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CNN Goes Inside Drone Operator Training In Ukraine; Pentagon Launches Website For UFO Information And Reporting; Massive Backlog In Afghan Special Immigrant Visas. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 01, 2023 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Any support is welcome in Ukraine, especially if it appears blessed by Jesus, say these drone students, set up in an abandoned church, working on their simulators and convinced their cause is just.

YULIA, UKRAINIAN DRONE PILOT: We do whatever we can now to resist, because Russians want to kill all of us. This is genocide.

AMANPOUR (voiceover): Next door in the construct and repair class, Yulia solders and tweaks and teaches. This part is fairly simple and fun, she says.

AMANPOUR: And did you study engineering? What are you in normal life?

YULIA: A writer and a film director.

AMANPOUR: You're a writer and a film director.

YULIA: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And now, you're a drone operator.

YULIA: Yes.

AMANPOUR (voiceover): We're not allowed to disclose the location where Yulia and the others put theory into practice.

AMANPOUR: Here in this innocuous looking field with a rudimentary obstacle course, this could almost be child's play but with deadly results, of course. These are all civilian drones that the Ukrainians are repurposing for their current war effort. They can be bought off store shelves. But this signifies a turning point in the conduct of modern warfare.

AMANPOUR (voiceover): A $500 drone that's been weaponized can take out vehicles and weapon systems worth millions.

Software engineer, Lyuba Shipovich, started the Victory Drones Initiative. LYUBA SHIPOVICH, CO-FOUNDER, VICTORY DRONES: The most advantage, it's one of the most cost-effective weapons. And it's also a weapon and it could be used as reconnaissance. For reconnaissance purpose, if you see the enemy, you can hit enemy, you can hide like your soldiers. So, it's --

AMANPOUR: But enemy they can see you.

SHIPOVICH: Yes, if you don't use security measurements.

AMANPOUR (voiceover): Like hiding or disguising their signals, because the Russians are adapting fast. She says they're mostly cloud funded and have deals with the Ukrainian military to train frontline troops, tens of thousands so far in what's become indispensable strategy.

That was just practice dropping a water bottle full of sand. But just a few days ago, the group says one of their former trainees took out this Russian tank on the eastern front. They can also wipe out artillery positions and troop carriers.

AMANPOUR: How long did it take you to learn to fly?

AMANPOUR (voiceover): Many of these citizen soldiers are women busting stubborn myths. And Yulia, of course, agrees. In fact, she assembles the drones her husband flies too.

AMANPOUR: And a lot of women have taken up this fight?

YULIA: Yes, we are all people and we're fighting for our existence.

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AMANPOUR (on camera): These, of course, are repurposed civilian drones. The bigger military drones are being used now increasingly to attack inside Russia, as we've seen this week. And the Ukrainian Defence intelligence chief says the idea is to tie up Russian resources and take the fight into -- as he puts it -- the territory of the enemy.

I also spoke to Ukraine's Foreign Minister and he tells me any criticism from, you know, armchair warriors, and think tank experts about the pace of this counteroffensive is unfair. He said it's like spitting in the eyes of our soldiers who are literally sacrificing their lives, of course, to defend every inch and to try to liberate more territory. Back to you.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: Our thanks to Christian Amanpour for that report.

Now to some of the other headlines that we're watching this hour. In Hong Kong, they are still feeling the effect of a powerful storm. Typhoon Saola has weakened in the last few hours, but parts of the territory are still getting hit with hurricane force winds. At its peak, the storm was the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane with devastating winds of up to 140 mph. The center of the storm is likely to remain offshore over the weekend. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says that the

number of unaccompanied migrant children in its custody has jumped more than 30 percent in just one month. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of migrant children encounters jumped from about 7,800 encounters In August -- rather on August 1st, to more than 10,000 by the end of the month, August 30th. Officials say that more children are being placed in HHS custody in a single day than are being transferred out.

And extreme weather hitting parts of Las Vegas. A flash flood watch is in effect through tomorrow morning. You can see people here scrambling to stay dry, trapped on top of a bus stop bench. More heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected there this afternoon.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Two years later, families of troops killed in the Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan are demanding accountability. The questions they still have for U.S. officials.

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KEILAR: UFOs are mysterious, but now maybe a little less mysterious. Because the Pentagon is launching a website designed to be a one stop shop for information on unidentified anomalous phenomenon.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann is here with us. I'm only saying that once it is too hard to say, Oren. But this is a site described -- it's like an Intel hub that includes declassified photos and videos.

[15:40:04]

I think a lot of people are going to be interested in this. What else is on it and why did the Pentagon make this site?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: The idea here is to make a one stop shop for not only the reporting of unidentified aerial or anomalous phenomenon. UAPs we're going to call them from now on. But also to put out information once UAP incident has been identified and resolved, or at least as far as DoD and the apparatus working on this can get it. So you'll see they've already posted some fairly new videos of UAPs. This one I believe is of a commercial aircraft they determined after looking at the video itself and other information they had.

But the idea here is that DoD is well aware of not only the interest in this, but also that these can be a national security issue and that's why this is so important to the Department of Defense. So at some point soon, this will be a place where current and former U.S. government employees can go and can submit reports of UAPs even going back decades. And then after that within a couple of months, according to the Pentagon, the public will also be able to report on UAP incidents.

There's also more information here. This is a typical UAP report or what they expect to see in one of these reports. Some interesting information here. Most of these are described as round, of a size between 1 and 4 meters, somewhere between 10 and 30,000 feet. A color of white or translucent there or silver and then moving anywhere between stationary to mock 2 which is about 1,200 or 1,300 miles an hour. So certainly a bit of a range there.

Now there's also a map of UAP hotspots. We'll call it UFO hotspots to make this a little easier. And you'll see these areas where the hot spots are, the East Coast, the West Coast of the U.S., the Middle East there and then eastern Asia. So also interesting on where DoD says they get most of their reports.

Again, the idea here and the reason this was created, the AARO office was created, to standardize this and to try to figure it out. Brianna, as of last update they have some 650 reports of UAPs they're going through.

KEILAR: All right, I can't wait for that wiki-UFO. I'm going to be all over that. Oren Liebermann at the Pentagon. Thank you -- Alex.

MARQUARDT: It has been two years since the last American troops left Afghanistan and the Taliban took control of the country. Today, the United States is still struggling to protect civilians who supported America's fight against the Taliban for all those years. A new government watchdog report finds that the backlog in the special immigrant visa program will not improve and there are no plans for a significant boost of resources. That means that thousands of Afghan civilians and their families who stood fearlessly -- it must be said -- alongside U.S. troops, will remain stuck in limbo.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper joins us now. Jake, today on "THE LEAD" you're going to be talking about this and also new reporting on the families who lost their loved ones at Abbey Gate during that chaotic withdrawal two years ago.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR, THE LEAD: That's right. Earlier this week, there was a hearing on Capitol Hill. It was during a lot of the hurricane coverage, so it didn't get as much coverage as it deserved. 13 Gold Star families who lost loved ones at Abbey Gate two years ago with some very tough questions for the administration.

And not just general questions about accountability, but more specific ones. Based on some questions that have come from Congressional testimony and also from reporting. So today on "THE LEAD," we're going to take a look at two of those questions and try to get answers based on documents and interviews that we've done.

MARQUARDT: So, it's less about the withdrawal itself and specifically about this incident and --

TAPPER: Well, I'll tell you the two -- I'll tell you the two questions. One of them is, according to testimony from one Marine sniper who was grievously wounded, he had in his sights someone who matched the description, a description of the suicide bomber that they'd gotten, and he was -- he says he was not given permission to engage with that individual. What is the truth behind that? What are the claims behind that? What

was the description of the individual? What do other Marines have to say about that? What is the administration's response to it?

The other one has to do with some -- a briefing that's contained in one of the Pentagon's investigations, in which an individual claims that before the bombing a couple days before, I think, ISIS Khorasan -- the group that later claimed credit for the suicide bombing -- was known to have had a staging area at a hotel a few miles away from Abbey Gate.

And according to this one individual, the U.S. knew about it, asked the Taliban to take it out, and the Taliban declined to do so. We'll be diving into that as well, trying to get to the -- get to the root of that.

MARQUARDT: It's been two years, but those scenes are still so fresh that they really do stick with you. And obviously, particularly tragic that these 13 lives were lost at the very last moment of America's presence in Afghanistan.

TAPPER: And this is the definition of journalism.

[15:45:00]

These are people who feel powerless, and they have questions and we are giving voice to them and trying to get some answers on their behalf.

MARQUARDT: Yes, really looking forward to seeing it. Thanks so much for doing that.

TAPPER: Thanks so much.

MARQUARDT: Appreciate it. And be sure to tune in for "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper at the top of the hour, Brianna.

KEILAR: We certainly will.

Rock'n'roll owes a lot to Richard Penniman, who you may know as Little Richard. But has his legacy been overlooked? We have a look at the new CNN film on the iconic music pioneer next.

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KEILAR: The legends surrounding the birth of rock'n'roll have long been dominated by straight, white icons like Elvis and The Beatles. Well, now the new CNN film "Little Richard, I Am Everything," takes a closer look to reveal the Black queer origins of rock'n'roll and the man who brought it all to life.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just like a shot out of a cannon. His voice, he created the rock'n'roll icon. Sorry y'all, it wasn't Elvis.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The King of rock.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The first songs that you loved that your parents hate is the beginning of the soundtrack of your life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Little Richard's lyrics were too lewd to get airplay on the radio.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just as clean as you were.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was very good at liberating other people. He was not good at liberating himself.

LITTLE RICHARD: Michael was inspired by me, Prince, James Brown, I discovered him. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player.

PAUL MCCARTNEY: I used to stand on a desk and do-Little Richard.

MICK JAGGER: Everyone was beholden to him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And joining us now is Jason King. He is the Dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, and he appears in the film as well. Jason, hard to overstate just how huge Little Richard was at his peak. But he was a gay Black man with his very sexualized performance style. So how did he become such a major star in the conservative, Jim Crow era that that he was becoming a star in?

JASON KING, DEAN, USC THORNTON SCHOOL OF MUSIC: It's true he was an Overground mainstream figure. I mean, he had nine Top 40 pop hits. He had 17 Top 40 R&B hits, but he was a gay, queer Black man. He was feminine. He was gender nonconforming, and he did all of this at a time in which it was extremely difficult to do that. It was a time of incredible homophobia and racism, legally sanctioned segregation.

I think the way he was able to do it is because of those amazing songs, Tutti Frutti, Lucille, Long Tall Sally. The songs themselves are incredibly well written and he performed them with this amazing kind of wild child energy. If you look at the lyrics to the songs, they're pretty graphic and they're, you know, they're really ribald.

But you know, they're also coated. So he's saying phrases like A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom. Who knew what that meant? It was a code in a lot of ways, you know, for sex, but it was coded. And so people could read that as being campy, funny, kind of humorous, without actually really understanding the full transgression that he embodied.

KEILAR: Yes, he was so popular. But then you also have these early rock stars, Elvis and Beatles. The Beatles are imitating his style. When we heard that there in the bit from the film, they're singing his songs. And they really get to the point where they're overshadowing him. What kind of impact did that have on Little Richard? KING: Oh, it was devastating to Little Richard. I mean on one hand

everybody wanted to be like Little Richard and to imitate him, certainly John Lennon, Paul McCartney, The Beatles, they wanted to be everything that he was. He was, you know, very free. He had this incredible energy. He could sing like nobody else.

But there was a terrible tradition in in the 1950s in the music industry, where record labels would take white artists and they would have them cover songs by Black artists. And they would often do them in these sort of tepid, milk toast renditions that generated more success than the Black artists themselves for their own music.

On top of that, Little Richard never really received his due in terms of publishing royalties. His contracts with record labels were really disadvantage. And this hurt him professionally, personally and he basically exited the music industry by 1959. He left for the church, but most people think the reason that he left was because he had been so hurt by the way that he had been treated in the music industry.

KEILAR: Yes, it's heartbreaking. And you see just that the largess of his talent. It's unbelievable. Jason King, thank you so much for sharing about Little Richard with us. I can't wait to learn even more. And for our viewers to be sure to tune in to the all-new CNN film, "Little Richard, I Am Everything." It will premiere Monday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific right here on CNN -- Alex.

MARQUARDT: Well, it is business at the front and a long party in the back. The lengths this woman had to go through to officially have the longest female mullet in the world.

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KEILAR: When is the last time you cut your hair? I feel --

MARQUARDT: Just a couple days ago.

KEILAR: Right? Exactly, right? You've got to keep up with it. Well, a woman from Tennessee says the last time she got a haircut was February of 1990, and now she's a world record holder. But not for the longest hair. She is the proud Guinness World Record holder for the longest female mullet.

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TAMI MANIS, GUINESS WORLD RECORD HOLDER: Growing the longest mullet never really started out as anything other than it was the 80s and everybody had a rat tail and I started growing mine. And over the years, it just kept growing. A lot of people just notice it when I turn around. So most of the time it's like they don't notice how long my hair is until they look at the backside.

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[16:00:00] MARQUARDT: From rat tail to mullet. Now, like all the best mullets, it is all business in the front. But this is where she starts to take the cake. In the back it is 5 feet 8 inches of party. Pure party. Tami Manis says that she had a mullet back in the 80s. She decided to cut it in 1989 and immediately regretted it. She touched it since. That was 33 long years ago.

KEILAR: Yes, she loves her mullet. But it could be a problem because she has to tuck it into her pockets when she rides her bike. I don't know, what do you think -- Alex?

MARQUARDT: Yes, I mean, if you're --

KEILAR: Does this work for you?

MARQUARDT: I think she could -- yes.

KEILAR: I'll just do that.

MARQUARDT: She could just braid it.

KEILAR: "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.