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American Morning

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Talking Tough on North Korea; The Jessica Lunsford Act

Aired May 03, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

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


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody. Just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Straightaway the news headlines. Here's Carol Costello with some breaking news now. Carol, hello.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. Good morning. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, this just in to CNN this morning, U.S.-led forces have recovered a letter apparently intended for Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Now this letter was believed to be addressed to the Jordanian-born militant. It was apparently seized during a raid last month in Baghdad. The letter apparently talks about low morale among his followers and the incompetence of leaders in his terror network. When we got more on this, we'll pass it along to you. Interesting stuff this morning.

The new Iraqi government is set to officially take control this morning. The Iraqi National Assembly now meeting to approve a full cabinet. Some of the key positions, including the ministries of oil and defense, have been in dispute after an initial agreement last week. The new officials are expected to be sworn in, in the next hour.

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again today. Sources say Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan, will boost the federal funds rate by another quarter point, up to 3 percent. That would be the eighth hike since last June.

And it's been three days since the runaway bride-to-be came home. But still no word on whether she'll face the altar, or the slammer or both. Jennifer Wilbanks could face civil, and criminal charges for falsely claiming she'd been kidnapped. Authorities are deciding on the best course of action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANNY PORTER, GWINNETT CO. D.A.: I think there's got to be some consequence, and that could be something that ranges from a sincere apology and restitution to some period of confinement. That's the one good thing about the criminal system is we have a multitude of options to do -- to try and solve a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: In the meantime, it seems Wilbanks isn't new to the running game. Officials say she was engaged once before, but she changed her mind. And her current fiance, knowing that, gave her the ring back.

HEMMER: Yes. We only repeat our behavior, don't we, Carol?

COSTELLO: We just never learn.

O'BRIEN: He says he loves her, and he wants her to work through her issues, and then they're going to get hitched.

COSTELLO: You're such a nice person, much nicer than I am.

O'BRIEN: I didn't say I agree with it; I just said that's his position.

HEMMER: And I'm going to get a date to that wedding and blog from it.

COSTELLO: I'd love that!

O'BRIEN: Don't encourage him. Thanks, Carol.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking tough on North Korea. Tensions high since the communist country tested a short-range missile on Sunday. Secretary Rice tried to assure allies that their security will be guarded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECY. OF STATE: The United States maintains significant -- and I want to underline significant -- deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region, so I don't think there should be any doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Peter Brookes is a senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He's in Washington this morning.

Peter, nice to see you as always. Thanks for talking with us.

PETER BROOKES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Good to see you.

O'BRIEN: You just heard secretary Rice there talking about significant deterrent capability, and then she said, and I want to underscore that. What exactly is she talking about?

BROOKES: Well, there's a whole host of things. I mean, not only are North Korea launching a missile the other day, a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, but also their nuclear weapons program. And I think what secretary rice was referring to is not only our conventional forces -- our Army, our Navy, our Air Force -- but also the fact that we have -- are developing a missile defense system, which has been deployed to Fort Greeley (ph) Alaska and Vanderburg (ph) Air Force Base, but also the number of strategic nuclear weapons that we have as well. And what she means is it put as doubt in the mind of Kim Jong-Il, the leader of North Korea, that the risk would certainly outweigh the benefit of starting a military confrontation with the United States.

O'BRIEN: So in your mind, she's saying, listen, if push comes to shove, and I'm being serious here, we have an arsenal we could use. What do you make of her tone?

BROOKES: Well, I think she has to be serious. I mean, North Korea has said some very serious things. They're pursuing a nuclear weapons program. They have one of the world's largest militaries, and unfortunately, Soledad, that comes at the expense of their people. They've had a famine going on for the last 11 years, maybe as many as two million out of 22 million people have starved. So I think you -- the North Korean leader believes power comes from the barrel of a gun. So I think you have to kind of stand toe to toe with them and speak with the same sort of rhetoric, not as inflammatory as North Korea, which they're famous for, but I think you have to be tough with north Korea.

O'BRIEN: Does that toe-to-toe stance, though, give an indication that the threat is more serious, if you take a look at it from Secretary Rice's perspective, or is she indicating that there is a change in the stance of the United States?

BROOKES: Well, it is a very serious threat. As I mentioned, it's got one of the world's largest armies. It's working on nuclear weapons. It's talking about putting nuclear weapons on long-range missiles. Some of their missiles at some point in the future may be able to reach the United States.

So I think what she's saying here is, you know, don't do anything foolish, don't miscalculate American resolve, and that if you do something, that either it jeopardizes American interests or South Korea. As you know, that's the issue is that the division between north and South Korea. If you do something militarily against Japan or South Korea, we will react, and we will react with resolve and with strength.

O'BRIEN: Kim Jong-Il has been called very unpredictable many, many times. Is there a chance do you think, that these may be floated stories, that they're not based on any truth at all?

BROOKES: That he's unpredictable?

O'BRIEN: No, no, that this -- the stories about the ability, the missile and their ability, and thus bringing the response from Secretary Rice that, in fact, they're overstating their position, and she's coming down hard, because she actually thinks she's going to squash their positioning.

BROOKES: Right. Well, you know, Soledad, the fact is that some of this is based on intelligence, as you know. In fact, there is some new reporting out that hasn't been confirmed that North Korea may actually be working towards testing a nuclear weapon, which would be a first for them. So some of it's based on intelligence. We know the size of their military. We know we have this missile capability. North Korea is the world's most prolific proliferator of ballistic missiles there, in the arsenals of Iran and Pakistan. And so there's serious reason to be, you know, concerned about them. It's not just bluster. North Korea likes to bluster with rhetoric, and we see that quite often. They've talked about turning Seoul, the capital of South Korea, into a sea of fire and other things.

But, you know, the fact that they have this very significant military conventional arsenal, as well as the fact we know they're working on nuclear weapons, there is reason to be concerned. They are a threat to peace and stability in that part of the world.

O'BRIEN: Peter Brookes, nice, as always, to see you. Thanks for talking with us -- Bill.

BROOKES: Thank you.

HEMMER: State of Florida now says it has one of the toughest child sex-offender laws in the country. The governor, Jeb Bush, signed the Jessica Lunsford Act Monday, less than two months after the 9-year-old was killed allegedly by a convicted sex offender.

Here is what is in the law, it dictates sentences of 25 years to life for people convicted of certain sex crimes with children under the age of 12. It also requires those offenders to wear GPS monitoring systems, tracking systems, for the rest of their lives. And it toughens registration and reporting requirements for child sex offenders.

Question today, though, will this be effective? Victims advocate Marc Klaas of the Klaaskids Foundation back with us this morning in San Francisco.

Marc, always good to have you here. Good morning out there.

MARC KLAAS, THE KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: Hi, Bill, how are you?

HEMMER: I'm doing fine.

I know you like what they did in Florida, but how does this keep the children, the kids in Florida, safer now?

KLAAS: Well, first of all, we have to understand that there's no "silver bullet" solution to this issue. This is a very important component of a very complex puzzle. What this is going to do -- what we have to understand is we've done a miserable job of dealing with sex offenders in this country, both in punishing them and then in managing them once they get out or monitoring them once they get on the streets. This addresses both of those issues. It gives much harsher sentences for people who will commit heinous crimes against children. And it then gives law enforcement a much greater ability to track and monitor these individuals once they are released back on to the street. If this law is enforced, it will go a long way towards the goal of protecting children from the predators that currently exist.

HEMMER: You said the key there, if this law was enforced. Does Florida have the will now to do this, and does it make it easier to throw out, or are we throwing this back in the bushel and saying, you know what, you have to make to hire even more people to make sure that the law was enacted?

KLAAS: Sure. One would hope you'd have to hire less people to enact the law, simply because the alternative to tracking and monitoring these kinds of individuals outside of the GPS bracelets would be hiring enough probation and parole officers to be able to pay much more regular visits. This way, you can have certain people sitting in front of computer monitors.

Now, as far as the will to enforce the law goes, it's not a Florida problem; it's the United States problem. It's an issue that we've dealt with for years. We've passed laws. They turn out to be nothing more than photo opportunities for politicians. One would hope that in this instance, this is not the case.

Let's take an example. David Onstott, the individual who murdered little Sarah Lundy, was an absconding sex offender. In other words, he was not in compliance with the sexual-registration laws in the state of Florida. The penalty for that is supposed to be a five- year felony sentence.

However, knowing that he was an absconder, the local authorities fined him $1,000 and allowed him back on the streets. It was not long after that that he kidnapped and murdered little Sarah Lunde.

HEMMER: Let's point out, the allegations, too. He's on trial and that case will continue through the court system.

KLAAS: Yes, well, that's fine. You can say that. But I mean, from my point of view, this is what's going on. These guys, we don't put the hammer on these guys nearly enough. This is a wonderful opportunity to do something about it.

HEMMER: One more thing here.

O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Potential identity theft hitting very close to home, as in right here in this room. Here with that and a preview of the markets is Andy Serwer. What the hell is that?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: It's our new "Identity Theft Watch" logo, banner, animation, because there's so much of it going on that we decided we needed our very own little animation screen.

Yesterday afternoon, Jack, we were up at "Fortune" magazine reading the latest issue. We have a story out about security and identity theft. And got an e-mail, and the e-mail said that 600,000 Time Warner employees had their identities compromised.

CAFFERTY: That would be us.

SERWER: That would be us. We work at Time Warner. So the story hits home.

Here's what happened. On March 22nd, a truck carrying 40 tapes with 600,000 -- information on 600,000 current and former employees, these cooler -- the coolers. It's a cooler-shaped box with 40 tapes in it, didn't make it to the location where it was supposed to be. A company called Iron Mountain was in charge of these tapes, and they said they picked the tapes up at a Time Warner location, and they never made it in a location to New Jersey.

We got an e-mail from a gentleman named Larry Cochel (ph), the head of Time Warner security. He used to be head of security during the Clinton administration for President Clinton as it turns out.

Iron Mountain is from Boston, and they said that over the past year, they have lost data four times like this, including Bank of America, 1.2 million federal employees have lost their information. They do this for 40,000 companies. Iron Mountain. Maybe we should call it balsa wood Mountain.

CAFFERTY: Swiss cheese Mountain.

SERWER: Yes, how about cotton candy mountain.

CAFFERTY: When did the stuff disappear?

SERWER: March 22nd.

CAFFERTY: And we were just told about it yesterday, which would have been May 2nd.

SERWER: We were just told, 2nd.

A Time Warner spokesman yesterday was contacted and said -- we asked why didn't you tell us, us 600,000 employees? He said, quote, "We wanted to sort of keep paramount the integrity of the investigation." I guess sort of keep paramount.

CAFFERTY: That's a fairly definitive answer.

SERWER: Well, you know, I mean, why couldn't they tell us and do the investigation at the same time? Apparently this truck made 18 stops along the way. So they probably checked it. And one other note. I think it's important to say here, reports say that one person has already been fired in this case, and that is the truck driver.

CAFFERTY: Yes, of course. SERWER: The truck driver has been fired in this case.

CAFFERTY: What do they stay about stuff goes downhill? What about the markets? Do we have time?

SERWER: Markets, yes, just quickly, yesterday a good day and the big news today is going to be the 2:15 Fed....

CAFFERTY: OK, could raise rates.

Time for the "Cafferty File." Rich people -- time for the Cafferty File," hello. Rich people -- take two -- just as likely to be fat as poor people. Obesity, which is defined as 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight, has increased almost three-fold over a 30-year period among Americans who earn more than $60,000 a year. There used to be more fat poor people than fat rich people, but not anymore.

According to government figures in the 1970s, fewer 10 percent of the affluent were fat, compared to almost a quarter of those who earned less than $25,000. A researcher at the CDC says higher=income people may have more sedentary jobs, physical inactivity, and large portion sizes at those fast food places are affecting everybody.

Lawmakers want to make it illegal to sell cloned pets in California. The nation's only commercial pet cloning company, Genetics Savings and Clone, is based out there. They've already sold two cloned kittens for 50 grand a pop. The kittens were genetic clones of their owner's recently dead cats. Proponents of the bill think cloning that hurts the animals, exploits grieving pet owners and is unnecessary in a state that kills more than a million unwanted dogs and cats every year. The bill would ban the sale of genetically modified pets, which could affect a San Diego company's plan to create an all-allergy-proof cat, altered to remove a protein that causes people to sneeze.

SERWER: A little bit too much science there maybe.

CAFFERTY: I got one more. Second generation of extremely rare white Bengal tigers has been born in captivity. Eight-year-old Shinta gave birth last week to these four cubs in an Indonesian safari park. Shinta was the first tiger bred and born in that safari park. Her parents came from a Minnesota zoo here in the United States. The cubs are born blind. They stay with their mothers for two to three years. It's estimated, sadly, that there are fewer than 3,000 Bengal tigers left in the wild and only 150 white ones.

SERWER: Shinta is pretty cool, huh?

O'BRIEN: She's beautiful.

SERWER: Good looking mother.

CAFFERTY: They should clone those.

HEMMER: In a moment here, the 8-year-old boy who became an unlikely hero, how he saved his father's life on a Massachusetts highway.

Back in a moment here on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired May 3, 2005 - 08:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody. Just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Straightaway the news headlines. Here's Carol Costello with some breaking news now. Carol, hello.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. Good morning. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, this just in to CNN this morning, U.S.-led forces have recovered a letter apparently intended for Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. Now this letter was believed to be addressed to the Jordanian-born militant. It was apparently seized during a raid last month in Baghdad. The letter apparently talks about low morale among his followers and the incompetence of leaders in his terror network. When we got more on this, we'll pass it along to you. Interesting stuff this morning.

The new Iraqi government is set to officially take control this morning. The Iraqi National Assembly now meeting to approve a full cabinet. Some of the key positions, including the ministries of oil and defense, have been in dispute after an initial agreement last week. The new officials are expected to be sworn in, in the next hour.

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again today. Sources say Federal Reserve chair, Alan Greenspan, will boost the federal funds rate by another quarter point, up to 3 percent. That would be the eighth hike since last June.

And it's been three days since the runaway bride-to-be came home. But still no word on whether she'll face the altar, or the slammer or both. Jennifer Wilbanks could face civil, and criminal charges for falsely claiming she'd been kidnapped. Authorities are deciding on the best course of action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANNY PORTER, GWINNETT CO. D.A.: I think there's got to be some consequence, and that could be something that ranges from a sincere apology and restitution to some period of confinement. That's the one good thing about the criminal system is we have a multitude of options to do -- to try and solve a problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: In the meantime, it seems Wilbanks isn't new to the running game. Officials say she was engaged once before, but she changed her mind. And her current fiance, knowing that, gave her the ring back.

HEMMER: Yes. We only repeat our behavior, don't we, Carol?

COSTELLO: We just never learn.

O'BRIEN: He says he loves her, and he wants her to work through her issues, and then they're going to get hitched.

COSTELLO: You're such a nice person, much nicer than I am.

O'BRIEN: I didn't say I agree with it; I just said that's his position.

HEMMER: And I'm going to get a date to that wedding and blog from it.

COSTELLO: I'd love that!

O'BRIEN: Don't encourage him. Thanks, Carol.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talking tough on North Korea. Tensions high since the communist country tested a short-range missile on Sunday. Secretary Rice tried to assure allies that their security will be guarded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECY. OF STATE: The United States maintains significant -- and I want to underline significant -- deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region, so I don't think there should be any doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Peter Brookes is a senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation. He's in Washington this morning.

Peter, nice to see you as always. Thanks for talking with us.

PETER BROOKES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Good to see you.

O'BRIEN: You just heard secretary Rice there talking about significant deterrent capability, and then she said, and I want to underscore that. What exactly is she talking about?

BROOKES: Well, there's a whole host of things. I mean, not only are North Korea launching a missile the other day, a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, but also their nuclear weapons program. And I think what secretary rice was referring to is not only our conventional forces -- our Army, our Navy, our Air Force -- but also the fact that we have -- are developing a missile defense system, which has been deployed to Fort Greeley (ph) Alaska and Vanderburg (ph) Air Force Base, but also the number of strategic nuclear weapons that we have as well. And what she means is it put as doubt in the mind of Kim Jong-Il, the leader of North Korea, that the risk would certainly outweigh the benefit of starting a military confrontation with the United States.

O'BRIEN: So in your mind, she's saying, listen, if push comes to shove, and I'm being serious here, we have an arsenal we could use. What do you make of her tone?

BROOKES: Well, I think she has to be serious. I mean, North Korea has said some very serious things. They're pursuing a nuclear weapons program. They have one of the world's largest militaries, and unfortunately, Soledad, that comes at the expense of their people. They've had a famine going on for the last 11 years, maybe as many as two million out of 22 million people have starved. So I think you -- the North Korean leader believes power comes from the barrel of a gun. So I think you have to kind of stand toe to toe with them and speak with the same sort of rhetoric, not as inflammatory as North Korea, which they're famous for, but I think you have to be tough with north Korea.

O'BRIEN: Does that toe-to-toe stance, though, give an indication that the threat is more serious, if you take a look at it from Secretary Rice's perspective, or is she indicating that there is a change in the stance of the United States?

BROOKES: Well, it is a very serious threat. As I mentioned, it's got one of the world's largest armies. It's working on nuclear weapons. It's talking about putting nuclear weapons on long-range missiles. Some of their missiles at some point in the future may be able to reach the United States.

So I think what she's saying here is, you know, don't do anything foolish, don't miscalculate American resolve, and that if you do something, that either it jeopardizes American interests or South Korea. As you know, that's the issue is that the division between north and South Korea. If you do something militarily against Japan or South Korea, we will react, and we will react with resolve and with strength.

O'BRIEN: Kim Jong-Il has been called very unpredictable many, many times. Is there a chance do you think, that these may be floated stories, that they're not based on any truth at all?

BROOKES: That he's unpredictable?

O'BRIEN: No, no, that this -- the stories about the ability, the missile and their ability, and thus bringing the response from Secretary Rice that, in fact, they're overstating their position, and she's coming down hard, because she actually thinks she's going to squash their positioning.

BROOKES: Right. Well, you know, Soledad, the fact is that some of this is based on intelligence, as you know. In fact, there is some new reporting out that hasn't been confirmed that North Korea may actually be working towards testing a nuclear weapon, which would be a first for them. So some of it's based on intelligence. We know the size of their military. We know we have this missile capability. North Korea is the world's most prolific proliferator of ballistic missiles there, in the arsenals of Iran and Pakistan. And so there's serious reason to be, you know, concerned about them. It's not just bluster. North Korea likes to bluster with rhetoric, and we see that quite often. They've talked about turning Seoul, the capital of South Korea, into a sea of fire and other things.

But, you know, the fact that they have this very significant military conventional arsenal, as well as the fact we know they're working on nuclear weapons, there is reason to be concerned. They are a threat to peace and stability in that part of the world.

O'BRIEN: Peter Brookes, nice, as always, to see you. Thanks for talking with us -- Bill.

BROOKES: Thank you.

HEMMER: State of Florida now says it has one of the toughest child sex-offender laws in the country. The governor, Jeb Bush, signed the Jessica Lunsford Act Monday, less than two months after the 9-year-old was killed allegedly by a convicted sex offender.

Here is what is in the law, it dictates sentences of 25 years to life for people convicted of certain sex crimes with children under the age of 12. It also requires those offenders to wear GPS monitoring systems, tracking systems, for the rest of their lives. And it toughens registration and reporting requirements for child sex offenders.

Question today, though, will this be effective? Victims advocate Marc Klaas of the Klaaskids Foundation back with us this morning in San Francisco.

Marc, always good to have you here. Good morning out there.

MARC KLAAS, THE KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: Hi, Bill, how are you?

HEMMER: I'm doing fine.

I know you like what they did in Florida, but how does this keep the children, the kids in Florida, safer now?

KLAAS: Well, first of all, we have to understand that there's no "silver bullet" solution to this issue. This is a very important component of a very complex puzzle. What this is going to do -- what we have to understand is we've done a miserable job of dealing with sex offenders in this country, both in punishing them and then in managing them once they get out or monitoring them once they get on the streets. This addresses both of those issues. It gives much harsher sentences for people who will commit heinous crimes against children. And it then gives law enforcement a much greater ability to track and monitor these individuals once they are released back on to the street. If this law is enforced, it will go a long way towards the goal of protecting children from the predators that currently exist.

HEMMER: You said the key there, if this law was enforced. Does Florida have the will now to do this, and does it make it easier to throw out, or are we throwing this back in the bushel and saying, you know what, you have to make to hire even more people to make sure that the law was enacted?

KLAAS: Sure. One would hope you'd have to hire less people to enact the law, simply because the alternative to tracking and monitoring these kinds of individuals outside of the GPS bracelets would be hiring enough probation and parole officers to be able to pay much more regular visits. This way, you can have certain people sitting in front of computer monitors.

Now, as far as the will to enforce the law goes, it's not a Florida problem; it's the United States problem. It's an issue that we've dealt with for years. We've passed laws. They turn out to be nothing more than photo opportunities for politicians. One would hope that in this instance, this is not the case.

Let's take an example. David Onstott, the individual who murdered little Sarah Lundy, was an absconding sex offender. In other words, he was not in compliance with the sexual-registration laws in the state of Florida. The penalty for that is supposed to be a five- year felony sentence.

However, knowing that he was an absconder, the local authorities fined him $1,000 and allowed him back on the streets. It was not long after that that he kidnapped and murdered little Sarah Lunde.

HEMMER: Let's point out, the allegations, too. He's on trial and that case will continue through the court system.

KLAAS: Yes, well, that's fine. You can say that. But I mean, from my point of view, this is what's going on. These guys, we don't put the hammer on these guys nearly enough. This is a wonderful opportunity to do something about it.

HEMMER: One more thing here.

O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Potential identity theft hitting very close to home, as in right here in this room. Here with that and a preview of the markets is Andy Serwer. What the hell is that?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: It's our new "Identity Theft Watch" logo, banner, animation, because there's so much of it going on that we decided we needed our very own little animation screen.

Yesterday afternoon, Jack, we were up at "Fortune" magazine reading the latest issue. We have a story out about security and identity theft. And got an e-mail, and the e-mail said that 600,000 Time Warner employees had their identities compromised.

CAFFERTY: That would be us.

SERWER: That would be us. We work at Time Warner. So the story hits home.

Here's what happened. On March 22nd, a truck carrying 40 tapes with 600,000 -- information on 600,000 current and former employees, these cooler -- the coolers. It's a cooler-shaped box with 40 tapes in it, didn't make it to the location where it was supposed to be. A company called Iron Mountain was in charge of these tapes, and they said they picked the tapes up at a Time Warner location, and they never made it in a location to New Jersey.

We got an e-mail from a gentleman named Larry Cochel (ph), the head of Time Warner security. He used to be head of security during the Clinton administration for President Clinton as it turns out.

Iron Mountain is from Boston, and they said that over the past year, they have lost data four times like this, including Bank of America, 1.2 million federal employees have lost their information. They do this for 40,000 companies. Iron Mountain. Maybe we should call it balsa wood Mountain.

CAFFERTY: Swiss cheese Mountain.

SERWER: Yes, how about cotton candy mountain.

CAFFERTY: When did the stuff disappear?

SERWER: March 22nd.

CAFFERTY: And we were just told about it yesterday, which would have been May 2nd.

SERWER: We were just told, 2nd.

A Time Warner spokesman yesterday was contacted and said -- we asked why didn't you tell us, us 600,000 employees? He said, quote, "We wanted to sort of keep paramount the integrity of the investigation." I guess sort of keep paramount.

CAFFERTY: That's a fairly definitive answer.

SERWER: Well, you know, I mean, why couldn't they tell us and do the investigation at the same time? Apparently this truck made 18 stops along the way. So they probably checked it. And one other note. I think it's important to say here, reports say that one person has already been fired in this case, and that is the truck driver.

CAFFERTY: Yes, of course. SERWER: The truck driver has been fired in this case.

CAFFERTY: What do they stay about stuff goes downhill? What about the markets? Do we have time?

SERWER: Markets, yes, just quickly, yesterday a good day and the big news today is going to be the 2:15 Fed....

CAFFERTY: OK, could raise rates.

Time for the "Cafferty File." Rich people -- time for the Cafferty File," hello. Rich people -- take two -- just as likely to be fat as poor people. Obesity, which is defined as 30 or more pounds over a healthy weight, has increased almost three-fold over a 30-year period among Americans who earn more than $60,000 a year. There used to be more fat poor people than fat rich people, but not anymore.

According to government figures in the 1970s, fewer 10 percent of the affluent were fat, compared to almost a quarter of those who earned less than $25,000. A researcher at the CDC says higher=income people may have more sedentary jobs, physical inactivity, and large portion sizes at those fast food places are affecting everybody.

Lawmakers want to make it illegal to sell cloned pets in California. The nation's only commercial pet cloning company, Genetics Savings and Clone, is based out there. They've already sold two cloned kittens for 50 grand a pop. The kittens were genetic clones of their owner's recently dead cats. Proponents of the bill think cloning that hurts the animals, exploits grieving pet owners and is unnecessary in a state that kills more than a million unwanted dogs and cats every year. The bill would ban the sale of genetically modified pets, which could affect a San Diego company's plan to create an all-allergy-proof cat, altered to remove a protein that causes people to sneeze.

SERWER: A little bit too much science there maybe.

CAFFERTY: I got one more. Second generation of extremely rare white Bengal tigers has been born in captivity. Eight-year-old Shinta gave birth last week to these four cubs in an Indonesian safari park. Shinta was the first tiger bred and born in that safari park. Her parents came from a Minnesota zoo here in the United States. The cubs are born blind. They stay with their mothers for two to three years. It's estimated, sadly, that there are fewer than 3,000 Bengal tigers left in the wild and only 150 white ones.

SERWER: Shinta is pretty cool, huh?

O'BRIEN: She's beautiful.

SERWER: Good looking mother.

CAFFERTY: They should clone those.

HEMMER: In a moment here, the 8-year-old boy who became an unlikely hero, how he saved his father's life on a Massachusetts highway.

Back in a moment here on AMERICAN MORNING.

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