[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn Anchor:] Thanks very much for watching. Erin Burnett OutFront starts right now.
[Erin Burnett, Cnn Anchor:] OutFront next, breaking news, America's top general breaks his silence on the Niger ambush that killed four American soldiers. Nineteen days out, why are there still many more questions than answers? Plus, Trump gets in a last word to the widow of a fallen hero. Why did he use a tweet to suggest she's a liar? And Trump about to declare an emergency on opioids. Dr. Sanjay Gupta goes to the U.S.Mexico border, and that is have Trump's wall will or won't stop the drug 50 times stronger than heroin. Our special investigation. Let's go OutFront. Good evening, I'm Erin Burnett. OutFront tonight, the breaking news, new information on the deadliest combat loss of Trump's presidency. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs taking 50 minutes of reporter questions about the Niger ambush. Dramatically changing the timeline of the fire fight that left four American soldiers killed by ISIS fighters. General Joseph Dunford saying a full hour passed with the fire fight raging before U.S. troops called for air support, and then, it took another full hour for that help to arrive. It has been 19 days since the ambush. This is the first time a member of the Trump administration has taken questions. And General Dunford acknowledged the nation deserves answers.
[Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., Joint Chiefs Chairman:] We owe the families as much information as we can find out about what happened. And we owe the American people an explanation of what their men and women were doing at this particular time. And when I say that, I mean men and women in harm's way anywhere in the world. They should know what the mission is, what we're trying to accomplish when we're there. And so those are all fair questions, in my judgment.
[Burnett:] While Dunford, though, welcome those fair questions and he said again and again they were fair, and that the families of the fallen and the American people deserved answers. Again and again. Again and again he did not have answers.
[Dunford:] We don't know that definitively right now. I can't answer it definitively. I don't know how this attack unfolded. I don't know why the mirages didn't drop bombs during those initial passes. I don't know if the unit on the ground asked them to do that. I don't personally know how the soldiers that they were equipped, if they were wearing body armor.
[Burnett:] That was how General Dunford answered these questions. Why was Sergeant La David Johnson's body found a mile away? Is General Dunford sure the U.S. soldiers didn't call for help for a full hour after coming under fire? Why didn't those French mirage jets that came to help the American troops drop bombed? And a basic question, were the U.S. troops wearing body armor? The answers, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Ryan Browne is at the Pentagon tonight and Ryan, let's start with the timeline because this is a very big change tonight.
[Ryan Browne, Cnn Pentagon Reporter:] That's right, Erin. We learned new details about the timeline of this attack from General Dunford in a rare appearance by him in the Pentagon press briefing room, and he laid out a much different timeline than military and defense officials had been saying previously saying that it took almost two hours before air support arrived to support the U.S. troops on the ground. Let's have a listen.
[Dunford:] It's about an hour after the initial contact was made, they requested support. When they requested support, it took the French aircraft, the French were ready to go in 30 minutes and then it took them 30 minutes, approximately 30 minutes to get on the scene. So from that, I think it's a fair conclusion to say that about two hours after the initial contact was made, the initial French mirages arrived overhead.
[Browne:] Now, one of the reasons it took an hour for the team on the ground to call in that air support, General Dunford said was potentially that they thought they could handle the ISIS fighters on their own. But as General Dunford said, that consisted of some 50 militants with RPGs, light machine guns and vehicles. So, again, many questions, though, remain unanswered about what exactly happened during the fire fight. Were the local villagers that the team meeting with, were they complicit in that ambush? Some officials told CNN previously that they might have been. These are other questions that need to be found out. There is an investigation on the way. But one thing that's definitely not known at this time is how Sergeant Johnson became separated from the rest of his team and was missing for almost 48 hours. Erin?
[Burnett:] All right. Thank you very much, Ryan Browne. As Ryan said, no answers yet for that as well as whether they were wearing body armor. The mission, itself. OutFront now, Retired Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, he until June commanded special operation forces on the African continent, knows more about this than anyone. Our Senior Political Analyst Mark Preston is with me, senior writer and terror correspondent for the New York Times Eric Schmitt joins us, along with former CIA operative Bob Baer. Bob, we've been talking about this over the last few days. Nineteen days later, we got a big 50-minute long press conference from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What do you make of the news? A big change in timeline. It went from 30 minutes, that's what has been reported last week. It was 30 minutes from when help was requested to when it arrived to two hours.
[Robert Baer, Former Cia Operative:] Erin, I think what's clear and this was clear from the beginning, those guys were surprised in an ambush. They weren't prepared, they weren't wearing body armor. They didn't have armored vehicles, they didn't expect combat. And what's crucial in this, and what lost lives, is there was no quick reaction force. Every one of these special operations and the military people will tell us better than I will that you need backup for one of these things if you expect to get into a fire fight. You just don't go on into a war zone without some sort of support. And I think the military is at a loss to explain how those guys got up there, and why the intelligence was so bad because you get 50 people, 50 ISIS fighters, all together and you're, you know, you're outgunned. No doubt about it. And, you know, those questions they can't answer those questions because they don't know. And I think a mistake was made along the line. And they're trying to determine who made that mistake.
[Burnett:] Right. And of course, and I just want to be clear here, when I say two hours, it was two hours from when the fire fight started, one hour from when help was called for. And again, the original report was a half an hour. General, you have been on the ground, you have run operations like this, and we learned something else today which was that a U.S. drone arrived an hour after that attack got under way. So pretty much General Dunford said within moments of the troops on the ground asking for help, that drone showed up. The remote-pilot vehicle, it has full motion video and it was right over the scene. How crucial is this video, General?
[Ret. Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, Deputy Operations Director, U.s. Africa Command:] I think the video is very crucial and, of course, the investigation that is ongoing will determine how crucial that is. But you have to realize that Niger is you know, the operational area in Niger is larger than the operational area in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and Syria. So, this is a very large area where the special operation forces count on their partners to provide the security necessary and of course as General Dunford said, you know, the situation is that enemy contact will be unlikely. They were doing a civil military operation mission that is part of the special operation force missions there on the ground. So they were decentralized and dispersed, they were working in and among the populous. The commanders on the ground used their judgment with helmets and body armor. You know, the enemy gets a vote here so to speak by watching them. They
[Burnett:] General, were you interested today I mean, I was curious, one of the things General Dunford said was that the troops were on their way back from another mission. He didn't know whether the mission had changed. That was another of the answers he didn't know the questions he didn't know the answer to. But he said they only slept a couple of hours the night before. Did that surprise you?
[Bolduc:] No, that doesn't surprise me at all. It's an operational environment in which people must do security, and which there's 24 hour operations going on. The support of our partners, you know, everything is tightly integrated to include the coordination with our French partners and the close air support that they provided was, in my experience, part of the plan. The quick reaction force, there is nothing quick in Africa given the terrain and given the distance that needs to be traveled. So they go out and they go out ready to go.
[Burnett:] So, Eric, General Dunford admitted that the questions out there, and there are a lot of them. He admitted that they are fair which is an important thing. Here he is.
[Dunford:] What you're asking is a fair question but we don't know that definitive right now. It's a fair question but I can't tell you definitively the answer to that question. All those are fair questions but, again, I would just ask for your patience and just giving us the time it takes to do the investigation.
[Burnett:] One of those "it's a fair question but I can't tell you definitively" answers, Eric, came to whether a question of whether the mission itself had changed. A lot of these I don't knows came in response to very central and very basic questions. Were they wearing body armor, what were they equipped with? Why aren't there answers to some of these questions 19 days later?
[Eric Schmitt, Senior Writer And Terrorism Correspondent, New York Times:] I think, Erin, one of the reasons there aren't full answers is, the investigation still has to interview a number of other people. They need to interview the French that intervened. They have to interview the Nigerian troops who are involved in the mission as well. They may hold key clues as to what happened and whether they were diverted as the New York Times reported on, guys on motorcycles dashing away toward the border of Mali and whether these whole patrol took pursuit. But the general said also said was that the key clues as to what happened and whether they were diverted as the New York Times reported, guys on motorcycles dashing toward the border of Mali and whether the what the general said today they spent overnight, a night out in the desert. That might have given time for some of the militants to mass and launch their ambush later on with perhaps, complicity with the villagers. Those are some of the things they're still trying to sort out. They're sending a team to the region. They're actually going to walk the ground where this all took place to see if they can find more clues.
[Burnett:] And Mark, you know, after the General Dunford presser, Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee who of course have been very critical of the lack of information he's been getting, had threatened even to issue subpoenas if he wasn't satisfied with the information flow, was asked about the presser. And here's what he said.
[Manu Raju, Cnn Senior Congressional Reporter:] What is still your biggest question that you have after
[Sen. John Mccain  Chairman, Armed Services Committee:] It's about the whole operation. Come on. Questions about it, why four men died. T hat should be the that's the question most Americans want to know.
[Burnett:] Not satisfied from the Senate, Mark.
[Mark Preston, Cnn Senior Political Analyst:] And he's right, you know, Senator John McCain is correct in saying that he's not satisfied and that the American public should be more focused on why did this mission fail and more importantly, why did we have four service members die in the line of duty? This is what you call a textbook case of how not to handle a crisis. Not to wait 19 days to go out and to hold a news conference, to basically deliver no answers. Now, I don't hold anything against General Dunford for not having answers because it's the fog of war, I'm guessing as Eric said. There are still a lot more questions to be answered. Had they handled this, though, 14 days ago, 15 days ago, we would be in a much different situation. And to add to this, President Trump in his interaction with the widow, you know, has really, really heightened this to an incredible another level. And in fact, just try to politicize it with his tweets when he went after the congresswoman who was the first to talk about the fact that the phone call didn't go as smoothly as it should. So, again, I think General Dunford did what he thought he had to do today. He tried to do his best today. It was just a little too late.
[Burnett:] And perhaps right perhaps all those non-answers, you know, two weeks ago would have felt different than they felt today. Bob Baer, you know, when you look at this, you told me that this ambush in Niger was worse than Benghazi because in that situation, the actual decision to go into the line of fire was made by an ambassador and in this situation, it was ultimately made by the Pentagon. Chairman Dunford was asked about that comparison, specifically, today, about whether this is Benghazi and here is how he answered the question.
[Dunford:] I personally see no utility in comparing this incident to any other incident. What I will tell you is we lost four Americans in this incident. We had two others wounded. What's most important to me, aside from getting the facts, is identifying those things that we can do better in the future.
[Burnett:] Bob?
[Baer:] Well, Erin, he's right. I mean, the ambassador in Benghazi decided to go to Benghazi and heroically lost his life. He was doing his job but that was his decision. In this case, it's the military. And I think what we're really dealing with here is we're fighting too many wars on terror. The military, given its
[Burnett:] Yes.
[Baer:] How many of them were shooters? American shooters, maybe 50 to 100. That's not enough in a country the size of Niger and it's a very dangerous country. ISIS has been operating there for the last 12 or 13 years. Sort of at will, they've been kidnapping French engineers. It was 14 years ago or something like that. So I mean, we're too thin. The military needs more support. We got to fight these wars but they also have to have the support.
[Burnett:] Right, and of course, a big part of this investigation is going to be who was complicit. Who gave up this information? Whether that was someone in the village or very damningly for the conversation we're having whether that had any possibility of coming from the Niger forces, themselves. Thank you all so very much. I appreciate it. And next, Trump essentially calling the widow of the fallen soldier, Sergeant Johnson's widow, a liar today. Plus, John McCain mocks Trump over his bone spur draft deferment. Will Trump keep his threat and fire back? And it's hard to believe, but a package this small, this small, this amount of powder, could be used to make a million pills of fentanyl and bring in tens of millions of dollars. So what's being done to stop it? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us for our Special investigation tonight on the heroin crisis.