Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Inside Sprawling Factory Fueling the Arsenal Of Ukraine's Defense; Court Documents Reveal FOX Stars Privately Trashed Election Fraud Claims; Families Desperately Wait For News Of Missing Loved Ones In Turkey. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired February 17, 2023 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[10:33:42]
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Happening right now, Vice President Kamala Harris meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz at the Munich Security Conference. This of course as we are quickly approaching the one-year mark of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the start of that war.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Ukrainian military forces burning through ammunition, often firing some 11,000 artillery shells in just a few days. That's roughly the same amount one plant in Pennsylvania can churn out in an entire month.
CNN Pentagon correspondent Oren Liebermann joins us now with more.
So, Oren, you went to this plant that's making this ammunition. First question is, is this the only one and how fast are they working there?
OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: There are several others around the country but not many Well, there is another one in Texas, and there is a 24/5 operation, and their goal is to make it a 24/7 operation to increase the number of shells they can crank out each month. Take a look inside here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LIEBERMANN (voice-over): In the steel furnaces of Scranton, Pennsylvania, the weapons of war are in high demand. One ton metal rods, heated and forged into about 11,000 high explosive artillery shells a month.
[10:35:01]
CNN got a rare look inside the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, one of only a few in the country that make this crucial round. Here, especially made steel is heated to 2,000 degrees, slowly shaped step by scorching step into its final product.
(On-camera): To this point, it's only taken a few hours to heat the steal, and then to turn it into what looks like what an artillery shell, to press it into that familiar shape. But it's still days of testing and inspecting to make sure that this can be turned into a one 155-millimeter artillery shell that can fired. (Voice-over): The process doesn't end here. The empty shells are
shipped to another plant for explosives, fuses, 5,000 miles from the frontlines in Mother Russia, the enemy here is Father Time. Ukraine can burn through the plant's monthly production in half a week, locked in a grinding war of attrition with Putin's army and Russian mercenaries.
JENS STOLTENBERG, NATO SECRETARY GENERAL: The current rate of Ukraine's ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production.
LIEBERMANN: One year in, the war has turned into a vicious math problem. How to make enough ammo for Ukraine, United States, and allies? The Pentagon is already planning on new ammo plants in Texas and Canada, part of a race to increase the capacity of the defense industrial base.
Doug Bush is the Army's head of acquisitions.
DOUG BUSH, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR ACQUISITION: Right now, we are meeting demand. Of course I would want it to be faster. Everyone does. But there is a time factor, a year to 18 months is often what you're looking at.
LIEBERMANN: Bush says this is the greatest ramp up in military production, possibly going back to the Korean War.
BUSH: Early on we realized we had to really put our foot all the way to the floor.
LIEBERMANN: The goal within two years is to produce five times more artillery rounds each month, up to 70,000, twice as many Javelin anti- tank missiles, up to 4,000 a month, 30 percent more rounds for the HIMARS rocket launchers, about 850 a month. Precision weapon Ukraine has used to target Russian command posts and ammo depots, and 60 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles each month.
The U.S. isn't at war with Russia, but that matters little to weapons manufacturers whose products are part of the fight.
SETH JONES, DIRECTOR, CSIS INTERNATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM: Our defense industrial base is still largely geared towards a peace time environment, and not towards a wartime or at least a quasi-wartime environment that we're now in.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIEBERMANN: And you get a sense of the contracts put out there. Just within the last couple of weeks, we've seen about $1.5 billion in contracts put out for the construction of this crucial 155-millimeter artillery shell to make it faster, and to make sure it can get to the front lines in greater quantities -- Jim and Erica.
HILL: It's such an interesting look at it all, right, and how it all comes together.
Oren, really appreciate the reporting. Thank you.
Still to come here, court documents reveal FOX News hosts privately trashed those claims of fraud in the 2020 election even as they allowed those comments to be promoted on the air.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:42:49]
SCIUTTO: There was no widespread fraud in Georgia's 2020 presidential election. That unanimous finding of a special grand jury investigating former President Trump's efforts to overturn the election in that state.
HILL: Parts of the highly anticipated report were released yesterday. The grand jury also concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath and urged the D.A. to consider perjury charges.
Seventy-five witnesses went before the grand jury, among them some of former President Trump's most loyal allies. No one was of course named, though, in those parts of the report that were made public.
SCIUTTO: Well, an Arizona court of appeals has also rejected Republican Kari Lake's claims of election fraud in her failed bid for governor in that state. The court said in part that the evidence provided, quote, "ultimately supports the court's conclusion that voters were able to cast their ballots, that votes were counted correctly, and that no other basis justifies setting aside the election results." Of course Kari Lake continues to lie about that.
HILL: Governor Katie Hobbs won that election by 17,000 votes. Lake says she still plans to take her fight to the state's Supreme Court.
SCIUTTO: Another story we're covering this morning, there are newly revealed text messages that show how some of the biggest names at FOX News actually felt about the bogus election fraud claims that they were pushing at the same time on FOX's air.
HILL: So these messages were revealed in court filings. This is part of Dominion's billion-dollar lawsuit against the right-wing media channel.
CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy joining us with more.
So these documents perhaps in some ways what they're revealing is not surprising to folks who work in the media, maybe people in Washington, but maybe revealing for a lot of dedicated viewers.
OLIVER DARCY, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think this court filing, the messages contained in it, really expose FOX News as frankly a propaganda machine in search of profit. You see that the top executives, people like Rupert Murdoch, as well as the top hosts, people like Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, they knew, they privately knew and acknowledged behind the scenes that the election fraud claims being pushed by President Donald Trump's campaign were bogus, they were not true. [10:45:03]
And yet the network allowed these claims to make its way on to their air and they were shy about fact-checking. In fact, in one case, one of the FOX News correspondents, Jacqui Heinrich, the White House correspondent, fact-checked a tweet from Trump pushing election denialism, and behind the scenes, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity talked about how they could her fired.
HILL: Simply for fact-checking.
DARCY: For fact-checking.
HILL: For doing her job as a reporter when you're supposed to report the truth and put only the facts out there.
DARCY: That's precisely right. And she wasn't fired. She's still at the network but that tweet that she did post fact-checking the president, did eventually come down. I think this shows how void of any journalistic ethics the people at the top of FOX News were. They were not caring about, you know, what the right thing to do as a reporter is. They were caring about not alienating their audience. They were afraid of the audience and afraid of Donald Trump, and these messages, they're really quite damning, they're revealing.
SCIUTTO: Oliver, as these messages were revealed, has FOX News been covering those revelations in the last 24 hours?
DARCY: FOX News is surprisingly not covering the revelations exposed in their own network, and I would also note that the "Wall Street Journal," which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, has also not covered this as well. FOX News, I should say, is accusing Dominion of cherry- picking quotes in this court filing. But I went through it, I mean, it's hundreds of pages, and they lay out a mountain of evidence that is really an indictment of the network.
HILL: So in part of that, too, I've been pointing in some of this, Tucker Carlson is pointing out Sidney Powell is lying, by the way. I caught her. It's insane. Laura Ingraham says, Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her, ditto with Rudy. Carlson actually says it's unbelievably offensive to me, our viewers are good people, and they believe it.
That one really sticks to me. Our viewers are good people and they believe it, and we're going to keep spoon-feeding what we know are lies to them?
DARCY: It's so -- I mean, Tucker Carlson, despite saying these things, went on air, last night, after this court filing had come out, he went on air last night and cast out on the 2020 election at the top of his program.
This is what these people do. They don't care about the facts. They know behind the scenes that the election was not rigged, that it was not stolen, and yet in search of profit, in search of power, they go on air and feed the audience this nonsense. And they know it's nonsense and they still do it, and I don't know what there is to say about it, but it does expose this network as not interested in the facts, not interested in the truth, but interested in telling the audience what they want to hear so they don't lose it.
HILL: And above all else, holding out to that audience, right? They don't want to lose those numbers. They don't want to lose the eyeballs, the advertising revenue, the numbers.
Oliver, appreciate it. Thank you.
DARCY: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: Still ahead, a remarkable moment in the midst of a tragedy. A man in Turkey called his friend to tell him he was alive. This after more than 260 hours? That's 10 and a half days trapped under the rubble.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:52:47]
HILL: Boy, what a moment in the middle of this tragedy in Turkey. Every time a moment like this happens it really catches your breath. A man pulled from the rubble and then he was immediately calling a close friend to let him know he was OK. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): How is my mother and everyone?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They are all waiting for you. Everyone is well, they're all waiting for you. I'm coming to you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Did everyone escape OK? Nasli (PH)?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They are all well. Everything is well. They're waiting for you. They're all waiting for you.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Let me hear their voices if for a moment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I'm driving. I'm coming to you, brother. I'm coming.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Thank you to each and every one of you. May God be happy with you 1,000 times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: What a story of survival. CNN's Jomana Karadsheh, she's in Antakya, Turkey where she spoke to people waiting for any kind of news.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AYLIN AKYURT, SEARCHING FOR FAMILY MEMBER: You lose track of time so I don't know which day it is, but at this point, I don't think they have anybody left alive.
JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Aylin and her family have been searching for her aunt. Other bodies have come out of the building, but not hers.
AKYURT: You go through all stages of, you know, of grief. You're angry. You're desperate. You're sad. You accept then you get mad again. At this point, we've come to accept that she's passed away but we just want to put her at her final resting place because with how it's been going, leaving her here is unimaginable.
KARADSHEH: Around the corner the rare good news these days. After more than 220 hours under the rubble, a woman and two children were rescued alive.
(On-camera): Several bodies have also been recovered from the building. There are others still trapped inside. They don't know if they're alive or dead.
(Voice-over): They prayed they find them alive. Mohamed Bayron just buried his daughter and her husband, his 12- and 14-year-old grandchildren are still inside.
God, I beg you, he says. Just like they got that woman and two children out alive, we're hoping for the same.
It's been the most agonizing of waits for his and other families here. May the Lord not put anyone through this, this woman says.
[10:55:01]
Mohamed hasn't eaten in 11 days. He says all he can do is hope, pray and wait. We weren't able to get these big machines for a few days, he says. They had to go through other buildings here first. Maybe if they had, they would have come out alive.
Another call for quiet during our interview. One of many in the past few days. Rescuers hear something, cheers break out. They believe they've located two people alive. A tense wait now into the evening, the crushing sound of silence. It's hardest for those who wonder if they mourn or wait. It is here where hope fades as fast as it grows.
Jomana Karadsheh, CNN, Antakya, Turkey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCIUTTO: Those poor people.
HILL: What a moment. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. I'm Erica Hill.
SCIUTTO: I'm Jim Sciutto. "AT THIS HOUR" starts right after a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
