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Published January 24, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "The Kelly File," November 13, 2015. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MEGYN KELLY, HOST, "THE KELLY FILE": Breaking tonight, Paris under lockdown. The French borders closed and a massive, nationwide manhunt is underway. As a devastating series of attacks rock America's oldest ally, the nation that stood by us after 9/11 that gifted us the Statue of Liberty. France tonight fell victims to the worst terror attack in its history.
Welcome to "The Kelly File," everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly. Here's what we know at this hour. At home, the NYPD is deploying counterterrorism teams. American airlines is holding all flights to Paris, France. Authorities here say there is no specific or credible threat to the United States. And our government is pledging to do all it can to assist French investigators.
Back in France, the lights of the Eiffel Tower have gone dark. Paris is under an effective police state. Our curfew is in effect, officials declaring the ability to seize and confiscate people's weapons. And impose house arrest on anyone considered dangerous. This as the death toll climbs. More than 150 people believed to have been murdered in multiple attacks across Paris tonight. The worst of it coming during a hostage standoff at a sold-out concert featuring an American band, the Eagles of Death Metal.
Eyewitnesses say, the attackers were shouting Allahu Akbar, killing people one by one, shooting them as they were on the floor, even searching for anyone who might have been hiding, reloading to take out as many people as they could over and over and over again. Police finally storming the hall to take out the attackers from everything we can tell, what they found inside was apocalyptic. Around 100 people killed there. Listen to one man who managed to get away describing the horrors of what he saw. This is in French with subtitles. But the story he tells is heart stopping.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
LOUIS, EYEWITNESS: (Subtitle) Come on mom, come on. Then they were shooting at the crowd and crying "Allahu Akbar" while they were shooting their guns, I believe. The concert stopped, everyone was lying on the ground and they still continued to shoot. Damn, this is hell. Excuse me. You heard it there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think you were acting normally in this instance. What was your reaction in that moment and what were you able to do?
LOUIS: I grabbed my mom, we got down on the floor. I was on the floor with my mom and some said, "They left." And we fled, we ran across the street from Bataclan. I was able to get out with my mother.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your mother, she is at your side, you were able to leave the concert hall?
LOUIS: We are on the car on Rue Lafayette, actually.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there people who are, at the moment inside the concert hall Bataclan?
LOUIS: It appears that yes, I don't know what to tell you. I think, yes, I don't know. When we left we had to go over bodies, you understand, it's a nightmare. It's a nightmare.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Louis, on this nightmare, were you able to see the attackers?
LOUIS: No. I could not see them. I was able to see the silhouette of the shooters (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you were all lying down, they said the words that you told us?
LOUIS: Allahu Akbar, there you go. They said Allahu Akbar and I don't know anything else they said. I don't know anything more.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you Louis for your testimony and good luck.
LOUIS: You're welcome. I just want to say good luck, have strength to all the others. Good luck to everyone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: This is hell. You heard it there. On the left side of your screen, we are bringing in live pictures from Paris provided by various news agencies including our sister network Sky News. At this hour, some 1500 soldiers have been deployed across Paris. The French President is saying, "In the face of terror, France must be strong." As we mentioned before, there were a number of attacks in Paris tonight. Including near the biggest stadium in France where the French president was watching a soccer match between France and Germany and had to be evacuated from that stadium, as well as another horrible attack at a restaurant south of the stadium. The attacker opening fire. Spraying the windows as diner fell to the floor. Police report that at least 11 people were killed there.
And we are joined now by American Margot Schmorak who was eating dinner in Paris when she heard shots fired at the restaurant that was attacked.
Margot, thank you so much for being with us tonight. So you're there in Paris. And what was the first time you have that there -- that something had gone wrong?
MARGOT SCHMORAK, AMERICAN WITNESS: Well, we were sitting outside at the restaurant on the sidewalk and kind of in-front of the doors of the restaurant. And my colleagues and I said, there were four of us sitting at a four-top table. And we heard about eight to 10 shots and we didn't really understand what they were. We weren't sure if they were gunshots. And then we heard actually two other sounds which were also gunshots that were different from the first bunch that we heard. And my colleague actually said I think those were gunshots. And I looked up and saw eight to 10 people running around the corner towards the restaurant. And we all got up immediately from the table and ran inside and we heard more gunshots as we were running inside the restaurants.
KELLY: How many would you say you heard?
SCHMORAK: You know, it's hard to say. The first round was probably 10 to 12. And like I said we heard a few that sounded different. And my friend and I were just talking about how the two in the middle sounded like they were smaller weapons. The first were, like semi-automatic weapon, like boom, boom, boom. And they're kind of pop, pop and then another boom, boom, boom and during the second round, we ran inside. So, I couldn't tell you exactly how many.
KELLY: Could you tell where the gunshots were coming from?
SCHMORAK: No, it sounded like they were very close. So, I mean, we were about half of block away. Like I said, we were around the corner. And we actually stop people running, coming around the corner from two corners that we were. And we were just looking up online where the shooting was reported to have happened and it actually with (INAUDIBLE) block. So, we actually were kind of on the other side of that block. And it felt very close.
KELLY: Did you have an understanding in that moment, given everything gone on in the world, that this was likely a terror attack?
SCHMORAK: You know you have this moment where time is kind of close down, when you have to make a split second decision about what to do. And I remember thinking I think these are gunshots. I don't want to die today. And I just ran inside.
KELLY: What was the mood? Was it panicked? Was it controlled?
SCHMORAK: So the local Parisians were actually very calm. And I think the only people in the restaurant where we were at who were actually very agitated were the people who were outside. As Americans, we were pretty scared. And we went in and we saw family with young children. They were sitting in the restaurant at the main level. And there was a basement level that looked safer. And so I actually said to the family, I think you need to bring the children upstairs. And then some, the mother of the small children started to get very scared. I have two young children myself, so that was part was very scary. But for the most part people were really calm in the restaurant. I mean, personally, I was very scared. But a lot of other people were sort of taking it a little bit more calmly than I was, honestly.
KELLY: Did you -- were you able at any point this evening to see what had actually happened at the restaurant across the way?
SCHMORAK: No. So, we -- at one point about maybe 45 minutes after the shooting it happened in the police had cordoned off the area, we went and poked our heads around the corner. Because we thought, well maybe, it was an isolated incident of maybe it wasn't a shooting and we just didn't really understand what it happened. And we saw the police there, we heard that there were bodies that people saw, we didn't see any ourselves. And then we went back into the restaurant and it just seemed like the safest place to be.
KELLY: Tonight, after you got out, I mean, at what point, first of all, were you able to leave? And what was it like when you did leave? I mean, you must have been worried something else could happen.
SCHMORAK: Yes, we were very worried. We were checking with our families back in the United States. Some who have access to -- people who can help us kind of think about the situation and we were getting really conflicting advice about what to do. Some say stay foot in the restaurant. Other said, we have to leave because they're targeting restaurants. We ended up staying for about three hours, from 9:30 to a little bit after midnight at which point we decided to leave. And we actually had to walk back to our apartment that we were staying in, which was about a 30 minute walk and that was pretty scary too. We actually saw police officers on the way back and we asked them where it's safe to walk. And he said, honestly, I don't know. And he said, just go to your hotel so we just walk as quickly as we could.
KELLY: Wow! I mean, we have a picture of some of the carnage at the restaurant. And we warned the viewers it is disturbing and you can see what appears to be the bodies of the dead, some of them. And this is it. We put it up for shock value, but to underscore what has happened in Paris, France tonight. People just out trying to bond with fellow human beings and having a meal were shot dead in and around the restaurant and that included many Americans were in these restaurants. We don't know the nationalities of the dead nor if it's particularly relevant. But Margot, you where there. I know you are the mother of two young children. And after you left the scene tonight, you managed to get a picture of them. You must be feeling like one of the lucky ones this evening.
SCHMORAK: Yes. I am. Definitely.
KELLY: We're very glad you're safe. Thank you for being with us.
SCHMORAK: Thank you.
KELLY: We're getting reports that five attackers have been killed. But Chief Intelligence Correspondent Catherine Herridge suggests it likely took upwards of a dozen people to plan and execute an attack of this magnitude. Meaning this manhunt is likely far from over. Those who are said who have been shooting in to at least one of these restaurants did so from a car and then drove away. And that's not even take into account the multiple other shooters who appeared to have been in Paris, France tonight and maybe unaccounted for.
Congressman Peter King is the chairman of the counterterrorism and intelligence subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee. He's with us tonight. Congressman, thank you for being here.
REP. PETER KING (R-NY), HOMELAND SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Megyn.
KELLY: First, give us the big picture. Give us the big picture on what we've seen tonight.
KING: This was a vicious, diabolical attack carried out I'm certain by Islamic terrorist, most likely ISIS. It's a nightmare scenario that all of us who deal with intelligence and Islamic terrorism fear that the fact that you get a foreign fighters most likely coming back from Syria, carrying out an attack like this -- coordinated attacks hitting over to the levels of society, hitting restaurants, hitting a concert hall, hitting a soccer stadium. To create this feeling of fear and absolute confusion and chaos. This was terrorism at its worse. And this is what can happen really in any major large city in the United States or Europe.
We have to -- I hope this is a wake-up call. I hope the President -- this morning he said that ISIS is contained, this shows that it's going to be a long hard fight before ISIS or al-Qaeda or Islamic terrorism is contained and destroy. So, this is a war and we have to realize that we have to stop holding back and stop making believe that our main worry is how fast we can close Guantanamo. Our main goal has to be how closely we can destroy ISIS.
KELLY: The situation is fluid and we are working on preliminary information. But according to one report, one of the men arrested near the Bataclan, the concert hall where so many were murdered tonight, the man taken into custody reportedly told the authorities, I was recruited by ISIS along with three others coming from Syria. There has been a huge controversy in France over how many of these refugees coming from Syria they should take. And whether it was a matter of being humane or whether it was a matter of potentially jeopardizing the people of France in their safety. We, too, have been engage in the same debate here in the United States and we have taken in over a thousand. The President says, we'll take in 10,000. The question I have for you is, how confident are you that we have an adequate screening process here?
KING: Megyn, I'm not confident at all. I have no confidence. And by the way, neither does the FBI or the other agencies in our government because they have no databases to work from. We don't know who these people are. There are no records. There are no government records we can go to. There's no personal records we can go to. We don't know who these people are. So you have, and we know that ISIS does want to infiltrate terrorists into Europe and the United States with these refugees. Also, in addition to that, you have the foreign fighters. These thousands of Europeans. Many of them French who have gone down to Syria, to fight all alongside ISIS, to be trained as terrorists. And they are coming back into Europe.
And once they get to Europe, they can fly into the United States without getting a visa. This is a very desperate situation. And I don't hear many people in our government talking about it, many candidates talking about it. The President somehow said ISIS were under control. And you think what's happened just in the last week. There's been the Russian jet that has gone down, there's been over 200 people killed, men, women and children. The bombs going off in Lebanon. Now, what we've seen tonight in Paris. Megyn, this is the real deal. And when I think of all the attacks that were made in the NYPD, because of the fact that they were monitoring potential terrorists here in New York City, well, maybe it's Paris police could have been incorporate this same methods. This, you know, may not
have happened. And also --
KELLY: But we're not doing that anymore here in New York.
KING: Well, we'll let me hear Commissioner Bratton, he's doing the best he can under certain circumstances. And it's not as much as it was done before. And that's part of the problem we faced.
KELLY: But is there any other way? Is there any other way in a free society? And some would question whether we are free if you have, you know, law enforcement infiltrating places like mosques. I understand that. But is there any other way besides doing that that you can realistically prevent someone from strapping on a suicide vest and walking into a public place and detonating it or doing a drive by a restaurant and opening up fire with an AK 47?
KING: Megyn, there really isn't. That's the reality. I mean, you need a combination. We have to use the NSA, we have to use the CIA, the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the police on the ground. Now, just this past July, we were told that ISIS was going to attack the United States, specifically New York, over the Fourth of July. Five ISIS operatives were arrested in New York City and Northern New Jersey. If they had not been arrested, if they had not been stopped, we may well could have seen over the Fourth of July the same type of carnage that we saw in Paris today.
KELLY: How significantly if it all does this raise the alert level here? You know, we used to have the color coded system? We got rid of that.
KING: Yes.
KELLY: But what is likely to happen here in America over the next days and weeks?
KING: Well, I can assure you that within moments of this happening in Paris, all of our agents, the FBI, Homeland Security, National Counterterrorism Center, FBI, all of them came together. The Joint Terrorism Task Forces, NYPD, other police departments around the country. Consolidating and searching as much intelligence as they could, increasing the security patrols in New York, you're going to see a higher level of police protection. And there's going to be more police activity that you don't see. And I'm sure that will be repeated in the major cities across the country. You're going to see more security at the airports. You're going to see us sharing what every intelligence we have, with the French, with the British, with the Germans and Spaniards. We don't know whether or not these attacks were just coordinated in Paris, or are they part of a worldwide series of coordinated attacks. All of that has to be looked at and that's what's going on right now. It's a full court press.
KELLY: We talked about the -- essentially, it's a police state tonight in France.
KING: Right.
KELLY: Where they're saying they can place you under house arrest. If they find you suspicious, they can confiscate your weapons. Could that kind of thing happen here if we were to suffer an attack like this?
KING: Megyn, we certainly don't want that to happen. And that's why when I was talking with the NYPD before, in certain activity that the FBI should carry out. To me, those are entirely within the constitution. Yes, it's going further than maybe some of us (INAUDIBLE) would like. But it does say within the constitution. The dangers of something like this does happen, what happened in Paris that people will want to give martial law powers. We don't want that. I don't want that. But if we keep restricting the legitimate rights of police and the legitimate rights of law enforcement, if people keep yelling about the NSA, that could reach a situation where we do an attack like this, and then people call for much more severe action, that would have been required in the first place. And I would not want that to happen.
KELLY: Congressman Peter King. Thank you, sir.
KING: Megyn, thank you.
KELLY: Well, we also have some new details coming in just a moment ago about the retaking of the Bataclan concert hall. One hundred people were reportedly killed. These are preliminary numbers. They're going to change, folks. When these terrorists stormed the venue. But now we're hearing some reports from French police that in the effort to retake the popular music venue, four officials, possibly police officers lost their lives, as well. And here's how one witness described the scene shortly before that rescue operation was executed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Julian Peters is joining us. He's a radio reporter. Julian, I understand you were inside the Bataclan Theater during this concert of that American rock band, Eagles of Death Metal were performing. But now you've made it outside. Tell us what you've seen and what you've heard.
JULIAN PETERS, EYEWITNESS (on the phone): Well, I've seen two terrorists, from my point of view. An AK-47 entering the concert room and firing randomly to the crowd. People yelled, screamed and everybody lied on the floor. It lasted for 10 minutes -- where everybody was on the floor covering their head. And we heard so many gunshots. And the terrorists were very calm, very determined, and they re-loaded three and four times. And they didn't shout anything. They didn't say anything. They were wearing black clothes and they were shooting at people on the floor and keep shooting them.
And I was luckily at the top of the stage, in the front of the stage. And people tried to escape to work on people on the floor and tried to find the negative. And I found the negative when the terrorist reloaded his gun in the meantime. And I (audio gap) the terrorists in there -- and they're hiding in some kind of room in the dark and they text me. And they're very afraid, of course. (INAUDIBLE) But it's been over two hours now. And this is terrible. What happened was terrible. I mean, honestly, 15 minutes of gunshots firing randomly in a small concert room, I mean, the Bataclan is not a huge concert room. It's a small one. A thousand people were there, maximum. And it's horrible.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Julian, were these terrorists and you say you saw three or four of them. You say they were dressed in black. Were their faces covered with masks?
PETERS: They were not wearing masks. I mean, they were unmasked. I see the face of one guy. One terrorist. He was very young. He was about 20 years old, 25, maximum. He wasn't wearing a bear or something. He was like a random guy holding a Kalashnikov. And then they were not matched.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And did you hear any words coming out of his mouth? Was he speaking in French or Arabic or anything you could discern?
PETERS: Nothing. Nothing. I heard nothing. Just the yelling and screaming of the people. They didn't shout anything. They didn't say anything. No Allahu Akbar or something like this. They said nothing. They just shot. They were just shooting to people.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So they weren't just questioning anyone who they were. They would just look at someone and shoot and kill them. Is that what you're saying?
PETERS: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you saw 20 people shot and killed, at least 20 bodies there on the floor of the theater?
PETERS: Yes, yes. Some of them were dead. Some of those were very badly wounded. But it was a blood bath.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's sort of blood bath. And it's still continuing right now. You're outside the theater. As far as you know, Julian, the hostage crisis there and the killing, presumably is continuing?
PETERS: Yes. I'm not sure of the information. But I got a bunch of friends who are hiding right now in the comfort room. And they're hiding because they're not sure if the terrorists are still there.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.
PETERS: And the police is not inside.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Julian? Are you okay, Julian?
PETERS: I'm okay. I'm outside the comfort room. I'm in an apartment. And the police are all around me. So, I'm all okay.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Julian, be careful over there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: Unbelievable, testimonial. Just hours after the news broke, President Obama here, came out to address the tragic attacks in Paris. He called it an attack on all of humanity and vow to stand ready to help the people of France in any way possible.
James Rosen reports from the White House live tonight for us. James?
JAMES ROSEN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Megyn, good evening. President Obama was informed of these attacks in Paris by Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the President for Homeland Security and counterterrorism. He spoke for only five minutes in the White House briefing room and something that was obviously hastily arranged. He told us that he has not contacted a French President Francois Hollande because President Obama said it was his expectation that Mr. Hollande is busy right now but that he expected to speak with him in the next few days.
Ironically, President Obama had spoken with the French president earlier today, much earlier today, before any of this transpired to discuss their shared participation in an upcoming economic summit. But the President said that we stand by the French. He said that we have offered all kinds of assistance to the French authorities as they may need. And he said and I'm putting quoting him, now we stand together with the French in the fight against terrorism and extremism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRES. BARACK OBAMA, D-UNITED STATES: This is a heartbreaking situation. And, obviously, those of us here in the United States know what it's like. We've gone through these kinds of episodes ourselves. And whenever these kinds of attacks happened, we've always been able to count on the French people to stand with us. They have been an extraordinary counterterrorism partner. And we intend to be there with them in that same fashion.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROSEN: Secretary of State John Kerry is in Vienna ready to convene a summit on Syria. He has issued a statement, as well. And we're told that the U.S. Embassy in Paris has been working hard to make sure that any Americans who may have been affected by this attack have the full help of the United States government behind them. A French Embassy official here in Washington told me that at one point, they counted at least five situations that were live and ongoing, including the stadium, the two restaurants and two others, Megyn.
So this, obviously, a major attack. The State Department has been briefing some members of Congress. And there are some indications that there may have been some inklings on the part of the French authorities of a plot underway. We're still working to confirm that. One last point here, I asked the French official if any Americans were known to be harmed, hurt, killed, held, hostage, et cetera. And this official told me that given the venues that we're talking about and the sheer numbers that we're talking about, quote, "They're not all going to be French" -- Megyn.
KELLY: James, thank you. As we watch the screen, we see folks walking by in the shiny blanket that they tend to give you after you run a marathon. You know, warming blanket and we believe that these are survivors of the attack that we saw on the concert hall, in particular, where people were held hostage for hours and hours trying to hide from the gunmen as they continue to reload over and over and over again. Some witnesses talking about how they had to go to the roof of the facility, about how they had to push through doors and more doors and more doors and more doors and 30 to 40 of them wind up on the roof and then they saw a man who was waving to them for the neighboring house and waved them over and said, come here and helped them escape by bringing them into his own home through his attic.
So these people could get out of the facility in which they are being shot down mercilessly one after the other. That is how many of the people managed to emerge from this facility from which you heard the one witness say earlier, this is hell. As we reported earlier tonight, intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge believes, it may have taken upwards of a dozen people to plan and execute this attack, this coordinate this attack at six separate sites. And while officials are not providing an estimate, the Paris prosecutor said, just moments ago that quote, "accomplices may still be on the loose."
Catherine Herridge is live with us tonight with the very latest. Catherine, so do we know -- do we know now who is responsible for this?
CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS INTELLIGENCE CORRESPONDENT: We do not know who is responsible. But Megyn, tonight, there are two separate threat streams that are being followed. One involves credible ISIS accounts or ISIS sympathetic accounts. These are accounts that are celebratory in their tone. Lauding the attack in Paris but they are not claiming responsibility for the attack itself. We saw a similar pattern on the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine. And that was ultimately, the blame is ultimately affixed on two brothers who were trained by al-Qaeda and Yemen.
There is also though a second set of chatter from ISIS Ramadi (ph) accounts and they are reposting a story that was published by a British newspaper, The Daily Male in July of this year and it was about a French Jihadi who had executed a Syrian military officer and then promised to bring the massacre and the blood bath to the French land itself. This is being reposted by ISIS accounts. Almost trying to suggest that the French had been warned about their intervention in Syria. But the bottom-line for viewers tonight is that there has not been a credible claim of responsibility, but there has been significant activity on this ISIS social media accounts -- Megyn.
KELLY: And there's been plenty of celebration by ISIS as well on line. They have a hashtag going out called Paris in Flames. Catherine, standby just for one second.
HERRIDGE: Sure.
KELLY: I have more I want to go through with you. But I want to dip into our sister network Sky News and listen what's happening.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: More than 140 people have been killed in the combination of attacks, the majority of them at the Bataclan Theater. Perhaps more than 120 people. They're bearing in mind, we believe that 1,200 were attending this concert by the American rock bands that may well be that many of them did manage to survive.
Rebecca, you're getting indications that people have literally been sheltering between seats and lying down to avoid all of the gunfire.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Subsequent reports coming out of Paris at the moment. Dozens have managed to survive. You can see some of them in the shots from the screen at the moment. Of course people with these foil blankets keeping themselves warm. Some have come out of the venue covered in blood. As you say, we understand there are 1,300 people there. So a huge proportion of them, now, we know, have died. But like you say, they were sheltering under the seats, in the gallery, lots of them (INAUDIBLE) of this concert venue.
The shocking news as you just read out, that the Paris -- said, these attackers blew themselves up with suicide belts as the police drove in. And of course, a number of people were killed there. And I mean, presumably, in the coming hours, we'll get more information about exactly what went on inside that concert venue. Apparently, the attackers now are dead, five have been killed. Although, authorities are hunting for any possible accomplices. We're just getting that in now, just breaking that news now. Hunting for any possible accomplices. We're just getting that news now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I guess we also have this no confirmation.
KELLY: And Sky News on the same page as we are with their accomplices still on the loose potentially and being searched for by investigators. Katherine, so ISIS has not claimed responsibility, but is celebrating this, and we have learned some eyewitness accounts about the shooters. There was an eyewitness who said that they heard gunmen talking about Iraq and Syria. So what are investigators focused on right now?
CATHERINE HERRIDGE, WASHINGTON: Investigators this evening are focused on the simultaneous nature of these attacks, at least six at this time that have been counted, and also on the level of premeditation and the scope and the support network. You have to think of each of these attack sites like a separate cell having responsibility for it. When you look at the breakdown, you anticipate in a situation such as this that there are two operatives that do advanced surveillance so they understand the layout of the target.
And then you also have to do an assessment of what the security is in the neighborhood. So you would go to that part of Paris on weekend evening to understand the pattern of the police and the security services. The next thing that you have to look at here is the use of military hardware. The grenades, the effectiveness, and the handling of the AK47 at the concert hall certainly suggest a familiarity with the weapon. Training outside of Paris, and then, also the suicide belts or bombers themselves. You've got to have someone who is familiar with explosives, has experienced making these bombs, so not to have an incident in advance that would tip off police.
Then, you also have to consider that some of these operatives were not willing to die on the mission, and would therefore have an escape route. When you start tallying up all of those numbers, Megyn, you are looking upwards of a dozen people easily and you're looking at an operation which would not be a pick-up operation, but would take weeks, perhaps even months of planning. We learned in the last hour the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was briefed. That gives you a sense of how highly this is being circulated within the administration, and we were told to focus on this migrant stream as well as the returning foreign fighters, as you just heard from Congressman Peter King.
KELLY: Catherine, thank you.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: Well, as Catherine just mentioned, France's official news outlet has just reported that the three attackers at the concert hall scene detonated explosive suicide belts as the authorities closed in. Joining me now, former CIA Operative Morton Storm, who was once an insider in Al Qaeda in Yemen, so he knows how these guys operate firsthand. Morton, thank you for being here, here's my first question, are they getting more aggressive, because we saw -- if this ISIS, we've seen them blow up a Russian airliner over Egypt and now we see this coordinated attack that must have taken some level of sophistication and planning.
MORTON STORM, FORMER CIA OPERATIVE: You know it's not surprising. Since the uprising of ISIS, the sleeper cells have woken up. And I think the only way to do what France has done today is to close all of the borders and to stop the invasions for these countries. Last week, I said, unfortunately, I was right on this.
KELLY: The sleeper cells have woken up. The question though, is you know they've closed the borders now. What we're being told is the borders are closed to those who want to leave France, not necessarily to those who want to come in France. They -- perhaps are trying to suggest that the accomplices, if there are any perpetrators, may be trying to leave. So are those who have helped in this endeavor that are still alive, do you believe they'd be hiding in plain sight in Paris? How do they go about -- these cells have got to be well hidden and well coordinated to have pulled this off. Sow how did they find them?
STORM: Well, these people allow pretending to be one of us. It's a specific warfare, according to Islam, that you can potentially be long-standing to be part of them, to give them permission to kill. This is what's happened at the time of Prophet Muhammad. And I know, inside and out, how these people think the strategies. The strategies of being Muslims, even. It's very sophisticated. It's very calculated.
KELLY: This may sound like a simple question, forgive me. But when you hear the barbarity of it, you know just going into a concert hall and standing there with these AK47's just one by one picking off the people and reloading and then again, civilians, targeted civilians. And in restaurants, just going by and lobbying grenade, these aren't hard targets. These are soft targets. Is there any thought? There's no thought given to the fact that these are civilians. And on that airplane that we saw, there were babies on board. They don't care.
STORM: Nope. If it justifies the cause, it's permissible in Islam. I can say that. I have studied this. So I don't care what other imams are trying to say. Because I hear a lot of apologetic -- it is not. In fact, it's very violent. It's permissible for these to kill Muslims, even civilians.
KELLY: So what would be the reaction inside of these cells or groups, if this ISIS-sympathetic group. They would see this as a victory? What would it encourage, more?
STORM: Yes, this is going to encourage them even more. We are not going to leave alive. They will die in this fight.
KELLY: What stops it from happening here? I mean, you look at the -- I don't know, for lack of a better term, the ease with which they just shot up, these restaurants, and this concert hall. You have to wonder what stops it from happening here. Do you know?
STORM: The only way is to fight fire with fire. We need to totally wipe ISIS out in the Middle East, we need to deport anyone who have links to Islamic extremism -- or not extremism but militant fundamentalism.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: You wipe one group, and then if there's just one left, they metastasize and they start again. I mean, is there any wiping out a group like this?
STORM: Well, that should be a ban on the political and military Islam in Europe. Such ideology should not be allowed into the country.
KELLY: That's tough. That's tough to do. When you have open borders and a free society, how do you stop it from happening? That's one of the debates we're having right now. We're getting statements from all the Presidential candidates right now. One that just came in from Senator Cruz who said this is a clear and unmistakable escalation of ISIS' ambitions, do you agree with that?
STORM: You know we have so-called professors of -- in counter terrorism who teach us at King's College and other places. These people suggest that we should allow these terrorists to come back again to Europe so we can understand them. I do not know how we can think rationally like this. Those involved today in this horrible attack, some came back with experience.
KELLY: Morton, thank you for being with us tonight.
STORM: You're welcome. Thank you so much.
KELLY: Joining me now from Paris, Adam Kirk who is a University of Washington student who was near the concert hall where they took hostages and reported to kill more than 100 people tonight. Adam, thank you for being with us, so you're an American in France, and what was the first you understood that something terrible happened this evening?
ADAM KIRK, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON STUDENT: Yeah, I am just studying abroad over here in Paris. I was just on Twitter, actually, following the soccer game between France and Germany. I am a big soccer fan and they mentioned something about an explosion, which obviously was very suspicious. But, at soccer games, there's always loud bangs and stuff like that. I went to my window and I heard a lot of sirens and stuff going passed -- about 10, 15 minutes which is very rare for the area I am in. It is a very quiet are, pretty much all of the time. I messaged my dad, had you heard anything on the news or anything like that? There hadn't been anything.
About five minutes later, I went back to the window. I am in a little courtyard area, but then I heard two or three loud explosions. It was obviously very scary.
KELLY: And then what did you see next? Was there a horde of people
coming? What happened?
KIRK: Actually, it took about an hour. And I believe that's when the hostage situation was taking place at this theater just around the corner. During that period, police stand in and they took out all the cars in my lot. They came in and checked the area. I would imagine it was when they went in to clear the scene, I heard five large explosions again. At that point, about 100 people came rushing into my courtyard. A couple people didn't have shirts on. They came running in my courtyard. At that time, I just kind of laid low because I didn't know what was happening.
KELLY: This is the picture of your courtyard which you're speaking. So you saw at least one injury. How many injuries did you see?
KIRK: I didn't see a whole bunch of injuries actually. So about 30 minutes to an hour went by, and everyone was standing and milling around. I went out and tried to offer people some water. I actually charged phones for a couple people whose phones were dying. But I didn't see too many people injured, but a lot of people had on the gold shock blankets that they give out.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: And where did they go? What did the police do with them?
KIRK: They were there for three hours, at least. And then the police came in and they all went back out. I don't know exactly where they are. I haven't obviously been out of the courtyard for safety reasons. There's a triage area set up within 10 steps of where my front door is. My whole street is completely locked down. It's kind of like a war zone honestly.
KIRK: We are told the taxi cabs in Paris are free to those milling about the city tonight. There are only people trying to return home from dangerous sites. They have no place to go. You're not supposed to be out of lockdown. So many hundreds were stuck outside, never expecting to find themselves in the midst of a coordinated terror attack. I want to reiterate what we had heard moments ago which is that the Guardian and others are saying -- that's a paper, that the officials in Paris that they have -- that all of the attackers are -- that they believe all of the attackers are dead.
And we're not sure how many there could be. We heard Catherine mention perhaps a dozen -- how many people it would have taken to coordinate this. The reason they're putting a number perhaps around five is because they're saying that some of the shooters are believed to have sprayed the restaurants with bullets and possibly grenades before they then went to the stadium to don a suicide vest. And perhaps the same is true with respect to the concert hall. But we're trying to get the details now. We are hearing from a few different sources now that the officials in Paris report that all of the attackers are believed dead.
But they, indeed, must have had some accomplices to pull something off like this. The question is where are they? How will they be detected and how intricate are the links and how organized was this? Did it come from Syria? Is ISIS in fact behind it, are they getting more with the plane crash, the bombing of the plane that we saw and then now this? The Former Assistant Director of the FBI is James Kallstrom. He is with us tonight by phone. James, thank you for being with us tonight, your thoughts on what we've seen this evening in Paris.
JAMES KALLSTROM, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE FBI: Sure. My heart goes out to all of the victims of these maniacs. Megyn, you know me. I am very, very concerned tonight of what I've seen here, Megyn.
KELLY: Why?
KALLSTROM: Well, it's not really anything new. But the fact that number one, the so-called migrant stream into Europe which is -- I believe, orchestrated to a large extent, the fact that they're going to end up in European capitals. It's very scary and it's something we have to do something about. You know the fact that these folks travel from Europe and here in the United States and get training and then they come back to the countries, to me is just crazy and preposterous. And I don't know how where he continue to do this thing.
KELLY: The French President FranØois Hollande promised to bring in 24,000 Syrian refugees over two years. It shows the public they're opposed to it. There's been a sharp divide in France about this.
(CROSSTALK)
KALLSTROM: Megyn, we have no idea who these people are. When you look at pictures of them 90 percent males between the age of 18 and 30, it's crazy. It's phony. And we must end the sanctuary cities in the United States. What a farce. What a joke. With our open border and free society, we have a great FBI, they're on demand. They don't have enough people. We have a great CIA. We've curtailed the very legitimate activities in NSA. This could be in the United States, as the Congressman said. And what would we do then -- why didn't we build up this, why didn't we build up that, why didn't we close the border. Why did we have 50,000 people come here that we don't have a clue that they are. This has to stop. If it doesn't, it's just a matter of time before what we're seeing today in France happens here.
KELLY: The FBI has an investigation in each of the 50 states here into possible ISIS connections -- in every single state in the union. So the question is if you were in charge of the FBI Now, what would you be doing differently? What can be done to stop this?
KALLSTROM: I would take away all of the -- all of the things that burden investigations, all the nonsense that burdens it. We can do this well within our constitution. I would add many, many more people to the FBI. You have the notion that you can follow hundreds and hundreds of people. That we can do that with the resources we have is just not true. So in this wide-open society where we have these stupid sanctuary cities and these naive people that run these cities and these states, we cannot
put any burdens, no extra pounds in the pack of the FBI. And we need to let NSA do what they need to do to protect this country.
KELLY: The FBI Director Comey has been jumping up and down about this saying, on the record, I don't have enough people. Something's going to happen. We're going to get attacked. I don't have enough people. I don't have the resources to stop that.
KALLSTROM: Megyn, he doesn't have enough people by thousands, not hundreds, by thousands to keep track of the people that we should be keeping track of 24 hours a day, 7 days a week right now.
KELLY: What is it? Why is he under-resourced and why do you feel that the programs you think we need to protect ourselves have been cut back.
KALLSTROM: This will sound very hard-hearted. We haven't had enough people die here in the United States. I mean that's the way it is. I was up in Capitol Hill testifying in the '90s to get -- telephone switches became digital and the FBI and law enforcement could continue doing wiretapping. You know I had numerous conversations with people that were definitely opposed to that. I asked them a simple question, if their daughter was kidnapped, would they want the FBI to be able to track their kidnappers. They had a funny look on their face when I asked him that question.
But that's the kind of question we have to ask the people now that are sitting in Congress. Here's the President this morning saying that ISIS is contained, of all days to pick him to say that. I mean is that an exclamation point or is that an exclamation point?
KELLY: On top of that, the quote on those is the American blood is best. And we will taste it soon.
KALLSTROM: It's always been best. The Israeli blood and the American are always -- that's the prime blood. And if we don't do something about this flow -- this so-called migrant stream, the Europeans, if they want to continue to dilute what their counties are all about, we cannot allow those people into the United States without a visa. There has to be some kind of an asterisk by their name so they don't travel into the United States. And if we're stupid enough to bring in thousands and thousands of these people, who we don't have a clue who they are, all we're doing is putting 50 more pounds in the backpack of law enforcement. That's all we're doing.
To me it's very concerning, to the point where I am concerned of my own family. I am concerned of where my kids go. I am concerned about a lot of things. And I mean I've always had these concerns because, you know, you sort of have those concerns when you work in that field. But we're just so naive about what we're doing. And we don't have to change the country. We don't have to become a police state to do the common sense things.
KELLY: We just have to make some different decisions. James, let me thank you. I want to go to the live coverage that we're listening to now in Paris, France. Stand by.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Francois Hollande as well as the French Prime Minister came to the site of the attack. I know that there are several entrances to access the site. Were you -- where Francois Hollande made a speech earlier and fill us in on what he said.
KELLY: Apologies, but what this man was saying just before we got to him was that there may still be people trapped in the Bataclan. People may still be trapped in there. It apparently has several different floors. I told you earlier the story of how some escaped through the roof and many tried to take shelter or sheltered in place as they were shooting at those attending the concert. What an eyewitness said earlier is they were reloading over and over for 10 to 15 minutes they just shot at the people in there. That the shooters were not moving. They stood at the back of the room. The quote on another network was they shot at us like we were birds.
And they were wearing black, did not have masks on, and just continued to reload other and over again as people tried to find a means of getting out while they reloaded. If in fact, there are still people trapped in this venue that would be a new breaking development. We'll continue to listen and see what we can find out about it as we continue to watch the situation in Paris.
We're told right now that they believe they have apprehended all of the actual perpetrators or that they have in fact died. Now we're being told that inside the concert hall, the two perpetrators killed themselves as the police moved in. That is the initial report coming out now. We have been in touch tonight with General Michael Flynn who basically ran the sister to the CIA that oversees military intelligence in this country and outside. And he has told us tonight, this is a quote from him, "It is ISIS, and there will be more." This is a man who did this for a living.
And as we watch the situation in Paris, France tonight, it doesn't surprise anybody, given what we've seen them do, given what we've seen them capable of, and the only question is what we can do to stop it. Joining me now is retired Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaffer, who is a CIA-trained Intelligence Operative, and a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, also Brad Thor, who served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Unit. Gentlemen, thank you both so much for being here. Colonel, let me start with General Flynn. It is ISIS and there will be more, anything more to quibble with there?
TONY SHAFFER, CIA TRAINED INTEL OPERATIVE: No. I said that on your show a week ago. Mike is one of my colleagues and friends, and absolutely. Megyn, we have to recognize the White House has been consistently wrong on this. They could walk outside, look up in the sky and miss it. President Obama said today that ISIS is under control. It's not. We recognize the trend. And the other thing we're failing to recognize here is the fact foreign fighters are returning from the battlefield. This was an attack executed with military precision, it was rehearsed, it was very clearly laid out.
So we got to look at the facts for what they are, not what we want them to be. And I think this is exactly what Mike meant by saying it's ISIS, I believe completely with him on this.
KELLY: Brad, it seems like somewhat of a change in tactics. ISIS had been doing terrible things in the regions in which he was fighting, and Al Qaeda has been going for the huge dramatic terror attacks as we saw on 9/11. This feels like a hybrid between what we see done to the Israelis by the Hamas, they target them where they live, eat and socialize, and something more preplanned in grandeur. What are your thoughts?
BRAD THOR, SECURITY ANALYST: I agree with you there, Megyn. I believe what we're seeing here was blueprinted in Mumbai in 2008, where there was the swarm style attack which was designed to overwhelm military and police responders as well as first responders with ambulances. There were 166 people who died in Mumbai, over 600 injured. I don't know if we'll get to 600 injured in Paris, but I do believe we're going to see more than 166 killed here. And probably one of the biggest problems, you heard Peter King speaking earlier about what NYPD ought to be able to do with the monitoring when they're going into New Jersey.
The French intelligence services are very good at monitoring particularly people with North African dissent. But right now the French are working feverishly to unpack who these people were, who they were connected with, and why they missed this.
KELLY: That's the thing. You know Colonel Shaffer, we saw this after 9/11. When you've been attacked -- this is the worst terror attack in the history of France. When that happens, people suddenly have a very different view sometimes of civil liberties and how far we should go.
SHAFFER: Well, absolutely. I agree with Brad on this. This was a rolling attack designed to do that. The French -- these folks also learned from the (Inaudible) attack. We looked at how the French missed this. What components were observable which they now know but they didn't see? I agree with Peter King and some of the other folks. But we need to go back to espionage. To defeat a network, Megyn, you must penetrate the network. That's what we're going to find that the French failed to do.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: You need people like Morton Storm. You need double agents to infiltrate.
SHAFFER: Bingo. If you don't defeat the network, it will come back. And I don't know if it's a new network that was completely undetected or the network that Charlie Hebdo network was not completely detected.
THOR: And Megyn, to add to what Tony said which is excellent, I believe that our counter terrorism teams are hostage rescue teams here in the United States, no bull horns, no negotiations, we have to be willing as a public to do what the French teams do in France which is you go in, you kill these guys because the longer you let them set off and stay inside, the more innocent people die. We have to be there as a culture in the country to say send them in, kill them fast and let's minimize the casualties.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: What will the response be from France and the United States who says it will do all it can to support the country. This is from the Vatican saying this is an attack on peace for all humanity and it requires a decisive, supportive response on the part of all of us as we counter the spread of the homicidal hatred in all of its forms. Colonel, you tell me what that means -- you got the Vatican -- this is if first time they suggested we need to go after ISIS.
(CROSSTALK)
SHAFFER: They recognize what's going on here. Yes, we have to act. We have to do what we're doing, ramping up in Syria and Iraq. Go after the leadership, the assassination of Jehadi John yesterday. We have to start looking and working with impunity to defeat the networks when they're detected. We don't always have to know in the public. Brad knows what I am talking about. But we have to be completely committed to defeating them no matter where they're at.
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: Go ahead, Brad.
THOR: Megyn, to add to what Tony is saying is we have to go after them. But we have to go after the cause of the cancer. We cannot get Islam to reform itself. We need to turn up the heat. You and I can stand in longer TSA lines, all of that stuff. We need to turn up the heat on the Islamic world to reform itself.
SHAFFER: Absolutely.
KELLY: That seems like a tall order, Brad.
SHAFFER: But it needs to be done.
(CROSSTALK)
THOR: Instead of -- you know, Charles Cooke had a great article where he says, let's shut down visas for 12 to 24 months while we round up the people who have overstayed here.
KELLY: Stand by. Stand by, my apologies.
Breaking tonight, a live look at Paris where authorities are on the hunt for possible accomplices now after Paris suffers its worst terror attack ever. More than 150 people are believed to have been killed in at least six different attacks across the city tonight.
The meantime, here at home, police and the feds are on alert, deploying additional resources, saying there are no credible threats to America at this time but that Americans must remain vigilant.
Welcome to "The Kelly File," everyone. I'm Megyn Kelly.
As we have been reporting, the terrorists sought out soft targets, slaughtering innocent civilians at a restaurant, launching attacks near the nation's biggest stadium in France, where the French president was among those watching a soccer match, and then saving the worst for a packed concert hall where an American band happened to be playing. There they took hostages and shot people one by one.
For hours, those being held at gunpoint sent messages to their friends and loved ones begging for help. Finally, it came, but it was too late for many of those inside. As police closed in, we understand the attackers blew themselves up, killing four more people.
All told, more than 100 people at that concert lost their lives. That's the number so far. It could change. We do not know exactly who is to blame, but witnesses say the attackers yelled, Allah-u Akbar before they committed their murders. And one suspect apprehended tonight reportedly claimed that ISIS had recruited him as he came into France from Syria.
All over the world tonight, leaders are voicing their outrage and their solidarity with France. And here in New York, the World Trade Center, the scene of the worst terror attack in our history, lit up in honor of the French victims.
Remember, France is our oldest ally, the nation that gifted us the Statue of Liberty, the one that fought with us side by side in several wars. And tonight, our leaders are promising to support them as they have supported us.
Trace Gallagher has been tracking all of the breaking news as it comes in. We go to him live tonight for an update -- Trace.
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX CORRESPONDENT: And Megyn, so far, the primary common link appears to be that all of the attacks were meant to hit places with large gatherings of people to kill as many as possible. For now, the death toll, as you said, has been placed at 158. That will certainly change. And French authorities have warned that we might expect it to go up.
Authorities have also confirmed that six different locations were attacked, beginning with a Cambodian streetside cafe in the 10th District called La Camboge (ph). Witnesses in a nearby bar say it appeared to be a drive-by shooting, suspects in cars firing high-volume, high-powered weapons. At least 11 people are thought to have been killed in that initial attack, most of them dining street-side.
This man got off a train and just happened by the first shooting scene. Listen to his account.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police started to stream into the area. There were police in riot gear coming at us. A police officer told us to run into a cafe and take cover. And Shep, I'll tell you, he had a look of fear in his eyes, which you don't usually see a police officer look scared.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GALLAGHER: The attack on the soccer stadium happened during a game between France and Germany, and you could clearly hear the explosions from inside the stadium. Listen close.
Authorities say the explosives were a combination of suicide bombers and grenades. French president Francois Hollande was in the stadium at the time. He was quickly escorted out.
Then there was the attack on the Bataclan, a concert hall where a California band was playing. Three young men walked in with what witnesses say were Kalashnikov rifles. They yelled, This is for Syria, and Allah-u Akbar before opening fire.
We're told the gunmen then moved to the balcony and began firing down on people. Many inside the hall were able to escape, but up to 100 others were held hostage, with the gunmen killing them in no certain order. There are reports that some men went to the balcony to try to negotiate for the life of their wives.
After hearing a series of gunshots inside, police stormed the concert hall, but now French authorities report the gunmen blew themselves up with suicide bomb belts, killing four.
Here's part of what it sounded like.
At least 118 people were killed inside. That number could also change. The concert hall -- the wife of one of the band members, by the way, told The Washington Post they all got out alive. There were also shots fired at Les Halles, the shopping center. people could be seen on the ground screaming, though it's unclear how many, if any, were shot and killed there.
An eyewitness also says there was a shooting at a cafe in the 11th district. Though so far, we're getting very little information about the final two attacks, there are reports that all of the attackers are now dead and that police are looking for accomplices. But we do not know yet how police came to that conclusion -- Megyn.
KELLY: Trace, thank you.
The city is in lockdown right now. The city of Paris is in lockdown. The borders are closed, although we're told that is to outgoing traffic, not sure about incoming traffic. Military units are on the street tonight, and it looks like a police state of sorts, The New York Times reporting tonight that the police have been empowered to seize people's weapons, to go into their homes and place them under house arrest if they deem them to be suspicious.
This is the first time, we believe, the first curfew in the City of Lights since 1944 when the Nazis occupied that city.
That's where we are tonight. Think about that!
Shortly after the attack this evening, President Obama delivered remarks promising that the United States will do all it can to support our oldest ally, France. Here is President Obama.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Good evening, everybody. I just want to make a few brief comments about the attacks across Paris tonight. Once again, we've seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. This is an attack not just on Paris, it's an attack not just on the people of France, but this is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values that we share.
We stand prepared and ready to provide whatever assistance that the government and the people of France need to respond. France is our oldest ally. French people have stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States time and again, and we want to be very clear that we stand together with them in the fight against terrorism and extremism.
Paris itself represents the timeless values of human progress. Those who think that they could terrorize the people of France or the values that they stand for are wrong. The American people draw strength from the French people's commitment to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. We're reminded in this time of tragedy that the bonds of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite are not only values that the French people care so deeply about, but they are values that we share. And those values are going to endure far beyond any act of terrorism or the hateful vision of those who perpetrated the crimes this evening.
And we're going to do whatever it takes to work with French people and with nations around the world to bring these terrorists to justice and to go after any terrorists networks that go after our people.
We don't yet know all the details of what has happened. We have been in contact with French officials to communicate our deepest condolences to the families of those who have been killed, to offer our prayers and thought to those who have been wounded. We've offered our full support to them.
The situation is still unfolding. I've chosen not to call President Hollande at this time because my expectation is that he is very busy at the moment.
I actually, by coincidence, was talking with him earlier today in preparation for the G20 meeting. But I am confident that I'll be in direct communications with him in the next few days and will be coordinating in any ways they think are helpful in the investigation of what's happened.
This is a heartbreaking situation, and obviously, those of us here in the United States know what it's like. We've gone through those kinds of episodes ourselves. And whenever these kinds of attacks happened, we've always been able to count on the French people to stand with us. They have been an extraordinary counterterrorism partner, and we intend to be there with them in that same fashion.
I'm sure that in the days ahead, we'll learn more about exactly what happened, and my teams will make sure that we are in communication with the press to provide you accurate information. I don't want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this.
It appears that there may still be live activity and dangers that are taking place as we speak. And so until we know from French officials that the situation is under control and we have more information about it, I don't want to speculate. OK? Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: The president of the United States hours earlier.
Let's go now to James Rosen. He's reporting live from the White House tonight -- James.
JAMES ROSEN, FOX CORRESPONDENT: Megyn, good evening once again. It was Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism who first notified him of these coordinated attacks taking place in Paris. It has been Lisa Monaco's unenviable duty to inform this president of so many kinds of events like this.
We have heard from the secretary of state, John Kerry, who was in Vienna today to convene a summit on Syria, with Russia and Iran set to take part at that summit.
The U.S. embassy in Paris immediately set to work, trying to determine if any American citizens were harmed, killed or held hostage during these coordinated attacks. So far, we have not heard about any American citizens who may have been involved in any way.
However, we are also told by a French embassy official here in Washington that given the venues that were involved in these attacks and the sheer numbers of people who were involved, not all of the victims are going to be French. But that said, we should emphasize we have no word just yet of any American citizens who were affected.
The State Department has also been briefing selected members of Congress. I spoke with one of those members who was briefed, or an aide to that member, I should say, and they were left with the distinct impression that the French authorities were on something of an even higher alert than normal over the past few days, but we're going to work to confirm that.
President Obama said he wasn't going to speak with Francois Hollande, the president of France, anytime just yet so as to give the French president a chance to attend to his many duties in such an hour of crisis for his own country. But ironically, the two presidents had spoken much earlier today in preparation for their shared participation in an upcoming economic summit. No word from the White House that we expect the president to change or alter his travel plans. He's off to Turkey tomorrow, and then to Asia for a week-long set of summits and meetings over on those continents -- Megyn.
KELLY: James Rosen live at the White House for us tonight -- James, thank you very much.
Joining me now by phone, Fran Townsend. She's the former homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush.
Fran, thank you very much for being here. First of all, your thoughts on the impact this is going to have on the United States.
FRAN TOWNSEND, FORMER BUSH HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER (via telephone): Well, Megyn, look, I mean, we have been very concerned about illegal immigration, taking in Syrian refugees. I mean, all of this -- we've got to know -- we've got to get more facts, right? We've got to understand, were the attackers in Paris refugees? Were they returning foreign fighters -- that is, French citizens who returned -- or were they homegrown?
We don't know the answer to that. And it may be a combination some of all three. But it will certainly impact the way the United States looks at and approaches our efforts at disruption.
KELLY: Meaning infiltration?
TOWNSEND: Absolutely. Sure. You want -- you're going to look at the communication these guys had. You know, you can't pull off multiple simultaneous attacks without a good deal of planning and communication...
KELLY: Right.
TOWNSEND: ... training. Where did they get the weapons from? How did they get the ammunition? These kinds of weapons are not common in Western Europe. And so there's a bunch of questions that investigators and intelligence officials are going to have to look at and answer so we can understand here, what can we learn to prevent the same sort of attacks.
KELLY: Fran, do you find it surprising that the Paris police are saying that all of the attackers are dead so soon? I mean, do we know? Because the reports were attackers drove by, they unleashed, you know, firepower on different restaurants, they threw some grenades. It seems so early to affirmatively declare that they have -- that they've all been killed.
TOWNSEND: It does seem early to me, too, Megyn. And besides that, even if that's true, the individuals who were pulling the triggers, tragically, in Paris, they had to have a support network. And so even if you got all the attackers, there's a support network in and around Paris that no doubt investigators are trying to identify and scoop up now.
KELLY: What level of sophistication -- I mean, would you -- how would you rate this?
TOWNSEND: Oh, no, to have multiple simultaneous attacks that we're talking about, five to six sites with various kinds of weapons -- we heard suicide vests, we've heard grenades, we've heard AK-47s -- to have that variety of armament, multiple locations at a coordinated single time -- no, that's a pretty sophisticated effort, the likes of which we haven't really seen before.
KELLY: And the targeting of the soft targets -- I mean, is that -- is that the wave of the future, Fran, because we've been talking about here in this country for some time -- is this what's going to happen? Does Paris, does France, does the United States become Israel, in effect, where that's the new reality?
TOWNSEND: No question. Look, the bad guys have moved to soft targets because they're just easier and more available for them. I mean, there are things we can do to disrupt these and to try and -- but we need sort of surveillance tools. We need intelligence and we need the resources put against those capabilities to ensure that we continue to have the edge to try and disrupt plots.
KELLY: But we're going the other way, are we not? We're going to the opposite way right now in the country.
TOWNSEND: Exactly right. And you know, we've become complacent over time because we've been successful at disrupting them in the United States, and that's a vulnerability. That complacency becomes a vulnerability where we think, well, we haven't seen those attacks in the United States, so we're going to take those tools away. This should be a reminder about why we need them.
KELLY: You know, President Bush once said, "If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch." Do you believe that's happened? I mean, does this have anything to do with American power or not?
TOWNSEND: Look, I think what we're seeing is when America fails to lead, nature abhors that sort of vacuum and others will move to fill that vacuum.
You know, I think we've -- unfortunately, the administration has taken the view that the threat is an away threat. It's something that happens over there in Syria. It's not an American problem.
We've heard some talk about concern about foreign fighters, but frankly, you can't approach this as, as I call it, an away game, right, because of the Internet, because of social media that ISIS uses to recruit and inspire individuals inside the United States and because of travel, right?
We know that these guys, the foreign fighters, will bleed out. They continue to be drawn to this alleged caliphate that they have, and they will bleed out and they will bleed out first to places like Western Europe, like France, like London.
But inevitably, you're going to find that they make their way to the United States. I mean, the FBI has got investigations in all of the 50 states. We've seen a number of arrests over the last 18 months related to ISIS and terrorism inside the United States.
And so look, we need to resources and the tools in order to prevent these attacks, and it's still going to be a challenge.
KELLY: The target selection here, Fran -- when you see a concert hall, a crowded concert hall with an American band, a stadium with a -- you know, jampacked, with the current president of France, along with the former, with thousands of people there, and then, you know, restaurants where people socialize and connect with one another socially -- meant to produce mass casualties.
TOWNSEND: Absolutely. And look, and the weapons that they used, the AK-47s -- you know, we've heard eyewitness accounts where these guys were prepared with ammunition to reload multiple times. So these guys were in there, and they were determined to cause as many casualties as possible.
KELLY: And yet we saw what we believe, what the authorities are all saying, ISIS kill 224 people on a Russian jetliner two weeks ago as it was flying over Egypt -- 224 -- and tonight, they're saying -- you know, the reports so far, believed 158 dead in Paris.
But there's something -- there's a special brand of terror when the people know it's coming and it happens in different pockets and in places, unlike an airplane, where you understand you are at some risk, places where, for lack of a better term, you don't expect it.
TOWNSEND: Right. I mean, and that's -- you know the nature of these multiple simultaneous attacks -- it has that quality to it, right, because the first one happens, and the city sees that and all of a sudden, these attacks begin to pop up at various locations, and then nobody feels safe. No one in Paris could possibly have felt safe as these events were unfolding.
And in fact, you know, for good reason, law enforcement in Paris told Parisians to say home, Stay in your home. And frankly, so people were frightened. No one felt safe anywhere in the public.
KELLY: The deputy mayor came out tonight and said, We are truly facing an unknown and unprecedented era in Paris, France.
Fran, thank you so much for being with us tonight.
TOWNSEND: Thanks, Megyn.
KELLY: We're going to go to our live coverage now on our sister network, Sky News, from somebody who was inside the stadium when the attack happened there with the suicide bomber. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (via telephone): ... started seeing the news coming in and that there was shooting happening in various areas in Paris. It was clear that it wasn't one single incident we could simply move away from. It was a city-wide panic. There was no way to see where it was safe, where it was (INAUDIBLE)
And there was -- there was -- there was chaos. People were running every direction. Police were corralling people towards kind of one kind of direct route. But you know, we really -- we had no idea what to expect (INAUDIBLE) what to do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So the news tonight is that at least 140 people feared to have been killed, but the five attackers dead, too, we're being told by the authorities, and confirmation of attacks at at least six locations across the French capital.
We'll keep you updated with all the details. Stay with us here on Sky News.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: Just want to tell you that we have been getting a lot of incoming reaction from the presidential candidates. We played what we heard from President Obama. But just to give you a feel for what we're hearing from those running for president -- this from Hillary Clinton. "The reports from Paris are harrowing. Praying for the city and the families of the victims." Bernie Sanders saying he's horrified by the attacks, thoughts are with the victims.
Jeb Bush -- "Praying for Paris. Will stand with you against terror." Donald Trump -- "Prayers are with the victims. May God be with you all." Ben Carson -- "My thoughts and prayers are with the people in Paris." Marco Rubio -- "We cannot let those who seek to disrupt our way of life succeed. We have to improve our defenses, destroy terrorist networks and deprive them of the space from which to operate." Chris Christie -- "These attacks are alarming and heartbreaking. Thoughts and prayers to the victims."
Now, Republican presidential candidate and Texas senator Ted Cruz has also weighed in, suggesting it is not just the people of Paris who suffer tonight. And that quote -- "This is an evil that does not discriminate between French, German or American, Christian, Muslim or Jew, soldier, football player or concert goer. Their only goal," he says, "is to murder those who do not submit to their vicious totalitarian ideology."
Pete Hegseth is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America. I wonder what this feels like to you, Pete, somebody who's actually risked his life to fight this ideology over and over and over again! And yet as I said earlier, like a cancer that metastasizes, just as soon as you cut one part of it out, it grows, it festers elsewhere and comes back!
PETE HEGSETH, CONCERNED VETERANS FOR AMERICA: Absolutely. I think about it every day, the magnitude of the threat that we face from radical Islam. As I was watching these reports sitting next to my wife tonight, I turned to her and said, Maybe the only possible silver lining out of this is a reawakening in a reality of not -- not just Americans but Europeans to the scope of the threat that we face from political Islam, from radical Islam, from sharia law, the silent invasion that has occurred in Paris, whether through mass -- mass immigration, lack of assimilation, demographics, you've got -- they've got a radical Islamist problem in that country and throughout Europe that is creeping its way toward the United States that we haven't begun to wrap our arms around, let alone go to the source in Raqqa and Syria and Iraq and actually defeat this vicious enemy.
What you see in Paris right now- it is a war zone! That is a war. That is a war for whoever that radical Islamic group was, whether it was ISIS is or al Qaeda or any variation thereof. It was a manifestation of Johnny Jihadi and that night pointing into that screen, saying, I'm coming for you. Blood will pour in your streets eventually because that's where we're going.
Now, thankfully, he's dead and -- killed in an air strike a couple of days ago. But that...
KELLY: Jihadi John.
HEGSETH: The legacy of what -- yes, what -- the legacy of what he's threatened into that camera and others continue to is exactly what we saw on the streets of Paris. And if we don't do something about it and aggressively confront it, unfortunately, we're going to see more of it.
KELLY: That's the question now because where -- where are we in this battle with ISIS because you watch this unfold tonight and you start to wonder, is this -- are we looking at the beginning? Are we 30 percent into this fight? I mean, is this a situation where our children now are going to be, you know, drafted to fight this war when they reach the age of majority? I know you've got young kids. I do, as well. Where are we in that battle?
HEGSETH: Megyn, I wish I had an answer. The only answer I have is one that America has always had to give, which is the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. It never stops. It's not going to end. It -- it -- we have to stand guard in defense of freedom in every single generation.
I have three little boys. I hope they carry on the cause of freedom in some way, maybe a rifle. But the only way to do it is to understand the nature of the enemy that we face. And that's what's so frustrating about this administration that refuses to call them Islamists, that refuses to recognize...
KELLY: But you know, Pete...
HEGSETH: ... when we're fighting...
(CROSSTALK)
HEGSETH: ... boots on the ground!
KELLY: You know what the mentality has been. And it's not just President Obama or the left. A lot of Americans...
HEGSETH: Of course!
KELLY: ... wanted to see President Obama be elected because they felt that they were sick of the war...
HEGSETH: They were weary.
KELLY: They were war-weary. Some were. But they also felt that somehow, we had antagonized the radical Islamists and that if we did step back from some of these conflicts in the Middle East, they'd be less focused on us.
HEGSETH: I mean, that is one perspective, and that perspective is being challenged tonight, whether we want to decide in the face of this threat to pull back and hope, and hope, Megyn, that they don't continue to come after us, which is what they've said they've done.
So I mean, 9/11 happened before the Iraq war, happened before Guantanamo Bay, happened before Abu Ghraib, happened before all the things that the left or anybody else wants to point to as the reasons for these types of threats.
Have mistakes been made? Have we executed this war perfectly? Absolutely not. I've seen it in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay Bay, mistakes that have been made. There is no doubt.
But we need to stand proudly for the values that we represent, for a free society, and recognize that there are people in this world who don't -- who are fundamentally incompatible with a belief in freedom and they will carry both a Quran and a knife and suicide vests and they will take it to cafes and stadiums and concert halls in Paris, just like if they could, they'd go to shopping malls in the United States!
If we're not willing to go kill them where they are, viciously, brutally, without apology, with every tool at our disposal...
(CROSSTALK)
HEGSETH: ... not going away!
KELLY: But I have to ask you this because I know a lot of people are saying, OK, so we took a more, you know, non-interventionalist approach under President Obama. You only know whether that works over time. You have to see how things go over time. Well, over time, over the past seven years, we've seen, you know, this metastasize even worse. I mean, ISIS is bigger and stronger and more dangerous than it ever was, and so on.
And yet the question is whether it can be wiped out. So if we go over there, Pete, and we go in guns blazing and we put all of our resources towards defeating this terrible group, is that giving them what they want? Will whatever remains of ISIS when it's over just come back bigger and stronger and more determined to kill us because there is proof that bin Laden -- that's exactly what he wanted. He wanted us...
(CROSSTALK)
KELLY: ... American troops over there because he wanted a fight. He wanted to spill American blood on his land.
HEGSETH: ISIS wants the same thing. So if we're not smart about it, if we don't approach it strategically through a leadership role, as opposed to just throwing as many hundred thousand men as we can at the problem, then we won't solve it fundamentally.
We have to be smart about approaching it, but we have to realize the size and scope of the threat and not sit in front of a camera today, like Barack Obama did, and say that the threat is contained when it isn't, when it isn't being fundamentally solved.
And I think we have to look at the fact that mistakes have been made in how we approach following through on the wars that we start. You and I have talked a lot about the Iraq war and the Iraq surge. There was an outcome in Iraq that could have been favorable toward a different kind of outcome in that country that we abandoned because of American abandonment. It's not about sending hundreds of thousands of troops, Megyn, in every scenario. There is a measure of restraint that can and needs to be shown at certain times.
But there's a viciousness of nature that America needs to have in facing this threat because they're coming after us, whether we want -- whether we realize it or not. It's an ideological battle that they are fundamentally committed to, Megyn.
KELLY: And it's not just at the Pentagon. It's in the cafe and at the concert and at the sporting event. Pete, thank you.
HEGSETH: That's right. Thank you, Megyn.
KELLY: Joining us now by phone is eyewitness Seth Porgus (ph). He was near the original shooting scene at the restaurant and heard the shots as they first rang out.
Seth, thank you for being here. So first of all, what are you doing in Paris?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (via telephone): Here on vacation, and I did not expect to have this happen.
KELLY: You're there on vacation, and did you hear gunshots and understand them to be gunshots?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, actually (INAUDIBLE) they happened I believe while I was in the elevator of my building on the way down. (INAUDIBLE) apartment (ph) that's right next door to the restaurant. As soon as I got down, the first thing I see is a man with a bloody hand sort of hiding (INAUDIBLE) behind the gate of the building I'm staying in. It's a heated (ph) building.
And I walk a couple feet, and then I see police officers, lots of police officers. And at first, I thought it was just normal Friday night police activity. And then I see them have their guns out, and they're hiding behind their vans as if -- they're crouching, almost like it's a movie scene.
And there are dozens and dozens of onlookers, pedestrians. Nobody's shooing them away. They're just there snapping photos, talking, trading (ph) gossip. And that's (INAUDIBLE) anybody is (ph) really sure what is going on. People talk about they heard a couple gunshots. Somebody else says they saw some bodies.
And then the rumors just start to escalate. Somebody says that it was machine guns. Somebody says that multiple people got killed. And then somebody says, Well, the guy (ph), he's (ph) still out there. And that's when you realize that this is serious.
KELLY: Right, that this was something that -- that this was a terrorist attack. When you saw the man with the bloody hand, do you now believe that he had been shot?
SETH PORGES, WITNESS: I do. When I first saw him, I thought it was somebody who had (INAUDIBLE) got drunk and punched a windshield. That was my first thought. It's Friday night. There's no other contact. The first thing in my head is this guy got shot in the hand. But I think it's a near certainty that he got shot now that I think about it.
KELLY: Did you speak with anybody who saw any of those who were killed?
PORGES: Yes. I spoke to somebody who said that -- and I would have heard the bullets outside about 10 seconds later, that five or six shots went off in quick succession and that he saw some people appeared to be dead and some appeared to be alive. I don't know if the people he saw who were shot who appeared to be alive was the same person I saw, but it's impossible to tell.
KELLY: I mean, we saw a picture -- we'll put it on the screen one time. We put it on the screen one time last hour. We'll put it on the screen one time this hour -- of dead bodies out in front of one of the caves targeted. And it does look like a war zone. Our last guest was -- there it is -- a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars saying this is a war. This is a warzone. That's what it looks like. And as an American in Paris on vacation, Seth, what is that like for you to understand how close you were to a terrorist attack not necessarily targeted at Americans but targeted at freedom?
PORGES: You know, it's a really interesting scenario because when I was there I had no idea what was going on. I don't think anybody else really did. You walk 20 feet and people were still out drinking and laughing and talking on their phones and chatting with their friends because it's Friday night.
And then you see them talk to somebody as they get closer and then their faces change. And then as the minutes go by, the streets get just a little bit emptier and a little bit emptier until maybe two hours later and there's nobody left in the streets and the police have cordoned off the area around there. And it just gradually happened. There was no hysteria. There was no panic, at least the part of town I was in. Maybe by the stadium or elsewhere there was. There was none of that over here, though. It kind of spread via gossip and probably social media. It wasn't a big boom in the sky that everybody could see and identify. I was much more subtle.
KELLY: I'm sure your family is very thankful that you are safe tonight. Seth, thank you for giving us our time.
PORGES: Thank you for having me.
KELLY: Well, the details on the death tolls have been changing by the minute over the course over the last several hours. And with reports that all of the attackers may have been killed but accomplices are still on the loose, we go to Trace Gallagher for an update with the very latest on what we know and what we don't. Trace?
TRACE GALLAGHER, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: And you have to keep in mind, Megyn, we have been scanning all of the French news agencies and listening to what we can out there. And the information is trickling in now. And a lot of the information doesn't align, and as mass casualty situations turn out, the death toll in this one will likely change. Right now it stands at 158. But again, we're hearing there were victims in the last two attacks that have not yet been confirmed, which is why French authorities warn that we should expect the death toll to go up.
But just to reset here. There are now six confirmed attacks. And while some happened almost simultaneously, it does appear that it began on a street side cafe in the 10th district call Le Cambodge. It's a Cambodian restaurant. Witnesses say it appeared to be a drive by shooting because the suspects were firing from cars high volume, high powered weapons. At least 11 people so far are thought to have been killed in that initial attack, most of them dining street side.
The attack at the soccer stadium happened during a game between France and Germany. Authorities say in that attack there were explosives and they were a combination of suicide bombs and grenades. The French president, Francois Hollande, was in the stadium at the time. He, as you might imagine, was quickly evacuated.
The deadliest of all attacks happened at a concert hall where a California band was playing. And witnesses inside were saying there were three young men. They walked in with what they described as Kalashnikov rifles. They yelled "This is for Syria," and they also yelled "Allahu Akbar," which of course means "God is great," and then they opened fire.
We are told the gunmen then moved up to the balcony of this concert hall and they actually started firing down on people. Many inside the hall were able to escape, but up to 100 others were held hostage at least for a short time with the gunman killing them in no certain order.
After hearing a series of gun shots, police finally stormed the concert hall. But now French authorities report the gunmen blew themselves up with suicide bomb belts, killing at least four other people. In all at least 118 people were killed inside the concert hall. There were more than 1,200 people in attendance at the concert. And we're told the band made it out with many others.
There were also shots fired at a shopping center near the Louvre, though it's unclear how many victims there were there. We can tell you that victims and witnesses report seeing people screaming on the ground. An eyewitness also tells us there was a shooting at a cafe in the 11th district. So far we're getting very little information about that. As the information comes in, Megyn, we will get you updated as quickly as possible.
KELLY: Trace, thank you.
Well, France's official news agency reporting moments ago that a security source puts the number of people injured at more than 200, 80 those said to be serious injuries. It comes as we are just getting new amateur video in from Paris. Listen as the attacks unfold while a man races from the scene.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SHOUTING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KELLY: You can see here the sheer panic and chaos that ensued. And we are told that the sound of sirens was all anyone was hearing this evening throughout Paris.
Joining us now is Dr. Sebastian Gorka. He's the chair of military theory at Marine Corps University. Doctor, thank you very much for being here. And I know that you recently gave an important briefing to somebody who is actually running the fight against ISIS. Your thoughts on what this says about this group that our president just said has been contained.
DR. SEBASTIAN GORKA, MILITARY THEORY CHAIR, MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY: Well, it says one very clear thing, that ISIS is not the jayvee team. If these individuals are shouting that this is for Syria, then these people, even if they're not in operational connection to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Syria, they're doing it for him. They're doing it for the new caliph. And the idea that Secretary Kerry today stated that with the death of Jihadi
John we are winning and ISIS is losing, it's just unconscionable. This group is building a caliphate in the Middle East. But it's not about events happening 10,000 miles away. It's about events happening in Paris, in Garland, Texas, on the streets of Boston during a marathon. This is all part of their plan. And, sadly, this kind of tragedy we witnessed today will not be the last one of its kind.
KELLY: Because we're fighting against people that don't see the world in any similar terms to the way we -- they want to die. They want to die in a holy war.
GORKA: Think about it. Jihadi John wants to be a martyr. The fact that he's died isn't going to stop anybody. The people who were killed today, tomorrow, tonight, they will be on ISIS Twitter feeds. They will be praised as martyrs, Shahid, to the cause of Allah, to the creation of the caliphate, to holy jihad. This is a different kind of enemy. They want death. And when we kill one, 15 volunteer to replace him.
KELLY: And therein lies part of the problem which is it's not like fighting the Nazis where, OK, there's a defined group with a defined leader and you win against them military and hopefully it's over. This, how -- really, if you were in charge, how would you do it? You send 200,000 troops to Syria and try to bomb them to kingdom come?
GORKA: No, no, no. The people who are the frontline victims are the Muslims that are on our side. They're killing Christians. They're killing Yazidis. They're killing Jews. But look at the numbers. In the last 15 years, it's by far Muslims. It's moderate Muslim. It's the nonviolent ones.
They have to take the fight to ISIS. The Egyptians, the Jordanians, even the Kurds. But you know what, if you served in the region, you know that's never going to happen unless we support them, unless they believe America is on their side. We just canceled half a billion dollars worth of training program that trained less than 200 Syrian fighters. What message are we sending to the region? We don't care about you. And as a result they think they're winning, our allies in the region feel as if we've betrayed them, and the jihadi narrative is victorious.
KELLY: What do you say to those who believe, all right, but the more involved we get over there, the more they're going to come after us?
GORKA: OK, let's just have a little history check here. One of your colleagues, Brian Kilmeade, just published a book on the Barbary Wars. Let me ask anybody who believes this is our fault because of our foreign policy. Do you know that we have been fighting jihadis since the Barbary Wars 200 years ago? One of the first missions of the marines were to fight jihadis who were taking our sailors, our ships prisoner. This isn't because we support Israel. Israel didn't even exist 200 years ago. This isn't because of our troops in the region. We had no troops in the region 200 years ago. Jihad is a 1,400-year-old concept, and we have to support those Muslims who say it is no longer permissible instead of closing our eyes and say, oh, it's all about economics. It's all about unemployment. If we believe that myth that the current administration is peddling, we will be playing whack-a-mole for the next 100 years, and Americans will be dying on U.S. soil, Megyn.
KELLY: So you say it is not possible that we will not defeat ISIS or stop this unless we have a change in our overall foreign policy approach, that we need a leader at the top that is going to actually make our Middle East allies believe that America is behind them 100 percent, because our current president says that and he points to monies that we've given them and so on. But you want more. I mean are you a Lindsey Graham kind of guy, you want all in, or do we need something less than that?
GORKA: It's not about the 82nd Airborne or the Third Marine Infantry Force or expeditionary force deploying. No. It's about us assisting local actors to win this war. We don't want to be the face of this war. It's not going to be white-skinned or brown-skinned Americans killing the jihadis. It's got to be the locals but with our assistance.
But one very important thing to remember. Megyn, we have had 80 ISIS arrests in America in the last 12 months. And 29 percent of those people arrested in interrogation admitted they had no intention of going to travel to the Middle East to fight in Syria and Iraq. They decided the best way to serve the caliph, to serve the empire of Islam, was to kill Americans on U.S. soil.
KELLY: Are these homegrowns? What's our big problem, because over in Europe they have homegrown terrorists, but they also have an influx of people from Syria who want to unleash hell? What is our big problem here?
GORKA: The trouble is that this, as many of your guests have pointed already tonight, this isn't about individual groups. It's not about lone wolves. There is no such thing as a lone wolf. It's all about ideology. It's about people who are connected. There's no lone actors. They all share the same ideology, whether it's the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, the "Charlie Hebdo" shooters, or these actors. They are all connected at a visceral level by the ideology that the caliphate must conquer all and all jihad, all infidels must be killed. We have to take a war to the ideology. And for the last 14 years, this isn't just the Obama administration, for the last 14 years we haven't taken the ideology seriously.
KELLY: Are you surprised that they were able to pull this off in France? It's not like France and Paris in particular have not been on high alert to the threat of terror within their borders. So, I mean, are you surprised that this was planned so extensively, obviously, without detection?
GORKA: It's impressive because it's six events happening at the same time. But at the same time it's a very low tech event. I disagree with one of your guests. This is not a big deal. To get automatic weapons in Europe, to get hand grenades, to make explosive devices, it's easy. The hard part is synchronizing it and keeping yourself undercover.
The trouble is French national security professionals are very, very serious individuals. They get the threat and they're very good. But the trouble is they're part of the EU, and the EU with the Maastricht Treaty, got rid of borders. There's freedom of movement everywhere except in the U.K., which means you get in a dinghy in north Africa, you paddle your way across to Italy or to Spain or Portugal, you're home. You can go all across Europe. You can meet facilitators. This is what Richard Reid did, the shoe bomber. You can have explosive devices given to you. As a result this challenge is fundamentally a human intelligence challenge, and that's the hardest part of counterterrorism.
KELLY: Dr. Sebastian Gorka, thank you so much for your expertise tonight.
GORKA: You're welcome. Thank you, Megyn.
KELLY: Brad Thor, Tony Shaffer, and a powerful display of support for France just ahead. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KELLY: Breaking tonight, hundreds killed and hundreds more injured. More than -- I should say about 158 killed in Paris tonight after the worst terror attack in their history. Earlier this evening Shepherd Smith sat down with our own Geraldo Rivera whose daughter was in the stadium that was targeted by suicide bombers tonight. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHEPARD SMITH, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: As we were reporting live earlier we learned sort of together -- we knew there were a lot of Americans there. We knew that there were a lot of Americans in that stadium, and we learned sort of together that our own Geraldo Rivera's daughter was in the stadium and heard the explosion, his daughter Simone. And Geraldo is with us yet again now. How is she doing?
GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Shep. I think she's on the phone. Are you there, sweetheart?
SIMONE RIVERA, GERALDO RIVERA'S DAUGHTER: Yes, I'm here.
RIVERA: We're with Shepard Smith. We're live. And so many people were so worried about you. Why don't you just tell us what you saw? Tell us first of all, you're at the game, the soccer game. Did you know the president of France was at the game?
SIMONE RIVERA: No, I didn't know the president was there. And before halftime, we all heard a very loud explosive sound, but no one seemed to make any -- seemed worried about it except for the fellow New Yorkers by my side. But we just brushed it off as nothing. And then at halftime, we went to get food and we saw they weren't letting anyone leave the stadium at that point and they weren't telling us anything. And they just had a bunch of ambulances and people in uniforms starting to look very nervous, but they wouldn't tell us anything so we went back in and we heard two more explosive sounds.
But, again, no one expressed any concern. They didn't tell us what was going on. And then, my friend, Isabel, was sitting next to me and she kept getting calls from her mom back in the States and tells us that there is a terrorist attack happening throughout Paris. And we tried to leave. And there were teams of SWAT barricading everyone, like just - it looked like people were in bomb outfits and just preparing for everything.
And no one would tell us what to do. They were just herding us like sheep. And we were freaking out. And there was one point where we sort of break away. And there is just a swarm of people running at us. And we just all started running in this direction not knowing where to go. And then all of the police officers were there with guns ready. I don't know what happened next. We're all just stuck in this area for four hours because there was a blockade, a perimeter around the stadium. I didn't know there were other attacks until you told me and I saw them on TV that there was at a concert.
RIVERA: Tell us how you're feeling, honey. How are you feeling right now?
SIMONE RIVERA: I'm shaking still. Yes, that was, probably the scariest thing I ever had to deal with. I don't -- we don't speak French, so all of the police officers couldn't help us. And we didn't know what to do. And thank God we have cell service to contact you. But, yes, we're all just freaking out. We tried to get a room at a hotel nearby but they locked their doors and weren't letting anybody in. And finally we found a store that let people in.
RIVERA: The hotel was locked? You tried to get into the hotel and it was locked?
SIMONE RIVERA: Yes. We went and we just asked if we can stay in the lobby. They said no and they locked the door.
RIVERA: And then, how scary was it to be stranded there, to not be able to take a metro. They closed the metro, no cab, no Uber, no nothing?
SIMONE RIVERA: First we were planning on walking home before we knew there were any other attacks. And it's like four and a half hour walk. And we didn't know the neighborhood but we thought that would be a better idea. And then people started telling us the military was coming in and it was a state of emergency and we couldn't walk. So we needed to walk back to the stadium area and we were just stuck there until, until your son came and got us.
RIVERA: Do you want to come home, honey?
SIMONE RIVERA: I do. I want to come home.
RIVERA: I'm going to come get you tomorrow.
SIMONE RIVERA: I don't know if I can go home. The borders are shut, aren't they?
RIVERA: Borders are shut. The airports are shut. We had a plane waiting tomorrow morning, but they said the Paris airspace is closed. But I'm sure they'll get around to it. It's so scary. The attacks were so widespread. So many people are dead. And I'm so -- you know what it was like for us here. You know, so many people knew that you were there and people were so concerned about you.
SIMONE RIVERA: Yes. I only had my French phone. Thank God Isabel had her phone. I couldn't even reach mom.
RIVERA: I know, honey. Shepard has been covering it all night. Shep, do you have any questions?
SMITH: I just wonder when people first started flooding out of the stadium, what it was like Simone? Was there a panic? Were people confused? What was it?
SIMONE RIVERA: At first people were confused, and then we saw all of the, what looked like the French equivalent of SWAT. Then people started to get panicked and people started running. And there was a bunch of little kids there and you see all these parents just not knowing what's happening and just picking up their little kids and just running in every direction not knowing where to go. And then they calmed down after an hour and a half, I guess. But I don't know how people got out of there. They shut down everything.
SMITH: A million stories about how people did get out. And Simone, while you're with us, I'll tell you we've just gotten a dispatch from French authorities. And Geraldo, they don't know how many, but French authorities have just sent out a bulletin that a number of armed terrorists are on the loose somewhere.
RIVERA: Honey, don't go out, whatever you do, don't go outside. Don't go outside. Don't go to any strangers. Just stay where you are. Stay where you are. Make sure the phone is charged.
SIMONE RIVERA: I know.
RIVERA: Make sure the phone is there.
SIMONE RIVERA: I'm not planning on leaving.
RIVERA: And the doors are locked and everything else, you know.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KELLY: An extraordinary moment unfolding here on live TV earlier tonight.
I want to update you on a couple of things that have happened now. The secretary of defense, Ash Carter, has issued a statement that ends as follows, "For more than 200 years the U.S. and France have stood together in friendship. We have stood for the common good and security of all nations. We have never stood closer than we do now. Vive la France."
And then we have this message from the NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton, "To the men and women of the NYPD tonight," it says in part, as follows, "There is no known nexus between attacks in Paris and New York City, but we are cops and we are cautious." And he addresses certain groups and says that they are all "deployed throughout the city, as are you. All of you who wear the blue are the guardians who watch over the city and, when necessary, the warriors who fight for her. Tonight, tomorrow, and in the days to come, be vigilant, be prepared, be aware, and, as ever, be safe."
The scope of this tragedy becomes even more evident when you look at the size of the emergency response in Paris at this hour. More than 700 firefighters, 1,000 police officers, 1,500 soldiers, 36 hospitals receiving the injured, and a likely untold number of doctors and nurses reportedly coming in on their own to tend to the wounded.
Joining me now with their final thoughts, retired Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shaffer who was a CIA trained intelligence operative and senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research, And Brad Thor, who served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's analytic red cell unit. And so it's not surprising to get messaging from our own Pentagon that we will stand shoulder to shoulder with our NATO ally, France, and right down to the localities with the police being told they too should stand shoulder to shoulder and be ready for anything, Tony.
LT. COL. TONY SHAFFER (RET), CIA TRAINED INTEL OPERATIVE: Absolutely. And I've been talking with some of my sources this evening. Pentagon is right on top of this. We have to take this very seriously, though. And Megyn, I don't want to frighten anybody, but we don't want to see Geraldo Rivera's daughter situation replicated here. We're worried about our children coming out of a stadium after an event or a terrorist event happens.
The time is now to do what Dr. Gorka said. We need to look at this as an issue we have to deal with there. Fundamentally there are people that want to work with us. President el Sisi said in a New Year's Day speech that they as Muslims need to renounce the violence part of their religion. We need to work with him, work with others to go about trying to dismantle the radicalism over there, using them as an ally, and frankly we need to work now diligently to stop that sort of violence from coming here.
KELLY: Brad?
BRAD THOR, SECURITY ANALYST: Megyn, we've been blessed. We have not seen suicide bombers in our movie theaters or in our shopping malls. We have not seen a Beslan style attack conducted in one or multiple schools in this country. We are out of time. We have had the blessing of time, but there is no more time left on the clock. If we don't get serious about this fight and kick political correctness to the curb we are going to have blood in the streets that will make what happened in Paris look like child's play. And I don't want to see that in this country.
KELLY: What about, colonel, the approach we've been taking so far in Syria? We have Donald Trump, Rand Paul, others, they don't want to get further involved in Syria. A lot of Americans agree with them.
SHAFFER: Rather than boots on the ground, we've talked about several times the idea of organizing our allies. We put forth the idea of an Arab NATO. For goodness' sake, NATO won the cold war. We need to put together something like that now to actually deal with the threats now. Frankly the Russians are there with their version of the Warsaw Pact, the Damascus pact. So it makes sense to organize our allies to be effective, to lead them, with them, to let them do the heavy lifting, and then go about dismantling the radicalism that Seb Gorka was just talking about.
This is a multipronged effort. As Brad was saying, if we don't pay attention to it now, we will see that violence spilling over here. Now is the time to get serious bit.
KELLY: Colonel, thank you. Brad, thank you as well.
SHAFFER: You bet.
THOR: Thanks, Megyn.
KELLY: Your heart goes out to people in Paris and France tonight, does it not? We've seen the solidarity shown from the World Trade Center tonight, and what we've seen in the people of France as they walked out of the stadium, the survivors, those not hurt, they were singing the French national anthem. They were throwing sheets out of the windows so that the bodies of the dead could be covered and not just lie there.
Thank you for joining us for your coverage tonight. I'm Megyn Kelly. This is "The Kelly File."
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