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President Bush Delivers Commencement Address at Louisiana State University; In Southern Alabama, Questions About Why Plane Fell From Sky

Aired May 21, 2004 - 10:30   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.


DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan. Let's take a look at the top stories at this hour. Coalition leaders both military and civilian are due to hold a briefing any moment in Baghdad. You'll see that live right here on CNN.
The main issue likely to confront them is the deepening prisoner abuse scandal. There new unauthenticated images being seen by the public. What you see there is a live picture from Baghdad. These images are being seen both in the U.S. and Arab world along with graphic descriptions from the inmates themselves.

In the U.S. Homeland Security officials have announced the first federal security measures to protect the nation's rail system. For example, some trash cans will be moved and inspections made to reduce the risk that explosives are being planted in public areas. More safeguards will be implemented if the nation's security level is raised.

Officials with the nation's largest subway system are proposing a precaution of their own. New York wants to ban photography on their subways to guard from terrorist planning. It comes as the big apple gets ready to host this summer's republican national convention. If approved by local transit board, the ban would also apply to city buses. >

The governor of Massachusetts has taken the first step to block out of state couples from applying for same sex marriage licenses. Governor Mitt Romney has said that a 1913 law forbids nonresidents from applying for marriage licenses in Massachusetts. The only stay to -- state to legalize gay unions. Romney says he has found at least ten such violations and turned the case over to the state's attorney general.

President Bush has often joked that he may have enjoyed his college years a bit too much. Today he is all business delivering the commencement address at Louisiana State University. Our White House Correspondent Dana Bash is traveling with the president and she joins us with more on that from Baton Rouge--Dana good morning.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Daryn and the President's commencement address here, his second of the graduation season is expected according to the White House to be quite light-hearted sort of a typical commencement speech.

However on Monday, the President will turn a lot more serious. He is giving the first in a series of speeches between now and June 30th when the transfer of sovereignty does happen in Iraq. It's going to be now in prime time, 8:00 o'clock Eastern, the White House announced this morning. They will not be asking the networks for time but the White House, according to a spokesman, Trent Duffy, did say they hope people tune in because they say it's, a quote, "an important speech."

Now, what the President will do in this first speech is begin to lay out the plan as far as the United States and the United Nations understands it for the transfer of sovereignty back to the Iraqis for an interim or caretaker government.

The topics as laid out by the White House this morning will include a security, how that will go forward, sovereignty, in general, how that will also go forward and civil infrastructure and the humanitarian effort in Iraq between now and June 30th and also after June 30th.

This is part of what the White House is trying to do. Sort of a large scale p.r. effort to get the president out there in a series of speeches, perhaps as many as one a week to try to explain to the American people and even to the Iraqis and the world, if you will, about what exactly the U.S. is planning on, is hoping that they will see in Iraq, but it's also in large part to set expectations for Americans that after June 30th, there will likely continue to be bad news.

There will still be more than 135,000 troops in Iraq so a lot of this is essentially trying to set expectations and explain to the American people some of the issues going on in a Iraq because there are still a lot of unanswered questions--Daryn

KAGAN: Dana lets focus on Louisiana just for a second, these selections of where the President will speak doesn't happen in a bubble. Louisiana has suddenly become a battleground state for the 2004 election?

BASH: That's right. Well if you talk to the Bush campaign they say they're pretty comfortable in how they'll do here. The president won pretty comfortably in Louisiana in 2000.

And they have been advertising a little bit here, but certainly John Kerry and his campaign, they're hoping that this is a battleground state and they've been campaigning here, as you said, certainly competing here.

They've been running their advertising here as well. When you sort of talk to the experts here, they say it's probably going to go for George Bush but you never know--Daryn

KAGAN: And which is why you have a job there Dana covering all that. Appreciate it. Dana Bash in Baton Rouge. We'll be seeing the president's commencement speech later today on CNN from LSU.

Education is a favorite theme of both Bush and Kerry campaigns. Now the presumptive nominee John Kerry is focusing on higher education. The democrat says now if he's elected, he could boost college enrollment by 1.5 million students within five years. He also accused the Bush administration of under funding a program that helped steer at-risk kids to college.

We have an update for you now on yesterday's story of the abandoned 3-year-old girl and a public plea to identify her. Now, two people have stepped forward separately. One claiming to be her mother and the other claims to be her father. Authorities though say the story only gets more complicated from there. Details now from reporter Roosevelt Leftwich of our CNN Baltimore affiliate WMAR.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROOSEVELT LEFTWICH, WMAR BALTIMORE: This family is optimistic that their prayers will finally be answered. It's been 18 months since they've seen Acacia Parsons but the child's grandfather says when he saw a picture on TV of the child, that was abandoned here in Baltimore he knew it was her.

ABANDONED GIRL'S GRANDFATHER: Definitely. Very much so. Thank you guys for doing everything you did putting her picture up.

LEFTWICH: How much did that help you?.

GRANDFATHER: It made all of the difference in the world because that's when I totally became convinced that it was her when I saw the picture.

LEFTWICH: The story started in December 2002. The woman in the gray shirt, 21-year-old Patricia Harper, was in a custody battle with Acacia's father, 27 year old Robert Person.

Person was awarded temporary custody of Acacia and a week later, Harper was given permanent custody of the child but person took Acacia and then disappeared. Last Friday, a child calling herself Courtney from Brooklyn New York is turned over to social services.

DARY DERSTENFIELD, ATTORNEY: He dropped the child off to complete strangers and went out to buy drugs apparently got arrested and the child was turned into Department of Social Services and the child thinking that her name is Courtney and what she said is my name is Courtney and I'm from Brooklyn and what she meant is Brooklyn avenue in Baltimore city.

LEFTWICH: Social Services began a nationwide search concentrating in the New York area but when Acacia's pictures were shown on TV, that's when her grandfather from Laurel saw her and the family came up Thursday with documents including a court order awarding the child to Patricia Harper. Social services are investigating the family's claim but the attorneys say the family is hopeful that acacia will come home soon.

DERSTENFIELD: She's actual from Prince George's county and she has a beautiful mom that she hasn't seen in two years and she's going to find out that her mother loves her very much. The father apparently told Courtney that her mother didn't want anything to do with her.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And that story comes to us from Roosevelt Leftwich from our Baltimore affiliate WMAR,

Just a few minutes away from going live to Baghdad as soon as the Coalition Provisional Authority news conference begins their daily briefing, we will go back live and bring you the latest form Iraq. Right now we fit in a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(FINANCIAL REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Standing by once again as a live picture from Baghdad. The Coalition Provisional Authority holding its briefing any minute. As soon as it begins we will go live back to Baghdad.

Meanwhile let's take the chance to check on some stories making headlines across America at this hour.

He excuses the shaky video here but there a reason for it. The reporter inserted himself in a story when he ran down a suspect. The reporter was in front of the Shreveport Louisiana police headquarters when the suspect ran out chased by marshals. The reporter later made the call.

Check out pictures of this encampment a remote area of Portland, Oregon a park there was home for a 53 year old Marine Corps veteran and his daughter. The man came to Portland, with no job or place to live and didn't want his daughter to get into alcohol and drugs on the streets. Father and daughter are now living in a mobile home.

Colorado widow calls it a total miracle. Her husband lost his wedding ring while water skiing at a lake in 1965. The lake is being drained and a retiree with a metal detector found the ring and it was returned to the woman who says it's even more important to her since her husband's death.

And from southern Alabama questions about why a plane fell from the sky. The answers might lie in the shallow waters where it went down but so far the mystery has only deepened. More now from Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: From the muck and mud of a mobile Alabama marsh, Laura Wade excavates clues to her brother's plane crash more than a year and a half ago.

LAURA WADE, SISTER OF CRASH VICTIM: And this is Tommy's airplane. MESERVE: A National Transportation Safety Board investigator concluded in an interim report that Tommy Presiosi's plane collided in flight with an unknown object. But what was it?

SISTER: We simply don't know.

MESERVE: A Vietnam veteran and former New York City cop, Tommy Presisosi loved to fly.

TOMMY PRESIOSI: Motoring one. One started.

MESERVE: The night of October 23rd, 2002, he was piloting this Cessna Caravan full of freight. Visibility was poor Presiosi was flying on instruments. But four minutes after takeoff from Mobile, Alabama, he went down in Big Bato bay. Presiosi's last words to air traffic control "I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed.

SISTER: He's saying I see something coming at me and I know I'm going to die and I want you to know what happened to me.

MESERVE: The wreckage yielded two tantalizing clues. On some pieces, red streaks, perhaps transferred from something the Cessna hit and embedded in one fragment, a small piece of anodized aluminum of unknown origin, apparently not from Presiosi's plane. But searches that night and since have not turned up any other object or aircraft.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For it not to leave anything behind is puzzling. Really puzzling.

MESERVE: Speculation about what hit the Cessna has ranged from a terrorist missile to a drug smuggler's plane. Some theorize a military target drone might have gone astray like one that crashed near a Florida highway in February. But the Air Force says its drones couldn't have flown all the way to Mobile and didn't.

LT. COL JERRY KIRBY, USAF: The United States Air Force had no drones in the air at the time that this incident occurred near mobile, Alabama.

MESERVE: Radar shows a federal express DC-10 was in the air that night, but it does not appear to cross paths with Paresis's Cessna. Which is 1,000 feet below and at least a mile away.

(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)

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 May 21, 2004 - 10:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Daryn Kagan. Let's take a look at the top stories at this hour. Coalition leaders both military and civilian are due to hold a briefing any moment in Baghdad. You'll see that live right here on CNN.
The main issue likely to confront them is the deepening prisoner abuse scandal. There new unauthenticated images being seen by the public. What you see there is a live picture from Baghdad. These images are being seen both in the U.S. and Arab world along with graphic descriptions from the inmates themselves.

In the U.S. Homeland Security officials have announced the first federal security measures to protect the nation's rail system. For example, some trash cans will be moved and inspections made to reduce the risk that explosives are being planted in public areas. More safeguards will be implemented if the nation's security level is raised.

Officials with the nation's largest subway system are proposing a precaution of their own. New York wants to ban photography on their subways to guard from terrorist planning. It comes as the big apple gets ready to host this summer's republican national convention. If approved by local transit board, the ban would also apply to city buses. >

The governor of Massachusetts has taken the first step to block out of state couples from applying for same sex marriage licenses. Governor Mitt Romney has said that a 1913 law forbids nonresidents from applying for marriage licenses in Massachusetts. The only stay to -- state to legalize gay unions. Romney says he has found at least ten such violations and turned the case over to the state's attorney general.

President Bush has often joked that he may have enjoyed his college years a bit too much. Today he is all business delivering the commencement address at Louisiana State University. Our White House Correspondent Dana Bash is traveling with the president and she joins us with more on that from Baton Rouge--Dana good morning.

DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Daryn and the President's commencement address here, his second of the graduation season is expected according to the White House to be quite light-hearted sort of a typical commencement speech.

However on Monday, the President will turn a lot more serious. He is giving the first in a series of speeches between now and June 30th when the transfer of sovereignty does happen in Iraq. It's going to be now in prime time, 8:00 o'clock Eastern, the White House announced this morning. They will not be asking the networks for time but the White House, according to a spokesman, Trent Duffy, did say they hope people tune in because they say it's, a quote, "an important speech."

Now, what the President will do in this first speech is begin to lay out the plan as far as the United States and the United Nations understands it for the transfer of sovereignty back to the Iraqis for an interim or caretaker government.

The topics as laid out by the White House this morning will include a security, how that will go forward, sovereignty, in general, how that will also go forward and civil infrastructure and the humanitarian effort in Iraq between now and June 30th and also after June 30th.

This is part of what the White House is trying to do. Sort of a large scale p.r. effort to get the president out there in a series of speeches, perhaps as many as one a week to try to explain to the American people and even to the Iraqis and the world, if you will, about what exactly the U.S. is planning on, is hoping that they will see in Iraq, but it's also in large part to set expectations for Americans that after June 30th, there will likely continue to be bad news.

There will still be more than 135,000 troops in Iraq so a lot of this is essentially trying to set expectations and explain to the American people some of the issues going on in a Iraq because there are still a lot of unanswered questions--Daryn

KAGAN: Dana lets focus on Louisiana just for a second, these selections of where the President will speak doesn't happen in a bubble. Louisiana has suddenly become a battleground state for the 2004 election?

BASH: That's right. Well if you talk to the Bush campaign they say they're pretty comfortable in how they'll do here. The president won pretty comfortably in Louisiana in 2000.

And they have been advertising a little bit here, but certainly John Kerry and his campaign, they're hoping that this is a battleground state and they've been campaigning here, as you said, certainly competing here.

They've been running their advertising here as well. When you sort of talk to the experts here, they say it's probably going to go for George Bush but you never know--Daryn

KAGAN: And which is why you have a job there Dana covering all that. Appreciate it. Dana Bash in Baton Rouge. We'll be seeing the president's commencement speech later today on CNN from LSU.

Education is a favorite theme of both Bush and Kerry campaigns. Now the presumptive nominee John Kerry is focusing on higher education. The democrat says now if he's elected, he could boost college enrollment by 1.5 million students within five years. He also accused the Bush administration of under funding a program that helped steer at-risk kids to college.

We have an update for you now on yesterday's story of the abandoned 3-year-old girl and a public plea to identify her. Now, two people have stepped forward separately. One claiming to be her mother and the other claims to be her father. Authorities though say the story only gets more complicated from there. Details now from reporter Roosevelt Leftwich of our CNN Baltimore affiliate WMAR.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROOSEVELT LEFTWICH, WMAR BALTIMORE: This family is optimistic that their prayers will finally be answered. It's been 18 months since they've seen Acacia Parsons but the child's grandfather says when he saw a picture on TV of the child, that was abandoned here in Baltimore he knew it was her.

ABANDONED GIRL'S GRANDFATHER: Definitely. Very much so. Thank you guys for doing everything you did putting her picture up.

LEFTWICH: How much did that help you?.

GRANDFATHER: It made all of the difference in the world because that's when I totally became convinced that it was her when I saw the picture.

LEFTWICH: The story started in December 2002. The woman in the gray shirt, 21-year-old Patricia Harper, was in a custody battle with Acacia's father, 27 year old Robert Person.

Person was awarded temporary custody of Acacia and a week later, Harper was given permanent custody of the child but person took Acacia and then disappeared. Last Friday, a child calling herself Courtney from Brooklyn New York is turned over to social services.

DARY DERSTENFIELD, ATTORNEY: He dropped the child off to complete strangers and went out to buy drugs apparently got arrested and the child was turned into Department of Social Services and the child thinking that her name is Courtney and what she said is my name is Courtney and I'm from Brooklyn and what she meant is Brooklyn avenue in Baltimore city.

LEFTWICH: Social Services began a nationwide search concentrating in the New York area but when Acacia's pictures were shown on TV, that's when her grandfather from Laurel saw her and the family came up Thursday with documents including a court order awarding the child to Patricia Harper. Social services are investigating the family's claim but the attorneys say the family is hopeful that acacia will come home soon.

DERSTENFIELD: She's actual from Prince George's county and she has a beautiful mom that she hasn't seen in two years and she's going to find out that her mother loves her very much. The father apparently told Courtney that her mother didn't want anything to do with her.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: And that story comes to us from Roosevelt Leftwich from our Baltimore affiliate WMAR,

Just a few minutes away from going live to Baghdad as soon as the Coalition Provisional Authority news conference begins their daily briefing, we will go back live and bring you the latest form Iraq. Right now we fit in a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(FINANCIAL REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Standing by once again as a live picture from Baghdad. The Coalition Provisional Authority holding its briefing any minute. As soon as it begins we will go live back to Baghdad.

Meanwhile let's take the chance to check on some stories making headlines across America at this hour.

He excuses the shaky video here but there a reason for it. The reporter inserted himself in a story when he ran down a suspect. The reporter was in front of the Shreveport Louisiana police headquarters when the suspect ran out chased by marshals. The reporter later made the call.

Check out pictures of this encampment a remote area of Portland, Oregon a park there was home for a 53 year old Marine Corps veteran and his daughter. The man came to Portland, with no job or place to live and didn't want his daughter to get into alcohol and drugs on the streets. Father and daughter are now living in a mobile home.

Colorado widow calls it a total miracle. Her husband lost his wedding ring while water skiing at a lake in 1965. The lake is being drained and a retiree with a metal detector found the ring and it was returned to the woman who says it's even more important to her since her husband's death.

And from southern Alabama questions about why a plane fell from the sky. The answers might lie in the shallow waters where it went down but so far the mystery has only deepened. More now from Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: From the muck and mud of a mobile Alabama marsh, Laura Wade excavates clues to her brother's plane crash more than a year and a half ago.

LAURA WADE, SISTER OF CRASH VICTIM: And this is Tommy's airplane. MESERVE: A National Transportation Safety Board investigator concluded in an interim report that Tommy Presiosi's plane collided in flight with an unknown object. But what was it?

SISTER: We simply don't know.

MESERVE: A Vietnam veteran and former New York City cop, Tommy Presisosi loved to fly.

TOMMY PRESIOSI: Motoring one. One started.

MESERVE: The night of October 23rd, 2002, he was piloting this Cessna Caravan full of freight. Visibility was poor Presiosi was flying on instruments. But four minutes after takeoff from Mobile, Alabama, he went down in Big Bato bay. Presiosi's last words to air traffic control "I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed to deviate. I needed.

SISTER: He's saying I see something coming at me and I know I'm going to die and I want you to know what happened to me.

MESERVE: The wreckage yielded two tantalizing clues. On some pieces, red streaks, perhaps transferred from something the Cessna hit and embedded in one fragment, a small piece of anodized aluminum of unknown origin, apparently not from Presiosi's plane. But searches that night and since have not turned up any other object or aircraft.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For it not to leave anything behind is puzzling. Really puzzling.

MESERVE: Speculation about what hit the Cessna has ranged from a terrorist missile to a drug smuggler's plane. Some theorize a military target drone might have gone astray like one that crashed near a Florida highway in February. But the Air Force says its drones couldn't have flown all the way to Mobile and didn't.

LT. COL JERRY KIRBY, USAF: The United States Air Force had no drones in the air at the time that this incident occurred near mobile, Alabama.

MESERVE: Radar shows a federal express DC-10 was in the air that night, but it does not appear to cross paths with Paresis's Cessna. Which is 1,000 feet below and at least a mile away.

(INTERRUPTED BY LIVE EVENT)

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