CNN "Wolf" - Transcript: Terrorism

Interview

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SCIUTTO: The terrorist couple who gunned down 14 people in San Bernardino were likely radicalized before they met and married. FBI Director James Comey revealed that information today during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republican Senator Ron Johnson is chairman of another key committee, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs. He joins us now from Capitol Hill.

Thank you, Senator Johnson, for taking the time.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI), CHAIRMAN, HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: Hello, Jim.

SCIUTTO: So as more details come out, it's become very clear that this was not some sudden radicalization. Communications back in 2013 talking about martyrdom between this couple. The fact that that took place before they were married. You're briefed on these issues all the time. Is there more evidence here, in your view, that an international terror group would likely have been involved for that kind of forward planning and to make this international connection of two people who would eventually be in effect their own two-person cell? Is that becoming more of a line of inquiry here?

JOHNSON: Well, we need to obviously find out exactly what happened and the investigation will hopefully reveal that. It's extremely important that we do get that information. I don't have information right now to tie this to any organized group. But what it really shows is how imperfect our intelligence gathering and how imperfect the information we have on people really is.

What do you do with the not guilty yet? These are enormous challenges. We are vulnerable. I've always said, our first line of defense against Islamic terrorists is the effective intelligence gathering capability, recognize that it's going to never be a perfect system, but we have to always look for continuous improvement.

SCIUTTO: What would be effective intelligence gathering here? Because in effect, to have caught these communications between Farook and Malik before they were married, you'd have to be looking at e-mail traffic. I mean you didn't have probable cause to go after these two before, but you'd kind of have to look at e-mail traffic between everybody, right, I mean, and just search it for certain term, et cetera. I mean is there a fix here from an intelligence perspective that you see that might have caught this -- caught this before it happened? JOHNSON: Well, one of the ways we degraded our intelligence gathering

capability was canceling the NSA metadata program. Now, again, I'm not saying that's a perfect system, but that's certainly one ways you -- one way you might be able to make those connections. If you -- if we know terrorist and we know they're making phone calls and we can, you know, tie those networks together, that's one way. But again, nothing is perfect.

We just held a hearing on the visa waiver system and, you know, some of the vulnerabilities there, but also recognizing the visa waiver program helps us share information between those countries who participate in it, that also enhances our security. So this as enormously difficult problem, but it is about information sharing, intelligence sharing, intelligence gathering. We just need to make that a more robust process and continue to improve it.

SCIUTTO: Senator Johnson, you bring up the changes in the visa waiver programs and we've been looking at the details there. In effect it bars people -- well, it requires people who travel to Iraq and Syria within the last five years to get an extra interview in effect.

JOHNSON: Right.

SCIUTTO: And extra line of review. Do you think that's enough to spot potential terrorists like those who carried out this attack?

JOHNSON: It's an improvement. We actually expand it beyond that to other countries that are hot spots for terrorism, which I think is appropriate. And, again, we're not denying people entry, we're just saying that they can't utilize that visa waiver program, which, again, has robust intelligence sharing thresholds that are part of that process, but you're just going to have to get an interview before we actually grant you entrance into America. I think that's a common sense approach. It strengthens those information and intelligence sharing agreements.

[13:20:05] One of the things we included in my companion bill is, push out the borders by a preclearance program. You know, get customs and border protection personnel in different airports, in different countries, to, like I say, kind of push out the borders where we can more effectively screen people before they come into America.

SCIUTTO: Senator Johnson, I want to ask you as well, the comments from -- well-known comments by now by Donald Trump supporting a -- really a blanket ban on all Muslims from coming into the country, at least -- at least a temporary ban as he says. Let's speak about the security implications of this. Is this a danger to U.S. national security to feed that kind of anti-Muslim feeling, which we know that groups such as ISIS are really trying to spark here, right, and certainly take advantage of in terms of recruiting. But when you heard those words from Donald Trump repeated and defended, did you think to yourself, this is dangerous for America?

JOHNSON: Well, I don't -- I don't agree with Mr. Trump on this. From my standpoint, Islamic terrorists declared war on the civilized world. They're already pretty well upset with us for some reason. Their -- their -- they want to kill people in the civilized world. So they declared war on us. And I guess what I object to is when President Obama talks about, we want to end these wears. The fact of the matter is, there's only two ways to end wars. Either both parties have to decide to end the war, and obviously Islamic terrorists aren't' give up, the other way is to defeat them. I mean that's really the root cause. We have got to defeat ISIS. We've got to defeat Islamic terrorists wherever they are. We've got to commit the civilized world to actually removing the scourge once and for all.

SCIUTTO: Senator Johnson, thanks for taking the time today.

JOHNSON: Have a good day.

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