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State of the Union

France Holding Special Mass For Terror Victims; Special Service at Notre Dame; New Leads Into Terrorists. Aired 12-1p ET

Aired November 15, 2015 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:00:08]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Anderson.

Hello I'm Jake Tapper in Washington, D.C. where the state of our union is on edge.

The breaking news this hour.

A French counter terrorism source telling CNN that terrorists who were directly involved in the Paris terrorist attack may still be on the loose. The 129 people were killed and 352 were injured in Friday's coordinated attacks. Rapidly unfolding developments on this investigation this morning as police all over the world are hunting any accomplices who may still be at large.

Seven people have now been arrested in Belgium in a raid, although none have yet been charged. (INAUDIBLE) several AK-47 rifles were found in this abandoned car in a Paris suburb. French authorities also telling CNN that the first suicide bomber to blow himself up at a French soccer stadium was smuggled in -- smuggled himself in rather embedded with Syrian refugees.

My colleague Christiane Amanpour and Anderson Cooper are live in Paris.

Christiane, you broke this story this morning. What more do we know about how this terrorist snuck into the country?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is very clear from the French authorities and I've seen diagrams and all sorts of itineraries, that the person who blew himself up at the Stade de France, the first person, did have a Syrian passport. They don't know whether it was a stolen passport or his actual passport. That's what he showed when he came to Greece.

In Greece, he was given additional documents that legalized his status as a refugee because he claimed to be a refugee. So he was given those documents. Then his itinerary shows that he went to Macedonia, to Serbia, to Croatia and to Italy -- that's a new step that we've learned, and then somehow came here. We don't quite know how but obviously there has been a lot of talk about the whole Belgian connection. So you know, that's on the border. You know, maybe he came in from Belgium (INAUDIBLE). They're doing a lot of investigation on that regard. And again, to reiterate, the cadaver, as the French call it, the cadaver that was -- that was cleared up after blowing himself up, the finger of that cadaver matched the paperwork that the French say is attributed to him. So, that's how they know that this was this person. And they say -- additionally they strongly believe, they say there's no doubt that he was part of an organized ring of infiltrators into the refugee migrant -- people coming over to Greece by boat and because his fingerprints were not in any known French data base. So he was somebody new to the French authorities. Totally different from the French national who was one of the killers at the Bataclan concert hall not so far from (INAUDIBLE).

He was known and he was a French national. This other person was not known. Furthermore the other two suicide bombers at the Stade de France Stadium were apparently, we're told, carrying false Turkish passports. So, they believe this is a very long planned, very sophisticated infiltration designed to basically match this threat that ISIS made not long ago that we will infiltrate the refuges. We will send out fighters to your cities with these masses who are fleeing Syria.

TAPPER: Indeed ISIS warned they would attempt such a thing. The Pope who has called for Europe to take in all of these hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees also warned that there might be infiltration.

Anderson, in just minutes, the church bells will ring at Notre Dame Cathedral as the city begins the process of trying to memorialize its dead. Rallies in the street have been banned in the wake of the attacks. So, this will really be the first major public gathering we've seen.

What's the mood among the people of Paris? What are you picking up?