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Senior Official: "Threat Is Still Out There" as Evacuations Push Ahead; Pentagon: 300 Plus Americans Evacuated in Past 24 Hours; Afghan Official: Kabul Death Toll Increases to more than 170 Killed; Evacuations Continue after 13 U.S. Service Members Killed; Ex-CIA, Pentagon Chief: Our Work is not Done in Afghanistan. Aired 12-12.30p ET

Aired August 27, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I am Anderson Cooper in New York. This hour the Pentagon warns of a specific, credible and imminent threat to the Kabul airport. That's just 24 hours after the terror attack made August 26 2021, the single deadliest day of the war for Americans in more than a decade.

A blast outside the airport part of a complex terror attack claimed by ISIS in the course on killed U.S. service members and scores of Afghans are now learning there was only one explosion. The Pentagon initially said they believe there were two yesterday.

Two flights landed today in Germany carrying wounded U.S. personnel. President Joe Biden promises no forgiveness for the perpetrators of the attack. We will hunt you down and make you pay he said. Pentagon last hour again, insisting that the American mission will end on August 31.

The big concern another attack could derail the frenetic effort to get out. 5400 or so people are said to be waiting for their turn at the Hamid Karzai Airport tarmac are on the tarmac as of this morning. 300 Americans were told got out in the last 24 hours, 89 total flights loaded with 12,500 evacuees managing to escape since Thursday.

CNN is covering these developments from all angles, both here in the United States and around the world. CNN's Sam Kiley is in Doha, Qatar. He spent much the week reporting in and around the Kabul airport. So Sam, what is the situation as far as we know the airport right now?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the numbers gathering around the airport Anderson, way down way down for two reasons. Obviously, in the first instance, because of this catastrophic terrorist attack 13 Americans dead at least 90 killed. According to the Afghan health authorities, more than 100 Afghans wounded, 15 --18 Americans wounded too.

So amidst all of this horror, there is an obviously a disincentive to go to the airport, then on top of that, the Taliban have put in a harder perimeter, they are already had a policy of trying to stop Afghans from getting to the airport.

It's actually almost amusing that anybody's managing to get through and then get through the gate at all. But we do know from the Pentagon that the evacuation process is continuing for those who are managing to get through albeit in much lower numbers, Anderson.

COOPER: And at this point, I mean, can Afghans I mean, are there still Afghans gathered around the - you know, the funnel points to try to get into various gates? I know the numbers are greatly reduced. Do we know? You know, is it still the same situation of Afghans getting there and then being served by U.S. Marines and others in army?

KILEY: The actual process varies from gate to gate. And whether or not the gates are actually open, the Abbey Gate, we understand where this atrocity was committed yesterday is firmly closed. The British are still in Canberra and right next door to it, although they're expected to be leaving over the next 24 hours.

Or even as we're speaking, there are thousand British forces as part of this multinational evacuation effort there.

And other gates, we've also got reports that members of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan special forces who are still part of the coalition still themselves hoping no doubt to be evacuated towards the end of this operation, have been throwing flash bang bombs, you know, flash bang grenades to try to drive people back from the gates.

They are running their own sort of private evacuation processes for friends and family that they can get to the gate. They have their own methodology. And equally, the Taliban have been employing some of their own crowd control methods which frequently involve shooting in the air.

So it's a highly fraught environment. It's actually almost amazing that there wasn't a firefight or more of a catastrophe when that gunman opened fire. Following the bombing at Abbey Gate, Pentagon reported that there was gunfire from there.

The troops in that environment seem to show a great deal of discipline in not ending up spraying members of the crowd and engaging in profligate fire back at this individual and equally the Taliban use of gunshots to drive people back.

We've seen recent video of that, and it's an equally problematic but equally not seeming to send up the level of already high tensions, extraordinary incident.

COOPER: Sam Kiley, appreciate it. CNN's Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon where a news conference wrapped up a short time ago. Barbara talk about what we learned about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan this morning.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: The Pentagon is taking great pains to say that the threat from ISIS-K does continue that it is serious that they are looking at it around the clock and trying to be ready if in fact there are more attacks. Now they are pressing for additional force protection measures at the airport and in no small part pressing the Taliban to push the perimeter back to close some roads.

They're having some success with that but they're not giving us any specifics about what the Taliban agreed to. So the question is why weren't those measures in place? Perhaps, before the attack yesterday, the Pentagon addressed that question.

[12:05:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: We're going to do the forensics on this Barb, and clearly try to figure out what went wrong, because clearly something went wrong.

But it would be irresponsible, if we didn't act immediately to just too double down and make sure that we were that we, that we were being as anticipatory as possible, because we still believe there are credible threats. In fact, I'd say specific, credible threats and we want to make sure we're prepared for those.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: And can they meet the president's promise of retaliation against the perpetrators of the attack? The top general at that briefing to the U.S. military, of course, does have the capability to do that.

But I think it's quite clear that what they are still trying to do is fine tune, develop the intelligence about exactly where ISIS-K perpetrators may be and develop some kind of plan. How do you get to them? That of course, is the big question. Anderson?

COOPER: And Barbara it's interesting that the U.S. now says that there was one it was one blast.

STARR: Yes, they took - they also we did correct that record. And you know this is why we always point out when there are these incidents attacks. Very often, the first reports, quite frankly, can be wrong or incomplete.

A lot of it's based on eyewitnesses and what people think they may have seen or heard today now they say they are quite convinced there was only one suicide bomber at the gate. There was not another explosion at the nearby Baron hotel.

COOPER: Yes, Barbara thanks. I want to go back to Sam Kiley in Doha, Qatar. Sam, the death toll now we just got in from an Afghan official according to this Afghan official, the death toll is now increased for Afghans to 100 to more than 170 dead more than 200 wounded. It really gives you a sense just of the power of this blast, the horror of it and how crowded that area must have been.

KILEY: Yes, incredibly dense number of people to surround a single suicide bomber, of course, bounded by those glass walls that we were talking about yesterday, which without being too gory about it means that shrapnel and the blast wave itself will bounce backwards and forwards, concentrating the power of the bus and killing them wounded, wounding even more people.

But even taking that into account, then adding in of course, 170 plus 13 Americans murdered in this attack. 183 people killed by one single suicide bomber with this best indicates just how maliciously competent groups like ISIS-K and ISIS more widely are.

They have been able to bring in the sorts of skills that they developed in Syria and elsewhere around the world. A lot of those skills, of course, learned in originally from Hezbollah in South Lebanon passed on through Iraq and then further refined over the years and years and years of mass murder and terrorism into this sort of mass atrocity.

I mean, these 470 Afghans, 13 Americans killed, more than 200 Afghans wounded. More than a dozen Americans also wounded an absolutely astronomical number of people from a single attack.

Now the Pentagon did also say that there was gunfire following the initial explosion. So some people arguably would have been injured or killed by that wave of gunfire, but they would have been the gunman driven off or killed pretty quickly.

That absolutely extraordinary level of mass murder, even by the standards of the so called Islamic State, the last massive atrocity they committed was the double bombing at a girl's Shia predominantly Shia Hazara School in Kabul involving a two car bombs there and other series of mass casualties there.

This is the sort of thing they like going in for and this will be a major blow to the reputation and efforts of the Taliban trying to put across the idea that they are capable and responsible new government, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, sickening new death toll, Sam, I appreciate it. CNN's National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood is at the State Department for us. So let's talk about the threat that the U.S. believes ISIS-K now continues to pose.

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, very clearly stated from the Pentagon in that briefing just now ISIS-K continues to pose an imminent threat to the U.S. mission in Kabul at the airport there. Multiple attacks, that's the typical pattern that we see from ISIS-K according to the CENTCOM Commander who spoke yesterday after this explosion occurred.

[12:10:00]

ATWOOD: And just to give folks an idea for who ISIS-K is, this terrorist group that we are talking about who conducted this terrorist attack, they operate in Central Asia, primarily Pakistan and Afghanistan right now, they were first formed however, in Iraq and Syria, that was in 2015. We know that they're ranked the fourth deadliest terrorist group in 2018, significant 77 attacks in the first four months of this year alone. And there was a car bombing outside of girl's school in May, that Sam Kiley referenced there that killed at least 85 people.

The group relies heavily on suicide bombings. And we should also note that there were some ISIS-K fighters who were released from prisons on the outskirts of Kabul, when the Taliban took the country under control.

We don't know exactly how many of those ISIS-K fighters were released from those prisons. But the Pentagon press secretary just said just a short while ago that that number is in the thousands. So there are more fighters that had been released into the country, just in recent weeks, Anderson.

COOPER: So what is the latest from the State Department about how these evacuations are now being run, obviously, that there's probably a level of detail they don't want to get into now. But what do we know?

ATWOOD: Yes, I mean, for operational security reasons, they aren't giving us a whole lot of detail as to what it looks like when they are saying that they are getting Americans safely out of the country safely to the airport, right?

What we do know is that the security around the airport right now isn't safe. They're telling Americans still to stay away from the crowds that are outside the airport. They told them that before these explosions happened, that still stands.

So what we do know is that they are working on ways behind the scenes to get Americans to safely to the airport. But because of the security situation on the ground right now, they're not telling us a whole lot of details.

But what we do know is that they're nearing the final phases of that right now. They're going to have to turn pretty soon from evacuation mode to complete withdrawal mode. Anderson?

COOPER: Yes, I appreciate it. Let's check in with the CNN Senior White House Correspondent Phil Mattingly at the White House. What word is Biden Administration saying?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: You know, Anderson, I was struck and listening to my colleagues how they laid out the complexity, the fluidity, the scale of the current threat that U.S. officials are staring at right now.

It gives you a sense of what the President and his national security team were grappling with this morning behind closed doors in the Situation Room.

Anderson, it was the same group that was just starting to sit down just 24 hours ago, when the explosion went off, they had to brief the president, then they are still grappling with the fallout of that explosion.

But White House officials I've spoken to, while they made clear yesterday was an extraordinarily somber day, very tense day, that they don't have much time right now to sit and think, to sit and try and figure out what happened or what went wrong, because of all of the issues that they're dealing with at this moment.

You know, Kylie laid out the scale of the evacuation that still needs to transpire in just the extraordinarily limited time window that U.S. officials, both here and on the ground are currently dealing with, obviously, the terrorist threat.

U.S. officials have been unequivocal about how real it is right now. And when you talk to White House officials, they reiterate that over and over again, somebody just a couple of hours ago said it's not an if it's a win, it's kind of the perspective that they have at this current moment.

And then you have a president who made very clear that the U.S. was going to strike back that there would be repercussions for those attacks. That is something that is also in play. Now officials I've spoken to over here have made a couple of things clear.

One, while the president hinted that they had some idea of who was behind the attack beyond kind of the obvious nature of the terror group ISIS, of course on, that is a process that is still playing out in terms of trying to identify and locate.

And while Pentagon officials Anderson have made clear they believe they have the capability on the ground to conduct a strike if the information is there to do so. Right now, the expectation seems to be that this may be something that would have to occur after U.S. forces fully withdraw on August 31.

That is still very fluid as well. But it just kind of all underscores that in just a matter of days that the administration is dealing with right now. They have all of these issues on their plate, no clear or easy answers.

And obviously a terror threat that is as real as it ever has been in the wake of the worst loss of U.S. military personnel in more than a decade. And certainly the only loss of military personnel due to hostile action since President Biden took office Anderson.

COOPER: And Phil, just briefly I understand President Biden's meeting with Israel's Prime Minister.

MATTINGLY: He is behind closed doors right now with the new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. We expect to hear from the President and what's called a spray where reporters go in the two leaders lay out some remarks beforehand. We will see if he answers questions.

This will be the first time we see; we have seen the president since his remarks to the nation last night. Obviously everybody is hanging on every word at this point, given what's at stake right now. So we will definitely keep you posted on if the president weighs in when reporters are in the room for that meeting, Anderson.

COOPER: Phil Mattingly, I appreciate at the White House coming out with future terror threats pull the United States back into Afghanistan. The former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says yes. Plus he documented the aftermath of yesterday's attack today he's covering funeral -- Correspondent and photographer who is and who's in Afghanistan right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

COOPER: Welcome back to our special coverage of Afghanistan where the U.S. military is pushing forward with evacuations following the deadly explosion of Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. service members, the death toll just increased to more than 170 Afghans.

Pentagon officials are warning the potential future attacks from ISIS- K which claimed responsibilities for yesterday's attack. Joining me now is CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto and Cedric Leighton, CNN Military Analyst and retired Air Force, Colonel.

[12:20:00]

COOPER: Jim, the threats obviously make this evacuation effort even more difficult, more dangerous. In terms of actually retaliating, as President Biden has said that the U.S. will be at a place in time of their choosing, that I guess gives him some wiggle room, but the options for retaliating are made all the more difficult by the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question, this will be a test of the president's reliance now on what you've heard him describe as over the horizon options. In other words, because you don't have U.S. military boots on the ground, you don't have U.S. Intel assets on the ground; you also don't have airfields in Afghanistan anymore to fly the drones and the other aircraft from a close distance.

You have to do all of that from over the horizon. CIA Director, Bill Burns, he testified recently saying, we have less capability in those circumstances, we simply can't get the same Intel without being up close and personal, as it were.

So as the president has made this vow and the military working on carrying it out, this will be a test as to how well they can accomplish that. Listen, it's been done before you remember, after the U.S. Embassy attacks in Tanzania and Kenya, in 1998, they fired those missiles from over the horizon.

But those missiles missed their targets; the targets were gone by the time they got there. You certainly have less capability not being in the country. Do you still have enough to get targets? We'll see.

COOPER: Cedric, what do you make of the U.S. capabilities once the last run throughout? COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Anderson, I think the U.S. capabilities that we would have are certainly less. Director Burns is absolutely right, as Jim mentioned, there are going to be difficulties in getting the intelligence that we need in order to carry out precision strikes.

The overdue rise in capability from an intelligence standpoint has been around for a while, in fact, it's well over 20 years old, predates 911, by a few years in its more robust form. And it was certainly used to great effect in Iraqi Freedom, as well as in nascent form in Desert Storm before that as well.

So there are so many factors to this Anderson that you have to look at the technical capabilities that we have, but also the fact that it's not just the technical data that we can collect. The human interaction is what's necessary to really understand what's happening and that would be lacking.

COOPER: Yes and Jim Sciutto, the most I would assume that many of the people the U.S. would rely on for human intelligence for you know, eyes on the ground Afghan assets. A lot of those people have probably - if they certainly if they were able to have gotten out of the country.

SCIUTTO: Left hope. If they're lucky, right, if they're among the lucky ones or have had to go on the ground internally. That was already an extremely dangerous job in a place as Afghanistan, because Afghanistan has had terror groups that the Taliban still active for many years and still targeting people who cooperate work with U.S. military and the government.

Now, the Taliban runs the country and many folks who worked for the U.S. military, U.S. agencies, et cetera, even if they weren't Intel gatherers, right? The riskiest jobs are being told to go to ground to save their lives. So absolutely their own personal Intel gathering capability is less because you know that they got to protect themselves and their families.

COOPER: Cedric, former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta was asked if it's right for the U.S. to stick to the August 31 deadline, I just want to play what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEON PANETTA, FORMER DEFENSE SECRETARY, CIA DIRECTOR: Bottom line is that our work is not done in Afghanistan; we're going to have to go back in to get ISIS. We're probably going to go have to go back in when al Qaeda resurrects itself; I understand that we're trying to get our troops out of there.

But the bottom line is we can leave a battlefield, but we can't leave the War on Terrorism, which still is a threat to our security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Colonel, do you foresee U.S. troops having to, you know, be back in Afghanistan at some point?

COL. LEIGHTON: Unfortunately, I do Anderson. And the reason I do is because this area of Afghanistan and the surrounding countries are hotbeds of extremism. And as a result of that we can expect that terrorist groups whether they're known like ISIS-K or al Qaeda, or maybe unknown groups in the future mind to try to use Afghan territory to create harm and create havoc.

And we have to be prepared for that. You know, before 911 we weren't prepared for it. We have very few specialists in Afghan languages, Afghan culture and we better be careful not to get into that situation again.

COOPER: Yes. Jim Sciutto, Lieutenant Colonel Cedric Leighton, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. More coming up today tragedy in Afghanistan, we'll talk live with a correspondent who documented the aftermath of yesterday's deadly attack. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

COOPER: President Biden meeting with Israel's Prime Minister, let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: There's going to be - we're going to talk about our relationship which is strongest convey, but I know you're going to want to know what's happened this morning in terms of my meetings with our my NASA security team.

Let me begin by once again acknowledging the bravery and the sacrifice that our military makes every single day and the loss of Americans Marines, sailor army personnel is tragic, as I said yesterday and Prime Minister talked about a slightly it's he's a military man gone to war lost a friend.

You know, losing a son or daughter, husband or wife is like being sucked into a big black hole money or just don't think there's any way out. Wonder what's happening. So my heart goes out, our hearts go out to all those who we've lost.

But look, the missions they're being performed is dangerous and has now come with significant loss of American personnel. And it's a worthy mission, because they continue to evacuate. Folks out of that region out of the airport evacuated more than 12,000 additional people out of the airport in the last 24 hours.

I met with my commanders this morning and first thing in the morning, got a detailed briefing by yesterday's attacks and the measures they're taking to protect our forces and complete the mission. And we will complete the mission.

I'm not going to take any questions because of the Prime Minister being here on Afghanistan now, but I'll be available at another time. But it's great to have the prime minister here. We, we become close friends. He's written the Amtrak to train a lot from New York down to Wilmington, Delaware.

I told you we have a few corporations in Delaware back in the days when he was in private practice. But he heads and leads the most diverse government in Israeli history. And we've got a big agenda today, starting with COVID, which we've been talking about and 19 and both are successful vaccination programs.

And we've talked a little bit we're going to continue to talk about the issue of booster shots. And you started your program early is that with great results, we're going to start mid-September, but we're considering the advice you've given that we should start earlier.

And this is promising. Also these booster programs are going to start here in September the 28th. Pending Approval of the FDA and the CDC committee, outside experts and the question raised is should it be shorter than it should it be in almost five months? That's been discussed.

I spoke with Dr. Fauci this morning about that. We're also going to discuss Israel's unwavering, unwavering commitment that we have in the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:30:00]