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First MH-17 Bodies Arrive in Netherlands; Interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham

Aired July 23, 2014 - 10:30   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a military operation that's happening right now in terms of respect for these victims and it's happening very precisely, very painstakingly, very, very slowly, no sense of rushed or hurriedness over this. They are, as we've been saying, giving the kind of respect and dignity to what has just taken place that was so obviously absent, and in fact the reverse happened a week ago, ever since those bodies were strewn across that field in eastern Ukraine.

And we talked about what might happen in the future, what kind of retribution or justice to those who committed this crime, because it is a crime, and many people have said that it actually is possibly a war crime since civilians were targeted and blown out of the sky.

And, of course, the Netherlands is home to the first world crimes tribunal since World War II. That was set up in the 90s to try the war crimes from the Bosnia war, now the International Criminal Court. And they may very well be in the future people who are brought to justice for this crime.

But at the very same time that these victims are being mourned, there are more jets being blown out of the sky over eastern Ukraine. As we know, two Ukrainian fighter jets have been blown out of the sky. Ukrainian authorities accuse those pro Russian separatists.

That begs a massive, massive question, that even after this week of maximum pressure on those separatists, on President Putin, those shoulder-fired missiles and other equipment is still getting through, including dozens of tanks still getting through that border, still going to those separatists. And this is a very, very serious, serious moment to contemplate what more can be done to make sure that stops.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the other disturbing element to that is the crash site itself has been compromised and with the shoot- down of these two military jets over eastern Ukraine, I mean it happened pretty near the crash site, so that's even more contamination and more difficulties for investigators to deal with.

AMANPOUR: Exactly. Hard to know whether that was precisely by the crash site, but you are absolutely right. It's in that same general area, the Donetsk, the Luhansk area of eastern Ukraine. And again you're right about the actual crash site of MH 17 because so much has happened there to compromise that scene.

But still investigators say if they can just get to it and at least talk to people in the area, try to find out and piece together what might have happened, and then collect as much as they can of the actual hard evidence. But also they need to talk to people to try to build a picture of precisely who might have had their finger on that trigger, if ever that is discovered.

And as we know the black boxes have been brought here and are now in Great Britain, where they also be forensically analyzed. They will be looked at very carefully to see whether they have been in any way tampered with or compromised in an effort to subvert any kind of investigation.

But yes, this is a maximum catastrophe, a massive human tragedy and an investigative nightmare because it happened in a war zone. And again to quote the Australian Prime Minister again, the crash site was being guarded by those who perpetrated the crime.

COSTELLO: Christiane, stay with me. I want to bring in Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina. Senator -- are you there?

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Yes, ma'am.

COSTELLO: As you look at these pictures, what goes through your mind?

GRAHAM: Senseless waste of decent human beings trying to do nothing but travel freely throughout the world and got killed for no good reason.

COSTELLO: You heard about the two Ukrainian jets shot down this morning.

GRAHAM: Right.

COSTELLO: When you hear something like that, what goes through your mind?

GRAHAM: That the rebels are very engaged in trying to dismember the Ukraine and the Russians are all-in helping the rebels. And it is pathetic what the United States and Europe is doing in response to this naked aggression. It sort of breaks my heart to see the Ukrainian people left out in the cold.

COSTELLO: What should the United States and Europe be doing?

GRAHAM: First, arm the Ukrainian military, train them so they can defend themselves. How about a U.N. resolution condemning Russia? You asked a good question. Whose finger was on the trigger? In every meaningful way it was Putin.

So let's have a debate in the United Nations about who's responsible for this and put Russia on trial. I don't know how the outcome would be. But the process would be great. Energy sanctions led by the United States, deny landing rights to Aeroflot when it comes to coming to the United States, and put Putin on a list of people that we should not do business with personally in terms of banking and energy.

COSTELLO: When you say put Russia on trial, you mean put Mr. Putin on trial?

GRAHAM: The Russian government through him -- yes. How about a resolution condemning this action of killing innocent civilians? It is a war crime and making the case that Russia is to blame as much as the rebels. And just see how the world would respond. You know the European response is heart breaking. I appreciate our allies, but quite frankly Europe has folded in the face of naked aggression. We're not doing much more and Putin has got to be pretty pleased with the response of the world community toward him.

COSTELLO: Well, as far as I know, U.S. intelligence sources say they can prove that it was pro Russian militants who fired this missile. They can prove that the missile was fired from eastern Ukraine, and not Russia. What they can not prove is if Russian operatives were on the scene when that missile was fired or that Russia supplied this weapon.

GRAHAM: I don't find that to be a problem for Lindsey Graham. We know where the missile came from. It wasn't fired by the Ukrainian government. It was fired by the same rebels who shot down the fighter planes. We know that Russia is providing arms. The satellite photos of the Russian military base on the Ukrainian borders shows arms are flowing into Russia. We know that there all of kinds of Russian special forces units throughout the Ukraine.

And I am convinced that this missile could not have been launched without some Russian assistance and it came from Russia itself. So this is why you would have a trial, to prove these things.

COSTELLO: How would you characterize Mr. Putin at this point?

GRAHAM: Serving his interest above all else; making sure that Russia dominates its neighbors; that NATO can't advance around its borders. Snuffing out democracy where he finds it within Russia. Trying to control the region he lives in, expanding Russian power and influence, getting personally rich at the expense of his people.

He has absolutely no empathy or sympathy for individuals. Naked aggression toward his neighbors to try to control the desires of the Ukrainian people to have a different life, to move toward the west; and just a dictator, an autocratic ruler who has destroyed democracy in his own country and is trying to destroy it in his backyard.

COSTELLO: What would you like President Obama say to Mr. Putin?

GRAHAM: Stop talking to him. Just act. I would like President Obama to come to the Congress and he would get an overwhelming response from the U.S. Congress for unilateral sanctions, if nothing else. I would like to see President Obama call Samantha Powers, who is a good U.N. Ambassador, to draft a resolution condemning Russia for the part they played in this, and start naming Putin individually to be subject for sanctions.

Do all these things. Then call him and say if you continue to dismember the Ukraine, more will be coming your way.

And arm the rebels -- excuse me -- arm the Ukrainian military.

COSTELLO: You said more will be coming your way, not war, right?

GRAHAM: Yes, not war. More.

OK -- this is important -- 80 percent of the Russian people believe that Putin is doing a good thing. Sanctions against the Russian economy, we could grind it into the ground, it's no larger than the size of the Italian economy. I want the Russian people to feel pain in response to the pain they caused. I want to put sanctions on their economy so they understand that what Putin is doing is not good for them long term and the way to get to Putin is to basically make the Russian people pay a price for supporting this guy. They are part of the problem as far as I'm concerned.

COSTELLO: Senator Lindsey Graham thanks for your insight this morning. I appreciate it.

GRAHAM: Thank you.

COSTELLO: I've got to take a break. I'll be back with much more in the NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right. Back to the Netherlands now. It is a national day of mourning; 40 bodies, 40 victims have returned home finally after their plane was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine. Those bodies and coffins being removed from those large cargo planes and being loaded aboard hearses. The hearses will then take the bodies to a laboratory in a nearby town where the DNA will be tested to try to determine who these victims are. Of course, this is just the beginning, I don't know, of weeks and months and maybe years of pain.

Chris Dickey, I want to bring you in, foreign editor from "The Daily Beast", because only 40 bodies have returned. 193 Dutch nationals died in this tragedy. So there's just so much more pain to come.

CHRIS DICKEY, FOREIGN EDITOR, "DAILY BEAST": Well, you know, there is a lot more pain to come, but over time, it will start to become routine. People will feel, yes, there are more bodies, there's another dozen today, there's another 50 tomorrow, and these kinds of moments, as intense as they are, will start to fade away, which is, of course, what the people who were involved in the shoot-down, people like probably President Putin of Russia are counting on. That the page will turn and people will forget and everybody will go on with their lives. And he will rest unpunished which is I think what Senator Graham was talking about a little bit earlier.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. But I will say there's a sense of extreme anger in the Netherlands. There's a group that's been put together called the Victims Support, Netherlands Group and they have a policy director. And he's speaking for these family members who have lost loved ones and expressing great anger not only at Russia and Ukraine but also at the Dutch government, the government of the Netherlands for not keeping the families more informed of what's happening. DICKEY: Well, you know, there's two different levels of this, Carol.

One is the question of the families -- the bodies of their loved ones, of how those are treated and of the insults that occurred to the dead on the fields of eastern Ukraine and that's felt very intensely.

But there is another kind of anger that is welling up in the Netherlands. An anger at the people who perpetrated this, at the people responsible for it and there are not a lot of doubts about who those people are. Maybe the individual names are not known but the general responsibility is very clearly understood.

So you have columnists like Bas Heijne, for instance from NRC Handelsblad who are saying "Man-up, Netherlands. It's time to really face the responsibility not only for your anger but for taking action based on your anger." And I think one of the things that's important to understand right now is that if anybody is going to lead the way toward stronger European sanctions, stronger European action, the Dutch are the people to do it.

The French are not acting. I'm sitting here in Paris where the French are going ahead with the sale of $1.2 billion worth of warships -- I'm sorry -- 1.2 billion euros worth of warships to Russia despite all that's happened. The British are not going to give up all the money that's in the city of London from all the Russian oligarchs who've moved there.

Nobody is really taking action in Europe. So when people say Europe is not standing up, they are right and the people who could lead Europe now are in fact the Dutch. We'll see if that happens, but I think there is that level of anger.

COSTELLO: Well, let's bring in Christiane Amanpour. Of course, some people Christiane say that the United States should lead this effort?

AMANPOUR: Carol -- frankly it has to be everybody. And I think Chris puts his finger right on it. There needs to be a much more concentrated level of focus on the stated desire to get the perpetrators of this crime and of all the destabilization, not to mention the annexation of sovereign territory that would be Crimea from Ukraine, over the last several months.'

The sort of truism about sanctions, Carol, is that in order for them to actually work, those putting them on, those imposing those sanctions have to be willing to take the pain. The U.S. has to be willing to take the pain, the Germans, the Italians, the Dutch, the French, the British -- everybody has to be willing to take pain in order to inflict pain.

And until those countries feel that they are able and are willing to do that, you are right, the Russians are going to think like in a week or so the world anger will have dissipated and they can get back to business as usual. Unless you doubt that, I had on yesterday the E.U. Russian ambassador who told me that he felt that Russia was doing quite nicely, thank you very much, on the international stage right now. So they clearly are hoping -- maybe that was just a brave -- putting a brave face on universal anger directed at them, but they are clearly hoping that after a few days this dissipates and they are clearly counting on the United States, on all those European countries I mentioned to calculate that they are not willing to take the pain to inflict pain on Russia.

However, the British treasury secretary, known as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne has said this week that actually now everything has changed; that this downing of this plane means that we can no longer afford to be timid. That it is much more costly for us not to inflict that kind of sanction and pain because we cannot live in a world where these huge costs are inflicted of shooting down a civilian plane. Not just real cost, but human cost as well.

COSTELLO: Absolutely.

AMANPOUR: We cannot live in a world where huge cost of annexing sovereign territory is allowed to go unaccounted for and uncounted.

So there is a real sort of moment of truth happening and to Chris's point about the Dutch leading the way, even Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands yesterday said that everything has changed since this tragedy. But you are absolutely right. Actions will speak louder than words.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. And what we're witnessing right now, the hearses are now on their way to a military base in Hilversum and that's where doctors and investigators will collect DNA samples to identify the victims inside those coffins.

I'll let you watch a little bit as we go to break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: All right. Back to the Netherlands right now. The first bodies from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 back home on Dutch soil. The families of the victims welcoming their return as did government officials and even the Dutch royals. Right now, most of the coffins with the remains are on their way to a nearby town. They will be taken to a military laboratory where their bodies will be tested for -- you know, to try to find out who they are. DNA testing will take place.

Richard Quest has all of those details. He joins me now from New York to explain. Hi -- Richard.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: A very good morning to you and a sad morning. But I think Carol what we are seeing with these pictures from Eindhoven is the first moments of decency, the first moments of dignity, the first moments when the long and difficult process of putting names to faces and putting identities and humanity to those on board.

And so that will begin at a military base. It's going from Eindhoven to Hilversum. From Hilversum it will take many weeks, if not months because of the numbers involved. There, you see the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte who, of course, is sitting near the royal family, King Willem and Queen Maxima, who only last year of course, succeeded and took the throne, the orange throne of the Netherlands.

And then after that Carol, then of course, the individual countries will repatriate their own nationals to their country. Australia calls this Operation: Coming Home and have made it clear that until every last Australian on that plane has been returned and until justice has been done, they will not rest -- Carol.

COSTELLO: It's just -- it's so sad to watch. It's just unbelievable. This is just 40 bodies. 50 are expected to return to the Netherlands tomorrow. But there are 298 victims here. Not all of the remains have been recovered.

QUEST: And that, unfortunately, we need to keep in our minds and our hearts and our prayers as we watch these pictures. Because although the bodies, the first 40 on these planes, these planes will return to Ukraine to pick up the next. They will return with empty coffins and they will come back with more families, more friends, more members.

And then we have the very difficult issue of how many are still resting, how many remains are still in these sun fields of Ukraine. Because Carol, you are right, it's believed that maybe there are only 200 bodies have been recovered so far. If that is the case, then a great deal more work needs to be done amongst the wheat and the sunflowers in Ukraine.

COSTELLO: And sadly, the fighting too, right? I know the black boxes have been recovered and they are now in Britain. When will the download begin?

QUEST: I'm guessing it's happening while we're speaking. For the experts at Britain's AAIB, Air Accident Investigation Branch, this is a very much routine form of operation. The boxes look to be in good condition. They were built to withstand the sort of force and fall that they endured. There's a representative of the NTSB who will be there as well to assist experts and all the experts know exactly what they are doing.

And the information, Carol, that they will glean from the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, it will immediately be transmitted to the Netherlands because it is the Dutch safety board which is now the proper authority that will investigate and will produce the final report. Lessons need to be learned so this can never happen again.

COSTELLO: I hope so. Richard Quest, many thanks.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" after a break.

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