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American Morning

City Park, New Orleans, Asks Workers to Pay Rent; Revisiting the Memogate Scandal

Aired November 10, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: You know this -- Central Park is 800 acres big, and City Park in New Orleans is almost twice that, 1,300 acres.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Wow.

S. O'BRIEN: Large. I mean, it's huge. One of the -- I think the five biggest urban parks in the country. And now you have all these people camping out there and being charged rent, in fact. These are the people who are helping clean up New Orleans. They're also, to a large degree, damaging the park. This morning we're going to talk about how you -- can you charge them, should you charge them, if they're helping build...

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Of course, they got trash. I mean, come on.

S. O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, am I interviewing you later?

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, as a matter of fact, here's how I feel about it. The city deserves a little revenue for that. I mean, these are big companies coming in, trying to build things. That's true. That's good. But they shouldn't get a free ride either.

S. O'BRIEN: And there's some locals living there, too. It will be interesting to see.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, the locals -- the locals are a different story. I think they should be able to...

COSTELLO: Well, you guys hash that out amongst yourselves.

S. O'BRIEN: Apparently, we don't need to do the interview. Because Miles has resolved it for us.

(NEWSBREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about what's happening in New Orleans. Many workers who are helping to rebuild that city are being told to pay up or get out. Workers, in fact, have been staying in city park free of charge for weeks. All that, though, is about to change.

Take a look at this map, this Google map, as we zoom in. You can see City Park there. It is massive. City Park is about 1,300 acres large. To give you a little perspective, if you've ever visited Central Park here in New York City, that's about 800 acres. Well, Bob Becker is the CEO of City Park and he joins us from New Orleans this morning.

Mr. Becker, thanks for talking with us. For a while people were staying for free, camped out in tents. Now you're charging them. Why the change?

BOB BECKER, CEO, CITY PARK: Well, when they first got here they sort of homesteaded in the park. Major contractors who are cleaning up the city set up a base of operations right on the park's border and all these people started to show up who are working for the contractors and being paid to clean up the city. And for a while, it started out small and then it started out larger and larger and more and more people came. And so we -- you know, we felt like we needed to get a handle on this situation in some way or another.

Plus the park received incredible damage during the storm, over $40 million in direct damage. All of our revenue has been destroyed. So we thought that people who are being paid to help clean up the city should also pay for a place to stay, at least, while they're doing it.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, what are you...

BECKER: Again, these are all people who are here being paid.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, what are you charging folks to stay?

BECKER: Well, we actually started collecting in October and pro- rated a half a month. And now we're collecting for November. And we're basically charging about $350 for people to be here and to have their equipment here.

S. O'BRIEN: Because it's not only the tents, and we've seen some of the tents behind you -- we were just showing some videotape of the tents, too. A lot of people are sleeping out to protect their gear, right?

BECKER: Oh, a lot of people are here with all kinds of things. There are campers here, big mobile homes here. There are people in tents, of course. People have brought all of their equipment with them, giant machines and backhoes and trailers and dump trucks and, you know, all kinds of things that they use to clean up the city and is their source of livelihood.

S. O'BRIEN: I want to show some before and after pictures, if we can. First, let's throw up what the park looked like before. Quite a beautiful park, I mean, and well-renowned for its beauty, in addition to just how massive it is inside a major city. Then you look at the after picture. And you mentioned $40 million worth of damage, at least. Do you really expect charging $350 for the people who are camped out is going to, you know, bridge that gap there?

BECKER: No, not at all. Certainly not going to, in any way, take care of the physical damage to the park, Soledad. But you also have to remember, we have no revenue here. So we have already laid off 90 percent of our employees. We have no way to operate. The city cannot really help us at all. They're virtually bankrupt. The state is verging on bankruptcy and can't help us either.

So we don't expect this money in any way to do the major repairs to the park, but it does provide some operating income, does allow us to keep a very small staff going to try to provide some management in this giant facility.

S. O'BRIEN: As you well know, there are some critics of this plan to charge people who would say, hey, you know what, I'm here cleaning up the city, doing a favor for your city, and now I'm going to be charged money to sleep out on the ground in a tent. Do you have -- see any validity to those arguments?

BECKER: No, not really. I don't. First of all, nobody's doing us a favor. There's nobody here who's volunteering to clean up this city. We have many volunteer groups here providing food and other kinds of assistance to homeowners trying to deal with their property, but these people, they're here to make money. And they are following the contractors as they go around cleaning up the city. So there's no volunteer here cleaning up the city. They're all being paid to do it.

They would have to provide housing -- anywhere they went in the country, there would have to be some sort of housing. We're trying to accommodate them and accommodate their needs to be here, to support the recovery of the cities. But to say that they're doing us a favor by being here is just not correct.

S. O'BRIEN: So are people, overall, have you found, do they feel like, hey, listen, I'm willing to pay, I got to live somewhere and this is kind of a good deal, or do you think there are more people who are angry?

BECKER: Well, a lot of people -- oh, you know, I'm not really sure. There are hundreds of people and they change every day. They come and go, new people in come in, some people go out. But a lot of people, once they understand that the money is going to the park, to try to help the park, they don't have any problem at all. In fact, they've been lining up to pay pretty frequently.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh. Well, that's good news to hear then.

Bob Becker, in fact, is the CEO of the City Park. Thanks for talking with us this morning.

BECKER: Thanks, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles?

M. O'BRIEN: I think we got that one settled now, right?

S. O'BRIEN: He agrees with you, yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Absolutely. All right. Let's...

S. O'BRIEN: It's only $350 a month. Come on. You can't do better than that.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, come on.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, one airline might give away all its tickets if on-board gambling takes off. Andy's going to explain that as he minds your business, just ahead.

M. O'BRIEN: On-board gambling. Interesting concept.

S. O'BRIEN: I thought that was like getting your luggage back. I'm funny.

M. O'BRIEN: Very good, very good.

S. O'BRIEN: Moving on.

M. O'BRIEN: And revisiting Memogate, that controversial "60 Minutes" report on President guard's -- President guard -- President Bush's National Guard service. The producer fired over the scandal will tell her side of the story, next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Let's take you back to September 9th, 2004. On that morning, producer Mary Mapes, "60 Minutes," was on the world. She scored what she thought was a great scoop the night before, telling the story of George Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam era, or perhaps some holes in that service.

That quickly turned south, to say the least, as some bloggers got ahold of this story and determined, or so they thought, and that is still in dispute when you talk to her, that these documents were, in fact, forged, the documents under which the whole story was underpinned.

Mary Mapes is telling her side of the story now. The book is entitled "Truth in Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power."

And she joins us now, just having flown in on the red eye, having spoken with Larry King last night. We thank you for your excellent effort to get here.

MARY MAPES, AUTHOR, "TRUTH AND DUTY": It was worth it.

M. O'BRIEN: And we appreciate it.

MAPES: So far.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, so far, so good.

You've been vilified.

MAPES: Fair.

M. O'BRIEN: And what is that like, being on the inside of that? MAPES: It's awful. It's absolutely awful. I think 25 years in television, I'd always thought about what it was like to be at the center of a story, but I didn't realize what it was like to be at the center of a tornado, and that's what this became like.

M. O'BRIEN: Very quickly too. And it's interesting how the new journalism changed things for you. There were people outside the journalistic mainstream who called attention to some of these documents, which are at the core of your story, and very quickly, the story crumbled.

MAPES: Well, that's right. The story crumbled in a couple of ways. What I compare it to was what was happening inside the Superdome during Katrina. All the rumors were swirling and murders and alligators biting people and all of that, and there wasn't even time or the ability to check facts, to make sure that this was actually true before it became sort of de facto fact. And that's what I think happened in this case.

You know, we live in a computer-driven society, and it's very hard to go back and find out exactly what old typewriters could do. And I think it was a lot of rumor and false statements about what they could or couldn't do.

M. O'BRIEN: And the case began to unravel just on the way little TH's are done on old typewriters, very word processors.

MAPES: That's right.

MAPES: We don't need to belabor all that.

What do you say right now about those documents? I mean, can you say categorically that you believed them to be valid and true documents?

MAPES: I believe them to be valid and true until I see something that I can't knock down.

What we did before we put them on the air was not just have document analysts look at them, which we did, and give us a go ahead, we also corroborated the content with Killian's old commander. We also vetted all the information inside the documents, everything from post office boxes to, you know, service numbers and all kinds of things, and then meshed them with the official records, and it all fit. So we didn't have any reason to believe that these were not the real deal.

M. O'BRIEN: But, you can't say categorically they are, which sort of puts an interesting burden of proof on that, right? Doesn't it shift -- Where is the burden of proof?

MAPES: Isn't that an interesting question?

M. O'BRIEN: You should prove that they are beyond a shadow of a doubt real documents, right? MAPES: We get documents all the time. We get copies of documents, correct, as reporters? Here's a copy of this, or that or the other. We don't ever -- that I know of, ink test those things to make sure that the ink was produced at the right stage and age. We use all of our, you know, all of our powers of reporting and investigating to figure out where they came from, and sometimes it's very easy. Sometimes Scott McClellan hands them out, and it's very easy, and we trust and know. But sometimes there are documents that fall into an odd category, and this was.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, well, last night when on Larry King, Lou Boccardi, former head of Associated Press, who headed that investigation, co-headed that investigation in the wake of all of this, was asked about this notion that you feel that the documents -- you can't prove them to be absolutely true beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you feel like they're true. Let's listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOU BOCCARDI, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: I'm not sure that it's our job to disprove. It's a curious kind of journalism that says that if you say something, you're not responsible for proving it. Other people are responsible for disproving it. That's not the kind of journalism I grew up with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Are you operating on a different kind of journalism?

MAPES: No, except that I will say the group last night, it was interesting to me, I felt like I had done my interview, I left, and then the conventional wisdom panel came in. And...

M. O'BRIEN: Would you have preferred to stick around?

MAPES: Yes, actually I would have, I would have, because I would have liked to have talked about that. One of the things the panel determined was that we should not have had Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes (ph) on, the man who said he helped Bush get in, because Lou Boccardi said that we couldn't prove that he helped him. But journalism is based a lot on he said, she said.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, there's a fair amount of hearsay in our business.

MAPES: Well, it is. And if we took that out, what the heck would we talk about?

M. O'BRIEN: Let's get the CBS news statement in here, in the interest of journalistic fairness here. Sandy Genelius offers this, "Her disregard for journalistic standards and for her colleagues comes through loud and clear in her interviews and in the book that attempts to rewrite the history of this complex and said affair. The idea that a news organization would not need to authenticate such an important source of material is only one of the troubling and erroneous statements in her account." And there were two experts that you consulted with, who said, you know what, these are fakes.

MAPES: No, that's not what they said. One expert said she didn't feel she could make a judgment without the originals. That was Linda James of Plano, Texas. And Emily Will, who's in South Carolina, had concerned about the superscript, the TH, and she warned me about that. I also had two experts who said go, I feel good -- they felt good about the signatures and about the typeface.

M. O'BRIEN: It was a split decision, though. And do you regret pushing the story on at that point?

MAPES: Well, as you know, too, producers don't always -- I mean, I'm not in charge of what goes on, CBS or 60 Minutes"; I work as a group. Andrew Hayward was part of a decision to put the story on the air. It was a group decision. I don't -- neither or nor Dan Rather made some kind of announcement that we're airing this tonight.

M. O'BRIEN: But they were not made aware of those doubts, were they, at the time, when you mentioned Andy Hayward?

MAPES: Well, when we talked about what they did know, was that we could not fully authenticate the documents, because we didn't have ink -- we didn't have originals that we could do ink tests on, that we had to have a combination of vetting, meshing, corroboration and document analysis.

M. O'BRIEN: Final thought, are you sorry about anything? I don't see any apologies in this book. This not...

MAPES: But you haven't read the book.

M. O'BRIEN: I read a good chunk of it. I haven't seen any apologies.

MAPES: There are apologies in there. There are things that I regret. They may -- I mean if people expect me to regret having covered the Bush Guard story, no, I don't regret that at all; or regret having put the story on. Surprisingly, I think the story should have been on probably years sooner. I think it's the kind of story that deserves to be on, and I think it deserved to be told a long time ago. I regret the way it was handled, I regret that it came into an atmosphere that was so toxic politically that it blew up into a great big sort of drunken blogging brawl, which is what it was, and that that ended up costing the jobs of some good journalists.

And I know -- I mean, I know that here at CNN, you lost a journalist to a blogging attack essentially, and I think now with a little bit of history between that and between what happened to us, we're all going to look back at this time and kind of go, what the heck happened? Why did that happen?

M. O'BRIEN: The book is "Truth and Duty." The author is Mary Mapes. Thanks for being here -- Soledad.

MAPES: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, we're going to meet a crime busting Elvis impersonator. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was kind of persistent. He said this stuff I can authenticate it. And when he said that, I remembered the Elvis Cerama Robert (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

S. O'BRIEN: Well, police say he helped nab a crook hawking stolen Elvis memorabilia. There he is. We've got his story coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: An airline says it's willing to roll the dice on free tickets. Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." It doesn't sound like a very good business model.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Well, it's a little different.

S. O'BRIEN: Explain it.

SERWER: I mean, airlines are trying to do anything. This is RyanAir, one of Europe's largest discount carriers, run by a flamboyant Irishman named Michael O'Leary, who's always willing it try something new. In-flight gambling. Roll the dice while you fly. No, we're not talking about crap tables or roulette or black jack. This would be electronic gambling. And he wants to try to get this going by 2007. You would play it on say a laptop or a Blackberry or a cell phone or something like that. And gamblers might get free tickets.

And interestingly, people were criticizing O'Leary right away, saying oh, you can't do this, it will be bad for children. He said, well, you know, look at the airline business. High costs, poor food, rip off. How could it be any worse? I love this guy, O'Leary. He is really funny.

S. O'BRIEN: Speaks what everyone's thinking anyway.

SERWER: He does. Yes. He's funny.

S. O'BRIEN: So the idea is that you would -- you could win free tickets.

SERWER: You would get a free ticket if you agree to gamble on the flight, and then you could actually win money.

M. O'BRIEN: Just agreeing to gambled, you get comped out.

SERWER: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: It's kind of like Las Vegas. S. O'BRIEN: Oh, I see. Atlantic City. You get the bus ride for free.

(CROSSTALK)

S. O'BRIEN: He's always been much more over the top than me.

SERWER: There you go. High flier, right?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, very, very interesting.

M. O'BRIEN: Mr. High Roller. Winner gets to land the plane, maybe. That'd be good.

S. O'BRIEN: You can fly.

M. O'BRIEN: Talk about a gamble.

SERWER: You fly, you do it.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks a lot. Do you did you hear the story about this Elvis impersonator? Elvis impersonator -- speaking of Las Vegas -- who actually ended up helping the cops nab a thief. Let's get right to him. His name is Duke Adams and he's in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Good morning to you, Duke. Nice to see you.

DUKE ADAMS, FORMER ELVIS IMPERSONATOR: Good morning. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: You're going have to walk us through this story, because it's kind of a bizarre one. You're getting your prescription filled and a guy comes up to you and says, have I got a deal for you. What did he tell you, what did he offer you?

ADAMS: He offered me some Elvis memorabilia, and I had turned him down at first. And I told him my wife had recently passed away, and I wasn't into collecting anything right now.

M. O'BRIEN: How did he know you wanted Elvis memorabilia, by any chance?

ADAMS: I don't know. I guess a lot of people look at me and...

M. O'BRIEN: Oh, that's it. I get it.

S. O'BRIEN: But at second thought, after you said no, then you said yes. And you set up a meeting, because you thought, well, maybe -- this reminded you, in fact, of a robbery that you had heard of. And you set up kind of a sting on your own...

ADAMS: Correct.

S. O'BRIEN: ... with the cops kind of standing by. So when he got to your office, what happened? What did he show you? What did he have?

ADAMS: Well, he had Elvis' 38, he had his three medallions, he had four rings, he had his Hamilton watch, he had his bracelet that has EAP on it, and...

M. O'BRIEN: EAP?

S. O'BRIEN: Elvis A. Presley.

ADAMS: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: You know what, Duke, that's right, I'm going to be the big thinker for the group today. Uh, duh.

M. O'BRIEN: I was thinking of TBC.

SERWER: Taking care of business.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, eat a lot of bologna.

SERWER: We knew too much.

S. O'BRIEN: So let's -- that high drama moment. He said he's going to charge you what, like, $80,000, $70,000 for the whole collection? Is that right, Duke?

ADAMS: Yes. I asked him, I said, well, what do you want for it? I was trying to stall until the police got there. And he said, $80,000. So I'm looking at it and I said, well, it does look authentic. And he told me he could authenticate everything. And I said, well, it does look like it's worn. And I kept trying to buy some time until the police walked in.

S. O'BRIEN: Then they walk in, they bust in, and what happens?

M. O'BRIEN: It's like in the movies.

ADAMS: Yes. The door opens and when an officer said who is Duke, and I said I am. And immediately...

M. O'BRIEN: You or me.

S. O'BRIEN: He had to ask, which is the Elvis impersonator?

(CROSSTALK)

ADAMS: My back was to the police.

S. O'BRIEN: OK, OK, that's fair.

ADAMS: And so the other officer grabbed this suspect's arms, both of them, behind him and they cuffed him and took him out.

S. O'BRIEN: That's the guy right there, Eliab Aguilar, who is the suspect in question. Well, Duke Adams, I know you've had a little bit of a tough time with the loss of your wife...

ADAMS: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: And I know you kind of stepped back from doing a lot of the Elvis stuff that you've done for a while. But I'm sure the cops really appreciate your hard work and your help in all this. Thanks for talking with us.

ADAMS: Well, you're welcome. I'm very honored.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, we're honored. Thanks for being with us.

M. O'BRIEN: You know, Duke, Elvis, as you well know, was deputized by Richard Nixon.

ADAMS: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: So you -- in every respect, you're impersonating Elvis. Taking law enforcement into your own hands. Somewhere the King is smiling.

ADAMS: I hope so.

S. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Duke.

ADAMS: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Here's a question for you, too. Are men necessary -- I'm with the wrong group here. I'm surrounded by guys. OK, this is not going to work. Where are the women on this show? Come on out, ladies. Are men necessary? It's a question, of course, as you know, Maureen Dowd is asking in her new book. We're going to ask her what she thinks when she joins us.

M. O'BRIEN: Stupid question. Come on.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, obviously, no.

M. O'BRIEN: Of course we're necessary.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, I'm sorry, what?

We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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