CNN "The Situation Room" Transcript: San Bernardino Shooting

Interview

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BLITZER: And the lawyers made the point, made it clear forcefully, as you just explained as well, the family members were totally shocked, had no idea these two individuals could commit such a heinous, heinous crime.

All right, thanks very much, Jim Sciutto, for that.

Let's talk all of this and more with Republican Senator James Risch of Idaho. He's a member of the Intelligence Committee, as well as the Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, thanks for joining us.

Tashfeen Malik, the wife, declared allegiance to ISIS during the attack, according to this post on Facebook, given another name, but authorities believe it was she who did that. Do you know how she and her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, were perhaps inspired, if not formally directed by ISIS?

SEN. JAMES RISCH (R), IDAHO: Well, you know, Wolf, there is some really interesting aspects of this.

I think, first of all, this last piece you did about talking about workplace violence and all that, we need to set this aside. Look, America has been visited by ISIS, either directed or inspired. Now, I know there is people saying, well, there is no evidence of this being directed.

I don't doubt that there is no evidence, hard evidence at this moment, but you and I both know that, over recent months, all terrorist communications have moved to the dark Web. And that is not penetratable by the intelligence community at this point.

And as a result of that, it's hard to believe that with all this having gone on, these people weren't communicating with somebody. And in addition to that, the suspicion that adds to it, of course, is the missing hard drive. We need to set all that stuff aside, call this what it is. It's a terrorist attack and it was done by two people who have been radicalized.

Interestingly enough, a number of us when we saw this unfold were immediately hit by the possibility that the female in this had an oversized role in it. And the more this rolled out, the more it became apparent that she had a major role, if not the major role in this.

It's frightening, because it doesn't take a large leap of the imagination to think that it's possible that ISIS has found a backdoor in using the type of visa that she used. You had a man here who by all accounts had spent almost three decades here without getting into any kind of trouble, without being radicalized, without visiting sites that are radical sites.

And then all of a sudden, he hooks up with this woman that more and more and more is looking like a black widow. And then she comes here a year ago and a year and four months later, they got a house full of bombs and ammunition and rifles that are used for this sort of thing, and they go out and do this.

I mean, it's just -- there is some aspects to this that are very troubling and they are going to be studied closely in the coming days and weeks.

BLITZER: So, Senator, are you suggesting that perhaps she was sent here? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but is there any indication she was actually sent to the United States to do what she did?

RISCH: Wolf, there is no evidence to that effect, direct evidence, but the circumstances are very, very suspicious, where she gets hooked up through either the Internet or the travel that this gentleman took and then comes over here as his fiancee, and slightly over a year later, all of this stuff unfolds. It doesn't take much of an imagination to think that if you had

people that wanted to do this, that they could train her in bomb- making, they could train her in a Paris type of an attack, they could get her hooked up with a type-B personality individual who was easily led, put her in a position to do this and away they went.

BLITZER: Senator, we're getting some new information from the government of Saudi Arabia right now about her two visits from Pakistan before she came here to the United States.

I'm going to share that information with you and our viewers when we come back. Stand by for a moment.

The killers' home, also, the news media given an extraordinary look inside. We have more on all the breaking news coming into THE SITUATION ROOM.

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

Senator Risch is still with us of the Intelligence Committee.

And I want to pursue some of your thinking, Senator, about this woman, the wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27 years old, originally from Pakistan. The government of Saudi Arabia has just told us she visited Saudi Arabia from Pakistan twice. In 2013, she was there in early October for 20 days, went on the hajj, the pilgrimage.

And then the following year, she was there for a few days in June of 2013. And she left to go back to -- she left to go back to Pakistan, presumably awaiting to get married with her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook.

Walk us through once again your thinking on her role, if in fact this was an act of terror inspired by ISIS.

RISCH: Well, Wolf, like I said, it doesn't take a lot of imagination.

If you're on the other side of this and you want a way into the United States -- and you and I have talked about this over the months. In February, I said that they had moved from the aspirational stage to the operational stage. And if you're on the other side of this thinking, how are you going to do this, how can you reach out and touch the United States, we have seen efforts.

There has been over 50 people already arrested this year for, many of them, making plans, taking steps towards hurting us. If you're on the other side of this and looking how am I going to do this, really, a very easy way to do it is to find a woman who has a deep commitment to this and is willing to make the full sacrifice, and put her in a position where you train her for bomb-making, train her for a Paris-style attack, and then get her on the Internet or at a place where people congregate for religious tourism in Saudi Arabia and hook them up with a person that is -- that they could influence.

This does not stretch the imagination at all, and it's relatively easy to get a fiancee visa to get into the country. That's exactly what happened here. It just strikes me that this thing is -- the way this happened, it just came together so neatly once they came to America back in July of 2014.

It just came together so easily. There had to have been some prior thought on this. This business of it being a workplace violence is just nonsense. You don't leave the workplace after an argument with somebody and go home and say, honey, put on your assault clothes and grab a few bombs and some assault rifles. We're going to go down and kill -- that just doesn't happen.

This was thought out. This was planned. And, obviously, they had somebody else who was advising them, inspiring them at the very least, if not directing them on the dark Web as to when and how to do this.

BLITZER: That -- if that is in fact true, it may explain why the FBI says that cell phones were destroyed at the scene of that townhouse.

Also, hard drives were destroyed inside as well. They have retrieved those cell phones, that hard drive from the computer. They are going through it to see if they can get some information out of that.

Do you have any information to believe they will get the information out of those hard drives and cell phones?

RISCH: I don't know that at this point. They don't know that at this point.

But, if they do get it, the difficulty, of course, as we have talked about before, is the dark Web exists for exactly these kinds of communications. So, whether you have it or whether you don't, it may not make any difference if they used the dark Web, which all of those people involved in those kinds of enterprises are using today.

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

RISCH: You bet.

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