Two U.S. Members Killed in Afghanistan; Boeing Jets Allegedly Lacked Two Safety Features; Trump Backs Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights; E.U. and U.K. Leaders Set Plan to Avoid Brexit Crash.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking overnight, two U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan as efforts to wrap up to bring that 17- year war to a close.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Do family tours and staff departures mean the special counsel is done? New indications the Mueller report could go to the attorney general at any moment.</s>BRIGGS: Jared Kushner using WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. Why his attorney says it's not a problem.</s>ROMANS: And for the second time in a year, Mississippi is trying to ban abortions before some women even know they have a baby on the way. Good morning, and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.</s>BRIGGS: I'm Dave Briggs. It is finally Friday, March 22nd. It's 4:00 a.m. in the East. We start with some breaking news overnight. Two U.S. service members killed while conducting an operation in Afghanistan. Information still coming in at this hour. Let's get straight to senior international correspondent Matthew Chance live from Moscow. Matthew, what are we learning?</s>MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don't know very much at this stage, Dave, but there's been a press statement reached by the NATO Military Alliance, NATO Resolute Support, which is the ongoing military operation involving U.S. forces in Afghanistan, saying that two U.S. service members were killed while conducting an operation on this day, March 22nd, inside Afghanistan. Now the statement says -- it's very short but it says, "In accordance with the U.S. Department of Defense policy, the name of the service names killed in action are being withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified." So it may well be tomorrow until we learn the actual identities of these individuals. But it does bring to fore the number of U.S. service personnel that had been killed in Afghanistan just this year alone, more than 2300 have been killed since the war began. What is it? More than 17 years ago now. And that's underlined concerns and the urgency that's being felt in the United States to try and bring America's longest running conflict ever to an end. The United States President Donald Trump has said he's accelerating diplomatic efforts to try and achieve that. U.S. diplomats have been meeting with negotiators from the Taliban, the militant group that was toppled back in 2001 but which has been resurgent in recent months. They've been meeting to try and get some sort of peace proposal together. The Afghan government, which has been a strong ally of the U.S. and others, is very concerned about that because they have been kind of cut out of the process and they feel they may be abandoned to the Taliban if the United States and its allies should leave. But the fact that another two U.S. service personnel have been killed today underlines the urgency and the need to bring that conflict to an end there.</s>BRIGGS: Yes. Could further complicate things. Matthew Chance live for us in Moscow this morning. Thank you.</s>ROMANS: All right, the Mueller watch in full swing here. Robert Mueller has the White House and the world on edge this morning. The special counsel appears close to delivering his final Russia report. Beltway insiders and the president's lawyers are on high alert and here is why. CNN's Katelyn Polantz pointing out that members of Mueller's team are bringing family members to the office for visits with some staff members carrying out boxes. The top prosecutor is leaving for another assignment now. Plus the special counsel's grand jury has not been seen in two months.</s>BRIGGS: When Mueller does file his report it could take weeks for most Americans to find out what he learned. The special counsel is required to hand over his report to Attorney General Bill Barr. The Justice Department would then share portions with the White House. CNN reported this week the White House wants to review it before lawmakers do to claim executive privilege where it sees necessary.</s>ROMANS: White House special counsel Emmet Flood and his team have already prepared responses to whatever becomes public based on several potential scenarios. Sources tell CNN there appears to be a sense of relief within this White House that they managed to navigate the entire Mueller episode without this president ever sitting down for a face-to-face interview. From the White House point of view that is a big win.</s>BRIGGS: The wait continues. Meanwhile, House Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings claims several senior White House officials have used personal e-mail and messaging accounts to conduct government business. In a letter to the White House, the Maryland Democrat alleges Jared Kushner has been using WhatsApp to communicate with foreign leaders. According to Cummings, Kushner's attorney insists his client is complying with the Presidential Records Act because he takes screen shots of the WhatsApp messages and sends them to his White House account or the National Security Council.</s>ROMANS: So why not just use the official e-mail for that?</s>BRIGGS: Begs that question.</s>ROMANS: It is not clear whether Kushner communicated classified information. Cummings also claims former Deputy National Security adviser KT McFarland and Steve Bannon received e-mails on their personal accounts about the transfer of sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. These new revelations come as President Trump continues to attack Hillary Clinton for using a private e-mail server when she was secretary of State. He built a campaign around that. And now his own administration questioned about complying with Presidential Records Act.</s>BRIGGS: His signature attack line. They're still chanting "lock her up" at the rallies because of that. Boeing meanwhile paying a heavy price for two deadly crashes involving its 737 Max 8. Indonesian carrier Garuda says it wants to cancel an order for 49 of the jets. Boeing stock down 11.7 percent since the most recent disaster. In Ethiopia, that is over $27 billion in market cap gone. In the face of the crisis at his company, a new filing reveals Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg made $23.5 million last year, a raise of 27 percent. And now the "New York Times" reports the pilots of both doomed jet liners lacked two notable safety features that could have helped them. It seems Boeing only offered them as extras. CNN's Tom Foreman has more on these safety features and what the company is doing now.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Christine. Hey, Dave. The heat around Boeing is just getting hotter. These were considered add-ons by Boeing, according to this "New York Times" article, and they would tell you, the pilots inside the plane, it would tell them if these sensors on the front of the plane were reading that the plane was headed more up or if it was headed more down, or if they disagreed with each other. Readouts in the plane and also a warning light, these are two separate systems. Boeing now says they're going to make one of these things no longer something that they charge for, no longer an add-on but a standard part of the plane. But this is really ratcheting up the tension around Boeing because people are saying if these are safety measures, to make this plane safer, why weren't they free all along? Why weren't they considered a standard part of the plane? One of the answers is these types of add-ons are a big market for companies like Boeing out there. Nonetheless, this will make the investigations of Boeing which we know about now from the FBI, Justice Department, just go even more energetic at this point. What are they looking at in all of this? Any sign that Boeing was taking steps that effectively by omission or co-mission allowed a dangerous circumstance to come into play, a dangerous circumstance, which has taken hundreds of lives -- Dave, Christine.</s>ROMANS: Tom Foreman, thank you for that. Another "we're sorry" from Facebook. This time for mishandling the passwords of hundreds of millions of you. Facebook said it did not properly masked the passwords and stored them in an internal database that staff had access to. Facebook vice president said the passwords were never visible to anyone outside of Facebook and there's no evidence anyone abused the passwords. It's been a year of constant issues for Facebook. Cyber security concerns, regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe and a lengthy outage last week. At the same time misinformation about vaccines is appearing on Facebook and Instagram weeks after both sites said they would minimize that content. Earlier this month Facebook said it would reduce the rankings of groups and pages that spread misinformation about vaccines by not including them in recommendations or in predictions when users type a search. But two weeks later, this is still an issue. A CNN Business review showed Facebook recommending content in the search bar that links vaccines with autism. Of course that's not borne out by science. A spokesperson for Instagram and Facebook called the effort to curb the misinformation a long-term commitment.</s>BRIGGS: Well, this weekend Trump world will be remembered for the president's incessant attacks on the Senator John McCain. In an interview Thursday with FOX Business, he yet again slammed the deceased war hero calling McCain horrible for his 2017 vote against a measure to repeal Obamacare and claiming the Arizona Republican gave the FBI an explosive dossier on alleged Trump ties to Russia for, quote, "very evil purposes." The president also said this.</s>MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS HOST: But, Mr. President, he's dead. He can't punch back. I know you punch back.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Uh, no.</s>BARTIROMO: But he's dead.</s>TRUMP: I don't talk about it. People ask me the question. I didn't bring this up, you just brought it up. You asked the question.</s>BARTIROMO: Well, you talked about it this week.</s>TRUMP: You asked me the question.</s>BRIGGS: Fact check, that is not true. President Trump went after McCain unsolicited twice on Twitter last weekend and did it again this week during a speech intended to focus on the economy in Ohio.</s>ROMANS: Yes, what you're looking at right now, no one asked the president right there about John McCain. He went on a lengthy tirade about John McCain the late senator and are war hero. All right. President Trump overturning five decades of policy in a single tweet announcing it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. A single declaration handing embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a significant foreign policy victory just weeks before Israelis head to the polls. Want to go to the Golan Heights and bring in CNN's Oren Liebermann. Politically for Netanyahu, this was important.</s>OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Netanyahu is facing a very difficult re-election campaign. He had been sliding in the polls a little bit and this could easily reverse that trend because it's such a momentous announcement from the U.S. for Israel. Israeli -- rather U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty where I'm standing now in the Golan Heights. For more than half a century, this has been considered by the international community as occupied territory. No country ever recognized Israel's annexation in 1981 until now. There didn't seem to be any pressing reason to make this announcement even if the international community was opposed to it. There wasn't anybody pushing back against this. So why now? And that answer perhaps the elections. Just a couple of weeks away at this point. Trump handing Netanyahu such a big victory, certain to give him an election boost. Now when asked about it, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who was visiting here didn't mention the election, Netanyahu never mentioned the elections, and Trump said it wasn't really a consideration, but that's hard to believe. Here's what he said to FOX.</s>BARTIROMO: It's not about Netanyahu's re-election?</s>TRUMP: No. I don't -- I wouldn't even know about that. I wouldn't even know about that. I have no idea. He was doing OK. I don't know if he's doing great right now but I hear he is doing OK. But I would imagine the other side, whoever is against him, is also in favor of what I just did.</s>LIEBERMANN: Though it's certainly true that all Israelis will support this move, that's not likely to sway anybody in the international community. We've seen already condemnation from Syria, their state news agency, saying this is the U.S. being blindly biased towards Israel. Russia condemned it as well, saying the U.S. can't simply overturn international consensus and U.N. Security Council resolutions. Now as part of what appears to be blatantly the Trump administration campaigning for Netanyahu, part of that Netanyahu heads to AIPAC, to Washington, where he'll meet with Trump. He's stay in the Blair House, the official guesthouse of the White House. So, Christine, this may be just a part of the Trump administration lobbying for Netanyahu to win.</s>ROMANS: Sure. All right, Oren Liebermann, in the Golan Heights. Thank you for that, sir.</s>BRIGGS: All right. Ahead, 25 states at risk of serious flooding this spring. Some of them already saturated. Farmers are getting desperate after the latest blow. We are on the ground in Iowa next.