Interview with Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
TAPPER: You're looking at live pictures from the federal courthouse. We're waiting for defense attorneys representing the three men charged today in connection with the Boston bombing investigation. We will bring that to you live when they come out and begin answering reporters' questions. The ultimate goal of the terror attack is to terrorize. It looks as though the Boston bombings have struck a little more fear in the hearts of Americans. Polls conducted in the wake of the marathon bombings by CNN and "TIME" magazine show that four in 10 Americans are worried that someone in their family will become a victim of terrorism. That's the highest that number has been since President Obama took office. Although worries about terrorism are up slightly only 40 percent of Americans say they're willing to give up some personal freedom to fight terrorism. And while there's a lot of support for more cameras in public places, people want the government to layoff their cell phones and get out of their e-mails. Only 38 percent favor expanding government monitoring of those forms of communication. That number was at 54 percent after 9/11. Joining me now is former homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff. He's now chairman and cofounder of the Chertoff Group, a consulting firm that focuses on national security issues. Thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate it. If you were still heading the Department of Homeland Security, which is obviously intimately involved in this investigation, what questions would you be asking the FBI and investigators right now about these three individuals arrested today?</s>MICHAEL CHERTOFF, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: The first thing you want to know is, is there another threat out there. You want to ascertain are these three people actually involved in any way in the preparation and carrying out of the bombing attack? You want to look to see were there other connections that the Tsarnaevs have to people in the U.S. who might have been facilitators. You want to see what the connections were overseas. Were they trained in Russia? Were they inspired in Russia or in Chechnya? And you need to do this in order to make sure that you're preventing another plot from being carried out. That's priority number one.</s>TAPPER: Having been at the Department of Homeland Security during, was it 2005 to 2009?</s>CHERTOFF: Right.</s>TAPPER: When some of these plots were foiled and other operations took place, what is your suspicion? I don't obviously --</s>CHERTOFF: Right.</s>TAPPER: -- we don't want to go into irresponsible speculation, but when it comes to the likelihood that two individuals were able to do this entirely on their own, it seems like even if the bombs were relatively crude, it's more sophisticated a bomb than I could make and seems like a rather sophisticated operation.</s>CHERTOFF: It also seems like it was planned out. It appears based on reporting that there were other devices. They had guns. So, it wasn't something that was spur of the moment. It required a certain amount of planning. The question in my mind is what happened over there in Russia. You would normally expect and we saw during the time I was in office many of these plots involved a component of somebody going overseas, training in a camp or training with somebody and then bringing that back home. And that's why if I were looking at this as an investigator, I'd put a lot of focus on what happened in the Caucasus during the six months or so that the older brother was back there.</s>TAPPER: Do you think that there was -- looking at what we know about the pre-attack intelligence, that there was a warning by the Russians to the FBI about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to the CIA, about six months later in 2011, he went to Russia, to Chechnya, Dagestan, came back. There was no ping, no flag was raised. Was there a failure of information sharing at the very least, or what we all talk about after 9/11, using our imaginations at the very most?</s>CHERTOFF: Well, you know, the structures are there to share information. The law is there to share information. Obviously, there was a failure in that somebody missed this. Now, it may be an excusable failure or understandable failure, but it's not a success when people die. The question here is, should you have tracked this person when they came back and re-interviewed them? Obviously when a foreign service takes the trouble twice to send a message to agencies, you have to take it seriously.</s>TAPPER: How often do the Russians do that?</s>CHERTOFF: Well, it's not unknown but it's not common. And any time a foreign service makes a specific request with a particular name, it suggests that they have some knowledge based on some overseas activity.</s>TAPPER: Now, the FBI complained, we went back to them for more information and they did not cooperate. And you heard President Obama yesterday talking about how cooperative the Russians have been since the attacks -- the implications being not so much before the attacks. Does this Cold War mentality that President Obama talked about, does this still hamper relations between the U.S. and Russia?</s>CHERTOFF: It appears to have been a problem in this case but it really shouldn't. You know, we've had relations with countries around the world which have been pretty rocky and yet, on the counterterrorism level, it's been very, very good cooperation. Even when I was in office at times that some other countries were not necessarily seeing eye to eye on Iraq or other issues, at the law enforcement level, there was always a lot of exchange of information because it's mutually important. This is important to the Russians as it is to us. So, I would put some emphasis on making sure that our relationships with the Russians or anybody else at this level are being maintained properly and so there is a good flow of cooperation.</s>TAPPER: I've heard talk that one of the reasons why it might not have gone as swimmingly as it should have is because Russia is always trying to convince the U.S. that the Chechens, with whom they're involved in this ugly, bloody war for years and years, they're always trying to convince the U.S., the Chechens are our enemy and the U.S. is very wary of ever getting dragged into that conflict. Do you think that that -- I mean, is that accurate that that is a tension?</s>CHERTOFF: Right. I mean, it certainly causes you to be careful. But I want to go back to</s>TAPPER: All right. Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff -- thanks for joining us.