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American Morning

Tomorrow First Anniversary of When Republican Sen. James Jeffords Announced He Was Leaving GOP

Aired May 23, 2002 - 09:19   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Tomorrow is the first anniversary of a fateful day that rocked the nation's capital. Senator Trent Lott called it the Coup of One, when Republican Senator James Jeffords of Vermont announced he was leaving the GOP. That move of course handed control of the Senate over to the Democrats. And tonight at 8:30 Eastern Time, CNN congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl will bring us a look into the back quarters of the Senate based on more than 20 interviews. And he will be live from Capitol Hill with what really pushed Senator Jeffords to defect. He joins us now with a preview.

Good morning, Jonathan.

What else will you have for us tonight?

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Paula, this is political drama really at its best, and you know, as you mentioned, this wasn't somebody who was really an obscure senator. He was virtually maybe 99th out of 100 on the list of people you knew outside of his home state. He was, you know, not the most articulate, not the flashiest, not somebody that got out there toward the limelight.

But his decision completely rocked Washington, changed the balance of power singlehandedly, and really, in a significant way, changed the correction of the country politically. What we have done with the benefit of a year's worth of hindsight, is we gone back and we have tried to piece together exactly what was really going on behind the scenes as Jeffords was making that decision.

We have first-ever interviews with the people that were with Jeffords behind the scenes as he was struggling through what to do. We talked to his key staff, first his wife, who by the way tell us, that she thought the idea was a stupid idea and she tried to talk her husband out of it, out of switching parties. We also talked to the Republicans and learned about their extraordinary 11th hour effort to get him to change his mind.

We even found out that Trent Lott actually called Jefford's son the day before he switched, and said, oh, please, call your dad one more time and try to talk him out of this. This is a terrible thing to do, and, Paula, in an amazing thing, we found out that one of Jefford's staffers had a video camera with him behind the scenes and was actually there in his little Capitol Hill hideaway, videotapes Jeffords when Trent Lott made -- when Trent Lott called to his son, and the son called Jeffords in that hideaway. We see this amateur video behind the scenes of Jeffords talking to his son about what Lott has said.

So it's an amazing story. We have got some first-ever things. We never knew at the time what was really going on with Jeffords making this decision. So I hope you'll check it out.

ZAHN: We will go inside with you tonight, 8:30 p.m. Eastern time. Before you go, are you staying in front of a backdrop, or is that the capital right behind you, because that is one heck of a shot there.

KARL: That is actually really the capital.

ZAHN: Boy, is that beautiful.

KARL: We have got Omar here, who has really framed it up nice.

ZAHN: Through the magic of television, capturing reality. We love that. Good luck tonight. We look forward to watching.

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