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MSU Gunman Had List of Targets; Belarusian Troops Won't go to Ukraine; Svitlana Oslavka is Interviewed about Yahidne Survivors; Congress Needs to Act on Debt; Congress Grills FAA Chief. Aired 9:30- 10a ET

Aired February 16, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Another day in America. That's video of people running for their lives during a shooting. This one at a mall in El Paso, Texas. You can see one of the injured taken away there. In the wake, at least one person dead, three others injured. Two people are now in custody. One of them caught by an off-duty officer who was working security at a store in that mall during the shooting. A motive, and we always ask these questions after these acts, still unclear.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: It is important to note the location here, though. This is El Paso.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: And, in fact, this mall is next door to the Walmart where a gunman killed 23 people in August of 2019, injured nearly two dozen. That 24-year-old gunman pleaded guilty last week to 90 federal charges as part of a plea deal.

SCIUTTO: I was at that shooting.

HILL: We both were.

SCIUTTO: It seems like a long time ago.

HILL: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, in about 30 minutes, officials in Michigan will give an update on the investigation into Monday's deadly mass shooting at Michigan State University. Overnight, CNN learned that the gunman had a two page note in his backpack which listed other possible targets and claimed that another team would, quote, finish off the city of Lansing. Not clear what he's addressing.

HILL: CNN correspondent Adrienne Broaddus is in Lansing, Michigan, this morning with more for us. So, Adrienne, what more do we know about this note and what was in it?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Erica, we're learning more about that two-page note. We know he started with an introduction. This is according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation. He started by saying, hi, my name is Anthony McRae. He goes on to says, I will be shooting up MSU. He also says, another team will, quote, as you mentioned, finish off the city of Lansing. Also in that note, the 43-year-old shooter, who died by suicide, targets other businesses. We're not naming those businesses. We know he targeted a warehouse, an employment agency, a discount store, a church, and a fast-food restaurant. We're learning this information less than 24 hours after more than 2,000 people at least gathered on campus last night to hold vigil. We're talking about students, people from the community, faculty, professors and, of course, the state's governor.

And the big question on many people's minds who have spoken with us, many of them students who barely spoke above a whisper when they were at that vigil last night, said they want to know why. They are also hoping to get more answers from law enforcement officials in regards to how that 43-year-old shooter, who police say had no ties to MSU, obtained the gun. Hopefully, and most likely, we will have more answers in the hour or so as you see behind me members of law enforcement are setting up to brief the media.

Erica and Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, we'll have more answers. Certainly not all of them.

Adrienne Broaddus, thanks so much.

Still ahead, CNN questions the Belarusian president ahead of his visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin tomorrow. His stance on his country joining Russia's war on Ukraine. That's coming up.

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SCIUTTO: Just moments ago, the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, reassured the world, and his country, I imagine, he will not be sending his country's own troops to Ukraine any time soon. He said at a press conference there is no way it will happen unless Ukraine were to commit aggression against Belarus.

HILL: Well, Lukashenko is set to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow tomorrow.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen was at that press conference in Minsk.

So, Fred, what is the significance, this meeting, right, the timing of this meeting, what more did you hear from Lukashenko?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, first of all, the bit significance of that meeting, first of all because the war is about a year old now and there's a lot of people who believe that there's a big offensive coming from the Russians and that that offensive might already be happening. Of course, the big question is, will Belarus, at some point, get more involved in that. And, you know, that's not only about sending troops as far as that's concerned, but it's also, for instance, the Russians launching air strikes or missile strikes from Belarusian territory and how that will continue in the future. So, certainly, the meeting is very important.

And as far as the press conference is concerned, you're absolutely right, Lukashenko, who was very combative by the way, did say that that press conference that he would not send his own forces to Ukraine unless Ukraine attacked Belarus. Of course, that's something that certainly doesn't seem to be in the cards. We were actually at the border area between Ukraine and Belarus yesterday. But at some point I did confront Lukashenko and I said, look, I had just been to Donbas and it certainly didn't seem to me as though the Russians were making very much progress there. In fact, the Russians seemed to be losing a lot of people, at the same time killing a lot of Ukrainian civilians. And I asked him why he still supports Vladimir Putin's war. And here's what he said.

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PRESIDENT ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO, BELARUS (through translator): This is another rhetorical question. Why do you support Ukraine, pumping it with weapons instead of sitting down to negotiate, as I suggest. You're already discussing sending long range weapons, missiles up to 300 kilometers in range, and F-16 fighter jets, state of the art fighter jets, after hundreds of Leopard tanks have gone there.

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Why are you doing this? You understand this is escalation.

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PLEITGEN: So, Lukashenko there, he also said that he does believe that in the end Russia will win. And one thing to add, you guys, he also said that essentially what he would like to see happen is for President Biden to come here to Minsk for peace talks with Vladimir Putin and also Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Guys.

SCIUTTO: We'll see. Fred Pleitgen, in Belarus, thanks so much.

Well, we're coming up on nearly a year since Russia's evaluation of Ukraine. Now, several areas of the country are known for the atrocities they bore witness to. Among them, Yahidne, where an entire village of nearly 400 people was held hostage, confined to a school basement, as Russian soldiers camped on the floors above them, threatening them. For 25 days the captives endured the unimaginable, confined even with the dead as the elderly, some of them went insane. Many slept standing up. Space, food, air, scarce. One survivor says life in the basement was like hell.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): As soon as you entered that room, you realized you shouldn't go in. There's no air to breathe. Plus, the smell of those candles, the smell of the cellar, the smell of sweat and breathing, it was unbearable down there.

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SCIUTTO: Joining me now from western Ukrainian is journalist Svitlana Oslavka. She reported this story for "Time" magazine, in partnership with The Reckoning Project.

Svitlana, thanks for joining us this morning.

SVITLANA OSLAVKA, UKRAINIAN JOURNALIST: Hi. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: You know, your account here is moving. It is an account, from all indications, of a war crime here. No better way to describe this than a makeshift concentration camp. For weeks people sleeping sitting up. They had to use buckets for toilets. They had to sleep with the dead because they weren't allowed to bury them.

I wonder, having met these people, how did they manage to survive all this?

OSLAVKA: Yes, really, as you mentioned, those people themselves they described this experience as a concentration camp. They found this analogy in the history to describe what they lived through.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

OSLAVKA: And I was surprised, actually, to see how full of light those people emerged from those experience after I saw them half a year after March 2022. Like they experienced terrible things, obviously, but they were still capable of telling about them in a way that you still could see hope in their stories.

But, of course, what they lived through was terrible. Is 25 nights, some of them even more, in the basement with half a meter - half a square meter for person as they count themselves, and day and night in the basement, sometimes in the day they were allowed to go outside to go to the toilet, or to bring sometimes some food from their home, the food the Russians left for them because they basically ate everything that was.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

OSLAVKA: And they were under threat. I mean the soldiers told them outright, we're going to kill you.

Yahidne now, it seems, adds its name to a list of Ukrainian cities that are identified with crimes. You think of Bucha. You think of Mariupol. Is their treatment being investigated as a war crime?

OSLAVKA: Yes. What happened is Yahidne is being investigated. It's in the process. The whole village, it's a very small one, the whole village was occupied by huge amount of Russians soldiers.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

OSLAVKA: And four of them right now have been convicted, but in absentia, by Ukrainian court, three of them got 12 years in prison and one of them ten years.

But, of course, this is not enough. And this was not for what the Russian soldiers did to the people in the basement. This was for their actions, their crimes that happened in Yahidne, but not in the school basement.

So, we are still waiting to the - to the results of the investigation about the school basement itself because this is one of the most horrific story that we have of the first days of the first month of the invasion.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

OSLAVKA: This story just -- you cannot imagine how people could live through this, but they did. Although 10 people died in the basement because of lack of oxygen.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and fired -- they were fired upon, as you recount in the story, when they tried to bury their dead outside the school.

You also describe at the end this moment of peace and hope as they leave that basement there and even you have this image of birds returning to the school for the first time.

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It's an almost biblical image.

You're from Severodonetsk, which has suffered as well in this war. Do you see a moment like that for Ukraine as a whole in the near future, the end of all this?

OSLAVKA: Yes, of course I do. And we all do see such moment in the future. And we are working for this and we are in The Reckoning Project also working for this. Doing -- combining journalist, storytelling and the legal approach to -- we record testimonies (INAUDIBLE) stories for those testimonies will be used in future to convict those who are guilty.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, you're doing your part here by creating an historical record of this. Svetlana Oskavka, we appreciate you coming on.

A note for all of you. You can see the full video, as well as firsthand accounts of these villages, their story of survival. Look at how they were cramped in that basement there. Image that for weeks. This is all at time.com.

HILL: Still ahead here, just as the acting FAA chief is set to face lawmakers over computer system failures, safety lapses, travel meltdowns, a new federal investigation begins into yet another close call on a runway.

Stay with us.

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SCIUTTO: Well, a fresh warning to Congress to raise the debt limit by this summer or risk economic catastrophe for this country. That warning comes from the Congressional Budget Office, it's non-partisan, on the dire consequences if the U.S. defaults on its debt as it's now hanging in the balance.

HILL: Look at that, current debt ceiling, debt limit, $31.4 trillion.

So, the CBO here also predicting a slowdown in economic growth, estimating inflation adjusted growth will actually come to a halt by the end of the year due to these interest rate hikes.

CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans joining us now.

This sounds like a somewhat sobering report.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

HILL: But also is this sort of the reality check that Washington needs as a reminder, hey, you've got to get your act together here people?

ROMANS: Yes, getting the act together, long term and short term. On the short term, that x date that we're hearing from the CBO is the beginning of July. That's the date when the U.S. runs out of money without borrowing to pay all of its bills. And there are millions of people who would instantly start to feel that. Presumably the government would continue to pay interest on our debt, right, so that you wouldn't have a default of that magnitude but that would mean IOUs for the 2.1 active duty military members, it could mean 67 million people who receive some sort of a Social Security payment would also receive an IOU. This could throw the economy overnight into a recession. So, you've got a situation where this debt ceiling needs to be raised.

Longer term you have another situation, and that is the CBO is saying that higher interest rates, the - just the growing number of people relying more on health care and more on Social Security, those higher costs are going to mean that the national debt will rise another $19 trillion over the next decade. So, there's a short-term problem here, which is paying for the bills that have already been spent, right, and not causing a crisis this summer over the debt ceiling, and then there's the longer term discussion about how you're going to get your financial house in order. And that's -- Congress has to do both of those things.

SCIUTTO: So, let me ask you a question, Christine Romans. When the Fed sees a report like this from the CBO that says, hey, if these rate hikes continue, economic growth is going to zero out, does the Fed says, hmm, maybe we should hold back a little bit here? Yes, get inflation under control, but we don't want to go too far because zero economic growth is a bad thing.

ROMANS: So, one of the things about these CBO forecasts is that in the further out years they get harder and harder to predict because there are literally hundreds of different variables. What this - what the - what the Fed is trying to do right now is get inflation under control. We saw this morning another I would say warm inflation report from Producer Prices, up 6 percent. We also saw a job market -- layoffs that were very, very low. And yesterday I told you, as you know, retail sales were very, very strong.

So, the Fed is trying to - try to - try to kill inflation here at this point because that is the near-term problem that is the most - the most dangerous. And so I think, just taking over the last three or four days, you're pretty much going to see more interest rate hikes ahead. And you're right, Jim, those higher interest rates mean it costs more to service the debt we already have and can slow the economy further out. So it's a very, very dangerous and delicate game here.

SCIUTTO: No question.

HILL: Christine Romans, appreciate it, as always. Thank you.

And NTSB is now investigating the third close call on a runway in less than a month. A United jet and a small cargo plane came dangerously close at the Honolulu Airport in January.

SCIUTTO: At one point they were only about 1,000 feet apart. That's minuscule at these speeds. Congress is now stepping in, calling - grilling, rather, the acting FAA administrator.

CNN's Gabe Cohen reports.

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GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A series of system meltdowns and near disasters.

BILLY NOLEN, FAA ACTING ADMINISTRATOR: We cannot and must not become complacent.

COHEN: Landing the FAA's acting administrator, Billy Nolen, in front of a Senate committee just hours after announcing a sweeping safety review for the agency.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have a backup redundant system. Why couldn't we just go to that system?

NOLEN: I thank you, Madam Chair, for the question.

COHEN: One focus, the NOTAMs system that failed last month, triggering the first national ground-stop since 9/11. The cause, a contractor accidentally deleting files during system maintenance.

NOLEN: They no longer have access to either FAA facilities or the NOTAMs system. COHEN: The FAA says it's moving to a more modernized system by 2025, and for now it has put in safeguards to prevent a repeat.

NOLEN: We're about halfway through it in terms of our modernization of the NOTAMs system.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Is there redundancy being built into it or can a single screw-up ground air traffic nationwide?

NOLEN: We do have redundancy there.

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Could I sit here today and tell you there will never be another issue on the NOTAMs system, no, sir, I cannot. What I can say is that we are making every effort to modernize and look at our procedures.

COHEN: But now aviation safety is under the microscope after two near collisions at JFK in Austin and a United 777 diving toward the ocean after takeoff from Hawaii for reasons that FAA and United are keeping confidential. Administrator Nolen offering little on the incidents themselves.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Asking if you have an answer today about why this occurred?

NOLEN: No, ma'am, that investigation is still ongoing.

COHEN: And now the FAA is planning an extensive safety review of the agency, including a summit with industry partners next month to gameplan solutions and then dig through flight data to find out if more of these incidents are happening.

NOLEN: Can I stay to the American public that we are safe? The answer is that we are. Is the - if the question is, can we be better, the answer is, absolutely. And that's the piece we're working on.

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COHEN: And now we've learned about that third recent incursion in Honolulu on January 23rd. The flight data there shows a United 777 actually land and then turn towards the next runway. You can see the animation here. The FAA says the plane then crossed that next runway over despite being told to wait by air traffic control right in front of the small cargo plane that was just landing on that same runway.

Now, the FAA says the aircraft were still a little more than 1,100 feet apart and neither plane had to abort. So, Jim, not quite as close a call as we saw at JFK and Austin, but the NTSB now investigating. And, again, it's the list that keeps growing of these close calls.

SCIUTTO: Yes. That's close -- too close for me watching that animation.

Gabe Cohen, thanks for following. Thanks so much. At any moment now officials expected to give an update on the

investigation into the deadly mass shooting at Michigan State University. You can see the podium there. We'll be there live, next.

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