did they not know there were cameras everywhere, did they not know that the department store across the street had cameras that were capturing them? i mean, the first thought a lot of fork folks that i talked to intelligence had was did they want to be seen, because they were at the place that later was accurately described as probably the most photographed place in america on that day. and they had as we found out, you know, horrifically yesterday, they had constructed other bombs seemingly for a case of pursuit. so, we have no idea, but, you know, was that some kind of exit strategy, suicide by cop? it s, you know, a complete unknown question. well, and at the same time there s no manifesto, there s no suicide note. this isn t the unabomber. there s no sort of grand statement of any kind of ideology which, you know, in some ways, chris, may actually turn out to be good us in, that unlike the times square bomber that spencer mentioned, unlike
obviously, you re not arguing to the contrary, the self-radicalized individuals like nidal hassan, the fort hood shooter, are the ones that are the biggest risk for this country right now because intelligence has been so good and the united states has made so many changes post-9/11 to people, for wouldnnt of a bette term, bad guys out of the country. individuals in the country radicalize themselves some way. hasan is said to have reached out to anwar al awlaki and radicalized himself. that s what we just don t know right now. and that is, that is a great point. what we do know is that they tried to rob a 7-eleven. so that is sort of good news in the sense that it doesn t seem like they were had some major backing to get them out of here. mastermind terrorists are not do that. they have an exit strategy. so we re just putting the pieces together live, and just, you know, sort of trying to figure out whether there s a major
international terrorist plan here, or is it two brothers who planned this on their own? let s go to tom fuentes, a cnn analyst and former assistant director with the fbi in washington. i think juliette has a good point, tom. i really enjoy hearing your thoughts. the fact that we re told that the brothers went to knock up knock over, rather, a 7-eleven to rob it, that that s apparently one of the things that they did last nooirt. the fact that they clearly did not seem to have any elaborate exit strategy or help escaping. although we still do not know whether it was just the two of them. but if it was more than two it wasn t some big network. that would seem to be a small sliver of good news in this horrible, horrible story. that s right. it would indicate that they weren t being supported overseas or sent here to commit an act over here. they came, and as juliette mentioned earlier, came here and then later self-radicalized and decided to commit the act. that could be the result.
but, you know, we have to also understand that those police officers, as they re walking up to the doors of each apartment, they know they could be ambushed, they know there could be booby traps, they re in a very dangerous spot. and this is a guy that just last night assassinated a police officer who wasn t even approaching them, much less the officers today who are going after him. so they just have to take it very slow, very carefully, deliberate process, hope to not touch off a booby trap, not only get themselves killed, burn down an apartment building and have other problems, so this is something they re just going to have to do it safely, methodically, and unfortunately that s going to take a while. tom, what do you make of the fact that the bombings themselves were not suicide attacks, and yet these two, these two suspects, if they are in fact the people who committed these atrocities, they didn t seem to have an exit strategy.
he lives or has friends, and did he go into somebody else s residence. they combed that area. or did he keep running. so the area that he ran to, he s outside the perimeter that later gets set up, to have. so i think there s a couple of possibilities with that. that s the only explanation i could think of, is that he just managed, if at that point, immediately after the shootout with the police, that he managed to get out of their view, into the darkness, and get away. because it s hard to believe a 19-year-old can do something like that, escape law enforcement. not just a dozen or two dozen or a few hundred, or thousands of law enforcement personnel are searching for him in this area. and he just sort of disappears. let me bring julia into this. how sophisticated is this 19-year-old, based on everything you re hearing? not very. well, enough to plan an attack, but clearly the exit strategy,