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American Morning

ACLU Suing Over 'No-Fly List'; 'Paging Dr. Gupta'

Aired April 07, 2004 - 08:33   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.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: A German court now releasing the only person convicted in connection with the September 11th terror attacks. Wanir El Motassadeq (ph) was found guilty last year of aiding an al Qaeda cell. A federal appeals court overturned the verdict last month. His lawyers say Motassadeq will be free until a retrial, expected to begin in June.
Kobe Bryant wants a speedy trial and says he wants the case to be over just as much as his accuser does. Bryant's lawyers are insisting they want the trial to move forward because the ordeal is taking a grueling personal and professional toll on the L.A. Laker. Prosecutors accuse Bryant of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman last June.

In Wisconsin, the search continues this morning for a missing mother of four. Police and about 200 people turned out to search streams and wooded areas in Sheboygan for the 33-year-old who disappeared on Sunday. Detectives been interviewing an acquaintance of Caroline Welsh. Friends say they doubt Welsh would leave her four children, who range in age from 16 to 9.

Chocolate may actually be good for babies when it comes to their temperament. I'm taking notes. Researchers in Finland say pregnant women who ate chocolate daily had happier, livelier babies. Scientists say a mood-altering chemical in chocolate may be responsible for the upbeat baby behavior. Some doctors point that chocolate is high in fat and say women can really pack on the pounds during pregnancy if they eat it everyday.

Hello, it's the sugar, upbeat.

HEMMER: Come on, more energy.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COLLINS: A number of Americans say they are being humiliated at airports by the federal government. The ACLU is suing over a so- called no-fly list of suspected terrorists. The people who are suing complain they haven't been told why they're on the list or how to get off it.

Reginald Shuford of the ACLU, is here with us to talk about this, and David Nelson, a plaintiff in the cases in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mr. Nelson, I'd like to begin with you, if I could. You say you've been stopped every time you go through the airport, something like 40 times now. What have you been able to do about this? What have you done to get off the list?

DAVID NELSON, PLAINTIFF IN "NO FLY" LAWSUIT: Well, my attorneys tell me that for the past year, they have sought information from the government about the creation, maintenance and management of the no- fly list and have been told nothing at all. So I'm afraid I don't have much to say about what's going on with this list.

COLLINS: Well, why do you think you got on it in the first place? Anything that you've been able to figure out on that?

NELSON: No, I must say that the best i've been able to divine is that there is someone that the government suspects, someone that the government suspects of being a potential terrorist perhaps or having the desire to do harm to other Americans, and that person's name must be Dave Nelson.

COLLINS: Mr. Shuford, I want to ask you now, why did the ACLU file this suit? I mean, doesn't the issue of airline security trump passenger convenience?

REGINALD SHUFORD, ACLU ATTY.: I don't think automatically so, Heidi. As our client David Nelson indicated, we've tried over the past year and longer to get information from the TSA about how it creates and administers this no-fly list, only to find that they are not being responsive to our concerns whatsoever. Our lawsuit on behalf of our clients was a last resort. It wasn't a first resort, simply we want our clients to be treated as every other innocent passenger is treated, and they're not being.

You know, detaining Dave Nelson 40 times, I'm not sure what the story is with other people, but 40 times for him seems to sort of make a mockery of this whole system, which of course is designed to keep passengers safer.

What is the problem here?

SHUFORD: We don't know. They won't tell us the information. But what we can say for certainty that it is not making anybody safer. It is arbitrarily enforced. Sometimes people will be stopped and harassed. Other times they'll be allowed to go through. And you know, the government and airlines all have, you know, these finite resources, and to be devoting those resources to innocent passengers who have shown and verified their identities as nonterroristic people. There is nothing to be -- there is nobody for those people to avoid this problem other than the lawsuit we had to file today.

COLLINS; All right. Of course, frustrating as it sounds. Mr. Nelson, I want to ask you one more time about this. You said the longest that you've been delayed is 15 or 20 minutes. Have you ever missed a flight because of this?

NELSON: Let me put the answer in some context. As the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, I'm really a placekeeper. I am in -- emblematic of many other stories, dozens, perhaps hundreds. So my story is similar. It will meet the legal requirements of commonality and typicality in place of others. But I was not chosen, and I did not volunteer for the named plaintiff position, simply because my circumstances were the worst.

Instead, I chose to do this and was asked to do this, because I was willing to, for example, fly to Seattle, if that becomes necessary, leave my family, leave my legal practice behind for a time in order to devote efforts to this case. And I was willing and am willing to put myself in the crosshairs of the government's case when it mounts the defense.

So again, the context is, I'm an individual whose case is emblematic, but I was not chosen as the individual who had the worst experiences.

Having said that, I think in answer to your question, I have been delayed for as little as a few minutes for as much as 15 or perhaps 20 minutes. Sometimes that delay involves a detention where I'm asked questions by a police officer, sometimes not.

COLLINS: All right, very good, Mr. Nelson, thanks so much.

Want to make sure we have a minute here to talk to the Transportation Security Administration. It has also been named in the lawsuit.

Mark Hatfield is the TSA's communications director in Washington now this to join us.

Mr. Hatfield, what's your reaction to what you've been hearing here so far?

MARK HATFIELD, TSA COMM. DIR: Well, the first thing I'd like to do is try to demystify some of this, because the more I hear the dialogue continue, the more confusion is entered into it. First of all, the no-fly list is not a mystery. It is a list of known terrorists that we are bound and determined to keep off of airplanes. I don't think anybody argues with that.

COLLINS: But, sir, you've heard them saying, they haven't been able to get information about what it is or why it's happening.

HATFIELD: Well, let me just separate two things that I'm hearing. And I'm not going to address the particular complaints of this lawsuit, because we'll leave that to the lawyers. However, if you listen to the dialogue, there is reference to the no-fly list. If an individual is on the no-fly list, they are not going to be allowed on the airplane. The airlines are tasked with administering that, with doing the passenger prescreening. And if you are confused with somebody on that list, it's usually settled within a short period of time, often with the involvement of law enforcement or the FBI to come and talk to you. That's an inconvenience, and it's one that we regret and one that we're working to eliminate.

But What I think I'm hearing discussed is secondary screening, which is that little corral near the checkpoint where people are often directed. I've been sent there. My colleagues are randomly selected on occasion. About 15 percent of all air travelers are selected for secondary screening. It takes three to four extra minutes. It's not a burden. The problem is, we're selecting too many people, and we've said that. We'd like to get that down to less than 5 percent of passengers, and we have a next generation prescreening system that will do just that.

COLLINS: Mr. Hatfield, are you saying this is a computer problem? I mean, once these people are on the list, found to be not the people that the TSA is looking for, how are those amendments made? You say it takes a short time to get off that list. Clearly in this case, that is not what's been what's happened.

HATFIELD: Well, first of all, the current prescreening system that we have is antiquated. It was designed in a different era to deal with a different threat. We have the next generation passenger prescreening in a position we're about ready to test it, and we'd like to get it launched as soon as possible to eliminate a lot of these problems. Because for one thing, the administration of that prescreening, the burden is put on the airlines. So it's done at 1,000 different ticket counters for scores of different airlines at hundreds of airports around the country.

If we take the burden off the airlines, put it under one roof, let the TSA manage that and also be a single point of contact to redress any grievances or solve any problems, we think that we will see a dramatic decrease in these kind of unnecessary, secondary screenings.

COLLINS: Another job for the TSA. All right, David Nelson, thank you so very much, from St. Louis morning. Reginald Shuford, right here next to me, and Mark Hatfield out of D.C. this morning. Thanks so much gentlemen -- Bill.

HEMMER: Heidi, going to break here in a moment, tracking the latest from Iraq, and there's a lot to track again today. The coalition working to quell the uprisings there. We'll get you back there in a moment -- Heidi.

COLLINS: The juror in the middle of the Tyco mistrial denies one of the most shocking charges against her. Andy Serwer has that.

HEMMER: Also, Sanjay checks in in a moment, tells us why medical schools may soon be just as interested in your video game scores as they are in your MCAT scores. Back in a moment, here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: May sound like a bit of a strange question. Does your surgeon play enough "Super Mario?" Sanjay doesn't think so. Doctors who may be performing better in surgery because of their video game skills.

Intriguing. Some would suggest kooky. You don't.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm a surgeon. I'm also a video game player as well. Listen, 94 percent of adolescents play video games nine hours or more a week. I'm not an adolescent by the way. A lot of people started playing in the '70s when video games came out, and a lot of them are still playing today. The question is, as a lot of surgeons are playing video games as well, does it make you a better surgeon in some ways? It's long been speculated that perhaps it does.

Some people decided to put it to the test. Specifically, there's a program at Beth Israel Hospital, specifically looking at surgeons training in laproscopic techniques, minimally invasive techniques of surgery, trying to figure out whether or not video games skills and laproscopic techniques are somehow coordinated.

Interesting, they looked at three video games in particular, and they found a correlation for sure. They were "Super Monkey Ball," "Star Trek Racer," and "Deer Hunter." And what they found specifically was that if you were playing three hours a week on average or more, you had 37 percent fewer mistakes when performing laproscopic surgery in this particular training program, and 27 percent faster than your nonplaying counterparts as well. Some pretty interesting statistics there. There were about 33 surgeons in this particular study, so not a very large study by any means, but still interesting findings. I think larger study is going to be needed to find out if the joystick actually correlates to an operating room instrument -- Bill.

HEMMER: You mentioned laproscopic surgery. Tell us more about that, Sanjay.

GUPTA: You know, laproscopic surgery is something that's certainly coming into vogue a lot. A lot of people have had their gallbladders removed, appendectomies, things like that. Best way to describe it really is that you're sort of using like chopsticks and putting chopsticks in the body, trying to tie your shoelaces with chopsticks. That's how difficult it can be sometimes for surgeons to perform these techniques.

You can see it there. They are actually looking at the monitor. You see where that surgeon's looking? He's not look at the patient. He's looking at the monitor to try and do these techniques. The correlation then, you can start to assume, to guess, between video games and laproscopic surgery is more obvious after looking at those...

HEMMER: As a neurosurgeon, back to this whole video game issue here, you understand better than most the coordination between the brain and the hands. How does -- how do video games help a surgeon gain better skills?

GUPTA: There are a lot of correlations, in all fairness here. If you look at the joysticks on a video game, for example, and the controllers they use for a particular operation, they are very similar in a way. But I think more than that, you are using a monitor, in this case, a two-dimension visual, to essentially perform a 3-D surgery. That's the key here. Shadows, often both in video games, as well as in the operating room, can give you important clues. If you're right-handed, you really need to develop the skills in your left hand, but you've got to be ambidextrous, so to speak, as well. Accurate targeting and hitting as well. You don't want to injure important structures when you're operating, and you learn that in video games as well -- Bill.

HEMMER: I can hear kids across the country say, see, mom, Nintendo is good for me, Sanjay told me.

GUPTA: Don't take it too far, though.

HEMMER: All right, and you're never an adolescent too much. Thank you, Sanjay. Great to see you.

GUPTA: See you later.

COLLINS: Still to come, the woman at the center of the Tyco trial turmoil speaks out. Did juror No. 4 give the OK sign or not? That story ahead, here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Welcome back, everybody.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: In the latest news from CEO court cases, juror No. 4 in the Tyco case speak out, and an Enron figure is sentenced today, but it's not what you think.

Andy Serwer is here "Minding Your Business" this morning.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning.

This is our daily trial update. This segment is called "Women and Justice." Let's talk first about Lea Fastow.

You like that, OK?

CAFFERTY: That's an oxymoron.

SERWER: No, no, Jack, come on.

Lea Fastow, the wife of Enron's former chief financial officer Andy Fastow, set to meet the judge this morning in Houston, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. She's looking at five months in prison and five months of home confinement, you know, not that big of deal. Really, it's Just tens of thousands of dollars of income tax fraud, but part of the whole Enron thing didn't help bring this company down or didn't really contribute to it.

And yesterday, her lawyers presented a sentencing memorandum to the judge that includes all manner of stuff about her personality, how she was a modest person and how she as accepted to nursing school recently. Congratulations, Lea, as well as some pictures of her and her family that we might find interesting. Let's take a look. This was included in the sentencing memorandum, guys.

There she's with her family at the beach. A little bit chilly, so they had a fire, Jack.

Next, we have a picture of her on the couch reading. This is from the "Houston Chronicle." They got these things. So this is kind of interesting.

CAFFERTY: Very funny.

SERWER: Let's talk about our next woman and justice. Juror No. 4. I'm still not going to say her name. I will not say this woman's name because of what happened. Usually you can at this point afterwards.

HEMMER: She's doing front-page interviews.

SERWER: Yes, I'm still not saying her name. She's in "The New York Times." She's going to be on "60 Minutes" tonight. The interview in "The New York Times" had some interesting stuff. She denied making that OK sign. Remember OK? She said she didn't make that. She just had a kind of thing with her hair. She also said that she would have voted to acquit or not voted to convict. And also, she got in -- she did admit to making some weird kind of facial things. She was animated.

And here's an interesting thing. The clerk said, "Are you flirting with Mr. Kozlowski?" And juror No. 4 said, "This man has too many women in his life already." You may remember this, he was involved with all manner of women in the trial, so kind of fun stuff. Women and justice.

CAFFERTY: Futures up or down?

SERWER: Futures are flat this morning, and we'll be getting to that a little bit later.

CAFFERTY: Thanks, Andy.

Cafferty File, things that people said that got our attention in the last week, beginning with this: "They remind me of teenagers who got their inheritance too soon, couldn't wait to blow it," former President Bill Clinton the Bush White House.

"The Bush family is just like the Corleones. Jeb fixed his brother's election," radio host Randy Rhodes in her debut on Air America, the liberal talk radio network.

"The only way I'm going to run is if I'm willing to tolerate the consequences of having two ex-wives, and I'm not." That September 11th commissioner Bob Kerrey, who was recently remarried on the possibility of being vice presidential candidate John Kerry's running mate.

SERWER: Kerry and Kerrey would be too confusing.

CAFFERTY: That's true, too, very confusing.

SERWER: "We couldn't handle it." CAFFERTY: "I do want my life back to normal, because it's hard. It's so hard. But at the same time I'm like, wow, I get to go to New York, get to go to New York, I get to Hollywood, I get to hang out with people like Britney and Leonardo." That is former POW Jessica Lynch on her life one year after being rescued in Iraq.

"When I go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk, I don't have to buy a package of celery and a bunch of broccoli. I don't like broccoli," Senator John McCain on legislation that would require cable TV companies to allow subscribers to pay only for the channels that they want. That would be a nice idea.

"She's not a big TV watcher and doesn't really read the newspapers," record producer Jimmy Jam, claiming Janet Jackson was unaffected by the uproar over the Super Bowl halftime show.

Knowing that she doesn't watch TV or read the newspapers explains a lot about Janet.

SERWER: Right. Right.

Hey, Jack, you know, those flowers are terrific that you brought in.

CAFFERTY: You know how long it took me to arrange those this morning? I got here at 3:30, and I was doing that in my office.

SERWER: Are these roses?

CAFFERTY: The last bunch we had here, nobody watered them and they died in like one day.

SERWER: Yes, but they had your wrath to deal with after that.

CAFFERTY: Hey, The Broccoli Network, do you like that idea?

SERWER: Didn't President Bush, the first President Bush not like broccoli?

HEMMER: Sure was. Now they're a pair.

Let's get a break here. In a moment, U.S. forces vowing to take down the insurgency in Iraq. The action on a number of fronts yet again today. There's a lot to track on this story. We will, top of the hour here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired April 7, 2004 - 08:33   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: A German court now releasing the only person convicted in connection with the September 11th terror attacks. Wanir El Motassadeq (ph) was found guilty last year of aiding an al Qaeda cell. A federal appeals court overturned the verdict last month. His lawyers say Motassadeq will be free until a retrial, expected to begin in June.
Kobe Bryant wants a speedy trial and says he wants the case to be over just as much as his accuser does. Bryant's lawyers are insisting they want the trial to move forward because the ordeal is taking a grueling personal and professional toll on the L.A. Laker. Prosecutors accuse Bryant of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman last June.

In Wisconsin, the search continues this morning for a missing mother of four. Police and about 200 people turned out to search streams and wooded areas in Sheboygan for the 33-year-old who disappeared on Sunday. Detectives been interviewing an acquaintance of Caroline Welsh. Friends say they doubt Welsh would leave her four children, who range in age from 16 to 9.

Chocolate may actually be good for babies when it comes to their temperament. I'm taking notes. Researchers in Finland say pregnant women who ate chocolate daily had happier, livelier babies. Scientists say a mood-altering chemical in chocolate may be responsible for the upbeat baby behavior. Some doctors point that chocolate is high in fat and say women can really pack on the pounds during pregnancy if they eat it everyday.

Hello, it's the sugar, upbeat.

HEMMER: Come on, more energy.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COLLINS: A number of Americans say they are being humiliated at airports by the federal government. The ACLU is suing over a so- called no-fly list of suspected terrorists. The people who are suing complain they haven't been told why they're on the list or how to get off it.

Reginald Shuford of the ACLU, is here with us to talk about this, and David Nelson, a plaintiff in the cases in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mr. Nelson, I'd like to begin with you, if I could. You say you've been stopped every time you go through the airport, something like 40 times now. What have you been able to do about this? What have you done to get off the list?

DAVID NELSON, PLAINTIFF IN "NO FLY" LAWSUIT: Well, my attorneys tell me that for the past year, they have sought information from the government about the creation, maintenance and management of the no- fly list and have been told nothing at all. So I'm afraid I don't have much to say about what's going on with this list.

COLLINS: Well, why do you think you got on it in the first place? Anything that you've been able to figure out on that?

NELSON: No, I must say that the best i've been able to divine is that there is someone that the government suspects, someone that the government suspects of being a potential terrorist perhaps or having the desire to do harm to other Americans, and that person's name must be Dave Nelson.

COLLINS: Mr. Shuford, I want to ask you now, why did the ACLU file this suit? I mean, doesn't the issue of airline security trump passenger convenience?

REGINALD SHUFORD, ACLU ATTY.: I don't think automatically so, Heidi. As our client David Nelson indicated, we've tried over the past year and longer to get information from the TSA about how it creates and administers this no-fly list, only to find that they are not being responsive to our concerns whatsoever. Our lawsuit on behalf of our clients was a last resort. It wasn't a first resort, simply we want our clients to be treated as every other innocent passenger is treated, and they're not being.

You know, detaining Dave Nelson 40 times, I'm not sure what the story is with other people, but 40 times for him seems to sort of make a mockery of this whole system, which of course is designed to keep passengers safer.

What is the problem here?

SHUFORD: We don't know. They won't tell us the information. But what we can say for certainty that it is not making anybody safer. It is arbitrarily enforced. Sometimes people will be stopped and harassed. Other times they'll be allowed to go through. And you know, the government and airlines all have, you know, these finite resources, and to be devoting those resources to innocent passengers who have shown and verified their identities as nonterroristic people. There is nothing to be -- there is nobody for those people to avoid this problem other than the lawsuit we had to file today.

COLLINS; All right. Of course, frustrating as it sounds. Mr. Nelson, I want to ask you one more time about this. You said the longest that you've been delayed is 15 or 20 minutes. Have you ever missed a flight because of this?

NELSON: Let me put the answer in some context. As the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit, I'm really a placekeeper. I am in -- emblematic of many other stories, dozens, perhaps hundreds. So my story is similar. It will meet the legal requirements of commonality and typicality in place of others. But I was not chosen, and I did not volunteer for the named plaintiff position, simply because my circumstances were the worst.

Instead, I chose to do this and was asked to do this, because I was willing to, for example, fly to Seattle, if that becomes necessary, leave my family, leave my legal practice behind for a time in order to devote efforts to this case. And I was willing and am willing to put myself in the crosshairs of the government's case when it mounts the defense.

So again, the context is, I'm an individual whose case is emblematic, but I was not chosen as the individual who had the worst experiences.

Having said that, I think in answer to your question, I have been delayed for as little as a few minutes for as much as 15 or perhaps 20 minutes. Sometimes that delay involves a detention where I'm asked questions by a police officer, sometimes not.

COLLINS: All right, very good, Mr. Nelson, thanks so much.

Want to make sure we have a minute here to talk to the Transportation Security Administration. It has also been named in the lawsuit.

Mark Hatfield is the TSA's communications director in Washington now this to join us.

Mr. Hatfield, what's your reaction to what you've been hearing here so far?

MARK HATFIELD, TSA COMM. DIR: Well, the first thing I'd like to do is try to demystify some of this, because the more I hear the dialogue continue, the more confusion is entered into it. First of all, the no-fly list is not a mystery. It is a list of known terrorists that we are bound and determined to keep off of airplanes. I don't think anybody argues with that.

COLLINS: But, sir, you've heard them saying, they haven't been able to get information about what it is or why it's happening.

HATFIELD: Well, let me just separate two things that I'm hearing. And I'm not going to address the particular complaints of this lawsuit, because we'll leave that to the lawyers. However, if you listen to the dialogue, there is reference to the no-fly list. If an individual is on the no-fly list, they are not going to be allowed on the airplane. The airlines are tasked with administering that, with doing the passenger prescreening. And if you are confused with somebody on that list, it's usually settled within a short period of time, often with the involvement of law enforcement or the FBI to come and talk to you. That's an inconvenience, and it's one that we regret and one that we're working to eliminate.

But What I think I'm hearing discussed is secondary screening, which is that little corral near the checkpoint where people are often directed. I've been sent there. My colleagues are randomly selected on occasion. About 15 percent of all air travelers are selected for secondary screening. It takes three to four extra minutes. It's not a burden. The problem is, we're selecting too many people, and we've said that. We'd like to get that down to less than 5 percent of passengers, and we have a next generation prescreening system that will do just that.

COLLINS: Mr. Hatfield, are you saying this is a computer problem? I mean, once these people are on the list, found to be not the people that the TSA is looking for, how are those amendments made? You say it takes a short time to get off that list. Clearly in this case, that is not what's been what's happened.

HATFIELD: Well, first of all, the current prescreening system that we have is antiquated. It was designed in a different era to deal with a different threat. We have the next generation passenger prescreening in a position we're about ready to test it, and we'd like to get it launched as soon as possible to eliminate a lot of these problems. Because for one thing, the administration of that prescreening, the burden is put on the airlines. So it's done at 1,000 different ticket counters for scores of different airlines at hundreds of airports around the country.

If we take the burden off the airlines, put it under one roof, let the TSA manage that and also be a single point of contact to redress any grievances or solve any problems, we think that we will see a dramatic decrease in these kind of unnecessary, secondary screenings.

COLLINS: Another job for the TSA. All right, David Nelson, thank you so very much, from St. Louis morning. Reginald Shuford, right here next to me, and Mark Hatfield out of D.C. this morning. Thanks so much gentlemen -- Bill.

HEMMER: Heidi, going to break here in a moment, tracking the latest from Iraq, and there's a lot to track again today. The coalition working to quell the uprisings there. We'll get you back there in a moment -- Heidi.

COLLINS: The juror in the middle of the Tyco mistrial denies one of the most shocking charges against her. Andy Serwer has that.

HEMMER: Also, Sanjay checks in in a moment, tells us why medical schools may soon be just as interested in your video game scores as they are in your MCAT scores. Back in a moment, here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: May sound like a bit of a strange question. Does your surgeon play enough "Super Mario?" Sanjay doesn't think so. Doctors who may be performing better in surgery because of their video game skills.

Intriguing. Some would suggest kooky. You don't.

Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm a surgeon. I'm also a video game player as well. Listen, 94 percent of adolescents play video games nine hours or more a week. I'm not an adolescent by the way. A lot of people started playing in the '70s when video games came out, and a lot of them are still playing today. The question is, as a lot of surgeons are playing video games as well, does it make you a better surgeon in some ways? It's long been speculated that perhaps it does.

Some people decided to put it to the test. Specifically, there's a program at Beth Israel Hospital, specifically looking at surgeons training in laproscopic techniques, minimally invasive techniques of surgery, trying to figure out whether or not video games skills and laproscopic techniques are somehow coordinated.

Interesting, they looked at three video games in particular, and they found a correlation for sure. They were "Super Monkey Ball," "Star Trek Racer," and "Deer Hunter." And what they found specifically was that if you were playing three hours a week on average or more, you had 37 percent fewer mistakes when performing laproscopic surgery in this particular training program, and 27 percent faster than your nonplaying counterparts as well. Some pretty interesting statistics there. There were about 33 surgeons in this particular study, so not a very large study by any means, but still interesting findings. I think larger study is going to be needed to find out if the joystick actually correlates to an operating room instrument -- Bill.

HEMMER: You mentioned laproscopic surgery. Tell us more about that, Sanjay.

GUPTA: You know, laproscopic surgery is something that's certainly coming into vogue a lot. A lot of people have had their gallbladders removed, appendectomies, things like that. Best way to describe it really is that you're sort of using like chopsticks and putting chopsticks in the body, trying to tie your shoelaces with chopsticks. That's how difficult it can be sometimes for surgeons to perform these techniques.

You can see it there. They are actually looking at the monitor. You see where that surgeon's looking? He's not look at the patient. He's looking at the monitor to try and do these techniques. The correlation then, you can start to assume, to guess, between video games and laproscopic surgery is more obvious after looking at those...

HEMMER: As a neurosurgeon, back to this whole video game issue here, you understand better than most the coordination between the brain and the hands. How does -- how do video games help a surgeon gain better skills?

GUPTA: There are a lot of correlations, in all fairness here. If you look at the joysticks on a video game, for example, and the controllers they use for a particular operation, they are very similar in a way. But I think more than that, you are using a monitor, in this case, a two-dimension visual, to essentially perform a 3-D surgery. That's the key here. Shadows, often both in video games, as well as in the operating room, can give you important clues. If you're right-handed, you really need to develop the skills in your left hand, but you've got to be ambidextrous, so to speak, as well. Accurate targeting and hitting as well. You don't want to injure important structures when you're operating, and you learn that in video games as well -- Bill.

HEMMER: I can hear kids across the country say, see, mom, Nintendo is good for me, Sanjay told me.

GUPTA: Don't take it too far, though.

HEMMER: All right, and you're never an adolescent too much. Thank you, Sanjay. Great to see you.

GUPTA: See you later.

COLLINS: Still to come, the woman at the center of the Tyco trial turmoil speaks out. Did juror No. 4 give the OK sign or not? That story ahead, here on AMERICAN MORNING.

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COLLINS: Welcome back, everybody.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: In the latest news from CEO court cases, juror No. 4 in the Tyco case speak out, and an Enron figure is sentenced today, but it's not what you think.

Andy Serwer is here "Minding Your Business" this morning.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning.

This is our daily trial update. This segment is called "Women and Justice." Let's talk first about Lea Fastow.

You like that, OK?

CAFFERTY: That's an oxymoron.

SERWER: No, no, Jack, come on.

Lea Fastow, the wife of Enron's former chief financial officer Andy Fastow, set to meet the judge this morning in Houston, 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time. She's looking at five months in prison and five months of home confinement, you know, not that big of deal. Really, it's Just tens of thousands of dollars of income tax fraud, but part of the whole Enron thing didn't help bring this company down or didn't really contribute to it.

And yesterday, her lawyers presented a sentencing memorandum to the judge that includes all manner of stuff about her personality, how she was a modest person and how she as accepted to nursing school recently. Congratulations, Lea, as well as some pictures of her and her family that we might find interesting. Let's take a look. This was included in the sentencing memorandum, guys.

There she's with her family at the beach. A little bit chilly, so they had a fire, Jack.

Next, we have a picture of her on the couch reading. This is from the "Houston Chronicle." They got these things. So this is kind of interesting.

CAFFERTY: Very funny.

SERWER: Let's talk about our next woman and justice. Juror No. 4. I'm still not going to say her name. I will not say this woman's name because of what happened. Usually you can at this point afterwards.

HEMMER: She's doing front-page interviews.

SERWER: Yes, I'm still not saying her name. She's in "The New York Times." She's going to be on "60 Minutes" tonight. The interview in "The New York Times" had some interesting stuff. She denied making that OK sign. Remember OK? She said she didn't make that. She just had a kind of thing with her hair. She also said that she would have voted to acquit or not voted to convict. And also, she got in -- she did admit to making some weird kind of facial things. She was animated.

And here's an interesting thing. The clerk said, "Are you flirting with Mr. Kozlowski?" And juror No. 4 said, "This man has too many women in his life already." You may remember this, he was involved with all manner of women in the trial, so kind of fun stuff. Women and justice.

CAFFERTY: Futures up or down?

SERWER: Futures are flat this morning, and we'll be getting to that a little bit later.

CAFFERTY: Thanks, Andy.

Cafferty File, things that people said that got our attention in the last week, beginning with this: "They remind me of teenagers who got their inheritance too soon, couldn't wait to blow it," former President Bill Clinton the Bush White House.

"The Bush family is just like the Corleones. Jeb fixed his brother's election," radio host Randy Rhodes in her debut on Air America, the liberal talk radio network.

"The only way I'm going to run is if I'm willing to tolerate the consequences of having two ex-wives, and I'm not." That September 11th commissioner Bob Kerrey, who was recently remarried on the possibility of being vice presidential candidate John Kerry's running mate.

SERWER: Kerry and Kerrey would be too confusing.

CAFFERTY: That's true, too, very confusing.

SERWER: "We couldn't handle it." CAFFERTY: "I do want my life back to normal, because it's hard. It's so hard. But at the same time I'm like, wow, I get to go to New York, get to go to New York, I get to Hollywood, I get to hang out with people like Britney and Leonardo." That is former POW Jessica Lynch on her life one year after being rescued in Iraq.

"When I go to the grocery store to buy a quart of milk, I don't have to buy a package of celery and a bunch of broccoli. I don't like broccoli," Senator John McCain on legislation that would require cable TV companies to allow subscribers to pay only for the channels that they want. That would be a nice idea.

"She's not a big TV watcher and doesn't really read the newspapers," record producer Jimmy Jam, claiming Janet Jackson was unaffected by the uproar over the Super Bowl halftime show.

Knowing that she doesn't watch TV or read the newspapers explains a lot about Janet.

SERWER: Right. Right.

Hey, Jack, you know, those flowers are terrific that you brought in.

CAFFERTY: You know how long it took me to arrange those this morning? I got here at 3:30, and I was doing that in my office.

SERWER: Are these roses?

CAFFERTY: The last bunch we had here, nobody watered them and they died in like one day.

SERWER: Yes, but they had your wrath to deal with after that.

CAFFERTY: Hey, The Broccoli Network, do you like that idea?

SERWER: Didn't President Bush, the first President Bush not like broccoli?

HEMMER: Sure was. Now they're a pair.

Let's get a break here. In a moment, U.S. forces vowing to take down the insurgency in Iraq. The action on a number of fronts yet again today. There's a lot to track on this story. We will, top of the hour here on AMERICAN MORNING.

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