[Berman:] Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm John Berman, in for Jake Tapper. The national lead: a new worldwide travel alert from the State Department with concerns over the possibility of a Paris-style attack. Americans are being warned to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, especially as they crowd airport terminals and train stations for holiday travel this week. CNN's Rene Marsh joins me now. Rene, so, is this related to a specific terror threat?
[Rene Marsh, Cnn Aviation Correspondent:] Well, John, when you really look at this big picture here, you have a Russian passenger plane that's blown out of the sky, and attacks in Beirut, Paris, and Mali. So, absolutely, the increased terror activity triggered this new State Department travel alert, this happening just as millions of Americans are traveling for the holiday season. They are being told to remain on alert and avoid large crowds. Now, we've seen this alert issued for a specific region. But what's different here is this is a worldwide alert. Meaning, there's a potential for an attack wherever you travel. It is important to note, though, this does not mean people shouldn't travel, but it does mean you should be vigilant, because the threat is real. We do know that airlines continue to fly to places like Brussels and Paris, John.
[Berman:] Rene, so I'm sitting here in New York, just outside where I am right now, Macy's parade goes right by here, thousands of people lining the streets, maybe millions of people lining the streets. One of the plans to keep this city safe during the parade.
[Marsh:] Well, they are expecting record breaking crowd and that's all because of the weather. It's going to be pretty warm. But NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said, just said, there is no direct, credible threat against the Thanksgiving Day parade. That said, there will be a show of force like never before. Take a listen.
[Unidentified Male:] We employ counterterrorism overlay that includes elements of visible police presence at and around the Thanksgiving festivities. This will include extra uniformed police officers and traffic agents, plus additional mobile cameras, helicopters, canine, mounted units.
[Marsh:] All right. And specially trained dogs will sniff for traces of explosives in the air. Radiation detectors will be used to find any evidence of a dirty bomb. Meantime, NYPD is boosting the number of detectives assigned to investigating a flood of suspicious incidents reports, this happening in the wake of the Paris attacks. They are saying that reports are 200 percent the volume of a normal week.
[Berman:] And, Rene, I understand the New York Police Department is sharing what kind of tips they're getting. What are they hearing?
[Marsh:] Well, they say some of the tips, they're coming in on tonight 911, others flagged doing key word searches on social media, on the Internet, they're ranging between someone reporting a man abandoning a car on a bridge, to someone posting video on the Internet, posing with guns. It really runs a wide range here. The NYPD is saying some of these will be credible, may be credible, some may not, but the bottom line is they are checking all of them out, John.
[Berman:] All right. Rene Marsh for us in Washington thank you so much. I want to talk about the threat here in the United States and across the globe with CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank, and former assistant director of the FBI, Shawn Henry. Shawn, let's first talk about this global warning, this travel warning out from the State Department. What goes into making that decision to issue that? And what is the FBI doing behind the scenes right now to help keep things safe.
[Shawn Henry, Former Executive Assistant Director, Fbi:] You know, John, it is the totality of what we're seeing throughout western Europe and through the Middle East. The FBI working with state and local law enforcement agencies through the Joint Terrorism Task Forces. There are more than 100 JTTFs around the country that are staffed with multiple federal, state, local agencies. They're going out now and they have really turned up the heat in the course of their investigations. While they're investigating terrorists, jihadists and those that they believe are aligned with terror, they're pretty passive. They're collecting intelligence. They're trying to determine the full scope of the organizations that somebody might be involved in, if they're planning a threat. But now, sense what we've seen in Paris, they're out there being much more proactive, much more aggressive, really turning over every rock, trying to develop credible intelligence to help them assess if there's a pending threat.