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CNN Live At Daybreak
Talk of CNN: Saddam Hussein's E-Mail
Aired November 25, 2002 - 05:45 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.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Time now to check out the buzz in the Granite State this morning. Mark Ericson, Danielle Carrier, better known as the WOKQ Waking Crew in Portsmouth and Manchester, New Hampshire on the phone with us guys.
Thanks for being with us this morning. How are you?
MARK ERICSON, WOKQ WAKING CREW: Good morning. How are you?
CALLAWAY: Doing well. You've got an interesting story up there about this journalist -- this freelance journalist apparently stumbling upon a public e-mail account that supposedly was Saddam Hussein's.
ERICSON: Well you know I guess, and everybody has one, including the president of the United States. On the White House site there is a -- there's a way to get in touch with the president. However, in the case of Saddam Hussein, yes, a gentlemen from Durham, who's a freelance writer and a guy who is an Internet expert, stumbled across the Web site and started noodling around with passwords and user names and got in.
CALLAWAY: A Web site or was it e-mail? It was just an e-mail account?
ERICSON: It's an e-mail account that's on the Saddam Hussein or on the Iraqi government Web site.
CALLAWAY: All right. What are some of the things that were -- that he found in there?
ERICSON: Well he found an odd assortment of stuff, including a number of letters to Saddam Hussein that were less than kind, shall we say. And he also found some other things.
DANIELLE CARRIER, WOKQ MORNING CREW: You know I always thought to myself, what would you e-mail to Saddam Hussein, right? Guy wrote in China e-mailed an idea to convert an agricultural pesticide into a chemical weapon. They're giving him ideas.
ERICSON: Somebody in China wanted to try to help Saddam Hussein.
CARRIER: Yes, there were fawning solicitations for autographed photos, obscene death threats, so on and so on. But this one's my favorite, someone in Las Vegas e-mailed him to try and sell him a flame retardant to the Iraqi Army.
CALLAWAY: So he's getting pop up ads, too, is he?
CARRIER: He's getting everything. I wonder why this guy doesn't have SPAM mail, you know, attachments, you know.
CALLAWAY: Oh my goodness (ph).
ERICSON: Also the gentlemen who discovered the e-mail account, as I said, he's a freelance writer and an Internet expert, he lives in Durham, New Hampshire. His name is Brian McWilliams. He says that the version of Web mail software that the Iraqi ISP, the Internet Service Provider, uses has a lot of security holes and they haven't fixed any of them.
CALLAWAY: Hey, did he say what Saddam Hussein's password was? I wonder how he figured that one out.
ERICSON: You know he said -- the only thing he will say is that it was five letters long and that the user name and the password are one and the same but he never actually says what it is.
CALLAWAY: All right, Mark and Danielle, thank you very much.
We got a little mixed minus (ph) going on there. Did you hear that little echo? Apologize about that everyone.
Thanks for being with us, Mark and Danielle, have a good day.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 25, 2002 - 05:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Time now to check out the buzz in the Granite State this morning. Mark Ericson, Danielle Carrier, better known as the WOKQ Waking Crew in Portsmouth and Manchester, New Hampshire on the phone with us guys.
Thanks for being with us this morning. How are you?
MARK ERICSON, WOKQ WAKING CREW: Good morning. How are you?
CALLAWAY: Doing well. You've got an interesting story up there about this journalist -- this freelance journalist apparently stumbling upon a public e-mail account that supposedly was Saddam Hussein's.
ERICSON: Well you know I guess, and everybody has one, including the president of the United States. On the White House site there is a -- there's a way to get in touch with the president. However, in the case of Saddam Hussein, yes, a gentlemen from Durham, who's a freelance writer and a guy who is an Internet expert, stumbled across the Web site and started noodling around with passwords and user names and got in.
CALLAWAY: A Web site or was it e-mail? It was just an e-mail account?
ERICSON: It's an e-mail account that's on the Saddam Hussein or on the Iraqi government Web site.
CALLAWAY: All right. What are some of the things that were -- that he found in there?
ERICSON: Well he found an odd assortment of stuff, including a number of letters to Saddam Hussein that were less than kind, shall we say. And he also found some other things.
DANIELLE CARRIER, WOKQ MORNING CREW: You know I always thought to myself, what would you e-mail to Saddam Hussein, right? Guy wrote in China e-mailed an idea to convert an agricultural pesticide into a chemical weapon. They're giving him ideas.
ERICSON: Somebody in China wanted to try to help Saddam Hussein.
CARRIER: Yes, there were fawning solicitations for autographed photos, obscene death threats, so on and so on. But this one's my favorite, someone in Las Vegas e-mailed him to try and sell him a flame retardant to the Iraqi Army.
CALLAWAY: So he's getting pop up ads, too, is he?
CARRIER: He's getting everything. I wonder why this guy doesn't have SPAM mail, you know, attachments, you know.
CALLAWAY: Oh my goodness (ph).
ERICSON: Also the gentlemen who discovered the e-mail account, as I said, he's a freelance writer and an Internet expert, he lives in Durham, New Hampshire. His name is Brian McWilliams. He says that the version of Web mail software that the Iraqi ISP, the Internet Service Provider, uses has a lot of security holes and they haven't fixed any of them.
CALLAWAY: Hey, did he say what Saddam Hussein's password was? I wonder how he figured that one out.
ERICSON: You know he said -- the only thing he will say is that it was five letters long and that the user name and the password are one and the same but he never actually says what it is.
CALLAWAY: All right, Mark and Danielle, thank you very much.
We got a little mixed minus (ph) going on there. Did you hear that little echo? Apologize about that everyone.
Thanks for being with us, Mark and Danielle, have a good day.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
