CNN "The Situation Room" Transcript: San Bernardino Shooting

Interview

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BLITZER: Joining us now, Senator Angus King. He's an independent from Maine. He's a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee.

Senator, you have read the Trump statement. Your reaction?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I), MAINE: A gift to ISIS. A gift to ISIS.

This is exactly -- this is literally their strategy. If you read about what they are trying to do, they are actively trying to drive a wedge between non-Muslims and Muslims around the world to push Muslims toward them, toward their extreme version of Islam.

And this is exactly the worst thing that we could do. It's the same argument that applies to sending U.S. troops into Syria. That would be the same kind of mistake, because that's what they want. They are trying to convey to the Muslim world that this is a war of the West against Islam, the new crusades. That's the language that they like.

And I have read some of their strategic writings, and they talk about exactly this kind of thing, where they want us to push our Muslims away and push them toward radicalization. It's just a terrible idea.

BLITZER: In a statement that you have read and I have read, and he cites these polls suggesting that there is hatred among a lot of Muslims around the world who want to come to the United States.

And then he tweeted: "Just put out a very important policy statement on the extraordinary influx of hatred and danger coming into the country. We must be vigilant."

What should the U.S. government be doing right now? What should the American Muslim community be doing right now? We heard what the president said last night.

KING: Well, you asked me two questions. One is what the government should do.

And, obviously, one of the things we have to do is be very careful who does come in, but not exclude an entire class of people that includes 1.6 billion people in this world, but to be careful about what people's backgrounds are. Are they on the watch list? Are they on the terrorist watch list? Are they on the no-fly list? What are their connections to terrorism?

I do think we need to be careful about that. And we need to take extra scrutiny, particularly of people coming from these unstable countries in the Middle East. That is definitely part -- should be part of the policy.

But we don't want -- you said, what should Muslims do? I think it's incumbent upon Muslims, particularly Sunni Muslims, particularly conservative Sunni Muslims in places like the Gulf states, to forswear this organization.

They have got to come out with their own religious leaders saying, this isn't Islam. This is a small slice of a small slice. And they got to step forward.

Now, the United Arab Emirates has stepped forward. The other Gulf states, not so much. That's where a lot of the pressure has to be. We can't carry this message. Muslims have to step up because these guys are ruining their brand.

BLITZER: Senator, we have a lot more to discuss, including the latest revelations about the FBI investigation into the terror attack in San Bernardino. I know you're well-briefed on what is going on.

Much more with Senator Angus King in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:18:59]

BLITZER: We're back with Senator Angus King.

And we're following the breaking news on terror. The FBI now says the married killers in San Bernardino, California, had been radicalized for "quite some time" before the attacks. We're also learning more about the attempts by the top ISIS leader to dodge the U.S. military's efforts right now to track him and to take him out.

What are the chances of finding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and, as the White House says, take him out? The president said that was his goal, in effect to kill him.

KING: Well, I think it is going to be difficult because he's obviously aware that we're after him and he moves in secret, and there's a lot of efforts to conceal it.

But, you know, we got Jihadi John, we believe, and I think my advice to Mr. Baghdadi would be, don't buy any green bananas.

BLITZER: You think he's being targeted right now. I'm sure he is.

What can you tell us about the wife, Tashfeen Malik, when she was radicalized, how she was radicalized? Did she come here to the United States as an ISIS sympathizer anxious to kill Americans?

KING: I think that's the indication.

Here is what I can share, that she came from Pakistan, had been to Saudi Arabia, and clearly had some of these sympathies, it appears, when she came here. And this is the hardest kind of attack to prevent, although a lot of people aren't aware of this. Over the past year or so, the FBI has arrested 60 people in the U.S. plotting these kinds of attacks.

So they have been very effective. They have got 900 investigations going on, in every state. And often these are people like the people in San Bernardino, but sometimes they are ordinary Americans, non-Muslims who for some reason have fallen for this romance of the death cult, as the president called it.

But this is a very tough problem for us because it doesn't involve a lot of planning and a lot of leaks and a large group of people. This is one that we have to keep working on. And I think all of us have a responsibility. We don't want to be snitches on each other, but we also want to, if you see something, say something.

BLITZER: Did she radicalize him?

KING: I don't know if we can -- if I can go that far, because it appears that he was going to some of these Web sites for some years even before he met her, but, clearly, she was an active participant.

But can you believe this, Wolf, that this woman, this couple left a six-month-old baby? It's sort of incomprehensible to me.

BLITZER: Because the assumption, some people are suggesting that was just for show, to have a child, but they were never really planning on raising this child. They were anxious to go out and do the work of ISIS.

KING: What a tragedy for that child, what a tragedy for the grandparents and people who are puzzled by this.

But this is a -- this is a powerful idea. And we were all talking, the president was talking last night about military options. We need to talk about the idea, and it's -- you can't kill an idea. We have to be combating it.

I thought that was the one missing piece of the president's speech. And I thought he did a good job of laying out the strategy, talking about how he got where we are. But the one missing piece was, we need to be fighting on the battlefield of ideas.

And that's where, as I mentioned before, we got to have the world's Muslims with us.

BLITZER: Was there an intelligence failure here not picking up these two? KING: I don't think so. And I have done a lot of thinking about

that.

And, in fact, we're going to have a briefing tomorrow afternoon on that subject. But it doesn't appear so. We don't want to live in a country where everybody is being watched all the time.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But apparently, he, the husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, he was in touch with people, whether on the Internet, and various communications with people who were in fact being watched by the U.S. government.

KING: And that's where we need to dig in and see whether there was something missed.

It's a question how many leads can you follow up and -- but here was a guy, people at his workplace expressed shock. They didn't see any of this coming. But, obviously, one of the things we have to connect is, was he in touch with other people, are there other people involved in the cell, if you will?

And this is why some of these programs that got all the flak last year about being able to follow up on the phone calls, not the content, but who called who, I think that's an important tool in a case like this.

BLITZER: The president says the U.S. is not going to deploy ground troops into Syria to go after ISIS. There are 3,500 or so in Iraq right now.

So where are the ground troops coming from? Because the moderate Arab states, months ago, they had a few airstrikes. They stopped months ago, whether the Saudis, the Jordanians, the UAE. They are not even engaging in airstrikes and they have absolutely no intention of sending ground troops in. The French have made it clear, even what happened in Paris, they aren't sending ground troops. The British aren't sending ground troops.

Where are the ground troops coming from?

KING: That's the right question. That's the gap in the strategy.

We have got the Iraqi security forces and the Kurds in Iraq, but Syria, where the ground troops are going to come from -- that's why what Secretary Kerry is working on in Vienna to try to ease Assad out, if we can get Assad out -- and it's going to take the cooperation of the Iranians and the Russians -- then the ground troops is the Syrian army.

BLITZER: But the president didn't even mention Bashar al-Assad last night in his Oval Office address.

He made no mention of what Hillary Clinton is proposing, a no-fly zone to protect Syrian refugees inside Syria. Those are sort of what his critics are calling thunderous silences on his part.

KING: Well, I think the part about getting rid of Assad, so that we can then focus the attention of the Syrian army, the Russians, the Iranians, the Americans on ISIS, that's the strategy, but it -- the successful extinction of ISIS goes through Damascus.

BLITZER: Yes, but Damascus, the Bashar al-Assad regime, as you know, has strong support from the Russians, strong support from the Iranians, strong support from Lebanese Hezbollah. They're in pretty good shape right now.

KING: Here is what has to happen.

Putin has to decide that ISIS is a greater danger to him than Assad is an asset. And Putin has a -- they don't like this radical jihadism, because they have got their own problem in the Caucasus and in Russia.

So, and I think they are in the process of making that calculation. That's exactly why they went to Vienna.

BLITZER: Angus King, the senator from Maine, thanks for joining us.

KING: Sir.

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