time on hbo max. join us here on cnn the week after the super bowl to find out who is talking next. welcome back to the 8:00 hour of the cnn newsroom. i m jim acosta in washington. we begin with more breaking news. some of the first images we have seen of possible debris from that chinese spy balloon downed yesterday off the coast of south carolina. this video was shot by a south carolina resident just coming in this evening. this resident told cnn he saw a navy boat carrying what he believed to be debris from the balloon. cnn cannot independently confirm whether this is indeed debris from that balloon. we are reaching out to the u.s. navy for comment. in the meantime, this comes at the same time we are learning new details about when the pentagon learned about the balloon and when the president was informed about it. more on that in a moment. i want to begin in north myrtle beach, south carolina, and the focus of the recovery efforts. ca carlos, what can you tell us abou
as high as commercial aircraft but lower than surveillance satellites. the size of three buses. two flights were diverted for safety. military leaders considered but ultimately decided against wthe president s decision to shoot it down. but the idea that was under conversation shows how seriously u.s. officials and the president were taking the idea of a chinese spy balloon floating over the u.s. you mentioned what it was flying over. right. montana. the air base, has icbms there. something that china would naturally be interested in taking a closer look at. it happened before? it happened over u.s. territory before. here is something i want to note in terms of surveillance capabilities. this was not a big jump in what china is able to do. why? because china is flying spy satellites over the u.s. after 90 minutes as they orbit the earth and they have at least equal surveillance capabilities. they are highly advanced. in terms of what china could gather from this ballo
The police broke us up. before they sped off, i took down the license plate. that s the first time i heard of chris george and his identical twin brother jeff who were the masterminds and the initial people to come up with this massive pill mill scheme that many others later emulated. it s fascinating. the film shines a bright light on what the brothers were do, the deadly consequences for thousands of people. how did you convince them to participate in the film? it took a long time. like i said, in 2009, about nine months after they chased me down i95, they became the target of the largest prescription drug trafficking case in u.s. history. there was a long investigation. they went to trial. they pled out. then some doctors went to trial. eventually, they wound up in prison. while they were in prison, i wrote a letter. remember that guy you chased down i95?
License plate traced back to chris george. that was the first time i heard the name, about nine months later chris george and his identical twin brother jeff george would be the targets of a large prescription drug trafficking case in u.s. history. and they both went to prison, one of them is out, one is still in, i think, until 2030 is how long his sentence is. you know, what do people see when you talk to them in this film? you know, i wanted to tell the story of the george brothers because i thought it illustrated an important chapter in the history of the opioid crisis in america. the rise and fall of the george brothers is colorful, there is a lot of colorful characters in this, but ultimately it s a story about the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. these are the people that the pharmaceutical industry partnered with to pump out billions of pills to people who didn t need them and basically spawned the opioid crisis. what differentiates the opioid crisis from other dr