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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Deflects on Major Security Breach, calls it "Witch Hunt"; Hegseth Claims "No Classified Information" in Signal Group Text; Interview with Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX); Trump Deflects on Major Security Breach, Calls It Witch Hunt; Hegseth Claims No Classified Information in Signal Group Text; DHS Secretary Noem Tours Controversial Prison as Appeals Court Upholds Deportation Block; State Health Officials Say Measles Cases in Kansas Rises to 23; Five Senior CDC Leaders to Depart as Agency Braces for Deep Cuts. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 26, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AMANDA KNOX, WRONGFULLY CONVICTED OF MURDER: And so, just hearing her, I mean, she's texted me today just letting me know that I can try to remember that I have this, like, glowing golden light around me. Anytime I'm talking to someone and I'm not --
I'm not on trial anymore, which is such an amazing thing to hear from somebody who, like, knows it and who has been through it and who is reclaiming her space and her voice and really platforming me to do the same.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: All right, Amanda Knox.
And, thanks so much to all of you for joining us, AC360 starts now.
[20:00:33]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Good evening. We begin tonight with breaking news in the breach of National Security by the Trump administration and the President now saying his Defense Secretary had nothing to do with it.
This is all in the wake of explosive new signal messages released by "The Atlantic's" Jeffrey Goldberg in a new article today. Now, first to those newest details reported by Goldberg. He says because of what the President and members of his national security team said after his first story published.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE SECRETARY: Nobody was texting war plans and that's all I have to say about that.
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It wasn't classified information, so this was not classified.
TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal text. JOHN RATCLIFFE, CIA DIRECTOR: My communications, to be clear, in a
Signal message group, were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And Goldberg writes today that while he initially declined to report the specifics of the military plans, he was sent, "The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump, combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the context of the Signal text, have led us to believe that people should see the text in order to reach their own conclusions."
Now, we thought it'd be useful to hear some of the text conversation that was exchanged via Signal using artificial intelligence software, CNN has created an audio version of the group chat. The voices used are reading the text neutrally. No attempt has been made to imitate the actual voices of the officials, or alter the text exchange in any way. Even typos are read as they are in the text.
Now, present on the Signal chat in addition to the reporter, Jeffrey Goldberg were National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who admits he accidentally added Goldberg to the chat, not Vice-President J.D. Vance was there. Secretary of State Pete Hegseth with us as well; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles; and Middle East Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
Now, by listening to this text exchange, which you can also hear on cnn.com in its entirety, you get a sense that the Trump officials interactions as they discuss the strike on Yemen, it's a window into unvarnished conversations that the public is almost never privy to.
This part of the chat is from Saturday, March 15th, when the U.S. Military strike on the Houthis in Yemen took place. The text began at 11:44 A.M., roughly two hours before the attack, with Defense Secretary Hegseth providing the exact timing of when U.S. military jets would take off and when the bombs would drop. These are A.I. voices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
A.I. PETE HEGSETH: Team update time now, (11:44 E.T.) Weather is favorable. Just confirmed with CENTCOM, we are a go for mission launch;
12:15 E.T. F-18s launch (first strike package);
13:45 "Trigger Based" F-18 first strike window starts. (Target terrorist is at his known location so should be on time.) Also, strike drones launch (MQ-9s);
14:10 more F-18s launch (second strike package);
14:15 strike drones on target. (This is when the first bombs will definitely drop pending earlier "trigger based" targets);
15:36 F-18 second strike starts. Also, first sea-based Tomahawks launched.
More to follow per timeline.
We are currently clean on OPSEC.
Godspeed to our warriors.
A.I. JD VANCE: I will say a prayer for victory.
A.I. MIKE WALTZ: VP, building collapsed, had multiple positive I.D. Pete, Kurilla the I.C. Amazing job.
A.I. JD VANCE: What?
A.I. MIKE WALTZ: Typing too fast. The first target their top missile guy, we had positive I.D. of him walking into his girlfriend's building and its now collapsed.
A.I. JD VANCE: Excellent.
A.I. JOHN RATCLIFFE: A good start.
A.I. MARCO RUBIO: Good job Pete and your team.
A.I. MIKE WALTZ: The team and MAL did a great job as well.
A.I. STEPHEN MILLER: Great work all. Powerful start.
A.I. PETE HEGSETH: CENTCOM was/is on point. Great job, all. More strikes ongoing for hours tonight and will provide full initial report tomorrow. But on time on target and good readouts so far.
A.I. SUSIE WILES: Kudos to all, most particularly those in theater and CENTCOM. Really great. God bless.
A.I. TULSI GABBARD: Great work and effects.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Goldberg points out in today's article. "If this text had been received by someone hostile to American interests or someone merely indiscreet and with access to social media, the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic. This is Defense Secretary Hegseth today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HEGSETH: Nobody is texting war plans.
I noticed this morning out came something that doesn't look like war plans. And as a matter of fact, they even changed the title to attack plans, because they know it's not war plans. There's no units, no locations, no routes, no flight paths, no sources, no methods, no classified information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:34]
COOPER: They're communicating on Signal, a commercially available app. Keeping them honest, multiple current and former defense officials CNN spoke to said that any discussion of the timing targets or weapon systems to be used in an attack would be classified because of the potential risk to U.S.'s service members' lives if those plans are revealed prematurely and under no circumstances should such discussions be conducted on a commercial app.
But also notice that Secretary Hegseth there is quibbling with the semantics. Goldberg called them attack plans in today's article versus war plans in Monday's report seemed to be a talking point of spin shared across the administration.
Late today, the President was asked about the latest and defended the Secretary of Defense and used a familiar phrase "witch hunt."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Should Secretary Hegseth consider his position over the Signal?
TRUMP: Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this. Hegseth -- how do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look, it's all a witch hunt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, meanwhile, on Capitol Hill today, Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who was part of the Signal chat, testified for the second time in as many days about this breach of security, this time in front of the House Intelligence Committee ranking member, Democrat, Jim Himes, drilled down on the question over classified material being shared by reading her classification guidelines from her own office.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): I'm reading from your classification guidance and the criteria is information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack? Do you recall what your own guidance would suggest that that be classified?
TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: I don't have the specifics in front of me.
HIMES: I guess you don't have it, but information providing in, this is the ODNI guidance. Information providing indication or advance warning that the U.S. or its allies are preparing an attack should be classified as top secret. Do you disagree with that?
GABBARD: I don't disagree with that. I just point out that the DoD classification guidance is separate from the ODNI's classification guidance --
HIMES: Do you think it would be materially different?
GABBARD: Ultimately, the Secretary of Defense holds the authority to classify or declassify.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And Congressman Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, had strong words for those involved.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Nobody is willing to come to us and say this was wrong. This was a breach of security, and we won't do it again. It is outrageous and it is a leadership failure. And that's why Secretary Hegseth, who undoubtedly transmitted classified, sensitive operational information via this chain, must resign immediately.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro is also part of the Intelligence Committee said this today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): The idea that this information, if it was presented to our committee, would not be classified, you all know, is a lie, that's ridiculous. I've seen things much less sensitive be presented to us with high classification, and to say that it isn't is a lie to the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: And Congressman Castro joins me now. Congressman, I appreciate you being with us. You spoke to the people who were testifying today, who were appearing before you, many of whom you served with in Congress. You know, these people, as you said, and you said they know that this is classified, that they know better, right?
CASTRO: Sorry, Anderson, I'm not getting any audio feed on the --
COOPER: Can you hear me now, Congressman? We'll try to get this worked out. We'll try to get the audio. Let's bring in -- Susan Rice, she had Mike Waltz's job, National Security Adviser from 2013 to 2017. Before that, she served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Ambassador Rice joins me now. Thanks for being with us.
So, you have President Trump, Mike Waltz giving conflicting explanations of how and why Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the group chat. The President says Hegseth had nothing to do with this whole thing, even though Hegseth was the only one -- was the one texting about military aircraft launch times. In your experience, how out of the norm is all this? SUSAN RICE, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION:
Anderson, it's so far out of the norm, I don't even know where to begin.
So let me try to explain this as simply as I can. The National Security Principals Committee, which is the cabinet level group of senior officials, most of whom who are on this group text, normally meet in the White House Situation Room, a highly secure, classified environment to discuss any issue of national significance.
[20:10:16]
When they are discussing a potential attack on a foreign adversary. That's among the most sensitive kinds of conversations you can possibly have. So, the whole predicate of this debate that's happened over the last two days is flawed, because people need to understand that the mere fact of a meeting and the substance of a discussion as to whether the United States ought to attack a foreign adversary when, how, and for what purpose is itself inherently classified.
Because, as anybody with a common sense can understand, if a foreign adversary were to learn in advance that the United States was planning an attack, even without the specifics of what aircraft, what ordnance, what time, what place, that in itself is inherently classified, because that adversary would be in a position to evade attack, to attack us preemptively, to do harm to American personnel. That's why war plans and preparations are among the most classified and sensitive material that there is.
So, you recall that text is not just about, you know, when the bombs were to drop and where. It was also a discussion of merits of undertaking this action.
COOPER: Right, which was the day before.
RICE: Yes. But the point is the whole text chain is in itself inherently a classified discussion among the National Security principals as to whether, when and how to attack a foreign adversary --
COOPER: So even --
RICE: -- that information --
COOPER: -- even --
RICE: -- would be detrimental to either --
COOPER: Even the --
RICE: -- secure --
COOPER: Either you're saying even the initial conversation about, well, Vice-President Vance, you know, disagreeing with the President essentially, and saying, look, you know, I'm not going to say this publicly, but, you know, I think the President doesn't understand all the implications here. Even that conversation about whether there should be an attack that could it be delayed several days, that's that should be done in a secure location?
RICE: Absolutely and the Signal text chain is the wrong place on so many levels. It's the wrong place because you don't have substantive, deep, thoughtful deliberations on a text chain when people are flinging emojis around.
Secondly, a conversation of that sensitivity and significance should be done in a classified setting -- in the White House Situation Room or via classified video networks, which we have very readily available to each member of that National Security Principals Committee, or by secure phone.
Anywhere a National Security Cabinet official goes, or the National Security adviser as I was. That goes with a package of communicators and equipment everywhere they go so that they have 24/7 access to classified communications equipment.
Why these people are using Signal is itself a big question, and I think a scandal and frankly, the only reason to use Signal is either they're lazy, stupid, or they just don't care and they want to be able to evade the Federal Records Act because Signal does not retain the records of a deliberation as required by law.
COOPER: What does it tell you that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the principal military adviser to the President, was not, apparently, on the group chat discussing imminent U.S. military action.
RICE: I observed that immediately as I read through these texts, and I find it highly disturbing.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is the Presidents principal military adviser. He and the central commander, central -- CENTCOM commander as we call him, the four star responsible for the region of the Middle East in which the action took place would normally be involved in any National Security Principals Committee consideration of whether, when and how to strike a foreign adversary.
Their absence is puzzling to me, and suggests, one -- that they have the wisdom not to be on a Signal chat about a classified operation, but two -- that for some reason they were cut out at least of this aspect of the discussion, which was not only operational but initially deliberative, and they should have been part of that.
COOPER: Ambassador Rice, I appreciate your time under these bizarre circumstances, thanks very much.
I want to bring back in Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, today questioned some of the top National Security officials who were on that group chat. You know, a lot of the folks you were talking to today who have been who have been appearing. Do you honestly believe they know they did wrong, that they know better than what they were saying? You can't hear me still.
CASTRO: The audio. I don't know. [20:15:19]
COOPER: I don't know what's going on, I'm sorry. Congressman, we'll try to make it work. We're going to take a break.
Next, the confusing, sometimes contradictory answers from the President and his administration about how Jeffrey Goldberg was added to the chat and who added him, and later, more on the claim from Defense Secretary Hegseth and others who say the chat did not have classified information. I'll talk with retired Army General James "Spider" Marks and CNN's John Miller.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:03]
COOPER: Well, if you've been following the White House and some of the people involved in this Signal chat have struggled at times to explain how it all happened.
Just last night, we saw two separate interviews and two separate explanations of how "The Atlantic's" Jeffrey Goldberg got access to the chat room. Here's what President Trump said in a prerecorded interview that aired last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: What it was, we believe, is somebody that was on the line with permission, somebody that was with Mike Waltz, worked for Mike Waltz at a lower level, had, I guess, Goldberg's number or called through the app, and somehow this guy ended up on the call.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So, the President suddenly suggesting there was a lower level staffer essentially at fault for including Jeffrey Goldberg, not Waltz, just a staffer. But that same evening, Mike Waltz on Fox News said the exact opposite.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST "THE INGRAHAM ANGLE": So, you don't know what staffer is responsible for this right now?
MIKE WALTZ, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible and look, I take full responsibility.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Okay, so it wasn't a staffer. Good for him for taking responsibility. But then there's the question of how the number of Jeffrey Goldberg ended up on Waltz's phone. Waltz said he doesn't know him. Trump, you may remember, certainly does not like Goldberg. He called him a con man after Goldberg reported in 2020 that Trump referred to soldiers killed in battle during World War I as losers and suckers. Trump's former chief-of-staff actually confirmed those comments, by the way.
So, last night, here's how Waltz tried to explain how Goldberg's number was in his phone to Laura Ingraham.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALTZ: I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact where it was, said one person, and then a different phone number.
INGRAHAM: But you've never talked to him before. So, how's the number on your phone? I mean, I'm not an expert on any of this, but it's just curious -- how is the number on your phone?
WALTZ: Well, if you have somebody else's contact and then somehow it sucked in --
INGRAHAM: How would someone send you that contact?
WALTZ: -- it gets sucked in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: "I gets sucked in." I have no idea what that means. Does he mean Goldberg's contact somehow got sucked into his phone, or it got sucked into the chat? Laura Ingraham then asked a very sensible question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Was there someone else supposed to be on the chat that wasn't on the chat that you thought was --
WALTZ: So, the person that I thought was on there was never on there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: All right, so now, we're getting somewhere because there was someone else who was supposed to be there. And then, of course, Ingraham follows up with the obvious question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Who was that person?
WALTZ: Well, look, Laura, I take responsibility. I built the group.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Okay, so, did that sound like there was a person? But he didn't want to give that person's name? Or did that sound like he realized he'd been backed himself into a corner and made a mistake in claiming there was someone and there wasn't. You can interpret that as you will. Today, Trump said this about Waltz.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Mike Waltz, I guess he said he claimed responsibility. I would
imagine it had nothing to do with anyone else. It was Mike, I guess, I don't know. I was told it was Mike.
REPORTER: Should Secretary Hegseth consider his position over the Signal?
TRUMP: Hegseth is doing a great job. He had nothing to do with this. Hegseth -- how do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look, it's all a witch hunt.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Joining me now is former Pentagon Press Secretary and former White House communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin; POLITICO's White House bureau chief Dasha Burns; and CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod.
David, we spoke Monday night. Are you surprised by where this whole thing stands now 48 hours later? Do these explanations make any more sense?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, no and, you know, we've said it with Republican White Houses and Democratic White Houses, sometimes the best answer is we screwed up. We're going to look into why it happened and how it happened so it doesn't happen again. But you know, the thing that's disturbing, listening to that video of the President is that he seems to think that the big problem here is that Jeffrey Goldberg was on this call.
Yes, that is a problem. It also is the reason why we know it happened. They might have been going on Signal again and again after this, had he not been on the on this Zoom conversation. Zoom, not Zoom -- Signal chat, but the real issue is the classified information on a commercial network.
Yes, encrypted, but not one for that. You heard Susan Rice on that before. And when he says, what is Hegseth have to do with it? Everybody else we've heard from tonight has said, well, it's up to the Secretary of Defense to decide what's classified
Hegseth has everything to do with it and the fact that the President thinks, no, I just need to find out why that reporter I don't like was on this Signal chat suggests to me he doesn't get the gravity of what just happened.
COOPER: Yes, Alyssa, I mean, what stands out -- I mean, there's so many different aspects of this. I mean, the fact that they're talking on signal, the fact that the Vice-President Vance is disputing the President's position to the rest of the Cabinet is bizarre.
[20:25:05]
ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's hard to narrow down what's the most stunning outcome that we've seen from this revelation. But I would say this, it does seem like Trump world is circling the wagons to really make Mike Waltz take the fall for this. But the reality is, we can argue, I don't think any of this should have been on Signal.
I as a, you know, a civilian working in the Pentagon would have been prosecuted if I started discussing war plans over Signal with other staffers. But the real issue was that the Secretary of Defense lacked the judgment to not put actual military strikes hours before they were to take place with the actual aircraft we were going to use into this chat.
And I think the fact that to, Axelrod's point, this has become more about, but how did Jeffrey Goldberg get in there? And really, how did we let this liberal reporter and that just speaks to how Trump world is viewing it. But the public wants answers about why there wasn't a baseline level of judgment of all the principals.
COOPER: It also seems like they've done this before on Signal. I mean, it's not like anybody in this chat said, hey, I didn't know we were using Signal for this. Okay.
GRIFFIN: So if 18 people, all with the highest level of security clearances being on this that nobody said -- hey, should we take this to the high side? Hey, should we get on, you know, a VTC from a SCIF and talk about this? That was stunning to me. Marco Rubio was a member of the gang of eight. He knows how you handle classified information or even highly sensitive information.
The fact that this could easily be exposed to American adversaries who we know, you were told when you go into these positions, Axelrod knows it from when he was in the White House. Your phone is always being monitored by foreign adversaries at any level you serve in, in the Pentagon, State Department or the White House. So they knew the risks and no one spoke up to say like, hey, maybe we shouldn't discuss this here.
COOPER: Right, Dasha, what are you hearing at the White House? I mean, is there a frustration behind the scenes here?
DASHA BURNS, WHITE HOUSE BUREAU CHIEF, POLITICO: Oh, there's a lot of frustration. There's frustration, there's tension. There's a lot of if we're talking emojis like facepalm emoji going around right now, especially after that Waltz interview with Laura Ingraham. Because look at the muddled messaging here. It's really displaying this sort of fracture in the Trump playbook.
Usually what you do when there's a scandal in Trump world, you deny. You certainly don't apologize and you go on Fox News. Well, Mike Waltz has been doing just that, but it is not working. And what I've been hearing from White House sources, one senior White House official told me that there was a lot of disappointment with Waltz's appearance on Laura Ingraham's show.
They thought he could just own the mistake, take accountability and move on. Instead, they feel like he dug the White House deeper into this by claiming that somehow there was some conspiracy with how Goldberg got onto his phone and into the chat. He opened the interview saying, you know, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but that's immediately a red flag for everyone. And now, they worry that he's opened the door to an FBI investigation, which they believe is only going to add fuel to the fire for this story and this explanation that he doesn't know Goldberg. He's never spoken to him. He never put his number in his phone.
One close White House ally told me that's just B.S. he should own it. The White House, he said, should fire Waltz and move on, because none of this messaging is really making sense right now. And then you have the Press Secretary going out and saying "The Atlantic" is lying when the receipts are all right there.
COOPER: David, obviously, like, I mean, the FBI would normally maybe run kind of an investigation, but what are the chances of that?
AXELROD: You know, that's the problem when these positions are doled out for political loyalty instead of fidelity to the Constitution and the rule of law, it's very unlikely that the FBI is going to engage in an investigation that would be embarrassing to the President or the White House.
But I want to return to something Susan Rice said about a potential motivation for them using Signal. There are requirements to have records of these conversations. And Signal may be a way to escape that, because those conversations disappear.
So, there are real -- there are much, much bigger questions here that are significant because it goes to the National Security and the security of our troops in the field. Not this time, everybody should be thankful that nothing happened this time. But what about next time? And so you know, I hope that there are investigations. I hope the Congress grows a spine and has an investigation.
They certainly have the authority to get to the bottom of this, because there are bigger stakes here than the momentary embarrassment of the White House.
COOPER: Yes, David Axelrod, Dasha Burns, Alyssa Farah Griffin, thanks very much.
I'm going to try one more time. Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. He joins me now. Congressman, can you hear me?
CASTRO: I can. Hopefully the third time's a charm.
COOPER: We don't even need to be on Signal. So, what do you make of where all this stands tonight? I mean, do you -- is the White House just going to continue to downplay, disparage and deny?
CASTRO: Yes, Anderson, I think that what we saw was dangerous incompetence and gross negligence. And these folks who are the highest military and intelligence officials in the country are using the Trump playbook. They denied first, refused to acknowledge wrongdoing, refused to apologize for anything. And now, because he's got people, as David Axelrod said, who are loyal
to him politically and don't want to embarrass him, there probably is not going to be a thorough investigation about an episode here that put our troops in danger.
[20:30:33]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST OF "ANDERSON COOPER 360": German News Magazine, Der Spiegel just posted an investigation where they revealed that mobile phone numbers, email addresses and passwords of prominent Trump administration officials like the National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, like DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and the Defense Secretary Hegseth can actually be found online using a combination of commercial search engines and data from massive hacks that have been released on the web.
So that doesn't sound very good. The testimony that you have heard from people who you have worked with, these are some of the former members of Congress.
CASTRO: Yeah.
COOPER: You said today repeatedly, they know better.
CASTRO: Oh, absolutely. Kash Patel was on the Intelligence Committee. He worked on the Intelligence Committee while I was serving on it. John Ratcliffe is from Texas. He also served on the committee with me before he went over to DNI in Trump's first term. These are people who know better. They knew that they should not have been on Signal, that this should only have been discussed in a Skiff. And they also are trying to convince the country that the sky is green when they say that this information was not classified.
As I said at the hearing, I have sat there for nine years on the Intelligence Committee and there is a lot of information that is much less sensitive that is highly classified, that you can't just take it and walk out of the Skiff and give it to whoever you want. By saying that this information, these war plans, the timing, the sequencing, the weapons were unclassified, they're basically saying that you could take that information and give it to anybody. It's completely unclassified, and it's dangerous.
COOPER: Well, also they're claiming that -- that there's no -- I mean they -- it seems clearly that they have done this on Signal before because nobody voiced any surprise about being on this chat. How much do you think it is about not wanting there to be a record of what is being discussed?
CASTRO: Well, I think that's quite honestly a big part of it. I think that there is a laziness, as Susan mentioned, and just a gross negligence. But it begs the question in terms of national security, is this the first Signal chat that they've had about classified sensitive national security information? Is it the only one? Or what else are they out there discussing? And this was a fairly large group of people, national security folks. Are there smaller Signal chains or larger Signal chains that have taken place where information like this has been discussed? These are all questions that need to be answered by the administration.
COOPER: Reuters is reporting that House Democrats are going to seek a -- to force a vote on an investigation on the Signal chat. Would you endorse that? Do you think that you'd get any Republican support on that?
CASTRO: We should get -- we should all as a Congress be able to say that there at least, at a minimum, should be investigation. So I absolutely support it. I do think that the secretary of defense who shared those war plans should resign, that there should be an independent investigation, and that others who were also derelict should also resign as well.
COOPER: All right. Congressman Castro, I appreciate your patience on our audio problems, so thank you. Coming up next, more on the deflection from Secretary Hegseth and others in the administration, claiming it's no big deal. But what if foreign operatives got access to that group chat? We'll talk it over with John Miller and Retired Army General James "Spider" Marks. And later, the concerns over Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. and his approach to measles and other medical issues from the Former Director of the CDC's Office of Communications, who just resigned from his post.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:38:45]
COOPER: More now on our breaking news, the president calling the fallout from the Signal group chat a witch hunt. The Atlantics' Jeff Goldberg shared all the texts he has this morning. And at the White House, there's no talk of leak of classified information. Instead, here's what Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this afternoon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would characterize this messaging thread as a policy discussion, a sensitive policy discussion surely amongst high-level cabinet officials and senior staff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: A sensitive policy discussion, others don't see it that way. Joining me now are Chief Law Enforcement Intelligence Analyst John Miller and Retired Army Major General James "Spider" Marks. John, I mean, so this is Signal, commercially available. You have Gabbard overseas, you have the hostage -- the head, Witkoff, the Head Negotiator. He's actually in Russia meeting with Vladimir Putin. How vulnerable is Signal?
JOHN MILLER, CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, it's hard to say. It was built to be end-to-end encrypted and to be impenetrable, but it's also an open source code. And when something is made with open source code, the first thing that we do, the Chinese, the Russians, is you start to attack it and you look for vulnerabilities.
In our case, it would be to do intelligence collection on specific targeted foreigners that would be covered under 702.
[20:40:00]
But in Russia and China's case, they're going to be looking for those high-value collection points too, and that's going to be basically everybody who is in that chat.
COOPER: We also don't know if they're all using their personal phones or encrypted phones or government phones.
MILLER: So, those answers were not clear. Were you on your government phone, or your personal? It's interesting because DHS CISA, which has been almost disbanded, put this memo out on December 18th telling officials, the Chinese basically own the phone systems in terms of penetration, exploitation. So switch to apps like Signal, and they actually name Signal as kind of the only one they name, if you're going to have sensitive conversations.
But what they're not talking about is classified conversations because they understand that if it's in the classified realm, you can't guaranty that those vulnerabilities haven't been penetrated or exploited or who's in that room with you. And one advantage that they got out of this is not only did they figure out who's in that Signal chat group, but they named all of their right-hand people who they said, this will be my second. So, they basically got their next list of targets.
COOPER: And also, you have the secretary of defense on this, talking about operational security, that they have operational security there. I mean, does that make any sense to you?
MAJ. GEN. JAMES SPIDER MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It's a tad ironic. Frankly, I don't -- I think all of us would agree. We don't need a memo from DHS to say, if you're talking on sensitive matters, be careful. Signal might work for you. In this particular case, I think there is a legal high bar to say this was classified legally. But when you put together times, locations, target packages, it's classified.
So, it's a distinction without a difference. What that falls into is to the extreme stupidity category. And I think when you look at this, you go, there's a casualness about this which is unimaginable to a guy like me. I mean, I lived in this world forever.
COOPER: This would've been unthinkable for you to do.
MARKS: Unthinkable. And I'm concerned without being facetious, is that -- if that had occurred, I probably would've been -- right now, I'd probably be in pretrial confinement.
(LAUGH)
COOPER: You would've been brought up on charges? MARKS: Probably, yeah. But again, as I said, legally it would be hard to prove that I broke a law because it was not stamped 'classified.' But when you tie all those strings together, you go, Hey guys, this is more than sensitive. This is classified. We got to be careful about it. And the other point to that is, those folks that were in that text chain, somebody should have said, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
COOPER: Well, that's the remarkable thing to me that no -- clearly, they have done this before because nobody is saying, Hey, it's weird that we're on Signal, or sure this is a good idea?
MILLER: Or who's JG?
COOPER: Right. True.
MILLER: You know, when that invitation went out, it's quite remarkable. But if you look at it the other way, and Spider and I talked about this, is how do you do containment here? You come out from the White House and you say, this was sloppy. This was a mistake. We're going to get to the bottom of how this happened. We're going to make sure it doesn't happen again.
And it's early in the administration and we have people who are new to this game, including the secretary of defense, we're going to fix this. That story goes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then it fades out. What they have done by insisting more on being right than on being true, is they have caused this battle which is going to make this a story that is a story that keeps on giving, which I just don't understand the strategy.
MARKS: It makes no sense to me. I mean, we all understand the cover- up is worse than the crime. And there is this great attempt to try to cover this up. I want to take a second and I want to go to JG, and when he accepted an invitation to join this chat group, so he did that consciously. If I had gotten a note from Mike Waltz, Hey, you want to join this chat? Absolutely, I'll accept that. What do you want to talk about?
Then all of a sudden, the chat group data comes in and you look at it, and this is a national security reporter. This is a very talented, smart, savvy guy. So he gets all this targeting information, he goes, I think I'm in the wrong chat group. He had an opportunity at that point to put that thing down, turn it off, call Waltz's office, say get your boys over here to sweep, burn this thing because I don't think I need to be in the middle of this.
He chose not to do that. I think he made a bad choice. What he did do, he chose to write an article about it. But he didn't release that information, big deal. It's now out there, that something's crazy. It could -- he could have achieved the same result by going right back to the originator, said I think you got to fix, you got a problem. You got to fix this.
COOPER: Although, I mean, as a reporter, if you are involved in a chat, first of all, it wasn't the operational security stuff was not really until the day of the attack the next day. Initially, it was this fascinating policy discussion in which the vice president of the United States is contradicting the president's own policy.
MILLER: Saying he doesn't understand the dynamics. It would be quite fascinating.
[20:45:00]
But on the other hand, had he done that prescription, which is I don't belong in here, somebody made a mistake, let me help them fix it.
(LAUGH)
MILLER: There's little or no indication that this behavior wouldn't have just continued.
COOPER: Right. There's no way they would be like, oh my God, we've seen the error of our ways. We're never going to do this on Signal again. They would be like, OK, we're not going to prosecute you. Thanks for letting us know.
MARKS: Well, there could have been a, we dodged a bullet.
COOPER: Right.
MARKS: And having dodged bullets, you go, OK, I'm going to change my behavior so I don't have to dodge that bullet again.
COOPER: Yeah, we'll see.
MILLER: Yes.
COOPER: James "Spider" Marks, Captain Marks, "Spider" Marks, appreciate it. Major General and John Miller, thank you so much, appreciate it.
As a number of new cases in measles rises again, a top official at the CDC joins us for an exclusive interview to explain why he couldn't work for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. anymore. And later, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem toured a notorious prison in El Salvador, receiving deportees on the same day an appeals court upheld a temporary block on allowing the administration to keep sending alleged gang members there. I'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:50:40]
COOPER: More breaking news tonight, Measles cases in Kansas have now risen to 23. State health officials say that the outbreak there could be linked to the one ongoing in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma that has infected at least 379 people. In both cases, unvaccinated children represent a majority of the cases. Now, this comes after comments by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in an interview this month, he has previously and wrongly linked the MMR vaccine to autism.
In the interview, while he did say that the vaccines "do prevent infection," he also downplayed their safety instead of their effectiveness, "for many people, it wanes." There's no evidence it wanes in most cases. Then yesterday, Kevin Griffis, the now Former Director of Communications Office at the CDC, published a new editorial in The Washington Post about why he left the agency the previous week.
At one point he wrote, Kennedy has promoted unproven treatments for measles. He also suggested distributing vitamin A, which does not prevent measles. Meanwhile, my final weeks at the CDC, I watched that career infectious disease experts were tasked with spending precious hours searching medical literature in vain for data to support Kennedy's preferred treatments.
I'm joined by Kevin Griffis for his -- for this exclusive interview. Kevin, I appreciate you being with us. I do want to play some of what Secretary Kennedy said on -- to Sean Hannity that you referenced.
KEVIN GRIFFIS, FORMER DIRECTOR, CDC OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: There are adverse events from the vaccine. It does cause deaths every year. It causes -- it causes all the illnesses that -- measles itself cause encephalitis and blindness, et cetera. And so people ought to be able to make that choice for themselves. And what we need to do is give them the best information and encourage them to vaccinate.
The vaccine does stop the spread of the disease. Yeah, we're providing vitamin A which -- there are many studies, some showing 87 percent of effectiveness of vitamin A against serious disease and death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: I mean, there's a whole host of issues with what he said, as we just talked about. What -- why did you decide to leave your role at CDC? What was it about that interview in particular?
GRIFFIS: Well, I mean, one of the fundamental things actually that Secretary Kennedy talked about there, which was that it's important for us to provide the best information to the American people. The problem is that's not Secretary Kennedy's strong suit. And so, a couple of different things that played into my decision to leave CDC, one, public health communications overall has really ground to almost a halt. It's certainly just a trickle compared to what it used to be.
I mean, that's important because medical information changes all the time. And there's essentially a pipeline, a circuit of information that is happening all the time that goes from federal government, state, local governments, all the way down to your medical provider. So having a halt of communication could have impact on your health.
COOPER: Why are they not giving press conferences? Why are they not communicating?
GRIFFIS: Well, I think that's something that you would need to ask them, but I think one of the things that's clear is that the communications process, the public health works best when the folks who are our experts are the ones who are saying, Hey, this is something we need to communicate and we need to communicate it now. And not relying on political appointees to make that decision.
COOPER: We mentioned that in your op-ed you wrote about career infectious disease experts spending hours searching for data to try to support Kennedy's preferred measles treatment. You went on to say all this misdirection is a waste of federal dollars that will do nothing to control the outbreak. It could also cost lives. Do you think the country is prepared for this growing measles outbreak or another pandemic?
GRIFFIS: Well, what I know is that right now, that the leadership at HHS isn't doing what it needs to do, to do everything it can to control this problem. It is a complicated situation and it's important that we spend all of our time thinking about how -- what are the best ways to be able to interdict the situation and curb the outbreak. But instead of talking to the experts at CDC, Secretary Kennedy is talking to people on the ground who are of, I would say, of questionable reputations.
And it's important that the folks at HHS, all political appointees are listening to career officials who are experts to be able to just get the best advice, so that they can make the best decisions.
COOPER: The CDC is also bracing for cuts. I mean, it could affect, we're told, as much as a third of the workforce. What kind of an impact would a third of cuts have?
GRIFFIS: Right. Well, I mean, look, I think that it's going to have an impact on its -- CDC's capabilities.
[20:55:00]
I think you can kind of think of it the way that you think about the military. In peace time, there may not be a huge amount for the agency to do. But you're constantly preparing for what is next. And so, what you want to be sure of is that you have the best capabilities, the best force ready to go when something, a situation escalates and you're needed. And if we have significant cuts to CDC, obviously, that imperils that.
COOPER: Kevin Griffis, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you very much.
GRIFFIS: Thank you so much for having me, Anderson.
COOPER: Also breaking tonight, a divided federal appeals court has maintained a temporary block on President Trump's controversial decision to invoke an 18th century law to quickly deport alleged gang members from Venezuela. They're being flown out of the country without any judicial proceedings to a notorious maximum-security prison in El Salvador. We really have no idea how these people have been picked as being gang members. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the prison today. She did a tour of the facilities by officials. She called the prison "One of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people." The prison campus is the size of seven football stadiums, inside are eight sectors each the size of an airplane hangar. Each of those sectors holds more than two dozen large cells with roughly 80 inmates per cell, that can fluctuate.
Officials refused to give CNN the exact population, but sources say it's between 10 and 20,000, with the capacity to hold up to 40,000 prisoners. Inside each cell are toilets, a concrete basin for bathing and a barrel of drinking water. There are several rows of metal bunks, no mattresses, sheets or privacy. Our Senior National Correspondent David Culver toured this prison. He joins us now.
So, Secretary Noem signed what was called a security alliance in El Salvador. Is it clear exactly right what that is? What it means?
DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She just posted a bit about this as she's boarding to leave El Salvador, headed on to Colombia. And the way that she describes it is this is an alliance that essentially would allow for sharing of criminal backgrounds between, Anderson, the criminals, as she puts it, those who are alleged of have committed crimes, mainly those connected to gangs, between the U.S. and El Salvador. As she says, this would inadvertently prevent folks from being placed back out onto the streets in the U.S.
So, they're certainly portraying this as a protective mechanism. It does seem it would also lead though, this agreement between the U.S. and El Salvador, to an increase in deportation flights. That was also alluded to. And as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, I mean, this is an endorsement after this visit of CECOT, this terrorism confinement center by Secretary Noem, who says that this is a tool in the toolkit for those that commit crimes against Americans.
COOPER: I mean --
CULVER: She is certainly in favor of it.
COOPER: It is extraordinary, clearly some of these people must be gang members and are probably pretty violent and awful people, but there's been no hearing for people and there are family members who have come forward and said, look, my loved one has a tattoo of a rose and you interpret that as being linked to a gang, but it's not. And these people have had no, which is something this judge has come out saying that they, according to the judge, Nazis which is the last in the World War II were at least given a hearing in the United States before being kicked out, and these people have not had a hearing.
I don't suppose that Secretary Noem made any effort to try to see if there were any mistakes made of any people who maybe shouldn't be there.
CULVER: I went through the entirety of the raw video that was fed back from her visit just a couple of hours ago, and there was no real interaction to try to ascertain any more information about their background. And in fact, I couldn't even see any direct contact between the secretary and alleged members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang.
There were some interactions between the secretary and Salvadoran gang members, MS-13, 18th Street. And as you mentioned, I mean, some of these folks have horrendous backgrounds. I mean, they've done brutal, brutal things and that's why a lot of the folks in El Salvador, Anderson, quite frankly, look at CECOT, this prison, and they love it. I mean, they see this as a symbol of freedom and they don't really look at any civil liberties as having been disturbed. They see themselves as having freedom to actually walk the streets and be able to leave their homes for the first time in decades, (inaudible).
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Which is significant in El Salvador, which has had -- yeah, I mean, El Salvador has extraordinary violence and the crime rate has plummeted.
CULVER: Exactly. Yeah. That's the context here though. You're talking about a country that has a level of brutality that we can't really conceptualize here. It's very different though when you're talking about Venezuelan gang members or alleged gang members. This is the problem here. We don't have specific information about their backgrounds and the crimes they're alleged to have committed, and we don't even have the total prison population.
So, a lot of these facts are missing here. And so, while folks may look at this from a positive perspective, from a discipline of those who actually have committed these horrendous acts, those who are now in this experimental stage, if you will, of trying to figure out if they're going to be there indefinitely or be able to get out, I mean, it has left them in a limbo, essentially.
COOPER: Yeah. David Culver, thanks very much.
A quick programming note, the final episode of "Twitter: Breaking the Bird".
