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AI Security Breach; ICE Agent Behind Fatal Shooting In Maine; Federal Workers Held Hostage At Gunpoint. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired July 22, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:31:18]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It sounds like a scene from a movie, but this really happened. OpenAI says some of its experimental AI models escaped and hacked into another AI company. It's one of the first publicly disclosed examples of an AI system autonomously breaching its testing environment and reaching a real external system.

CNN AI correspondent Hadas Gold is with us on this story. Shaking your head, I mean, I -- this is why ---

HADAS GOLD, CNN AI CORRESPONDENT: Amazing.

KEILAR: Hadas, this is like the nightmare of the future.

GOLD: This is the nightmare of the future. And not only does it sound like a sci-fi movie, but it is something that AI and cybersecurity experts have been warning about for some time as these agentic AI models get better and better. Agentic meaning that these AI models, they take actions on their own, independently. They be given sort of a task and then they make these decisions on what to do by themselves.

So let me walk you through exactly what happened. OpenAI says that it was testing some of its models on an offensive cybersecurity test, essentially could they hack something. But they removed some of their safeguards in order to do this, but put them in what's known as a sandbox. This is like think of a biocontainment lab when you're testing out viruses. It's supposed to be a protected environment.

But this model, with no human intervention, hacked OpenAI's own internal systems to gain access to the internet. It wasn't supposed to have access to the internet. And then on its own, it decided that Hugging Face, which is a popular repository for open-source AI models and data sets, was going to have the answers, or was most likely going to have the answer to this test that it was supposed to take. And then it hacked into Hugging Face's own systems.

Now, what's fascinating is that Hugging Face actually noticed the hack, and they actually went to law enforcement. They were saying, hey, police, we've been hacked. Help us here. When then, in fact, it took them some time. And then OpenAI actually reached out to them as well, and they figured out this was actually OpenAI test model that had hacked into their systems.

Now, OpenAI has says in a statement, we consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident involving state of the art cyber capabilities and are responding accordingly. We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and help calibrate on what models are now capable of.

But again, just think about what happened here. This model, on its own, no human intervention, hacked OpenAI's own systems, escaped out of its sandbox, out of its testing environment, got onto the internet, and then hacked a whole other company systems.

KEILAR: OK. The sandbox clearly needs some bars here. And I called it the nightmare of the future, but I guess it's now the nightmare of the present. Has Hugging Face said anything publicly about this?

GOLD: Yes. So Hugging Face's CEO and I should note, Hugging Face is very popular amongst the AI community. They said, the CEO said that they suspected that last week's cyber attack might have come from a frontier lab, given the sophistication of the agent. And it turns out they did.

And they said they've now spent hours working with open AI to not only try and fix the flaws in their system that this agent found. Because these agents, they are so good at cybersecurity that they're not only good at, you know, hacking into something, finding the exploits, but also helping defenders and fix them.

But just this is important because think about what could happen not only if these types of agents get into the wrong hands, but what would happen in another testing environment where they're trying to test, you know, how good could you hack into a bank? And then that agent actually breaks free and manages to hack into our banking systems or utilities. So this is really a critical moment for cybersecurity and these AI companies to really shore up all of our defenses.

KEILAR: My goodness. Hadas Gold, what a story to watch. Thank you so much for that.

Still ahead, CNN investigates what happened in the 18 days between the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good amid the immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

[14:35:05]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Residents in Maine are demanding action following the deadly ice shooting of a 25- year-old father from Columbia last night. The Biddeford City Council held its first meeting since the killing of Joan Sebastian Duran Guerrero last week. Residents spoke during a public comment portion of the meeting, expressing both sadness and anger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM PECOR, BIDDEFORD RESIDENT: Limited power is not no power. You cannot control ICE you -- but you can govern Biddeford. It's your job to use every lawful municipal power to defend constitutional government within these borders. The danger before us demands leadership in the full exercise of local authority, publish the Biddeford Police Department's policy, order a public legal review of the city's federal and available municipal safeguards. Put binding action before this council.

[14:40:14]

EVAN LOCKWOOD, BIDDEFORD RESIDENT: I can't help but sit there and think that you knew that this would happen. This was a long time coming, and that's sad to say. We'd been contacting you, we'd been emailing you about this, about the ICE presence in this, not only in this state, but in this city. And it's sad that it had to come to this point. Saying that there's not much that we can do that just isn't enough.

LIAM LAFOUNTAIN, MAYOR OF BIDDEFORD, MAINE: When one of us is taken like this, we do not look away, we do not stay quiet. So what are we asking for? Two simple things, justice and truth. The

truth of what happened to Joan that morning, a full, honest, transparent accounting with nothing hidden and no one shielded from it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Duran Guerrero was authorized to work in the US. The Department of Homeland Security said the officer used deadly force because he was "fearing for public safety." Officials also say that the 25-year-old was not the intended target of the operation and none of the agents were wearing body cameras at the time of the shooting.

This Friday will mark six months since the death of Alex Pretti, that VA nurse who was shot and killed by federal immigration officials in Minneapolis. And his death came just after the fatal shooting, of course, of Renee Good.

In a new CNN Investigation, Jake Tapper examines the tumultuous 18 days surrounding those two deaths. Photography Focusing on the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies.

SCIUTTO: Joining us now, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent Jake Tapper. I mean, listen, Jake, when you look at this, you found that Greg Bovino, since deposed, was personally pressuring federal prosecutors to charge protesters and they had to push back because the evidence just didn't support those charges.

How did they manage given all the pressure that was imposed but also, is this kind of thing still going on?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, that's the question. What our investigation concluded is, it revealed, is that the prosecutors that resigned from the US Attorney's Office in Minnesota a few days after the shooting of Renee Good, they had already been alarmed by what had happened in December with the launch of Operation Metro Surge.

And one of the reasons Bovino was so mad is because the prosecutors had been seeing and filing cases against protesters. The immigration agents accused them of assault on federal officers, or AFOs. And then time after time, the claims that the immigration agents were

making were proven to have been lies over and over. So they did, you know, pull it back in terms of how many of these charges they were bringing against protesters unless there was evidence.

But I want you to take a listen to one of the prosecutors who resigned on January 13th. This is a guy named Tom Calhoun-Lopez, who has been a prosecutor for years and years, was in the army before that, talking about what it was like watching Operation Metro Surge in December.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM CALHOUN-LOPEZ, FORMER ASSISTANT US ATTORNEY, MINNESOTA: Beginning in December, the administration had an unprecedented wave of immigration enforcements in the city, in the Twin Cities. But Operation Metro Surge was different. From the beginning, it was conducted in a paramilitary posture. Hundreds of agents were flooding in from out of district.

They weren't familiar with Minnesota communities. They were heavily- armed. They were in masks. They patrolled in combat gear. And their ethos was of a military occupying force. Their mission seemed to be to subdue the state and to bring it to yield.

TAPPER: You know from occupation because you're a veteran.

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: That's correct. I deployed to Iraq twice, once as a field artillery officer and once as an army judge advocate.

TAPPER: And it reminded you of that kind of occupation?

CALHOUN-LOPEZ: It did. Through two different deployments, I got to see what a military occupation looked like. And unfortunately, Operation Metro Surge had all the hallmarks of a military occupation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So that was the setting. And then in early January, a Homeland Security Investigations' agent told the prosecutors and others, upon hearing that Bovino and Border Patrol were coming, to join this surge of 3,000 individuals in the streets of Minnesota. And their concern was the Border Patrol.

These guys, they guard the southern border. There's no backup for 50 miles. They think of themselves as the last line of defense. They get away with a lot. Them coming here is a bad idea, Bovino coming here is a bad idea, and the quote was, someone's going to get killed. That was in early January. January 7th, Renee Good is killed.

And then Bovino calls mad about the lack of prosecutions against protesters, says a whole bunch of stuff about putting down the city. Says some anti-Semitic things, the prosecutors believe, against the US attorney, Danny Rosen.

[14:45:09] And then after that call, one of the prosecutors says they're going to kill someone else. And then a few days later came the Alex Pretti killing.

KEILAR: That is stunning, what that prosecutor said to you. And when a lot of people say that who are critical of what happened in Minneapolis, they would be dismissed as hyperbolic. But he's someone who knows, right? So he's bringing sort of a really interesting perspective to that.

Before we came to this segment, we were looking at what is happening and has happened in Maine. And looking at what's unfolding there, what's unfolded in Houston, has there been a change to what immigration officials are doing in how they're using their tactics?

TAPPER: The accusations from the prosecutors, and just keep in mind, we're not talking about a bunch of, like, hippie communists, right? These are prosecutors. These are people who join the government, want to lock away bad guys and keep communities safe.

And the accusations, the impression they got was, one, these tactics were over aggressive and actually counterproductive. They were not going after the worst of the worst. They were going after protesters and they were trying to start a riot, Bovino and others, in the view of these prosecutors.

And two, there was a policy about lying. The immigration agents were lying about what happened. There was this other case in between the two shootings, you might remember, these Venezuelans that were fired upon by an ICE agent. They were charged, and then it turned out the ICE agent had been lying.

He claimed he had been attacked by a shovel and a broom. And the video evidence came, and Danny Rosen, the US attorney, had to withdraw the charges with prejudice. And that ICE agent has now been charged with lying and assault. It is the policy to lie about these things.

And we've seen now in Texas and in Biddeford, Maine, claims made by immigration agents that are contradicted by witnesses, contradicted by video in many cases. And they're not going after the worst of the worst. They're not going after people who have guns or drugs. They're not traffickers.

They're -- maybe in some cases they're undocumented citizens, but do they need to be killed?

SCIUTTO: And they're going after a quota it seems, right? The administration set --

TAPPER: Oh, just a quota?

SCIUTTO: They want to reach some number --

TAPPER: A hundred percent.

SCIUTTO: -- regardless of who it is. TAPPER: Yes, 2,000 A day.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TAPPER: Yes.

KEILAR: Or in the case of Maine, not the target of the operation that they're undertaking.

TAPPER: But we're not even talking about, like, should this guy have been arrested. He was killed with his wife or his partner, and their daughter in the car. And the claim is like because he was going to drive away and that was going to be an endangerment to the community?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TAPPER: Who endangered who? What endangerment is this going on? This is the policy. And the reason these prosecutors resigned is because they were being pushed by the Justice Department to claw back the arrest warrant or the warrant for Renee Good's car and change it.

So it's not an investigation into whether Renee Good's civil rights were violated, but whether or not Renee Good was trying to attack the officer. And they were being asked to conduct investigatory steps into the widow, Becca Good. And that was just a bridge too far. And so five resigned that day, January 13th, and others resigned after.

KEILAR: Jake, thanks for being with us such important reporting. And you're going to see much more of this exclusive reporting on THE LEAD starting at 5:00pm Eastern. We'll stay tuned for that.

TAPPER: Thanks, guys.

KEILAR: Coming up, two federal workers were abducted at gunpoint, zip tied and taken hostage for 15 hours in a remote trailer in Northern California. The sheriff that led the negotiations to freedom is going to join us live next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: This week, federal prosecutors revealed more details of the terror that two federal forestry biologists experienced as they were held hostage in a California national forest for some 15 hours. Court filings describe these biologists conducting frog research last Thursday near Gumboot lake campground an hour southeast of Mount Shasta, when they were then held at gunpoint, kidnapped, zip-tied and led to a remote trailer.

Federal prosecutors say the suspects then used one of the captives' cell ph to make demands and threats saying "I've got live rounds ready to effing then something inaudible here, anyone who Fs with me. Some of his conversations with law enforcement were caught on dispatch audio.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) SUSPECT: I have two biologists in my custody right now. I tried to make contact with the FBI through the law enforcement agent that is in the ranger station here in Shasta. I'm requesting FBI investigator to speak to so that I can release these hostages, over.

You're best to send somebody up unarmed. Talk to me from that camper. I can hear you. And then we can go from there and try to make further contact, over.

FBI: Tell me, what's your name? Who am I talking with?

SUSPECT: Who are you talking with? Come on, guy.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: The Justice Department is charging 49 year old Joseph Henrichsen, and his son Phoenix, with kidnapping federal employees. We're joined now by the sheriff who helped lead this huge local, state and federal response to end this standoff. Jeremiah LaRue is the sheriff of Siskiyou County, California.

[14:55:08]

Sheriff, this is incredible, and thank goodness this ended with these two employees being released safely. How were authorities able to successfully negotiate this? Tell us what these communications were like.

JEREMIAH LARUE, SHERIFF-CORONER, SISKIYOU COUNTY: Brianna, thank you for having me on. I'm happy to be here and tell a little bit of the story. It was a very long day, went into the night, over 15 hours. Great collaboration with local, state and federal resources.

And it was a scary situation, very dynamic. We didn't know what was going to happen, what to expect. We did our best to maintain control of the scene. And we began negotiations at 4:00 o' clock in the afternoon, and it didn't conclude until around 2:40 in the morning.

And I could tell you a little bit about what was going on and a lot of it was waiting. Joseph, who we were primarily in contact with, didn't give us a lot. He said he wanted to speak to the FBI. We had the FBI there, but he didn't say really what he wanted. And that made us very nervous for the safety of the two people that were hostages inside the trailer.

KEILAR: So he didn't really make particular demands here. And it sounds like there was a bit of a lack of clarity about the motive that he had, is that right?

LARUE: Yes. Even to this day, I still don't know what the motive was. He just indicated that he wanted to talk to the FBI and that's really all that we got out of the conversations with him. The call originally came in at about 11:00 AM that morning, and we responded.

We were in the area about noon and we immediately launched our drones in the area, which I have to say, for anyone that's listening, drones are incredibly helpful. And it kept us a distance away from that trailer because we knew that he was armed. And because of those drones, we were able to get sort of a preview of what to expect later on.

KEILAR: Yes. We're seeing just how remote this area is. We saw some footage of some of the officers there. This is a 2000ft up in rough terrain in the Shasta Trinity National Forest. What were the difficulties just kind of getting in there?

LARUE: Yes. As you're seeing, I mean, that campground is about 16 miles from Mount Shasta City. And the road is very narrow. It's really hard to get multiple vehicles, you know, through that area. So we had to basically stack up vehicles along that road in order to make our way in.

And so, even at the campground it's very small, there's no areas to turn around. So we had to be really decisive and, and make sure that when we went in that we were doing it safely, and that we had hopefully time on our side. The concern was, what's the state of the victims? What are they going through?

We wanted to make sure we could get there as quickly as possible to rescue them. And we were not going to leave until we got those victims to safety.

KEILAR: He'd been on the radar, according to NBC, of law enforcement before he'd had a violent charge dismissed because of overcrowding in a mental health facility there in the state. He allegedly had harassed a neighbor, including firing guns and fireworks at the neighbor's porch. Was he on then law enforcement's radar, should he have been on their radar in a more fulsome way?

LARUE: So this is a little bit unique in that I spoke about this before. We at the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office had no record of these two individuals. They weren't known to us. We had never spoken to them before. And only after the encounter did we learn about this other case.

And so, there was concerns potentially of mental health issues. And so when we went into this, we didn't have a lot of information. And so, we had to build that information slowly during the negotiation process, which again lasted again 15 hours. It's a long time.

Very thankful for a positive outcome. It couldn't have been more smooth. I mean, it was an excellent example of law enforcement coming together, collaborating. And it didn't matter if you were local, state or federal, we all worked together very well.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly glad to hear that. I just can't imagine going, I think really most people can't. From researching frogs to then being a hostage, how were -- how are these forest workers doing? Do you know?

LARUE: So I was there the night that it happened, and what I can tell you is when they came out, I briefly saw both of them. Obviously they were going through a terrible situation. They were very brave, I can tell you that. I was really impressed by how they were handling the situation.

It's going to be a long haul for this right now. I can tell you that they're healthy physically, but again, there's a lot of impact that's going to be emotional and long term that they need to work through. And the great thing is I know the Forest Service, as well as a lot of our local partners, are teaming up to provide that service that can help them because we need to be compassionate. We need to think about those people.

And again, there are community members and we -- and we love them dearly and we want to make sure that they're safe.

KEILAR: Yes, what a tough situation. Sheriff LaRue, thank you so much for being with us. We're so grateful that obviously this came to a peaceful resolution.

LARUE: Thank you, Brianna, for having me.

KEILAR: A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.