CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Terror Attacks and Cybersecurity

Interview

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BLITZER: Let's get some more now on what's going on. James Risch is joining us. He's the U.S. senator. He's a Republican. He's a key member of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, you hear those shots. You see what's going on. You have been briefed on this situation, I assume. Tell us what you know.

SEN. JAMES RISCH (R), IDAHO: Well, Wolf, virtually everything that is known, you have reported. There's a few details that are classified.

But, by and large, you know exactly what happened and the details that are classified wouldn't change the conclusions and those things that you have already reported. I will say a couple of things we note from this. First of all, you and I have been talking about this for a long time. This is exactly the kind of thing that we have talked about.

We have a very, very robust intelligence community in America that is doing a great job. This kind of situation is the most dangerous, because this guy just did not give the signals ahead of time that can be picked up. If there is no signals of any kind, there's no evidence ahead of time, you really can't blame anyone for not picking it up.

And that's pretty much what he had here. The people you interviewed that knew him from the past just gave no indications that this guy had these kinds of problems. But the one thing, of course, that immediately pops out at you are these trips that he made over to Jordan in the recent past. Of course, he had a seven-month stint over there in Jordan.

Obviously, something happened there. We will find out. We will follow those things back and see what the connections were there. We will get to the bottom of that. But it is very difficult. The one thing I'm holding judgment on a little bit is, I know one of my colleagues said they were convinced this was an ISIS-inspired attack.

I am convinced that it was a radical Islamic-inspired attack. I'm not so sure it was ISIS. There is a lot of them out there. Al Qaeda is still out there. Al-Nusra is out there. There's lots of others out there.

Now, admittedly, ISIS is the most likely candidate, but you notice they haven't jumped forward. In all of these other ISIS- inspired ones, within a short period of time, they jumped right in the middle of it and said, look, this is ours. This is what we did.

That hasn't happened here yet, so I'm going to reserve judgment. But there's no question that it is one of those groups really that inspired this person to do this.

BLITZER: And very often, after this kind of incident, as you know, Senator, there is also a video that is released, some so-called martyr video that is released, by some group explaining why this individual went out there and did what he did.

Senator, stand by. We're getting new information. I just want to go through it. We will take a quick break. Much more with Senator Risch when we come back.

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[18:23:25]

BLITZER: All right, this just coming into THE SITUATION ROOM. We're getting new details about the number of weapons carried by that Chattanooga gunman.

Let's bring back our justice reporter, Evan Perez.

Evan, what are you learning?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we now know that the gunman actually had four guns.

These were four guns that were seized yesterday at the end of the shooting. The FBI at the press conference mentioned that there were two long guns and one handgun that were found at the scene at the end of the shooting there. After that, the FBI went and did a -- conducted a search and they found another rifle at the home of the suspect.

So now we know that there are three long guns and a rifle, a handgun, a .9-millimeter handgun was found and three rifles in all were found. The FBI is saying that they're still investigating to try to figure out whether or not there was a crime committed in the transfer of at least one of these firearms.

We know the investigators believe that these were not recently purchased. These were guns that he had and he liked to shoot. His friends have said that, that he was a fan of guns and went out shooting so it was not unusual for him to have these. We don't know when those guns were purchased, but it was not a recent purchase, according to investigators.

BLITZER: Yes, four weapons and a lot of clips of ammunition too.

PEREZ: A lot of firepower, which is what explains that scene, that incredible scene that that witness recorded.

BLITZER: Yes, we heard all those gunshots.

Very quickly, the sounds of silence. You and I have been discussing this. What intriguing element -- here he is, 24 years old. He's a young guy. He is not -- apparently not on Facebook, not on Instagram, not on Twitter, no social media that we could find.

[18:25:06]

BLITZER: I assume law enforcement is looking closely. That's highly unusual, which raises the question, is he engaged in encryption? Is he doing secret stuff? Has he plotted this for a long time?

PEREZ: That really adds to the puzzle in this case, Wolf, because he doesn't fit the mold of so many of these attackers that we have seen before. People who are proud of what they have done and almost immediately you find that they have posted something, left something behind. Proud of what they have done.

In this case, there are no signs of that and again this goes back to the trip to Jordan and whether or not there's something that happened there. Was he instructed by someone to erase all signs of that and to lay low, to plan this attack? We don't know. That is certainly what is part of this investigation at this point.

BLITZER: Because he is obviously an engineer. He just finished college...

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: ... years ago. A smart guy. You would think he would

be all over social media, like everybody else his age, and he wasn't.

PEREZ: His age, exactly.

BLITZER: That's the sound of silence that they're investigating. Good work, Evan Perez.

I want to go back to Senator James Risch, who is joining us.

What do you think about these latest developments, first of all, Senator, the fact that he had four guns, not two, not three, but four, and a lot of ammunition clips?

RISCH: Wolf, we haven't focused on the guns. This guy was a United States citizen. He had nothing in his background that would stop him from going out and purchasing as many guns as he wants.

He was exercising his Second Amendment right in that regard. A lot of us own guns and that isn't what we're focused on. We're focused on the individual, what he did, and how he got radicalized and I don't think there is any question but that he was radicalized.

An interesting point you just discussed, and it is becoming more and more common is what you called the sounds of silence. I would call it the deep Internet. There are ways obviously to communicate anymore that you can use encryption and different ways to mask what you do, although again that is not what we usually see in these.

We usually see where people are stating their opinions, doing manifestos, doing a lot of different things. We had none of that with this guy. There was just nothing in his background with the possible exception of his father some years back. But that's really about it. And it is the most dangerous condition you can possibly have.

BLITZER: Do you have any information to believe that while he was, let's say, in Jordan for those seven months, he was being trained by someone? Someone was instructing him? You know what, you don't go on social media. You don't post anything on Facebook or Twitter. You stay silent, but get ready. You're going to be doing something.

RISCH: Entirely possible. Certainly, it is suspicious that there was that long of a trip over to Jordan which, of course, is immediately adjacent to Syria. And easily could you move from Jordan into Syria.

You just don't know what happened over there. But there are ways and means of finding out what he did over there and who he was in contact with. And that will all be analyzed in detail to find out exactly what happened. Something happened. There is absolutely no question about it. What it was and who it was that did this is of real interest to us.

BLITZER: Is security good enough at these U.S. military recruitment centers? You have got some in your home state of Idaho. Are you worried about what's going on at these so-called soft targets? RISCH: Well, you know, Wolf, we're Americans. And we don't

build defensive mechanisms wherever we are.

And a recruiting station certainly wouldn't be high on the list of something you would think about as being a target. But we have had these over recent years. We have had situations in supermarkets, in movie theaters, in malls, in stores.

Look, we can't go about our lives building walls around everything that we do. And there's 330 million of us. And we have tried to go about our lives regularly. Unfortunately, you and I are talking about these sorts of thing way too frequently. The good thing, the good news, as you noted earlier today, there were a lot of these broken up.

For every one of these that we hear about or that they have some success in, as you know, the intelligence community and the FBI thwarts a lot of these. And that's a good thing.

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BLITZER: Last week, you told us here in THE SITUATION ROOM, Senator, in your words, these lone wolf type of attacks, they're smaller. They're still very devastating. And you said, there is no question they're going to happen, they're going to succeed here in the United States.

You were basing that on what?

[18:30:18] RISCH: Well, I think the collection of all the information that we have. But more importantly, the trend. This isn't -- this isn't something new. This has been trending for over a year, where we're seeing these kind of attacks.

We've really shifted, and the terrorist groups have shifted from these large iconic kinds of things to more of the smaller lone-wolf attacks. That certainly doesn't make them any less devastating to the innocent people that are caught up in it. But nonetheless, that's the shift, and it is -- it's easier to do. It's easier to pull off.

And that's what, as they've had these small successes that they have had in the United States, it has been using this new method, if you would, of attack, as opposed to the larger iconic kinds of things that they've attempted in the past.

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

RISCH: You bet, Wolf. Thank you for having me.

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