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Daring Spacewalk; Investigation Begins Into Air France Crash; 14 U.S. Marines Killed in Iraq; 'Fair' Tax?

Aired August 03, 2005 - 07:31   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome, everybody. It is just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. A very busy news day on lots of fronts really. News out of Iraq this morning, Canada as well, and in space.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In space. Shuttle Discovery, the space station, a busy place on the outside today, and that's where we begin. Let's take a look at some live pictures right now the as Discovery astronauts work their way through what should be a seven- hour spacewalk. We're now at about the two-and-a-half-hour point in this spacewalk.

And we're told that they might actually get to that critical repair. You see the shuttle's belly there. You can't really see the protruding pieces of gap filler, which are the focus of their attention later, not in this particular image. But up toward the nose is where spacewalker Steve Robinson will perform a delicate maneuver, although conceptually, as he put it, a simple maneuver. Just pull the gap filler out, and the problem goes away. That's in theory. Of course, execution is everything in the spacewalk racket.

Joining me now to talk a little bit about this is Jerry Ross. He is the chief astronaut at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. And former NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space. She's in Columbus, Ohio.

Good to have you both with us. Jerry Ross, I just want to touch base with you. You really helped design this spacewalk and this technique. Are you worried?

JERRY ROSS, NASA ASTRONAUT: Not at all, Miles. I think we have it well in hand. And we have all of the smart people that have been working on this for over two years brought to bear on it. And I think we have a good plan, and I think the crew is very confident they can do it quite easily.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Well, you haven't been working two years on pulling out gap fillers specifically, though. This is a relatively new concept, right?

ROSS: This is relatively new, but it's well within the experience base of the types of things we've been preparing for just in case.

M. O'BRIEN: Kathy Sullivan, let's talk about that notion of, you know, what is a simple task in space? I mean, we have to remind folks this is a rather harsh environment, spinning around the planet in the vacuum, temperature swings, that inflated suit, that gloved hand. Simple tasks can get complicated pretty quickly, can't they?

KATHRYN SULLIVAN, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, they can, Miles. And I think Steve said it really well yesterday. He said it is conceptually simple. No one who's ever donned a suit and snuck outside has regarded what they're doing as simple. Each of the pieces and parts is very understandable, but each has to be done with great care, great focus and attention, a lot of delicacy. And for that matter, in this one in particular, the robotics work of Vegas and Wendy Lawrence from inside the station are going to be just as critical and just as delicate.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. Talking about those robot arms, making sure they're in the right position. Jerry Ross, that's a key thing, of course. You don't want to get Steve -- he needs to be close enough to reach those gap fillers, but not so close that his helmet or something might bang into those tiles, which, after all, are very fragile. That's a big concern, isn't it?

ROSS: That's been one of our focuses, Miles, is to make sure that we give the crew member that was going to do the task enough maneuvering room to do the task, and yet enough clearance that we weren't going to have any inadvertent bumping of the underbelly of the orbiter.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. You've done, I'll call it a crash course, but that's probably not the best choice of words. You've done a crash course on this, and you put astronauts in that huge swimming pool, the tank in Houston to go through this. Did they run into any potential snags that are worth sharing with us this morning?

ROSS: Not that I'm aware of. They obviously worked the details out. They tested different types of body orientations and the locations of the tools on the outside of the suit for ease of reaching them and stowing them. I think they've got a good plan in place, and I think you'll see that this morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Kathy, it's worth pointing out here the amount of training that goes into a typical spacewalk. They're very choreographed. Many, many hours using virtual reality in that big tank. And that -- although that wasn't specifically the training for this particular task, all of those skills kind of come to bear, don't they?

SULLIVAN: They absolutely do, Miles. I mean, you've pointed out before, it's a big bulky suit, you're at the end of a long cherry picker. It's all sort of a strange place to be. You have to be able to be so comfortable and so familiar with the suit that all of that for the spacewalker is almost background. You are aware of it, but it's not front of mind.

And so to Steve, to a degree that the average folks might find a little hard to quite believe, it will really be like standing out, as he said, in his garage playing with his airplanes. He's so aware of the suit, how it works, comfortable with it. He was commenting earlier in the spacewalk today on how really well-suited to a fit into the gloves he feels. So, he's clearly very comfortable now in his third EVA, and he'll be able to put all of his attention on the work environment right in front of his face.

One of the small points that I know he'll be very alert to, as will all of the other folks watching the camera angles, when he pulls on the gap filler, although it's not reckoned that it's going to take much force to pull it out, something around maybe one or two pounds, and everyone reckons no greater than 10. But remember this is zero gravity. When you pull on something, unless you think about tensing all of your muscles to resist that pull, the natural tendency is that you're going to pull yourself towards the thing that you're yanking on. Since he'll already be so close to the bottom of the shuttle, Steve will be very mindful and watching out to be sure he's braced his body so that he stays rigid and actually exerts the pull on the gap filler.

M. O'BRIEN: Thanks very much for that good primer on the spacewalk that lies ahead. Jerry Ross, Kathy Sullivan, both of them veteran spacewalkers. Appreciate your time -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's get back to that potential disaster in Toronto; 309 people, though, walked away from the disaster. Here's a live picture of Pearson International Airport just outside of Toronto. Investigators are on the scene there this morning. The Air France flight they took from Paris landed in severe weather conditions yesterday. The plane, though, didn't stay on the runway. It skidded into a gully and then burst into flames. Everybody got off safely, though. No Airbus A340 has ever crashed. Now investigators want to know what happened to spoil that perfect record.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Conrad Bellehumeur is the spokesman for the Canadian Transportation Safety Board. He's in Ottawa this morning.

It's nice to see you. Thanks for being with us. Is it right that you were watching television and watching the accident really unfold on TV before you got the official call that you were going to be involved?

CONRAD BELLEHUMEUR, CANADIAN TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD: That's right. I was sitting in my office, and I have a television across from my desk. And I saw it unfolding on the local news network, and then the official call came in shortly after that.

S. O'BRIEN: And you knew you were going to having a long day in the office that day. You've got lots of advantages here, I would guess, in any kind of investigation. First, the crew survived. The passengers survived. The plane is mostly intact. That must give you tremendous headway so far, doesn't it?

BELLEHUMEUR: Well, this is a very unique situation for us and a good situation in that we'll be able to interview the entire crew, several of the passengers, as well as retrieve the technical data from the plane, from those black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the data recorder. So with all of that wealth of information, we should be able to piece together exactly what happened and why there was a crash.

S. O'BRIEN: At this early stage, though, do you have any sort of educated guesses about what happened?

BELLEHUMEUR: No. Right now it's very much too early in the investigation to be able to start to speculate as to what caused the crash. Normally, what we do know from previous investigations is that it's not one simple thing. It's normally a sequences of events or a number of contributing factors that lead to a crash.

S. O'BRIEN: You've got people on the ground, though, who obviously are going to want to interview. You've got people on the plane, the crew, and the passengers as well. Do you estimate that you'll be talking to 400 or so people, or will it be significantly fewer than that?

BELLEHUMEUR: Well, that's a decision that the investigator in charge will have to make. Every single passenger, crew member, official from the airport that was somehow involved will have a different perspective. And once the investigation team feels that they have a clear picture, it's going to be up to them to decide whether they want to interview everyone or that a representative sample is sufficient.

S. O'BRIEN: There were some reports from folks on the ground that the plane was struck by lightning. Is that very unusual? Is that a big focus of your investigation right now?

BELLEHUMEUR: Well, the weather is definitely going to be one of the factors that we're going to look at. We have reports that the plane had been in severe weather conditions for quite some time. So we're going to be looking at different aspects related to the weather, whether that would have contributed to crew fatigue, what was the visibility from the cockpit onto the runway, what were the conditions of the runway at the time that the landing was attempted? So all of these factors will be considered throughout the course of the investigation.

S. O'BRIEN: A lot to do. But really good news in that 309 people survived the crash.

BELLEHUMEUR: Yes, very good news.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. Thanks for being with us, Conrad Bellehumeur, joining us from the Canadian Transportation Safety Board this morning. Nice to see you.

BELLEHUMEUR: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: It's time for a check on some of the other headlines in the news this morning. Carol Costello with that.

Good morning -- Carol.

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

"Now in the News."

New developments out of Iraq, an attack today killing 14 U.S. Marines and one civilian, their interpreter, in Haditha. That's in northwestern Iraq.

Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon.

Barbara -- what do you know about the circumstances surrounding these deaths?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Carol, this word still coming into the Pentagon now, but they are saying they believe it was an improvised explosive device, one of those IED roadside attacks that killed 14 Marines and their interpreter traveling in their amphibious assault vehicle near Haditha. Haditha about 120 miles northwest of Baghdad, the same place, the same city area where seven Marines were killed on Monday. Six of those Marines in some sort of attack, small-arms attack by insurgents.

Carol, all of this comes at a very difficult time, of course. U.S. and Iraqi forces talking about where Iraq might be secure enough to turn the situation over to the Iraqis to allow U.S. troops to eventually withdraw and come home. Northwestern Iraq very much remains an insurgent stronghold. Carol, in the last 10 days, 43 troops killed across Iraq -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Barbara Starr live at the Pentagon this morning.

Also in Iraq, an American freelance journalist was found shot to death earlier this morning. A western official tells us Steven Vincent and his translator had been kidnapped by unknown gunmen. Vincent was shot several times. His translator did survive. He was in Basra working on a book about the history of that city.

We've been following this story. A brain-dead woman in Arlington, Virginia, has now given birth to a healthy baby girl. Susan Torres was kept on life support. Remember that? She's been on life support since May to allow more time for her baby to grow. Well, the baby was born, named Susan, after her mother. We'll have much more on this story in the next hour, because, as you know, mom will probably be disconnected from life support and will soon die.

In the weather department, the worst is yet to come. That's according to forecasters who say much more hurricane activity is on the way. Forecasters had already predicted this year's hurricane season would be fierce. So far, we've seen seven storms since June and July. Two were major storms.

(WEATHER REPORT) S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, two former execs convicted of looting their companies will taste freedom a little bit longer. Andy is going to tell us why. That's in "Minding Your Business" just ahead.

M. O'BRIEN: And the push to ditch the IRS. Bring it on. I just got audited.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: We'll hear from the talk show host behind a plan to get rid of the federal income tax all together. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Where the balance sheets meets the police blotter, we find Andy Serwer once again.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Always there. Scandal watch for us this morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Scandal watch.

SERWER: And we have a bunch of things to discuss. First of all, the continuing saga of Enron, another large settlement; this, the biggest one yet actually: $2.4 billion to be paid to Enron investors by CIBC. That's a large Canadian bank. Our friends north of the border sharing in the pain here. The reason it's bigger is because they were involved in more transactions.

Other companies still haven't settled this kind of activity, which will be Merrill Lynch and CSFB. So more to come there.

News about our parent company, Time Warner, it's not good again. A $2.4 billion settlement paid to investors here. This having to do with securities fraud in conjunction with AOL. And, actually, it may be good news, because the company may be putting this behind it, so...

M. O'BRIEN: I have no comment.

SERWER: At this particular time?

M. O'BRIEN: No comment.

SERWER: At this particular time.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

SERWER: OK. And finally, we told you yesterday that Dennis Kozlowski, the "Koz," he, of course, the former CEO of Tyco, will be sentenced September 19. The wheels of justice turning slowly, remember I said. Yesterday, prosecutors wanted him to spend time in jail until his sentencing. The judge said, you know what? He doesn't have to do that. He can spend time at home or maybe at his home in Nantucket even before that sentencing next month. So a little bit of a reprieve there for big Dennis.

M. O'BRIEN: So he stays in a well-appointed place?

SERWER: With a shower curtain that costs thousands of dollars, no doubt.

M. O'BRIEN: And enjoy it while you have it, right?

SERWER: That's right.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Andy Serwer, thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, we'll talk to the author and talk show host who wants to say good-bye to the IRS forever. He's got a plan for getting rid of federal income tax. We'll explain it ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Imagine getting your paycheck and then discovering that no federal taxes have been taken out. For that matter, imagine dumping the IRS and, in fact, imagine dumping the dreaded income tax all together.

Well, our next guest is co-author of a new book. It's called "The FairTax Book: Saying Good-bye to the Income Tax and the IRS." And then there's even a longer title under that, which asterisk all of the other taxes as well. It is now number two on Amazon's bestseller list. It's radio host Neal Boortz. He co-wrote the book with Georgia Republican congressman John Linder.

Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in to talk to us about it.

NEAL BOORTZ, AUTHOR, "THE FAIRTAX PLAN": Thank you. Thanks for having me.

S. O'BRIEN: It's our pleasure. Give me a sense of how this plan -- I mean, you get rid of the IRS. You get rid of the federal tax, period. Where do you make up the money?

BOORTZ: Well, it's very simple. All corporate taxes, business taxes, gone. All personal federal taxes, they're gone. You get 100 percent of your paycheck.

S. O'BRIEN: But?

BOORTZ: But there is a consumption tax added to retail goods and services, only at the final retail sale. So that it's revenue neutral. The consumption tax raises the exact same amount of money for the federal government that all of these taxes we're getting rid of now raise.

Does it raise the price of consumer goods? No, because all of the embedded taxes that are in these consumer goods now because of the corporate income -- the business taxes, they're gone. So the price of consumer goods remains just about the same, but the retailers are paying the consumption tax to the government.

One more thing, the president's Tax Reform Commission said last week that this plan, the fair tax plan, is the only tax reform plan out there that completely removes federal tax liability from the poor. Every penny of it.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. So it does sound simple, I'll give you that. But let me tell you what some people who people of respect are saying about this plan.

BOORTZ: Oh, absolutely.

S. O'BRIEN: Alan Greenspan.

BOORTZ: I'm ready for them.

S. O'BRIEN: I hear you.

BOORTZ: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Alan Greenspan, consumption tax alone is bad for the economy. The AARP, it's unfair to senior citizens. The National Retail Federation, it would cause a three-year decline in the economy. It would cause a four-year decline in employment. It will cause an eight-year decline in consumer spending. So all of those groups and more. That's a small sampling.

BOORTZ: Oh, yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Not loving your idea at all.

BOORTZ: Well, no, there are people that don't. The principal people that don't like it, Soledad, is K Street in Washington, the lobbyists, the people that like 300,000, 500,000, and the National Retail Federation lobbyists, K Street. These are people that make money gaming the current tax system, manipulating it for their clients. Huge money. They're out of business if this happens.

S. O'BRIEN: But isn't this basic economics 101...

BOORTZ: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: ... that you don't want to ever put any kind of clamp on spending. And if there are all of these taxes -- I mean, you get a tax every time you purchase something. Doesn't that clamp down on something?

BOORTZ: Well, I know. But remember this: If a $100 coffeemaker still costs $100 after this plan is implemented, OK? If it still costs $100, where is going to be the disincentive to buy that coffeemaker? If a $25,000 car still costs $25,000 after the plan, or a $400,000 house still costs $400,000, where's the disincentive to consume?

The research shows investment in this country, private investment individuals would go up by 76 percent the first year under this plan, because every penny you put into a savings account, stocks, bonds investments -- not taxed. Everything you earn. Not taxed.

S. O'BRIEN: But every economists who disagrees with you says it's going to devastate the economy, at least in the short term.

BOORTZ: Well, in the final chapter of the book is questions and objections. We knew the book was going to be a focal point for criticism. So we took...

S. O'BRIEN: You think?

BOORTZ: Oh, sure.

S. O'BRIEN: This is what the cover looks like. "No IRS." You think?

BOORTZ: Is there any American that doesn't love that cover? Now, we knew it was going to be a focal point for criticism. So the final chapter, questions and objections, every objection that you've mentioned here, every single one of them is covered in that chapter. And I think with John...

S. O'BRIEN: It's a great way to get people to read the book. But answer my question for me. The people who say it's going to devastate the economy, at least out three years, maybe out even longer.

BOORTZ: No. It will not. In fact, Alan Greenspan -- I have quotes from Alan Greenspan right now saying we need tax reform, fundamental tax reform, and the consumption tax is the way to go.

Now, will it devastate the economy? America will become the world's largest tax haven. I mean, one example real quick. We have Daimler Chrysler, a combination of Chrysler and Daimler Mercedes Benz. Why isn't it Chrysler Daimler? Why not? Because when they merged, they had to find a country to locate in. They chose Germany. Why? Because of the tax structure in the United States. Make the United States t the world's biggest tax haven, and watch this economy grow.

S. O'BRIEN: It is a simple plan. Not sure it's going to catch on, though. Neal Boortz, thank you.

BOORTZ: Well, you replace -- you have 133-page bill for the fair tax to replace nine million words in the Federal Tax Code right now.

S. O'BRIEN: We'll see if it works. Neal Boortz, nice to see you.

BOORTZ: Wish us luck?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I've got to read through the book a little more clearly. I'm not an economist, but, you know, there are some big issues about that. Thank you for coming in to talk to us.

BOORTZ: My pleasure. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: We appreciate it -- Miles. M. O'BRIEN: Maybe we should tax it by the word. That would be good right there. Nine million words.

All right. Up in space, things are getting ready. Steve Robinson is getting ready with his tools, forceps, hacksaw, ready to do those repairs on the space shuttle Discovery. These aren't live pictures right now. We'll see some very shortly. But they've so far had a successful spacewalking run. And very soon, an unprecedented and risky attempt to repair the shuttle. You'll see it here on AMERICAN MORNING.

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