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AT THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Abdulazeez's Mosque Reacts to Shooting; Tenn. Suspect's Father on Terror Watch List; Plane Crash Victim Talks Survival. Aired 11:30a- 12p ET

Aired July 17, 2015 - 11:30   ET

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


[11:30:00] DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: And as we've seen in other cases like this, a community that is most likely introspectively looking at itself to see if there were any signs missed. The president of the Islamic society said he is meeting with police and the FBI. I think they will also be asking those questions of the shooter's closest friends.

But so far, you know, all the digging we've done and we've heard of it, you know, ad nauseam, that there were no outward signs of aggression, of anger, of anti-U.S. feelings that this shooter was giving out, at least to the people here in Chattanooga and his friends, even on the internet we can't find that. So I think that's why the FBI, the forensic examination that's going to go on, trying to find out who his contacts were in Jordan, what kind of preaching tapes he might have been listening to online, is going to be so important in determining just what happened to this fellow here and why he snapped.

I also think, John, I want to bring up quickly, we're getting more details about this drunk driving arrest. Something happened in his life. There was a drunk driving arrest back in April. It looked like it might have been more than drunk driving. There was white powder under his nose. There might have been some kind of turning point internally in this guy's life that also snapped. All of this will come into play, but right now the Islamic community in Chattanooga, no celebrations whatsoever. This is a day of mourning.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I talked to the district attorney who said the toxicology reports haven't actually come back from that DUI arrest. He smelled of marijuana, had crushed caffeine pills, white powder under his nose that's being investigated.

Drew Griffin for us in Chattanooga. Thanks so much, Drew.

We have breaking news about the shooter's father, including word he was investigated by the FBI Terror Unit. We'll tell you why. We have breaking details coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:35:] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: We do have breaking news for you in the investigation into the shootings in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Of course, four Marines killed there. Joined now by our justice reporter, Evan Perez.

Evan, you have new information on the shooter's father. He at least had caught the eye of federal officials at least twice we believe over the last several years.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John. The FBI had opened investigations looking into money that the father was sending to what he believed were charities, charitable organizations, and which the FBI believed had links to terrorist organizations, and so back in the 1990s, one of those investigations was opened up, pretty quickly closed. It was a preliminary inquiry and it was looking into terrorism financing issues, and again shortly after 9/11 the FBI looked into again terror financing issues with money, charitable money, he believed he was sending overseas and the nib thought was ending up with the terrorist organizes. Very important to add to the context here that there was no indication that the father knew anything about what happened yesterday, was in any way supporting this, and that these investigations had anything to do with the attacks that were carried out yesterday. It's also important to remember that a lot of Americans of this father's type of wealth, he was a very successful man there in Chattanooga, were the subject of these types of investigations simply because some of these organizations they were sending money to were seen in a different light after 9/11. A lot of these investigations were opened, a lot of them were never charged and just like that, this father was never charged with any wrongdoing. Again, but these investigations did exist, and now the FBI says that they're looking back at any of these things to see if there's anything missed. It doesn't appear that there was. Again, this doesn't really explain what happened yesterday.

BERMAN: No, but it does provide a little context. But the crucial things, Even, these investigations they were open, but they were also shut with no evidence of any wrongdoing.

PEREZ: Exactly.

BERMAN: Evan, thank you very much. We know you're going to keep hard at work because the details are coming in fast and furious.

Want to bring in CNN's terrorism analyst, Juliette Kayyem, former Homeland Security official in Massachusetts and the federal government as well.

Evan brought the investigation brought up the investigations that had gone into the father over the last 15, 16, 17 years. You say these kinds of things not uncommon.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: No, and probably not relevant to the investigation. We're right now less than 24 hours --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Everything is relevant within the first 24 hours. KAYYEM: Exactly. And so what we have to remember is some of this

information we have will not mean much to understand the motivation of what happened yesterday. So just want to put it in context. So for many years the federal government has had a statute called prohibition on material support for terrorist organizations. That included fronts for groups like al Qaeda. It actually came out of the Palestinian crisis, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other groups like that. A lot of devout and faithful and wealthy Muslim Americans were giving to charities they believed were charities in good faith but actually once the money got there ended up being a terrorist organization. So the U.S. government was likely to have opened up investigations on all sorts of people and then realizing they thought they were giving to a charity or, in fact, the charity was actually a charity but just in, you know, in Palestine or anywhere else.

BERMAN: So the father is one route of investigation, probably won't yield anything fruitful. Another area which might be crucial right now is the foreign travel the shooter took over the last several years. We know of at least one trip to Kuwait and Jordan in 2010. That's a while ago now.

But a coach told us last night that he had been gone for much of the last year and there are media reports he traveled for months at a time to the Middle East, possibly to Jordan. I have to believe that will be a key area of investigation.

KAYYEM: Absolutely. And so what I'm looking at is a sort of government validation of where he, in fact, traveled to because we're hearing about a lot of places. The Middle East countries are very different. You can't speak of Jordan and Yemen in the same breath. There was some speculation he went to Yemen. I find it hard to believe he went to Yemen and didn't end up on some list. American citizens don't just don't go --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Yemen isn't somewhere you go. Jordan is.

KAYYEM: Exactly. The question is, where did he go and what happened there? But I have to believe something in the calendar year 2015 clearly happened to him and whether it was radicalization online or the result of some travel, because what you see this year, including the DUI arrest, is just the down fall of a 22-year-old. Something happened and that's the sort of time period I would look at rather than foreign travel, say, six or seven years ago.

[11:40:31] BERMAN: No. But within the last year, I have traveled to Jordan. I have vacationed in Jordan. It would not raise eyebrows. It's the duration of time there. We're talking possibly months. That seems curious.

KAYYEM: And did he go with a return ticket? Who was he visiting? All the questions they do actually ask you on your way to foreign travel are actually going into a database. That's how we cover it. So what I would be curious is how did he pay for the airline ticket? Did he go without a return trip? And then who was he staying with? Those where the investigation is going to be, but Jordan in and of itself is not going to be --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: I'm fascinated by who is digging. What's happening? You have the CIA or FBI talking to Jordanian intelligence. Where are we going to get these answers?

KAYYEM: You have the equivalent of an incident command led by the FBI. They're following every lead, including the father's previous investigations to the social media and sort of figuring out what was on his hard drives and websites and then the foreign intelligence link and that will be the FBI directing the CIA or NSC or National Terrorism, NCTC, to talk to foreign intelligence agencies.

BERMAN: We haven't heard anything on Twitter or Facebook yet in terms of postings that have raised eyebrows. You were surprised it's taken this long to find anything?

KAYYEM: Yes. So, therefore, that's why -- yesterday I know there was a lot of sort of -- we want to call this something, right? And that's helpful. He targeted U.S. soldiers, so I don't question what it was in terms of creating --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You murder four Marines, that's an act of terror. What --

(CROSSTALK)

KAYYEM: I think people wonder, why are you being careful with your words? You're relevant because you don't want to lead in the wrong direction both because there might be other affiliates you want to get, but if there's going to be any silver ling out of it, it's can we figure out what is going on with, you know, men of a certain age who are either converts to Islam or late-comers to Islam who then are doing horrible things in this country? There are other categories of people doing horrible things in this country, white supremacists, as we have seen, and unless we understand them without labeling it, we won't actually be in a better position --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: You want to stop it before it happens last time.

Juliette Kayyem, thank you so much for being with us.

KAYYEM: Thank you.

BERMAN: We really appreciate it.

Coming up for us, as the investigation turns to the gunman's home, we want to ask who is the woman that investigators escorted out of that house in handcuffs? We have new details on that coming up ahead.

Plus, chilling video of rebels rummaging through the luggage of passengers who were on the flight that was shot down one year ago, MH- 17. We'll tell you what is surprising.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[11:46:58] UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO (voice-over): When I was a special- ed teacher, I taught carpentry to high-risk kids. During the daytime, they would catch on. You'd see that spark. They'd go home at nighttime, it would get erased.

The tears you would see, the anguish they would go through. I saw a real need, and that's when the idea hit me, don't let them go home.

ANNOUNCER: The morning meal is now being served.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO: We provide --

Good morning.

-- a residential setting for young men --

Ready for a rip-roaring day of work?

During the day they learn trades.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What I'd like to do --

UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO: At nighttime, they get their high school education.

We take on a lot of tough cases from foster care to the court system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm impressed.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO: The emotional support we get is critical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Worked hard on it.

Good job.

The grounds are wide open, fields, trees, chickens, animals. It's not a lock up.

This facility becomes a home for many of them. When they leave, we try to help them get a job and a place to live. Anything they need, we make sure that they have.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The program saved my life in every way. I'm currently enrolled in college. I feel like I'm moving from the bottom to the top.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bennie gave me the tools to build my future. I decided to come back and work with youth just like other people worked with me.

UNIDENTIFIED CNN HERO: I don't want to see any more kids fall through the cracks. If I can give them an opportunity to turn their lives around, to step forward, that's my life's work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: What a great mission that is. If you know someone who should be a "CNN Hero," let us know at CNNheroes.com.

We'll have much more on our breaking news involving the Chattanooga shooter and his father, including word that the father was investigated by the FBI Terror Unit.

Plus, a brand new revelation about the head start that el Chapo had when he busted out of a Mexican prison. How long was it before guards realized that this drug lord was gone?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:52:52] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: We have breaking news, new information just into CNN about one of the Marines wounded in the shootings yesterday in Chattanooga. His name, Randall Smith, and his grandfather spoke to CNN. You're looking at a photo provided by Linda Wallace. She says her grandson, Randall Smith, is alive after being shot three times in this attack. He was hit in the liver, the stomach and colon. He is in surgery right now to repair the colon. The grandmother told us he made it through the night, which wasn't expected, but he is a fighter and we are praying so hard for his recovery. The grandmother also tells CNN that her grandson, Randall Smith, saw the shooter and tried to warn everyone around him but did not get away fast enough before he was shot. Again, Randall Smith right here, shot three times in surgery right now. The grandmother and the entire family, not to mention the Marine community, praying for his well-being. Clearly in serious condition. He is a U.S. Navy logistics specialist. Married, father of three. I think the whole country is praying for this young man right now.

Other news, one year after Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, we have disturbing new video. It appears to show fighters who speak Russian going through crash victims' belongings as the wreckage is still smoldering. CNN could not immediately verify if the video was authentic or who are the people in it are. But News Corp Australia reports that Russian-backed rebels recorded the video. Flight 17 was on route for Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down. 298 people were killed. The media company says it's turned the video over to international investigators.

We're now hearing from the teenage girl who survived the plane crash in the remote mountains of Washington State.

Sarah Sidner has that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[11:55:00] SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 16-year-old Autumn Veatch was excited when her grandparents offered her a chance to be flown home in a private plane instead of driven home. That excitement turned into sheer terror when the plane began to have problems.

AUTUMN VEATCH, PLANE CRASH SURVIVOR: We almost crashed the first time. We went through clouds but he took a sharp turn and was like, "That was a close one."

SIDNER: It happened again, and this time, the plane crashed in the remote wilderness.

VEATCH: I'm still, like, panicking, freaking out. Then they started freaking out, yelling, "Turn the GPS back on." And I can't see anything that's going on so he started to go up and there was a light and it was all trees and all fire.

SIDNER: She got out and tried to save her step grandparents.

VEATCH: They were both screaming. And I was -- there was no way I could get to grandma because she was on the far side. If I got grandpa out first maybe she would come out. I was trying to pull him out and I couldn't do it. There was a lot of fire.

SIDNER: Sobbing, she eventually realized she'd die, too, if she stayed put.

(on camera): You must have been so incredibly stressed out, scared, sad.

VEATCH: Scared to be alone in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I didn't know where it was or what city it was.

SIDNER (voice-over): She began walking, her hand, face, and hair burned. Her body bruised.

(on camera): Did you think at some point, "I'm not going to make it, I'm going to die?"

VEATCH: I was freezing and it didn't seem likely that I would make it? What are the odds? I don't know anything about outdoor survival.

SIDNER (voice-over): But she made it after two nights and three days in the wilderness. She credits a tip from the survival shows her dad watches. Follow the water and live.

Sara Sidner, CNN, Bellingham, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Sara Sidner for that.

Breaking news, the coverage out of Chattanooga, four Marines killed yesterday. We were getting new information just in about the shooter and new information about the victims, including a survivor right now fighting for his life.

"Legal View" picks up the story right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)