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American Morning

Hussein Trial; Election Day Blues for Republicans; Senate Probes Prices on Gas After Katrina

Aired November 09, 2005 - 09:00   ET

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


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The results are in. A stinging defeat for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. His vision for reforming California rejected.
And Democrats roll out big wins in New Jersey and Virginia. We'll find out what it all means for the president.

And that money you've been spending on gas, the Senate would like an explanation, and now we'll go live to this morning's hearing on possible price gouging.

And some breaking news in the trial of Saddam Hussein. Could security concerns put the start of this trial in jeopardy?

That's ahead 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.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. Welcome back, everybody.

We begin this hour with breaking news which is coming to us out of Iraq this morning. There is a report out of Reuters that says that Saddam Hussein's chief lawyer is saying that lawyers for the former Iraqi president and also his seven co-defendants are going to stop all dealings with the tribunal that is trying to convict them of crimes against humanity.

This is the quote, according to Reuters: "The defense committee has decided to consider the date of November 28 canceled and illegitimate."

That comes one day after a lawyer for one of the defendants was shot dead in Baghdad.

Let's get right to Michael Scharf. He's a professor and director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center and one of the experts, too, who trained the Iraqi tribunal lawyers.

Nice to talk to you, Michael. Thanks for being with us by phone.

Can they do that? Can they decide that the proceedings are canceled and illegitimate?

MICIHAEL SCHARF, DIRECTOR, FREDERICK K. COX INTERNATIONAL LAW CENTER: I think this is an interesting ploy, and it falls right within their agenda all along of trying to derail the proceedings. But the judge in this case has some cards that he has not yet played.

For example, when these lawyers signed up to be official defense lawyers in the Iraqi special tribunal, they became officers of the court. And under the inherent powers of the court, the judge can tell these officers, you have to meet with us so that we can discuss other compromise solutions to the security problem. You have to appear on the 28th. If you don't, you're obstructing justice, and the things I can do as any judge can do in any Iraqi court, is I can fine you, I can send you in jail for a day, I can have you disbarred so that you can never practice law again in Iraq, and I can have you replaced.

So we have not heard the end of the story yet.

S. O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about the defense attorneys. In some cases they've chosen not to have security. Obviously this, to some degree, then, has ended up as of today to basically reject the proceedings as a whole.

Is there a middle ground that you can see here?

SCHARF: Well, they have made two choices here that has brought on this situation. The first is, they chose to have their faces and identities broadcast throughout Iraq and the world during the first day of the trial when they were given the choice of not having their faces shown. And most of the prosecution staff decided not to have their faces shown.

The second thing is, when the Iraqi government and the U.S. military said we will give you security, we will move you in to the Green Zone, we will protect you and your families, they declined. And it doesn't seem to me that they have any legitimate reason to decline other than that they're playing a dangerous game here, and they've literally sacrificed a member of their team to try to make this point that they don't believe that the tribunal is credible.

Now, there are some compromises. It could be if they don't want the U.S. military to provide their security, that the judge could say, all right, pick your own security team, and the U.S. government will pay for them. But you need to have security. You can't just go out risking your life and trying to put the proceedings in jeopardy.

S. O'BRIEN: So the November 28 date, does it go forward or not, do you think?

SCHARF: It's starting to look a little sketchy. But I think that there's a lot of pressure on the tribunal and on the judge to cheap the proceedings moving forward.

The thinking is, the longer these trials drag out, the more the insurgency will be fueled. The faster the proceedings go forward, and the evidence of the atrocities are shown to the Iraqi people, the faster the support for the insurgency will dry up.

So they really don't want to drag this out past November 28. And I think it's at this point 50-50 percent chance that it will proceed.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, I know you're going to keep watching it, as will we.

Michael Scharf is a law professor and also the U.S. adviser to the tribunal as well, updating us on what is happening in the Saddam Hussein trial -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Election Day blues this morning for Republicans, especially for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and for President Bush.

AMERICAN MORNING's Bob Franken has been watching all of the results as they have been streaming in.

Good morning, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

And now the spinners take over. Perhaps Duke Ellington was correct when he said it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that spin. And we're going to be hearing a lot of spin about Governor Schwarzenegger going zero for four as far as the ballot initiatives he favored in California and Republicans losing in the key governor's races. So what we're going to be hearing about is what this means to Arnold Schwarzenegger and George W. Bush.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JERRY KILGORE (R), DEFEATED CANDIDATE: The president of the United States, George W. Bush!

FRANKEN (voice over): On election eve in closely watched Virginia, the Republican candidate for governor, Jerry Kilgore, called in President Bush for a last-minute appearance. On election night, Kilgore lost.

KILGORE: Tonight, we may have lost a battle, but we have not and will not lose this war.

FRANKEN: It was a similar story in New Jersey, a Democrat won, pulling the president's coattails out from under the Republicans.

SEN. JON CORZINE (D), NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR-ELECT: Tonight, I want to thank the people of New Jersey for rejecting the Bush/Rove tactics that we see in politics.

FRANKEN: It was not a shutout. In overwhelmingly Democratic New York City, the GOP's Michael Bloomberg won in a landslide, but Bloomberg is not considered a prototype Republican.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and first lady Maria Shriver!

FRANKEN: Arnold Schwarzenegger is not really a prototype anything in politics. GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R), CALIFORNIA: Believe or not, I even want to thank the people who were so passionately vocal against us. I guess it didn't do a good enough job to convince them otherwise.

FRANKEN: Since taking over the statehouse two years ago in California, Schwarzenegger has been overtaken by the realities of governing, and is now facing the reality of losing his fight for signature ballot initiatives. It was not the best of nights for Republicans nationwide. Expect Democrats to declare this a preview of coming attractions.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRANKEN: And the next attraction is going to be the midterm election next year. As anybody will tell you, Miles, a year is a long time in politics. And all we have to do is ask President Bush.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Bob Franken. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that spin. We're still mulling that one over. But we'll take it.

A little creative interpretation I guess. All right, thanks very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Some of the executives from the big oil companies have some explaining to do. A Senate hearing is starting in just a few minutes, and the executives will be asked why they made so much money while consumers were paying so much money.

Congressional Correspondent Ed Henry live on Capitol Hill for us this morning.

Hey, Ed. Good morning.

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

You know, obviously there have been plenty of partisan battles lately, whether it's the Scooter Libby indictment, whether it's the Supreme Court fights up here on the Hill. But this is finally one issue that both parties can agree on.

They both want to drill these oil executives coming before them. They want some answers about the gyrating gas prices. They also want to call them on the carpet about why these oil companies are registering record profits at a time when consumers are seeing very little relief either at the pump or in their home heating prices.

Lawmakers will get that chance this morning. There's going to be a joint hearing among the Senate Energy and Commerce panels. Take a listen to some of the rhetoric before the hearing from the Republican energy chairman, Pete Domenici, and Democrat Byron Dorgan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. Pete DOMENICI (R), ENERGY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: They better show us what they're doing with this money. The people want to know, are they really trying to help with oil supply that will ultimately bring the prices down for the average American?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D), ENERGY COMMITTEE: Talk is cheap. The question is, will Congress do something to address these issues? And there are fundamental issues of fairness: the highest profits in the history of corporate America and significant pain on the part of the consumers all at the same time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, Senator Dorgan is among several lawmakers pushing a so-called windfall tax, trying to tap some of those oil profits, pass them on to consumers. What he's referring to there is the fact that Democrats believe Republicans are just nervous about the '06 elections, the fact that there may be a backlash at the polls over these oil prices, gas prices, and that Republicans are going to do a lot of talk at this hearing but not a lot of action.

Take a look at some of the profits for these companies. Their executives will be testifying.

ExxonMobil, so far this year $24.9 billion in profits. Shell, $20.9 billion. BP, $18.7 billion. ConocoPhillips $9.8 billion. Chevron, $7.9 billion.

Now, Republicans insist they're serious. They want to do something about it. It's not just going to be rhetoric at this hearing.

But Democrats point out, when you look at the energy bill that was passed earlier this year, it included a lot of tax breaks for some of those same companies on that list already making a bundle -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, the hearings are coming up in just a few minutes. Ed Henry on Capitol Hill, sort of laying groundwork for us.

Thanks, Ed.

And as we mentioned, we're expecting to hear -- get those hearings under way around 930 a.m. Eastern Time. We're going to bring part of that to you live when it happens.

Other stories, though, happening across the world. Let's get right to Carol Costello with an update on those.

Good morning again.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad. Good morning to all of you.

Coalition forces in western Iraq bombing a suspected al Qaeda site. Military sources say the building was actually a storage area for a huge weapons cache.

U.S. troops near the Syrian border are still working to root out insurgents ahead of next month's elections. It is day five of Operation Steel Curtain.

And there have been more Iraqi and U.S. casualties. At least seven Iraqis were killed in a suicide car bomb attack in Baquba. And U.S. military sources say a Marine was killed in a roadside bombing in the Anbar province west of Baghdad.

More rioting in France, but authorities say there was less than in previous -- than in the previous dozen nights. A number of cities are enforcing nighttime curfews, and some banned the sale of gasoline to minors.

Still, nearly 600 vehicles were torched overnight. Right now France's prime minister is speaking before lawmakers about the latest violence. The prime minister canceled a trip to Canada to deal with the riots at home.

People in southern Indiana coming home today. Residents of a leveled trailer park are being allowed back for two hours to gather whatever remains of their belongings, and then they're going to have to leave. Construction crews will move into the area to begin the rebuilding. Officials are still trying to figure out why some special radios did not pick up a tornado warning sent out minutes before the twister hit.

And smoke 'em while you've got 'em. Washington State has approved one of the most restrictive statewide bans on indoor public smoking in the entire country. The ban would also create a 25-foot smoke free buffer around doorways and windows.

Now, this is set to go into effect next month. And that means if you can't smoke inside the building -- you know, you see the smokers huddled around the doorways.

S. O'BRIEN: In the winter. So sad.

COSTELLO: Yes. You can't do that anymore in Washington State. You have to go 25 feet down the road, and if the building 25 fight down the road bans smoking you can't smoke there either.

S. O'BRIEN: In the middle of the street, basically.

M. O'BRIEN: So they're going to get hit by cars.

S. O'BRIEN: It's time to quit.

M. O'BRIEN: It will be a lot quicker than lung cancer, at least.

COSTELLO: Oh, man.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh god.

M. O'BRIEN: That was kind of rude, wasn't it?

S. O'BRIEN: That was so inappropriate, yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Sorry.

COSTELLO: Talk to the hand, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Mr. rude man this morning.

S. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: Sure.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Jacqui Jeras. Bail me out of this one, would you, please?

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: You know, Washington leaks so much it's amazing it hasn't sunk by now. But it just keeps leaking away. More allegations of a new CIA leak. More calls for investigations.

S. O'BRIEN: No one's actually confirmed if what's been leaked is true.

M. O'BRIEN: About the prisons?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. I mean on the record.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, yes, I mean, there's a lot of -- there's a lot of...

S. O'BRIEN: But now the focus is less...

M. O'BRIEN: ... strong reporting by "The Washington Post," which would suggest that is to be true. But having said all of that, we've got -- we've got a leakgate going on here it seems.

S. O'BRIEN: Also this morning, we're taking a look at this new study about caffeine in your bloodstream and your blood pressure. Some people say cola might be worse for women than coffee. The big question is why. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Well, yet another story to tell you about: leaks, the CIA, and some secrets that probably shouldn't have been in the public domain in the first place, and congressional calls for investigation.

Senator Jay Rockefeller joining us now. He is the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, the Democrat of West Virginia. Senator Rockefeller, good to have you with us.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the leak, first of all. Senator Trent Lott, let's quote him. He was in a meeting the other day, and he was there with Vice President Cheney, other Republicans, and he said, "Every word that was said in there went right into the newspaper."

He's referring to "The Washington Post" last week out with a story which indicates that there is a network of CIA-run secret prisons. Now, I want to talk about those secret prisons in a moment. Let's just talk about the leak, though.

Was that surprising to you to hear Senator Lott say that coming out of that meeting?

ROCKEFELLER: It was surprising to me, Miles, that the vice president was at that meeting, because that's a Tuesday caucus Republican meeting. We had one, too.

But the main thing is that we don't know if it's a leak. The CIA will refer it as they usually do to the FBI for an investigation of what happened. And as we know, the FBI is very tough on these things.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, somehow, some way it leaked out. We know that, right?

ROCKEFELLER: Correct.

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

Let me ask you this, what is -- what's your concern here? Is your concern that there was a leak? Or should we be more concerned about the fact that the CIA is running a network of these so-called black-site prisons?

ROCKEFELLER: That's -- that's actually a more than excellent question, because there -- there is no question that interrogation carried out properly produces enormous amounts of intelligence which prevent incidents from happening, or you learn things which you otherwise would not know. And you can only learn that through interrogation.

The next question, should you have, so to speak, ghost sites? And that's something that I am not -- I do know something about them, Miles. Quite honestly, as vice chairman of the committee who's been briefed on these things, I'm not allowed to talk about and will not talk about.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, and I don't want to put you in this difficult position. But clearly you and other members of this committee, over time, have been made aware of these -- these black sites. You must have been a bit frustrated to hear that they were occurring.

Why -- your job is to perform oversight. What could you do? What should you have done to try to stop these prisons from existing?

ROCKEFELLER: Well, what -- what we -- the great untold story in all of this is not the secret what Trent Lott said, do they exist or do they not exist, but the much larger subject which goes all the way back to Abu Ghraib, and obviously way before that, which is the subject of detention, first, then interrogation second, and then rendition, third, which is when you turn people over to other countries for interrogation, which is a very controversial subject.

We have been trying for six to eight months to have that brought up as a matter of committee business, an investigation into the whole scope of how do we handle prisoners, taking the Geneva convention, everything else, because what we do to them they'll be doing to us. Are we putting our soldiers at criminal risk, for example, because they're breaking laws that they don't know about?

This has to be studied. We're the only ones who can study that in the Intelligence Committee. And our efforts to do so have been rejected.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, let me ask you this, when you heard about them, what did you do about it?

ROCKEFELLER: Heard about?

M. O'BRIEN: When you heard about these prisons and you became aware of them in a classified forum, what did you do?

ROCKEFELLER: I'm -- Miles, I'm -- I'm sorry, this makes me a terrible interview, but I'm in a position where I cannot answer your question by saying -- when you say when you heard about these prisons, if I said anything I would either be confirming them or not, and it's embarrassing. I apologize.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. No, I understand. I'm putting you on the spot. I apologize. I guess the question...

ROCKEFELLER: Can I say something more, though?

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, feel free.

ROCKEFELLER: I think that -- that these so-called secret briefings, or whatever, on whatever subject are used too much by the Bush administration as a way of suppressing information, because they know that if I'm told something about any subject by a high official in certain types of locations, that I can never say anything about it for the rest of my life. And the same with Pat Roberts. He has that same problem.

So it's a very difficult situation.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Final thought here. Should there be sort of a 9/11-style commission looking in to this leak, the Plame disclosure, the faulty intelligence on WMD with Saddam Hussein? Kind of wrap that all into one and put it with an independent commission? ROCKEFELLER: No. I think -- I like the idea of an independent commission on the subject of detention interrogation and rendition as a whole, which is a mammoth subject which -- I mean, Hastert and Frist wrote this letter saying it should be investigated, but they've always been against doing this larger investigation.

No, it's the FBI which has to do that investigating, Miles. They're the ones who do it best. They're the ones who are the most thorough. And as we've seen in recent weeks and months, they're good at it. That's the only place that does the investigation on leaks like this.

M. O'BRIEN: Thanks for your time, Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. And sorry to put you on the spot there with classified issues.

ROCKEFELLER: Oh, OK. Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, a "House Call" to tell you about. Caffeine can raise your blood pressure. OK. That makes intuitive sense. But why are we seeing it in cola and not in coffee? We'll talk to a medical expert about that just ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: It's been long known to doctors that high blood pressure can be a silent killer. So this new study out found that caffeine, in fact, can cause high blood pressure. But only caffeine that's in cola, not caffeine found in coffee.

Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmayer is from the Harvard Medical School. He's the author of this new study. He's in Boston today.

Nice to see you, doctor. Thanks for talking with us.

DR. WOLFGANG WINKELMAYER, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Good morning, Soledad. How are you?

S. O'BRIEN: I'm very well, thank you.

I'm curious about this study because lots of it seems very counterintuitive. You began by trying to figure out what?

WINKELMAYER: Well, first we started out to kind of study the long-standing myth that was around both in the public and also among physicians that caffeine intake, or coffee consumption might actually be related to an increased risk of developing high blood pressure. And so we studied this, and when we just looked at caffeine overall, our findings were not entirely intuitive.

And so we started breaking it down by caffeinated beverage. And what we did find is quite in contrast to popular belief, that coffee was not associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure in the long run.

S. O'BRIEN: But cola was. And why is that?

WINKELMAYER: That is absolutely the tricky part of our study. And it is difficult to reconcile these findings.

There's basically two options. If caffeine is the only agent in play here, if you will, then we would expect the same association from coffee and from cola beverages.

So since this is not the case, maybe there's some other ingredient in coffee that may attenuate the effect of caffeine. And we know from other studies that coffee is very rich in antioxidant substances. So maybe they don't only mitigate the effect of caffeine, but maybe even lead to a decreased risk of high blood pressure in women. And that's actually what we found.

S. O'BRIEN: In other words, the caffeine in coffee is sort of good caffeine, and you drink enough of it and it can actually bring your blood pressure down. The caffeine in soda is not necessarily good caffeine, and that can raise your blood pressure.

Obviously this leads to lots of other tests you must want to do. What else do you need to find out here?

WINKELMAYER: I think it's most important to confirm these findings. I guess the good news for this morning for all the women out there having their coffee is that they can continue to do so and really enjoy the morning or afternoon coffee, or even more of that. I think this is the real focus here.

Regarding our cola findings, these findings clearly need to be confirmed elsewhere. And most importantly, this association that we are describing does not constitute a cause and effect association.

We don't know, and we have not identified a biological agent that might be responsible for this association. So that's definitely a key focus of future research.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, clearly future research. I love that six cups of coffee actually can bring your blood pressure down before work.

WINKELMAYER: Isn't that interesting?

S. O'BRIEN: Very interesting. And again, we should really reemphasize the study was only done in women.

Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmayer joining us from Harvard Medical School.

Nice to see you, doctor. Thank you.

WINKELMAYER: Thank you very much, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Coming up, Soledad, let's take a look at a live picture. Washington, D.C., there's the room where some executives of the rather large oil companies will meet up with some members of Congress who have some questions about their pricing tactics.

Is it gouging? We will take a look as the hearings begin in just a moment.

Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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