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America's Longest War Ends; Biden to Address Nation on War's End; Some Americans Left Behind after Withdrawal; James Clapper is Interviewed about Afghanistan; Power out for Weeks after Hurricane; Craig Fugate is Interviewed about the Hurricane Response. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired August 31, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: For adoption and it also made room in Louisiana shelters for those animals that were injured or separated from their owners during the storm.

Thank you for letting me join this morning.

CNN's coverage continues right now.

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

A new chapter, an uncertain one, begins. The last U.S. military planes have left Afghanistan. And today, for the first time in nearly two decades, there are no U.S. soldiers deployed on the ground in that country.

This image captured the moment Major General Chris Donohue (ph), commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, stepping onto a C-17 in Kabul, the final U.S. soldier to step off Afghan soil. An iconic photograph marking the unceremonious end to a war that cost some 2,461 American lives, many thousands more injured.

In just a few hours, President Biden will address the nation. He is expected to explain his decision not to extend the mission past the August 31st deadline, even with the administration granting that Americans remain on the ground there. He'll also address what comes next.

We have a team of reporters following all the angles of this story. Let's begin in the region.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins me now from Qatar, where the U.S. diplomatic mission for Afghanistan will now be based. And, of course, where many thousands of those evacuees went from Kabul.

So what has the first day under Taliban control looked like in Afghanistan?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Some each (ph) each understands a possible degree of celebration from the Taliban, declaring essentially their independence. Remember, this is a country where the median age is about 18 years old. So, so many Afghans have never known a country without an American presence in it. And we've seen the Taliban parading, particularly well-armed Taliban parading through aircraft hangars on that military side of the airport near some of the helicopters that appear to have shipped around a lot of U.S. diplomats when they were using helicopter essentially to get around their daily commute. Also, to a press conference on that tarmac, essentially congratulating Afghanistan's on their newfound independence.

But there is an enormous task now ahead of the Taliban. They no longer have the Americans to blame for anything going wrong in Afghanistan's economy. Health care system. There is a banking crisis potentially unfolding them (ph) now as well. And, of course, the security threat of ISIS-K, initially focused, it seems, on the Americans left at the airport, but certainly also, too, that terror group, the mortal enemies of the Taliban and the many other broad brands of extremism in that country that could find the Taliban sort of slightly more stayed bureaucratic form of governance, something they want to push back against.

But it's extraordinary today to be on the Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar, Doha, and see these fleet of C-17 aircraft, dozens of them as far as the eye could see at times, sitting idle. For two weeks they've been spearheading this extraordinary 122,000 strong evacuation effort. For 20 years, frankly, they've been assisting in America's longest war. We saw some over the last aircraft that flew out just last night in one corner of the airfield. Extraordinary to see how they look idle, sat there, almost abandoned. And now Americans having to work out precisely what the last 20 years gained for them, where they left Afghan in Afghanistan, and quite what comes next, most importantly, for the millions of Afghans left behind under the Taliban now, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, all those aircraft just one side of the enormous military effort in that country over the past 20 years.

Nick Paton Walsh, thanks very much.

Let's go to the White House now. CNN's Jeremy Diamond.

So, Jeremy, the president will speak today. We heard from the secretary of state yesterday. What will he say? What kind of future will he paint for Afghanistan?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, President Biden left it up to the head of the U.S. Central Command and to his secretary of state to announce the end of the America's longest war. But today he will certainly have to mark that moment as a moment in history.

President Biden has talked since he came into office vowing that he would not pass this war on to a fifth commander in chief after becoming the fourth commander in chief to oversee this war. So I think he will certainly talk in broad scopes about what this moment in history means and why he decided to make that decision. We have heard him defend his decision to withdraw U.S. troops for

weeks now. But some questions that President Biden will have to answer, including, you know, his commitments in the past. As he said less than two weeks ago, to getting every single American citizen out of Afghanistan before U.S. troops would leave that country, saying that he would only leave on that August 31st deadline if, indeed, the mission was complete.

[09:05:01]

We know that that mission was not complete. There are at least 100 Americans, perhaps as many as 200 American citizens who remain in Afghanistan, according to the secretary of state. And so we'll hear the president talk about the next phase of this mission, which, as we have heard from the secretary of state and others, is focused on this diplomatic mission now to get those remaining Americans out. And I'm sure we will hear the president expound on exactly how that is all going to get done.

SCIUTTO: A mission dependent, frankly, on cooperation from the Taliban.

OK, so the Biden administration is claiming the decision, at least to stick to the August 31st deadline, was a unanimous one, but that's somewhat misleading, is it not, because we know that on the decision to remove all forces from Afghanistan, that several of the president's senior military advisers opposed that decision. They recommended leaving perhaps 2,500, 3,000 troops there.

Can you explain that difference?

DIAMOND: Yes. Yes, no doubt about it, Jim. You hit the nail on the head there because there is a distinction between the president's advisers, military and civilian advisers agreeing that he should proceed with that withdrawal on August 31st once conditions on the ground deteriorated, once we saw that terrorist attack in Kabul happen last week.

There is an entirely different thing to say that those military advisers agreed with the president's initial decision back in April to withdraw all U.S. military forces by then, by September 11th, which was the original decision that the president had made.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DIAMOND: We know that the president was advised to do a conditions- based withdrawal by the military and that certainly is not the decision that the president made. That being said, what we do know is that ultimately the president is sticking to the decision, hoping that by pulling troops out by the deadline that was agreed to with the Taliban, that they will be more cooperative in allowing civilians, American and otherwise, out of the country now that troops are gone.

SCIUTTO: Well, that's a big if, right, and one we'll have to be watching very closely in the days and weeks ahead.

Jeremy Diamond at the White House, thanks very much.

CNN's Barbara Starr, she's at the Pentagon for more on what the Pentagon is saying about the withdrawal of the last troops from Afghanistan.

Barbara, I'm aware you're in a building there surrounded every morning in the hallways by people who served in Afghanistan, commanded forces there, and likely lost fellow service members there. Tell us what you're hearing from those officials now as America's longest war has ended.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, here at the Pentagon, they are very adamant that while the military part of this effort is now over, it is shifting to a diplomatic effort led by the State Department to continue to get Americans out, Afghans out who want to leave, and try and develop some sort of, if you will, pragmatic relationship with the Taliban. The Pentagon not embracing yet the notion that there was any defeat involved there, leaving that to the pages of history.

Listen to what the press secretary, John Kirby, had to say on CNN's "NEW DAY" a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Historians will write the -- they'll write the chapters here.

What I can tell you is that we prevented Afghanistan from ever becoming a safe haven for an attack on the United States against. And in the process, U.S. forces, coalition forces, our NATO allies and our Afghan partners made a lot of progress in that country, progress which is now going to be up to the Taliban to see whether they're willing to continue or not. They have -- they have made promises and now the United States government, the international community, are going to hold them accountable to those promises.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STARR: But the big unknown, of course, is the potential terror threat from the U.S. point of view, ISIS-K, ISIS in Afghanistan, still very much a threat. And as the Pentagon's been saying now that threat is right in the lap of the Taliban.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: The Taliban guilty of terror attacks itself through the years, many dozens of them.

Barbara Starr, thanks very much.

Joining me now to discuss is James Clapper. He's former director of national intelligence, led U.S. intelligence operations during a big part of those many years in Afghanistan.

Director Clapper, thanks so much for joining us this morning. JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Well, thanks,

Jim, for having me.

SCIUTTO: Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he said yesterday that the U.S. has, quote, significant leverage over the Taliban to ensure cooperation on a number of issues going forward. Is that true?

CLAPPER: Well, it's true depending on how the Taliban conduct themselves. If they endeavor to behave like a normal, air quotes, nation state, we'll have some leverage, particularly with respect to sanctions. Afghanistan has been almost totally dependent on external foreign aid to function. So if they recognize the need for that, and that tempers their behavior, then, yes, we would have leverage. If they don't, if they revert to the way they behaved before 9/11, then we don't have so much leverage, in my view.

SCIUTTO: The truth is their behavior even post 9/11 has not been encouraging.

[09:10:03]

I mean this is a group that carried out many, many terror attacks against Afghan civilians, U.S. soldiers. We know al Qaeda fighters were fighting alongside Taliban militants as they advanced across the country.

I just wonder, based on your experience with the Taliban, do we have any reason to believe they will not offer safe haven to these kinds of groups, al Qaeda and others?

CLAPPER: Well, we'll see. They've got a real problem on their hands with ISIS, the ISIS franchise in Afghanistan, which with whom they do not have a good relationship at all. So if they are fighting among themselves, that will be a huge distraction. And, oh, by the way, will help us collect more intelligence.

SCIUTTO: Does al Qaeda, as it currently stands today in Afghanistan, as well as ISIS-K, do they have the capability today to carry out attacks overseas, including on the U.S. homeland?

CLAPPER: I don't think so as things stand today, but that's not to say that couldn't evolve. But at this moment I don't believe they do.

SCIUTTO: The U.S. strategy going forward to handle that threat, as the president has often said, is, as known in the military, as over the horizon. In other words, you have drones flying out of UAE and elsewhere monitoring the possibility of staging U.S. forces outside the country to go in if they have to carry out a particular raid. Does that over the horizon capability effectively replace having not just boots on the ground but intel gathering on the ground, airbases on the ground, et cetera?

CLAPPER: Well, it doesn't -- it obviously does not replicate the capability we had by all the on-the-ground resources we had. But harking back to history, and I was in the intelligence community right after 9/11, we have a -- we're not starting from square a here. We know a lot more about Afghanistan and the players there, and we've learned a lot about how to conduct counterterrorism operations. So while we can't replicate having on-the-ground presence, I do believe we'll have a substantial capability to monitor, surveil over the horizon.

SCIUTTO: Pakistan's role in all this has not been encouraging. It harbored the Taliban for the last 20 years, gave them safe bases across the border in Pakistan from Afghan territory and, frankly, helped organize and supported their quick takeover of the country.

Is Pakistan, can it be described as a U.S. ally any more for real, in reality?

CLAPPER: Well, it's played both roles. Perhaps a frenemy. I don't -- I don't know.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CLAPPER: Pakistan has been on occasion duplicitous about this. They are a -- the wild card here. What are they going to do now? Will they cooperate with us if -- if, you know, just to share intelligence? I don't know about basing in Pakistan. So the stance that Pakistan now assumes is, I think, going to be critical and potentially critical to this -- to the over the horizon capability of the United States.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

Final question, because I know this is an issue close to your heart. You served many decades in U.S. intelligence, both before and crucially after 9/11, central to many of these -- these battles and these operations.

Do you believe the U.S. lost this war?

CLAPPER: Well, I don't really think of it that way. I think it's kind of a draw. I think we -- we did a lot in 20 years. We -- the original mission objective was to thwart a homeland attack, and we did that for 20 years. So I really don't think of it that way. I think, like a lot of people, it's going to take some time to sort out just what to think about the momentous developments of the last couple weeks.

SCIUTTO: Yes. James Clapper, thanks for your service through the years, I should say, the decades, and thanks so much for joining us this morning.

CLAPPER: Thanks, Jim, for having me.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next this hour, sweltering heat, no power, long lines for gas and other supplies. That's a reality in southern Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Ida. We're going to take you live to New Orleans.

Plus, 14 portable morgues are headed to the state of Florida as it deals with an unprecedented number of COVID deaths. Look at that graph there spiking up.

And the U.S. Education Department has launched investigations into five states over their bans on school mask mandates.

[09:14:58]

Why they could be -- could be a violation of civil rights law.

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SCIUTTO: This morning, the death toll from Hurricane Ida stands at two. Several others in critical condition and, of course, still assessing damage across the region. This after a highway in southern Mississippi was washed away, most likely because of torrential rain caused by the hurricane. The state highway patrol says at least seven cars fell into a hole nearly 20 feet deep. The ground is still unstable where it happened.

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The highway is a main artery between Mississippi and Louisiana and remains closed in both directions.

This morning, Ida is now a tropical depression, making its way slowly across the southeastern U.S. This after slamming into the Gulf Coast as a category four hurricane. More than a million customers across three states, they remain without power. Could take weeks for it to be restored to some parts of Louisiana.

Take a look at this. This is aerial video from a Coast Guard helicopter surveying damage in parts of Grand Isle. Officials are asking residents who evacuated from there not to return yet. Downed power lines, debris making roads impassable. You know, even when the storm passes, there's still a lot of danger out there.

CNN's Ryan Nobles -- Ryan Young, rather, is in New Orleans with more.

Ryan, tell us what you're seeing down there.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely, Jim.

Look, there's a lot of problems here when you think about it. Communications also very spotty. So you stand in one spot, you have a cell phone, you don't when you stand in another. And you look at this trees that's down, that's what we saw throughout the area. There are a lot of trees that were down in the street. So you think about this in terms of at nighttime, there is no power in this area, so it makes it very hard to see where you're driving.

Now, the good news here in New Orleans, we haven't seen a lot of structural damage. It's more of these branches that are down that also are on top of power lines. Power crews have a lot of work to do.

As we traveled yesterday 14 hours to get here, because obviously we had to drive thru the storm, we saw a lot of power crews coming in from Mississippi, from Florida, from Georgia to help out in this effort.

And as we take this turn down this direction, the University of Tulane is just down the street here. They're going to evacuate students over the next few hours and take them to Houston because the power situation here is so bad. So we believe they're going to be loading them on buses to take them to Houston. Some students will be flying out. Some will be staying there for quite some time because what we're told is, this university has to be shut down because of this power outage.

When you add in the other part of this, Jim, it is already hot here, so you're talking about no air conditioning. So people are having to swelter through the day. There's a heat advisory. When you add all the mosquitoes and the fact that there's standing water everywhere, you understand the situation they're dealing with.

If there is good news in terms of this, we haven't seen a lot of structural damage in the New Orleans area. But everywhere you go, especially with these massive trees here, the magnificent threes that are throughout this area, they're on top of power lines. So you understand, there could be more trees that fall in the next 24 hours or so that could take down some of these lines.

And as we were talking to crews who were working through this, they were hoping to get some of these lines back up and get maybe some of this power going. Even at our hotel in the downtown district, there is no power in that area at all. So they have generators in some of these locations. But as you can understand, you're talking about maybe a month before power gets back on. And you can see, as people start driving around to assess the damage, they're looking at their houses, they're seeing some damage on the roofs, but not the massive damage we've seen in hurricanes past. But if you think about it, heat, maybe for a month, over 80 degrees with no air conditioning, you can understand, we might have more issues in the days coming.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Ryan Young, good to have you there. Thanks so much.

Joining us now to discuss all this, Craig Fugate. He's former administrator of FEMA, currently chief emergency management officer at One Concern.

Good to have you on this morning, Mr. Fugate.

Listen, I know the storm has passed from the coastal areas, but rescue workers, first responders still trying to get a sense of people in need. Do we know how many people are still in need, you know, most urgently of rescue at this point?

CRAIG FUGATE, FORMER FEMA ADMINISTRATOR: Well, you know, yesterday they got into a lot of areas. Today they're going to get into the rest of the areas. They've been getting helicopters in. They've got reports of flying over areas and trying to get a better sense.

This is going to move fairly quick. There's a lot of teams there. They'll be getting to folks. A lot of this is people that are cut off, that just need to get out. And then you're -- what you're hearing is what's going to be the next

big phase, and that is keeping people safe and alive as we go through recovery. Hospitals are already overwhelmed with COVID.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

FUGATE: The last thing they need is more heat exhaustion or trauma or accidents. And, you know, as much as possible, if you're not there, stay away from that area. Until you really get power up and water systems, this is not going to be a good place to get back to quickly.

SCIUTTO: It seemed that with this storm, some things worked, frankly. Levees that had been reinforced post-Katrina seem to have held in many areas, particularly around New Orleans. Staging of resources, search and rescue, et cetera. It just seemed that there was better planning. And I wonder, given your experience, do you think that made a difference here?

FUGATE: Absolutely. You've got to give a lot of credit to the governor and his team, Governor Edwards. He's been experiencing a lot of disasters. His team is battle tested. We took a lot of lessons of Katrina at the federal level and implemented that.

But you're also seeing the dividends of making investments in infrastructure that helped buy down future disaster risk.

[09:25:03]

Both the levee system, but also buildings, like a lot of public safety buildings, those that were upgraded and hardened after Katrina also have done very well in the storm.

SCIUTTO: So looking forward, because there are, of course, I mean, listen, we're showing pictures there of water still inundating communities. This was no small thing. You've got the power issue. And it's going to take a long time to restore that power. Then you have the double punch, right, in effective, of a major storm in the midst of a major outbreak of COVID.

What are the key challenges going forward in the coming days and weeks?

FUGATE: Well, again, it's really basically lifesaving, life safety, and get the utilities turned on. If you think about it, a lot of the area impacted when the power comes on will start getting back to normal and then the focus will be on where the devastation and destruction took place on the homes and businesses.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and do those communities have the resources that they need to do that?

FUGATE: Well, that's why the president did declare a major presidential disaster after the governor requested it to provide that financial assistance.

SCIUTTO: Yes. FUGATE: So, again, everything is moving towards getting to the point where we're focused on getting utilities up where we can, and then start looking at what it's going to take to house and build these communities back.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

FUGATE: But build them back, not the way they were, but build them back for future risk. This is not the only hurricane we're going to face. Louisiana got hit three times last year.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And it feels like every other day there's a -- there's an emergency declaration in some state for the flooding or the fires.

Craig Fugate, good to have you on. We appreciate the work you do.

FUGATE: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is punishing two school districts because they defied his ban on mask mandates, even in the midst of a major outbreak there. Portable morgues are being brought in to handle an overflow in Florida of coronavirus deaths.

And we're moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures are flat. The Dow ended Monday flat, but the S&P 500 and Nasdaq composite each closed yet again at all-time highs. Investors are shrugging off concerns about the delta variant, Hurricane Ida and Afghanistan for now. We're going to keep a close eye on the markets going forward.

Stay with us.

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