baghdadi. he seems to have become a middleman between the isis leadership and the cells all over europe. the profile you ve just described is already fascinating. not poor, not desperate, middle class or upper middle class. part of the street gang began before the ideology. that s right. this hoodlum-like behavior began first. this is not atypical. a lot of the young people, particularly those going from various parts of the west, from europe and also the u.s., were going to syria or iraq to join isis are not necessarily their profiles don t suggest deep religiosity. they re looking for a chance to shoot guns, kill people. a sense of adventure in their minds rather than, although they may say these words, rather than the service of some religious cause. i want to show you and our viewers this sickening bit of video we got involving this so-called mastermind. here he is behind the wheel of a
january that was thwarted. everybody thought he had gone back to syria or iraq. french and coalition authorities. reporter: tarretting him in syria and iraq. now it appears, again, i say it appears, this situation is very fluid. there s a lot of information coming through and we want to make sure we really lock it down before reporting it but it appears that he is the focus, the target of this raid overnight. no word yet on whether anything actually happened in terms of finding him. but certainly we do know that as many as two people were killed, three arrested. a woman who was wearing a suicide vest blew herself up. a lot of moving parts here, chris. we re continuing to keep an eye on this church to see if that may reveal anything. it s worth noting as well, the residents around here, all around us, they can t believe what is happening, chris. this is paris. this is europe. people are not used to seeing police banging down doors, heavy
the french are basing everything they re doing in the next couple days on that assumption. you re just simply not going to get an all-clear from these terrorists. whatever they found today will then lead to a potential investigation of anything that might have happened in the future. i just want to point out how unique this is in terms of the density of the streets for police tactics, this is a very challenging, i don t know if any civilians were hurt yet. this is different. this is not the caves of afghanistan and we ve been talking a lot about syria and other places. look, the french have a french problem. almost everyone they ve picked up is a french citizen and they re hiding in plain sight. that makes it very different in terms of a counterterrorism for the french right now. as you know, isis has put out a threat saying that the u.s. will be next. how much stock do you put in that?
back in september of 2014 when the president announced he ordered these actions, the primary purpose of carrying out military operations inside of syria was to start to take action, deny them a safe haven so they cowl not use a safe hafen inside of the chaos of syria to carry out attacks in west. we have made progress. 20% to 25% of the populated area that isil previously operated in in iraq and syria is no longer an area they can operate. we made progress but there s more important work to be done. we may have made progress in terms of territory but the very fact they were able to carry out this coordinated, deadly attack in paris, didn t that the mean we have not, obviously, done enough to stop isis? alisyn, of course there s more important work to be done. the president made clear back in september of 2014 when he discussed this issue, when he ordered this military action, made clear that this was going to be a long-term proposition. isil made significant gains in
and other watch lists that we maintain. if people show up on those lists they re not able to board flights for the united states. we do maintain our security. each country, though, i think to some degree protects their sources and methods, part of the reason why there isn t a complete flow of information. these particular suspects, as i understand it, correct me if i m wrong, were not on a watch list that would not have flagged them at the airport if they had tried to come into the u.s. alisyn, i don t think that s accurate. i can t go into the specifics of it but i don t think that s correct. let me ask you about something that speaker paul ryan has said he wants to bring up on the house floor tomorrow. he wants to vote on the president s plan to bring in 10,000 syrian refugees because of the humanitarian crisis over the next year. speaker ryan has said that he believes it s time to pause this refugee program given what happened in paris on friday. what do you think about that