CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Domestic Terrorism

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BLITZER: OK. Thanks very much. Thanks very much.

Let's talk about all of this and more with Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho. He's a key member of both the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

Secretary Kerry said today Somalia is turning around. Is that an accurate characterization? Do you agree with him?

SEN. JAMES RISCH (R), IDAHO: Well, first of all, I do agree with him that things are better there than they were.

That's not a very high bar. I don't know if I would go quite so far as to label it turning around. But certainly it is better there than what it's been. I guess I was surprised, as everyone else was, that John Kerry went there.

When we have got so many other problems in the region, to open up Somalia, I'm not sure where we're going to go with that, because it is so broken. If it's possible, it's broken worse than Yemen is, at least one of the provinces in Somalia, a couple of them a little different ball game. But the one that is a real problem is badly broken.

BLITZER: Yes, I'm sure you're right. But it did take guts for the secretary to even show up in Mogadishu. You got to give him credit for that.

RISCH: We do have to give him credit for that. And not only that, but that is a reward for those people, a very substantial reward, to have an American secretary of state step off the airplane on to their soil and congratulate them for doing better.

Over there, that is a huge thing. And, hopefully, it will do some good. But, as I say, that particular country, on the list of the problems we got, there isn't much we can do right now, other than what we have been doing.

BLITZER: You don't think he will be able to do that in Yemen any time soon or Libya, for that matter, where the U.S. in recent months had been forced to shut down its embassies there as well?

RISCH: Right, both broken states very similar to Somalia, uncontrollable, difficult to get on-the-ground information out of there.

And there -- all three of the countries you mentioned are really at the bottom of the list of where you can actually make progress. We have got other things going on that we really need to pay attention to that I think are a bit higher than that.

BLITZER: Closer to home, let's talk that terror attack in Texas over the weekend, ISIS now claiming responsibilities, responsibility for it. I know you have been briefed. What can you tell us?

RISCH: Well, probably not much more than what your people have said already.

And that is, in a very general sense, there is no question that ISIS is responsible. Now, was it from a direction telling these two people, this is what you should do, this is the event we want you to target, this is what time we want you to show up, this is what we want you to do? So far, there has been no evidence really uncovered of that.

In a very general sense, as far as being inspirational and giving general guidance, we have all heard the general instructions that ISIS has given to the people here in the United States, that they should pick up weapons and do just what these two people did. This ended very well for us. But, Wolf, as you and I have discussed on a number of other occasions, this isn't a surprise to us. It's the first time here that we have really seen an ISIS-inspired attack.

But are there going to be more of these? Again, I'm not going to be surprised to see it, simply because we have such an open culture, a free culture. And when they're giving instructions, as they are, could we see that again? It is much more probable than unlikely.

BLITZER: We know there have been al Qaeda attacks inside the United States, 9/11, of course. But was this the first successful ISIS attack on U.S. soil?

RISCH: I'm sorry. I didn't catch the question.

BLITZER: Was this the first successful ISIS attack on U.S. soil? I know it wasn't all that successful--

RISCH: Yes.

BLITZER: -- because these two guys were shot and killed almost immediately, although they did manage to fire their weapons, their long guns and their assault rifles--

RISCH: Right. It is.

BLITZER: -- at the U.S., at the police who were there.

RISCH: Well, certainly, it was the first attack like this. I wouldn't classify it as successful, obviously. It ended very, very well for us.

As we all know, these things can go upside-down very quickly. Given a slightly different set of circumstances, had they done more homework, had they done some different planning, we could be looking at a very, very different situation today.

Now, in addition to that, this was anticipated. I believe it's out there in open source. In fact, I'm sure it is. The Homeland -- Homeland Security and the FBI on April 30 put out a written warning that this particular event was a very high-risk event. They did not specify any specific knowledge of this kind of an attack. But they certainly identified it as a very likely place for something to happen. And they were spot on with their warning in that regard.

[18:15:03]

BLITZER: And it could have been obviously a whole, whole lot worse.

Senator, I'm going have you stand by. We have more to discuss, including the announcement today that four of these ISIS terrorists that the U.S. is seeking, that there will be millions of dollars in reward money for anyone who helps the United States find these guys.

Much more with Senator Risch right after this. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: We're following the breaking news, a U.S. official now telling CNN the weekend terror attack in Texas was -- quote -- "certainly more than just inspiration by ISIS."

Two gunmen were shot and killed by a guard posted outside a gathering where cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed were being displayed. At least one of the gunmen was an ISIS sympathizer.

[18:20:04]

We're back with Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho. He is a member of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees.

Senator, you told me a couple of months ago that the ISIS threat to the U.S. homeland was moving, in your words, beyond aspirational. Was Sunday's attack an example of that?

RISCH: Well, no question about it, Wolf.

When I said that on your show here, this is exactly what I had in mind. We have known all along that this is what they want to do. This is a dangerous group. And we have tried to communicate that as best we can to the American people. They're -- they have every intention of attacking the American homeland.

And this is a clear way to attempt to do it, as they did just this past weekend. So this is what they want to do. And we're -- our intelligence communities and actually the FBI and Homeland Security are all very in tune with this. The words that they use is putting people on their radar screen.

And I think it's already been reported that one of these individuals was very much on their radar screen, had been a while ago, had been convicted of a rather minor offense of lying to the FBI about trying to travel to Somalia, but was back on -- on being a person of interest fairly recently.

BLITZER: Yes, you're talking about Elton Simpson--

RISCH: Correct.

BLITZER: -- who was well-known to the FBI. He had been placed on probation for three years for making false statements about discussing travel to Somalia to engage in jihad.

Do you know yet how these two guys were able to secure assault rifles, body armor, bulletproof vests?

RISCH: Wolf, I don't know exactly right now.

I will here in very short order. But, having said that, weapons for people who don't have convictions are fairly easy to come by, as we all know, depending on where you are and what state you're in. So we will find that out. But I suspect we're going to find out that they got them through legal channels. I could be wrong on that. We will know here fairly soon.

BLITZER: Fairly soon.

And if an individual is convicted of lying and gets three years, three years' probation, not serving in jail, like this guy Simpson, Elton Simpson was -- should the FBI or others have been watching him more closely, because, apparently, he was not under any significant surveillance, as far as we know right now?

RISCH: Well, I don't want to take this too far, Wolf. But, as you and I have talked about before, we have a number of people who have traveled overseas to fight with ISIS or have even expressed a desire to do so.

There are ways and means of taking precautions regarding those specific individuals. And the group of those keeps getting larger and larger. And the larger the group gets, the more difficult it is to keep a short string on each and every one of them.

We have a number of people whose resume is much, much more dangerous than what you just described about this individual. I'm not saying that they shouldn't pay attention to them. Certainly, he was on the radar screen. But there are a lot of very dangerous people here that need to be watched.

BLITZER: So when they threaten that the next attack will be bigger, will be more bitter, in their words, as they posted on social media today, you take those threats seriously?

RISCH: Wolf, I take those threats very, very seriously. Indeed, they wish this one was bigger and more vicious.

And whether they can get it done or not, we don't know. But I can tell you that the intelligence community, that our domestic agencies, who work very hard on these issues, take this very seriously. And they're going to continue to monitor the things that they monitor to see that this doesn't happen. And that's always the problem, is we have got to be right 100 percent of the time. They only got to be right once.

BLITZER: Very quickly, the State Department, as you know, announced new rewards, up to $7 million, for four key ISIS leaders. We're showing their pictures on the screen right now, Senator. How bad are these guys?

RISCH: They're very bad. The amount that you're talking about seems like a lot of money. But if the you launch a counterterrorism operation against one of them because you have specific information, the price tag goes up a lot higher than that.

So, you have to put these things into perspective.

BLITZER: Senator Risch, thanks very much for joining us.

RISCH: Wolf, thank you. Thank you for having me.

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