. I mean, when you look at what Al Qaeda tried to do, go to an extremist forum to actually, you know, find other extremists that have that type of ideology. What happened is that, you have so many different avenues and platforms, and it's so difficult to track these hackers nowadays, the techniques to use to shre - you know, to make yourself anonymous and make yourself invisible, are a very common well-known practices that make it significantly harder for law enforcement, for Twitter, for Facebook, to identify a lot of these problems. So it makes it a lot easier for these groups to get their message out and into the mass public. So we have a technology problem where, you know, you can cover your tracks, you can hide yourself and it's really difficult for law enforcement to can't find you.

BURKE: I'd just like to add, though, if you try to upload a Rihanna song to YouTube, it will come down automatically because of the copyrights, because these platforms had invested so much money because they felt the pressure from the industry like music, like television, so we need to put the same pressure on these platforms to take down terrorist propaganda, ISIS videos, immediately automated just the way they do for Rihanna.

COSTELLO: I can't disagree with that, David.

KENNEDY: I can definitely see a point for that, and trying to get more to the automated fashion of taking this down. They are very creative, especially the hacking movements. You know, they are going to find different ways to try to circumvent this. It's a problem we need to focus more on the government side of trying to identify ahead of time in these groups and finding where they are at and taking them down.

COSTELLO: Well, hopefully finding answers on capitol hill this afternoon. Samuel Burke, David Kennedy, thank you so much for joining me.

[10:10:00] A big election going on across the Atlantic right now. And it could have major implications for the United States. Voters across the UK are going to the polls to choose a new government, their votes will decide who will become Britain's next prime minister.

So what could be the outcome of the election means for the United States. CNN Senior International Correspondent Nick Robertson is covering the election for us. Good morning. NICK ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Good morning, Carol. I

mean, if you want to take the real extreme view, one of the extreme outcomes of these elections, the conservative party put forward as part of its manifesto, that it will have a referendum on taking Britain out of the European Union by 2017? Why has it done that, because there's been a rise of a smaller right winged parties, UK independence party, pulled the conservative party somewhat, it fringes in that direction.

So you know, how would the rest of the world see this in two years' time if this was the election that set the country on course for that. At the moment it appears the country, you know, if they had a referendum in and out of Europe, they would vote to stay in Europe. That's the picture at the moment. But these elections also have other consequences. You know, if you look at Scotland North of the border, we remember back last year scholarship had referendum to cut themselves off. You know, take themselves out of the United Kingdom, so to go - get independence with Scotland. They lost that referendum.

But right now in Scotland, the Scottish national party is expected to win the vast majority of seats in Scotland. That's huge. It's a massive change, it's a real landslide. They will go from about six members of parliament to 50 something members of parliament. That's huge. And that will have an effect on British politics in London and potentially as well lead to Scotland getting that independence that it's looking for.

So these elections have never been so close in Britain before. It's never been a situation where we have these sort of smaller parties making a significant difference. At the moment no one is expected to get a clear majority neither the conservative or the labor two principle parties here and how they will form a government. That's still in question at the moment as well, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Thank you very much. I have to interrupt you. I'm sorry about that. I have to take viewers back to Baltimore, this is Baltimore's mayor is speaking.

STEPHANIE RAWLINGS-BLAKE, BALTIMORE MAYOR: You might see a collection of people here but in essence, what you're looking at is one Baltimore. As mayor I have been so in creditably inspired by the overwhelming generosity of our community that responded in a way that we do in Baltimore to a crisis. We came together.

So many communities, partners, residents, organizations, foundations, institutions, they all called and said how can I help? What can I do to rebuild. Many didn't even wait for an answer, they just got busy, got started, getting working starting to heal our city. What we know about Baltimore is we love our city. This is our home.

I've been talking about the fact we've gotten so much national and international attention for the devastation that our city has seen, and I'm just excited about the fact that I know all of these cameras are going to be back to see our recovery and our victory after this tragedy. We also know that if we are going to have real healing in our city, in a real recovery, it has to be a coordinated and overarching effort to leverage all this energy that we have in Baltimore, all of this financial support and all of this good will.

We don't have time to wait, we don't have resources to waste. We have to come together and make sure that we are using all of these resources to the maximum capacity. And that means we have to work together as one Baltimore. We need to be deliberate. We need to be thoughtful. We need to be innovative. We need to ensure that this conversation about recovery is centered in the communities that we seek to serve.

With one Baltimore we will coordinate leaders across our city to advance collective solutions, to systematically promote inclusive city and a city that will provide for the future of all of Baltimore's neighborhoods. This is about more than government. This is a once in a lifetime effort to begin to attack the system's systemic inequalities that impact all aspects of our city.

[10:15:00] This partnership will guide a number of impact areas under one unified vision so that we create more opportunity in every community, to make sure that every community succeeds. I remember a conversation I had with Senator Murkowski, and she said, the needs of our community is very simple, the needs of our...

COSTELLO: All right. Let's step away, the Baltimore mayor trying to draw the community together, to tell the people of Baltimore that her office has ideas to heal you know, the underlying causes of what happened in Baltimore over the last couple of weeks we'll keep you posted.

Still to come, in the newsroom a severe storm outbreak, dropping records rains, spotting dozens of tornadoes in the heartland and the threat isn't over yet.

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COSTELLO: Tom Brady now responding to the deflate gate report, remember back in January, the AFC championship game controversy swirled after the Indianapolis raised concerns that balls used by new England patriots in the first half were underinflated. Well, the NFL commissioned a report, a Wells report to try to figure what happened. It reads in part, quote, based on the evidence, it is also our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities involving the release of air from patriots game balls. OK. That's sounds pretty noncommittal but it's pretty damming at the same time. Tom Brady's agent is pretty darn upset about the whole thing.

[10:20:00] In the past hour, Don Yee released this statement, quote, Tom made himself available for nearly an entire day and patiently answered every question. It was clear to me the investigators had limited understanding of professional football. For reasons unknown the Wells report omitted nearly all of Tom's testimony, most of which was critical because it would have provided the report with the context that it lacks. Despite the wishy washy language in the report, should Tom Brady and the patriots be penalized? So let's talk about that. With me now, the anchor of At this Hour and Patriot and super fan John Berman, sports attorney and agent, Eugene Lee and former New England Patriot linebacker Chad Brown. Welcome to all of you.

Should I start with the emotional part of the story John Berman, its front page news, in Boston, The Globe and The Herald, you know, did you see the top cover of their papers today?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: They are pretty upset. But on the emotional scale, you know, you see a resignation there in the face of Tom Brady, his face right now over just the last hour is one filled with anger. This statement from his agent is fascinating. I mean, they call the report a significant, terrible disappointment, it omits key facts. Listen to this line, more probable than not the league cooperated with the colts in perpetuating a sting operation. He essentially accuses the attorney who did the report of using it for billing purposes to make money. I mean, Brady, forgive me for saying this, for showing a big sets of gripes here.

COSTELLO: OK. Big set of gripes, John Berman, but I want to read to you one of these tweets from Tom Brady you know, this contained in the report, this is from January 19th. And he's talking to these two guys in charge of inflating the balls properly. Tom Brady: You good, Johnny Boy? John Jastremski: Still nervous. So far so good, though. I'll be all right. Brady: You didn't do anything wrong, bud. Jastremski: I know, I'll be all good. And I could go on and on. But Eugene, there's plenty in this report to make you believe Tom Brady knew they were underinflating these balls.

EUGENE LEE, SPORTS ATTORNEY: The problem I have with the report is it's all circumstantial evidence, there is no eyewitness testimony, no in controvertible part of evidence that Tom Brady may knowingly underinflated these footballs. You have text messages between equipment managers, the alleged promise of gifts of free shoes and autographed footballs.

COSTELL: Yes. But Tom Brady won't turn over his own text, why?

LEE: Has he a right against self-incrimination.

COSTELLO: See. There you go. Why? Chad, come on, joined me here. You played football. You played football and you played with Tom Brady. Why isn't he turning over his text?

CHAD BROWN, NEW ENGLAND LINEBACKER: Well, I think there's perhaps something he's not willing to reveal. We talk about circumstantial evidence. Aaron Hernandez is going to spend a long time in jail based on circumstantial evidence. So while Tom Brady, there is no smoking gun that directly links him to the underinflation of footballs, it seems from this Wells report that he at least knew what was going on and approved those activities.

COSTELLO: Do you believe - I want to make it clear, Chad, do you believe Tom Brady knew something was going on?

BROWN: I think he and the equipment guys had an understanding of where Tom liked the footballs. Did Tom say I want those balls underinflated below the standards, what the rule the league has set. I don't think Tom said that. I think he said I like the balls a certain way. And he left those up to the equipment guys to see to it those balls were to his liking.

COSTELLO: So what does that exactly mean, Chad, parse that for me. Because deliberately saying deflate these balls so I'm cheating or in like these balls a certain size is two different things. They are two different things. So what exactly are you saying?

BROWN: It gets into the realm of plausible deniability. I like a ball a certain way but I don't know what that specific air pressure is. An equipment guy happens to know that it's under the minimum standard of 12 pounds per square inch and that's up to the equipment guy. Tom wasn't simply saying, here, this ball feels great in my hands. Make all the balls just like this. Not stressing a specific number and the air pressure.

COSTELLO: OK. So again, if that is true, why doesn't he turn over his texts?

BERMAN: Well, you know, one of the issues here all along is that he agreed to testify at all. You know, under the union rules he doesn't have to do anything. There's no subpoena power to this investigation. So what Brady and his team are saying we went way further than we had to here. I agree with you.

COSTELLO: (inaudible) entire day.

BERMAN: I agree with you, there's something incredibly sketchy and the mountain of circumstantial evidence here points to the notion that something was going on. I agree with Chad - and Chad thank you for your service with the new England patriots.

[10:25:00] I agree with Chad Brown it was likely a scenario where Brady made it clear in general how he like it in this guy and the equipment guys went ahead and did it without Tom giving the number there. But something went on there. The league has to decide how much it's willing to punish Tom Brady based on these circumstantial...

COSTELLO: Yes. Because if Tom Brady isn't cooperating with NFL investigation that's a bad thing, right. And shouldn't the NFL retaliate in some way just because he's not you know, cooperating.

LEE: I think, you know, if you have NFL on of defensive after recent handling of cases involving Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson, it took quite a hit in the public image last year. They are going to meet out punishment quickly and harshly here. But I would expect an immediate appeal of any discipline levied against Brady because his legacy is at stake.

COSTELLO: So, when you say harsh, what do you mean by that? How harsh?

LEE: I can see a suspension, long-term suspension.

BERMAN: Long-term?

LEE: Long term, at least one year.

BERMAN: I would be shocked if they did that.

LEE: I would be shocked if it's more than two games.

COSTELLO: Yes. Because Robert Kraft is buds with the commissioner, right?

BERMAN: I don't think that's the issue here. The issue here again, wasn't the phrase generally aware, you know, generally aware is not planned and plotted it. Generally aware is a pretty thin connection there. One or two games may be reasonable. That in and of itself tarnishes the legacy quite a bit.

LEE: To a certain extent the problem I have with the Wells report is the burden of proof was more probable than not. That's akin to the burden of proof in a civil trial, by a preponderance of the evidence.

BERMAN: Isn't that a burden of proof commissioner's office has when laying out discipline in the league, more probable than not?

BROWN: I think that the issue for the league and Roger Goodell is not so much the crime of slightly underinflated football because the Wells report lists those balls that are measured at halftime of the colts game and they were very slightly underinflated. I think the commissioner is going to be much more upset about the attempt to cover up and spin some of this and not just be more forthcoming. That's where the punishment is going to come in. Not the initial crime but attempted cover-up or trying to cover the crime up.

COSTELLO: All right. Leave it there. John Berman, Eugene Lee, Chad Brown, thanks to all of you. I appreciate it. I'll be right back.

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