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American Morning

New Intelligence Chief; Interview With Senator Jay Rockefeller; Mars Life Signs

Aired February 17, 2005 - 8:59 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. A big announcement from the president expected very soon, naming the person to lead a brand new intelligence agency.
Also, the current threat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PORTER GOSS, CIA DIRECTOR: It may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: CIA Director Porter Goss and others telling Congress that Americans are still at risk.

The train and the strawberry truck. Did the photographer who got these pictures know something like this could happen?

And a huge claim today about life on Mars. Is it there now deep below the planet's surface on this AMERICAN MORNING?

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody.

A decision coming up that's going to be important to the safety of all Americans. President Bush will name his new director of national intelligence coming up in just one hour.

CNN is learning more details about this story in the last half- hour or so. We're going to bring you a report from Washington, D.C. just ahead. And, of course, that announcement we'll bring to you live at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

HEMMER: Also in a moment, here, check this out. Torrential rains just pounding Arizona. One man got caught in his truck when the waters got a bit too nasty.

Tricky operation to get him out of here. And we'll talk to the deputy sheriff who rescued him in a moment. And also, there is talk about having these people pay for the rescue operation, which could get interesting, too. That's up in a moment.

O'BRIEN: A stupid driver legislation when they...

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, yes, if you drive your car into a...

HEMMER: Standing water.

O'BRIEN: Situation that you shouldn't be in.

CAFFERTY: And you get trapped, and then the taxpayers, why should we have to pay to rescue some idiot who is dumb enough to do it?

O'BRIEN: And forget the money. You know, those guys that risk their lives...

CAFFERTY: Well, that, too.

O'BRIEN: ... every time they go in to save -- try to save somebody.

CAFFERTY: Yes. So do away with that idea. We're opposed to that.

The government is going to undertake its first big obscenity case in 10 years. A district judge threw out an indictment against a California pornography company, saying that people have the right to view this stuff in the privacy of their own home if they wish. The nation's new attorney general wants the indictment reinstated, saying that he doesn't think that pornography companies should be sheltered under the protections allotted by the first amendment of the Constitution.

The question is, are the nation's obscenity laws unconstitutional? AM@CNN.com is the e-mail address.

HEMMER: Thank you, Jack.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

HEMMER: Back to the headlines. Heidi Collins starting with news out of Iraq still developing now.

Good morning.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, very interesting, too. Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everybody.

"Now in the News," Iraqi officials certifying results from last month's historic election. Within the past half-hour, results show a Shiite-dominated alliance holds a small majority of the 275 member national assembly. A Kurdish alliance won the second most seats.

A new prime minister may be decided in a couple of days. And the ceremony in Baghdad expected to go on for another hour or so. We'll be watching that one for you. An FDA panel is hearing testimony at this hour to determine the safety of some popular painkillers. FDA scientist David Graham is presenting new findings on drugs like Celebrex and Bextra. You see him there again in Washington.

The panel is expected to hear from some members of the general public as well. The hearings are expected to wrap up tomorrow.

The governor of California heading to Capitol Hill. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger set to meet this morning with the state's congressional delegation.

On the agenda, redrawing California's districts. He's also pushing for more federal dollars for the Golden State. California faces an $8 billion budget shortfall.

And that's the news for now.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

Want to get back to Washington now. And, again, in about an hour's time now, the president will announce who he wants as the nation's director of national intelligence. New pressure was put on the White House by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee listening yesterday to top intel leaders and the possible terror threats against the U.S.

All this now in our focus of our CNN "Security Watch" this hour. And our national security correspondent, David Ensor, kicks it off down there in Washington.

Good morning, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Bill, this really is an extraordinary situation. We understand that the president, in looking for a new intelligence chief, at least four people who were on the short list asked the White House to take them off the list. This has been a difficult job to fill, although it would be one of the four or five perhaps most powerful jobs in Washington. A very usual situation.

So this morning you had Porter Goss, the CIA director, going into the White House as usual to brief the president, to give him his daily intelligence briefing. And it is not clear -- and we will soon know -- who will be taking over that task from Mr. Goss, assuming, of course, that the director of national intelligence decides that he or she wants to be the person that briefs the president.

It could also be that he or she will decide to have Goss continue to do it. And that is one of the issues we have here.

Two months ago, the president signed a new intelligence reform bill. On December 17 the signing ceremony took place. And many people are saying that the legislation was not clear enough in the powers that it gives to this new director of national intelligence. It gives him or her responsibility if another 9/11 attack should happen or something like that to. Clearly, the fingers will be pointing at this person who is going to be named in an hour. But some critics are saying the legislation does not give the power necessary over budget purse and so forth. That the Pentagon won some of the battles at the end there, and it's just not clear enough what the powers will be. So we may hear something on that during the discussion today as well.

Now, this comes against a backdrop of increasing fear of danger to the national security of the United States. Yesterday, in the annual presentation of what the intelligence chiefs see as the threat to the United States, Porter Goss, the CIA director, enumerated a rather grim picture. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOSS: Al Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to strike Americans in the homeland, one. Number two, it may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. We must focus on that. Three, al Qaeda is one facet of the threat from a broader Sunni jihadist movement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: So whoever this is to be named in less than an hour is going to have his or her hands full -- Bill.

HEMMER: David, at the outset, you said it has been difficult. Why so difficult?

ENSOR: Because many of the people who are -- who were under consideration by the president for the job did not feel that the job had been clearly enough defined, that the powers had been clearly enough defined in the legislation that was rushed through in December. Critics argue that the White House wanted legislation through, knew that there were problems with the legislation, but let it go through anyway in order to get an issue off the table prior to the election, not to give John Kerry something to beat up on the president with. But that many officials in the administration are now privately acknowledging there may have to be some fixes done.

So you may see -- and, in fact, Senator Susan Collins, who was a key player in this legislation, has also said there may have to be some changes made in the coming weeks and months to make this job more clearly defined, to make the powers that this person will have more clear. They're going to have to have a lot of power.

The power to get these agencies to work together well, the clarity over who can hire and fire the senior officials in these agencies, all of that has to be very clear. Now, the other thing that people are saying is that whoever the president is naming in less than an hour had better be a major figure with a lot of respect, a lot of bipartisan respect, if he or she is to be effective in this very, very difficult new job. HEMMER: Thank you, David. David Ensor watching that in D.C. -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: CIA Director Porter Goss also warned that the war in Iraq could be helping to train terrorists to wage attacks against American targets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOSS: Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists. Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq, experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of context to build transnational terror cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller is the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He's in D.C. this morning.

Nice to see you, sir. Thanks for talking with us.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV), VICE CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: The intel chiefs laid out the threats. Now we're hearing from the White House that in about 50 minutes or so they're going to announce the new national intelligence director. First, do you have any insight on who's going to be announced?

ROCKEFELLER: I don't. I also don't entirely agree with David Ensor in what he said.

I think the fact that all of the lines aren't crossed and every decision isn't made about what powers the DNI has is, in fact, an advantage for the DNI. Because a vacuum invites power.

And I think it's much better that the DNI be able to come in, he or she, in order to fill that out according to their own instincts. If we had prescribed in Congress every relationship between each of the agencies, I think that would have been an enormous mistake and would have rendered this person more useless. This person can exercise power, and I think that's good.

O'BRIEN: So you think leaving the relationships open a little bit will give an opportunity to create those relationships and negotiate that?

ROCKEFELLER: I do.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you, then, you had said you were very concerned about the delay in naming the national intelligence director. OK. How -- assuming in 50 minutes, in fact, that that man or woman is named, how are we safer? What happens? ROCKEFELLER: Well, in our law, as David Ensor explained, we gave the director of national intelligence six months to get confirmed, to put together his or her team, and to lay out a plan for how they intended to run their operation. Already two months has passed, so there's only four months left. Confirmation will probably take a month to a month and a half.

So it's just a very late decision by the president. On the other hand, I'm just very glad that he's making that decision.

O'BRIEN: Let's go back to this testimony from Porter Goss and the other intelligence chiefs. As we played a little bit of it, he pointed out that what's happened in Iraq, it has essentially become a training ground and a recruiting tool for al Qaeda or al Qaeda-like groups. How surprised were you by what you heard from Porter Goss?

ROCKEFELLER: How surprised? I mean, we've all known that all the way along. I mean, that's -- that's why these people are, however many they are and wherever they come from, that's what they're there to do.

And they attract people from across the world. And they want to do damage to get trained there and do damage in other Middle Eastern countries and in this country.

And he said another thing which I thought was even more important. And that is that the Russian stockpile of nuclear weapons, which is relatively unguarded, which there are about 4,000 parts of nuclear weapons that can easily be assembled, are available. And many of them are unaccounted for. Half of them are unaccounted for and could be out there on the black market for the use of those same terrorists that we were just talking about.

O'BRIEN: That, in fact, is an exchange that you had with the CIA director. Let's listen to a little bit to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCKEFELLER: Can you assure the American people -- and I think this is a yes or no type thing. Can you assure the American people that the material missing from the Russian nuclear sites has not found its way into terrorist hands?

GOSS: No, I can't make that assurance. I can't account for some of the material, so I can't make the assurance about its whereabouts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Porter Goss says it is only a matter of time before al Qaeda or a group like al Qaeda has some kind of attack or U.S. soil or tries an attack on U.S. soil. And he said, though, that he thought that that attack would be most likely low tech.

Considering the exchange that you just had with him, I'm a little bit confused. Why would it be a low-tech attack? ROCKEFELLER: It would not necessarily be -- it could be any kind of attack. There can be a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb can render several square miles of the city useless for 30 years. You know, you can't even enter into that area for 30 years. That's just enriched uranium that would just set up in clouds.

Or it could be a nuclear weapon in a suitcase or carried in on a cargo container. And that does a lot more damage.

But the point is that the Russians have more of these weapons than any other country other than ourselves. And half of them are unaccounted for. And if they're unaccounted for by Putin and his people, who are trying to find them, working with the Nunn-Lugar agreement, which I won't explain, that's a very, very serious and scary situation, except potentially for terrorists who are saying, hey, I can put out a certain amount of cash, get into some of these unguarded places, bribe the guard, and make off with some very dangerous material. That I worry about.

O'BRIEN: Well, we have sort of laid out the litany, as you did yesterday, too, of the potential threats. Did you hear yesterday about -- that comforted you about what's being done to curtail any potential threats?

ROCKEFELLER: No, except that we have to be on guard at home. And in homeland security, in fact, among all our intelligence activities across the world and at home in protecting ourselves abroad or at home, homeland security is the most under-funded, the least understood, and the least reacted to by the American people.

So we have a lot of work to do. And I don't mean -- you know, I'm wearing a wonderful green tie today to try to cheer myself up. But this was not a very happy -- not a very happy hearing yesterday. But it was truth telling, and it was truth telling that needs to be heard by the American people.

O'BRIEN: Well, I like the tie, but I'm not sure it's going to go far enough to spin things in a positive way. Senator Jay Rockefeller, thanks for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it.

ROCKEFELLER: Thanks.

O'BRIEN: And once again, we have to mention we are waiting for President Bush to name that director of national intelligence. We're going to bring that to you live when it happens. Administration sources are telling us that that's about 45 minutes away -- Bill.

HEMMER: Get a break here in a moment. A strawberry truck turned into strawberry jam, pulverized by a passing train. Did somebody know something like this was going to happen? And, if so, what do they do with the videotape?

O'BRIEN: And here's a question for you: Is there life on Mars right now? Some startling new evidence ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: NASA scientists reporting this week they may have strong evidence that there is life on Mars. Neil de Grasse Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History here in New York City, also wrote the book "Origins."

Good morning.

NEIL DE GRASSE TYSON, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM: Good morning.

HEMMER: Welcome back here.

TYSON: Good morning.

HEMMER: Now, this is a leaked paper, right? It's not considered scientific fact? Or how do we explain this?

TYSON: It's a leaked story. And so it's not yet even peer reviewed. So we shouldn't discuss the paper itself.

HEMMER: OK. Let's don't go over the deep end on it then.

TYSON: OK.

HEMMER: But what is it saying then? What does it claim, the paper?

TYSON: Well, it's -- what it's -- it's putting together pieces of evidence that has been percolating over the past year or so. And that is, the presence of methane has been spotted on the surface of Mars.

Now, methane, if you're not otherwise familiar with it, it's in your gas stove. In urban centers, it's methane. In the suburbs sometimes they use propane. But it's that gas.

That gas, it turns out, is evidence, is kind of like a bio marker. Because we know it is the byproduct of biology. And on Earth, cows produce methane.

HEMMER: But all this time we've been talking about trying to find water on Mars.

TYSON: Well...

HEMMER: How is this different from the methane claim?

TYSON: Excellent. So now we know there's no water on the Martian surface, that's been clear. There's ideas that maybe the water has seeped below the surface, possibly occupying aqua firs (ph).

The trick here is that methane has been found in the same places as evidence for subsurface water. So that -- that's telling us that the methane would not produce out of a volcano or any other thing that might not be life related. Every place there's water on Earth there's life.

HEMMER: So you're not dismissing this report? But in order for it to be accepted by the scientific community...

TYSON: Right?

HEMMER: ... what has to happen?

TYSON: Well, first, it gets peer reviewed. And people see, well, did they dot their Is did they cross their Ts, did they do it right. If they didn't do it right, they send them back to the drawing board. They redo the analysis, they do the experiment, re-interpret it. But if it goes through, it will be in the journals in a few months.

HEMMER: Now, from what I understand, they had to go to a part Spain to go ahead and carry out experiments. What was in Spain that they had to look into?

TYSON: Yes. What's interesting about this particular part of Spain is that there's a river that is rendered red by the presence of iron. And it's a very high acid environment. And there are life forms that thrive there.

Life forms that previously would have never imagined could have survived. And this is a new brand of life that we now collectively call extremophiles (ph), lovers of extreme environments.

And while biologists are particularly excited about this, we're even more excited about it in astrophysics and astrobiology. Because now when we look for life in the universe, we no longer have to look for just the room temperature planet.

HEMMER: OK.

TYSON: We can look for planets that might have exotic conditions of temperature, pressure, radiation, because we know life can thrive under those conditions. And here we have possible evidence of that on Mars living today, not just a billion years ago.

HEMMER: Good stuff. Hey, tomorrow, come on back, and we'll talk about Pluto.

TYSON: Pluto.

HEMMER: There's some questions about...

TYSON: It's reared its head once again, apparently.

HEMMER: I understand you're getting some really nasty e-mails from third-graders around the country.

TYSON: Totally.

HEMMER: Because you don't believe it's a planet. We'll pick it up tomorrow.

TYSON: All right. I'll be back.

HEMMER: All right.

Here's Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Well, police say it is a miracle nobody was seriously hurt. But should authorities have seen this collision coming? We'll look at that up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: From southern California now, a videotape shot by a man trying to prove the danger at a rail crossing. Captured that collision right there.

A truck carrying strawberries wiped out by a speeding train. There's another angle. Investigators questioning whether or not a poorly-timed crossing signal may be to blame. But the man who shot the videotape says bell warnings of the approaching train does not give the truck driver time enough to get out of the way.

Police say it is a miracle neither the driver nor the train passengers were hurt. The crossing signal is now at the heart of that investigation. And they've got the evidence right there.

O'BRIEN: Well, here's the thing. He's got three angles on this, right?

CAFFERTY: Yes. Something...

O'BRIEN: We saw two relative, closer, and then one wide shot. Clearly plenty of time. And he's allowed this train -- he's not warning the train conductor. There are people on board who could have been killed in that.

CAFFERTY: There's a weasel deal here somewhere.

O'BRIEN: There's something going on that's...

CAFFERTY: Yes.

HEMMER: He's trying to let folks know that the signals have to be better. If you get a truck stuck on the tracks there, they need more time to get out of the way.

O'BRIEN: So did someone stick the truck on the tracks?

HEMMER: Oh, Je ne sais pas.

CAFFERTY: Yes. Well...

O'BRIEN: A lot of questions I think about that. Three interesting angles.

CAFFERTY: How come you didn't asked the guy who was talking about life on Mars how it is that the cows produce methane?

HEMMER: You know, it was... CAFFERTY: He mentioned that, and you just let that go right on by.

HEMMER: Tip of my tongue.

O'BRIEN: We know. Want me to tell you?

CAFFERTY: There was no query made about, well, how this is possible? Does this mean that -- all right.

The "Question of the Day" is as follows -- I knew that. The government is taking up its first big obscenity case in 10 years. A U.S. district court judge threw out an indictment against a California pornography company, Extreme Associates, Inc., saying that prosecutors overstepped their bounds.

The Justice Department wants the indictment reinstated, arguing the ruling undermines obscenity laws. The new attorney general, picking up where old what's his name left off, apparently -- the new guy's Alberto Gonzales. Ashcroft is the guy I was trying to think of -- says selling or distributing obscene materials does not fall within first amendment protections.

I suppose the conundrum is, how do you define what's obscene? But it is only a three-hour show. We have no time to get into that.

The question is whether or not all these obscenity laws are unconstitutional.

Guy in New York writes: "Of course it's unconstitutional. As long as nothing actually being done in the movie is illegal, there shouldn't be any ban at all. This is a free country and the first amendment does protect all this."

James writes: "The federal government has no business dictating what constitutes obscenity. What would be considered obscenity by those living in an Amish community could be normal to people living in a nudist colony. How can a nation that touts its diversity allow such an attempt to crush it?"

Wes writes: "The world would be a pretty boring place if we banned everything the majority didn't approve of. Individually, Americans are pretty intelligent. But as a majority, we are morons."

Chuck in Tennessee, "As the pendulum continues to the right, I'm sure more attempts will be made to regulate morality. The problem with this case is, how do you define 'obscene'? The line is so blurred, it will continue to be hard to define. I personally believe your set furniture is obscene and should be removed."

He's right. Look. That was the cue for the set furniture. There we go.

HEMMER: Actually, it looks kind of nice in that shot.

CAFFERTY: Yes. It's really ugly stuff. HEMMER: It's the other shots.

CAFFERTY: It's just -- it's just awful. I mean, I -- they spent some awful, obscene amount of money to buy this junk. And it has been sitting here for three years.

And it's uncomfortable to sit in. And nobody is ever in the right position because there's cracks in the middle. And the pillows have to be put off and put back on. And you're absolutely right, they should buy some new furniture. CNN makes a lot of money.

O'BRIEN: So you support the obscenity laws?

CAFFERTY: Huh? The other thing they should do is CNN should pay for your dress to go to the Oscars.

Soledad's going to the Oscars. They told her she's going to have to buy her own dress.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

CAFFERTY: Now, you know we're going to talk to you on this program about your experience at the Oscars.

HEMMER: That's a write-off, baby.

CAFFERTY: You're working. You're working the Oscars. The company should be reimbursing you for that dress.

O'BRIEN: Thank you, Jack. I'm going to put you straight through.

CAFFERTY: And after I get fired, you just tell them on the way out the door I said that they ought to pick up the tab on your dress.

O'BRIEN: I absolutely will.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Thank you.

CAFFERTY: Sure.

O'BRIEN: We're keeping a close eye on the White House this morning. President Bush expected to announce his pick to become the nation's first intelligence czar. When it happens, we'll bring it to you live.

A short break. But AMERICAN MORNING is back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired February 17, 2005 - 8:59 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. A big announcement from the president expected very soon, naming the person to lead a brand new intelligence agency.
Also, the current threat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PORTER GOSS, CIA DIRECTOR: It may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HEMMER: CIA Director Porter Goss and others telling Congress that Americans are still at risk.

The train and the strawberry truck. Did the photographer who got these pictures know something like this could happen?

And a huge claim today about life on Mars. Is it there now deep below the planet's surface on this AMERICAN MORNING?

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody.

A decision coming up that's going to be important to the safety of all Americans. President Bush will name his new director of national intelligence coming up in just one hour.

CNN is learning more details about this story in the last half- hour or so. We're going to bring you a report from Washington, D.C. just ahead. And, of course, that announcement we'll bring to you live at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

HEMMER: Also in a moment, here, check this out. Torrential rains just pounding Arizona. One man got caught in his truck when the waters got a bit too nasty.

Tricky operation to get him out of here. And we'll talk to the deputy sheriff who rescued him in a moment. And also, there is talk about having these people pay for the rescue operation, which could get interesting, too. That's up in a moment.

O'BRIEN: A stupid driver legislation when they...

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, yes, if you drive your car into a...

HEMMER: Standing water.

O'BRIEN: Situation that you shouldn't be in.

CAFFERTY: And you get trapped, and then the taxpayers, why should we have to pay to rescue some idiot who is dumb enough to do it?

O'BRIEN: And forget the money. You know, those guys that risk their lives...

CAFFERTY: Well, that, too.

O'BRIEN: ... every time they go in to save -- try to save somebody.

CAFFERTY: Yes. So do away with that idea. We're opposed to that.

The government is going to undertake its first big obscenity case in 10 years. A district judge threw out an indictment against a California pornography company, saying that people have the right to view this stuff in the privacy of their own home if they wish. The nation's new attorney general wants the indictment reinstated, saying that he doesn't think that pornography companies should be sheltered under the protections allotted by the first amendment of the Constitution.

The question is, are the nation's obscenity laws unconstitutional? AM@CNN.com is the e-mail address.

HEMMER: Thank you, Jack.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

HEMMER: Back to the headlines. Heidi Collins starting with news out of Iraq still developing now.

Good morning.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, very interesting, too. Thanks, Bill. Good morning, everybody.

"Now in the News," Iraqi officials certifying results from last month's historic election. Within the past half-hour, results show a Shiite-dominated alliance holds a small majority of the 275 member national assembly. A Kurdish alliance won the second most seats.

A new prime minister may be decided in a couple of days. And the ceremony in Baghdad expected to go on for another hour or so. We'll be watching that one for you. An FDA panel is hearing testimony at this hour to determine the safety of some popular painkillers. FDA scientist David Graham is presenting new findings on drugs like Celebrex and Bextra. You see him there again in Washington.

The panel is expected to hear from some members of the general public as well. The hearings are expected to wrap up tomorrow.

The governor of California heading to Capitol Hill. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger set to meet this morning with the state's congressional delegation.

On the agenda, redrawing California's districts. He's also pushing for more federal dollars for the Golden State. California faces an $8 billion budget shortfall.

And that's the news for now.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

Want to get back to Washington now. And, again, in about an hour's time now, the president will announce who he wants as the nation's director of national intelligence. New pressure was put on the White House by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee listening yesterday to top intel leaders and the possible terror threats against the U.S.

All this now in our focus of our CNN "Security Watch" this hour. And our national security correspondent, David Ensor, kicks it off down there in Washington.

Good morning, David.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Bill, this really is an extraordinary situation. We understand that the president, in looking for a new intelligence chief, at least four people who were on the short list asked the White House to take them off the list. This has been a difficult job to fill, although it would be one of the four or five perhaps most powerful jobs in Washington. A very usual situation.

So this morning you had Porter Goss, the CIA director, going into the White House as usual to brief the president, to give him his daily intelligence briefing. And it is not clear -- and we will soon know -- who will be taking over that task from Mr. Goss, assuming, of course, that the director of national intelligence decides that he or she wants to be the person that briefs the president.

It could also be that he or she will decide to have Goss continue to do it. And that is one of the issues we have here.

Two months ago, the president signed a new intelligence reform bill. On December 17 the signing ceremony took place. And many people are saying that the legislation was not clear enough in the powers that it gives to this new director of national intelligence. It gives him or her responsibility if another 9/11 attack should happen or something like that to. Clearly, the fingers will be pointing at this person who is going to be named in an hour. But some critics are saying the legislation does not give the power necessary over budget purse and so forth. That the Pentagon won some of the battles at the end there, and it's just not clear enough what the powers will be. So we may hear something on that during the discussion today as well.

Now, this comes against a backdrop of increasing fear of danger to the national security of the United States. Yesterday, in the annual presentation of what the intelligence chiefs see as the threat to the United States, Porter Goss, the CIA director, enumerated a rather grim picture. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOSS: Al Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to strike Americans in the homeland, one. Number two, it may be only a matter of time before al Qaeda or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. We must focus on that. Three, al Qaeda is one facet of the threat from a broader Sunni jihadist movement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: So whoever this is to be named in less than an hour is going to have his or her hands full -- Bill.

HEMMER: David, at the outset, you said it has been difficult. Why so difficult?

ENSOR: Because many of the people who are -- who were under consideration by the president for the job did not feel that the job had been clearly enough defined, that the powers had been clearly enough defined in the legislation that was rushed through in December. Critics argue that the White House wanted legislation through, knew that there were problems with the legislation, but let it go through anyway in order to get an issue off the table prior to the election, not to give John Kerry something to beat up on the president with. But that many officials in the administration are now privately acknowledging there may have to be some fixes done.

So you may see -- and, in fact, Senator Susan Collins, who was a key player in this legislation, has also said there may have to be some changes made in the coming weeks and months to make this job more clearly defined, to make the powers that this person will have more clear. They're going to have to have a lot of power.

The power to get these agencies to work together well, the clarity over who can hire and fire the senior officials in these agencies, all of that has to be very clear. Now, the other thing that people are saying is that whoever the president is naming in less than an hour had better be a major figure with a lot of respect, a lot of bipartisan respect, if he or she is to be effective in this very, very difficult new job. HEMMER: Thank you, David. David Ensor watching that in D.C. -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: CIA Director Porter Goss also warned that the war in Iraq could be helping to train terrorists to wage attacks against American targets.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOSS: Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists. Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq, experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of context to build transnational terror cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller is the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. He's in D.C. this morning.

Nice to see you, sir. Thanks for talking with us.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV), VICE CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: The intel chiefs laid out the threats. Now we're hearing from the White House that in about 50 minutes or so they're going to announce the new national intelligence director. First, do you have any insight on who's going to be announced?

ROCKEFELLER: I don't. I also don't entirely agree with David Ensor in what he said.

I think the fact that all of the lines aren't crossed and every decision isn't made about what powers the DNI has is, in fact, an advantage for the DNI. Because a vacuum invites power.

And I think it's much better that the DNI be able to come in, he or she, in order to fill that out according to their own instincts. If we had prescribed in Congress every relationship between each of the agencies, I think that would have been an enormous mistake and would have rendered this person more useless. This person can exercise power, and I think that's good.

O'BRIEN: So you think leaving the relationships open a little bit will give an opportunity to create those relationships and negotiate that?

ROCKEFELLER: I do.

O'BRIEN: Let me ask you, then, you had said you were very concerned about the delay in naming the national intelligence director. OK. How -- assuming in 50 minutes, in fact, that that man or woman is named, how are we safer? What happens? ROCKEFELLER: Well, in our law, as David Ensor explained, we gave the director of national intelligence six months to get confirmed, to put together his or her team, and to lay out a plan for how they intended to run their operation. Already two months has passed, so there's only four months left. Confirmation will probably take a month to a month and a half.

So it's just a very late decision by the president. On the other hand, I'm just very glad that he's making that decision.

O'BRIEN: Let's go back to this testimony from Porter Goss and the other intelligence chiefs. As we played a little bit of it, he pointed out that what's happened in Iraq, it has essentially become a training ground and a recruiting tool for al Qaeda or al Qaeda-like groups. How surprised were you by what you heard from Porter Goss?

ROCKEFELLER: How surprised? I mean, we've all known that all the way along. I mean, that's -- that's why these people are, however many they are and wherever they come from, that's what they're there to do.

And they attract people from across the world. And they want to do damage to get trained there and do damage in other Middle Eastern countries and in this country.

And he said another thing which I thought was even more important. And that is that the Russian stockpile of nuclear weapons, which is relatively unguarded, which there are about 4,000 parts of nuclear weapons that can easily be assembled, are available. And many of them are unaccounted for. Half of them are unaccounted for and could be out there on the black market for the use of those same terrorists that we were just talking about.

O'BRIEN: That, in fact, is an exchange that you had with the CIA director. Let's listen to a little bit to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROCKEFELLER: Can you assure the American people -- and I think this is a yes or no type thing. Can you assure the American people that the material missing from the Russian nuclear sites has not found its way into terrorist hands?

GOSS: No, I can't make that assurance. I can't account for some of the material, so I can't make the assurance about its whereabouts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Porter Goss says it is only a matter of time before al Qaeda or a group like al Qaeda has some kind of attack or U.S. soil or tries an attack on U.S. soil. And he said, though, that he thought that that attack would be most likely low tech.

Considering the exchange that you just had with him, I'm a little bit confused. Why would it be a low-tech attack? ROCKEFELLER: It would not necessarily be -- it could be any kind of attack. There can be a dirty bomb. A dirty bomb can render several square miles of the city useless for 30 years. You know, you can't even enter into that area for 30 years. That's just enriched uranium that would just set up in clouds.

Or it could be a nuclear weapon in a suitcase or carried in on a cargo container. And that does a lot more damage.

But the point is that the Russians have more of these weapons than any other country other than ourselves. And half of them are unaccounted for. And if they're unaccounted for by Putin and his people, who are trying to find them, working with the Nunn-Lugar agreement, which I won't explain, that's a very, very serious and scary situation, except potentially for terrorists who are saying, hey, I can put out a certain amount of cash, get into some of these unguarded places, bribe the guard, and make off with some very dangerous material. That I worry about.

O'BRIEN: Well, we have sort of laid out the litany, as you did yesterday, too, of the potential threats. Did you hear yesterday about -- that comforted you about what's being done to curtail any potential threats?

ROCKEFELLER: No, except that we have to be on guard at home. And in homeland security, in fact, among all our intelligence activities across the world and at home in protecting ourselves abroad or at home, homeland security is the most under-funded, the least understood, and the least reacted to by the American people.

So we have a lot of work to do. And I don't mean -- you know, I'm wearing a wonderful green tie today to try to cheer myself up. But this was not a very happy -- not a very happy hearing yesterday. But it was truth telling, and it was truth telling that needs to be heard by the American people.

O'BRIEN: Well, I like the tie, but I'm not sure it's going to go far enough to spin things in a positive way. Senator Jay Rockefeller, thanks for talking with us. We certainly appreciate it.

ROCKEFELLER: Thanks.

O'BRIEN: And once again, we have to mention we are waiting for President Bush to name that director of national intelligence. We're going to bring that to you live when it happens. Administration sources are telling us that that's about 45 minutes away -- Bill.

HEMMER: Get a break here in a moment. A strawberry truck turned into strawberry jam, pulverized by a passing train. Did somebody know something like this was going to happen? And, if so, what do they do with the videotape?

O'BRIEN: And here's a question for you: Is there life on Mars right now? Some startling new evidence ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) O'BRIEN: NASA scientists reporting this week they may have strong evidence that there is life on Mars. Neil de Grasse Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History here in New York City, also wrote the book "Origins."

Good morning.

NEIL DE GRASSE TYSON, HAYDEN PLANETARIUM: Good morning.

HEMMER: Welcome back here.

TYSON: Good morning.

HEMMER: Now, this is a leaked paper, right? It's not considered scientific fact? Or how do we explain this?

TYSON: It's a leaked story. And so it's not yet even peer reviewed. So we shouldn't discuss the paper itself.

HEMMER: OK. Let's don't go over the deep end on it then.

TYSON: OK.

HEMMER: But what is it saying then? What does it claim, the paper?

TYSON: Well, it's -- what it's -- it's putting together pieces of evidence that has been percolating over the past year or so. And that is, the presence of methane has been spotted on the surface of Mars.

Now, methane, if you're not otherwise familiar with it, it's in your gas stove. In urban centers, it's methane. In the suburbs sometimes they use propane. But it's that gas.

That gas, it turns out, is evidence, is kind of like a bio marker. Because we know it is the byproduct of biology. And on Earth, cows produce methane.

HEMMER: But all this time we've been talking about trying to find water on Mars.

TYSON: Well...

HEMMER: How is this different from the methane claim?

TYSON: Excellent. So now we know there's no water on the Martian surface, that's been clear. There's ideas that maybe the water has seeped below the surface, possibly occupying aqua firs (ph).

The trick here is that methane has been found in the same places as evidence for subsurface water. So that -- that's telling us that the methane would not produce out of a volcano or any other thing that might not be life related. Every place there's water on Earth there's life.

HEMMER: So you're not dismissing this report? But in order for it to be accepted by the scientific community...

TYSON: Right?

HEMMER: ... what has to happen?

TYSON: Well, first, it gets peer reviewed. And people see, well, did they dot their Is did they cross their Ts, did they do it right. If they didn't do it right, they send them back to the drawing board. They redo the analysis, they do the experiment, re-interpret it. But if it goes through, it will be in the journals in a few months.

HEMMER: Now, from what I understand, they had to go to a part Spain to go ahead and carry out experiments. What was in Spain that they had to look into?

TYSON: Yes. What's interesting about this particular part of Spain is that there's a river that is rendered red by the presence of iron. And it's a very high acid environment. And there are life forms that thrive there.

Life forms that previously would have never imagined could have survived. And this is a new brand of life that we now collectively call extremophiles (ph), lovers of extreme environments.

And while biologists are particularly excited about this, we're even more excited about it in astrophysics and astrobiology. Because now when we look for life in the universe, we no longer have to look for just the room temperature planet.

HEMMER: OK.

TYSON: We can look for planets that might have exotic conditions of temperature, pressure, radiation, because we know life can thrive under those conditions. And here we have possible evidence of that on Mars living today, not just a billion years ago.

HEMMER: Good stuff. Hey, tomorrow, come on back, and we'll talk about Pluto.

TYSON: Pluto.

HEMMER: There's some questions about...

TYSON: It's reared its head once again, apparently.

HEMMER: I understand you're getting some really nasty e-mails from third-graders around the country.

TYSON: Totally.

HEMMER: Because you don't believe it's a planet. We'll pick it up tomorrow.

TYSON: All right. I'll be back.

HEMMER: All right.

Here's Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Well, police say it is a miracle nobody was seriously hurt. But should authorities have seen this collision coming? We'll look at that up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: From southern California now, a videotape shot by a man trying to prove the danger at a rail crossing. Captured that collision right there.

A truck carrying strawberries wiped out by a speeding train. There's another angle. Investigators questioning whether or not a poorly-timed crossing signal may be to blame. But the man who shot the videotape says bell warnings of the approaching train does not give the truck driver time enough to get out of the way.

Police say it is a miracle neither the driver nor the train passengers were hurt. The crossing signal is now at the heart of that investigation. And they've got the evidence right there.

O'BRIEN: Well, here's the thing. He's got three angles on this, right?

CAFFERTY: Yes. Something...

O'BRIEN: We saw two relative, closer, and then one wide shot. Clearly plenty of time. And he's allowed this train -- he's not warning the train conductor. There are people on board who could have been killed in that.

CAFFERTY: There's a weasel deal here somewhere.

O'BRIEN: There's something going on that's...

CAFFERTY: Yes.

HEMMER: He's trying to let folks know that the signals have to be better. If you get a truck stuck on the tracks there, they need more time to get out of the way.

O'BRIEN: So did someone stick the truck on the tracks?

HEMMER: Oh, Je ne sais pas.

CAFFERTY: Yes. Well...

O'BRIEN: A lot of questions I think about that. Three interesting angles.

CAFFERTY: How come you didn't asked the guy who was talking about life on Mars how it is that the cows produce methane?

HEMMER: You know, it was... CAFFERTY: He mentioned that, and you just let that go right on by.

HEMMER: Tip of my tongue.

O'BRIEN: We know. Want me to tell you?

CAFFERTY: There was no query made about, well, how this is possible? Does this mean that -- all right.

The "Question of the Day" is as follows -- I knew that. The government is taking up its first big obscenity case in 10 years. A U.S. district court judge threw out an indictment against a California pornography company, Extreme Associates, Inc., saying that prosecutors overstepped their bounds.

The Justice Department wants the indictment reinstated, arguing the ruling undermines obscenity laws. The new attorney general, picking up where old what's his name left off, apparently -- the new guy's Alberto Gonzales. Ashcroft is the guy I was trying to think of -- says selling or distributing obscene materials does not fall within first amendment protections.

I suppose the conundrum is, how do you define what's obscene? But it is only a three-hour show. We have no time to get into that.

The question is whether or not all these obscenity laws are unconstitutional.

Guy in New York writes: "Of course it's unconstitutional. As long as nothing actually being done in the movie is illegal, there shouldn't be any ban at all. This is a free country and the first amendment does protect all this."

James writes: "The federal government has no business dictating what constitutes obscenity. What would be considered obscenity by those living in an Amish community could be normal to people living in a nudist colony. How can a nation that touts its diversity allow such an attempt to crush it?"

Wes writes: "The world would be a pretty boring place if we banned everything the majority didn't approve of. Individually, Americans are pretty intelligent. But as a majority, we are morons."

Chuck in Tennessee, "As the pendulum continues to the right, I'm sure more attempts will be made to regulate morality. The problem with this case is, how do you define 'obscene'? The line is so blurred, it will continue to be hard to define. I personally believe your set furniture is obscene and should be removed."

He's right. Look. That was the cue for the set furniture. There we go.

HEMMER: Actually, it looks kind of nice in that shot.

CAFFERTY: Yes. It's really ugly stuff. HEMMER: It's the other shots.

CAFFERTY: It's just -- it's just awful. I mean, I -- they spent some awful, obscene amount of money to buy this junk. And it has been sitting here for three years.

And it's uncomfortable to sit in. And nobody is ever in the right position because there's cracks in the middle. And the pillows have to be put off and put back on. And you're absolutely right, they should buy some new furniture. CNN makes a lot of money.

O'BRIEN: So you support the obscenity laws?

CAFFERTY: Huh? The other thing they should do is CNN should pay for your dress to go to the Oscars.

Soledad's going to the Oscars. They told her she's going to have to buy her own dress.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

CAFFERTY: Now, you know we're going to talk to you on this program about your experience at the Oscars.

HEMMER: That's a write-off, baby.

CAFFERTY: You're working. You're working the Oscars. The company should be reimbursing you for that dress.

O'BRIEN: Thank you, Jack. I'm going to put you straight through.

CAFFERTY: And after I get fired, you just tell them on the way out the door I said that they ought to pick up the tab on your dress.

O'BRIEN: I absolutely will.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Thank you.

CAFFERTY: Sure.

O'BRIEN: We're keeping a close eye on the White House this morning. President Bush expected to announce his pick to become the nation's first intelligence czar. When it happens, we'll bring it to you live.

A short break. But AMERICAN MORNING is back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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