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American Morning
Interview with Senator Lieberman; Latest Violence and Kidnappings in Baghdad
Aired September 09, 2004 - 08:00 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
The president changes his position on a national intelligence director. Can he bring Congress, though, along with him?
Report from the battleground -- new polling shows one sign the campaign may be gaining an edge.
And a hard landing -- can NASA learn anything from a quarter billion dollar capsule that crashed to earth?
And hurricane Ivan damaging 90 percent of the homes in Grenada. Where is the category five monster headed next?
The forecast on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.
HEMMER: Good morning again, everybody.
8:00 here in New York City.
Soledad is out.
Heidi Collins back from a few days moving from the great deep South to New York City.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.
HEMMER: And apparently it did not go well, is that right?
COLLINS: Well, hurricane Frances. Yes. It showed up on the day that we were moving all of our stuff into the truck.
HEMMER: You don't want to reconsider, did you?
COLLINS: No, actually not.
HEMMER: There you go. That's the right answer.
Some of the other headlines this hour. We're following a troubling story today out of Iraq. Two women taken hostage there. They were there doing humanitarian work. Is it a change now by the tactics of the terrorists? We'll get a live report on what's happening with that in a moment. COLLINS: Also, comedian Bill Cosby stirring controversy again, telling African-American parents that many of them aren't involved enough in their children's lives. We will talk to a child psychiatrist from Harvard about Cosby's comments and whether he's off base.
Also, Jack is still on vacation. Toure is here, though. He's going to be taking your e-mail in just a few moments.
We want to go ahead now first and check on what's happening in the news.
Daryn Kagan is at the CNN Center for that -- good morning, Daryn.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Heidi, good morning.
We begin in Iraq, where U.S. military sources there say that a U.S. soldier was killed in a vehicle accident in Ba'qubah. Six other soldiers were injured in that same incident.
In Falluja, the U.S. military now says there was an unknown number of civilian deaths in this morning's attack on Falluja. The air strike targeted buildings used by suspected militant Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.
Police in Indonesia are combing for clues this hour at the site of a massive car bombing in Jakarta. Officials say that at least eight people were killed. Some 170 others are injured. There has been no claim of responsibility for this attack. Initial suspicions fall on a militant group with ties to al Qaeda, but that has not been confirmed so far.
A large study finding the popular antibiotic erythromycin can dramatically increase the risk of heart attacks, especially when it's taken with drugs for high blood pressure. The risk of cardiac death is five times greater when the drugs are taken together. That translates to six deaths for every 10,000 people taking the drug for the typical two week cycle while on the other drugs. Erythromycin has been on the market for 50 years -- back to Heidi.
HEMMER: All right, Daryn, thanks so much for that.
We'll check back with you a little bit later on.
In the meantime, it appears President Bush is now giving full support to one of the 9/11 Commission's major recommendations, a national intelligence director with full budgetary power. The president met with congressional leaders at the White House yesterday to discuss intelligence reform.
And Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was at that meeting.
He's joining us now from Washington.
Good morning to you, Senator.
Nice to see you.
SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: Good morning to you, Heidi.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
COLLINS: Let me ask you right off the bat here, why is the creation of this director, with full budgetary power, so critical?
LIEBERMAN: It's critical because the 9/11 Commission report made clear that no one was in charge of our intelligence community and the enormous investment we make in it, billions of dollars every year. So that one agency was not sharing with another. All the dots were not together. There was no sense of real accountability.
And a strong national intelligence director will put somebody in charge. And that person will be accountable and force everyone to work together.
So the president's decision yesterday to give budget authority to the intelligence director is a very significant step forward, and I think means that there's a very good chance that we in Congress will pass the strong intelligence reform that the 9/11 Commission has called on us to do.
COLLINS: Do you think, though, that that's possible, to pass that legislation before Congress goes into recess again next month?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I hope so. And let's remember that we're talking about a nation at war with terrorism. We're talking about al Qaeda, that has made very clear it intends to strike us again here at home. We're talking about a raised terror alert by the Department of Homeland Security. You know, I know the campaign, the political campaign is important. But it is not as important as finishing our work in making the American people safer. And I think members of both houses and both parties get that.
And therefore I believe that we're going to pass tough intelligence community reform before we leave Washington for the campaign.
COLLINS: Interesting point, though, that Stansfield Turner, of course, former director of the CIA, made. He expressed some concerns about this particular post, saying this: "The 9/11 Commission's recommendations won't create a new intelligence structure. Mostly, they repackaging what we have now. For instance, the recommended position of national intelligence director already exists. We don't need a new layer of bureaucracy."
How do you do that and not form a new layer of bureaucracy?
LIEBERMAN: Right. This is not a new layer of bureaucracy. It is better organizing the $40 billion plus investment that we make in intelligence every year. There is a position called the director of Central Intelligence, but it's the same person as the head of the CIA. You can't do both jobs at once. And that director of Central Intelligence doesn't have the authority, the budget authority to force the organizations in the entire intelligence community, all the way from the Department of Defense to the FBI to Homeland Security, to work together.
So we've had a lot of evidence before Congress in the 9/11 Commission report that shows attempts by George Tenet, as the director of Central Intelligence in the late '90s, to get all the intelligence community to work together in a war against terrorism. But almost nobody responded to his call for action, frankly because he didn't have the muscle. He didn't have the budget authority.
And it's an old line in Washington, the golden rule, which is that whoever has the gold rules. And George Tenet and the current director of Central Intelligence don't have the gold, don't have the budget power and money. This new national intelligence director will have it and therefore will have the power to make the American people safer, to find the threats from the terrorists before they strike -- that's why intelligence is so important -- and to stop them before they can hit us again.
COLLINS: And quickly, before we let you go, Senator, obviously this is just one of 41 recommendations. And President Bush did change his mind. This was not originally how he saw the whole intelligence position going.
After the president's meeting, we know that the Kerry campaign issued this statement. It says" "If George W. Bush were serious about intelligence reform, he'd stop taking half measures and wholeheartedly endorse the 9/11 Commission recommendations and work for their immediate passage by Congress."
I know you didn't want this to get bogged down in politics, but didn't that already happen?
LIEBERMAN: Well, it's hard to keep it out of politics. But the good news is that we're moving together. I mean Senator Susan Collins and I lead the committee that's in charge of reporting a bill out to the Senate. We're working on a totally non-partisan, bipartisan basis.
So I think before it's over, most of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission will be adopted and I believe, I hope, supported by the president. That's the way it ought to be.
This is one occasion, lord knows, where we ought to put the security of our country far ahead of partisan political interests. And I think in the end, notwithstanding the crossfire back and forth -- a little plug for a CNN show -- we're going to actually do that.
COLLINS: We appreciate the plug, as always.
All right, Senator Joe Lieberman, nice to see you.
Thanks so much. LIEBERMAN: It's nice to see you.
Have a good day.
HEMMER: 4:30 Eastern.
COLLINS: Yes, 4:30 to 5:00.
HEMMER: Monday through Friday.
Seven minutes now past the hour.
We want to go to Iraq and significant news again to talk about today. U.S. warplanes pounding militant targets in Falluja now for a third straight day. The U.S. military says an unknown number of Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have died in those attacks. Meanwhile, the kidnapping of two Italian aid workers in Baghdad now bringing new attention to the tactics of hostage takers.
Live to Baghdad and Diana Muriel for more on this now -- good afternoon there.
DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, the diplomatic efforts are continuing, both here in Iraq and elsewhere, to try and secure the release of these two female aid workers. But the decision to take two Western women hostage may mark a change in the strategy adopted by these insurgent gangs, these criminal groups which have so far taken more than 100 Westerners hostage since the conflict began here.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
MURIEL (voice-over): Beautiful and brave, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, two Italian female aid workers kidnapped in broad daylight from their office in downtown Baghdad Tuesday. The hostage takers, diagnosed as Iraqi National Guard members, but whose identities have not yet been confirmed, knew precisely who their targets were and how to take them.
JEAN DOMINIQUE BUNEL, NGO COORDINATION COMMITTEE (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Two unknown armed people entered the office and asked the staff to move out of the corridor and lay down on the floor. One of them entered the office and lead two expatriate staff, Italian staff, to the corridor. He also took one national staff. They left the place immediately.
MURIEL: Both women had experience working in Iraq for an aid organization that was outspoken in its criticism of the war and that helped child victims of the conflict. Both knew the dangers of being here. Just 10 days before the women were abducted, Italian journalist Enzio Baldoni was murdered by his kidnappers after being snatched on the road to Najaf from Baghdad.
Italians, with around 3,000 troops stationed in Iraq as part of the coalition forces, have long been targets for Iraqi insurgents. In Italy, the people took to the streets to show their support for the two women and their sorrow at their fate. That as diplomatic efforts continue for their release.
Religious leaders in Iraq have joined in demands they be handed over.
"If you are Iraqi and love Iraq," said cleric Sheikh Anwar Kateeb Unis (ph), addressing the hostage takers at a Baghdad news conference, "then release them. These women helped the children and the sick, repaired damaged schools and fed hungry people."
(END VIDEO TAPE)
MURIEL: But the humanitarian effort itself could become a victim of the kidnapping of these two Italian aid workers. The few charities and aid organizations that remain here, Bill, are reviewing their operations to see whether or not they can stay here in a country where kidnapping has become a constant threat.
HEMMER: Diana Muriel in Baghdad, thanks -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Hurricane Ivan is now a rare category five hurricane with winds near 160 miles per hour. On the Caribbean island of Grenada, at least 12 people have been killed, 90 percent of the buildings have been damaged and the island's main prison is now destroyed and prisoners are on the run.
The same story in Barbados, trees down where homes and cars were destroyed. Unbelievable pictures there.
And Ivan is now heading toward Jamaica.
Chad Myers is at the CNN Center with the very latest on all of this.
Boy, we just keep looking at those pictures. They don't get any better.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, no, Grenada really got hit. Barbados got it -- I mean, Trinidad got it a little bit, too, but not really like Grenada. Grenada took the right side of the hurricane as it moved to the west. And that was the most dangerous side, winds that were gusting to at least 140.
Now winds are 160 with this storm, headed, really, right to Jamaica. If you have some plans to go to Jamaica, I would cancel them now and find someplace else to go. You don't want to be on that island, even if this storm misses Jamaica. It's so strong, even if it misses it by 100 miles, you're still not going to want to be on Jamaica.
Here's Ivan right here. The latest numbers, 14.2, 70.7 and 160 miles per hour. But some of the wind gusts are stronger than that. Two hours ago, hurricane hunter aircraft found a wind gust above the surface at 210 miles per hour, not down at the water level, but 300 feet higher.
And here it is, right into parts of Cuba for Sunday and the official forecast now into Monday. This could be very devastating to the Keys. Again, this is four to five days out -- Bill, it could go left, it could go right. We have to watch it. It could be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, making a big hard right turn and we call it a big fish storm. But if it goes left, obviously it goes into the Gulf of Mexico. If it goes straight on its course, that's what the forecast is for the weekend. And I really don't want to see you down there this weekend -- Bill.
HEMMER: I don't want to see you either, as a matter of fact.
MYERS: Not that I don't like your company, but I'd rather it go into the Atlantic Ocean.
HEMMER: That's right. I like to see you all the time, but I don't want to see you now.
MYERS: That's right.
HEMMER: Thank you, Chad.
MYERS: You're welcome.
HEMMER: It is not a total loss, but NASA scientists are left picking through the pieces of the Genesis space capsule today. The ambitious project to bring back bits of solar wind crashed in the desert of Utah yesterday. What went wrong? How much can be saved, if any?
The director of the Hayden Planetarium, author of "Origins," all about the evolution of the universe. That's got to be a long book.
Neil deGrasse Tyson my guest now here in New York.
Great to have you back.
Good morning.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, DIRECTOR, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM, AUTHOR, "ORIGINS": Yes, good to be back.
Thanks.
HEMMER: Solar particles?
TYSON: Yes.
HEMMER: What are they? How do you get them?
TYSON: Well, the sun's atmosphere releases charged particles every day. And they stream through space. We call it the solar wind. And the Genesis spacecraft was this big catcher's mitt out there. It stood out there in space for two and a half years gathering these particles, closed it back up in a capsule, brought it back to the Utah desert and then it crashed.
The capsule broke open and now we have pristine solar particles mixed with earth dirt. That's a problem.
HEMMER: That is a problem.
TYSON: Yes, yes.
HEMMER: Go back to the original question. Some scientists say based on these particles, you can tell the dawn of the universe.
TYSON: Yes. Yes.
HEMMER: That's a heck of a statement.
TYSON: Well, at least the dawn of the solar system. The issue here is for scientists so long it has been just characterizing things, tagging their ear, describing their properties, what they look like, what they feel like, smell like, taste like. Once you're done with that or once you've made sufficient advances, you are then enabled to ask a whole other set of questions.
How did the thing get there? How was it born? And once you know how it's born, then whatever is different between now and then tells you what has happened to it en route.
And so these origins questions are the dominant drivers of science today. We have astrobiologists, chemical physicists, astro particle physicists, all the branches of science are now coming together to ask these common questions about the beginnings of things.
And the Genesis capsule, the particles in it are the sun's birthday suit, because it was unaltered by earth's magnetic field, earth's -- initially, I mean before it crashed, of course. And so that's -- it would give us clues to what the detailed compensation of the solar system was at the beginning.
HEMMER: So you have a $300 million project that now could be dashed or not? Before we get to the possibility of doing it again someday, how much can be saved that we know at this point?
TYSON: I have no idea. I was actually -- the thing hit the ground at 200 miles an hour. I was impressed that it was not in a thousand pieces.
HEMMER: OK.
TYSON: It was just that little crack over to the side. So, you know, if any of us fell at 200 miles an hour, we'd look a lot worse than that dish.
So my hope is out to the principal investigators that something can be salvaged out of this. Otherwise we might have to do it over or...
HEMMER: Which would take, what, two or three years or perhaps a little longer?
TYSON: We've got to get to a location in space where that takes place. That takes years. And then bring it back.
HEMMER: Roger Wiens is a scientist at Los Alamos. He said, "This is sickening."
TYSON: Yes.
HEMMER: What are these scientists feeling now?
TYSON: Oh, it's a big pit in the stomach. Now, the more senior scientists, while they might be upset, they still have a job. It's the graduate students coming up that might have had this as their Ph.D. thesis, they're crying in the backyard right now.
People -- this is a lesson, though, not so much to the scientists, but to the public, that any science on the frontier has risks of failure.
HEMMER: Sure.
TYSON: Go into -- walk into any lab and say well, how are things today? And you'll get a whole laundry list of what went wrong that day. So the issue here is not that everything needs to always go perfectly, but that we learn when things go wrong.
HEMMER: Yes, sure.
TYSON: So you don't -- those mistakes don't happen again.
HEMMER: You always make it interesting.
TYSON: All right, great.
HEMMER: And you know how to (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
TYSON: Good to be here.
Thank you.
HEMMER: Good to see you again. All right -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Still to come this morning, the 58-year-old former president, Clinton, knew it was time to get his heart and cholesterol checked, but you may not want to wait until your 50s to get a checkup yourself. We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" on that.
HEMMER: Also, in a moment, a potential bombshell in the Scott Peterson trial. This time it involves Laci and the family dog and it may have hurt the defense. A look at that in a moment -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Plus, one candidate pulls ahead in several of those all important battleground states. We'll talk to the governor of one of them, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone. Eighteen minutes past the hour.
Quickly to Jakarta there. A powerful explosion a few hours ago killing at least eight, injuring more than 170 others. No claim of responsibility to this point.
Maria Ressa working that story overseas in Southeast Asia -- Maria, what do you have?
MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, it was a gruesome scene. The explosion happened at about 10:30 in the morning inside Jakarta's central business district. When we got there, there were body parts littering the four lane highway, an explosion so fierce that it shattered nearly all the windows of at least seven high rise buildings nearby and left a crater that was at least nine feet deep, according to authorities.
At this point, no group has claimed responsibility, as you said. But both Australia and Indonesia say they suspect the group behind it is the same group that was behind the Bali bombings in 2002 and the J.W. Marriott attacks in 2003. The group is Jemaah Islamiyah, a group terrorism experts say is al Qaeda's arm in Southeast Asia.
Back to you -- Bill. HEMMER: All right, Maria Ressa working that story again in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The story breaking a few hours ago.
We'll watch it again from here.
A break. Back in a moment with more after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Twenty-one minutes now past the hour. And there are several new polls out today about which way voters in swing states are swaying.
Ohio one of the critical battleground states. And back with us today is the governor, Bob Taft, from Columbus, Ohio with more on what we're finding out.
Good morning, Governor.
Welcome back here to AMERICAN MORNING.
GOV. BOB TAFT (R), OHIO: Good morning, Bill.
It's great to be with you.
HEMMER: We can put on the screen, back in July, John Kerry led George Bush in your state by about six points. Now it has flipped around, 52-44 in favor of the president.
What's happening in your state, Governor? TAFT: Well, I think, first of all, the president presented a clear plan for a more prosperous America and a safer world at the convention. So it was a very good convention. The president has been here a number of times, very enthusiastic crowds, strong rallies. And he's coming here again, incidentally, tomorrow, to southern Ohio. So he's focused on our state, but focused on his plan for leading America. And I think that's resonating with Ohioans.
HEMMER: Well, Governor, here's the catch. Your state has lost more than 200,000 jobs since President Bush took office almost four years ago. The economy is consistently listed as the number one issue of discussion for this election in your state.
Why is John Kerry not doing better, if that's the case?
TAFT: Well, the economy is moving in the right direction. Jobs are coming back and that's because of the president's policies. And he's the one with the plan to keep the recovery on track.
But I also think that Ohioans are concerned about our safety in the war against terrorism and the convention and the president's plans for the future demonstrate his resolve to protect America at all costs. And that's a big factor for voters.
HEMMER: Would you concede that he's still vulnerable on that issue, with 54 days and counting?
TAFT: Well, we're taking nothing for granted in Ohio. You know, we were eight points up four years ago against Gore and we carried the state by only about 3 percent. So the electorate is very volatile. Ohio is clearly a battleground state and will remain so right up until November 2.
HEMMER: John Kerry was there yesterday, not in Columbus, but in Cincinnati.
Listen to what he said about the war in Iraq and what the cost is back here at home because of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The cost of the president's go it alone policy in Iraq is now $200 billion and counting. $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford after school programs for our children. $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: Is that argument effective in your state?
TAFT: Well, not from John Kerry, because, you know, he supported giving the president the power to proceed against Iraq in the war. I think that Ohioans, number one, want a president who will keep America safe; also, a president with a plan for the future. And so far all we've heard from John Kerry is a lot of criticism of the president and no clear plan for how he would lead the country in a different way over the next four years.
We didn't even hear that at the Democratic convention.
HEMMER: Let me tell you what I was hearing back in Ohio a few weeks ago. I heard there was a lot of disappointment out of the White House because they did not feel their organization in Ohio was as strong as it should have been.
How do you feel about the strength of the campaign there in Ohio on the grassroots level?
TAFT: That's going to be the key, I think, to the president's victory in Ohio. We have over 60,000 volunteers. We're registering voters. We're staffed in about 12,000 precincts all across the State of Ohio and we've made about a million phone calls.
So we have a stronger grassroots organization than we ever have had.
However, the other side is doing the same. So we're going to keep working right up until election day to make sure that we turn out the strong base vote for the president.
HEMMER: Fifty-four days and counting.
Thank you, Governor.
TAFT: Down to the wire.
HEMMER: Bob Taft.
TAFT: Thanks.
HEMMER: Yes, that it is.
In Columbus, thanks -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Still to come, parents managing kids' lives by cell phone? That's Bill Cosby's latest criticism for African-American parents. It's controversial, but there are some experts who say the entertainer has a point. We'll talk to one of them ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Let's check in with Toure now and the Question of the Day -- good morning.
TOURE', "ROLLING STONE" MAGAZINE: I'm not doing good.
COLLINS: You're not?
HEMMER: What's wrong?
TOURE': The Red Sox are right behind us, man. They're like standing right there. Like back off! HEMMER: That's why they call it fall, baby.
TOURE': But they don't lose, man. Like this is not the Red Sox.
All right, the world is a different place because the Red Sox keep winning.
After 9/11, the world was a different place and the war on terror is unlike any conflict in U.S. history. As criticism of John Kerry's military record is winding down, questions about the president's military record are resurfacing.
Documents obtained by "60 Minutes" suggest the president left his National Guard duty early to work on a political campaign. But is it all much ado about nothing? Is it necessary to have had bullets flying by you to be commander-in-chief?
Our question is, in a post-9/11 world, how important is it that a candidate has had military service in leading the country?
I screwed up the diction, I know, tried to bring it back.
HEMMER: We know what you mean.
TOURE': Let's have some answers.
Peter from Houston: "None whatsoever. In the middle of a great war in 1864, President Lincoln, a non-military person, was up against McClellan, a famous Civil War general. Lincoln won by a landslide. The American people then realized the danger of changing the commander-in-chief in the middle of the war."
Jeff Greenfield covered that, right?
I love Jeff.
"I think, Gerard from Rochester, New York, "I think that Bush's war record from 35 years ago is relevant today. It speaks of his character. His campaign people have no problem attacking the war record of John Kerry, who was wounded in the very same war that W. worked so hard to avoid."
Matt from Florida: "If military service is of paramount importance, why didn't General Clark win the Democratic nomination? While a favorable service record is important to know how to best employ our military power, I don't think that's as important as the candidate's stands on the issues."
COLLINS: I guess that's the music. I guess you're done.
TOURE': I guess I'm done.
HEMMER: Are you sure?
COLLINS: We will check back later...
TOURE': I'm just working here.
COLLINS: ... for more e-mail.
TOURE': I hope so.
COLLINS: No question about it.
All right, Toure', thanks so much.
TOURE': Thank you.
HEMMER: In a moment here, everybody knows smog is bad for you. There's an alarming new study on the dangers and potentially deadly effects it could have on your kids, as well, in a moment.
COLLINS: Plus, a potential bombshell in the Scott Peterson trial. This time, the family dog figures into it, and it could be bad news for the defense. We'll talk about it, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired September 9, 2004 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
The president changes his position on a national intelligence director. Can he bring Congress, though, along with him?
Report from the battleground -- new polling shows one sign the campaign may be gaining an edge.
And a hard landing -- can NASA learn anything from a quarter billion dollar capsule that crashed to earth?
And hurricane Ivan damaging 90 percent of the homes in Grenada. Where is the category five monster headed next?
The forecast on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.
HEMMER: Good morning again, everybody.
8:00 here in New York City.
Soledad is out.
Heidi Collins back from a few days moving from the great deep South to New York City.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.
HEMMER: And apparently it did not go well, is that right?
COLLINS: Well, hurricane Frances. Yes. It showed up on the day that we were moving all of our stuff into the truck.
HEMMER: You don't want to reconsider, did you?
COLLINS: No, actually not.
HEMMER: There you go. That's the right answer.
Some of the other headlines this hour. We're following a troubling story today out of Iraq. Two women taken hostage there. They were there doing humanitarian work. Is it a change now by the tactics of the terrorists? We'll get a live report on what's happening with that in a moment. COLLINS: Also, comedian Bill Cosby stirring controversy again, telling African-American parents that many of them aren't involved enough in their children's lives. We will talk to a child psychiatrist from Harvard about Cosby's comments and whether he's off base.
Also, Jack is still on vacation. Toure is here, though. He's going to be taking your e-mail in just a few moments.
We want to go ahead now first and check on what's happening in the news.
Daryn Kagan is at the CNN Center for that -- good morning, Daryn.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Heidi, good morning.
We begin in Iraq, where U.S. military sources there say that a U.S. soldier was killed in a vehicle accident in Ba'qubah. Six other soldiers were injured in that same incident.
In Falluja, the U.S. military now says there was an unknown number of civilian deaths in this morning's attack on Falluja. The air strike targeted buildings used by suspected militant Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.
Police in Indonesia are combing for clues this hour at the site of a massive car bombing in Jakarta. Officials say that at least eight people were killed. Some 170 others are injured. There has been no claim of responsibility for this attack. Initial suspicions fall on a militant group with ties to al Qaeda, but that has not been confirmed so far.
A large study finding the popular antibiotic erythromycin can dramatically increase the risk of heart attacks, especially when it's taken with drugs for high blood pressure. The risk of cardiac death is five times greater when the drugs are taken together. That translates to six deaths for every 10,000 people taking the drug for the typical two week cycle while on the other drugs. Erythromycin has been on the market for 50 years -- back to Heidi.
HEMMER: All right, Daryn, thanks so much for that.
We'll check back with you a little bit later on.
In the meantime, it appears President Bush is now giving full support to one of the 9/11 Commission's major recommendations, a national intelligence director with full budgetary power. The president met with congressional leaders at the White House yesterday to discuss intelligence reform.
And Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman was at that meeting.
He's joining us now from Washington.
Good morning to you, Senator.
Nice to see you.
SEN. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D), CONNECTICUT: Good morning to you, Heidi.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
COLLINS: Let me ask you right off the bat here, why is the creation of this director, with full budgetary power, so critical?
LIEBERMAN: It's critical because the 9/11 Commission report made clear that no one was in charge of our intelligence community and the enormous investment we make in it, billions of dollars every year. So that one agency was not sharing with another. All the dots were not together. There was no sense of real accountability.
And a strong national intelligence director will put somebody in charge. And that person will be accountable and force everyone to work together.
So the president's decision yesterday to give budget authority to the intelligence director is a very significant step forward, and I think means that there's a very good chance that we in Congress will pass the strong intelligence reform that the 9/11 Commission has called on us to do.
COLLINS: Do you think, though, that that's possible, to pass that legislation before Congress goes into recess again next month?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I hope so. And let's remember that we're talking about a nation at war with terrorism. We're talking about al Qaeda, that has made very clear it intends to strike us again here at home. We're talking about a raised terror alert by the Department of Homeland Security. You know, I know the campaign, the political campaign is important. But it is not as important as finishing our work in making the American people safer. And I think members of both houses and both parties get that.
And therefore I believe that we're going to pass tough intelligence community reform before we leave Washington for the campaign.
COLLINS: Interesting point, though, that Stansfield Turner, of course, former director of the CIA, made. He expressed some concerns about this particular post, saying this: "The 9/11 Commission's recommendations won't create a new intelligence structure. Mostly, they repackaging what we have now. For instance, the recommended position of national intelligence director already exists. We don't need a new layer of bureaucracy."
How do you do that and not form a new layer of bureaucracy?
LIEBERMAN: Right. This is not a new layer of bureaucracy. It is better organizing the $40 billion plus investment that we make in intelligence every year. There is a position called the director of Central Intelligence, but it's the same person as the head of the CIA. You can't do both jobs at once. And that director of Central Intelligence doesn't have the authority, the budget authority to force the organizations in the entire intelligence community, all the way from the Department of Defense to the FBI to Homeland Security, to work together.
So we've had a lot of evidence before Congress in the 9/11 Commission report that shows attempts by George Tenet, as the director of Central Intelligence in the late '90s, to get all the intelligence community to work together in a war against terrorism. But almost nobody responded to his call for action, frankly because he didn't have the muscle. He didn't have the budget authority.
And it's an old line in Washington, the golden rule, which is that whoever has the gold rules. And George Tenet and the current director of Central Intelligence don't have the gold, don't have the budget power and money. This new national intelligence director will have it and therefore will have the power to make the American people safer, to find the threats from the terrorists before they strike -- that's why intelligence is so important -- and to stop them before they can hit us again.
COLLINS: And quickly, before we let you go, Senator, obviously this is just one of 41 recommendations. And President Bush did change his mind. This was not originally how he saw the whole intelligence position going.
After the president's meeting, we know that the Kerry campaign issued this statement. It says" "If George W. Bush were serious about intelligence reform, he'd stop taking half measures and wholeheartedly endorse the 9/11 Commission recommendations and work for their immediate passage by Congress."
I know you didn't want this to get bogged down in politics, but didn't that already happen?
LIEBERMAN: Well, it's hard to keep it out of politics. But the good news is that we're moving together. I mean Senator Susan Collins and I lead the committee that's in charge of reporting a bill out to the Senate. We're working on a totally non-partisan, bipartisan basis.
So I think before it's over, most of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission will be adopted and I believe, I hope, supported by the president. That's the way it ought to be.
This is one occasion, lord knows, where we ought to put the security of our country far ahead of partisan political interests. And I think in the end, notwithstanding the crossfire back and forth -- a little plug for a CNN show -- we're going to actually do that.
COLLINS: We appreciate the plug, as always.
All right, Senator Joe Lieberman, nice to see you.
Thanks so much. LIEBERMAN: It's nice to see you.
Have a good day.
HEMMER: 4:30 Eastern.
COLLINS: Yes, 4:30 to 5:00.
HEMMER: Monday through Friday.
Seven minutes now past the hour.
We want to go to Iraq and significant news again to talk about today. U.S. warplanes pounding militant targets in Falluja now for a third straight day. The U.S. military says an unknown number of Iraqi civilians, including women and children, have died in those attacks. Meanwhile, the kidnapping of two Italian aid workers in Baghdad now bringing new attention to the tactics of hostage takers.
Live to Baghdad and Diana Muriel for more on this now -- good afternoon there.
DIANA MURIEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, the diplomatic efforts are continuing, both here in Iraq and elsewhere, to try and secure the release of these two female aid workers. But the decision to take two Western women hostage may mark a change in the strategy adopted by these insurgent gangs, these criminal groups which have so far taken more than 100 Westerners hostage since the conflict began here.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
MURIEL (voice-over): Beautiful and brave, Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, two Italian female aid workers kidnapped in broad daylight from their office in downtown Baghdad Tuesday. The hostage takers, diagnosed as Iraqi National Guard members, but whose identities have not yet been confirmed, knew precisely who their targets were and how to take them.
JEAN DOMINIQUE BUNEL, NGO COORDINATION COMMITTEE (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Two unknown armed people entered the office and asked the staff to move out of the corridor and lay down on the floor. One of them entered the office and lead two expatriate staff, Italian staff, to the corridor. He also took one national staff. They left the place immediately.
MURIEL: Both women had experience working in Iraq for an aid organization that was outspoken in its criticism of the war and that helped child victims of the conflict. Both knew the dangers of being here. Just 10 days before the women were abducted, Italian journalist Enzio Baldoni was murdered by his kidnappers after being snatched on the road to Najaf from Baghdad.
Italians, with around 3,000 troops stationed in Iraq as part of the coalition forces, have long been targets for Iraqi insurgents. In Italy, the people took to the streets to show their support for the two women and their sorrow at their fate. That as diplomatic efforts continue for their release.
Religious leaders in Iraq have joined in demands they be handed over.
"If you are Iraqi and love Iraq," said cleric Sheikh Anwar Kateeb Unis (ph), addressing the hostage takers at a Baghdad news conference, "then release them. These women helped the children and the sick, repaired damaged schools and fed hungry people."
(END VIDEO TAPE)
MURIEL: But the humanitarian effort itself could become a victim of the kidnapping of these two Italian aid workers. The few charities and aid organizations that remain here, Bill, are reviewing their operations to see whether or not they can stay here in a country where kidnapping has become a constant threat.
HEMMER: Diana Muriel in Baghdad, thanks -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Hurricane Ivan is now a rare category five hurricane with winds near 160 miles per hour. On the Caribbean island of Grenada, at least 12 people have been killed, 90 percent of the buildings have been damaged and the island's main prison is now destroyed and prisoners are on the run.
The same story in Barbados, trees down where homes and cars were destroyed. Unbelievable pictures there.
And Ivan is now heading toward Jamaica.
Chad Myers is at the CNN Center with the very latest on all of this.
Boy, we just keep looking at those pictures. They don't get any better.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes, no, Grenada really got hit. Barbados got it -- I mean, Trinidad got it a little bit, too, but not really like Grenada. Grenada took the right side of the hurricane as it moved to the west. And that was the most dangerous side, winds that were gusting to at least 140.
Now winds are 160 with this storm, headed, really, right to Jamaica. If you have some plans to go to Jamaica, I would cancel them now and find someplace else to go. You don't want to be on that island, even if this storm misses Jamaica. It's so strong, even if it misses it by 100 miles, you're still not going to want to be on Jamaica.
Here's Ivan right here. The latest numbers, 14.2, 70.7 and 160 miles per hour. But some of the wind gusts are stronger than that. Two hours ago, hurricane hunter aircraft found a wind gust above the surface at 210 miles per hour, not down at the water level, but 300 feet higher.
And here it is, right into parts of Cuba for Sunday and the official forecast now into Monday. This could be very devastating to the Keys. Again, this is four to five days out -- Bill, it could go left, it could go right. We have to watch it. It could be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, making a big hard right turn and we call it a big fish storm. But if it goes left, obviously it goes into the Gulf of Mexico. If it goes straight on its course, that's what the forecast is for the weekend. And I really don't want to see you down there this weekend -- Bill.
HEMMER: I don't want to see you either, as a matter of fact.
MYERS: Not that I don't like your company, but I'd rather it go into the Atlantic Ocean.
HEMMER: That's right. I like to see you all the time, but I don't want to see you now.
MYERS: That's right.
HEMMER: Thank you, Chad.
MYERS: You're welcome.
HEMMER: It is not a total loss, but NASA scientists are left picking through the pieces of the Genesis space capsule today. The ambitious project to bring back bits of solar wind crashed in the desert of Utah yesterday. What went wrong? How much can be saved, if any?
The director of the Hayden Planetarium, author of "Origins," all about the evolution of the universe. That's got to be a long book.
Neil deGrasse Tyson my guest now here in New York.
Great to have you back.
Good morning.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, DIRECTOR, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM, AUTHOR, "ORIGINS": Yes, good to be back.
Thanks.
HEMMER: Solar particles?
TYSON: Yes.
HEMMER: What are they? How do you get them?
TYSON: Well, the sun's atmosphere releases charged particles every day. And they stream through space. We call it the solar wind. And the Genesis spacecraft was this big catcher's mitt out there. It stood out there in space for two and a half years gathering these particles, closed it back up in a capsule, brought it back to the Utah desert and then it crashed.
The capsule broke open and now we have pristine solar particles mixed with earth dirt. That's a problem.
HEMMER: That is a problem.
TYSON: Yes, yes.
HEMMER: Go back to the original question. Some scientists say based on these particles, you can tell the dawn of the universe.
TYSON: Yes. Yes.
HEMMER: That's a heck of a statement.
TYSON: Well, at least the dawn of the solar system. The issue here is for scientists so long it has been just characterizing things, tagging their ear, describing their properties, what they look like, what they feel like, smell like, taste like. Once you're done with that or once you've made sufficient advances, you are then enabled to ask a whole other set of questions.
How did the thing get there? How was it born? And once you know how it's born, then whatever is different between now and then tells you what has happened to it en route.
And so these origins questions are the dominant drivers of science today. We have astrobiologists, chemical physicists, astro particle physicists, all the branches of science are now coming together to ask these common questions about the beginnings of things.
And the Genesis capsule, the particles in it are the sun's birthday suit, because it was unaltered by earth's magnetic field, earth's -- initially, I mean before it crashed, of course. And so that's -- it would give us clues to what the detailed compensation of the solar system was at the beginning.
HEMMER: So you have a $300 million project that now could be dashed or not? Before we get to the possibility of doing it again someday, how much can be saved that we know at this point?
TYSON: I have no idea. I was actually -- the thing hit the ground at 200 miles an hour. I was impressed that it was not in a thousand pieces.
HEMMER: OK.
TYSON: It was just that little crack over to the side. So, you know, if any of us fell at 200 miles an hour, we'd look a lot worse than that dish.
So my hope is out to the principal investigators that something can be salvaged out of this. Otherwise we might have to do it over or...
HEMMER: Which would take, what, two or three years or perhaps a little longer?
TYSON: We've got to get to a location in space where that takes place. That takes years. And then bring it back.
HEMMER: Roger Wiens is a scientist at Los Alamos. He said, "This is sickening."
TYSON: Yes.
HEMMER: What are these scientists feeling now?
TYSON: Oh, it's a big pit in the stomach. Now, the more senior scientists, while they might be upset, they still have a job. It's the graduate students coming up that might have had this as their Ph.D. thesis, they're crying in the backyard right now.
People -- this is a lesson, though, not so much to the scientists, but to the public, that any science on the frontier has risks of failure.
HEMMER: Sure.
TYSON: Go into -- walk into any lab and say well, how are things today? And you'll get a whole laundry list of what went wrong that day. So the issue here is not that everything needs to always go perfectly, but that we learn when things go wrong.
HEMMER: Yes, sure.
TYSON: So you don't -- those mistakes don't happen again.
HEMMER: You always make it interesting.
TYSON: All right, great.
HEMMER: And you know how to (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
TYSON: Good to be here.
Thank you.
HEMMER: Good to see you again. All right -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Still to come this morning, the 58-year-old former president, Clinton, knew it was time to get his heart and cholesterol checked, but you may not want to wait until your 50s to get a checkup yourself. We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" on that.
HEMMER: Also, in a moment, a potential bombshell in the Scott Peterson trial. This time it involves Laci and the family dog and it may have hurt the defense. A look at that in a moment -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Plus, one candidate pulls ahead in several of those all important battleground states. We'll talk to the governor of one of them, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Welcome back, everyone. Eighteen minutes past the hour.
Quickly to Jakarta there. A powerful explosion a few hours ago killing at least eight, injuring more than 170 others. No claim of responsibility to this point.
Maria Ressa working that story overseas in Southeast Asia -- Maria, what do you have?
MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, it was a gruesome scene. The explosion happened at about 10:30 in the morning inside Jakarta's central business district. When we got there, there were body parts littering the four lane highway, an explosion so fierce that it shattered nearly all the windows of at least seven high rise buildings nearby and left a crater that was at least nine feet deep, according to authorities.
At this point, no group has claimed responsibility, as you said. But both Australia and Indonesia say they suspect the group behind it is the same group that was behind the Bali bombings in 2002 and the J.W. Marriott attacks in 2003. The group is Jemaah Islamiyah, a group terrorism experts say is al Qaeda's arm in Southeast Asia.
Back to you -- Bill. HEMMER: All right, Maria Ressa working that story again in Jakarta, Indonesia.
The story breaking a few hours ago.
We'll watch it again from here.
A break. Back in a moment with more after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HEMMER: Twenty-one minutes now past the hour. And there are several new polls out today about which way voters in swing states are swaying.
Ohio one of the critical battleground states. And back with us today is the governor, Bob Taft, from Columbus, Ohio with more on what we're finding out.
Good morning, Governor.
Welcome back here to AMERICAN MORNING.
GOV. BOB TAFT (R), OHIO: Good morning, Bill.
It's great to be with you.
HEMMER: We can put on the screen, back in July, John Kerry led George Bush in your state by about six points. Now it has flipped around, 52-44 in favor of the president.
What's happening in your state, Governor? TAFT: Well, I think, first of all, the president presented a clear plan for a more prosperous America and a safer world at the convention. So it was a very good convention. The president has been here a number of times, very enthusiastic crowds, strong rallies. And he's coming here again, incidentally, tomorrow, to southern Ohio. So he's focused on our state, but focused on his plan for leading America. And I think that's resonating with Ohioans.
HEMMER: Well, Governor, here's the catch. Your state has lost more than 200,000 jobs since President Bush took office almost four years ago. The economy is consistently listed as the number one issue of discussion for this election in your state.
Why is John Kerry not doing better, if that's the case?
TAFT: Well, the economy is moving in the right direction. Jobs are coming back and that's because of the president's policies. And he's the one with the plan to keep the recovery on track.
But I also think that Ohioans are concerned about our safety in the war against terrorism and the convention and the president's plans for the future demonstrate his resolve to protect America at all costs. And that's a big factor for voters.
HEMMER: Would you concede that he's still vulnerable on that issue, with 54 days and counting?
TAFT: Well, we're taking nothing for granted in Ohio. You know, we were eight points up four years ago against Gore and we carried the state by only about 3 percent. So the electorate is very volatile. Ohio is clearly a battleground state and will remain so right up until November 2.
HEMMER: John Kerry was there yesterday, not in Columbus, but in Cincinnati.
Listen to what he said about the war in Iraq and what the cost is back here at home because of it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The cost of the president's go it alone policy in Iraq is now $200 billion and counting. $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford after school programs for our children. $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: Is that argument effective in your state?
TAFT: Well, not from John Kerry, because, you know, he supported giving the president the power to proceed against Iraq in the war. I think that Ohioans, number one, want a president who will keep America safe; also, a president with a plan for the future. And so far all we've heard from John Kerry is a lot of criticism of the president and no clear plan for how he would lead the country in a different way over the next four years.
We didn't even hear that at the Democratic convention.
HEMMER: Let me tell you what I was hearing back in Ohio a few weeks ago. I heard there was a lot of disappointment out of the White House because they did not feel their organization in Ohio was as strong as it should have been.
How do you feel about the strength of the campaign there in Ohio on the grassroots level?
TAFT: That's going to be the key, I think, to the president's victory in Ohio. We have over 60,000 volunteers. We're registering voters. We're staffed in about 12,000 precincts all across the State of Ohio and we've made about a million phone calls.
So we have a stronger grassroots organization than we ever have had.
However, the other side is doing the same. So we're going to keep working right up until election day to make sure that we turn out the strong base vote for the president.
HEMMER: Fifty-four days and counting.
Thank you, Governor.
TAFT: Down to the wire.
HEMMER: Bob Taft.
TAFT: Thanks.
HEMMER: Yes, that it is.
In Columbus, thanks -- Heidi.
COLLINS: Still to come, parents managing kids' lives by cell phone? That's Bill Cosby's latest criticism for African-American parents. It's controversial, but there are some experts who say the entertainer has a point. We'll talk to one of them ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Let's check in with Toure now and the Question of the Day -- good morning.
TOURE', "ROLLING STONE" MAGAZINE: I'm not doing good.
COLLINS: You're not?
HEMMER: What's wrong?
TOURE': The Red Sox are right behind us, man. They're like standing right there. Like back off! HEMMER: That's why they call it fall, baby.
TOURE': But they don't lose, man. Like this is not the Red Sox.
All right, the world is a different place because the Red Sox keep winning.
After 9/11, the world was a different place and the war on terror is unlike any conflict in U.S. history. As criticism of John Kerry's military record is winding down, questions about the president's military record are resurfacing.
Documents obtained by "60 Minutes" suggest the president left his National Guard duty early to work on a political campaign. But is it all much ado about nothing? Is it necessary to have had bullets flying by you to be commander-in-chief?
Our question is, in a post-9/11 world, how important is it that a candidate has had military service in leading the country?
I screwed up the diction, I know, tried to bring it back.
HEMMER: We know what you mean.
TOURE': Let's have some answers.
Peter from Houston: "None whatsoever. In the middle of a great war in 1864, President Lincoln, a non-military person, was up against McClellan, a famous Civil War general. Lincoln won by a landslide. The American people then realized the danger of changing the commander-in-chief in the middle of the war."
Jeff Greenfield covered that, right?
I love Jeff.
"I think, Gerard from Rochester, New York, "I think that Bush's war record from 35 years ago is relevant today. It speaks of his character. His campaign people have no problem attacking the war record of John Kerry, who was wounded in the very same war that W. worked so hard to avoid."
Matt from Florida: "If military service is of paramount importance, why didn't General Clark win the Democratic nomination? While a favorable service record is important to know how to best employ our military power, I don't think that's as important as the candidate's stands on the issues."
COLLINS: I guess that's the music. I guess you're done.
TOURE': I guess I'm done.
HEMMER: Are you sure?
COLLINS: We will check back later...
TOURE': I'm just working here.
COLLINS: ... for more e-mail.
TOURE': I hope so.
COLLINS: No question about it.
All right, Toure', thanks so much.
TOURE': Thank you.
HEMMER: In a moment here, everybody knows smog is bad for you. There's an alarming new study on the dangers and potentially deadly effects it could have on your kids, as well, in a moment.
COLLINS: Plus, a potential bombshell in the Scott Peterson trial. This time, the family dog figures into it, and it could be bad news for the defense. We'll talk about it, coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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