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American Morning

Update on NYC Transit Strike; New Security-Screening Rules Now in Place

Aired December 22, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Rick Sanchez, sitting in for Miles O'Brien. New Orleans and euthanasia allegations. Investigators may be closer now to knowing what happened at a local hospital the days after Katrina. This is a CNN exclusive. Also ahead, a showdown in the Senate. They're up late, tying up some loose ends. So what did they get done, and what will have to wait until next year?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Also this morning, a case of penguin-napping. It's getting national attention in Great Britain. It's the story of Toga, the pilfered penguin, and it's ahead on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning. Welcome, everybody. Miles O'Brien has a little vaca. Rick Sanchez is helping us out once again. Appreciate that.

SANCHEZ: Thank you. Love the pilfered penguin alliteration, by the way.

O'BRIEN: And I didn't mangle it, which is even more impressive.

Let's get right to our top story this morning.

We're talking about the New York transit strike, all of us watching and waiting. Leaders from both sides are inside a midtown Manhattan hotel. It's the same place where the negotiations have been going on throughout this costly standoff.

Let's get an update now from Allan Chernoff. He is live at the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn is one of the main ways to get into Manhattan.

Allan, good morning to you.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Soledad. And I can tell you, all of these people waiting to get to the Brooklyn Bridge, they are really hopeful that something can happen at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Thus far, we've just had a standoff between the Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transit Authority. We've got three days of strikes so far, and let's have a look to see exactly what people are doing this morning.

How many do you have in the car?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Four.

CHERNOFF: Oh, so you're good. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're wonderful.

CHERNOFF: Did you know each other before? Or did you pick each other up?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, we all work together.

CHERNOFF: All carpooling together.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

CHERNOFF: All right, good luck.

How do you feel about this strike? Are you a little tired of it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want it to be over.

CHERNOFF: Enough, huh? One day is a novelty?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's it. It's too much. I'm tired already going to work.

CHERNOFF: OK, I think a lot of New Yorkers feel the same way, Soledad. One day, it's a real experience, something to talk about. But day two, getting tired, and now day three, I think a lot of people here in New York have simply had it. They want their subways and their buses back.

O'BRIEN: You know, I think the taxi drivers have had it too. I thought the cab drivers would sort of be out making money hand over fist, Alan, and not the case. I mean, they're sitting in traffic like everybody. You really can't make a lot of money on your fares, even if you're overcharging people, if you're not moving.

CHERNOFF: Exactly right. They are getting some good prices, people stepping into a cab typically paying at least $10, but if the traffic is crawling like this, not really worth that much to the cabbies either.

O'BRIEN: No, everybody's angry. All right, Allan Chernoff with an update for us. Thanks, Allan.

Of course we'll continue to check in with Allan throughout the morning.

Let's get right to Rick.

SANCHEZ: Here's that story we were just talking about, the Senate deciding on several critical and some controversial measures Wednesday. Senators made 11th-hour agreements to wrap up business before the holiday break.

Let's take you through some of this action. First, a budget bill, containing $40 billion in spending cuts was passed, with the tie-breaking vote by Vice President Dick Cheney. Provisions in the Patriot Act were temporarily extended for six months. The president expected to sign the bill, though he had previously threatened to veto for anything short of renewal.

And a measure to authorize oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve was defeated by Democrats. The drilling provision was a point of contention throughout the day, with Republicans trying to attach it to a defense bill that already contained funding for Iraq and money for Katrina relief as well.

Now Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, who strongly backs drilling in his state, took this defeat very personally.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED STEVENS (R), ALASKA: This has been the saddest day of my life. It's a day I don't want to remember, and I'm sorry to see it come to an end, because I am drawing the line now with a lot of people I've worked with before. I really am. I really am.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: You can hear it in his voice. Senate minority leader, meanwhile, Harry Reid said the drilling issue was the same as holding the military hostage -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Reminder for those of you who are heading to the airport today, or you're going to head to the airport over the next couple days. New security-screening rules are now in place. Officials say the time spent in those security lines will probably be about the same, so let's take a closer look this morning at some of the changes in our CNN Security Watch.

CNN's Kathleen Koch in Washington this morning.

Hey, Kathleen, good morning.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Well, passengers will now be able to carry some once-forbidden items like these on aircraft, while other security measures will be tightened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH (voice-over): Since the 9/11 attacks, the government has seized tens of thousands of scissors, screwdrivers and other tools from airline passengers, because they were potential weapons. Starting today, the ban has been lifted, because the government is worried about a bigger threat.

KIP HAWLEY, DIR., TSA: Virtually any object can cause harm, my hands, tie, belt, you know, whatever. But our perspective at TSA and homeland security is the system and what can hurt the United States, and the big threat is explosives to the United States. Scissors and small tools do not represent much of a threat to the country.

KOCH: The government says screeners will now spend more time looking for bombs. MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECY.: We've see ever- increasing sophistication in the kind of explosive devices that we encounter all over the world, and we have to train our screeners now to become more alert and more adept at detecting devices that are not as obvious as they might have been 10 years ago.

KOCH: But critics warn the decision could leave aircraft and their crew vulnerable to terrorists.

REP. EDWARD MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: TSA can't have it both ways. If this knife is too dangerous to be in a passenger cabin, then this scissors is too dangerous to be in a passenger cabin.

PAT FRIEND, NATL. ASSOC. OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS: We believe that the TSA's decision is reckless and it endangers the people who work on that aircraft, and it endangers the people who fly on that aircraft and potentially endangers thousands of people on the ground.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOCH: Government screeners will also step up random passenger screenings and patdowns, including arms and legs, instead of just the torso. Now the TSA doesn't think this will present additional security risks. Since 9/11 the cockpit doors have been hardened, pilots armed, and there are more federal air marshals.

And there are limits on what you can bring on. Scissors must have blades four inches or less, and tools must be shooter than seven inches -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Have you talked to passengers this morning, Kathleen, who know about the new rules and what's their response to them?

KOCH: I have talked to them, Soledad, and surprisingly I found none that had any objection to the new rules. They actually think it does make more sense to look for bombs than, again, to look for little, tiny screwdrivers. Some of them were irritated by how severe the measures were before, not being able to carry your nail clippers on an aircraft.

O'BRIEN: Kathleen Koch is at Reagan National Airport for us this morning. Thanks, Kathleen.

You want to stay with CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: In an Iraqi courtroom, Saddam Hussein lashes out today at his American captors once again, and directly at the Bush administration, about chemical weapons and his ties to terrorism. Aneesh Raman is in the courthouse. He's joining us now by phone.

What did Saddam Hussein say, Aneesh?

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Rick, it was in one of his tirades, speaking to the judge and to the court, but especially to the cameras in the courtroom, Saddam Hussein saying that the White House has lied once again, it is a liar, the number-one liar in the world, because it said there are chemicals in Iraq, and Iraq has relations with terrorism. He said that later we found nothing of the sort in Iraq. It is what Saddam Hussein, and he spoke often of himself in the third person, said was not true. He went on to talk, as we heard yesterday, of these allegations of abuse, that he's been beaten, that he has bruises to prove them.

He also went on in the tirade to see he has seen a number of American medical groups in two places, that they had documented injuries he had suffered, and that some of those injuries sustained to this day, some three years, he says, after they were incurred during the invasion.

So it's a battle, again, that we saw yesterday at the end of the session, where Saddam was sedate for most of the day, and at the end day lashing out at the Americans. Today, again, doing so, and the court giving him incredible latitude. We just had a press conference from the court spokesman who said the court has extreme patience with these proceedings. The question is whether the Iraqi public does as well -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: Yes, he's obviously trying to do some diversion here. Let me ask you a question about something we heard, that there was some kind of scuffle in the courtroom with guards. What happened?

RAMAN: Yes. Saddam's half brother Barzan Hassan Al-Tikriti, who's also been very vocal in these proceedings, was at length describing the fact that he didn't like the video out of the courtroom being cut, and the audio as well. During that point, the defense lawyers all stood up, Saddam's chief defense lawyer Khalil Dulaimi. He said one of the guards in the courtroom, in the back side of the courtroom, had insulted one of the defendants. At that point all of the defendants then stood up, including Saddam Hussein and his half brother. So you had virtually all the defendants and defense lawyers standing up for some moments as the court tried to figure out what do, Saddam yelling that this guard had to be removed, and the judge deciding to do so. The guard was sent out of the courtroom.

SANCHEZ: What a scene, unbelievable. Aneesh Raman following that for us, as he'll continue to do so throughout the morning, and we'll be monitoring it for you on AMERICAN MORNING.

Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is in Iraq this morning, making a surprise Christmas visit to British troops there. About 8,000 British soldiers are stationed in Iraq. Mr. Blair's fourth trip to Iraq since the war was kept secret due to safety concerns. He's also scheduled to meet with British and American officials to talk about Iraq's security situation.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, after breaking for the holidays, members of Congress yanked back to Washington for some last- minute business. We're going to tell you why just ahead.

SANCHEZ: Also then, new developments in the case of a New Orleans hospital charged with in some cases with some doctors euthanizing patients during Hurricane Katrina.

O'BRIEN: And we've got an identity theft alert. A computer holding sensitive information stolen from a major U.S. company. It affects 70,000 people. We've got details just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: House members head back to Washington for an afternoon session today. They broke for the holidays, but they're now being called back because of a Senate changes in a budget bill. Those changes and an extension for the Patriot Act highlighted in an incredibly busy day on the Senate floor.

Let's get right to CNN political analyst Ron Brownstein. He's in Washington D.C. this morning. Talk about down to the wire, Ron.

Oh, my goodness. Let's start with the Patriot Act, which has now been extended.

How close? How fierce was this debate?

RON BROWNSTEIN, "L.A. TIMES" COLUMNIST: Well, it was extraordinary. I mean, if you think back to four years ago when this was passed, only one senator, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, voted against it. And this time the Democrats were able to hold together and attract four Republicans for what would have seemed inconceivable, I think, only a year ago, a filibuster against an act that the president and the Republican majority presented as essential to post- 9/11 national security. And it really is a measure of two things, both how deep the polarization is in Washington, and secondly, how the political debate that was essentially erased from national security after 9/11 is gone. And we are really back, whether you look at Iraq, the Patriot Act, or this NSA spying question and a full-scale confrontation between the parties across a broad range of national security issues.

O'BRIEN: Then you had the vice president casting the deciding vote when it came to cutting the budget. Why, again, are all these things down to the wire?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, I think this week, this frenzied finish of this congressional session really captured in miniature the strength and limitations of approach to governing that President Bush and the majority in Congress have pursued for most of this five years.

I think one of their core principals is that the president has been willing to accept a high level of political partisan polarization, as the price of pursuing bold change and moving forward in an aggressive conservative agenda.

And when you look at all of these votes this week, whether it was the Patriot Act, Arctic Drilling, or certainly the budget. In each case, the Republicans pushed very aggressively for goals they wanted, knowing that it was going to leave them with very little, and in the case of the budget, absolutely no Democratic support in either house. That leaves them right on the edge. It also means that even small amounts of Republican defection can be very dangerous to them, as they saw this week in the Senate.

O'BRIEN: And as we saw in this bill that would allow drilling in Alaska. Give me a sense of what this means for the Democrats, this victory essentially?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, you know, I think most people have to be surprised. This is a story that's gone on all year, at the extent to which Democrats have been able to hold together, especially in the Senate, to resist many of President Bush's initiatives. I think after President Bush won that re-election in '04, increasing his margin and really running well in the red states, Republicans thought they could peel off those Democratic senators from states that President Bush won, the red state senators, but in fact they've seen on a number of key issues, first, and the most dramatically, Social Security, then on the budget, not a single Democratic vote for the budget. Only four Democrats dissented and opposed the filibuster on the Arctic drilling, and I believe only two Democrats dissented on the Patriot Act.

And, again, this is a level of unity that Democrats have not been able to achieve in the past, and to some extent, it's been a requirement. It's sort of a survival of the fittest. Republicans have held together extremely well under Bush. We're seeing a very partisan atmosphere. And what Democrats have been able to do is convince some of their more wavering members, that unless they hang together, they surely will hang separately.

O'BRIEN: So you think that the reason for the unity because the environment is so hostile?

BROWNSTEIN: So polarized. I mean, if you look at this budget debate, the Republicans went out and wrote a budget that had significant cuts in social programs, particularly Medicaid, which is a joint federal-state program providing health care for low-income families at a time when the number of uninsured is going up. There was not, Soledad, a single Democratic vote to this budget in the House or the Senate, and that puts enormous pressure on Republicans to hold together. In fact, in the Senate, they lost five moderates, but Dick Cheney was there to cast the tie-breaking vote.

You know, to me, what was striking about this, this whole week came after the very conciliatory language from the president Sunday night as we talked about before in his speech on Iraq, which he acknowledged mistakes seemed to reach out to the other side.

But this week was a reminder of where we really are in Washington. What we're likely to see next year is that we have two parties that have very different priorities, that are very dug in, and more likely than not, I think what we saw this week was more the template for what's coming in the election year.

O'BRIEN: They're on the verge of vacation. How about you?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, I'm hoping to be a little bit on the verge. But really, what a finish.

O'BRIEN: Really, flashy finish. Ron Brownstein, as always, "The L.A. Times" columnist and CNN political analyst.

Thank you, Ron. Thanks -- Rick.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, take a look at this cute guy. His name is Toga. He was stolen from the zoo, and now his life could be in dire risk we're told. What zoo keepers are saying about Toga's chances for survival. Get him some ice quick, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: And we welcome you back. It's happened again. Another major company says tens of thousands of people are at risk of having their identity stolen. The reason? Here's Andy Serwer to tell you about with "Minding Your Business."

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Good morning, Rick. Yes, indeed, it has happened again. We've got some bad news and some good news actually on the identity-theft front this morning. First of all, let's talk about the bad news, say to say. Ford Motor is informing 70,000 of its present and former white collar employees that a computer was stolen from a ford facility with information concerning those employees, including Social Security numbers.

Now, there's no evidence that this information has been misused, and there's very little more information that we don't know when this occurred or which facility. Obviously, this is the worst of times at Ford, especially for employees, and white-collar employees, it's just been a tough road there.

SANCHEZ: Like they need that, right?

SERWER: Exactly.

SANCHEZ: But then you have the other case with the bank, and this gets a little more personal, because you'd figure they'd have a lot of information about people's finances.

SERWER: That's right. This is Lasalle Bank out of Chicago. We talked about this a couple days ago. A tape containing information on two million mortgage customers went missing. DHL sent it out. But listen to this, they found it in a bunch of packages in Ohio with missing air bills. Actually a DHL employee was pawing through it and said, aha, voila, here is the tape. And, again, in this situation we don't know if any of this information was misused.

Listen to this, Rick, just over the past 12 months this problem, here is a list of institutions hit by this scourge: Choice Point, Bank of America, Lexus Nexus, DSW Shoes, TJ Max, Ameritrade, Boston College, Cal Berkeley, GM, Time Warner, our parent company, Colorado state health department, Motorola, on and on. It's been such a huge problem this year.

SANCHEZ: How little privacy we really have.

SERWER: That's right. SANCHEZ: Soledad, over to you.

O'BRIEN: All right, thanks.

Police in London investigating a possible lead on that baby penguin that was taken from the British zoo on Saturday. Officials say he is three months old name, his name is Toga, and if he is still alive he won't survive much longer without his mother.

CNN's Robyn Curnow live for us from London this morning.

Hey, Robyn, good morning. What are you hearing about this little penguin?

ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there. Well, time is running out. There has been, though, an anonymous tip. A man phoned into a local television station here in London, saying that he had taken the penguin, but that he had dumped it in a plastic bag in Portsmouth (ph) Harbor. Now Portsmouth Harbor is a major industrial harbor. It's also the home of the Royal Navy, so a little penguin about so high, in that part of the world, in a big scary harbor, is not looking good, people say.

But on the other hand, the good news is we've got the Royal Navy, the police and, of course, many, many concerned residents here looking out for Toga.

O'BRIEN: Couple quick questions for you, Robyn. Why would anybody steal a penguin? And why do they think that he only has a couple days to live? It is just because he's so young?

CURNOW: Well, he is small, like you said. He's just three months old. He needs his parents still, like any newborn or young baby. He also has a special diet, and he needs to have lots of fresh water.

But I think to answer your question, it's Christmastime, and that big hit movie, the documentary, "The March of the Penguins," has also been a hit on this side of the Atlantic, and there is a sense from the police that maybe someone really enjoyed that documentary and perhaps wanted to take a penguin home for themselves, or for their kids' Christmas present. So that is one of the reasons, one of the things speculating out here about why he was taken.

O'BRIEN: That is so sick. Steal a penguin because of a documentary. Robyn Curnow, that is horrible. I hope they find this little guy. Thanks for updating us.

CURNOW: Me, too. Me, too.

O'BRIEN: That's terrible.

Still to come, we're talking about a hunt of another kind. It's a manhunt in Miami. It's for a suspected serial rapist. He escaped from prison. We're going to talk to the police chief about the manhunt, what's happening today and how he got out. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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