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American Morning

Day Two of 9/11 Commission Hearings; Paging Dr. Gupta

Aired March 24, 2004 - 08:30   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.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: With about 100 days left until the power handover, Bremer says that Iraq has made significant economic progress since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL BREMER, U.S. ADMINISTRATOR, IRAQ: Much remains to be done in the next 100 days. But today, almost a year after liberation, we should take heart at what has already been accomplished.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Ambassador Bremer is giving the 100 days until Iraqi sovereignty speech today.

A New York man who married a millionaire widow, now being charged with murdering her husband. Danny Pelosi surrendered to police after he was told a grand jury returned an indictment against him for the 2001 murder of Ted Aman (ph). At his arraignment, Pelosi pleaded not guilty to a single charge of second-degree murder. Pelosi's attorneys called the government's case weak. They say it's based on circumstantial evidence.

And the clock is ticking for a whale that's tangled in fishing gear off the coast of South Carolina. Experts around the country are gathering this morning for what could be a last-ditch effort to try to rescue the North American white whale. The fishing line apparently is pinning the whale's flippers to its body, and the whale will die if that's not removed.

HEMMER: That effort continues, ongoing.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: 9/11 commission hearings getting started at this hour. First up today, a report from the commission's staff. We expect to hear from the CIA director George Tenet at the top of the hour, 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. And certainly we're keeping a close eye on that.

Senior analyst Jeff Greenfield not too far behind, keeping a close eye as well.

Good morning to you, Jeff.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Good morning.

HEMMER: Did you pick out a dominant theme yesterday? GREENFIELD: Oh, yes, one theme -- why didn't the Clinton and Bush administrations take stronger actions against al Qaeda? And if they had, could September 11th somehow have been prevented. And interestingly, some of the toughest questions for both Clinton and Bush officials came from the same commission member. That's former Nebraska Democratic senator Bob Kerrey. Here's a taste.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. But what the hell does that say to al Qaeda? It seems to me that a declaration of war, either by President Clinton or by President Bush, prior to 9/11, would have mobilized the government in a way that at least would have reduced substantially the possibility that 9/11 would have happened. Do you agree or not?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now, interestingly, both the Clinton and Bush officials gave essentially the same answer, that in a pre-9/11 world there would have been no international or domestic political support for a strike against the Taliban. And anyway, Donald Rumsfeld said by 2001, it would have just been too late to stop 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECY. OF DEFENSE: Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before September 11th, no one I know believes that it would necessarily have prevented September 11th. Killing bin Laden would not have removed al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States, months before the attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: This time yesterday, Richard Clarke was sitting right where you are. How did his charges play out yesterday?

GREENFIELD: I hate this cliche, but he was the elephant in the room. His charges -- we saw, for instance, former Democratic Congressman Tim Romer push very hard at Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the biggest Iraq hawks in the government, about whether Clarke was right when Wolfowitz was calling for an attack right after 9/11. Wolfowitz said he didn't remember saying anything quite like that. And you also saw John Lehman, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy, repeatedly press Madeleine Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, about why she and Clinton ignored Iraq's connection to al Qaeda operatives. Clearly here, Mr. Lehman is trying to help shore up the Bush administration's credibility on its insistence that there was some kind of connection between Iraq and the war on terror.

And we saw Richard Benvenista (ph) -- you may remember him from Watergate frame, a prominent Washington Democrat, he was prodding Bush officials to try to persuade national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify at this commission by saying, you know, other officials have done this in the past. So there is a lot of partisanship going on here.

HEMMER: On the roster today, George Tenet goes first today. Sandy Berger comes second. In the afternoon, getting twice the time will be Richard Clarke.

GREENFIELD: Yes, and what I think you can look for here is some very tough questioning from the Republican side of this bipartisan commission, about why for eight years the Clinton administration not respond more strongly to al Qaeda attacks. They're going to, I think, ask whether Condi Rice is accurate, when she says, look, Clarke never came to me with any specific discontents. And I think you'll see questions, again, on whether Clinton and the Bush administrations dropped the ball, with the Clinton administrations stories that they had the chance to take bin Laden into custody in the late '90s. There's a lot of stories about whether Sudan was ready to turn bin Laden over, whether the Clinton administration didn't pick up on that.

But there's going to be high drama. We have a decades-long history when these commissions and committees get going on a contentious issue, it's live. You can't tell what the script is going to be before it, and it's actually very compelling.

HEMMER: In a subscript of all that is the letter the White House put out yesterday. When Richard Clarke gave his resignation, the president very glowing terms about he felt the president acted the day of 09/11 and the days after that.

GREENFIELD: Well, on the day of 9/11, the resignation letter specifically says you were great on 9/11. That's not exactly what the book says. What interested me is this is a technique that White Houses use when somebody turns on them. Remember when Kathleen Willie accused President Clinton of personal misbehavior? One of the first things the Clinton White did was to whip out an effusive letter of praise that Kathleen Willie had sent Clinton. When people leave government, they tend to write nice letters. Very few people leave and say, you know, you're awful.

HEMMER: It's a small town.

GREENFIELD: It is a small town.

But I think the reason the White House is pushing back so hard on this is this is not a liberal left peacenik. This is one of the biggest hawks on terror through four administrations. And for him to challenge Bush on his record goes right to the heart of the re- election strategy.

HEMMER: You wonder why that letter didn't come out on Monday by the White House.

GREENFIELD: Thirty-six hours after "60 minutes," that's a pretty good turn-around time. Talk to you later. Hearings begin again right now in D.C. The testimony from George Tenet gets under way. There's Governor Kean, who chairs that commission, the 09/11 Commission. George Tenet expected top of the hour. We will take you there live when that question-and-answer question begins. Again, day two in D.C. -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: A NASA scientist is calling the latest information from the Mars rover Opportunity, quote, "a profound discovery." He was talking about evidence that there was once a salty pool of water on the Martian surface.

Space correspondent Miles O'Brien now from the CNN Center with more on this.

Hello, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

I guess you could call it the soggy grail. NASA has hit some paydirt on Mars, specifically with its rover named Opportunity.

Let's take a look at this landing spot. You've seen it many times by now. But nevertheless, I'd like to show you some beachfront property on Mars. The problem is, we're a few million years too late. These are the rocks which have given them the proof. And the question was, was there standing water here, or perhaps even a salty sea?

How do they prove it? Let's look at some movies and give you a sense of how it works. What happens when there's water? Well, you get ripples and waves when there's water. Scientists have been able to model some of the ripples and rocks there, and match them to ripples like these, which they say were present when those rocks were performed.

Look at the next movie, same basic idea -- the wave pattern carries dirt with it. As the dirt is deposited, it makes rocks and layers of rocks. The key is to look for different angles in those layers of sediment. Let's look at these pictures which were gathered by Opportunity's microscopic imagery. If you look very closely here, look at the lines in the sediment, that's one angle here. Here's another angle down there. There's another angle down here. Those multiple angles are what tell you that it was caused by those waves which would leave the sediment in different levels. If it had been volcanic, they'd be flat as a pancake straight across.

Let's look at the next image, kind of the same type of imagery here. And if you look in here, you see all kinds of different angles for that sediment. And if you're a geologist, that's as good as it gets as far as smoking gun evidence. There's more to it than that, though. The chemical composition of these rocks contains a certain ratio of chlorine and bromine, which leads them to believe it's water. As a matte of fact, it just screams out water.

Let's take a look at one more movie, I want to show you very quickly. They've been focusing on these things called blueberries. They're actually gray berries, because it's gray dirt.

But if you look at these little spheres that are all over the place, wherever opportunity landed, you have to wonder what those things are. Well, as it turns out, they might as well be like little pieces of ready-mix concrete. And in order to have ready-mix concrete, you've got to have water. And so each of those little spheres is formed when sediment comes in contact with water. All of that adds up to pretty much smoking gun proof, or maybe it's just a dripping water gun proof, of water on Mars, and a lot of it.

What does that mean? Well, everywhere we look on life where there is water, we find life. Water and life go hand in hand, Soledad. So the next question is, are there fossils up there?

S. O'BRIEN: Miles, quick question for you. How big are those spheres? Because earlier, we heard the NASA scientists, you know, absolutely thrilled to death about the discovery of these spheres. Give me the sense of the size of these things.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, these are a little less than a centimeter. They're teeny little spheres. And the problem as far as looking for the fossils I was just telling you about, is the scale of what we're talking about here. The microscopic imagery on Opportunity can't get close enough to see any microscopic fossils that might be there. That will have to do with another mission due to fly in about five years. So as far as finding Martian fossils, I don't think we're going to see it this time. Nevertheless, scientists are ecstatic.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet. It really has been just good news and more good news, followed by even more exciting news for the NASA scientists.

Miles, thanks a lot, as always.

HEMMER: Still to come here, we are just minutes away from day two of the 9/11 commission hearings in D.C. CIA chief George Tenet set to testify first up on the schedule today.

S. O'BRIEN: Also coming up next, one man says a strenuous workout nearly killed him. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to tell us just how much exercise is way too much.

Stay with us. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: A New Yorker is suing his gym for more than $1 million. He says he was put through a ridiculously tough workout by a trainer at Crunch Gym. And it was so tough, it actually left him with kidney damage. Thirty-seven year old Fred Whitland (ph) says that he warned the trainer that he hadn't exercised in years. He cut the workout short after pain and after becoming dehydrated. Thomas Mullaney is Woodland's attorney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) THOMAS MULLANEY, ATTORNEY FOR MAN SUING CRUNCH GYM: His statements to the trainer that he had not worked out for a long time, and his fitness goals were somewhat modest, were ignored. And he was put through what I would term a very rigorous exercise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The Crunch Gym issued a statement saying, quote, "The allegations surrounding Mr. Whitland's claim appear to be highly suspect, and we're going to be conducting a thorough internal investigation.

So what are some of the telltale signs that your workout has gone a little bit too far? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center with some important advice.

And, Sanjay, I have to imagine that working out too hard is actually not the problem for most people. It's not working out at all, right?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. That's a whole another problem which you and I talk about quite a bit. In this particular situation, certainly kidney failure, they talk about that can occur because you become too dehydrated or your muscles actually start to breakdown. And those breakdown products cannot be adequately cleared by the kidneys, ultimately causing them to go into renal failure, or kidney failure.

Soledad, they talk a lot about the no pain, no gain sort of adage. A little bit of soreness is OK, but if you're starting to have acute pain, really significant acute pain, the workout's probably gone too far. Lots of different sorts of strategies to try to avoid this sort of thing. A lot of them people know, as you already pointed out, Soledad, your body is going to be the best barometer. But if you're going to do aerobics and weight sort of training, your muscles, your body does need time between those sorts of exercises to try to recuperate. So don't do weight training more than one day in a row, and Mix it up with aerobic training as well.

Overall, if you're exercising three to four times a week, make sure you're mixing up the exercise regimen to give your muscles a chance to recover. Drink plenty of water during those exercise routines as well. And if you're starting off, you're going to want to start off slow. A lot of people getting into the gym this time of year for the first time in a while, given that it's spring and everything. You're going to have to start off slow, even though you're at the gym probably for the first time -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: What are the signs, Sanjay, that you're overdoing it, outside of just being in out and out pain, which is a pretty obvious sign that you've got to step. I mean, what are the physical signs that you're overdoing it?

GUPTA: Well, you know, the body, again, is going to are your best barometer. Your body is going to tell you enough, but if you want specific physical signs, there are some. And again, they're going to be somewhat obvious, in terns of what people should look out for. Decreased performance -- if your performance is starting to decrease during your workout, that could be a significant sign. Loss of coordination, prolonged recovery, elevated morning heart rate. So you're exercising, and the next morning your heart rate is starting to increase. There's also signs as well, loss of appetite. Let's say you've been working out quite a bit. Usually people's appetite goes up. Headaches. Muscle soreness and tenderness that's prolonged. After a workout everyone is going to have a little bit of this, but if it stays around for a while, that's a concern. Gastrointestinal disturbances. And then if you're immune system starts to falter, if you're getting sick, if you're getting a lot of colds now that you're work out, that can be a problem as well -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Sanjay, clearly, this guy who's following this lawsuit, which, again, Crunch says is suspect, in their minds, at this point. He claims that it was really all to blame on his personal trainer. How do folks pick a personal trainer who they can trust?

GUPTA: Yes, and that's a really good question. First of all, I think that if you're going to the gym for the first time in a while, a personal trainer may be a good idea, try to get you acquainted with the machines, get you a good regimen. Most times, they're going to be just perfectly fine. But there are some Web sites you can go to, to try and get some information about personal trainers. There's a certification Web site. That's important. And there are good questions to sort of ask, you know, things that you can find out about your trainer before you sign up with him or her, find out what their certification is, references, if there's any of those sorts of things. Charges, how much are they going to be charging you, and compatibility. In this sort of situation that you're talking about, it sounded like this gentleman saying the trainer worked the person too hard. Are you going to meet your goals without working harder than you think you need to work, Soledad?

O'BRIEN: All right, Sanjay, as always, thanks a lot.

GUPTA: Thank You.

HEMMER: In a moment here, money talk. The gas pump not the only place where prices are shooting sky high. Business news next, Christine Romans, a special guest today, in for Andy Serwer on an AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: All right, welcome back.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, indeed. Gas prices hitting record high across the country. And the pump isn't the only place where consumers are paying through the nose. And some durable goods numbers out there that may matter.

Christine Romans is here for Andy Serwer, "Minding Your Business."

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First time gas, you know, the economists are saying the rule of thumb is every penny at the pump is a billion dollars out of consumers' pockets. And you can see the paying continues, a billion. Yes, it's a lot of money. And some people are saying that even a half of the tax refunds that were going to be due this spring are already accounted for by the higher gas prices.

Well, what you can do, you can park the SUV and take your car, you can take public transportation. You can make sure your car is in good repair, rotate those tires. You can also comparison shop.

But it's not just gas prices. Did you know that eggs are now some 70 percent higher today than they were last year?

CAFFERTY: But you don't need eggs to get to work.

ROMANS: No, you don't need eggs to get to work.

But take a look at some of these commodities, eggs, soybeans, lumber, across the board, look at the rally in commodities prices. Scrap steel. A lot of this is China. China is a big buyer on the market. Five years ago, China was a blip on the screen. Now China is a new reality, you know, straining natural resources.

CAFFERTY: Sure.

ROMANS: An interesting thing, Jack, is that this hasn't shown up in CPI. Last year, the Consumer Price Index, the core rate was the slowest inflation we've seen since 1963. So the companies are absorbing the higher prices. And how are they absorbing higher prices?

CAFFERTY: They're laying people off.

ROMANS: Yes, they are.

CAFFERTY: And of course sending them to Calcutta.

ROMANS: Real wage growth is now negative for the first time in nine years.

CAFFERTY: Is that right? That's scary.

ROMANS: So if you feel your wages really aren't growing, you're right.

CAFFERTY: All right. What about durable goods?

ROMANS: Durable goods up 2.5 percent. Strip up transportation, airplane orders and they were actually more flat, a little bit down. We'll watch stocks today.

O'BRIEN: I'm sorry for interrupting. What counts as durable?

CAFFERTY: Things that last more than three years. Refrigerators, washer, drier, cars, tanks for the military.

ROMANS: Airplanes.

This could be like a game show. We could have a durable goods game show, name as many as we can.

Anyway. So we'll watch stocks today. It's been down four days in a row, so we'll see if we get a little bit of blip. Microsoft in the news. Durable goods in the news. Gas prices, that is in the news every day, and that continues today.

CAFFERTY: All right, thanks, Christine. On to The Cafferty Files. It's Wednesday. Things that people said over the last week that got our attention, beginning with this, "I felt she needed extra care, and she is old. I can look after her better as a husband than as a grandson." Twenty-five-year-old Indian man Narayan Biswas on why he married his 80-year-old grandmother. And he added, plus, she's a really hot chic.

O'BRIEN: He did not.

CAFFERTY: "It was the dumbest thing we've ever done." Georgia president Melissa -- resident, not the president, Melissa Davison, on why she and her husband were arrested after leaving a theater and getting into a violent argument over "The Passion of The Christ." They left the theater debating whether the God, the father and the holy trinity was human or symbolic, and they wound up spending the night in the cooler.

"I think God has a sense of humor. He took a vacation. When he got back from it, he answered all my prayers at once." Houston resident Jeffrey McGowan and his wife, Cheryl (ph), Giving birth to two sets of identical twins on the same day. The doctor said the odds of that happening, 11 million to one.

O'BRIEN: Her quote would have been so much more interesting. Like, oh, my God, that was a nightmare nightmarish experience.

CAFFERTY: Or see what you've done?

HEMMER: Talk about your durable goods.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

"We need to keep them out of here." This is Rhea (ph) County, Tennessee commissioner J.V. Fugate. We've got his picture. Put old J.C. up. Now, do we have the other picture? J.C.'s belly hits right around his knees. We cropped the picture because one of our producers was sensitive to the fact that this guy is the size of a Greyhound bus. But, hey, J.C. Fugate ate those chicken-fried steaks and stuff down there in Tennessee. And he says, "We've got to keep them out of here." It was a measure to ban gays and lesbians from living in his town. If they were caught being there, they would be prosecuted for crimes against nature. The measure was approved. But a couple of days later, it was withdrawn.

I specifically asked for the wide shot of J.C. Fugate. Shows you how much clout I've got around here. Finally, the Barbara Bush quote that people actually have been calling in about. "If the jump doesn't kill him, I will." Former first lady Barbara Bush on her husband, George Bush's, plans to parachute as a way to mark his 80th birthday.

O'BRIEN: I think that's cool that he's doing that.

HEMMER: He did that on 75, did he not?

O'BRIEN: Yes, I think so. I think that's awesome. Good for him.

HEMMER: Nice quotes, Jack.

O'BRIEN: She's not really going to kill him.

CAFFERTY: No, I wouldn't think so.

O'BRIEN: OK. Thanks, Jack.

HEMMER: I hope not.

O'BRIEN: Excellent file today.

CAFFERTY: Thank you, Soledad. Glad you enjoyed it.

O'BRIEN: I did.

CAFFERTY: You just liked it because it was about twins.

O'BRIEN: No, I like the twins. I like the guy, the grandson, 80-year-old grandmother, a lot of good things.

Still to come this morning, CIA director George Tenet just minutes away from going before the panel that is investigating the September 11th attacks. We're going to bring that to you live right here on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us everybody.

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Aired March 24, 2004 - 08:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: With about 100 days left until the power handover, Bremer says that Iraq has made significant economic progress since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL BREMER, U.S. ADMINISTRATOR, IRAQ: Much remains to be done in the next 100 days. But today, almost a year after liberation, we should take heart at what has already been accomplished.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Ambassador Bremer is giving the 100 days until Iraqi sovereignty speech today.

A New York man who married a millionaire widow, now being charged with murdering her husband. Danny Pelosi surrendered to police after he was told a grand jury returned an indictment against him for the 2001 murder of Ted Aman (ph). At his arraignment, Pelosi pleaded not guilty to a single charge of second-degree murder. Pelosi's attorneys called the government's case weak. They say it's based on circumstantial evidence.

And the clock is ticking for a whale that's tangled in fishing gear off the coast of South Carolina. Experts around the country are gathering this morning for what could be a last-ditch effort to try to rescue the North American white whale. The fishing line apparently is pinning the whale's flippers to its body, and the whale will die if that's not removed.

HEMMER: That effort continues, ongoing.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: 9/11 commission hearings getting started at this hour. First up today, a report from the commission's staff. We expect to hear from the CIA director George Tenet at the top of the hour, 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. And certainly we're keeping a close eye on that.

Senior analyst Jeff Greenfield not too far behind, keeping a close eye as well.

Good morning to you, Jeff.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Good morning.

HEMMER: Did you pick out a dominant theme yesterday? GREENFIELD: Oh, yes, one theme -- why didn't the Clinton and Bush administrations take stronger actions against al Qaeda? And if they had, could September 11th somehow have been prevented. And interestingly, some of the toughest questions for both Clinton and Bush officials came from the same commission member. That's former Nebraska Democratic senator Bob Kerrey. Here's a taste.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB KERREY, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I keep hearing the excuse we didn't have actionable intelligence. But what the hell does that say to al Qaeda? It seems to me that a declaration of war, either by President Clinton or by President Bush, prior to 9/11, would have mobilized the government in a way that at least would have reduced substantially the possibility that 9/11 would have happened. Do you agree or not?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now, interestingly, both the Clinton and Bush officials gave essentially the same answer, that in a pre-9/11 world there would have been no international or domestic political support for a strike against the Taliban. And anyway, Donald Rumsfeld said by 2001, it would have just been too late to stop 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECY. OF DEFENSE: Even if bin Laden had been captured or killed in the weeks before September 11th, no one I know believes that it would necessarily have prevented September 11th. Killing bin Laden would not have removed al Qaeda's sanctuary in Afghanistan. Moreover, the sleeper cells that flew the aircraft into the World Trade towers and the Pentagon were already in the United States, months before the attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: This time yesterday, Richard Clarke was sitting right where you are. How did his charges play out yesterday?

GREENFIELD: I hate this cliche, but he was the elephant in the room. His charges -- we saw, for instance, former Democratic Congressman Tim Romer push very hard at Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, one of the biggest Iraq hawks in the government, about whether Clarke was right when Wolfowitz was calling for an attack right after 9/11. Wolfowitz said he didn't remember saying anything quite like that. And you also saw John Lehman, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of the Navy, repeatedly press Madeleine Albright, Clinton's secretary of state, about why she and Clinton ignored Iraq's connection to al Qaeda operatives. Clearly here, Mr. Lehman is trying to help shore up the Bush administration's credibility on its insistence that there was some kind of connection between Iraq and the war on terror.

And we saw Richard Benvenista (ph) -- you may remember him from Watergate frame, a prominent Washington Democrat, he was prodding Bush officials to try to persuade national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify at this commission by saying, you know, other officials have done this in the past. So there is a lot of partisanship going on here.

HEMMER: On the roster today, George Tenet goes first today. Sandy Berger comes second. In the afternoon, getting twice the time will be Richard Clarke.

GREENFIELD: Yes, and what I think you can look for here is some very tough questioning from the Republican side of this bipartisan commission, about why for eight years the Clinton administration not respond more strongly to al Qaeda attacks. They're going to, I think, ask whether Condi Rice is accurate, when she says, look, Clarke never came to me with any specific discontents. And I think you'll see questions, again, on whether Clinton and the Bush administrations dropped the ball, with the Clinton administrations stories that they had the chance to take bin Laden into custody in the late '90s. There's a lot of stories about whether Sudan was ready to turn bin Laden over, whether the Clinton administration didn't pick up on that.

But there's going to be high drama. We have a decades-long history when these commissions and committees get going on a contentious issue, it's live. You can't tell what the script is going to be before it, and it's actually very compelling.

HEMMER: In a subscript of all that is the letter the White House put out yesterday. When Richard Clarke gave his resignation, the president very glowing terms about he felt the president acted the day of 09/11 and the days after that.

GREENFIELD: Well, on the day of 9/11, the resignation letter specifically says you were great on 9/11. That's not exactly what the book says. What interested me is this is a technique that White Houses use when somebody turns on them. Remember when Kathleen Willie accused President Clinton of personal misbehavior? One of the first things the Clinton White did was to whip out an effusive letter of praise that Kathleen Willie had sent Clinton. When people leave government, they tend to write nice letters. Very few people leave and say, you know, you're awful.

HEMMER: It's a small town.

GREENFIELD: It is a small town.

But I think the reason the White House is pushing back so hard on this is this is not a liberal left peacenik. This is one of the biggest hawks on terror through four administrations. And for him to challenge Bush on his record goes right to the heart of the re- election strategy.

HEMMER: You wonder why that letter didn't come out on Monday by the White House.

GREENFIELD: Thirty-six hours after "60 minutes," that's a pretty good turn-around time. Talk to you later. Hearings begin again right now in D.C. The testimony from George Tenet gets under way. There's Governor Kean, who chairs that commission, the 09/11 Commission. George Tenet expected top of the hour. We will take you there live when that question-and-answer question begins. Again, day two in D.C. -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: A NASA scientist is calling the latest information from the Mars rover Opportunity, quote, "a profound discovery." He was talking about evidence that there was once a salty pool of water on the Martian surface.

Space correspondent Miles O'Brien now from the CNN Center with more on this.

Hello, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

I guess you could call it the soggy grail. NASA has hit some paydirt on Mars, specifically with its rover named Opportunity.

Let's take a look at this landing spot. You've seen it many times by now. But nevertheless, I'd like to show you some beachfront property on Mars. The problem is, we're a few million years too late. These are the rocks which have given them the proof. And the question was, was there standing water here, or perhaps even a salty sea?

How do they prove it? Let's look at some movies and give you a sense of how it works. What happens when there's water? Well, you get ripples and waves when there's water. Scientists have been able to model some of the ripples and rocks there, and match them to ripples like these, which they say were present when those rocks were performed.

Look at the next movie, same basic idea -- the wave pattern carries dirt with it. As the dirt is deposited, it makes rocks and layers of rocks. The key is to look for different angles in those layers of sediment. Let's look at these pictures which were gathered by Opportunity's microscopic imagery. If you look very closely here, look at the lines in the sediment, that's one angle here. Here's another angle down there. There's another angle down here. Those multiple angles are what tell you that it was caused by those waves which would leave the sediment in different levels. If it had been volcanic, they'd be flat as a pancake straight across.

Let's look at the next image, kind of the same type of imagery here. And if you look in here, you see all kinds of different angles for that sediment. And if you're a geologist, that's as good as it gets as far as smoking gun evidence. There's more to it than that, though. The chemical composition of these rocks contains a certain ratio of chlorine and bromine, which leads them to believe it's water. As a matte of fact, it just screams out water.

Let's take a look at one more movie, I want to show you very quickly. They've been focusing on these things called blueberries. They're actually gray berries, because it's gray dirt.

But if you look at these little spheres that are all over the place, wherever opportunity landed, you have to wonder what those things are. Well, as it turns out, they might as well be like little pieces of ready-mix concrete. And in order to have ready-mix concrete, you've got to have water. And so each of those little spheres is formed when sediment comes in contact with water. All of that adds up to pretty much smoking gun proof, or maybe it's just a dripping water gun proof, of water on Mars, and a lot of it.

What does that mean? Well, everywhere we look on life where there is water, we find life. Water and life go hand in hand, Soledad. So the next question is, are there fossils up there?

S. O'BRIEN: Miles, quick question for you. How big are those spheres? Because earlier, we heard the NASA scientists, you know, absolutely thrilled to death about the discovery of these spheres. Give me the sense of the size of these things.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, these are a little less than a centimeter. They're teeny little spheres. And the problem as far as looking for the fossils I was just telling you about, is the scale of what we're talking about here. The microscopic imagery on Opportunity can't get close enough to see any microscopic fossils that might be there. That will have to do with another mission due to fly in about five years. So as far as finding Martian fossils, I don't think we're going to see it this time. Nevertheless, scientists are ecstatic.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet. It really has been just good news and more good news, followed by even more exciting news for the NASA scientists.

Miles, thanks a lot, as always.

HEMMER: Still to come here, we are just minutes away from day two of the 9/11 commission hearings in D.C. CIA chief George Tenet set to testify first up on the schedule today.

S. O'BRIEN: Also coming up next, one man says a strenuous workout nearly killed him. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to tell us just how much exercise is way too much.

Stay with us. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: A New Yorker is suing his gym for more than $1 million. He says he was put through a ridiculously tough workout by a trainer at Crunch Gym. And it was so tough, it actually left him with kidney damage. Thirty-seven year old Fred Whitland (ph) says that he warned the trainer that he hadn't exercised in years. He cut the workout short after pain and after becoming dehydrated. Thomas Mullaney is Woodland's attorney.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) THOMAS MULLANEY, ATTORNEY FOR MAN SUING CRUNCH GYM: His statements to the trainer that he had not worked out for a long time, and his fitness goals were somewhat modest, were ignored. And he was put through what I would term a very rigorous exercise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: The Crunch Gym issued a statement saying, quote, "The allegations surrounding Mr. Whitland's claim appear to be highly suspect, and we're going to be conducting a thorough internal investigation.

So what are some of the telltale signs that your workout has gone a little bit too far? Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center with some important advice.

And, Sanjay, I have to imagine that working out too hard is actually not the problem for most people. It's not working out at all, right?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. That's a whole another problem which you and I talk about quite a bit. In this particular situation, certainly kidney failure, they talk about that can occur because you become too dehydrated or your muscles actually start to breakdown. And those breakdown products cannot be adequately cleared by the kidneys, ultimately causing them to go into renal failure, or kidney failure.

Soledad, they talk a lot about the no pain, no gain sort of adage. A little bit of soreness is OK, but if you're starting to have acute pain, really significant acute pain, the workout's probably gone too far. Lots of different sorts of strategies to try to avoid this sort of thing. A lot of them people know, as you already pointed out, Soledad, your body is going to be the best barometer. But if you're going to do aerobics and weight sort of training, your muscles, your body does need time between those sorts of exercises to try to recuperate. So don't do weight training more than one day in a row, and Mix it up with aerobic training as well.

Overall, if you're exercising three to four times a week, make sure you're mixing up the exercise regimen to give your muscles a chance to recover. Drink plenty of water during those exercise routines as well. And if you're starting off, you're going to want to start off slow. A lot of people getting into the gym this time of year for the first time in a while, given that it's spring and everything. You're going to have to start off slow, even though you're at the gym probably for the first time -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: What are the signs, Sanjay, that you're overdoing it, outside of just being in out and out pain, which is a pretty obvious sign that you've got to step. I mean, what are the physical signs that you're overdoing it?

GUPTA: Well, you know, the body, again, is going to are your best barometer. Your body is going to tell you enough, but if you want specific physical signs, there are some. And again, they're going to be somewhat obvious, in terns of what people should look out for. Decreased performance -- if your performance is starting to decrease during your workout, that could be a significant sign. Loss of coordination, prolonged recovery, elevated morning heart rate. So you're exercising, and the next morning your heart rate is starting to increase. There's also signs as well, loss of appetite. Let's say you've been working out quite a bit. Usually people's appetite goes up. Headaches. Muscle soreness and tenderness that's prolonged. After a workout everyone is going to have a little bit of this, but if it stays around for a while, that's a concern. Gastrointestinal disturbances. And then if you're immune system starts to falter, if you're getting sick, if you're getting a lot of colds now that you're work out, that can be a problem as well -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Sanjay, clearly, this guy who's following this lawsuit, which, again, Crunch says is suspect, in their minds, at this point. He claims that it was really all to blame on his personal trainer. How do folks pick a personal trainer who they can trust?

GUPTA: Yes, and that's a really good question. First of all, I think that if you're going to the gym for the first time in a while, a personal trainer may be a good idea, try to get you acquainted with the machines, get you a good regimen. Most times, they're going to be just perfectly fine. But there are some Web sites you can go to, to try and get some information about personal trainers. There's a certification Web site. That's important. And there are good questions to sort of ask, you know, things that you can find out about your trainer before you sign up with him or her, find out what their certification is, references, if there's any of those sorts of things. Charges, how much are they going to be charging you, and compatibility. In this sort of situation that you're talking about, it sounded like this gentleman saying the trainer worked the person too hard. Are you going to meet your goals without working harder than you think you need to work, Soledad?

O'BRIEN: All right, Sanjay, as always, thanks a lot.

GUPTA: Thank You.

HEMMER: In a moment here, money talk. The gas pump not the only place where prices are shooting sky high. Business news next, Christine Romans, a special guest today, in for Andy Serwer on an AMERICAN MORNING.

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HEMMER: All right, welcome back.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, indeed. Gas prices hitting record high across the country. And the pump isn't the only place where consumers are paying through the nose. And some durable goods numbers out there that may matter.

Christine Romans is here for Andy Serwer, "Minding Your Business."

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First time gas, you know, the economists are saying the rule of thumb is every penny at the pump is a billion dollars out of consumers' pockets. And you can see the paying continues, a billion. Yes, it's a lot of money. And some people are saying that even a half of the tax refunds that were going to be due this spring are already accounted for by the higher gas prices.

Well, what you can do, you can park the SUV and take your car, you can take public transportation. You can make sure your car is in good repair, rotate those tires. You can also comparison shop.

But it's not just gas prices. Did you know that eggs are now some 70 percent higher today than they were last year?

CAFFERTY: But you don't need eggs to get to work.

ROMANS: No, you don't need eggs to get to work.

But take a look at some of these commodities, eggs, soybeans, lumber, across the board, look at the rally in commodities prices. Scrap steel. A lot of this is China. China is a big buyer on the market. Five years ago, China was a blip on the screen. Now China is a new reality, you know, straining natural resources.

CAFFERTY: Sure.

ROMANS: An interesting thing, Jack, is that this hasn't shown up in CPI. Last year, the Consumer Price Index, the core rate was the slowest inflation we've seen since 1963. So the companies are absorbing the higher prices. And how are they absorbing higher prices?

CAFFERTY: They're laying people off.

ROMANS: Yes, they are.

CAFFERTY: And of course sending them to Calcutta.

ROMANS: Real wage growth is now negative for the first time in nine years.

CAFFERTY: Is that right? That's scary.

ROMANS: So if you feel your wages really aren't growing, you're right.

CAFFERTY: All right. What about durable goods?

ROMANS: Durable goods up 2.5 percent. Strip up transportation, airplane orders and they were actually more flat, a little bit down. We'll watch stocks today.

O'BRIEN: I'm sorry for interrupting. What counts as durable?

CAFFERTY: Things that last more than three years. Refrigerators, washer, drier, cars, tanks for the military.

ROMANS: Airplanes.

This could be like a game show. We could have a durable goods game show, name as many as we can.

Anyway. So we'll watch stocks today. It's been down four days in a row, so we'll see if we get a little bit of blip. Microsoft in the news. Durable goods in the news. Gas prices, that is in the news every day, and that continues today.

CAFFERTY: All right, thanks, Christine. On to The Cafferty Files. It's Wednesday. Things that people said over the last week that got our attention, beginning with this, "I felt she needed extra care, and she is old. I can look after her better as a husband than as a grandson." Twenty-five-year-old Indian man Narayan Biswas on why he married his 80-year-old grandmother. And he added, plus, she's a really hot chic.

O'BRIEN: He did not.

CAFFERTY: "It was the dumbest thing we've ever done." Georgia president Melissa -- resident, not the president, Melissa Davison, on why she and her husband were arrested after leaving a theater and getting into a violent argument over "The Passion of The Christ." They left the theater debating whether the God, the father and the holy trinity was human or symbolic, and they wound up spending the night in the cooler.

"I think God has a sense of humor. He took a vacation. When he got back from it, he answered all my prayers at once." Houston resident Jeffrey McGowan and his wife, Cheryl (ph), Giving birth to two sets of identical twins on the same day. The doctor said the odds of that happening, 11 million to one.

O'BRIEN: Her quote would have been so much more interesting. Like, oh, my God, that was a nightmare nightmarish experience.

CAFFERTY: Or see what you've done?

HEMMER: Talk about your durable goods.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

"We need to keep them out of here." This is Rhea (ph) County, Tennessee commissioner J.V. Fugate. We've got his picture. Put old J.C. up. Now, do we have the other picture? J.C.'s belly hits right around his knees. We cropped the picture because one of our producers was sensitive to the fact that this guy is the size of a Greyhound bus. But, hey, J.C. Fugate ate those chicken-fried steaks and stuff down there in Tennessee. And he says, "We've got to keep them out of here." It was a measure to ban gays and lesbians from living in his town. If they were caught being there, they would be prosecuted for crimes against nature. The measure was approved. But a couple of days later, it was withdrawn.

I specifically asked for the wide shot of J.C. Fugate. Shows you how much clout I've got around here. Finally, the Barbara Bush quote that people actually have been calling in about. "If the jump doesn't kill him, I will." Former first lady Barbara Bush on her husband, George Bush's, plans to parachute as a way to mark his 80th birthday.

O'BRIEN: I think that's cool that he's doing that.

HEMMER: He did that on 75, did he not?

O'BRIEN: Yes, I think so. I think that's awesome. Good for him.

HEMMER: Nice quotes, Jack.

O'BRIEN: She's not really going to kill him.

CAFFERTY: No, I wouldn't think so.

O'BRIEN: OK. Thanks, Jack.

HEMMER: I hope not.

O'BRIEN: Excellent file today.

CAFFERTY: Thank you, Soledad. Glad you enjoyed it.

O'BRIEN: I did.

CAFFERTY: You just liked it because it was about twins.

O'BRIEN: No, I like the twins. I like the guy, the grandson, 80-year-old grandmother, a lot of good things.

Still to come this morning, CIA director George Tenet just minutes away from going before the panel that is investigating the September 11th attacks. We're going to bring that to you live right here on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us everybody.

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