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Rep. Steve Scalise Wins GOP Nomination For House Speaker; Early U.S. Intel Casts Doubt On Direct Iran Involvement In Attack; U.S. & Israeli Intel Appear To Conflict On Iran Role; Israeli Woman Mourns Loss Of 6 Family Members Killed In Home. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired October 11, 2023 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: They don't want to have the spectacle that we had in January where McCarthy just did it on the House floor and we had 15 rounds.

Particularly, not just because it would be an illustration of dysfunction within the House Republican conference.

Most importantly, you have what you just saw from Antony Blinken standing at Joint Base Andrews, talking about standing with Israel, getting on a plane to go to Israel, that image, with the split screen, of the House actually in total disarray and not able to get a House speaker.

Even for those who don't care that much about the image of a functioning government, sees that that is a problem in today's times.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Jeff, do you sense a loss of momentum here for Scalise, that he's not putting this for a vote today?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It certainly isn't ideal. I think anytime that you could use something quickly on the Hill, it avoids the lack of uncertainty and the unknown.

I do think one thing that also has happened really in the last few moments is Jim Jordan, who's the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who will go on to keep doing his job in the impeachment inquiry under things, he says that he will support Steve Scalise. That's a very important development.

The question is, will all of the 99 people who voted for him will? My guess is most of them will. This is probably a moment where cooler heads will prevail. Except they have seen that one or two members can spoil things.

So what is happening now is looking for specific deals. Looking for specific extractions potentially from Steve Scalise.

But I think we should just take back -- step back for a moment. Former President Donald Trump, he endorsed Jim Jordan. He did not win. So what is the former president going to do with this? My guess is he has an OK relationship with Steve Scalise. Steve

Scalise certainly is plenty Trumpy enough if you want to use that expression. So my guess is this moves forward. It will just take a day.

But uncertainty on Capitol Hill, the measure of time usually is not helpful for things.

SANCHEZ: You have to wonder whether the votes would have been different if there would have been more votes for Jordan if it wasn't a secret ballot. After all, he was endorsed by the former president.

Jamie, your reaction to Jordan now moving forward with an endorsement of Scalise.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, that is good news for Steve Scalise, except the word "but." It wasn't enough to hold a vote today.

There is something I think we should mention, and that is about Matt Gaetz, who actually is supporting Steve Scalise.

He said, quote, "I'm excited for him, can't wait to go vote for Steve Scalise, long live Speaker Scalise." So he has Matt Gaetz's vote.

But on the other hand, our Hill team has been going through -- Jeremy Berb has a note here of member after member who says, not my vote, or not yet, or no.

And so we're back to the horse trading. We're back to the dealmaking. And -- but there could be, maybe not the Matt Gaetz Eight, but a different group of holdouts here.

BASH: And some who voted to get rid of McCarthy are not yet ready to support Scalise. And I'm putting my hand over here because it's my right side of the --

(LAUGHTER)

BASH: -- Republican conference.

And then you have what Mike Lawler just told you recently, like in the last hour on air, Boris. He is about as moderate as it gets. He's from the swingiest of swing districts --

SANCHEZ: A Biden district.

BASH: A Biden district. One of the 18 Republicans who won in a Biden district, who's also not ready to support Steve Scalise.

Doesn't mean they won't ultimately. But they want to -- as they say on Capitol Hill, they're not going to do it for free.

SANCHEZ: What will Scalise give up to ultimately get to 217?

BASH: Yes. Yes. SANCHEZ: Dana, Jamie, Jeff, a pleasure as always. Thanks very much for

the conversation.

Back to our other breaking news now. Israel at war, and the conflicting intelligence on what and when Iran knew about the surprise attack from Hamas.

Stay with CNN. We're back in moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:37:57]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: There are certainly a lot of questions and concerns about what role if any Iran may have played in all of this. Did Iran know something in advance and when did they know it?

That's a question high-level officials in the U.S. and Israel, and elsewhere, have been scrambling to try to answer.

Whether or not Iran played a role in planning or approving the sophisticated terror attacks that took place here, starting Saturday morning, launched by Hamas against Israel.

We are now hearing some conflicting assessments at this stage. And it is pretty early in this whole process.

I want to bring in CNN's Alex Marquardt and Matthew Chance to try to walk us through what we have learned and what they are hearing from various sources.

Alex Marquardt, let's start off with you.

What are you hearing from sources about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Here in Washington, Anderson, from intelligence officials, from people who've been briefed on the intelligence, from administration officials, what we're told is there is no smoking gun that says that Iran was kept in the loop in terms of the planning, the execution, the approval of these attacks.

They're certainly not ruling it out, but they're saying, for now, there is no proof of that. No one is denying, Anderson, that Iran bears massive responsibility for whatever Hamas does.

The only reason that Hamas has the power that it does is because of the years and years and millions and millions of dollars of backing that Iran has given to Hamas, funding, training, weapons, components.

So they were certainly able to carry out this attack because of that support from Iran. And that's why the administration is saying that Iran is broadly complicit in the attack, they just don't have the proof that they were directly involved in this attack. I did speak with a senior Israeli official who said that he would find

it hard to believe that Iran didn't know. But as far as U.S. intelligence are concerned, they don't have that hard evidence.

We know the Israeli and American intelligence communities are going back through previous evidence to see if they've overlooked anything, to see if they can find a closer tie between Iran and the specific attack -- Anderson?

[14:40:00]

COOPER: Right.

And, Matthew, I know you've been talking to Israeli officials as well.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. There's a lot of overlap between what the U.S. says and what Israeli officials say.

They both agree, as Alex was saying, that Iran is complicit. It has provided long-standing support, weapons, political backing to the Hamas militant group in Gaza.

But it's a question of how much direct influence they had, how much direct commitment they had to this appalling operation that killed so many Israelis.

And what this Israeli official that I spoke to told me -- and he's somebody who's familiar with the latest Israeli intelligence -- is that he felt, he said, that Israeli intelligence had thought that Iran essentially greenlighted this operation.

They didn't know about the timing, they didn't know it was going to cause perhaps such tragic consequences with so many Israelis killed, but they were aware that the operation was in the planning stage and they greenlighted it in that sense.

They green lighted the concept of it. And that's slightly different to having no direct involvement at all, but not as much as saying look, Iran orchestrated this as the puppet master for Hamas.

They were involved. Perhaps they didn't know the appalling consequences of this operation and the geopolitical impact it was going to have, but they knew it was in the planning stage.

COOPER: And, Alex, just to be clear, from what you're hearing it sounds like the U.S. is not ruling out the possibility that they will learn more information.

Just at this stage, they have information that some senior Iranian officials were surprised about the operation, doesn't necessarily mean that there's not more information to learn. Is that correct?

MARQUARDT: That's right. And those are the Iranian officials that they're aware of that, clearly, they've been monitoring in some fashion. We are told by intelligence officials there was a certain level of surprise among senior Iranian officials about this attack.

But to Matthew's point, that could be surprise about the timing. That could be surprise about the barbarity.

When you talk to former officials, Iran's M.O. when it comes to Hamas and Hezbollah in the north, is essentially to create these proxies.

To give them the funding, the resources they need, the power they need, the equipment they need to operate in the geography and a shared understanding of what they're supposed to do, and in both those cases, Hamas and Hezbollah's, to attack Israel.

So there isn't necessarily a need for Iran to be aware of everything and on top of everything because it's understood that Iran is giving Hamas that support so they can go after Israel -- Anderson?

COOPER: Matthew, what do you -- when you're talking to Israeli officials, what are you hearing about a potential -- what they think a potential next step in Gaza is?

CHANCE: Look, I think Israeli officials have set out pretty clearly that they intend to go in on the land to root out Hamas and end it as a military organization so it doesn't have the capability to carry out the same kind of attacks --

COOPER: Which would be an operation on a scale we have not seen in many years.

CHANCE: I've been reporting from this region for a couple of decades. And I've been in Gaza many times and seen Israeli incursions. Some of them absolutely brutal.

But I think what we're looking at now is an operation on a different scale of magnitude. Not only have you got that massively densely populated area, that network of tunnels running underneath it, which are exclusively used by militants like Hamas.

But you've also got those 150 or so hostages, which adds an extra dimension of complication to any military operation -- Anderson?

COOPER: Matthew Chance, thank you very much.

Alex Marquardt as well.

Joining me now is Ryan Crocker. He's a former U.S. ambassador to Syria and Lebanon.

Ambassador Crocker, I appreciate you being with us.

Let's talk about Iran. What do you make of -- there's agreement between certainly U.S. officials and Israeli officials about broad responsibilities by Iran, but about the level of involvement in this Hamas terror attacks.

RYAN CROCKER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SYRIA & LEBANON: Well, thanks for having me, Anderson. I listened to your conversation just now with Matthew and Alex. I come

down in pretty much the same place.

There may not be any specific intelligence directly tying Iran to this operation in all its phases, but the question of Iran supporting Hamas in every way they can is not a question. It has not been for a number of years.

So, in essence, I don't think the specificity matters that much. The Iranians provided them with the capabilities, the overall direction. There is really no substantive issue out there as far as I can see.

And we have to bear in mind that both the Israeli intelligence network and our own missed some pretty big stuff here, like the entire offensive operation.

[14:45:00]

So the fact that they can't find a smoking gun in Iranian hands specifically, just I think is not all that relevant. Iran is the largest supplier and supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah. That's what really counts.

COOPER: I want to talk to you about what is going on now behind the scenes diplomatically.

It seems as if -- and Jake Sullivan spoke to this yesterday, President Biden's national security adviser -- that there are discussions about what to do with American citizens, who are living in Gaza and want to get out, and what to do about civilians in Gaza.

Obviously, more than 200 million -- excuse me, more than two million people live in Gaza. Egypt, the border on the south, has always been very resistant to allowing Gazans to leave and go into Egypt. Is that the only option?

And do you think they can come to some sort of agreement to allow, you know, whether it's small numbers of Gazan citizens every day to leave along with American citizens in Gaza?

How do you think that's going to work out?

CROCKER: Yes, it's really a problem from hell. And a reminder that, in the Middle East, there are almost never any completely good options. There are bad options and there are worse options.

And the reality that Israel and its supporters, led by us, are looking at is the fact that if they launch a major operation into Gaza, what about the hostages?

Hamas has already said they'd start killing them and may have already done so in a most horrific way. So we've got to try to factor that in. What can be done to ensure that the hostages, Americans among them, are not summarily executed?

The Egypt option for the broader population I think is the only option that is possible. It is just politically unthinkable, frankly, right now to imagine that Israel could take Gazan civilians in on their territory.

So I hope very much -- I'm sure we're working overtime on this. We will get the Egyptians to agree to that. We're going to need to get the United Nations involved in setting up very swiftly some large camp areas. But I think that is very, very important.

And I think that also is the -- really the only way forward to deal as well with the hostage situation, to find a way to signal to Hamas that if they start killing hostages, Israeli or American, that it is ready to go for them from bad to worse.

As you mentioned earlier, I think we've now got our top diplomat on his way to Israel. We also have a carrier strike group heading to the eastern Med.

And back in the day, I would refer to an aircraft carrier as 100,000 tons of diplomacy. That is the muscle that goes along with the politics on this for anyone who might be thinking of escalating this, particularly I would say Iran.

But it really is the problem from hell, how Israel cannot cede the moral high ground that Hamas has really given them by inflicting what the world would see as huge suffering on the Gaza population.

So we've got to figure out how to make this safe haven thing work.

COOPER: I do think it's worth mentioning that these tunnels that Hamas has built under Gaza City and elsewhere, I mean, these are tunnels not for the civilian population to hide in.

There's not secured bomb shelters that Hamas has built for civilian populations. They have built these tunnels for themselves to move weapons, to move militants.

CROCKER: That is exactly right. And I cannot imagine that Hamas is suddenly going to have a change of heart here and start moving its Palestinian citizens into those tunnels. That's simply not going to happen.

Which is, again, I think why the Egyptian option into the Sinai on a temporary basis is the only thing that could possibly work.

COOPER: Yes.

Ambassador Ryan Crocker, thank you for your time.

CROCKER: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: Up next, the human toll. I'll speak to a woman who has lost a number of her family in the terror attacks that began here on Saturday.

We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:52:52]

COOPER: The full horror of what has occurred here, the atrocities that have occurred here are just coming to light.

We knew about the slaughter that took place at that music festival. More than 260 people. We saw what happened yesterday, infants killed, families slaughtered.

Nir Oz is another spot where atrocities occurred. A grandmother was shot while hiding in a safe room. In these kibbutzes, everybody had a safe room. The grandmother was shot while hiding in a safe room.

Her son was killed, along with his wife and their three children. Those three children were all under the age of 5 years old. That is the family we're showing you right now. That family is now mourning the loss of all of them.

Joining us is Ranae Butler. Her mother was the one that was killed in the safe room. And her brother and his family were the others who were slaughtered in that attack in Nir Oz.

Ranae, I am so sorry for what has occurred.

You're born in the U.S. You moved to Israel with your parents. Talk about your brother, his wife, the kid, your mother. How are you holding up?

RANAE BUTLER, FAMILY MEMBERS KILLED IN ISRAEL: Well, my brother was a farmer. He was working in the fields, taking care of the fields, he was head of the fields. His wife was such an amazing woman, as her beautiful children, too.

You know, on that day and that morning, we had reached out in Tel Aviv, are you OK, and stay safe. Later, I was checking in on them. They said, no, what can I do? I said call the army. I'm forwarding the messages to whoever I could.

[14:55:00]

My brother, at some point, because he was in the safe room with his baby twin daughters and his son, 2-year-old son, he put on a Viking helmet. He held a screwdriver.

He was in his box because everybody ran to safe rooms under their beds early in the morning. He made a face to make fun, make everyone OK.

They were writing, trying to do things and the messages saying, they're here, they're burning us, we're suffocating. Him and his wife were shot through the window.

They managed to keep the window closed. They decided no one is taking them. They decided they'll suffocate, smoke inhalation together, and they held out while wounded. Great bravery. I'm so proud of them. My mom, too. She was in the safe room with her dog and she fought and

there she was shot and not taken.

Such a big, beautiful tribe we had. Half of our family is gone. The children are torn. It was our light. This is our love.

My brother really reminds me of life is beautiful, making his jokes, trying to keep things light in the face of horrific doomsday scenario.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Ranae?

BUTLER: Yes.

COOPER: Ranae, can you tell us your brother's name and his wife and the children's names?

BUTLER: Of course. And Johnny -- everyone called him Johnny. Tamala is my sister-in-law. She was running for the council in the area for a bunch of villages. She was such an uplifting, so many values, such a quality human being.

The family was all in this together. They're so amazing.

What else did you ask about them?

COOPER: The children's names and your mother's name?

BUTLER: Their names.

COOPER: It's important that everybody hear their names.

BUTLER: My mom's Carol. We're all American, by the way. Yes. My mother is Carol. My brother was Johnny.

We have 70 dead, 70 kidnapped from a kibbutz. It's the twins and their son. Their dog was Charlie.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: How do you go on? How do you get through the day?

BUTLER: How have I been through the day? What?

COOPER: Yes. How are you getting through each day?

BUTLER: First of all, we have survivors. We had kids. I had 14 nieces and nephews. I have 11 now.

Another brother of mine was head of security, was one of the guys who were fighting. They barely put on their boots and pants and ran and fought in bravery. He was shot but he is alive. He's with us. He was wounded.

I don't -- I'm not even there because this is not over. We're crying and hugging. And you know, they are being terrorized.

This is very satanic. This is very obvious. Very detailed on how it's OK to kill Jews, the insanity that people think is in the name of God but it's so satanic.

So, I don't know. People are screwed. (INAUDIBLE)

COOPER: There are many families who were killed in Nir Oz.

BUTLER: Yes.

COOPER: These kibbutzes, these are caring communities. These were communities where all of the families knew each other and where all of the families supported each other.

In Nir Oz, I think there was a popular of some 300 and 400 people total.

BUTLER: Yes. Yes.

COOPER: Do you have any idea how many people from Nir Oz have been killed or missing at this point?

Because I know, I talked to a woman yesterday whose cousin and her two boys, she believes they had been kidnapped? There's video of them being taken, as well as her aunt and her uncle.

I mean, it seems like horror came --

(CROSSTALK)

[14:59:59]

COOPER: -- to all these families.

BUTLER: Yes, about a fourth of the community was gone or missing or dead.