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President Bush to Appoint John Bolton U.N. Ambassador; Saudi Arabia's King Fahd Dies; Terror Investigation

Aired August 01, 2005 - 09:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A developing story out of Washington, D.C. Senior administration officials say President Bush is going to bypass the Senate and appoint John Bolton U.N. ambassador. We've got a live report from the White House coming up.
And a major political transition begins in Saudi Arabia. King Fahd, the country's ruler for 23 years, has died. How will his death change America's relationship with this longtime ally?

And also this morning, shuttle astronauts are taking their second space walk in three days. NASA is now considering another potentially risky repair mission.

Those stories are all ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN Broadcast Center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

S. O'BRIEN: Good morning. Welcome back, everybody.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to perform a risky repair mission on your laptop.

S. O'BRIEN: You notice that sort of was whisked away with the beeping here.

M. O'BRIEN: Kind of beeping. That was the beeping, folks.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. I've been pounding on it all morning. So that's probably why.

MYERS: All right. Busy morning this morning. We'll get right to it.

A developing story out of Washington. Just moments ago we learned President Bush will appoint John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations while Congress is out of session. They call that a recess appointment. It's kind of a little loophole in the law.

CNN's Bob Franken confirming the news for us. He's at the White House.

When will this all become official, Bob?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, consider it official now in that it comes from White House sources. But President Bush at some point today is going to hold an event -- he has nothing on his schedule now -- where he will make the announcement.

We're told it is not planned to be a news conference, but the president is going to announce after struggling with the Senate after quite some time this recess appointment. The term meaning that during a time when the Congress is in recess, as it now is, the president can make these appointments. They last, however, only until the next Congress convenes, which will be in a little bit over a year.

So the Democrats are saying that what this does is, since the president is going to do it that way, is it really undermines the credibility of the United Nations ambassador. However, the White House for the longest time has struggled to get John Bolton confirmed as the U.N. ambassador with no success.

Bolton, of course, quite controversial. He has views and temperament that many of the Democrats have tried to paint as incendiary. He is not considered to be by many Democrats, at least, a friend of the United Nations.

The Republican arguments are that John Bolton is exactly the kind of reformer who should be sent to the U.N. And since the Senate has not been able to undo its various rules and get that done, the president has now decided, we're told, reluctantly, that he will make this recess appointment -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Bob Franken at the White House. Thanks.

Let's check the rest of the headlines. Carol Costello with that.

Carol, good morning.

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

"Now in the News," another round of repairs in space. Not those repairs, but these.

Right now, astronauts are fixing a gyroscope which help steer the International Space Station. You see them out in. It's the second space walk of the mission.

NASA officials are also deciding whether a third space walk on Wednesday should focus on those repairs on the shuttle's underbelly. Some damage there could potentially lead to overheating during the shuttle's reentry.

Iraqi officials say they're on track for drafting the country's new constitution. The committee had until today to request a six- month extension, but the chairman said that the August 15 deadline will be met. If the charter is approved by the national assembly, a public referendum will be held in October.

In India, another day of downpours as Mumbai tries to clean up from record-breaking rain. Authorities say 1,000 people have died from last week's flooding and landslides. Government officials are asking residents to stay inside. Thousands have been without power since Tuesday, when 37 inches of rain fell in that city in 24 hours.

And it's a low-carb, low-cash diet for Atkins. Atkins Nutritional has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company is hurting financially as the popularity of its low-carb diet continues to dip.

The plan calls for eliminating carbohydrates, such as bread and pasta, to lose weight. You know that. But it's been criticized for focusing on fatty foods and cutting out most fruits and vegetables. The spokesman says the company owes more than $300 million.

You would have thought they would have seen this coming.

M. O'BRIEN: I guess so.

COSTELLO: The lessening popularity, and maybe they should like, you know, tweak their business model, which they're doing now, to try to save themselves.

M. O'BRIEN: Got to kind of pull in the belt a little bit, so to speak. All right. Thank you very much, Carol.

Messages from around the world are pouring in to Riyadh, expressing condolences at the passing of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. With the Saudi kingdom sitting on a quarter of the world's oil reserves, King Fahd was one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. His close ties with U.S., though, made his country a target of terrorists, and a key ally as well, in the war on terror.

Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson has traveled to Saudi Arabia many times, has met King Abdullah, and has reported extensively on the Saudi royal family.

Nic, what is the impact of the king's death on the war on terror?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's going to continue very much in the same vein. I mean, really, King Abdullah is the one that's been prosecuting the campaign against these terror cells, the al Qaeda-linked terror cells, inside Saudi Arabia, and he's going to continue to do that.

I think that perhaps the change we might see is that other members of the royal family, perhaps in the interior ministry, may feel under -- may feel now that King Abdullah is the king that they can afford to perhaps be a little harder. Maybe that will be the case as they try to prove their hand.

We'll certainly see the interior minister show that he wants to crack down on these cells. But the reality is, is that the government in Saudi Arabia doesn't know where they are, and they fight them when they pop up -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Nic Robertson in London. Thanks much.

We're learning more about a man, meanwhile, being held in Italy as a failed suspect in the London bombings. Or the failed London bombings, I should say.

Italian police say the suspect, originally named Hussain Osman, is, in fact, an Ethiopian named Hamdi Isaac.

Jennifer Eccleston live now in Rome, trying to sort all this out for us.

What else are Italian authorities telling us?

JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we got a little more detail today from Rome's chief anti-terrorism officer. His name is Carlo De Stefano, and he provided further details about that Friday arrest of Hussain Osman, the suspected London bomber, whom, as you so correctly said, Italian police call Hamdi Adus Isaac. And that's because it was the name that appeared on his Ethiopian birth certificate. Now, the police chief said that some 2,000 non-EU citizens have been questioned in Italy in relation to this investigation, and that some were subsequently arrested.

Now, he talked about that cell phone that tracked him to Isaac's movements here and proved that he had contacts with members of the east African immigrant community across Italy, including his two brothers who live here and who have also been arrested. He also confirmed that the family and friends of Isaac helped him make his way from London to Rome, and they are looking at the possibility that Isaac, or his family, could be part of a broader network of an east African criminal activity in Italy. But for now, it doesn't appear that he or his family are directly related to a wider terrorist network.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARLO DE STEFANO, ITALIAN ANTI-TERRORISM CHIEF: We have to realize that we are confronted here with the facts which have to do with what seems to us to be more like an impromptu or informal group rather than some kind of well-organized terrorist network.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ECCLESTON: The suspect continues to be questioned at a Rome prison. And we're still awaiting a judge's decision about whether or not there's enough information for extradition to the United Kingdom.

Now, as you know, Isaac's lawyer confirmed that her client will fight that extradition. Antonietta Sonnessa also confirmed that Isaac told investigators he was involved in that July 21 failed attack, but he said the strike was only meant to grab attention, and, Miles, it was not meant to kill anyone.

Back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Jennifer Eccleston, thanks -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: The city of London on high alert this morning. Thousands of police reportedly positioned on streets and on rooftops throughout that city after indications that a possible third attack might be in the works.

Bob Ayers is a security analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, joining us this morning.

It's nice to see you.

First and foremost, why are you so certain that, in fact, the July 7 and the July 21 bombers are, in fact, linked? As we just heard from Jennifer's report a moment ago, even Italian authorities feel like there is not necessarily some kind of connection.

BOB AYERS, SECURITY ANALYST: Well we have the same targeting. We have very similar bombs that are prepared. We have the same delivery system. And there's several other connections, at least through the neighborhood and through some of the religious centers.

S. O'BRIEN: There are also significant differences, though. You have east Africans in one case. You have Pakistanis in another case.

If, indeed, these are linked, what are the implications of that information? Does it impress you how wide that net would be?

AYERS: I think that what we're going to see is, as the Metropolitan Police continue their investigation, we're going to see more and more of a much larger network. What they're doing right now is they're rolling up contacts, they're rolling up other people that had awareness or knowledge of the bombing attempts, or the bombings themselves.

They're doing this very quietly. They're not showing a great deal of their results to the public, because they're trying to identify and apprehend the other terrorists.

S. O'BRIEN: Do you think it's going to be possible, though, to apprehend -- I mean, if you look at this case, and especially the arrest in Rome, here is a suspect whose face taken off of CCTV -- the closed circuit TV is plastered all over the city --somehow can still manage to get oust country? Is it going to be possible for the police, in fact, to crack down on such a -- what looks like such a widespread terrorist network?

AYERS: Well, we have to remember that there are no outbound immigration checks conducted by the British. When you leave the country, you're not checked. They are checked by the incoming immigration organization of the department they're going to.

So they were going to France. The French were the ones that were supposed to be checking the identity of travelers. The man did travel under a different name.

S. O'BRIEN: We know today that the city is under a lockdown, at least as it's described by some of the reports this morning. And I'm curious to know, with a heightened alert after the first bombing, and these suspected and attempted bombers were able to go ahead and get on the subway again with bombs and get on a bus again, give me a sense of what kind of evidence or what kind of information would have led to this lockdown and how long can it potentially last.

AYERS: Well, the police are not locking down London for no reason. What we're seeing is the external indications of an ongoing investigation. The police concern with maintaining vigilance, the police presence on the streets, indicates they have information about as of yet still-at-large terrorists in the city.

S. O'BRIEN: So you think this a relatively short-term lockdown?

AYERS: I think it will stay locked down until one of two things happens: either the police burn out, or they begin to identify some of the other suspects that they're so obviously in pursuit of.

S. O'BRIEN: Some of these al Qaeda-affiliated Web sites, it's been reported, have been sort of disappearing off the World Wide Web. What do you make of that? And who's behind that?

AYERS: Well, I'd like to think if my old former career is correct, that the British working with the Americans are taking these sites down.

S. O'BRIEN: Bob Ayers is a security analyst at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

Nice to have you. Thanks for talking with us.

AYERS: You're welcome.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, new questions about the safety of the Shuttle Discovery. So how serious is this latest problem that's facing the crew? We'll take a look at that.

M. O'BRIEN: Also, the biggest study ever conducted on teens and body image. It's an eye-opening look at how far girls and boys will go to get the perfect body.

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: The crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery, two of them, Soichi Noguchi, Steve Robinson, in the final stages of their important space walk today, about to attach a new and we hope operative control moment gyro, as it is called, to the exterior of the International Space Station. So far so good on that space walk. Lots of questions about the space walk that probably lies ahead.

Mike Cabbage is the space editor for "The Orlando Sentinel."

Mike, first of all, did they do OK on this run this morning?

MIKE CABBAGE, "ORLANDO SENTINEL": So far, so good, Miles. They have the new gyroscope in place, and it looks like so far the space walk is going just according to script.

M. O'BRIEN: You are probably hearing the same things I am, that it is very likely on space walk number three, day after tomorrow, some lower-priority items will be scrapped in favor of a never-tried-before repair of the Space Shuttle Discovery, taking out a few bumps in the nose area. Tell us a little about what you're hearing as well.

CABBAGE: That's exactly right, Miles. From what I understand, on Wednesday, when the Discovery crew does their third space walk, what they're going to do is they're going to either remove or trim down the so-called gap fillers that are sticking out in a couple of areas between some of the heat resistant tiles on Discovery's belly.

These are fillers stuck in before launch to sort of fill the gaps between some of the tiles, and apparently during liftoff they shook loose, where one of them is sticking out a little over an inch and the other one is sticking out about a half-inch. And there's concern that if you reenter the atmosphere with these protrusions, that it can increase the heating on certain parts of the shuttle to a degree that NASA managers don't want to risk.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, the shuttle relies on a very smooth air flow at certain speeds, especially. They call it the boundary layer. That gets into technical stuff, but basically what this does is create turbulence, which increases temperatures. It's kind of like jacking up the temperature on a blow torch or something.

CABBAGE: That's exactly right, Miles. And the concern is, is that if you have any other damaged tiles that are behind the air stream that's disrupted by these protrusions, these gap fillers, that it could increase damage. And they've seen these before, though.

They're not new, and they're really not that rare. And in fact, there was a 1995 flight of Shuttle Columbia that came home with a gap filler protrusion that's actually bigger than either of the ones that are seen right now.

But they've seen it. They have a chance to go fix it without really disrupting their space walk timeline. So they've decided, or they're expected to decide today, that they're going to do this.

M. O'BRIEN: How risky a move will it be? Never tried before, obviously.

CABBAGE: Well, technically it's never been tried, but it shouldn't be that big of a risk. One of astronauts, as I understand it, is going to go on the end of the space station's robot arm and they're going to go to this area. And I guess they'll do the equivalent of either taking a pair of pliers and yanking these out, or they'll trim them down to a point where they're not sticking out quite as much as they are now.

So you can say sort of it's a risky, unprecedented emergency repair, and I guess in one sense it really is. But practically speaking, it's really not that much different than a lot of the things that space walkers do on every mission.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Mike, before we get away, we've got a little scoop, and we're willing to tout that for you. You got a hold of the goods.

CABBAGE: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: This is kind of the what's next after the shuttle retires. The crew exploration vehicle, a trip to the moon, and ultimately on to Mars, and you got a hold of all the documents which lay that out.

I'm going to ask you to distill that down into about 45 seconds if you could. But what is the big picture here on what is planned for after the shuttle?

CABBAGE: The big picture for what's planned after the shuttle is that NASA plans to return to the moon with astronauts by 2018. And they're going to send four-person crews there for an eventual trip, to prepare for an eventual trip to Mars, where they're going to have six- person crews that might eventually spend up to 500 days on the Martian surface.

And the initial steps, what they're going to do, is they're going to take vehicles they derive from the current space shuttle using pieces of the shuttle, like the solid rocket boosters, and the external fuel tanks, and the shuttle's main engines, to build a big, hefty launch vehicle that can launch lots of weight, like the old Apollo Saturn 5s did, in a smaller crew launcher that can take this new crew exploration vehicle, which really is sort of a modified Apollo capsule, up into space.

M. O'BRIEN: It's interesting how they're going back to the capsule. Isn't it?

CABBAGE: It is interesting, but it's a simple design and it offers a lot of things. One difference from the Apollo missions with the capsule, though, is apparently it's going to thumping down on land in the western U.S. instead of splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

M. O'BRIEN: Interesting. Mike Cabbage is aerospace editor of "The Orlando Sentinel." If you'd like to read his article which lays all of this out in much better detail, go to OrlandoSentinel.com.

Thanks for being with us this morning, Mike.

CABBAGE: My pleasure.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, the crisis in Niger. Desperately needed aid has started to pour in, but relief workers say there is a way this tragedy could have been avoided. We're going to take a closer look coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A closer look now at the desperate situation in the African nation of Niger. Niger is about twice the size of Texas. It's situated in north central Africa. Much of the land is part of the vast Sahara Desert. And the land's been infested by locusts, and now widespread drought is placing more than a million people at the risk of immediate starvation. And 3.5 million could face dire food shortages.

Nicolas De Torrente is the executive director of Doctors Without Borders USA, joining us this morning.

You know, whenever these things happen, these crises, of such a massive proportion, you think, well, how did it get this bad? Is it that people just weren't paying or haven't been paying attention, on top of the drought issues and on top of the locust problems, obviously?

NICOLAS DE TORRENTE, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS: Well, Niger has been facing chronic problems for many years. Year and year out, many people in Niger live on the brink.

You know, they have small crops, they have herds of small animals, and they live in very difficult conditions. And we've been treating severe malnutrition in Niger, and last year treated 10,000 severely malnourished children in the southern part of the country. So it is known that there are chronic problems, but there were warning signs, clearly, that things would get worse this year.

You had mentioned the drought, you mentioned locusts, food shortages, and fodder for animals was much less of that. So we were seeing early this year a rate -- admission rates in our center doubling, tripling. And the real problem is that no emergency measures were taken quickly enough.

S. O'BRIEN: So now it's the sort of cliched, literal race against time, though. You've got 2.5 million people who are getting emergency rations. As doctors who are sort of there on the ground, what's your strategy? What do you do?

DE TORRENTE: Well, what needs to be done is, one, to take care of the children in particular who are already malnourished, severely malnourished. These are kids who are less than 70 percent of their normal body weight. They are severe risk of death.

You know, 30, 50 percent of them die if they're not treated. So you need specialized food, specialized medical attention. But then you need to do more.

And this is what has not been happening so far, is to help the families, help general food distribution, give free food to people who are so poor, that they can no longer feed their children. And this is what has not been happening.

And really, in fact, the government of Niger, international donors, resisted, objected to giving out free food until a few weeks ago, claiming that this would undermine development efforts, a destabilized market. And so there were no emergency measures taken in time to prevent this from reaching this point.

S. O'BRIEN: It seems like a lot of the government's issue was at the -- sort of the background behind the just giving -- giving away of the things. But, you know, I guess the question is, is money going to solve the crisis? Because the government's concern certainly is to get the money, but then there's no sort of permanent improvement in place. And that could undermine any efforts that they're making.

DE TORRENTE: Well, certainly you need to have development strategists to prevent these crises from happening over and over again, but these development strategies can't come at the expense of life-saving measures, timely life-saving measures when they're most needed. When you have people who are so poor and the price of food is so high that they cannot even afford to feed their children, to buy food for their children, and their children are starving to death, they can't ge to the hospital because you need to -- you know, you need to pay to get medical attention, then, you know, we need to override development strategies, we need to override these considerations and provide life-saving support. And that's what the world international community failed to do until -- until now, when people -- everyone is scrambling to get food in, to get emergency measures in.

S. O'BRIEN: Is it working? Are the emergency measures in place, enough of them to a great enough degree to save people?

DE TORRENTE: Well, yes. Now we have an emergency effort that's under way finally. Free food distributions are starting to take place. There's a scale-up of the relief effort. And many people will be helped, but it's just too late.

And it was utterly preventable. This is what is so frustrating about it.

S. O'BRIEN: It's heartbreaking.

DE TORRENTE: This is a country that is not at war, it's a stable country. This is a situation that's been allowed to gradually worsen over time. Largely preventable, and in many ways inexcusable.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, heartbreaking. What are the numbers estimated of people who will die because of this?

DE TORRENTE: Well, we don't know, but -- it's hard to extrapolate exactly, but many, hundreds of thousands of children are already malnourished. And it's really a race against the clock to save them.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, it's just heartbreaking. Nicolas De Torrente, thank you for coming to talk to us about it. Appreciate it.

DE TORRENTE: Thank you, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: We should mention that Anderson Cooper is in Niger. He's covering the crisis there, and he's got a special report tonight on "ANDERSON COOPER 360." That starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

A short break, and then we're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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