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American Morning
'Morning Buzz'
Aired January 24, 2002 - 07:18 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Time now to see what else is going on in the news. It's the first time we get to buzz.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Buzz, buzz, buzz.
CAFFERTY: We buzz three times a day here on AMERICAN MORNING and this is the first one.
Walker, he's home. Scanning the e-mails we get, no sympathy at all for this guy. No place can you find a kind word about this man. But somebody's been feeding him pretty well. That's the way he looked when they captured him. Check out the picture that was shot through the car window last night when he arrived back in the United States. Do we have that? I guess we don't.
ZAHN: He looks an awful lot like you, Jack, this morning.
CAFFERTY: No, he does not. But he's, he's obviously much more well fed than I am.
ZAHN: He looks swollen. He almost has the look like, when you see this picture, you check this out, almost like he's on steroids. He's very swollen.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
ZAHN: Maybe it's the angle of the camera. Who knows? Here...
CAFFERTY: There it is, yes.
ZAHN: We'll get a much better idea, I guess, when we get a courtroom sketch from the first appearance.
CAFFERTY: He looks like the Pillsbury dough boy or something.
COOPER: Yes. And there obviously won't be any cameras in the courtroom today. No electronic devices are allowed. But...
ZAHN: But we do have an artist that will be standing by.
COOPER: Yes. We also got some interesting news this morning from the lawyer, who basically gave the first indication last night that John Walker knows that his family did hire a lawyer, that the family just received a letter last night dated January 8 from John Walker saying, you know, I'm glad you've hired a lawyer. It gives me peace of mind.
ZAHN: And also a report that his attorneys, if Mr. Walker agrees to pursue this case with them, are going to try to get all of the FBI interrogation information thrown out and make it inadmissible in court.
COOPER: Right.
ZAHN: Apparently a lawyer was not present at the time at the interrogation...
COOPER: Although the government did offer him his Miranda rights.
ZAHN: Right. And he waived the Miranda rights.
CAFFERTY: But without those statements that he apparently voluntarily made, the government has virtually no case because according to people we've talked to on this program, the prosecutors' case is built on the things that John Walker told the investigators.
COOPER: But there is still the CNN tape, actually, I mean which is, can be offered into evidence.
ZAHN: Questions about that, though, as well, because he was injured and was suffering from that wound at the time of the interview. So as James Woolsey said this morning, the former head of the CIA, that a good attorney will go down that route.
COOPER: Right.
ZAHN: Who knows eventual (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
CAFFERTY: Suddenly Kenneth Lay at Enron is concerned about the stakeholders and shareholders in the company. He's resigning from company saying that it's very important now that the company reorganize and in the best interests -- where was he six months ago when this thing was collapsing like a house of tissue paper?
ZAHN: Making some money.
CAFFERTY: Oh, man. I mean these guys, that's going to be quite a show down there in Washington today.
COOPER: Well, February 4 is the big day. It's the day he appears on Capitol Hill. So, a lot of people I'm sure are marking that date on their calendars.
CAFFERTY: I wonder how many of them will be like in those little gangster movies, I respectfully refuse to answer on the grounds that the information may tend to be self-incriminating? They say Duncan from Andersen may take the first amendment. May.
COOPER: A lot of lawyers' hands over microphones.
CAFFERTY: Yes, right, as they talk to each other.
ZAHN: There's another story that I think women in America will find extremely disturbing today. And this is the confusion over whether mammograms save lives or not. The "New York Times" has a piece saying that an independent panel of experts is now saying that there was insufficient evidence to show that mammograms prevented breast cancer deaths. They go on to say while it was possible that mammograms were beneficial, it is also possible that they were not.
CAFFERTY: That's amazing.
ZAHN: Now, meanwhile, women in America are advised to have a mammogram every three years, I guess --
COOPER: Right.
ZAHN: ... after the age of 40. Those guidelines haven't changed. But at some point we need to get this information...
COOPER: And there's no...
ZAHN: ... so women will know what to do.
COOPER: And they, I mean they pointed out problems with the studies, but they haven't brought up any solutions.
ZAHN: Right. They said that the previous studies were flawed. But in the meantime, everybody knows that the earlier you catch cancers...
CAFFERTY: I was going to say...
ZAHN: ... the greater the chances are for you to survive cancer.
CAFFERTY: ... the key to those examinations is that it does tend to pick up breast cancer early, before the lumps are, you know, palpable or feelable to the fingers or whatever. It gives the doctors an early indication that something's going wrong. But I guess long- term they're suggesting it maybe doesn't make any difference at all. That's...
ZAHN: We're going to get to the bottom of this on AMERICAN MORNING.
COOPER: Absolutely.
ZAHN: Right here.
COOPER: We, perusing local papers from around the country, as we do every morning, the "Denver Post" has a fascinating story on the front page. I haven't seen it anywhere else. The headline is "Speed Skating Scandal" and it's basically a very simple story. A speed skater who's made it into the Olympics is accused of fixing a qualifying trial for people to get into the Olympics. But what's interesting is he didn't fix it for himself, he fixed it for his friend who made it onto the team and is actually the first African- American speed skater to make it into the Olympics for the United States.
So it's a story a lot of people in Denver are going to be paying attention to.
ZAHN: So might this kid, this athlete not end up competing in the Olympics? It's not clear?
COOPER: Very possibly, and there are lawsuits, several lawsuits going back and forth. And it may be ruled on today what's going to happen. An arbitrator is looking at it.
ZAHN: Wow.
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