Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Investigators Looking into Possible American Connection to Last Week's London Bombings; Discussion With Joe Wilson

Aired July 15, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. Breaking news overnight. Hurricane Emily gaining strength again. Now an extremely powerful category-four storm. Could get even stronger, headed for land, possibly Texas, where they're already swamped from summer storms. We'll have the complete forecast ahead.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. New developments in the London terror investigation and more information about the man that London police are looking for. We'll tell you about his North Carolina connection. A live report's coming up.

M. O'BRIEN: And in Washington this morning, the focus on two powerful men. William Rehnquist says we can retire those retirement stories. And as for Karl Rove, the husband of the outed CIA officer says the president's right hand man should be frog marched. The latest on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning. Welcome, everybody. And welcome back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: It's good to be back here. It's good to be back in an air-conditioned studio. It's about 120 in the shade there in Florida.

S. O'BRIEN: It looked a little bit toasty. Good job, though. Sorry it didn't go off without a hitch and as planned. But there's always another day.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, it's a million parts. And to make them all work, it's a tough thing. So we'll be back.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, you will.

Let's get right to our top story this morning, the London bombing investigation. Investigators now looking into a possible American connection to last week's bombings. We've got coverage from both sides of the Atlantic this morning. Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is following the investigation in Leeds, England. David Mattingly is in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Nic, we're going to begin with you this morning. What's the latest in this investigation?

NIC ROBERTSON CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Well, we heard a little while ago from the head -- the chief police officer heading the investigation. He says that he expects to find a link between this group and Al Qaeda. The investigation here in Leeds continues at the building behind me, a community center and a row of shops believed to be linked to at least three of the bombers. Police removed computers from these buildings this morning. Their forensic work appears to be going very slowly. They say they expect to take a lot of time.

The key points they're looking for in this investigation is, what brought these young men together? Who financed them? Who trained them? Who built the bombs? And as part of that investigation, they're investigating a biochemist there who was at the university here in Leeds teaching at the university here, Magdy El-Nashar. They don't know where he is. They believe he left the country before the bombing. He is also believed and has been linked into this investigation by a phone number. He's been linked into this investigation by information believed to be found at one of the premises the police were searching. He is believed to have rented, either for himself or somebody else, an apartment here in Leeds. When the police surrounded that apartment two days ago, they went in with bomb-disposal experts, expecting perhaps to find explosives. That didn't appear to happen.

However, that particular house El-Nashar's house, or at least the house he appears to have rented, is still the subject of the investigation, and he is also now known to have spent some time in North Carolina State University in the year 2000 -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: What details, Nic, are we learning about these suspected bombers?

ROBERTSON: Well, we now know the police have named all four of them. Hasib Hussain lived perhaps half a mile away from me here. He was 18 years old, said goodbye to his parents when he went to London. He, on the morning of the bombing, he was believed to be the bus bomber. Thirteen people died in that bomb. Shahzad Tanweer grew up a few streets away, about a few hundred yards to my left here. He, again, left his house in the morning. His parents obviously had no idea where he was going. He was believed to be aboard the train at Edgware. The bomb he apparently was carrying killed at least seven people in that explosion.

Perhaps one of the more interesting characters that's developing of the three of the four bombers here in the West Yorkshire area here in Leeds, Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30 years old, married with one eight- month-old child, was expecting another child was a teacher's assistant at a school just outside the Leeds area, in a town called Dewsbury. What is surprising investigators about him is he was older than the others. There is some evidence to link him with the other two young men. There is evidence that perhaps says that he was giving them instructions, that they met at a local mosque very close to where we're standing now.

One of the interesting things, a lot of it very much centered in this very small area of Leeds. The fourth suspect has now been named as Germain Morris Lindsay. He is -- was living at a premises just north of London, about 30 miles north of London in the town of Luton. He joined the bombers, the suspected bombers, as they got on a train just north of London the morning before the bombing. He was seen on closed-circuit videotape entering King's Cross Station with the other bombers. He is of Jamaican descent, interestingly. His mother believed to have lived in Cleveland, Ohio, at one time -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Nic Robertson with an update on the investigation from Leeds, England.

Let's get to David Mattingly. He's live in Raleigh, North Carolina.

We heard, David, just a moment ago about the American connection. Elaborate on that for me, if you will.

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What we can probably say most about Magdy El-Nashar's tenure here in the United States is that it was brief. According to university officials at North Carolina state, he attended only one semester of classes here as a graduate student in chemical engineering. That was the spring semester of 2000.

One person I talked to who knew him at the time said that he believes that he left here with plans to go back to his native Cairo and with plans to apply to continue studying in England, which apparently is what he did.

The university records are being compiled on him. There's not a whole lot that university officials are saying about him. They're not saying exactly what classes he was taking, only that he attended one semester of classes here. He lived in a very small off-campus apartment at the time. We spoke to the former property manager of that apartment building. She tells us she has turned over all her records to the FBI. The FBI trying to retrace his steps while he was here briefly in the United States, looking at who he might have known, talking to who he might have known, and looking at where he might have lived -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: David Mattingly with that side of the update.

David, thanks -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Chief Justice William Rehnquist puts an end to Washington's speculation, at least for now. Rehnquist announced Thursday night he's not retiring and will stay on the Supreme Court as long as his health permits.

Bob Franken is at the Supreme Court this morning.

Bob, what's the reaction there?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the reaction is pretty much in Washington of surprise that the chief justice would do that. You really get the feeling, Miles, that in his statement, there was quite a bit of exasperation. We'll tell you the statement, and you can decide what he was really saying. The chief justice said, "I want to put to rest the speculation and unfounded rumors of my imminent retirement. I'm not about to announce my retirement. I will continue to perform my duties as chief justice as long as my health permits." There was no report from the chief justice on exactly the status of his health, but certainly the message that he plans to be here for a while. Probably he's gotten a little bit off put by the cameras that have been outside his house as this speculation has gone pretty much rampantly running over the last several days. So the cameras will probably drift away now as the chief justice settles in and prepares for the next term.

Now the question is, who will be that ninth justice? Who will replace Sandra Day O'Connor? There was some feeling that, if there were two vacancies, it could have a more complex way of working its way out. Now this is certainly going to be a battle between conservatives and liberals, no matter who the president appoints. That appointment, the president says, will come in due time, and then we'll expect the hearings in either late August or early September, in the hope that all nine justices, with the new one, are seated on the Supreme Court when the court reconvenes on the first Monday in October with Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the helm -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Bob, this probably ruined a lot of parlor games there in Washington, that two-vacancy double switch they were talking about was getting a lot of traction. Was the White House, however, surprised by all this?

FRANKEN: The White House says it was surprised, no advance word, which, of course, ruined also some of the speculation that there was some sort of grand Machiavellian way, perhaps, of letting the chief justice announce his retirement. And it may ruin the parlor games, Miles, but it's probably saved a few vacations.

M. O'BRIEN: Maybe yours, too. All right, Bob Franken, thank you very much.

Karl Rove may have learned the name of a CIA officer from reporters, not the other way around. An unnamed source is telling "The New York Times" and the Associated Press about the presidential adviser's grand jury testimony. The source saying a reporter told Rove that Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. According to the source, "When columnist Robert Novak telephoned Rove, Novak mentioned who Plame was, and Rove confirmed he'd heard something like that, too." That a quote.

Suzanne Malveaux live at the White House. Suzanne, what is the White House saying about this, if anything?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, so far, they're not saying anything at all. I've been told not to expect that they will later on today. But having said that, White House surrogates, those who have been part of this very active campaign to defend Rove, basically put it this way, they tell me they believe that this little bit of information here, of course, that he could have been the source of a second reporter may work in his favor. They say, if you, in fact, believe the reports that he got the name Valerie Plame from fellow reporters, from columnist Robert Novak, that what it shows is that he was part of the discussion, but that he was also a recipient of the information. That is what they're focusing on. They also say that if, in fact, he was aware of her name, that according to "Time" magazine Matthew Cooper's e-mails, that he did not share that in his follow-up conversation with cooper. The bottom line is what they're telling me is that I heard that, too, simply does not meet the threshold for breaking the law in this case. Having said that, however, of course, the big question, just how will this affect Rove and the White House politically? Still the strategy remains the same, Miles. That is for them to say nothing or very little, and to let the pictures speak for themselves -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. That won't stop the speculation, of course. But we'll leave it at that. Suzanne Malveaux, thank you very much.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: And speaking of the shuttle, what is next for Discovery? We'll look at how long it could be before NASA returns to space.

S. O'BRIEN: Also ahead this morning, my conversation with former Ambassador Joe Wilson, now slamming Karl Rove for allegedly outing his wife, as that CIA operative. Find out what he wants to see happen to the president's top adviser. That's up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Now back to our big story out of Washington D.C. this morning. The outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. Well, Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, now blasting White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove for the leak. I got a chance to sit down and talk with Wilson about it on Thursday. And he began by saying he believes the information Rove leaked was classified.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOSEPH WILSON, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR: This has never been about Joe Wilson or even about Valerie Wilson. It has been about -- and it's never really been partisan. It has always been about whether or not somebody close to the president of the United States leaked classified information that compromised the identity of a covert officer of the CIA. And clearly, in the e-mail that Mr. Cooper, the "Time" reporter, sent to his boss, several days before the Novak article appeared, Mr. Rove had given him the name of my wife.

S. O'BRIEN: Republicans would say, those who are leading the charge against you certainly, would say he wasn't outing your wife. He was trying to correct -- and the word they would pick, I believe -- is a lie that you had in the op-ed piece that you wrote in the New York times where you, they would say, said that the vice president of the United States essentially sent you on this mission to Africa.

WILSON: Of course, I did not say that. And if you go back and you show the op-ed, what I say is that the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in this report, and that interest had generated my trip.

S. O'BRIEN: Here's a small chunk of it. In February, 2002, you write, "I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake, a form of lightly processed ore, by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."

Couldn't a reading of that be, hey, you're insinuating that you're going on this trip at the behest of the vice president?

WILSON: Read it again. I think you'll see there's no insinuation in there at all. There's no saying the vice president sent me. It says the office of the vice president -- the office, not even the vice president. It was the vice president who later admitted that, yes, indeed he had expressed an interest in this matter. So it was the office of the vice president that expressed the interest and was trying to be responsive to a legitimate question affecting American national security. The CIA operations directorate asked me to go out and answer some of the questions that they still had about the allegation.

S. O'BRIEN: Explain how the trip to Niger came about. Who actually asked you to go?

WILSON: Well, it was CIA operations officers, the operations directorate. It came about after I attended a meeting at Langley.

S. O'BRIEN: Did it, in part, come about because your wife said, hey, you know, Joe, my husband, could go. He should do this.

WILSON: Let me just answer that by pointing out the CIA answered that question in July of 2003, shortly after the -- shortly after my wife's name had been compromised. On July 22nd, "Newsday" wrote that they had called the CIA, and the cia said that no, Wilson's wife was not involved in sending him to Niger. The CIA has said that repeatedly whenever asked since, including last year to David Ensor of this network.

S. O'BRIEN: Did you see Peter King? He was on TV.

WILSON: No, I did not.

S. O'BRIEN: Let me read you a chunk of what he had to say. He said, "Once she" -- that's your wife, Valerie -- "allowed him to go ahead and say that, write his op-ed piece in "The New York Times," to have Tim Russert give him a full hour on "Meet the Press," saying that he was sent there as a representative of the vice president, when she knew, she knew herself that she was the one that recommended him for it. She allowed that lie to go forward involving the vice president of the United States, the president of the United States, then to me she should be the last one in the world who has any right to complain." Which I guess is, to me at least, sounds like a long way of saying, she deserves what she got.

I believe Congressman King is ill informed. And I would go back to what I said earlier, and that is that the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and as a consequence, referred it to the Justice Department.

S. O'BRIEN: You know -- or maybe you don't, but my guess is you do know -- that the bar in these sorts of things, legally speaking, is quite high. The letter of the law, in order to be illegal, the disclosure must reveal the identity of a covert agent, must be intentional, must be made with someone with authorized access to classified information. They must be aware that the information disclosed will reveal the identity of the covert agent. They must know that the United States government was taking active steps to protect the identity of a covert agent. It's a pretty high bar. Do you believe that Karl Rove has done anything to the letter of the law illegal?

S. O'BRIEN: Well, I'm not a lawyer. And I believe that the last word on this will be Pat Fitzgerald, the special counsel. And -- but I'll go back to what I said earlier, and that is that the CIA certainly believed that a possible crime had been committed.

S. O'BRIEN: Was your wife at the time that she was outed a covert agent for the CIA?

WILSON: I'm not prepared to discuss that. What I'm prepared to tell you is that the CIA believed that she was a covert employee for the purposes of asking the Justice Department to investigate.

S. O'BRIEN: But isn't that kind of the critical $64,000 question? I mean, if she's not a covert agent, isn't the whole thing a wash anyway? Because revealing the identity of someone who's not covert...

WILSON: Well, that's an interesting question. You probably ought to better ask that to Pat Fitzgerald, the special counsel who's been investigating this for almost two years now.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. I'll take that as a no comment on that one.

If Karl Rove, in fact, is found to not have committed a crime by the letter of the law, do you expect at all that President Bush would fire him?

WILSON: I have no idea. My own belief, which I've articulated frequently, is that the president has said that he would fire -- and his White House spokesman has said that he would fire anybody who was involved in the leak. It's now clear that Mr. Rove had given Matt Cooper my wife's name four days before the Novak article appeared. In other words, before her identity was publicly compromised. I find what he did then and afterwards to be an outrageous abuse of power, and I don't believe that the president should keep him in the White House. I think he should fire him.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Meanwhile, Karl Rove maintains he did not reveal the actual name of the CIA operative, although Karl Rove's lawyer has admitted that rove told "Time" magazine reporter Matt Cooper that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Delta airlines does an about face, or I guess in airline parlance, it would be a 180, raises ticket prices. Andy has details in "Minding Your Business," next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: All right, that simple fares deal, that was a good deal, but it's over. Andy Serwer "Minding Your Business" now. Or is it still simple, it's just simply higher?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: It's simply more expensive. I mean, really an about face for Delta Airlines. A lot of action in the airlines sector yesterday, Miles. All begin with Delta Airlines, said it was raising the cap on its most expensive fares by $100. Now, that's news given the fact that airlines have been raising prices all year, but it's particularly ironic, as you suggested, Miles, because it was six months ago that Delta Airlines said it was simplifying fares and lowering them.

Now an about face. But a spokesman for the company said, look, we cut fares when the price of oil was $43 a barrel. It's now around $61 a barrel. We simply have to do this if we are to remain profitable. And other airlines followed suit yesterday, all the biggies: Northwest, United, Continental and American Airlines. The stocks were up on the news, Miles, of course, because that means that these companies may begin to be profitable.

Another thing that happened yesterday that was positive for the business is the price of oil dropped. Now, of course, we've seen this day after day. It goes up and down. But it was a pretty sharp drop yesterday, over $2, to $57.80 a barrel. But that was yesterday, and, of course, today the price of oil is inching back up.

M. O'BRIEN: That's a big cost for them, isn't it?

SERWER: Huge.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you, Andy. Appreciate it.

SERWER: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: More to come on AMERICAN MORNING.

Ahead on "90-Second Pop":

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNNY DEPP, ACTOR: I believe they're going to treat us to a little song.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: R. Kelly's new song says he's trapped in a closet, but the R&B bad boy is on top of the charts. Have his legal battles helped his career. Plus...

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEPP: Wow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: Harry Potter versus Willie Wonka? Will sales of the boy wizard's new book take a bite out of Wonka's box office?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEPP: Hey, little boy, don't push my button.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: Later on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com