at least 36 people have now lost their lives according to turkey's prime minister. his government suspects isis. so does u.s. intelligence. another explosion caught on video. before showing it, want to warn anyone with kids this would be a good time to have them leave the room. the video begins with the killer racing down a hallway holding an assault rifle. he's hit by gunfire. that's one of the gunmen there. shot, falls down. you see his gun slides away, his rifle slides away. you then see law enforcement personnel, i assume it's law enforcement personnel, approaching him. whether he's shot again is unclear. then the policeman runs away. probably after seeing a suicide vest. then it seems there may have been another shot right there. then the detonation. 36 people killed so far. that's the death toll. that's where the number stands right now. most likely it will rise. at least 147 people wounded.

we are devoting much of this hour to any and all late developments. lawrence cameron was there, and i understand you had just stepped off the plane when this happened. can you describe what you first saw and heard? >> yeah. i was around the corner to see a sea of people running towards me screaming and panicking, all a bit of a mess. initially i just thought, you know, bomb scare, this probably happens quite a lot these days, but it soon became quite apparent that actually something was very wrong. >> at that point, had all the detonations already occurred as far as you know? >> yes. as far as i know, i didn't hear any more explosions. it was just panic. police rushing around.

[ inaudible ] all the airport staff had gone, there was one chap who i remember distinctly in a wheelchair, he was sort of struggling to get through it all. that really stuck in my mind. yeah, it was that point that i realized that actually this wasn't just a -- sorry. >> understandable. you had to walk through one of the areas where i understand where one of the bombs went off. it was the only way to get out. what did you see? >> yeah, well, obviously you're coming from a plane, there's no way off except through passport control. when they eventually reopened it, the police had cordoned through the baggage area and

duty-free. it was all very eerie. bags were piled up on the floor, there were panels pulled from the ceiling. the closer we got outside it was quite apparent there had been some kind of explosion in that indoor area which i think, having watched the images on tv, i think i can now pinpoint where it was. from that, we walked out into what was the taxi rank, whether you would have hailed a taxi to be on your way, and it looked like a disaster movie. there was just devastation, blood still on the floor. obviously by that point the ambulances had taken away the wounded and it was just soldiers and police. again, hustling us all off, pushing us out into the multi-story car park and out into the night, really. >> i also understand there were family members holding up signs with their loved onces' names o them trying to find them.

>> there were one or two holding up a paper and people looking back into the crowd, i guess that had been split up from friends or loved ones. again, the police were doing their best to get everyone through. you can understand why they wouldn't want people lingering. very frustrated passengers looking back into the airport, clearly having missed someone or having been split up from loved ones. it was all a mad crush. we were stuck in there for about half an hour. people crying and running around and the police would come and go and everyone asking everyone else what's happening, what's happening. yeah. >> i appreciate you talking to us. i'm so sorry for what you went through. i'm glad you're doing okay and can get some rest now. appreciate it. joining us now is "time" magazine middle east bureau, jared, tell us a little about what you have been seeing over the last several hours.

>> i arrived about an hour after the attack took place, as far as i can tell. as your previous guest has described, it was an extremely chaotic scene here with ambulances screeching in and out, the police established a cordon at the entrance to the terminal and blocked off all the streets leading to the airport, and finally of course, hundreds of passengers stunned, stumbling out of the terminal and describing this kind of unimaginable scene inside where there were at least two explosions and gunfire, and yeah, just a really large number of really stunned traumatized people, people separated from their families, obviously travel plans extremely disrupted and a lot of people kind of bewildered, not sure what they were going to do next. >> this is an airport, you i'm

sure have used it many times, where there is a high level of security, no? >> that's right. this is an extremely hard airport to get into in the first place. they take security here very seriously. there's a stringent security check at the entrance to the terminal and from what the witnesses here have been telling me and telling other news organizations is that this was an attack that took place inside the terminal, at least beyond that first security cordon, if not further, and so obviously, a very extremely grave breach of security here. >> jared, i appreciate you joining us. before going any further, i do want to get an update just on everything we have been learning on both sides of the atlantic. for that, cnn's senior international correspondent clarissa ward joins us. what's the latest on what you have learned so far? >> reporter: okay.

we have quite a lot of new information coming in, anderson, some of which you have already touched on earlier in the show. firstly, u.s. officials, intelligence officials, are telling cnn that based on what they have seen from a preliminary point of view, this attack does bear all the hallmarks of an isis directed or isis inspired attack. now, that also gels with what we heard from the turkish prime minister, who said they are also looking at isis as their number one suspect. the turkish prime minister also gave some more details about how the attack went down. here is what we know. there were three attackers, all of them believed to be wearing explosive vests and all of them believed to be heavily armed with ak-47s. they apparently arrived according to the turkish prime minister together in a taxi and they began -- they left the taxi obviously. we know that two of them went to the arrivals hall, the international arrivals hall. we mentioned this before but it bears mentioning again, there's

heavy security at the entrance to the international departures hall. there's a full screening process, you have an x-ray machine and you have to go through a metal detector but in the arrivals hall, of course, you don't have that same level of security. so two of the attackers we believe went into the arrivals hall, they appeared to fire their weapons before exploding their devices. you saw that harrowing video where one of the attackers appears to be lying on the ground injured, he appears to be engaged by a turkish security personnel officer who appears to fire at him, then run for his life as he senses perhaps that the attacker is about to push the button on his explosive vest. now, isis has not at this stage yet actually claimed responsibility for this attack, but if you look back at isis attacks in turkey, unlike other attacks they have done in the west, they don't typically claim

responsibility for them. there have been three, including -- well, there have been three including this attack, there have been three isis attacks if indeed this is confirmed to be an isis attack, in turkey since the beginning of the year. they are really stepping up the pressure, particularly now, it's the last ten days of ramadan. we have seen a call from the spokesman for isis urging followers, urging supporters, urging those inspired by isis to carry out these types of attacks, but this one, anderson, looks like it was coordinated, it looked like it took some planning and it looked like the attackers knew where they were going and what they were doing. >> thanks for that update. back with our panel. security and counter terrorism experts joining the conversation. former cia official phil mudd. phil, if you were at cia or fbi, both where you worked at this point, seeing the videos you have seen, getting the information we have publicly, what jumps out at you? >> first thing you have to do is follow the facts. i think this is an isis

operation. geographic proximity to syria, a target that is the turks who have engaged against isis in syria, therefore isis is saying we got to go after them. the technique we saw in brussels, that is, you are not going against an aircraft, a hard target, as al qaeda would have. i don't agree that this is a hard target. this is a soft place where you can bring in a backpack, suicide vest, weapon, and walk in and kill people. fairly easy to attack. the second piece is you got to wait for judgment. i want to know who they are, who sent them and who directed them from syria before i have a final conclusion on whether this is isis. i think so. 24 or 48 hours, we should know so. >> but based on your experience, how likely is it there are more people involved in a larger -- i mean, to get three people into an airport with vests, with weapons, is it just three people or is it larger than that? >> it's not likely. it's a certainty. you have got to think of at least three levels. the first is the people who conducted the operation.

the operators. the second is the people who facilitated, where are the documents, who got them through the borders, who paid for it, who built the weapon. the third is most significant. not only from the turkish perspective but from the american intelligence getting perspective, how did we collect intelligence to stop this. who was in syria that had the idealogical inspiration to say we want to attack in brussels, in paris and now in turkey. those people have to go. >> michael, you kind of ran down very succinctly in our last hour a number of sort of why now. what is the answer to that, why now? >> well, isis always has a motive to attack foreign country, particularly one that's part of the coalition, especially one that's a nato ally. but given recent events, they lost fallujah in iraq. they are about to lose an important city in northern aleppo. they scattered their forces, including the head of the foreign intelligence branch of isis. this guy along with his family is rumored to have fled to turkey where he's been

apprehended by the turkish security services. if that's the case, imagine if a hostile nation kidnapped john brennan, for instance. that's how they would view this. they had any plans under way to commit a terrorist atrocity on turkish soil, they will have sped it up as a result of that. also, there are other geopolitical optics here. turkish/israeli rapprochement which was just announced. in 2015, i counted about half a dozen isis attacks. they don't claim credit for it but the turks have come out and said this is who did it. most of those attacks were arranged against kurdish targets in turkey, particularly pkk. we have been talking about might this be pkk. why is isis doing that? these guys think geopolitically. they are trying to draw a wedge between turkey and the other coalition allies knowing quite well the turks don't really want to be at war with isis. they would rather be at war with the pkk and bashar al assad. by going after the kurds they expect the kurds to rise up against the erdogan government in turkey and create a political

instability inside turkish society. that's exactly what happened if you look at the last several elections in turkey. this is a change of tactics for them, if it is indeed isis. they are going after an international target. they will have wanted to kill americans, french, britons, turks, you name it. just like in brussels. we are seeing the same methodology. arrive by taxi, coordinate a team of in this case three suicide bombers and as phil and others pointed out, it will be a bomb maker, a whole network of facilitators and fixers inside turkey who helped with this attack. >> i know you have been working your sources talking to people here at dhs, elsewhere. what are you thinking of right now? >> so i mean, obviously the first thing you think about is the homeland as one should. we are entering july fourth weekend. there is no evidence to suggest that this push by isis in terms of isis, potentially isis directed attacks could reach the homeland but what you are going to see is a surge of security forces, some of it may be just cosmetic. i have no doubt you will see

every major mayor in the days to come, come forward and say people are safe and secure. at the airports, the challenge now for the u.s. is we have this program called the last point of destination. these are the airports that service the u.s. directly. istanbul is clearly one of them. we have a whole security apparatus that looks at the planes, the cargo, the people, the security apparatus, but there's no security apparatus that is going to make an area like phil was describing, where people are flowing and going to and fro, perfectly hard. you can't make it hard, because you need people to access the flights. that's going to be the challenge for this program, the last point of destination, how much tougher can u.s. sort of protocols be in foreign airports given the vulnerabilities we have seen in the last couple months. >> how essential is a solution to the war in syria? in the final analysis, does this

all boil down to syria? >> it really does. we are separating out attacks in places like western europe and turkey from what's happening in the difficult area of syria. simple point. this is the tail of the snake in turkey. a few operators inspired by syria go conduct an attack. until you deal with the question of how do you control space in syria, do you support the dictator assad in reinforcing security for syria, somebody who has used chemical weapons against his own people, or do you allow a civil war to continue by supporting the opposition, which will maintain instability and allow isis to operate. it's an impossible question for the white house. the two candidates, i think, are sidestepping the question but you got two bad options. allow instability to continue or allow security to return in which case you allow assad to maintain power. you don't have a good option. >> yet in iraq, there had been fallujah is back in the hands of

the iraqi government such as it is. mosul is i guess the next target. >> it is. according to brett mcgurke there's going to be a concerted effort to retake raqqah and mosul at the same time. there are contradictions inherent in this war. isis is very well aware of them and trying to prey upon them. one of them being in iraq, the people who are doing the heavy lifting by and large are shia militia groups, many of them backed by iran. these guys committed atrocities against sunnis. there is talk in the pentagon, the daily beast today reported there's fear that because isis kind of melted away so quickly from fallujah, they are planning to come back. why would they leave? they want to see scorched earth campaign. they want to see ethnic cleansing and pogroms against sunnis because that will be the catalyst to drive people back into the fold. they are losing recruits absolutely internationally but on the ground in their region, syria and iraq, there are still lots of arabs who join up not out of idealogical loyalty but out of, this sounds bizarre, a

sense of pragmatism. we prefer these guys to the guys who would liberate us from them, including bashar al assad. >> a lot more to talk about. we have to take a quick break. more eyewitnesses continue to come forward. we will hear from another one next. i love my shop, but my back pain was making it hard to sleep and open up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve. now i'm back. aleve pm for a better am. introduces new, easy-to-swallow tablets. so now, there are more ways, for more people... to experience... complete protection from frequent heartburn. nexium 24hr. the easy-to-swallow tablet is here. is happening now at red lobster. summerfest and if you love lobster and shrimp, ...check out all these new entrees. like new coastal lobster and shrimp... ...with summer ale barbeque sauce, ...and new lobster and shrimp overboard.

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one of the most security-conscious airports in the world yet somehow three suicide bombers found a weak point. tonight at least 36 people have died, many more are wounded. american officials telling us this bears the hallmarks of isis. the turkish government suspects the same. no claim of responsibility. clearly a lot more to learn about who the bombers were and who almost certainly helped them. one thing abundantly clear, it was a terrible, terrible scene. joining us by phone is thomas kemper, who lives here in the u.s., was at the airport and thomas, what did you see, what did you hear? >> yeah. i was in the lounge of the turkish airlines lounge, was just trying to take a nap while changing flights, then i heard this incredible blast and shooting and it seemed to be very near.

at first we were thinking it's terror but you don't think it's real. but then people started running and running and running. so i grabbed my stuff and started running as well. but then people came from the other direction, no, they are over there. so we fell over each other. it was total chaos. what we did is basically went back into the lounge and i was hiding for, i don't know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes in the back room of one of the kitchens there trying to hide. we were thinking maybe the terrorists would come because we had no information, of course. >> when you left, did you leave through the arrivals area? what did you actually see? >> yeah, yeah, we -- it took a long time. we all had to go through the arrival hall. they tried to cover it, but the blood there and everything destroyed in that area, and you had to walk because it seemed to

be the only way out because we were in the international transit area. >> you wrote on your facebook page terror coming so close, i give thanks for my life, my family and cause us to fight hate and terror everywhere. >> yes, anderson, i sat next to a young woman and she was crying, so i just talked to her. i didn't know whether she spoke english. she spoke broken english and she said i'm here from turkey, i can't go home. i said why can't you go home. i was staying with a friend and then the bombs came and i started running, have i no passport, they don't let me out. then i was next to a somali family and they were on their way to mogadishu. he said this is everywhere now. these are our friends, these are our allies. they are muslims but together we

have to stand up because we together have to stand up against terror. if we don't reach out to them, i lead a mission, christian mission, but if we are not together in this world, we will never overcome this terror. i think that was so clear. most people affected here are muslims and they suffer and they flee and they are refugees and we have to open our arms and build a different world together with them. >> thomas kemper with the united methodist church, thank you for talking to us tonight. in a statement condemning the attack the white house says istanbul's airport is a symbol of international connections and the ties that bind us together and says the united states remains steadfast in its support for turkey. joining us now is cnn world affairs analyst, fareed zakaria, also cnn senior political commentator and former obama senior advisor david axelrod. president obama has obviously been briefed on this, made a statement about this. what is happening in the white house at a time like this? when there's an incident like this? >> first of all, ascertaining

what the source of this was. it appears to be isis. they need to run this to ground and how this happened. i think they want to offer the assistance they can to the turkish government in dealing with the aftermath of this, and determine what the holes are here that have to be plugged. this is an ongoing struggle and sadly, i think it's going to continue. so what lessons can be learned here in terms of security. >> fareed, you have obviously looked deeply into this in your documentary, "why they hate us." the efforts to combat isis, a lot of it is dependent and we have seen advances on the ground, we were just talking about with michael weiss in iraq. obviously the civil war continues in syria. yet, it's almost as if these actions abroad by whether it's isis or other groups, is in reaction to battlefield losses. >> that's right. as they get squeezed in their

home bases, they look for ways to maintain attention, maintain funding, maintain recruitment, set the agenda, and one way to do that is these kind of spectacular acts of terror. what they also realize is they are trying to find the place where they can get the maximum impact so if you notice, they have realized that just doing it on a street corner doesn't do much. so the bataclan in paris, a theater, a nightclub, airports. airports, what's most interesting about this, of all the places we have seen, this happened in brussels and here, airports are generally thought to be harder targets. they are not cafes or nightclubs. there is security. but of course, there isn't that much security because you have to allow travelers to come in and out. >> the sheer volume of people versus how much security. >> people don't realize but you have literally millions of people going in and out of airports every day. you can't have highly elaborate screening procedures everywhere.

so they seem to be searching for places like that. where you can get a big impact but where it is still not a hard target. that's what makes one think it's probably something like isis or it may be one of the other jihadi groups in syria. there are many. isis usually claims responsibility. this is an unusual case where in turkey, there have been a number of these kind of attacks and neither isis nor anyone has in many cases taken responsibility. >> did the u.s. consulate, they said they have accounted for american personnel working for the consulate. no one was involved. but obviously, the u.s. is still investigating whether any americans might have been hurt in the attack. that's also i guess got to be a high priority for the obama administration. >> absolutely. absolutely that has to be a high priority. and you know, i think that one of the questions about all of this is how do americans react to this. does this seem like a remote event or is this equated with

what we saw elsewhere, including orlando. does this become part of the larger sense that there is a growing threat out there. >> i mean, fareed, do you think the threat is growing, or because it is on the one hand, if they are suffering battlefield losses, part of isis early on was the belief that they needed territory, they wanted to create this caliphate. if they are now shrinking on the ground, that's obviously a good thing, that's a good development, but is their reach growing? >> i think there's no question the world is becoming more complicated. i don't know that i would say it's becoming more dangerous because these are still small numbers. if you compare it to the number of, you know, all kinds of statistics you could look at, but it's clear that they have recognized that because they are not going to rule syria, they are not going to rule iraq, they are not going to rule afghanistan, but this, they can do, and they have begun to do more and more expertly and there are more of these lone wolf or

small group attacks, so how you deal with this is -- i don't think any of us have quite figured out what the right response is. what exactly do you do to stop the next orlando, to stop the next istanbul airport, which is a very modern, very well-run airport. that's the core of the problem we face. how do you partner with local communities. how do you get good intelligence. >> it's also an interesting dilemma from a news standpoint, is that we are aware of so much and we see the violence in ways that previous generations didn't. so even if the total number of people dying violent deaths is reduced, there's an immediateness to it that we never saw before. >> and the nature of the kind of violence. if you watch people dying in vietnam, you didn't think you were going to be killed because you are not volunteering. but in an airport, anyone can imagine being in that airport. i have been in and out of that airport dozens of times.

so you don't have to have done that. istanbul airport is a very modern airport. it looks like any great airport in the world. that makes people feel like that could be me. so the statistics are the kind of intellectual way to look at it but there is a real emotional, visceral tug. how to respond to that, president obama has himself talked about how he sometimes doesn't recognize the optics of these situations, he looks at these things very -- >> we dealt with that when i was in the white house. there was the complaint he wasn't as passionate and as angry as he should be in the face of these things. but he does tend to look at these things analytically and as problems to be addressed. i think one of the dangers here is that even though there may not be a net increase in these kind of activities or in the threat, it is fodder for

demagogery in politics and we will undoubtedly see that in the coming weeks and months. >> i wonder, one of the things we have noticed after orlando is that people are coming to recognize we are in difficult, complicated times. brexit, this kind of attack, and trump at least has not helped himself with a series of off-the-cuff, seemingly intemporate comments. it's an interesting balance. sometimes it helps to seem as though you're tough and are going to be tougher than anybody else, but you can also make people anxious if you seem -- >> that is clearly happening. you saw had a "the washington post" poll hillary clinton had a 12 point edge when it came to dealing with terrorism. it had to do with experience but also temperament. the question is is there a tipping point where people become frightened to the point

where they choose the strong man who says i can deal with it even if he can't articulate how he would deal with it as opposed to a rational response. that's something that will be tested in the next few months. >> thanks very much. we will have more in just a moment including the political reaction. donald trump, hillary clinton responding from thaer paths on the campaign trail, next. ♪ the sun'll come out tomorrow... ♪ for people with heart failure, tomorrow is not a given. but entresto is a medicine that helps make more tomorrows possible. ♪ tomorrow, tomorrow... ♪ i love ya, tomorrow in the largest heart failure study ever. entresto helped more people stay alive and out of the hospital than a leading heart failure medicine. women who are pregnant must not take entresto. it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don't take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren. if you've had angioedema while taking an ace or arb medicine,

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we just got new video from inside istanbul's ataturk airport immediately after the attack. take a look. we are seeing it for the first time here.

>> gives you a sense of kind of the chaos, people not sure exactly what is going on. some who lived through this have been coming forward. we have been getting eyewitness accounts throughout the evening, each with a different view of the istanbul airport suicide bombings, also bearing witness, many security cameras including at least two that captured the detonations. before showing some of it, we should warn you, it is graphic. authorities will no doubt be screening this and many other clips in the hours daines and d come. this shows one of the killers racing through the terminal before a gunshot takes him down. we don't know the source of the video. judging from the quality it appears to be from a security camera overhead. the man you see on the ground is shot by a security officer who then flees, then more shots apparently seem to hit the gunman. one shot in particular at the very least just seconds before the device itself is detonated. that's the detonation. again, this is just one of three

bombers according to authorities, almost certainly with additional help, according to our security expert. we are just getting new information about the locations of the explosions themselves. that's been one of the big questions. of the three attackers, two of them were at the international terminal. the third bomber was in the nearby parking lot. turkish official tells cnn all three of them did detonate suicide vests. more eyewitnesses coming forward. this one spoke to our israeli affiliate channel 10. >> were you inside the terminal? >> yes, i was inside the terminal. >> can you tell us what happened? >> we heard a blast. it was a big blast. a few minutes later, another one followed. a few minutes later, a slight blast, i think it was further away and then we heard -- we saw a lot of people running around. they were all covered in blood. that's the only thing i can say about this. >> the blast, the bomb, were at the entrance of the terminal or inside the check-in area?

>> it was just before the security. it was before the security. it was outside. as you see there. just behind that bridge. that's where it happened. >> where were you at during the bomb? >> i was in the lounge which has a clear view of the entrance of the international arrival terminal. that's what i saw. just right after the blast. . >> did it look like suicide bombers or they tried to shoot people after the bomb? >> in fact, i didn't see anybody shooting around. when i listened to the news, they claim that there was a suicide bomber who tried to get inside and when the policeman noticed that he was a suicide bomber, he started shooting around with a rifle, the people. they said it was a kalashnikov and he detonated the bomb. >> donald trump tweeting yet

another terrorist attack this one in turkey. will the world ever realize what's going on. so sad. he spoke as well tonight at a campaign spot in eastern ohio. jason carroll was there. what has trump said while in ohio? >> reporter: well, he opened up his rally here tonight speaking about the attacks in istanbul. what must have been in his mind is all the criticism he received after the orlando attack. many people saying that his response after orlando was not presidential, that he didn't hit the mark. tonight, he said somewhat of a different tone. he released a statement a little earlier today basically saying that his heart goes out to the families, the victims there in istanbul. today he told the crowd here tonight the united states has to be smarter, has to be tougher. one of the things that he has advocated in the past, he advocated again here tonight, is this call to bring back the use of the interrogation technique of waterboarding. >> you look at what happens, you remember when i got in some

trouble where i talked about waterboarding. they asked me a question. they started off, they asked ted cruz a question. he rightfully didn't want to get into it. he was a little bit like don't ask me about waterboarding. well, they asked me the question. i said i'll answer that question. they said what do you think about waterboarding. i said i like it a lot, i don't think it's tough enough. you know, you have to fight fire with fire. >> reporter: i should tell you that right after he made that statement, you have to fight fire with fire, it was met with a huge applause here. i heard one woman out here tonight who really sort of summed up what a lot of people in the room were sort of thinking when he said that, which is we have heard about one terrorist attack after another. i really, she said, i really feel like this is the man who sets the right tone for this country. >> yesterday, we heard from the trump campaign, from sources saying that trump was going to change his stance on banning all muslims temporarily from entering the u.s. until they figure out what the heck is going on.

did he mention that at all today? >> reporter: no mention of that here tonight. and you have to wonder, since he mentioned about the united states being smarter, being tougher, what essentially does that mean. does it mean banning all muslims like he said back in december when he called for that ban, or does it mean instead a sort of softening of that position and calling for immigrants from terrorist countries to be banned from the united states. no mention of that here tonight. again, he kept it in some ways a bit vague, but got specific when it came to the idea of waterboarding. >> all right. jason carroll, thanks. now hillary clinton also responded to the terror attacks. she's in los angeles tonight. jeff zeleny joins us. what did the secretary say? >> reporter: secretary clinton responded with a statement shortly after the attack, once it became clear what was going on there, and it read in part like this. it said today's attack in

istanbul only strengthens our resolve to defeat the forces of terrorism and radical jihadism around the world and it reminds us that the united states cannot retreat. we must deepen our cooperation with our allies and partners in the middle east and europe to take on this threat. so a pretty short and pro forma statement from secretary clinton. >> she's at a town hall right now. has she commented on the attack? >> reporter: it just wrapped up a few moments ago in los angeles. she did not comment on the attack at all. she was asked some questions about a variety of things, talked about economic anxieties, talked about donald trump, of course, but did not mention this attack which is a little unusual given her vast foreign policy experience and the distinction she's trying to draw with donald trump. >> it was also interesting in that statement she used the term radical jihadists. >> reporter: it was. the word radical, she's definitely trying to take a tougher stance, a tougher tone than this administration. as we know, rightly or wrongly,

this administration has been backed into a bit of a corner and certainly has been strongly criticized by republicans for not using that word. she did use that word but did not use islamism. she said radical jihadism. she does not want to blanket this whole faith. the president has been opposed to doing that as well. she has done that as well, but you can just feel the conflict here that is setting up between hillary clinton and donald trump on this. it is going to become a major issue. now, terrorism is front and center in this campaign after we have one attack after another. it's starting to be deja vu here. >> hillary clinton was also dealing with another big item for her, the house report on the killings of americans in benghazi. dana bash has that. >> reporter: eight hours into the deadly terror attack in benghazi, u.s. military forces were still not deployed to rescue american diplomats under siege. >> not a single wheel of a

single u.s. military asset had even turned toward libya. >> reporter: house republicans say that's a key finding of their two-year probe by their special committee looking into events surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a u.s. compound in libya. but the military's failure to respond fast enough has been public record for years. >> there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond. >> reporter: still, gop chair trey gowdy insists their lengthy probe costing tax payers $7 million, was worth it because they gleaned new granular details from 81 interviews and 75,000 new documents. a more accurate picture, they say, than the seven investigations before it. like confusion between top military officers about whether defense secretary leon panetta ordered a rescue mission to deploy or just prepare to. or a newly revealed two-hour secure video conference with obama officials in washington

while the u.s. compound in benghazi burned. >> the administration was more concerned about diplomatic sensitivities with the libyans and promoting its policy as successful than it was about the americans' safety. >> reporter: the 802 page report also leaves a lengthy narrative about a state department too bureaucratic to keep their personnel safe but draws no conclusions and provides no new information about culpability of then secretary of state hillary clinton. does that suggest that you don't have the goods on placing any blame on the administration? specifically the woman who wants to be the president of the united states? >> dana, shockingly, that was not what the house asked me to do. speaker boehner asked me to find out what happened to four of our fellow citizens. >> reporter: two committee republicans clearly thought their chairman did not go far enough in laying political blame at clinton's feet, and issued their own report doing just that. >> if you choose to put political expediency ahead of

the men and women on the ground, you have to answer to yourself. >> reporter: a lingering question has been why ambassador chris stevens, a seasoned diplomat, took such a risk traveling to benghazi at all. one answer, this report finds, is stevens was determined to make benghazi a permanent u.s. consulate and wanted a quote deliverable for clinton's planned trip to libya the following month. the chairman got emotional as he talked about his own deliverable. answers for loved ones of the four americans killed. >> they are sons and husbands and brothers to the people that we talked to at the very beginning and the last group i talked to which are the family. >> reporter: dana bash, cnn, capitol hill. up next, more on today's terror attack and broader implications. love my shop, but my back pain was making it hard to sleep and open up on time. then i found aleve pm. the only one to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour pain relieving strength of aleve.

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the airport in istanbul, the site of the attack, is known for having such events, which makes

this more disturbing. i understand you were in one of the last planes to actually land at the airport. what did you see when you got in the terminal? >> actually, we arrived with an hour delay. the minute we landed, we turn on our mobile and we got the breaking news and we didn't know anything. we thought we would wait on the plane but then they took us to the terminal, elevators, escalators were not working. so we didn't really know the size of the event and there were people, all the transfer passengers. we can hear some people screaming and some people crying and police officers running back and forth. and br we were, we were face. an hour later they opened the passport gate. probably we were the first group to go out of the terminal.

as we walked, i realized the size of the event. it was really big. there was debris and broken glass everywhere and blood stains on the uniforms of the police officers. we went outside. there were no taxis. i'm a frequent traveler, i always go from that part normally there are hundreds of people waiting for their families and, you know, there was no one, no taxi and we had to walk for an hour to find a car parked by one of our friend, ambulances. >> and what is security normally like in the arrivals area? >> well, security, i was coming from cannes and you were there, the security is right before you enter. but in istanbul, our airports are very secure.

when you enter, you have full control and after the check-in, you have another control. there are cameras, there are officers everywhere. and istanbul airport in my opinion is one of the safest. but, you know, when you have people determined to do tarkt acts, they just find a way. unfortunately this is what happened. and now that i've been watching your program, it is really terrible. it shows the size of the terrible, terrible thing. >> yeah, i appreciate you taking the time to talk to us, fatos. thank you so much. phil, as we're sort of getting near the end of the two hours, if the days to come, what as a former official of the cia/fbi, what do you want to know? what are the key points to like focus on? >> i think the first hour of this conversation has been confused. we're answering the question of can you find defensive measures

in an airport to ensure it doesn't happen? we're not talking about security in an airport. we're not talking about getting past body scanners. we're talking about taxis, can you bring in a backpack, a weapon? i think the question that has to be answered is what happens in syria? can we prevent the continuation of safe haven in the midst of a five-year civil war. that's the question we don't have an answer to. >> nobody has an answer. >> nobody has an answer. they can't figure out do we allow assad to continue or -- that's why the president has gray hair. that's why candidates do not

want to answer that question. >> you're seeing it in paris and brussels. istanbul is a european city for all intents and purposes. i remember a syrian rebel in 2012 saying, look, you can give as you no-fly zone today and you'll have drones in the air tomorrow. >> on the flip side, on one hand it sounds appealing to say let assad just continue to rule and finish up with the war. what that actually means, though, is there's a lot of people who are going to get killed by assad and imprisoned by assad and tortured by assad, just as there have been for generations. >> we have a simple reality check after the arab string of 2011. stability means you have civility. lack of security, i hate to say this, democracy means instability. religious divides worsen, ethnic

divides worsen. if you want to enforce our idea, a western idea of democracy, that almost guarantees stability. so i would say you want security, you can eliminate isis but you get dictators. you want democracy, you get instability. that for some time may mean isis. >> we tend to focus too much sometimes on isis. they're not the bad guys out there. al qaeda, they stand to gain enormously if isis gets defeated. and isis 2.0, we haven't seen what at that looks like. sunni arabs still feel this enormous sense of dejection and dillusionment. >> and we scene escalated attacks inside turkey. >> and we're going to continue

to see them. essentially president bashar al assad is the oxygen that allows isis to breathe. as long as assad is in power and dropping barrel bombs on people in punity, you will have the likes of al qaeda and isis and al nusra. turkey understands this the most. the problem they have is isis has grown more and more powerful. there are more and more turkish citizens within isis's ranks that have become radicalized. you can't be right every single time. >> juliet, i think i've been in three european airports in the last month and none of them in the departures area, you know, when you first enter, none of them had car checks before the airport, none of them had x-ray scanners as this airport did,

even before to bring your bags in to the check-in area. there were hundreds of people milling around. these are easy targets. >> exactly. i mean, just the flow of people in a global environment like ours cannot sustain itself if the security apparatus is too strong. we tend to talk about layered security. you think about an airport. the cockpit is probably the most secured area, at least we hope it is. the further you get away from the airplane and the security checks and to the sidewalk, let alone the parking structure where there seems to be some reporting something was happening there, you're eventually going to have a soft target. so we try to layer it at various points but we're always going to have that soft moment so to speak at a place like an airport with millions of people passing by annually.

>> juliette kayyem, thank you so much. " "cnn breaking news continues with don lemon. this is cnn breaking news. >> this is what we have. at least 38 are dead, 147 are dead. three suicide bombers are dead. they arrive in a taxi, open fire and then blow themselves up. some desperately try to flee the carnage. and on the campaign trail, hillary clinton and donald trump go head to head on terror. >> folks, there's something going on