[0:00]It's Thursday, February 26th. These talks will be constructive or else. We start here. With the looming threat of military
[0:10]strikes, Iran and American negotiators are back in Switzerland. >> The forcer has been amassed here. Looks like a force for war. >> What each side is looking for and can
[0:21]any of that prevent missiles from flying. A confrontation off the Cuban coastline leaves several dead. The real question here is, were they inside of Cuban territorial waters?
[0:31]>> What happened and exactly where did it happen? Each answer is going to be important. And we know these files exist. So where did they go? >> They just don't exist in the Epstein files.
[0:42]>> The curious case of a young woman making allegations not just about Jeffrey Epstein, but about Donald Trump. From ABC News, this is Start Here. I'm
[0:53]Brad Milky. Today, delegates from the US and Iran
[1:03]are back in Geneva, Switzerland, having indirect negotiations about Iran's nuclear program. And when you're negotiating national security stuff, you usually want to do so from a place of
[1:14]strength. Right now, there are more and more American military assets pouring into the region. But the question is, is this all just a show of force? Or is this the US actually gearing up for a
[1:25]strike? And if that's the answer, is there anything that can be done today to avert it? ABC's chief foreign correspondent Ian Panel has made his way to Tel Aviv. He's in Israel right now at
[1:35]a very tense moment. Ian, what are the stakes of this? Like, if if talks don't go well today, are we at the point where somebody gets bombed? Like, is that the bottom line here?
[1:44]>> Yes, I think we are. I think uh there's no hiding it really. I mean the the force that has been amassed here looks like a force for war not just a mere
[1:55]deterrent as as you raised a question earlier. Uh is this a negotiating tool? It's a very expensive negotiating tool to have this much firepower, this many
[2:05]resources focused on one single region. 12 F-22 stealth fighters moved from here in Britain to Israel, which is a very unusual step and is being interpreted as
[2:17]perhaps a sign that military action is getting closer. Of course, >> there is clear threat there that if the negotiations don't go as planned, then the president may resort to military
[2:27]action. Now again, it raises questions. What for? >> We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words. we will never
[2:38]have a nuclear weapon. >> I think there's a lot of concern that the president hasn't actually made the case. I think we saw something of that in the State of Union trying to present this case that Iran presents a threat to
[2:49]the US. Others are saying, "Look, there's no real strategic value for the US in striking Iran, makes sense for Israel, even makes sense for Gulf countries, possibly even for Europe, but
[2:59]for the US, the argument is far less clear. >> I think that he is preparing for contingencies. He is pursuing his policy of peace through strength. >> We've already seen the president claim
[3:09]once that his nuclear program has been obliterated. So arguably you can't obliterate it twice. And if his ballistic missile program is somehow diminished, uh which it was after June
[3:20]last year, but they still retain the ability to abuse them, then you haven't really achieved very much at all. >> Which takes us to negotiations, at least the thought of them. I mean, what have they been asking from each other?
[3:31]>> Yeah, I mean, there certainly appear to be differences. I think part of the problem here is there hasn't been a clear consistent message from the US side. The president's uh claimed and
[3:42]asked for a number of different things. So what is it that the US actually wants? Do they want no nuclear program whatsoever or do they want no nuclear
[3:52]weapon? Because the two things are not the same. Iran has had a nuclear program for decades. lasting agreements can only be achieved through mutual balanced commitments and respect for the
[4:03]legitimate rights of nations. It has long insisted that that program is purely for peaceful purposes. Its detractors have long suspected that in
[4:12]secret it's developing uh uranium to a highlyenriched level that could only probably be used for an offensive purpose. And we saw Steve Wickoff uh in
[4:22]the last week reiterate the claim that Iran uh could possibly make some kind of nuclear device within a week given the amounts of enriched uranium uh that it has.
[4:33]>> They continue starting it all over. We wiped it out and they want to start all over again and at this moment again pursuing their
[4:42]sinister ambitions. The president said that Iran's nuclear program was obliterated and yet he says they're starting it up again in secret. >> They were told not to try to restart it and here they are. You can see them
[4:54]always trying to rebuild elements of it. >> So what is it clearly that the US is asking for if it's just on the nuclear issue. I think there are things that the Iranians would be ready to agree to.
[5:06]They've already said publicly um foreign minister Araji uh just hours before the president took to the podium for the State of the Union posted online saying Iran guarantees it will never develop a
[5:17]nuclear weapon. >> Hey, where does Israel, you're in Tel Aviv right now. Where does Israel fit into all this in the negotiations but also into like a potential strike? They're the ones who really led the charge last year.
[5:29]>> Yes. And and they've kind of taken a curious almost backseat uh on this. Now, we know that uh Prime Minister Netanyahu when he recently went to to meet with President Trump has repeatedly tried to
[5:39]get President Trump to focus more on Iran's ballistic missile threat rather than its nuclear program. I think the battle damage assessment after the strikes last June is that its nuclear
[5:50]program had been set back significantly. Even though it contained this highly enriched uranium, it won't be eradicated because it's almost impossible to do that just from the sky. however big and
[6:01]fancy your bombs are, how devastating they are. We still believe that that the Iran retained some uh abilities there and it retained its enriched uranium. I mean, the phrase that's sometimes used,
[6:12]rather ugly phrase uh in reference to Israel military action on Iran is mowing the lawn, you know, every few months. You're going to have to do it again to reduce uh their offensive capabilities.
[6:23]But again, there are lots of voices warning. It becomes very hard to contain this because Iran said it will respond not just to Israel but to US assets in the region.
[6:34]>> Iran remains fully prepared to defend itself against any threat or act of aggression. If it hits a US base and
[6:43]kills a large number of US troops, uh, apart from being domestically damaging for the president, that will then likely lead to an escalation by the US of its
[6:54]attacks. And you're talking about a fragile regime that potentially could be unseated from power. Perhaps the Ayatollah is targeted, for example. In other words, you you'll get into this
[7:06]stage of unintended consequences. And that is the clear risk. Again, without clear targets, without clear objectives, without a clear exit strategy, the risks
[7:16]of not being able to contain this, the risks of not even achieving what you set out to do are significant, >> right? And the regime thing is important because the more a regime feels like
[7:26]we're about to get knocked out of power, the more kind of irrational and desperate they become and it's not always your traditional self-preservation place. Uh Ian panel, thank you so much. >> Thanks, Brad. Next up on Start here. The Middle East
[7:40]is on edge, but so is our neighbor just 90 miles south. A shootout near Cuba after the break. Now, it's not just the Iranian regime
[7:51]that is wearily eyeing the US military right now. Cuba recently watched the leader of Venezuela get toppled. The Trump administration has made it so that the Cuban government no longer has
[8:02]access to foreign oil. And as a result, this island nation is teetering on the edge of humanitarian crisis while its military remains on high alert. Well, yesterday we learned the Cuban military
[8:13]have been engaged in a gunfight just off their shores. Several people on a boat were shot and killed and that boat apparently flew under an American flag.
[8:23]>> I'm not going I'm not going to pine on what I don't yet know. Um but we're going to find out exactly what happened here and then we'll respond accordingly. That was the Secretary of State Marco Rubio describing what little we know so
[8:35]far. But let's turn to Colonel Steven Ganard, former Marine and State Department official, now an ABC News contributor. Colonel Ganard, I mean, what can you piece together about what went down here? >> So, what we know, Brad, is just what the
[8:45]the Cubans have told us, which means that we probably need to disregard about 99% of that because they uh this all happened supposedly within Cuban territorial waters, one mile offshore of
[8:57]Cuba. Uh they say that uh six people were injured and four people were killed. They said that the boat that they approached uh fired on them first.
[9:07]We don't know that. Uh and the really the real question here is were they inside of Cuban territorial waters inside of that 12 nautical mile limit? Because if they were then they're
[9:18]subject to Cuban law such as it is. If they were outside that 12 nautical miles then that becomes international waters and this becomes a big deal for the US government. Well, and who were these
[9:28]people and what were they there to do? Like, if the US government says this boat appears to have been stolen from Florida, that the owner wasn't in on it, they're definitely insisting whoever was on board had nothing to do with the US
[9:39]government or military. But who were these people then? >> The Cuban government gave us a registration number, a boat registration number in Florida. And so it appears
[9:49]that the that the uh boat is registered in Florida, but uh we do know that there's been decades long fastboat trade where people have paid a lot of money to
[10:01]have these fast boats, these cigarette boats and and high-speed boats go down to Cuba and pull their their loved ones offshore and to take them to the United States. Now, apparently in the past
[10:11]couple years, this used to be mostly between Cuba and Key West, but because the US been patrolling those waters more often, this fastboat trade has been
[10:20]between the Cuban shore and biminy or Grand Bahama Island, and then they take them from there back into the US. So, but wait, when I hear about cigarette, but like I used to think about like drug
[10:30]boats like trying to outrun coast guards from various countries. You're saying this is like a common, not human trafficking. I'm sure people involved would call this human rescuing, but this is a that's a regular thing.
[10:41]>> Yeah. Yeah. Think Don Johnson and Miami Vice and and those things speeding uh speeding into Cuba and and meeting people offshore, which would make sense if in fact this boat was a mile offshore, then somebody could could make
[10:53]their way out to this boat um without the boat having to touch uh land in in Cuba. But uh apparently it costs tens of thousands of dollars to get somebody out. But if you have somebody in the US
[11:04]that's willing to pay that money and you can find them to do it, uh it it's a long-standing trade. Uh what may have happened is that that went wrong. Somehow this Cuban patrol vessel came
[11:16]upon what may have been a US boat. Uh and what happened after that, we don't know. Well, now Cuba said overnight these were Cuban immigrants returning
[11:26]from the US to unleash violence and terrorism on the island. Cuba listed their names. They describe them as known criminals. They claim to find an arsenal of weapons on board. How does this
[11:36]impact the US Cuba relationship right now? Because things are seemingly more and more desperate there on the island. No doubt the Cuban government and the Cuban military is on edge, on high alert
[11:46]because once Maduro was yanked out of Venezuela, the US assumed the uh the revenues and uh and who gets what in terms of Venezuelan oil, which means
[11:56]that Cuba, which got 60% of its daily required oil from Venezuela, no longer gets that 60% oil. And so it's just a matter of time before this economy
[12:07]collapses. It could be weeks, it could be months. Everybody said for years that the Cuban economy is about to collapse. But when you take that much oil away that runs the generators that runs basic
[12:17]power on the on the island at some point the the economy and maybe the society collapses. This is why the the Cuban government is on high alert and maybe they're
[12:28]patrolling more often. >> And that's why you're saying like if if this happened in international waters more than 12 miles offshore, that's a much bigger deal. >> It's a it's a big deal. We we need to see what happens, what the US government uh finds out in terms of where this
[12:40]actually happened, and that's going to determine what happens going forward. >> All right, Colonel Steven Gear, thank you so much. >> Thanks, Bren. >> Today, former Secretary of State Hillary
[12:51]Clinton is going to be visited by members of the House Oversight Committee, asked to describe exactly what she knew about the late Jeffrey Epstein. Former President Bill Clinton will do the same tomorrow. This
[13:02]deposition testimony almost didn't happen. No one's accusing Bill Clinton of anything any wrongdoing. We just have questions. >> Weeks ago, they refused to appear before this committee despite a subpoena and were threatened with being held in
[13:14]contempt of Congress. President Clinton has acknowledged knowing Epstein for years, but has denied knowing about his abuse and trafficking of women and girls. And that's been the response from
[13:24]many people. I knew him, but I didn't know that stuff. Millions of documents have been released, many with big black redactions on them. That's all most people have to go on. But this week,
[13:35]we're also learning a little more about documents that still haven't been made public. ABC's Peter Harlamus has been following all this. Peter, we keep talking about the Epstein files as if the DOJ knew everything there was to
[13:46]know. Democrats had these pins onto the State of the Union, like released the files. It sounds like ABC News is learning more about documents that Epste might have hidden from investigators. What's going on? >> Yeah, Brad. Really the great paradox of
[13:58]this story is that as we see more of these documents, these 3 million recently released by the Department of Justice, we're learning more about what we don't have in our possession. That documents that were not released or
[14:09]documents that federal investigators somehow never obtained. Just days before Jeffrey Epstein's home was searched by the Palm Beach Police Department, uh he
[14:20]hired a private investigator to go in and take multiple computers from his property, multiple files from his property, and basically take them into his possession so that investigators
[14:30]could not find them. He was able to successfully effectively hide these documents for investigators during that critical three-year period in the late 2000s when he was under investigation
[14:41]and ultimately got that lenient plea deal that allowed him to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. Interestingly enough, even after federal prosecutors in New York opened up a new investigation, they
[14:52]never actually found these documents. They're largely still missing, hiding somewhere in the world and kind of leaving this huge gap in a way in our understanding. And that we understand
[15:04]that these were uh dozens of uh address books, three different computers in his home, including at least one computer that was connected to his surveillance
[15:14]system. And this in a way kind of shows part of the reason why Epstein was able to evade justice for so long. >> I was going to say he's dead now. Like you can't you can't learn anything more
[15:24]from him. Like if how did they not find these in like we're talking about years of not discovering this. >> Yeah. And and they did search for them. You know in Florida prosecutors issued subpoenas to try to find these
[15:35]documents. Epstein's lawyers intervened to delay this process. And at the end of the day when his plea deal was reached that issue kind of went away. When
[15:45]survivors of Epstein began with civil litigation, Epstein's lawyers scrambled again to make sure those documents would not be disclosed. At one point, Epstein
[15:55]was paying for a storage unit to store those materials. And even today, it's a bit of a mystery where those documents went. We know, for example, the serial numbers of the computers. And you can
[16:06]look into the DOJ's database online and see that a lot of these materials were never actually in the federal government's possession. that there's this period of of time where his
[16:17]computer and his address books, we just don't know what was going on there. >> Hey, you mentioned survivors as Jeffrey Epstein and all the alleged victims out there. One lawmaker, Democratic Robert
[16:27]Garcia, has said, "We know for a fact that one woman who accused Epstein specifically also mentioned President Trump." So, if you guys are releasing everything, surely these allegations would be in these documents somewhere,
[16:39]right? And yet, that doesn't seem to be the case, Peter. Even in the documents that have been released, are we seeing glaring holes? >> Yeah, this was honestly one of the the bombshells, if anything, that came out
[16:50]of these files. And that there was a woman, according to Garcia, who accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse when she was a minor. This was an incident that she said happened in the early 1980s.
[17:01]Uh, and that she actually met with federal investigators multiple times. We know that there's an index of all of these witness interviews that were included in the public release of
[17:12]documents. And when you look at that particular woman's uh files, you can see that the FBI met with her on at least four occasions. They generated what are
[17:22]called 302 reports to kind of summarize what happened. Uh there were notes from those conversations and within the actual DOJ library of Epstein documents,
[17:32]only one of those 302s was released uh suggesting that at the end of the day, the DOJ withheld three FBI reports and notes of their meeting with this woman
[17:43]who accused the president of abuse. >> Why why would you withhold that? >> You know, that's really the big question here because at the end of the day, there are few reasons why under the Epstein Transparency Act, you can
[17:53]withhold these kind of documents. uh they can claim some kind of privilege. They can say that they include explicit material. Uh that the victim information in there would kind of expose victims in
[18:04]a sensitive way. >> If documents are duplicative, they could claim to withhold them. But what's interesting here is that it's not like if you look at the Epstein files, you can find these notes, but they're just
[18:14]heavily redacted. They just don't exist in the Epstein files. And when Representative Garcia actually went to the Department of Justice to try to see these files, he said he was able to
[18:24]confirm that the person whose documents were missing was the same person who accused the president of abuse. Uh but that he couldn't even see them in the unredacted versions that they're being withheld even to lawmakers who can see
[18:35]the full unredacted Epstein file. >> Yeah. And the Department of Justice now says they are reviewing whether some interview reports were improperly tagged in the review process and therefore omitted from that public records release. Hey, Peter, last question.
[18:47]Because we keep talking about how British police, for instance, have made actual arrests based on what came out of this document dump. We have not really seen arrests in the US besides, of course, Epstein himself and Glenn
[18:57]Maxwell before these most recent records were were released. Clearly though, these records are starting to generate other types of consequences, right? Like Bill Clinton's own former Treasury Secretary, the renowned economist Larry
[19:09]Summers, resigned his position from Harvard University yesterday over ties to Epstein. what specifically is kind of generating these miaulpas? >> Yeah, I mean that's a good point from you and that a lot of the repercussions
[19:20]here are extrajudicial that there isn't necessarily going to be a prosecution, but there is this public reckoning. So in the case of Larry Summers, he's the former Treasury Secretary, uh the former
[19:30]president of Harvard University, someone who has exchanged messages and been friends with Epstein for years. Uh within the actual Epstein files, there were multiple occasions in which they
[19:41]were basically bantering about women uh where Epstein was basically playing uh Summer's wingman. >> Some of you will have seen my statement
[19:51]of regret expressing my shame uh with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein. you know, he denies
[20:01]any wrongdoing and he hasn't been accused necessarily, but the fact that he had this long-standing relationship was enough to effectively force him out of Harvard. And this isn't the only
[20:11]example from yesterday. We also saw uh Bill Gates had a town hall on Tuesday uh with his nonprofit where he basically apologized for his relationship with
[20:21]Epstein where he acknowledged that he made mistakes. He regrets that relationship with Epstein and owned up to it to the nonprofit. Though I will say that again this relationship with Epstein, even if this person is not
[20:33]accused of wrongdoing, is this massive blackark on their record and that it is kind of tarnished his reputation in society. And he basically acknowledged in these remarks that, you know, that
[20:45]kind of relationship is completely antithetical to the goals of his nonprofit foundation. >> Right. At the very least, you got people admitting they kept in contact with someone who had been previously convicted of sex crimes with underage
[20:56]victims. Peter Harumbos. Thank you so much. >> Thanks so much, Brad. >> Okay, one more quick break. When we come back, basketball shoes have never been accused of being pleasant to listen to,
[21:06]but could a new study change all that? Time to run. One last thing is next. And one last thing,
[21:17]if you hoop at the gym or if you've ever just been close to a basketball game, it's a familiar sound. In fact, sometimes it's the only sound you hear.
[21:26]The familiar squeaks of basketball sneakers. The sound is so noticeable. But why? What makes it so distinct? Well, a while back, a Harvard researcher
[21:36]named Adele Jaluli was at a Boston Celtics game and realized he didn't understand why sneakers squeak, which is weird. He thought he studies material
[21:44]sciences. This squeaking sound when uh players are sliding on the floor is omniresent. It's always there, right? and it's somehow the sound signature of
[21:56]the NBA. >> He decided to put together a study. Yesterday, he published the results in the journal Nature. So, when you drag something solid across a hard surface, it'll make a sound.
[22:07]That's just friction. This is a spoon going across my coffee table. So, that's not very high pitched. But now, think of a sneaker sole. One, it's
[22:18]soft. Two, it's got all these little tiny ripples. Well, when you bring soft rubber to a sudden stop, parts of that sooul are changing position. Julie
[22:28]filmed soles being dragged across panes of glass. As these tiny pieces of rubber squish under the pressure, they're actually
[22:38]leaving the glass for a split second, then coming back into contact thousands of times per second. That high frequency makes a high-pitched sound, a squeak.
[22:49]Now, this might not be the biggest shocker in the world. It's the same reason tires squeal, different parts of rubber rapidly coming into contact with pavement. But a study like this hadn't existed before. And once you understand
[23:00]the physics involved, you can start engineering for it. Friction is one of the most consequential forces of machines, of electricity, of earthquakes. It also
[23:11]means you could start adjusting sneaker souls. Maybe fewer ripples will squeak less. Maybe certain souls could be less embarrassing and echoey hallways. Or maybe, just maybe, you could start
[23:22]adjusting the tone of the squeaks these sneakers produce. Imagine being the hooper complimented not just for your jump shot, but for your acoustic kicks. Just imagine designing the soles to be
[23:35]like a symphony of sneakers. Instead of shirts and skins, it's major and minor cords on people's feet. More on all these stories on ABC News Live. In fact, I'll be on there in the 9:00 a.m. Eastern hour today talking about our
[23:45]favorite stories of the week. I'm Brad Milky. See you tomorrow.