FBI Director Chris Wray Orders Internal Review Of Flynn's Case
BLACKWELL: The USS Theodore Roosevelt is back at sea for the first time in almost two months during the coronavirus pandemic. Now, you'll remember last month the commanding officer on board the aircraft carrier, Captain Brett Crozier, was relieved of his command after a strongly worded letter he sent to Navy leadership about his concern was leaked. More than 1,100 personnel on that ship have tested positive for coronavirus. Well, now the man who replaced him, Captain Carlos Sardiello , is speaking to CNN. This is his first interview since taking the role and I started by asking him how he is first making sure that sailors aboard the Roosevelt are -- the principal concern -- are safe, but then also the psychological element. How does he make sure that they're confident in the safety procedures?</s>CARLOS SARDIELLO, COMMANDING OFFICER, USS ROOSEVELT: To ensure that the sailors are safe to do the mission and to operate in the carrier environment, we certainly have to address the COVID threat. In that, we have gone through a rigorous process to ensure that every sailor is tested multiple times, that they're free from symptoms, and that we have cleaned the ship from bow to stern, all 1,082 feet, 10 storeys up, seven storeys down, before they got here to provide a clean environment. And we maintained rigorous protocols that require medical screenings by doctors and core-men, at least once a day. If anyone has even the slightest symptom of a cold, then they're going down to medical and being screened. And we have robust testing capability on board to test for COVID, if that's necessary. And so, here we are at sea with that capability in action. How do they feel about it? Well, it's messaging. Tell them exactly what is expected, what is the mission? How we're protecting them, and they have a part in this and they understand that, that line of effort is COVID prevention, mitigation, strategy that has been in effect since, you know, day one that I got here.</s>BLACKWELL: So, we understand that there have been 13 sailors who tested positive who were once positive, then isolated, then tested negative, again are now positive. There's also the concern of social distancing with berthing compartments that are tight, the missiles that are -- that are tight. How do you enforce social distancing and what's the concern of, you know, a single test may prove that they're negative at that time, but how often should there be testing?</s>SARDIELLO: So, regarding the few sailors that were reported to be positive, they were identified by our protocols and then removed from the ship out of a -- over abundance of caution. Those were previously positive sailors. So I'm to report that today, we continue to have no new positives on board. The social distancing, we're leveraging our situation right now as we build our readiness with pilot-landing care qualifications, we are not required to bring the entire crew out. And so, we have additional space that we're using to increase that social distancing in addition to our standard measures of spreading out in the dining areas, the common areas, one way traffic around the ship, and then the constant cleaning. So in this care qualification phase, we have a lot of room and we're spreading out. The berthing areas as well. We've also segregated them by a watch sections, cohorts we call it, so that we're compartmentalized, and if we need to respond, we can identify that quickly and then move, treat, isolate sailors and decontaminate if necessary. But again, other than drills which we've executed frequently and in accordance with our procedures, we stand ready to do that. But again, right on mission and everything is going according to plan.</s>BLACKWELL: Your predecessor there, Captain Brett Crozier was relieved of command after it was deemed that he exercised extremely poor judgment for a memo, calling for some decisive action when there were a few dozen cases, he called for the ship to be evacuated, eventually there were more than a 1,000 COVID positive cases on board the Roosevelt, 4,000 sailors that were evacuated as you know. What would be the threshold for you to call for some decisive action. Has there been a number determined if you see 50 cases or 75 cases or 100 cases that you'll have to return to port?</s>SARDIELLO: I'm not going to speculate in the details of our protocols, but suffice to say they are set up to ensure that if there's even one case that we're addressing that, and it's isolate, quarantine, treat and if the opportunity presents itself to medevac. In that, there are contingency plans from everything from no cases to one case, and then multiple cases so that we can respond. I think where we are now, with everything that has been learned about COVID, with the equipment and the training that we have, particularly these types of protections that we have on board, sailor-to-sailor transmission, just breaking the chain between each and every sailor, you know, 4,860 that we have, if you can't get from one to number two, it's not going anywhere. And so that's the foundation, but we can respond and test and isolate people if necessary, and, again, we're drilling and practicing to that on a regular basis.</s>BLACKWELL: My thanks to Captain Sardiello, and our thanks to everyone on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt for your services especially during this difficult time.</s>PAUL: So FBI Director Christopher Wray is ordering an internal review into the investigation of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.</s>BLACKWELL: And in a statement, Wray said the review will look for misconduct and try to find any improvements that could be made to FBI practices. Now, this review is following the Justice Department's move to drop the case against Flynn, he pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the</s>FBI. PAUL: So re-opening schools and keeping kids safe from the coronavirus. That's a tough balance to make, right? It's going to be a major stress test for the U.S. Well, looking at what we can learn from Denmark, which is one of the fastest countries to get children back to school.