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Nancy Grace

37 Dead in Terrorist Attacks in London

Aired July 07, 2005 - 20:00   ET

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

LISA PINTO, HOST: Tonight, 37 confirmed dead and more than 700 badly injured in an attack on our friends in London. I know you`ve heard about it all day. But let`s ask ourselves: Are we safe right here at home? Are there more bombs that we don`t even know about?
Good evening, everybody. I`m Lisa Pinto in for Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us.

Wow, what a wakeup call this morning. Thirty-seven confirmed dead and more than 700 seriously hurt by four bombs in central London. Right after the attacks, our government raised the terror alert. So I`m asking myself, what can they do to keep us safe or are we sitting ducks? How can we fight back? Are we next?

First, let`s take a look at the timeline of what actually happened in London this morning just when we woke up.

The first blast was at approximately 8:51 a.m. in London at Liverpool Street Station. You`re seeing footage of a subway ripped apart. Seven are confirmed dead from that subway, 110 confirmed wounded. People on their way to work.

The second blast was just five minutes later at King`s Cross-Russell Square Stations. These were in central London, people commuting to work. Twenty-one confirmed dead in that blast. It`s (INAUDIBLE) all over again.

Blast three was 9:17 a.m. in the morning on the Edgware Road. That`s, again, in the subway, the third subway attack in London. Seven confirmed dead.

And then a bus, a bus squashed like sardine can. You saw the double- decker bus there. That was 9:47 a.m. in Upper Woburn Square. Two confirmed dead, but we don`t have all the numbers from that bus bombing yet. Four bombs in the space of less than an hour.

Let`s go straight out to London, Alex Thompson from ITN to tell us what is happening in London right now -- Alex? Can you hear me? What`s...

ALEX THOMPSON, ITN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good evening to you, Lisa, and all of your viewers. Right now, it`s a very quiet night, frankly. A lot of people left home early. They were told to stagger their journeys. A totally bizarre scene for the evening rush hour after a very bizarre scene, obviously, in the morning rush hour.

This evening, tens of thousands of people streaming home on foot. You could hear nothing but the patter of feet around the areas where these blasts had happened. So really, the transport system was down. People simply had to walk to the main rail routes and then take the trains overland from there. No underground, no taxies, very few buses.

PINTO: That`s sounds like 9/11, people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and hiking uptown to get home. That`s exactly what you`re describing. What are the numbers at this point, the casualty numbers? I mean, we`re just horrified over here.

THOMPSON: Well, I wouldn`t want to make any parallels with September 11th, with 9/11. This was nothing like on the same scale. There were thousands of people killed in those -- in the Twin Towers attacks.

Here we`re talking 37, possibly 38 people, confirmed dead and several hundred injured. We don`t know, of course, whether amongst those, the casualties, the dead, will, in fact, turn out to be some four suicide bombers. We don`t know that. These could be simply remote controlled time-bomb devices. They could be suicide bombers. We don`t know yet.

So it`s on a much smaller scale. Ninety-nine percent of London is really unaffected. I mean, the areas around where the underground station bombs happened, of course, they`re cordoned off. The rest of the city, once the Tube will be up and running, and that`ll happen tomorrow...

PINTO: But, Alex...

(CROSSTALK)

THOMPSON: ... onwards, and so, too, with the buses.

PINTO: Alex, the morning commute tomorrow. Are people going to want to get on the Underground? I`ve been on your Tube system. You have to go down, down, down three -- sometimes three flights of escalators just to get on the subway. And the people -- the way this is today described being stuck there for 30 minutes. Who`s going to want to ride the subway?

THOMPSON: It depends how people are. Personally, I`d ride it tonight, I mean, if it was open. It really depends how people assess the risks. And ultimately, that`s a personal thing.

I think most people will quite simply take the decision, as people tend to the world over. It`s happened now. It`s probably safe now. It`s not going to happen to me. The odds are very long on it actually happening to you.

Of course, there`ll be an effect, not least the infrastructure won`t be working fully tomorrow. A lot of these -- the effects at stations where the bombs happened, they`re not going to be open because there are scenes of crime.

PINTO: Alex, let me bring in Peter Bergen, who`s our CNN terrorism expert.

Peter, are we safe in this country right now? Are we next?

PETER BERGEN, CNN TERRORISM EXPERT: Yes, I think we`re quite safe in this country. And we`ve done a lot of things since 9/11, hardened cockpit doors, made it much harder for hijackers to hijack planes.

After the Madrid attacks in 2004, the United States, according to Michael Chertoff today, the head of Department of Homeland Security, you know, mass transit, there`ve been additional safety measures taken in mass transit this country. I mean, obviously, you can`t protect yourself against everything, but we`re in a very different posture.

PINTO: Well, Peter, let me ask you this. Do we know who did this?

BERGEN: We don`t. We`ve had a claim of responsibility from a group called Al Qaeda in Europe...

PINTO: No sound.

BERGEN: ... on a Jihadist Web site. Unfortunately, the Jihadist Web sites are -- can you hear me?

PINTO: Well, Peter, let me ask you this, what brought this on? Was it the G-8 summit meeting?

BERGEN: Yes, sadly, the G-8 summit meeting was a factor. I mean, I think there were several different factors here. Assuming this is a jihadist group, you know, Britain is a close ally of the United States. It`s involved in the coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The G-8 summit was happening, a symbolic event. There was a mass casualty attack. And so, you know, there is a very limited universe of people who would have done this kind of attack. The IRA wouldn`t indulge in this sort of thing, so it...

PINTO: You can say for sure it`s not the IRA? You can say that for sure?

BERGEN: I think it`s very extraordinarily unlikely. The IRA always - - usually warns about attacks, it`s usually against -- not against large numbers of civilians.

PINTO: Well, let me go to Kelly Wallace who`s here with me in the studio, because I want to know what Americans should be thinking about right now. Can I take my kids on the subway tomorrow?

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, yes, but, you know, they need to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, for suspicious behavior. It is this delicate balancing act. We`ve heard it all day. Officials in New York City, throughout the country saying, "Be vigilant, be aware, but still go about your normal business," which is a tough balancing act.

PINTO: Kelly, this suspicious activity, suspicious stuff, I`m sort of mystified, what does that mean? Does that mean I look around the subway car? Does that mean, if I`m riding Amtrak to see my grandma, I walk up and down the rails? What does that mean?

WALLACE: It means, if you`re riding Amtrak with your grandma, and you see a suitcase there, and no one`s coming back to it over and over again, you maybe go to an Amtrak employee and say, "Something is going on."

Very interesting today, Lisa, because someone -- a woman contacted us. She was on a bus, a New York City bus. And an officer got on the bus and was doing a random check. And she said, after he did a check, he started talking to them about signs of a suicide bomber.

And that is a first time I`ve really heard a New York City police officer talking about that, saying, if you see someone with heavy clothes in the summer, if you see someone kind of like in a zombie-like state, to alert the driver. So it`s really extraordinary what we heard about today.

PINTO: Wow. It`s a new climate, a new reality for us. I`m just, you know -- as an American, I don`t know what to think. Are we safe in the malls, or are we safe at home?

We`re going to take a quick break and more on whether we are safe here and in the heartland after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLES CLARKE, BRITISH HOME SECRETARY: I`m not in a position at this time to give precise details. But what I can say is that four explosions have been confirmed. First on a Tube train between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street. Second on a bus in Woburn Place. Third on a Tube train between Russell Square and King`s Cross. And fourth on a Tube train at Edgware Road Station.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: That`s a CNN British parliament, the British home secretary talking about the devastation this morning.

I`m joined by Kelly Wallace in the studio today, a CNN analyst and correspondent, because I want to know: Are we safe, Kelly? You know, I would take my children to the water park this weekend. I would go about business as usual. Now I just don`t know.

WALLACE: I know. Well, Lisa, it`s so sad. I mean, we talk about this word "the new normal," right? And this was sort of after September 11th, we felt like we`re not really totally safe.

Many people think maybe we were lulled into a little bit of a complacency. It will be four years in September, since the September 11th attacks. Officials will say, "You know what? We`re not totally safe. They can`t protect us from anything. But you still want to live your life, right?"

PINTO: Kelly, I can`t feel complacent when I know that there are people wounded in the hospital in England.

Let`s go straight out to London to Alessio Vinci who is in front of one of the London hospitals.

OK, Kelly, more about the wounded in London and whether we should be ready for another 9/11 here in New York.

WALLACE: Well, it was very interesting. You saw cities around the country reacting immediately after the explosions in London, even before the Homeland Security secretary decided to increase the terror threat level on the mass transit system up to orange, to a higher state of alert.

So people reacted quickly. They say right now, Lisa, there`s no credible or specific information that an attack like what we saw in London, or any kind of attack, is imminent here in the United States. Still though they say they worry about copycat killers. They see how coordinated this was, and they worry that it could happen here, too.

PINTO: Back to Alex Thompson in London. Alex, I`m not comparing this to the scale of September 11th, but certainly the fear is here in America. Are the British afraid? Are people...

THOMPSON: Perhaps not in the same sort of way. The scale`s different. This is a city that`s gone through the blitz of the Second World War. More recently, of course, back in the early `70s, `74, we had the IRA bombings. People have been through a bit of this. I think that they`ll pretty well take it in their stride.

PINTO: You say this. But let`s hear what Alessio Vinci saw at the hospitals today, the 700 wounded.

Alessio, are you with us in London? Tell us, you must have seen some carnage.

ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I am, Lisa. I actually have not seen some carnage, Lisa. I was traveling for most of the day. I arrived here about an hour ago. And the situation now at the hospital is pretty much under control and quiet.

As a matter of fact, it has been very much under control throughout the day. The hospitals, and the nurses, and the doctors involved in helping out the people involved in these incidents have acted under a well- rehearsed plan known here as the "major incident" plan, which was set up in place after the 9/11 attacks in New York.

PINTO: You`re standing outside a hospital. Have you talked to any people inside the hospital, people that were on those buses or those subway trains, that experienced this horror? Have you talked to them?

VINCI: No, I have not personally talked to them. The hospital officials have not allowed anybody inside the hospital, at least in the last few hours. Right now, nobody`s allowed inside.

We do understand that, at this particular hospital, about 200 people were treated, most of them walked themselves from the nearby station where the first attack took place. And when the -- this time 27 of them remain admitted. Of those, 19 are staying on wards, and seven are still in critical condition, they`re still in intensive care. And of course, the next 24 hours are very, very important for them to find out exactly whether they`re going make it or not.

PINTO: Well, the good news is that the hospitals are full. That means that people will survive. I remember the chilling thing about 9/11 was that there were no people to take to the hospital.

We`re seeing footage of double-decker buses crushed. Let`s take a listen to one of the people who was in the attack this morning and what they saw.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) the bus pulled up just shy of a stop (INAUDIBLE) a number of people (INAUDIBLE) walked on. And I followed the bus thinking I could catch up with it as it went slowly down the street, thinking I could get on it. And I was about 25, 30 inches away from it when it just completely blew up into thousands of pieces. It looked to me as though there was no bus left at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So much smoke and people panicking. And then people started to calm down, people wanted to get to the back of this train away from the danger area. There was nowhere for them to go. And then they took us off the train and made us walk all the way back past it all, dead bodies on the tracks, train blown open.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: Listen to the anguish in that man`s voice, having not only to experience the bombing but then see the results afterwards. I have a friend who lived through one of the region`s park bombings. Thirty years later, she still has bad dreams.

Kelly, tell me this is not coming to the U.S.

WALLACE: I wish I could tell you that. I`d like to say that. And I don`t think any U.S. official really could tell you that honestly.

They do worry. They say Al Qaeda and other groups have made it clear they want to attack in Europe, they want to attack in the United States. They worry, again, about copycats. They worry, again, about the intent.

They say they`re doing everything they can. But, Lisa, they keep saying this: They can`t protect every single person that goes on the subway or gets on a bus. They just can`t do it. They can`t have metal detectors, that we all have to assume a little bit of risk.

PINTO: Sombering stuff.

WALLACE: It is.

PINTO: But before we go to break, we at NANCY GRACE want desperately to help solve unsolved homicides and find missing people. Tonight, take a look at this picture of Margaret Haar, just 26-years-old when she was found murdered in her Texas home, smothered to death with a pillow on June 27th of 1986. And her two babies, her toddlers, found one day later alone in the home.

If you have any information on Margaret Haar, please call the Carole Sund Carrington Foundation at 1-888-813-8389. Please help us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABIGAIL MILNER, WITNESSED BUS EXPLOSION: I think I just was so shocked there was just people running everywhere. I ran into the nearest hotel just to get away. And so I ran in there, and everyone was kind of coming to see what happened. People were running out with blankets, you know, medical staff were trying to get to people.

So everyone in the hotel that I was in was trying to help any spare medical supplies, blankets. I think I was in too much shock, really, to do anything. It was horrific just to see it happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: Hello, I`m Lisa Pinto sitting in for Nancy Grace. That was one of the survivors from the bus in London, the fourth attack this morning telling us about her ordeal.

Let me go quickly to Alessio Vinci, CNN correspondent outside a hospital in London, who can tell us about the injuries, people still coming in. Are people still coming in, Alessandro?

VINCI: No, Lisa, they are not coming in. We do understand that a search-and-rescue operation is now over, that most of the people who were injured, either critically or lightly injured, have been now been taken care of. Most of them have been sent back home after being able to not only walk themselves to the hospital, particularly in this one, which is only a ten-minute walk from the site of the first attack, but also some of them are now still being treated at a hospital around town.

PINTO: What kinds of injuries are we seeing at the hospital?

VINCI: Well, we understand that primarily, of course, there`s broken limbs, lacerations, burns, as well, of course. And we understand that some people actually had to go through amputations, although we have not been able to independently confirm that. But of course, the attacks have been so ferocious on that they`re treating all kind of injuries, light and serious ones, as well, of course.

PINTO: What a horror story.

Let me go to my American panel of lawyers, two lawyers who are defending suspects post-9/11, terrorism suspects. First, to John Zwerling whose represented Seifullah Chapman and Omar Ali.

Let me ask you about Mr. Chapman. This is the ex-marine who practiced shooting people with paint ball and then went to a military camp in Pakistan. In your closing argument, you said that he was mountain climbing? Is that right?

JOHN ZWERLING, FMR. DEFENSE ATTORNEY FOR TERROR ATTACK SUSPECT: Yes, that`s true.

PINTO: Yes, mountain climbing in Pakistan, after he admitted to going to a terrorist camp in August of 2001. Mr. Zwerling, when we keep...

ZWERLING: It was not a terrorist camp in 2001 when he was there. And he was there when 9/11 occurred, and he got down the mountain on his own and took an early flight home to be with his family and his country.

PINTO: Oh, right. And it`s interesting, though, because he was convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and firearms charges...

ZWERLING: No. He was not convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts. He was convicted of a conspiracy to violate the neutrality law, which hadn`t been prosecuted in over 100 years. It`s never been used against anybody but Muslims in this country in 100 years.

PINTO: Well, maybe post-9/11, Mr. Zwerling, it`s time to dust off some of those old laws and bring them back.

Let me go to Donna Newman, quickly, who represented Jose Padilla, the bomber -- the so-called dirty bomber. Donna, this is a man who, according to an Al Qaeda higher operative, said this man, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, born in Brooklyn, born in New York, like you and me, went to the Al Qaeda and said, "I would like to drop a dirty bomb in Chicago." How do you represent this guy?

DONNA NEWMAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I think it`s quite easy, if you believe in the Constitution, like I do, and like I hope you do, we both know that the Constitution is what guides this country. And under the Constitution, we have rights. Now the odd thing about the Jose Padilla case is he is not charged with a crime. You stand corrected on that.

On the contrary, there have been allegations that have been passed through the press...

PINTO: But, Donna, the fact is that...

NEWMAN: It`s not a fact. The fact is...

(CROSSTALK)

PINTO: ... that Abu Zubaydah, a high-level Al Qaeda operative, says that this man came to him with a plan to kill Americans. And my question to you is, I understand. I worked at a public defender. I understand zealous representation. But you have a family, and you live in New York, and yet men like this want to wipe out our major cities. Isn`t there a problem there?

NEWMAN: There is a real problem I have with your representations. I have a real problem when people want terrorists to win. I do not want them to win. And the way to fight terrorism, in my opinion, is to uphold what we stand for.

PINTO: But wait a minute.

NEWMAN: Wait. Let me finish.

PINTO: Go ahead.

NEWMAN: There are men who are fighting overseas for what we believe in. And what I am trying desperately to have the rest of the country understand about our case. If we are to succeed, if we are beat terrorism...

PINTO: Donna, you sued -- Donna, you sued President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, the federal government, you didn`t like him being classed as a material witness or an enemy combatant. Even if we propose new legislation, new names for how we hold people in custody who try to kill us in times of war, will you be happy?

NEWMAN: If there is new legislation, that is our point. Until there are laws, nobody is above the law. And that was the aim of that lawsuit.

And when you say he has done things and it is a fact, I beg to differ. It is not a fact. It is only a fact when it is proven in a court of law. And that is all we are trying to succeed in doing. We are a very unusual defense team in that we are striving to get our client actually accused of a crime.

PINTO: Donna, I`ll be back with you after the break. We`re going to take a quick break, and then more on what we can do in America to keep us all safe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was 8:56 a.m. The Piccadilly line train had just left King`s Cross station. The tunnel between King`s Cross and Russell Square is just two-thirds of a mile long. But the bomb exploded between the two stations, blowing a hole in the tunnel wall.

Twelve fire engines rushed to the scene. Below ground, those that could smashed carriage windows and scrambled to safety at either end of the tunnel.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE) seconds, heading westbound, there was a massive bang. The whole carriage is filled with smoke. I saw flesh up the side of the carriage. Within seconds, the whole carriage filled with smoke. There was screams, so much hysteria, there was no signals from anyone with directions, no intercom messages, nothing. And nobody knew what was going on. Twenty to 30 minutes we`re all on the carriage, there was more and more smoke, people were starting to say the Hail Mary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As we left King`s Cross station (INAUDIBLE) 15 seconds, there was a large bang. People were physically ejected out of the chair. There was flashes of lights on the side of the two carriage. Smoke immediately billowed into the carriage. It filled -- people started to scream because there was a burning smell and everyone -- just kind of long story short -- thought they were going to die. People started saying prayers, praying to God, panicking, breaking the carriage windows with their bare hands, anything to get oxygen into the carriage because more people tried, the more distressed they became.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: I`m Lisa Pinto, sitting in for Nancy Grace.

What a nightmare. We just heard one of the victims from this morning describing about his struggle to breathe on the subway this morning. More on how we can stay safe in America. I think we need to do more with the Patriot Act.

Let me go quickly back to one of my attorneys, Donna Newman, a very capable attorney, but Donna, I don`t agree with you when you wrap yourself in the Constitution. Jose Padilla, born in New York, a felon, convicted felon, gang member, and then he finds Islam and he goes to mosque school and learns how to be a radical. We have a problem with people like that coming back to America to kill us. Can you understand that?

NEWMAN: What I don`t understand is your statement as if it`s a fact. We do not know that those are facts, and that`s the problem. The problem is, we have courts here that allow us to learn the facts and then punish. We have very severe crime statutes that have penalties that are quite severe...

PINTO: But Donna...

NEWMAN: ... including the death penalty.

PINTO: Donna...

NEWMAN: There is no "but." The problem here is...

PINTO: Sure there is, Donna!

NEWMAN: No...

PINTO: Let me tell you what my problem is.

NEWMAN: There is no...

PINTO: Patriot Act -- people have been against the Patriot Act. They say it infringes on our privacy, yet it hadn`t -- these laws hadn`t been updated since 1986. We need roving wiretaps. We need to be able to go after people`s cell phones. We need to get their business records. And civil libertarians and people in the defense bar say, Oh, no, that`s an intrusion.

NEWMAN: First of all, that`s not accurate. The defense bar you cannot lump together because every defense attorney has a specific opinion that goes with -- based on their knowledge of the law. And you are correct, that legislation was a long time in coming. It did not come as a -- as a result of 9/11. It was well thought out. And it was based on the fact that there was a failure, as we now know, for the various agencies to communicate.

PINTO: Donna! Donna, when you -- when I say the defense bar -- if there`s a wiretap in a case and you`re representing someone, you`re going to file motions saying it was an unlawful wiretap. That`s just crim (ph) pro. But let me ask you this, about the libraries. Congress didn`t pass more -- more scrutiny of -- the FBI cannot go into libraries and find out what people were checking out. I think that`s a problem, given that the 9/11 terrorists used libraries to book tickets and plan 9/11. Do you agree?

NEWMAN: No. I do not think that people who are terrorists go into libraries and check out books on terrorism. I really don`t. And if that were a fact, the librarians are well equipped to look at what people are checking out...

PINTO: Donna...

NEWMAN: ... like any other citizen, and make their report.

PINTO: Let me bring in Peter Bergen...

NEWMAN: So there has to be a view with privacy. That was the issue.

PINTO: Donna, let me...

NEWMAN: Do you really believe that...

(CROSSTALK)

PINTO: ... terrorism expert. Peter, what do you say about the Patriot Act?

BERGEN: Well, there are many provisions in the Patriot Act, but I think Donna Newman is completely correct about her client, Jose Padilla. If, indeed, he is -- there is a crime, then he should be charged with a crime and the facts of the crime should be made public. I mean, right now, we have this very vague allegation that he might be planning some kind of radiological bomb attack against the United States, but the government hasn`t produced any evidence...

PINTO: Peter...

BERGEN: ... about the case.

PINTO: Peter, can you understand why the American public would want the government to have broader powers to wiretap, search, and keep things quiet, not disclose their informants when they`re working a high-level terrorism case? But can you understand that after -- especially after today`s attack...

BERGEN: Of course. Of course.

PINTO: ... with people having their limbs fall (ph) off.

BERGEN: But I mean, you`re talking about apple and oranges. I mean, if you`re talking about the Jose Padilla case, I think most Americans expect that people who have committed crimes should be charged with them and then tried in some manner.

PINTO: But...

BERGEN: And that`s just -- and the -- you know, the Patriot Act, I think most Americans are happy with it, and I think there`s been a certain amount of self-flagellation about it amongst people perhaps on the left. And I think it`s really...

PINTO: Yes, the -- I agree with you. The hand-wringing is totally unnecessary.

BERGEN: There`s been some exaggerations. But nonetheless, I think that -- we`re -- we get -- we get ourselves, I think -- we`ve got ourselves in a huge pickle...

PINTO: But Peter...

BERGEN: ... with a number of different issues. The Guantanamo issue...

PINTO: Right.

BERGEN: ... I think a problem. I mean...

PINTO: But Peter, are you concerned about whether they`re getting three squares at Guantanamo, after what happened in London today? How can we protect ourselves? Instead of worrying about people`s books being ripped up, let`s talk about keeping Americans safe. What can we do now?

BERGEN: OK, these are not either/or things. I mean, we should act in -- we`ve had a Constitution that has served us extremely well for the last 200 years, including in times of war -- World War I and World War II. We haven`t felt it necessary to turn a lot of people into enemy combatants, as we have in this conflict, which is -- and I understand that after 9/11, there was a great desire to -- and I think right now, we should be -- kind of calibrate our responses because I think some of...

PINTO: I got to disagree with you, Peter.

And I`m going to bring in Bernard Kerik, And I`m wondering if he sees things my way, former police commissioner of New York, dealt firsthand with 9/11. How are you, Mr. Kerik?

BERNARD KERIK, FORMER NYC POLICE COMMISSIONER: I`m fine.

PINTO: Thanks. Do you agree with me? Do we need to do more? Do we need to expand Patriot Act and -- you were an undercover cop. We need informants here, right?

KERIK: Well, I think you have to give the police and the law enforcement authorities the same powers and authority that they have to go after the Cali cartel, to go after organized crime. The Patriot Act does that. You know, can we go into libraries and look at people`s records? Yes, we can under the Patriot Act, but we also have to go before a judge. We have to give probable cause.

PINTO: Sure.

KERIK: We have to get a warrant. We have to do things just like you would have to do for the Cali cartel. People that are opposed to it out of either ignorance or just, you know, because they`re opposed, they forget to tell you those things.

PINTO: Right.

KERIK: The Patriot Act also gives us the ability to talk between the CIA and the FBI, which they were...

PINTO: So important.

KERIK: ... not allowed to do by law. They`re allowed to do now. That there is one of the most important issues that we could...

PINTO: Mr. Kerik...

KERIK: ... we could have in the Patriot Act today.

PINTO: Mr. Kerik, how do you rate the response in London? I thought it was pretty amazing this morning there. Paramedics were there on the scene.

KERIK: Well, it was really apparently that over the last several years, London, the British authorities, have really paid attention. They had a phenomenal crisis management plan. They had a response plan by the emergency services, the fire, the police, the special operations personnel. They were quick to get there. The rescue and recovery was extremely quick, from what I`ve seen.

PINTO: Mr. Kerik, you...

KERIK: I`m in Jordan, as you know...

PINTO: Right. And you`ve been all over. You were in Giuliani Partners. You weren`t just commissioner of New York. You visited a lot of different cities. Do you feel that across America, in LA, Chicago, New York, Miami, are we safe? Are we as safe? Will our response be as good?

KERIK: I think our response will be as good as what we saw in London. I think nobody knows better than we do that you have to prepare for the unexpected, the unimaginable. That`s what we started doing after 9/11, and I think that`s happened really all over the country. And then you take the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the merging of the 22 agencies...

PINTO: Right.

KERIK: ... the Patriot Act, the merging of the intelligence mechanisms, this has all made us a lot safer in the United States.

PINTO: Mr. Kerik, I`ve heard it said Scotland Yard`s strengths are sort of the gumshoe police detective work, and that our -- and the one thing that we`re adding in terms of value, is by sending the FBI, is high- tech forensic experience. Do you agree? We`re sending FBI agents to London.

KERIK: Well, we`re sending FBI agents to London. Commissioner Ray Kelly, who took over after I left, has now sent New York City detectives there. We have New York City detectives assigned to Interpol. There`s a lot more coordination and communication today than there ever has been in the past, and I think that`s going to benefit us, New York City, but also the United States and other countries, as well.

PINTO: Well, thank you, Mr. Kerik. More from you after the break on how we can keep ourselves in America and enhance police surveillance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE WALKER BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now, the contrast between what we`ve seen on the TV screens here, what`s taken place in London, what`s taking place here is incredibly vivid to me. On the one hand, we have people here who are working to alleviate poverty, you know, to help rid the world of the pandemic of AIDS, and they`re working on ways to have a clean environment, and on the other hand, you got people killing innocent people. The contrast couldn`t be clearer between the intentions and the hearts of those of us who care deeply about human rights and human liberty, and those who kill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No idea. I assumed we`d -- we`d hit a train, hit something just because we were still in one piece. There was no fire. All the windows had blown in, and some of the metal had been bent withinside the carriage. So thought it was a pretty hard impact, but no idea at the time that it was -- could have been a terrorist attack.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: I`m Lisa Pinto, sitting in for Nancy Grace. That was one of this morning`s survivors from the subway in London.

Let`s go back to Alex Thomson, ITN, in London. I want to ask him about the British investigation. Where do you go from here? How do you prosecute these people?

THOMSON: Well, we have to find out whether, indeed, the people who did it have actually died. They could have been suicide bombers, of course. That is one possibility being explored.

There are various rumors that materials have been recovered. We`re hearing that detonators may have been recovered. That`s not confirmed. What the police are saying, though, that they found traces of explosive. Clearly CCTV footage could be critical.

It is possible, looking at where these bombs happened and when they happened, that all the bombs could have been put on the subway system, the underground system, at King`s Cross station, in one location. If that`s true, and it`s theoretically true, then CCTV outside that station could be a critical lead.

PINTO: But Alex, wouldn`t there be a -- wouldn`t someone report having seen a man with a backpack who said something and got on the subway, if it was a suicide bomber? This seems to be remotely exploded, no?

THOMSON: No, I have to say not, in the current circumstances. This is London. This is summer. This is rush hour. People have backpacks. People have any kind of pack you can imagine. It`s rush hour. It`s heaving (ph). It`s not chaos, but it`s very busy. It`s easy to see how they could have put -- you know, possibly put small packages -- these weren`t big bombs, don`t forget -- small packages onto the subway system.

PINTO: What about this Web site notice, You know, Rejoice, it`s time. We`ve taken revenge against the British Zionists? Do you think that this is the group that did it? Do you know anything more about this statement? I`m showing it to Dusty (ph). It was on a -- in Arabic, on a Web site, a group that calls itself the Secret Organization Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization Europe.

THOMSON: Two things about this. Two things about this that are very important. One, this is an unknown group. Nobody`s heard of this organization. Nobody`s heard of this name -- significant. Much more significant, this message has not been taken up by any of the other Web sites which I`ve checked out. All genuine al Qaeda-type messages...

PINTO: OK.

THOMSON: ... claiming responsibility for various coordinated attacks are always taken up by other sites. Hasn`t happened here.

PINTO: Commissioner Kerik, what do you think? Who do you think is behind this today?

KERIK: Well, I mean, it has the trademark signature of al Qaeda. But this morning, as this unfolded, I was in the Jordanian intelligence center here in Amman, and I saw the transmission, the al Qaeda transmission. But even the Jordanians at that time said it`s premature to tell and only time will tell. And I agree with your former speaker. That Web site was subsequently dropped. The transmission was not picked up by any other al Qaeda Web sites. So I`d be a little skeptical, at this point.

PINTO: Back to Alex Thomson in London. Alex, of course, we`re all thinking about Atocha in Spain, you know, the horrors there in March, several -- a year ago. What -- now, no group took responsibility right away back then. Do you see a pattern?

THOMSON: Well, we see a pattern. I mean, clearly, this is a coordinated -- this is a -- you know, this was a good, competent attack. It`s not easy to manage an attack like this and to have a series of different explosions going off in (INAUDIBLE) 51 minutes in the rush hour, on the day after London wins the bid for the Olympics, on the day -- the main day of the G8 summit. This is a seriously competent exercise, just as the Madrid bombings also were.

PINTO: To Kelly Wallace here in the studio with me. Kelly, you were a correspondent in Jerusalem. You`re no stranger to bombings. I guess what I`m wondering, is it a good thing we didn`t win the Olympic bid?

WALLACE: It is amazing because people were talking about the cover of the newspapers today. "The New York Times" -- jubilation in London yesterday, winning the Olympics. And then today. Obviously, you know, New York City hoped it would win the Olympics.

But your point about Israel is so interesting because Mayor Bloomberg, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, was asked this because this London attack, much more like what we see in Israel than, really, the September 11 attacks. And he sort of responded, saying, Look, you all -- we`re all the eyes and ears. We`re the front line of defense. People have to be vigilant. It`s kind of an understanding that some people believe in this country it`s not a matter of if but when we could see it here in the United States.

PINTO: What scares me, Kelly, is we hear about sleeper cells in Buffalo and here in Virginia and there. You know, we`ve got shopping malls. We`ve got bridges. We`ve got the Statue of Liberty. We`ve got amusement parks. We are so vulnerable.

WALLACE: We are so vulnerable. And there`s a growing concern in the fact that the -- what they call the harder targets -- airplanes, government buildings -- as we have learned and we`ve gotten more and more secure, whether terrorists will go after the so-called softer targets, which I personally hate the name, "softer targets"...

PINTO: Right. Right.

WALLACE: ... right? But shopping malls, movie theaters, mass transit. That`s a growing concern.

PINTO: Do you think our surveillance is better? Do you think we`re more up to date on the chatter here in America, so we would see this coming?

WALLACE: Absolutely. I mean, I think that people look at September 11 and look at -- we`re almost four years after, and we have grown and we - - better coordination. Mr. Kerik was talking about that. You have much more coordination now than you did...

PINTO: Sure.

WALLACE: ... four years ago. The interesting thing, though, is in these months leading up to today, people talked about how it was quiet. You know, they always hear...

PINTO: Right.

WALLACE: ... the chatter. They said it was quiet.

PINTO: Right.

WALLACE: And that sort of made some people growing concerned that we were getting complacent because it was so quit.

PINTO: To Alex Thomson in London. Do you think you`re going to see a reaction against the British government, the way we did in Spain, where the government was voted out shortly thereafter?

THOMSON: No. We`ve had our election, so it`s not going to -- we`re not under the same sort of pressures in terms of the government. I think what will happen here is, it will stiffen the government`s resolve in terms of pushing through the whole ID cards business, which the government is very keen to have.

PINTO: Right.

THOMSON: And there`s a lot of opposition against that at the moment. That opposition could be eroded by what`s happened.

PINTO: So basically, illegal aliens in your country will be more exposed because they won`t have those identification documents. Maybe we need some of that in the U.S.

To Alessio Vinci, who`s outside the hospital in London. Alessio, I understand that people came in on helicopters today. Is that right? The injured were brought in on a helipad in the hospital?

VINCI: Well, actually, this hospital -- not really, actually. This hospital is equipped with a helipad and has a medical helicopter, which this time was used to actually ferry the doctors and nurses to the scenes of the attacks and allow them to take care of those injured within minutes after the explosions. As I mentioned to you earlier, one of the train stations is very close to this hospital. Others are a bit far away. But moments after the attack, of course, the entire city turned into a gigantic gridlock. It was very difficult for ambulances and other cars to drive around. So this helicopter managed to actually bring the doctors to the people who were there, and they were able to...

PINTO: I got to take a quick break...

(CROSSTALK)

PINTO: I`m hearing in my ear over here in New York, I got to take a break.

When we come back, more about the situation in America. We`ve heard from Commissioner Kerik. We`re going to hear more keeping Americans safe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MILNER: I just think to take a life like that -- I mean, there`s people that die every day of, you know, no food or -- and that sort of thing. And to selfishly take lives or hurt people, destroy things like that, you know, for the sake of their selfishness, I would imagine, is just shocking.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SIR DAVID MANNING, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: It reminded me of something I think was said at the time of the Brighton bombings, if you remember that, when we had those terrible events. We have to be lucky all the time, the terrorists only have to be lucky once.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PINTO: How right he is, Sir David Manning. I`m Lisa Pinto, in for Nancy Grace. That was the British ambassador to the U.S. talking about the four bombs this morning.

I have with me in the studio Kelly Wallace. And during the break, we were talking about whether we`ve gotten too complacent in this country.

WALLACE: And that`s a big concern. And we were just talking during the break also, how after the Madrid bombings in March of 2004, a lot of concern in the United States -- are our metro -- mass transit systems safe, are they secure enough? And there were big questions. And you know what, Lisa? I`m hearing from Democrats and Republicans, e-mails today, people saying, You know, we didn`t do enough.

PINTO: Right.

WALLACE: And here we are, looking at London, raising the same questions again.

PINTO: I feel better at the airport. I see soldiers, National Guard with guns. I think I want to see that now on subway, on Amtrak and at Penn Station.

WALLACE: But here`s the question. And commissioner Ray Kelly was asked this today. Can you really do it? Do we have the resources? Also, he was asked about metal detectors. Can we really have metal detectors before the New York City subway or getting on buses? He says there are too many people. You can`t do it.

PINTO: But people said we couldn`t have them in schools, and now we do, to keep our kids safe.

WALLACE: Well, that`s true.

PINTO: Finally, to Alex Thomson in London. Any final thoughts for New Yorkers to keep -- what can we -- what should we be thinking about?

THOMSON: Well, there are two ways of looking at this. Personal vigilance -- there is no such thing as security against a suicide bomber. Wider frame -- how does America, how does Britain protect ourselves? Well, that`s one for foreign policy. Put bluntly, if you go around the world slaughtering civilians, civilians in that country want to slaughter you.

PINTO: And you`ve got more legislation now, right? I mean, since 9/11, you`ve got more tools...

(CROSSTALK)

THOMSON: It`s on its way.

PINTO: OK. Well, thank you...

THOMSON: (INAUDIBLE) we`ve got a whole portfolio.

PINTO: Thank you for...

THOMSON: We can put people in prison without trial.

PINTO: So -- we need more of that over here!

Quickly, thank you so much for being with us tonight. Thanks to all my guests. But remember, our talk is meaningless if you`re not listening, watching and participating in this debate on criminal justice. Thank you so much for being with us.

Coming up, headlines from around the world, Larry King on CNN. I`m Lisa Pinto, signing off for tonight. I hope to see you right here tomorrow night at 8:00 o`clock Eastern time. Good night.

END