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CNN Live At Daybreak

Overseas, U.S. Troops on Move This Morning

Aired May 16, 2002 - 08:36   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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We also have a couple of stories developing right now at the Pentagon.

Let's turn to Barbara Starr, who is standing by with news that U.S. troops are on the move.

Good morning, Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Before we get to that about what U.S. troops are doing overseas, let's bring everyone up to date closer to home here. Army secretary Tom White, already the subject of an awful lot of controversy, is going to be called to testify before Congress about the Enron Corporation. White, as everyone will remember, was a high-level official at Enron for eleven years before joining the administration as army secretary.

Now, a Senate commerce subcommittee says they will call White to testify right after the Memorial Day holiday about what he knows about alleged manipulation of the California energy market during their power crisis last year. So that's one to watch. It will be coming up in the next couple of weeks or so.

Overseas, U.S. troops are on the move this morning. About 30 special forces troops have now arrived in Yemen. They are the first contingent of what could range up to 80 to 100 troops. They are going to train the Yemeni military in counter terrorism. This follows, of course, the Cole attack of about a year and a half ago and the belief that Al Qaeda is operating inside Yemen.

U.S. troops are now going to train the Yemeni military to improve their counter-terrorism capability to go after the Al Qaeda in their own country.

Next stop in this whole effort, U.S. troops are expected to arrive in the former Soviet republic of Georgia for a similar training program in the next several days. And about those terror alerts that we've heard so much about this morning, the military is reminding us that all of last summer, they were very concerned, they had not seen the warnings about a potential hijacking, but all of last summer, the U.S. military overseas had lot of intermittent warnings about a possible attack. And last June, in fact, there was such a heightened concern, that the Navy sent all of its ships in Persian Gulf out to sea. They put them away from ports, away from land for several days. There was that much concern. So they're going to be watching that as a continuing store as well -- Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Barbara, thanks so much.

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