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CNN This Morning
North Korea Launches ICBM; Tuberville Backtracks on White Nationalists; Sexual Assault at Coast Guard Academy. Aired 6:30-7a ET
Aired July 12, 2023 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:30:04]
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: You're taking a live look here at the Iowa statehouse in Des Moines where late last night the Republican-led legislature passed a ban on most abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy. It was during a special session called by Republican Governor Kim Reynolds to address the issue specifically. Demonstrators representing both sides of the abortion rights debate packed the statehouse. A reporter for "The Des Moines Register" caught a tense moment between two of the demonstrators you see that had to be broken up by a state trooper.
Now, the bill excludes exceptions for miscarriages, when the life of the pregnant woman is threatened, and fetal abnormalities that would result in death. There are also exceptions for rape reported within 45 days, and incest reported within 140 days. Governor Reynolds says she intends to sign the bill Friday, at which point the ban would immediately go into effect. This would put Iowa with a growing list of states limiting or outright banning the procedure.
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, also this morning, new overnight, North Korea firing a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast just days after Pyongyang threatened to shoot down U.S. reconnaissance planes. Now, it landed between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
CNN's Marc Stewart joins us live from Tokyo.
Mark, what do we know?
MARC STEWART, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Phil. Good to see you.
For a good part of the morning military forces here in Japan and South Korea were on alert monitoring this missile launch. This missile was in the air for 74 minutes. This time duration viewed by experts as significant, seen as a big deal.
We should also point out that this missile was launched at a very specific angle where it would have a very short flight. Again, only 74 minutes. However, this is a missile that has the potential of crossing the ocean, landing in other continents, and that is why there is so much attention to what happened over the last 12 hours here in the Pacific region at least.
MATTINGLY: Yes, the time duration was what struck me, and also when this actually happened. Obviously we've been talking all week about the world leaders meeting at NATO. We've just learned that South Korea's president will be holding an emergency meeting there over this latest launch. What are the expectations from that?
STEWART: Right. Well, let me just say this, and as you well know from spending time in the region during the G-7, North Korea craves attention. And when you have a gathering such as the NATO summit, something like this is ripe to happen.
As far as the South Korean meeting, it is believed that it has included defense ministers, other top officials. South Korea has made comments today saying that there will be consequences.
As far as what happens next, that's still ambiguous. I can tell you, though, having spent time in the region, I wouldn't say that people are necessarily alarmed at this point, even though South Korea is saying there could be some consequences. I think at this point this is just a general awareness that North Korea continues to move things step-by-step further.
MATTINGLY: Yes, and it's like an unsettling new normal to some degree.
Marc Stewart, great reporting. Thanks.
BROWN: Well, new this morning, Chinese hackers have breached email accounts at two dozen U.S. organizations, including some U.S. government agencies. That's according to the White House and Microsoft. The National Security Council issuing a statement saying last month, U.S. government safeguards identified an intrusion in Microsoft's cloud security, which affected unclassified systems. Officials immediately contacted Microsoft to find the source and venerability in their cloud service.
And Microsoft says the hacking began a month before the breach was detected, and that the hackers used a stolen sign-in key. The full scope of the hack is still being investigated.
And "The Washington Post" reports that accounts from the Pentagon, intelligence community and military did not appear to be affected.
On that note, that's good news, but it will be interesting to hear if Wray, the FBI director, is asked about this today.
MATTINGLY: We talked about what substantive questions could actually be asked.
BROWN: Yes. That could be one.
MATTINGLY: This is one of those substantive questions.
BROWN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And I think when you talk to national security council officials, intelligence officials, with all of the things that are going on in the world, cyber and hacking threats is always kind of this pervasive issue that they're keeping a very close eye on and very concerned about.
BROWN: Yes. I mean you ask them, what keeps you up at night, it's this.
MATTINGLY: This. Yes, no question about it.
All right, Senator Tommy Tuberville is changing his tune. It was quite a journey he was on yesterday. Now he says white nationalists are racist after previously refusing to denounce them. The backlash he's getting from both sides of the aisle.
BROWN: And we're going to take you live to space and speak with a NASA astronaut who has been living on the ISS for four months. I am so looking forward to this segment. What he's doing up there. We've got so many questions for him.
Stay with us.
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[06:39:05]
BROWN: You are looking at live images from the NATO summit in Lithuania well underway there. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just finished speaking. He seems to be softening some of his frustrated language, saying the results of the summit are, quote, good, but that receiving an invitation to join the alliance would be the ideal.
And we have learned that President Biden and NATO leaders unanimously agreed to a substantial new aid package to Ukraine and there will be a major announcement from Biden and G-7 leaders after the summit wraps.
New this morning, also the Kremlin warning against providing security guarantees to Ukraine, saying such actions could lead to extremely negative consequences.
And we also just learned the head of Russia's foreign intelligence service held a phone call with CIA Director William Burns at the end of June. That's according to Russian state media.
In a few hours, Zelenskyy will meet face-to-face with President Biden. We'll bring that to you live. But safe to say there is no shortage of news this morning.
[06:40:02]
MATTINGLY: Yes. Keeps us busy.
BROWN: We bring it.
MATTINGLY: Including the journey -
BROWN: Yes.
MATTINGLY: That we all went on with the senior senator from Alabama yesterday, Tommy Tuberville. He's now changing his tune.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): I'm totally against racism. And if the Democrats want to say that white nationalists are racist, I'm totally against that, too, OK.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But that's not a Democratic definition. The definition of a white nationalist is someone --
TUBERVILLE: Well, that's your definition. My definition is racism is bad.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is the definition.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTINGLY: Now, to be clear, this was a journey that I don't think any of us wanted to be on.
BROWN: Correct.
MATTINGLY: The senator did finally relent and say that white nationalists are indeed racist. That was a 180-degree turn from what he told CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Monday night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): My opinion of a white nationalist - if somebody wants to call them white nationalists, to me, is an American. It's an American.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTINGLY: Let's bring back Elliot Williams and Lauren Fox.
And, Lauren, what was striking to me yesterday is it felt like the days when you and I were on -- in the halls together during the Trump administration where every single day you would just track down Republicans and ask them about Trump's latest tweet. They never wanted to talk about it. They were infuriated that it was getting in the way of whatever policy issue they wanted to be talking about. This time it wasn't the former president, it was one of the members of their conference.
LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. And you can expect that when there's a president that you are supposed to be supporting, it's one thing. And when it's just a fellow rank and file member who you sit with at lunch, it's a very different thing.
I knew that this was starting to turn yesterday when I talked to Senator John Thune, the Republican whip, who is usually very honest and candid, even though he's very polite in his delivery about how he thought that Tommy Tuberville was really going nowhere with this discussion and said repeatedly he had no idea what Tommy Tuberville was trying to say but that he wanted to make it very explicit that there was no room for white nationalists in the Republican Party or in the military, which is where this all started from.
I think that one of the things that became clear to me was that while Republican leadership doesn't lean on members to change their stance, it was very clear that one after another Republican yesterday in the halls was making it clear that this was not a conversation they wanted to be having, this was not a conversation that they thought helped the Republican Party, and they wanted to quell it as quickly as possible.
BROWN: Do you know, just to follow up on that, if any of them actually spoke directly, though, to Tuberville and say, like, cut it out? Let's nip this is in the bud.
FOX: I was told it did not come up in the Republican lunch yesterday. That doesn't mean that there weren't any private conversations that we don't know about. But it did not come up as like a Republican wide discussion in the lunch.
MATTINGLY: Elliot, from -- if we could step back to some degree.
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.
MATTINGLY: And I think, you know, Jake Tapper made the point when we were talking to him yesterday -
BROWN: Yes. Right.
MATTINGLY: That you need to contextualize Tuberville's comments because he has a history, not just on this specific issue, which he's been talking about for some reason I can't quite figure out now for a couple of months, but also on the campaign trail last year made some comments that were immediately kind of refuted by Republicans who were very uncomfortable with the racist tone of them. But from a bigger picture perspective, this isn't happening in a vacuum.
WILLIAMS: Right. Unlike someone's right to a fair trial, Phil, this is not something I'm going to both sides. And, look, you know, let's define what white nationalism is, and it's the belief in a white ethnostate in America, in the belief that race mixing itself threatens the United States of America and that there ought to be a white majority in America.
Now, none of those views are actually illegal to have. And maybe that's the point that Senator Tuberville was trying to - switching (ph) of people's beliefs. But those are toxic views in a civil society. And more to the point, if you notice late - late in the interview with Kaitlan, he says, it was right here, if you're going to do away with most white people, then we're going to have problems. And I'm genuinely curious as to what audience he's speaking to there. If there is a silent majority of whites in America who truly are threatened by the idea of race mixing or a non-white majority, that's what he seemed to be saying. Now, he might - he brought up all this stuff about identity politics
and it's a slur and people are being called racist when they're not. And you can have a debate or discussion about that. But he really did seem to be tapping in to -- or thinking he was tapping into something and speaking for a constituency in America that's very frightening if it does exist.
BROWN: Yes, like, you know, brings to mind the great replacement theory, things like that.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
BROWN: Tapping into that.
WILLIAMS: You know, Pat Buchanan, back in - remember, ran for president, wrote -- back in 2000 wrote a book called "The Death of the West." And sort of prestaging (ph) this idea that whites were being replaced in America. And I - and to some extent it seemed Senator Tuberville was tapping into a little bit of that as well, this replacement and this idea.
But, again, the most frightening thing is I think he felt that he was speaking for all or most white people, and that's not good.
MATTINGLY: Fox, we've got to go, but I do want to ask you, the dynamics within the Republican conference, you saw the public comments from McConnell, from Thune, which, again, to your point, seemed very intentional.
[06:45:04]
Can somebody pull him aside and say, like, dude, what are you doing right now, or is that just not his relationship within that conference?
FOX: Well, it's not the leadership's style necessarily to do that, but Roger Wicker, who is the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, he said that he does think at some point that the fever is going to break on this issue of these holds. But he told me yesterday he did sit by Tommy Tuberville at lunch. He said they are not there yet in terms of some kind of resolution. But a few interesting things have happened this week, including the fact Wicker sat by him yesterday. He met with Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee on Monday. There's no resolution yet. But NDA (ph) is coming. That may be an opportunity, a potential off ramp. We'll be watching.
MATTINGLY: All right, we'll keep watching for sure.
BROWN: We will.
MATTINGLY: Elliot Williams, Lauren Fox, thanks, guys.
BROWN: Well, we have a CNN exclusive coming up that I've been working on along with my team on the investigative unit. It's an investigation into sexual abuse at the Coast Guard Academy and the findings that were kept secret for so long. What survivors are now telling us and how lawmakers are reacting to the damning report. Some new information ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): This episode is probably the most shameful and disgraceful incident of cover-up of sexual assault that I have seen in the United States military ever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
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[06:50:23]
BROWN: Well, this week, the head of the Coast Guard will face questions on Capitol Hill about a damning report into sexual abuse at the Coast Guard Academy that was kept secret for years, only unveiled because of an exclusive CNN investigation. Some survivors tell CNN they've been wanting accountability for decades.
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BROWN (voice over): New questions about the secret damning report called Operation Fouled Anchor which revealed a decades-long history of substantiated sexual abuse, including rapes, at the Coast Guard Academy, according to documents viewed exclusively by CNN. The assaults were treated as minor misconduct by Coast Guard command and were usually covered up. Victims were often punished. The investigation ran from 2014 to 2019 but only reviewed sexual assault from the late '80s to 2006, leaving a major gap in its findings.
KERRY KARWAN, U.S. COAST GUARD VETERAN: The Coast Guard has failed the victims. And the worst part is, it's the culture and the environment that they still have at the academy is allowing this behavior to continue.
BROWN: Kerry Karwan says she was sexually assaulted in 1995 and even wrote about the incident in her journal at the time, saying a football player came to her room, quote, bit my neck and felt up my chest.
KARWAN: Luckily, I got away and he left, but he said he was going to come back and finish what he started. And I was terrified. This guys was bigger than me, he was stronger than me, and I didn't have roommate and I didn't know how to protect myself.
BROWN: She reported her attack at the time, but the Coast Guard Academy only gave him demerits and assigned him to write an essay. That same cadet would be accused of multiple other assaults, including rape, according to records viewed by CNN.
KARWAN: We are not being attacked by somebody who's a complete stranger that we never see again. You're repeatedly getting traumatized by this individual because you're stuck in the environment with them. BROWN: Karwan says she was hoping for change when the Coast Guard
reopened her case, and dozens of others, with Operation fouled Anchor. But that didn't happen.
KARWAN: There was no, you know, here's what the results were and this is what we're doing about it and this is the Coast Guard's way forward.
BROWN: Instead, Coast Guard officials kept the problem secret for years. A source telling CNN the report was, quote, very centrally controlled, similar to how a classified report would be treated. The Coast Guard only briefed Congress last month after CNN started asking questions. Now senators are demanding answers.
SEN. TAMMY BALDWIN (D-WI): We are looking for accountability. We want to know what steps have been taken to make sure this never happens again.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): This episode is probably the most shameful and disgraceful incident of cover-up of sexual assault that I have seen in the United States military ever.
BROWN: Of the dozens of old sexual assault cases examined, only one person was ever prosecuted. The charge against him was dismissed when a court ruled the statute of limitations had run out.
Many of the alleged perpetrators graduated from the academy and went on to high-ranking positions in the Coast Guard or other branches of the military. The man Kerry Karwan says assaulted her ended up retiring from the Coast Guard with full benefits.
KARWAN: The victims don't feel like the Coast Guard handled their situation well. Their attackers have gone on to have careers, retired with benefits, I mean yet the victims have never stopped suffering.
BROWN: CNN has spoken to more than a dozen former cadets who say they were assaulted over the years. Some more recently.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to talk about it.
BROWN: This woman, who says she was raped three times, just graduated from the Coast Guard Academy last year.
BROWN (on camera): So you have to wonder if they had released this report, if they had done more to crack down on sexual assaults, how your experience would have been different.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know, I often find myself wondering what my future would have been like. Time and time again the academy and the institution don't protect their people. It did nothing to save me when I was asking for help, and it's devastating.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Well, the head of the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, will testify on Capitol Hill tomorrow. A Coast Guard spokesperson told CNN that most of the historical cases couldn't be prosecuted because they had to go by the law at the time of the offense. And in the '90s the court-martial definition of rape was very narrow. Clearly a lot has changed since then but still really disturbing.
And I spoke to a congressional source yesterday who said lawmakers are really looking at ways to - to hold the Coast Guard accountable. Like, you know, there's going to be an appropriations bill coming out for the Coast Guard, or DHS, I should say. They're looking at ways to guarantee transparency moving forward. So, we'll have to see what happens.
MATTINGLY: Great. Very important work, you and your team, Pam.
[06:55:01]
All right, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy attending the final day of the NATO summit and seeking assurances that his nation can one day join that alliance. We're going to be live on the ground coming up next
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MATTINGLY: One national league all-star game losing streak, it's now over thanks to one swing of the bat from a very unlikely hero. Thirty- two-year-old Rockies catcher Elias Diaz had never been to the midsummer classic after nine seasons in the majors. That didn't faze him. What you just watched there, a big, big home run in the eighth inning, down by one, facing one of the best relievers in the game, Felix Bautista of the Orioles. Diaz crushed the ball deep into the left field stands. The two-run shot, one that was enough to earned him MVP honors after the game. And he got emotional talking about his mother being there to see it happen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELIAS DIAZ, 2023 ALL-STAR GAME MVP (through translator): That was incredibly special for me, you know, to have her here.
[07:00:02]
A lot of emotions. With everything that we've been through, all the sacrifices that she made for me, it was really special to have her here for me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
