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CNN Live At Daybreak
White House Spy; Bird Flu Fears
Aired October 06, 2005 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is Thursday, October 6. At the White House, sensitive information and serious questions about a former aide. He had a top-secret clearance, but did a former Marine abuse that trust and one of the government's most sacred locations?
Also, young, innocent and on the edge. We'll tell you how she survived what could be the world's next health scourge.
And the grandeur, the wildlife. You say you want to go there before you die? Well, strap on your boots and get ready for a trip to America's last great frontier.
ANNOUNCER: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK with Carol Costello and Chad Myers.
COSTELLO: And good morning to you. We'll have more on those spy suspicions in just a minute.
Also ahead, some U.S. soldiers call Afghanistan the forgotten war. But NATO leaders are said to be planning to send some major reinforcements. Our Nic Robertson has that story.
But first, "Now in the News."
Five hours from now, the battle against terrorism. The White House says President Bush will make a major speech detailing Iraq's battle against terrorists and America's role there. That's at 10:10 Eastern. We will bring it to you live.
The Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, heads to Number 10 Downing Street in the next hour to meet with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In two weeks, Iraqis vote on a new constitution.
It's burning now. A wildfire that erupted just yesterday in southern California already has scorched at least 2,000 acres. It's also coming dangerously close to about 100 homes in the northern Riverside County.
Wow. That looks serious, Chad.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.
We crank up our "Security Watch" this hour. At the White House, officials are scratching their heads over the alleged theft of classified information. It supposedly happened between 1999 and 2001. Was there indeed a spy at the White House?
Our Kelli Arena has more for you.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE DEPT. CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A former U.S. Marine who's already been arrested for stealing from FBI computers is now being fingered for allegedly stealing classified information from White House computers.
RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: We have a number of very sensitive sources and methods, interception technologies, human agents. And it's possible that by revealing the information he actually reveals its source. And once the source is revealed, we can lose the source.
ARENA: As first reported by ABC and confirmed by multiple U.S. government sources for CNN, Leandro Aragoncillo allegedly misused his top-secret clearance to download the information, including a dossier on the Philippine president, which he allegedly passed on to her political opposition. Aragoncillo worked at the White House for three years, from 1999 to 2001 in the vice president's office, but it wasn't until he left to work as an analyst for the FBI that he was nabbed.
Las month, federal prosecutors said Aragoncillo and an accomplice were seeking to reveal classified information to foreign nationals.
LESLIE WISER, FBI, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: While it is disheartening to realize that a man who was hired to be an analyst in our own organization, and who was a former serviceman who swore to uphold the United States Constitution would conduct these types of activities, the American public should be aware that the FBI is ever-vigilant against all threats, whether they emanate from beyond our shores or within our own borders.
ARENA: In a criminal complaint, Aragoncillo was charged with giving the information to Michael Ray Aquino, a former officer with the Philippines Secret Police, who government sources say is expected to be indicted this week.
CHRISTOPHER CHRISTIE, U.S. ATTORNEY: I have to tell you that our -- our view on matters like this is that there is to be no compromising the secrets of the United States.
ARENA: Aragoncillo has not been indicted. CNN is attempting to locate both his and Aquino's lawyer for comment.
(on camera): Officials tell CNN Aragoncillo is cooperating with investigators, who are trying to determine the scope of his alleged illegal activity. The White House says it's cooperating, too, but would not comment on the ongoing investigation. Neither would the Justice Department.
Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)
COSTELLO: And stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.
As we told you, the White House says President Bush is making a major speech this morning on Iraq and the fight against al Qaeda- related elements. But during comments at the White House yesterday, he had this to say about what he calls the growing capabilities of the Iraqi security forces.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Over 30 percent of the Iraqi troops are in the lead on these offensive operations. They've got troops embedded with them, and that's an important part of the training mission.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: About five hours from now, we'll hear more about those Iraqi forces and how it all relates to U.S. troops and Iraq's growing democracy. CNN will bring you the president's comments at 10:10 Eastern this morning.
The president certainly has been highly visible this week.
On Monday, he was introducing us to his next Supreme Court nominee. Harriet Miers was at the president's side in the Oval Office for that big announcement.
On Tuesday, the president turned his attention back to the matter of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and the problems and possible solutions for that.
And on Wednesday, he was flanked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The topic: Iraq and the ongoing fight against insurgents there, a subject we will hear a lot more about later this morning.
And that brings us to our e-mail "Question of the Morning."
MYERS: I don't know when he sleeps. I really...
COSTELLO: He's been a busy guy.
MYERS: I really, really don't. But what's the focus? Did we lose focus? Should there be a focus? What should the focus of the U.S. policy be?
I mean, we've got all these options: gas prices, Iraq, Katrina. All these things that need to be, well, eventually fixed, I suppose.
DAYBREAK@CNN.com. What's your priority? Maybe it's something different. Go to DAYBREAK@CNN.com. Send you your opinion -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes, the president will be talking a lot about Iraq later this morning. So we were wondering, should he be talking about that? Or, you're right, Chad, should he be talking about high gas prices or the high energy costs for this coming winter? What should the priority be in this country?
DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
MYERS: Maybe they could all give us houses in Florida and we won't have to use so much heating oil.
COSTELLO: Out of the hurricane zone, that is, in Florida.
MYERS: Well, there's no -- the hurricanes are almost over. We're this close.
COSTELLO: Oh, thank goodness.
Thank you, Chad.
MYERS: OK.
COSTELLO: The Senate throws down the gauntlet on the White House war policy. Senators almost unanimously approved new limits for interrogating detainees. Standards set in the Army field manual bar cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of military prisoners. Now, the president has threatened to veto the measure which was proposed by Senator John McCain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I might add the obvious, the image of the United States was very badly harmed by the pictures of prisoner abuse. We have to send a message to the world that we will not ever allow such kind of treatment to be repeated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Anne Plummer of "The Congressional Quarterly" attended the hearings where McCain rallied the Senate troops. Quite passionate. The president says the measure would tie his hands on the war on terror, that's why he's threatening to veto it. Anne will join us in the next hour to try to sort it all out for us.
In other news "Across America" this morning, investigators have determined weight was a factor in last weekend's tour boat tragedy. Twenty elderly passengers died when the Ethan Allen capsized. The tour boat's sister vessel failed a stability test. It was designed to determine if it could accommodate for 48 passengers aboard the Ethan Allen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK ROSENKER, NTSB CHAIRMAN: I can say that the test showed that it is not appropriately certified for 48 people.
(END VIDEO CLIP) COSTELLO: In Coconut Creek, Florida, a teenaged football player is dead this morning and several others injured after being struck by lightning during a high school football game. Fifteen-year-old Shafner Knoll (ph) was killed when lightning hit him in the chest. It happened shortly after the game was called off because of the oncoming thunderstorm.
A Portland, Oregon, woman was forced off a Southwest Airlines flight for not changing her controversial T-shirt. The T-shirt had pictures of the Bush administration and a phrase based on the movie "Meet the Fockers." Lori Heasley (ph) said her shirt represented freedom of speech, but airline officials said the message raised safety concerns.
Still to come on DAYBREAK, into the breach in Afghanistan. New NATO troops face their first ground combat missions in the stronghold of the Taliban insurgency. Nic Robertson will bring us the details.
Also, the story of a little girl who survived avian flu, and laying the groundwork for battling a possible bird flu epidemic.
And visiting America's last frontier before there's no frontier left to visit. The push is on for Alaska before you die.
But first, here's a look at what else is making news this Thursday.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: International markets sharply lower this morning. Tokyo's Nikkei is down 330 points. The London FTSE is off 53. The German DAX lower by 68.
In futures trading, hey, some encouraging news about oil. It's lower. It's down 85 cents -- $61.94 a barrel this morning. And, of course, AAA will soon put out its average price for a gallon of gas. We'll see if that made any difference.
Your news, money, weather and sports. It's 5:13 Eastern. Here's what's all new this morning.
The White House says President Bush will make a major speech about the war on terror today. He'll address the National Endowment for Democracy at about 10:00 Eastern Time.
CIA Director Porter Goss says he has decided not to punish agency employees who made mistakes leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Goss says singling them out sends the wrong message about taking risks.
In money news, Donald Trump is eying the Mideast. He's reportedly joined forces with a top Arab developer to build a tulip- shaped hotel on a manmade island shaped like a palm tree. Isn't that beautiful?
In pop culture, Hollywood couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, I'm sure you've heard about this by now. They're expecting their first child together. Forty-three-year-old Cruise proposed to 26-year-old Holmes back in June after barely two months of dating.
In sports, post-season baseball, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim evened up the series with the Yankees late last night. The 5- 3 win sends the series to New York tied at one game a piece.
In the other American League match-up, the White Sox beat the Red Sox again, 5-3. That puts Chicago up two games to none in the best of five series.
And in the National League, the Houston Astros jumped out with a big 10-5 win over the Atlanta Braves. Ooh, ouch. The Astros lead that series 1-0 -- Chad.
MYERS: And good morning, Carol.
(WEATHER REPORT)
COSTELLO: Thank you, Chad.
We've been talking about it for the past few days. Plans are being made for a possible bird flu pandemic here in the United States. That's among the topics for today's first day of a major international bird flu conference at the State Department. The flu has been found in 11 countries so far, but there have been no cases in the United States.
But for more on the flu and its human toll, we're joined from Hong Kong by CNN Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy.
Hello, Mike.
MIKE CHINOY, CNN SR. ASIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol.
Well, one of the things that worries experts about this bird flu virus is that it's so lethal. It's much more deadly, for example, than the virus that caused the 1918 global flu pandemic. A lot of the people who get this bug now die.
I was in Vietnam not long ago, and I had a chance to meet one little girl who survived.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: Hong An returns to the hospital where she almost died last year. She's greeted by the doctor who saved her life. It's a routine visit now, but with Hong An, nothing is really routine. She's one of only six people in Vietnam known to have caught the avian influenza virus and survived.
"I had a little pet duck," she tells me. "It died. I buried it, but had to dig it up and bury it someplace else. The next day I got sick."
Three days after that, with a raging fever, Hong An was moved to the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Ho Chi Minh City, where the bird flu diagnosis was confirmed.
"It was so hard to breathe," she says. My chest hurt so much. I thought I was going to die."
"She had never been that sick before," says Hong An's mother, Thanh Chau. "When we heard it was avian flu, we didn't think she'd survive. We started making plans for her funeral."
Doctor Tran Tinh Hien shows me Hong An's x-rays from the most critical days. Her lungs almost completely blocked from the fast- acting infection.
Dr. Hien suspects Hong An survived because she was diagnosed early and got anti-viral drugs fast. Today, he says she's OK. Hong An's mother worries, though, because her daughter still tires easily, doesn't eat much, and isn't doing well at school. Even so, the family knows Hong An had a narrow escape.
"It was so frightening," says Thanh Chau. "When she recovered, we thought we were the luckiest people ever."
Today, Hong An is just like any other 10-year-old girl. But she says she's never going to have a pet duck again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHINOY: Early diagnosis and rapid treatment with anti-viral drugs appears to be the reason why Hong An survived. Health experts say that, in fact, their models show that if there was a cluster of human-to-human transmission, there would be about a 21-day period in which it would be absolutely critical to get all the people in the affected area on to anti-viral medication to try and prevent this from becoming a more extended outbreak.
And that cuts to the heart of one of the big problems here in Asia, Carol, which is in countries like Vietnam or Indonesia, with a very weak infrastructure, poor, not good communications, the whole issue of surveillance is a big problem. And health officials are very worried that this virus might take root and start spreading from people to people before the health authorities got wind of it and could act in time to curb it -- Carol.
COSTELLO: OK. So I have a question. This little girl had this flu. Did she spread it to anyone else? And did the government take any action to prevent that in Vietnam?
CHINOY: As far as we know, in this case, she didn't spread it to anyone else, because, so far, almost all the cases have been humans who caught it from poultry. This is the big question mark: if humans start spreading it to humans in the way that the ordinary flu virus is spread so easily, especially during the winter months, then we're all in trouble.
The Vietnamese government has done a lot, both slaughtering poultry in areas where there have been outbreaks of bird flu, they've tried to experiment with a vaccine for poultry. They've worked closely with the World Health Organization.
They're well aware of what's at stake here. But as I said, in these countries that are developing countries, there's bad communication, poor infrastructure, the danger is that a cluster could start spreading in an area that the authorities don't know about. And by the time they do, it could be too late -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Mike Chinoy, reporting live from Hong Kong this morning.
Thank you.
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt will host the bird flu conference we told you about today. Before that, though, he'll explain the plans on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING." That comes your way at 7:00 a.m. Eastern.
Still to come this morning, was there a spy inside the White House? And if so, what, if any, secrets did he steal? More on that from Maria Ressa in our "Security Watch."
Plus, the president tells us that more and more Iraqis are battling the insurgency. Aneesh Raman has the latest battle assessment live from Baghdad.
You're watching DAYBREAK for Thursday, October 6.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MYERS: There seems to be an endless amount of food on the buffet for today, but what should the focus of U.S. policy be when President Bush talks tonight?
DAYBREAK@CNN.com, tell us what you think -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Yes. He's talking later this morning.
MYERS: Later this morning.
COSTELLO: And he's going to talk about the war on terrorism. But we were wondering if he should be focused on something else.
What do you think? DAYBREAK@CNN.com.
Time for our DAYBREAK "Eye Opener" right now.
Even if you look closely at this picture, you still probably will not be able to figure out what it is. And that's a good thing.
It's a very large Burmese python that tried to swallow a live alligator in the Florida Everglades. But it seems the gator was too big and too active, so you can imagine what happened to the snake's stomach.
Now you know. Now for something a little less gross. These cats are getting ready for this weekend's New York Cat Show. The even is one of the most prestigious on the cat show circuit.
More than 300 cats from all over the world will compete. New this year will be a little kitty cat obstacle course.
Some drivers in Hallandale, Florida, got a bargain at the gas pump. One station accidentally charged 32 cents a gallon instead of $3.29. And that was for premium, no less. No one said anything to the workers of the station, but after several hours of low-priced unleaded a news crew showed up and management finally figured out what went wrong.
There you see it.
It's death or Alaska, whichever comes first. The good people of Alaska's tourism board hope you will pick Alaska. A truly original ad campaign is coming up. We'll have that for you in the next half-hour of DAYBREAK.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: From the Time Warner Center in New York, this is DAYBREAK with Carol Costello and Chad Myers.
COSTELLO: And good morning to you. Thank you for waking up with us. Welcome to the second half-hour of DAYBREAK.
Coming up in the next 30 minutes, how often do you get to hear about Jesus, accused murderers and crystal meth in one interview? Larry King's one-on-one with Ashley Smith, truly "The Unlikely Angel," coming up.
And later, see Alaska before it's gone, or you are, whichever comes first. An unusual tourism ad campaign is just ahead.
But first, "Now in the News."
A former Marine is suspected of stealing secrets while working inside the White House. Government sources confirm to CNN that Leandro Aragoncillo allegedly sent classified information to people in the Philippines. He's already accused in another case of stealing documents while at the FBI.
The Pentagon finally has a plan to pay back soldiers for their body armor expenses. Soldiers who spent their own money on helmets and vests will get up to $1,100 back. Congress ordered the reimbursement, but it took the Pentagon seven months longer than expected to come up with a plan.
Hundreds of firefighters are battling another wildfire near Los Angeles. Evacuation shelters are open for people in the possible path of the fire. The fire has already burned through 6,000 acres in Riverside County.
To the forecast center.
Good morning, Chad.
MYERS: Good morning, Carol.
(WEATHER REPORT)
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