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Richard Clarke is Interviewed about Cybersecurity; Chilling Video of Chinese Airliner Accident; Tanya Kozyreva is Interviewed about Children Wounded in Ukraine; Senate Holds Supreme Court Nominee Hearing. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired March 22, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

AARON DAVID MILLER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: The administration has been very luke warm, if not opposed to that idea. You're going to have to figure out a way to protect these people and to provide air cover for them. All of which, John, raises the question of the main reason now for the absence of an effort to stop civilian killing, and that is the prospects and the risk of escalation with the Russians.

There's a "New York Times" article out today, which if you haven't read you need to, chilling about how the threshold for the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons, small nuclear explosions on the battlefield, even for demonstration effect, is now within the realm of conversation. It's no longer unimaginable. That's the real problem. I wish -- I wish we had an answer and I don't.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it is not as unimaginable as you might think.

Aaron David Miller, there are no easy answers here. We appreciate you raising the right questions, though. Thank you very much.

MILLER: Thank you, John, and be safe.

BERMAN: New intelligence that Vladimir Putin's next escalation could be a direct cyberattack on the United States. How U.S. businesses should prepare.

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[08:35:14]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: President Biden is issuing an urgent warning to American business leaders to strengthen company's cyber defenses immediately. He's calling this a patriotic duty. He's pointing to evolving intelligence to suggest Russia could conduct malicious cyberactivity against American companies and critical infrastructure.

Joining us now to talk about this is former special adviser to the president for cybersecurity, Richard Clarke.

Richard, thank you so much for sharing your expertise on this with us this morning.

RICHARD CLARKE, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT OF CYBERSECURITY: Good morning.

KEILAR: What are you expecting here?

CLARKE: Two kinds of possibilities here. One, the Russians target key infrastructure. This is related to our sanctions. So, they might go after gas pipelines, again. They may go after refineries. In addition to targeted attacks, they can also do indiscriminate attacks, like they have done. They took a company, SolarWinds, that provided software to a lot of people, and they put malware in the software update, in the software supply chain. It hit 14,000 companies. They didn't even know what companies it was going to hit. So, they could do either targeted or indiscriminate attacks. And, frankly, it's likely they will because what else can they do to retaliate for our sanctions? And they've said they will retaliate for our sanctions.

KEILAR: You mentioned SolarWinds. Would you expect there's already -- they're already in the system, right?

CLARKE: Yes.

KEILAR: In a way they're already in the door and they've just been waiting?

CLARKE: Oh, yes.

Brianna, when we discovered SolarWinds, my first question was, how many more are there like this? FireEye (ph), a Mandiant (ph) company, discovered it almost by chance. And what the first question was is, the technique they used to get into that software supply, have they used that to get into the thousands of companies that do software supply to other companies?

KEILAR: What's the option for the Biden administration responding? How does the U.S. respond if Putin does this?

CLARKE: Well, the first thing we want to do, and we're doing it now, is to raise our defenses. I said years ago that we should do shields up and now the Homeland Security Department has taken that slogan on, shields up. There are things we can do now that we wouldn't normally do day to day to make our security heightened. In the next few days and weeks and months, you can't always have everyone on tipity-toes at the highest level of security. But there are things you can do if you're expecting an attack. And the Department of Homeland Security, their cybersecurity agency, CSIA, has a list of things that you can do if you're a company to be on higher alert.

In terms of retaliation, Biden said we could respond in kind. And we can. But the fact that we turn out the lights in Moscow doesn't help if the lights are out in New Jersey.

KEILAR: Well, to that point, what does that look like? I mean if you have the rules of engagement being a little loosey-goosey compared to say the rules of conventional warfare, what could this evolve into? CLARKE: Brianna, there are no rules of engagement. There are no rules

of the road. This is a first cyberwar between two super powers, if it happens. And we don't know.

Part of the problem is, people think it will stay in cyberspace. And when two superpowers, or two powers start attacking each other this way, it's a slippery slope to conventional war. There may be things that they attack, there may be things that we attack, and that we think are sufficiently damaging that we can't just respond with a cyberattack.

The Pentagon has a policy that says we will decide on our response to a cyberattack based on the level of destruction and damage. And we have the right, the Pentagon says, to respond with a conventional attack in response to a cyberattack if the damage was big enough.

KEILAR: That raises more questions than it answers, I think, certainly that policy.

Richard Clarke, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

CLARKE: Thank you.

KEILAR: Ukrainian forces are regaining control of a town that is just outside of Kyiv, raising the Ukrainian flag after days of heavy fighting. We're going to get the latest from the ground.

Plus, the chilling, new video of what appears to be the moment that a Chinese airliner plunged straight down from the sky.

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[06:43:43]

BERMAN: Shocking new surveillance video appears to show a China Eastern Airlines flight plummeting from the sky in a nose-dive and crashing into the mountains. The accident is China's worst air disaster in more than a decade, with 132 people on board, no survivors.

CNN's Pete Muntean with the latest for us in Washington.

Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: So many questions swirling around this crash, John. Aviation experts tell us they want to know whether this was an act of suicide, like the Germanwings crash of 2015. They're also pointing to data showing a blistering dive. Flight Radar 24 shows the plane lost 25,000 feet in less than two minutes. It's also backed up by that security video obtained by Chinese state television. It shows Flight 5735 going straight down into the mountains of southern China.

The fact is, we will not know more until the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder are recovered. What we can say is this was not triggered by the same cause of the

Boeing 737 Max crashes, simply because this was not a Max. This was a 737 800.

I went to a flight simulator, Dream Airol (ph) at the Montgomery Mall in Maryland, which replicates a 737 800. And retired Captain Mark Weiss showed me that this plane lacks the MCAS system that caused the Max crashes.

[08:45:03]

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK WEISS, RETIRED AIRLINE PILOT: It's probably one of the safest airplanes ever built.

This was the model before the Max. And that did not have the MCAS system in it.

MUNTEAN: Even though people hear 737 --

WEISS: Apples and oranges. Same airplane, different problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: The Boeing 737 800 is the world's second most popular airliner. You've probably flown on one. Hundreds of them are used by Southwest Airlines and American Airlines.

China Eastern has grounded its 737 800 fleet, but no sign that will happen here in the U.S. Boeing's CEO Dave Calhoun just told employees the company it is deeply saddened by this crash. Boeing has offered the full technical support of our experts, it says, to help in the investigation, which is being led by the Chinese government. This is China's first major airline crash in more than a decade.

John.

BERMAN: A lot of new details there.

Pete Muntean, thank you so much for that reporting.

A line of severe storms causing some serious damage across the U.S. South. We have stunning video from Texas. It shows a truck getting tossed around by the powerful winds. Nearly two dozen tornadoes were reported Monday in Texas and Oklahoma.

This is what it looked like in Jacksboro, Texas, after a twister went through. As many as 80 homes in the county were demolished.

A new tornado watch is in effect this morning for more than 8 million people in parts of Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.

KEILAR: Of the countless horrifying stories that are coming out of Ukraine, many of them involve children. The images that you are about to see are disturbing, I will warn you. But it's important for the world to see the faces of these children and to hear their stories. These are pictures taken of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Children's Hospital. Doctors allowing the British publication "The Telegraph" to publish them, saying that they hope the images will make a strong impression on the world about the horrors of war, particularly on its youngest victims.

Joining me now to explain these photos in greater detail is one of the reporters on this story, investigative journalist Tanya Kozyreva.

Tonya, these are tough pictures to look at. These kids in the middle of this, the biggest victims of this.

Can you tell us their stories? First, I'd like for you to tell us about Masha (ph). And just to be clear, the headline on this story is, Masha is 15, her body is broken and Russians say she's a fake. Tell us about Masha.

TANYA KOZYREVA, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: So, the whole -- the whole scene that we witnessed, it was -- it was horrible, and a nightmare. We entered this room, intensive care room of the regional Zaporizhzhia hospital, and there was three kids. And all of them, like, two of them was not in conscious and Masha was the only one who, you know, who was reacting on what is going on. She -- she could speak, but we decided not to disturb her. And we just saw, you know, this grim picture of very young and beautiful Ukrainian girl who is only 15 years old, but who already had her right knee amputated, her right leg amputated above the knee, and her right hand is also shredded by the shrapnel that got into there -- got into her.

And Masha, I had to tell you, Masha is from Boloha (ph). This is the small town near Zaporizhzhia. And it's a town where there is no like military base and there's no military objects. And she just caught the shrapnel into her body while she was walking around her town with her mother.

So mother covered her from this shrapnel by -- as her grandmother told us the story, this story, this grim story, she told us that her mother covered her daughter, but when she, you know, when she woke up, she saw, you know, legs --

KEILAR: Yes.

KOZYREVA: (INAUDIBLE) this, you know, this very grim picture. And when we spoke to grandmother, to Masha's grandmother, she -- she was crying. Valentina (ph), she, you know, she -- she's (INAUDIBLE) crushed, I think, forever just because two dearest members of her family had this wound forever, you know, and --

[08:50:00]

KEILAR: Yes. And I will say, in your -- in your story, Tanya, we see the grandmother. She -- I mean the pain on her face.

You also -- you also introduce your readers to Malana (ph), who is an 11-year-old, who is wounded and is attached to a ventilator. As you mentioned, one of the children who is unconscious.

I think one of the stunning things about this is, Russians don't believe these are real, right, Tanya?

KOZYREVA: Yes. Malana's story is even, you know, it's -- it's even worse, but if it can be even compared, probably not. Malana (INAUDIBLE) her father (INAUDIBLE) was on the way from Mariupol. So, they survived the siege. They survived this more than 20 days with no food, no electricity, no water, you know. And after all this, they were on the way. They, you know, they were on the way to Zaporizhzhia. And then their car was shelled on this big queue of cars that was trying to escape the siege.

And this is one of the cases that, you know, that we saw. And it was one of the cases when the civilians in the cars were trying to escape. There were, you know, they had -- they basically, again, they're damaged forever, I think.

Yes, but the story here is also very impressive just because the head of this intensive care, the hospital, he told us that, you know, that many of his friends and I think many Ukrainians will share this expression with him, but many of his Russian friends doesn't believe that those pictures is real, that those stories about wounded people and wounded people and killed kids, they're, you know, they're fake stories that Ukrainians are making them up just in order to impress somebody or impress the world. But this is real. This -- what is really -- we as a journalist witnessed and this is something that doctors, as they told us, never saw ever before. They never have seen kids in this kind of conditions, and heavily wounded.

KEILAR: And, Tanya, this -- thank you for sharing this important work with us because I know some -- look, some people aren't going to believe it, no matter what. But when you're doing this reporting and you're showing these pictures, there are going to be some people who look at it and they wonder and they're going to ask some more questions.

Tanya, thank you so much.

KOZYREVA: No problem. Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: John.

BERMAN: A Ukrainian father suffering the unimaginable pain of losing his young son to shelling by the Russian army. His two-year-old was killed in an attack near Kyiv. Speaking to reporters at the site of his now destroyed home, the father said the day began in relative quiet, and then, without warning, everything changed.

OLEH SHPAK, FATHER OF TWO-YEAR-OLD STEPAN SHPAK KILLED IN RUSSIAN SHELLING (through translator): I don't know if the almighty is there and why all of this and what for. A two-year-old child who hasn't seen life. He suffered for nothing.

Mom called him sweet kiss. Now there's no one. Morning started peacefully. There was no sign of any trouble. Usually

there are sounds of artillery over there from the direction of Irpin. Everything was quiet. He asked to go to sleep in his bed again and stayed asleep there. The blast simply blew away the annexed structure to hell. The kid was covered with all of the debris. The moment he was found, there was still a heartbeat, but he died during the attempt to load him into the ambulance.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:57:30]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome, everyone.

It is a pivotal day on Capitol Hill. Minutes from now, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden's Supreme Court nominee, will face her first questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jackson would make history if confirmed, becoming the first African American woman to receive the lifetime appointment to the nation's highest court.

Good morning, everyone. It's a big, very important day in the nation's capital. I'm Poppy Harlow, joining you live from New York this morning.

Senators will each have 30 minutes to vet the judge, soon to possibly be justice. Among the issues we expect to be raised, Jackson's record as a public defender, a position that no other justice on this court has held. It is significant.

Our team is standing by to walk us through all of the key developments as we get ready for this critical day on Capitol Hill.

Let's begin there with our chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju.

Manu, good morning.

Considering how tense and combative the past two, for Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, confirmation hearings have been, today seems like it will be different. Will it?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It depends. I mean this is really the most significant day of Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearings. Each senator will get 30 minutes to question her. And this will be -- the big question will be whether there is any pitfalls, anything that comes up, any efforts to trip her up that are successful that ultimately upset the trajectory that she is on now, which is to the Supreme Court.

At the moment, they're -- from yesterday's hearing, which was just opening statements, that members laid out, Democrats often praising her background, Republicans raising questions about some of her positions that she's taken over the years, that had done nothing to change what the ultimate outcome almost certainly would be at this point is that she will get the votes to be confirmed.

But what will happen today when Republicans, in particular, question her about what they view as a record they say is soft on crime. Something that the White House has rejected. Something that the Democrats have rejected. But something that we'll hear for the first time from the nominee's own words about why she thinks that is a wrong picture of her past record, both as a district judge on the U.S. sentencing commission, as well as a public defender.

So, all those topics will be explored, as well as some big weighty issues before the court that could be taken up by the court. But one thing that will -- that a lot of senators won't get here today, Poppy, are some of the key answers.

[08:59:59]

We have seen in hearings past nominees often refuse to weigh in on what can come before the court, often to the concern and consternation of members on this committee.