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Ramadi Falls to ISIS; Closer Look at African Migrants; What Clinton E-mails Mean for Her Presidential Prospects; U.S./Cuba Relations Get Warmer. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired May 21, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:31:42] DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Dana Bash, in for Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

Let's turn to Iraq and the fall of Ramadi, called a setback from the Obama administration. We saw a reaction from the president, saying, "If the Iraqis are not willing to fight for the security of their country, we cannot do that for them."

Joining me now from Capitol Hill is California Congressman Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

First, your reaction to the president's comments.

REP. ED ROYCE, (R-CA), CHAIRMAN, HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Well, it is a true statement that Iraqis have to willing and able to defend themselves and their citizens. At the same time, we in the United States need to be certain that the Sunni tribes and Kurds have the weapons they need to fight ISIS. Remember those weapons are being held in Baghdad from a lot of pressure from the neighboring Iranian regime not to allow the Sunni men to have the equipment they needed. And lastly, we weren't exactly up with the air strikes as requested. A little more than two a day average, from what I saw, over the last couple weeks of the air campaign. So there was a critique about U.S. air support as well. And we don't have any forward deploy personnel to assist on making sure those air strikes hit the ISIS targets. So there's a little bit of criticism to go around here.

BASH: And certainly has been frustration on Capitol Hill that the administration is not taking the fall of Ramadi seriously enough. In fact, John McCain was on the floor ripping White House spokesman, Josh Earnest. Listen to what Earnest said first and McCain's reaction.

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JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We have to sort of decide what our approach to these issues is going to be. Are we going to light our hair on fire every time there is a setback in the campaign against ISIL or are we going to take responsibility to evaluate the area where we succeed?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, (R), ARIZONA: In the response to Ramadi, the answer seems to be quote, "Let's not set our hair on fire," by the president's statesman. Where is our morality, our decency, our concern about these thousands of people that are being slaughtered and displaced and their lives destroyed? And we shouldn't set our hair on fire? Outrageous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: What's your reaction and more specifically what's you're view on the way that the administration is treating the fall of Ramadi?

ROYCE: I think they are treating it in the same way that they are treating the setbacks in Syria in the war against ISIS right now as well. As ISIS continues to take towns and destroy antiquities -- you see, the Roman ruins, the Syrian ruins, the Hellenic civilization, they are blotting it out and massacring civilians. The tribesmen in Ramadi who fought against ISIS, these Sunni tribesmen, their children were slaughtered, their wives were killed. And in the face of this kind of assault where they used 30 suicide bombings -- 10 of those were as big as what we saw in Oklahoma City in the bombing that we experienced here in the United States. So that gives you some idea of what is going on. So my reaction to that is that we need more air support, closer air support, air strikes called in, and we need to force the issue of arming the Kurds and Sunni tribesmen. I know the Shia don't like that idea but it is necessary to defend themselves.

[13:35:] BASH: Mr. Chairman, back to what the president said in that "Atlantic" interview, talking about the fact we can't do it for them, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey offered criticism of Iraqi troops in Ramadi. He said they weren't driven out of Ramadi, instead they drove out of Ramadi, meaning, they were out of there, they fled.

ROYCE: Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: So there's only so much the U.S. can do, back to the president's point, right?

ROYCE: Remember, hear me out on this, the Baghdad officer, you know, Baghdad-appointed officer there retreated, OK? He pulled out. But the Sunni tribesmen stayed and fought and they died there. And the reality is that more support forcing the issue of having a government in Baghdad that protects all of the citizens and recruits from the entire pool, instead of just trying to make the Shia-leaning government, which leans to Iran flight, happy, we need to do that. So I would make that point. We don't need U.S. brigades on the ground there. We need to exert our considerable influence and get the weapons to the Kurds and Sunni tribesmen that they need. That is a serious issue.

BASH: So you don't is this there should be U.S. troops. There's a lot of talk suddenly about 10,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. Lindsey Graham and others have been saying that for some time. You disagree? ROYCE: I think what you need on the ground -- our commandos carried

out the operation the other day in Syria to take out their emir of oil and gas basically. Those kinds of operations you can do. You need forward deployed spotters, special ones to call in air strikes so the air strikes can be effective, so you can actually hit the ISIS targets. Those are the kind of things to do. You don't need brigades on the ground. What you do need is you have an army of 180,000 Kurds, who have been trying for months and months to get the weaponry, the artillery, the mortgage mortars, anti-tank that they need to confront ISIS. And you have the same problem with the Sunni tribes fighting ISIS. So we need an overall strategy that will also give them air support. That's what we should be doing.

BASH: We will obviously be continuing this conversation.

Thank you, Ed Royce, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

ROYCE: Thank you.

BASH: Now we go to high stakes on the high seas. Coming up, a closer look at the African migrants risking their lives to make it to American shores. CNN's Christiane Amanpour saw that struggle close up and joins us live from Italy next.

And a little later, Hillary Clinton and those e-mails on her private server, what they may and may not tell us about her days at the helm of the State Department.

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[13:42:06] BASH: The numbers are absolutely extraordinary. The Italian Coast Guard said, in just one day, one day, 900 migrants were rescued at sea. But look at the numbers. According got the International Organization for Migration, more than 12,000 migrants arrived by sea just this month along. That brings the total number of migrants since January to more than 38,000. And take a look at some of the key migrant groups through the Mediterranean Sea. Thousands of refugees flee North Africa, attempting to gain sea crossings from Libya, Tunisia to Italy and to Malta.

Our chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, joins us from the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Christiane, you were on an Italian navy vessel as it rescued hundreds of migrants, which -- I can't imagine that experience. Tell us about it.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It was extraordinary. And we were there as they rescued nearly 300 of those 900 you were talking about. That was yesterday. Today, it is really windy. Seas are high. There have been no crossings. Gives you an idea of how it happened.

Most of the migrants coming across are from Syria, escaping the war, but a lot of them from Africa. It was extraordinary site because there are five naval vessels in an area of the sea about the size of the U.K., about 80,000 square miles and there are about a thousand personnel are there from responding to may day calls. The method of traffickers is to get people onto rickety boats into international waters and then radio the Italian Coast Guard for help, knowing the laws of the sea means vessels have to help anybody in distress. So that's what we witnessed. We saw 290 people cramped on to one of these blue wooden boats. Luckily, were intercepted by the Italians and taken on to the warship and they were processed, give a basic medical check and water. And then they came today into land in Sicily not far from here. One of the people died, three were very ill, but the others were really lucky and really happy to be rescued by the Italians.

BASH: I'm sure they were, Christiane. But then, what happens? Once the refugees come and are processed where do they go?

AMANPOUR: Well, that's the big, big question, and that's caused a huge dilemma because what is happening is these traffickers are putting Italy right in the front line of taking on all these people and basically dumping them in Italy for Italy to deal with. So the E.U. is trying to have a beefed up military mission to stop the smugglers and try to destroy the smuggling boats. Also, they have talked about quotas of migrants. But some of the E.U. countries are denying taking in any of them or abiding by quotas. Once they are on land here, it is a long, slow, bureaucratic process to get them through maybe to grant asylum or temporary homes or jobs until someone else can take them.

It is a long and torturous journey and will only get worse as the wars continue. That is what is increasing the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.

[13:45:33] BASH: Absolutely. It makes you think, to be willing to endure this, what it must be like in their own countries.

Christiane, thank you. We look forward to seeing more of your reports. Appreciate it.

Just ahead, Hillary Clinton's e-mails on Benghazi could be made public in a matter of days. What it will mean for the Benghazi investigation and for her presidential campaign?

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BASH: We could be just days away from the release of Hillary Clinton's e-mails related to the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya. The State Department is expected to make the first batch public in the coming days. Now, Clinton turned over about 30,000 e-mails from the private account she used as secretary of state. The State Department says the documents amounted to about 55,000 pages delivered in 12 bankers boxes. 296 e-mails, about 850 pages, were sent to the House Select Committee that investigated the Benghazi attack.

Our senior political correspondent, Brianna Keilar, is joining me now to talk about what we're learning so far -- Brianna?

[13:50:07] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, we're going to be learning a lot. Particularly, let's focus in on a couple dozen of these e-mails that are coming from Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to both Hillary Clinton and also back in Bill Clinton's administration. What we see in the e-mails that "The New York Times" got a hold of and describes is memos on -- and keeping in mind that at this point Sidney Blumenthal is not working for the State Department. He's sort of outside advising Hillary Clinton and sending her memos about what's going on in Libya, to her private e-mail, which as we know the e-mails were stored on her private server. So these are memos about what's going on. Hillary Clinton takes them, she forwards them to one of her top -- or really her top foreign policy aide, Jake Sullivan, who remains in the same position on her campaign as we speak. Then they would be circulated as we understand from "The New York Times" without any evidence that they were coming from Sidney Blumenthal. A couple key points "The Times" zooms in on here. The day after the Benghazi attacks, in Blumenthal's memo, there's this prevailing theory that it was protesters who were demonstrating over a video, an internet video about Prophet Muhammad, and that was really where this attack happened in Benghazi, Libya. The next day, though, another memo was sent from Blumenthal. He says that Sharia took advantage of what is really this protester situation in Libya. At that point, Iran countered what the Obama administration was saying. Hillary Clinton has said, you know, I have a lot of old friends. I was talking to an old friend. I'm not going to stop. But critics will look at the role of Sidney Blumenthal in this and say he's a hatchet man for the Clintons.

BASH: There's so many things to unpack here. One is the process by which she was e-mailing and getting information. Another is who she was getting information from. Maybe some of the Millennials out there don't know who Sidney Blumenthal is, but he was a big player, a controversial one, in the Clinton administration in the '90s.

KEILAR: He was a very big player. He was actually once a journalist and came over and was very key to the Clintons in many different ways, through many different sagas they went through. There's also this question of if Hillary Clinton was using her e-mail account for sensitive but unclassified information. Was there any classified information? We have learned, we understand it, from -- it's really about a third of these 850 pages that we're expecting soon that "The New York Times" got to look at. We understand that there isn't classified information, but there is some sensitive but unclassified information a year and a half before the attack, information about where Chris Stephens, the ambassador who was killed in the Benghazi attack, where he was at a certain point in time, when he was thinking about leaving Benghazi because of the deteriorating security situation there, even a year and a half before.

BASH: And we're going to continue to be talking about this because the judge ruled that they can be released on a rolling basis, which is, as you know, not good for the Clinton campaign.

KEILAR: Politically, dribs and drabs. Not good for her.

BASH: Brianna, thanks so much. See you soon.

KEILAR: Yeah. BASH: Still ahead, a new U.S. agreement with Cuba makes it easier for citizens to travel there, but U.S. diplomats may not be able to move around so freely. That story, next.

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[13:57:08] BASH: Officials are indicating that the U.S. and Cuba are as close as ever to an agreement to fully restoring diplomatic relations and reopening embassies. The fourth round of talks between the two countries resumed today here in Washington, but these are the first talks since President Obama announced on April 14th that he decided to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state-sponsored terrorism.

CNN's Patrick Oppmann is in Havana.

Patrick, what are you hearing about the talks there? How are they viewed in Cuba?

PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Very positively by Cubans. We've seen something we haven't -- I haven't seen in years, since I've been living here, which is on American flags, all types of clothing. They know it's coming, it's very close. They're celebrating in their own way. There's no flag over the American embassy. They're not allowed to have a flag there yet. But for Cubans, they are putting on flags. They're celebrating. The Cuban government is about to declare victory when, next week, they are taken off the list of countries that support terrorism. Things are slowly moving forward, and perhaps as early as today, Dana, an announcement about when that embassy could open here in Havana.

BASH: Then, of course, they're going to have to deal with the beat that I normally cover, which is Congress, and whether or not they're going to provide funding for that. But that's a different story.

I want to ask about the financial implications. I'm guessing that it would just be a boon to Cuban economy and businesses when it comes to normalizing these relations.

OPPMANN: We're already seeing changes. The Cuban government says since December they've seen a 15 percent increase in tourism. That's a major industry here. A lot of it is more Americans coming now that you have more avenues for legal travel. A lot of it is Europeans and others who want to get here before the Americans come. So they are seeing an increase. There are not enough hotels, cars. Of course, there are shortages of just about everything in Cuba.

And on the other side, Dana, even with that increase in tourism, it's not going to be enough to get Cuba out of the very deep economic hole it's in. It'll take the Cuban government opening up more of their economy, allowing more foreign businesses coming here.

The U.S. embargo is still very much in place. That's something the Cuban government wants to negotiate with the U.S., is lifting those economic restrictions that really still have a major impact on this country. BASH: And real quick before I let you go, the ban on ferries between

neighboring countries, it was lifted. What about the service? When is it going to start?

OPPMANN: Well, you know, no ferries here just yet. People were very excited to hear that the U.S. State Department said that you could have ferry service between the United States and Cuba. But the Cuban government said we're still studying the issue. This really comes back to the idea that, you know, the Cuban government has to open up as well. We're just not seeing that happen, at least not yet.

BASH: Patrick Oppmann, from Cuba, thank you so much.

That's it for me.

Our international viewers, stay tuned for "Amanpour." That's next.

For our viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Poppy Harlow starts right now.

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