Africon News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Over to capitol hill, privately seemed to brief both mccain and grar graham. did you get a briefing? >> no, i did not. i spoke to secretary mattis on the phone thursday evening and friday i was in providence, rhode island and glad he got over there. as you know, the secretary left the following day for his asia tour. >> what do you feel -- was this -- let me ask you this. both lindsey graham and chuck schumer didn't know there were 1,000 troops in niger. was that knowable by a member of congress? did you know this? >> i did not know the exact number. one of the reasons we're having the classif...

Know when the media reports where we have troops. some of it was very surprising. i would not have come anywhere close to a number like 144. are we supposed to know all this stuff? and i guess there are people like john mccain who should know things because he's chairman of the armed services committee maybe the rest of us don't know. does it come as a surprise how many places we have u.s. troops in? >> i tend to follow it pretty closely. it doesn't surprise me, but specifically with africon. there's 53 nations in that area of responsibility. 15 of the top 25 weakest states are in the africon ...

Like senator mccain was entirely satisfied with all of the answers he got and he didn't give secretary mattis by any sense of the pentagon, a clean bill of health. given several opportunities to do that, he didn't do it. what mccain actually wants in terms of subpoena and testimony again, i didn't quite understand what he meant having someone from the cyber side testify. because this has to do with africon, not necessarily cyber security. >> hans, thanks for that and kelly as well. for more on the investigation i want to bring in tarpa copp. what are we talking about here. is there an inherent...

Attempt? >> first of all, we are at the -- at the highest level of the u.s. government. the people that will answer those questions will be the people at the other end of the military pyramid. i'm sure the special forces group is conducting -- i know they're conducting an investigation. that investigation, of course, under the auspices of africon will ultimately go to the pentagon. i've read the same stories you have. actually i know a lot more than i'm letting on, but i'm not going to tell you. there is an investigation being done, but as i say, the men and women of our country that are servi...

So that we don't have to send our soldiers and marines there, in their thousands. that's what they were doing there. now, there is an investigation, there's always an -- unless it's a very, very conventional death in a conventional war, there's always an investigation. of course, that operation is conducted by africon that is, of course, works directly for the secretary of defense. there is a, i talked to jim mattis this morning, i think he made statements this afternoon. there's an investigation ongoing. it doesn't mean anything was wrong. an investigation doesn't mean people's heads are goin...