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Afghans who Supported U.S. Fear Retribution; Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) is Interviewed about Afghanistan; Biden Administration to Recommend Boosters. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 18, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:24]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow. We're glad you're with us.

Hours from now, the White House and the president will update the public about the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. Officials are expected so present three sets of data to show vaccine protection may be waning against COVID and this variant. But hospitalization and deaths are not. It is very effective against those. This as hospitals across the country are reaching really desperation mode and running out of beds for COVID patients.

SCIUTTO: Amazing to be there again.

First, we do want to get to Afghanistan, where the scene has become increasingly dangerous at the Kabul Airport. The Taliban controlling who has access, beating people in the streets as thousands of people are trying to find a way out of the country.

CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, she is on the ground amid that chaos. She just filed this report as desperate Afghans crowded around her, gunshots could be heard in the background.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Let me try to explain to you the situation where we are. It's very hectic. You can probably hear those gunshots.

We're about 200 yards, even less than 200 yards away from the entrance to the Kabul Airport. We just drove through it quickly. It's absolutely impossible to stop there. And I say we drove through it quickly. You can't drive through it quickly. It's bumper to bumper. Cars are barely moving. There are Taliban fighters all around.

We actually did see them physically (INAUDIBLE) with trunchins (ph) trying to get them back. We have seen them and heard them a lot as well firing on the crowds to disperse the crowds. It's a little difficult to see from this vantage point and it's a slightly edgy situation, so I don't want to push our luck. But all along the roadside over there, there's just hundreds of people who are basically waiting, desperately trying to get out of the country. It's not clear if they have their paperwork in order, if they've been declined and told that they can't enter the gates, or if they simply don't have the wherewithal to get inside.

The cameraman, Will Bonets (ph), just panning off right now. You can see it's a pretty large crowd who's formed around us already because this is a slightly unusual situation to be doing live shots from here, I think.

But it's definitely chaotic. It's definitely dangerous.

I will say this, the Taliban appears to be trying to disperse the crowds, and there are crowds there of young men who seem to be just engaging in like criminal activity. I don't know if you heard that. They're kind of running towards the Taliban and then running away from them again, almost like it's a game. But, you know, when there's bullets firing like that, they're firing to disperse the crowds. They're not targeting people. They're not trying to kill people.

But, of course, the minute you're firing willy-nilly when you have a bunch of civilians all over the road and civilian vehicles, people get hurt. That's what happens. So there's not a huge amount of discipline, let's say, to use an understatement in the ways in which they are dispersing the crowd.

We did see some people behind the concertina wire, implying that they had been able to get into that first perimeter, but I'm not going to lie, I mean, you're -- you're running the gauntlet to try to get in there because there are so many different things going on. You can just hear the gunfire is pretty much constant as the Taliban tries to push people back. And as a result, you're just getting lots of people on the road surrounding the airport, like the one we're on, less than 200 yards away. You're just getting lots and lots of people sitting by the roadside. Some of them have their bags. And they're just, obviously, have no idea how they can get out.

Will, could you just pan around a little bit more to get a bit of -- more of the scene. I'll step out to the side. You can see we've got this crowd around us, which is -- which is never great because, you know, crowds are always a little bit dangerous. And most of these people -- let me ask you, sir, are you waiting here to get out or what are you doing here?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, (INAUDIBLE) here.

WARD: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here, working with the American, with the (INAUDIBLE) --

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All have their documents, (INAUDIBLE), everything.

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) and they announced we take these guys working with the American are with the (INAUDIBLE). We take them to America. But they are liars. Just -- they take these guys -- they have --

WARD: Did you work with the Americans?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, of course. Of course. There is all -- like, more than 50,000 people here, crowded here, who is -- all of them is going to their homes. There's a (INAUDIBLE) less people now that are here.

WARD: Fewer people here now than there were a couple days ago?

[09:05:01]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes. Yes, the (INAUDIBLE) -- our home is here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But all -- there is many flights (ph) in here (Ph).

WARD: Did you try to get in?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, but it's all in -- didn't let you to go in.

WARD: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If -- they are not let you.

WARD: What did they tell you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're telling us just to stay here, the American (INAUDIBLE). We (INAUDIBLE), these guys, we have American passport (ph) or American British (ph) or they have the green cards, we take him. I don't know why you have to stop here or to stay here. We tell them we cannot stay here because every day that Joe Biden says we take this -- all the Afghan workers, they are -- help us --

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We take them to America. But in --

WARD: Have you applied? Have you tried to apply for --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Yes, of course.

WARD: And what happened?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They tell us you have to bring the HR (INAUDIBLE) for 2021. But it's impossible. The -- all the companies locked down in 2014. And it's very hard to find it --

WARD: Are lots of people in the same situation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, all the same. They have HR letter, but it doesn't have the recommendation letter. But most of them had their -- lost their badge.

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So and this --

WARD: So what's your message to America right now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's our message, America, we help the American peoples. So that's their jobs to help now, right now here. There's a very bad situation. If someone knew that you work with somebody, (INAUDIBLE).

WARD: I'm just going to thank you, sir.

Can I just bring you in? You have a green card?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, see, this is my green card.

WARD: This is your green card. He's showing me a picture right now of his green card. That's his green card. So you have a green card.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, and I have flight on IF-20 (ph) this Friday.

WARD: Right. Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'll -- fill out the application for the U.S. embassy.

WARD: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And this is the emails that I got from the U.S. embassy.

WARD: And so did you try to get in to the airport?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I -- I did but --

WARD: And what did the Taliban say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Taliban say we don't know, just go. We don't want to try to let you in. And like they say we don't have flights and we don't know anything.

WARD: They don't have flights?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

WARD: OK.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They just say but they -- do you have a flight?

WARD: You're talking about some of these people, they have their paperwork. This man has a green card. If you are a U.S. green card holder, you should be allowed to get into that airport. But the problem is it is such a chaotic situation, and the Taliban understands how this looks. The Taliban knows that having thousands of people on the streets desperately trying to press into the airport because they're so frightened, because they just want more than anything to leave, they know that that looks bad.

So it is not entirely surprising that the Taliban is not exactly embracing this sort of mass exodus. The question becomes, what recourse do these people have? How can their safe passage be facilitated? And we're not getting any sense of how that could happen.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: Just a view of the desperate attempts to escape that country and the chaos around it.

Just an hour after filing that report, CNN's Clarissa Ward give new insight into what she and her team were wilting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WARD: We went and got very close to the airport. And it was extremely chaotic. We had Taliban fighters all around approaching us, shouting. One man shouting at me to cover my face or he wouldn't talk to me. He was carrying this huge makeshift whip. It was a bicycle lock that had basically been split in two, so the heavy metal padlock was in the middle. And he's just using it to just get anybody out of his way who gets in his way.

There was a consistent stream of gunfire. We also were just accosted by people. I mean it's so heartbreaking. Everybody coming up to us with their papers, their passport saying, please, you know, I worked at Camp Phoenix, I worked at this camp, I was a translator, help me get in, help me get to America, help me get my SIV, my visa to get out of the country. And then the Taliban would just come through. At one stage this one fighter just lifted his gun up in the air as if he was about to start firing rounds, so we had to run and take cover.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Listen, you really get a sense the what a house of cards the whole system was. The government, the military, small U.S. force leaves, house of cards comes down.

HARLOW: And saying this is not the Taliban of 20 years ago. It's not. But it's clearly on the streets right now.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Exactly.

HARLOW: Let me bring in my next guest, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who served four tours in Iraq as a Marine Corps officer. He has been sounding the alarm his entire career, advocating bringing Afghan translators and others who have helped the United States and Afghanistan back to the states by streamlining the special immigrant visa program. On the night Kabul fell to the Taliban, Congressman Moulton wrote

this. To say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest. Worse, it was avoidable. But there is still time to debate how we manage our retreat. America and our allies must drop the onerous visa requirements where a typo can condemn an ally to torture or death and the military must continue the evacuation for as long as it takes.

Congressman Moulton joins me now.

Congressman, good morning.

You just saw and heard Clarissa's harrowing reporting that Afghan man showing his green card on his phone and saying the Taliban have turned him away.

[09:10:06]

What is your reaction?

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA): I mean, it's heart-wrenching. I mean let's just put this in perspective. We went into Afghanistan 20 years ago because the Taliban harbored the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. And now we're relying on that same Taliban to keep Americans safe, to keep American citizens -- they estimate between 10,000 and 15,000 American citizens are still in that crowd or cowering in their houses in Kabul and surrounding areas right now trying to get into the airport.

And that's not to mention the other 50,000 or 70,000 allies, like some of the people that we just heard from, who put their lives on the line, put their lives on the line alongside our troops and diplomats, not just for Afghanistan, but for America. We have a moral obligation to get them out, and I still don't see how we're going to do that.

HARLOW: You don't? Well, you have said, just as recently as this week, it is still within the power of the United States to do this. So it's not a question of ability, it's a question of how far will we go.

I want your reaction to this from a former Afghan interpreter to my colleague, Jake Tapper, just yesterday. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is not a system for them to get out. If these guys (INAUDIBLE) in Afghanistan or people (ph) we (ph) left behind, trust me, they're going to be hunt down one by one and people get killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: How imperative do you think it is that the Biden administration publicly commit to keeping those operations going at the airport past August 31st if necessary to get everyone out that wants to leave?

MOULTON: It's absolutely imperative. They must make that commitment. And they must follow through.

And this is a commitment I've been asking them to make for months now when I told them to starts the evacuation before we get to a point like this.

HARLOW: Actually, Congressman, can we listen --

MOULTON: But I stand by what I said. We can do this.

HARLOW: Let's let everyone listen to that moment. This is you questioning Defense Secretary Austin and General Milley in June.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOULTON: It takes 800 days or more to process a special immigrant visa. So it's too late for the special immigrant visa process.

Secretary Austin, why have you not started an evacuation yet?

These Afghan and American heroes, people who we asked to risk their lives, not just for Afghanistan, but for America because we had their backs. Their future is -- is in your hands. And this much is certain, the Taliban will kill them if they can. And they will rape and murder their wives and kids first if they can.

Chairman Milley, if the service chiefs were ordered to evacuate our Afghan allies today, is there a plan in place to get that started immediately?

GEN. MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: We have the military capability to do whatever is directed by the president of the United States with respect to our allies and those that have worked with us. And I consider it a moral imperative to take care of those that have served along our side.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: General Milley calls it a moral imperative. You call it a moral imperative. Have you had any response from the White House or the State Department to your call now to get them out and deal with the paperwork later?

MOULTON: I mean, essentially, no, they're moving in that direction. They talk about how many people they can evacuate per hour on planes. But if people can't simply get into the airport -- even green card holding people like you saw on TV --

HARLOW: Yes.

MOULTON: Then very quickly we'll get the people out who are at the airport right now. But there will be tens of thousands who are stuck outside that wire under the Taliban's control.

HARLOW: So is it your assessment, at least in terms of where we stand this morning, Congressman, that America will leave come August 31st, or perhaps later, and those who aided us will be left behind? MOULTON: I refuse to believe that. I'm certainly not going to agree

with that. It is absolutely within our power today to make sure that that doesn't happen, to see this operation through. This is a harrowing situation because in many ways we are relying on the Taliban to not start massacring people today. I mean they could massacre that crowd outside the airport at the drop of a hat if they wanted to.

[09:15:02]

HARLOW: Have you talked to the --

MOULTON: And taking aside how terrible the situation is, we've got to do everything we can to get people out. We're the United States of America. If we can put a man on the moon, we can figure out how to get people out of Afghanistan.

HARLOW: Yes. Yes. Have you talked to the president since Sunday?

MOULTON: I have not. Look, I'm not -- I'm not sitting here on TV and criticizing President Biden because I'm trying to get attention or something. This is just the right thing to do.

HARLOW: Yes.

MOULTON: So, I don't really care whether the president wants to talk with me or not. I just want him to execute this mission. I want him to get it right. And I want him to get it right because it's good politics, but more fundamentally, it up holds our values and it's the right thing to do.

So I don't care who gets to the president and tells him how important it is to see through this mission, I just want to make sure he does it because thousands of people, men, women, young children are counting on him.

Poppy, I was sitting in bed last night going through emails that had been forwarded to me from all over the country, from veterans who were trying to get their friends out. And just looking through some of these passport documents, seeing the innocent faces of these young kids who may very well die because their fathers or mothers worked for us.

HARLOW: Right.

MOULTON: And it's just heart-wrenching to think that we might leave them behind.

HARLOW: They could -- they could be our children.

Congressman Seth Moulton, thank you very much.

And to be clear to our audience, you have been calling for this, not for months, not for a year, but since 2014. Thank you for staying on it.

MOULTON: Thank you, Poppy. SCIUTTO: Just amazing perspective from him.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: He was on the ground. He served there.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, we're also staying on top of breaking news on the COVID crisis. We're learning new details about how effective the vaccines are.

Meanwhile, in Alabama, there is not a single ICU bed left in that state.

In Florida, one of the nation's largest school districts goes back to class with a mask mandate in place, that in defiance of the governor.

HARLOW: Also, the governor of Texas has just announced that he has tested positive for COVID one day after attending this packed event. We hope he is OK. And we'll have an update on this ahead.

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[09:21:52]

SCIUTTO: This morning, the Biden administration will brief Americans about the rollout of COVID-19 vaccine booster shots. We will bring that to you live.

We do expect the White House COVID-19 team to present three sets of data which suggest some waning vaccine protection against COVID-19 infection in the U.S.

I want to bring in CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, as well as former acting CDC director, Dr. Richard Besser.

Thanks to both of you.

Sanjay, I know you've been talking to the White House advisory team. What are they going to announce and what does it mean?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, what they're going to announce, as you -- as you mentioned, is this idea that booster shots will be recommended for all Americans, ultimately, roughly eight months after they received their first shots.

Now, this is going to be based on new data. New data that's been embargoed -- will be embargoed until 11:00 today, at which point many people will see this data for the first time, including many federal health officials.

I've been talking to people over the past several days, some of whom, Jim, told me that they did not anticipate boosters being needed. I think they're going to be seeing this data for the first time along with the rest of the country. Three separate data sets, all United States-based data sets, Jim. I bring that up because what we've largely been looking at up until today was international data sets from places like Israel, for example. There's a data set that's looking at long term care facilities specifically, another data set that's looking at hospitals and then another large data set from the state of New York.

And based on that, they -- they say that they've seen evidence of waning of the effectiveness of the vaccine against infection, infection overall.

SCIUTTO: Right.

GUPTA: What they haven't seen, and I asked about this, was waning of the effect on the vaccine against people getting sick enough to go to the hospital or dying. They think the vaccines still hold up very well.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GUPTA: But what they're saying, based on the waning that they're seeing against infection, the concern is they want to get ahead of the curve, they say.

Now, this is coming from the task force, Jim. And let me just end with that. The FDA, they need to, obviously, look at safety data and efficacy data and some of that data hasn't even been submitted yet. So this is not imminent, the booster.

And then the CDC has to weigh in on it and formally recommend this.

SCIUTTO: OK.

GUPTA: But it was very clear from my conversations with people today that we're headed in this direction and that for the first time, really, many people will see data that they haven't seen before.

SCIUTTO: OK. Dr. Besser, there are some who had said we should be preparing for this. That at some point we may need boosters. This is not unlike you have a new flu shot every year as the flu virus changes. For folks at home who are watching this and who are vaccinated and felt safety from that, how should they process this news? Should they be worried about waning efficacy, or should they take this as this happens and the booster can, you know, in effect, address this problem?

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: Yes, you know, I think it's important that we all look at the data, the information that's released later this morning, to better understand the conclusions here.

[09:25:03]

You know, if the thinking is that there is such widespread transmission in the United States from the delta variant and that people who are fully vaccinated are contributing to that because of the waning protection, that's an important thing to talk about because that's a different standard than what was -- than what was proposed earlier where boosters would only be recommended if they started to see an increase risk of hospitalization or serious infection in those who are fully vaccinated.

But I don't -- I -- this doesn't raise concerns to me. It's what I was hoping we would be seeing, is that close monitoring. We knew that CDC was looking at groups of people. And so sharing that information, sharing their thinking is important because it brings people along in the thought process. It's not a rush to get vaccinated, it's a cautious approach, but we need to look at the -- at the evidence and information that's driving this new decision.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Gupta, I wonder, big picture here, do we need to change to some degree the way that we look at this virus? In other words, not so much a pandemic with a hoped for end date, but something that we have to come to live with over time, right, and that part of living with that will be getting boosters, right, at the right time to help increase immunity as this thing is out there and mutating and finding other ways to infect people?

GUPTA: Yes, I think it's increasingly looking that way. I think there was always this -- or there was often this sort of idea that there would be a fairytale ending with the vaccines. But the idea that this virus is becoming more endemic, more entrenched, I think people were concerned about that almost from the very start given how contagious even some of the initial variants were. I think delta, obviously, really added to that.

I think what is interesting about this conversation about boosters, though, Jim, and I really drill down on this, is that some say, look, this was always expected, as Rich Besser was just sort of talking about. Many shots do require boosters. But -- and you have a prime shot and then a boost shot. I think the way that it was sort of explained early on was that you got two shots of these mRNA vaccines. The first was the prime, the second was the boost.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GUPTA: But now what we're hearing is that both those shots together were sort of the prime, and this will be the boost.

Why did they give two shots together at the beginning? Because one shot wasn't providing enough protection. So two shots together at the beginning and that -- and now this boost. So some say this was always sort of the plan. But as Rich pointed out, we've got to look at the data to sort of justify it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

Dr. Besser, there is a big portion of the population who cannot get vaccinated to this point, right, and that is children, people under the age of 12. So we're already talking about boosters for adults. Where do we stand, to the best of your knowledge, on a decision about okaying at least emergency use authorization for vaccination for children? BESSER: Yes, you know, hopefully, Jim, we will see some movement on

that in the near term. FDA has been pretty tight lipped in terms of the process on that.

But I do think it's really important, though, that we recognize that boosters is not going to end this pandemic. What's going to end this pandemic is finding a way to motivate the 30 percent, 40 percent of people this this country who haven't gotten any vaccines yet, and doing a much better job, a much better global job at getting vaccines around the world, because if we -- if -- as long as there is transmission anywhere, everyone is at risk. We're at risk for variants to arise that the vaccines are totally ineffective against. And then from a pure equity standpoint, the fact that 80 percent plus of the vaccines have gone to wealthy nations is really unconscionable. We need to do more here in America to get vaccines around the globe.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean the virus has a lot of life boats, right, to keep itself going, including among unvaccinated Americans.

Dr. Gupta, Dr. Besser, thanks so much to both of you.

GUPTA: Thanks, Jim.

BESSER: Thanks, Jim.

HARLOW: Well, ahead, it is a race against time for the Biden administration to evacuate tens of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan ahead of the U.S. military's August 31st self-set deadline. How daunting is this? What will it take? We have some new insight ahead.

We're also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures are down. There are major renewed fears about the pace of economic recovery at this point in the pandemic. Investors will now keep a close eye on details from the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting. We'll see how markets open.

Stay with us.

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