CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Terrorist Recruitment

Interview

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KEILAR: I want to talk now all about of this breaking news in the fight against terror with the senior Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff of California.

Thanks so much, Congressman, for being with us.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D), CALIFORNIA: You bet.

KEILAR: And I want to talk to you about, of course, the death of this AQAP leader, the number two of al Qaeda, but I want to talk to you first about what we are just learning, a 20-year-old man charged with planning to detonate an explosive device in New York in the name of ISIS.

What can you tell us about this?

SCHIFF: Well, we are still getting information on this latest domestic plot.

And, unfortunately, we have seen a proliferation of these, from the plot in Boston, to this one in New York, to the one in Garland, Texas. A lot of it is fed by some very sophisticated ISIS propaganda. I don't know if that was the case with respect to the New York plot, but we're trying to gather all the facts as we can as quickly as we can.

Obviously, the imperative in these kind of investigations is to make sure we run to ground whether there are any other people involved and whether there is any continuing threat to the public. But it just highlights the continual threat and pressure that we face from this homegrown radicalism and the power of social media to communicate that violent message.

KEILAR: I know for U.S. officials, you can't really overstate the symbolic importance of getting al-Wuhayshi in Yemen. This is someone who trained in Afghanistan in the '90s with Osama bin Laden. He was in the Tora Bora caves after 9/11 before fleeing the country.

But he wasn't the target for this strike. So do you think that U.S. intel really gets credit for this?

SCHIFF: Well, I think we do. I think the community does, because, look, we have a variety of sources of intelligence even in these very harsh, impermissible spaces like Yemen. It's a combination of some human intelligence, although I think

we have had a real atrophying of human intelligence after we had to remove a lot of our people with the civil war going on there, but we have strong signals intelligence. We have strong overhead intelligence. We have put that together to identify people that we believe are in the leadership of AQAP.

And we may not know all the time precisely which leaders have gathered, but, you know, statistically, if you're going after the top leadership, ultimately, you're going to get them, as we did here. And this is quite a big and successful counterterrorism operation, because some of these figures are not easily replaceable.

It is disruptive to the organization. This was somebody viewed as the heir apparent to Zawahri, someone who led the most dangerous franchise of AQAP. So, it's a significant achievement.

KEILAR: And this isn't the only AQAP official taken out in recent months.

Since the beginning of this year, there have been a number of them, to the point where we understand there are actually rumors inside of the terrorist organization that there may be spies that have infiltrated. What do you think about that?

SCHIFF: Well, and this is part of what makes these counterterrorism operations successful, is, you not only gain insights from them in how you see the organization respond, but it also sows a lot of discord within the terrorist organization, as they all begin to look at each other and wonder, OK, who might be a source of information?

But, here, if you look at AQAP, they just lost their top leader, they lost their top propagandist in Awlaki. The one remaining, I think, very dangerous figure, in addition to the now successor, is al- Asiri, this bomb-maker who is very much on our priority list as well, so a lot of very dangerous people coming out of AQAP that are really key to the remaining vitality of core al Qaeda.

[18:10:15]

KEILAR: And if -- al-Asiri, responsible, really the mastermind behind that very-close-to-happening underwear bombing in 2000 -- or a few years ago here.

I think what we have heard from experts, though, is that knowledge that is so I -- a marker of AQAP, they expect that, even with al-Asiri, even if he is to be taken out, that that is going to remain. So, how close is the U.S. to taking him out and would it even matter?

SCHIFF: Well, it really does matter, because like al-Awlaki, who was really good at what he did with that propaganda, he is not easily replaceable.

There are other people that will step in and have stepped into his shoe, but they're not necessarily as effective. And, similarly, you take out the chief bomb-maker, and he may have apprentices, but those apprentices may not have be as good as the master bomb-maker himself.

So, it does have a disruptive impact. But, Brianna, I think you point out a very important issue. And that is, this has to be only one piece of a counterterrorism strategy. You can't rely simply on operations that take out leadership. It has to be accompanied by an attack on the ideology, on the recruitment, on the financing, really all across the spectrum.

KEILAR: All right.

We have much more to go in this conversation, but I have got to get in a quick break, Congressman.

We will be back for more with the top Democrat on the House Intel Committee. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:16:27]

KEILAR: We're back now the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff.

And we are talking about a huge new setback for al Qaeda. This is the death of a senior leader in a U.S. strike, the number two in al Qaeda, the leader of AQAP, perhaps the most active branch of al Qaeda.

So, Congressman, we have seen that this -- this string of successful strikes in recent weeks in Yemen against al-Wuhayshi. And then, as well, we have seen this strike in Libya recently.

These are very important, and it makes people wonder if the intel community, are they doing something different? Is there some sort of, like, code they have cracked in a way on some of this?

SCHIFF: Well, I think the intelligence community is continuing to improve its capabilities in some of these very difficult spaces like Yemen, like Libya.

And while I can't comment on the precise nature of the counterterrorism operations that may have been undertaken in Yemen, I can say that, you know, I think, over time, intelligence ends up building on itself.

So you get information from particular sources that lead you to new sources. You learn information from signals intelligence of a particular communications. That helps you build on other communications, and I think the fact is, we're getting better at this. So, we obviously had good information about where Abu Sayyaf in Syria that enabled that operation to try to capture him.

We also had pretty good information in terms of Libya with respect to somebody who had American blood on his hands, as well as the blood of many dozens of hostages. And with respect to some of the top leadership in AQAP, we have been successfully able to go after them as well.

So, we're good at it. We're getting better at it. But, again, this has to be just one piece of a broader counterterrorism strategy.

KEILAR: Yes. And there is the big guy, right, the leader of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri. The U.S. has not gotten him yet.

What do you think the prospect of that is, especially now that I imagine a lot of terror leaders are worrisome, or sort of wary of being caught? They may be being careful.

SCHIFF: Well, his time will come.

We haven't forgotten about Zawahri. He was the number two to bin Laden and was a very direct actor in the deaths of scores of Americans. So we will take as long as is necessary, and we will turn over every rock and go to every expense and every effort to track him down. So I'm confident his time is coming. And I'm not able to really say more than that.

KEILAR: OK.

Before I let you go, I do want to talk about Russia, because now Vladimir Putin is saying that he's switching out some nuclear weapons for 40 new nuclear warheads that are advanced and could stop anti -- anti-missile defense, which is obviously a big warning to the U.S. He's talking about putting some weapons near the border there with Russia.

Is this a fight between the U.S. and Russia, or is this a fight between the U.S. and Putin?

SCHIFF: Well, I think this is really a fight between the international community and Russia and Putin.

This is an authoritarian ruler who has invaded his neighbor, who has annexed territory of his neighbor, and now who has resorted to throwing nuclear threats on the table in a way that is...

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KEILAR: But -- I'm sorry to interrupt you, Congressman.

SCHIFF: Yes.

KEILAR: I just -- I kind of want to clarify my question. I guess my question is, do you see this being very personality-driven by Putin? Do you think that Russians en masse are backing him on this, or do you think this is just -- this is just Putin?

[18:20:11]

SCHIFF: Well, I -- honestly, I think it's a combination of both.

It's certainly driven by Putin, by his personality, by his paranoia, many would say. But it enjoys a very high degree of popularity among the Russian people. The arguments that Putin makes that Russia has been belittled, it's been stabbed in the back, that Russia has to go protect other ethnic Russians in other parts of the world, that Russia is encircled by its enemies, all of these arguments appeal to Russian sentiments.

And they have made his policies very popular. I think that, you know, that popularity is thin, in the sense that it will only take him so far, and if the economy continues to degrade, I think his popularity will degrade with it, but, right now, Putin and Russia are pretty much inseparable.

KEILAR: All right, Congressman Adam Schiff, thank you so much for talking with us today.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

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