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American Morning
CIA Leak Watch; 2,000 U.S. War Dead; 'Minding Your Business'; Airman Mystery
Aired October 26, 2005 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Whoa!
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR: Whoa!
MILES O'BRIEN: Michael, put that shot back up there, will you, please? Let's let folks enjoy it. As a matter of fact, we're going to do the rest of the two and a half hours, just that.
VERJEE: We'll just talk over these pictures.
MILES O'BRIEN: Enjoy it. Savor it. Think of it as a postcard. Our postcard to you this morning. A beautiful morning in New York.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know it's about 38 degrees outside this morning?
MILES O'BRIEN: You're raining on my parade, girl. Come on. I'm trying to savor the moment, smell the roses and you tell me about the rain.
VERJEE: I didn't have a brolli (ph) this morning for the rain.
COSTELLO: An umbrella.
VERJEE: Sorry, umbrella.
MILES O'BRIEN: What did you call it?
VERJEE: Brolli.
MILES O'BRIEN: A brolli.
VERJEE: A brolli, darling.
MILES O'BRIEN: You wear a brolli in a hurricane?
All right.
VERJEE: At the Pentagon.
MILES O'BRIEN: We got some serious stuff here. Let's get Carol (INAUDIBLE).
COSTELLO: We do. We have some serious stuff to begin with this morning. We begin with a developing news story out of Tel Aviv. There has been an explosion inside a fourth floor apartment. We're just getting these pictures in now. Take a look. The Israeli military and medical officials on the scene right now. At least three people have been killed and we have absolutely no idea as of yet what caused this explosion. When we get more information, of course, we'll pass it along.
Frustration and anger as Floridians wait for basic necessities in the wake of Hurricane Wilma. The power is still out for nearly 3 million residents, especially in Miami-Dade County. Elsewhere, lines at gas stations stretching for blocks and some people waiting more than 10 hours for FEMA supplies. There you see the lines to the gas stations.
And this won't be an easy fix. Wilma's winds were so strong they caused two parked jets to collide at the Opalata (ph) Airport near Miami.
More controversy this morning surrounding the former FEMA chief, Michael Brown. According to e-mail cited by "The Washington Post," Brown was planning to resign just days before Hurricane Katrina hit. The top Republican senator investigating FEMA's response to the hurricane says that could help explain an apparent gap between Brown and the agency's response. Brown officially resigned on September 12th but remains on Homeland Security's payroll as a consultant. Yes, he's still being paid.
Supreme Court Nominee Harriet Miers is expected to give more details. Today is the deadline for her to turn in a re-written questionnaire. The Senate Judiciary Committee has also asked for internal documents she wrote while working at the White House but President Bush says he won't provide the papers calling it "a red line he would not cross." Miers' confirmation hearings are set to begin on November 7th.
And the Air Force Academy's longtime football coach is raising some eyebrows. There was some racially tinged comments. Fisher DeBerry told reporters there's a reason for the Falcons' slumping performance. He says it's partly because his school does not have as many African-American players as rival schools.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FISHER DEBERRY, AIR FORCE ACADEMY COACH: Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run but it's very obvious to me that they run extremely well. I just want to recruit speed. We need to find speed as much as anything. But the black athlete seems to have, you know, statistically, program, program, program, you know, seems to have an edge as far as the speed is concerned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Did he miss all that Jimmy the Great stuff? MILES O'BRIEN: Wow. He needs to go wherever gee, I think the issue may be a coaching issue there. It's a lack of leadership clearly there because he needs to be thinking honestly about what he's saying. That's amazing to me.
COSTELLO: I don't think he even realized what he was saying but Academy officials . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, that's scary. If that's true, that is really scary, don't you think?
COSTELLO: Absolutely. Academy officials are investigating and I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this in the days to come.
MILES O'BRIEN: Doesn't fly at the Academy or anywhere else, that's for sure.
All right, Zain.
VERJEE: To one of our lead stories today. The indictments in the CIA leak case could be unsealed by the end of the day. We really don't know what is going to happen. The grand jury meets again in just a few hours. Dana Bash is live with us at the White House.
Dana, good morning.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Zain.
We really don't know. But nevertheless, I can tell you that the White House is bracing for the possibility there could be some change around here, especially since federal investigators did do some last- minute interviews. We're told that one former Bush officials was asked about Karl Rove's role yesterday. We also know that some of the neighbors of Valerie Plame were asked if they knew she had covert status. All of this comes as the White House still says no comment to any questions about this, even when it comes to the vice president's role.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BASH, (voice over): More than a month before her name appeared in print and blew her cover, the vice president told Chief of Staff Scooter Libby that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA. That, according to "The New York Times," which reports Cheney learned about Plame, perhaps without knowing her name, from then director George Tenant, after asking for more information about her husband, Joe Wilson, an administration critic.
SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: There's a lot of speculation that is going on right now. There are many facts that are not known.
BASH: Bush officials will neither confirm nor deny the account, which appears to makes the vice president himself a central source of White House knowledge about Plame. Cheney's conversation with Libby about Wilson and his wife reportedly took place June 12, 2003, as Wilson began to anonymously accuse the administration of building a case for war with claims Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, ignoring his finding that was false.
Three months later, the vice president told NBC he did not know Wilson or who sent him on the Africa mission.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have no idea who hired him and that . . .
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The CIA did.
CHENEY: Yes, but who in the CIA, I don't know.
BASH: That appears to contradict "The New York Times" report, Cheney had already told Libby, Wilson's wife "may have helped arrange her husband's trip." Was he misleading? A GOP source close to Cheney could only say the statements were not contradictory. And a former intelligence official confirms to CNN, the vice president did not know about Wilson's mission until well after it occurred.
But intelligence sources say all this exposes very real tension between the vice president and the CIA about Iraq. A former intelligence official tells CNN, Cheney and his staff pressured them to find links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, as well as evidence of Saddam Hussein's WMD.
In a CNN interview this past June, the vice president denied those allegations.
CHENEY: It's not true. And anybody who's looked at it, and several people have, have found it's not true.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: Now regardless of any political or perception problems for the vice president, experts say he doesn't appear to be in any legal jeopardy. But the truth is, Zain, we really don't know right now, even at what appears to be the 11th hour, what kind of legal jeopardy specifically any of these key players are in.
VERJEE: Patrick Fitzgerald is keeping things really close to his chest. Dana, what are you hearing, though, about sort of the atmosphere inside the White House today?
BASH: Well, you know, I can even just tell you, this morning I talked to one aid who was reading the newspaper, preparing for the regular morning meetings. Another who was putting some last-minute touches on the president's speech on the economy later today. They're trying still very hard to go about their business their regular business. But I can tell you, Zain, you can really cut the anxiety with a knife here. This has been two years and they really, at this point, just want this to be over. They hope that, considering the president's other troubles, once this is over, they can try to turn the corner.
Zain. VERJEE: Dana Bash reporting from us this morning from the White House. Thanks, Dana.
Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: President Bush is expected to speak to the economic club this afternoon in Washington. That will be at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. CNN will bring you live coverage as it happens, naturally.
Outside the White House today, anti-war protesters will focus on the news that 2,000 U.S. troops have now died in Iraq. Activist Cindy Sheehan and a small group of protesters died, at least symbolically, Tuesday. They plan to keep it up for the next for the rest of the week, I should say. Around the country, as many as 300 anti-war protests are planned for today.
Two thousand U.S. service men and women. Young men and women. The best of us all. A grim milestone that the U.S. would prefer we not focus on. But the support for the war flagging, it is an appropriate occasion to ask some tough questions about the U.S. mission in Iraq, what the exit strategy might be. Michael Rubin is a former advisor to coalition authorities in Iraq. If you sum the sum total of his time in Iraq is now at 20 months.
Michael, you've got a lot of experience in the country. I want to share with you a poll that we just took, a CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup Poll. Fifty-seven percent of Americans now think the war is going badly and 42 percent say well. No statistical difference between now and August. How would you respond if you had been asked to participate in this poll?
MICHAEL RUBIN, EDITOR, MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY: I think, from all my experience in Iraq, we've had a lot of difficulties, but things are looking up.
MILES O'BRIEN: So it's going well?
RUBIN: I think it's going well. And what I would look at is not the metric of the bombings and the casualties, as tragic as they are, but some metrics which I would say would be a little bit more objective. For example . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: What do you mean by metric, by the way?
RUBIN: A metric, just a way of measuring . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: OK.
RUBIN: What's going on. For example . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: So ignore the bombings?
RUBIN: Not ignore the bombings. The bombings shows the reach of the insurgency. But other issues. For example, under Saddam Hussein, one out of every six Iraqis have fled the country. Four million people have became refugees. Iraq today has resettled more refugees than it's producing. If it's as chaotic as many people say, where are the refugees? That's one issue.
Two, when people are very worried, they invest in gold. You have to look at what people are investing in because you can take gold with you, you can flee. But when people have more confidence in the future, in the long term, not necessarily in the short term, they invest in real estate, they sink their money and real estate prices are booming in Iraq.
What I would say is, look, there's a huge security problem in Iraq. There's a lot of problems. But when you look at what the Iraqis are doing, it seems that, despite the problems, they have more confidence in their future than many of the Americans polled in these recent polls would indicate.
MILES O'BRIEN: All right. We mentioned the U.S. military would prefer we not mention this particular milestone. Let's look at an official statement which came out from Lieutenant Coronel Steven Boylan, who's the chief spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq.
He says, "the 2,000 service members killed in Iraq supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom is not a milestone, it is an artificial mark on the wall set by individuals or groups with specific agendas and ulterior motives."
Just in the interest of fairness, I'd like to point out the following picture, May 1, 2003. These is that famous scene on the aircraft carrier, mission accomplished. I think we can all agree that was probably an artificial milestones as well. So these milestones come on both sides. It is our nature to measure things this way as human beings. Do you think it's appropriate at the 2,000 mark to take a good, hard assessment of the war?
RUBIN: Yes, it's absolutely appropriate. I'm not a Pentagon spokesman. What I would say is soldiers are making a sacrifice every single day. The number 2,000 itself is artificial. But what the polls are reacting to, in the American context, is the constant sacrifice people are making.
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, it's very what do they mean by artificial, though? It's very real if you've lost a loved one.
RUBIN: I mean it's it's very real, but the 2,000th casualty is no less tragic, no more tragic than the 1,999th or the 2,001st.
MILES O'BRIEN: Absolutely.
RUBIN: That's what I'm saying.
MILES O'BRIEN: All right. Let's listen to the president yesterday, what he said about all this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Each loss of life is heartbreaking. And the best way to honor and sacrifice of our fallen troops is to complete the mission and lay the foundation of peace by spreading freedom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILES O'BRIEN: Now let's go to the well (ph) of the House, Dick Durbin, Democratic whip from Illinois. Listen to him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D) ILLINOIS: The enormity of this loss of 2,000 of our best and bravest breaks America's heart. We do not honor our fallen soldiers simply by adding to their numbers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, that last line there, we do not honor our soldiers by adding to their numbers. I'm concerned that there's a bit of circular logic going around Washington. Two thousand are dead and, therefore, we cannot pull out. And the deaths will continue. Is that what the logic is right now?
RUBIN: There's two issues here. First of all, again, I've already said I see a lot more progress, and I think anyone that's been to Iraq, soldiers or civilians both, have seen a lot more progress than is often reflected. That said, in 1983, we withdrew from Beirut as a result of bombing. In 1993, we withdrew from Mogadishu, Somalia, as a result of violence. In both occasions, terrorism flourished after that.
Osama bin Laden, I believe, had cited the inability of the United States to take casualties. We're in a major, strategic problem. If we withdraw, the mission isn't complete and the lesson that people learn throughout the Middle East and elsewhere is that violence works.
MILES O'BRIEN: Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. He is editor of "Middle East Quarterly." Thanks for your time.
RUBIN: Thank you for having me.
MILES O'BRIEN: Zain.
VERJEE: Miles, let's check back on the weather. Jacqui Jeras is at the CNN Center with the latest weather update.
Good morning again, Jacqui.
(WEATHER REPORT)
VERJEE: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, Wilma woes at the airport. Tourists forced to change vacation plans because of Wilma. Andy's "Minding Your Business" on that.
MILES O'BRIEN: And we're learning new details about the identity, perhaps, of that frozen airman found in California in the high Sierra. Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VERJEE: Parts of Wilma's legacy canceled flights, stranded passengers and tens of millions of dollars in losses for the airlines. Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business" and he joins us now with more on that.
How bad is it?
ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's pretty bad. And as we've been reporting over the past couple days, obviously, airports across Florida and Mexico have been closed. I'll give you the latest.
Miami is open this morning. The first flight came in at 5:00 p.m. last night. But it is going to be sketchy and you are going to need to check with the airport and with your airline if you're flying in there. West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, still closed.
Let's take a look at some of the damage at airports across Florida. This is Miami. And you can see there, there's problems and there's things to be cleaned up. Next, we move on to Naples. I just hope that's not Miles' plane.
Miles, is that your plane?
I sure hope it isn't because you're not going anywhere, guy.
MILES O'BRIEN: Andy, for a brief moment, I thought it might be kind of fun to fly my own plane down to cover the story.
SERWER: Yes.
MILES O'BRIEN: Very bad idea.
SERWER: No.
MILES O'BRIEN: No, you leave the plane.
SERWER: And you can see why Miles did not fly to Florida to cover this story.
Key West also has damage and $17 million a day, Zain, is what it's costing the major airlines when they don't have business in Florida. So it's a lot of money.
VERJEE: If it's costing the airlines that kind of money, is it going to affect on my ticket prices?
SERWER: Well, ultimately, it probably will. I mean, these guys have had such problems over the past couple months. And, of course, there's all sorts of delays also with cruise ships, rail traffic as well. So if you're traveling to that part of the world and we have no word on the Cancun Airport in Mexico. We can only assume that it is still closed. Obviously that area was very hard hit and that airport needs a major fixing up anyway, if you ask me. So, we'll keep you posted.
VERJEE: Andy Serwer, thank you.
Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, a followup on that World War II airman found frozen in Sierra Nevada. Maybe the mystery might be solved. We'll have the answer potentially from Ohio. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MILES O'BRIEN: Here's a followup to a story we brought you last week. Forensics experts are working to identify the World War II airman found frozen in the California mountains. As CNN's Thelma Gutierrez tells us, an ID could be the first step in a long, final journey home.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): High in the Sierras at 13,000 feet near the bottom of a glacier, a startling discovery by some ice climbers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is it?
GUTIERREZ: It reopened a missing person's mystery. It is quite literally an unsolved cold case from World War II.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got some (INAUDIBLE), so we do have a cranium (ph).
GUTIERREZ: Preserved in ice and granite, climbers found the body of a young man. We now know he was a World War II soldier.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Got some hair here.
GUTIERREZ: He had light hair. He was still wearing a vintage military sweater but no dog tags and no wallet. But here's what we do know, he was carrying a leather address book and a sewing kit. He also had a World War II era silk parachute and it apparently did not open. And there were no signs of plane wreckage. We also know that the Sierra Nevada range was a routine flight circuit for Air Force pilots training to go to war against Germany or Japan.
So who is this ice man? Where is he from? And who did he leave behind? One possible answer takes us to Pleasant Grove, Ohio.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have followed the story in the newspaper of the frozen airman who's been recovered after so long.
GUTIERREZ: For three sisters here, this is the message of all but lost hope. Lois Shriver (ph), Sarah Zayer (ph) and Jean Piles (ph), all in their 80s, have prayed they would learn the fate of their big brother, Glen Munn (ph). Relatives called when they first heard the news of the ice man. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could it be Glen? Could it be Glenn? GUTIERREZ: Ernest Glen Munn was 23 when he enlisted in the Army. He was based in Sacramento. Seven months into his service, on November 18, 1942, the Army airman was in a training flight over the Sierras and then disappeared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They said his plane was lost.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They said they went out on a training flight and never returned.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I remember mom fainting in the bathroom, you know, and she just couldn't take it.
GUTIERREZ: Newspaper reports at the time tell of an ill-fated navigational training flight. Search teams went out.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And they searched for about a month and then they told us that the search had been called off. Five years after that they declared him dead.
GUTIERREZ: The sisters say their big brother was their idol. They say Glen knew he was about to be drafted and so he enlisted and was the pride of the town.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And when he walked him, they said, here comes the blonde bomber. And I said, that's my brother.
GUTIERREZ: And they've been waiting for six decades to find out what happened to him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We just believe in miracles. I think it was supposed to happen before any of us passed on.
GUTIERREZ: The frozen airman was thawed and flown to a military forensic laboratory in Hawaii where scientists will study his skeleton, teeth and his shirt.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a badge above his shirt pocket but it is corroded. There's after we take it in and clean it up, we might be able to look at it under an alternate light source.
GUTIERREZ: The military lists 25 different training crashes in the Sierras during that period, so we don't know yet the answer to the frozen mystery in the mountains. The sisters hope this will finally close a painful chapter in their lives. And if the iceman is Glen Munn, they say they will bring him home to Pleasant Grove, home to his family after 63 years.
Thelma GUTIERREZ, CNN, Pleasant Grove, Ohio.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN: The POW/MIA identification laboratory has narrowed the list of possible missing service men from that time frame to fewer than 10. But they also say that list could change as they continue this investigation. Zain.
VERJEE: Miles, in just a moment, our series on getting ready for your golden years. Your dream retirement. Today, what can you do now to get your house ready for when you're older? That's ahead here on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MILES O'BRIEN: The West Wing on edge. Will indictments be handing up today in the CIA leak probe. The grand jury is meeting and we've got it covered for you.
The aftermath of Wilma in Florida. There's damage all over the southern part of the peninsula. Millions without power. Record- setting power outage. Tempers flaring. We'll bring you up-to-date on that as well.
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