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flight, an air canada flight, arrived in that very terminal on a flight from alaska earlier today, that he waited for his luggage along with the other passengers on that flight, that he retrieved his bags where he had checked firearms. these are firearms that you can legally check with the airline. and he legally was able to do that. he went to a bathroom, retrieved the firearm and came back out and started shooting. according to the initial investigations, it doesn't appear that he was targeting anyone in particular. he appeared to be shooting ram donnelly. there was no rym or reason to the shooting. but it appears that a lot of the people who he would have shot and some of the people that were killed might have been some of the passengers that were on this flight. again, he came on a flight, an air canada flight we're told, that came from alaska and landed earlier at ft. lauderdale international airport. again, this is a twist on something we've never seen before. again, we've seen shootings at airports where people come from outside the airport with
firearms. you don't normally see somebody coming from an aircraft that's gone through security, again, with secured luggage. and then retrieving a firearm. this is not something that we've seen before. again, this is still early in the investigation. there's still a lot of witnesses to be interviewed. there's surveillance camera footage to look at to see exactly how long this took. we don't know everything about his movements. again he appeared to arrive on this flight and then started shooting once he emerged from the bathroom. >> evan perez, stay there. i know you'll continue to speak to law enforcement sources here in washington. i want to go to cnn's boris sanchez, he is live at ft. lauderdale/hollywood international airport. i know that just after the shooting, there was a great deal of confusion and fear at the airport. we saw pictures of people after the gunman was taken, still running in fear. but now police are saying they're confident there was just a lone gunman here. >> that's right, jim. we actually heard from the
broward county sheriff about 20 to 30 minutes ago and he told us that reports of a second shooter were unsubstantiated, they were simply rumors. we heard people screaming and running shortly after we saw a group of about six armed and heavily armed uniformed officers running across from terminal 2. this is terminal 2, this is where the shooting happened. this is the second floor. the shooting happened on the lower level in baggage claim. we saw the officers running across into these parking garages here and that's what really kicked off just panic here. there were people running in all directions from terminal 2 on to the runways from terminal 1, down here to where we're standing now, and then on to the runways. it was sheer chaos. things are much calmer now, but as the sheriff of broward county said earlier, this is still a fluid situation. officers from just about every jurisdiction and the southeastern part of florida are here. there are helicopters in the air, tactical vehicles as you saw a moment ago driving around. this is still an ongoing
investigation. as you said, and as you heard from evan earlier, it appears that the shooter in this case arrived on an air canada flight, terminal 2 is the delta and air canada terminal, and then he apparently, sources say, went into the rest room, retrieved a weapon from his bag, and opened fire, killing at least five people, eight others were rushed to the hospital. there's no word yet on a motive. we understand that the shooter was put into custody without incident. he's being questioned as you said by local and federal investigators. one interesting point to note, especially because we saw so many officers go into these parking garages, i asked the broward county sheriff if, perhaps, they had identified a vehicle here at the ft. lauderdale airport that might belong to the shooter. he told me that at the time we were speaking to him he did not have a vehicle that belonged to the shooter that they were able to identify. again, this is a very delicate situation. still there are hundreds of people that are stranded. i believe we actually have one here now. sir, nice to meet you. >> nice to meet you.
hear the initial shots. i heard the commotion. i was actually -- i just had back surgery and i was in a wheelchair and just had gotten through security so i saw the commotion and heard the people. i thought maybe just a fight or something had broken out at security. i actually was at the first gate that the wheelchair stopped at and got a call from my mom saying, what's going on. and i had no idea. i just heard the screaming. and not five minutes later, people came running down the hall screaming gun, gunman was coming. so everybody, you know, ran and luggage flying, purses flying, and i can't move very fast because of my surgery so i got up and started hobbling and all the restaurants were closing their cages and getting people into hiding places and a woman frozen kind of in the middle of the hallway and her child made it into the gate, so i took her into a corridor. we were stuck in that corridor about the last 45 minutes or so
and then escorted out with guys with long guns and moved us away from the glass. so it does sound like maybe it was an unsubstantiated second threat. but people certainly weren't acting like it. >> ryan, it must have been horribly frightening for you, particularly you're injured. were people coming to your aid? what was the response from law enforcement and others inside the airport as this was happening? >> you know, a lot of confusion at first because people were aware that something has happened adjacent to us, but once everybody started running, i have to say the jetblue personnel, which is what i was flying, were great and the cops that came in initially the broward county sheriff local guys, they were great. i mean, since i was kind of stuck in a corridor with a woman who was frozen in fear, they just kind of guarded us on either side and stood there. and then like i said, finally escorted us out once some guys
with long guns came in and they were homeland security guys, fbi, and now escorted us outside and kept us away from the windows. still see a lot of helicopters, lot of action but it seems to be calming down, but they definitely are still riding by with -- on the trunk of the cars with long guns out. so definitely not giving us the clear. >> in the midst of it i'm told you shielded a child? >> there was a -- >> during the chaos? >> actually it was his mom. the child sat about ten feet from her and i handed -- the child to the chile's employee that was closing the gate quickly so they could hide and i ran back over, pushed the mom into a corner and laid on top of her. i'm a big guy, so it was easy to cover her up. she was frozen. >> ryan, i'm sorry you had to experience this, for anybody who went through this firsthand, but thank you for the help that you gave to others in need there. we appreciate it. i want to bring in the national
security analyst julia kayyem, former assistant secretary for homeland security and phil mudd, a former cry counter terror aficial, tom fuentes, assistant fbi director with me here in washington. tom, a couple of things i would like to run by you in light of your experience. one, if you want to find a police with a big police presence it's, of course, america's airports today. this shooter struck in one of the least protected areas, in baggage claim, outside the security perimeter. >> baggage claim is open because people are arriving and may have luggage checked in. family members and others help them. they drive up and park, go to baggage claim, help them carry their stuff out. so yeah, they don't go through magna tumors to get in. you can have a threat from outside the airport easily or true in this case, if he had a
gun in checked luggage, he can hide in a bathroom and go out on the sidewalk and come back in and begin shooting if that's what actually happened. >> julia kayyem, this is a situation, rare, that you have the shooter taken in custody unharmed. eyewitnesss have said that after firing these shots, he, in effect, laid down on the ground and waited to be taken. police able to take thhim, they say, with no shots fired. how unusual is that in your experience? >> it's very unusual for a preplanned attack. normally if this was something he flew across the country, at least from our understanding, you know, from alaska to florida, with a plan on doing this attack, you would think that his exit strategy was either to get out of the airport or to be killed. so this is very rare. so the other theory talking to law enforcement agents right now that i'm hearing, the other theory is that something happened at the airport that triggered this, an altercation
or something in baggage claim. those would be the only two theories, he didn't plan it, but he happened to have guns, or that the guns were, you know, sort of on the airplane and he planned to do this. because the rarity of getting someone who just sit downs and says here, take me away, has to be explained somehow and so those are the two theories of the case that investigators are looking at right now. >> and the suspect being questioned now. phil mudd if i can draw on your experience, i'm told by officials that he had possible mental health issues, but, of course, it's early. the department of homeland security telling us there was no known motive at this time. tell us, if you can, the kinds of questions, the kinds of work investigators are doing now to figure out why he did this? >> first of all, i wouldn't be asking the question why at the moment. the first question is who. is there anybody else involved. was there a co-conspirator. if he's not mentally stable my first questions would be where are his friends, family,
associates, does he have social media accounts that might suggest he was communicating to somebody about an attack. after that, i might get into motive. why did you do this. was it just a random act of violence. i'm with juliette. this is odd you would bother to go across the country and buy a ticket to engage in a shooting incident at an airport against civilians whom you don't know. if you wanted to kill people why wouldn't you do it at the point of origin. a lot of unanswered questions. the first one, is there a single other person out there. that takes a while to figure that one out. >> tom, it is a way, though, to get a gun into an airport, is it not? put it in your checked baggage, legally check it, declare it, and when you pick it up you have a gun in an airport. i suppose you could walk into the baggage area as well because that's a place where, you know, there might be police around but you don't have to walk through metal detectors. >> hundreds of people travel legitimately with their firearms to go on a hunting trip or off-duty law enforcement or other military that may have weapons and check them in.
there's procedures each airline has. tsa has for checking in a secure manner a firearm in your luggage, you know, making sure it has the right lock box and ammunition. the main issue is that firearm is not in the cabin. they're not in position to hijack the aircraft. when the plane lands they recover their luggage at baggage claim and once again they're reunited with their firearm. so yes, they could shoot on the front end of that through the detectors or ticket counter or on the back end when they recover it at the destination airport. >> julie ya kayyem, this is not the first time we've seen shootings or terror attacks in that unsecured part of airports, remember look back at the istanbul attack a number of months ago in that area and the check-in area, outside of the security corridor, whenever that happens there's discussion why don't authorities move that cordon out further, right.
is that something that homeland security has considered at various times and if so, why hasn't that step been take? >> well, it has been considered, but just to make it clear, so wherever you put the zone of security, there is going to be a zone of insecurity right next to it. you can move it out ten miles from the airport. mile 10.01 there will be insecurity. and the other aspect to this is, we are a global economy, global aviation. if you put too much security on any of these airports, you will -- i mean basically you're going to impede the movement of people and things. millions of people a day domestically fly and you're constantly weighing the challenge of security and flow. what we do see and i just, you know, to sort of say this looks like chaos, you know, look, sometimes there's organized chaos. this looks exactly how you would want it to look from a homeland security and public safety perspective. active shooter case you want
people to flee. you don't want them to stay put. you have them shelter in place to ensure things are good. it looks bad but this is the way you want it to work because you want to protect people. you will never make the airports perfectly secure. a lot of it has to do with weapons and the achlts of weapons that are out there and so we shouldn't believe that if only we put the security, you know, further back everything would be okay. there's more we can do to protect these unsecured areas, but at some stage you will have an insecure area. >> juliette, tom, fim, stay there. we're continuing to follow this story and we will come right back to this breaking story. but first more breaking news. >> this is cnn breaking news. >> as i said, we have more breaking news on a separate story. one we've been following for some time. the government has just released the declassified intelligence report blaming russia for cyber attacks during the 2016
presidential race. this has been a great deal of anticipation for this for some time. and i just want to draw your attention to a few headlines from this. it says that vladimir putin aspired to help donald trump win the election. that, the judgment of the u.s. intelligence community. i want to go to cnn's pamela brown who has the report. pamela, reading these pages here, first of all they make clear at the top, you know, that this is intelligence, it's classified, we can't lift the veil on everything, but we will in effect tell you as much as we can. that stood out to me. we assess that putin and the russian government aspired to help president-elect donald trump's election chances here. what other headlines come out at you from this report? >> well, it talks about the range of motivations here and as you point out, this report does not mince words. it comes out and says we believe vladimir putin med led in the election process and tried to hurt hillary clinton and help donald trump. it listed a few reasons why.
one of which putin publicly pointed to the panama papers disclosure and the olympic doping scandals as ways that the united states was trying to undermine russia and so in the view of the u.s. intelligence, putin wanted to do this to get back at the united states. it says, he sought to use disclosures to discredit the image of the united states and cast it as hypocritical and it talks about why he wanted to undermine hillary clinton, saying he most likely wanted to discredit secretary clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012 and because he holds a grudge, he almost certainly saw disparaging against him. it talks about why the u.s. believes he tried to help donald trump. it says moscow saw the election of president-elect trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the islamic state in iraq and it goes on to explain
how the united states came to this conclusion. it says, we assess with high confidence that russian military intelligence, general staff main directorate, used the 2.0 persona and d.c. leaks.com as a way to release u.s. victim data. it says back in march that the military intelligence services stole these e-mails that we know were leaked from the dnc as well as john podesta, the clinton campaign chairman, and used this forum, the dcleaks.com and wikileaks in order to have the effect that the united states says russia wanted, which was to med dle in the process and help donald trump. it talked about the trolling operations, jim, and says it traced the likely financier of the so-called internet research agency, located in st. petersburg, russia, as a close putin ally with ties to russian intelligence.
these are the troll operations that were apparently pushing out fake news. you heard james clapper say in that hearing yesterday that the russians were responsible for pushing out fake news against hillary clinton and the report says that is continuing to help this day and to expect more of this type of behavior from russia in the future. it also makes the point, i think this is important to emphasize and you heard this in donald trump's statement, there was no indication that the russians compromised or got involved in vote tallying. it said while the russian actors targeted multiple state or local electoral boards as we have been reporting, there's no indication that the russians got in there and actually messed with the vote tallies. jim? >> well, it's interesting that you make those points this was a comprehensive information operation. not just the attacks on the dnc, but also fake news, all intended it seems to sow doubt about the election. they made the point that the targets included associated with both major u.s. political
parties. pamela brown, thanks very much. i want to bring in now california congressman adam schiff, the top democrat on the house intelligence committee. thanks very much for joining us this afternoon. >> you bet. good to be with you. >> so you have the advantage, of course, of having seen the classified version of this report as well, but without delving into the classified, now that this is public, what do you find the most convincing evidence to back up the intelligence community's assessment here? >> well, jim, the evidence is really what comprises the classified version and unfortunately i can't go into, obviously, paramount importance is protecting our sources and methods. i'm sure the russians would like to know how we know the contents of what's been released publicly. i will say i've been on the committee almost ten years. this is about as iron clad a case as i've seen on any major issue. i think the intelligence agencies really did great work here and i think those findings are well documented and supported and i hope their presentation today to donald trump will cause him to change
his tune about this because i think the facts are really undeniable. >> now, adam schiff, we have donald trump's statement, that followed his briefing earlier this afternoon we're told went for an hour meeting with top intelligence officials. in the statement, he doesn't say explicitly yes, russia hacked the election. he said while russia, china and other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through, he goes on to say, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election. seeing donald trump's response so far, in your view, is that sufficient? >> i'm glad you raised that statement. no, it isn't. in fact, that statement is demonstrably false. the report did not go into whether this russian action changed the outcome of the election. in other words, had the determinative impact on the election. that's beyond the scope of what the intelligence agencies look at. the fact that there was no evidence of tampering with machines, doesn't mean that it didn't influence the outcome of the election as donald trump has
said in his statement. in fact, quite the contrary. the daily dumping of damaging material to secretary clinton was enormously consequential in terms of her campaign, was enormously beneficial to donald trump and to ignore that, or to say it didn't happen, i think is quite inaccurate. and all of this was, of course, enabled by the russian cyber operations. >> let me ask you this, because you have been pushing for action on this for some time. the obama administration has come under criticism from republicans certainly, but also from democrats, for not acting earlier. because it was a month before the election when the intelligence community as you know expressed publicly they had confidence russia was attempting to hack and influence the election with a focus on dmtsic party. do you believe -- democratic party. do you believe the obama administration waited too long to act on this intelligence? >> i do believe they waited too long to act and this was point that senator feinstein and i
made when we released our own statement about the russian involvement in the elections even before the intelligence community did. nonetheless that doesn't let either the russians off the hook or anyone else and it certainly doesn't mean that democrats and republicans shouldn't come together right now to develop all the counter measures we need to confront this russian covert influence operation in the united states and in europe, and i think we need to develop stronger sanctions against russia on what they did already if we're going to have any hope of deterring them in the future. >> i think it's save to say looking at donald trump's statements so far it's not exactly a fulsome endorsement of the intelligence community's assessment and as you know, up until this morning, he was disparaging the intelligence and as you know as well, had he's also called into question the capabilities of the u.s. intelligence community. from your perspective what do you -- what does the american public need to hear from president-elect donald trump now after those expressions of doubts? >> well, what's really missing
from the president-elect statements today is, not just he had a good meeting with intelligence officials, but that he has looked at the evidence he looked at it now in detail, he knows the sources of that evidence, and he has convinced -- he is convinced the russians did this and there is going to be a price to pay for, he applauds the measures president obama took and we ought to do more and we're going to prevent russia from ever interfering in our elections in this way again. he hopes to have a different relationship with russia, that's fine, but he cannot continue to deny what has taken place and that is i think what he ought to be saying to the american people. >> congressman adam schiff, thanks very much. >> thanks, jim. >> i want to bring in now former california congresswoman jane harmon who served on the house intelligence committee and now president of the wilson center. jane harman, thanks for joining. you know intelligence matters very well. in your experience, have you seen the intelligence community lift the veil to the extent it has on its assessment that
russia hacked the election? >> i think this is unprecedented, and add to that, that yesterday, the senate armed services committee really on a unanimous basis, aligned itself with the intelligence community evidence that this was clearly a hack. it's not just a hack of this election in 2016, but it goes back a decade according to the portions of the report i've been able to read. that's three presidential elections. and it also, let's add in france and germany, as other targets of russia. most people think that where vladimir putin goes next is angela merkel to destabilize the last of the old generation of leadership in europe. so, with these tools, unfettered, russia uses offensive cyber to basically, as i see it, undermine democracy in the world. it's very serious. and i applaud trump's statement. i heard adam schiff, who now
holds the position i did for some years on the intelligence committee, but i applaud donald trump for moving in the right direction and hopefully he will move further. just one last comment, jim, as we watch these events in ft. lauderdale unfold, it should remind all of us how important it is to have seamless, connected intelligence. maybe we could not have found this particular person, but when you look at how this overlay of law enforcement and other response is coming together, lots of this has to do with the corrective actions we took in congress after 9/11. we're much better prepared. >> you make a good point there. again we don't know the motivations of the shooter in florida, it's too early but that's essentially the intelligence community's job is to find intelligence, prevent bad things before they happen. i want to quote from donald trump's statement the final graph here, he says that we need to aggressively combat and stop cyber attacks. i will appoint a team to give me a plan within 90 days of taking office. if you were advising the
president and his team, what steps would you advise them to take urgently? i know many republicans are calling for more severe sanctions than president obama imposed. what would you recommend? >> well a strong response against russia, even stronger than president obama's, is the first thing i would do. but you have to be careful. if we get into a tit for tat and we do something aggressive against russia in the nature that they did against us, we're ratcheting up danger to us. i don't know that that's where we go. some of this could not -- doesn't have to be public. i do agree with donald trump that not every move needs to be advertised. that would be number one. number two, i would encourage everyone in america to use the strictest cyber hygiene. a lot of this could have been prevented at the dnc if they had had better hygiene. i know at the wilson center, a think tank, understand that think tanks are targets, we have very strict cyber hygiene now and we train our people on it. if they can prevent this stuff
from coming in to the dotcom space and we can do better in preventing it coming into the.gov, and we're doing a better job of that, that's another defense that the trump administration ought to roll out as fast as possible. >> congresswoman jane harman, thanks very much. >> thank you, jim. i want to return now to our other big breaking news story this hour, a mass shooting at ft. lauderdale airport. five people are dead. eight others are wounded. the airport remains shut down. the suspect, however, is in custody. and sources tell cnn he had a weapon in his checked bag, which he retrieved when he arrived there at ft. lauderdale. i want to bring back cnn justice correspondent pamela brown, she has new information on the shooter. what are we learning? >> we're learning, jim, investigators are looking into a possible altercation on the plane that the suspect was on from an core rage, alaska, to
florida. there are been claims by witnesses, by some of those on the plane, that the suspect esteban santiago got into some sort of altercation on the plane with other passengers, and as we know, after he got off of that plane there in ft. lauderdale, he went into his checked bag, once it came through baggage claim, pulled out the gun that apparently he had filled out paperwork and declared before, and then opened fire, killing five people. we are still trying to get more information about this altercation and, of course, investigators, want to verify it. oftentimes as you know there are witness accounts, they want to corroborate that. the initial reports are that investigators are looking into this possible altercation between the suspect and passengers as a possible motive there for the shooting and in baggage claim at the ft. lauderdale airport. >> pamela, that would be enormously important, because it would imply, we want to caution our viewers these are early reports and facts, not conclusive at this point, it would be an indicator this was
not previously planned. right? >> right. >> that it was more spontaneous, perhaps, a reaction to what happened on the flight? >> and that's exactly what investigators are looking at because, of course, when anything like this happens you want to figure out is this terrorism or some other motive at play here, some sort of issue, and so that is why this is a critical piece of evidence that investigators are looking at or claim i should say from the witnesses, this possible altercation may be one of the reasons, as you point out, sometimes there's multiple factors, but one of the reasons at least why he got off that plane and went into his checked bag and pulled that gun. we also are learning today, jim, that the suspect apparently was in the military. we know we heard from senator nelson earlier he had a military i.d. they were trying to verify the authenticity and we are told from our sources that, in fact, he was in the army. no criminal record we're told. we're trying to piece together more about the suspect or more about him, and that's the very late west he know right now. >> pamela brown, thank you very
much. law enforcement officials saying there was some sort of altercation with the suspected shooter on the flight and after that altercation he went and retrieved the when and fired in the bag am area. i want to bring back julia kayyem, phil mudd and with me in washington cnn law enforcement analyst tom fuentes. with that new information, tom fuentes, possible altercation on the flight, what does that tell you at this stage. >> at this point we don't know who he was having an argument with. did he know them before. is this a group of people who were already friends or went hunting together or something and had a previous argument, continued on the plane with each other and then he continues it afterward when he has the firearm, or are they complete strangers and argued about overhead bin space or some other issue on the plane. so that will be determined hopefully pretty soon by the fbi and police that are doing the interviews of him as well as the passenger witnesses as to -- and the victims who he was arguing
with. why were you arguing. what was the cause of that. >> julewel julia kayyem, airpor are tense places, it can be a tense time. that is an argument for not allowing people to even check weapons when they travel? >> well, it will be very difficult. people carry weapons for a variety of reasons, hunting trips, or they're moving and need to move their lawful weaponry and so i think the clear thing that we're all picking up on now, it's still undetermined whether he entered the flight with the intention to do this in ft. lauderdale or if something triggered him. and look, something could trigger anyone in an airport and they could be armed even if they weren't a passenger and just come in through baggage claim. so we have a lot more to determine at this stage, but i have to say, the protocols for putting guns in checked baggage are pretty strict. you have to show that the gun is
lawfully yours, it can't, of course, be loaded, you have to fill out forms and that's actually part of the security process that someone like me never worried that much about and we just have to determine whether this was someone who used a potential loophole to attack an airport or actually was someone this could have happened anywhere. he's deranged or has mental issues and used a gun in his possession to kill people at an airport. >> to be clear, you may know this or tom, you can check both a weapon and ammunition? >> yes. >> tom fuentes shaking his head yes. >> yes. >> if you're going on a hunting trip you will have both with you when you arrive at the destination. the fact that he's coming from alaska might be why he was there. we don't know. >> that's exactly what i was going to pick up on. hundreds of thousands of law enforcement personnel who often travel with their weaponry. you have to fill something out. it's a protocol under the faa and tsa. you have to fill something out. you can't just do it. nonetheless it's a common procedure for people who own
guns. >> phil, phil mudd, i know i'm asking you this with a handicap because it's early, i'm just asking you in light of your experience as a profiler, you look at this person here, altercation on the flight, carrying a weapon, but also other things like shooting and killing, and then laying down, letting himself be arrested, as you look at that early and incomplete picture what do you take away? >> as somebody in the counter terrorism business let me take you behind the door for a moment. the first thing people in my business think about they hope it's not terrorism. you know, in some ways if you have to rank incidents of tragedy and violence in this country, as soon as you get an incidence of terrorism you're saying who organized this is there an immigration issue, connection to isis. if we have someone that stepped off the plane, what i see in the initial stages of this, is an individual who doesn't show the characteristics of the people i used to worry about when i chased terrorism. we talked about, for example, lying down on the floor.
the people i chased typically would want to have enough ammunition so they went down in a fire fight with law enforcement. that was not a suicide operation. that for them was a martyr dom operation. i look at this and say i think we might come to a conclusion over the next hours it was just one of those tragedies where you say i'm not sure there's anything you can do. >> and just for the sake of our viewers, that word terrorism there. we don't have any evidence yet and no official has told me at this point. the official word we're hearing from multiple sources is no known motive at this point although the newest information there was an altercation on the flight could be indicative. >> i would like to make a distinction. we haven't seen this because we're always broadcasting about terrorism events and jihadist events typically they're not taken alive. state and local police will tell you, i was a street cop six years, there are plane situations police arrive, someone has shot their family dead, thrown the gun down and surrendered or committed in
other serious crime with a firearm and when police arrive they surrender. so it's not uncommon in general circles even if we think it's uncommon in our circles. >> julia kayyem, as we're looking at this as well, what are the missing pieces at this point that you'll be looking for? the unanswered questions? >> well, during the press conference i thought it was interesting and this just having seen so many of these, the extent to which they are going to shut down the entire airport. that's, you know, that's better safe than sorry at this stage. they need to reopen it relatively soon. it's a major airport. and the faa and it tsa are working as we've heard already to divert everything. you will start to see a slow reopening of different terminals. that's part of the protocol. the unanswered questions i have is just the basic one, is essentially was this a cross-country from alaska to florida flight which seems less likely to me or an altercation where he happened to have a gun.
we don't know much about the assailant at this stage so we want to learn more. i have confidence that they believe, that the officials, just based on the press conference, they believe it's an individual assailant who got triggered by something only because they seemed quite confident and they wouldn't be, that the imminent threat was now over. >> juliette, phil, tom, stay there for a moment pap back to the scene of this shooting rampage, ft. lauderdale/hollywood international airport. boris sanchez is live just outside. boris, what are you seeing in the last few minutes from your vantage point there? >> jim, we're just waiting for a press briefing from the governor of florida, rick scott, set to start in about ten minutes or so. we've seen several helicopters circling overhead. broward county sheriff's and others. as we heard from the sheriff of broward county, about an hour or so ago, this is still a fluid scene. it does seem, obviously, like
it's way more under control than it was just a few hours ago. they just put up that yellow tape. we're seeing a very large law enforcement presence from all over the southeast part of florida here. the difficulty now is in canvassing all the passengers and people that are still here on the scene. there are several hundred people that can't go anywhere because the airport is shut down. and as you can see behind me this is terminal 2, this is where the shooting took place on the lower level in the baggage claim area. this is an air canada and delta terminal. and just to give you an idea this is the second floor, this is where the de par tours leave. the lower floor, the baggage claim area where the shooting happened is the arrivals. still, so much to piece together in this. one thing i did want to point out i asked the sheriff of broward county perhaps they identified a vehicle belonging to the shooter here at ft. lauderdale international airport. he told me they had not. we did see a large group of officials heavily armed going
through the parking structure, so we were he still trying to figure out exactly what details might give us an idea of what was going through the shooter's mind and if this was something that was planned or if he was responding to an altercation on the plane as some of our sources have been saying. >> boris sanchez on the scene. joining me on the telephone is senator marco rubio of florida. senator rubio, thank you very much for taking the time. >> thank you. thanks for having me on. a terrible situation. >> our thoughts with you. a tragedy in your home state. if i can begin, can you tell us if there's any uptated information on the shooting? what can you tell us? >> well, i want to be very cautious about what we share because i think it's a fluid situation. i think you've already probably reported the name of the assailant, i think you've reported. there are still some questions whether -- it's clear he was an inbound passenger. that seems to be some confusion as of 15 minutes ago still among the agencies about whether he was inbound on an international flight or domestic flight but
from outside the continental united states. i think, obviously, the other thing that's going on and you're probably seeing images of it, is they're just trying to make sure this thing is finished. there's always this concern if it were some sort of coordinated incident you would have one attack to draw in first responders and law enforcement and the secondary attack to target them. we know those are tactics that have been discussed in the past. that's part of what you're watching. then it goes to preserving evidence because if, in fact, this turns out to be a domestic prosecution they have to be able to prove it in court. so all of that is going on simultaneously. even as they are trying to run as much information as they can about this individual across data bases to try to begin to piece together what happened here. >> are you seeing any information, any indication, this was a coordinated attack, beyond a lone gunman? >> no. as of now, nor have any of the agencies indicated they suspect it. they've got to rule all of that out. they will take every precaution
on the ground. our immediate interactions with the fbi concluded that while their involvement because of the investigative capability and because it involves abation there could be -- aviation there could be federal criminal violations here, in fact there no doubt is, they do not at least initially see this as some sort of an act of terrorism in terms of what we normally associate with terrorizing. as of this moment anyway that's not the way they're approaching it. i'm not sure they've ruled that out. they have to gather information. >> we know throughout as we ask you these questions, it's early, the picture incomplete. we're hearing from law enforcement sources here in washington that this passenger had witnesses say he had some sort of altercation on the flight before he then retrieved his weapon from his bags and then carried out his shooting. are law enforcement sources there telling you any more about that? whether they believe that was the motivation? >> well, i'm not prepared to say
that was the motivation. i know that was mentioned as a potential cause and they wanted to kind of look into that a little further and get to that point. i think what they'll probably be troubled by the attack did not seem targeted at specific individual, but rather just kind of widespread across the baggage claim area. but that was, in fact, one of the potential causes that was brought up among several others. but we're not trying to be evasive. i certainly am not. truly they don't know. just a few hours removed from this happening and they have to piece all of this together before they know more. one of the things that's unusual about it is, if you wanted to shoot up the baggage claim area of any airport in america you don't have to fly there on an airplane, check it in your bag and wait for the bag to come out. you can just drive up, walk in and do it. so i think that's putting some doubt in their minds about premeditation in terms of that being a specific target. but again, we'll learn more, i
imagine, over the next few hours and days. >> we know the name or multiple sources have told us the name esteban santiago. we're also told that he had a military i.d. on his person. i'm curious if you know any more about his background? for instance, whether he was an active or former military service member? >> no. i can tell you that is the name, the name that i've heard from multiple sources now and the military i.d. component. i did ask the question whether it was an active military i.d. and they didn't have the answer at the moment. i asked local law enforcement, the first to kind of move on that front in terms of identification. my understanding he is in custody and injured, so i imagine he's been transported to a medical facility. i don't have any more. i would say one thing the name, if you ran that name on just a public data base, obviously, without knowing more about who it was that's not an uncommon name. esteban is not an uncommon name.
spanish. and santiago is not an uncommon name. it's not garcia or perez but it's not uncommon. i imagine they're trying to make sure they have the right person. through that i think the passenger manifest from the airline is probably brought into some high level certainty at this point. as of now there's nothing in what they know about this individual that has led them to change any of the assumptions that i've outlined to you earlier here in this conversation. >> well, senator rubio, we thank you for taking the time and we're sorry that you and your state have to have experience violence like this. >> well just know that our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those that have lost their lives and several others that have been severely injured and as a result of this attack and we pray for them and hope that they will be able to make a full recovery. >> no question. we'll be thinking of them as well. senator rubio, thanks very much. >> thank you. >> i want to go to cnn aviation correspondent rene marsh. rene marsh, can you tell us what you're learning most recently
about the shooter and the investigation so far? >> well, just to reset, jim. we know the name of the shooter is esteban santiago as you've been mentioning there. he flew from alaska to florida. we do know, again, that gun was checked in his checked luggage. he had declared that weapon. and then he retrieved that weapon and that's when he opened fire after getting off of his flight. now, you know, many people may not realize, but he went about this all very legally. tsa rules are very clear, they state what the rules are for carrying a gun on board. you can legally carry a weapon as well as ammunition only in your checked luggage. you cannot carry that in your carry-on luggage. that's exactly what this individual did. however, when you do carry it in your checked luggage, it has to be unloaded. it has to be in a hard, locked case. and again, you have to declare
it to the airline at that ticket counter. so to our knowledge, this traveler, esteban santiago, did all of those things and he did all of those things very legally. however, you have a problem which we've talked about time and time again, with these airports, we saw it happen in istanbul where you have the soft targets of the airport that essentially if you talk to any law enforcement official, it really is virtually impossible to get the vulnerability down to zero. anyone will tell you that. and so this particular area where he opened fire, the baggage claim area, of the airport, wit yit was not by the checkpoint that is considered the soft target and he essentially took advantage of that and that is why we are where we are where the latest numbers are that five people had been shot dead an and we do know
eight were transported to the hospital. >> to be clear we're showing live pictures there. we continue to see police activity on the tarmac. even on some of the highways leading into the airport terminal there, blocking traffic, et cetera. but also to be clear, a little less than an hour ago, police said they believe there is no active shooter still present, that it looks like this shooter who is in custody acted alone. have they changed that assessment? are they still acting as if there could be other assailants there? >> well, when we did get that update they did tell us that they had cleared everyone out of that vicinity because they had their s.w.a.t. team coming in and they were -- their s.w.a.t. team was going inch by inch throughout that area looking for others, potentially, but they did say they strongly believe they had their one shooter. however, they want a sterile situation so that not only can they make sure 100% that the threat is gone, but also looking
for evidence because they need not only physical evidence, but, of course, they're going to want to look at that tape as well, that tape is going tell a lot as far as how long did this all go on. that tape will tell them exactly where he was standing, who he was aiming at, how he went about this as he opened fire on these innocent travelers, jim. >> rene marsh, thanks very much. please stand by. i want to bring in niegel nelson, he was there. he heard the gun shots as he waited in the security line. niegel, you think you may have been close to the shooter as this happened? >> pretty close, actually. so i was in the line waiting just about to step through the screening area when we heard the shots and there were people running behind us and screaming, security personnel screaming run run run. we ran. we were led out by the flight attendants and so on on to the
tarmac. there we waited until about an hour or so when we got information as to what was happening. they tried to provide refreshments. >> i understand you may have heard more gun shots following that initial round of gunfire? >> this was about say 45 minutes to an hour after we were on the tarmac waiting when they got us all together and said that they they've pretty much secured the building or secured the terminal and they were trying to get us inside. get us back inside. >> understood. >> that's when we heard shouting and screaming again and people started scurrying away. i heard at least two more shots. then, of course, we started running. >> i understand in that panic, you lost your shoes, just a sign of how quickly people had to get out of there? >> well, actually, i was, like i
said, i was just about to step through the security screening. i put my shoes, phone, wallet, all my belongings into the trays. they were able to go through. that's when the shooting started and that's when everybody started running. i had to run without even a belt on my pant, with everything. i just had to run. >> now what are you seeing there right now, as understand you're still at the airport? >> i'm still at the airport. we're -- i'm in terminal d. terminal 2, section d6. we were let back inside. we're told they're doing some amount of checks still. they did confirm with us a while ago that they saw or they phoned -- found something suspicious and they're going to do a controlled explosion within five minutes or so, so the announcement just came over to tell us that we shouldn't panic or anything. so we're still waiting.
they -- the security personnel they're moving around trying to keep us calm, trying to, you know, give us a sense of security and all that. >> well, thank you very much, niegel nelson, we here at cnn are glad you're safe. we want to go back to evan perez. i understand you have new information? >> you're welcome. >> all right. >> the fact that the suspect had with the fbi in anchorage alaska, recently about a couple months ago, he showed up at the anchorage office of the fbi and apparently exhibiting sh some kind of mental health issues. there was concern there. local authorities or himself. at some point he has checked into a local mental health institution according to officials we've been talking to. this is still part of the early investigation still putting together a picture of exactly where he's been, what exactly might have led up to this shooting. but what we're beginning -- what's beginning to emerge is a
picture of somebody who was exhibiting some kind of mental health illness, issues. he apparently checked himself in or voluntarily was checked in to a mental health institution there for some treatment. after he showed up at the fbi office in anchorage, alaska. after that, we don't know what happens next. we know that he did get on a flight from alaska and was -- flew into ft. lauderdale today. earlier we i think mistakenly said he had come through canada, but i think partly because of some of his initial interviews and statements to investigators, in which he indicated that he had come from canada. we now know that he, indeed, had come from alaska, had flown into ft. lauderdale airport earlier today, before he started carrying out this shooting. again, mental health issues is the picture that's emerging here from this suspect. >> that's right. i heard similar from u.s. officials earlier. evan perez, thanks very much.
tom fuentes with me in washington and phil mudd still on the line. tom, as you listen to that, we're beginning to get a clearer picture perhaps of the suspect and the shooting. >> it could be serious mental health problems. we don't know the cause of it. you know, we've had other incidents where somebody severely mentally ill does have access or owns a gun. which apparently is the case here. but you have situations where if somebody already owns a gun and then later gets mental health treatment there's no real way to find him and take the gun away. that's the possibility in this situation, he developed this problem mentally after he already owned the sgloon it's an issue that comes up so frequently with shootings that we cover, mental health, and that's one issue you hear from republicans as well, maybe they need to address the mental health issues as tied to gun violence. phil mudd, a lot of experience profiling bad actors tell us your view as we hear more information about the suspected shooter? >> i would step away from this and i think we will come up with
the unavoidable conclusion we have another tragedy in america that's not preventable because we have someone that has mental health issues who didn't intend before he got on the plane on killing somebody. two quick things. did anybody know before he got on the plane that he had anger issues that might manifest themselves on the plane and did he talk about an incident of violence. my guess is no, but guess is not good enough here. there's a second bigger question. is there anything we can learn? we're talking about the issue of how do you think about someone who goes into mental health treatment who has access to a weapon. i think you to do an after action here but i'm afraid we're going to step away and say in the america of 2017 this is just going to happen periodically. >> sadly, we come on the air with stories like this more often than we can coun. juliette kayyem, based on evan's information, the idea he arrived on ap earlier flight than we believed initially, and might have had some time to think about this before he acted?
>> that's exactly right. what i'm picking up on phil's point. what are we going to learn from this? obviously, you know, we have another major mass casualty shooting and there are debates, political debates, about guns and access to guns, but the other question i have, is if there was some sort of altercation or disturbance on an airplane, or around the airplane, what -- did officials at the airport, certainly plenty of them, whether it was at airline industry or tsa or local or state officials did they do anything or what did they do? i'm curious about that only because we have to train these officials to be able to deescalate problems in a world in which we have too many -- lots of arms and unfortunately untreated mental health issues. and so that would be one of my takeaways from this as we started the hour, you know, i said this was a suspicion, that this was someone who got on a plane and didn't intend on doing this. and how can we deescalate these situations before they lead to a
tragedy like this. >> just to reiterate some of that new information, learning now that shooter, one, had previous contact with the fbi, he was known to the federal bureau of investigation. two, that it is believed that he had mental health issues, possible mental health problems. in addition to that we learn as well there might have been altercation on this flight, an immediate perhaps triggering event. >> right. at this point we need to do the investigation. we need to find out what exactly happened. to the extent we can know it. we may never know what was inside his head that caused this to happen. and, you know, what his background is. so it's going to take more investigation to even have an idea of what happened here. >> tom fuentes, thank you. new information that being a photo of the shooting suspect here. i'm going to go to our evan perez. >> that's right. this is a photo that we have of the suspect. you know, there was not a lot of -- we checked his criminal background. not a lot in his criminal background. very minor stuff that he -- that showed up in the records.
and so this indicates that, aside from this recent visit to the fbi office in anchorage, alaska, there's really not much contact that police have had, law enforcement has had with him. we're told he has not shown up on any radar of anybody who is potentially extremist or radicalized. that's one of the first things unfortunately these days that law enforcement does when one of these cases happens, they check to see whether or not there's anything that comes up with regard to extremism. we haven't -- they haven't found any indication of that at this point. again, very few -- very minor criminal history is what we have in his background. and apart from just a couple months ago showing up at the fbi office in anchorage and exhibiting signs of mental illness that appears to be the extent of the law enforcement contact. significant law enforcement contact that this suspect had until today. jim? >> you're looking at the face there in that photograph of esteban santiago, the suspect in
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