CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Terror Threat Level and Terrorism Recruitment

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BLITZER: Yes, better to err on the side of caution, especially when we're dealing with this kind of a threat. Thanks very much, Jim Sciutto, for that.

Let's talk a little bit more about this July 4 terror threat.

Joining us, Senator James Lankford. He's a Republican of Oklahoma. He's also a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Senator, thanks very much for joining us.

What do you make of these developments? Are you more concerned potentially, let's start off, with some sort of small-scale lone wolf attack, going after some sort of so-called soft target? Or is your greater concern something more complex, a larger, more coordinated terror attack that could kill potentially a whole lot more people?

SEN. JAMES LANKFORD (R), OKLAHOMA: The greatest concern is actually the lone wolf.

It's the individual that just decides to be inspired by ISIS. What they have done, ISIS is very well outspoken about how much they hate our freedom, who we are as Americans. So, July the 4th is one of those natural dates, while we're celebrating freedom, for them to be able to find some way to be able to poke us in the eye basically during that process.

ISIS has not typically done a lot of coordinated attacks. What they did in Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula is an anomaly in some ways. But most times, it's something closer to what happened in Garland, Texas, to inspire an individual, to be able to drive multiple states to be able to go and shoot and to be able to have some attack on a small scale.

That's the greater threat. It's also harder to be able to track.

BLITZER: Yes, in the Sinai, they -- what, they killed about 30 Egyptian soldiers in a very well-planned, coordinated military-type attack. That's obviously very worrisome.

Any specific threats -- I know you're well-briefed. Are there any specific, hard, concrete threats out there, some plot that the U.S., for example, got wind of?

LANKFORD: No, this is not about a specific threat. This is just ISIS in general.

We know they function on social media. And when they try to inspire people, they're very different than al Qaeda. Al Qaeda likes to coordinate, have a central command to be able to send out emissaries around that they have highly trained and say this is the moment we're going to do a large-scale attack.

ISIS is very different. They're reaching out on social media, telling people, it's a holiday, we ought to kill people, here's some ideas about how to do it, here's some places to be able to go. Just be able to go and do it. Here's our logo, put our logo up, tell them you're with us.

So, they're not looking to send people. They're looking to inspire people that already live among our midst. So, they're looking for people that have the same radical jihadi-type mind-set and say, join us in the worldwide fight and engage. That's why you see little pockets of ISIS all over the world doing these smaller-scale events.

[18:10:10] They're trying to inspire the same thing. And in fact they have

done it for several holidays. They have tried to do that. They have just been unsuccessful in trying to get it for several holidays, things like are Veterans Day, and others times, Memorial Day, when they were trying to inspire it. This is just one more time to do that.

I can tell you that the people of Oklahoma, the people that I'm around, we're going to continue to go out to events. We will be attentive to all those things, as we always are. But this is ISIS trying to instill fear, and that's not who we are as Americans.

BLITZER: And the good advice is, you see something, you say something. Hopefully, it will be a quiet, very nice July 4 holiday weekend.

LANKFORD: That's right.

BLITZER: What should the U.S. be doing to go after those ISIS commanders who are leading their social media campaign to go out there and inspire, if you will, ISIS sympathizers to launch these kinds of terror strikes?

We know the president is willing to order drone strikes to kill ISIS military commanders. What can the U.S. do to downgrade or destroy that social media capability, which clearly is very effective and inspiring ISIS supporters out there?

LANKFORD: Sure.

It is identifying those individuals, finding and locating those through social media. It's not always simple to do, but identifying those individuals that are actually inspiring this and to be able to engage. That takes great intelligence. That takes a lot of work to make sure that you're actually going after the right individual on this.

And, quite frankly, a lot of this is still driven by the instability in Syria as a whole. With Bashar Assad still leading Syria, there's still a tremendous number of individuals that would fight against ISIS, but as long as ISIS is fighting against Assad, they're going to leave ISIS alone and just continue to fight against Assad.

So, while Assad is still leading Syria, they feel like ISIS is not a threat to them personally. ISIS is a threat to Assad, and so they're going to ignore them. We need individuals in all these different groups focused on taking out ISIS. They're a worldwide threat.

But that also means that Assad needs to be replaced and needs to be gone and have a transition leadership in Syria to help get that.

BLITZER: We have much more to discuss, Senator, including the heightened security at U.S. military bases here in the United States and around the world -- much more with Senator Lankford when we come back.

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[18:17:02]

BLITZER: We're back with Senator James Lankford. He's a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Intelligence Committees.

We're talking about the Fourth of July terror threat, the unprecedented holiday security being put into place right now.

Senator, we also learned today that one of the ISIS leaders, a guy by the name of Tariq Al-Harzi, was killed in a coalition airstrike. He was known as the emir of suicide bombing. What do we know about this guy? The State Department had a $3 million bounty on his head.

LANKFORD: There are several individuals like him, Wolf, that are out there in the process that we're identifying. As we can identify their exact location, what they do, and how they're involved in the organization, we're trying to take some of those folks out.

You will remember about a month ago where we had the actual oil minister for ISIS that we actually went in and did a special operations raid in Syria to actually take the person out and then to be able to remove intelligence information from his home.

So this is a part of the ongoing strategy to be able to help identify those individuals, to be able to remove their leadership. ISIS has leadership, just like al Qaeda has leadership. It's important to be able to eliminate the individuals that are leading the organization. And it's also important that we actually take away the parameters of why they're trying to actually do this.

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BLITZER: Senator, excuse me for interrupting.

You have no problem for the U.S. going out targeting these individuals and killing them?

LANKFORD: No, I do not, actually, on that, Wolf.

And the reason is, ISIS has been very clear that they want a worldwide jihadi movement to be able to overthrow multiple locations, and to be able to inflict as much terror, whether it be the United States, or our allies, all across the Middle East. We made that clear and obviously the threats that are coming down from July the 4th for us.

This is not a group that's just interested in Syria and Iraq. This is a group that is interested in worldwide domination and spreading this kind of hatred around the world. So it is important that the United States steps up and leads, because we cannot ignore real threats. Now, this was the same thing that we faced years ago with the Taliban and with al Qaeda, to say they're thousands and thousands of miles away, what does it matter to us, until they did a coordinated attack on American oil soil.

And we understand it does come to us, whether we want to pay attention to it or not.

BLITZER: Here in Washington today, Senator -- I know you're in Oklahoma, but here in Washington at the Navy Yard, we saw law enforcement come out in huge numbers responding what turned out to be fortunately a false alarm. But did we see an overreaction, an over- response?

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LANKFORD: Actually, that's just a response you would expect in something like the Navy Yard, with the shooting that happened there before.

They're responding to it. It ended up being a large-scale drill, to say the least on it. It was a false alarm. But we actually saw law enforcement in a coordinated effort be able to respond to that in an entirely appropriate way for an active shooter.

Thankfully, there wasn't an active shooter there. But it is good to know that law enforcement has that kind of coordination and, in that moment, we do have appropriate response.

BLITZER: Is this the state of concern, the state of concern, what we call the new normal?

LANKFORD: It is for now. We're a nation that is still at risk.

[18:20:00]

And there is the sense among Americans that we can sit back because we're pulling out of Afghanistan, we're out of -- officially out of Iraq, in that zone. But Americans need to understand, there are people around the world that really do hate us, that really do hate our freedom.

It's difficult for us to be able to process because we're such a nation that has great care for people around the world. We do such incredible charity around the world. And we have this perception that we leave them alone, they leave us alone.

But we know very clearly from radical Islam that is not true. They actually develop worldwide recruits by attacking America and attacking the West. And the more that they can attack us and the more that they can poke us, the more that people that have that philosophy actually move to help them. So, attacking us is actually a recruiting element for ISIS, which seems completely foreign to us.

But we have to realize we are still a nation at risk and this is extremely important that we can still continue to defend ourselves and our families.

BLITZER: Should U.S. military bases here in the United States, including your home state of Oklahoma, where there are several major U.S. military facilities, should they be on a heightened state of security alert this weekend and maybe for the rest of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which goes through mid-July?

LANKFORD: There is always a perception that during Ramadan -- we have seen other attacks in previous years on that.

I know you had mentioned earlier about the base in the U.K. They saw base-specific things for them. They wanted to make that decision. But you will remember again about a month ago multiple bases went on heightened security because they sensed that there was a threat coming to bases.

That's not specific at this point to any of those bases. They would be on the same security status that they're always on and be as prepared as any other person in the United States would be.

Again, this is a group that's really energized by lone wolves, individuals that are unpredictable, that step out and say, I believe in this ISIS philosophy, this particular brand of radical Islam, and I want to go make a statement for ISIS.

So, this is not something that's highly coordinated in that. This is just a message to go out and say, if you hate America like we do, and you hate their freedoms, then step out and do what we do.

BLITZER: Senator Lankford, thanks very much for joining us.

LANKFORD: Thank you.

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