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Don Lemon Tonight

Malaysia Flight Investigation Continues; Crisis in Israel; A Pivotal Moment for Putin?; Media War Over MH-17

Aired July 21, 2014 - 22:00   ET

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


ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Alisyn Camerota. Great to be with you.

LEMON: It's good to be with you as well.

And we are all over two big breaking news stories tonight, first, major developments in the investigation of Flight 17. A train carrying the bodies of some of the victims has left. And, yes, Dutch forensic scientists and a handful of Ukrainian aviation experts finally have access to that crash site. And pro-Russian rebels have handed over the plane's black boxes to Malaysia.

Meantime, the U.N. Security Council adopts a resolution condemning the downing of the plane and demanding full access to the site, the resolution approved unanimously by the council, which includes Russia. But it doesn't address who is to blame for the crash.

CAMEROTA: And our other big story, President Obama pushes for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza as the death toll rises on both sides. Some 550 Palestinians have been killed. The U.N. estimates 70 percent of those are civilians; 25 Israeli soldiers have died, including three believed to have been killed by friendly-fire.

Two Israeli civilians have been killed. And we have a pulse on public opinion to share with you. The latest CNN polls show, not surprisingly, that we support Israel, but not Russia; 57 percent of Americans say Israel's actions against Hamas are justified, while in the wake of the Flight 17 tragedy, just 19 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Russia.

So let's begin tonight in Ukraine.

Nick Paton Walsh is in Kharkiv, Ukraine, for us. He is awaiting the arrival of the train with victims' remains on it.

Nick, tell us what the scene is there.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We have been down to the railway station where we're told this convoy of trains will eventually arrive. We understand that just in the last few hours, about 3:10 local time,

it pulled out of Donetsk, the separatist stronghold here, bound for (INAUDIBLE) before then turning direction and heading towards where we are in Kharkiv, a different route than originally planned, perhaps some concerns on the safety of traveling more directly.

But we don't know precisely when it will arrive here. I think a good seven or eight hours' drive there along those railway tracks, if in fact tracks were all possible. When it finally arrives here at the railway station, it will be met by a number of Dutch experts we have seen coming into the airport here.

A couple of soldiers accompanying some of the C-130 air flights coming in here say that in fact they have been bringing in coffins and they're being used to try and move some of these bodies back, potentially directly back to the Netherlands. Whether or not the identification of the bodies occurs here first before they're flown out is still unclear, but a growing sense here of people gathering in Kharkiv to try and assist in repatriation of many of these bodies backs towards the Netherlands.

CAMEROTA: And, Nick, are there family members there awaiting the arrival of the train?

WALSH: Very few that we have seen so far. Mostly it is Australian, Dutch officials growing, as I say, in number to try and provide as much aid as possible.

A lot of logistics confusing for many people here. It isn't clear when it will arrive, this train convoy. It isn't clear quite how they manage to get those bodies from the train to the airfield, where many believe they will be eventually flown out, but a large task ahead here certainly I think making it -- becoming more difficult day by day the further away we get from the first hours after that crash, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Nick, also, earlier today, the Ukrainian rebel leader ceremoniously handed over the flight's black boxes to Malaysian authorities. Now what happens?

WALSH: The Malaysians will now obviously have to take them out of separatist-held areas.

I would presume the direct route would be back here towards Kharkiv and then of course what do the Malaysians do with it? I understand they don't have necessarily the technology on their side to go through the black box and determine what secrets it holds. That may be perhaps given to another one of the interested parties in this -- other governments who have citizens on board that aircraft, potentially the Australians, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Nick Paton Walsh, thanks so much for the update and keep us posted as to when that train arrives. Thank you.

LEMON: Let's talk now more about those black boxes. The handover of the black boxes, a big development today, very significant, but U.S. intelligence says one thing they won't tell us is who shot down Flight 17.

Joining us now, CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

Again, a significant development here. They're in the possession of Malaysian authorities. But you and I were talking about 370, and there was a lot of mishandling by the Malaysians there. Is this a good idea?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, whether it is a good idea or not is irrelevant. And, in a sense, it is Malaysian property. So Malaysia is the correct authority to which you hand back the boxes.

Whether it is -- Malaysia is perfectly capable and competent at handling these boxes, because we know already, Don, if you remember from 370, they said that their investigative authority does not have the competency to open them up and extract the data. So they will give it to another country.

LEMON: So it shouldn't go to like a third party, like, i.e. the NTSB and that sort of thing, instead of Malaysia?

(CROSSTALK)

QUEST: No, no, no. That's not the way -- you're talking about a chain of custody. So you hand it to the person who is entitled to have the boxes. And thereafter that person decides who should open them.

My guess, it would be the Netherlands, the British, the Australians, and maybe the NTSB. But -- yes.

CAMEROTA: Here's something interesting that happened when the self- pointed rebel leader handed it over. He said at that moment -- it was sort of a press conference, because there were reporters around. He said -- quote -- "This is an information war. We don't have the technical ability to destroy this plane. We believe these are the black boxes and these boxes will reveal the truth."

Does that suggest that they have some inclination that they will be vindicated by something on there?

QUEST: Oh, I suspect they do. But I also suspect they probably don't have a terribly detailed understanding of what that box might show.

It is not going to show what happened on the ground. It will show what happened to the aircraft when it's -- any ground-to-air transmission, the noises that were heard, what the pilots said to each other, and, yes, depending on how the plane was affected when the missile exploded those last seconds.

LEMON: Could the separatists have removed or changed any of the information on the black boxes? I'm speaking as a layman.

QUEST: Yes, the answer is no. Could they have -- first of all, if they have opened it up, we would

know about it. The seals would be broken. If you show the picture of the black boxes, it says do not open. You would know if that had been opened. Could they tamper electronically with it? Highly unlikely. These boxes are designed to withstand tremendous forces.

Do they have the technical expertise to tamper with them? Unlikely. In fact, no.

CAMEROTA: Richard, what is interesting to me is that when we all sat here on Friday night, you were almost hopeless that the bodies would actually ever be extracted from the field where they lay. As you know, they weren't letting any sort of international monitors in. We didn't know how it was ever going to show progress.

And now tonight as we sit here, the bodies are on a train bound eventually for their loved ones. Something happened over the weekend.

QUEST: What happened was the Ukrainians and the rebels came to some sort of understanding.

And the people who actually removed those bodies and put them on the train partly was the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, but also the emergency service workers of Ukraine, based in the region, paid by Kiev. They are the ones that did, if you like, the hard work, the grisly work of putting them -- but they haven't got all the bodies yet.

What I'm looking to see now of course is when that train gets to Kharkiv, as Nick Paton Walsh was saying, and then we see the coffins which will have been transported by the Dutch and we can start to see a proper process of dignity for those who lost their lives.

LEMON: Where are we going to get the significant information? Remember, we were trying to figure out, was going to it be the Malaysians? Will it be Tony Abbott in Australia, what have you? Where is that going to come from, Washington or other intelligence?

QUEST: All of them.

In terms of black boxes, whoever, it will come back via Malaysia, absolutely, no question. Whoever opens the box and gets the data will hand it back to the Malaysians. We have seen a very, very different Malaysia this time. It took them weeks to do the flight manifest and through the cargo with 370.

It took them 36 hours with this one. The prime minister is in charge and is dealing with this, in terms of the other information, the Netherlands. Remember, on Friday, I said I thought it would be the Netherlands that would be leading the investigation? That's the way it's playing out.

The Netherlands is going to be the country leading the way here.

CAMEROTA: Because they lost the most people.

QUEST: Because they lost the most people here. They have the biggest interest. They are the most interested party.

CAMEROTA: The rebel leader also agreed to give independent international investigators -- quote -- "safe access" today to the crash site. Is there more to be learned at the crash site?

QUEST: Oh, they haven't even started. You have all those big pieces of wreckage that have to be looked at in great detail to see what sort of distress marks there are, which way the implosion holes go, in or out.

And also crucially, they will want to go over the -- bit by bit by bit. Safe corridors have to be arranged for them so they can get there, do their work and get -- very worrying today, Alisyn, very worrying, pictures of chain saws being used on some of that wreckage.

CAMEROTA: And what does that mean?

QUEST: Well, it means somebody is trying to, if not exactly destroy the evidence, at least mangle the metal such that you wouldn't be able to see what was happening. That's one possible explanation for this.

Nobody should be taking chain saws to anything, except qualified aircraft investigators for a particular purpose.

LEMON: I have got to run, but can you quickly tell me how long do you think it will take them to go over this entire site, to go through this entire crash site?

QUEST: Weeks.

LEMON: Weeks.

Thank you. Thank you, Richard Quest. Appreciate that.

I want to turn to our other big story tonight and that's a showdown between Israel and Hamas and Gaza.

CNN's Martin Savidge live for us right now in Jerusalem.

Hello, Martin.

More deaths being reported on both sides tonight in what is turning out to be really the most violence in that region, that that region has seen in nearly five years. What's the very latest?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The second day of a lot of bloodshed being spilled. Good evening to you, Don.

Well, I was just going through my notes here trying to summarize. The Israeli military right now is saying that it lost seven of its soldiers today. That brings the death toll for Israeli soldiers to 25. For Palestinian civilians, the toll is much greater, the numbers there set to be now a total of 573 people killed in Gaza as a result of this ongoing operation.

And most of those are said to be civilians. The Israeli military is describing the combat inside of Gaza as that very difficult, that very brutal and that very up-close kind of urban warfare. It appears they're meeting stiff resistance -- resistance, that is, from Hamas militants, who are effectively using tunnels and anti-tank weapons.

It has been reported that Israel today shelled a hospital in the central part of Gaza. Israel is actually accusing Hamas, saying that it was using that hospital to try to protect rockets. Rockets continue to be a problem for Israel. There were more of them that have been launched today, not as many as seen last week, but still there were several barrages that was fired.

One of those rockets hit a kindergarten. Fortunately, there was nobody in that school at the time. It is this very difficult, very hard and unfortunately because of the densely populated Gaza Strip, a very costly fight that is taking place -- Don.

LEMON: And, as you know, Martin, over the weekend, there was some back and forth about the alleged capture of an Israeli soldier. I spoke to the Ambassador Ron Dermer, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. And here's what he had to say. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Hamas claimed that they have kidnapped an Israeli soldier, but Israel says that is not true. Can you say definitively that no soldier has been taken?

RON DERMER, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES: To the best information that I have right now at this point, no soldier has been taken.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Is Hamas still maintaining that they have a soldier, Martin?

SAVIDGE: They are. There are a number of reasons why they would. First of all, if they in fact do have an Israeli soldier, could it change things dramatically militarily on the ground as to the way Israel operates, because they so highly would want to get that soldier back.

But then, on top of that, it is also a great P.R. coup, you could say. There was cheers that came up in celebration in the Gaza Strip, because, as you remember previously, when there have been other Israeli soldiers held, they have been exchanged for high numbers of Palestinian prisoners.

But, again, Israel says it just does not know yet. It is still trying to confirm whether or not one of their soldiers has actually been captured.

LEMON: Hey, quickly, Martin, in the short time I have, I want to ask you about this, because the sun is about to rise over Gaza and Secretary of State Kerry and U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-Moon arrived in Egypt today. Does a cease-fire, never mind a peaceful resolution, even look possible? SAVIDGE: It is certainly something that everybody would say they

want. But then they would say, but under what terms? Israel says it has wanted a cease-fire and has actually worked for a cease-fire, but each time it has agreed, it has been broken by Hamas.

Hamas is saying, look, we don't trust the terms, so right now unlikely, it seems.

LEMON: All right. Martin Savidge in Jerusalem, Martin, thank you very much.

I want to remind our viewers that the entire interview with the ambassador will air at 11:00 p.m. right here on CNN -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Don, the tragedy of Flight 17, for the friends and families of the 298 people on board, the anguish is very raw and personal. We will talk with the friends of an Indiana University student who was killed.

Plus, Putin under pressure. President Obama says the burden is on Russia to get the rebels in line. Will the Russian president change his strategy?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone.

The crash of Flight 17 has become a worldwide obsession. But for the friends and the families of the 298 people who died, the story is intensely personal. One of those teens -- one of those passengers, I should say, was 25-year-old Karlijn Keijzer, a champion rower from Amsterdam who studied chemistry at Indiana University.

And joining me now, two young women who knew her well. And that's Catherine Campbell and Rachel Weigler.

Thank you for coming in. It's good to meet you in person. I spoke with you on Friday.

RACHEL WEIGLER, FRIEND OF KARLIJN KEIJZER: Yes, absolutely.

LEMON: Just before we came out of the break, you guys held hands as we were going into this interview. You're pulling your -- you're using each other for strength?

WEIGLER: Oh, absolutely. Catherine and I and Karlijn were all roommates together the year that Karlijn and I lived together. So Catherine and Karlijn and I were very close.

LEMON: How are you doing?

CATHERINE CAMPBELL, FRIEND OF KARLIJN KEIJZER: I'm coping as best I can.

Karlijn was a dear friend of mine since 2010. Our relationship goes back to before she came to the United States. We were on the same rowing team, and to channel our relationships. And now it is pretty hard. But having Rachel here and doing this for her, for her family and friends, it's what she would want.

LEMON: I feel it -- you're emotional, like me. And so it's hard, right? It is hard to even get the words out.

CAMPBELL: Yes.

LEMON: How did you meet?

You said she introduced you to your boyfriend, correct?

WEIGLER: Yes. She absolutely did. And actually Catherine introduced me to Karlijn.

LEMON: Oh, my gosh.

WEIGLER: Yes.

LEMON: I wouldn't say -- it is a circle, a lovely circle. Right?

WEIGLER: Yes, it's fantastic.

LEMON: And so you guys -- and now you're -- it has been your boyfriend of over two years, right?

WEIGLER: Yes.

LEMON: It has been said that Catherine was a bright star -- I should say, Karlijn was a bright star in the I.U. constellation.

How would you describe her?

CAMPBELL: She lived to love and she loved to live.

She taught me so much about being a friend, being compassionate, Being present, and loving and showing her love to her family and friends. Every day, she was Skyping with her friends and family back home in Amsterdam. And she brightened my world in so many ways. And I will cherish my memories of her so much. That is how she is a consolation.

LEMON: I hate to ask you this question, but where were you when you found out? Were you guys together? Or...

WEIGLER: Well, actually, I found out first. I was watching the news at work and saw that the Malaysia Airlines flight had gone down.

And then shortly thereafter, the announcement that that plane was out of Amsterdam, and I went straight to Facebook, because I knew Karlijn was going to be traveling. And it wasn't good news. There was a picture of her and Laurens, her boyfriend, that morning at the airport.

And then Karlijn's sister, Annebel, had posted about them, that they were in line for the 12:00 Malaysia Airlines flight. And I called Catherine to find out if she knew anything, if she knew that Karlijn was traveling. And, unfortunately, I think I may have been the one to break the news to her too.

LEMON: And your heart sank?

CAMPBELL: Yes, absolutely.

I had actually received a CNN notification on my phone and thought it was from the Malaysia Airlines flight five months ago. And Rachel called me and she said, have you seen the news? And, I said I got a notification.

But after talking to her, figuring out, well, there's bound to be hundreds of flights, and we kind of held on to our seats. And I went for a run, because I knew that's what Karlijn would have wanted me to do. And those were some excruciating hours. But the news came, and we cried.

And the fact that we're here now and sharing her story and being together, it is pretty heartwarming.

LEMON: Do you feel -- I have had several people close to me die, including my father and my stepfather, my grandmother and others. Do you feel her presence? Because, at moments, even in the beginning I could feel...

CAMPBELL: Absolutely. I keep reliving memories that we shared together. And we're in our mid-20s. We haven't really experienced grief.

And those are themes that I haven't thought about, and I keep asking myself questions. What can I do to feel her, to feel her presence? And that's reliving the stories that we shared, the wine and the cheese nights and watching "How I Met Your Mother" as roommates, reliving the happy moments, because that's what made Karlijn feel alive, and that's what makes her present. And that's what I feel right now.

LEMON: It's a good show to watch as a group. I liked that show.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: Tell me about -- because she was a champion rower, correct? Tell us about her as an athlete.

WEIGLER: I actually can't speak to that one. Catherine was the one who rode with Karlijn.

LEMON: Was she good?

WEIGLER: She was phenomenal. She -- that's what brought us together in the first place, this beautiful, magical friendship. Rowing started it all.

She was a national junior rower from Amsterdam, and I was on the U.S. national pre-elite team from the United States. And so our first bond was the intensity of rowing and how the body awareness and technique from the Dutch was so different from the United States. And she taught me a lot. She was very bold in her demeanor, as well

as her technique in rowing. And rowing is a unique sport, in the sense that it is a lot like a life metaphor. You can't control everything around you. And I translate this experience to that, because we can't control tragedies.

And I cherish the moments rowing with her, because rowing lets you be one with someone else or a team. And our Indiana team was a family. And their hearts are breaking, just like her family's, just like her friends'. And we so cherish the moments on the water. And we wish her flat water. She knows -- she likes that. So...

LEMON: Was it you who told me that she would tell you what you needed to hear, not necessarily what you wanted to hear? I like that. Is that what she gave you as a person?

WEIGLER: Yes. Yes.

She was the most genuine person you would ever meet. And if you were worrying about something, that you should not be worrying about or if you were obsessing over something that was not a big deal, she was going to tell you to lighten up. You know, she just wanted you to love life.

LEMON: Yes.

Thank you. If you need anything, let us know. Thanks. Appreciate you coming in.

WEIGLER: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much.

LEMON: Thank you so much.

CAMPBELL: Thank you.

LEMON: And you take care. It will be all right. It will be all right.

CAMPBELL: Thank you.

LEMON: When we come right back, the West putting tremendous pressure on Vladimir Putin in the wake of Flight 17 and there are calls for even greater sanctions on Russia. But does Putin care? We're going to ask our experts next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: World leaders are turning up the pressure on Vladimir Putin. President Obama says Putin has direct responsibility to get the rebels to cooperate with the Flight 17 investigation.

So, how will Putin play all this?

We're joined by Stephen Cohen. He's the professor emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and NYU. He is also the author of "Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War." Also, Chrystia Freeland, she's a member of the Canadian Parliament for Toronto Centre, and she is banned from Russia in retaliation for supporting economic sanctions against the regime.

Great to have both of you. You come at this from different perspectives. Chrystia, let me start with you. Is this a defining moment for Putin on the world stage?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND, MEMBER OF CANADIAN PARLIAMENT: Absolutely. And it could be a positive moment for Putin. This could be the moment when Putin decides to separate himself from the separatists, when he decides to stop arming them, stop sending his nationals in to lead and train them.

And if he does that -- and he doesn't have to make a big deal of it. If he does that, the conflict ends, and Russia can return to the world community.

And we've seen -- we heard from David Cameron, the British prime minister, from President Obama today some openings towards that.

So I am hopeful that back-room conversations are happening with Putin, maybe led by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, saying look, there's an off-ramp for you.

KEILAR: That's an optimistic take on it. Stephen, what's your take?

STEPHEN COHEN, AUTHOR, "SOVIET FATES AND LOST ALTERNATIVES": She's absolutely right. It's a defining moment. And let me give you the view inside Russia, because it brings a perspective we don't hear.

KEILAR: Yes?

COHEN: Putin is being told, and I can tell you this 100 percent, by the group of 70 or 80 people around him, that this is his moment of truth. No matter what he's done for Russia in 14 years, if he loses eastern Ukraine to NATO or to any kind of western influence, he will go down in infamy in Russian history.

On the other side, people are telling him that we are spitting distance from an actual war between the United States and Russia. And he has to act cautiously. So it's fairly clear what his strategy is at the moment.

KEILAR: And what is that? What will he do given those two paths?

COHEN: Well, he will try his very best, and I think Chrystia would probably agree with this, to get a cease-fire. But it is not in his power to give a cease-fire. The cease-fire will have to come from Washington and Kiev. Because they're the ones who are attacking the eastern cities at the moment.

KEILAR: So what you're saying is that the U.S. is backing Kiev in this civil war and Putin is backing the separatists, and that it has to be a cease-fire that starts in Washington?

COHEN: And Kiev. CAMEROTA: Chrystia.

FREELAND: Can I just say, Allison, I think it's really important not to describe this as a civil war. This isn't a civil war.

CAMEROTA: What is it?

FREELAND: Ukraine was an independent state for 23 years. And there were -- there was no fighting. There were no armed separatist movements anywhere on Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. This is a war that was started by Vladimir Putin. These are rebels who are armed by Vladimir Putin, and they are led by Russian nationals, so it's really important to call things by their correct names.

CAMEROTA: Professor.

COHEN: You know, I completely disagree, but I don't think it's an argument that's going to get us anywhere. I think we need to recognize, and I think we would agree on one thing. We've known each other for many years, and we care about this.

We're close to war. And we're missing that picture. We're close to war with Russia. This could happen. And the thing that's missing, whether Chrystia wants to call it a civil war or not. And there's -- interestingly, there is an article in "The New York Times" on the website today, the first one I've ever seen. And it will be in the paper tomorrow, that from the moment the plane was shot down, Kiev stepped up its bombardment of these two large eastern Ukrainian cities, Lugansk -- Lugansk and Donetsk.

In other words, under the cover of this tragedy -- and I have to say I find this obscene -- they redoubled the bombing of these Ukrainian cities. Now, whatever you think about the people in those cities, and they're women and children, all the same. Stop and think what pressure that puts on Putin. No matter what he wants to do, that Kiev is doing this. That's why I say they've got to stop the fighting right now.

CAMEROTA: Let me play for you what Congressman Peter King suggested today in terms of what pressure to put on Putin. He had some suggestions. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: I think we should take very severe economic action. And also symbolic action, like cutting off Aeroflot's landing rights in the United States and Europe. Making every effort to keep them from hosting the next World Cup in 2016. And going after their personal assets.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Economic and symbolic action against Putin. What do you think?

FREELAND: Yes. Absolutely. We've been doing it. The real action is going to be tomorrow. It's going to be in Europe. It's going to be in Brussels.

And the big question is: Do the European leaders really come on board with the economic sanctions we've seen so far? That would be really decisive.

And I do think, you know, we've been talking about what are the debates happening inside the Kremlin? And there are people in Russia, particularly in the economic ministries, the business people who really are feeling the bite of these sanctions and who are saying to Putin, "Please, now is the time to back off." And let's hope those saner voices prevail.

CAMEROTA: Steve, economic sanctions?

COHEN: the history of sanctions tell us that, A, they don't work. B, they hurt the people who do the sanctions also. And in the end, sanctions are carried out by a government that doesn't really have a policy but has an attitude.

CAMEROTA: So I know that you are cautioning everyone to wait until all the facts come out. But what do you -- if the -- if Putin's fingerprints are on this weaponry and that he did help train or his soldiers helped train the people who launched this missile, then what happens to Putin? What do you think?

COHEN: Well, first of all, that won't happen, because it doesn't make any sense even though it's formulated. Please understand that these missiles are jointly Russian and Ukrainian built. The whole defense complex in the Soviet Union, was a Ukraine/Russian -- you would agree with that -- enterprise.

Secondly the Ukrainian government has had Buks since the 1970s when they were part of the Soviet Union.

Thirdly, there are people my age and like you young women, and younger, officers in the Soviet Ukrainian-Russian army who know perfectly well how to fire these things. They didn't have to send an expert to Moscow to detonate this thing. This is just a silly question. So there won't be those kind of fingerprints.

CAMEROTA: All right. We'll see what happens in Europe tomorrow. Great to have both of you...

COHEN: She's right. That's very important, what's going to happen in Europe.

CAMEROTA: You guys agreed a lot tonight.

FREELAND: We did have some agreement. I would have come back on the Buks. But no time.

CAMEROTA: Next segment. All right, thanks so much for being here. Great to talk to both of you.

COHEN: Thank you. CAMEROTA: Well, meanwhile, a media war has broken out over what happened to Flight 17. And if one theory pushed by pro-Russian rebels sounds like it could be the plot of a TV drama, that's because it is. So we'll explain where the rebels may have come up with this idea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: In the finger pointing over the crash of Flight 17, a war of words has broken out in the media, and some of what's being presented as fact is really some creative story telling. Here's CNN's Miguel Marquez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As the evidence of what exactly happened to MH-17 comes to light, the media war is heating up, at times taking this horrific story to bizarre places.

Rebel commander Igor Gurken (ph) suggesting many of MH-17's passengers were corpses, already dead and put aboard the flight. If those claims being made on Russia's Ruskanaveska (ph) website sound like a Hollywood plot -- that's because it is. That story line was used in more than one version of a Sherlock Holmes-themed series. This one from "Elementary" in 2012.

JONNY LEE MILLER, ACTOR: This man didn't die in a plane crash. He was murdered.

MARQUEZ: Moscow has claimed the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter. Today it presented radar evidence suggesting another plane was within five kilometers of Malaysian Flight 17.

LINDA KINSTLER, MANAGING EDITOR, "THE NEW REPUBLIC": What we've kind of seen is like an upwelling or a feedback loop from these rumors on the Internet that eventually wind up in mainstream media in Russia and are then taken as fact.

MARQUEZ: Both the rebels in eastern Ukraine and the Russian government have been slammed by world opinion over their handling of the victims' security around the plane's wreckage and their possible culpability in bringing down the plane.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN "NEW DAY" ANCHOR: They've intercepted conversations, bragging that they had taken down the plane. So if you have the tweet and the conversations and the pictures that all point to your forces, how do you deny that it was your forces that brought down the plane?

ALEXANDER BORODAI, LEADER OF PRO-RUSSIAN SEPARATISTS (through translator): It is very simple to disprove it. All of the information that comes through the Internet, in my opinion, is practically all lies.

MARQUEZ: With the stakes so high, even basic information online is being changed to shape facts. The Twitter site @rugovedit automatically tracks changes by Russian government sites to Wikipedia. It has tracked dozens of changes from Moscow to Wikipedia entries about MH-17.

KINSTLER: Russians need to believe that the Kremlin was not responsible and they can't risk propagating the message domestically within Russia that people who -- the rebels, who have been risking their lives for the idea of this Russian -- this grand Russian nation, are being refuted or turned away by the Kremlin.

MARQUEZ: The narrative taking an increasingly ugly tone. Ukraine's President Poroshenko says this is no longer a fight against pro- Russian separatists but terrorists.

PETRO POROSHENKO, PRESIDENT, UKRAINE: By the way, please, Christiane, don't name them separatists. There is no separatists there. They are terrorists. They are killing the innocent people.

MARQUEZ: From western leaders, an increasingly tough message as the evidence mounts of rebel and Russian involvement.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The burden now is on Russia to insist that the separatists stop tampering with the evidence.

TONY ABBOTT, PRIME MINISTER, AUSTRALIA: Having those people in control of the site is a little like leaving criminals in control of the crime scene.

DAVID CAMERON, PRIME MINISTER, UNITED KINGDOM: We should push our partners in the European Union to consider a new range of hard-hitting economic sanctions against Russia.

MARQUEZ: Video of the victims laying in the field for days, their bodies then unceremoniously loaded onto trains. Their release negotiated. The black boxes finally handed over by separatists.

All of it raising concerns for whether the truth will be learned from the hard and horrible evidence laying on the ground in eastern Ukraine or will it be rewritten by those who disagree with the facts?

Miguel Marquez, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: It's an interesting piece. Look, we're all a product of what we hear on our media.

LEMON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So that's what the Russians are hearing.

LEMON: Yes. But the truth. We want to get down to the truth. And hopefully, at least, the retrieval of the black boxes will help us get to that. And the families, now that the train cars are there, hopefully they can get their loved ones back where they can lay them to rest with dignity.

CAMEROTA: Certainly progress. LEMON: And coming up, separating fact from fiction. We're going to talk to a former "Russia Today" reporter who quit her job just because she said she was asked to obscure the truth.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Sara Firth was a correspondent for the state-run news network "Russia Today." I say "was" because she quit the network last week. She tweeted, "I resigned from 'R.T.' today. I have huge respect for many on the team, but I'm for the truth."

Joining me now is Sara Firth.

Hi, Sara. Are you doing OK?

SARA FIRTH, FORMER "RUSSIA TODAY" CORRESPONDENT: I'm good, thank you.

LEMON: Can you describe the "R.T." newsroom on Thursday when news of Malaysia Flight 17 broke?

FIRTH: Of course. Well, I'm based in the London office. So it's not in the main headquarters, which obviously, Moscow based, where I had previously worked for many years.

And so our studios in London is slightly smaller, and you don't have the sort of main frame, the inner circle of the "R.T." management there. And walking in and watching the story unfold and the way that "R.T." were running it, and you know, I saw very clearly what has happened many, many times in that situation, where a very sensitive breaking news story gets reported, and it's handled incredibly badly.

There's very clearly very little fact checking. And from a very early point, you can see that it's already pitching a particular narrative. And as I said it, it's one of many, many stories that "R.T." has handled in that way. And for me that was the final straw.

LEMON: So Sara, you said -- you mentioned narrative. What narrative did you think they were trying to push on this particular story?

FIRTH: As I said on my social media account, it was tongue in cheek, but it comes from a very serious place, that "R.T." style guide rule one in a story like this: it's absolutely not Russia's fault. It's Ukraine's fault or whatever country that we're trying to fight back against.

And at that point you really, really feel the sense that there's no adequate questioning. It's absolutely right that a different perspective should be put out there, and "R.T." are absolutely right that there are other channels who are speculating wildly and holding Russia accountable before evidence has come to light. But that doesn't excuse what "R.T." is doing.

And I'm very clear about this, and I thought about it long and hard. "R.T." is mass information manipulation. And it is incredibly effective. And when you have a story like this that is so sensitive, it can become incredibly dangerous. LEMON: Had you expressed concern to your managers about "R.T.'s"

reporting in the past? Had you brought this up?

FIRTH: Absolutely. It is an ongoing battle and...

LEMON: What did they say?

FIRTH: ... one just starts being -- fighting. The -- it's very, very clear what happens when you start questioning at "R.T.," is you become very problematic for them. And you have lots of heated e-mail exchanges, and you're put in your place very firmly. Let's put it that way. You start asking the tough questions, you are not getting assigned the stories where that might become problematic, and it becomes a lot more difficult. And I always had a very difficult relationship with them.

LEMON: I want to go through some of the reports and get your reaction that have been in the Russian media. That it was a Ukrainian transport plane. Then that the Ukrainians shot intentionally at MH-17 because they thought it was Vladimir Putin's plane.

And then today a Ukrainian war plane was detected flying in the area of MH-17. And that this video that you're looking at right now of a Buk missile being transported from Ukraine to Russia was manipulated. I mean, do the Russian people ever question the news reports that they're receiving?

FIRTH: The propaganda is so blanketed, and the tightening grip around independent journalism, especially inside Russia, is so strong that that is the viewpoint that the Russian public are seeing and believing. And that's why it is incredibly dangerous.

As a correspondent at "R.T.," we were broadcasting to an international audience, and so it was slightly different. But you can see even at "R.T.," we pick up a lot of the conspiracy theories, the unverified information. As

I said, this happens on all sides, and I think it's really important to say with a story like this, it's absolutely our job as journalists, of course, to be questioning narratives that are put out, and accusations and statements from governments are not facts. And I think that's really what I wanted to highlight in this case. Is that that's what we should be pushing for and that was not happening at "R.T."

LEMON: Let me talk to you as a reporter about this story, OK? Last night Vladimir said that there needs to be full cooperation with the investigation into this particular incident. Do you believe that the truth will ever come out, having worked there?

FIRTH: I don't think you're going to get the truth broadcast on "R.T.," no, I don't. And that's my biggest problem with this story. The narrative was set from the very beginning of this. And there's no questioning, no hard questioning over the areas that we should have been asking them. It's very difficult, because as I said, you know, working within

"R.T.," you're not outright lying. I learned that with "R.T." There are a million different ways to lie. It's very, very easy as a journalist to exempt yourself from responsibility of what the channel is doing on a wider level.

And what I said is, what we do at "R.T." so effectively is take one tiny sliver of the information, a couple of the facts, and then we push them incredibly aggressively. And without the all-important context behind those, you end up getting a massively distorted version of what's going on, and it is very, very effective. And that's why it's so dangerous.

LEMON: So the truth, if you can just give me a yes or no. Do you think the truth will come out with "R.T."? You said no. Do you think it will come out from Russia?

FIRTH: No.

LEMON: No.

Can I get your reaction to the statement that they released about your resignation? It says, "Sara has declared that she chooses the truth. Apparently, we have different definitions of truth. We believe that truth is what our reporters see on the ground with their own eyes and not what's printed in the morning London newspaper. In our coverage, 'R.T.,' unlike the rest of the media, did not draw conclusions before the official investigation has even begun. We show all sides of the story, even if everyone else has already decided which side is to blame."

What do you think?

FIRTH: It was completely unsurprising and as I said, this idea is inherent within "R.T.'s" system, that there are multiple versions of the truth. And I think that's -- that's a risky game to start playing. And "R.T." is a game.

And as a journalist that worked there for such a long time, I played it. You know, I had my eyes wide open. And my reporting, I felt I could defend, and I was trying very hard to fact check and be accurate.

But then what you're doing at the end of the day is giving that one tiny slice, as I said, that flops into an overall narrative, and you end up packaging these stories and tiny bits of facts, and packaging lies as truth. And I just, you know, as I said, it's something I felt very strongly I had to talk about.

LEMON: Sara Firth, good luck to you. Thank you.

FIRTH: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Good for her. A fascinating interview, Don.

LEMON: Thank you. CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, coming up, with crises in both Ukraine and the Middle East, what's on President Obama's agenda tomorrow? We have more on that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: This is "CNN TONIGHT Tomorrow." These are the stories you'll be talking about tomorrow.

Despite the tragedy of Flight 17 and the ongoing violence between Israel and Hamas, President Obama will not be monitoring late developments from the Oval Office. He'll be on his way to the West Coast for three days of fund-raisers. First in Seattle, then heading to San Francisco and Los Angeles, trying to raise millions of dollars.

The White House insists that the president will not let up on the pressure he's applying to Vladimir Putin and can easily do that from out west. So we will bring you the latest on all that tomorrow.