Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Bush Under Fire?; Hurricane Ship; TSA to Relax Carry-On Restrictions

Aired December 01, 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: That's just a beautiful shot. Look at that.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: That is positively three dimensional.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely.

M. O'BRIEN: Imagine that in high definition.

S. O'BRIEN: It's gorgeous.

M. O'BRIEN: Imagine us in high definition. Don't like that.

COSTELLO: No. My friend just got a high definition television and she was flipping the channels to see what everyone really looked like. I'm not going to tell you what she said about me.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, if she's a friend, I hope she said, girl, you look fabulous.

COSTELLO: No, my friends are very honest, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: I don't believe it.

M. O'BRIEN: She gave you the business card of a plastic surgeon something.

S. O'BRIEN: What a great friend.

Welcome back, everybody. A reminder: we come to you live starting at 6:00 a.m. AMERICAN MORNING's got some new hours and we want you to join us. As we start our day, maybe you can start your day with us.

Lots to talk about today. President Bush fresh off his remarks yesterday, also making some remarks today in a different vein.

(NEWSBREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: It is the morning after at the White House and the numbers are kind of sobering. The president's plan for victory speech met with a lot of skepticism among an increasingly war weary populous.

Let's check out these CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll. This particular question, posed last night: does Bush have a plan for victory? Forty-one percent say yes, 55 percent say no. Our next guest is going to weigh in on that issue. But we need to tell you about what she's up to most recently. Peggy Newnan, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, is now a contributing editor to "The Wall Street Journal" and out with a book, "John Paul the Great" about, of course, the late pontiff. Good to have you here with us.

PEGGY NEWNAN, "WALL STREET JOURNAL": Hi, Miles, wonderful to be here.

M. O'BRIEN: If you were inside the Bush White House right now, could you get on that keyboard and come up with a wonderful speech to turn it around, do you think?

NEWNAN: No. What the president needs is good fortune and what the U.S. troops, I think, over there need is some good fortune and good things happening. I thought the president's speech yesterday was a good beginning for a sort of new phase for him, in which he speaks less in abstractions about freedom and more concretely about what's happening on the ground. So I really liked it in that way.

M. O'BRIEN: You worked for the Great Communicator and helped make the Great Communicator just that.

NEWNAN: Oh, he was the Great Communicator when I met him.

M. O'BRIEN: And -- well, but you certainly helped. And a lot of people have said that the problem with the Bush presidency is that they haven't -- the administration has not effectively communicated the strategy and the plan. Would you go along with that?

NEWNAN: No. I -- when people say that they haven't effectively communicated what they're doing, what they always mean is, the speechwriters aren't doing enough -- a good enough job. And whenever people say, it's the speechwriters, I know it's not the speechwriters. Do you know what I mean?

M. O'BRIEN: Is it the person at the podium?

NEWNAN: It's the whole planning thing, it's the whole mess of war. War is always messy and in the modern and chaotic and in the modern media environment, there will always be 20 things you can knock an administration for each day as they go forward in the sort of endeavor they're going forward with. I don't think it's a communications problem. I think they bit off a lot and they're trying to chew it each day.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Let's move on and talk about the book.

NEWNAN: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: "John Paul the Great." And as that title suggests, this is quite a valentine, isn't it? .

NEWNAN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: You are -- well, I don't know if the term is appropriate, You don't say big fan about a pontiff, do you? I guess you do.

NEWNAN: I guess you could. I am -- look, this man, I feel he was very important to the world. I feel he lived one of the great lives of the 20th century, one of the most important and also, in a way, most endearing, most impressive. Came from nothing, went on to become everything. A very modest man.

This is my way of trying to capture him, his importance to me, his importance to the world, like a little kiss good-bye.

M. O'BRIEN: And that it is. I want to talk about -- you do tackle some of the -- what you view as his mistakes. But there's a question I have about the way Americans view Pope John Paul II. It seems to me it's sort of similar to the way they viewed President Reagan. They really embraced the man and his charisma and that ability to evoke and communicate, but in many respects disagreed with many of his issues.

And you look at the polls, American Catholics disagree -- whether you want to talk about contraception or marriage of priests or female priests, on down the list, disagreed with him on many things and still loved him. How?

NEWNAN: They adored him. He had -- gee, what you're asking is kind of a big question. People sometimes have a paradoxical relationship with institutions that they don't have with the head of the institution. People looked at John Paul and they saw that he was a man, he was full of God, and he was attempting each day in an almost countercultural way, Miles, to bring God and faith and religion into the conversation each day and the world.

Didn't care what "The New York Times" thought of him, didn't care what the criticism of him was, as long as he felt he was doing the right and faithful and goodly thing. People could look at him and tell that. And people admire a leader who cares so much and is brave.

M. O'BRIEN: The big mistake that you mentioned, of course, is the sex abuse scandal, and his response or perhaps lack of response to it. How much does that mar his legacy, do you think?

NEWNAN: Well, it is the American sex abuse scandal, I think this old Polish man who saw priests as heroes who were fighting the Nazi resistance when he was a young man, risking his life to become a priest, fighting the communist Soviet Union -- he saw priests as heroic figures.

I think he had no category for, no way of understanding the idea that in America there were priests who were sexually abusing young men and getting away with it. Their bosses would find out and they would be transferred some place else and they'd do it again to a kid. He didn't, I feel, understand it. I think the church is trying to deal with it now. But I think it was a tough one for him to absorb.

M. O'BRIEN: Peggy Newnan. The book is "John Paul the Great." Thank you for being with us.

NEWNAN: Thanks, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, as you all know now, hurricane season ended on Wednesday and really not a moment too soon. This year certainly was one of the worst ever, but sometimes something positive can come out of nature's wrath.

John Zarrella is live for us in Key West with that story. Hey, John, good morning.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, good morning, Soledad. Well, we all agree hurricanes are terrible events. But as you said, every once in a while, some good comes out of a hurricane. This is one of those stories, and it takes place just up the way in Key Largo.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): The original sinking had been a disaster. For three years, the Spiegel Grove had rested on its side.

ROB BLESER, PROJECT COORDINATOR: It was one of the lower points of my life, there's no question about that.

ZARRELLA: That was three years ago, when Rob Bleser managed the sinking of the Spiegel Grove off Key Largo. The 510-foot Navy ship was to become the largest-ever artificial reef. As the ship went down, it filled with water, but not enough. The Spiegel Grove rolled over. Part of it rested on the bottom, part stuck out of the water.

For the next three weeks, engineers and salvaged divers worked to finish the job, but in the end the best they could manage was an artificial Spiegel Reef lying on its side. That was until Dennis came through this past July.

MATT STRAHAN, NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE: There's a very narrow channel that comes up along the north side of Cuba, between Cuba and the Bahamas, and points to the Upper Keys.

ZARRELLA: Experts believe 20-foot waves from the hurricane produced a powerful underwater current that was funneled up the Florida Keys, and then slammed into the Spiegel Grove, turning it upright. Bleser remembers vividly the words from a crew at the wreck site after the storm went by.

BLESER: They gave me a call on the cell phone and said, it's important that you get out here to the Spiegel Grove. And I said, why? And they said, because it's sitting upright. I said, I don't have time for this. I'm busy today.

ZARRELLA: Now, when divers hit the water on a clear day, the massive ship immediately comes into view. It is the most spectacular dive attraction in the Keys, courtesy of Hurricane Dennis.

We mostly view hurricanes as terrible events, but they can do good, scouring coral reefs of algae, cleaning out clogged bays, and in this case, turning a downright disaster into an upright success story.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA: Now in the past three years since the original sinking, there have been some 75,000 sports dives at the Spiegel Grove site, and now with it sits upright, Soledad, the folks at the tourism council down here expect that number to increase dramatically.

S. O'BRIEN: I sure bet they do. It's always nice to get good news out of what's really been a season of just horrible news.

John Zarrella, thanks. Those pictures are just absolutely beautiful.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning also, more on those airport- security changes that we've been telling you about. Scissors, other sharp objects will now be allowed back onboard. Does that put passengers at risk? And does it put the flight attendants at risk? The president of the Flight Attendants Union is going to join us coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

M. O'BRIEN: Hey, that's my knife. I want it back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: This just in to CNN, live pictures courtesy of our affiliate in the Washington, D.C. area, WTTG. You're looking at a road in Landover Hills, Maryland, Prince George's County. What you see to the left of your screen is a Prince George's County transit bus that has skidded off the side of a road after a collision with that vehicle you see on the shoulder of the road.

We're told the bus driver has minor injuries, but the car driver has critical injuries after this accident. We are tracking that for you. It happened in the 3,000 block of Penzi Drive (ph), right near the Landover Metro Station, for those of you who are familiar with that part of the world -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: That looks pretty devastating for that vehicle. We'll get more information throughout the morning.

Let's turn to our CNN Security Watch this morning. Safety for the flying public is our focus. Tomorrow, as we've been telling you all day, the government is expected to change the rules. Passengers will be allowed to carry some small, sharp objects on to planes.

Patricia Friend is the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, and she joins us this morning.

It's nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

PATRICIA FRIEND, ASSOCIATION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: Good morning. Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: So what do you make of this plan?

FRIEND: Well, we're extremely concerned about it. We've been talking with the TSA For the past month, trying to persuade them that this was an ill advised move on their part to essentially allow weapons, lethal weapons, into the cabin of the airplane.

S. O'BRIEN: Why do you think it's ill advised? And from what I've read, nothing has said lethal weapons. It said things like toenail scissors, and tweezers and little items like that.

FRIEND: Well, what it actually says is, scissors up to -- with blades up to four inches in length, household tools up to seven inches in length, such as a seven-inch screwdriver, a seven-inch wrench, any of which could be used very easily as a weapon.

S. O'BRIEN: You've had conversations clearly with the TSA leadership. How have those conversations gone? Did you feel like you were having productive conversations with them?

FRIEND: Well, I thought we were. But unfortunately they have decided in the interest of solving their staffing problems to move forward.

S. O'BRIEN: So you think instead of actually putting more people onboard, because the TSA will say what we're trying to do is speed people through the line and trying to free up some of the people who are searching for toenail scissors to actually look for explosives, which is a bigger concern.

FRIEND: So I absolutely believe that it's a staffing issue that they're trying to resolve by allowing weapons back onboard the aircraft.

S. O'BRIEN: There are a lot of people who would say the truth is if someone wants to overpower a flight attendant, you can do it with some of the stuff that you can bring onboard right now, that a scissor, a little, you know leather man, little knife, it doesn't really make a difference, and that it shouldn't matter. You can do it with a plastic ballpoint pen if you're big enough and strong enough and hold it to somebody's neck. Don't they have a point?

FRIEND: Well, I mean, that's absolutely true. We know that a person properly trained doesn't need any weapon, that they can kill with their hands. Our objection is that we're just making it too easy for people rather than trying to limit the opportunities.

S. O'BRIEN: Customer service will improve. It seems to be a part of the momentum behind this change. Doesn't the TSA have a have a point? I mean, it's -- I think they collected something like three million sharp objects beginning in January of this year and counting through end of November. Three million. You have -- that must slow down the security checkpoints tremendously.

FRIEND: Well, I think we have to weigh whether or not -- or rather, we're willing to stand in line for an additional five minutes against a feeling of safety and security while we're actually on board that aircraft.

S. O'BRIEN: What can you do now? Will you have some kind of official opposition to this change?

FRIEND: Well, we've already officially registered our opposition, but we're working with several members of Congress who are also frequent fliers, as you might imagine, who are also very much opposed to this. And it looks as though we may have to legislate a -- the number of items or the type of items that can be taken on board the aircraft since the TSA's judgment is not very good in this regard.

S. O'BRIEN: Patricia Friend is the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, joining us this morning. Nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us.

FRIEND: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Business news is just ahead. What are you talking about?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Soledad, a mall in Atlanta has a case of bad Santa. You won't believe what he's making families do. Stay tuned for that on AMERICAN MORNING.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, that sounds good!

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Guess what's coming up tomorrow on AMERICAN MORNING.

SERWER: What?

S. O'BRIEN: Why, look over there. Paula Abdul, "American Idol" judge, has a new DVD set out.

M. O'BRIEN: But she won't be out at 6:00. It kind of looks like she'll be here at 6:00. She won't be here at 6:00.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, you start watching at 6:00. Maybe she will be on...

M. O'BRIEN: You never know!

S. O'BRIEN: You never know. We're going to talk to her about this new DVD. It's actually very funny. It's got some of the show's best moments and then, of course, even more hilarious, some of the worst moments.

M. O'BRIEN: Which are the best moments.

S. O'BRIEN: Which are the best moments.

SERWER: That's right.

S. O'BRIEN: And we will touch upon that little old controversy with some of the contestants. M. O'BRIEN: Absolutely. Must go there.

SERWER: Yes. Relationships with contestants.

S. O'BRIEN: All that stuff is ahead. First, though, a little business news. What you got?

SERWER: Soledad, we're talking about a bad Santa situation in Atlanta. Phipps Plaza, which is an upscale mall in the Buckhead region of that city, has a Santa, a well-known Santa with a long, long line.

M. O'BRIEN: He's the best Santa. He is the best Santa in Atlanta.

SERWER: Miles tells me he's best Santa in Atlanta. In all of Atlanta, he's the best Santa. That's a nice rhyme. And what's going on here is that it was so popular that...

M. O'BRIEN: That's not him. That's a fake beard. He's got a real beard.

SERWER: What they've decided to do, Miles, is...

S. O'BRIEN: Because he's Santa.

SERWER: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: Whatever. Go on.

SERWER: Miles there is no -- nevermind. They've decided this year to have a reservation system online so you can only see Santa if you registered online.

S. O'BRIEN: OK. That gets rid of a large portion of the population right there.

SERWER: Right, exactly. And what happened, it quickly overload the Web site, santaatphipps.com, and it crashed. Then they reverted over to a system whereby you reserve on the phone. Of course, that was continuously busy. Then customers were warned if they sold any of these slots that they may have been able to get on eBay or something like that, they would be severely punished.

S. O'BRIEN: You will never meet Santa. Never, never, never!

M. O'BRIEN: I'm on the naughty list forever.

SERWER: So, you know, and now finally they've realized they have to revert to the old line system for the last week before Christmas. And they had these expensive packages, you know, $30, $40, $100 to buy pictures and DVDs and videos of the whole thing. Very upscale mall. Saks, Armani, Versace, Tiffany. I bet Elton John shops there.

M. O'BRIEN: Undoubtedly.

SERWER: He's a wealthy Atlantan.

M. O'BRIEN: He waits in line to see Santa.

SERWER: He might. I don't know if he does.

Anyway, I want to talk about the markets quickly this morning. Yesterday, a bit of a downer as far as the Dow goes, down 82 points. Basically what happened here is too much good news. The GDP reading for the third quarter came in.

How fast did the economy grow? It grew 4.3 percent, which was faster than anticipated. People now concerned about inflation and rising interest rates. However, this morning, futures are up briskly and I suspect we'll get a rebound, at least initially. And that's all I've got for you.

M. O'BRIEN: You are now on record.

SERWER: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: You know how much a Santa visit costs -- what they're selling? You want a DVD to have 18 years of Santas? You couldn't make this up: $94.95.

SERWER: But you better reserve it online.

S. O'BRIEN: And then you get the little choch (ph) keys, the silver plate, $50, the Christmas bell, $19.

SERWER: It's a business.

M. O'BRIEN: Do you think in 18 years they'll be using DVDs?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, a business. I know, exactly. They're really making a bet on that.

SERWER: There are a lot of questions here, aren't there?

M. O'BRIEN: Many issues.

S. O'BRIEN: So many. And we're only solving a few at a time here on AMERICAN MORNING today. Thank you, Andy.

SERWER: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: In a moment on the program, we're going to shift gears. We're going to go live to Baghdad. A look at a couple of offensives that under way as we speak.

Also, what's really going on with the Iraqi military? We'll take a critical look at the nuts and bolts of their training, their experience. All of that when AMERICAN MORNING returns.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com