CNN "The Situation Room" Transcript: San Bernardino Shooting

Interview

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BLITZER: Victor Blackwell, on the scene for us, thanks very much.

Joining us now a Democrat at the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Andre Carson of Indiana. He's also a former police officer.

Congressman, what did you make of that, the FBI local law enforcement actually allowed the media? They didn't do anything to prevent the media from going into that townhouse with all that stuff inside. How unusual was that?

REP. ANDRE CARSON (D), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Well, first of all, let me say that my heart and prayers go out to the victims and their families. I think that the FBI being the lead investigative agency on this has done a fantastic job and local law enforcement and we command the hard-working law enforcement officers for the thankless job that they are doing. Having said that, it is a bit unusual and curious but I think what's even most important is that is the time for us to very seriously think about strengthening our gun laws in this country and addressing the radicalization and extremism that is taking place in pockets of our society.

I think a great point was made earlier, Wolf, in that we've seen mass shootings almost it seems like weekly now for the past at least couple of weeks and we have to make sure that we are not demonizing one group, in this instance, particularly Muslims, but we know that there are scores of Muslims who are in our law enforcement agencies and intelligence communities, who are helping us solve crimes and prevent terrorist acts from happening.

But going forward, we just always want to make sure that we aren't exposing innocent people to discrimination and suspicion unnecessarily by showing family photos and those kinds of things but at the root of it, this lone wolf attack was simply unacceptable.

BLITZER: Certainly was unacceptable. 14 people were murdered and 21 people were injured. We just heard the lawyers for Farook's family, he's the husband, the male shooter, suggest that people were getting way ahead of themselves because these two individuals, the husband and wife, both Muslim. What do you make of that? And I ask you that question specifically in part because you're one of two Muslims in the U.S. Congress.

CARSON: Well, I think it's always challenging when you have these acts committed and these -- you know, the perpetrators of these crimes happen to be or at least claim to be Muslim and you have a whole group of people, or billions of people who are then tagged as being terrorists or having a faith that encourages terrorist activities. And for us, we want to make the distinction and Muslims have been very vocal condemning these actions. It is not representative of the religion of Islam.

And I think more has to be discussed about the current violent extremism, efforts that have been initiated by the administration and we have to bring in local law enforcement, we have to bring in federal agencies, we have to bring in the faith community, pastors, rabbis, imams and so on and so forth. We have to bring in mental health professionals. We have to bring in educators and have a holistic approach not only to report suspicious activity but to prevent these kinds of acts from happening and develop groups such as MPAC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, that that are working on counter narrative strategies to push back on a lot of the online extremist rhetoric that we're seeing taking place right now.

[17:55:08] BLITZER: Have you seen evidence, Congressman -- and you're a member of the Intelligence Committee -- that the woman in this case, Tashfeen Malik, actually posted some sort of statement of allegiance as the event, the murders were going on, on Facebook, a statement of allegiance to the ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?

CARSON: Well, I think Director Comey made a very powerful statement in saying that it doesn't seem as if a directive wasn't given from Daesh or ISIL to these folks. A growing problem that we're seeing, Wolf, is we're seeing people becoming more and more self-radicalized by looking at content online and folks who are already disillusioned, or even troubled for that matter mentally. Their thoughts and views have become concretized and solidified by what they're seeing online, and our hope is that our law enforcement community, the National Counterterrorism Training Center, Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, state and local law enforcement, as well as our fusion centers can work with mosques, churches, synagogues, so on and so forth, in having a village approach and ultimately eliminating the extremist threat that is internal to our country.

BLITZER: Congressman Andre Carson joining us from Indiana. He's a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Congressman, as usual, thanks very much.

CARSON: An honor. Thank you.

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