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American Morning

Formerly Flooded New Orleans Recovers from Katrina; Bush to Lay Out Flu Pandemic Plan; Deadly Month for U.S. in Iraq

Aired November 01, 2005 - 08:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: President Bush this morning preparing America for the risk of a super flu pandemic. It's a deadly scenario that could kill millions. We're live in Washington with details of a $7 billion plan.
The president's pick for the Supreme Court, Samuel Alito, back on Capitol Hill this morning as Democrats weigh a risky strategy in his confirmation battle.

And two months after Hurricane Katrina, the broken levees of New Orleans are nowhere near ready for the next hurricane. Will it take a whole new way of thinking to make this city safe? We're live in New Orleans 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: It's kind of a New York City skyline there, kind of the tree line over Central Park. Welcome, everybody. We're coming to you in a split show this morning. I'm reporting from New York, and Miles is in New Orleans this morning.

Hey, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Good morning, Soledad.

Take a look at the neighborhood just a few feet below the 17th Street Canal. This is that breach that -- I guess infamous breach now that we've showed you so much about since Hurricane Katrina. What a difference a few feet can make.

Photographer Walter Imperado (ph) is about six feet above me now. And that's about where the levee stands right now with this temporary fix, but six feet is not, by any stretch, Category 3 or pre-Katrina levels. There's a lot of work to be done here before they can even get to that point.

They want to get all that work done by June 1. But then the issue is, is that enough? Category 5 is the question. Would they double the size of these levees and sea walls? Those are big questions with a lot of big price tags attached.

Let me just tell you where we are compared to yesterday. We were down on Canal Street very near the French Quarter. We've moved about just a few miles to the north, very close to -- closer to Lake Pontchartrain, 17th Street levee and that significant breach, which was the first breach that the Corps of Engineers spotted the Tuesday after Katrina. It turned out it was just one of many, and their task right now is very big.

This location where I'm standing, where I just walked out of, just a few weeks ago, you couldn't walk down there. The water is gone. You can see a puddle down there. That's leaking from this sandbag patch, but acceptable amounts.

Right now, though, they're going to work on a more permanent and yet temporary solution, if that makes any sense, which will get them to the point where they can make a decision on how -- just how safe, how high to go and whether Category 5 protection is appropriate -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Permanent, but temporary is one of those many oxymorons that has sort of become New Orleans.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles, thanks.

Back to our top story this morning. The White House moving forward with its agenda again. Monday, a new nominee for the Supreme Court. Today a plan to tackle the flu pandemic.

AMERICAN MORNING'S Bob Franken is live for us at the White House. Good morning to you, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. The motto of the week is moving right along. And the president will be moving out to the National Institutes of Health today to prevent -- present what is called a strategy for fighting a possible flu pandemic. Possible avian flu, possibly something else.

It will include $7 billion in supplemental funds spent for this to identify an outbreak when it occurs, develop vaccines and respond quickly to a flu outbreak.

But the real message, says the secretary of health and human services, is that there's a need to establish -- a bad need to establish an infrastructure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL LEAVITT, HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: The pandemic is unique among disasters. It can happen in 5,000 different communities around the world at the same time. No central place can manage all of those difficulties, and so local communities need to be ready. And part of the president's plan is to assure that they are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: And moving on to the Judge Alito nomination. I think we can sum things up this way, Soledad. The left is really upset about him. The right loves him. There will be a fight. S. O'BRIEN: Yes. I think that's a pretty good summary. I mean, if you look at timing, though, in all seriousness, it's sort of the first good news the White House has had in quite awhile.

FRANKEN: Well, it looks like it could be that way. There seems to be an effort here to have such things as the Scooter Libby indictment as "so yesterday." The problem is it will also be "so tomorrow."

S. O'BRIEN: Truer words were never spoken. Bob Franken at the White House for us. Thanks, Bob.

The president is going to speak about his plan for the flu pandemic, potentially. That's going to happen at 10:10 a.m. Eastern Time this morning, and we're going to carry that speech for you live when it happens.

There are reports this morning of another death in Iraq. An American soldier reported killed by a homemade bomb. Carol has got a look at some of the other stories that are making news this morning, including that one.

These numbers are just heartbreaking.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I know. They just keep going up and up, don't they?

I've got to tell you about this National Guard soldier, because he may soon face a court-martial for a June indictment in Iraq. Sergeant Alberto Martinez is accused of killing two of his superior officers in Tikrit. A military investigating officer said today there is reasonable cause to support the charges and said Martinez may have had a personal vendetta against the men.

Fire him! Former U.S. ambassador, Joe Wilson, wants President Bush to oust his top aide, Karl Rove. Rove has not been indicted but remains under investigation for his alleged role in revealing the name of Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame. No matter, Wilson says the White House should set an example.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE WILSON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR: I think that Karl Rove should be fired. I think that this idea that you can with impunity call journalists and leak national security information is repugnant. It is not fitting for a senior White House official. It is below any standard of ethical comportment, even if it is not technically illegal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: In the meantime, Vice President Dick Cheney has reshuffled his staff, naming two replacements for Lewis "Scooter" Libby. As you know, Libby was indicted, and he resigned last week. He will be back in court on Thursday. Don't know if they'll have cake, but Alan Greenspan will host one of his last Fed meetings in just about an hour. More importantly for you, will Greenspan raise the rates? Word is the Fed will nudge interest rates up another quarter percentage point, to four percent. It would be the 12th consecutive rate hike.

And here is some research you can rest assured by. If you were watching this man's first steps after four months in bed. Steven Snitsky (ph) took part of this study, all in the name of science. Some of the time, he was suspended four feet off the floor to simulate weightlessness. Researchers are studying bone loss and muscle atrophy and will closely watch him over the next several weeks. His work may one day help astronauts, but scientists say they'll -- they'll still need a lot more work -- they still need to do a lot more work. Snitsky (ph) also got to read 29 books, watch 25 movies and play countless games of solitaire.

S. O'BRIEN: He's got up on all the movies.

COSTELLO: All in the name of science.

S. O'BRIEN: All in the name of science. I wonder, you know, sometimes they pay, like, $10 an hour for those tests. I wonder what he made.

COSTELLO: Poor Mr. Snitsky (ph) probably didn't get anything. Who knows?

S. O'BRIEN: Twenty-five free movies.

COSTELLO: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: Carol, thanks.

Let's get back to Iraq now and reports of another death in Iraq this morning. An American soldier was reported killed by a home-made bomb last night. Brings to 94 the number of U.S. troops lost in October, one of the deadliest months in the war.

Aneesh Raman is live for us in Baghdad this morning.

Aneesh, good morning.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, good morning to you.

Six U.S. soldiers in all killed in those various incidents yesterday. It made October the second deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq, a month that also saw that unfortunate marker of the 2,000th American military personnel killed in combat here. And now, it seems, a month that, as well, saw the death of the highest ranking U.S. military official to be killed in combat in Iraq.

The military confirms to CNN that Colonel William Wood, 44, based out of Ft. Stewart, Georgia, died on Thursday after striking an improvised explosive device. He is, as we said, the highest ranking official to die in combat. His area of operation was south of the capitol in the northern part of Babil province.

And Soledad, I was embedded there in that exact area last week with members of the 3rd Infantry Division. It is a persistent fight. It is there the military says that a number of insurgent groups are staging attacks on the capital. They find IEDs. Minutes, at times, later new IEDs are put in that place. It is an incredibly difficult cycle to break.

They are trying to outreach to the civilians there who, out of fear, who are being killed by these insurgents on a daily basis are not cooperating with intelligence.

And the soldiers continue to go out there. More than anything else from what I spoke to them of, it was during that week of that unfortunate 2,000th death, it was about fighting to stay alive, to keep their brothers and sisters in arms alive, as well. They are out there, aware of the vigilance that has to be maintained now that we enter November, just six weeks away, Soledad, from that final major political milestone for Iraq, the general elections on December 15.

So October an incredibly grim month for the U.S. military that they continue the fight as we head toward those elections -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Huge toll in that month. Aneesh Raman with an update from Baghdad. Aneesh, thanks.

It's nine minutes past the hour. It's time to take a look at the weather for the day ahead, and Bonnie Schneider has a look for us at the CNN Center. Hey, Bonnie, good morning. What a great night last night for trick or treating.

BONNIE SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I know. It was absolutely perfect.

S. O'BRIEN: Fantastic.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Not too bad for them. All right, Bonnie. Thanks.

SCHNEIDER: Sure.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, an up close look at the president's new Supreme Court pick and how he actually predicted this day would come -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad, you're looking at the thin concrete line at the 17th Street Canal. This is the flood wall that was designed to protect folks from Category 3 levels. Of course, Katrina was -- well, it was no match for Katrina, put it that way.

Now, the effort to get it at least back to pre-Katrina levels is a big job. It really is unprecedented in the history of the Corps of Engineers. We'll talk to somebody in charge in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Welcome back to the city of New Orleans. I'm Miles O'Brien.

It's another work day here at the 17th Street Canal. Take a look down in the distance there and you'll see what's going on right now. There's a series of cranes, and they're using what are called Flexifloats. They're putting them in the canal, and those Flexifloats are just basically work platforms.

A lot of the real problems here in fixing these levees is just accessibility to the work site, as you can imagine, with all the flooding and problems with the levees in the first place. Getting heavy equipment in place is a big problem.

As a matter of fact, the whole scope of this job is pretty hard to get your head around.

Joining us to try to help us explain what they're up against is Colonel Lewis Setliff. He is with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Colonel, good to have you with us this morning.

COL. LEWIS SETLIFF, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Good morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Try to give us some sense of perspective here, not just this break. You've got 50 big ones, well, not all big but 50 breaches that you're working on overall. Give us a sense of how big a job that is to try to get that all at least to pre-Katrina levels by June 1?

SETLIFF: Well, it's a tremendous effort. We have a lot of engineers working on it. I think both in -- all around the New Orleans area, we have breaks to levees, we have breaks to flood walls that our intent as part of Task Force Guardian, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is to address all of the fixes, get them to pre-Katrina levels of protection so we can make the follow-on decisions that's required for the citizens here in New Orleans.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, what's interesting is -- and we'll talk about those follow-on decisions in a moment -- what's interesting is here each of these levees, it appears -- we don't know for sure -- kind of failed in a different way. Some of them were overtopped, as we've heard, water coming over.

In this case, there's a lot of thinking that this wasn't set deep enough in the ground. And as a result, as the water -- or the soil became less stable, it was undermined, and off went the water in this case.

So what is going to be different ultimately about the flood wall here that will make it a little more safe?

SETLIFF: Well, Miles, we really don't know what will be different. I will tell you that we're committed to insuring that the best science is used so that when we come in and make our final repairs, that we have incorporated all of the engineering. We've had a lot of independent surveys being taken out here, so we have the correct repair and rehabilitation of these flood walls.

M. O'BRIEN: In the meantime, before June 1, you're going to just build essentially a metal wall here. They call it sheet pile, kind of a coffer dam which will go along here and give you a little more of a permanent solution, but that's not really the long-run solution, obviously, for these neighborhoods.

And the question becomes when you start talking about the future, Category 5 is the question that comes up time and again. And there's no easy answer to that, is there?

SETLIFF: There is no easy answer. I think the strategy that the Corps of Engineers has taken to repair the damages to the pre-Katrina strength will allow us time to make those decisions and resource what's required to do things like Category 5 protection, if that's the decision that's made.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. In the meantime, there's a lot of vulnerability here. We're still in hurricane season. This particular levee, like so many others is, what? At about six-foot level. Maybe a little bit less in some cases, in other breaches. Obviously, very vulnerable. Of course, there's property that has already been severely damaged, so you've got that. But nevertheless, I bet you're watching the weather very closely?

SETLIFF: We are watching the weather. There is physics involved here, and we've taken a three-pronged approach where the -- what you just pointed out here is the interim repair. We will come out and make a more permanent repair that's going to require the coffer dam you discussed.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. So, ultimately, Category 5, it's a huge question which doesn't have an easy answer. I mean, really, when you're talking about one way is to build, you know, a 30-foot high embankment here but that's not easy to put in and be supported and still have houses right nearby, right?

SETLIFF: That is correct. In an urban environment, especially when you start discussing the engineering involved with a Category 5 level of protection, when the houses are so close, your real estate issues, it will be a very tough engineering challenge, as well as just trying to decide and resource the answer.

M. O'BRIEN: And just to give us perspective, this actually hearkens back in scale to the Panama Canal?

SETLIFF: I think the engineering challenges we're facing to restore just the damages to a very powerful storm by 1 June equates very similarly to Panama Canal.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Lewis Setliff, who is colonel in charge of the many construction projects under way right now, not getting much rest these days, as they try just to get back to pre-Katrina, Soledad. And once again, that issue of Category 5, that's an issue that goes all the way to Washington and Congress and many billions of taxpayer dollars on figuring out a smart way to make this city safe for a future Katrina-like storm or perhaps worse -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. Pre-Katrina for many people is just not enough. Miles, thanks.

A short break is ahead this morning. But coming up, Republicans are calling him a grand slam pick. Democrats say he's a radical. So who is the real Judge Samuel Alito? We've got an in-depth look at him just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: It has been more than three weeks since that devastating earthquake, 7.6 magnitude, struck South Asia and left many people in just horrible conditions.

Stan Grant is in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir for us this morning with really quite a remarkable and unusual look at what's happening there. The official death toll, 54,000 but you could -- you expect it could go much higher -- Stan.

STAN GRANT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Soledad, we have traveled many hours to get to the point where we are now. We're about 8,000 feet above sea level, high in the mountains of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Of course, Kashmir a hotly disputed region between India and Pakistan, and they've fought several wars over this region.

Now, the people here stricken by this earthquake that has claimed some almost 60,000 lives now and injured more than 70,000 other people.

The people you can see behind me huddled around this fire are the homeless and the desperate. These are the people who have lost everything in this earthquake; they simply have nowhere to go.

There are two, three tents behind me here. That is not enough to house these people. Most of the people you see behind me here, the elderly, the young, the injured, are going to have to sleep outside tonight, as they have slept outside every night since this earthquake began.

The big problem now is the onset of winter. Temperatures tonight will get below zero. In the coming weeks it will plunge to perhaps about minus 20. The onset of snow is going to create even more vulnerability. The great fear is if they cannot get aid and relief to these people, more people, Soledad, are going to die.

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, what a big problem. Stan Grant for us. He's got an update on what's happening there in the wake of that terrible, terrible earthquake. Stan, thank you.

Well, you know, over the last few days, we have certainly heard a lot about the president's pick for the new Supreme Court nominee, in the past 24 hours, Samuel Alito. He is the son of an Italian immigrant, and he's a rabid Philadelphia Phillies fan. And he is somebody who actually predicted this day would come. We've got much more now on him from AMERICAN MORNING's Kelly Wallace.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All my kids' toys. Can't get over it. Oh, my God. This is depressing. Oh, man. It's destroyed. The mold everywhere. My bed is still made. But it's moved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: Obviously, we are having a problem with that clip. That is not the right piece. We're going to have a look at Kelly Wallace's piece on Judge Alito in just a few moments when we get that little technical glitch fixed. A short break and we'll be back in just a moment. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Our technical problems solved, let's get right to Kelly Wallace's piece on the new Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He goes by Sam, not Samuel, loves baseball, played as a little boy growing up in New Jersey, and did so well on his elementary school assignments, his now 90-year-old mom said his teachers grew suspicious.

ROSE ALITO, JUDGE ALITO'S MOTHER: Sometimes that they were so good that the teachers would think that he did not do them, and that would hurt him very much.

WALLACE: But his confidence was clearly not shaken. In his senior yearbook at Princeton University, he said he intends to go to law school -- he went to Yale -- and eventually to warm a seat on the Supreme Court.

JUDGE SAMUEL ALITO, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: That was a college joke. I think my real ambition at the time was to be the commissioner of baseball.

WALLACE: His resume: federal prosecutor during the Reagan administration, arguing 12 cases before the Supreme Court; a former top prosecutor in New Jersey; and a federal appeals court judge for the past 15 years. His former colleagues say the father of two is incredibly smart, somewhat reserved, and someone who works like a dog.

PAUL FISHMAN, ALITO'S FORMER COLLEAGUE: He's not someone who, if there's a television in the room, will flip it on to watch the news, necessarily. He will actually sit at his desk and do his work. And as a result of that, I think he can sometimes run circles around other people, because he just does it faster and longer than other people who are doing the same thing.

WALLACE: Jay Jorgensen clerked for Alito back in 1997. He said half of the judge's clerks are always liberal, half conservative.

JAY JORGENSEN, FORMER ALITO LAW CLERK: In the entire time I worked for him, even though we talked about so many things, I never found out what his personal political views are, because again, he does not bring his personal political views to work.

WALLACE: Alito's critics don't necessarily agree.

BRUCE ACKERMAN, YALE UNIVERSITY: I don't think conservative is the word. This person is a judicial radical.

WALLACE: One of Alito's most controversial opinions was back in 1991, when he argued to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring married women to inform their husbands before an abortion. But Alito supporters point to another decision, this one in 2000, in which he ruled that a New Jersey law banning partial birth abortions was unconstitutional.

JORGENSEN: If he was against abortion or for abortion and was injecting that personal view into his cases, they would both come out that way, but they don't.

WALLACE (on camera): Alito's former law clerks might not know where he stands on abortion but his mother said she does, telling the Associated Press, quote, "Of course, he's against abortion," a statement that will likely be used by both sides during what is expected to be a bitter confirmation battle.

Kelly Wallace, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Judge Alito has a connection to the Bush family, too. He was first nominated to the federal bench by Bush 41, the current president's father back in 1990.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: You know, it's 7:30 local time there at work here. You know what, half the battle here, Soledad, is just getting access to the site. This is all part of just building a road that will carry some heavy trucks, which, in turn, will carry some heavy rocks to do some more permanent and yet still temporary fix. This temporary/permanent thing is kind of bugging me today, but that's basically what it is. They want to get it so it can handle a Katrina situation, but the long-term figs fix is still up in the air. And as far as the woman and the dates, I wish her well.

S. O'BRIEN: You don't want to give me a figure, $600,000? Sounds expensive for you.

M. O'BRIEN: No, it's got to be more than that. Eight figures, eight figures?

S. O'BRIEN: I knew you had a healthy ego, Miles, I knew it! I knew it.

Let's continue to talk about the CIA leak investigation, shall we? We all now know that Lewis Scooter Libby is out of a job. No time to think about that. He's trying to keep himself out of prison now.

CNN's David Ensor takes a look at Libby's difficult legal battle in this investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On Thursday morning at the U.S. district court, the vice president's former chief of staff will make his first appearance to hear the charges against him. He's expected to plead not guilty. Lawyers for Lewis Scooter Libby may have their work cut out for them.

RANDALL ELIASON, FMR. FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: This is not a sort of he said/she said, my word against yours case. This is a he said/they said. They've got a large number of people, according to the indictment,who are going to testify contrary to what Mr. Libby is going to say.

ENSOR: At the White House, the spokesman answered questions this way.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECY.: Under our legal system, there is a presumption of innocence. We need to let that legal process continue. If people want to politicize this process, that's their business.

ENSOR: Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a strident critic of the Iraq war, and the husband of Valerie Wilson, the CIA officer allegedly unmasked by White House officials, said that since then, his family has been threatened.

JOSEPH WILSON, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR: There have been threats, and as a consequence, we have been working closely with the appropriate law-enforcement agencies. We've changed our phone numbers and taken other security measures.

ENSOR (on camera): If the trial goes ahead, the prosecution plans to call a succession of reluctant reporters and administration officials to try to show that Libby made false statements about what happened. Even the vice president could be called. Libby's friends are saying he's innocent and will fight. Others are predicting a plea bargain.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Continuing our discussions of New Orleans. Before Katrina hit, Court TV was in New Orleans filming the city's police department. The crew stayed on and followed two officers who then remained on duty. The result is now featured in a Court TV documentary and it airs this evening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OFC. JONATHAN CARROLL, NEW ORLEANS POLICE: Just stealing food and water. Am I going to arrest them because they're trying to survive because they have no food and water? Absolutely not. Is it stealing or is it survival? It's a big difference there. If you're stealing a plasma TV, that's different. You're going to jail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: Officer Jonathan Carroll was featured in that clip, and he joins us this morning. It's nice to see you.

CARROLL: How're you doing, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: They were in doing this documentary anyway, and all of a sudden, the hurricane struck. Did you ever think of saying, you know what, guys, we are now in a disaster and we're responding as a police force; I need you to shut the cameras down?

CARROLL: Well, I never thought that, because I knew that the police department was being portrayed in kind of a negative manner, and at that time, I knew that if they kept filming, they would portray us in the real light of what's actually going on in New Orleans at the time.

S. O'BRIEN: How soon did you know, once the hurricane hit, that was it was this massive disaster?

CARROLL: Probably, maybe 10 hours after. Because when the hurricane hit, there was no water. Everything -- we had wind damage and things like that.

S. O'BRIEN: And no communications.

CARROLL: No communications, no.

S. O'BRIEN: No one was calling in and saying, I lost everything.

CARROLL: Well, actually, we had a little communications the first couple of hours, and then the water came, and then communications completely shutdown.

S. O'BRIEN: Did you ever consider for a moment, like many of your fellow officers did, I'm out of here?

CARROLL: No, I signed up as a police officer, and I have a duty to the city of New Orleans, and I have to say. And who can the people trust if they can't trust the police?

S. O'BRIEN: Did you have a lot of moral conflicts? Like the one we saw on that clip, where it's sort of deciding who you're going to arrest and not arrest. I mean, someone stealing food, and they're stealing it, or they're stealing a TV. You're making decisions like that. I mean, it's very unusual circumstances. CARROLL: Absolutely. Who am I to tell somebody that they can't take food and water for their child or for their family to survive? Because everything they had, all of the food and water they had was completely flooded out.

S. O'BRIEN: I remember when I was coming into the city, we ran into so many police officers who were right on the outskirts. Everybody had a shotgun, and they were disgusted. They were disgusted by the reaction. They were disgusted by the looters, the officers that I was talking to, just angry. What were the officers who stayed on the job in the city, what was going through your minds?

CARROLL: Just control. Let's control of what we have left. Let's secure the part of the city that wasn't completely destroyed, which was the central business district, the uptown area, the French Quarter. And I think we did a great job, the men and women of the police department did a great job in doing that.

S. O'BRIEN: Did it surprise you how quickly things kind of unraveled and became lawless really?

CARROLL: It did. It surprised me. But I think that we were able to react to it and get a hold on it real quick. I think that we took a bad wrap on, you know, the ability to secure it, when in essence, it really was secured very fast, and there was a swift movement by the police department, as well as, you know, the other agencies that came and supported us.

S. O'BRIEN: You lost your house.

CARROLL: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: And I want to show a clip where you go back and take a look, and I know you didn't want to go. So let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: All my kids' toys. I can't get over it. Oh, my God, this is depressing. Oh, man! Destroyed. The mold everywhere. My bed is still made! But it's moved!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: That's kind of a moment I think a lot of people experienced. Everything is completely shaken up, and yet one thing has stayed perfectly the same. What was it like to go back? I know you were very reluctant.

CARROLL: Yes, I didn't want to go back at all.

S. O'BRIEN: Why not?

CARROLL: I have a job to do in the city, and my focus was to work, and I was trying to make myself numb and not think about home, because I knew I had a duty to the citizens and the people that were still there. And I had to -- well, I had a family to take care of. I had two families to take care of, my wife's family and my family. I had to be the mouthpiece for them and tell them what's going on.

S. O'BRIEN: Was it distracting to suddenly go from protecting citizens on to, oh my god, my house is gone, my kid, my wife, her family?

CARROLL: Yes, oh, absolutely. The biggest part of the whole deal was I missed my child's first birthday.

S. O'BRIEN: That has to tough.

CARROLL: A month before the storm, we were planning the birthday party. Would you think, you know, I'm going to miss your child's first birthday, you know, around as a father? No. That was the biggest thing that hurt me during the storm.

S. O'BRIEN: What do you want people to get out of this documentary?

CARROLL: Well, of course, it's airing tonight at 10:00 on Court TV. And I want people to realize that, you know, what's been portrayed about the police department is false. We're human beings. You know, we have families, we have homes that we lost. And 80 percent of us lost our homes. And that we stayed on, stuck through this and we're going to rebuild New Orleans. It's going to be a bigger and better city, there's no doubt in my mind.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet it's going to be a great documentary. I look forward to seeing it tonight. Officer Carroll, nice to see you, thanks for talking with us.

CARROLL: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's get right back to Miles in New Orleans -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Soledad. Slowly but surely, things are coming back to life here. Take a look at this. This is actually a significant moment. This is "The Gambit Weekly," just out on newsstands today, first time since Katrina. This is an alternative newspaper here and an important voice, journalistically.

Interesting cover choice there. Finding faith. That cross there is a marker where a body was found. It had been left for several days. And, yet, in spite of that, a lot of the message inside "The Gambit Weekly" is on the future and what lies ahead and the city on the mend.

The editor of the paper is Clancy DuBos. He joins us now. Lifelong resident in New Orleans. One-time columnist for the "Times- Picayune."

Thank you. Just getting this paper out was an accomplishment. Congratulations for just getting it done.

CLANCY DUBOS, EDITOR, "GAMBIT WEEKLY": Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Half your staff is gone. It took a lot to pull together. I'm surprised at how many ads there are in here.

DUBOS: I'm very pleasantly surprised. And I've always felt that "Gambit" was a very good indicator the local economy. One hundred percent of the ads in our paper are local businesses. We don't have any national advertising. So for us to publish a 64-page paper after 10 weeks of dormancy is phenomenal. And it's a testament to, I think, people's faith in our company, but also their faith in the local economy. Local businesses advertise when they're confident that things are going to get better.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, I suppose there were times along the way were you thought maybe not. That when it came time to start selling ads, there'd be nobody there?

DUBOS: Well, my wife told me -- my wife's the publisher and CEO. She said, honey, we're jumping off the cliff. A miraculously, thank God, a lot of people threw us parachutes on the way down so we had a nice, soft landing. .

M. O'BRIEN: Big picture here. We're standing in the neighborhood as impacted as any neighborhood.

DUBOS: This is our Ground Zero.

M. O'BRIEN: This is -- that's a good way of putting it. This is the Ground Zero for New Orleans here. And before neighborhoods like this come back, can come back, many people would say you've got to have a Category 5 system to protect them before they can come back. What do you think? Is that something that is reasonable, feasible, economical?

DUBOS: It is feasible. In the long time, I think it reasonable, because New Orleans is worth saving. Economically, it has be done with federal aid, and it's not going to happen in one year. But they can get the levees up to their previous strength, which held up for 200-something years, by next hurricane season, if they put themselves to the task. That is, they being Congress and the Corps of Engineers.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Right now, we've seen a lot of evidence of the work. By June 1st, they expect to have pre-Katrina levels. I guess that will help people get through this next season somehow?

DUBOS: Well, before Katrina, nobody worried about the levees. It's only since there were a couple of failures. If they fix the failures and reengineer the levees (INAUDIBLE) Category 3 storms, I think New Orleans will be fine. Because then we can start to build, over a five or ten year period, up to Category 4 and up to Category 5. And if put the pumps in the right place at the end of the canals, so that the water goes right out of the city, directly into the lake instead of into the canals, and then back out, we can make it work.

M. O'BRIEN: Final thought. You're a longtime political columnist here and a watcher of the political scene here. February's the mayoral election. The mayor still under a lot of criticism for his leadership, or in some cases people would say lack thereof. How would you handicap that race right now? Is Mayor Nagin going to be reelected here, in spite of all that's happened?

DUBOS: Well, he's on the bubble and a lot of people want a change, but nobody so far has stepped up to challenge him. And there's even some question as to whether we're going to have the election. Because there is a state law that allows for elections to be suspended or delayed in the face of a state emergency. So it's (INAUDIBLE).

M. O'BRIEN: Clancy DuBos, editor of "The Gambit Weekly." And you'll note that his wife is the boss. He understands the reality very well. And we should tell you, happy birthday.

DUBOS: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Thanks for coming by on your birthday, on All Saint's Day, by the way, in the city of New Orleans. One of the traditions here is that people will go out to gravestones, grave markers and whitewash those gravestones. And perhaps you'll see evidence of that today as at least some people have begun moving back to this city.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Back now in this neighborhood just beneath the 17th Street Levee. In particular, the breach. Take a look at all this debris. This is just one block. And that really doesn't even account for all of the things that are in the houses. It's just tons and millions and millions of tons of debris. And, now, there is a whole controversy over where it should go and who might want to buy it.

When we return, we'll check in with CNN's Ed Lavandera who has the story of one man's trash being another man's treasure.

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M. O'BRIEN: Think of all the debris here in the city of New Orleans, really all around the Katrina and hurricane regions. This is what's left of one house. When the levee broke free here, which is just right over there, it washed away some houses, leaving that debris. You see that old Volkswagen Bug in the mix there. But that's really that's left of that house and all of that translates into something that has to be disposed of.

This is an obvious case, but there are probably -- it's hard to say. They're estimating 50,000 homes -- 50,000 homes in the city of New Orleans that can't be saved at all. So, when you start multiplying out that out and think of all refrigerators and all the cars and all the things that are associated with your house, you have a significant debris issue.

CNN's Ed Lavandera brings us an interesting twist on that story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mountainous piles of debris are erupting all over New Orleans. Landfills can't hold it all, so Rick Granados knows it's time to get creative.

RICK GRANADOS, ARMY CORP OF ENGINEERS: We're definitely, you know, interested if anybody has any ideas, you know, to let us know what possibilities, you know, they see where this material could be used.

LAVANDERA: All sorts of ideas are already being debated. For example, what to do with 50,000 boats stranded on dry streets. Engineers say the fiberglass boats could be shredded and used to build artificial reefs to protect the Gulf coastline. Wood debris could be used the same way and it could also be ground into landscaping mulch.

GRANADOS: This is the Pontchartrain Boulevard disposal area or staging area, as we call it.

LAVANDERA: Granados works for the Army Corps of Engineers and is in charge of clearing out some of the hardest hit areas of New Orleans. He says power plants could burn the trash and turn it into electricity, and even though it's a far-fetched idea at this point, Granados says engineers could even consider turning this trash pile into home insulation material.

GRANADOS: This is a sample right here of the piles that we have ground up.

LAVANDERA: Just look at how bulky chunks of trash have been quickly turned into fiber-like waste.

(on camera): On the surface, it might look like a huge pile of trash, but the goal here is to make sure that not all of this is wasted. There is a wide array of companies nationwide lining up to buy just this.

(voice-over): The goal is to recycle at least half of these debris piles in some form to help save landfill space.

DR. CHUCK BROWN, DEPT. ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY: To me, it just makes, you know, too much sense to recycle than to dispose. We've had offers from -- throughout the country, from other sister agencies, from universities, from private citizens, that offered just their help and their services.

LAVANDERA: Rick Granados says these trash piles keep getting bigger every day, so he hopes someone figures out how to turn this trash into treasure real soon.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: It's just amazing when you think about, Soledad. Yesterday on that helicopter tour, we flew over the refrigerator graveyard. There must have been, I'd say, 10,000 refrigerators, easily. And they were going through them, each and every one of them, pressure-washing them, removing the contents, draining the freon and then shredding them. And on they go into, I guess, future refrigerators.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it's a huge task, but you know, that is an environmental hazard. You cannot leave those things out.

M. O'BRIEN: It is.

S. O'BRIEN: It's a big problem. And, you know -- and there's lots of them. I bet that's quite a sight from a helicopter.

Hey, Miles, coming up this morning, got some bad news and that is that your heating bills are going to be really, really high this winter. Got some good news, too, because Gerri has some advice on how you can bring those bills down. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Heating bills are going to be high this winter. But Gerri's got some good news in the form of some tips. She's "Minding Your Business" because Andy Serwer has the day off. Good morning.

GERRI WILLIS, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE EDITOR: Good morning, Soledad, good to see you.

Did you know that 80 percent of the homes built before 1980 don't have enough insulation? If you have one of those homes, you definitely want to check it out. Job number one is seeing if you have bad insulation. Do you get icicles on your roof line when it snows? Now, that's really pretty, but you know what, it means you don't have adequate insulation.

Put your hands over the electrical outlets. If you feel air blowing through it, that's another signal. Cold floors, yet another signal that you need some help.

S. O'BRIEN: So what do you do?

WILLIS: Well, you got to buy some insulation. The first thing to do is check out the R-value. You need to understand how efficient the insulation should be in your home. Typically, for an attic, you want an R-value of 30. And you can figure out how much insulation, how much protection you have from the cold air, by measuring the thickness of existing insulation and taking that times three. That gives you the R-value.

But I got to tell you, the Energy Department has a great little tool on their Web site, it's simplyinsulate.com, That will tell you exactly the R-value that you need in your house, because it varies by region.

S. O'BRIEN: And you can just do this yourself?

WILLIS: You can do it this yourself. You can hire an expert, especially if you want to blow it into the walls. If you're just rolling out into the attic, it's easy enough to do on your own. You've got to choose the right insulation, and the cool thing about this, Soledad -- they make it out of soy. They make it out of blue jeans. You can get it out of sheep's wool.

S. O'BRIEN: No longer out of asbestos, as it used to be made out of right?

WILLIS: Well, you know, you can still buy fiberglass, but the good news is there are a lot of green alternatives. They're not that expensive. I suggest you check out some of the cotton varieties right now, because they're pretty cost efficient. Be sure to keep it away from the lights. You can you cause a fire.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, that doesn't surprise me at all. All right, Gerri, some good advice, especially since we've told everybody the bad news, which is, you're going to pay more if you don't do this stuff.

WILLIS: That's right.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Gerri.

Still to come this morning, details on the president's plan for fighting an outbreak for the bird flu. Is it too little, too late? We'll look at that ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

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