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New Day

Meghan and Harry Name Daughter; FDA to Decide on Alzheimer's Drug; CIA Scrambles on Afghanistan Operation; Heat Advisory in Northeast; U.S. Men's Soccer Beats Mexico; Classified Report on Lab Leak Theory; Energy Secretary's Warning; Bezos on Passenger List for Space. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 07, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: It all went to plan. Lilibet is a name that the queen was called. It was her nickname as a child but she couldn't pronounce Elizabeth. But it's actually a name that was used throughout her life. And Prince Philip used to call her Lilibet as well.

So this is a very affectionate way referring to the queen. So Lilibet is the first name and then Diana, of course, the second name, a tribute to Harry's late mother.

The royal family issued statements. Much excitement here. There you had Charles congratulating the couple and the family in a tweet. Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge also sending their congratulations. There's also another joint statement from the whole family and much being made in the newspapers as well as you can imagine, John.

But there's no photo. Normally you see a photo on the front pages but the Sussexs haven't issued a photo yet. You've got "The Son" referring to the names there, how the baby's named after Elizabeth. And then you have a bit more analysis, if you can dig a bit deeper, in "The Daily Mail," new baby Sussex given queen's family nickname, but did they even ask her? Speculation that the queen wasn't consulted about this. "The Times," however, does have a source saying Harry did speak to the queen before the announcement. The question they're raising is, will a new baby heal a rift. And they're saying very clearly inside that these two names given to the baby were a gesture to heal the (INAUDIBLE) between the two families. We don't know whether or not that's true. The Sussex side aren't speaking about that. The queen here isn't speaking about that. But certainly there's a lot of speculation about whether or not this could be a fresh start for the two sides of the family.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, certainly symbolic, to say the least, honoring two, you know, very important people in the family.

When do we expect a photo? If they haven't released a photo yet, when's that coming? FOSTER: Well, you can never really tell with the Sussexs because

particularly when it comes to the babies, they do things very much in their own way and they only release information when they feel comfortable. They've said they're on parental leave. I think they will issue a photo at some point. It may not be a full body photo, as it were, because with Archie they just issued a photo of his hand. I think when they feel comfortable to show images of the baby, we'll see them. But it could be any time.

BERMAN: All right, Max Foster, as always, thank you so much for that report.

Today the FDA is expected to decide whether to approve an experimental Alzheimer's drug. But is there enough evidence that it works?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, new video shows a Republican lawmaker from Oregon appearing to coach people about how to breach the state capital before actually helping protesters enter the building. We'll have that story coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:37]

KEILAR: Today, the FDA is expected to decide whether to approve the use of an experimental drug for early phases of Alzheimer's disease. The FDA has not approved a new Alzheimer's drug in nearly 20 years.

Elizabeth Cohen is tracking this story for us.

You know, this is -- this is exciting, it's controversial, but, either way, this affects a lot of people, Elizabeth. Tell us about this drug.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It certainly does, Brianna. So when people hear, oh, a drug for Alzheimer's, you know, everyone knows someone with Alzheimer's. And it gets exciting. You think, wow, finally there might be relief. But this might not be the drug that gives the kind of relief that people are looking for.

So the company that developed this drug, they actually brought this to the FDA earlier, and an advisory committee said, no, we don't think this ought to be approved. And let's take a look at why they said that. That's because one study showed that it actually didn't do anything. And another study showed that it slowed cognitive decline by 22 percent.

Now, what some experts are saying is, look, 22 percent isn't much. It may not even be noticed by the person who is -- by the patient themselves. And, also, this is -- I want to be very clear about this, this is not a drug for people with advanced Alzheimer's. This is a drug for people who are starting, who have very, very early cognitive impairment. And when -- if we look at sort of the history of how things work in the United States, this could be prescribed even to people with advanced Alzheimer's, even though technically it's not supposed to. Doctors often will acquiesce to patient requests. That's going to be a problem for the patient and a problem financially. These new drugs are often very expensive. There would be a whole lot of money spent on this drug for people for whom it is not appropriate.

Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, people want a silver bullet. It is a terrible disease that robs people.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for breaking that down for us.

COHEN: Thanks.

KEILAR: The CIA is scrambling to find new ways to gather intelligence amid the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops. We have some brand-new reporting about the options they're considering, next.

BERMAN: Plus, the Olympics still weeks away, but Simone Biles already making history. Highlights from her stunning championship performance ahead in the "Bleacher Report."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:42:54]

KEILAR: President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan by the September 11th deadline has the CIA, which has played an integral part of the 20 year American presence in Afghanistan, scrambling. This is according to a new report in "The New York Times." And "The Times" reporting says that the rapid U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan is creating intense pressure on the CIA to find new ways to gather intelligence and carry out counterterrorism strikes in the country.

Joining me now is one of "The New York Times" reporters who is behind this story, Mark Mazzetti. He's Washington investigative correspondent at "The Times" and he's a CNN national security analyst.

This is interesting and I love how you lay this out. It is so clear what is happening here.

Tell us why the CIA's in a bind.

MARK MAZZETTI, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, they've, for about 20 years, have used the large military presence in Afghanistan kind of as a cover to do their operations, to gather intelligence, to do various counterterrorism strikes, use bases along the eastern border of Afghanistan to go into Pakistan. And with the military leaving, they no longer have that.

And so their scramble is to figure out where to base CIA officers, how to actually gather intelligence without a large presence on the ground, and as one of the former officers we quoted said, when you are not there on the ground and you're relying on your own agents, you know, human informants, it's like a game of telephone in order -- sort of vetting intelligence. So it's -- it's very difficult and also very difficult just figuring out what country might allow the CIA and also the military to use bases because there's a lot of thorny diplomacy.

KEILAR: Why is this essential? What is the CIA able to glean? What do they do with this information?

MAZZETTI: Well, I mean the real concern is, of course, that once the U.S. military leaves, the very weak government cannot sustain itself very long. The security forces are still not up to grade to be able to protect the country. So the Taliban could gradually take over in the country. Other militant groups. It could revert to something akin to what it was like before 9/11. And that creates the problem of, you know, the terrorists' safe haven.

[06:45:04]

And so whether it's the CIA or the military, there might need to be further operations.

So, first, it's gathering intelligence about what's happening and then a question of what to do about it. And these are some of the real tough decisions that President Biden, and the Biden administration, are going to have to make after the pullout this year.

KEILAR: So if they're not in Afghanistan, if the U.S. doesn't have a presence in Afghanistan, the CIA doesn't, what are they looking at? What are the possibilities for being able to keep an eye on Afghanistan so that it doesn't become a terrorist safe haven?

MAZZETTI: Well, the current plan is to have military and CIA drones and other assets in the Persian Gulf countries. And it's a really long way to go.

KEILAR: It sure is.

MAZZETTI: For a lot -- and so for a lot of reasons that's not ideal. They're looking for bases that are closer.

So the first obvious choice might be Pakistan. There's a long entangled history with Pakistan over the last 20 years. And as we report, there's been some discussion about having a base that the CIA, maybe others, could use. But the price is pretty high in terms of the Pakistanis currently would try to sort of sign off on who the United States might want to target. They have a long history with the Taliban. So that's not an easy option. There's some discussions of former Soviet republics and the bases that the U.S. has used over the last 20 years, but Vladimir Putin probably would have something to say about that, not be too happy.

So it's all -- it's sort of in the churn right now, but it's not -- and it's not settled.

KEILAR: It's not settled.

All right, we know that you will be trying to settle it.

Mark Mazzetti, thank you so much for the report.

MAZZETTI: Thank you.

KEILAR: The aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos has just announced who will be traveling on its first space tourism flight. And we'll tell you -- maybe you can guess here who's on the list.

BERMAN: Does it rhyme with schmezos (ph)?

KEILAR: Maybe. Maybe it does.

BERMAN: Plus, a stark warning from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about the ability of foreign adversaries to shut down the U.S. power grid.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:51:18]

KEILAR: More than 15 million people in the northeast are under heat advisories amid record-high temperatures that are expected to last for days. Let's check in now with our meteorologist Jennifer Gray.

Ooh, it is hot, hot.

JENNIFER GRAY, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yes, it's brutal and it's going to be that way over the next couple of days. Look at temperatures over the weekend. These record highs. LaGuardia Airport, Saturday and Sunday, mid-90s. Dulles Airport, lower to mid-90s. And so the heat is going to continue. It's going to stay hot in the northeast.

Meanwhile, temperatures will finally be around average across the southeast. So heat advisories in effect feeling like 95 to 100 degrees all up and down the northeast, northern New England, 95 degrees in Boston, almost 15 degrees warmer than Atlanta will be today at 82.

And so the heat will hold on for about two more days and then it will start to relax. We're seeing below average temperatures across the south, above average temperatures across the northeast and the midsection of the country and then things will start to moderate over the next couple of days. Give it until Thursday, though. Look at that. Go from 95 to 71 on Boston on Thursday.

Brianna.

KEILAR: Quite the dip there. Jennifer, thank you so much.

GRAY: Yes.

BERMAN: It's one of the craziest soccer games you will ever see. The U.S. men's national team pulls off a dramatic win over Mexico in Denver last night.

Andy Scholes has more in the "Bleacher Report."

Andy, this was nuts.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: It was, John. You know, the U.S. and Mexico, they're certainly rivals on the pitch. And their nation's league's final matchup in Denver, it certainly got ugly towards the end of it. Closing moments of the second half, the game was actually halted for

three minutes due to fans using an anti-gay chant. Now, when the game resumed, it would go to extra time. And U.S. men's star Christian Pulisic gets a penalty and he would bury it into the upper right corner of the net to give the U.S. a 3-2 lead. And while celebrating, you can see on screen, Mexican fans start throwing cups, beer, bottles at the players. Giovanni Reyna got hit right in the face with one of those bottles.

Now, moments later, Mexico had a chance to tie it on a penalty, but backup goalie Ethan Horvath, the save of his life. That wins it for Team USA. They claim the title by a final, 3-2.

All right, well, less than two months away from the Summer Olympics and Simone Biles looks more than ready. The 24-year-old putting on a masterful performance and claiming a record-breaking seven U.S. gymnastics championships. She won the all-around by nearly five full points in Tokyo. Biles, you know, looking to become the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic all-around title in more than 50 years.

All right, to golf, where Patrick Cantlay said his victory at the Memorial yesterday felt weird, and for good reason. Jon Rahm was up by six shots on Saturday when officials told him on the 18th green that he had tested positive for COVID-19. Rahm clearly upset when he was told he had to withdraw from the tournament. Rahm had come into contact with someone who had the virus on Monday. And all of his tests had come back negative until Saturday.

Rahm is asymptomatic and said on Twitter that he's going to take all the necessary precautions.

And, John, a number of sports books graded Rahm as the winning tickets, even though he didn't even play in the final round. And, you know, a lot of people on social media were saying, you know, the PGA shouldn't have done that right there on the 18th green, but the PGA said they were just following their protocols.

BERMAN: Yes, the protocols had been in place and it was sort of clear what they had to do, but that's hard, man. That's tough.

SCHOLES: Yes.

BERMAN: One other note, Andy, the Red Sox swept the Yankees. I just feel like we should put that out there. We should just put that out there.

SCHOLES: Get that in. All right.

BERMAN: Let the viewers decide how they want to handle that.

Andy, thanks so much.

SCHOLES: All right.

BERMAN: Brianna.

KEILAR: Now they know.

[06:55:00]

A classified report suggesting a Wuhan lab leak may have triggered the pandemic has now re-emerged as a focal point for lawmakers investigating the origins of COVID-19.

And CNN's Natasha Bertrand has more on this with us.

Tell us about this. Tell us about what they're looking at.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN REPORTER: Yes. So this classified report that was drafted by a research lab called Livermore in California suggested back in May of 2020 that there may have been evidence for this lab leak theory. And, of course, that was kind of politically taboo at the time. The intelligence community was not publicly saying they had any support necessarily for the idea that this may have been manmade in a laboratory.

And so this top secret report that was drafted by these researchers made its way months later to policy makers and to certain key lawmakers on Capitol Hill. And now there's a new push by some lawmakers on The Hill to dig more into this report and see what evidence they had at that early period that contributed to their belief that this could have been a leak from a laboratory that caused this pandemic of COVID-19.

And so certain lawmakers are now kind of angry because they say that they did not see that report until much later and they have said that this could have provided key evidence at a key moment in time to better understand the origins of this pandemic. And so now what these Republicans -- primarily Republicans on The Hill are doing is they're requesting briefings from the Energy Department, which oversees all of these national labs, and they're trying to use this as kind of a jumping off point to say, look, scientists early on here thought that it was plausible that this came from a lab, why are we only learning about this now?

Of course some lawmakers and some staffers on The Hill downplayed the significance of this report, telling us that actually it doesn't reveal that much more than we already know because the intelligence community has come out and said, look, it could either be a lab leak or it could come from animals, we just don't know yet. The report says much the same.

KEILAR: But the timing of it, why didn't they know sooner, right, they're -- they're bring up. It's really interesting.

Natasha, thank you for that report.

BERMAN: So a stark warning from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about the venerability of the U.S. power grid after recent ransomware attacks that targeted staples of American life, from food and gas to water and hospitals.

CNN's Kristen Holmes joins us now with the latest on this. Kristen.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John.

I mean just in the last few weeks we have seen these attack on a pipeline, numerous government agencies, the meat industry, and that's just to name a few. Now we have the secretary of energy saying in no uncertain terms that these bad actors do have the capability to completely shut down the U.S. power grid.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You see the earth from space and it changes you. It changes your relationship with this --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Do you think that adversaries of the United States have the capability right now to shut down the power grid?

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, ENERGY SECRETARY: Yes, they do. I mean I think that there are very maligned actors who are trying even as we speak. There are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally.

It's happening all the time. And this is why the private sector and the public sector have to work together. And this is what the president is doing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And you can really hear the sense of urgency there as the Biden administration figures out how exactly to deal with these cyberattacks.

Now, we have seen them take a number of steps. Just last week they sent a letter to private companies urging those companies to take these ransomware attacks more seriously. We know that the DOJ has signaled that they are going to treat cyberattacks with the same protocols that they treat terrorism. But all the experts I'm talking to and really what we've seen, this just simply isn't enough.

BERMAN: Yes, this is not a looming crisis, this is an extant crisis. It's now. It's on.

Kristen Holmes, thanks so much for your report. Appreciate it.

KEILAR: Just in to CNN, Blue Origin, the aerospace company -- pardon me -- owned by Jeff Bezos.

BERMAN: Cicadas (ph).

KEILAR: Has -- I know, right? Just part of -- OK, has released its passenger list for its first manned flight. And right there on the manifest itself is Bezos.

So let's bring in Rachel Crane to talk about this.

I mean I guess if -- it makes sense, Rachel, but, wow.

RACHEL CRANE, CNN INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: You're right, Brianna, it makes a lot of sense. But what's surprising here and quite heartwarming, I must say, is Bezos is bringing his brother, Mark, along for this historic ride. Bezos saying that traveling to space, becoming an astronaut, getting those astronaut wings, a life-long dream of his. He couldn't imagine taking this journey without his best friend, his brother Mark, along for the ride.

Take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER, AMAZON: You see the earth from space. It changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity.

[07:00:01]

It's one earth. I want to go on this flight because it's a thing I've wanted to do all my life. It's an adventure.