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American Morning

New Orleans Police Chief Resigns; Future For New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward; Minding Your Business

Aired September 28, 2005 - 07:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Look at this. This is a house. This is the foundation of someone's house.
Now, if we show you the levees back here, the levees are completely intact. They didn't breach at all. So what you had was essentially a giant wave of water that came rushing into St. Bernard Parish and blew out homes with the force practically of a tornado.

As the sun rises, we're going to give you a little bit better sense of what's happening here in St. Bernard Parish and also give you a sense of what they're planning to do now. As you can imagine, if you're the homeowner who comes here to gather what you can, there's really nothing left to pick up and take. You have nothing. You've got absolutely nothing. We'll take you on a tour of St. Bernard Parish this morning.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Boy, it's hard to see that. It's really like a tsunami, isn't it, Soledad?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: You know, that's the word that's been used. And at first I thought, maybe it's being overstated. Used loosely. Unless (ph), of course, they were referring to the Asian tsunami back at the end of last year. And then you see the devastation and you understand what they're saying. A wall of water hit this parish and took out these homes and blasted them off their foundations very much like the tsunami that we saw back in December.

We'll talk more with the sheriff this morning as well. He's the guy who says this is ground zero for St. Bernard Parish. He's also got some theories about what happened here that was beyond a natural disaster.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: All right, Soledad, see you in just a bit. Thank you.

Let's get a check of the headlines now. Carol Costello in with that.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.

Good morning to all of you.

"Now in the News."

After four weeks of focusing on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, today President Bush is turning his attention to the war on terror. The president's remarks coming on the heels of a briefing from top commanders in Iraq. CNN will, of course, have live coverage of this event. It starts at 10:20 Eastern.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco heading to Capitol Hill this morning. She's expected to publicly react to claims by the former FEMA chief, Michael Brown, that her response to Katrina was "dysfunctional." Brown testified Tuesday that FEMA is not a first- responder agency and that that role belonged to state and local officials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BROWN, FORMER FEMA DIRECTOR: If Congress expects the federal government to be able to supply every individual food and water immediately following a catastrophe or disaster, then this committee in Congress needs to have a serious public policy debate about what the role of FEMA and the federal government is in disasters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Governor Blanco is set to face the Senate Finance Committee in less than three hours.

Turning to Iraq now.

At least five people have been killed in a suicide bombing in Tal Afar near the Syrian boarder. An Iraqi army official tells CNN, the attack was carried out by a female bomber. Dozens of people are wounded.

Army Private Lynndie England is behind bars this morning. A military jury sentenced England to three years in prison for her role in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. She has also been dishonorably discharged from the Army. Her sentencing is the final of nine military trials in this scandal.

And you might remember Ashley Smith, the hostage turned heroine. Well, she has some revelations about her experience in her new book. In it, Smith admits she gave accused Atlanta courthouse shooter Brian Nichols drugs. Smith writes that Nichols asked her for marijuana. She didn't have any marijuana, so she admits to giving him some of her supply of crystal meth instead. Smith says the ordeal helped her kick the habit. Police say she will not be charged. The book "Unlikely Angel" out in stores now.

To the forecast center to check in with Chad.

Good morning.

(WEATHER REPORT)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right, Chad, thanks.

Well, it was a big surprise here in New Orleans certainly and elsewhere, I would imagine, when we heard that the police superintendent, Eddie Compass, was out. He says he's quitting his job. Lots of questions though about why he's leaving and why right now. Anderson Cooper has a look at that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): New Orleans police chief, Eddie Compass, is a lifelong friend of the mayor. They knew each other as kids. And in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, he's been the mayor's staunchest ally.

SUPT. EDDIE COMPASS, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: Mayor Ray Nagin, the real hero of all this. You know a lot of people out there taking bows. Mayor Ray Nagin, the greatest man in this United States, stood strong.

COOPER: But now Compass is under fire for statements he and the mayor made in the days after Hurricane Katrina. Statements that seem to have been based on rumors, rather than facts. This is what he told Oprah Winfrey.

OPRAH WINFREY: So are there still many dead people inside the houses, do you think?

COMPASS: Oh, yes, there are thousands.

WINFREY: Thousands?

COMPASS: I would say thousands.

WINFREY: Inside the Superdome, he had seen horrors that will haunt him the rest of his life.

COMPASS: We had little babies in there. Some of the little babies getting raped.

COOPER: The New Orleans' "Times-Picayune" published an article revealing that the soaring body counts and rape accusations were part of, "scores of myths about the dome and convention center treated as fact by evacuees, the media, and even some of New Orleans top officials." Many police officers we've talked to feel Compass didn't adequately prepare for the storm and they say they were left with little ammunition and no clear plan.

We spoke to one New Orleans police officer who didn't want to be identified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I mean we had nothing to work with in advance. The chief I'm sure. I've met the man many times and he's a hard working, very committed man. But no matter how hard working and committed any of the people were beforehand or during, our poor planning really, really broke us down and I think cost some lives.

COOPER: Once campus resigned, his old friend, Mayor Ray Nagin, hailed him as a hero, calling this a sad day for the city. As for the outgoing police chief, he says this is the right time for him to leave.

COMPASS: I will be going on in another direction God has for me. I want I will ask you to respect my privacy, respect my decision, and just respect my right to be by myself. Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: James Varney is with the "Times-Picayune" for more on this and the fallout.

Good morning. It's nice to have you.

How much of a surprise was this to you?

JAMES VARNEY, NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE: Well, it was a jolt for everybody. I don't think that anybody saw this coming at all.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It's been floated that he's got book deals. It's been floated that he became really a media darling, to use that term, over the last several weeks and that maybe he's moved on to something more in the way of Hollywood. Do those ring true to you? They don't ring true to me.

VARNEY: I'm not sure I see Hollywood in his future. I think the book deal is something that people had been talking about over the last couple of weeks.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: But for a reason for leaving now?

VARNEY: I can't imagine that was it. I'm more inclined to think that perhaps some disagreements between him and the mayor, perhaps some of the emotional pull that had built up with him over the last month were bigger factors than other deals.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I thought he was friends of the mayor?

VARNEY: I would say they had a reasonably strong working relationships, but I wouldn't say that they were friends. Certainly the mayor is considered to be closer to Warren Riley (ph), who is now replacing or appears to be the replacement for Eddie Compass.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What about respect from the people who worked for him? Eddie Compass came up through the ranks. He was on the force for 26 years. One would think that that meant that people would respect him because he'd been kind of at every level. Did the people who worked for him like him?

VARNEY: I think most of the officers did like him and partly for the reason that you just cited. He was considered a cop's cop, to use that cliche. And as a 26-year veteran, and as a native New Orleanian, everybody felt that he had the NOPD's interest at heart. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Did they think overall I mean we heard from the one gentleman in Anderson Cooper's piece who said he fell that the chief was inadequately prepared for the aftermath that they were dealing with in Hurricane Katrina. Did a lot of the blame for that fall on his shoulders? I mean there's a lot of blame going around.

VARNEY: Sure. I think that some of it did. Whether he was adequately prepared or not, think I is sort of a difficult thing to ascertain. I think it was probably tough for anybody to be prepared for what happened here. You can see it all around you. I don't think that's a personal shortcoming to somebody who was ill prepared for this when it happened.

I think that some of the blame probably also came to him because, as you mentioned, he had started to become more of a media darling in some people's eyes than a hands-on police chief when he went to New York for the coin flip of the Saints/Giants game, that was something that people thought he probably shouldn't be doing.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And also, speaking kind of hyperbolically about what had happened, the real numbers. I mean, he was the person who people came to get the facts and the figures and he was kind of talking . . .

VARNEY: Right. There's no question that the stories that went around about what happened at the Superdome . . .

MILES O'BRIEN: All right. Obviously, we lost that signal and we apologize. We'll try to get that back as soon as we can.

Politicians have promised the new New Orleans would, in fact, happen. But now, in the devastated lower ninth ward, there's concern about what will be lost in that historic district. Here is CNN's John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): The water is finally receding in the lower ninth ward, exposing the incomprehensible destruction and offering clues to a neighborhood now in shambles. There was a little girl with a pink bike. A woman in white shoes. If Ophelia Jackson (ph) made it out alive, she left her purse and her car keys behind. It will be a long time before the gospel choirs return. Maybe too long for the elderly who lived in the small, narrow homes.

What goes through your mind?

CYNTHIA WILLARD LEWIS, NEW ORLEANS CITY COUNCIL: Oh, it breaks my heart because every house represents a family. And the family is not here. And so I pray that they did not lose a loved one.

KING: City Council Woman Cynthia Willard Lewis represents the lower ninth ward and is among those concerned what is rebuilt here will be very different from what stood here just a few weeks ago.

LEWIS: I am not so foolish as to believe that other agendas are not being fashioned. I would imagine that individuals who focus on the wealth of the land, who focus on the fact that perhaps with the higher integrity of the levee system, high-rise buildings might be fashionable and trendy.

KING: Fashionable and trendy were not words used to describe the neighborhood where these newspapers warning of what was coming were never delivered. Ninety-eight percent of the ward's population was African-American. The average annual income was $27,500. Less than half the national average. And 54 percent of ninth ward residents were renters, giving them little say over what happens next here.

This is the wreckage of the levee that was designed to protect this neighborhood. When it gave way, the water flooded in, destroying the homes and the lives of these people with it. You can see it extending for dozens and dozens of feet down the way. Again, a wall designed to protect a community now lying, a very symbol of the destruction here.

But if you lift your eyes above the destruction, you see downtown New Orleans just off in the distance. It is that proximity to the center of the city that has many of the poor people who lived here just a few weeks ago worried that when this is all cleaned up, people with a lot more money than they have will want the land.

This service is 75 miles from New Orleans. Bishop C. Garnett Henning, forced to relocate to Baton Rouge because his Union Bethel AME Church in the lower ninth ward was destroyed in the flooding after Katrina and Rita.

BISHOP C. GARNETT HENNING, UNION BETHEL AME CHURCH: My motto is never ever give up. And that's the way we're approaching it. And I'm telling that to the people of my churches. If we let it go quietly, we will lose. The poor people will lose, without an advocate.

KING: Willard Lewis wants guarantees affordable housing will be built and that those forced to leave will have the first chance to move back to the neighborhood Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Fats Domino calls home.

LEWIS: He could live anywhere in the world. He could live in Paris. He could live in London. But he chooses to live in the historic lower ninth ward. On Monday, fixing red beans and rice, follow the brothers in the hood.

KING: The debate over what comes next is just beginning. This FEMA team a reminder of a much more urgent priority. Twelve square blocks of the lower ninth have still not been searched to take a toll of the dead.

John King, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN: And we managed to patch together our communication once again.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, you know, and we're back with James Varney from the "Times-Picayune." Of course, he is he knows all things about this area. And we were interrupted a little bit with a technical little hit a moment ago talking about Eddie Compass.

But let's talk about the lower ninth ward. And it's a concern here as well in St. Bernard Parish. Which is, what is it going to look like? And what happens to the people who sort of invested their lives here? What's your best guess?

VARNEY: Well, I think, obviously, there's an issue about insurance. Whether or not they're going to get fully reimbursed because the damage was caused by the flood or the hurricane. And then I think everybody's lives are so fractured at this point that the big decision is whether you want to rebuild, even if you have the financial needs. And when you see destruction like this in your home, it's there really aren't words to describe it. And whether or not you decide that the future is here, and I think is a decision each person's going to have to come to on their own.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It's going to take a long time too. I mean these are not decisions that, well, they have to be made in three months.

VARNEY: No, but they're, obviously, huge decisions. And people who already have moved in some cases to other states. And these are people with the means to have done it on their own. Their kids are enrolled in schools in other states. Somebody was saying to me just recently that there is civilization and it's not that far away from us.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: James Varney, thank you for talking to us.

VARNEY: Certainly.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We certainly appreciate your time this morning.

When we come back in just a moment, we're going to talk to the sheriff here in St. Bernard Parish and really ask him the same question, what happens now and what are his concerns about rebuilding? Is he concerned people won't come back or is he concerned it's not going to look like it did. That's just ahead as we continue right here on AMERICAN MORNING. We're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: You're taking a look live now down St. Marie Street in St. Bernard Parish. Early, so not many folks have come back to try to dig through what's left to find some of their belongings that they can recover, but it is a scene we've seen a couple of days now.

We're joined by the sheriff here. The sheriff of St. Bernard Parish is Sheriff Jack Stephens. And we've spent a lot of time together over the last couple of weeks and then again over the last couple of days. I know how upset you were when you first sort of got the picture of how bad the damage was. How's it been to talk to the people who have been coming back?

SHERIFF JACK STEPHENS, ST. BERNARD PARISH, LOUISIANA: It's been difficult. We were prepared for them to be stocked by what they found. And unfortunately, our expectations were well-founded. I must have spoken to 150 families in the last couple of days and all of them agree that there was really no way to prepare them for what they would find. I mean they're courageous people. But this is certainly a life altering event.

And there's so many unanswered questions surrounding their future right now that there's a high degree of anxiety with respect to what happens to them. First and foremost, with what the insurance adjusters are going to do. And then what the government is going to do with regards to them being able to rebuild. Are those options going to be available to them? And I think the worst thing that you can deal with in life is uncertainty and they're dealing with a lot of that right now.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There's lots of questions, too, about the role that man played in all of this. I mean, everyone that we've spoken to is furious about the levee system. And I want to give people a sense of where we are. So why don't we walk through here.

I mean, when you see that these homes are I mean these are homes here. They're wiped off the foundation. And you wouldn't know this was a home if you didn't see the brick wall. What makes you think that manmade changes really affected the devastation of Katrina, which was a very bad storm?

STEPHENS: Well, it was a category four or five storm, depending on where you were. And I live in the lower part of our parish and the weather service told me they clocked sustained winds at 182 miles an hour there. But as you look along the northern boundary of the subdivision, which is immediately adjacent to our (INAUDIBLE) levee, you can look at the levee and not see any breaches at all. So this wasn't a this wasn't a flood. This is not where our levee failed.

The tide actually topped this levee by about five feet in this case. I talked to someone who lived in this area and survived it and they said that the water came up 10 to 12 feet in three minutes. And you look at the force of the destruction that's caused just on this first street, and you can see that it basically just blew these houses up.

The further you get into the subdivision, while there's extraordinary damage, you don't see houses that are quite in the same condition this is, is because this probably acted as a buffer in that first wave of water that came through. But you just can't imagine the extraordinary force that a billion gallons of water has coming over these levees. And it happened for an eight or 10 mile stretch simultaneously. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What percentage of the people that you talk to say they want to come back? Because I have to imagine there's a lot who say, you know, forget it. First of all, this is my house. I've got nothing. And also, the community looks like this. I mean this is not this is the worst case example but the best case example is not very good.

STEPHENS: No, it's not. You know, and surprisingly, I would say 75 percent of the people that I spoke to said that they're anxious to rebuild. That they want a resolution of the questions that they have facing them right now so they can get about the business of rebuilding. Of the remaining 25 percent, half probably said that they've already bought houses other places. And the other half just don't know.

Now I'm sure the dynamics of that are going to change as people get into the insurance adjustments and finding out what their cash position is with regards to their property. But, I mean, just the overall grief that you feel and the loss that you feel is just it breaks your heart. You know it starts to really make you understand how much you love your community and how much it means to you when you see the people that you've grown up with in this situation.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Is your house a total loss?

STEPHENS: No. My house is built actually outside the levee protection system. And the first floor living is 21 feet above sea level and water came within three inches of getting in it. So, I mean, it was at least a 21-foot tide where I was. And I probably have $75,000 to $150,000 worth of damage depending on what they find in plumbing and all. But I have something to start with.

But, you know, I live in an fishing community. My family were basically immigrants from the Canary Islands and they were all commercial fishermen. People outside the levee protection system know how to build differently and are prepared for these type of things better.

And maybe it's a lesson that needs to be learned for those who build inside a levee protection system, to build to a higher first floor elevation. Those are things that you know there's decisions that are going to be driven by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, building inspectors. And I talked to Commissioner Robert Wully (ph), our insurance commission, yesterday at length. He came to visit me. And he said that there may be situations where at large parts of not only this parish, but Orleans, where repetitive flooding has occurred that the government just buys and makes open and green areas.

So you're going to see the landscape change now down here. And it's not just in St. Bernard, but it's in parts of Orleans, too. And it's going to be driven by what type of flood insurance is available and basically what government lets people do now.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We'll see what it looks like. Sheriff Jack Stephens, nice to talk to you again.

STEPHENS: Thank you, Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.

STEPHENS: You're welcome.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And we certainly appreciate you talking to us.

STEPHENS: You're welcome. Good seeing you. Take care.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And let's head back to Miles in New York.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: Thanks very much, Soledad.

And still to come, we're "Minding Your Business." It looks as if Hurricane Rita caused a lot more damage to the oil industry than we first thought. Andy is here with the bad news next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: All right, Mr. Bad News, Andy Serwer, here to tell us that the well, the good news is, the refineries may be OK.

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right.

MILES O'BRIEN: But we're talking now about offshore and the rigs.

SERWER: That's right, Miles.

In the days right after Rita hit, you know, we were talking about how the energy infrastructure, the oil business that would be, was basically in pretty good shape. They had just a glancing blow, dodging a bullet and all that sort of talk. Now it turns out, though, that damage to this business might be worse than anticipated. In fact, the "Financial Times" newspaper is reporting this morning that the damage to the oil rigs in Hurricane Rita was, "worse than any storm in history." More than Katrina. More than Hurricane Ivan last year.

And here is what happened. Katrina, when it went through the Gulf we're talking about oil rigs again here, not the refineries. When Katrina came through, it went through a mature section of the Gulf in terms of where the rigs are. Rita came through and newer exploration area. That means newer wells, newer rigs with newer fields. That's bad news.

In fact, the Coast Guard is now reporting, for instance, that nine submersible rigs are adrift. And this kind of stuff, Miles, takes days and day to assess. And, you know, I hate to keep coming up here and giving you bad news about the oil industry and the oil business and ultimately gasoline prices, but that's what we've got right now.

MILES O'BRIEN: Right. We have to let the chips fall where they may.

SERWER: Indeed.

MILES O'BRIEN: But this is serious stuff. And when you have a loose, submerged platform, first, you've got to find it.

SERWER: That's right.

MILES O'BRIEN: That's number one. But number two, getting it back on station, getting it back into production, that's a very laborious thing.

SERWER: Just a tremendous amount of work for people down there. Maybe that's the good news, there's plenty of jobs to be had.

MILES O'BRIEN: There you go. Andy Serwer, we're finally finding the half full portion of that story. Appreciate that.

SERWER: Yes.

MILES O'BRIEN: In a moment, ex-FEMA chief, Mike Brown, blasted Louisiana officials on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Now at least one of them is set to fire back. And we're sorry about the tape there. We'll go live to Washington for a preview, we hope, of today's hearing. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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