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 doesnt 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 were told, that came from alaska and landed earlier at ft. Lauderdale international airport. Again, this is a twist on something weve never seen before. Again, weve seen shootings at airports where people come from outside the airport with
firearms. You dont normally see somebody coming from an aircraft thats gone through security, again, with secured luggage. And then retrieving a firearm. This is not something that weve seen before. Again, this is still early in the investigation. Theres still a lot of witnesses to be interviewed. Theres Surveillance Camera Footage to look at to see exactly how long this took. We dont 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 youll continue to speak to Law Enforcement sources here in washington. I want to go to cnns 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 theyre confident there was just a lone gunman here. Thats right, jim. We actually heard from theBroward 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 thats 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 were 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. Theres no word yet on a motive. We understand that the shooter was put into custody without incident. Hes 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, whats 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 cant 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 werent acting like it. Ryan, it must have been horribly frightening for you, particularly youre 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 im 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 chiles 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. Im a big guy, so it was easy to cover her up. She was frozen. Ryan, im 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 its, of course, americas 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 dont 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 thats 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 . Its 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 im 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 didnt 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, im told by officials that he had possible Mental Health issues, but, of course, its 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 wouldnt be asking the question why at the moment. The first question is who. Is there anybody else involved. Was there a coconspirator. If hes 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. Im 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 dont know. If you wanted to kill people why wouldnt 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 thats a place where, you know, there might be police around but you dont have to walk through metal detectors. Hundreds of people travel legitimately with their firearms to go on a hunting trip or offduty Law Enforcement or other military that may have weapons and check them in. Theres 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. Theyre not in position to hijack the aircraft. When the plane lands they recover their luggage at Baggage Claim and once again theyre 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 weve 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 checkin area, outside of the security corridor, whenever that happens theres Discussion Why Dont Authorities move that cordon out further, right. Is that something that Homeland Security has considered at various times and if so, why hasnt 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 youre going to impede the movement of people and things. Millions of people a day domestically fly and youre 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 theres 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 dont 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 shouldnt believe that if only we put the security, you know, further back everything would be okay. Theres more we can do to protect these unsecured areas, but at some stage you will have an insecure area. Juliette, tom, fim, stay there. Were 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 weve been following for some time. The government has just released the declassified Intelligence Report blaming russia for Cyber Attacks during the 2016
president ial 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 cnns 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, its classified, we cant 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 ElectDonald Trumps 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 emails 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 socalled Internet Research agency, located in st. Petersburg, russia, as a close putin ally with ties to russian intelligence. These are the Troll O