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Why have they been so hard to track? reporter: well, wolf, again, sorry, we have a minor disruption. there s a lot of revers on the streets. a lot of the guys have criminal records. talked about the mastermind, 27-year-old belgium moroccan origin abdelhamid abaaoud, a member of a street gang. and that s the same with many of them. they ve all got rap sheets, all know how to avoid the police, how to get weapons, how to get under radar. that makes it difficult for authorities. dealing with a toxic combination. a radical, a petty criminal. clairissa ward, thanks very much. joining us, colin powell, national security adviser to joe biden. thanks very much. so-called mastermind of the plot, abdelhamid abaaoud, what do you know about him? i think your report captured it well. ....
These are difficult times for you for all of the people of france. first of all, deepest condolences to what happened friday night. this has been shocking to all of the french people to the entire world where is the investigation right now? where does it stand in how many suspects are still at large? well, you know, the investigation is going on and obviously there are a lot of questio questions which have not been answered. for the moment we know one suspect on the run and now we think we have a second suspect. one suspe. do you know the name. i don t know the name. a second suspect involved. exactly. who survived all of this. he s somewhere as well. exactly. do you suspect your authorities suspect they are both in france or gone to belgium or some or country. we don t nope as you know, we have identified brussels as only ....
This information? if that s true, there s got to be a serious conversation about information sharing. one of the thing that happens is a country says, is it appropriate to pass along to another government that might take action on it. in the wake of this, there has to be more serious conversations regardless of nationality. we have to pass that information regardless of the consequences. paul cruickshank, you ve spent a lot of time in belgium and france. officials tell me that they think the belgian intelligence there, basically incompetent. they make a pretty strong argument that these guys in belgium, in brussels, they don t know what they are doing. have you heard that? wolf, i would really dispute that. you know, i speak to belgian counterterrorism officials a lot. it s a small country. they are stretched very, very thin. they ve got a huge threat to ....
Deal with and everything that i ve been talking to these officials for a decade or so is that they do have a significant amount of experience, a significant amount of contact, very professional about the way they go about things. they don t have some of the technical capabilities as the americans and the french when it comes to intercepting communication. sometimes to get ahold of e-mails they say help us because it s going through internet american companies and portals. it s a small country and doesn t have the resources like france but that s fundamentally unfair to say that they are incompetent. what the french has said to me, some french officials feel that belgium, it s a small country, as paul correctly points out, but you ve got different speaking populations and it spills over to tlaheir ....
Of the attackers spent time in syria. several of them, while being french nationals, were living in belgium. belgium has one of the highest numbers of per capita of nationals traveling to syria and iraq to join the jihad. we know that the alleged mastermind of this attack, abdelhamid abaaoud, that he also was from belgium, that he was part of a street gang along with salah abdeslam, who is the focus of this manhunt. they have criminal records, long rap sheets, know how to avoid police and buy weapons. what this really reveals as well is how much the nature of jihad has changed. it used to be that jihad was arabic speakers living in caves in afghanistan and recruitment done through the mosques and now they are friends and recruiting each other over social media from syria, from iraq, talking directly to people in their homes, inside belgium. ....