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US Recovering Spy Balloon Debris as Diplomatic Crises Worsens; Large Earthquake Devastates Parts of Turkey and Syria; Rescue Efforts Underway to Pull People Out from Under Rubble in Turkey and Syria. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 06, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:03]

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning Here are five stories to start your day.

Thousands of people feared dead in Turkey and Syria as one of the region's most powerful earthquakes hits while people slept. The search is underway for survivors.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: A train carrying hazardous material derails in Ohio, and this morning a potential explosion is leading to mandatory evacuations.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president was paralyzed for an entire week by a balloon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president made a very clear and decisive decision.

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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Domestic, political, and international blowback as China's spy balloon has upended President Biden's State of the Union address this week. And the U.S. is on alert for possible retaliation from Beijing.

LEMON: Another close call on the runway as a FedEx cargo plane nearly collides with a Southwest flight in Texas.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Breaking the record for the most Grammy wins of all time!

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HARLOW: Queen Bey is now queen of the Grammys. Beyonce making history, taking home more Grammys than any other artist ever.

CNN THIS MORNING starts right now. LEMON: And you can see, there's a lot going on this morning. And we

have to begin with a dramatic new video of a reporter running for his life on live TV while he was reporting on the devastating earthquake in Turkey. Take a look.

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(SHOUTING)

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LEMON: Boy, oh boy, the catastrophic quake has now killed more than 1,500 people across Turkey and Syria. Buildings and homes came crashing down while people were asleep inside, and the desperate search for survivors underway right now as powerful aftershocks continue to violently shake the region. The situation especially dire in northwest Syria, an area ravaged by more than a decade of civil war. I want you to listen to this desperate plea from one of Syria's White Helmets. Here it is.

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ISMAIL ALABDULLAH, VOLUNTEER, WHITE HELMETS: It's very difficult as for us. We need help. We need the international community to do something, to help us, to support us. Northwest here now is a disaster area. We need help from everyone to save our people.

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LEMON: So that rescue worker right there, we're going to speak to him in just a moment. We're also working on some live pictures for you from Turkey.

But first, we're going to go to Jomana Karadsheh in Istanbul. She is tracking all of the developments. Good morning to you, Jomana. This earthquake was so powerful, the tremors were felt thousands of miles away in Greenland.

JOMANA KARADSHEH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was so powerful. A 7.8 magnitude, Don. The Turkish president describing this as the biggest disaster his country has faced in the last century since the 1939 devastating earthquake that killed thousands of people. The epicenter of the earthquake is the southern province of Gaziantep. The earthquake zone stretches across 10 provinces, a vast, vast area of southern Turkey, and across the border, as you mentioned into Syria. Absolute and utter devastation on both sides of the border. Thousands of buildings destroyed according to officials.

And as you mentioned that death toll is continuing to rise over the past few hours, we have seen it continuing to rise, at least 1,500 people so far confirmed killed, more than 1,500, more than 1,000 of them here in Turkey and more than 500, as well, in Syria, both in rebel-controlled parts of Syria in the northwest as well as government-controlled areas.

And then you had about 30 aftershocks, one so powerful, a 7.5. Can you imagine how terrifying this must have been for people who are still dealing with the trauma of this, the many who were feared to still be trapped under the rubble. And then you've got this very complex and delicate search and rescue operation that is ongoing in Turkey, as well, and Syria, where in Syria this country in no way is it ready, is it equipped, is it capable to deal with this sort of devastation after 12 years of war that have decimated the country's infrastructure and services.

And especially in the vulnerable part of northwestern Syria, where you're talking about thousands and thousands of people who have been displaced so many times, now dealing with this, Don. And in the middle of a winter storm, absolutely miserable conditions for the people who are left without shelter right now and rescue workers who are in this race against time to try and rescue those many who are still believed to be under the rubble.

[08:05:11]

LEMON: Jomana, we'll be checking back with you throughout the day. Thank you very much for that.

Joining us now is Ismail Alabdullah in Syria. He's a volunteer for the Syria Civil Defense, a humanitarian organization known around the world as the White Helmets. The White Helmets are working right now to pull survivors from the rubble in northwest Syria. Ismail, thank you so much. Hello to you. It's morning here, but it's 4:00 in the evening there. I'm glad that you are safe, but you are one of the people who can tell us what is going on there. So tell us about what you're seeing and how many people you think are still trapped.

ISMAIL ALABDULLAH, VOLUNTEER, WHITE HELMETS: First, the death toll just reached about 400, about 400 people killed by the earthquake. More than 1,000 people are injured. In each city, in each village, in of course, northwest Syria, there are people under the rubble. In each city, we have not just one side, many buildings in this area, this village where I am now, their neighborhood, five buildings collapsed on the heads of the families. All of them are trapped.

As White Helmets, we responded. We did everything we can do. And we tried our best to help and rescue. But the reality is this area, northwest area, which was bombed and is being bombed by the forces and the regime since new year's and made the situation more worse for them by bombing the hospital and bombing every medical facility, all of that made the situation worse for us and for the civilians.

The number of trapped people under the rubble, it's countless up to now. We don't have exact number of the people who are trapped. Maybe our operations, our operations can continue for a week, maybe two weeks, because of that large scale of destruction, devastation, mountain of troubles in many, in many cities and villages. In one village, in the west countryside, 60 people were killed just in one village. And other villages, still the teams working on it to pull the dead bodies and to recover and save the others who are trapped.

All this misery, all these tragic conditions, it comes to people who were originally from many parts of Syria. Most of them now under the rubble from other parts of Syria by Assad's forces and the regime. And now they are under the rubble. Those who are, those who lift, those who are now injured, they are, they are facing another fear that we don't have enough hospitals and we don't have enough --

LEMON: Ismail, if you'll just -- we have lots of questions for you, pardon, but I'm sure my colleagues have lots of questions that we would like to get in to talk to you about what's going on.

HARLOW: As I understand it, you -- you were among the last people to leave Aleppo in 2016. And those were the conditions then and the civil war raged on, it's been 10 years now despite a very fragile cease- fire. Can you speak about how difficult it will be to get any humanitarian aid into those parts of Syria?

ALABDULLAH: Getting humanitarian aid to Syria now, it's very difficult. We're almost trapped almost by the borders. We're trapped from other, just we have the border of Turkey. So it's very difficult to get humanitarian aid for those who are in need. But actually the reality tells us that they need support. They need aid. They need something to help them to overnice this tragedy. Those thousands who are trapped, who are injured, they, actually, the area where we live now, we don't have that infrastructure. We're not ready to deal with something like this. We responded, we dealt with bombing one building, two buildings at the same time, five buildings, but not that big number of buildings, not that big number of lives under the rubble.

[08:10:05]

It's very difficult. It's very different -- either, if you can't -- it's bigger than us and bigger than any NGO over in northwest Syria to have this disaster. That's why in the White Helmets we say that northwest Syria now is a disaster area. We need help. We need support, immediate support from anyone who can support us.

LEMON: All right. Ismail Alabdullah, thank you very much. We're thinking about you. The worldwide resources of CNN will be covering this and getting back to the region as often as possible here on CNN. Thank you. Be well.

COLLINS: Also this morning, Navy crews are now working to collect the suspected spy equipment from the Chinese balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. Officials say that debris was spread out over about seven miles of the ocean. The recovery effort is expected to take days. That is a big aspect of this.

Joining us now is Dianne Gallagher, who is live on a boat off the coast of South Carolina. Dianne, I think this is probably the most fascinating live shot we're going to have in this show today. But you're there. Now the Navy is working to try to recover this, because what officials want to know is what exactly this balloon could see. What are you hearing from officials on how long this is going to take?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, Kaitlan, we are in the ocean right now. Behind me is myrtle beach, the shoreline there. And then out on the horizon is where we can start to see some of what appears to be those Navy vessels. Now, look, when that suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down on Saturday, we were told that they already had ships, they had vessels from the Navy and the Coast Guard that were in the vicinity, that were able to come and sort of set up a perimeter.

Now, where we are right now, we're in the ocean, but it's actually not that deep. In fact, where that balloon came down, according to a U.S. military official, it's only about 47 feet. And so, they say that should make the recovery process fairly easy. Essentially, what they have to do is they can use Navy divers and they can also use these unmanned vessels that can essentially go under the water. They can pick up the structure and put it on to these salvage vessels that have been in route coming here to get it.

Now, I will tell you that we haven't been told that we cannot go any further, but we are anticipating being told pretty soon that we're not going to be able to go much further, closer to where this recovery area is. Our captain of the boat, we kind of hopped on to a shrimp boat here, and our captain told us that there's usually far more boats and ships that are out right now. We're the only one that we've seen out on the waters at this point.

COLLINS: Yes, that's what I was going to ask is how close are you allowed to get, Dianne? But can you actually have the camera pan -- can you see the recovery effort? Can we have them turn to what you can see?

GALLAGHER: So I'm going to go ahead and have him pan and let you kind of see across the horizon. You may not be able to see in part because of the sun. And also, I can see it quite well, the shaping of it with my eyes here, but again, we're -- through the camera, it doesn't always translate as well. It's coming through there. And you mentioned, look, this is a very -- the balloon was very big, and this is a seven-mile area that this debris is scattered out on. And so what we essentially are hoping to see is some additional vessels, some additional activity, but I'm again, not very sure how close we're going to get. And I'm going to let you know that as soon as I walked up there, I just lost connectivity to you, so I cannot hear you any longer, Kaitlan. I will pass it back to you, because, again, I cannot hear you. We'll see how close we can get before the Coast Guard tells us to turn around.

COLLINS: All right, Dianne Gallagher who is off the coast of coast of South Carolina there monitoring that recovery effort underway.

HARLOW: Absolutely fascinating to see.

LEMON: We could hear her loud and clear. That was great to see.

HARLOW: Wow, incredible. Great reporting to Dianne.

Republicans in Washington are slamming the delay in response, calling this a win for China.

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SEN. TOM COTTON, (R-AR): I think the humiliation this week was inflicted by the Chinese communists on the president. Again, we should have shot down this balloon over the Aleutians as opposed to letting it float all across middle America on its merry way. The idea that we were going to let this go all across America, let a spy balloon complete its spy mission before we shot it down, I'm afraid is an embarrassment to the United States.

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HARLOW: China's defense ministry is protesting the shooting down of that balloon, claiming it was a, quote, "civilian unmanned airship." A spokesperson said in a statement that China reserves the right to use necessary means to deal with similar situations.

[08:15:00]

Our chief national security correspondent, Jim Sciutto is with us.

Jim, thank you for being here. You've been great covering all of this, you know, since it was shot down this weekend. What does that mean, necessary means, right? What might China do now, if anything?

JIM SCIUTTO CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's almost a mob like ring to it, right? It would be a shame if something were to happen to one of your surveillance aircraft here, and let's be clear, the US does fly surveillance aircraft, both crewed and uncrewed around Chinese airspace. I think we could put up a map here, but those include the Global Hawk, an unmanned aerial vehicle, the P8 Poseidon, which is crewed. I've actually been on one of those over the South China Sea when we were confronted by the Chinese Navy.

The concern being, does China retaliate? It certainly saying it reserves the right to retaliate. Now, I spoke to a Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder -- General Patrick Ryder over the weekend to ask him if he wanted to respond to those -- that veiled Chinese threat and he did respond, and in quite clear terms, he says, "Let's be clear the PRC surveillance balloon was in US territorial airspace, a violation of our sovereignty. We do not conduct such operations in Chinese airspace, so there is no similar situation. The United States will continue to sail, fly, and operate anywhere international law allows, we always take the safety and security of our service members seriously."

Point being there, the US making a distinction saying the Chinese balloon came over US territory that US aircraft both crewed and uncrewed go around Chinese territory, but also in those words there, Poppy, you heard him saying, we're not stopping these flights, right, in effect, the US not going to be intimidated by those Chinese comments, but it's a real danger here because retaliation is a possibility, and therefore, escalation is a responsibility, and that is something we have to be watching closely.

LEMON: This is not a tit-for-tat moment right now.

Thank you, Jim Sciutto, appreciate it. We'll see you a little bit later on today.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

LEMON: Coming up, we're going to talk to the former Trump National Security Adviser, John Bolton. Kaitlan is going to do that.

COLLINS: Yes, and senior White House official now telling CNN that three Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not discovered until after Biden took office. Back in a moment.

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[08:20:35]

COLLINS: As the 2024 presidential election approaches, there are questions of course about what is it going to look like when it comes to that presidential race? There are new polls out about Americans not being excited about a potential Biden and Trump rematch, those are big questions on the political front, but that also comes as the President is facing blowback this morning when it comes to how they handled the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down on Saturday, that is coming from Republicans; some Democrats are defending him as Jim Himes just did on CNN earlier this morning.

To talk more about this, we're going to have the former National Security Adviser under the Trump administration, John Bolton here.

Thank you so much, Ambassador for being here. I think the first question is, do you believe that they should have shot down this balloon sooner?

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Yes, absolutely. You know, when it was first sighted near Alaska on the 28th of January, according to press reports, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, apparently decided it was not threatening. I'd like to know how they know.

The payload for this balloon was apparently the size of three buses. That's pretty big. Were we confident there was not a nuclear weapon in that payload? Were we confident it wasn't carrying biological weapons, pathogens, or toxins that could have been dumped into a reservoir or spread across crop lands? Why were they so sure?

And then two days later, they did determine it was an Intelligence threat, and didn't do anything about it and didn't tell the President of the United States until three days after the first contact, which I find incredible.

COLLINS: So you have questions about that, because, so it was first detected January 28th. It was January 31st that the Defense Department alerted President Biden, that's when he asked for those options about potentially shooting it down. You think he should have been told the day it was detected?

BOLTON: Well, I think much sooner. I mean, there's a lot we don't know here, and I think the wording of many of the statements by administration spokesmen is sloppy. And when the wording is sloppy, that often means the underlying story is sloppy. But that's a significant delay in my view, and I'd like to know the

explanation. I'd also like to know where in the chain of command from that first sighting, the first detection of the balloon, how far up did it go? Where did it stop? And why did it stop?

COLLINS: The argument is that shooting it down over water was the safest option, because what we've heard from officials is that they believed it could have caused damage to people, it could have hurt buildings, it could have hurt people if they had shot it down while it was over Montana or Idaho for example.

Do you agree with that assessment?

BOLTON: Well, I think we obviously have to be concerned about the safety of our citizens. How would their safety be affected if there were weapons on that thing that we didn't act when it was timely to do so?

And with all due respect to the great citizens of Alaska and Montana, it is less populated than here at home. We've had bomb shelters before, people can be prepared for this, the government can pay compensation for property damage. There are a lot of things that just are unanswered about what the government do.

But there's another possibility here, too. We've talked about this as if shooting it down means destroying it. Back in the day before there was electronic transmission of photographs from space, we used to dump film that our satellites had taken into canisters that came back to Earth, and they were caught by airplanes.

Now, I don't know the technology if we still have it, or if we've junked it, or if it was possible here. But you know, as the saying goes, where there's a will, there's a way.

Capturing that payload is going to be very important, whatever we can get off the bottom of the sea, if there were some other way to have brought it down more slowly resulting in less destruction, so we could prove this was Chinese Intelligence gathering or whatever is in that payload, we should have taken a closer look at.

COLLINS: The other thing we heard from the Pentagon right after this happened last week, as we were monitoring it was that this actually happened before when your boss, former boss, former President Trump was in office. We're now learning from a senior administration official who says those previous occurrences were discovered after the Trump administration left office.

I think you as National Security Adviser, can you answer how did a Chinese spy balloon get into US airspace and someone like you was not told, someone like former President Trump was not told, the former Pentagon Chief Mark Esper says he was not told about any of this. How did that happen?

[08:25:01]

BOLTON: Well as far as I know, every Trump administration official who has been asked have said they didn't know anything about it. I will say this, if there was any actual knowledge that these balloons were over the United States and higher authority wasn't told, that's a serious problem. That's a serious problem.

That's not what the Biden administration is saying. I wrote these words down, I was so stunned by them. One official told FOX News that the balloons went undetected -- undetected -- and then said, "Two things can be true at once. This happened and it wasn't detected."

Well, if it wasn't detected when it happened, how did we detect it more recently? Did the Biden administration invent a time machine? What is the basis of this new detection?

Now, I understand that the administration has offered to brief former National Security officials from the Trump administration. They haven't called me, I'm not waiting by the phone for it, although I'd take the briefing if they offered it.

I think Congress has got a lot of questions here. This was a botched effort from the beginning. And by the way, the fact that there were earlier transits of part of the United States territory, which I think the administration made public to say, it is nothing new, don't worry about it proves exactly the opposite.

The very fact, if it is a fact that the Chinese have tried this before, should have alerted us and should have caused us to take action before the balloon crossed into American sovereign territory.

COLLINS: Well, notable that you said you do want that briefing and Ambassador Bolton, while I have you here, I want to ask you about what I mentioned earlier, which is these new polls that we're seeing from the ABC and "Washington Post" on 2024, where it says few Americans are excited about a Trump and Biden rematch.

I know you've toyed with the idea of running for office, have you made a decision on whether or not you're running for President in 2024?

BOLTON: I have not, but I would say whether I run or not, I do think National Security is going to be a much more important issue in 2024 than in recent elections. And if this Chinese balloon incident proves anything, it's that the people of the United States need to hear more from candidates what their foreign policy views are.

These are life and death decisions that Presidents make and I know it has not been the source of a lot of popular discussion in recent campaigns, that's a mistake for the country. The candidates need to talk about National Security much, much more.

COLLINS: Do you think Trump has a good message on National Security?

BOLTON: Trump doesn't have any message on National Security other than that he would be perfect -- perfect phone conversations, perfect decisions on the balloon, perfect decisions to solve the Russia- Ukraine war. It's all about Donald Trump. It's not about foreign policy.

COLLINS: Former Ambassador John Bolton, thank you for that perspective this morning.

BOLTON: Thank you.

LEMON: In a new series, actor and former Obama administration aide, Kal Penn explores an optimistic approach to solving the climate crisis all with his patented humor. Oh wait a minute --

HARLOW: He is here.

LEMON: Kal Penn, he is studio, live next.

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