i don t personally know how these soldiers that day were equipped, if they were wearing body armer. more broadly, you talked about the difficulty of next of kin notifications. there is a big political discussion about the right way to do that. can you talk generally on the difficulty, the challenge of conveying to american families when their loved one is lost what they died for? yeah, i one, i think what you just zeroed in on is one of the things we try to do when we do this. i ve certainly had to do it myself. you want the family to understand the why. so i think one of the most important things we would try to do in this particular case is be able to explain what they re loved ones were doing was related to the protection of the homeland in dealing with the threats that we confront. and, frankly, i think in this particular case we ll be able to do that. following up on sorry. go ahead and then i ll come back. following up, sergeant johnson s widow said this morning i
asked to see her husband s body but had been told no. is that the case? is there a reason why? yeah, it s not you know, first of all, i did hear that this morning, and what typically happens and, again, i ve been involved in these cases myself, is there are times when we make a suggestion to the family that they may not want to review the remains. at the end of the day, the policy is it s the family s decision as to whether or not they do that. so i can tell you what the policy is. i don t know what happened in the case of mrs. johnson, but we ll certainly find that out. i did hear her say that today, and certainly, again, from a policy perspective, we would typically defer to the family s desires and we do that, but i don t know exactly what happened in the exchange with mrs. johnson and what would have normally been the casualty assistance officer that would have been supporting her. there is a follow-up. if it does turn out she was not given the option to view her husband s bo
jake. all right, jim sciutto, i want to bring in jason candor, the former jason, thanks for joining us. general dunford was asked about a statement made by myesha johnson, the gold-star wife of sergeant la david johnson who was killed in niger. myesha johnson saying this morning on good morning america that she was told she could not look at the body of her late husband. she doesn t even know if that s an empty box. general dunford said he didn t know the particulars about what mrs. johnson had been told, but sometimes the army advises gold-star families they might not want to look at the remains of their deceased loved one, but the body is in complete control of the gold-star family. he obviously didn t know the details about this. what do you make of what myesha johnson had to say earlier today about her conversation with president trump? i mean, it was heartbreaking,
not basically, just by calling ms. johnson a liar. and what i don t understand about that is, i don t i don t personally know anyone who would react that way. i mean, i don t believe the president s account, but even if the president feels he was misunderstood, i can t imagine feeling as though feeling anything other than just devastated that you made someone feel that way and wanting to reach out and fix it. that s what stood out to me. john kirby, you were shaking your head. i think one of the things john kelly was trying to do the other day was to explain the reason the president said he knew what he signed up for is that what general dempsey, i believe general dunford. general dunford told jen general kelly he had died and said something along those lines. the conversation between two marine generals might be quite different. exactly. in the context of that conversation for the kelly family, it probably was comforting and a reminder that general kelly what service to
seen speculation, and then what are the fundamental questions we re asking. the questions we re asking, this is a very complex situation that they found themselves in. a pretty tough firefight. and what tactical instructions the commander on the scene gave that caused units to maneuver and why they might have been when sergeant johnson s body was found, those are all questions we ll identify during the investigation. and you had a follow-up. you are aware, i imagine, that some of the administration, when faced with tough questions about this operation, the information sharing from the operation, have intimated that perhaps members of the press shouldn t ask such tough questions, particularly of people in uniform or recently in uniform. and i m curious if you have a reaction to that. if you share any of that or take any issue with those questions. let me just speak for myself on sharing information with the media. i don t know exactly what you re referring to. i m not going to bench