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The Situation Room

Netanyahu Says, Plane Attacker Had Islamist Radical Indoctrination; Attorney Says, Jane Doe Displayed Textbook Reaction to Trauma; FTC Probes OpenAI, Anthropic Over Potential Safety Risks. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 01, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news. New details about the suspect in a cockpit attack. What the Israeli prime minister is now saying.

Plus, a turning point for Jane Doe, we are learning new information about the days after the alleged rape at a Cornell fraternity house.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Also, lethal injection botched, what witnesses now say about the ordeal in Tennessee.

And a very close call caught on camera when arrow missed on a very busy Nebraska road.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with the breaking news. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, now says the man accused of attacking his fellow pilot and trying to crash the Flydubai airliner could have extremist leanings. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: The attacker, the co- pilot who attacked the captain is now being interrogated, but here's what we do know. First, we know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination. That appears to be something we're gathering from the information, his personal information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We want to warn our viewers these next images you're about to see from the plane are graphic. Here we see the wounded captain wearing an oxygen mask and being cared for, and as the camera tilts up, we see the co-pilot already subdued.

The captain is being hailed as a hero for somehow unlocking the cockpit door. It allowed brave passengers to rush in and regain control of the flight after it dropped, listen to this, 17,000 feet in less than two minutes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

YANIV HAYOUN, FLYDUBAI PASSENGER: When I got inside, I saw the attacker on the instrument panel between the two seats. There were no pilots in the seats. One was on the floor, one was on the instruments, and someone else had come in with me. I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and dragged him out first. It all happened in seconds, and the plane's nose was pitched like this.

I called out to a bunch of Israelis on board, and two other guys came over. We pinned him down. I jumped back, grabbed the controls, and started pulling back the handles.

DR. SHOTA MUSAEV, FLYDUBAI PASSENGER: We used the cord from the headphones, and later they brought us plastic zip ties, which we used as well. We were fully engaged in subduing and restraining him. At the same time, I was helping the pilot. Everyone there behaved heroically, the whole plane, including the children, everyone, absolutely everyone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have such an amazing people in this country that were in an act of heroism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Saved us. They just saved us, saved our people, and everything's happened so fast for them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then I see the wing of the plane and the brakes, the brakes of the wing of the plane, they come up, and all of the plane tilts.

I almost touched God. I saw the face of God.

MIKA BAUMAN, FLYDUBAI PASSENGER: We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little. And everyone was screaming. There were children crying and it was just like a death in front of our eyes moment, like I was just sure I was going to die.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: We're following all the latest developments. CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson is joining us now live from Jerusalem. Nic, what do you make of the Israeli prime minister claiming the suspect had undergone radical indoctrination?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. The Israeli prime minister hasn't put forward any evidence yet, but he said they've gleaned this from going through his personal records, if you will. And I think whatever social media accounts he has, if they've been scrubbed or taken down, certainly, the Israelis and other intelligence agencies will be able to get a look at them, and they're going to learn things from there. So, is this what the prime minister is alluding to?

So, you know, I do think over coming days we may get to learn more about it. The prime minister also told us some pretty shocking details that the captain was attacked with an axe, that this -- the other pilot, the attacking pilot, attacked him with an axe.

We have also had good news today for the captain. He underwent surgery in Saudi Arabia. Now, according to Indian officials, he is now out of danger and is expected to reunite with his family.

[10:05:05]

The United Arab Emirates have kicked off their beginning of their investigation. The attorney general opened an inquiry to look at the possibility of a terrorist act, also to look at how it was planned and how it was directed, meaning were there others involved sort of pushing the attacking pilot to do this, or was it just him?

Clearly, more things to be learned about him. We don't know his name yet. That's not public. We do know that he'd only been flying with this airline, Flydubai, for about eight months. We also know that he was an Omani national. And according to some security aviation experts here in Israel, that would've been unusual to have him flying that route.

More clearly to get known, but very striking, Wolf, as you say that the prime minister has spoken about this indoctrination, this radical Islamist indoctrination here.

BLITZER: Amazing. All right, Nic Robertson in Jerusalem, thank you very much.

Also happening now, the investigation of a botched execution. Death row inmate Christa Pike is still alive this morning, despite being given two doses of a lethal drug.

CNN Senior National Correspondent Ryan Young is covering this for us. So, Ryan, so what happened here?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, still a lot of questions about this, an investigation ongoing at this point, still little details about this.

You may remember we were outside that prison yesterday when this was supposed to happen around 10:00. There was a stay granted. And then after that stay, the A.G.'s office in Tennessee pushed for it and tried to get this execution to go through. The Supreme Court said yes, and then at 7:27, they opened up the sheets there so people could see the fact that she was strapped to a gurney, and they started to administer this drug, and then all of a sudden things started to go wrong.

Let's take a listen to two of the witnesses who were there.

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CATHERINE SWEENEY, REPORTER, WPLN NEWS: When they told us to leave at 8:53, Christa Pike was still breathing. They did two separate rounds of pentobarbital. She lifted her head up and was looking around at one point. She said that there was a spot that was burning and hurting and asked if that was normal.

I covered all the executions last year and most of the ones this year. We haven't seen anything like it. It went really poorly.

TORI GESSNER, ANCHOR AND STATE CAPITOL REPORTER, WKRN-TV: When the curtains were opened, she was kind of inconsistently going in and out of snores and silence. When the curtains closed the final time at 8:05, we could consistently hear her snoring, and then it kind of developed into a snore squeak and then a snore. And even at 8:53, when the microphone was cut off, we could still hear snoring.

JOHN NORTH, SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, WBIR-TV: We have a lot of questions about what we saw and what we did not see. The Department of Correction has a lot of answers that it needs to provide to the public about what happened here.

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YOUNG: Yes, Wolf, I think this is pretty important. If you listen to those witnesses who were there, this is part of the reason why witnesses are there, to watch these executions, to come back and report exactly what happened here. Let's not forget this was supposed to be the first woman in 200 years executed in the state of Tennessee. There're so many questions about how this may move forward now, but there is a comprehensive investigation moving forward, and that's been started by the governor, Bill Lee. Wolf?

BLITZER: All right, Ryan Young reporting. What a horrific story indeed. Pamela?

BROWN: Just awful. Happening now, we are getting some new details about the days just after an alleged rape at a Cornell University fraternity house. The attorney for Jane Doe, Thomas Giuffra, is speaking out, and he's corroborating details from more than 1,000 pages of documents The New York Times obtained that describe the school's initial investigation in 2024.

Giuffra had made it clear he did not leak this document to the public or to The Times, but said the report, quote, is an excellent interpretation of the processing of trauma by a sexual abuse survivor. And he added, Ms. Doe's internal processing went from denial to shame and ultimately acceptance that she had been raped by people that she thought were her friends. Her reactions were a textbook reaction to trauma. I am not a mental health professional, but I have seen this many times in my practice.

He went on to say that Jane Doe went to the university's health center just days after the alleged incident, telling CNN, quote, once she reached the point of acceptance, she took steps to protect herself and sought STD testing and UTI treatment at Cornell Health on October 22nd. Ms. Doe disclosed to the treating healthcare professional that she contracted the UTI in a traumatic way. The visit to Cornell Health was the earliest opportunity to get herself outside help. Sadly, instead of getting help, there was yet another failure by Cornell.

CNN's Brynn Gingras has been following all of this. So, Brynn, have we heard anything from the university about this?

[10:10:00]

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, this is really the first time we're hearing about the Cornell Health incident, right? That she went to get this help from medical professionals, and she basically was told maybe therapy is good. She, according to her attorney, didn't even get the resources that are provided by Cornell University. They have resources that they could have given her. And he says that she didn't even get that.

So, we've reached out to Cornell University to sort of get a feel as to why that even happened. And yet we haven't heard back just yet on that specific question.

But, listen, Pam, this is a really big deal learning about this transcript, really this larger you know, interview that Jane Doe had with police in the aftermath of this incident happening in 2024, because it provides so much context, so much more clarity, right? And going to the health -- the university health department isn't only thing that she did to help herself.

We also have learned from these documents that she was preserving evidence. She saved the dress that she was wearing. She had text messages going back with one of her alleged accusers basically saying, you know, what happened she doesn't feel was right. She was also taking photographs of the bruises that she says that she experienced, and so there's so much more information as part of this documentation.

I do want to say also, as part of this documentation, we're learning that university officials interviewed multiple people as part of its Title IX investigation, including some of her roommates, also six of the seven members of that fraternity that have been accused in that civil lawsuit.

And some of these roommates have expressed in these interviews that The New York Times is reporting that she was going through this process, as you mentioned, Pam, of going from denial to finally acceptance, that she wasn't even using the word rape at that point because she couldn't quite understand it.

The New York Times reporting essentially that she was seeing on message boards that she was being called a whore at first, and then she saw one message board where basically someone was saying that the Chi Phi fraternity was terrible people because they gang raped someone, and that is what actually prompted her to go to police and report this as a sexual assault. Pam?

BROWN: And the D.A. said that he was not given that interview transcript. Could this case have had a different outcome? You have to ask that question.

GINGRAS: I mean, you have to ask that question, and we are going to ask that question to the D.A., of course. You know, because this is so important, too, Pam, that six-page summary that you got gratefully for us to understand sort of a little bit more picture of what allegedly happened that night is only a small part of the 120-page interview, according to The New York Times, that she gave to police, 120-page transcript. So, you can imagine there's way more details that are in that interview that were not made available to the district attorney's office.

Now, we don't want to give the D.A. a pass either, because he could have also been doing his own interviews after hearing about these allegations. He could have been doing his own sort of fact-finding, and we're not clear why that didn't happen either. So, still so many questions. At the root of it is really should criminal charges have been filed, too, and continues to be why weren't there?

BROWN: All right. Brynn Gingras, thank you so much.

And coming up in about 30 minutes from now, we're going to ask two Cornell students what changes they want to see ahead of a public hearing this afternoon.

And if you or anyone you know is struggling after a sexual assault, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7 to help. The number is 800-656-HOPE. There are also resources at rainn.org. Wolf?

BLITZER: And still ahead, a Situation Room special report. We'll speak to the chief global affairs officer for OpenAI as concerns grow about the technology's potential impact on lives and livelihoods.

Lots going on, you're in The Situation Room.

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BROWN: All right, now for a Situation Room special report. The Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other A.I. companies over the potential dangers their products pose to people. This comes after President Trump and six top AI leaders signed a voluntary non-binding pledge to implement more safety controls.

Joining us now is the chief global affairs officer for OpenAI, Chris Lehane. Thanks for being here.

CHRIS LEHANE, CHIEF GLOBAL AFFAIRS OFFICER, OPENAI: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: We appreciate it.

LEHANE: Thank you.

BROWN: So, is OpenAI going to assist with the FTC's investigation? Oh, we'll certainly engage constructively in any type of review. Just for context purposes, I mean, what we know is basically what we've seen publicly reported on the --

BROWN: So, they haven't reached out?

LEHANE: We haven't heard specifically what the issue is. But also, as you alluded to or touched on, I mean, we were at the White House on Tuesday. The FTC was actually there when we announced those safety commitments. Those safety commitments are things that OpenAI has already been working on. But, of course, look, I think there is a really important big issue here, which is how are you making sure you're giving the American public confidence that we're building these tools in safe and responsible ways.

And, you know, we do believe we do that. You know, we have this the most capable model in the world out right now. It also happens to be the safest model in the world.

BROWN: So, just to follow up with you on the FTC investigation, some critics might say, you know, this is the administration's way to use this FTC investigation to justify that the laws on the books are enough or sufficient to regulate A.I. What do you say to that?

LEHANE: I think there's two key points here. I think the first is it is certainly a responsibility of the companies, as with any company in the world putting a product out there to make sure it's doing it in a safe way. I mean, if you're a car company and you're building cars, you need to put your cars out in a safe way.

[10:20:00]

I mean, it's even in our self-interest. People aren't going to buy and use this stuff if they don't have confidence in it. That's point one.

Point two is I do think what took place at the White House on Tuesday was constructive. It was a real step forward to have the five or six biggest companies in the world building this all lock arms on the importance of doing this in a responsible and safe way.

That said, we, OpenAI, have been pushing for quite some time now to actually create mandatory required national safety standards for the frontier labs. I do think you look across the both sides of the aisle. I think there's strong public support for it. Obviously, not a lot left in Congress before the midterms, but perhaps there's a window, a policy window opening up where the politics and policy really come together, and we can get those in place.

I do think that would be important. I also think it's a particularly important -- this is a general purpose technology -- like electricity or the wheel or the combustion engine. Companies should be making them safe, but the American public needs to weigh in about what it wants through the small D democratic process.

So, in addition to making sure it's safe by having required standards, actually getting democratic input is really important. And you talk about public trust. A new Quinnipiac poll finds a vast majority of Americans say they don't have trust in the leaders of A.I. companies. So, how do you earn the public's trust?

LEHANE: Yes. I mean, you used the right word. You have to earn it, right? You have to show it, not tell it. Like for us, we have 1.2 billion people who are using our tools on a regular basis. That's roughly one in six adults in the world, and it's very evenly distributed, rural, urban, gender, even economics. And what we find is that people who are using it, and the more they use it, the more they actually trust because they're actually finding how it impacts them.

Now, even just this week, we did two things. We, first of all, announced a new tool called Dots. Think of it as an assistant in your pocket. It can save you a ton of time on your daily life, helping you with emails and managing daily life challenges. And then we announced an initiative that actually helped build A.I. into 1,000 small businesses across the country, to give those small businesses the ability to really punch up.

So, you know, those are the types of things --

BROWN: No question there are A.I. agents that have been very helpful to people. But, you know, a lot of Americans are concerned that A.I. could take their job and that even it could be a risk to humanity. And, you know, we talked about earning trust. The Senate held a hearing on the risks of rogue A.I. agents yesterday. But Senator Josh Hawley said that your boss, Sam Altman, declined his invitation. Let's listen to this.

LEHANE: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R0MO): We extended invitation to him to be here and do his own panel if he wanted, and he turned us down. I think that's unfortunate because I think the American people deserve to know exactly what's going on at all of these companies, and to give us the sort of transparency that I think is needed for not just comfort, but to have an understanding of what these companies that are the most powerful companies in the world are doing right now with the most powerful technology ever known to man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And we appreciate you coming on the show to talk about it, but, you know, Altman is asking the public to trust tech companies. So, why not show up there and face Congress?

LEHANE: Yes, it's a fair question. Now, Sam himself has been incredibly accessible and has appeared before Congress before to testify, and I'm sure, as we go forward and in the next Congress, you know, executives from the company will be certainly engaging.

I mean, I spent all day yesterday up on the Hill meeting with various elected officials in their offices. And I do think part of, you know, the dynamic that we're in is you do really have to have those types of conversations as part of the democratic process.

So, that is certainly something that we will be doing and we have been really accessible over time.

BROWN: Will he do more media interviews? We've been asking on this show. Will he come on?

LEHANE: This -- if he can make it onto your show, then we've definitely made it in America.

BROWN: Well, let's make it happen.

LEHANE: And, you know, by the way, with a Dots tool, he will have more time to be able to spend with you.

BROWN: Okay. That's good. But it does raise the question because he's not an elected leader, right? We have politicians on this show all the time.

LEHANE: Yes.

BROWN: He's not elected, but he has tremendous power.

LEHANE: Yes. And people want to hear what he has to say, what his game plan is.

And there's a lot of questions about how these A.I. leaders can be trusted to regulate their companies when billions of dollars are at stake.

LEHANE: I mean, I thought one of the points that the senator made, and it's a point that we have made, and it's a point that you are making, which is, in effect, this is the first technology, at least in our era, that is this capable, that has this power, that is really being made by the private sector and not the public sector.

And I do think as we go forward, like I think two of the concerns that Sam himself has raised, one is, are we building this in a safe way? Are we putting the right guardrails around it? But the other piece, and that really goes to this point, is we can't let power be concentrated in terms of a small handful of laboratories like ours making these decisions. It is why you do need to have the democratic process, giving democratic inputs. I mean, this is --

BROWN: So, you don't want to self-police? OpenAI does not want to self-police?

LEHANE: No. We believe that we need to do our part. But we also believe --

BROWN: But you want more because --

[10:25:00]

LEHANE: Yes, 100 percent. I mean, to be really clear, if there's one message, like we do want to see national mandatory safety standards. BROWN: Okay, because --

LEHANE: We want that to be passed into law. We want legislation, and we are advocating for it. I was actually on the Hill yesterday pushing that.

BROWN: Yes. So, I just want to make that point because, as you know, President Trump has said he wants tech leaders to self-police instead of imposing regulations that might undermine the U.S. lead over China.

LEHANE: Yes.

BROWN: Yesterday, as you well know, OpenAI flagged an alleged model copying campaign by Chinese startup Moonshot.

LEHANE: Yes.

BROWN: How does the U.S. maintain its edge over China without losing control of A.I. models in the process?

LEHANE: I think this is amongst the reasons why you do need national standards here. First of all, national standards I think will give the American people a lot of confidence that these are being built and deployed in a responsible way. In addition, having national standards would allow us therefore to lead on international standards. And I do think it is imperative and critical for U.S. global leadership on A.I. to be able to be advocating and pushing international standards.

If we want this technology built on our values, on democratic values, you do need to build those into international standards. You think of something like how the U.S. used the dollar as the global currency, or even maybe perhaps another analogy which is not quite as big as the dollar, but the U.S. created the airline industry. We put in place the FAA. The FAA became the global standard for air travel and safe air travel.

So, I think there's a lot of precedent to think about how we can use national standards to therefore then lead at the international stage, which is good for the U.S. leading on the innovation, and it's really good for the small D democratizing of this technology here and around the world.

BROWN: Has -- as we wrap up, has it gotten to the point of super intelligence as President Trump says, which --

LEHANE: You know, I think that's very much somewhat of a subjective -- I mean, look, first of all, I appreciate why people are talking about it in that way. I just think the simplest way to think about this is that we are in a new era. We are in a new chapter of this technology. It is really capable.

Sam has talked about how it can actually unlock and unleash a renaissance because it really does give individuals the power to think, to create, to build, to produce. We're doing a bunch of stuff around small businesses, even this week, a thousand small businesses across the U.S. that can really punch up in terms of how they compete. But because of the capabilities, right, as we've talked about --

BROWN: And not being aligned with human values necessarily.

LEHANE: Right, yes. And that's why it's like I think the most important -- this really comes back to our mission, like our mission is to build A.I. that benefits all of humanity. The simplest way to think about this is you have to build A.I. that's going to be, for, and by people.

BROWN: All right. Chris Lehane, thank you so much for your time.

LEHANE: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: And we look forward to Sam coming on the show.

LEHANE: I'll keep the seat warm.

BROWN: Okay. Wolf?

BLITZER: I'm looking forward to it as well.

And coming up, happening now, midterm push. Early voting is underway in Virginia. We're tracking just how many pre-election ballots have been cast so far.

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