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American Morning

Confirmation Battle; St. Bernard Parish Recovery; Swamp Solution In New Orleans; 'Minding Your Business'

Aired November 02, 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: Welcome back, everybody.
What a beautiful shot. I mean, every morning we have really, this week, we have showed (INAUDIBLE).

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And you have to admit, although it's only the first few days of November, it's been a great month weather wise here.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, as they say and look at that picture. It is as warm as it looks in that shot. It's just a beautiful, beautiful day.

Not the same can be said across the country.

COSTELLO: No.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I hear it's cold in New Orleans. That's where Miles is. Well, actually, he's in St. Bernard Parish this morning.

Hey, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

You know, October here in the New Orleans area was the third driest month ever. Imagine that after Katrina and Rita to have such a lack of rain. And then I heard somebody on the radio yesterday saying, we really could use a little rain. And I thought that was very odd in light of all that has happened here.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, that is sort of a sad irony, isn't it?

Well, I know you're going to be talking to a man who I truly enjoyed interviewing and respect very much. A lot of the people do, too. That's senator look at this, I'm elevating Sheriff Jack Stephens to senator! I'm sure he'll appreciate that.

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, since you he wait a minute, Soledad, you've got to be honest. He made you a captain. So I can see . . .

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A lieutenant actually.

MILES O'BRIEN: I can see why you elevated him to senator.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, I . . .

MILES O'BRIEN: I am bucking, by the way, I am angling to become a colonel. So when I come back, I will outrank you.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Well, you know, you always do, Miles, and it's fine with me! We'll check in with you a little bit later. And, of course, we're looking forward to your interview with the sheriff. He's terrific to talk to.

First, though, there is just a ton of news out of Washington, D.C. and we want to get right to it. There's a new Supreme Court nominee and clearly that's going to be a contentious battle. Also, some development overseas in the war on terror, too, to talk about.

Let's get right to the U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. He's at the Justice Department.

It's nice to see you, sir. Thank you very much for talking with us.

ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Good morning.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit, first, about the Supreme Court nominee, because we've been talking about that headline for a couple of days now. When you look at the poll numbers, you see 17 percent of the public, American public polled, said excellent choice, 26 percent said good choice and then only fair or poor, the rest of the numbers there, 22 percent, 17 percent. You do the math on that, 43 percent of Americans polled say excellent or good and everybody else, you know, the other side of that, doesn't think he's such a great choice. That number is actually lower than Harriet Miers number when her nomination was first announced. How concerned are you about those numbers?

GONZALES: Well, I'm not concerned about the poll numbers about this wonderful nominee. Listen, it's very early in the process. There is a lot that people don't know about Judge Alito and his wonderful record in public service as a U.S. prosecutor, as a member of the Department of Justice and his 15 years as a circuit court judge. And that's what the confirmation process, the hearing process is all about, is so that the American people and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and, ultimately, the Senate, have an opportunity to learn about a person's qualifications to serve on our nation's highest court. So at this juncture, I'm not worried at all.

I think the president has made a wise choice. Judge Alito is very well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. I think he has the right kind of philosophy that the American people want to see and people who serve on our courts, people do not have a personal agenda. And we're hoping for a very dignified process. And at the end of that process, a successful confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: The president could have picked a woman. He could have picked a minority. These are things that were really, I thought, pretty aggressively discussed before Harriet Miers was named and then sort of fell by the wayside after that nomination kind of blew up. Do you think he missed an opportunity here, the president? GONZALES: Well, listen, I think the president's record on adversity is a very, very strong one. And, obviously, I am an example, a very important example I think, with all modest city, appointing the first Hispanic attorney general to the United States. And so his record on diversity I think is one that I'm very, very proud to defend.

At the end of the day, a president takes into consideration a wide range of factors in deciding who to nominate to the Supreme Court. This president weighed carefully the qualifications of a number of well-qualified candidates and ultimately decided that Judge Alito was the right choice for this vacancy.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Let me ask you about some development overseas. We're getting a report, and I'm looking at it here, from the Associated Press. It talks about Omar al-Farouq. You know of him well. He is a guy who's considered a top lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. Escaped according to the Associated Press, they're reporting that, from a U.S. military facility in Afghanistan. And apparently some Indonesian terror officials are saying, we never even got the word from Washington. How does that happen? How did he escape?

GONZALES: Well, I don't know all the facts of this particular incident. Obviously, we consider it a very serious problem and one we'd have to look into the details of. We work very hard to identify and to capture people engaged in the war on terror against America. And we'll continue that effort.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: "The Washington Post" has a story and the headline is "CIA holds terror suspect in secret prisons." And they're saying that there are these U.S.-run secret prisons, and they have more details in this article, that are in, I guess, Thailand, Afghanistan. Are there these secret prisons? They've never been officially confirmed. And are they operating above the law?

GONZALES: Soledad, I'm not going confirm or deny on this show the existence of this program. We normally do not talk about intelligence activities. What I can say to your viewers is that, the president has charged the administration, we're doing what we can to protect America against another domestic attack and to protect our allies and those who are working with America. But to do so in a way that is consistent with our legal obligations, both domestically and international. So I can say that.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Alberto Gonzales is the attorney general of the United States. Thank you for talking with us this morning.

GONZALES: Thank you.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: There are other stories making news and Carol has a look at all of those. All of them.

COSTELLO: All of them. Every single one.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Good morning.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

You could call it the November surprise, at least to Senate Republicans. They're still stewing over a surprise move by Democrats to speed up an investigation of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Without consulting Republicans, Senate Democrats invoked a rarely used rule to force a closed-door session. Majority Leader Bill Frist said Democrats had "hijacked the Senate." A new bipartisan task force is now assessing the progress of the investigation. That's what came out of all of that.

CNN now confirming that an American chopper has gone down in Iraq this morning. The U.S. military says two Marine pilots were killed in the crash near Ramadi, which is just west of Baghdad. We don't know what caused the accident but recovery operations are now said to be underway.

A final tribute this morning to civil rights leader Rosa Parks. A white hearse carrying her casket to the Greater Grace Temple Church in Detroit. These are pictures of that. The funeral begins at 11:00 this morning, that's Eastern Time. And you're talking a look at live pictures outside of this church. Inside the church, there are room for 2,000 seats for the public. And you can see they're singing outside of the church right now. The Reverend Jessie Jackson will perform the eulogy. Aretha Franklin will sing. President and Mrs. Clinton are there and President Clinton is expected to make some remarks. So these people probably waiting in line to get a seat inside.

Royal watchers, if you're out there, Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, the duchess of Cornwall, will be guests at a special black tie dinner tonight at the White House. The royals started their U.S. tour in New York on Tuesday with a visit to Ground Zero. They also attended a glitzy reception at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Guests included Donald Trump, Sting, and Barbara Walters. There you see them.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And Milania.

COSTELLO: And Milania. The pregnant Milania.

And despite word that Camilla had packed about 40 outfits for this trip, one New York paper called her look they called it the fromp (ph) tower.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh.

COSTELLO: it's just so mean.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It is mean.

COSTELLO: I don't think she can win.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That is unnecessary roughness, I think. I mean, you know.

COSTELLO: Penalty! SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: If you're still using snail mail, listen up. Stamp prize are going up to 39 cents. The Postal Service says it needs the money to make a $3 billion escrow payment required by Congress. The two cent hike is expected to take effect in January.

And look at the panda.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh.

COSTELLO: Look at the panda. It's hypnotizing, isn't it, to look at a panda?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes.

COSTELLO: This is little Tai Shan, the 16-week-old baby panda at the National Zoo, taking its very first steps. Officials at the zoo released these pictures on Tuesday. They say that see, it's hypnotizing. You just can't take your eyes away from it.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It's so cute.

COSTELLO: As you can see, it's a very curious toddler. Tai Shan's expected to make his official public debut next month. He now weighs, what, 15 « pounds.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: My son took one of my twins took their first steps.

COSTELLO: Really?

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: One twin took his first steps. And the same thing, it's that oh.

COSTELLO: So cute.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And a Panda and a kid, it's so cute.

COSTELLO: Oh, I know. It's hypnotizing. I'm becoming a little nauseated now. We'll skip to the forecast center.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Save her, Jacqui! Save her.

COSTELLO: Save me, Jacqui!

(WEATHER REPORT)

MILES O'BRIEN: It is chilly in St. Bernard Parish this morning. Definitely a cool, clear morning. Another dry day here. As we said, Jacqui, just a little while ago, third driest October ever. Imagine that after the deluge which came with Katrina and then, of course, Rita, to have such dry weather.

St. Bernard Parish. This is Florida Avenue. Soledad was here end of September and really not much has changed here. You see some evidence of people having come through, trying to pick through what's left of their homes, trying to pick out some of their possessions. But things are pretty much the way they were nine weeks later because there are so many questions which are unanswered.

We had the parish president here with us, Henry Junior Rodriguez, who's been asking a lot of those questions himself. He was in Washington just a couple of weeks ago.

Mr. Rodriguez, good to have you with us.

When you went to Washington, you were talking to the congressional delegation. What kind of reception did you get? And was it satisfactory?

HENRY RODRIGUEZ, PRESIDENT, ST. BERNARD PARISH: Well, we got a good reception. But, you know, it wasn't satisfactory as far as I was concerned about the results. You know, we asked for some help. We asked for a helping hand. We didn't ask for a handout. And what we got was a loan. And this is unprecedented.

I mean, we went to Iraq U.S. went to Iraq, we never gave them a loan. We rebuilt them. Florida, no loan. Come to Louisiana, this is probably the most devastated area that you've seen anywhere in this area. St. Bernard Parish is devastated from one end to the other and we have to make a loan.

I wouldn't mind making a loan if I had an opportunity to pay it back. But what you're asking me to do is, you're asking me not to tell you to prove we have no tax base. You can see this. We depend on (INAUDIBLE) taxes and sales taxes. So we have no tax base, so how are we going to pay you a loan back?

MILES O'BRIEN: So that must be frustrating. And couple that with the inability to get things like trailers to house people here and the general response, you've got to be frustrated at this point.

RODRIGUEZ: Oh, very frustrated. I mean, that the Washington trip was like a slap in the face to us. You know, I felt like we were being treated as second-class citizens. And then we come down and the problems we're having with and FEMA's doing the best it can, but as they can but, again, the guidelines and the rules and regulations they have to go by, we're in a position where environmental studies have to be made before we can put in a trailer city.

MILES O'BRIEN: Really? You have to do a study before you get trailer in, in the wake of an emergency?

RODRIGUEZ: That's exactly right. And none of these things have been waived. And we have to go through all of this red tape and we got people that's waiting to come home, you know? They're waiting for and they're in they're in a bad position because they want to come home. They don't want to rebuild. But we can't get them a trailer. It's so simple in life, you know. But when you get government involved, it becomes a nightmare!

MILES O'BRIEN: The bottom line is here, do you feel as if you're on your own here pretty much? And you're on your own, but you need help?

RODRIGUEZ: Oh, definitely. We've been on our own since the beginning. It was six days before we saw anybody from the federal government. As a matter of fact, on the third day, a group of mounted police from Vancouver, Canada, showed up in my office.

MILES O'BRIEN: The Mounties?

RODRIGUEZ: That's exactly right. How in the hell did they get there, you know? They got there and our people couldn't even get there?

MILES O'BRIEN: All right.

RODRIGUEZ: I mean, you know, it started off bad, but we survived on our own. We were prepared. I'll say that about St. Bernard Parish, we were prepared. But we've always been in that posture because we always knew that we you have to fend for yourself first.

MILES O'BRIEN: Henry Junior Rodriguez, parish president here at St. Bernard Parish, thank you very much for your time. Good luck here.

Let's take a look over here. Off in the distance, that's an important levee. Yesterday we took a ride in an air boat on the other side of that levee. We took a look at the marsh land out there. It's a stark picture. When we come back, we'll tell you how that marsh used to be a rather lush swamp. And if that lush swamp had been there, this damage you see in the foreground might not have happened.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: Welcome back, live, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. I'm Miles O'Brien.

Take a look at this damage along Florida Avenue here. Among the hardest hit places in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Many of the homes on this street will have to be demolished. They're right beside an important levee here. A levee which, obviously, didn't do the job when that perhaps as high as 30 foot storm surge came through from Katrina. Yesterday, we took a trip on the other side of that levee, looked at the marshes and saw how they are unable to do what mother nature wants them to do, and that is protect the land.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, (voice over): John Estedes remembers when this barren marsh on the fringe of Lake Born (ph) was a lush swamp filled with mature oak and cypress trees, draped with Spanish moss.

JOHN ESTEDES, ST. BERNARD PARISH RESIDENT: And the trees so thick, the moss, you know, hanging in that, you know, and you'd see the daylight, but, I mean, you couldn't see the sun shining through it, it was so thick in here.

MILES O'BRIEN: What's it like seeing it now? ESTEDES: Disgusting.

MILES O'BRIEN: Disgusting and dangerous because healthy wetlands would have posed a significant speed bump to Katrina's surging waters, perhaps reducing their height by as much as 20 percent.

So this would have been a great protection if it were still here?

SHERWOOD GAGLIANO, COASTAL ENVIRONMENTS INC.: It would have a it could have been the difference between the levees failing and not failing.

MILES O'BRIEN: Sherwood Gagliano is among the first scientists to realize the wetlands of Louisiana are vanishing as a direct result of efforts to tame the mighty Mississippi. All the channels, locks, levees and flood walls are funneling the river's fabled mud or sediment away from the wetlands.

GAGLIANO: This sediment transported by the river is the most precious resource that this state has and we're dumping most of it into the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

MILES O'BRIEN: The sediment, along with a steady flow of fresh water, are the key ingredients for healthy wetlands. The manmade channels have also brought salty Gulf water into the swamp killing the trees. Twenty-five square miles of wetlands disappear here each year.

Man broke it. Can man fix it?

GAGLIANO: Certainly, we can fix it. We have the scientific understanding now to restore wetlands and restore marshes. We can train the river so that it will deposit sediment, it will build new delta glands.

MILES O'BRIEN: Gagliano is proposing an audacious solution, building a dam and channel to redirect a third of the Mississippi's waters towards the waning wetlands. The fresh, muddy water would nourish them back to health, protect the environment and offer a natural barrier to hurricanes.

GAGLIANO: Well, I've been preaching this for literally decades and now, all of a sudden, it's news. And I think the nation is hearing what we've been trying to say.

MILES O'BRIEN: And even the Army Corps of Engineers, which built the levees that created the problem in the first place, are now listening.

COL. RICHARD WAGENAAR, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: Any future work here, we're looking at the environment as one way to use that to solve the hurricane the category five problem.

MILES O'BRIEN: I guess in this war, you've got to make mother nature your ally if you can.

WAGENAAR: You've got to try because she's pretty powerful. MILES O'BRIEN: Do you think it's important to get this back somehow? Figure out a way?

ESTEDES: It'd be gorgeous, you know. It would be hard to ever put it back like it was, but it could be, you know, something for the younger generation to be proud of.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, it's clear the solutions here, Soledad, are twofold. First of all, people need to feel like they're safe from category five storm. Secondly, just building a wall of concrete is not the way to beat back those storms. Looking at mother nature and what mother nature can do to help is going to be crucial and hopefully that lesson has been finally learned.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, I think you're exactly right. And so many things to do on so many fronts, you know? Rebuilding an estuary, bringing it back and rebuilding homes and figuring how you get the tax base (ph). I mean, there's just a million things to do.

Miles, thanks. We're going to check in with you in a little bit.

Still to come this morning on AMERICAN MORNING, more bad news for Detroit's big three automakers. Andy's got that. He's "Minding Your Business" coming up next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: More trouble for U.S. automakers. With a look at that and a market preview too, Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business" this morning.

Hello.

ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Soledad.

October is usually a big month for automakers. You know, the new models are out. The new ones for the fall. But did not work out so well for the big three. Take a look here. This is the worst October in 13 years for Detroit and that is some big stuff. And particularly GM and Ford, as you can see.

Meanwhile, guess a what, Japanese automakers doing a whole lot better. Toyota really moving up on Ford in terms of its market share, getting very close. Some of them don't do too well. Nissan didn't do too well. But, you know, overall, this is just on the one hand, on the other hand and it's just not what GM and Ford and Chrysler really had in mind.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And they can't continue to maintain these staggering losses. You can't lose 25 percent of your business every year.

SERWER: Yes, that's right. And, of course, they had those big sales over the summer. That's what, you know, made people not want to buy cars in the fall because they already bought cars.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right. Kind of a mess (ph).

SERWER: Talk about the markets a little bit.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes.

SERWER: Yesterday, of course, we had that interest rate hike that everyone knew was coming. No surprise there. Still, Wall Street was hoping perhaps an end was in sight, but they didn't get any sign of that from Alan Greenspan. Also, Dell kind of hurt the markets a little bit as well. And the futures are mixed this morning.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks very much.

Did you ever hear of Senate Rule 21?

SERWER: No.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: No? Well, you're going to hear a lot about it today.

SERWER: OK.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Because just ahead this morning, we've got more on that turmoil based on that rule out of Washington, D.C. The White House kind of keeping quite on that showdown. We'll take you to Washington, tell you about that just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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