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CDC Says Schools Should Maintain Mask Requirements For Rest Of Year; Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; U.K. Accelerating Vaccination Drive Due To Variant Concerns; U.S. Gas Shortages; U.S. Afghanistan Exit Puts Interpreters' Lives In Jeopardy; Mandatory Wildfire Evacuation Ordered For Parts Of Western Los Angeles. Aired 3-4a ET
Aired May 16, 2021 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROBYN CURNOW, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hi, welcome to all of our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. Thanks for joining me.
Ahead on CNN, the seventh day of conflict between Israel and Gaza is underway. The home of Hamas' leader there has been hit. We are live in the region.
Some Afghan workers saved the lives of American troops and now theirs hang in the balance. What the United States needs to do to return the favor. I'll speak with former intelligence director James Clapper.
Plus, mandatory fire evacuations as California suffers from droughts.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Robyn Curnow.
CURNOW: The Israeli military says it has struck the home of the Hamas leader in Gaza. The IDF says he was not hurt in the airstrike. The attack on the Hamas leader came hours after Israeli warplanes leveled a high-rise in Gaza City.
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CURNOW (voice-over): The Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets had offices there and were given an hour to evacuate.
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CURNOW: The Palestinian health ministry says 147 people in Gaza have died, including more than 40 children. A ministry spokesperson says five children were pulled alive from the rubble Sunday.
In Israel the death toll continues to rise to 10 on Saturday as rockets fired from Gaza struck a residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv, killing an Israeli man. The Israeli prime minister vowed to keep up the military campaign until the rockets stop.
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BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: Israel has responded forcefully to these attacks and we will continue to respond forcefully until the security of our people is reinstated and restored.
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CURNOW: The Israeli military claims it blew up the high-rise because Hamas intelligence assets were operating there. But the head of the Associated Press, whose bureau was destroyed, says it had no indication of Hamas activity in the building. We get the latest from Ben Wedeman.
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BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City brings down the 12 story Jala'a tower, causing offices of the premier U.S. news agency, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera network.
Once more a massive building in Gaza is reduced by Israel's version of shock and awe to rubble and dust. The Israeli military warned that building's occupants, among them families, to evacuate before the bombing. The Israeli air force claims the building contained what it called, Hamas military intelligence assets, which, it alleges, were using media outlets as shields.
The air and artillery campaign against Gaza continues with mounting intensity as Hamas and other militant factions fire barrage after barrage of rockets into Israel. In Gaza's cramped confines, Israel's claims to be avoiding civilian casualties often seems to ring hollow as the residents of a crowded refugee camp bury their dead.
Early Saturday morning, Israeli warplanes struck a home in the crowded camp, killing at least 10 people, eight of them children. Among them, four of Mohammed Hadidi's (ph) five sons and his wife. The only son to survive, found under the rubble, was five-month-old Armad (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking foreign language).
WEDEMAN (voice-over): "They destroyed the house without warning at 1:30 in the morning," said Mohammed (ph). "People were sleeping, the children were sleeping."
Saturday saw more confrontations in the West Bank between Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. May 15th is Catastrophe Day, marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.
WEDEMAN: On the outskirts of a town, young men use slings to hurl stones at the soldiers.
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WEDEMAN: With the West Bank now aflame, Hamas has called upon the people here, in their words, to "set the ground ablaze under the feet of the occupation."
WEDEMAN (voice-over): And indeed, the fires are spreading -- Ben Wedeman, CNN, Al-Bireh, on the West Bank.
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CURNOW: As Ben has just reported there, journalists had to flee their offices right before the Israeli airstrike. This video captured frantic moments as journalists scrambled out.
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CURNOW (voice-over): So the head of the Associated Press says he doesn't know why Israel bombed the building but he says it will hamper further reporting in Gaza.
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GARY PRUITT, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ASSOCIATED PRESS: We didn't know any other details but we knew to get out. And our folks then did get out and them the missile strike ensued and leveled the building.
So we didn't get all of our equipment out but, importantly, we got all the people out. But our bureau, our offices, where we had operated for 15 years in Gaza, were completely destroyed.
We don't know the motivation. And you know, we're the Associated Press. We don't speculate about things. We deal in facts. I don't know the motive but I can tell you the impact. And the impact is it will hurt reporting. The world will know less about what's going on in Gaza as a result of this attack.
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CURNOW: Journalist Elliott Gotkine joins me from Ashdod.
Elliott, hi.
What more do we know about the targeting of that building?
Is the IDF likely to offer any proof as the AP and others have requested?
ELLIOTT GOTKINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They haven't done so, so far. We did reach out to them and they said they weren't adding to what they had said already about the building housing Hamas military intelligence assets.
The IDF is coming under pressure from the AP to provide evidence as to whether indeed there were Hamas military intelligence assets in that building. The Foreign Press Association has expressed concern and dismay at what happened in the Gaza Strip with that building.
But I think what this also does show -- because, obviously, the IDF knew that there was the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media organizations in that building. I think what this shows is its willingness to attack targets that it feels will help it meet its objectives, no matter the fallout.
You're probably not going to get much worse fallout from the international press by leveling the building housing some of the international press.
In terms of those objectives, they are, of course, to degrade Hamas and other militant groups' infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, to take out leaders, to degrade underground tunnels and rocket launchers.
In terms of the rocket fire, we had more rockets fired into Tel Aviv last night. I had to run down to the shelter with my children in the night. More rockets are being fired this morning. So quiet has not yet resumed.
A few moments ago, prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that this operation will continue, as long as is necessary, in his words.
CURNOW: Talking about Benjamin Netanyahu, how have domestic Israeli politics played into this latest cycle of violence?
GOTKINE: As we came into this latest conflict, the mandates to form a government had been lost by prime minister Netanyahu. He failed to put together a coalition so that mandate has passed to the opposition. He was getting closer to getting the right wing Yamina party on board and even the tacit or explicit support of the Islamist party, Ram.
So there was a real prospect that Israel's longest-serving leader was facing the exit.
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GOTKINE: But in the wake of what's been happening, the Yamina party has said it can't possibly go into a coalition government if it's supported by an Islamist party and has seemingly gone back to the side of prime minister Netanyahu.
Former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman, who used to be an ally of Netanyahu and now doesn't get on with him at all, says this is all part of his strategy to get more support, as Israel is likely to go to fifth elections later this year.
CURNOW: Thanks, Elliott Gotkine in Ashdod, Israel.
The mounting death toll in Gaza has forced the Biden administration to mount a diplomatic effort aimed at restoring calm in the region.
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ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Biden spent most of Saturday here at the White House, where he spent the day working the phones, having separate phone calls with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.
There's growing concern about these tensions regarding Israel. The president is trying to strike a very delicate balance in extending support for Israel's right to defend itself but also expressing concerns for the Palestinian people.
I want to read you a bit of the White House readout.
The White House says that, "The president noted that this current period of conflict has tragically claimed the lives of Israeli and Palestinian civilians, including children. He raised concerns about the safety and security of journalists and reinforced the need to ensure their protection."
This phone call took place late Saturday morning after that Israeli airstrike flattened that building in Gaza that was home to the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and other media outlets.
But these readouts don't specifically say whether the president addressed that specific airstrike. Now it wasn't just the president making calls over the weekend. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his Israeli counterpart to talk about the situation there.
But right now the administration is taking this all hands on deck approach as they're trying to urge de-escalation in the region -- Arlette Saenz, CNN, the White House.
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CURNOW: For more than a decade, U.S. ambassador Dennis Ross played a leading role in shaping America's involvement in the Middle East peace process.
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AMBASSADOR DENNIS ROSS, FORMER SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: What we've seen is the Middle East is imposing itself once again. You can ignore the Middle East but it doesn't ignore you. So the administration at this point also has to think through how it's going to try to manage things.
The reality that the administration is going to thinking through how it's going to manage its position, that also relates to countries in the region thinking, OK, how can we affect that?
I cite Egypt because it's important not only in terms of brokering a cease-fire now but Egypt also has an interest in reminding the Biden administration that the U.S. has an interest in Egypt.
And this is one example of why that interest is quite real. So a lot of -- a lot of what's going on right now is everybody's thinking about how does the current events affect what may be American policy over the next few years.
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CURNOW (voice-over): We have been seeing an outpouring of rage and solidarity for Palestinians in cities around the world. These scenes are in Jordan. Hundreds rallied there.
In Lebanon on Saturday, mourners buried a man killed the day before. Lebanese authorities say he was killed by Israeli gunfire after he tried to cross the Israeli border fence. Israel's military says its tanks fired warning shots at people who were damaging the fence.
Salma Abdelaziz was at those demonstrations on Saturday. She joins us from Beirut.
What can you tell us?
SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: I know we have some footage to show you. The demonstrations started out very peacefully, very calmly. We did see buses bringing people in but we also saw families arriving with their children.
You saw flags for some of the key factions, Hezbollah, the yellow flag; also people waiving Lebanese and Palestinian flags.
People said it broke their hearts to watch families in Gaza living under bombardment during Eid al-Fitr. Quite quickly, we started to see small groups of men come down those hills and go towards that very tall fence that you see in those images there, that divides Lebanon and Israel. They began to throw stones, some tried to climb that fence, hoist flags.
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ABDELAZIZ: We did hear what appeared to be gunfire coming from the Israeli side. We also saw Israeli troops on the other side. We found out that two people were wounded due to Israeli gunfire.
But by and large, it did end peacefully. That's because Lebanese troops moved in to disperse those crowds, making it clear that everyone needs to go home. That's exactly what happened.
Those protests are not just seen here in Lebanon. We also saw demonstrations in Jordan along similar lines, with the authorities also breaking those up there. But there's this sense across the region that these are very limited demonstrations. That's because of two big reasons.
The first is we are in the post-Arab Spring period. There's a lot of autocratic regimes here, that, human rights groups will tell you, simply do not want to see mass gatherings on their street.
Take for example, Egypt. You're not going to see President Sisi allow a huge demonstration to come out. You have a lot of countries in the region pursuing normalization agreements with Israel, countries trying to change their relationship with Israel.
That comes with more muted criticism, more muted response, a sense that they should quiet the streets. That's something protesters were telling me yesterday. They feel failed by Arab leadership and government. They said this is the only way they can show and voice their solidarity and support.
It's important to remember a lot of the people I saw yesterday, they were Palestinian descendants. This is not a remote conflict for them. This is at their heart and soul.
CURNOW: Salma Abdelaziz, thanks for that. Appreciate it.
Coming up, the CDC rolled back its mask guidelines this week for Americans fully vaccinated against the virus. But layers of federal and local regulations are causing confusion.
Where does that leave schools and students?
We'll have that next.
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CURNOW: People are, in North Carolina, getting back to normal this weekend. You can see many of them here are maskless at this outdoor food and drink festival.
States around the U.S. are revising and loosening many COVID restrictions as more Americans become fully vaccinated.
Now the U.S. CDC says schools should continue to mask for the rest of the academic year. Health officials say that's because there's not enough time for students to become fully vaccinated before schools are out for the summer.
Schools will need time to make potential adjustments in policy. Meanwhile, the U.S. recently opened up the Pfizer BioNTech COVID vaccine for kids as young as 12. That's helping schools to reopen further and get kids one step closer to normalcy.
Walt Disney World and supermarket chain Publix are among the latest companies to change their masking policies. But some small business owners haven't decided what to do.
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CAMILA BERNAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To take it off or to keep it on?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't mind the masks but I definitely feel like it's liberating to not wear them.
BERNAL (voice-over): Trader Joe's, Walmart, Costco, Starbucks say no masks required for most of their stores for customers fully vaccinated. But many small business owners Like Jay Spangler...
JAY SPANGLER, BUSINESS OWNER: I love taking this thing off.
BERNAL (voice-over): -- still unable to make changes and unclear about what they'll eventually require from their staff and customers.
SPANGLER: I think everybody wants to take their mask off. When people come in the restaurant and sit down, the first thing they do is they want to rip their mask off.
BERNAL (voice-over): What makes it even more complicated, states in red in this map didn't require masks before the CDC updated its guidance. States in blue updated their guidance. And others, like California, still reviewing their mask regulations.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'll continue to wear my mask around people that I feel are more vulnerable. I think it's the responsible thing to do.
BERNAL (voice-over): In the meantime, the Biden administration trying to answer questions.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What should I say when someone tells me they don't want to get vaccinated?
DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: It's important to understand what you're putting into your body and this is especially important because we know there's a lot of misinformation swirling around.
These are rigorously studied vaccines. Doctors and nurses across the country are not only recommending them but taking them themselves.
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BERNAL (voice-over): The experts have been on defense after the new CDC guidance, saying fully vaccinated people can go without a mask in most cases, caused a great deal of confusion. The CDC says the change was based on new analysis of data from vaccinated health care workers.
SPANGLER: The rules change so much that we just wait until the day of and then adapt on the fly.
BERNAL (voice-over): Spangler believes there will still be confusion, changes and last-minute notices but overall --
SPANGLER: It's great to see people's faces again.
BERNAL (voice-over): And he's hopeful about the future.
SPANGLER: The more we can fit inside, the better just because we've got a lot of recouping to do.
BERNAL (voice-over): Camila Bernal, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE) CURNOW: Parts of the U.K. are set to forge ahead with the easing of restrictions on Monday. But there's certainly growing concern over the COVID variant first discovered in India that's prompting the U.K. to step up its vaccine drive.
Let's go to Phil Black in London.
PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The British prime minister Boris Johnson often describes the situation here as a race between the rollout of the vaccine and the spread of the virus. This new variant, which is known to be more transmissible, tightens the race significantly.
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BLACK: With that in mind, the U.K. is tweaking its -- or I should say England is tweaking its vaccination program to try to get more coverage to those deemed to be most vulnerable.
Up until now, the waiting time between first and second dose has been about three months. For everyone over 50 or those who are more vulnerable, they will wait just eight weeks. The idea is to try to get them as much protection from the vaccines as possible ahead of any possible significant spread from this new variant.
So it is a race but it is also a balancing act. Lifting significant restrictions, from tomorrow, these are new freedoms which will allow people to once again mix indoors in homes, bars, restaurants. This is a lifting of restrictions that, even without the new variant, carries some risk.
What the government is hoping is that it can proceed with this lifting of restrictions while, at the same time, targeting more acutely those who are most vulnerable with the vaccination program and also testing aggressively, hunting down new instances of this variant.
That's the tactical situation they've embraced for the moment until they learn more. I think the analysis is, if this new variant is not significantly more transmissible, then that plan holds a good chance of working. If it is specifically more transmissible, then the government will have to rethink and particularly rethink further plans to reopen society.
As of June 21st, it was hoping to lift all restrictions. But as the prime minister said, if this is more transmissible, significantly so, there are going to have to be hard decisions in the weeks ahead.
CURNOW: Which folks in the U.K. do not want to hear. Phil Black there, thank you.
Football fans in London got a refreshing return to some normalcy on Saturday. Around 21,000 people were allowed into Wembley Stadium. Fans were overjoyed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's great, obviously. We've been waiting so long. It is a bit strange, I must admit. You got used to this experience of seeing everything third-hand on the television. So it is a little odd.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's brilliant. It's fantastic. I've got to say, I must admit it's great to be back. I really live around the corner basically. So we walked here today. It's fantastic, it's just brilliant.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's what football is all about. If you don't enjoy a day like today, you'll never enjoy football.
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CURNOW: And they were treated to a spectacular game as Leicester City pulled off the shocking upset, defeating Chelsea 1-0.
The fuel crisis in the U.S. is starting to ease. But in some places it is far from normal, all because of last week's cyber attack on a pipeline. How the future of cybersecurity is shaping up. I have that conversation, next.
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CURNOW: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. Thanks so much for joining me this hour. It's 31 minutes past. I'm Robyn Curnow.
The major U.S. pipeline hacked in a ransomware attack last week has been up and running for a few days. But it's still a huge challenge to find gas in some areas. In Washington, D.C., outages were reported at more than 80 percent of gas stations there and also across the Southeast. Natasha Chen reports.
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NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gas stations like this one here in Charleston, South Carolina, don't currently have fuel. But the overall situation is slowly improving across the southeast.
In fact, near us other gas stations got new supply of fuel overnight. On Saturday morning, Colonial Pipeline said its systems are now at normal operations but it could take several days, up to two weeks in certain places, for there to be a sense of normalcy.
Fuel flows through that pipeline at about 5 miles an hour. In the meantime, a handful of Southern states are under states of emergency. That lifts weight restrictions for trucks delivering fuel. These declarations also help states prevent price gouging from happening. Authorities are also urging drivers not to panic buy, because hoarding
gas could prolong this issue and make matters worse. According to the app Gas Buddy, which is crowd sourced from drivers self-reporting prices and outages, the highest percentage of gas stations without fuel is in the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., followed by the state of North Carolina. Just under half of gas stations in Georgia and South Carolina are without gas -- Natasha Chen, CNN, Charleston, South Carolina.
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CURNOW: So this attack on the Colonial Pipeline is part of a growing trend of ransomware attacks. Cybersecurity experts say the extortion website used by the hackers is now offline but a lot more needs to be done to make sure it doesn't happen again. Here's the head of the U.S. cybersecurity agency.
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BRANDON WALES, DIRECTOR, U.S. CYBER-SECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: Cyber attacks in our nation's infrastructure are growing more sophisticated, frequent and aggressive.
Malicious cyber actors today are dedicating time and resources toward researching, stealing and exploiting vulnerabilities, using more complex attacks to avoid detection and developing new techniques to target information and communications technology supply chains.
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CURNOW: Eric Cole is the founder and director of Secure Anchor Consulting and joins me from Washington. He's the author of "Cyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World."
Eric, hi, good to have you on the show.
How embarrassing has this hack of Colonial Pipeline been for the U.S.?
It really has exposed huge vulnerabilities.
ERIC COLE, SECURE ANCHOR CONSULTING: It's unfortunately not surprising to me and other cybersecurity professionals, because we knew the vulnerabilities that existed for a while.
And, unfortunately, these organizations are not fixing it. You're right; this is a big embarrassment. Not only did they have to shut down their entire pipeline for almost a week.
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COLE: But after denying multiple times that they weren't paying the ransom, it turned out that they did have to pay a ransom of almost $5 million.
CURNOW: Did paying a ransom increase the possibility of future threats, not necessarily for their company but for others?
COLE: Absolutely. It's sort of a double-edged sword. Unfortunately, with ransomware, when they get into your entire network -- in this case, they got into the entire pipeline and they had to shut it down -- the only possible way to recover, in any timely manner, was for them to pay the ransom.
Unfortunately, this sets a precedence that really scares me because the vulnerabilities present in Colonial are present in over 70 percent of the critical infrastructure, not only in the United States but across the world, which means, from an attacker's standpoint, game on.
And you're going to see these attacks increase significantly now that they know companies are going to pay.
CURNOW: So what are the lessons that have been learned, particularly in how government and these private companies, who maintain and own all of this critical infrastructure, particularly here in the U.S., how can they work to prevent this happening again?
COLE: First, to me, this is an Enron moment. What I mean by that is, when Enron happened, with publicly traded companies, it basically showed the government that these companies couldn't self-regulate and the government needed to step in.
To me, this shows, especially in the United States, that the government must step in and start regulating these industries. What's interesting is, nuclear power plants are already regulated by the NRC and they've had zero ransomware and zero attacks.
So it shows, when it comes to critical infrastructure and regulation, unfortunately, it does work.
CURNOW: I know that the U.S. President Joe Biden did institute an executive order that had been talked about in terms of trying to rework cybersecurity.
Did it go far enough?
When you talk about regulation, do you really think anything is possible in the divided Congress right now that is going to make real changes?
COLE: I definitely think executive orders are a good start. However, what was very confusing is, the executive order that came out a few days ago, on the same exact day that Colonial opened up again, actually had nothing to do with Colonial or ransomware. That was an executive order that dealt with SolarWinds that happened back in November.
So it shows even the U.S. government is 6 or 7 months behind when it's passing these regulations.
But I think you really identified the key problem. Right now, Congress is viewing cybersecurity as a political issue. We saw the sanctions against Russia, blaming them for so-called election fraud without a lot of proof. And they're really using it more as a political weapon.
What Congress needs to recognize is cybersecurity impacts every single person, not only in the United States but the world. And it needs to be a bipartisan issue that they start passing good regulation to implement proper security.
CURNOW: Is this also an example of a blended threat, essentially, that this is a criminal group that was supported by a nation state?
So this wasn't a direct attack from China or from Russia but a criminal group based in Russia, according to the U.S.
What does that tell you also about what companies are facing?
COLE: DarkSide was the group that it was traced back to and actually took credit for it. What's interesting about DarkSide, they've actually commercialized cyber crime. They're a commercial entity in Russia that's run just like a normal business, except they make all of their money on ransom.
And, unfortunately, because the United States doesn't have extradition treaties with Russia and it's not illegal to hack outside of Russia, this is a situation where, being in cyberspace, where you can access any country anywhere but not having international laws, is really something that's going to hurt us for the next five or eight years.
CURNOW: Eric Cole, thanks for joining us here on CNN.
COLE: My pleasure.
CURNOW: Working for the U.S. is a risky business for interpreters and others in Afghanistan. Now there are concerns about what will happen to them when the U.S. military withdraws. That, next.
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CURNOW: Welcome back.
So the U.S. withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan is raising big questions about those who could be left behind. We're talking here about Afghan citizens, who work for the U.S. as interpreters and in other critical jobs, putting their own lives on the line in the process.
According to a former U.S. national intelligence director, the citizens saved thousands of American lives. Now they fear they'll be prime targets for militants when the U.S. leaves.
My next guest, former director James Clapper, wrote about this, about the translators in a recent CNN op-ed. And he said, "What they did is they made a difference between mission
success and failure and between being killed or surviving to fight another day. We can and must do the right thing here."
CNN national security analyst and the former director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, joins me now from Fairfax, Virginia.
Good to see you, sir. Thanks so much for joining us.
JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER U.S. DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Thanks for having me.
CURNOW: You've written this op-ed on cnn.com and, in many ways, it reads like a plea.
Why do you feel you needed to publicize the plight of Afghan interpreters?
CLAPPER: It's through the coauthor that I became aware of this situation, since I did not actually serve in Iraq or Afghanistan. My war, in air quotes, was Southeast Asia.
And he got in touch with me and enlightened me as to the plight of these literally thousands of people, both in Iraq and now more critically right now in Afghanistan, who worked for the U.S. military in a variety of capacities, probably, most notably, as translators or interpreters, from the highest levels of the U.S. Command down to the squad level in the field.
And they're in a real bad place right now because, with the fixed date for the departure of U.S. forces, their lives are literally in jeopardy because the Taliban have vowed many times in the past to want to get even with these people for assisting us.
So they are at risk, as are their families.
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CLAPPER: And so I was engaged by a group called No One Left Behind, which is a group of service people -- former service people -- that served in Iraq and Afghanistan with these people and have taken up their cause. And I believe it's a worthy one.
CURNOW: You mention the delays and lags in processing these applications.
Are things getting at least better under a Biden administration compared to a Trump administration?
And how critical is it to speed up that process?
You of course, mentioned this end date of 9/11.
CLAPPER: Well, they do have an end date and there is a fairly rigorous 14-step process, as I understand it, that they have to go through to apply for what's called for a special immigration visa, an arrangement set up by the Congress in 2009 in recognition of the plight of these people.
And so, as the clock winds down toward the time when the U.S. is completely -- the U.S. military is completely out of Afghanistan, something needs to be done to expedite the processing for these people.
Due to COVID restrictions, there was, as we understand it, one person assigned in the embassy in Kabul to process these thousands of people. So there needs to be more effort put forth in terms of people and resources to process them.
And a related challenge, of course, is, once they're processed and moved to the United States, then the issue is settling them. And here, we've asked for -- No One Left Behind has implored the contractors, who profited over many years by hiring these people and employing them, just to remind them of the moral and ethical responsibility they have in helping to resettle these people in the United States.
CURNOW: So you talk about the security situation and how this needs to be sped up.
Do you think they will be targeted by the Taliban?
CLAPPER: I don't think there's any question of that. The Taliban have already targeted them. And so there are records of hundreds of these people that have been assassinated, murdered by the Taliban and retribution against their families as well.
So there's no question what the Taliban intent is. And the reason why these were crucial to the Taliban standpoint is, this was the bridge, the means by which U.S. forces in the field could communicate with the locals.
So if the translator is killed, which the Taliban regarded as critical, that then cut off the bridge of -- the conduit of communication between the U.S. forces and the local people and, you know, in a situation where they're trying -- to borrow an expression -- to win the hearts and mind of the local people.
CURNOW: So your worry for the Afghan interpreters, especially those who have moved to Kabul, I think, does it point to a broader concern about long-term security in the outlook for Afghanistan?
Because are you concerned then about the resurgence of the Taliban?
CLAPPER: Well, exactly, because many of these people sought safety and security, they thought, by moving from a rural area to an urban area; most notably, the largest urban area in Afghanistan, which is Kabul, thinking that, because there's a large American presence there and it's a big city with lots of people, they might be safer.
Well, that may not -- probably will not be the case once the U.S. military departs.
CURNOW: What can be done?
What else can be done?
How else can urgency be injected into potentially saving the lives of so many Afghan interpreters, who worked with the American troops?
CLAPPER: Well, there are two things here that need to be done. One is the processing by the State Department; perhaps the Department of Defense, I don't know, could lend a hand with resources. So the more people that are there to adjudicate cases in Afghanistan, to get them through the 14-step process, the better.
Then the other thing that has to happen is, once they are processed and they're authorized to come to the United States, is settling them someplace that's safe and secure for them.
There's not sufficient government funding to do that. That's why No One Left Behind has called on the contractors, the companies who employed these people for many years in a variety of tasks, not just translators but construction workers, electricians, people that worked in dining halls, et cetera, any number of tasks, all of whom now are going to be at severe risk when we leave.
There's the two aspects, the processing and the settling.
[03:50:00]
CURNOW: James Clapper, appreciate you joining us here on CNN. Thank you very much.
CLAPPER: Thanks, Robyn.
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CURNOW: For the first time in nearly a decade, the entire state of California is suffering from a drought as one wildfire forces mandatory evacuations. Details just ahead.
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CURNOW: Mandatory evacuations are underway in parts of southern California due to the fast-moving Palisades Fire. The Los Angeles County Fire Department says it's burned 750 acres so far and is zero percent contained.
Areas near Topanga Canyon in western Los Angeles county are evacuating. It's unclear how many homes and residents are impacted by these evacuation orders. This comes as California suffers from a statewide drought for the first time in seven years.
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CURNOW: So that wraps this hour. Thanks for joining me the past two hours. I'm Robyn Curnow. I'm going to hand you over to Kim.
