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Aerial Targeting of Hospitals Inside Rebel-Held Syria; State Department Response to Hospital Targeting in Syria; Lindsey Graham Endorses Ted Cruz; Congress Michigan Governor, EPA Head on Flint Water Crisis. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired March 17, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[13:30:00] DR. MAZ AL-SOUAD, GENERAL MANAGER OF SYRIAN HOSPITAL: But if they didn't know, this is an even bigger disaster. Because if you were bombing a building like this without knowing it's a hospital, it means you are hitting totally indiscriminately.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Against the backdrop of this vicious war, Islamist factions have gained the upper hand here. Among them, the al-Qaeda affiliate, Shabbat al-Nusra (ph). The landscape is peppered with signs shunning Western democracy and urging all men to join the jihad. One encourages women to cover up completely.

Dr. Feras al Jundi works at the only hospital still standing. He's no militant but sees this conflict in black and white.

DR. FERAS AL JUNDI, PHYSICIAN & IDLIB RESIDENT (through translation): The whole of the Syrian people is against ISIS and against extremism. But we see that the Russians are bombing far from ISIS, and they're focused on civilian areas.

WARD (on camera): (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(voice-over): I asked him why he doesn't leave Syria.

AL JUNDI (through translation): If I did that, I would abandon my conscience. This is our country. We can't desert it. If we left, then we have sold our morals. Who would treat the people? I can very easily leave, but we will remain steadfast. I am prepared to die rather than to leave. And I will carry on no matter what.

WARD: Carry on in the faint hope that for the next generation of Syrians it will be better.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And Clarissa Ward is joining us live from New York.

Clarissa, what more do we know about the targeting, especially the targeting, aerial targeting of these hospitals? WARD: Well, we have reached out to the Russians and to the regime of

Bashar al Assad, and essentially what they have said is we have never hit any civilian targets, we have never targeted any civilians. And that is also what the regime has been saying now for years.

But we did manage to get a hold of a report from Doctors Without Borders for 2015, and in rebel-held areas in the space of one year, 82 medical facilities were hit. And if you look at the breakdown of those hits, there is a massive spike in the month of October.

Now for our viewers, remember, the Russian military intervention began towards the end of September. Is that a coincidence? I will allow our viewers to decide that for themselves.

WOLF: When you went undercover -- and we saw you there undercover. This is the third report we have aired this week of your amazing work over there. It must have been so scary to be there, to be in the midst of the air strikes, the ground attacks. Talk about what it was like as a journalist trying to find out what was going on?

WARD: This is a trip that took us six months to plan. I think that gives a sense already of how complicated the landscape is. You have many different dangers, from the threat of kidnapping, the jihadist presence and, of course, the bombardment, which at the time we were there, before the cessation of hostilities began, was relentless. In less than 24 hours, we heard the fighter jets overhead. And believe me, there is a pit that forms in your stomach when you hear the sound of those fighter jets, because you know that a bomb is about to fall, and you don't know exactly where it is going to fall. In the case that we witnessed, it was on a fruit market. So we were there for just under a week, Wolf, and at times, it was terrifying. But the people in Syria who still remain, they have to live there all of the time. This is their new normal --Wolf.

BLITZER: Certainly is such a frightful situation.

Clarissa, stay with us.

I want to bring in the State Department spokesman, John Kirby, right now.

Admiral Kirby, thanks so much for joining us.

You were the Pentagon spokesman. Now you're the State Department spokesman. I want to get your reaction to Clarissa's amazing reporting on the ground. I know you have seen some of this work.

ADM. JOHN KIRBY, SPOKESPERSON, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: Yeah.

WOLF: But it's an awful situation over there. How much blame do you put on the Russians right now?

KIRBY: Well, first of all, I do want to commend Clarissa for the excellent reporting. It was a very compelling piece, and I have watched it now several times, and it just is heart-wrenching to watch this, and certainly very gripping. I would tell you that we have been long saying that the Russian

military presence in Syria was designed to bolster the Assad regime, to strengthen their hand against the opposition. And in Clarissa's report, you can see the effect that that kind of activity had continued to have in terms of helping the Assad regime stay in power and to try to push back on the opposition.

Now since the cessation, I will say that Russian air strikes are being directed against Daesh, against ISIL, against the terrorist groups. And they have been meeting their obligations under the cessation of hostilities. But no question about it, that their military activity over the last several months has done nothing to help calm the violence in Syria, again, up until the cessation.

[13:35:19] BLITZER: Admiral Kirby, Clarissa has got a question. She's back from that amazing reporting. She's got a question for you.

Go ahead, Clarissa.

KIRBY: Sure.

WARD: Well, I just would like to get a better sense from you, the question coming from the Syrian people, repeatedly during our week on the ground was, why has the U.S. not done more to take Russia to task for what essentially amounted to war crimes?

KIRBY: Well, we have been very much focused on what Russia was doing inside Syria in their efforts to bolster the Assad regime. And that is why we have pressed so, so hard for this cessation of hostilities and why we were very glad to get Russia to the table inside the ISSG to agree to that cessation of hostilities, which, as I said, they have largely been complying with here for the last couple of weeks. I mean, the other thing that we pressed hard with the Russians for is so we make sure we get humanitarian access to so many besieged towns, that are in desperate need of medical supplies, food and water. And the Russians have used their influence on the Assad regime to allow that access to occur. Still needs to be more done. There is no question about that. The Assad regime, still -- we're seeing reports of them now removing medical supplies from some of this humanitarian aid, which is unacceptable. So still more to be done. We're going to press our case with Russia to continue to use their influence on the Assad regime to do the right thing.

BLITZER: I want to talk to you, Admiral Kirby, about Secretary Kerry's announcement today that the U.S. does believe ISIS is engaged in genocide against the Yazidis, other Christians in Iraq and Syria. This declaration, what does it mean?

KIRBY: A few things, Wolf. One, it documents officially for history's sake, what we have known for many months, this group has been doing. And it's a systemic way. Number two, it formally recognizes the suffering of the victims, so many innocent people that have been affected by these horrific, horrific acts of violence and atrocities by this group. Number three, we hope that it helps galvanize not just the world community, but even communities here in the United States, to look at this and try to do more to help us address the challenge presented by a group like Daesh, particularly when it comes to the collection and analyzing of information and evidence that frankly we're going to continue to seek and to try to catalog going forward.

Now, what it won't do is it's not going to change our focus on this group. Now, we have intensified our efforts on Daesh in just the last several months. And as you know, Wolf, we have been flying air strikes since August of 2014. We have, in fact, acted as if these were acts of genocide all the way back to the operations on Mt. Sinjar back in August of 2014. This codifies that, as the secretary said. It's important to name this crime and we have done that. But in practicality, we have been acting as if this is genocide and doing everything we could not just in Sinjar, but in other communities inside Iraq, to try to stem genocide from happening.

BLITZER: Because we have heard all these reports. And Clarissa, she's an eyewitness. She has seen the devastation of churches, individuals being obviously beheaded, but also crucified, if you will. This is a systematic effort. Genocide, that's a word that means a systemic effort to destroy a group of people, right?

KIRBY: To destroy them in whole or in part. And, again, the secretary, as he said this morning, has seen enough evidence now that he believes and he asserted that these are acts of genocide. He has seen enough evidence. He also said that we don't have a complete record, because there's -- there's information -- it's spotty. We don't have people on the ground in great numbers or even other organizations to be able to see everything that Daesh is doing. But we have a complete enough this determination.

BLITZER: Very quickly, Clarissa, do you have a final question you have for Admiral Kirby?

WARD: Well, I just think it's interesting. We talk about this genocide, and ISIS' crimes which obviously are heinous. Again, the question that I kept hearing over and over on the ground from the Syrian people is, why does the U.S. care so much more about the crimes that ISIS is perpetuating against minorities in Iraq and Syria than they do about what they would call the genocide that the Assad regime is perpetuating inside Syria.

KIRBY: Yeah, it's a very fair point, Clarissa. Let me say that I certainly understand how that sentiment could be had. But I'll tell you, it's absolutely not the case. We are fundamentally trying to stop this civil war in Syria, to stop this bloodshed. There have been too many Syrians killed and millions of them sent out of the country to seek refuge because of what the Assad regime is doing to them. That is why we are so focused on trying to find a political solution.

And look, without question, in the last two weeks, the violence is down in Syria, there is no question about that, because of the cessation of hostilities. There is also no question about the fact that a couple of hundred thousand or more Syrians are now getting aid, food, water, medical supplies, that they weren't before. And frankly, there's no question that the political talks in Geneva are pursuing, progressing. We're getting there. There's a lot more work to do. But I can tell you that nobody in the United States government,

certainly not here at the State Department, is turning a blind eye to the atrocities that Bashar al Assad have visited upon his own people. But we have always maintained what needs to happen as a political solution to this conflict, and that's what we're putting our energies on, finding a political solution, so they have a government that's responsible to them, responsive to them, and they can come home to a whole unified Syria.

[13:40:55] BLITZER: Let's not forget, maybe 300,000, 400,000 people have been killed over the five years of this warfare in Syria. Hundreds of thousands more have been injured. Millions have been made homeless refugees. It's an awful, awful situation.

KIRBY: No question about it.

WOLF: Admiral Kirby, thank you very much for joining us.

Clarissa Ward, thanks for your brilliant reporting, your very courageous reporting for all of us.

We're going to stay on top of this story, obviously.

Coming up, breaking news involving former presidential candidate, Lindsey Graham. We now know who he is backing for president of the United States. Dana Bash has the information when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:45:24] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: We've got some breaking news. Dana Bash is here with the information.

The former Republican presidential candidate, the Senator, Lindsey Graham, we have been wondering is he going to make an endorsement, not make an endorsement. What have you been hearing?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I just spoke to him and we're waiting for the interview to come up and, hopefully, we can bring it to viewers very soon.

The bottom line is that he started to make his way towards Ted Cruz as soon as it became clear to him that Donald Trump was going to be very, very hard to stop. And now he is actually going to hold a fundraiser for Ted Cruz in and around the AIPAC big conference, which is, of course, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, the big conference here in Washington. He's going to have a lot of his donors to come and fund raise for him.

And now I'm told we have the interview, so let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: Senator, you have some news. SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Yeah. I'm going to be

doing a fundraiser with and for Senator Cruz. I think he's the best alternative to Donald Trump. He's certainly not my preference, Senator Cruz is not, but he's a reliable Republican conservative, of which I've had many differences with. I doubt Donald Trump's conservatism and I think he would be a disaster for the party and so I'm trying to help raise money for Senator Cruz and the Cruz committee.

BASH: So you are raising money for him. Are you endorsing him?

GRAHAM: Well, I think me --

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: It that effectively an endorsement?

GRAHAM: What I'm saying, John Kasich I think is the most viable general election candidate. I just don't see how John gets to the primary. This is an outsider year. He's seen as an insider. So I think the best alternative to Donald Trump, to stop him from getting to 1,237, is Ted Cruz. And I'm going to help Ted in every way I can. I'm going to raise hundred for him in the community. And if I were in one of the states coming up in terms of voting and I didn't like Trump, I would vote for Cruz.

BASH: I've known you and watched you particularly with Ted Cruz over the past several years. I'm actually waiting for pigs to start flying down the street.

(LAUGHTER)

GRAHAM: Yeah. Well, it tells you a lot about where we are as a party.

BASH: It sure does.

GRAHAM: It does. I've had many differences with Senator Cruz's tactics, but I believe he would be a more reliable partner for Israel. I think he would build the Keystone Pipeline. Senator Clinton would not. I think he would repeal and replace Obamacare. I don't think she would. I think he's a reliable Republican conservative who would pick a true conservative to be on the Supreme Court. I doubt -- I have doubts about Mr. Trump. I think Mr. Trump is not a Republican. I don't think he's a conservative. I think his campaign is built on xenophobia, race baiting, and religious bigotry. I think he'd be a disaster for our party. And as Senator Ted Would not be my first choice, I think Senator Cruz is a Republican conservative who I can support.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BASH: And so here is the actual invitation that just is going out to a lot of the donors that Lindsey Graham has relied on for his Senate race. And it says right here, "Come join Lindsey Graham for a fundraiser for Ted Cruz for president." Again, it was very clear in that interview, it was not something he

ever imagined doing. But considering the alternatives, considering where the Republican Party is right now, the math, the map and the calendar, he feels like this is something he wants to do to try to stop Donald Trump.

BLITZER: Earlier -- S.E. Cupp is with us, as well. What's your reaction when you hear this?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, yeah, surprising. But Lindsey Graham is at where a lot of Republicans have arrived, maybe reluctantly, maybe begrudgingly. But I think at the beginning of this cycle, the people who said I would never vote for Ted Cruz have, thanks to Donald Trump, really, sort of warmed up to him. He's at the very at least, a conservative, which for a lot of conservatives they feel is missing from a Donald Trump candidacy.

The existential crisis for conservatives is that Donald Trump looks like he's going to secure the nomination. Ted Cruz looks like the only person who might challenge him. Ted Cruz will have a very tough time in the general. John Kasich has no pathway to get the nomination but he probably has the better chance in a general at beating Hillary. So we've got nowhere to go here. Hence, Lindsey Graham's, you know, bizarre marriage now with Ted Cruz

BASH: Right. Lindsey Graham has gone from being a candidate, to backing Bush, to now very reluctantly backing Cruz. The fact of the matter is, to your point about John Kasich, he said very bluntly he believes Kasich would have the best chance in a general election. A lot of Republicans feel that way. But the problem is when you come to the convention, which everybody thinks is going to be the forum on deciding on the Republican nominee, he's just going to be so far behind, it's not going to be possible, which is why he thinks Cruz is the best bet.

[11:50:12] WOLF: Is it took late right now? Because it looks like Donald Trump has the clearest path.

CUPP: I think he does. I think there's a lot of sort of finger crossing and late-night prayers, you know, amongst some in establishment circles that somehow Ted Cruz can beat him on delegates. At the very least, these two candidates can maybe keep Donald Trump from maybe clinching before the convention. But either way, I think Donald Trump goes into the conventions with huge headway, with the most delegates, with by far the most votes. And it's going to be a hard argument to make that someone with so many fewer votes, maybe even no delegates, no vote, should somehow be the nominee of this party.

BASH: The one thing I want to underscore is it's not just support. It's money. Because, you know, Ted Cruz has done very, very well fundraising. His wife has been kind of helping him lead the fundraising charge. They're fund-raising dynamos. Everybody on his team is. But this a long haul if you're talking about now and July. So the fact that Lindsey Graham is helping him and kind of taking his long-time donors and lending them and giving them to Ted Cruz is a big plus.

BLITZER: Good reporting as usual, Dana, first here on CNN. The news, Lindsey Graham now supporting Ted Cruz.

Coming up, a very different story we're watching, demanding answers in the Flint water crisis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS, (D), MARYLAND: They should have rushed in sooner to rescue the people of Michigan from Governor Snyder's vindictive administration and his utter incompetence at every level.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Lawmakers put the governor of Michigan in the hot seat over lead-laced water that has poisoned young children. We're going to get reaction from Michigan Congressman Dan Kildee, who's standing by live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Raised voices and heated accusations punctuated today's hearings on the Flint, Michigan, water crisis held here in Washington up on Capitol Hill by the House Oversight Committee. Anger in the room boiled over as members of Congress questioned the Michigan Governor Snyder and the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JASON CHAFFETZ, (R), UTAH: That's cheap. Oh, yeah, we just got regrets.

(CROSSTALK)

CHAFFETZ: That's cheap.

GINA MCCARTHY, ADMINISTRATOR, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY: You have to look at how the law works. And we did --

(CROSSTALK)

CHAFFETZ: Yeah, you know what? And it failed. You failed.

REP. PAUL GOSAR, (R), ARIZONA: You still don't get it. Member after member. You still don't get it. You have bred a culture at EPA that is built of fraud, denial, incompetence, and bureaucratic nepotism.

REP. MATT CARTWRIGHT, (D), PENNSYLVANIA: Pretty soon, we will have men who strike their wives saying, "I'm sorry, dear, but there were failures at all levels."

People who put dollars over the fundamental safety of the people do not belong in government.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [13:55:23] BLITZER: Snyder and McCarthy also had the chance to defend their records or apologize. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICK SNYDER, (R), MICHIGAN GOVERNOR: -- where it took outside experts, that's tragic. We failed at doing what though have happened in terms of career bureaucrats that were experts, quote/unquote "experts," that, to be open with you, I get so mad that I never should have believed them.

MCCARTHY: We just couldn't get a straight answer anywhere. People don't deserve that out of their government. I will take responsibility for not pushing hard enough, but I will not take responsibility for causing this problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF: Here with me is Michigan Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee. His district includes Flint, Michigan.

I was there. Awful situation. Should the EPA administrator and the governor of Michigan resign?

REP. DAN KILDEE, (D), MICHIGAN: First of all, whether the governor resigns or not is really a matter of his conscience. I think the EPA administrator demonstrated there were failures at the EPA but their biggest failure was trusting what the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality was saying to them. So even the governor's own task force points to the vast majority of responsibility to the state of Michigan.

I have not yet made a determination as to whether he should resign. I think after today's hearings, the governor needs to do some soul searching to determine whether he has the moral authority to be the governor of the state.

BLITZER: Gina McCarthy, the EPA administrator, the buck stops with her, right?

KILDEE: That's part of the problem here is the buck stops with her, yes, to the extent the law allows the EPA to intervene when a state is not enforcing the law. One of the things I had real difficulty with was a lot of the members of Congress that were really attacking her and calling for her head are the very same people that are most critical when the EPA does reach beyond what they think is her formal authority. Most of them said she should have gone beyond her formal authority, a pretty extraordinary thing to hear from people, most of whom support candidates for president who want to eliminate the EPA.

BLITZER: Here's the most important thing. You've got to clean up the situation, make the water safe in Flint, Michigan. When I was there, I got the impression, but for the grace of god, this could happen in almost any industrial older town in the United States. And they've got to learn the lessons from this disaster and make sure it doesn't happen again. KILDEE: That's for sure. Anywhere you have lead pipes, you have to

manage that system. The failure here wasn't just old infrastructure. You have that in lots of cities. The failure was switching to a new water source, the Flint River, without any real science, and then the state of Michigan told everybody the water was safe when they knew it was not. That's something you rarely see --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: That's unconscionable.

KILDEE: Now I hope though the focus can turn much more sharply to how we solve this problem.

I was really disappointed in the governor's answers on that. He says he's basically committed everything that he's going to provide. We know that the total cost over the next decade or so of fixing this problem is about $1.5 billion. And the governor suggested he'll supply maybe $200 million of that. He has $1 billion.

BLITZER: They've got to come up with the money to fix this, because thousands of people, their lives, their kids lives, are on the line.

KILDEE: This is where apologies ring pretty hollow to the people of Flint. The governor repeatedly apologized, look, I get that, he feels sorry. I take him as being sincere in that regard. But it takes more than that. When you do something wrong, you apologize, but then you step up and you make it right. And you have to -- wherever that takes you. And when the state of Michigan is sitting on $1 billion of unbudgeted money that he doesn't know what to do with, and all he can come up with for the biggest crisis that he will ever face is less than 20 percent of that, that's not responsibility.

BLITZER: If there's a hurricane, if there's a disaster, the federal government comes in and helps, FEMA. That's what it was created for.

KILDEE: I agree.

WOLF: This is a disaster. Somebody's got to fix this. These people, their lives are on the line, their kids' lives are on the line.

KILDEE: I agree. The issue of accountability needs to be pursued but it needs to be pursued after we get the solution. I've submitted legislation that would just say, OK, responsibility at every level of government, even though it's not proportional, but let's just split it, half from the state, half from the federal government. My legislation would do that. It would help Flint turn the corner.

BLITZER: You think of all the money the U.S. is spending, infrastructure development, for example, in Afghanistan right now, or Iraq, for that matter, you'd think they could come up with the money to help the people of Flint, Michigan.

KILDEE: Sure should.

BLITZER: This is obviously a heartbreaking story. Congressman, thanks for all the good work.

KILDEE: Thank you, Wolf.

WOLF: Congressman Dan Kildee, of Michigan.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back at 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

The news continues next right here on CNN.

[14:00:11] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, there. Good to be with you. I'm Brooke Baldwin. You're watching CNN.