[Burnett:] Welcome back to "OutFront." We are following breaking news on the terror attack right here in New York City. At least eight people are dead, multiple people injured after a truck driver slammed into bicyclists in a bike lane. The attack coming just hours before New York City's major Halloween parade. Officials, including Governor Andrew Cuomo, are vowing a major boost in security.
[Gov. Andrew Cuomo , New York:] We will be vigilant. More police everywhere. You'll see them in the airports. You'll see them in the tunnels. We're not going to let them win. And if we change our lives, we contort ourselves to them, then they win and we lose.
[Burnett:] Jason Carroll is "OutFront." And, Jason, look, this is the sort of thing that many people had said would be a horrific attack and could happen. It did not happen for years and years after it happen in so many other places. It is not yet happens here until today. What is New York City doing tonight to secure this major parade where you're going to have thousands and thousands of people on the streets to secure it after the terror attack?
[Jason Carroll, Cnn National Correspondent:] Well, thousands of people you're absolutely correct. And the staging area actually not that far from where we are right now at Sixth Avenue and Canal just about 15 blocks, that's also in Downtown Manhattan as well for folks who aren't familiar with that. But you heard the governor, you heard city and state officials encouraging people to go along with their lives, to be vigilant. And what the NYPD will do will what they are going to do is increase the police presence there. They didn't give numbers, Erin, but what they did do is give a sort of list of what folks who are coming out to the parade might expect and that included several things. Not only more officers on the streets, but heavy weapons teams are going to be lining the parade route, especially along key and iconic sites along Sixth Avenue. Also something that's called blocker vehicles, these are sort of heavy vehicles that will be stationed along streets meeting into and out of Sixth Avenue along the parade route, that way vehicles that aren't supposed to be on that street won't be able to get there. And also, sand trucks will be there as well. So once again, you're going to have an increased presence of heavily armed officers, some of those blocker trucks, sand trucks along the parade route, as well that parade just getting underway just around 7:00 tonight, expected to end around 11:00 tonight. And you heard the governor there, same thing that we heard before that's been echoed so many, many times in the past, asking folks to be vigilant, but also asking New Yorkers as they have been asked so many times in the past to go on with their lives. That's what they are attempting to do tonight. They're going to be doing it under a heavy police presence. Erin?
[Burnett:] All right. Jason, thank you. And President Trump speaking out on this attack moments ago in a series of tweets saying, "In NYC, looks like another attack by a very sick and deranged person. Law enforcement is following this closely. Not in the USA!" He also said, "We must not allow ISIS to return or enter our country after feeding them in the Middle East and elsewhere. Enough!" And then, "My thoughts, condolences and prayers to the victims and families of the New York City terrorist attack. God and your country are with you." Let's go now to Athena Jones. She's at the White House tonight. And, Athena, what more are we hearing from the White House about this tragedy right now?
[Athena Jones, Cnn White House Correspondent:] Hi, Erin. Well, that last tweet from the President coming just a few minutes before the hour. And just a few minutes ago, the White House putting out a statement from the President reiterating some of those tweets saying, "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of today's the terrorist attacks." The President went on to say, "My administration will provide its full support to the New York City Police Department, including through a joint investigation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation." The statement goes on to thank the first responders. And, of course, we know that President was briefed on this incident some time ago by Chief of Staff John Kelly. He's going to get continual updates as the situation develops. And we should mention that the first lady, Melania Trump, was in New York today for meetings. She put out a tweet a while ago saying, "My heartbreaks for NYC today. Thoughts and prayers as we monitor the situation." Melania Trump just one of several members of the Trump family to tweet about this incident, including his daughter, Ivanka, his son, Don Jr., and Don Jr.'s wife, Vanessa. So this is something the White House is going to be closely watching. Erin?
[Burnett:] All right. Thank you very much, Athena. My panel is back with me. Let's just start here. We have just confirmed the breaking news at this moment, Art, that the suspect rented that truck at a Home Depot in New Jersey today. So, what does that tell you? Obviously, he had not had it for a period of time. And even though we know he have links to Florida, it's not as if he rented it there or anywhere along the way. He was in New Jersey and he rented it there today. You can see the condition it was in after his rampage there on the video.
[Roderick:] I think, you know, we always ask what the motive is here. You know, right now, we're hearing the motive is a terror attack. But what triggered him to do that today? I mean, we're starting to get ready to enter into the heavy holiday season. You know, there's going to be gatherings of people in a lot of locations. Why did he pick today? Was it because today is Halloween and he knew a lot of people were going to be out there? Luckily he didn't do this later. It was 3:30 in the afternoon. And although there's a lot of people around, they wouldn't have been around, you know, much more people later tonight that would have been out enjoying the parade and the festivities. But this is going to be taking apart this case completely and putting this individual's life together for at least the last five years since he's been or seven years since he's in the United States. So this is going to take some time, but I'm sure they've already peeled back this onion far enough and they can at least figure out, you know, what's the real motive behind this and what caused him to do this today.
[Burnett:] And, Juliette, that is the big question. What caused him to do it today? And also, where he chose to do it? It wasn't just that it was New York City. It is just a couple blocks away from Ground Zero, the scene of course at 911. We know he has links to Florida. We don't know if he was living there or what or whether he was living in New Jersey, even though we do now know he rented the truck there today. But the location here obviously could be hugely significant as well, right?
[Kayyem:] That's right. And remember before 911, of course, the World Trade Center had been attacked in the 1990s. And so, you know, he is alive. We don't know what condition he's in. And so he sort of forms the center of a series of investigations that are going to be domestic, New York. We've already mentioned New York, Florida and New Jersey. And then, of course, international ties to Uzbekistan or anyone else. I should say you know, Uzbekistan, I mean, this is the challenge that Bob was talking about. I don't think Bob means to sound fatalistic. I found the say way, which is the challenge is you have these guys radicalizing potentially and we have multiple soft targets because we love living in cities like New York City. That is the benefit as well. And so one of the challenges with the way we talk about terrorism now for example is Uzbekistan is, of course, not on the travel ban list, right, because this, you know, the radicalization process isn't tied to a country. It's tied to a mentality about how these men are thinking about the world. And until we begin to understand that, we are going to focus our counterterrorism efforts on countries, rather than a radicalization process, which even if we could stop it, it is never going to get the risk down to zero.
[Burnett:] Right.
[Kayyem:] The benefit of living in New York City is sort of, you know, the flow. People are out and about.
[Burnett:] What does this mean, though, Bob, in terms of this is the sort of thing that has happened elsewhere? I mean, there's a long list of places where people have done vehicular attacks, right, whether you're talking about in France, or whether you're talking about in Germany. This has happened but now that this has happened in New York City. This is the first time.
[Baer:] Well, Erin, you know, I think we talked about this last week with the fall of Raqqah. You can have a lot of people sympathizing with the Islamic state, whether they're in direct touch or not. And they are going to look at this as a great defeat for Sunni Islam. And they don't recognize our government as a legitimate government in this country. There should be a government of Islam and they are radicalized, of course. And all they really need to do is find a weapon. And the easiest weapon to find or weapons, easily available like box cutters and airliners on 911 and now its trucks. And they can get the same number of casualties as they can instead of using acetone and peroxide bombs and they know this. And they are learning. They are learning to stay off the internet communicating with the Islamic state or other groups. I think Paul is right. We'll find out there is connections between this man and other groups as they look into it, but they are not obvious connections, which makes it so difficult to get. And what do you do about somebody? You know, you can watch truck rentals, but then they're going to start stealing trucks. And we are just very, very vulnerable, especially a large city likes New York City.
[Burnett:] Right. And, of course, we don't know, again, Paul, just to emphasize anything about, you know, when Juliette, I think
[Cruickshank:] That's right. And in fact, as we reported in
[Erin Burnett, Cnn:] But the reality of it is, is that it's already here.
[Paul Cruickshank, Cnn Terrorism Analyst:] That's right. And in fact, as we reported in March, there was a DHS assessment of people getting involved in violence extremism in the United States. And they found the majority of people actually were radicalized after arriving in the United States in terms of foreign-born people. So, there's a problem in the United States. People have access to this jihadi propaganda over the internet, over social media. There are ISIS cyber coaches in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Also, Libya reaching out to Americans all the time trying to encourage them to launch terrorist attacks. So, we're going to have to wait and see where this individual was radicalized, whether they had any overseas connections. They will be looking at all those foreign travel patterns after they did the same thing with the Boston bombings, where there was travel back and forth to the Dagestan region. So, all of that now is being investigated, Erin.
[Burnett:] And obviously, Juliette, the similarity to Boston with the survivor, right? You have the attacker here who has survived. We understand out of surgery, right? So, they have someone to question, someone is going to be punished, according to the full extent of the law for this.
[Juliette Kayyem, Cnn National Security Analyst:] Look, the public safety exception to the Miranda will apply to make sure there's no threat to New York. I have every reason to believe the mayor and the police commissioner that there isn't. And then the sort of more familiar legal proceedings will occur. And in that process, the investigation will be ongoing in terms of co-conspirators. That to me is really sort of the open question and it really has to do with the van. And that will be determined relatively quickly. Was someone with him? Did someone help him? Did he use his driver's license? Once you determine it's just him, then you're really only looking at, as Paul was describing, a potential radicalization process with others abroad.
[Burnett:] Bob, you know, one of the things, though, when you look at the images here you know, we mentioned this, there was a school bus. And the two adults and two children on that school bus survived. Eight others obviously were slaughtered, were killed by this terrorist. But there was a school bus that was hit. People were able to get out of it. You see the bikes, the mangled bikes. This is someone who just got on a bike path in a major city and just plowed down. This is a city, right? It happens to be the biggest city in the United States, but any city is full of pedestrians and bikes and strollers and people going about their lives. And that is what is now at risk because from what we know about this guy, which is nothing leading into this, the question is, how can you stop it?
[Robert Baer, Cnn Intelligence & Security Analyst:] You can't. You can't put up stanchions or HESCO barriers and the rest of it. If New York City does, then they will move it to Cleveland, Ohio, and then to Los Angeles. And these people are very mobile. They've got money. They are dedicated. And the car is everywhere. It's omnipresent and it's lethal and probably the way it looks to me is that school bus when he hit the school bus stopped this attack. You know, he could have kept ongoing and it could have been a lot worse than eight people. And, you know, this is a horrible, hideous problem we have here. And as long as these problems in the Middle East continue, we're going to be facing this danger and I predict there will be more attacks like this.
[Burnett:] All right. Let me just also raise something that some people may not want to hear, but I'm going to say it any way. That is this was a horrific attack. He had two guns. It was a BB gun and paintball gun. Even either of those had been a real gun, a lot more people could have been killed.
[Art Roderick, Cnn Law Enforcement Analyst:] Yes, and I think that's a good add on to Bob's point. That bus stopped him from continuing driving that vehicle and killing more people. I mean, there's no doubt this was this was a suicide attack. It was going to be suicide by cop. Any time you commit a crime and pull out a fake handgun, you're only looking for one thing. A law enforcement officer to shoot you. And that's exactly what occurred here. And I think because this individual is alive, this is the best piece of evidence we have as to what's going on in this individual's head and what's going on in his life and where he traveled to. So, I think we've got we're lucky he didn't get gunned down. It's horrible that he killed as many people that he did. He probably could have killed a lot more if it wasn't for hitting the school bus. But he's the best piece of evidence we have in it this whole crime right now.
[Burnett:] Juliette, what comes next for the Trump administration? This is a crucial moment. The president is now saying not in the United States. He's going to stop them in the Middle East and elsewhere before they come to the United States. This is a crucial moment for him.
[Kayyem:] It is. And it has two pieces. One is operational, which is going to go on whoever the president is. It's the FBI lead FBI investigation, resources of the Department of Homeland Security to educate state and locals. All that stuff that sort of goes regardless of politics. Then, there's going to be a political side. So what the president has said so far is sort of, you know, calling it terrorism or talking about ISIS. So there will be a political consequence. As we have seen, the Trump administration is more prone to make politics out of this kind of terrorism than they would say with Las Vegas where many more people died. So, you know, I can't predict how this is going to sort of become a political moment, but this will be a moment where Donald Trump will likely talk about Islamic terrorism and those abroad. And just to remind people again, you know, this idea of a travel ban, you know, he's already here. That's one. And number two, he's not on the right country list. So, the idea that we can stop all of this, we have to brace ourselves, and prepare ourselves, but the idea that we can stop it through politics is just not going to happen.
[Burnett:] All right. Thank you all very much, staying with me. And next, the witnesses. This was a very busy area. There were a lot of people there. They are telling us what they saw as the attack unfolded.
[Unidentified Male:] He's in the bike lane, clearly in the bike lane. I see when I go down I see two gentlemen laying in the bike lane.
[Burnett:] And we'll take you through the attack as the suspect moved from one block to the next terrorizing people block after block.