[Berman:] Just into CNN, our Christiane Amanpour just interviewed the prime minister of France, who told her that the working assumption right now inside the French government is that there were accomplices involved in these terror attacks at "Charlie Hebdo," the satirical magazine behind me. Not sure if the accomplices were involved in the attacks themselves or involved in the planning of them, the financing of them, the procurement of weapons. The French government is deploying 10,000 new military forces to keep key locations secure around the country as well as 8,000 additional police personnel. Will it be enough? Joining me to talk about this, CNN law enforcement analyst, Tom Fuentes; and also Peter Brookes, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation. Tom, I want to start with you. The idea that there could be bigger cells, accomplices still on the loose here in this country. If you were the French government right now, how would you be pulling on these threads? How would you find these suspects?
[Tom Fuentes, Cnn Law Enforcement Analyst:] John, the first step that they'll be doing is trying to look at every method of communication that the Kouachi brothers and the others involved in this had. They were already aware of the 500 phone calls among the wives. They will look at who else was being contacted and how far back can those phone records go? They may not be able to go that far back in phone records and other electronic communication records such as e-mail and social media to be able to determine that. Assuming that they are looking at that, you know, that's what they would be trying to do is establish the electronic links and during the time they have especially the Kouachi brothers under surveillance, who were they meeting with at that time? Did any other names come up on radar at that point during the coverage they already had?
[Berman:] Congress passed the Patriot Act, giving United States officials more investigative power and greater surveillance power. I talked to French officials here. It's unclear whether there is public will for that kind of increased authority. Peter Brookes, I want to ask you a side question. We have information that at least one of the Kouachi brothers, in Yemen, knew the underwear bomber. They knew each other and may have lived each other when they were both in Yemen at the same time. So what can U.S. intelligence now do with this information? Can they go to him in prison and say, hey, what do you know about the Kouachis?
[Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow, Heritage Foundation:] They could. I hope they would. Tom did a good job, John, outlining what they should do in France. The other part is the international perspective, reaching out to the United States, reaching out to other partners to see what they might know and put these things together. Because we found out, so many times in the past, that one country knew something that another country would have liked to have known, whether you're talking about the Tsarnaev brothers or other international plots. It was the mal-intention of not sharing the information. But sometimes the stuff falls through the cracks. The French need to go beyond France and talk to international partners about what they might know as they try to put together this jigsaw puzzle and prevent a second wave or another attack.
[Fuentes:] John, if I could add one more comment to that.
[Berman:] Go ahead, Tom Fuentes. Go ahead, Tom.
[Fuentes:] I dealt with the European police services for in years when I was in the FBI. I ran FBI national operations. I was on the board of Interpol. The reason that those services are very reluctant to share information, initially share information or even maintain information is because these are the countries that were under the Gestapo during the Nazi occupations. And at the end of World War II, they passed the laws saying we're not going to hold information for long periods of time. If somebody doesn't stay on the radar, we're going to purge their files. That privacy issue has something we've been trying to work through for many years. After 911, the French became really outstanding partners. They were the first country to provide the U.S. with flight manifests of passengers and give us data, which why is why this guy ended up on our no fly list. That happened because of their cooperation. But the reluctance of Europeans to maintain this information runs very deep and for a long time, since World War
[Ii. Berman:] A complicated legacy to say the least.
[Berman:] I should add hang on, we're going to move on, unfortunately, gentlemen. I want to thank you so much. One point I just want to add to button this thing, is that our Pamela Brown is reporting that the man who attacked the kosher supermarket, killing four people, he was on a U.S. terror watch list, the so-called TIDE watch list. How much did the French know? That's one of the situations we'll be investigating further Michaela?
[Pereira:] Questions still about where and who that accomplice is. John, thanks so much. Ahead @THISHOUR, the flight data recorder located, the cockpit voice recorder located. Now reports that the AirAsia flight exploded upon impact. We'll discuss with our aviation analyst ahead.