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CIA Chief Met With Zelenskyy During Recent Trip To Ukraine; Pence Says He Called AZ Gov. About Election But Not To Pressure Him Into Finding Fraud; Israel Runs Largest Military Operation In West Bank In 20 Plus Years. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired July 03, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:46]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: In a CNN exclusive interview, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says President Putin looks weak after the attempted mutiny. The war also will not end, he says, until Ukraine takes Crimea back from its Russian occupiers. All right, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So former Vice President Mike Pence responding to reports that Donald Trump pressured him to call then governor of Arizona and pushed him to find fraud in the 2020 election. How Pence is now describing those calls.

SIDNER: Plus, if it seems like it's crowded at the airport well, it is. Travel records have been broken. The TSA just screened the most passengers ever for a single day. Right now we're tracking July 4th travel delays. All of that coming in right here to CNN News Central.

BERMAN: John Berman here with Sara Sidner. Kate is off today. This morning, an exclusive discussion with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian leader was quite candid with CNN's Erin Burnett, now nearly 500 days since Russia first invaded his country. Zelenskyy called Vladimir Putin weak. And he said the recent revolt against him only proves that Putin does not have control. Zelenskyy also addressed Crimea, the region now at the center of an assassination claim, as Russia overnight accused Ukraine of trying to kill the Russian backed Crimean leader. Zelenskyy is adamant that the war will not end as long as Russia is in control there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE (through translator): We cannot imagine Ukraine without Crimea. And while Crimea is under the Russian occupation, it means only one thing war is not over yet.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: To be clear in victory in peace, is there any scenario where Crimea is not part of Ukraine?

ZELENSKYY (through translator): It will not be victory then.

BURNETT: I know the U.S. CIA Chief Bill Burns has come and visited you regularly. He was here recently. What did you tell him about your plans to take back territory in the counter offensive?

ZELENSKYY (through translator): To be honest with you, I was surprised to see the information in some media, both in the U.S. and Ukrainian and European media. My communication with the CIA chief should always behind the scenes and the media attention because we discuss important things, what Ukraine needs and how Ukraine is prepared to act. We don't have any secrets from CIA because we have good relations and our intelligence services talk with each other.

I don't know what were other contacts, I don't really remember which media I read it in. The situation is pretty straightforward. We have good relations with the CIA chief, and we are talking. I told him about all the important things related to the battlefield, which we need.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: And you can watch Erin's full interview with Zelenskyy Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Sara?

SIDNER: All right, CNN learned that CIA Director William Burns visited Kyiv last month. But CNN just learned about it on Saturday. So what is the response in Washington this morning to Zelenskyy telling Erin he was surprised that information about the meeting he thought was secret actually got out and was reported. CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann joins us now. Oren, what are you hearing from officials?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Sara, first it's worth noting you get a sense of a bit of that frustration from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the fact that the meeting with CIA Director William Burns last month did come out, a meeting he clearly says would have been preferred to keep secret. A U.S. official does confirm the meeting happened, but they wouldn't say that much more about it, only that Burns meets regularly with Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian intelligence officials, including this previous meeting.

We know, for example, that Burns was there in January. And this seems to imply at least, that there have been at least some other meetings, if not many other visits by Burns to Ukraine. What was this meeting about? To reiterate, according to this U.S. official, the ongoing U.S. support and intelligence sharing that has helped Ukraine carry out its counter offensive against Russian forces as it tries to retake territory.

[11:05:04]

And especially now that we're at the year and a half mark or so of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now, it is worth noting that Burns, who did speak openly this past weekend while in England, talked about the disaffection of the Russian population with the war in Ukraine. Obviously, that has hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin's standing. And anything that hurts Putin's standing is good for Ukraine. But that disaffection has also been a boon to the CIA and recruiting. Here is Burns from Saturday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BURNS, CIA DIRECTOR: Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership. That disaffection creates a once in a generation opportunity for us at CIA. We're very much open for business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIEBERMANN: Worth remembering that the CIA had a recruiting essentially pitch or a recruiting boost when the war began and that, according to officials, went well. This, according to Burns, a continuation of that, or perhaps another attempt at that. Also, the CIA opened for business there. It's also worth noting the timing of this visit. The U.S. Official says it was before Wagner leader and founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, launched his attempted insurrection or mutiny against Putin. So that did not come up in these conversations there, Sara.

SIDNER: All right, Oren Liebermann, thank you for your reporting. John?

BERMAN: All right with us now, Phil Mudd. He is a former CIA counterterrorism official and former FBI senior intelligence advisor. Phil, always great to see you. How important is it thank you that secret meetings stay secret?

PHIL MUDD, FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: I actually don't think it's that important. I can see why the Ukrainians are frustrated. If you want to have a conversation in private and it shows up in newspapers in Europe, the United States, kind of frustrating if that blunt conversation or that conversation that doesn't have sort of diplomacy involved gets publicized. But, look, part of the message here is to Moscow. And the Moscow message in the midst of political conversations in America about how committed we want to be. Zelenskyy is muddled, you know, do we want to stay in this game?

The message to Moscow is we're in. The CIA director is there. The military is there. The diplomats are there. So you can see the debates in Washington about whether we're committed. But when you see the economy publicized, the message to Putin is, don't mistake us. We're in. And we're in for a long time.

BERMAN: What kind of a message does it send when Burns, the CIA chief, says, we're doing really well with recruitment inside Russia right now?

MUDD: I think that's an interesting message, obviously, to Putin when Burns says that openly CIA directors don't speak openly. And the ones that I work for, when they speak openly, they have a message typically, often not for the American people, but for people overseas. So what do you tell Putin in the midst of facing many revolts a short time ago? You tell him, look, you're vulnerable.

There is a huge upside, I guarantee you, for the CIA behind the scenes, some of the best informants I ever saw, the CIA were what we call walk-ins volunteers. We didn't recruit them. They walked into a place like an embassy and said, I'm disaffected. I want to join up. There is a flip side to that, though, and if I were Putin, I'd be taking advantage of this flip side, and that is they're going to flood the zone, that is the Russians. They're going to find out how the Americans are trying to recruit people online, and they're going to send their own recruits in. We call them Dangles to see if we can frustrate the Americans. So huge opportunity, I think, for the CIA, but it's not as easy as it sounds, John.

BERMAN: Oh, you think the Russians are actually going to send in plants, basically, because there are so many people walking into the U.S. right now?

MUDD: Hell yes.

BERMAN: That sounds like a dangerous game, yes.

MUDD: -- in the intel business. Yes, yes, so you're thinking of this in the digital world, which is a new way of recruiting. You ask people to get into a secure link and talk to them. But this is the ancient world of the spy business. Back before the digital age, a lot of people would walk into embassies. One of the best informants I ever saw in al-Qaeda, he was a walk in. He was ticked off at the al-Qaeda organization for killing too many civilians. He was a great, great informant, same thing with the Russians.

But the Russians would send in Dangles to Embassies, and it takes a while to sort through that because they're going to have some good information to prove their bona fide. So you have to figure out over time whether they're a Dangle or whether they're true. I assume the same would hold true with the Russians trying to go after the Americans online. They're going to send in Dangles. That's part of the game, John.

BERMAN: I was not even aware that such a thing was going on. So Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, we haven't seen him since this failed revolt, we, I mean, everyone in the world and the public here. Does the CIA know where he is? Is there a mystery inside about where he is? Are they searching for him? How important is it to know?

MUDD: I would be interested about where he is. I mean, if I were him, I'd have a pretty big insurance policy right now. If you look at the history of oppositionists like this, I would assume he's going to be dead soon. the CI would be interested not just in him, but to determine whether, for example, he's trying to mount something else. I mean, if he's a has been, I wouldn't be interested in the CI. The question is about the future.

[11:10:11]

I think the more interesting question, John, is not what happened in terms of Prigozhin. It's what happened in terms of the response in Russia. There's going to be a lot of CI analysis of technical information, for example, intercepted information about how the military responded internally, whether generals were involved. And then there's a ton of open source information. Did people across Russia, on platforms like Facebook, talk about this? And did they talk about it in ways that were different than what you would have expected a year ago? This is a goal mine for people at the CIA assessing opposition within Russia, a real gold mine, John.

BERMAN: And in terms of understanding what's going on at the highest levels right now inside Russia, how well positioned is the CIA?

MUDD: I'm going to say not great, just based on my experience looking at high end intelligence over decades against what we call hard targets, the hardest targets around the world, typically, people like the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians. Look, the people who you want to talk to, who know what Putin is up to, have a vested interest in staying close to Putin. A lot of those people are human rights abusers. They may have corruption involved, which means they're getting money from staying within the regime.

What's the value to them of trying to overthrow Putin? There's also the hassle of dealing with the Russian internal security services, which are great. They're not going to arrest you. They're going to kill you if they find you. So I think the Americans probably have a decent picture of what's going on, but I would be pretty surprised if they have a great picture. I might be wrong, but I'd be a little surprised.

BERMAN: Phil Mudd, great to see you this morning. Nice talking to you, my friend. Sara?

SIDNER: Coming up, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is under fire from inside his own party after his campaign shared an aggressive video that attacks Donald Trump's stance on LGBTQ rights.

Also, he went missing when he was just 17 years old. Now, eight years later, he's been found alive. The story of his mysterious disappearance and the new questions being raised by his reappearance.

Also, as tourists poured into Los Angeles for the holiday weekend, thousands of hotel workers went on strike. What they're demanding before they agree to head back to work.

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[11:17:03]

BERMAN: An SUV plowed into a roadside bar and restaurant in New Hampshire, injuring 34 people. This happened in Laconia. Police say a three car crash in front of the buildings, sent one of the vehicles right into the restaurant. Everyone, thankfully, is expected to survive.

In Houston, a young man who was missing for more than eight years has been found alive. Rudy Farias was 17 years old when he disappeared in March of 2015 while walking his two dogs. The Texas Center for the Missing says he is recovering in the hospital. His mother says he will only speak a few words at a time and that it will be a long healing journey. Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin will throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium tonight. First, though, he's holding a CPR training class for players and coaches. For the last few months, Hamlin has been traveling in the country to distribute medical equipment and promote techniques that help save his life when he went into cardiac arrest during a game in January. Sara?

SIDNER: It is remarkable that he has returned and is doing so much good. All right, former Vice President Mike Pence says, yes, he did make phone calls to Arizona's then governor just after the 2020 election. But he says there was no pressure from Donald Trump to ask for the governor to help overturn the 2020 election results. CNN previously reported Trump repeatedly pushed Pence to help find evidence of voter fraud and stop the certification of Biden's win. CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now with details. What are you hearing along these lines? We also saw CNN reporting that Donald Trump himself, we now know, was trying to pressure, according to sources, the former Arizona governor.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Sara. So we did know that there had been communication between the former president and then Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. Both of them confirmed that at the time, Trump and Ducey, but we never knew exactly what they talked about. Well, over the weekend, I learned from a source that Ducey has told people privately that Trump was pushing him to try to find some sort of voter fraud, fraud in the election that would overturn those results of the 2020 election.

As you remember, Trump lost by about 11,000 votes in Arizona. We also learned over the weekend that Trump had Pence call. Pence talked to Ducey multiple times. And the question again was whether or not Pence applied this pressure. Now, I was told by sources he did not apply pressure to Ducey. And here's what Pence himself said over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I did check in with not only Governor Ducey, but other governors in states that were going through the legal process of reviewing their election results, but there was no pressure involved. Margaret, I was calling to get an update. I passed along that information to the president, and it was no more, no less than that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And Sara, I want to point out two other details here. We, of course, have been reporting on for now years that infamous call between Trump and Raffensperger, the Secretary of State in Georgia, where he asked for more votes. We also note that Raffensperger has appeared before the special counsel, Jack Smith, in his investigation into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Two things to note about the Raffensperger call versus this Ducey call. One, we are told that there is no recording of this call between Trump and Ducey. And two, we are also told by sources that Jack Smith has not reached out to the former Arizona governor about their interaction involving the 2020 election.

[11:20:25] SIDNER: OK. Can I move on to another presidential candidate? We're talking about Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. He's facing a whole bunch of criticism this morning after his campaign shared this odd video, to say the least, on Twitter slamming Trump over Donald Trump's support for the LGBTQ community.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: Yes. Kristen, what are Republicans saying about this video with lathered up bodybuilders and very dark music?

HOLMES: So, Sara, usually when you ask me what people are saying, I say, oh, it depends on who you talk to. And then I go into various responses. But really, I'm only hearing one thing when it comes to this pretty bizarre video from Republicans, which is, why did he do this? And this does teeter on homophobic. I talked to several donors who were scratching their heads. These are people who support Ron DeSantis, who have given him money, who are wondering what exactly this was supposed to do, what this was supposed to mean. We also heard from the Log Cabin Republicans, they call themselves the largest Republican organization that represents the LGBT community within the Republican Party.

They said that this teeters on homophobic. They said that this was divisive, destructive. And then, of course, we heard from the Trump campaign, but they have the most to gain from a DeSantis misstep. But I want to note one part of this video. It is in itself, again, bizarre. You hear the music playing, these oiled up bodybuilders. At one point, you see a Christian Bale from American Psycho. But there's also another message here, which is that top of the speech where you hear Trump saying he's going to offer his support to this community. That came just a month after the Pulse shooting.

He was accepting the nomination in Ohio, and he was saying that he was going to support this community and support any community that was facing domestic terrorism. It is unclear why the DeSantis team, of course, we have asked, would choose that speech to kind of draw a line here about the former president's support of the LGBT community. But it was a moment in time when this group was really suffering. So there are a lot of questions about that as well. Did they know what this speech was even about when they put it out there?

SIDNER: All right, Kristen Holmes, thank you for your reporting. John?

BERMAN: All right, Israel launched its largest military operation in the West Bank in more than two decades. We're going to go live to Israel for the latest on the violence that has left at least eight people dead.

[11:23:12] And this just into CNN, a U.S. ambassador to Russia, the U.S. ambassador to Russia has just met with detained journalist Evan Gershkovich. What we're learning about what they discussed at the meeting.

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BERMAN: This morning, an Israeli source says the country has launched its largest military operation in the West Bank since 2002, the Second Intifada. Israel says its forces are targeting what they call terrorist infrastructure. Gunfire could be heard in the streets. There is unverified video that appears to show several large explosions. The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least eight people have been killed. CNN Hadas Gold is live just outside Jerusalem with the latest Hadas, what are you learning?

HADAS GOLD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, this is being described as the largest Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank since 2002. That means since the days of the Second Intifada, when Israeli military tanks were rolling through cities in the occupied West Bank. Now, there were Israeli military tanks in the occupied West Bank, but they were outside of the city limits of Jenin.

But in terms of just the pure size of this operation, in terms of the number of soldiers who were used, and in terms of the airstrikes, this actually started around 1:00 a.m. overnight with Israeli airstrikes. They used drones for these airstrikes targeting locations within the Jenin refugee camp. It's hard to overestimate how dense and closely packed and populated this area is.

Now, the Israeli military saying that they were focused on what they call terrorist infrastructure, what they called command and control centers for militants, weapons manufacturing sites and the like. We know that they've carried out at least ten separate airstrikes, and there are still ongoing gun battles.

As we speak right now, the Israeli military is saying that they are still operating in Jenin, saying that they are still engaging in firefights with what they call militants, including what they said are militants at mosques and the like. Now, I was actually just in Jenin yesterday with our team for a separate story, speaking to residents there, Israeli military drones were buzzing above our heads. That's not unusual, but the residents saying today what they are seeing is unusual, just the sheer amount.