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Deaths Related to Extreme Temperatures Reported from Philadelphia to Phoenix; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Demands an Apology

Aired July 21, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Carol Costello. Watching a serious flood threat after Emily brings 20 hours of continuous rain to the mountains of Mexico. The storm downgraded but still dangerous. A live report for you just ahead.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And a developing story from Sudan, where Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is traveling. Rice demands an apology after members of her staff and some of the media are roughed up by authorities, on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning to you. I'm Miles O'Brien. We're glad you're with us.

COSTELLO: We certainly are. I'm Carol Costello, in for Soledad. We're watching the thermometer this morning, and it's only going to get worse.

O'BRIEN: Yes, that's where we begin this morning, the heatwave. No relief expected today. Deaths related to the extreme temperatures being reported from Philadelphia to Phoenix. Take a look at today's highs. Dark red, not good, folks. Serious heat advisories are issued all across the Midwest and for the mid-Atlantic states as well.

Meanwhile, in Phoenix, Arizona, many of the deaths have occurred. The mayor is taking the unusual step of asking for federal emergency help. The heat has been higher than normal every day since June 29th.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN (voice-over): A deadly heatwave is scorching Arizona. In the Phoenix area, at least 18 people have died since Saturday, nearly all of them homeless. For 10 straight days, the mercury has soared to 109 degrees or higher. It was 116 on Sunday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had no idea that it could be so intense. I mean, the air is even hot when the wind blows. You feel like you're cooking.

O'BRIEN: For the first time in years, the city's homeless shelters have opened their doors during the day.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's ice-cold water over here.

O'BRIEN: Volunteers have also been delivering water to the homeless around the city. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It becomes saddening after a while that these people actually don't seem to -- either they don't have anywhere to go or they don't want to go to the places that are afforded for them to go.

O'BRIEN: The mayor is appealing for federal emergency assistance. That's little comfort to folks at one Phoenix apartment complex where the air-conditioning conked out.

QUESTION: How is it in your apartment?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like 120 degrees.

QUESTION: The last month, we haven't had any air conditioning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can't even relax in the bed of my own apartment.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: South Texas was spared from a direct hit by Emily. Now a tropical depression, as Chad mentioned, but there's damage to report.

CNN's Chris Lawrence on South Padre Island, giving us an assessment from there. How much damage there?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, damage is here and there, but overall nothing too bad. At its worst, Emily caused about 30,000 people to lose power. That's already down to 5,000 and most of those folks should have their power back on by tomorrow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE (voice-over): This is what Hurricane Emily left behind, parts of a roof ripped off and dumped into this swimming pool, windows smashed by high winds, power lines dangling from poles.

DAN QUANDT, SOUTH PADRE ISLAND OFFICIAL: At one point, almost every place on the island was without power. It just didn't all happen at once.

LAWRENCE: Emily came ashore with an ocean surge. Winds gusted to more than 60 miles per hour.

TRICIA CRAFT, ON VACATION: Our window was facing the ocean, and it was -- we had to move the kids because the windows were shaking back and forth. It was scary for me.

LAWRENCE: Tricia Craft and her family were among the first people back on the beach Wednesday. Even with the ocean still churning, the curious returned just after the hurricane passed.

DAVID CRAFT, ON VACATION: Everybody wants to come down to the beach and, you know, see what, you know, happened and what it looks like.

LAWRENCE: At one point, between 4,000 and 5,000 people rode out the hurricane in emergency shelters across the Rio Grande Valley. Nearly all of them would later find their homes just as they left them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE: There's still flooding in some neighborhoods in South Texas, but it's isolated to a very few streets. Now you saw people out here on the beach yesterday. Officially it's still closed, because the water is so rough, but it's supposed to reopen later today. Overall, you know no one got hurt in this storm, and the kind of damage it caused can be repaired fairly quickly -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Glad to hear that. Chris Lawrence, South Padre Island, thanks -- Carol.

COSTELLO: One suspect in the London terror attacks may draw a line to connect the dots, beginning with Osama Bin Laden, passing through Pakistan, the United States and ending with the train and bush bombers. British police are looking for Haroon Rashid Aswat. Nic Robertson live in London now.

Nic, what can you tell us about Aswat and his connection to the United States?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, he is known to have left Britain just before the bombings happened, but it is with what connects him to the U.S. that is really making him very central for the British investigators here right now. When he went to the United States in 1999 and scouted out a possible location for an Al Qaeda terror training camp in Bly, Oregon, he was coconspirator number two in the trial of James Uwagema (ph), who was indicted in 2002 for not only passing money and computers to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but also for helping scout out that possible location for an Al Qaeda training camp in Oregon. That's one of the reasons why the police are looking for him right now. He is known to have left Great Britain. He is known to have gone to Pakistan just before the bombings took place.

According to Pakistani officials at this time, they will not confirm media reports in Pakistan that he has been arrested. They say that they can't confirm that. Indeed, they say we don't have him at this time. But it is those links to the United States, it is links to a radical cleric in Britain, Sheikh Abu Hamza Al Masri. He was believed to be a righthand man for that firebrand cleric in Britain who was arrested just in the last year. It is those links that investigators are taking to mean that he was highly placed within the Al Qaeda organization may well have had links with Osama Bin Laden, and therefore his presence in Britain and the very fact he came from the same area in Britain where three of the bombers came from means that he is very central to the inquiry here -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Nic Robertson live in London. O'BRIEN: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice upset with Sudanese security forces who roughed up her staff and some journalists traveling with her. Rice was talking with Sudanese President Omar El Bashir when staff and press members were manhandled outside the meeting. Rice said the Sudanese had no right to push and shove.

Andrea Koppel was in the midst of the fracas and she joins us now from the Darfur region of Sudan. Andrea, what happened?

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, miles, to be honest with you, it's really sort of a side story to the bigger story here in Darfur, but to answer your question, the Sudanese security didn't want western media to go into Secretary Rice's meeting with the president of Sudan, Omar El Bashir. They tried to keep us out. When they did let journalists in sort of in different groups, and someone asked a question, they kind of yanked that person by the arm and pulled them out. They weren't just roughing up media, manhandling media, they were also manhandling some of Secretary Rice's aides. She did get an apology from the foreign minister. She was obviously very angry.

O'BRIEN: Andrea, just give us the backstory on this though, why was there so much animosity there between the president's staff and the entourage that was with Secretary of State Rice?

KOPPEL: You know, I've spoken to my colleagues have who have been here, my journalist colleagues who've been here before with, for instance, Secretary Powell last summer, with Secretary Rice's Deputy Bob Zellick, who's been here three times, and said this is the first time that's happened.

So presumably it's because previously you didn't have a meeting with the president, with El Bashir, and they were much more, you know, on guard literally about letting media in and, in fact, one American official said in trying to get us in there, look, we have a free media back in the U.S. And the foreign minister of Sudan said, there is no free media. So it's a different mindset, it's a different approach that you get in countries where they don't have democracy and where they don't have a free media.

O'BRIEN: Andrea Koppel in Sudan, thank you very much -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Now to Iraq where at least eight people have been killed in several attacks in and around Baghdad. In the meantime, reports of another diplomat kidnapped in Iraq, and that's where Aneesh Raman is for us this morning.

Aneesh, tell us about this latest kidnapping.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, good morning.

Police confirming to CNN that about a half hour ago, Al Jazeera's chief of mission to Iraq was abducted by gunmen. It took place in the Al Mansour area of the capital, an affluent area known to house a number of diplomats. It comes, Carol, of course, just a few weeks after we saw attacks on both the Pakistanis and Bahraini diplomats to Iraq, as well as the notable capture and later killing of Egypt's top enjoy to Iraq, Ihab Sherif. It will once again raise serious questions about security for diplomats, particularly the Arab diplomats here in the capital city.

Also today, Carol, already three attacks taking place in Baghdad alone. Three members of an Iraq reconstruction committee shot dead during a drive-by shooting. Also two suicide car bombs detonating at two Iraqi army checkpoints in southern Baghdad. Those explosions taking place about an hour apart from each other. At least eight people have been killed total so far today, Carol, in Baghdad alone.

COSTELLO: Aneesh Raman, live in Baghdad this morning.

O'BRIEN: Supreme court nominee John Roberts will be back on Capitol Hill this morning. He'll be meeting with at least one of his toughest critics, and the question of a filibuster will be discussed when the bipartisan "Gang of 14" senators as they're known meets today. Ed Henry live on Capitol Hill.

Ed, what's the early reaction there from members of the Senate on this particular nominee?

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, so far, there is bipartisan support that seems to be emerging for Judge Roberts. It's not quite a cakewalk, but it's pretty close.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HENRY (voice-over): Mr. Roberts came to Capitol Hill and was welcomed with open arms by beaming Republican leaders.

SEN. BILL FIRST (R), MAJORITY LEADER: He is the best of the best of a legal mind in America.

HENRY: More importantly two key swing senators who helped divert a nuclear showdown over lower-court judges flatly declared Roberts should be no the filibustered.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: One of the criteria of the Gang of 14 is that we would not filibuster a nominee to a court or the Supreme Court if -- unless it was, quote, "extraordinary circumstances." I think that Judge Roberts deserves an up-or-down vote.

SEN. JOHN WARNER (R), VIRGINIA: But in the end, I repeat, I do not think there will be any body of fact that will give rise to invoking the extraordinary circumstance clause.

HENRY: More good news for Roberts from the Democratic leader of the gang, Ben Nelson, who doesn't see a filibuster coming either.

SEN. BEN NELSON (R), NEBRASKA: Well, I'm certainly not thinking about it right now, and I'm not hearing anybody. Sometimes there's hallway whisper. None of that to date. It's still new, but I'm not hearing it.

HENRY: Democratic leaders vow they won't be a rubber stamp. SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: Presidents come and go, senators come and go, Supreme Court justices tend to be there a lot longer than all of us. I want to make sure we do our job the right way.

HENRY: But far from demonizing Roberts, top Democrats are heaping praise on him.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS; There's no question about this man's legal skill, none at all. Nor has there been any serious question of any kind raised about his integrity, his honesty.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HENRY: Senate Democrats admit privately that barring some sort of political earthquake, John Roberts is going to be confirmed easily -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, thank you very much. A little later this hour we'll speak with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about the upcoming confirmation process. Of course his name was mentioned quite a bit prior to this announcement. We'll ask him about that, if he's a little disappointed.

HENRY: Yes, it'll be interesting to hear his answer.

O'BRIEN: Yes.

HENRY: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, more on today's new developments in the London terror investigation. Have authorities found a connection to a worldwide terror plot. We'll talk to a journalist who's been following this case closely.

O'BRIEN: Plus, a Muslim cleric sparks outrage in Britain. Londoners furious about who he blames for the bombings. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: The man British authorities are looking for in the London bombings turns out to be the same man U.S. law enforcement agencies believe tried to build a terror training center in Oregon. Mark Hosenball has co-authored a piece in the (INAUDIBLE) of "Newsweek" that details the activities of Harron Rashid Aswat. He joins us from London this morning.

Mark, good to have you with us.

Tell us a little bit about what we know about Aswat.

MARK HOSENBALL, "NEWSWEEK" REPORTER: Well, Aswat is a British- born Muslim, apparently from the Leeds area, the same area that the suspected suicide bombers in London came from, and he seems to be a well-known character. His name turned up in a previous investigation of a possible terrorist plot in London in 2004, but also, American authorities actually want to talk to him and would like to interview him in New York, in connection with an alleged scheme, I guess you could call it, in which Abu Hamza, a notorious London imam, whose mosque was also attended by other suspected terrorists like the shoe bomber Rich Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the accused September 11th coconspirator.

This Abu Hamza allegedly dispatched Mr. Aswat and another character who apparently lives in Sweden and may apparently have been picked up by authorities there, to in Oregon I think it was in 1999 to scout out a possible location in the United States and Oregon for a jihadi training camp. But they went out there, and apparently they didn't like the location, so they came back and they didn't set up the terrorist training camp.

O'BRIEN: So by any account here, you would put Aswat on a short people to watch if you were involved in security and trying to stop Al Qaeda?

HOSENBALL: Some of the government sources that I've bean talking to say -- have said to me, he's not a good dude. He's not a good person; he's a bad person. Yes, you would want to watch him.

O'BRIEN: If he's a bad guy who's the focus a lot of attention, how is has he been able to operate, potentially have having a significant role in the London bombings? how did that happen.

HOSENBALL: Well, that's, you know, the 64,000-pound question I guess. They don't know. They don't know -- I mean, there's a big question as to whether this guy is even in custody. Some Pakistani authorities were credited two or three days ago as saying that he had been picked up in certain strained circumstances, like he had a suicide belt on. Today the Pakistani authorities apparently saying that's not true; they picked up 200 people, not this guy. I actually don't know whether or not this guy's been picked up yet.

I do know with some considerable confidence that they're really looking for this guy, that they think he might be -- well, they think he is a suspect in the London bombings, that he was some sort -- at the very least a helper or a step up the organizational food chain from the actual people who blew themselves up in the subway. Conceivably a high-level planner of this operation, but conceivably not.

And as we discussed earlier, he was a well-known figure, or apparently somewhat well-known figure, in London's extremist circles. How they managed to do this, how all these people managed to do this under the radar of British authorities is obviously something that eventually British authorities will come to grips with.

O'BRIEN: There are reports that he actually traveled to Great Britain a couple of weeks before the bombings as well. He's using the cell phone. He's potentially orchestrating this plot, if all this comes true. After all that has been said and done about intelligence and the desire to, you know, pick out people and make sure that they are focused on and not allowed through airports and so forth, it's amazing to me that he was able to so freely operate. HOSENBALL: Well, there are reports out that two of the bombers and this guy were all known to both British and American authorities, or certainly British authorities, from previous investigations, particularly an investigation called Operation Crevice in 2004.

However, their names were only like amongst 2,000 other names that the British had collected during the course of this investigation, and as people keep saying, and they're right about this, they can't watch all of them. It's my understanding in the case of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the oldest of the actual suicide bombers, they considered what to do about this guy, and they decided, well, he's not dangerous. He's one of the people we have to put aside and we can't watch him. So the fact is, to watch somebody around the clock if he's a serious suspect, they need like 20 guys. You can't do that for hundreds, or even thousands of suspects, and so there's a problem here, you know, with maybe lots of suspects out there, and they don't know who they are, let alone have the man power to watch them if they did know who they were, so it's kind of scary in some ways.

O'BRIEN: It's a frightening thought. We'll leave it at that. Mark Hosenball of "Newseek" magazine. Thank you very much for being with us -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Still to come, another shakeup of top brass at Delta Airlines, just as the carrier struggles to avoid bankruptcy. We're "Minding Your Business," just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Yet another management reshuffling at Delta as the airline faces talk of bankruptcy. Gerri Willis is in for Andy Serwer, as she is "Minding Your Business" this morning. I'm just looking at the numbers, and I don't know how you can lose that much money an still stay in business.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a great question, Carol. Good morning. Good to see you. Delta having more problems here. You're used to hearing about troubles in the airline industry, right. Well, Delta a real loser here, Carol. They're going to be reporting quarterly profits -- I should say losses, and the expectation that they will lose $340 million. Take a look at how much money this company has lost over the last several years. It's astonishing.

COSTELLO: I mean, I just -- added them up very quickly -- $8 billion it looks to me over four years. How can you stay in business?

WILLIS: Well, apparently senior executives are saying they won't be able to, that they should file for reorganization for bankruptcy. That's the conversation going on right now. And guess what? The CFO, the second CFO hired in two years, has resigned, is leaving because of these losses that are mounting up. It's a fascinating story. It will be interesting to see who can hang on. We've got United and U.S. Air also in bankruptcy, and I should say that the story today in "The Wall Street Journal" about these executives and the fact that they're pushing for bankruptcy. COSTELLO: Gerri Willis, thank you.

WILLIS: You're welcome.

O'BRIEN: NASA now aiming for a launch of the space shuttle on Tuesday morning. It is hoped. The decision came out late yesterday. Space officials there. The engineers have been going over that faulty fuel sensor there, and they really don't know what the problem is just yet. But they're still going to march forward with the countdown, include in a little testing procedure. Depending on how the test goes Monday. they hope to have a launch about 10:39 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL PARSON, SHUTTLE PROGRAM MANAGER: We believe the best way to go through this is to do a countdown. If the sensors work exactly like we think they will, then we'll launch on that date. If anything goes not per the plan that we've laid out in front of us, then we'll have a scrub, and we'll have to talk about it, and either we can fix that and do a quick turnaround or we may have other issues on our plate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Now the leading suspect, although it hasn't been fully identified, the leading suspect is electromagnetic interference, you know, like when they tell you to turn off your cell phone off on the airplane. It could be somebody's Blackberry that's keeping the shuttle on the ground.

COSTELLO: Oh, come on.

O'BRIEN: That's quite possible. It is possible.

COSTELLO: Come on.

O'BRIEN: There's more to it than that, but the truth is it could be electromagnetic inter fence, yes.

COSTELLO: It's getting to be embarrassing now, isn't it?

O'BRIEN: Well, it's a complicated machine, there's no question. And it's -- we have a complicated machine here, too. We should give it a break and come back.

COSTELLO: OK, I guess we're going to take a break then.

O'BRIEN: I think we're taking a break, yes.

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