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NTSB Chair: Examining Amazon Plane's Black Boxes Right Now; Netanyahu Faces Backlash Over Report He was Warned of Hamas Attack Days Before October 7th; Trump Administration Strips Confederate Criticism at Former Memorial; In Court Filing, SEC Threatens to Boot LSU Over Ex-Pro Players. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired September 08, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

ROBERT WHITMAN, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: ... Looking at stolen art. I've never seen that in almost 35 years of investigations. It just doesn't exist.

KEILAR: Or he's really quiet. No, I'm just kidding, Robert. I agree with you.

I think you probably would have seen it if it exists. Robert Whitman, it is unfortunate to talk to you again, but we do always appreciate your expertise when we're seeing one of these things. Thanks for being with us.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Thanks.

WHITMAN: Thank you. My pleasure.

KEILAR: Still ahead, we are learning some new details on the investigation into the deadly cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport. These are live pictures coming to us. The airplane still where it was yesterday over a service road.

We'll have the latest on this probe when we come back.

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[15:35:00]

SANCHEZ: Later today, the NTSB may release data from the black boxes of the Amazon cargo plane that crashed Sunday, killing five people. The Miami-Dade County Sheriff has identified the victims. They were all in a van on an airport road when the plane hit them.

The Boeing 767 also struck an SUV after it overran a runway at Miami International Airport. Flight tracking data shows the plane was still going 130 miles an hour when it reached the end of the runway, slamming into those vehicles. Five others were injured.

CNN obtained this video apparently showing one of the pilots escaping the front of the plane as it burned. The sheriff reported the two pilots have now been released from the hospital. Joining us now is David Soucie. He's a former FAA safety inspector.

David, thanks so much for being with us. So the plane, as we watch in the landing footage, was coming down almost parallel to the ground.

Instead of the standard maneuver where you see the nose being lifted, what does that tell you?

DAVID SOUCIE, FORMER FAA SAFETY INSPECTOR: Well, it's interesting. You do see it begin to flare. It does come up, the nose is high, but then it immediately comes right back down again.

And what that's indicative of to me is that there was a tailwind switch, and we did confirm later that there was a 26 knot wind from the tail of the aircraft coming forward, pushing that aircraft forward at that point. So it would have been very difficult for them at that point, not anticipating that, to have come up and not be able to get the aircraft up where the nose is up in the air and the wheels are down on the trucks. So I suspect that there's a lot of things that are going on in this right now that we still don't know, but you can tell that that aircraft was coming in too fast for that spot that it was in.

SANCHEZ: Yes, just based on some of the background in the footage, including here and the one that we just showed, there are overcast skies in both of these videos. How much do you think the weather was a factor in the crash?

SOUCIE: Well, I think it was a significant factor because the fact that ATIS, which was reported before us where they get the weather information, had shown about 20 minutes before this flight that there was only a three knot wind. That's it. It didn't even really have a direction.

It was just kind of a three knot gathering wind. And at this point, you can see that later we got the LWAS, which is the low level wind shear warning system at the airport that shows that there was a 26 knot wind coming back towards the tail. So I really think it's going to have a large factor in it.

A lot of people are focusing on how fast it was coming in. It was above the glide slope, but that isn't typically a non-recoverable situation. But when you get already a half a way down the runway and your trucks are still not on the ground solidly, at that point, you need to be thinking about going around and pushing the throttles forward and going around for a second try.

SANCHEZ: Wow. Recovery crews, as we noted, retrieved the black box, which is being reviewed by the NTSB now. What details from that analysis are you most looking forward to learning?

SOUCIE: Well, one of the things as an investigator I would want that for is to understand the communication between the two pilots in the cockpit. What made the decision to not make the go around or what made the decision to continue to try to stop before the end of the runway? What discussions did they have? Also, what were they communicated to? Did the tower tell them that the aircraft -- or that there was this change in the low level wind shear that could affect their landing? Were they informed of that or were they not?

I did speak with a friend of mine who had landed just four minutes before this airplane at the same runway, and they said that it was very rough. It had a lot of turbulence, a lot of wind shear at that point. So what my -- as an investigator, I'd be asking, did that crew notify the tower?

And did the tower then notify this airplane what they were going to encounter? Because that's where the best information comes is through that communication string.

SANCHEZ: Yes, we'll see what comes from officials later today. They are expected to brief the press once more. David Soucie, appreciate the expertise.

SOUCIE: Great, thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing backlash over a report that he was warned of a major operation by Hamas just days before the October 7th attack. How the Prime Minister's office is responding when we come back.

[15:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing fierce political backlash over a new report that he was warned Hamas was planning a major operation just days before the horrific events of October 7, 2023. Remember, more than 1,200 people were murdered that day. CNN's Oren Liebermann is live in Jerusalem with more.

So, Oren, walk us through what this report says.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF: This report from the Haaretz newspaper says that about 10 days before October 7, 2023, and the Hamas-led attack on that day, the UAE ruler, Mohamed bin Zayed, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and gave him a warning that Hamas was planning some sort of operation described as an earthquake. According to the report, MBZ knew this because intermediaries that had been working negotiations between Israel and Hamas had been warned by Hamas's then leader, Yahya Sinwar, who apparently was upset by the pace of ongoing talks that he was planning something major. The warning was serious enough that it went from the intermediaries who passed it on to MBZ, according to the Haaretz report, who then called Netanyahu and in a 45-minute phone call about a week and a half before October 7, warned him that Hamas was planning some sort of major operation that could destabilize the region.

[15:45:00]

According to the Haaretz report, Netanyahu was relatively calm, felt that he had Hamas and Gaza under control and was more worried about the occupied West Bank and other fronts here. Well, Netanyahu's office put out a statement calling the report an absolute lie, while his spokespeople have said this is an attempt to alter the elections with less than two months to go before critical elections.

Except this bombshell report is already making major political waves here in Israel. The main opposition parties have put out a rare joint statement calling for a, quote, immediate and thorough investigation into the report and what they describe as Netanyahu's, quote, failures and malfunctioning. Of course, one of the definitive ways to know if there really was a phone call is from the UAE and if the UAE foreign ministry put out a statement.

Well, they did. And one thing they didn't do in that statement is deny the report itself or the existence of that 45-minute phone call in a week and a half before October 7. The UAE foreign ministry says they quote, "Do not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders and that there have been and are ongoing talks between the intelligence agencies."

One of the other ways to definitively answer what happened here and whether this phone call happened, whether Netanyahu did get a warning before October 7 and chose not to act would be an independent state commission of inquiry. That would give a definitive answer on the truth of this matter here, except Netanyahu has absolutely refused a state commission of inquiry for nearly three years now.

SANCHEZ: An important point to remember. Orrin Liebermann, thank you so much for that report -- Brianna.

KEILAR: The Trump administration removed language criticizing the Confederacy from a marker at the site of a former memorial for Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery, according to a new report from The Washington Post. The Post says the Defense Department also removed historical critiques from its website. This is a 32-foot bronze statue that was removed in 2023 following the recommendation from a bipartisan naming commission congressionally mandated to identify military sites honoring the Confederacy and recommend replacements for them.

According to The Post, a new marker says the army expects to display the sculpture at the same site next year. So bring it back. The Post asked the Defense Department about the changes to the sign in the website.

The department referred questions to Arlington National Cemetery, which The Post says did not respond.

We're joined now by retired Army Brigadier General Ty Seidule. He was vice chair of that naming commission. He's also a former head of the history department at West Point and is currently a professor at Hamilton College. And he's the author of "A Promise Delivered, 10 American Heroes and the Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases."

All right, General, thanks for being with us on this. First off, tell us about this statue and why it was identified by the commission. BRIG. GEN. TY SEIDULE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, the statue -- thanks, Brianna, it's great to be with you. The statue, when we went looking, was the most racist statue that we found anywhere on federal property. It features an enslaved mammy figure -- that's an overweight enslaved woman cradling the baby of her enslaver with a tear in her eye to show that the enslaved people appreciated and loved slavery.

And that's what, if you read the documents, that's what it's there to show. It's to show that the insurrectionists who were Confederates were right, that the United States was wrong, and that the South, the white South, will always be right. It was clearly a Confederate commemoration.

And the United States Congress created the naming commission to get rid of anything that commemorated the Confederacy. And nothing commemorated it more than this 1914 statue. And so we clearly said we should get rid of it.

And that's what the Department of Defense did in 2023.

KEILAR: Yes, you mentioned the timing, 1914. The statue was commissioned during the Jim Crow era, so well after the Civil War was over. What was the intent behind installing it when it was installed at Arlington?

SEIDULE: Well, there were two things. While some people say it's about reconciliation, that's not really accurate. There had already been reconciliation with the granting amnesty to all Confederates in 1868 by bringing all of the former states of the Confederacy back into the Union, to the United States.

What it was meant to show was that white supremacy reigned supreme, that all of the southern states had new constitutions to ensure a Jim Crow era. It was the height of Confederate monument building. It was also the height of lynching.

So this was to celebrate the return, as it said in the program of Anglo-Saxon civilization, to ensure the primacy of white southerners over black southerners. That was the purpose of it. And so every part on there showed that this was really a Confederate textbook in bronze.

[15:50:00]

KEILAR: Yes, I think there was a black soldier fighting for the Confederacy also at the bottom part of this as well. We should mention the naming commission, for those who don't remember, it had bipartisan support. It was actually included in a defense authorization bill that the president vetoed over the renamings, and Congress overrode that veto on a bipartisan basis.

Is it legal, in your understanding, what the Trump administration is doing, overriding that naming commission that was created at Congress's direction?

SEIDULE: No, it's blatantly illegal. And by the way, that other soldier, it wasn't a soldier, it was an enslaved man. They would not have said there was a black soldier back then.

But no, they would not have allowed this. By law, it's illegal. The problem is, is who has standing to sue?

And what we've seen from the Supreme Court is that they don't find many people that have standing to sue. But I really don't believe that -- I think this will come back in 2027, and they're going to spend tens of millions of dollars.

It was almost destroyed when they took it away, and now they're going to try to put it back. What I don't understand is why this administration is so pro-Confederate. Remember that Confederates killed U.S. Army soldiers, more than any other enemy in our history, to create a slave republic. And what they should do is put a monument there in Section 27 to the United States Colored Troops. There's no monument to them who fought for our great nation. And the idea that they're going to create and put a new monument there that is for those who killed U.S. Army soldiers is just a travesty.

KEILAR: What is the effect? And thank you for correcting me on that, not being a soldier. I think the effect of the statue is it sort of appears to have this endorsement on the part of enslaved people of the Confederacy.

Once you start really looking at that statue, it's important to kind of look at the meaning of it. What is the effect on the ethos of the military when you kind of look at the totality of all of this? The statue, the renaming bases after their former Confederate names, while finding other names with those same last names to name them after, admittedly, restoring the Robert E. Lee portrait at West Point and so on.

SEIDULE: Right. I mean, I think it just tells you that this administration is pro-Confederate. I mean, I can't imagine that they would do this.

This is pro-slavery. It is a slap in the face, not just to Black soldiers, but to everyone who wears a uniform, particularly those who wore the blue uniform during the Civil War. Remember, more soldiers died in that -- U.S. Army soldiers died in that war than any other. And to think that we're going to recognize the enemy who tried to destroy the country, who were insurrectionists, who refused to accept the results of a Democratic election, chose armed rebellion to create a slave republic. I just don't understand why they would go against the will of the American people through their elected representatives and put something so horrible. It is the cruelest monument that I've ever seen, and this is the subject that I study.

And the idea that we would put it back in the most hallowed place in America, which is Arlington National Cemetery. In fact, for the first 40 years that that cemetery was around, no Confederates were allowed to be honored. There were no flags allowed.

There are allowed now. In fact, only recently with the president, in the last 10 or 15 years, were the presidents not putting memorials on this. But it shows you that we've come a long way, that we no longer recognize that the Confederates were after the best interests of this country.

They weren't. They were trying to create a slave republic, and that should be against every vision that we have. Remember, we're not changing history.

We're changing commemoration, and commemoration is about our values and what inspires us. And this is the worst.

KEILAR: General Seidule, we appreciate you being with us. Thank you so much. And we'll be right back.

SEIDULE: Thank you.

[15:55:00]

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KEILAR: The college football season just kicked off, but the biggest play of the week may be happening actually in the courtroom. In a new court filing, the Southeastern Conference says school officials will meet this Thursday to decide whether to expel LSU from their league.

SANCHEZ: The SEC and LSU are at odds over the Tigers' push to add two players to their football team who spent time at NFL training camps over the summer. CNN sportswriter Dana O'Neill is with us now. So how serious is this threat from the SEC?

DANA O'NEIL, CNN SPORTS WRITER: I think it's serious in that the SEC is really aggravated and angry with LSU and specifically head coach Lane Kiffin. I don't know that it's so serious that they're actually going to do this, but they want some leverage. You know, LSU blinked by not including them in the roster for the game on Saturday, but they left enough wiggle room where they said they could add them at a later date.

They left roster spots open, and if they do, the SEC wants to be able to come back with them with a vengeance and say, no, you can't do that. So this to me feels like it's a force to try to get the LSU to understand we are as serious about stopping you as you are stumbling your nose at us. And now they want the leverage from the courts to be able to say that LSU can't interfere with their governance process, and they want protection to be able to make their rules as they see fit.

KEILAR: Dana, new twist in that clock controversy that we saw over the weekend. Western Michigan University is now appealing, of course, when it comes to that game outcome with the University of Michigan winning. What happens now?

O'NEIL: What happens now is it goes to the football oversight committee and the college football playoff. That's who Western Michigan and MAC have appealed to. They said in their letters that, look, we know this is extraordinary.

We know you don't ordinarily alter final results, but they're trying to argue that this is a protocol problem, that the officials used the wrong clock. Why there are two clocks is a conversation for another day. But they went to the wrong clock to determine whether or not the game was over or there was an additional second.

SANCHEZ: We shall see what happens. The controversy continues. Plenty more for us to talk about.

[16:00:00]

Dana O'Neill, thank you so much.

KEILAR: We're getting a wrap right now, but I don't trust this clock.

SANCHEZ: The clock that the producers are using.

KEILAR: I'm using a different clock --

SANCHEZ: We're on our own clock.

KEILAR: -- that says "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

END