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U.S. General: Delay In Shooting Down Balloon Will Be "Well Worth Its Value" In Intelligence Collected Against China; Massive Quake Kills 2,800 Plus In Turkey & Syria, Toll Likely To Rise; FL Lawmakers Back DeSantis, Aim To Strip Disney Of Governing Powers. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 06, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

REP. GEORGE SANTOS (R-NY): Of course, I deny it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Inaudible) against you?

SANTOS: Let me make it very clear, let me make it clear.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

SANTOS: If there was remote, any part of that that were true, he should've led with that and not begged for a job that we decided to pull from him for being accused of doing exactly what he did to us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And just a follow up, so you categorically deny it?

SANTOS: A hundred percent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Now, Santos, as you heard there, was completely denying the allegations. He also was making a reference to the fact that this prospective staffer who was a former reporter made some audio tapes, recorded conversations with Santos and then leaked them to Talking Points Memo. But this is just the latest serious allegation in a long string of allegations against the embattled Congressman, Bianna.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: A long string that keeps on getting longer. Melanie Zanona, thank you.

It is the top of the hour on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

Just a short time ago, the Pentagon defended the President's choice to delay shooting down the suspected spy balloon from China. A fighter jet brought down the aircraft Saturday, just off the coast of South Carolina. After the balloon crossed the continental United States, multiple Republicans have criticized the President for waiting calling it a weak response.

But the commander of NORAD said the intelligence gathered from the balloon will be a value. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. GLEN VANHERCK, COMMANDER, U.S. NORTHERN COMMAND & NORAD: There was a potential opportunity for us to collect intel where we had gaps on prior balloons. This gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed and I think you'll see in the future that that timeframe was well worth its value to collect over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: A senior Biden official said the first pieces of the balloon have already reached the FBI's lab in Quantico, the commander of NORAD said Navy crews are using sonar and the debris field off the coast of South Carolina to locate pieces of the balloon, which was 200 feet high and had a payload of more than a ton.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand and Marc Stewart are covering this for us.

Natasha, to you first, the Pentagon just talked to reporters. What more are we learning about the balloon itself and the ones that came before it?

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. Well, Gen. Vanherck who commands NORAD and NORTHCOM did speak to reporters earlier today. And he was giving an update on kind of the state of the recovery operation here. And he told reporters, look, that the debris field right now from this balloon is expected to be about one square mile, so not nearly as much as had been projected previously, which is as much as seven miles.

But at the same time, it is going to take some more time, of course, to analyze and recover all of this debris. But he did also touch upon some gaps in the U.S.' knowledge and U.S.' ability to track balloons that have come before this one. Because as we have since learned, since this balloon was shot down, there were at least three other ones that transited the continental United States during the Trump administration and those actually were not detected. Take a listen to what Vanherck had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VANHERCK: Every day as a NORAD Commander, it's my responsible to - responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that's a domain Awareness gap that we have to figure out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: So pretty remarkable admission there that the U.S. Military had awareness gaps that allowed these Chinese balloons to transit the United States, basically, completely undetected, and only after the intelligence community was able to do its own review after the fact, were those patterns of those balloons able to be detected. So moving forward, obviously, the military is going to have to do some work to figure out how these balloons can be detected in real time in the future. Because not only is it important, just in terms of preventing those balloons from being able to gather intelligence about the U.S. and about sensitive sites here, but also because it allows the U.S. to collect intelligence on those balloons as well and kind of turn the tables on the Chinese and that is another point that Vanherck made to reporters earlier that because of this delay in shooting down the balloon, the U.S. was able to gather important intelligence about China's surveillance program, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: All right, Natasha.

And Marc, meantime, as the days have gone by, the response from China has become more and more abrasive. Early on, they were almost apologetic. That's not the case right now, what are they saying?

MARC STEWART, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So Bianna, to understand China's response, let's just look at the current landscape. We have two balloons, one was discovered flying over Latin America over Colombia and Costa Rica. And then we have another balloon that was flying over North America over the United States.

In both of these cases, a very similar explanation based off of weather or control issues, China is saying that there really were no nefarious intents here.

[15:05:00]

However, today when pressed by reporters at a news conference in Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman basically said the U.S. was trying to hype things up. And again, was insisting that these were due to factors out of their control.

So that's the Chinese response met with skepticism from the United States. And there are so many other lingering questions, are there other balloons and what will this do to the diplomatic ties and relationships with the United States? It was just days ago that we were reporting an upcoming visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to establish diplomatic ties.

So if something like this were to occur, perhaps more confrontation or rhetoric could be avoided. But that's the situation we are now and, again, China is saying most of this out of our control.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. But to your, I would imagine, hypothetical question, are there more balloons. I mean, there does appear to be another balloon and that is flying over Latin America right now as we speak and China did seem to acknowledge that that was theirs.

Natasha Bertrand and Marc Stewart, thank you.

Mike Lyons is a retired Army Major and Bob Baer is CNN intelligence and security analyst and a former CIA operative. Welcome both of you.

So Major, if I could start with you. The payload of this balloon was the size of approximately three buses. How much information do you think the Pentagon will be able to glean overall in terms of the debris that they are finding right now and sending to Quantico?

MAJ. MIKE LYONS, U.S. ARMY (RET): Well, a lot of it just depends on what survived on impact. They seem to say that they knew what was going on in the balloon. It was tracking whatever it was tracking to be. So I like to think that - that's true statement, they - that they wanted to track it.

I'm surprised we're still talking about it, frankly. I think that this is really an opportunity for us and the American people to have kind of an awakening as to what's going on with China and our relationships. The fact that you could look up in the sky and see this balloon there and collecting intelligence, maybe people will see that it's going to become a great menace.

So I - we'll see what the Pentagon gets out of it, what survived the crash. They say they were monitoring it while it was an error. We'll find out more as they discover it.

GOLODRYGA: Bob, we still don't know why China sent this balloon and the timing is suspect. Obviously, we have the president delivering the State of the Union tomorrow. We had Secretary of State Blinken making the first trip by a cabinet official in the Biden administration to China over the weekend, that was cancelled. This comes at a time when both countries were at least trying to settle some sort of baseline in a relationship that was quickly going south, what do you make of the timing here?

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE & SECURITY ANALYST: Well, exactly. This couldn't have come at a worse time with Blinken on his way to Beijing. And my feeling is we don't really know what's going on in Beijing. The military could have sent this balloon. They - obviously could have withheld covering that area if the balloon was under control, like we believe it was.

So you have to wonder if the military, Chinese military, is responsible for this foreflight and what did their divisions in Beijing and just how much control President Xi has over the country, which has always been a question. Unfortunately, American intelligence can't get inside the narrow circles of power in that country.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, this - after he just secured a third unprecedented term as president, but you're raising some really interesting points with that response, Bob.

Major, something that stood out to me was what we heard from the NORAD Commander in terms of an answer to why the U.S. government was not able to detect it in the Trump administration, those three balloons that had travelled across the United States at the time. We had the President didn't know this, the Defense Secretary, also Esper didn't know about this as well.

Well, we would now know there was a domain awareness gap. That seems pretty serious and raises questions as to what other events we possibly missed as well. LYONS: Yes, it does. Sixty thousand feet is where Patriot missiles are supposed to take out incoming ICBMs. And if we don't see this at 60,000 feet, then what are we seeing there? And when does it violates a U.S. airspace? In a post 911 world, this is the kind of incident that has - there's no tolerance for, that should have been reported right through the chain of command. Hopefully, the military protocols change and get this to the administration a lot quicker and give warning to something that's violated American borders like this.

And so I'm a little bit concerned again by that answer, because of what the Chinese have capability of. They've got a space station, they've got the ability to already see a lot of other things that this balloon was looking for. To me, it's a kind of a great power trial balloon, so to speak, and it was set on purpose to see what our response is.

And again, hopefully it leads to a great American awakening, about the threat that China actually is. Our politicians know, our military knows, but I'm not sure American public is aware of the threat that China poses to us.

GOLODRYGA: Bob, does that awareness gap raise any red flags for you? We're not talking about balloons that were sent decades ago. These are relatively not that sophisticated in terms of other capabilities.

[15:10:04]

And yet we're now hearing that just a few years ago, our radar defenses or whatever it was, was not able to detect three balloons that have traveled across the United States.

BAER: Well, it does worry me about the Chinese just how capable they are of collecting intelligence in this country. I mean, there are all sorts of things we don't know what that balloon was carrying, what kind of cameras, whether it had communications equipment or even sensors back in the '70s. When I was working for the CIA, we used to drop sensors on China to monitor their nuclear weapons. Are they doing the same thing at our (inaudible) bases?

This is why recovering the wreckage is so important, first, to give light to the Chinese propaganda, but then to see what their capabilities are. What scares me is when they get this stuff out of the ocean it's going to turn out to be American technology, which is a good chance that it will be.

GOLODRYGA: And we'll continue to find out more as the debris is sent in for analysis. Bob Baer and Major Mike Lyons, thank you so much for your time.

The death toll is climbing after a massive earthquake rocked southern Turkey and neighboring Syria. More than 2,800 people have died so far. President Biden is expected to speak with Turkey's president today. The 7.8 magnitude quake struck before dawn flattening high rises to rubble and causing more than a hundred aftershocks, one right after another sending people running for their lives. Thousands of buildings are now decimated with people still trapped under the wreckage. You can see the clouds of dust as this building just fell to the ground in a Turkish city flat like a pancake.

Right now in Turkey and Syria, there's growing fear even more people will die if rescuers cannot get to them in time. Teams are digging through the rubble using their bare hands, hammers anything that they can find. More than 2,400 people thus far have been rescued, including this Syrian boy who was trapped under piles of debris. You can see him right there - it's so hard to even watch - lifting his hand to rescuers. They were ultimately able to pull him to safety.

Rescuers also got this toddler to safety after her home was severely damaged. Her mother and siblings, sadly, all perished.

CNN's Jomana Karadsheh is in Istanbul, Turkey.

Jomana, you've been covering this for us all day and yet each time we see these images, you just can't get numb to them. They are so painful to see. How is the search and rescue operation going right now?

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN INTT CORRESPONDENT: Well, the search and rescue efforts are ongoing right now, Bianna. As you can expect, it is being slowed down, obviously, during the nighttime hours right now and then you've got these harsh winter weather conditions that are impacting the southern part of the country of Turkey and also across the border in Syria.

Snow freezing temperatures tonight and also you've got so many roads that are blocked, making it very difficult for search and rescue teams to try and get to the many, many different cities and towns and villages across this massive earthquake zone. We're talking about at least 10 Turkish provinces with a population in the millions that has been impacted by this massive earthquake.

And then, of course, you've also got these aftershocks that are continuing more than a hundred some so powerful and almost as powerful as the initial 7.8 magnitude earthquake. And authorities here, as you mentioned, a recording in both countries, more than 2,800 people have been confirmed killed. More than 1,700 of them here in Turkey and then more than a thousand in Syria and rebel-held parts as well as government controlled areas.

But the fear, the real concern right now that the numbers are going to be rising significantly in the coming hours, Bianna, here in Turkey, officials are saying thousands of buildings have been destroyed by this earthquake that hit at four o'clock in the morning as people were indoors. Families sleeping in their homes when this happened, so the fear is that thousands may still be trapped under the rubble and in Syria.

Aid agency saying it is very, very difficult for them to try and get information out of the country. The infrastructure there are decimated by more than a decade of that civil war. And now you've got an earthquake that has hit - really impacting communications with disruptions to communications and power outages, making it very difficult for them to get information and assess the extent of the damage they say in this hard hit part of Syria right now, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. And we had a seismologist on earlier in the show who said that the aftershocks continue for days now which obviously would impact us search and rescue as well.

[15:15:01]

Jomana Karadsheh, thank you so much for all the work that you're doing.

James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF joins us now with more.

James, I wish I could have you on in better circumstances here. I'm just curious, my first question to you is do you have a team on the ground there trying to help those who are stranded?

JAMES ELDER, UNICEF SPOKESPERSON: Yes, we have team, well, in Syria and in Turkey.

In Syria, as your correspondent just said, Bianna, we had some really hard area to reach. We've had partners there for years, who we've worked through trusted partners. You've got 4 million people in that part of Syria who have - who displaced, who rely on humanitarian support.

Then through a frigid freezing, record breaking winter and a cholera outbreak on top of that you have this earthquake, so it's an enormous effort, it already was, everyone is overstretched in that part of the world where the world will be rallying as we see in Turkey. But there's an enormous amount to do because these people could not take another shot much less literally a shock like this.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Syria raises a whole other set of challenges given that it's a war torn country and there's so many displaced people there already, so many young children and elderly there now in need of desperate assistance. What are the first steps that you are taking right now and your workers there and colleagues on the ground in terms of trying to provide help?

ELDER: Yes, we go and we look at all the earthquakes that UNICEF has had to support in the recent years Haiti, Nepal, this is first and foremost - it's about things like blankets and food and water. It's so key to get in and work out how - just how badly devastated the water systems been because people can't survive without water for very long at all.

Of course, the bitter irony there is that the people have fled their homes and are often standing around in snow in bitterly cold conditions, really without access to safe water. So water is key, blankets, food, psychological support, Bianna. We can never overlooked that. I mean, the people I've spoken to today in those parts that have been hardest hit, they went - people went to bed as your correspondents said at 4 am and then this terrifying idea of first you feel a few shakes and tremors and then maybe a car alarm and some glass will break and then it's this absolutely terrifying sense of concrete starting to crumble. At that moment, what does a parent grab? Well, they only have half a second to decide and, of course, there is nothing to grab but your child. And then they flee outside to nothing, to dust and devastation, to screams of neighbors.

So psychological support, comfort, warmth are absolutely fundamental as we hoped some of the other images we get, as we just saw from you, the little boy, the toddler, we need more of those images as we wait for those brave rescue workers (inaudible) then UNICEF simply builds in as many life saving supplies as we possibly can from big water systems to hygiene kits to try and take some of the pain away from these people.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, you're right. You're right. These rescue workers are heroic here, really trying to save as many lives as possible. And we know many countries have already offered to provide as much help as needed as well as United States included, obviously.

James Elder, thank you for all the work that you and your team are doing there. We appreciate it.

Well, from a Chinese spy balloon to the economy and inflation, President Biden has plenty to address in tomorrow's State of the Union, how he's preparing up next.

And the Disney-DeSantis feud is now in the hands of Florida lawmakers. Will the entertainment giant get to keep its special governing status, that's next.

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[15:22:51]

GOLODRYGA: Today in Florida lawmakers are finalizing their efforts to strip the Walt Disney Company of its special governing powers. The special session follows a year long feud between the entertainment giant and Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Republican leaders hoped to restructure the 1960's era Reedy Creek Improvement District which effectively gives Disney control over the land in and around its Orlando theme parks.

CNN's Leyla Santiago is live in Tallahassee.

Leyla, you've been covering this, as we said, for nearly a year now. We understand a bill has just been filed. What more are you learning about it?

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Bianna, up until about an hour ago, we really didn't have the details as to exactly how the State would move forward with stripping Disney of this special district. The bill has just been filed. It's 189 pages, so we're still reading through it.

But here's what we have learned so far that it is clear that Gov. Ron DeSantis will sort of take control of who governs this, right? He will now appoint the board of supervisors who up until now have been positions that have been land owners that are - have close ties to Disney.

So while this special district will remain in place, will continue to pay for the services that it provides, we're talking about fire departments, police departments, even wastewater management, Gov. DeSantis will now appoint the positions there and that will be confirmed by the Senate.

So remember, this has been a year long feud that we have covered all along because it's been sort of a controversial saga. So let's talk about how we got to where we got to.

Last year when Florida decided to get rid of this special district, again, it didn't have too many details, but it was controversial really for two reasons. One was a critic said that this was sort of retaliation by the Governor for a company that spoke out against how Florida discusses sexual orientation as well as gender identity in the classroom.

Gov. DeSantis all along has said that this is more about making sure that no corporation has any sort of special privileges. And then also came who pays for sort of the taxes here, right, who pays for the bond obligations that Reedy Creek had.

[15:25:08]

There was concern that possibly that could get absorbed by neighboring counties and then make taxes go up. That's something that if they continue this route may not be much of a concern. But now that this proposal is out there, we'll have to wait and see how legislators move forward with this, Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. The implications are quite significant for the State and the company as well. It's seen a change in leadership ...

SANTIAGO: Right.

GOLODRYGA: ... in part because of this over the past few months.

Leyla Santiago, thank you.

Well, the judge in the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial just dealt a major blow to his defense by allowing evidence of the former lawyer's alleged financial crimes. We'll explain why that matters, straight ahead.

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