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IDF Says It Mistakenly Killed 3 Israeli Hostages In Gaza; Western Officials Warn Ukraine "Certain To Fail" Without U.S. Aid; How Classified Russia Intel Went Missing During The Final Days Of Trump's Presidency. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 15, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And we continue to follow the breaking news out of Israel and its war on Hamas. The Israel Defense Forces says that it accidentally shot and killed three Israeli hostages in northern Gaza who were mistakenly identified as a threat. Two of the victims identified were kidnapped from their kibbutz and - by Hamas on October 7th. This is what IDF Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus told me just this last hour.

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LT. COL. JONATHAN CONRICUS, IDF SPOKESPERSON: We're looking into how it happened and how it came about that these hostages were out and trying to understand how that happened, whether it was intentional or by Hamas or whether it wasn't intentional. And what we have told our troops is to exercise extreme caution when being confronted with people in civilian clothes.

Again, part of the complexity here is that we're fighting in a civilian environment where almost all of the RPG crews and the IED crews that have been attacking our tanks and our troops have been dressed in civilian clothes. So it creates a very dynamic and challenging combat environment. And what we have told our troops is to be extra vigilant and do one more safety check before dealing with kinetics, with any threat that they face on the battlefield. But it is a very challenging environment that our troops are in.

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BROWN: CNN Jeremy Diamond is here with new reporting. So - and we're just hearing from the Prime Minister - Prime Minister Netanyahu about this. What is he saying, Jeremy?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Pam. The Israeli prime minister expressing his sorrow to the families of those hostages who were killed by the Israeli military, mistakenly killed by the Israeli military in this incident that happened in the Shuja'iyya neighborhood where there has been intense fighting over the last week. The Israeli prime minister saying, "This is an unbearable tragedy. The whole state of Israel is grieving this evening. My heart goes out to the families aching during their time of immense grief. I would like to send strength to our brave soldiers focusing on the sacred mission of returning our hostages, even with the price of sacrificing their own lives."

We have learned of the names of two out of the three hostages who were killed in this incident in Shuja'iyya. They are 28-year-old Yotam Haim, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7th, and 25- year-old Samer Talalka who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Am also on October 7th. The Israeli military has said that it is investigating this incident and that it is taking the lessons learned from it and conveying those to the troops.

As Col. Conricus just told you, Pam, they are effectively telling troops to be more careful in the coming days and weeks, given this incident that just happened. Of course, what this does is it sheds light on how the Israeli military has been operating and the ways in which Israeli troops have had their rules of engagement loosened at the beginning of this war, allowing them to conduct fewer checks before firing upon suspected threats.

Northern Gaza, in particular, I mean, I think back to conversations that I had with Israeli military officers in the lead up to this ground offensive, they effectively said, look, we told all of the civilians to move south, and so they would, at least one colonel told me that he would consider anyone who was moving effectively in northern Gaza as a potential threat.

And so now you see the ways in which that may be playing out on the ground. The families of hostages, of course, have been dreading a potential scenario like this. Last week, one of the released hostages actually confronted the Israeli prime minister directly, accusing him of not having sufficient intelligence about the whereabouts of hostages.

[15:05:04]

Noting that her location where she was being held was actually shelled by the Israeli military while she was in captivity.

BROWN: We should note that U.S. National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, is in the Mid East right now. He has expressed the Biden administration's concern about the intensity of the IDF offensive and the President - President Biden's desire for Israel to tone it down. How might these developments play into those sensitive talks and also talks about making rescuing those hostages a top priority? And I know our latest reporting was at - really was at a standstill with Hamas at the moment.

DIAMOND: That's right. And trying to restart those hostage negotiations has been one of the missions that Jake Sullivan has embarked on as he is now in the region. But what this also sheds light on is, of course, the U.S. concerns about how Israel is conducting its military operations in Gaza and the fact that, as Jake Sullivan said earlier today, effectively, Israel's intention may be to distinguish between Hamas militants and civilians in Gaza, but that the reality on the ground reflects something entirely different.

We have seen that, of course, play out for weeks now as Israel's ground offensive has resulted in heavy civilian casualties, thousands of Palestinian civilians who have been killed in Gaza. And today, it appears that the way in which Israel is prosecuting its military campaign has now also resulted in Israeli civilian casualties, with these three Israeli hostages having been killed mistakenly by Israeli forces operating in an intense combat environment in Shuja'iyya.

BROWN: All right. Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much. Boris?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We want to dig deeper now with former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, CNN Military Analyst Gen. Wesley Clark.

General, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us. The IDF is still gathering information about this incident. I'm wondering what that process looks like during an active war in an area where there is open conflict and how soon the hostages' families might have answers?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, you've got to get the unit that was engaged offline, and you've got to talk to the troops and you've got to talk to the commander. You've got to find out exactly what happened and you've got to find out what instructions they were operating under. Probably goes all the way up to the chain of command.

And it may take a few days. But just looking at it from the outside, based on what we know right now, you can imagine this is a group of men moving. Some of them are armed. The Israelis are under orders to engage and block these people, to take them out. And they didn't discriminate. They couldn't see. Maybe they weren't close enough. Maybe the hostages were held in the center of a group, who knows? You can't speculate on it with any precision at this point.

But soldiers in contact are prone to shoot, because their lives are at risk. So if the guidance is look one more time before you shoot, I'm sure they're going to try to do it. But when you get right down to it and soldiers are in the heat of combat and the bullets are flying back and forth, the tendency is to pick a target and take it out. And unfortunately, that may be what happened here. But we won't know. This is all speculation, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes. This is notably coming on the same week that we learned a total of 13 Israeli soldiers have been killed by friendly fire in this war. That accounts for roughly one out of every eight IDF deaths in Gaza paired with this news about the hostages, does that indicate anything to you about how Israel might need to change the way it's conducting this war or the rules of engagement?

CLARK: In terms of the rules of engagement, that's the first thing you look at. So do you say shoot on sight, do you say shoot when positively identified or do you say shoot only if engaged first and in self-defense, so you have to look at the rules of engagement first. And then you have to look at the way they're maneuvering and the information flow.

The units should know where the adjacent unit is, whether it's a squad or a platoon or a company or whatever. If you know somebody's on your flank, you're supposed to know that before you go out on the operation. And you're supposed to stay in contact with them and avoid that kind of fratricide.

It does happen in our battles in the Gulf War. We had fratricide in the - this was the 1991 battle. We worked really hard after the war to sort of diagnose it, fix it, put a lot of emphasis on it. Obviously, the Israelis need to do that.

The Ukrainians are very careful. If you look at the Ukrainian battle shots, you'll see they've got usually green a hundred-mile-hour tape on their sleeves.

[15:10:04]

So they've got some kind of identification that distinguishes their camouflage uniforms from the Russians. And it's just something that has to constantly be worked. It's rules of engagement, it's discipline, it's training and it's communication up and down the chain of command. That's all you can say.

But there is this, Boris, the more you emphasize the ground engagement, the more you put the troops in personal contact, the more casualties you take, the more likelihood there is of something like this happening. When the Israelis were doing more bombing, killing more civilians, they're not putting themselves as much in harm's way. So that's the trade off and the Israeli military is going to have to make that trade off, because as the president has said, they're losing support.

SANCHEZ: Yes, it is overall a tragedy.

Gen. Wesley Clark, thanks so much for the perspective.

We do want to let you know this just into CNN; we've learned the name of the third hostage that was killed in this incident where the IDF confused the three hostages for Hamas operatives. The name of that third hostage Alon Shamriz. I will, of course, stay on top of this story and bring you the very latest as we get it. Pamela?

BROWN: All right. Thanks, Boris.

Turning now to the war in Ukraine. CNN has new reporting that suggests Ukraine's fate may depend further on further aid from the U.S., aid which has been held up in Congress for weeks. Western officials say if the U.S. fails to greenlight the funds, the effect on Ukraine could be debilitating. President Biden already described that potential scenario as a Christmas gift for Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Let's get straight to CNN's Nick Paton Walsh.

Nick, tell us more about this warning and why this is so important. NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, I mean, the key is the timeline here. It's pretty clear at this point that Congress is not, unless some magical political sleight of hand occurs in the next few days, is not going to be able to pass any legislation that gets new bulk aid to Ukraine in January, maybe later in January when Congress is back. To add to that extraordinary difficulty, the European Union just last night was unable to pass a $55 billion aid tranche for Ukraine as well.

That's two extraordinary blows financially for Ukraine and some Western officials have been doing an assessment as to exactly how long Ukraine might be able to hold out if no further aid was sent. Ukrainian officials themselves, in fact, have warned that doctors, first responders' salaries might come unstuck in January if aid doesn't keep flowing.

Remember, so much of Ukraine's war effort underpinned by its NATO Western allies, Western officials saying that, look, "There is no guarantee of success with us, but there is certain failure without us," essentially pointing out the fact that this financial support keeps the Ukrainian military machine moving. They have had an extraordinary influx of weaponry here, training, the ability to pay salaries, to wage a war against such a well-financed machine as Russia, even though the Russian military performed so badly initially.

And look, this has been a disastrous week for Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I hate to say it. He traveled across the world, to Washington, hoping to change opinions that did not occur, a display of unity alongside President Biden. President Biden today tweeting, and I paraphrase, that the world is watching and it's important for them to see how they stick by Ukraine. But he can't get Congress, so far, it seems, to change their mind.

And so we're looking now at the millions, the billions, slowly evaporating into next year. I was at the front lines over the past 10 days or so. It's palpable, the anger, the anxiety amongst Ukrainian frontline troops as to exactly how are they supposed to get through this bleak winter with a resurgent Russia pushing forward in multiple towns along the front lines without any United States aid.

It's hard to tell precisely when it's going to run out, but we're already seeing units angry at the lack of equipment, ammunition that they have. I saw one combat medic we've known for a number of months last night. He said, look, without the aid, we are finished. And publicly, I think you see a more stoic Ukrainian military saying we'll fight on regardless because they have no choice.

And frankly, as President Biden suggested, this is a moment Vladimir Putin has been waiting for. It is a Christmas gift. The Western unity was something of an outlier when it first emerged at the beginning of this war. It has now clearly eroded and we are dealing with a split Congress on this. No immediate signs of compromise there, and a European Union, where one member, Hungary, led by Viktor Orban, clearly a Putin sympathizer, is holding that money up.

[15:15:02] The EU being very sunny in the disposition, saying, look, we'll revote in it again in January, and it indeed will get through. But the signal here to Ukraine is damaging to its morale. It says the West no longer has their back. We're in for a very difficult winter here, even if the money kept coming. Pam?

BROWN: All right. Nick Paton Walsh, thanks so much.

Coming up, highly classified information is missing. We're going to bring you CNN's exclusive reporting about the binder of Russian intelligence that disappeared at the end of the Trump administration.

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BROWN: And now to a CNN exclusive on highly classified intelligence that went missing in the final hours of the Trump administration and it's still missing nearly three years later. CNN has learned that the intelligence relates to Russian election interference, information that was deemed so sensitive it could only be accessed at the CIA and the people working with the Intel had to keep their notes locked in a safe at CIA headquarters. Yet, in the final weeks of the Trump administration, a binder of this intel was brought to the White House at the request of the president, as part of an effort to declassify documents. And in the final chaotic hours of his presidency, it went missing.

CNN's Katie Bo Lillis is part of the team that broke this story.

Fascinating reporting here, Katie Bo, what can you tell us?

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN REPORTER: Pamela, this binder that was brought to the White House contained raw intelligence that the U.S. and NATO allies had collected on Russia's efforts to meddle in the 2016 election, including sources and methods, which is some of the most sensitive information in the intelligence world. And what we're talking about here is the underlying intelligence that formed the basis of the U.S. government's assessment that Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.

The disappearance of this binder was so alarming to intelligence officials that they briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leadership about the situation last year. And we're also told by one U.S. official familiar with the matter that this was not among the classified items that were found in last year's search of Trump's Mar- A-Lago estate. So more than two years later, it appears that this binder is still missing.

QUESTION: Yes. And the big question is how did this intelligence, this highly classified intelligence end up at the White House?

LILLIS: Yes. So Trump had spent years, right, trying to declassify material that he said would prove his claims that the Russia investigation was a hoax. And this intelligence was part of a massive collection of documents that Trump had ordered brought to the White House. And there was this sort of frantic scramble in the final days of the administration to redact the documents so that they could be declassified and released publicly. And we do know that on his last full day as president, Trump did issue a declassification order for some of the materials and the FBI has published some of this on its website.

BROWN: Well, what about - where could it be? Are there any clues about what actually happened to this missing intelligence, where it could be right now?

LILLIS: So this is the million-dollar question, Pamela. We don't know what happened to the binder that went missing. There is one theory that has emerged from testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former top aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

She told the January 6th committee that she was "almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows." She said the binder had been kept in a safe in Meadows' office when it was not being worked on. And she also wrote about this in her new book, claiming that on January 19th, the final night of the Trump presidency, that she saw Meadows leave the White House with an unredacted binder "tucked under his arm."

Now, we should say here that Mark Meadows' attorney strongly denies this. He said in a statement: "Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong."

So at this point, Pamela, the mystery of this missing binder remains just that, a big mystery.

BROWN: It sure does.

Katie Bo, thank you so much.

And joining us now to talk more about this is Miles Taylor. He's the former chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen and the Trump administration.

So, what is your reaction to this? You worked in National Security. How concerning is - the fact that this binder with all of this raw classified intelligence is just missing nearly three years later?

MILES TAYLOR, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY CHIEF OF STAFF UNDER TRUMP: Pamela, it's deeply alarming. In fact, this is one of the first things I insisted on being briefed on when I came into the administration, because there was a lot of work that needed to be done to protect the country against ongoing Russian interference.

But here's something that we knew from the get-go. First, we knew that this was information that infuriated Donald Trump because he associated the intelligence with Russia's interference with people thinking his win was illegitimate.

Second, people became really worried about sharing this information with the president for two reasons. One, because of his consistent and obvious mishandling of sensitive information, Pamela, but also the worry that he might potentially pass information to the Russians. He had meetings with Putin where allegedly sensitive information was disclosed on other issues. So there was a lot of worry here.

But the third thing that I think is most damning is we, of course, know that the ex-president left the administration with information he wasn't supposed to. And now, this binder that he was so keenly fascinated by has disappeared.

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So I don't think we know for sure that he has it but I would say this, Pamela, where there is smoke, there is fire and I hope federal authorities are doing the appropriate investigation to see if it's in the former president's custody or Mark Meadows, as Cassidy Hutchinson suggests.

BROWN: Right. And as you know, our reporting is Mark Meadows' lawyer is denying he has it. It was not turned up at the search of Mar-A- Lago, according to a law enforcement official speaking to CNN. And sources told CNN the binder contained raw intelligence that the U.S. and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents. Tell us, what is raw intelligence and what kind of damage could documents like these do to U.S. National Security?

Well, look, there's a reason why we take sources and methods in the national security community and put them in what's called compartments, where a very limited number of people are allowed to know how intelligence was collected in the first place. That's really what we call often the crown jewels of the intelligence community, how you got the information.

Now, based on your reporting. The way that this information was handled would strongly suggest exactly that, that it had the details about how the intelligence related to 2016 election interference was obtained. That's the type of information that can get people killed if it's released publicly. It's the names of sources you use. It's the electronic means of surveillance that might have been exploited to try to collect information. It's other sensitive capabilities the intelligence community possesses, where it invests billions of dollars, time, effort and again, people risking their lives to obtain.

So if someone were to have absconded with that, that is a federal crime for a reason. Because it not only could put those sources at risk, it can put ongoing operations run by the American intelligence community at grave risk and put American lives further down the field in danger. So this is a very serious concern, Pamela, and I think authorities are treating it as such.

BROWN: All right. Miles Taylor, thanks so much.

And still ahead, we don't hear from her much and certainly not at a venue like this. What Melania Trump just said at a rare public speech today, that's next.

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