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Wolf

GOP Upset by Hillary Clinton's V.A. Comments; NORAD Surveillance Blimp Untethered, Lose in Pennsylvania; Kurdish Forces Shot of Weapons Against ISIS. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 28, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00] REP. JAMES CLYBURN, (D), SOUTH CAROLINA: We talk all of the time about what the challenges are for middle school students. Certainly they are going to act out, but we as adults must act like adults irrespective of how the children may act. WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Good point.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us.

CLYBURN: Thank you so much for having me.

BLITZER: James Clyburn of South Carolina.

The GOP is calling out Hillary Clinton on recent comments she made about the Veterans Administration. Now Senator John McCain is asking her to apologize to the veterans in the United States. What caused this uproar? What is her campaign saying about it? That is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:35:02] BLITZER: Hillary Clinton's campaign is walking back controversial comments about the Veteran Administration's problems being over stated. This is what the Democratic frontrunner said on MSNBC last Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY FO STATE: I don't understand that. I don't understand why we have such a problem, because there have been a number of surveys of veterans, and overall, veterans who do get treated are satisfied with the treatment.

RACHEL MADDOW, HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: And much more so than the people in the regular sector.

CLINTON: That's exactly right. Nobody would believe that from the coverage that you see and the contact berating of the V.A. that comes from the Republicans, in part, in pursuit of this ideological agenda they have.

MADDOW: But, in part, because there has been a real scandal.

CLINTON: There has been. But it is not as widespread as it has made out to be. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Veteran groups fired back at Hillary Clinton earlier in the week. Just this morning, Senator John McCain said her comments were, in his words, "disgraceful," and called for her to apologize.

And now her campaign says the statements were misinterpreted and released the following statement. "Hillary Clinton was outraged by the problems exposed at the Veterans Health Administration, which a government audit found to be systemic. Even now, too many our veterans are still waiting and unacceptably long time to see a doctor or to process disability claims and appeals. As president, Hillary Clinton will work to further reform the V.A. to make sure it truly works for our veterans."

Mark Preston is the executive editor of CNN politics and joining us, along with our senior investigative reporter, Drew Griffin, who broke this V.A. scandal, and won all sorts of awards.

Drew, the inspector general last year said the problems at the V.A. were said to be widespread. And you have new reporting that the problems now are actually getting worse. Tell us what you found

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is not new reporting, but it comes straight from the V.A. I sat down with the deputy secretary of health, who is in charge of fixing this mess, Sloan Gibson, who said that there are 500,000 or more veterans waiting for appointments for 30 days or longer, in many cases, 60 days or longer, and as the capacity increases at the facilities, which are not up to speed, the wait times are longer. Our sources inside of many V.A. hospitals across the country are saying that the veterans are being denied, delayed care because of the wait list scandal, and you know, that is why so many of the veterans groups are speaking up, and wondering how informed is Secretary Clinton on this very issue, which, as you have rightly pointed out, Wolf, has been in the news now for the better part of two years.

BLITZER: And the V.A. and the administration, they have given you and the investigative team here at CNN a lot of credit for publicizing the blunders even though the inspectors general and others knew what was going on at the V.A.

Mark, the conservative commentator, the radio talks show host, Hugh Hewett, he says Republicans candidates, tonight, at the debate, these Republican candidates should take advantage of what Hillary Clinton said about, the so-called dismissive comments about the V.A. Do you believe it is going to happen?

MARK PRESTON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, CNN POLITICS: Yes. Two reasons. First, it is an easy one for them to come out to be critical of the frontrunner of the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. It allows them to attack her directly. But more importantly, it also gives them an opportunity to show that they are willing to take Hillary Clinton on. If they are able to give a coherent and yet forceful argument against Hillary Clinton tonight, that is what the Republican primary voters are looking for. And in many ways, if you look at Donald Trump's success, it is because he is so forceful and out front. And Jeb Bush, who many thought would be the frontrunner at this point, why he is not doing so well, because he has been too meek. That is why you will see it in the debate.

BLITZER: I have heard some Democrats say, you know what, she probably misspoke the other night when she was speaking to Rachel Maddow, and the campaign is now walking back her comments. What must she do now, Mark, to fix it, because potentially it is a problem.

PRESTON: It is potentially a problem and not for the Democratic primary, so to speak, but the Republican ad makers are taking the clip of that the interview and filing it away, because it is an issue that could have some resonance as we are heading into November.

But for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, as a whole, the veterans don't tend to be very supportive of the Democratic Party. If you go back to the 2014 midterms, across the country, the Republicans won the electorate, veteran electorate by 20 point. And if you back to 2008 and 2004, the Republicans won it in the presidential election. But Hillary Clinton needs to at least offer her plan to try to reform the V.A. And we are told by the campaign that is going to be happening next month.

BLITZER: And quickly, Drew, because you have investigated this, Bernie Sanders when he was, when the Democrats were in the majority, the Senator who chaired that Veterans Committee in the Senate. What kind of record did you see that he had as far as oversight was concerned?

[13:40:11] GRIFFIN: Well, you know what Hillary Clinton said about the vets on Rachel Maddow's show? Bernie Sanders made the same comments more than a year ago before Eric Shinseki was fired. And they are talking points about veterans who just got service at the V.A. This is not the issue here. In all of the discussion, Wolf, I'm a little nervous for the vets that this does become a political issue. Quite frankly, the V.A. has been on a slide for a decade and a half, and it is going to be taking bipartisan efforts to fix the V.A. bureaucracy which is the problem. And if this is allowed to become just another political issue in a campaign, it will be the vets who will suffer, because it is just going to be pushed on down the line.

BLITZER: Drew Griffin, thanks again for your excellent reporting along with the Investigative Unit.

And Drew Griffin and Mark Preston, guys, thank you very much. We will stay on top of the story.

We are getting breaking news into CNN. NORAD is saying that a massive military blimp, associated with NORAD surveillance of the east coast in the United States, has become dissociated with its mooring. It is untethered and flying around somewhere over Pennsylvania, we are told, right now. According to the NORAD spokesman and a Pentagon official, who say that two F-16s have scrambled from the New Jersey National Guard and tracking the blimp right now. We will have full details.

We will take a quick break and much more on what is going on when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[13:46:13] BLITZER: We are following breaking news here in the United States. A massive and extremely expensive blimp used by NORAD has come loose from the tether and is now floating freely over Pennsylvania somewhere.

And now we go to Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.

Barbara, what is happening? It is sort of flying around right now, and what are they going to be doing about this?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the information just coming in, and NORAD, the North American Air Defense command releasing information that the blimp became untethered from Aberdeen Proving Grounds, Maryland, north of Washington, D.C., and it is flying uncontrolled. It's a large aerostat, but think of it as a large helium-filled balloon structure floating uncontrolled over Pennsylvania. It is being tracked by two air force f-1s that were scrambled out of their air station in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They are tracking it, following it. The FAA and other federal agencies are working on it right now trying to ensure air traffic safety in the path of to a aerostat, because it is uncontrolled in the uncontrolled flight, and making sure that no aircraft get in its way and trying to decide what to do about it.

What is this system? It is essentially helium-filled with extensive radar equipment and something they are using and testing at Aberdeen. It is a system that is designed to track incoming aircraft, and incoming unidentified aircraft, and missiles in a combat situation. We have seen over the years the kinds of aerostats smaller in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and successful of providing the surveillance over a wide area, but this system in particular can fly about 10,000 feet over sea level.

Right now, we are told that it is drifting at 16,000 feet. It is going to remain to be seen what the U.S. military can do to get control of this thing. Are they going to let it drift and lose the helium in some fashion and float to the ground or take the action to disable it, and make it come to the ground? But at this hour, a pretty urgent effort to make sure that the air safety as long as this afloat, air safety is maintained, and if it is going to be coming to the ground in a controlled fashion so no one is hurt or injured.

BLITZER: How do they do it? Fire some bullet in there so it sort of starts to float to the ground? Is that potentially what they would do?

STARR: Well, to be blunt, this is unchartered territory the right now, at this moment, as you and I are chatting. I don't think that there has been any instance of one of the large aerostats coming -- loose from the mooring, and loose from the 240-foot tether rope and drifting over the United States. We have not had that before, and we have not had a helium-filled aerostat like this. This thing can, how large and how significant, it can survey territory, we are told the size of the Texas. Now, we have had disabled small civilian aircraft where NORAD has to track them until they frankly do crash to the ground, and we have had a couple of those situations in recent years, but this is always going to bring up the delicate matter at what point does the U.S. Military take kinetic action? What point do they shoot down some object floating over the United States that is not under control? A real decision what to do about it in the coming hours -- Wolf?

[13:50:13] BLITZER: And very expensive surveillance radar equipment inside of the blimp, as it is called, the JLENS, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System. That's a long name.

We'll stay on top of this disturbing story. We've never seen anything like this in the United States before. We are going to hope they bring it down in some unpopulated area in a field somewhere.

Thank you, Barbara.

Other news we're following, they are outman and outgunned, but the Kurdish forces are managing to take hold of the ISIS territory. We will explain why they have fears of the terror group coming in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:55:06] BLITZER: The Iranian foreign minister will be at the table this week in Austria for talks in the crisis in Syria according to Iran's news agency. This marks the first time Iran has been included in the international talks which include the U.S., Turkey, Russia, among others. The Russian foreign ministry says the United States invited Iran. Iran is an ally of Bashar al Assad, and he's apparently boosting his military presence as we speak in Syria.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has upped its support for Kurdish and other Arab groups fighting ISIS in northern Syria. Despite air drops of ammunition, Kurdish forces say they remain desperately short of weapons, transportation and armor.

CNN's Clarissa Ward visited one newly liberated area where fears of ISIS still linger.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Weeks ago, these dusty plains were held by ISIS. This is what's left of its presence now, the charred remains of a training camp hidden in a pine forest. It's where ISIS trained an elite unit of suicide bombers that attacked Kurdish positions with devastating effect.

Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, took this entire area from ISIS in August, but holding it along a front line more than 400 miles long is a huge challenge.

In the shadow of Mt. Abdullah Zeez (ph), Commander Zenar said he lost 30 fighters in a recent battle when ISIS came down from the mountain.

COMMANDER ZENAR, YPG (through translation): The enemy attacked us with a large number of fighters using heavy weapons. They took control of three villages and after that the clashes lasted for hours until we were in control again.

WARD: Zenar is a battalion commander, but this is the size of his battalion, a handful of poorly equipped men, the nearest friendly forces miles away.

The cost of pushing ISIS out has been enormous. Streets here are draped with the flags of fighters killed in battle, along desolate roads through abandoned villages we saw scene upon scene of devastation. The wreckage of months of fierce fighting and relentless coalition air strikes.

(on camera): Dozens of villages like this one that were liberated from ISIS months ago are now still completely deserted. That's partly because the ISIS militants, before they retreated, planted land mines all across this area. But it's also because many people here aren't convinced that ISIS won't be coming back.

(voice-over): In the tiny village of Mahuja (ph), we met this woman who lived here all her life. She told us she was afraid to leave home when ISIS was in control, that they beat and killed people, and brought misery upon the community.

"There were no air strikes before they arrived. Then the strikes started. There was one next to me. We were scared of everything, not just ISIS."

(on camera): (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(voice-over): Are you still afraid, I ask? She says not, but glances warily at the Kurdish fighter with us.

The Kurds question the loyalty of these villages, claiming they harbor ISIS sympathizers.

The killing may have stopped, but there is no peace here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Clarissa Ward is joining us live from Irbil in northern Iraq.

Are these Kurdish fighters getting any help from the Iraqi military? They obviously have had their problems with the Iraqi military. What do you see on the ground there?

WARD: No. The Syrian Kurdish fighters are not getting any assistance from the Iraqi military. The Iraqi Peshmerga does have some cooperation with the Iraqi military, but the Syrian Kurds, the only real cooperation and coordination and support they're getting is from the U.S. and I think there's a distinction to be drawn when we're looking at what the Kurdish fighters we spent time with and what the U.S. is hoping they will want. Kurdish fighter was spent time with are really focused, Wolf, on establishing a contiguous, autonomous Kurdish independent region. And the U.S.'s focus is, of course, to get the Kurdish fighters to take the fight to Raqqa to launch an offensive on ISIS' stronghold. From what we saw, the YPG's focus and priority simply isn't on taking the fight into areas that are not Kurdish areas.

BLITZER: Clarissa Ward on the scene in Irbil, northern Iraq.

Clarissa, be careful over there. We'll check back with you tomorrow. Thanks for your excellent reporting.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.

[14:00:05] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.