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Dramatic Developments in Saddam Hussein Trial; Lionel Tate Asks for Competency Hearing; Readiness for Terror?

Aired December 05, 2005 - 9:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Soledad O'Brien.
Dramatic developments in the Saddam Hussein trial this morning. Tough testimony, a walkout by Saddam Hussein's defenders.

We're going to take you live to Baghdad this morning.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR; I'm Miles O'Brien.

Failing grades on our security. Does the federal government lack a sense of urgency? That's the claim from former 9/11 Commission vice chairman Lee Hamilton. He'll join us live.

S. O'BRIEN: And this just in to CNN, some new developments in the Lionel Tate trial. We're outside the courtroom live on this AMERICAN MORNING.

M. O'BRIEN: Lionel Tate in court for a probation violation hearing.

S. O'BRIEN: Things took a very strange turn.

M. O'BRIEN: Took a strange turn. Lionel Tate told the judge he's hearing voices in his head. End of hearing.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. It brought the proceedings to a halt. And now, of course, there's going to be a competency hearing to see how they can and how they will proceed.

Of course, all of this stems from a pizza delivery man who claims that Lionel Tate robbed him and that he was on probation. And that raised all those issues again. But now they're a kind of a new territory with this claim of voices in his head. We'll see where it goes and we'll continue to follow it.

M. O'BRIEN: We will check in on that, have more details for you. But before we do that, let's talk about the Saddam Hussein trial.

Really, they're watching -- we're watching it here, they're watching it in Iraq as well. We've seen a witness and defendants shouting, cursing at each other. We've heard horrific descriptions of torture, rape and murder.

Aneesh Raman live in Baghdad.

Aneesh, the court is once again in a break. When should they get back together?

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Any moment now we expect the court to resume. We get word of it before we see the video. There's effectively a 20 to 30-minute delay.

But as you say, a day in court that began with legal chaos, with the defense attorneys and the judge trying to wrangle control with the defendant standing up, Saddam Hussein saying, "Long live Iraq." It turned incredibly solemn in the afternoon as we heard from the first witness to testify in court in front of Saddam Hussein and the seven other co-defendants about what happened in July 1982 in that village of Dujail, north of the Iraqi capital.

He detailed in specificity how thousands were thrown in jail, bodies that he saw executed within minutes after Saddam narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. He also at times was incredibly confident. He interrupted defendants who were interrupting him, including Saddam Hussein, to go through with his testimony. At other times he nearly broke down, especially when he spoke of his brother and the torture that his brother endured under Saddam Hussein's regime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AHMED HASSAN MOHAMMED, WITNESS (through translator): If I were to mention the names and the methods of torture, I would need more than 10 days. Senya Gub Mazhid (ph), they broke him, broke his arm, his leg. This is during torture, and they also -- Salah Ali Assad (ph), they also shot at his foot. All of that during interrogation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAMAN: Now, the recess we're in right now, in part, is to allow that witness to collect his thoughts. He will by the end of the day be able to put forth a sum of money, monetary compensation for what happened to him and his relatives.

He said, "I don't have a high school education. I need time for all this." The judge granting that. But incredibly detailed testimony of torture, of killings by this regime that ended a day that started, Miles, with legal chaos.

M. O'BRIEN: Aneesh, we also saw Ramsey Clark, serving, it seemed, as if the lead attorney on Saddam's defense team. Is that accurate to say or has he assumed that role?

RAMAN: Well, by law, he can't be the lead attorney. It has to be an Iraqi by the Iraqi high tribunal statute. But he certainly took an incredibly powerful role, if not the leading one, in court today.

He had wanted to speak to the court last week. He wasn't allowed to do so. And when the defense attorneys walked out, it was because Ramsey Clark wasn't allowed to make a statement.

The judges reconvened 10 minutes later and allowed Mr. Clark to begin his speech, which essentially was about security, the fact that without security for the defense this trial cannot go through. He also talked about the setting of this trial and that it could be either divisive or help Iraq at the point that it's in now.

Speaking to the legitimacy as well of the court overall. Another one of the advisers, a former Qatari justice minister, said Iraq is a "occupied land and that these defendants, including Saddam, are prisoners of war."

So they got to make their statement. But after that, no ruling by the judge. The first witness came forward.

This is a key moment for this trial. Iraqis have been waiting for this first witness to come forward -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Aneesh Raman in Baghdad.

Thank you very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: To Florida now, and some new developments in the case of Lionel Tate, who at the age of 13 became the youngest person ever sentenced to life in prison. His probation hearing this morning now over, and there have been some surprising revelations.

CNN's John Zarella live at the courthouse for us this morning.

John, what happened?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Soledad, certainly a surprise this morning at that hearing. It lasted about 10 minutes.

Lionel Tate came in wearing the brown jumpsuit, jail garb that he came in with. And what happened was that Lionel Tate wrote a letter to Judge Joel Lazarus. And in that letter, which the judge read in court, Lionel Tate asked for a competency hearing. And Tate said in the letter that he is hearing voices and that he wants to kill himself.

Now, it was the fact that he did not get a competency hearing during his original trial or before his original trial that resulted in an appeals court throwing out his conviction and -- which ultimately ended up with Tate pleading to a lesser charge and being given probation, 10 years probation. He has been in and out of trouble since that -- that release two years ago, and that hearing today was because he had been charged with armed robbery against a pizza delivery man.

That hearing now postponed until the 19th of December, at least the 19th of December, at which time there will abe competency hearing. So developments today, no hearing on the pizza delivery man robbery charges. Instead, the 19th of December, everyone will be back in court for a competency hearing.

What Lionel Tate did not get five years ago before -- during his original trial he will now have -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: A pretty surprising movement in this case. John Zarella with an update on what's been happening.

John, thank you very much.

Other stories that are making news this morning. Let's get right to Carol Costello for a look at these.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad.

Good morning to all of you.

We've just heard about a large earthquake in East Africa. The area hit includes Kenya and Tanzania. Tremors from the magnitude 6.8 quake were felt all the way to the democratic Republic of Congo. A number of office buildings in Nairobi are also being evacuated. When we get more information of course we'll pass it along to you.

A suicide bombing in northern Israel. The explosion happened outside of a mall in the northern part of that country. We're told at least five people are dead, 35 others hurt. Police are going through the rubble now looking for that explosive device.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is telling European allies they should trust the United States. Secretary Rice is defending U.S. tactics in the war on terror and downplaying reports of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

Rice spoke about it earlier this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured.

The United States has not transported anyone and will not transport anyone to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Rice is now on her way to Berlin. It is the first stop on her trip to Europe.

How low can gas prices go? Apparently not much lower.

Gas prices fell 11 cents in the past two weeks. The average for a gallon of regular now stands at $2.13. But analysts say do not expect those prices to keep falling. They point to high demand and crude oil costs. So get used to the $2.13 a gallon. And wasps, not White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, but wasps, the insect, may take over for bomb and drug-sniffing dogs. Really. Researchers say a certain species of non-stinging wasps can be trained in only five minutes to detect chemical and toxins.

But don't worry, the dogs won't be out of a job. Check this out. Police in England are using dogs to help during armed sieges. The German Shepherds fitted with camera harnesses scope out the building and relay the information back. And they can also be specially trained to drop off a cell phone at the door so that, you know, hostage negotiators can pick it up and start talking to the bad guys inside.

Let's head to the weather center and check in with Jacqui Jeras. She's going to tell us about really cold temperatures and snow.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. And the wasps' brains, how big are they? They can train them to do that?

COSTELLO: And it's hard to get them in those little harnesses, but they do.

JERAS: Amazing.

Well, the big buzz, Carol, is the storm that we're talking about across the Mid-Atlantic and into the Northeast right now. It's bringing wet weather across the Southeast.

Starting to mix over, seeing a little snow in Richmond right now. Roanoke, though, expected to get much heavier amounts. When you get up into the higher elevations, a good foot-plus will be possible.

Washington, D.C., under advisory. Warnings for Philadelphia and New York City. Advisories and watches all the way up to Boston.

There you can see that moisture coming into play right now. Very heavy across Virginia, into the Carolinas. Some big-time delays already starting in Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. We're expecting those to continue throughout much of the day today, as it's going to be overcast.

The storm system will pull out of the Southeast and make its way off shore. And it's going to be running into all that cold air, helps to pull it off, bringing in all this moisture from the Atlantic Ocean. And that's why we're going to see some pretty hefty totals here.

Expecting on the range of, say, three to six inches in New York City, also in Washington, D.C. Though Philadelphia a little bit heavier in these darker pink bands. That's where you're expecting to see about four to eight inches of snow. And there you can see that foot-plus expected into the higher elevations.

It is going to be a very fast mover, though. So that's some good news, is that it's going to be pulling out, we think, by tomorrow afternoon, but cold air will take its place -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Jacqui Jeras, thank you very much.

If you're in the market for a new car, we've got a list of this year's safest models. The Insurance Institute ranked over all winners that did well in tests like these: front side and rear crash tests.

In the large category, the Ford 500 and its corporate twin, the Mercury Montego, took the first prize. For smaller cars, the Honda Civic four door is the safest. And among midsize, the Saab 9-3 and the Subaru Legacy tied for gold.

Also recognize, the Audi A3, A4 and A6, the Chevy Malibu and the Volkswagen Jettas and Passats. The cars -- these cars all did well in front and side tests, had acceptable rear impact ratings.

S. O'BRIEN: There's a big choice then.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, there is.

S. O'BRIEN: Some good news.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come on the program, is the U.S. prepared for another major terror attack? A new report says yes. We'll talk with -- it says no, actually. It says not really at all. We'll talk to the former vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission about all of that.

S. O'BRIEN: Also, doctors are trying to outrun a possible bird flu pandemic. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to be along with that story coming up in our morning "House Call."

M. O'BRIEN: It's hard to get yes or no straight at this hour sometimes.

And the battle over Tookie Williams. Has he done enough to warrant a death row reprieve? We'll talk to one of Tookie's attorneys just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: In a little less than an hour, the final report from the people who gave us the 9/11 Commission Report will come out, and it's a report on whether the United States is ready for yet another terror attack. And the grades are not very good.

Joining us now from Washington to talk a little bit about it is Lee Hamilton. He is vice chairman of the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, which was an outgrowth of the 9/11 Commission.

Mr. Hamilton, good to have you with us.

I know you don't want to share with us the specific grades yet until your release, steal your own thunder, if you will, but let's go back to what has been the previous evaluations, and sort of give us a sense if you feel there's been progress.

The first issue -- and this comes up so many times -- is radio capabilities, the ability of police and fire and multi-jurisdictions all to talk to each other, which is so crucial whether it's the 9/11 attacks or, for that mater, Hurricane Katrina. Has the government made progress on this front?

LEE HAMILTON, 9/11 PUBLIC DISCOURSE PROJECT: No. It is approaching the scandals, I think, that our first responders four years after 9/11 are not able to communicate with one another when they reach the scene of a disaster.

There is a bill pending now in the Congress that would take steps in the right direction. I hope that bill will be passed in the next few days, next few weeks. But even if it is passed, it has a provision in it that says that this radio spectrum would not become available to the first responders until 2009. That's much too long a time to wait.

M. O'BRIEN: That is awfully slow progress. I wouldn't even call that progress. That's probably the wrong term.

Is this just -- is it a matter of money? It seems like a situation that can be dealt with by just getting -- clearing off some spectrum, as you say, making sure that these -- all these authorities have the radios.

HAMILTON: Well, it's a complicated technical matter, I'm informed. Likewise, of course, every bit of that radio spectrum is enormously valuable, a valuable piece of property. So it's not easy to work it through.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, but wait. This is the country -- we sent a man to the moon. And it's going to take us until 2009 to have our police and fire talk to each other?

HAMILTON: Well, I very much agree with you. I think this priority is so clear, it's a no-brainer in terms of being prepared for a disaster. We ought to do it immediately.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about nonproliferation. That's a big issue, and it's an issue we don't talk about on a day-to- day basis. But it lurks, and that is the whole notion of keeping these atomic stockpiles secure, the possibility that there would be people out there who might be selling this material on the black market.

When last we checked in, insufficient progress was the grade. Any improvement since then?

HAMILTON: Well, I think some improvement, but we really need to put this at the very top of our priority. Not because a nuclear attack is the most likely, but because the consequences would be by far the most devastating.

So we need to give this the highest priority in terms of homeland protection. And that is to secure as many of these nuclear materials across the world as we possibly can.

It will take more funding. It will take more political leadership. It will take the removal of some restrictions that are now in the legislation. But we have to get serious about this because, as the president has said, it is the number one national security problem.

M. O'BRIEN: You do have agreement from the president on that, as far as the priority goes, anyway.

HAMILTON: We do, indeed.

M. O'BRIEN: Anyway, now, the Transportation Security Administration, when last we checked in with your group, minimal progress was the verdict there on detecting -- specifically, the issue is explosives. Has the TSA improved? And as we say this, we just saw the TSA modify its stance on sharp objects, scissors and the like, allowing certain sizes of them to be allowed.

You could also address that, whether you think that's wise.

HAMILTON: Well, keep in mind that the terrorists were very sophisticated on 9/11. They knew they could get on that airplane with a four-inch blade knife, not with a six or an eight-inch blade knife. They know what our rules are.

Now, one of the things we said in the report was that the TSA should act on the basis of an assessment of risks. I worry more about the explosives in the cargo than I do about matters that -- items that may be brought upon the airplane itself.

I don't really make a judgement about the scissors because I don't know that much about them, although I might say I have some, I guess, kind of skepticism about it. But I think the major focus should be on stopping containers getting into the cargo hold of an airplane that might have explosives. And therefore, you have to accelerate, greatly accelerate detection equipment.

M. O'BRIEN: Final quick thought, Mr. Hamilton. Why -- why no sense of urgency here? Why this bureaucratic inertia?

HAMILTON: I just think there are so many problems on the national agenda. We're fighting three wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the war on terror, or one war with three fronts, if you want. We've got all kind of domestic problems. It's very tough for policymakers to sustain the priority for homeland security.

And what we're simply saying is in our report, we've got to get much more urgent about homeland security protection.

M. O'BRIEN: Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the 9/11 Discourse Project.

Thanks for your time.

HAMILTON: Thank you, sir.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad. S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, the race to stop a bird flu pandemic. Will the vaccine stockpiled by the U.S. government even work? Dr. Sanjay Gupta pays us a "House Call" just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: The bird flu is spreading, and in just about half an hour officials from the state, local and federal level will meet in a planning session. They're trying to come up with a plan for the bird flu that will work.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is in Atlanta this morning.

Hey, Sanjay. Good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

A lot of those plans that they're going to be talking about are hinged on a vaccine. But as we found out in a lot of investigative work, is that it's a very difficult vaccine to make because it is a very tricky virus.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice over): For nearly 50 years, Robert Webster has specialized in flu viruses. And at the age of 73 he still works 10 hours a day at St. Jude Children's Hospital in Memphis, trying to outsmart the virus that is already killing half the people it infects.

DR. ROBERT WEBSTER, ST. JUDE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: I'm concerned that the first go, if you like, of H5N1, if it learns to transmit, won't be pretty. We are going to be faced with potential catastrophe.

GUPTA: To stop the virus, Webster says you've got to look at it closely, very closely,.

WEBSTER: Under the electromicroscope, influenza viruses are spiky creatures, something like hinge (ph) bombs, if you like.

GUPTA: Those spikes on the surface of the virus are proteins. In H5N1, the "H" stands for hemagglutinin protein. That's this one. It attaches the virus to the respiratory tract.

This is the "N," short for neuraminidase, a molecular scissors. The flu virus uses its H protein to dock in the surface of the cell and invade. Then it hijacks the cell's own machinery to produce literally thousands of copies of itself. The N spikes, the scissors, cut the new viruses free from the cell, turning them loose to infect new cells in the respiratory tract.

To fight the flu, you target either the H or the N protein. Webster's vaccine -- in fact, any flu vaccine -- takes aim at the H spike so the virus can't enter cells in the first place to make people sick. The flu virus is simple. In fact, it contains only eight genes. But the virus has a menacing trick up its sleeve. Those genes constantly change more than most organisms.

WEBSTER: I compare it to a production line for an automobile. No quality control on the workers. They just threw the pieces in and most of the time it's disasters. But every now and again it can give a master strain.

GUPTA: Those master strains contain mutations that allow it to evade your immune system. Your immune system doesn't recognize it. These constant mutations are the reason we need a new flu vaccine every year.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It changes just enough that the vaccine from the previous year doesn't induce an immune response.

GUPTA: There is a problem with producing a vaccine against a virus that hasn't started spreading yet. If H5N1 mutates to spread easily between people, would Webster's vaccine, the one that the government is stockpiling, still work?

WEBSTER: The vaccine, even though it's not a perfect match, would probably protect you from death. If you were vaccinated, you would still get infected. You would probably get very sick, but not die.

GUPTA: This vaccine could buy us time, but a better vaccine, a perfect match, can't even be started until a new viewers emerges.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: We found, Soledad, sometimes it's easier to understand this virus when you look at it closely, like we did there. The vaccine that we're talking about here is the one the government is talking about buying eight million doses of and having it ready by February -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Eight million doses ready by February. Who gets it?

GUPTA: Well, it's probably -- 2.2 million doses are going to go to the Department of Defense right away. Probably reserved for healthcare workers, first line defenders against this thing, people who are most at risk. Just over five million are going to go into a stockpile to be used if we need it.

S. O'BRIEN: Scary stuff. All right, Sanjay. Thanks.

GUPTA; Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: You'll want to be sure to watch Sanjay's special. It's called "Killer Flu A Breath Away." And that's next Sunday, December 11, 10:00 p.m. Eastern -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, a call for clemency in the Tookie Williams case. But is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger listening? We'll talk to one of Tookie Williams' attorneys coming up on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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