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Workers at National Weather Service and NOAA Receive Buyout Offers; Trump Puts CIA and FBI Under Scrutiny; Philip Mudd is Interviewed about CIA and FBI Jobs in Jeopardy. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 06, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: I honestly and so superstitious that I'm not going to sit here and say that the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl. It's just not a thing that we do in Philadelphia.

Anyway, there's also this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's a penalty for hogging the water bowl.

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HUNT: Cuteness overload. I'll take this. Sneak peek at this year's Puppy Bowl. There are going to be 142 rescue puppies, some special needs players. You can watch the pups battle for the Lombarky trophy this Sunday. It will be on our sister network, Animal Planet. I personally love this tradition. I don't know - I don't know about you, Jonah.

JONAH GOLDBERG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I -

HUNT: Jonah is nodding.

All right. All right, still coming up here on CNN THIS MORNING, life- saving weather alerts could be on the line. Employees at the National Weather Service could face cuts with President Donald Trump's plan to dramatically reduce the federal workforce.

Plus, the intelligence community also facing those cuts. The CIA offered so-called buyouts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D-MI): It's just like taking a machete to the federal government without - without a concern for how it implies - it impacts our national security.

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[06:35:32]

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (September 4, 2019): We got lucky in Florida. Very, very lucky indeed. We had - actually, our original chart was that it was going to be hit - hitting Florida directly. Maybe I could just see that, Kevin. It was going to be hitting directly, and that would have affected a lot of other states. But that was the original chart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: You'll remember the moment from President Trump's first term, now known as Sharpie-gate, when he altered a hurricane forecast with a Sharpie.

Now, America's forecasting agency is being targeted by Elon Musk's DOGE. Employees at the National Weather Service and NOAA were sent a so-called buyout email. Their job is to ensure Americans have sufficient time to evacuate in the event of a hurricane or a tornado.

Senator Chris Van Hollen posted to X, saying, "NOAA is vital" and "saves lives." He says he and his team will not stand for "Musk's cronies" to target NOAA.

Let's get to our meteorologist, Derek Van Dam.

Derek, help us understand the implications of this.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, Kasie, what people need to understand is that the National Weather Service was already grossly understaffed. Some of the lowest staffing in decades, and further cuts to that amount of personnel means the potential for missing lifesaving and property saving information, which these meteorologists are responsible for creating and passing off to our viewers and the general public as well.

But remember, these meteorologists, they don't only forecast, they oversee the hardware that's responsible for the forecast. So, launching weather balloons that go into our computer modeling, maintaining the infrastructure as well. Super important for this personnel. So, reducing the amount of people that are able to do that means time sensitive information, like storm surge, hurricanes, tornadoes could potentially be missed.

Think back to the fires in Los Angeles. The meteorologists out of the National Weather Service there were some of the first to warn of the potential impacts of that strong La Nina and wind event for that particular region. And we've got to think about what's happening with the upcoming tornado season as well this spring, and then the hurricane season this summer and into this fall. Without personnel to warn, what are we going to do?

HUNT: And, Derek, there seems to be severe weather out there right now. VAN DAM: Yes, that's right. So, the meteorologists who are staffed 24

hours a day at these local agencies are issuing tornado warnings as - as we speak. In fact, there's a tornado watch here across parts of Kentucky, into West Virginia. All those pink shades of boxes, those are tornado warnings moving with this line that's associated with a much larger storm system that is currently actually producing a flash flood emergency. This is life-saving information that is being relayed by the meteorologists that jobs are in question right now.

Charleston, West Virginia, this area, under a flash flood emergency. The larger storm system bringing ice to the mid-Atlantic and snow to much of the northeast. So, without that personnel, the warnings don't get relayed to the people at home.

Kasie.

HUNT: All right, Derek Van Dam for us this morning.

Derek, thank you very much for that.

All right, let's continue to discuss Donald Trump's makeover of the federal government. But let's focus now on the impact it may have on our national security and our intelligence agencies.

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STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": The CIA sent a buyout offer to their entire workforce. I guess that's a wrap on the CIA. Let us now bid a fond farewell to some of their finest work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: Not all of the CIA's information has remained redacted, though, because CNN has learned that in order to comply with the president's executive order to shrink the federal workforce, the spy agency has sent the White House an unclassified email listing the names of all employees hired over the last two years. This does raise serious concerns about whether foreign adversaries could access the list and identify those employees.

One former agency officer told my next guest, David Sanger of "The New York Times," that the unclassified reporting of the names was a, quote, "counterintelligence disaster."

Democrats criticizing the move.

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SEN. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Apparently some list, according to public reports, of officers at the CIA was sent to the White House in an unclassified email.

[06:40:03]

Now, I remember a time it seems very quaint when Donald Trump was always talking about Hillary's emails. What about this email?

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HUNT: Joining us now, "New York Times" White House national security correspondent David Sanger, who's, of course, also a CNN political and national security analyst.

David, good morning.

How big of a screw up is?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Good morning, Kasie.

Well, Kasie, when we wrote about this yesterday, my colleague Julian Barnes and I were quite surprised to have heard about what had transpired. To their defense, and it's a pretty thin one, the unclassified email had the name, the first names, and the first initial of the last name of the agents and operatives and analysts involved.

So, the White House made the case, and others, that this did not actually, you know, reveal their - their full identities. It sure gave some clues that would be pretty useful, combined with other information from social media and et cetera. And we know that the Chinese and the Russians are particularly adept at combining all sorts of intelligence to put these together.

I guess the question that I would ask, Kasie, would be, supposing we had published in "The New York Times," or you had published on cnn.com a list of names and first initials of the last name of people hired by intelligence agencies in the past two years. What do we think the White House would have been saying?

HUNT: David -

SANGER: And, of course, we wouldn't have done that, right?

HUNT: Right. We would never have done that.

But can I just ask sort of on a basic level, can we assume that this is being read by foreign adversaries, that this has been hacked?

SANGER: I don't know for sure. But we do know - in this particular case. But what do we know? We know that during the Obama administration that the Russians were in the unclassified White House, State Department and Pentagon systems. We know that the Chinese, through a group called Salt Typhoon, that you and I have talked about before, got deeply into the telephone networks of nine major telecom providers and got at the information about how the Justice Department basically taps into the phones of suspected spies, drug dealers, so forth, when they have warrants. So, their skills here are pretty good, and particularly for getting into unclassified systems.

HUNT: And, very briefly, David, the lengths to which the CIA would normally go not to reveal the actual first name and last initial of lets - let's stick with the directorate of operations, the more kind of sensitive players here, normally, how far would they go to make sure - I mean normally these people operate in the world, often under names that are not their actual first names, right?

SANGER: That's right. And frequently they operate as well under sort of official cover, that, you know, they've got a job and a title at the State Department, at the Agency for International Development perhaps, at the Agriculture Department. You know, they - they could be placed in other, in other roles.

So, it's - it's very possible that the data could be, you know, cross- registered here. And remember, what did the Chinese steal back during the Obama years? They went into the Office of Personnel Management's database and got all kinds of data about U.S. officials who had security clearances. They did not, at that time, get into the intelligence agency list because the intelligence agencies kept them separate from what's in the Office of Personnel Management.

HUNT: Right.

SANGER: But this is, obviously, the kind of information foreign groups all look for.

HUNT: All right, David Sanger, thank you very much for being on the program, sir. Always appreciate you. See you soon.

SANGER: Great to be with you.

HUNT: All right, still to come here on CNN THIS MORNING, some Arab American voters who supported Donald Trump expressing regret after hearing his plans for nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Plus, FBI agents under scrutiny. How deep will the president's cuts go?

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[06:48:58]

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (September 25, 2023): Here's just some of the agenda we will immediately implement when we become - we, we, we're going to become the 47th president of the United States. I will totally obliterate the deep state. We started. We fired Comey. We got rid of a lot of scum.

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HUNT: President Donald Trump making good on his campaign, promises to go after the so-called deep state. Attorney General Pam Bondi sworn in at the White House yesterday, where she vowed to end the, quote, "weaponization" of the Justice Department. Part of this effort, apparently, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove's request for information on a core team of FBI employees who worked on January 6th investigations. But he said FBI leadership refused to identify that group of employees, prompting Bove to accuse FBI leadership of insubordination, according to a memo obtained by CNN.

This comes a week after Bove sent a memo instructing the FBI to provide information on all current and former bureau employees who worked on January 6th investigations at any time.

[06:50:00]

But yesterday, Bove attempted to clarify FBI employees who simply followed orders won't be fired, he said in an email. However, if anyone acted with, quote, "corrupt or partisan intent," they could still face consequences.

The former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, rejected that idea that these kinds of agents exist within the bureau at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: The idea that the FBI contains some group of rank-and-file agents who are radical, left- leaning partizans, who are out there ignoring the directions given to them by their supervisors in order to target Republicans is fantasy. It is a fever dream.

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HUNT: All right, joining us now is Phil Mudd. He is a former CIA counterterrorism official and former FBI senior intelligence adviser.

Phil, good morning. Always grateful to hear from you.

PHILIP MUDD, FORMER FBI SENIOR INTELLIGENCE ADVISER AND FORMER CIA COUNTERTERRORISM OFFICIAL: Good morning.

HUNT: You stood up earlier in your career the FBI's domestic counterterrorism capabilities in the wake of 9/11. You have kind of a deep understanding of the stakes of this kind of action. Can you help us understand what they are?

MUDD: Well, there's a couple of pieces here.

First, the numbers you're talking about, thousands of people, whether you divide that into - into what the Trump people call partizans or a broader FBI population, that's a substantial portion of the FBI. So, if you're looking at national security issues, like counterterrorism and counterintelligence and some of those agents or analysts worked on the case against President Trump and some of his advisers, that's a lot of people. And so that can impact mission, especially in the short to mid-term if you remove those people suddenly from the table.

There is a personal piece here. You can't be sitting around in New York or Washington or elsewhere at the 50 plus FBI offices across the country and not having - a have a cup of coffee saying, am I next? So, there's a nervousness about joining the service and saying, what do I get for my service? Am I going to be fired?

And then there's the bigger piece about whether thousands of people go, and that affects not just investigations into political corruption, which is a very small piece of the FBI, but also counterintelligence and counterterrorism stuff from agents and analysts who were - were detailed to work on those Trump investigations.

HUNT: Yes.

Phil, can you also talk a little bit about the CIA, because I know you spent the bulk of your career there.

MUDD: Yes.

HUNT: We were just talking to David Sanger about it. But this idea that they're going to offer buyouts across the board. And then there's this email that goes out that potentially exposes the real names of everyone that's been hired in the last two years.

What are the implications, and -and how far does the agency normally go to conceal the information that they just put in an unclassified system?

MUDD: Boy, you just gave the Chinese a gift. You're going to conceal that stuff, not because of first name and a last initial means a lot to a regular American citizen, but what the Chinese will do, and other services will do, is take that and combine that with other open source information.

Let's be really simple. Let me give you an example. Somebody who identifies himself as an analyst on Facebook without saying what agency they're with, and they have the same first name and last initial that's on that list, that's one bit of data you might use if you're the Chinese. And they've got a million other bits of data. They're going to try to use this as a phonebook.

So, I mean, I'm not going to lose sleep over it, but that is an unforced error, as we would say in tennis. I mean, you hit the net with that one because you didn't even try to get it over the net. That's embarrassing, and it could be a substantial risk to a person who just joined the agency.

In terms of buyouts, let me give you a simple sort of layman's response to that. Good luck with that. You joined the service of the CIA. It's an interesting job. It's not well paid, but it's interesting. And it's not just a job, it's a mission. You're in Washington, D.C. You're traveling around the world trying to understand what the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans are doing. And somebody comes in and says, here's some chump change to retire. Good luck with that. I don't think they'll get a lot of success with that. And then the question will be, what's the next step? Are they going to fire people? Try that one too.

HUNT: What would be the implication of firing people if, as you say, the CIA employees, who are, as you - as you very importantly note, are mission driven people, what implication does that have for all of us here at home? MUDD: Well, let's - let me give you a simple example. Let's say they

look at employees who are - who were brought on in the last couple of years. Those are the easiest employees to remove because they are still under what's called a probationary period. They're not full-time - they're not sort of employees who have gone past that initial stage of vetting once they join the agency.

Let's say you eliminate two or three years of recruits. Do you know how hard it is to find somebody to want - to move to Washington, D.C., alone or with your family? It's an expensive city. You're not going to make that much money. Let's say you speak some or fluent Mandarin or Russian or Korean. So, you move them here for two or three years, you get them through a vetting system, and then you eliminate that entire generation of people. Not only is that really hard to replace, not only will that take a while, but try going on to a college campus in 2027 and saying, hey, why don't you join the CIA if you speak Mandarin. What would you say if you were a graduate student? I'd say, get out of here, you can't insure my - my professional career.

[06:55:05]

And furthermore, the next administration might can me. I think there's a lot of implications, second order that people haven't thought through yet.

HUNT: All right, Phil Mudd, always grateful to have you, sir. Thank you so much for being here.

MUDD: Thank you.

HUNT: I hope you'll come back.

All right, so, let's turn to this.

President Donald Trump won the critical swing state of Michigan in November with a significant assist from Arab American voters. He convinced many of them that he would deliver peace and stability to the Palestinian people.

Here, though, is what some Michigan voters are now saying after the president announced his plan to take over Gaza.

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ALBERT ABBAS, DEARBORN, MICHIGAN VOTER: Many in the community are at a loss for words. Last night was a very rough night for most of us. At the end of the day, as Arab Americans or Muslims, we really didn't have much of a choice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Palestine is the red line for this community.

ALI FARAJALLA, REAL ESTATE AGENT: A lot of people are calling me and texting me, saying, hey, you know, how - how did your vote work out, you know? How is that third party vote?

AMER ZAHR, COMEDIAN: I didn't vote for Trump. So, a protest vote, I don't know. I would say it was a targeted vote of conscience to say that the children of Gaza have to mean something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right, our panel is back to talk more about this.

I mean, Jonah Goldberg, it seemed very obvious on its face, as angry as people in Michigan were about Joe Biden, that President Trump was not going to be someone that was going to do the things that were going to make them happier about the situation. I mean, the - that said, I mean, this is kind of the farthest you could go almost, right, other than saying that you're going to forcibly remove 2 million people, which I guess it's still a question, like, maybe that is on the table.

GOLDBERG: Yes. I mean, I don't know. I mean, like, I thought the whole turning the Palestinian issue among those voters into the decisive question of that election was foolish, regardless of how you think about it. It also didn't matter, ultimately. Like, they thought they had a lot more leverage.

But Trump won all the swing states, right? So, it was - it was - it was basically just performative on the whole. And I understand why they're - they're so incredibly frustrated. At the same time, there are lots of people who voted for things that they didn't see pan out the way they would like. So, we'll see, you know.

HUNT: Matt, I mean -

MATT GORMAN, FORMER TIM SCOTT PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER AND REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Yes.

HUNT: For - for voters like this, I mean for people in the U.S. who have, you know, and who are watching this kind of horrified, I mean, what is it - what is it - I guess maybe what it says is, is something about Donald Trump's ability to convince people that, you know, he's not going to do what he says he's going to do. I just - I am - I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it.

GORMAN: I would put it a little differently. I think for years I - there - consistently (ph) the Democratic Party had almost expected folks to kind of fall in line. African American voters, for a long time, were the - this sort of thing until Trump came along in '24 and really courted them.

I think this was something where Democrats, and I won't speak for Meghan, but from the outside it seemed like these guys, they expected this kind of, like, what are you going to do? You going to vote for Donald Trump or are you going to vote for a third party? And almost didn't expect them to go that far. And there wasn't a courting there. It was, you're going to really vote for him? And they didn't. And I think they're now dealing with the consequences of it.

MEGHAN HAYS, FORMER BIDEN WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF MESSAGE PLANNING AND DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes, elections have consequences. I think this is the best thing that you can see. Your vote matters and elections do have consequences. I don't understand - I think the thing that was really impactful in

the '24 election is, it's not just the protests that were happening and the people who are out there who did not vote for him. It was the narrative for so long that drove the narrative that - that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had to fight back against that I actually think impacted them.

HUNT: Yes.

HAYS: And it changed the way the youth voted. It wasn't just these people in Michigan. There was a lot of people impacted by this. So, I do think it was quite impactful, but elections have consequences.

HUNT: (INAUDIBLE).

GORMAN: October 7th really changed the debate in so many ways that we're seeing now, and certainly in the election.

HAYS: Absolutely.

HUNT: Yes.

All right, I'm going to leave you with this because we're just days away from Super Bowl 59, where, of course, the Kansas City Chiefs set to face off against my Eagles, setting up a rematch of sorts for the brothers Kelce. Travis, of course, currently plays for the Chiefs. And Jason is a former Eagle.

Travis, of course, hard at work preparing for Sunday's game. But Jason was front and center in his own kind of competition this week. We've been seeing so many of these, but I loved this one. A lookalike contest. "People Magazine" reporting ten Eagles fans were sent searching for Jason Kelce in a crowd of lookalikes. What was his takeaway? According to "People" he said, quote, "it went fantastic. The lookalikes really looked alike. Not that I'm a particularly hard person to look like, he joked." He did mention that, like, you have to have the eyebrows, you know, to look like him, which I was entertained by.

Now that Jason Kelce is off the field, though, the big question is, who's he going to be rooting for on Sunday?

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JASON KELCE, RETIRED PHILADELPHIA EAGLES PLAYER: I'm rooting for Philadelphia and I'm rooting for Travis Kelce. That's the reality of it.

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[07:00:05]

HUNT: You can see the eyebrows there.

Anyway, the choice not so easy for Jason Kelce's wife, Kylie Kelce. I have so much respect for this woman. She is a die-hard Eagles fan. She even refused to wear Chiefs red at last year's Super Bowl. She did wear red, but it was for the University of Cincinnati.

Anyway, there you have it, guys. I have to say, go birds.

Thanks to all of you for being here. Thanks to all of you for joining us. I'm Kasie Hunt. Don't go anywhere. "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.