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Former Manhattan DA Criticizes Decision Not to Prosecute Trump; Biden Administration Shoots Down Chinese Balloon; Earthquake Devastates Turkey and Syria; Toxic Train Derailment in Ohio. Aired 1- 1:30p ET

Aired February 06, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:07]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Stick with us. Abby Phillip picks up our coverage right now.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: Hello. I'm Abby Phillip in Washington.

Right, now a desperate search is under way for survivors after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and Syria. The death toll is now more than 2,500 and aid from across the world is pouring in. The aftermath of this catastrophic -- of this is catastrophic. This was the strongest earthquake to hit that area in more than 100 years, and it struck while nearly everyone was asleep.

Hundreds of people this hour are still believed to be trapped, massive high-rises reduced to rubble as more than 50 aftershocks, some as strong as 7.5.-magnitude, make matters even worse for rescue crews.

One survivor capturing this horrific moment that the building collapsed, floor after floor falling as people run from a massive debris cloud. Nearby, another collapse. Look at this. And video of dramatic rescues are also coming in, this child pulled from the wreckage. Crews are now hoping to uncover more miracles in the rubble.

CNN's Scott McLean will lead us off here.

Scott, a massive rescue effort is under way now. What more are you learning about how that is going?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Miracles was a pretty good way to describe it there, Abby.

The rescue crews across the entire region are battling an endless number of challenges. Chief among them right now is darkness and also frigid temperatures. They are hovering in the 40s, low 40s at the moment, but, overnight, they're going to get down to around freezing. Tomorrow, Thursday, they will be below freezing.

So time really is of the essence here, because, of course, people are not going to be able to survive in those conditions for very long. They are also dealing with aftershocks, huge earthquakes. One of them was a 7.5-magnitude. That was stronger than the earthquake that took place in 1999 and killed 17,000 people in Northwestern Turkey.

I also want to show you some video that really lays bare the human suffering on the ground there. This is a video from Northwestern Syria where a father outside of Aleppo is handed his infant baby son's body from the rubble. Listen. Of course, you don't need to speak the language to understand the pain that man is feeling at that moment.

But, as you mentioned, there are also miraculous rescues taking place. I will show you another one also from Syria, where a boy who seems like he's about 5 or 6 years old also near Aleppo, is pulled out from under a huge slab of concrete and rebar.

This is pretty miraculous that they can actually get to him without badly injuring him. And yet they do. And you hear the boy crying there as they put him on a stretcher. The rescue workers asked the guys to make way. Then they put him on a stretcher, and you hear the boy crying. And, surely, that is exactly what they wanted to hear there, signs that this boy, after his ordeal of hours and hours trapped under the rubble, is in fact alive.

But, clearly, not all of the stories have happy endings. We're also seeing footage from hospitals inside Syria not far from the Turkish border. One shows, frankly, children in not very good condition here, lying on stretchers, parents pleading with them to be conscious.

We're also seeing the bodies wrapped up of children on the floor in the hospital because there simply is not enough room for everyone. And the reality is that the Red Crescent has warned that there are real concerns about the medical situation in Northwest Syria, given the fact that there has been war there for a decade, that there are sanctions on the government and the infrastructure of that country has been absolutely decimated.

One other thing to mention, and that is that the Turkish authorities say that there are some 2,800 buildings that have been damaged across the country. There are hundreds, maybe thousands more on the Syrian side of the border. And so that gives you some indication, given that this happened in the overnight hours, when most people are sleeping, of how high the death toll may yet still rise -- Abby.

[13:05:03]

PHILLIP: Yes.

And, Scott, as you pointed out, this is a region that has already been going through quite a lot of suffering due to war over the years. So, this added on top of it is really incredibly tragic.

Scott McLean, thank you so much for that.

And let's get to more on this with Susan Hough. She is a seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey.

So, Susan, thank you for being here.

This was the strongest earthquake to be recorded in Turkey in more than 100 years. Did anyone in your line of work know that something like this was coming?

SUSAN HOUGH, SEISMOLOGIST, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY: No, there weren't any predictions that it was going to happen on any given day or even any given decade, but it's been known for a long time that Turkey is one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.

And so it was very much foreseeable, even though it wasn't predicted, per se.

PHILLIP: And there have been aftershocks, as Scott just mentioned in his report, measuring up to a 7.5 magnitude. That's larger than even some recent earthquakes that they have had in recent years.

How common is it to see such powerful aftershocks? And for the people who are still trying to pick up their lives who have survived, are they out of the woods for similarly powerful shocks in the coming hours or days?

HOUGH: Well, 7.5 was larger than the typical largest aftershock.

Typically, the largest aftershock is about one magnitude unit smaller, but that's only on average. So, to see a 7.5 after a 7.8 isn't unheard of at all. It's not likely that there's going to be another aftershock that big. But with a 7.8 main shock, you can have magnitude 6. 65. aftershocks.

And that's as big as the 1994 Northridge earthquake, for example. That was 6.7. So, if one of those aftershocks happens to hit close to a population center, they very much are a continuing concern.

PHILLIP: And I don't know if you can see these images. We're seeing high-rise buildings toppling and being completely -- complete devastation really in some of these densely populated areas.

In this part of the world, do you think that better infrastructure could have prevented more destruction and death here?

HOUGH: It's hard to sit from outside and comment.

Turkey has building codes. The degree to which they're enforced, I'm not really an expert on that. And, also, as building codes improve, there's a problem of older structures that weren't built to modern codes. So there's a lot to sort out. In general, we can engineer buildings to withstand even severe shaking.

California, where I'm from, we have had seismic provisions in the building codes going back 90 years after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. So hopefully, that's put us in a relatively good position for the future earthquakes here.

PHILLIP: And, as you noted, this is a part of the world that is at great risk for these kinds of earthquakes, and, hopefully, as they rebuild, will be able to do so in a way that would allow them to withstand this.

Susan Hough, thank you so much for joining us on all of that. HOUGH: Thank you.

PHILLIP: And, right now, the FBI is analyzing wreckage from the suspected Chinese spy balloon. And airspace is restricted off the South Carolina coast as the Navy looks for more debris.

A U.S. fighter jet shot down that balloon over the weekend in spectacular fashion. Critics say, though, the President Biden waited too long to order at the strike. The administration says, though, that it wanted to ensure that no Americans were on the ground and were in danger if they took that balloon down.

And while the remnants of this Chinese balloon are being scooped up in the ocean, Beijing has admitted another one is flying over Latin America right now and that it is also theirs.

We're covering the fallout from all of this with Dianne Gallagher, who is off the coast of South Carolina on a boat right now. And also with us at the White House is Phil Mattingly.

I want to start with you, Dianne.

Dianne, what can you tell us about this search effort? Have you been able to see anything from your vantage point off that South Carolina coast?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, Abby, we went several miles off the coast into the ocean, really just over the horizon there.

And we ran into the perimeter. And that is something that we knew from a senior defense official that, soon after that suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down by a missile on Saturday, that the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy had begun forming a perimeter around that crash site. Now we're told that the debris is scattered around roughly seven miles.

So this is a massive operation. And we learned today when we came up on a Coast Guard ship that, well, the perimeter itself is roughly 20 nautical miles. And we came up on it. The Coast Guard radioed our captain and basically said, look, you can't go any further. You have got to turn around some. They actually followed us a little bit as we were heading back south, which is what we're doing right now.

[13:10:16]

We know that they're using Navy divers and potentially these unmanned vessels to lift the structure up onto the salvage vessels, so they can take the rest of everything they find up to Quantico, so that intelligence officials can analyze the debris that they find.

We also know that they have talked about anything that may wash up on the shoreline, that, in Horry County, they told people, look, do not take anything, do not try to sell anything. There's a phone number for them to call to report seeing information. They're asking people to not even touch it, and just report seeing something, because they want to make sure they get every single bit of this.

But we could not see the recovery operation, even though we were right up at the perimeter. They have it set pretty far in, we're told, to make sure that nobody can contaminate it or come in contact with any of that.

PHILLIP: Yes, as much of a fascination as this is, I'm sure, to some people, it's probably best to leave that to the experts here.

Phil, I want to go to you now.

So this actual missile strike, by all accounts, was a success. They brought down that balloon. But the question is about what led up to it. And the White House seems to be playing defense to some extent right now.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, Abby, you have certainly heard from Republicans who made very clear from the first time it was made public that this balloon was over the continental United States that they believed White House officials, that the president should have signed off on it being shut down immediately when it was over Montana.

Now, White House officials have made very clear that the military leadership, Secretary Lloyd Austin, as well as Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had recommended, do not do that. The scale in terms of the debris would have put civilians in the risk or at risk of being in harm's way. And, therefore, they recommended waiting until it was over open water for the shoot-down, which is exactly what you saw on Saturday.

But there's also, what we have heard from the administration, the fact that they believe that this has happened before, including in the last administration, during the Trump administration, where, at least three separate occasions, balloons were able to float over the continental United States.

Now, White House officials have made clear that they will brief former Trump officials who say they don't have any knowledge of this, if they requested those briefings at some point in time. But I think the recognition to some degree is, this is becoming a very political issue, particularly on a very political week, with the president's State of the Union coming up.

And White House officials believed that both on the decision-making in this process -- they believe they made the right choices, particularly now, as Dianne is laying out, that they believe they can collect a lot of the payload, a lot of the information that was as part of this because it landed in water, and not on land -- but also that they have some pushback in the fact that this was not the first time this has happened, and it wasn't just in this administration when balloons floated across the continental United States.

PHILLIP: All right, Phil Mattingly at the White House, thank you for that.

And, Dianne Gallagher, off the coast of South Carolina, thank you both.

And let's break all of this down even further with CNN military analyst retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

So, Colonel Leighton, based on what we know about when this balloon entered U.S. airspace, the path that it was taking coming down from Alaska, through Canada and down into the United States, was there an opening? Could it have been shot down earlier?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I think so, Abby, but there are certain things that you have to consider when you when you look at this, because, for one thing, you have got this timeline right here.

So, NORAD detected this on the 28th of January. And the president wasn't briefed until Tuesday the 31st. So, by that time, a lot of path -- the paths had been crossed right there. So let's go to Alaska, where the first sightings actually occurred. And there's some reporting that the balloon actually overflew Shemya Island, which is right here in the Aleutians.

This particular island, it has a radar station associated with it. So that would have been the first installation that the balloon would have been able to take a look at from a surveillance perspective. And then the path was somewhere around this going up the Aleutians and possibly like this.

We have an Air Force base right here. That Air Force base, Elmendorf Air Force Base, does have F-22s stationed right there. So, theoretically, they could have conducted that operation off of Alaska, but, by this time, the president hadn't even been briefed yet. '

PHILLIP: That raises such an important question. I mean, the Biden administration says that previous balloons have flown over the U.S. before, but the previous administration, the Trump administration, may not have been aware.

How is that possible? Would the Department of Defense not have known and then not briefed the president at the time?

LEIGHTON: So, there are a lot of things that could have happened. So we're playing a bit of a guessing game here, Abby.

But the basic fact remains that, sometimes, we don't record dies these kinds of platforms for what they are. The fact that they're using a balloon as their surveillance platform, that kind of takes you back to the Civil War, even before that. And we don't think of people often using those kinds of technologies in the modern age.

[13:15:15]

So that might be a failure of imagination our part. And that might also mean that we're not really perceiving the threat that we need to perceive when it comes to how the Chinese are using these -- these instruments.

PHILLIP: And let's talk about the fallout now.

I mean, what are the capabilities that we as the United States has in terms of monitoring it and tracking it as it's making this path across the continental United States to prevent too much surveillance from happening while it's floating over land, right, as it did over the last week?

LEIGHTON: Right.

So let's take a look, first of all, at the different altitudes that all of these platforms can fly at. The F-22, which was the plane that shot down the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, that flies at a maximum advertised ceiling of 50,000 feet.

Now, we know it can go higher than that, because it was actually higher, at a higher altitude, about 58,000, when it actually shot the balloon down.

But that gives you a basic idea that NASA flies at 100,000 feet for their scientific balloons. So we're getting into the stratosphere at this particular point in time. What the problem is, is that these types of devices cannot be picked up very easily in terms of radar traffic.

So as things go floating through the United States, this basic path right here, which is what the balloon took, when it does that, it's not always possible for radar installations to pick these balloons up. And so that's why we need to fine-tune the radar. We also need to fine-tune the intelligence capabilities to recognize data streams that may be emanating from a balloon like this so that we can then figure out the command-and-control associated with it, and then track it that way as well.

PHILLIP: Colonel Cedric Leighton, thank you for breaking all of that down, as always.

LEIGHTON: You bet.

PHILLIP: And now where does the U.S. relationship with China go from here?

Let's bring in CNN global affairs analyst Kim Dozier to talk a little bit about the diplomatic side of this.

So, Kim, why would China make this move at all? What were they trying to accomplish by provoking the United States in this way?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: That is what U.S. national security and intelligence officials are trying to figure out right now.

And since China can be an opaque place to penetrate, that's going to leave some head-scratching, until they can get their hands on more of the debris in this 1,500 -- or it's supposed to be 15 football fields by 15 football fields, this debris field that they're scouring right now, to try to see what kind of equipment was attached to that balloon and try to figure out, did it definitely come from Chinese military intelligence?

There is a supposition that maybe this was meant to embarrass the Biden administration ahead of the State of the Union by sending something up that was so public, it couldn't be ignored. But you could also surmise that, since previous balloon flights had been not really reacted to, not noticed publicly, that maybe China was pushing the boundaries.

There's even analysis out there that the diplomatic side vs. the military side within the Chinese government are at odds, and while the diplomats wanted to smooth things over, the military remains more hawkish. And so they sent this balloon out to jettison any warming of relations.

In either case, they're definitely going to be taking advantage of it, at least the hard-liners within China.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, initially, China seem to apologize over this.

They have consistently insisted that this is a civilian weather balloon, but now they have switched to veiled threats. They have said: "China reserves the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations."

And here's what Democratic Congressman Jim Himes said about that threat from China.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): I don't fear retaliation by China. They're aggressor here, make no mistake. They flew a military asset over our sovereign territory.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: Are you concerned about retaliation or at the very least escalation in this relationship?

DOZIER: What I think U.S. military planners will have to think about is what kind of aircraft they now fly into contested territory, say, in the South China Sea, areas that the U.S. says or international waters that China claims as its own.

What China could use this incident for now, no matter who intended it or if it was unintentional and a stray, errant balloon, now, when U.S. spycraft go into Chinese territory, they will feel emboldened to shoot it down.

[13:20:07]

You might remember, back in 2001, a U.S. spy plane among many spy planes that regularly did incursions over Chinese airspace, got knocked out of the sky by a Chinese jet. And the U.S. had to negotiate for the release of the spy crew. That created the kind of public message that China might want to send to its allies in this war for influence with the U.S. that the U.S. is the aggressor and China is just trying to get along.

PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, Kim, you raise such a grave and serious example there.

Thank you for all of that analysis, Kim Dozier, CNN global affairs analyst.

And coming up next for us: They are facing grave danger or even death. The governor of Ohio warning people are living near a toxic derailed train that they must get out right now or face potential explosion of deadly shrapnel.

Plus, Ukrainian fighters just started training on their newest weapons in the fight against Russia, tanks coming from Western allies. We will take you there live.

And the congressman who can't seem to stay out of trouble is now accused of sexual harassment. What George Santos is saying about those accusations.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:38]

PHILLIP: A smoldering derailed train loaded with toxic chemicals could explode at any minute, and sending deadly shrapnel flying up to a mile away. That is the warning from officials in Ohio. And they're ordering people near the site to get out now.

Just moments ago, the governor said that officials plan a controlled release at the site in an effort to prevent an explosion.

CNN's Gabe Cohen is joining us now.

So, Gabe, what more are you hearing about the situation down there?

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Abby, this is a rapidly developing situation right now.

As you mentioned, Ohio's governor and officials just held a press conference, trying to figure out what to do to potentially prevent this potential catastrophic explosion. Now we know they are planning a controlled release of a chemical from five different railcars that were part of Friday's derailment in order to prevent any sort of catastrophe.

So, planning that controlled release, that's going to happen at 3:30 Eastern today, according to officials. And here's what that's going to look like. The goal is to blast a small hole, about a three-inch hole, in the bottom of those five unstable railcars.

And they're going to drain any chemical. In at least one of them, we're talking about vinyl chloride. It's a highly flammable substance. And what they're going to do is drain it into a trench built below each of these railcars, and those trenches are going to be lined with flares, the goal, to be able to control getting that chemical out and actually burning it off as it goes.

They're also expanding their evacuation area. There are still real concerns about that possible explosion, that evacuation area now expanded up to two miles in at least one direction. So, they are concerned that people need to get out. They said they are still knocking on doors, trying to make sure people understand the danger and potentially what could be fatal for some people if there is a massive explosion and shrapnel could be shot in the air up to a mile in any direction, so still that concern.

But, again, Abby, we now know there is going to be this controlled release at 3:30 today.

PHILLIP: A fluid situation. We will be keeping our eye on it.

Gabe Cohen, thank you.

And a former senior prosecutor in Manhattan says that he had the goods to bring charges against former President Trump, but his boss, the district attorney, declined to indict.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK POMERANTZ, FORMER MANHATTAN SPECIAL ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: If you take the exact same conduct and make it not about Donald Trump and not about a former president of the United States, would the case have been indicted? It would have been indicted in a flat second.

QUESTION: So what ties Donald Trump directly to this? Couldn't he say, my accountant said it's worth this, I signed it?

POMERANTZ: There were many bits and pieces of evidence on which we could rely in making that case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIP: So, that prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, resigned in protest a year ago when his office didn't move to indict Trump.

But here is what the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, told CNN about those accusations. He says: "After closely reviewing all of the evidence from Mr. Pomerantz's investigation, I came to the same conclusion as several senior prosecutors involved in the case and also those I brought on. More work was needed. Put another way, Mr. Pomerantz's plane wasn't ready for takeoff."

Here to discuss all of this is CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams.

Elliot, this is obviously a person who is selling a book, but on the substance of the allegations here, is there a difference of opinion here, just two prosecutors differing on how to proceed, or is Pomerantz right that Trump got special consideration because he's a former president?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think you touch right on it, Abby, by saying there's a difference of opinion.

You see this all the time. Look at workplaces around the country, but particularly prosecutors' offices around the country. Now, look, let's be clear. Mark Pomerantz in this book makes an incredibly compelling case for charging for President Trump with a crime.

But there's a few problems that get glossed over, frankly, in the "60 Minutes" interview. Number one, so much of this attention focuses on Alvin Bragg, the current district attorney, but they don't really -- he doesn't really talk about Cyrus Vance, the former district attorney, who had the case going back to 2019.

So, if there was such a groundswell of support for charging it, why didn't they do it back then?