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Biden Review Blames Trump's Decisions For Chaotic Withdrawal; Dermatologist Accused OF Poisoning Husband With Drain Cleaner; NASA: Supermassive Black Hole Is Barreling Through Space. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired April 07, 2023 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): So, welcome back to CNN NEWS CENTRAL. Here's a look at some of the top stories that we're following for you this morning.

Tensions high in the Middle East. The Israeli military has now mobilized its reserve forces as the country retaliates with airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza after a major rocket attack. This morning, the Israeli defense minister has ordered security be bolstered after two women, they were both sisters, were killed in a shooting, one 16, one 20 years old. That happened in the West Bank this morning. We're following all the major developments there.

Also, new numbers from the Labor Department showing the U.S. added 236,000 jobs in March. That's the low expectations. This indicates perhaps the labor market is cooling off a bit amid the Federal Reserve's year-long rate hiking campaign to cool inflation, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): Let's talk about Afghanistan right now. Nearly two years after American troops were pulled out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration is admitting some mistakes were made but also putting blame on the former administration, the Trump administration, for that chaotic withdrawal. CNN's Kylie Atwood has more on this report. Kylie, what more -- what more are you seeing in this? What is an important report? And also, what is going to come from it?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Yes. So, Kate, what the White House put out yesterday was a report on the key decisions and challenges surrounding the Afghanistan withdrawal. And it really focuses heavily on the decisions that were actually made by President Trump, which they say severely constrained how President Biden was able to execute the withdrawal. And some of the things that President Trump did during his tenure or strike that deal with the Taliban that agreed to getting the United States completely out of Afghanistan.

They also cut the number of U.S. troops that were in the country by a large number during the Trump administration. And the third thing that Trump did was to really focusing on not sharing information with the Biden administration during the transition period, from Trump to Biden.

Now, there are two lessons learned that the White House in this document cites. One of those is more assertive communication that was needed around a time of a destabilizing event, and also prioritizing evacuations from situations like this. But they don't exactly say that they regret exactly when they withdrew from the Embassy in Kabul. And it's important to note that when NSC's John Kirby yesterday was asked if President Biden takes full responsibility for the execution of this withdrawal, here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL COORDINATOR FOR STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: He's the Commander in Chief. And he absolutely has responsibility for the operations that our men and women conduct in the orders that he gives. And he continues to believe that the order to withdraw from Afghanistan was the right one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: But, Kate, one thing that we're learning is that the State Department did its own after-action report, and it has far more findings and recommendations in it. 34 of those recommendations, then this White House document that was put out yesterday has in it.

[11:35:05]

So, there are some questions about you know, how they collected the information from that State Department after action-report and the Pentagon after-action report and synthesize that into this 10-page document that was put out yesterday. And we should also know that the State Department after-action report that was completed a year ago has still yet to see the public eye. State Department officials here in the building are concerned that they haven't seen the findings from that review.

And yesterday, the Secretary of State held a town hall here at the department. He took questions about the review, and he summarized some of the findings. But there are still officials who are frustrated that they just still don't know what lessons were learned by the department as a result of this chaotic withdrawal, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Kylie, thanks for bringing it to us. And that's definitely something that Republicans have promised they are going to be following up on as they now have the majority in House.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR (on camera): They are already beginning to ask questions and hold hearings on this subject.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now was retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. He is a former Assistant Secretary of State for Political- Military Affairs under President George W. Bush. General, always great to see you. How accurate, how helpful this report from the White House? BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET), U.S. ARMY: Well, I don't think it was very helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, the president had accepted responsibility for what happened on the ground but this report tries to absolve him. And frankly, I don't think that he was well-served by this report or the people that wrote it. Number two, there is a classified section to this much larger that should not seeing the light of day but will be put for the classified hearings inside Congress. And hopefully, more will be explained there.

BERMAN: You know, you and I, I think first met almost 20 years ago when you were in Iraq serving as a spokesperson there. I was -- I was covering it. After that episode, I'm sure there have been dozens of after-action reports from every government agency.

KIMMITT: Yes.

BERMAN: In your experience, how does one use these reports going forward and apply that here to the lesson in Afghanistan? How should this be used going forward?

KIMMITT: Well, I think you've got to look at any military operation, either in training or in combat. After that incident or after that training event, we go through a process called Lessons Learned. There's an old saying. Lessons aren't learned unless the behavior is changed.

And candidly, I don't think the lessons learned from Iraq were learned very well in the strong capable evacuation we did from Iraq, the subsequent collapse of the Iraqi military, and the value that came when we put more troops back into Iraq in 2014. It almost seems like that was played out in Afghanistan, which tells me that those behaviors were not changed from those lessons learned.

BERMAN: You mentioned classified documents or a classified part of this report. It made me think about what we are now learning this morning. On social media pertaining to Ukraine, there's been this alleged leak of classified documents or documents that may be from U.S. intelligence about Iraq, and a possible offensive coming up. How damaging is the release of information like this, I suppose whether it's real or not?

KIMMITT: Well, first of all, I think you remember 20 years ago when a reporter from another channel got thrown out of Iraq for divulging upcoming military operations. Candidly, you put soldiers on the ground at risk, you give a significant advantage to the enemy, and the overall success of the offensive may be at risk. I think that the people that leaked that information should be held accountable. And candidly, I think the media organizations should be very careful about what they decide to print or announce knowing that that is classified information that puts people's lives at risk.

BERMAN: There is some thinking that maybe it isn't even real. It's just Russian disinformation.

KIMMITT: Yes. BERMAN: The Russians, once again, using social media to spread the idea that there are things leaking. I mean, who do you think is even winning the intelligence battle when it comes to Ukraine?

KIMMITT: Well, I think it's very clear that the -- that the Western coalition is winning the information battle in the intelligence battle. The very fact that this administration released so much of that intelligence before the Russian attack took away any attempt of the Russians to try to paint the attack or paint the invasion as something that it really wasn't.

BERMAN: General Mark Kimmitt, great to see you today. Thanks so much for your help. Sara?

SIDNER: Coming up. A dermatologist in California is charged with poisoning her husband after he says she tried to kill him with drain cleaner in his teeth. And the evidence includes surveillance pictures from inside their house. Hear what are her attorneys are claiming as a defense.

[11:40:15]

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SIDNER: This is upsetting. A California dermatologist has been indicted by a grand jury for allegedly poisoning her husband with liquid drain cleaner. Her attorney says she will plead not guilty. He says the woman's husband engineer the events to take advantage of her in divorce court.

CNN National Correspondent Camila Bernal is joining us now from Los Angeles. Good to see you, Camila. Can you walk us through what happened? Because apparently, there's some video or images of her actually doing this allegedly.

[11:45:04]

CAMILA BERNAL CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Yes. So good to see you, Sara. And yes, there is video. We have not seen it. They have not made it public. But we have seen the screen grabs.

So, the husband, Dr. Jack Chen, also a physician, says that essentially his wife was trying to poison and kill him, so he got suspicious, put cameras all over the house, and he says he has at least three incidents where her -- his wife was trying to poison him. In the court documents, it says that there was a lemonade that was covered with plastic wrap.

And so, what this doctor is saying is that his wife took the Drano from under the sink, you remove the covering, and then placed the cell -- the cellophane back into it and then put the Drano right back under the kitchen sink. So, he says there are multiple incidents where she did this, took the Drano, put it into his hot lemonade, and then put it back. That's a lot of the images that you're seeing here from the house. He also says that he had to go to the doctor because of all of this. And says that he was diagnosed with stomach ulcers after he drank this lemonade. Now, she was arrested. He is now facing -- or she is now facing three counts of poisoning and one count of domestic abuse.

And now, what the defense attorney here is saying is that Emily Yu is not guilty. She will plead not guilty and says that this is all a scheme essentially to try to win in divorce courts. So, he says you have to look at the context here and see that this was a troubled marriage and that this is a very high-stakes divorce.

So, what the defense attorney is saying is that Dr. Jack Chen essentially orchestrated this whole situation by putting the cameras up because he says that the house had an ant problem and that essentially they were using the Drano and the lemonade as bait to kill the ants. So, he says that instead of calling 911, he called his defense -- or his divorce lawyer.

And so, there's a he said she said situation here. But, of course, all of it is troubling. And we'll have to see what happens. But if she is convicted, she could face up to eight years and eight months in prison, Sara.

SIDNER: You know, I thought we were done with his poisoning thing that we -- that just this year, there was a Colorado dentist accused of poisoning his wife to death by putting stuff in her protein shakes. And here we are with another story on those same lines. Unbelievable. Camila Bernal, thank you so much, live there from Los Angeles. John.

BERNAL: Thank you.

BERMAN: A supermassive black hole is creating chaos in space. Supermassive seems harsh, can we just call it big bone? Look at the incredible trail of stars there. Why NASA is now calling this an invisible monster?

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[11:52:24]

BERMAN: An invisible monster is barreling through space. That does not sound menacing at all. That is what NASA is now calling a possible runaway black hole that the Hubble telescope is now seeing, though it's invisible. CNN's Tom Foreman with the details here. Tom, what's going on?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Yes, happy Friday. Good news, happy Friday. This is an extraordinary phenomenon that NASA scientists say they've never seen before. And, of course, everyone's very excited about this.

What you're looking at right here is an artist's depiction of what's happening. To the left, the thing down there in the corner, that's this giant supermassive black hole that is blasting through space at an extraordinary speed. What you see on the far right, the little light space up there is sort of a coalescence of light that seems to be related to what you see in the middle, which is stars that are being created by the compression of gas in front of this black hole because it's moving so fast. And then as the gas comes around the backside and it's been heated, it forms stars.

Normally, it would just gobble them all up. But it -- to put it in sort of simple physics terms, which will be completely incorrect, but I'll give you an idea. If you were taken a vacuum and run it over a really dirty carpet, it'll suck everything up. If you do it really fast, it'll suck some things up. It'll also just create chaos with everything else. So, this is a really exciting find and pretty amazing, John.

BERMAN: I am reliably told -- I call this black hole rudely. I called it supermassive. But I'm told it like weighs 200-plus times -- is it 200 suns? 20 million suns -- 20 million suns. The weight of 20 million suns. And I saw a --

FOREMAN: 20 million suns.

BERMAN: I saw a black hole, the movie, in 1979. And I'm still scared.

FOREMAN: Correct.

BERMAN: So, why isn't this scary?

FOREMAN: Well, first of all, that's a helpful measure because we all have a real sense of how much the son weighs. So, 20 million of them is really easy to get. But this thing, it weighs that much. It's traveling so fast. It could go from the Earth to the Moon in about 14 minutes. Distance to the moon is around a quarter million miles, so that's well above the speed limit.

And the really interesting thing about this, they found it by accident, John. They were looking at images from the Hubble Space Telescope. And when they were looking at it, they noticed this little weird streak out in space there. They thought initially that this was just some sort of an artifact on the camera, not the case. Instead, they found a phenomenon like we've never seen before.

BERMAN: Tom Foreman, thank you for helping us through this.

FOREMAN: My pleasure.

BERMAN: Thank you for explaining this so well.

FOREMAN: Good luck.

[11:55:01]

BERMAN: Have a great weekend. Neither of you are ever allowed anywhere near me when I'm about to read a joke like this. Again, you can't do that.

SIDNER: OK. But just to be fair, the person who wrote the press release for this --

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: The press release from this is amazing.

SIDNER: -- they have to be from a child of the 80s.

BERMAN: Yes.

SIDNER: Because listen to this, just a short line. Rather than gobbling up stars ahead of it like a cosmic Pac man. I'm like, who is writing this stuff? It's so good.

BERMAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: I can't -- is this good or is this evil? I still -- Tom Foreman did not answer that question.

BERMAN: Well, it's supermassive. I mean, I think the one thing we can all agree on.

BOLDUAN: And I think it's so judgmental.

BERMAN: Yes, this is -- (INAUDIBLE)

SIDNER: Yes, I think it is kind of rude, John. I mean --

BOLDUAN: I know.

SIDNER: It does evaporate quickly. OK. The nerd in me came out because anytime Tom --

BOLDUAN: Are you serious?

SIDNER: I'm sorry, I'm high.

BERMAN: All right.

BOLDUAN: This is -- it's clearly Friday here.

SIDNER: This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL. We'll be back tomorrow.

BERMAN: No, we won't.

SIDNER: No, we won't.

BERMAN: Monday.

BOLDUAN: Just look --

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