It is obviously a prime target. But we have to wait until perhaps the day light hours to get a claim from any terror group and to have a clearer idea on the final death toll. That does it for my coverage this hour. Hardball starts right now. Good evening. Im Chris Matthews in new york with an update on todays terrorist attack in turkey. At least 28 people were killed and another 60 injured when at least three terrorists blew themselves up at the istanbul airport. Witnesses say they first opened fire with automatic weapons. We have new footage that appears to show the explosions, though nbc news has not independently confirmed this. We should warn you, it is graphic. I its security video that appears to show one of the gunmen being shot by police, falling down and then detonating his explosive. Another video from Security Camera footage playing on a computer shows another explosion inside the terminal. A senior u. S. Counterterrorism official told nbc news it is very likely, his words, todays attack was the work of a group of 35 terrorists dispatched by isis. The official said the attack might be the first of several tied to the end of ramadan. Well, last march the group claimed credit for coordinated attacks on the Brussels Airport and metro station that killed 32 people up there. Also tonight, why did an order to rescue ambassador Chris Stevens and fellow americans not get carried out . Why were no american planes headed to libya that fateful night . Donald trump today travels from pennsylvania to ohio, hitting the same redhot issues of trade and immigration that roiled the british decision to leave europe. Thats coming up tonight on hardball. First, for the sixth time in a year, two of them here in the u. S. , another major terrorist attack, another major european
city is reeling. Nbcs Richard Engel joins us now from istanbul. Richard, thank you. Give us a sense of where this lies in the context of what we have had already in terms of terrorism from San Bernardino all the way to turkey in istanbul to what might be coming. Reporter well, the concern is that this was just the beginning and there may be more isis attacks in turkey or elsewhere. As you said, we reported several weeks ago that u. S. Intelligence had picked up that isis had Forward Deployed more than 35 suicide bombers to turkey with the idea of carrying out attacks during the muslim holy month of ramadan. We never knew if they were going to be carrying out attacks in this country or if they were planning to transit through turkey to carry out International Level attacks and simply using turkey as a gateway. After todays attack, a
counterterrorism official told me this was highly likely linked to that forward deployment carried out by those militants and that this could be the first in a series of attacks because if the militants want to carry out attacks during ramadan, there is only one week left and this has been the first of what is presumed to be isis attack during ramadan. What is the reason for attacking during a holy period . Why is that somehow timely in a terrorists mind . Reporter in a certain sense, it is seen as more holy, more deserving of sacrifice. This is a long tradition of this frankly in muslim holy war, in a good sense and a bad sense. It has been used by isis and other extremist groups as a rallying cry that if you are going to give your life up and going to carry out a suicide attack, better to do it during
the holiest month when you get the most blessings for it. Thank you, Richard Engel. Lets bring in msnbcs cal perry here in the newsroom with more graphic videos from the scene of the attack. As we review these videos, the picture we are seeing here is one of really heroic work by the security forces. This is the video of one of the bombers as he runs through the airport. Hes shot and taken down by one of the security officials. You see the gun there sliding across the floor. Then its another ten seconds or so before hes able to explode his explosive device. The key here being there was no civilians around him at this point. We are also learning as Richard Engel talks to witnesses there, the first bomber was taken out outside by a member of the Turkish Security forces. The second one managed to detonate his explosives at the entryway of the airport. We believe this in fact was the third bomber who was shot by authorities and then still exploded his vest. That extra security measure,
that extra bit of security outside the airport may have saved dozens of lives, as difficult as that is to imagine at this point. Amazing pictures. Thank you so much. Senior u. S. Intelligence official told nbc news this attack has the hallmarks of isis. So the official added, our long summer of discontent has just begun. Anyway, joining me, msnbc terrorism analyst laith alcori from flashpoint, investigation risk analyst Anthony Rowan to my left and former cia terrorism analyst, tara maller. Thank you. Let me start right across here. To try to think about this from the question that the average person watching the show would have. We had the french train in august 2015. We had paris of course november. Last year. Then San Bernardino december of last year. Then brussels at the airport in march of this year. Orlando, june of this year. Istanbul now, june. Is there any pattern to these . Do they have something to do with geography, opportunity, vengeance . What do we make of this pattern if there is one, or isnt there one and is that the heart of terrorism . Well, there is a pattern. The pattern is that they are increasingly sophisticated attacks and they are happening with greater frequency in the western world. And that is it. This is the new reality for us. We are how much brains does it take to pack yourself up with tnt and run into a crowd and blow yourself up . What do you mean, sophistication . The attacks are planned. There are surveillances conducted ahead of time. They are thought out. They are coordinated. Each person participating in the attack has a specific role. In this case, the turks were quite adept at understanding and analyzing what happened in brussels and changed their security technique and moved it
to the outer perimeter of the building. This saved countless lives. It appears these terrorists were attempting to penetrate one of those security points by blowing it up, this way allowing a pathway for the others to pass through. So when we are talking sophistication and tactics, that takes a little bit of training, that takes some bravery and this is the new reality. Suicide brave . Well, i wouldnt want to commit suicide. I dont know about you. I dont want to build these guys up, brain power or guts. But they have to be trained. But american airports and american facilities are not prepared to deal with this, as well as the turks dealt with it today. Let me ask the same question. Does that sound sophisticated, the idoiidea of one person goin, like charging an old medieval fort, one person blows the gate, the others rush through. We have seen a string of sophisticated attacks and the sophistication is not about
strapping yourself with explosives, its about building the explosives yourself. What did you see when you watched that surveillance tape . We havent certified it here but look, we are looking at it as a prospect of what happened. The guy was shot down, hes still alive, his leg was dangling a bit at one point. All of a sudden, boom. What was he doing there . There was question of whether he detonated that vest or it was detonated due to him being shot. So thats not clear. What is clear is that there were at least three suicide bombers. Thats coordinated. They attacked likely multiple parts of the airport or at least two different parts of the airport and what appears likely here is that this is taking place during the month of ramadan as we mentioned and during this month, you know, the frequency of attacks just goes higher. This is a call made specifically by isis spokesman just days before ramadan to specifically strike during this month against what he labeled civilians better than military. This seems to essentially follow in the footsteps of what he called for. Throughout the islamic world of millions of people, three Million People or so, a billion people, rather, they are thinking about this and thinking why attack turkey which is the most western of all the Islamic States, i guess you can say, islamic countries. Was this an attack on modernity . Whats the motive . Most people think of indonesia or pakistan or muslims living in india. What would be the motive behind Something Like this . There are a few reasons. This is a major airport, the tenth or 11th largest airport, has a Huge InternationalTraveler Base going through there. Turkey is part of the coalition, turkey is striking isis in the heart of syria. There are a number of reasons. In terms of the attack itself, i agree that it was coordinated and there were explosives used but i dont want to sort of overestimate that these attacks we are seeing although increased in frequency, i dont think that they are necessarily all increasing in sophistication. We see terrorist groups time and time again hit the same types of targets, transportation targets
have always been the top of the list. We see them using the same types of tactics, suicide bombs, more recently shootings, and some of these to be honest dont require that much funding, dont require that much training and the case of orlando or the homegrown cases, very little contact or Operational Training. So i dont want to sort of give them the boost of saying these are increasing in sophistication. Coordination, maybe, because they had multiple bombers but a lot of these attacks, we dont know if these individuals travel to syria and iraq and got training. We dont know enough about that. Turkey has high foreign fighter flow into syria so its possible. But its too early to say whether or not they were inspired or acted on their own. A lot of these people are inspired and have never actually had Operational Training or met with individuals in the group themselves. I dont want to overstate the sophistication. Terrorists can be very successful unfortunately with low sophistication. Thats whys an asymmetric tactic. In orlando, one individual with a gun in a night club was able to create the most death and
destruction in a mass shooting in u. S. History. I dont want to overstate the sophistication but it doesnt matter. A low sophistication attack can still cause a large number of casualties, unfortunately. Let me ask you about bombing. We dont have all the information, at least 28 dead, maybe more. A. P. Is reporting many more. At least 100 injured badly, probably. Look at that guy. We just watched there. Maybe lost his leg. Bombing. Whats bombing in terrorism have to do, it always seems to involve bombing. Is that one sure way to blow yourself up, certainly, and the suicide bomb strapped to the body seems to be part of this cult of suicide, martyrdom, if you will. They can have multiple switches, as my guest pointed out here, that once they are shot and killed, they can have an automated switch that if its not held down, the bomb goes off. Dead mans switch. Thats right. But bombing can create tremendous collateral damage. The reason they want to get
inside the terminal is that the same bomb will commit much more damage inside a terminal because of the enclosed space than outside the terminal. So in terms of planning and sophistication, its required to have surveillance of the location, rehearsals, training with the weapons, training with the bombs, and it does require a level of planning to make does it require the help of somebody in isis land itself, if you will, in the place, the part of syria and iraq which they hold as sort of a semicountry now . Does it require the participation of that homeland if you will of theirs to do these kind of things, or its just a networking thing . Well, it takes some money, it takes some planning, it takes safe houses, it takes some weapons. It takes bomb building. All of that requires administration. So we have the administration portion. This doesnt look lone wolf to you . This is not lone wolf. And it requires the execution
portion. All of that requires a lot of different steps. Since 9 11, we have always been aware that our enemies have one goal which is economic. They want to blast away at the west which has been so successful in the world in the last couple hundred years. Maybe its resentment, maybe this is the way to get the to them at their strength, take away their economic strength. Airports, the lifeblood of countries like turkey. Everybody wants to visit turkey, to go visit egypt. To live that lifeblood of tourists coming in mainly from the west, china, wealthier parts of asia, coming in with lots of money, spending it all at the hotel, on restaurants, and tourist places like that. This is going to discourage trips to istanbul. Certainly people are not going to put it on their live now. And terror groups, specifically jihadist terror groups have made that very clear. Hemorrhaging the economy of a certain country, especially world powers or regional, what they call tyrannical regimes
will ultimately weaken their Defense Forces this is an islamic regime. Not islamist but islamic regime. Well maybe even islamist. It is certainly a country that has the majority of its people are muslim. They dont necessarily implement religious sharia law and the laws they are obviously part of nato, they are the gate of nato to the east of europe. You can wear a bathing suit in that country. You will not be banning bathing suits or prostitution, for that matter. Whats clear is that turkey stands at the helm of the war against isis borderwise as well as it is helping the u. S. Led coalition or its own interests in the region. Turkey is at the top of the target list for isis and other groups. Well, tara, why dont you respond to this. This is secretary of state john kerry speaking today, for many of us i think he said this is becoming daily fare. Definitely bimonthly, if you will. Lets watch. I might just comment that i
want to make sure according to press reports at least, are dead and some 40 wounded and we are still collecting information and trying to ascertain what happened and who did it. I wont comment further on it except to say that this is daily fare and thats why i say the first challenge we need to face is countering nonstate violent actors, for a host of reasons. Nonstate violent actors is a long way of saying terrorists, in this case terrorists, we dont know how organized they were but the message from the experts here, tara, maybe you agree, we are talking about an organization here. It isnt just somebody who heard something on the internet. Yeah. In this case its not. But the problem we have been seeing is a combination of both. We have seen attacks where individuals have specific ties to isis affiliated groups. Isis individuals. And we have seen examples where individuals are inspired through radicalization online. This fight will need to be won militarily in terms of taking out isis in its stronghold,
raqqah and fallujah, so individuals cant get trained, cant have contact with these organizations, but its a fight that will also need to be won online. Stopping their messaging, their propaganda. This is where they have been extremely effective, inspiring individuals to carry out attacks in their name and those individuals dont actually have operational contact with the group. Its both. Its a little of both. Get in the mind and heart and soul even of these people. Three men apparently probably young and healthy with lives ahead of them, decided to kill themselves in the interest of blowing up a bunch of strangers at an airport. Including a lot of muslims, fellow muslims. Whats in their mind . Well, you know, im not a psychologist and it seems when you look across these cases theres really unfortunately not one narrative. Thats the Million Dollar question. Everyone wants a monocausal explanation. In many cases its a mix of jihadi inspiration, its social networks of individuals they come into contact with, its other problems potentially in their past, its potential
hatred towards specific minority groups as well. Its a lot of causes. Thats what makes these individual attacks so hard to stop ahead of time and why people need to be vigilant, why more resources need to go to organizations like in the Intelligence Community and the fbi so when the individuals cross theiradar screen they can do the proper investigations. A lot of these cases the message appeals to individuals because they feel disenfranchised, may feel they dont have a voice in their society and they may to be frank have disagreements with policies by western countries. Theres a combination. Its usually not one factor that goes across all individuals that engage in attacks whether San Bernardino or istanbul today. When we were hit in 9 11 here in the city of new york we werent hit by losers. The guys, the top four guys, the pilots who put it together were welltrained people, who could have had good careers as technical people. They were well educated. They were not losers. They seemed to be secular guys. They want to watch strip shows and stuff. They didnt seem to be mentally
disturbed in any way. They had the usual sinful manner of a lot of people, violent or not. What is the heart of terrorism in this case . Look, when you come down to the ideology itself and the ideology is much bigger than to explain in 30 seconds, but the idea here thats what we got. The idea is that the war is binary for them. The binary is that you are either with the enemy or you are with us and this so people in that airport going to south africa or dublin or wherever they were going, just regular neutralist people were seen as the enemy by these people . Yes. And for isis all is fair in war. Without the love part. And in this case, they believe that anybody who is in any capacity antiisis will essentially be their enemy. Your thoughts on this . People are all wondering every time this happens oversimplification. I agree. This runs the spectrum. You have physicians, scientists, bankers, an entire network thats not dissimilar to
organized crime to keep this machine running. International financiers and the fight mobsters dont commit suicide. These guys do. Thats the horrible tragic wrinkle. But simply the structure. The structure is sophisticated and runs the gamut from the very well educated to the po