To come to a heartbreaking end. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the lead. I am jake tapper. An alleged terrorist is in a hospital bed in newark, new jersey, but were learning this afternoon two years before he allegedly planted multiple bombs in new jersey and new york his father called his son a terrorist. Its a statement a Law Enforcement source tells cnn the dad ultimately recanted. His father telling reporters today that this all followed an incident where rahami stabbed his own brother after returning from an extended trip to pakistan and afghanistan. Lets get to jim sciutto in manhattan at the scene of the explosion saturday night which injured 29 people. Jim, the fbi heard rahamis father had called him a terrorist. What happened after that . Reporter well, the fbi released a statement a short time ago. They say they made an assessment. They did multiple interviews. They checked their databases for any evidence of terrorist ties. They talked to other Law Enforcement agencies, and then they made a conclusion that he had no terrorist ties at that time in 2014. These are difficult judgment calls. Of course, two years later we saw what happened just here over my shoulder. Attempted attack in new york and in new jersey as well. Tonight, u. S. Officials tell cnn that the fbi interviewed the father of ahmad rahami in 2014 after a violent domestic dispute. This led to a tip alleging the father was calling his son a terrorist. After the father then downplayed the accusation, the fbi ultimately concluded it was a domestic matter. Today rahamis father told cnn more about the violent altercation. Now he is a terrorist. Why did you call because he doing bad. What did he do bad . He stab my son. He hit my wife. And i put him to jail two years ago. Reporter investigators are attempting to question ahmad rahami though police say he still is not talking. One urgent question, did he have help in carrying out the alleged attacks. Do you still believe that he acted alone with these attacks and attempted attacks . Jim, its very early on in the investigation. As we move through this were going to determine who his acquaintances were, family, friends, go through his social media, see if he had any phones, go through all that to make that determination. Reporter pointing to possible inspiration for the attacks, a notebook that he was carrying when captured referenced american leader an w. A. R. Al awlaki, killed in 2011 by a u. S. Drone strike. It also contained references to the Boston Marathon bombers. Investigators are scrutinizing his travels to afghanistan and pakistan, where he married and had a child and spent time in areas with a heavy taliban presence. This to determine if he was radicalized overseas. The Afghan Taliban has denied any involvement in the bombings. The officials are trying to determine if he had help in this endeavor. It would have taken some time to get all the materials to put these bombs together. Reporter the devices were made with easy to obtain ingredients and with recipes accessible online. But those materials, considered by experts to be a high explosive, had a potential explosive power bigger than what was seen in the Boston Marathon bombings. Jake, when i spoke to the new York Police Department commissioner today, he made it clear this is an ongoing investigation. They have not eliminated the possibility that there were others in rahamis support network. They dont have an answer to that question now. Here i am on 23rd street, a few yards from where the bombing took place. It is hustling and bustling. Its been the same the last 24, 48, 72 hours. Being here, jake, particularly as a new yorker, you do not get a sense of a city that is on edge or nervous. Theyre handling this very bravely as always. New yorkers made of sturdy stuff. Thank you. Pamela brown is with me here in washington. She has been looking into the background of this alleged terrorist. Today we learned this mans wife left the country before the attack. An official told cnn she is cooperating. Do they think she was involved in any way, aware of her husbands alleged plans . Were being told by officials that she is not being accused of wron wrongdoing. That there is no indication she was involved or had knowledge of the plans. She was pakistani and patiently had come to the United States and went back to pakistan on a trip recently. Were told by officials that she was making her way back to the United States and was questioned in the United Arab Emirates after it became clear her husband was the bombing suspect. Were told by u. S. Officials that she is cooperating, that she is still in the area. She did not make it to the United States. They married in 2011 in pakistan. A few years later weve learned the suspect here contacted a u. S. Congressmans Office Asking for help getting his wife to the United States. She became pregnant. That created complications. Were told she eventually made it to the United States. The alleged terrorist travelled to afghanistan and to pakistan. What are officials looking for there . Obviously possible radicalization. Thats right. He travelled to places considered taliban strongholds. He spent a year there from 2013 to 2014. He also went there in 2011 for some time. When he came back he actually went through secondary questioning. He was a naturalized u. S. Citizen, but they questioned him considering where he visited, and he claimed he was visiting his wife and uncles, and he passed the screening without raising any red flags, jake, without being put on any terror databases. Of course, officials are going back to see if something was missed given what has unfolded. Got to be a lot of second guessing going on at the fbi that they didnt interview him even though the father had said he was a terrorist. Right. They interviewed the father and other people according to the statement but never interviewed him. At the time he was in jail. So theyre saying that was part of the reason why they didnt interview him. Given the fact of the accusations and whats happened two years later i think there is definitely second guessing. Fbi can be right a thousand times and wrong once. Horrible for them. Yeah. Thank you. Bringing in former republican president ial candidate senator rand paul of kentucky. He is on the Senate HomelandSecurity Committee and Foreign Relations committee. Rahamis father says he referred to his son as a terrorist two years ago. We know he went to kandahar, afghanistan and quetta, pakistan. The headquarters for the Afghan Taliban in 2011. And then travelled there again in 2013. He stayed for almost a year. Do you see this, as of right now, as a possible intelligence failure . Possible . Yeah. I have a couple of questions, all right. You stab somebody and youre not in jail . He stabbed somebody and it sounds like beat up his mother as well, and hes not in jail . How long did he spend in jail . The other question i have and this is a more troubling question almost every major attack we have had in our country has been previously investigated by the fbi, and the fbi closes the investigation. So i have been going around and around with the fbi on this because, when the orlando killer was investigated, they closed the investigation prematurely saying we did not deem him to be a credible threat. I even asked them, in retrospect did you make a mistake . And they were like, oh, no, given the facts we made the connect decision. No they didnt. They made a bad decision. And they made a bad decision here. The boston bombers they interviewed them in advance. 9 11, we captured one of the hijackers in advance. If your dad says you are a terrorist, why dont we subpoena, monitor, get a warrant, find out his travel schedule. If he has gone to pakistan, why dont we inquire where he went. This should have been done on the heels of someone accusing him of terrorism. I really think the fbi needs to do a better job. Rahami went throughsecondary screening each time he travelled abroad yet satisfied whatever concerns immigration officials may have had. A lot of people are saying screening is insufficient. What more can be done . What more should be doin . I think we have to ask deeper questions and also know who they talked to and we need to alert the authorities. When someone has been accused of terrorism in our country we should be alerting pakistan and pakistan probably should have surveillance an them when they get there. We should have known where the boston bombers were going and followed them. We did nothing to monitor their travel after the russians tipped us off. The fbi will respond, oh, we didnt have probable cause. This shows a misunderstanding of probable cause. Probable cause is something that you beseech the court and ask the court their opinion on it. There are standards for it. But until theyre turning you down repeatedly, you arent asking enough. 99 of the time when they go to the special court they get a warrant. I think they need to go more often. And what we have the debate we have in washington is, instead of Digging Deeper into suspects history they want to look at everybodys information. I dont want everyones information to be under the purview of the fbi but i want the fbi to do a deeper search and a search with a warrant into people with whom we have suspicion. Donald trump has been calling for profiling. When he has been told that it sounds like he is calling for religious or racial profiling, he says, no, i just want to leave it up to the experts, but he does talk about how somebody looks and how police are too worried and too politically correct these days to ask the right questions. Is there any kind of profiling that needs to happen . Obviously there is criminal profiling, a separate thing. That needs to happen that Law Enforcement is not doing that would make us safer. I think people misunderstand the debate about profiling. If we have an individual for whom we have suspicion, there should be a profile of activities that we look at based on the suspicion. But we shouldnt look at all arab americans, we shouldnt look at all muslimamericans. But if we have a person who has several of the criteria that seem to be consistent with terrorism and we have suspicion for that individual, by all means we should go down the rabbit hole, looking until we find out whether they are or are not. But we shouldnt just sort of simply say, well, most terrorists are muslimamerican, therefore, were going to look at all the data of muslimamericans. We go one step further. We want to look at everyones data or the government does, so i think we should individualize the suspicion but shouldnt be stymied and say, oh, well, probably not a terrorist. We should look long and hard and explore all of their contacts. So i dont think we are doing enough to investigate individual suspects, and instead were wanting to look at everyones information indiscriminately and i think that is a privacy violation. The senate will vote on a resolution of disapproval that you are offering. Its disapproving of a 1. 15 billion weapon sale by the United States to saudi arabia, which is obviously involved in this war in yemen. Why do you want to block this weapons sale . The constitution gave the power to initiate or declare war to congress. We are now at war in yemen, in a way. We are refueling Saudi Arabian bombers in the air and picking their targets. Sounds to me like were involved in a war, and yet no one has consulted congress or asked their permission. The vote tomorrow is a vote in a way on whether or not we should be at war with saudi arabia in yemen and its a vote on whether we should continue to sell them arms. President obama has sold more arms to saudi arabia than the rest of the president s combined. He sold 100 billion worth of arms to them. On one hand president obama has released money to iran to buy weapons and on the other hand hes giving money to saudi arabia. To me, it sounds like an arms race where we are funding both sides of every skirmish over there. In the ensuing chaos, saudi arabia does nothing to help. Are they taking any refugees from yemen . Are they taking refugees from syria . No. They stir up the fight on both sides. Their money and weapons flow in. They may look the other way at the humanitarian nightmare that is yemen and syria. Senator rand paul. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Tune in next week to a special cnn town hall event at the Fort Lee Army post in virginia. Its a critical time for our men and women in the armed forces. President obama will answer crucial questions posed to him by active service men and women, veterans and their families. Its at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on wednesday the 28th. Tune in. Coming up, did the bombing suspect act alone . What clues investigators are looking for while digging into rahamis past and his wife and his trips to afghanistan and pakistan. All of that next. Its scary when the lights go out. People get anxious and my office gets flooded with calls. So many things can go wrong. Its my worst nightmare. Every second that power is out, my citys at risk. Siemens digital grid manages and reroutes power, so service can be restored within seconds. Priority number one is keeping those lights on. It takes ingenuity to defeat the monsters that live in the dark. I know more about isis then the apprgenerals do. Age. John mccain, a war hero. Hes not a war hero, hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people that werent captured ok. Donald trump compared his sacrifices to the sacrifices of two parents who lost their son in war. How would you answer that father . What sacrifice have you made for your country . I think ive made a lot of sacrifices, built great structures. Ive had tremendous success, i think. Those are sacrifices . We got a tempurflex. And its got the spring and bounce of a traditional mattress. You sink into it, but you can still move around. And now that i have a tempurflex, i can finally get a good nights sleep. Change your sleep. Change your life. Change to tempurpedic. Thosthey are. Sses . Do i look smarter . Yeah, a little. Youre making money now, are you investing . Well, ive been doing some research. Let me introduce you to our broker. How much does he charge . I dont know. Okay. Uh, do you get your fees back if youre not happy . dad laughs wow, youre laughing. Thats not the way the world works. Well, the worlds changing. Are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed . Wealth management, at charles schwab. Welcome back to the lead. Phil mudd, former nypd director of intelligence sam ras kof and former Boston Police commissioner ed davis. Phil, senator paul said the fbi has to do a better job. I know you are eager to respond. Let me be subtle, jake. Complete nonsense in terms of the analysis of this case. My problem when i see people like senator paul analyze these cases is they start with the case and they blow it up and draw a conclusion thats too general. Let me tell you how this game works. There are 330 million americans. Two million plus travel overseas not every year, every month. Two years ago a dad calls the fbi and says he is worried about his kids. Take those two facts. A worried parent and a kid who travels. You want to tell me that, after a conversation with the family, the fbi should keep the case open . I am telling you when i served at the bureau the pressure was to get more people off watch lists and close cases faster because you dont have the resources and you dont have enough information to look over an americans shoulder. I am tired of people backseat driving when they dont look at how these cases are conducted. I have had it. Sam, there obviously is a lot of backseat driving and 20 there 20 hindsight going on. But if a father says my son is a terrorist should the fbi at the very least interview the son . Im going to go with yes to that, jake. And further, to the point phil made about travel, look, travel to australia is one thing. But travel to quetta and kandahar is an entirely different story. Combine the travel to those hot spots with the fact that dad is saying of his own kid, he has a problem. Incidentally, something that was said also of the Christmas Day bomber in 2009. I think thats cause for the fbi to want to interview the suspect himself. Ed, you, when you were commissioner of police in boston, you obviously spearheaded a similar investigation to the one going on right now in new york and new jersey after the Boston Marathon bombings. I know the secondguessing and the 20 20 hindsight can be a noying but does senate paul have a point when he says the fbi wont learn from their mistakes when the suspect in the orlando killing was investigated to taken off the watch lists. The fbi has evolved in the way they do their business. But i know what the rules are. And i am as angry as phil is at politicians who come out here after an incident like this and criticize police agencies. Senator paul criticized the boston Police Department after what happened at the marathon. He is now criticizing the fbi. The fbi is enforcing rules that are passed by congress. There are rules and regulations and theyre strictly interpreted after congressional laws passed sets the stage for what the fbi can and cannot do. I have seen the flow chart of how it all works, and its all based on our laws. And i i get really upset when a guy that wouldnt know probable cause if he tripped over it is starting to quote statutes that he is responsible for in some part. Phil, let me ask you, looking forward on this investigation, or looking in the present, right now, the alleged terrorist has, according to what were being told, not been cooperative. If he had help, is there any sort of Expiration Date when it comes to the information authorities could get from him . And how are they trying to get information from him . First you try to build a rapport. He has a 5 million plus bail. He is not going anywhere. They dont have a problem with time to sit by his bedside and start working on him over days and weeks, probably bringing his family and friends in. He has information that has an Expiration Date. You can think of three quick categories in terms of a conversation with a suspect like this. Number one, imminent threat. Is there somebody else out there who will kill americans. Number two,