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Amtrak Train Derailment Kills Six, Injured More Than 200; Kim Jong-Un Executes His Defense Minister; Interview with Senator Rand Paul; Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired May 13, 2015 - 13:30   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world.

[13:30:01] I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting today from New York.

More now on the breaking news, the deadly Amtrak derailment. It started as a routine trip. An Amtrak passenger train on its way from Washington, D.C., to New York City, all of a sudden chaos. Passengers and luggage catapulted in the air as the entire train left the tracks and crashed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAYOR MICHAEL NUTTER (D), PHILADELPHIA: It is an absolute disastrous mess.

BLITZER (voice-over): A flashpoint of terror, as surveillance video captures the deadly moments on board the Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188. The train, traveling from Washington to New York City, at about 9:30 p.m., while passing through the Port Richmond neighborhood in Philadelphia, the train derailed, sending all seven cars flying from the tracks. And the engine separating from the rest of the train.

The impact tore the train apart. Dozens scrambling to safety by crawling through the overturned cars.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep crawling, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where am I crawling to?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just crawl.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Crawl forward, sir.

BLITZER: More than 200 of the 243 passengers and crew on board were sent to area hospitals. At least six have died and eight others remain in critical condition.

GOV. TOM WOLF, PENNSYLVANIA: The human tragedy, the devastation, I can't imagine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Let's get an update from the other crash site. Kate Bolduan is joining us once again. She's in Philadelphia.

Kate, the mayor of Philadelphia expected to hold a news conference shortly. Tell us about that.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. The mayor, he's been -- he's been doing a very good job of keeping everyone updated and clearly he was here last night. He was here again this morning and he's going to be holding another press briefing with other officials that will be held in a short time at around 2:00 or just after 2:00 here in the East. At that time I'm told they will have new information, they will be in the position to bring us new information, though they would not go into details of exactly what that is.

With so many questions outstanding, you can't even speculate exactly what some of that new information could be that they're going to be bringing to us. But there are a lot of questions that we can pose to the mayor specifically, though, here at the scene, Wolf. I think what's important in terms of the investigation, the investigation is really on two fronts.

What's happening here on the ground behind me, back there, obviously police are not letting us get any further than we are now, as well as the investigation here on the ground in terms of forensics and then the investigation, the analysis if you will, of the black box. That is already under way because the black box has already been recovered and has been taken to their main point of operations in Delaware and that is being analyzed.

Here on the scene early this morning, investigators were seen walking the track, paying very close attention to the curve or the bend in the track, Wolf, where the crash really occurred and that could be key. The curve and how the train entered that curve could be key in the investigation and how and exactly what happened.

And why I say that is because my colleague Rene Marsh has some good information from investigators that they are seriously in a preliminary sense, they are seriously looking into the factor of speed and the role that speed could have played in this crash.

Trains along the northeast corridor, they can go in excess of 100 miles an hour. That's absolutely aloud, but when they're in a residential area or they're going around some of these curves they are required to reduce their speed. We're told the speed limit around this area is about 50 miles an hour. That should be an easy bit of information to come forward. That's one of the easy things to come from that black box that's being -- that's being analyzed right now.

That is something that we hear from the NTSB, the information in that black box, that could be readily available relatively soon and that could be a key factor. At least preliminarily that is one of their big focuses is right now.

Wolf, that's happening here on the ground and the black box being analyzed in Delaware. So a lot of outstanding questions because when we heard from the NTSB earlier, Wolf, they said essentially the same thing that we're doing. They said, we've got a lot of questions, you've got a lot of questions, it's really just getting under way, they're just starting to mobilize their important teams that are all broken up to look at signals, to look at mechanical factors, to look at the train track.

They break them up into teams to begin the forensic analysis of the scene here and that's really just getting under way because search and rescue teams have to clear out and finish with their priority of making sure everyone was taken off that train if there were still people in the train and that is another question we've got for the mayor when he speaks to us again at 2:15 -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Kate Bolduan on the scene for us in Philadelphia, thanks.

And we'll have much more coverage of the Philadelphia Amtrak derailment coming up as Kate just mentioned. The mayor, Michael Nutter, will hold a news conference, that's coming up soon. We will have live coverage, of course, here on CNN.

But there's other news we're following, including major international news. A North Korean official, the Defense minister actually, reportedly has been executed for treason. But the method of execution is raising a lot of eyebrows.

[13:35:01]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Look at live pictures from Philadelphia. The mayor, Michael Nutter, expected shortly to be addressing the news media, updating us on what happened when that Amtrak regional passenger train with more than 200 or some 238 passengers and crew members on board crashed last night. We'll get a full update from the mayor, that's coming up soon. Stay with us for live coverage of that.

But there's other news we're following, including in North Korea. North Korea has been accused of some pretty extreme actions in the past but the way it chose to carry out the execution of the country's Defense minister, very high on that list. The minister was charged with treason. South Korea's intelligence agency reportedly telling parliament the minister was killed by fire from anti-aircraft guns that reportedly happened as hundreds of people looked on at a Pyongyang military school.

Our global affairs correspondent Elise Labott is working the story for us.

Elise, what are you finding out? Why was the Defense minister, first of all, accused of treason?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS REPORTER: Well, Wolf, we have to be clear that we have no way of confirming these reports that Hyon Yong- Chol was executed, but reportedly what South Korean intelligence officials are telling lawmakers in a closed door briefing last night was that he was disloyal to Kim, that he was disobeying orders, that he was neglecting his duties. He even dozed off in some military events.

The North Koreans are not saying anything about this, but this is kind of a pattern that we've seen from this young North Korean leader as he tries to consolidate his power, eliminate his rivals and make nobody feel safe.

This man was someone who was a Kim family loyalist, someone who worked for Kim Jong-Un's father, Kim Jong-Il, worked his way up the military ranks and was seen as somebody when he reached the number two position of military in the country, that someone who would have been around for a long time.

[13:40:04] So this is just a pattern of executions that we've seen by Kim. We understand that he -- South Koreans are saying he killed about 15 officials this year, and, Wolf, who can forget the execution in 2013 of his uncle, someone in his inner circle, Chang Song-thaek, someone who really the -- the regime thought someone very close to the Kims.

BLITZER: What are you hearing from U.S. officials? What's the reaction?

LABOTT: Well, they also can't confirm these reports. They say they have no reason to doubt it, but they say again, this is a pattern of this leader. He's very unstable. Nobody knows what he'll do next. And you have to wonder what's going to happen in this country. It's not very safe to be a member of the regime these days. There are, obviously, worried about further instability, would there be a coup, would someone kill him.

That seems kind of a little bit unlikely considering the way that Kim holds on to power, it's really concentrated in one man, but certainly there's a lot of concern about instability as this young leader clearly is having a lot of trouble, Wolf, consolidating his power and this is just him trying to continue to do that -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Elise Labott, reporting for us, thanks very much.

Up next, Jeb Bush's comments on the Iraq war, drawing a lot of criticism. After the break, Republican presidential contender, Senator Rand Paul joins us. We'll talk about his possibility and the race for the White House. Much more coming up.

Senator Rand Paul, he's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:40:09] BLITZER: We're following the breaking news out of Philadelphia. The derailed Amtrak train, at least six people are killed, are dead as a result of that derailment, that crash, more than 200 injured. Several of them still in critical condition. We're awaiting a news conference. The mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, is going to be briefing reporters on the latest information. We're going to stand by as soon as the mayor starts speaking, making

his statement and answering reporter questions, we will have live questions here on CNN. So stand by further that.

There's other news we're following including Jeb Bush's controversial comments on the war in Iraq. Those comments drawing fire from both Republicans and Democrats. Here's what he originally said in an interview with FOX News earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: On the subject of Iraq.

JEB BUSH, FORMER FLORIDA CONGRESSMAN: Yes.

KELLY: Obviously very controversial, knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?

BUSH: I would have and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.

KELLY: You don't think it was a mistake?

BUSH: In retrospect the intelligence that everybody saw, that the world saw, not just the United States, was faulty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: But the former Florida governor dialed back his comments when he called into Sean Hannity's radio show yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I interpreted the question wrong, I guess. I was talking about given what people knew then would you have done it rather than knowing what we know now.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: So in other words, in 20/20 hindsight you would make a different decision.

BUSH: Yes, I don't know what that position would have been, that's a hypothetical, but the simple fact is, mistakes were made.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Republican presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul is joining us now live from Capitol Hill.

I know he's a potential rival of yours for the Republican nomination, Senator. What's your reaction to what the former Florida governor, potential Republican presidential candidate had so say about his brother, the war and what he would have done knowing what he knows now?

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I think it's a really important question, and I don't think it's just hypothetical. Because we seem to have a recurring question in the Middle East whether or not it's a good idea to topple a secular strong man or secular dictators and what happens after that.

You know, Hillary Clinton's war in Libya was the same kind of scenario. We toppled Gadhafi, a secular dictator, but we got chaos and the rise of radical Islam and I think we're more threatened now. But I think the same was true of Saddam Hussein. I think Iran is now stronger and emboldened and many ways Iraq is sort of a vassal state to Iran. We worry about Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

So I think we're a lot worse off with Hussein gone. There's a civil war going on there. We were also making the mistake, I think, to try to degrade Assad because as we degraded the strong man Assad, ISIS grew. So I think there's a consistent theme here that every candidate should be asked, and that is, is it a good idea to go into the Middle East, topple governments and hope that something better rises out of the chaos?

Because recent history seems to show that you know what, we're not getting something better, we're getting something worse.

BLITZER: I guess the point that Jeb Bush was trying to make, you're president of the United States, it's 2003, the vice president, the defense secretary, the CIA director, the secretary of state, they all come to you and they say, Mr. President, our intelligence shows us that Iraq has stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. Remember this is not that long after 9/11. What do you do in a situation like this? You're president. You want to be president. And your intelligence community gives you a dire assessment like that.

Now we know now it was wrong, but at the time, the president presumably believed that intelligence assessment?

PAUL: Well, the thing is, is we could also say the same for Assad until a about two years ago. He had stockpiles of chemical weapons. The question is their ability to use the weapons, their proclivity to use the weapons, and also what comes after. You know, people have to ask this question, the first George Bush, you know, Jeb Bush's dad, thought it would probably be a mistake.

Dick Cheney thought it would be a mistake ultimately or originally to topple Hussein, that chaos would ensue afterwards, and sure enough it still did happen after Hussein was gone. The country's chaotic, it's more aligned with Iran, Iran is more of a threat, so no, I think even at the time invading Iraq was a mistake and I thought the war even at the time was a mistake given the intelligence.

But now, I think that people should learn their lesson after the war in Libya. Everybody needs to be asked, all the Republicans should be asked, did you and do you support Hillary's war in Libya? And so I think as these questions get asked, we really get to the answer of who Republicans want to lead the country, who do Americans want to lead the country.

Someone who will perpetually get us involved in foreign war over there when the result is not to America's best interest, or someone who will be more reluctant? And I think that will be one of our big debates over the next year.

[13:50:07] BLITZER: It certainly will be because, as you know, Senator, some of your Republican rivals for the presidential nomination, they accuse you of being an isolationist. You call yourself a noninterventionist, if you will. Under what circumstances, though, would you order the U.S. military to intervene in a foreign country?

PAUL: I think the most important thing is you obey the constitution. And that says that the president doesn't unilaterally take the country to war. But I think right now ISIS is a threat to our embassy in Baghdad as well as our consulate in Irbil. And I am for military action against them, but it should be done by Congress. And I also think that ultimately the war, the end of the war, the defeat of ISIS comes with Arab boots on the ground, not American boots on the ground.

But I'm perfectly willing to have these debates because I think history is on my side. That every time we've toppled a secular dictator, things have been worse and America has been less safe. So it's not that I'm for no intervention, I'm just for less intervention than my of the hawks in this country, including some on both sides of the aisle.

BLITZER: This is going to be a huge issue in the debates. I know that you have very strong positions on this. A quick question on North Korea, Senator, while I have you. Now these reports, you've heard them, that the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has ordered the execution of the country's defense minister, not only that in front of hundreds of people with anti-aircraft fire, if you will. What's going on over there?

PAUL: You know, I don't know that we all have the whole picture, but what we're hearing is horrific. I think there's every evidence that we need to work with our allies, work with China to see what we can do to get stability in North Korea. I think China still has a great deal of influence, more so than we have, and more so than anybody else probably in the region has.

But this is a good reason for us to be working with China to try to get a good outcome because I think it's not good to have, you know, potentially mental instability in a leader running a country with nuclear weapons.

BLITZER: How's your campaign coming along, Senator?

PAUL: Very good. Very good. The best thing I -- the news I think that we have is that in purple states, battleground states, we're the only Republican leading Hillary Clinton. I think that shows that we can be a winnable candidate.

BLITZER: Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, thanks very much for joining us.

PAUL: Thank you. BLITZER: Coming up, we're going to have much more on what's going on

in Philadelphia. But we're also going to get some analysis of what we just heard, the race for the White House.

CNN political analyst Maggie Haberman is joining us. In fact, she's joining us right now.

Maggie, give us your reaction to what the Jeb Bush had to say about the war in Iraq, his brother? Was this a major gaffe, not so much of a gaffe? Tell us what's going on.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it was a pretty major gaffe. It was the one question -- and gaffe is not even the right word. This is the one question that was completely predictable that Jeb Bush was going to be asked in this race. He was asked it in a very clear way by a FOX News interviewer, and his answer was absolutely, I would reinvade Iraq. The question was knowing what we now know.

He then said the next day he misunderstood it but then said I'm not going to answer a hypothetical. His opponents in the Republican field have basically all answered this hypothetical and have said they wouldn't do it. He's been criticized from the left and the right for this.

I think that he saw an ability to drag Hillary Clinton into it in his answer because she did vote for the Iraq war. And that was obviously a huge problem for her in 2008. But she has since said, if I knew then what I know now, I would not have. So he has gotten himself into a difficult position.

BLITZER: And yesterday we heard Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, another potential Republican presidential candidate tell Jake Tapper the same thing. Knowing what he knows now, he would not have gone to war against Saddam Hussein back in 2003. So I guess it raises the bigger question about Jeb Bush. A lot of mainstream Republicans like him. He's raising a lot of money out there.

But is he going to have a big problem because his older brother was George W. Bush?

HABERMAN: He is going to have a problem dealing with his brother. This was always going to be an issue in how closely to hold his brother to him, how not, how much the policy he wanted to own, how much not. He has said repeatedly throughout this campaign, I am my own man. He also said again today in Nevada, you know, I love my brother very much. I don't think anybody is questioning his family loyalty.

I think that he is having trouble figuring out precisely how to answer this question. And George W. Bush's numbers in a general election are not great.

BLITZER: Is he going to avoid Iowa, the Iowa caucuses right now? Doesn't look like he's going to go out there for that straw poll. Is he going to put all his money, for example, into New Hampshire, some of the other states? What's going on?

HABERMAN: The skipping of the Iowa straw poll is very much in the model of what Mitt Romney did in 2012. The Ames Straw poll it was then. It has now moved locations and it's called something different. But it's the same approach. What Mitt Romney did was he was very half in, half out with Iowa. Jeb Bush is not yet a candidate, so we're going to have to see what he does when he is a declared candidate, how frequently he is there.

[13:55:10] I think the other thing -- but to your point about New Hampshire, there is no question that is a state that his folks see as much more potentially conducive to him. I think where you want to be looking, we all want to be looking, in terms of Jeb Bush is South Carolina and how he performs there. Florida is no longer going to be a firewall. There are other states that vote before it in the calendar. Jeb Bush needs to do well in South Carolina.

BLITZER: Can he do well in South Carolina? We know he can do well in Florida. Presumably he can do well in New Hampshire. Maybe not so well in Iowa. What about South Carolina? That's a tough state for him, isn't it?

HABERMAN: South Carolina is a very tough state for him. It is a state that his brother won. Iowa is a state that his brother won. New Hampshire, ironically, is the state that his brother lost to John McCain. South Carolina, it is a very conservative state. It is a military focused state. And there are other options who could be more appealing there who are seen as more local, who are seen as fresher. You have Ted Cruz from Texas, you have Marco Rubio from Florida.

There are going to be other candidates who voters are going to be looking at. And it can be -- it can be an interesting state. Remember, Newt Gingrich won in 2012 as part of the stop Romney movement.

BLITZER: Right.

HABERMAN: I think that Jeb Bush's problem is that his numbers are not moving. They're not getting better. And we'll see -- have to see how that happens when he gets into the race in a real way.

BLITZER: All right, Maggie. Thanks very much.

Maggie Haberman of the "New York Times," one of our CNN political analyst.

Remember, we're standing by for a news conference. The mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, getting ready to brief all of us on that Amtrak train derailment. Stand by for that. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "THE SITUATION ROOM."

For our international viewers, "AMANPOUR" is coming up next. For our viewers in North America, Brooke Baldwin continues our special coverage right after a quick break.

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