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Canadian Flight Stopped after Bomb Threat; Israel and Hamas Agree to Temporary Ceasefire; U.S. Libya Embassy Moved from Tripoli; Family Remembers Loved Ones Killed in Plane Crash in Ukraine; Rebels in Ukraine Express Loss of Patience with Plane Crash Investigation; Debate Continues in Congress over Solutions to Immigration Crisis; CNN Hero Works to Preserve African Lions

Aired July 26, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. So grateful to have your company. I'm Christi Paul.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Victor Blackwell. Ten o'clock here on the East Coast, 7:00 on the West Coast. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

PAUL: And we're following breaking news. I want to let you know, the United States have evacuated its embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. This is amid heavy militia fighting there.

BLACKWELL: U.S. officials say 150 embassy staff members, including 80 marines, have left Libya. They've driven to a neighboring Tunisia there to the west.

PAUL: Now, for weeks the Pentagon pressed to evacuate the embassy after the Tripoli airport came under repeated attack. That threatened the ability to get Americans, you can imagine, out on commercial flights.

Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr joining us now.

Barbara, what do you know this hour?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, again, Christi and Victor.

By all accounts it went smoothly in that convoy west across the border into Tunisia, about a five or six-hour drive for the Americans. But we also know now here at CNN, there was plenty of American military firepower standing by just out of sight ready to move in in that convoy had gotten into trouble, if it had been attacked. There were two F16s overhead, a drone following the convoy the whole way, a destroyer out in the Mediterranean, a U.S. Navy warship, of course, and there were also heavily armed marines flying overhead in V22 aircraft ready to land in the convoy had come under attack and take the Americans out very quickly out of that area. But it all went smoothly.

This is really a reflection of the growing violence in Libya, especially in Tripoli, over the last several weeks, the airport under repeated shelling, the neighborhood where the embassy is, shelling, violence, rival militias battling it out for control, the government in Libya growing increasingly fragile, increasingly unable to control the situation. So this somewhat became inevitable, I suppose. There had been a lot talk about it over the last several days, and they decided finally that the Americans really had to get out of the country for a while.

The State Department is making the point, the embassy is not shut down. They say it is relocated to neighboring countries, that the diplomats will continue to carry on their work. But make no mistake, the complex, the compound, is shuttered and the Americans will not be going back until the security situation improves.

CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: All righty, Barbara Starr, thank you so much.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Let's dig deeper and bring in Ed Royce. He's a House Republican from California, chairman of the house committee on foreign affairs. Congressman, good to have you with us.

REP. ED ROYCE, (R) CALIFORNIA: Good morning. Good to be with you.

BLACKWELL: We have this statement that we received from the State Department, from Secretary Kerry, and it calls on those in Libya to engage in a political process and come together to avoid the violence there. Do you think this is at a point at which that is the answer? Or is there a military effort that must be taken first?

ROYCE: Well, let me explain first of all that I think having removed Gadhafi, the administration sort of took its focus off Libya and things had been getting worse for some quite considerable time now. We have an embassy security bill I had authored that we passed out of the House. We were trying to get through the process, and, again, it would be good to have the administration for engaged on this over on the Senate side.

I did get briefed last night by a senior State Department official on this evacuation. I do think they should be much more engaged on the ground with the factions in Libya. I've tried to encourage some of this with the administration, and I think they're on the right track, but -- but late into the game in terms of trying to bring factions together and use U.S. leverage to try to work this out.

BLACKWELL: I was reading that an official there in Libya, and just so people have a good understanding what's going on there, said "shells are falling on houses. Children are terrified. Most people have evacuated. Our area is suffering." If they come to the U.S. and say, we need help, whether it be humanitarian, whether it be militarily, what do you think the U.S. is capable of offering?

ROYCE: Well, again, what we needed to offer was leadership there in north Africa, bringing neighboring countries together and bringing these factions together and trying to get them to cooperate with each other and trying to not let nature take its course, but instead, a more robust engagement diplomatically. And I think this is the criticism right now. It's not just in Libya, it's in many parts of the world, where we are not engaged enough with key decision-makers on the ground, and with our own coalition partners around the world, in order to try to avoid the kind of anarchy that's increasingly coming to areas where we sort of abdicate to be in there, leveraging, getting people to the table and to compromise. I just don't see us doing that.

PAUL: Congressman Ed Royce, thank you for being with us. Stick around, will you, please. We do want to bring you into the conversation over other major news overseas today as well.

BLACKWELL: Let's talk about what's happening in Gaza ramping up diplomatic efforts to secure this longer-lasting ceasefire there.

PAUL: Yes. We're in a 12 hours pause, as they've been calling it, between fighting between Israel and Hamas. That pause is underway and it has been quiet just, we're told, just about three hours left to go with that. But for the first time in days, residents of Gaza were able to return to the streets today, we're told. Many buildings are just rubble. The death toll has not reached at least 961, 961.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And that's after Palestinian officials say they found at least 40 bodies in buildings that were just too dangerous to enter until the shelling stopped during this pause. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with other foreign ministers in Paris to try to get the ceasefire extended, as we said, to now a full week.

PAUL: One man told CNN that he wishes the ceasefire hadn't happened because then he would never have found out that his home was just a pile of rubble right now.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring in CNN's Ian Lee in Gaza, and let's start with the situation is like there now. This ceasefire, we're now nine hours in. Is it holding?

IAN LEE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, victor, it seems to be holding so far right now, and as Christi said earlier, we are about three hours now until the end of the ceasefire. I went to two of the neighborhoods that were really the front lines of a lot of this fighting, and really sections, areas of these neighborhoods completely destroyed, reduced to rubble and twisted steel. The people picking through them trying to get whatever effects they can take out of that.

And really when you saw these people leaving the neighborhoods, going back to these U.N. shelters, it wasn't photo albums that you were seeing. They were taking clothes, they were taking food, and they were taking cooking fuel, things they could use in the near term, things to help them keep going day by day.

Now, I was going through one of these streets and one thing was just the massive amount of fire power. There was a huge crater right next to the side of the road that had to have been well over 10 feet deep, and just to show the massiveness, these 500-pound bombs that Israel is dropping on some of these neighborhoods. Now, talking to some of the people, they were, like you said,

devastated to find out some of their houses were destroyed, and wondering how they're going to pick back up. But in one neighborhood, we went fairly far towards the front line, about, about 100 meters from Israeli tanks, that's according to what our cameraman Joe Sheffer (ph) saw. He saw those tanks, and we were in that neighborhood and all of a sudden had people yell at us, we do not want to see a sole here. And what we took from that is that these were potentially Hamas fighters getting ready for the end of the ceasefire. It ends in three hours' time and it's likely, unless there's an extension that the fighting will pick up again.

PAUL: Ian, thank you so much. Please, stay safe there, to you and your crew as well.

Let's bring back Republican Congressman Ed Royce in Orange, California. He's the chairman of the House foreign affairs committee. And I know you've been following this. On July 11, Congressman, the House passed a resolution expressing U.S. support for Israel to defend its citizens against Hamas. When we see these number, when we see what's happening, and of course we know there is support for both sides certainly, but where does Congress sit in terms of what to do and how to move forward, Congress itself, for getting, you know, other territories that we're trying to negotiate with?

ROYCE: We want to see an end to the violence. We want to see a ceasefire. We want to see a ceasefire that holds. I think that one of the concerns is that there's the discovery now of 30 new tunnels that go deep into Israel, three miles into Israel. And one of the questions is, can we get an agreement where the Palestinian Authority can get in there and monitor this along with some of the international community, because what we've found is that those tunnels are being used not only in preparation for kidnapping people from Israel.

One of them comes up close to a school, but they're also being used to hide the leadership of Hamas, and one of the things right now is these are being cleared out is they're finding that's where the Hamas leadership is hiding, including those very authorities that went on television and asked specifically, asked people to be human shields, asked those in Gaza to be human shields and go to a site which was going to be attacked.

So this is an enormously complicated situation, but if we can get a ceasefire and if we can get the Palestinian Authority in there with a little help from the international community, then I think that ceasefire can hold and we can actually reduce the power of Hamas with all of those rockets they've got hidden.

BLACKWELL: All right, Congressman Ed Royce joining us from Orange, California. Sir, thank you so much for speaking with us.

ROYCE: Thank you very much.

PAUL: We appreciate it.

BLACKWELL: So imagine this. You're on a flight. PAUL: Oh, my goodness.

BLACKWELL: And then this happens.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heads down, hands up! Heads down, hands up! Heads down, hands up!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Police storm in onto this plane with weapons drawn screaming, "Heads down, hands up," after witnesses, witnesses there claim a man threatened to bomb Canada.

PAUL: And our other story, bodies arriving in the Netherlands today. Investigators begin the process of identifying remains of the flight 17 victims. We'll give you the process. Just stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: It's 13 minutes past the hour, and a really solemn scene in the Netherlands. These are pictures that we're just getting in here I wanted to share with you. Some of the 38 coffins that are being transferred from Ukraine to the Netherlands, so they continue the process of investigation but also the process for these families to hopefully reconcile some of their own feelings. But you really feel the sadness and the sacredness when you watch these pictures as these innocent people who had nothing to do with the conflict Ukraine and Russia are brought home.

BLACKWELL: It's the precision of military honors, when you see everything, and these soldiers we just saw turning just on, pivot on a dime here.

PAUL: And there's one right there.

BLACKWELL: It's special. Especially for all of the people who are standing there wondering if it's their loved one who is in that coffin that has been placed into a hearse.

PAUL: That's got to be what is one of the toughest things is to stand there and know these are people who were on that plane but not know if one of those bodies is the one that you want to come home to you so you can give it the proper burial that you're waiting for.

BLACKWELL: We'll pause for a moment and just listen.

Just lost that shot there, but 38 coffins returning today, just landing. They left Kharkiv, Ukraine this morning, and here they are back now arriving, and they'll be headed to facilities to begin the identification process.

PAUL: We also need to talk this morning, as you see another coffin being extracted there from the plane. It is something to see all of the military personnel in their uniforms escorting these coffins and wondering what the families must be feeling like as they're watching it.

BLACKWELL: You know, we heard on the first day, I think it was Thursday, that day of mourning, in those break, the pauses we listened to natural sound, where you can hear the people there crying as the first victims were returned to the Netherlands.

PAUL: Certainly thoughts and prayers going to all of those folks as answers are so few still, and hopefully they will get some of those answers in the coming weeks, months. And there is the salute, and again, thoughts and prayers going out to all of those folks there.

BLACKWELL: We'll continue to follow that as well. What's happening new this morning, the U.N. says the second black box from the Air Algerie flight that crashed Thursday, that's now been found. The device was recovered by a team working at the crash site Mali. Flight 5017 was flying from Burkina Faso to Algeria when it disappeared from radar after changing its flight path because of bad weather there. There are discrepancies in the number, but what we know from at least the French government that 116 people there were onboard. They were killed.

PAUL: I don't know if you've seen this yet, but it was chaos and fear inside a passenger plane in Canada. Put yourself in this position. This is captured in a cellphone video. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Heads down, heads up! Right now, heads down, hands up! Show me all your hands. Heads down!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL: "Hands up and heads down." Can you imagine being the person in that seat? This started with an angry threat that forced a Sunwing jet carrying 189 people to Canada to turn back to Toronto escorted by U.S. fighter jets.

BLACKWELL: Witnesses tell our affiliate that a 25-year-old Canadian citizen said he wanted to bomb Canada. A search came up empty, but Ali Shahi, that's his name, he's due in court today for a bail hearing. Police say he faces four charges including endangering the safety of an aircraft.

PAUL: You know, back to flight 17, as we were watching some of the bodies come back. Among those that was lost, a young family from the Netherlands. I want to show you a picture of Kim Hally and her four- year-old daughter Megan. Dave, the dad in this family, is the one behind the lens.

BLACKWELL: And he took this photo just before flight 17 took off, and now it's a final reminder of the joy for the grieving relatives in the Netherlands. Erin McLaughlin is at the Hague. Erin?

ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Victor. Those 38 caskets expected to arrive here at this military base. They're going to drive through those gates just over that way, and even though the bodies have yet to be identified and officials say there are still human remains at the crash site. Kim Hally's parents and sister tell me they're convinced the Hally's are home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

THLJS VERHAEGH, VICTIM'S FATHER: Too much. Three people.

MONIQUE VERHAEGH, VICTIM'S SISTER: A whole family. Yes, too much to understand.

MCLAUGHLIN: Dave and Kim Hally were on their dream holiday with their 4-year-old daughter Megan. Dave took what would be his very last photo. His wife and child ready for takeoff onboard MH-17.

MONIQUE VERHAEGH: We're looking at them and thinking -- yes. It was a happy moment for them, and --

MCLAUGHLIN: At least their last moments were happy.

MONIQUE VERHAEGH: Yes. They really were. Yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: Kim's parents say all they can do is wait for their bodies. They watched as the first unidentified caskets arrived in Holland. And while they didn't know for sure, they told themselves the Hallys came off the plane first.

MONIQUE VERHAEGH: They always wanted to win, so we said, this is it.

MCLAUGHLIN: When you saw the three coffins come off the plane, you thought, there they are?

THLJS VERHAEGH: The search was over. The at first we want our --

MCLAUGHLIN: That has to be it.

THLJS VERHAEGH: Yes.

MCLAUGHLIN: Do you blame anyone for what's happened?

THLJS VERHAEGH: Yes. The men who hit the button to start the rocket to blow up the airplane. If I get him, I will -- I could kill him.

MCLAUGHLIN: Not far away, the Hally house stands empty, their car parked in the driveway, a makeshift memorial on the front porch, and a grandmother's last moment remembered. As she was cycling from the Hally house just before the family left for their trip, she said she turned to see her granddaughter, who waved and said --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you, bye!

MCLAUGHLIN: Now all then have left are memories.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCLAUGHLIN: Christi and Victor, it's difficult to say just how much pain this family is going through. The latest round of caskets arriving here in the Netherlands to be identified, and it's difficult to put into words just how important it is every single victim is identified and given back to the family to be buried with dignity and respect. Christi and Victor?

PAUL: Erin McLaughlin, thank you very much.

BLACKWELL: The black boxes, we know they were handed over, those were intact, and the download a success.

PAUL: Right.

BLACKWELL: But just what will the investigators find on those black boxes?

PAUL: We're going to look where the investigation to the downed plane could lead now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: More than a week after Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was shot out of the sky investigators still don't have full access to the crash site.

BLACKWELL: This morning Malaysia's prime minister is requesting full cooperation from the rebels and Ukraine's armed forces. Now a spokesman for the international group of monitors in the region says rebels had suggested they may only have another week of patience left.

PAUL: So let's talk about this with Richard Barrett, a former counterterrorism director from Britain MI6 agency, and we're joined by CNN aviation analyst and pilot Miles O'Brien. Gentlemen, thank you for being with us and good morning to you. Richard, I want start with you. When people -- there's so much outrage around this already, but when people hear that the rebels are saying, you know what, we're getting a little fed up with you being here, is it time for the west to do more to intervene?

RICHARD BARRETT, FORMER COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR, M16: There was a remarkable contrast, I think, between the scenes that you showed earlier from the Netherlands of the dignity and respect shown to the victims there and the sort of chaotic and casual attitude of the rebels in the area where the plane came down.

And I think the west does lose patience, yes. I think it's a question then of what they can do. Certainly sanctions will be increased. Certainly they'll be more pressure, political pressure, on the government of Russia to try and get the rebels to stop the fighting and to, certainly, calm it down, and to protect the crash site, but I'm not sure what sort of effect that will actually have.

BLACKWELL: Miles, you're a pilot. You know what it's like inside the cockpit. There have been these three incidents in fewer than two weeks, and then we saw what happened on that flight to panama. For the people who work in the industry, how do you cope with these recent disasters, and is that an increased level of stress for people who fly or the flight attendants? MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Yes, well, the business has been

under stress for many years. And this is just the latest manifestation. We have a terrible, awful cluster of tragedies. Sometimes that happens. These circumstances seem to be more dire in many respects because of the nature of all these crashes that we've seen.

I think for the people who get in the cockpit, the flight crews, it's an opportunity to stop and check those checklists one more time. Maybe do an additional walk-around around the plane, maybe look more closely at what they're doing and re-evaluate that they're doing everything in a safe fashion. If nothing else a good crew is taking opportunity to pause and think about what they're doing, which is perhaps undermining safety ever so subtly. These things do creep into our behaviors and patterns. It's always good to reevaluate.

PAUL: Mr. Barrett, I wanted to ask you, we had the ambassador, former ambassador to Ukraine on earlier, and he finally said, militarily, we may need to act because of that crash site and the rebels that are controlling it at this point, and trying to figure out whether Russia did, indeed, give them all of these resources to shoot this plane down. Let's say that it is determined this was a missile, that Russia did supply the resources, if that is the case, at this point what do we do when we know that sanctions have not worked?

BARRETT: Yes. Well, if Russia provided that missile, and I can't think otherwise how the rebels would have got hold of it because I understand the Ukrainian missiles that they had possession of were non-functional. So if that is the case, then what do we conclude with that? Bringing down a civilian aircraft is an extraordinary act and probably a criminal act, but is it an act of terrorism? That's another question because of course an act of terrorism is an act of violence intended to bring about a political result. And I guess you wouldn't say that this downing of a completely unrelated aircraft is going to bring about a political result within Ukraine.

But I think that the irresponsibility in any conflict providing some sort of irregular group like the Ukrainian rebels with these very, very sophisticated weapons, that is unconscionable and can't happen anywhere. I couldn't happen in Syria, it shouldn't happen in Ukraine or anywhere else because the consequences can be so disastrous.

PAUL: Richard Barrett and Miles O'Brien, always appreciate your insight. Thank you for being with us.

So we're talking about a flag swap on top of the Brooklyn Bridge apparently drawing an awful lot of concern.

BLACKWELL: But was it really just a stunt, or a prank? Or was it something sinister?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: It's 33 minutes past the hour. Hope Saturday morning's been good to you so far. I'm Christi Paul.

BLACKWELL: And I'm Victor Blackwell. Here are five stories we're watching this morning.

Up first, just under three hours now remain on a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Secretary of State John Kerry and other diplomats are working to get it extend for a full week. More than 900 people, mostly civilians in Gaza, have died in the recent violence. Palestinians say they found at least 40 additional bodies today in areas that were too dangerous to enter earlier.

PAUL: Second, more heartbreak in Chicago from gun violence. A shooting this morning left a three-year-old by in critical condition. This, of course, comes hours after another shooting killed a 12-year- old boy and wounded six others. Chicago has been deal wig an ongoing problem with gun violence. Last weekend 47 people shot, and in one of those case, an 11-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet.

BLACKWELL: Number three, a fast-moving wildfire in California has forced hundreds to leave their homes. Look at this. This is about 40 miles east of Sacramento. Officials say the sand fire, as it's called, has already scorched about 1,300 acres and destroyed at least two buildings. Rugged terrain and dry conditions are making it pretty tough for the firefighters to contain it.

PAUL: Number four, New York police may be one step closer to finding out who's behind the Brooklyn Bridge flag swap. Officials say DNA was found on tin cans that were used to shield lights on top of the bridge while the bleached-out flags were put into place. Police say they're also investigating nicknames that may have been used by the culprits.

And number five, as many as four journalists, three of them Americans, have been detained in Iran. The "Washington Post" says a Tehran correspondent and his wife among those detained. The other two are freelance photographers who have not been named yet. It's not clear why the reporters are being held, but the Committee to Protect Journalists is urging Iran to release them.

Talking about the immigration crisis, it's stirring up partisan tensions in Washington and lawmakers are running out of time to find a solution because Congress leaves town for summer recess in less than a week now.

BLACKWELL: CNN's Erin McPike joins us live from the White House. Erin, what's the chance that the House and Senate will agree on something that the president is willing to sign?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor and Christi, the White House is worried that they won't come to an agreement in the next week before Congress leaves for recess. One White House official told us yesterday they are very alarmed they won't.

And, in fact, president Obama met yesterday with the presidents of three countries, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, to get commitments from those countries to help stop the illegal migration coming from there. But that very thing is proving to be a sticking point between Republicans and Democrats. Some Republicans want to change a 2008 law that would expedite deportation to those countries. But that sticking point is something that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson addressed just yesterday. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEH JOHNSON, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We're not going to address migration, illegal migration, from these three Central American countries into the United States until we can take appreciable steps to help them improve the conditions in their countries. We've begun that, our supplemental request includes funding to accomplish that, but we need to do more. We need to continue on this path.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCPIKE: Now, the amount of funding is also an issue, as always. The White House has requested $3.7 billion from Congress. The Senate was kicking around $2.5 billion. The House was looking at $1.5 billion. But that fell through. So now Republicans do think they want to do something before August recess. So it doesn't become an even larger problem. So they're not hearing more from their constituents about it, and they will be introducing legislation in the next week for less than $1 billion. So they're still looking at the movement, but it does not look good, Christi and Victor.

BLACKWELL: All of those town halls are happening over the five week break. Erin McPike for us at the White House, Erin, thanks.

PAUL: We'll be back in a moment. Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: It's 41 minutes past the hour, and breaking this morning, the United States has evacuated its embassy in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. This is amid heavy militia fighting there.

BLACKWELL: U.S. officials say 150 embassy staff members including 80 marines have left Libya and driven to neighboring Tunisia.

PAUL: Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about a situation just a short time ago. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: We are deeply committed and remain committed to the diplomatic process in Libya. Our envoy will continue to be engaged with the British envoy and other envoys, and we will continue to try to build out of the election the legitimacy of the government formation and the efforts to end the violence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: CNN global affairs correspondent Elise Labott joins us from Aspen, Colorado. Elise, The State Department calls this suspension of operations there at the embassy, not so much a closing. Help us understand the difference and what's really going on.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: OK, Victor and Christi, listen, when the State Department closes an embassy it kind of means they shut all the doors, they shutter it, and they don't really have any intention of returning. Look what they did a few years ago in Syria. They haven't returned since.

When they say they're temporarily suspending operations, look, things are getting dices in Libya right now, and the embassy is rally in a location in the crosshairs of fighting. So they want to take out the staff temporarily while some of the violence dissipates, and hopefully they can get a political process going. And then they have plans to bring them back as soon as they can.

But the State Department says this is, "temporary relocation of personnel." Listen, they did a full military protection to get these people out. So I think it's fair to say these people have been evacuated, but the embassy is basically temporarily stopping operations while they can't work in the country.

PAUL: I believe he said at one point they would still be working, they would just be doing it from the west, from wherever they're stationed now. But how effective might that actually be without them being there?

LABOTT: Well, listen, the embassy was down to a very low staff to begin with, kind of a limited staff because of the violence. That doesn't mean that the ambassador and other diplomats won't be reaching out.

But part of the problem is that these warring factions, the diplomats really haven't been able to even leave the compound. The diplomatic missions have kind of been suspended on the ground. So certainly they'll be reaching out. Secretary Kerry, as he said, will be reaching out to the government.

But really, this violence has really rocked the country. And it's ironic, isn't it, that the U.S. helped oust Muammar Gadhafi years ago. But I don't think we've seen that hands-on diplomatic engagement to the level should. And the government has remained fragile. It hasn't been able to build up not only political institutions but the military institution and the police force, and you've see this vacuum that's allowed these militias to really keep fighting and continue to destabilize the country, forcing the U.S. to remove its staff.

PAUL: Elise Labott, thank you so much for being available this morning to us. We appreciate it.

BLACKWELL: Elise, thank you so much.

And we're going to unpack this a little more. State Department spokesperson Maria Harf joins us live to talk about the suspension of separations as they call it at the U.S. embassy in Tripoli.

PAUL: Tensions, meanwhile, growing at the crash site of flight 17.

BLACKWELL: Rebels frustrated by international investigators, and it goes the other way, too. The problems in securing the scene, we'll talk about those in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: As the finger-pointing over who is responsible for the shooting down of flight 17 continues, a top pro-Russian rebel commander reportedly told Reuters this week rebels had control of the Buk missile system.

PAUL: It's the weapon of course that U.S. official say was used to shoot down the plane, and the commander later said his words were taken out of context. Let's talk about it with CNN military analyst Major General "Spider" Marks, and Bill Waldock, the Emory-Riddle Aeronautical University, from there. Thank you both, gentlemen, for being here. Bill, I want to start with you. Let's talk about this admission. This is coming from a rebel group that is not even allowing investigators into the crash site. Do you even take it for any sort of worth in this investigation?

BILL WALDOCK, EMORY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY: Well, it sounds like he might be backpedaling after saying something he probably thought better of later. Whether or not he was taken out of context remains to be seen.

BLACKWELL: General, we had the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine on, William Taylor, earlier this morning on "NEW DAY," and he said that after these reports that we got from this group that they are running out of patience. He said that if necessary there should be a military effort to take these rebels out. What do you think?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I think when you come right down to it, Victor, the only surefire, guaranteed way to isolate this location is to have some force on the ground, whether that's law enforcement capability or military capability, that truly can isolate and protect it. Right now the site has been terribly corrupted and it will continue to be corrupted until somebody can surround it, protect it, and then allow investigators to get in.

And I think that truly is an option that can be considered, probably has been considered, but it's been discounted, because it's so provocative. You have the Russians on one side and then you have some potential European international force coming in and trying to isolate it. There would have to be a lot of diplomatic back channels and overt actions to make sure that was done without viewed internationally as very, very provocative. But it is the way to do it. It's the only way to do it, frankly.

PAUL: Bill, when we know that British investigators have the black boxes. They are looking at them, and they've had them for, you know, quite a bit of time now. At this point, if we have no indication of what's on there, how much time might it be before we'll hear anything? And the fact that some time has gone by at this point, what do you make of that?

WALDOCK: Well, I've heard that the Netherlands is intending to eschew some sort of a preliminary report by the end of next week. Part of the problem here is, if you don't have access to the evidence and the wreckage, it's kind of hard to come to a real reasonable conclusion. I think on the face of it we've got a pretty good idea of what happened. But how it happened, who did it, I think are the two main issues we need to understand.

BLACKWELL: Let me ask you, general, before we get to, ask you about the military response. Australia's prime minister says he's working on this deal with Ukraine to send in police. Some could be armed. There are other countries that are sending in in unarmed police. Do you think that will exacerbate this situation with reports of rebels who are walking around, most of them drunk, or many of them drunk, with weapons? Will it exacerbate the tense situation, or is this going to, as you said, surround it and take control?

MARKS: Well, that part of Ukraine is clearly run by the separatists. The Kiev, the government in the Kiev, does not and has admitted they do not have control of that location. So in order to do that, you have to have agreement of some sort by the de facto ownership of that terrain and that situation.

So to bring some type of military or law enforcement, police force into the location, you've got to get the agreement of the Russian separatists. That may be difficult to do. So the short answer is, it could very well exacerbate it.

And if you, Victor, if you anticipate a fight, you don't want to pick a fair fight, you want to go in with enough fire power you can completely roll over these guys. That's not the intent with this capability.

PAUL: Good point.

BLACKWELL: Major General James "Spider" Marks and Bill Waldock, thank you both for joining us.

PAUL: Appreciate it, gentlemen.

BLACKWELL: We've just gotten some good news, very good news this morning. Anton Skiba, the CNN freelance producer in Ukraine who was detained while covering this story for us, working as a fixed, a guide, and a translator there, he's been freed. Skiba called CNN a short time ago to confirm that he is free and that he is fine.

PAUL: And we are grateful for that, aren't we.

BLACKWELL: All happy about that. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: In this week's CNN Heroes African lions are teetering on the brink of extinction with only 30,000 of them left on the entire continent.

PAUL: But there's one woman who is part of a community of conservationist battling to turn that startling fact around. Meet Leela Hazzah.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEELA HAZZAH, CNN HERO: And 60 years ago probably half a million lions in Africa. Today there's less than 30,000 lions in all of Africa. If we don't do something soon there are going to be no lions left maybe in 10, 15 years. Who knows?

I spent a year living in this community to understand why people were killing lions. It brings a huge amount of prestige to the warrior, and they were killing lions in retaliation for livestock that were killed. They started opening up and telling me stories. That's when it clicked. If we want to conserve wildlife, we have to integrate communities. Our organization hires warriors and it converts lion killers into lion guardians.

When we first hired lion guardians, they don't know how to read or write. We provide all of that literacy training and technical training. They track lions so they can keep very accurate ecological data on lion movements. The Lion Guardian model is founded on multicultural values, and it is just being tweaked a bit to the 21st century.

We never really even imagine that we could transform these flying killers to the point where they would be risk their own lives to stop other people from killing lions. When I first moved here, I never heard lions roaring. But now, I hear lions roaring all the time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL: If you'd like to nominate a hero, go to CNNheroes.com.

Go make great some memories today. But stick around. We're leaving you in very capable hands.

BLACKWELL: Yes, we're turning things over to our colleagues Ana Cabrera here at CNN World Headquarter, and Martin Savidge in Jerusalem covering for Fredricka Whitfield today.