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Tiger Woods In A Level 1 Trauma Center After A Horrifying Wreck; Former Security Officials Blame Intelligence Lapses for Deadly Insurrection; FDA Releases Johnson & Johnson Single Dose Vaccinate Data Ahead of Review. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 24, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: To a level one trauma center. Comminuted open fractures affecting both the upper and lower portion of the tibia and fibula bones were stabilized by inserting a rod into the tibia.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: The doctor continues. Additional injuries to the bones of the foot and ankle were stabilized with a combination of screws and pins. Trauma to the muscle and soft tissue of the leg required surgical release of the covering of the muscles to relieve pressure due to swelling.

Joining us now is CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, great to have you. I over breakfast and this morning trying not to think too hard about what a compound fracture is because it sounds horribly painful. What do you hear in that statement from the doctor?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, no, it's tough to think about certainly first thing in the morning or anytime. He had a -- he had significant injuries to his -- to the lower part of his right leg, that's what they're talking about in this open fracture. That basically means it was open, the bone actually coming through the skin.

Comminuted, you know, there was a couple of different areas of the tibia and fibula, those are the two bones of the lower leg. There's a couple -- at least a couple of different places where those bones were fractured. So, you know, there was a lot of energy that was absorbed into the ankle that had a lot of, you know, fractured bones and then into the lower part of his leg.

So, that's what we know, we also know that the muscles around those bones became quite swollen. And if you think about it if you just feel your own leg, you know, the muscles -- you feel the muscles in there, they're encased by a harder layer of tissue, tougher layer of tissue known as the fascia.

So, if the muscle starts to get swollen it really has nowhere to go and that's what's sometimes referred to as a compartment syndrome. The danger with that is that as the muscle swells the blood -- the blood supply to the muscle starts to be diminished and the muscle can actually start to die and that could be a real question of whether or not the limb can even be salvaged at that point, which is why this operation is important.

I've just thrown a lot at you there but basically, they had to address the fractures but they also had to address that -- the consequence of the injury which was all the soft tissues swelling around those fractures. That's what happened to him over the last, you know, last night.

I will point out, you know, on a more positive note, you know, we only had this snapshot in time at the time of the accident. He was calm, he was lucid, he was responsive but, you know, that was a significant accident -- car accident as we've seen from the images of the vehicle.

The things that the doctors have to do when they get to the hospital is make sure that they didn't miss another injury. Was there a brain injury, was there an injury to his chest or to his abdomen, was there internal organ bleeding, anything else? They made no mention of that and that is at least some good news --

BERMAN: Yes.

GUPTA: -- in terms of things that could have been much more life- threatening.

BERMAN: Yes, organ, spine, brain, no mention of that at all. The idea that he's up and conversant hopefully indicates that all of those things are of less or no concern. But the leg, and the muscles. and the nerves. and the very real fear that that could mean that, you know, whether or not that, you know, the safety or security or whether or not he could keep that leg was a question at a time, maybe not a question now.

What happens next with that, Sanjay?

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, so first of all with that point, you know, in terms of the salvage of the leg, you know, there -- there's -- my guess is, you know, and this is from just reading the statement but also talking to several orthopedic surgeons who do this kind of work, he's not out of the woods yet so to speak.

I mean, there's still concerns about infection and this was a big operation and so I don't want to minimize it. I think that he's in a much better position but the idea that there still could be complications or infection or something significant is something that I'm sure they're very much worried about.

But after that, I mean, first of all, he may need further operations if for nothing else to basically close those incisions I was just talking about and again, incisions to basically open up that outer layer around the muscle to allow the muscle to have room because it is so swollen.

Those areas will need to be closed at some point, that may be skin grafting or primary closure, don't know. So, there's going to be further operations and it's probably going to be a long time, you know, months before you start to think about any kind of significant weight-bearing on that.

So, rehab, further operations, overall recovery, you know, is -- it's going to be -- it's long. I guess everyone sort of realizes that at this point but this was a very significant injury. A significant amount of energy was sort of absorbed into his lower legs during that car accident when the front-end crumbled.

CAMEROTA: And where does that end, Sanjay? Crutches? A wheelchair? I mean, what will it take for -- to get back to mobility?

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, I think it's going to be a sequence of things. First of all, I mean, no weight-bearing at all for a period of time and probably just in bed just recovering from these operations. And that's weeks if not months probably.

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And then after that, yes, you sort of have this gradual progression of things, things that -- where you can be mobile but no weight-bearing wheelchair, crutches, and then, you know, start to slowly put some weight on this.

I mean, if you think about it, you know, the ankle, which, you know, was also severely affected by this, you know, is responsible for so much of the weight-bearing, obviously, that you have on your body. So, it's going to be a while before those bones recover.

You know, we talked about this last hour, there have been remarkable stories of people who've had similar sorts of injuries, every injuries different but Alex Smith, for example, quarterback, he was able to return to professional sports.

I don't want to be overly optimistic but, you know, he -- Tiger Woods has had five spine operations, returned after all those, who knows what this means. I think it's very, very concerning and much too early to tell but it's going to be a long road and a very steady progression.

BERMAN: Sanjay, thank you very much for that. We're going to talk to you again in just a little bit.

Joining us now, Wright Thompson, a senior writer for ESPN, and Dan Rapaport, he covers Tiger Woods for Golf Digest. Two terrific reporters, I really thank you both for being with us this morning.

And Dan, just -- I want to start with you. First off if you have any news or you're hearing anything new this morning? And also, you've got more insight into the -- what Tiger Woods had been doing the last few days leading up to the accident.

DAN RAPAPORT, STAFF WRITER, GOLF DIGEST: Yes, nothing really new apart from the statement last night. The only thing I've heard is what they're -- the Tiger Woods camp is saying, that there's no signs of impairment.

Which you heard the LA County Sherriff Department refer to yesterday there's no signs as of right now that he was impaired at the wheel yesterday. So, Tiger was host at the Genesis Invitational which wrapped up on Sunday at Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles, and kind of synching up with that we, Discovery, which is Golf Digest and GOLFTV, we had a two-day shoot with Tiger at Rolling Hill's Country Club in Palos Verdes.

The first day there was some post to social media suggest that maybe he was hitting balls or playing holes, which would mean that he was not being truthful when he told Jim Nantz on Sunday that he's not been cleared for golf activities. That's not true, he was not hitting balls, he was not playing holes. He was giving on-course lessons to celebrities.

You saw Dwayne Wade, David Spade, and Jada Pinkett Smith all post that they were with Tiger, and he was in good spirits. There's a video of him with Dwayne Wade laughing and smiling. I mean, obviously, he wasn't running around he's a 45-year-old man who's had five back surgeries but there was no indication that anything was markedly wrong.

And then Tuesday was supposed to be kind of a repeat of Monday, it was supposed to be three new celebrities, and Tiger was going to give these on-course lessons again but, obviously, he never arrived to the course on Tuesday morning.

BERMAN: Wright, tell us where this fits in the Tiger Woods story arc.

WRIGHT THOMPSON, SENIOR WRITER, ESPN: You know, I think the Tiger Woods golf story arc has two acts. I mean, there's '97 to 2007 which was wonder, and joy, and speed, and some celebrity. And then, you know, from the 2008 U.S. Open through the valley he passed through to the 2019 Masters is about overcoming injury, overcoming, you know, the court of public opinion.

I mean, this is a very, very strong-willed, tough person who likes the challenge of doing something that doctors and his body say that he cannot do. And so while, you know, I was listening to Dr. Gupta, you know, yes this is a long road but I think that this is just another thing for Tiger Woods to have to look inside and find the strength to battle.

BERMAN: To battle to what end though, Wright, I think is the question. And I do know that the question that's being asked maybe in the golf world, on the golf course this morning might be slightly different than being asked as society overall. The question I think we're all asking is, you know, will he be OK? And then in the golf world they may be asking will he compete again?

THOMPSON: I don't think anyone knows the answer. I mean, I think, you know, as the medical reports have said he's going to be in bed for a while. So, there's the question of capability, there's also the question of desire. I mean, at this point Tiger Woods has nothing to prove to anyone including Tiger Woods.

And so at some point, you have to imagine that the goal would be to be able to move comfortably with your kids. You know, before I got on the phone with you I was on the floor down there playing Peppa Pig, you know, like you want to -- you want to be able to do things like that. And those things are way more important than winning a golf tournament on television.

BERMAN: I hope you won, I mean if you're going to play and I hope you won.

THOMPSON: Totally. Dude, it's Peppa Pig Woodstock in there, it's chaos.

BERMAN: I don't want to hear there's no winner in Peppa Pig because we all know there is.

THOMPSON: It's me.

[08:10:00]

BERMAN: So, Dan, within the shoots watching -- hearing Dwayne Wade last night reflect on what it was like to be out with Tiger Woods, and Dwayne Wade, one of the things he said that was interesting is he picked up a golf club for the first time because of Tiger Woods which is interesting in itself.

RAPAPORT: Yes.

BERMAN: Go ahead.

RAPAPORT: I think he's not alone in that by any stretch. I mean, Tiger Woods has been golf -- is golf, and has been for 25-years. I mean, if you remember when -- before Tiger started golf was kind of this fringe sport that was just for stodgy, wealthy white males and Tiger democratized it, he made it cool, he added color to it.

He inspired athletes would never have considered golf before to play golf. And I think the best evidence of that is how his peers viewed him. The younger guys on tour, they revere Tiger, they realize he's the reason they're playing for all the money that they're playing for. He's the reason that they're on TV every single tournament.

He's the reason there are 50 tournaments a year now on the PGA Tour, and you can see when something bad happens to Tiger they're all very shaken because he's the one they grew up idolizing. He's the reason that they play and Jon Rahm, the world number two yesterday said even now Tiger, no longer the best player in the world, I think he's ranked around 48th, 45-years-old, all these surgeries, there is still a different atmosphere at a golf tournament when Tiger is playing from when he's not playing.

Still, he still remains the larger-than-life figure in this game and that's not going away anytime soon.

BERMAN: Yes.

RAPAPORT: You know, even if Tiger doesn't play golf again, like Jack Nicklaus, like Arnold Palmer, these legends who have staying power even after they're done, Tiger will remain a big presence in the game of golf for many, many years to come even if he never plays in the Masters one more time.

BERMAN: He's going to be doing that first tee at Augusta for the next 50-years. I mean, he's got that locked in for sure and he doesn't have anything left to prove to anybody in terms of golf. Wright --

RAPAPORT: Absolutely. Absolutely not. I mean, I think, sorry.

BERMAN: -- Sorry, I was just going to go to Wright with this and then I want to be clear that law enforcement says as of now there's no sign of impairment, there was no sign of impairment with Tiger Woods in terms of the accident that they saw then. I guess we don't know if there'll be anything else that comes out.

But where was Tiger Woods the last few years? In 2017, we know there was a DUI where he said it was based on an over-reliance on pain killers and he had all kinds of things in his systems and he had acknowledged some kind of a struggle or process but how much do we know about where he was with that?

THOMPSON: We don't know much. He's a very private person, you know, I mean, he has two big boats, one of them is named Solitude and the other one -- other one is named Privacy. You know, and we really don't know. I think he's a human being who like a lot of our friends and family members had a very, very painful injury and then struggled.

I mean, you know, I think he's a -- he is both a superstar and as, you know, as you just heard beloved and respected and almost feared in the golf community. I mean, where Rickie Fowler hasn't said on his phone as dictate (ph). You know, I mean, there's a -- there's a feeling of awe. But he's also a 45-year-old human being trying to be the best version of himself and can be.

And I think that that, I mean, endears is probably the wrong word but I think a lot of people see him and more than they did when he was a 21-year-old bombing golf balls everywhere, see some part of themselves reflected back at them by Tiger Woods.

BERMAN: Wright Thompson, Dan Rapaport, thanks so much for joining us this morning. Really enjoyed talking to you both.

THOMPSON: Thank you.

RAPAPORT: Thanks.

BERMAN: So, why did intelligence about a potential attack at the U.S. Capitol not make it up the chain of command?

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[08:17:27]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Lawmakers are starting to try to figure out how that deadly Capitol insurrection happened and who was to blame for not seeing it coming. The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police and the House sergeant at arms will testify to the House tomorrow. Now on Tuesday, three former law enforcement officials testified

before the Senate. All of them blaming intelligence lapses. But what does that mean?

Joining us now, CNN senior law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe. He's the former director of the FBI.

Andrew, great to have you.

The FBI sent a bulletin, okay? At 7:00 p.m. the night before the Capitol insurrection, they sent it to the Capitol police. The Capitol Police chief says he never saw that bulletin. So, they were ill- prepared, as we saw. Whose fault is that?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT: Well, Alisyn, there's really important questions to be asked on both sides of that exchange. So on the Capitol police side, they have acknowledged that that memo was received, and it was held at least at the level of sergeant and their intelligence infrastructure who never passed it on up this chain of command. So that's one possible problem there.

But we have to ask some questions on the FBI side as well. We can't overstate how good the relationship is between the FBI and the U.S. Capitol police and other law enforcement entities in D.C. When I was running the Washington field office, we used to get together at least once a month to discuss intelligence just like this.

The question is, why on the evening of the event did they pass this alarming report through kind of normal day-to-day channels rather than making personal contact with someone in leadership in the U.S. Capitol police and saying, hey, chief, we just got this. It's really concerning. You need to take a look at it for tomorrow.

That's one of the hard lessons that you learn after years of doing this. We learned that after the Boston marathon bombing. We look back on how we have been communicating with our local partners and saw that that was something that was lacking.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I have to say, the lack of answers, consistent answers in this hearing yesterday, was glaring. There were good questions by both Democrats and some Republicans. I'm not talking Ron Johnson here yesterday.

But trying to figure out what happened. And there's really no consistent answer from these law enforcement that were there and I was left with a feeling, Andy, I have to say, if someone wanted to attack the Capitol today, they could get away with it today again. They have real systemic issues there.

MCCABE: That was one of the most revealing things, John. They just openly admitted that they are not trained for this sort of an attack.

[08:20:02]

They're not equipped for this sort of attack. I mean, that's just an exposure of vulnerability that's shocking to hear in public. And while I completely understand the importance of having a public hearing like this, it is not going to get to the bottom of this issue in the same way that a focused, professional, bipartisan long-term investigation would.

You want to question those same folks again after you've had the opportunity to review all the intelligence that they had or didn't have, after you've got the phone records sitting in front of you and you're matching them up one to the other. Then you ask the hard questions and really get to the bottom of this. It's really hard to do that in a Senate hearing.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Andy, I know that you guys at the FBI are always monitoring chatter, right, online chatter. And so, help us understand how it -- when you see something like this, how you know that this is legit and it rises to that level, because here is what the online chatter was. I will read it. This is from "The Washington Post," which on January 12th knew this stuff. They reported this on January 12th.

So the idea the Capitol police chief said he only heard about this last night was another head slapper. Here's the intelligence.

Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in and blood from their BLM and Antifa slave soldiers being spilled.

Get violent. Stop calling this a march or rally or protest. Go there ready for war. We get our president or we die. Nothing else will achieve this goal.

What would you normally have done? What should they have done with this? Would that have warranted, as you said, picking up the phone and calling the chief?

MCCABE: Yes, so traditionally, Alisyn, the way chatter or electronic surveillance communications are evaluated is whether or not they are credible and specific. Those are kind of the two factors that analysts look to, to evaluate the seriousness of that kind of talk.

In this situation, it may be that they didn't know who was making any of these statements because people speak under anonymous, you know, avatars online, that sort of thing. They didn't deem it to be specific enough to be concerning. But one of the most important things we have to learn from this event is how the FBI and others at DHS and other places need to re-evaluate how they are thinking about exactly that sort of chatter from these right wing extremists or domestic extremist groups.

The time has come to take the statements seriously and react seriously. This is a 9/11 moment for our country and for our law enforcement and intelligence services. We need to step back and rethink how seriously we're taking these statements from largely white, largely conservative right-leaning groups.

BERMAN: So, Andy, you obviously watched yesterday and saw the lack of answers and the confusion there. If you could get an answer to one question right now about all this, what would you want the answer to? MCCABE: Well, I'm going to push you a little bit there. I'm going to

say if I were the director of the FBI today, I'd be asking two really important questions.

One, is our collection in the right place? Are we collecting the best intelligence about this threat?

And two, if we are collecting the best intelligence or based on what we are collecting, are we drawing the right conclusions? And that gets at this issue I've been talking about.

I think it's possible that the FBI is getting the right intelligence but they are evaluating it based on traditional biases that are preventing them from really appreciating the immediacy of this threat and that's a re-evaluation I think that needs to take place right away.

CAMEROTA: Andrew McCabe, thank you very much for all of the information.

MCCABE: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: OK. So breaking news on Capitol Hill -- a new sign that one of President Biden's cabinet nominees will be doomed. We have breaking details, next.

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[08:28:00]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: All right. We do have breaking news. The FDA just released data on the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine. The FDA advisory panel meets later this week to consider giving emergency use authorization. This is the data they will be looking at and there's a lot of new information inside this.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta got his hands on it just minutes ago.

It's like, what, 62 pages. Sanjay, you've read every single one and you can give us the highlights.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, well, I can give you the highlights. We're still making our way through this. It is sort of matches with what some of the data we received from Johnson & Johnson, Janssen specifically, the subsidiary company. What they are describing now is this one-shot vaccine that was tested in various trial sites around the world and looked to see how effective the efficaciousness of the vaccine was at 14 days after one received the vaccine and again at 28 days.

I don't know if we have some of the numbers but we can show you there's a couple of interesting things, as you point out. They were looking at a couple of different specific things. How protective was this against moderate disease going up to severe, critical disease and how protective was this for people who were severe only.

And they found that there was -- there was a difference when it came to moderate and severe disease depending on where this vaccine was trialed, which probably had very much to do with the variants. So for example, bottom of the left column, 57 percent protective against moderate and severe disease in South Africa, where the variant, the variant from South Africa that we've talked about a lot was predominantly circulating. About 90 percent of the trial participants in that trial had that variant that they were actually being immunized against.

Compare that to the United States where the wild-type variant, the variant of the virus that that we've been talking about the most, you see 72 percent protective there. But it's really that right side of the screen that they spent a lot of time talking about in the summary.