Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Aftermath of Fallujah Violence; Unmanned Warplanes on Drawing Board

Aired April 01, 2004 - 11:00   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: Witnesses say it was hit by a rocket- propelled grenade.
Also today, insurgents attacked a fuel convoy northwest of Baghdad. Today's violence follows the attacks yesterday that killed four civilian contractors. In a grizzly scene, their charred remains were dragged through the streets of Fallujah.

For more on the aftermath of the Fallujah attacks and the latest violence, we turn to CNN's Jim Clancy in Baghdad -- Jim.

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, Wednesday's violence in Fallujah is still very much on the minds of U.S. officials here and Iraqis as well. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator, with tough words, saying that certainly those who were responsible were going to be held accountable for the desecration of the bodies of four civilian contractors in that town that they were dragged -- their charred bodies dragged from vehicles.

At the same time, it was indicated by the U.S. military spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (ph), that the Marines would be going back in. They would be going after those responsible, and, in his words, it was up to the small group of people in charge of Fallujah to decide whether it was going to be done with a fight or without one.

But there was more fighting. As you had mentioned, a Humvee was seen along a roadside. The only evidence of an attack -- an apparent attack there. There are no report of casualties in this incident. But some Iraqis gathered around it, looking at the vehicle, and at one point trying to overturn it.

Perhaps more serious, a fuel convoy, and it was a big one, many, many fuel truck coming south toward Baghdad just in the northwest part of the city when they were hit. First, an IED, or an improvised explosive device, hit a civilian car. That stopped the convoy and all traffic. Then a second IED was detonated by remote control. One truck driver was wounded by shrapnel or flying glass when his wind screen was damaged. But the main target here, the fuel inside all of the fuel trucks, they missed that. The military evacuated the one truck driver who was wounded.

So, Daryn, the violence continues here in Iraq, and so does the pursuit of those that are responsible for it. The U.S. military and Iraqis in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps are going out on missions. They are looking for suspects here in Baghdad, all over Iraq tonight. KAGAN: Jim Clancy with the latest from Baghdad.

The civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, calling the Fallujah attacks an example of the struggle between human dignity and barbarism.

For more perspective on the violence, we're joined by Jon Alterman. He's director of the Middle East Program for the Center for Strategic and International Study.

Thanks for being here with us this morning. Appreciate it.

JON ALTERMAN, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: I think what is so shocking to Americans is not that these attacks took place -- as terrible as they were -- the response, the crowd response afterwards and how these bodies were treated.

ALTERMAN: That's exactly right. And I think that certainly for American audiences what people are going to remember is what the crowds did. It seems to me, though, that in the Middle East, what people are really looking for is what the American response is. People are waiting to see whether the Americans will react with violence, whether this is going to be treated as a police action. What's going to happen? What are the Americans going to do in response to this provocation?

KAGAN: Well, let's talk about exactly where it took place, because when we talk about Iraq, you can't talk about it just as a single place, because different parts of the country are developing differently. Fallujah, this is a hot bed, still, for people who are opposed to what's taken place.

ALTERMAN: Fallujah had started off as a core of support for the regime. It's a Sunni Muslim city. It's a place where people had a lot of jobs in the securities services for the regime. They are some of the people who feel most threatened by what Americans are trying to make out of the future of the country.

KAGAN: And so, now you mention not just Iraq, but the Middle East is going to watch what the U.S. does. And from there, what?

ALTERMAN: Well, it seems to me that people are looking, in general, at how the U.S. does in Iraq as a sign of whether the U.S. really intends better things for the region, whether the U.S. can play a constructive role in the future of the region. And how we do in Iraq is going to matter.

How we respond to this kind of provocation, how we respond in terms of protecting our own people, whether we pull back or push forward, is going to be something that people will take as a sign of how serious the Americans are, how tough the Americans are, how sincere the Americans are in really pushing forward, or whether the U.S. might turn tail and just leave. KAGAN: Well, and it seems -- and this is a very American perspective here. But it seems it's kind of a lose-lose situation for the Americans. Previously, if there's an attack that includes Iraqis, the Americans are blamed for two things: One, that you're here; and, two, that you're not here enough. That they want a stronger presence, but then they don't want them around. The same thing here. Well, if you don't respond strongly, well, then, you're weak. But if you respond strongly, then you're against the Iraqi people. So, how can the Americans make a proper response?

ALTERMAN: Well, it seems to me that the U.S. does have to respond strongly. It has to be serious. It has to be targeted in what it does, but it feels to me like that there has to be, at least tactically, a disproportionate response, a sign that you simply cannot do this. After that then, the question is how you use that response to say, no, we're really trying to make this a better place. We just can't deal with that.

KAGAN: And I guess my question, too, is not just what do you -- of course, you go after the people who did the attack. But how do you go after the people who dragged the bodies? It was almost like a "lord of the flies," a crowd response. That's tapping into something that's very deep and very emotional that's a response to a bigger situation, not just in Fallujah, but in Iraq.

ALTERMAN: Well, I actually think it's going to be easier to find the people who celebrated the attack and burned the bodies, because we have television images, and we're going to be able to match up some of the faces and some of the people. It's going to be harder to deal with the masked assailants with machine guns. But it's clearly something we're going to have to do. We're going to have to do it quickly, and we're going to have to do it with a fair amount of force, I would guess.

KAGAN: And you'll be tracking it, as we will as well. Jon Alterman, thanks for stopping by.

ALTERMAN: Great to see you. Thank you.

KAGAN: Appreciate it.

Well, Cuba is rejecting charges by a Bush administration official that it is trying to develop biological weapons. Fidel Castro's government says the allegation is a pretext for a U.S. invasion under the war on terror umbrella. Undersecretary of State John Bolton made that allegation that Cuba is working on bioweapons. It was written testimony to Congress this week. He first made that accusation back in 2002.

Future wars may look a lot different than Iraq. They could be fought without pilots in the cockpit.

Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, checks in now with that.

Barbara -- good morning. BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.

Well, we want to show everybody something just a little bit different this morning. The Pentagon is developing a new unmanned aircraft, a new warplane, and they are testing it right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): A perfect day for flying earlier this month in the California desert. The experimental X45a drops a 250-pound bomb. Just one thing: there is no cockpit, there is no pilot on board. Ground station operators are miles away.

This is the first time an unmanned warplane has dropped a weapon. This is the future of warfare. The Pentagon is testing unmanned warplanes, hoping to make them part of the U.S. arsenal.

For the first night of the war in Iraq, it would have been the ultimate stealthy weapon --flying toward Iraqi radars and missiles without risking a U.S. air crew.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can spot that threat before he spots us.

STARR: These unmanned aircraft will be able to fly at 40,000 feet and at the speed of commercial airplanes, more capable than current drones. Fleets of unmanned airplanes will move across enemy airspace, some conducting surveillance through on-board cameras, some dropping bombs.

But questions of ethics. Even with a human operator able to see the target through on-board sensors, should what is essentially a flying computer be used to attack?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can imagine an unmanned vehicle correctly finding a target, but then maybe a train passes by that target at just that minute with a lot of women and children on board.

STARR: The Pentagon says there are limitations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We still haven't replaced the human computer. The digital computer, as good as it is, can't do some things that we do very well.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: But the Pentagon, Daryn is moving ahead. The next test of this unmanned warplane could come as soon as this weekend -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

Topic of conversation on Capitol Hill today: al Qaeda. Just how dangerous is the threat to the U.S.? We'll take a look and a live picture -- we'll actually go live to Washington, D.C. for a look coming up. Also, they're going head to head over a head scarf. Coming up, you're going to hear from the young girl and the school representative at the center of the battle.

And later, do you love your cat? You got 50 grand? Then a California company might be able to make you an offer you can't refuse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: The Bush team is updating Congress this morning on the threat from al Qaeda. Let's talk to our Sean Callebs, who is at our Washington bureau this morning.

Sean -- good morning.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Tell us a little bit about Cofer Black, the man we'll see testifying.

CALLEBS: Right. He is actually speaking right now on Capitol Hill. Cofer Black has the rank of ambassador at-large. He is the coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department. He was sworn in, in December of 2002. Before that, he spent about a quarter of a century working for the CIA, focusing on counterterrorism.

Now, this is a regularly-scheduled meeting, so Black is really required by law to come and update committee members on what the U.S. is doing to fight terrorism.

One significant item, and this really come on the heels of the 9/11 Commission, which got so much attention this past week, and Black has focused on the fact that everybody in the world can hear or gain access to what he's saying. So, he has said time and again to the committee members that he'll speak in kind of a broad way but will not specifically go into what the U.S. is doing and has done to counter terrorism and specifically the threat of al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COFER BLACK, STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: The al Qaeda organization that we engaged before 9/11 and at 9/11 has been put under catastrophic stress. Seventy percent of their leadership has been arrested, detained or killed. The majority -- the rest of them essentially are primarily defensive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLEBS: The bad news is, because al Qaeda has been weakened so much that they are now reaching out to, in essence, co-op other terror organizations, to bring them in to the al Qaeda objective, which, Daryn, he says, is to harm the U.S. any way it can.

KAGAN: If people just kind of tune in and they see this, they might think that this is more 9/11 Commission testimony. This is not the 9/11 Commission hearing from him.

CALLEBS: No, really nothing like that. As I said, it's a regularly-scheduled meeting, something that he has to do by law. That he is really bringing the members up-to-date on al Qaeda and the effort to weaken that organization, really hammering away at the Bush administration's line that the U.S. has launched an offensive and really weakened it to a large degree.

But he also talked about the global threat of terrorism, really talking about Spain and what happened there on March 11, that horrific train attack. And how that despite what is going on, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort by a couple of motivated terrorists just to do a world of harm.

KAGAN: And it's also interesting that he is from the State Department. There has for a long time been a difference of opinion about how the fight on terrorism should take place from the State Department, let's say, versus the Pentagon.

CALLEBS: Exactly. He hasn't gotten into that so much yet. He did talk about the fact that -- or the discussion did come up that the CIA director came out last week and said, before September 11, really no one even had the idea that the scope of an attack could be so broad. And now, people are trying to think out of the box more.

He was also pointedly asked -- again, we're seeing live pictures of the hearing -- he was pointedly asked today: Are the same leaders still in power at the State Department who were before September 11? And Black said he's here to talk about what's going on in the fight against terrorism, not about personnel. And then Dana Rohrabacher, a congressman from California, said, we have to talk about personnel, because they are the people that make policy, and they are the people responsible for keeping the United States and its interests safe.

KAGAN: Sean Callebs monitoring that testimony from Capitol Hill. Thank you.

An Oklahoma school district is defending its dress code policy in a lawsuit over a girl's Muslim head scarf. The Justice Department has joined her fight to wear her head scarf at school. School officials say it violates their dress code. Attorneys on both sides squared off on CNN's AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAH FARISH, NASHALA HEARN'S ATTORNEY: At that time, she and her parents started discussing this with the school district, and ultimately she was suspended. She returned again in a hijab and was suspended again. And since then, she has been at school, wearing the hijab, under an agreement that the school district says allows them to indefinitely deliberate on whether they're going to make an exception to their dress code or change their dress code.

JOHN TUCKER, SCHOOL DISTRICT ATTORNEY: The Muskogee School District wants a dress code that applies consistently to all students, and head wear is not permitted because of the opportunities to use head wear to present signs of things that would be considered inappropriate and might lead to gang behavior.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The school district has asked the judge to dismiss the case by the Justice Department in support of the sixth grader.

Well, he's got the attention of the world and perhaps eventually the throne of England. Now Prince William has one thing most guys his age really want. The royal family is not too happy about the publicity. The story is coming up next.

Then, how much is your cat worth to you? How about 50 grand? You might want to stay tuned and see what one California company is offering.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Britain's royal family is said to be irritated over paparazzi pictures of Prince William and his new gal pal. "The Sun" ran photos of William and Kate Middleton (ph). That's with his dad, though. That's not his girlfriend. They're on a ski holiday in the Alps. She's a classmate at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

It was the first time a British paper ignored an agreement with the royals to allow William his privacy in exchange for palace-managed photo opportunities. This is a palace-managed one, like you're watching. I guess we'll have to look around to find you the photos we were talking about.

(WEATHER BREAK)

KAGAN: We're talking cats, though. If you want to keep your pet forever, there's a cloning company that says it might be able to make your wish come true for a big price. Lou Hawthorne is the CEO of Genetic Savings & Clone. He joins us from our San Francisco bureau this morning.

Good morning. Thanks for being with us.

LOU HAWTHORNE, GENETIC SAVINGS & CLONE: Good morning. My pleasure.

KAGAN: Now, tell me what you say you're able to do for the beloved family kitty.

HAWTHORNE: In 2004, Genetics Savings & Clone is going to be cloning nine cats. It's our nine lives extravaganza. Three of those cats are for GSC employees. That's just to make sure all of our protocols are perfect. And the remaining six are commercial clients. Four of those are already sold. But the idea is that anybody out there in the world with $50,000 and a cat they feel is worth it, we will clone that cat.

KAGAN: OK, I want to get to the price in a second. But you say -- have you already been able successfully to clone a cat?

HAWTHORNE: We -- through our research effort at Texas A&M, we cloned a cat named CC. We have licensed a new technology, called chromatin transfer, that is much more advanced than the method that was used to clone CC or any other clones commonly known such as Dolly the sheep. This is a quality standard that pet owners demand. They're much higher standards than people engaged in the cloning of livestock.

KAGAN: All right, let me ask you this. The video we're seeing there, the cute little kitty, that's CC, the cloned kitty?

HAWTHORNE: Well, I can't see the video, but I'm assuming it is.

KAGAN: Oh, OK. A little gray and white kitty, little stripes.

HAWTHORNE: Yes.

KAGAN: What about the cat that CC was cloned from?

HAWTHORNE: CC was cloned from a cat named Rainbow. Her genetic donor was a calico. And that's why CC and her donor don't exactly look the same. That's a unique phenomenon to calicos. In all others breeds of dogs and cats, the clone should resemble the donor as much as an identical twin, separated in time.

KAGAN: Ah, but it's possible if you're trying to clone your calico you have to kind of give a warning to the people that perhaps you're not going to -- your cat is not going to look exactly like what you're trying to get?

HAWTHORNE: We encourage people with beloved calicos to wait a year or two. We have a research effort under way to determine how to clone calicos with the same high degree of resemblance that occurs when you clone with other breeds of dogs -- of cats.

KAGAN: You mentioned Dolly the sheep. One of the criticisms of cloning and this type of research is that it's not just a sure shot where you just clone, that there are a number of mutilated embryos and animals that might have to be destroyed in order to get the one cat that you're looking for. How ethically do you defend that?

HAWTHORNE: Well, the vast majority of embryos that you transfer into the surrogate or recipient, the vast majority of those embryos fail to implant. So, that means we're talking about embryos that are only a few cells in size. We've never experienced a mutilated cat, or we've never experienced any abnormal outcome whatsoever, not to say they can't happen. That's why we've invested in this new cloning method called CT. It's much more advanced.

KAGAN: And then another ethical question here, and I say this, no one is a bigger animal and cat lover especially than I am, but $50,000, when you think of where that money could go, and you think about all of the animals that are sitting in shelters at this very moment that need homes, isn't there a problem with trying to clone an animal where there's already animals that should probably be going home with these owner?

HAWTHORNE: Well, we think adopting from shelters is a wonderful idea, if that's what you want to do. This is not a service for everyone. This is a service for people who believe they have one in a million cat. The vast majority of our customers have animals that have already been spayed. They can't be replicated any other way. And if they have the money, you know, this is America. You can spend your money on whatever you want. Nobody questions the priorities of someone who spends $50,000 on a new car. It's assumed to be a perk of working hard.

KAGAN: All right, and finally, I have a challenge for you here.

HAWTHORNE: All right.

KAGAN: Because I'm a huge cat lover. I have one at home, and he has been spayed. He's Tripod. He's a three-legged cat. Now, what are the chances you clone Tripod he's coming out three legs?

HAWTHORNE: Well, it totally depends on why Tripod has three legs. If Tripod lost his leg in an accident, then the clone of Tripod is going to have four legs. If Tripod has a genetic disorder, then the clone would have three legs as well. And that's something that we're very cautious about, cloning animals that have genetic disorders. It would really depend on what the problem is.

KAGAN: You know what? It's a mystery. I adopted him with three legs, and in 11 years he has never given up the secret about where the leg has gone. So, I won't be sending my 50,000 to your company, but thanks for telling us about the opportunity for some cat lovers out there. Lou Hawthorne joining us from San Francisco.

HAWTHORNE: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: A missing student is now home safe. What started as a frightening ordeal ends with an incredible reunion. We are live with the latest coming up next.

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 April 1, 2004 - 11:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Witnesses say it was hit by a rocket- propelled grenade.
Also today, insurgents attacked a fuel convoy northwest of Baghdad. Today's violence follows the attacks yesterday that killed four civilian contractors. In a grizzly scene, their charred remains were dragged through the streets of Fallujah.

For more on the aftermath of the Fallujah attacks and the latest violence, we turn to CNN's Jim Clancy in Baghdad -- Jim.

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, Wednesday's violence in Fallujah is still very much on the minds of U.S. officials here and Iraqis as well. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator, with tough words, saying that certainly those who were responsible were going to be held accountable for the desecration of the bodies of four civilian contractors in that town that they were dragged -- their charred bodies dragged from vehicles.

At the same time, it was indicated by the U.S. military spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt (ph), that the Marines would be going back in. They would be going after those responsible, and, in his words, it was up to the small group of people in charge of Fallujah to decide whether it was going to be done with a fight or without one.

But there was more fighting. As you had mentioned, a Humvee was seen along a roadside. The only evidence of an attack -- an apparent attack there. There are no report of casualties in this incident. But some Iraqis gathered around it, looking at the vehicle, and at one point trying to overturn it.

Perhaps more serious, a fuel convoy, and it was a big one, many, many fuel truck coming south toward Baghdad just in the northwest part of the city when they were hit. First, an IED, or an improvised explosive device, hit a civilian car. That stopped the convoy and all traffic. Then a second IED was detonated by remote control. One truck driver was wounded by shrapnel or flying glass when his wind screen was damaged. But the main target here, the fuel inside all of the fuel trucks, they missed that. The military evacuated the one truck driver who was wounded.

So, Daryn, the violence continues here in Iraq, and so does the pursuit of those that are responsible for it. The U.S. military and Iraqis in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps are going out on missions. They are looking for suspects here in Baghdad, all over Iraq tonight. KAGAN: Jim Clancy with the latest from Baghdad.

The civilian administrator, Paul Bremer, calling the Fallujah attacks an example of the struggle between human dignity and barbarism.

For more perspective on the violence, we're joined by Jon Alterman. He's director of the Middle East Program for the Center for Strategic and International Study.

Thanks for being here with us this morning. Appreciate it.

JON ALTERMAN, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: I think what is so shocking to Americans is not that these attacks took place -- as terrible as they were -- the response, the crowd response afterwards and how these bodies were treated.

ALTERMAN: That's exactly right. And I think that certainly for American audiences what people are going to remember is what the crowds did. It seems to me, though, that in the Middle East, what people are really looking for is what the American response is. People are waiting to see whether the Americans will react with violence, whether this is going to be treated as a police action. What's going to happen? What are the Americans going to do in response to this provocation?

KAGAN: Well, let's talk about exactly where it took place, because when we talk about Iraq, you can't talk about it just as a single place, because different parts of the country are developing differently. Fallujah, this is a hot bed, still, for people who are opposed to what's taken place.

ALTERMAN: Fallujah had started off as a core of support for the regime. It's a Sunni Muslim city. It's a place where people had a lot of jobs in the securities services for the regime. They are some of the people who feel most threatened by what Americans are trying to make out of the future of the country.

KAGAN: And so, now you mention not just Iraq, but the Middle East is going to watch what the U.S. does. And from there, what?

ALTERMAN: Well, it seems to me that people are looking, in general, at how the U.S. does in Iraq as a sign of whether the U.S. really intends better things for the region, whether the U.S. can play a constructive role in the future of the region. And how we do in Iraq is going to matter.

How we respond to this kind of provocation, how we respond in terms of protecting our own people, whether we pull back or push forward, is going to be something that people will take as a sign of how serious the Americans are, how tough the Americans are, how sincere the Americans are in really pushing forward, or whether the U.S. might turn tail and just leave. KAGAN: Well, and it seems -- and this is a very American perspective here. But it seems it's kind of a lose-lose situation for the Americans. Previously, if there's an attack that includes Iraqis, the Americans are blamed for two things: One, that you're here; and, two, that you're not here enough. That they want a stronger presence, but then they don't want them around. The same thing here. Well, if you don't respond strongly, well, then, you're weak. But if you respond strongly, then you're against the Iraqi people. So, how can the Americans make a proper response?

ALTERMAN: Well, it seems to me that the U.S. does have to respond strongly. It has to be serious. It has to be targeted in what it does, but it feels to me like that there has to be, at least tactically, a disproportionate response, a sign that you simply cannot do this. After that then, the question is how you use that response to say, no, we're really trying to make this a better place. We just can't deal with that.

KAGAN: And I guess my question, too, is not just what do you -- of course, you go after the people who did the attack. But how do you go after the people who dragged the bodies? It was almost like a "lord of the flies," a crowd response. That's tapping into something that's very deep and very emotional that's a response to a bigger situation, not just in Fallujah, but in Iraq.

ALTERMAN: Well, I actually think it's going to be easier to find the people who celebrated the attack and burned the bodies, because we have television images, and we're going to be able to match up some of the faces and some of the people. It's going to be harder to deal with the masked assailants with machine guns. But it's clearly something we're going to have to do. We're going to have to do it quickly, and we're going to have to do it with a fair amount of force, I would guess.

KAGAN: And you'll be tracking it, as we will as well. Jon Alterman, thanks for stopping by.

ALTERMAN: Great to see you. Thank you.

KAGAN: Appreciate it.

Well, Cuba is rejecting charges by a Bush administration official that it is trying to develop biological weapons. Fidel Castro's government says the allegation is a pretext for a U.S. invasion under the war on terror umbrella. Undersecretary of State John Bolton made that allegation that Cuba is working on bioweapons. It was written testimony to Congress this week. He first made that accusation back in 2002.

Future wars may look a lot different than Iraq. They could be fought without pilots in the cockpit.

Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, checks in now with that.

Barbara -- good morning. BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.

Well, we want to show everybody something just a little bit different this morning. The Pentagon is developing a new unmanned aircraft, a new warplane, and they are testing it right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

STARR (voice-over): A perfect day for flying earlier this month in the California desert. The experimental X45a drops a 250-pound bomb. Just one thing: there is no cockpit, there is no pilot on board. Ground station operators are miles away.

This is the first time an unmanned warplane has dropped a weapon. This is the future of warfare. The Pentagon is testing unmanned warplanes, hoping to make them part of the U.S. arsenal.

For the first night of the war in Iraq, it would have been the ultimate stealthy weapon --flying toward Iraqi radars and missiles without risking a U.S. air crew.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We can spot that threat before he spots us.

STARR: These unmanned aircraft will be able to fly at 40,000 feet and at the speed of commercial airplanes, more capable than current drones. Fleets of unmanned airplanes will move across enemy airspace, some conducting surveillance through on-board cameras, some dropping bombs.

But questions of ethics. Even with a human operator able to see the target through on-board sensors, should what is essentially a flying computer be used to attack?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can imagine an unmanned vehicle correctly finding a target, but then maybe a train passes by that target at just that minute with a lot of women and children on board.

STARR: The Pentagon says there are limitations.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We still haven't replaced the human computer. The digital computer, as good as it is, can't do some things that we do very well.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STARR: But the Pentagon, Daryn is moving ahead. The next test of this unmanned warplane could come as soon as this weekend -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

Topic of conversation on Capitol Hill today: al Qaeda. Just how dangerous is the threat to the U.S.? We'll take a look and a live picture -- we'll actually go live to Washington, D.C. for a look coming up. Also, they're going head to head over a head scarf. Coming up, you're going to hear from the young girl and the school representative at the center of the battle.

And later, do you love your cat? You got 50 grand? Then a California company might be able to make you an offer you can't refuse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: The Bush team is updating Congress this morning on the threat from al Qaeda. Let's talk to our Sean Callebs, who is at our Washington bureau this morning.

Sean -- good morning.

SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Tell us a little bit about Cofer Black, the man we'll see testifying.

CALLEBS: Right. He is actually speaking right now on Capitol Hill. Cofer Black has the rank of ambassador at-large. He is the coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department. He was sworn in, in December of 2002. Before that, he spent about a quarter of a century working for the CIA, focusing on counterterrorism.

Now, this is a regularly-scheduled meeting, so Black is really required by law to come and update committee members on what the U.S. is doing to fight terrorism.

One significant item, and this really come on the heels of the 9/11 Commission, which got so much attention this past week, and Black has focused on the fact that everybody in the world can hear or gain access to what he's saying. So, he has said time and again to the committee members that he'll speak in kind of a broad way but will not specifically go into what the U.S. is doing and has done to counter terrorism and specifically the threat of al Qaeda.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COFER BLACK, STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL: The al Qaeda organization that we engaged before 9/11 and at 9/11 has been put under catastrophic stress. Seventy percent of their leadership has been arrested, detained or killed. The majority -- the rest of them essentially are primarily defensive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLEBS: The bad news is, because al Qaeda has been weakened so much that they are now reaching out to, in essence, co-op other terror organizations, to bring them in to the al Qaeda objective, which, Daryn, he says, is to harm the U.S. any way it can.

KAGAN: If people just kind of tune in and they see this, they might think that this is more 9/11 Commission testimony. This is not the 9/11 Commission hearing from him.

CALLEBS: No, really nothing like that. As I said, it's a regularly-scheduled meeting, something that he has to do by law. That he is really bringing the members up-to-date on al Qaeda and the effort to weaken that organization, really hammering away at the Bush administration's line that the U.S. has launched an offensive and really weakened it to a large degree.

But he also talked about the global threat of terrorism, really talking about Spain and what happened there on March 11, that horrific train attack. And how that despite what is going on, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort by a couple of motivated terrorists just to do a world of harm.

KAGAN: And it's also interesting that he is from the State Department. There has for a long time been a difference of opinion about how the fight on terrorism should take place from the State Department, let's say, versus the Pentagon.

CALLEBS: Exactly. He hasn't gotten into that so much yet. He did talk about the fact that -- or the discussion did come up that the CIA director came out last week and said, before September 11, really no one even had the idea that the scope of an attack could be so broad. And now, people are trying to think out of the box more.

He was also pointedly asked -- again, we're seeing live pictures of the hearing -- he was pointedly asked today: Are the same leaders still in power at the State Department who were before September 11? And Black said he's here to talk about what's going on in the fight against terrorism, not about personnel. And then Dana Rohrabacher, a congressman from California, said, we have to talk about personnel, because they are the people that make policy, and they are the people responsible for keeping the United States and its interests safe.

KAGAN: Sean Callebs monitoring that testimony from Capitol Hill. Thank you.

An Oklahoma school district is defending its dress code policy in a lawsuit over a girl's Muslim head scarf. The Justice Department has joined her fight to wear her head scarf at school. School officials say it violates their dress code. Attorneys on both sides squared off on CNN's AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAH FARISH, NASHALA HEARN'S ATTORNEY: At that time, she and her parents started discussing this with the school district, and ultimately she was suspended. She returned again in a hijab and was suspended again. And since then, she has been at school, wearing the hijab, under an agreement that the school district says allows them to indefinitely deliberate on whether they're going to make an exception to their dress code or change their dress code.

JOHN TUCKER, SCHOOL DISTRICT ATTORNEY: The Muskogee School District wants a dress code that applies consistently to all students, and head wear is not permitted because of the opportunities to use head wear to present signs of things that would be considered inappropriate and might lead to gang behavior.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: The school district has asked the judge to dismiss the case by the Justice Department in support of the sixth grader.

Well, he's got the attention of the world and perhaps eventually the throne of England. Now Prince William has one thing most guys his age really want. The royal family is not too happy about the publicity. The story is coming up next.

Then, how much is your cat worth to you? How about 50 grand? You might want to stay tuned and see what one California company is offering.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Britain's royal family is said to be irritated over paparazzi pictures of Prince William and his new gal pal. "The Sun" ran photos of William and Kate Middleton (ph). That's with his dad, though. That's not his girlfriend. They're on a ski holiday in the Alps. She's a classmate at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

It was the first time a British paper ignored an agreement with the royals to allow William his privacy in exchange for palace-managed photo opportunities. This is a palace-managed one, like you're watching. I guess we'll have to look around to find you the photos we were talking about.

(WEATHER BREAK)

KAGAN: We're talking cats, though. If you want to keep your pet forever, there's a cloning company that says it might be able to make your wish come true for a big price. Lou Hawthorne is the CEO of Genetic Savings & Clone. He joins us from our San Francisco bureau this morning.

Good morning. Thanks for being with us.

LOU HAWTHORNE, GENETIC SAVINGS & CLONE: Good morning. My pleasure.

KAGAN: Now, tell me what you say you're able to do for the beloved family kitty.

HAWTHORNE: In 2004, Genetics Savings & Clone is going to be cloning nine cats. It's our nine lives extravaganza. Three of those cats are for GSC employees. That's just to make sure all of our protocols are perfect. And the remaining six are commercial clients. Four of those are already sold. But the idea is that anybody out there in the world with $50,000 and a cat they feel is worth it, we will clone that cat.

KAGAN: OK, I want to get to the price in a second. But you say -- have you already been able successfully to clone a cat?

HAWTHORNE: We -- through our research effort at Texas A&M, we cloned a cat named CC. We have licensed a new technology, called chromatin transfer, that is much more advanced than the method that was used to clone CC or any other clones commonly known such as Dolly the sheep. This is a quality standard that pet owners demand. They're much higher standards than people engaged in the cloning of livestock.

KAGAN: All right, let me ask you this. The video we're seeing there, the cute little kitty, that's CC, the cloned kitty?

HAWTHORNE: Well, I can't see the video, but I'm assuming it is.

KAGAN: Oh, OK. A little gray and white kitty, little stripes.

HAWTHORNE: Yes.

KAGAN: What about the cat that CC was cloned from?

HAWTHORNE: CC was cloned from a cat named Rainbow. Her genetic donor was a calico. And that's why CC and her donor don't exactly look the same. That's a unique phenomenon to calicos. In all others breeds of dogs and cats, the clone should resemble the donor as much as an identical twin, separated in time.

KAGAN: Ah, but it's possible if you're trying to clone your calico you have to kind of give a warning to the people that perhaps you're not going to -- your cat is not going to look exactly like what you're trying to get?

HAWTHORNE: We encourage people with beloved calicos to wait a year or two. We have a research effort under way to determine how to clone calicos with the same high degree of resemblance that occurs when you clone with other breeds of dogs -- of cats.

KAGAN: You mentioned Dolly the sheep. One of the criticisms of cloning and this type of research is that it's not just a sure shot where you just clone, that there are a number of mutilated embryos and animals that might have to be destroyed in order to get the one cat that you're looking for. How ethically do you defend that?

HAWTHORNE: Well, the vast majority of embryos that you transfer into the surrogate or recipient, the vast majority of those embryos fail to implant. So, that means we're talking about embryos that are only a few cells in size. We've never experienced a mutilated cat, or we've never experienced any abnormal outcome whatsoever, not to say they can't happen. That's why we've invested in this new cloning method called CT. It's much more advanced.

KAGAN: And then another ethical question here, and I say this, no one is a bigger animal and cat lover especially than I am, but $50,000, when you think of where that money could go, and you think about all of the animals that are sitting in shelters at this very moment that need homes, isn't there a problem with trying to clone an animal where there's already animals that should probably be going home with these owner?

HAWTHORNE: Well, we think adopting from shelters is a wonderful idea, if that's what you want to do. This is not a service for everyone. This is a service for people who believe they have one in a million cat. The vast majority of our customers have animals that have already been spayed. They can't be replicated any other way. And if they have the money, you know, this is America. You can spend your money on whatever you want. Nobody questions the priorities of someone who spends $50,000 on a new car. It's assumed to be a perk of working hard.

KAGAN: All right, and finally, I have a challenge for you here.

HAWTHORNE: All right.

KAGAN: Because I'm a huge cat lover. I have one at home, and he has been spayed. He's Tripod. He's a three-legged cat. Now, what are the chances you clone Tripod he's coming out three legs?

HAWTHORNE: Well, it totally depends on why Tripod has three legs. If Tripod lost his leg in an accident, then the clone of Tripod is going to have four legs. If Tripod has a genetic disorder, then the clone would have three legs as well. And that's something that we're very cautious about, cloning animals that have genetic disorders. It would really depend on what the problem is.

KAGAN: You know what? It's a mystery. I adopted him with three legs, and in 11 years he has never given up the secret about where the leg has gone. So, I won't be sending my 50,000 to your company, but thanks for telling us about the opportunity for some cat lovers out there. Lou Hawthorne joining us from San Francisco.

HAWTHORNE: My pleasure. Thank you.

KAGAN: A missing student is now home safe. What started as a frightening ordeal ends with an incredible reunion. We are live with the latest coming up next.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.