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American Morning

Some Members of Congress Scratching Heads After Two Days of Testimony From Donald Rumsfeld; 'Gimme a Minute'

Aired February 18, 2005 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody. Just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. Some members of Congress are scratching their heads a bit after two days of testimony from Donald Rumsfeld. Some might call it classic Rumsfeld.
Jamie McIntyre has a look at what the defense secretary didn't say, but how he said it.

Also this hour, Sanjay looks at a pioneering heart operation, open heart surgery on a tiny baby, the smallest ever to have this procedure, a heart the size of a small grape. Doctors cautiously optimistic, so this one may have a happy ending. So we'll get to Sanjay in a moment this hour.

Good story there.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's hope so.

First, though, headlines again. Heidi Collins sitting in this morning.

Nice to see you. Good morning.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, guys, and good morning, to you, everybody.

Now in the news this morning, we begin in Iraq, where there's been a series of attacks in the Baghdad area. CNN confirming three explosions now within the past three hours. The attacks killing at least 18 people, wounding dozens of others. The violence comes during a major Shiite holy period.

A Maryland police officer a free man this morning, cleared of charges he used excessive force to subdue a handcuffed suspect. The acquittal coming despite a videotape showing the officer hitting the suspect. Jurors said they believed the officer's testimony that he thought the man was armed. The suspect is serving a prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to carjackings and weapons charges.

To health news now. A new discovery could help breast-cancer patients avoid unnecessary chemotherapy. Scientists say they've developed a genetic screening test, which may help determine which patients are at high risk for the cancer coming back. Until now, there was no way to predict who was most likely to relapse, and most patients received chemotherapy drugs as a precaution. But researchers caution now the study was conducted on a small sampling of women. And plans for the royal wedding hitting a small detour. The office for Prince Charles says his April 8th nuptials for Camilla Parker-Bowles will take place in Windsor Town Hall, not the Windsor Castle. So on your invitation, make sure to make that correction. The move said to be due to problems with getting a wedding license. But the new location will apparently make it easier for the public to see the blushing bride and groom.

I don't know if that's, like, through the trees or what.

O'BRIEN: Yes, right. Wedding license problems?

COLLINS: Yes.

O'BRIEN: For the future king.

COLLINS: Yes, right, exactly. Who knows?

O'BRIEN: We're buying that. Thanks, Heidi.

HEMMER: From Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spent the past two days testifying before four different congressional committees, and while he took many questions, the answers did not always come easily.

Here's our senior Pentagon correspondent, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Donald Rumsfeld is a hard man to pin down.

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECY. OF DEFENSE: I'd dearly love to be able to give you a specific date. I can't.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was wondering, do you have any comment on that?

RUMSFELD: Congressman, I don't. I'm not familiar with the cuts you're referring to.

MCINTYRE: It's unknowable is Rumsfeld's rote response to everything from how long the war in Iraq will last to how much it will cost.

RUMSFELD: There's never been a war that was predictable as to length, casualty, or cost in the history of mankind.

MCINTYRE: A crafty political infighter, Rumsfeld knows anything he says can and will be used against him, so he rarely goes out on a limb.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I remember your testimony that said, this war isn't going to cost us anything.

RUMSFELD: I never said anything like that. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's going to be paid for by frozen assets.

MCINTYRE: Rumsfeld was right, of course. It was his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who made that rosy prediction.

But Rumsfeld's routine refusal to share even his informed opinion infuriates his critics.

Senator John McCain pressed for numbers of Iraqi insurgents, only to watch Rumsfeld easily evade the questions.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: Shouldn't the American people also know the size, and shape and nature of the enemy that we're facing, since it's their sons and daughters who are going to serve?

RUMSFELD: On the insurgency question, one can't help but agree with you. In a perfect world, you would like very much to have a good grip on the numbers.

MCINTYRE (on camera): But Rumsfeld's word world is never perfect. Unless he has that perfect bulletproof answer, he's loathe to give his detractors any ammunition to use against him. It may be smart politics, but to some members of Congress, it's decidedly unsatisfying.

Jamie McIntyre, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Well, every Friday at this time, we cook up the week's big stories to give to our "Gimme a Minute" gang for some fast-food for though. In New York this is WABC Radio host Mark Simone.

Hey, Mark, good morning. Nice to see you.

MARK SIMONE, WABC RADIO: Hey, good morning.

O'BRIEN: In Pittsburgh this morning is Bev Smith. She with American Urban Radio Networks.

Nice to you see, Bev. Good morning.

BEV SMITH, AMERICAN URBAN RADIO NETWORKS: Hi, Soledad. Nice seeing you.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.

And right here with us is Andy Borowitz of borowitzreport.com.

Nice to see you, Andy. Good morning to you.

ANDY BOROWITZ, BOROWITZREPORT.COM: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: We're going to begin with Bev this morning.

Bev, John Negroponte, yay or nay? You like the guy in his new position, or not?

SMITH: Is there a category called hmm, let me think about this. I'm not sure. He only had eight months in that ambassadorial position. There was controversy surrounding him before. I'm not sure.

I was really hoping that we would not push the president. I know this is going to sound crazy, me rooting for George Bush with this one. I can't believe I'm doing this myself. But I think maybe we should have waited to get the right kind of person. This is the super-intelligence person who has to deal with super spies and the like, and then has to convey those messages back to the president. I'm not so sure that Mr. Negroponte is ready for that position. But I felt the same way about Condoleezza Rice.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Mark, let me interrupt Bev there, because she makes a good point. Mark, there are other people we know now who were approached about the job.

SIMONE: Well, let's remember no matter who Bush appointed, Democrats would attack him. He could appoint James Bond, and they'd say he didn't know enough about intelligence.

Now Tom Kane and Lee Hamilton ran the 9/11 Commission. They dreamed up that position. They said that Negroponte had extraordinarily knowledge on intelligence issues. That should settle that.

All right, Andy, what do you think?

BOROWITZ: You know, when I heard the news, I was like, well, at least the president pulled one American out of Iraq. Good news.

O'BRIEN: OK, moving on. Let's get right to Mark. Here's a statistic for you. Five out of six military Reserve components falling short of recruiting goals this year. Does that surprise you, Mark?

SIMONE: Well, you know, it goes up and down. I love "The New York Times," though, a while back, a year back, enlistment was way up. So they said that was the result of a poor economy and people not being able to find jobs. So according to "The New York Times" logic the economy must be booming right now, people don't want to enlist.

O'BRIEN: Hey, Bev, how big a problem do you think this is?

SMITH; That's not the reason, booming and people don't want to enlist. People don't want to enlist because they don't believe anymore. And we need to tell that story, we need to talk about what recruiters are doing at the high school level, because they can't get the average citizen to come out, and going from high school to high school, getting seniors to sign sheets of paper saying when I graduate, I'll come to you oh Army, oh Navy, oh Marines. So I think people are not joining because they don't believe the hype anymore. They don't want to die for something they don't believe in, and they're not willing to take the risk of leaving their families and not returning. It's a serious issue, and I don't think we should trivialize it.

O'BRIEN: Andy? Ever thought about joining up.

BOROWITZ: Well, I'm going to trivialize it now. If we really need a lot of experienced fighters, aren't there a lot of hockey players available now?

O'BRIEN: I was wondering how long it would take for somebody to bring in the NHL.

Let's talk a little bit about this guy in the press corps. You know, it's so hard, as you know, to get in anywhere these days, and here's a guy who snuck into the White House press corps.

Bev, why don't you begin with this. Do you think this is sort of a tempest in a teapot?

SMITH: I think we're having fun with it. But then, when have we had fun in the White House? I think it's also the fact that many of us, who are legitimate journalists, and some of us talk show hosts like to think we are, can't get in. This guy changes his name, acts like he loves the president, the Republicans, the conservatives, and gets right in.

Now I'm go going to tell you something, that does not make me feel so secure about homeland security. He didn't even use his right name, and he got access to a lot of things. So I think...

O'BRIEN: For two years, Mark, for two years.

SIMONE: Well, there's another one. He's not the only one. There's another one who has been getting in for many years, Russell Mockabar (ph) is his name. He has a newsletter he claims has a circulation of 500. He asks very hostile questions, so he's been giving a complete pass here. Nobody's looking into him. The only time they banned him was in 2001, right after 9/11. They banned him for a couple months.

SMITH: But aren't there rumors that he may not be the real deal, that he may be a plant?

O'BRIEN: Maybe that will be something we'll have to look into.

Andy, what do you think?

SMITH: All I know is Bernard Kerik's got to be saying, I can't believe this dude mate it true and I didn't.

O'BRIEN: All right, we've got to get right to our under-covered story of the week.

Mark, why don't you start?

SIMONE: Well, I love that Rumsfeld story you just had. But the greatest thing was after the first day, he announced all of a sudden that they would have to take a recess, that it was time for lunch, and that he had to go testify somewhere else, and senators kept talking, as Rumsfeld packed up his briefcase and left. I love that reverse psychology. It's like when a cop pulls you over, asking to his license.

O'BRIEN: I'm going to try that next time. That's a very good idea.

Bev, what do you think?

SMITH: I think we missed following that story, and missed following the fact that Joe Lieberman's name has been bantered around quite a bit by the Republicans. And that there is a rumor, mark that, on Capitol Hill that is going wild that Donald Rumsfeld, bye- bye, Joe Lieberman, hello. So I think we kind of missed looking at that this week.

O'BRIEN: Andy, you got the final word this morning. What do you think?

BOROWITZ: That the judge in the Michael Jackson case has whittled down the jury pool to 242 book deals.

O'BRIEN: And you know what? You're not even joking about that. You guys, as always, I thank you very much. Have a great weekend, OK?

SMITH: Thank you for having us.

BOROWITZ: You, too.

SMITH: Bye, bye. .

HEMMER: All right, good round, too.

20 minutes before the hour now. There's a recent study funded by the government igniting a controversy over the potentially devastating impact of global warming on a major U.S. city. In Boston for us on this story, here's Dan Lothian this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Watch the water in Boston Harbor as it surges beyond its boundaries after a heavy storm, across streets, around buildings, over parks, flooding parts of downtown and the financial district, a scenario predicted by the end of the century.

PHIL WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION: The results are frightening and very costly.

LOTHIAN (on camera): Researchers also found that major roadways could also be impacted, submerged under two feet of water, like here, Sturrow Drive (ph), which runs East and West along the Charles River, past Harvard and M.I.T.

(voice-over): It's a stunning graphic to illustrate what researchers at Boston University, Tufts and the University of Maryland have detailed in an EPA-sponsored study commissioned during the Clinton administration. The fallout, they believe, from rising sea levels and extreme weather due to global warming.

DR. WILLIAM ANDERSON, BOSTON UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER: You think, well, the sea level's gone a couple feet higher. Oh well, so, a couple feet, what's that? Or it's going to be a couple of -- three degrees warmer. Well, OK, what's that? But what really matters is the extremes. Because of weather -- what matters is the extremes.

LOTHIAN: But the Bush administration and some experts are skeptical of the threat of global warming.

ANDERSON: Thus far, we haven't seen any great relationship between the warming observed and extreme weather events and we're not entirely sure if we ever will.

LOTHIAN: But in announcing findings, researchers and environmentalists warned of dire consequences if steps to mitigate global warming aren't taken.

PHIL WARBURG, CONSERVATION LAW FOUNDATION: Investing in cleaner renewable energy like wind power, investing in energy efficiency and cleaner transportation options.

LOTHIAN: Most importantly, they say, the city should take a proactive approach, such as flood-proofing buildings or constructing walls.

ANDERSON: We've got to start thinking about being prepared for it.

LOTHIAN: Even as experts debate the severity of global warming, and potential problems.

Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HEMMER: 18 minutes now before the hour.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: The on again/off again deal between two retail giants could be back on again. Back to Andy on that story in a moment here.

O'BRIEN: Also, when little Baby Jerrick was born 13 weeks early, most experts said he had no chance to live. But thanks to a heroic doctor and a groundbreaking procedure, all those nay-sayers were wrong. His story's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody. We're "Paging Dr. Gupta" this morning about a medical milestone. As Sanjay tells us, groundbreaking open heart surgery saved the life of a premature infant.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA LOURDES, BABY JERRICK'S MOTHER: What if I just pray hard, that my baby reaches two pounds.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Baby Jerrick was born weighing around just a pound. And he also had a life-threatening heart defect. Doctors told his mother, Maria, who is also a pediatrician, to abandon hope.

LOURDES: I told them, you know, like, so you're not giving me any options here. You know, what is it that you want -- what's the plan for the baby? It was very difficult. I was blocked a lot and I was just saying, you know, like, I was just surrendering, whatever comes.

GUPTA: But there was one option left. And his name, Dr. Mohan Reddy, a pediatric heart surgeon at Stanford and the only one willing to do the operation. In a last ditch effort, Jerrick was airlifted up the California coast. He was just a week old.

Jerrick suffered from what the surgeon called transposition of the great arteries. Simply, the large blood vessel to take oxygenated blood to the body was switched with the blood vessel that takes blood to the lungs. And the body was literally starving for air. Fixing it would be risky, but the alternative was almost certain death.

DR. V. MOHAN REDDY, LUCILE PACKARD CHILDREN'S HOSP.: Just to give you an idea, we just took a picture of the baby with a finger next to the chest, and the whole baby's chest is pretty much the size of my finger. And the incision is probably the tip of my finger. That's how big the chest, whole chest is.

GUPTA: And the heart?

REDDY: I would say probably the size of a moderate-sized grape, maybe smaller.

GUPTA: Still, after six hours, Dr. Reddy and his team completed a medical first. They switched the arteries back on what they believed is the smallest baby ever to survive this procedure. And at the same time, pushed back even further, the boundaries of life and death.

REDDY: When you do cardiac surgery in children, you're always living on the edge. Unless you take risks, you aren't going to advance the field in order to make progress.

GUPTA: In this case, progress is measured in a healthy baby and a happy mother.

REDDY: It's very joyous in the sense -- it's very satisfying that we can help this little, tiny baby.

LOURDES: I'm a mother. I think I was always looking for a good side of it.

REDDY: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Doctors expect Baby Jerrick to live a normal life, barring any complications from his premature birth.

HEMMER: And best to them, too. Will they or won't they? It looks like two retail giants are once again talking about this big merger. This story's on again and off again all week long. Back in a moment, live in New York City, after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Time for "The Cafferty File." A California man threw a lit cigarette out of his car, bad idea for a lot of reasons. One of then is it blew back in, landed in the back seat, and this is the result of that. This is the result -- that means roll the tape. There you go. His car was toast. The unidentified man driving across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco when he flipped the butt out the window. The back seat caught fire. The man pulled to the side of the road, but he forget to put the car in park. So the car, on fire, kept moseying on down the road. The guy wasn't hurt. It did singe some of the hair on the back of his head. Police say he'll be charged with littering.

What's wrong with this picture, a liberal Hollywood Democrat turning his back on a liberal Washington Democrat. This never happened, boys and girls, but it did here in New York last night. "The New York Daily News" reporting that Hollywood mogul and Democratic supporter David Geffen trashed Hillary Clinton's chances of becoming president of the United States in 2008 at an event in New York last evening. Geffen was a big supporter and friend of Hillary's husband, Bill Clinton, when he was president.

But here's what Geffen had to say about Hillary: "She can't win. She's an incredibly polarizing figure. And ambition is just not a good enough reason."

A CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll, however, begs to differ. Hillary is the top Democratic choice currently for 2008.

Here's something to ponder. A Chinese man discovered 30 years ago that his ears leak. He can force air from his lungs out his ears. Not just a little air either, a lot of air, enough to blow out candles, and enough to blow up balloons. Wi Min Tang's (ph) 55. He works in a factory in China. When he found out his ears leaked, he came up with this idea of using them to blow up balloons. The thing to ponder is, why? Sometimes a picture is just too good to pass up.

HEMMER: Cute stuff. Thank you, Jack.

Are we done? O'BRIEN: yes, I'm still impressed by the...

CAFFERTY: By the what?

O'BRIEN: Leaking ears.

CAFFERTY: What about that car footage that we almost didn't get to see. That was pretty good, right?

O'BRIEN: I liked it all. I give the file an A-plus.

CAFFERTY: You know, that car's now an antique.

HEMMER: They charged him with littering too.

Thank you, Jack.

Forget pitchers and catchers, time to start your engines. The NASCAR racing season begins this weekend, marks the season opening events for the fastest growing sport in the country. Carol Costello has a look at that, coming up next hour.

Back after this on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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