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American Morning
Judging Samuel Alito; A New Plan to Rebuild New Orleans Sparks Anger
Aired January 12, 2006 - 08:00 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.
Judging Samuel Alito -- the Supreme Court nominee stays cool, but his wife -- on the upper left there -- comes undone. Why? We've got that story live from Washington.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Miles O'Brien.
Neighborhoods of New Orleans could be no more. A new plan to rebuild the city sparks some real anger.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think this is right that you try to take our property. Because like I said, over my dead body.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
M. O'BRIEN: We'll go live to New Orleans to hear more of what people are saying about their city's future.
S. O'BRIEN: A best-selling author on the offensive.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAMES FREY, AUTHOR, "A MILLION LITTLE PIECES": A memoir is within the genre of non-fiction. I don't think it's necessarily appropriate to say I've conned anyone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
S. O'BRIEN: That's James Frey. He's defending his memoirs in a Larry King exclusive. And he gets a big push from Oprah herself. More on that ahead.
M. O'BRIEN: And a would be robber has to learn how to take a few hits. A bat to the head several times, maybe. We'll show you more of this amazing surveillance video ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
S. O'BRIEN: Good morning.
Welcome, everybody.
Lots to get to this morning. M. O'BRIEN: Good to have you with us.
We begin in Washington, where Samuel Alito, his supporters and interrogators are ready to take their places for the denouement of the minuet, or is it more like the final round in a boxing match? Mrs. Alito would probably suggest the latter. The political sparring reduced her to tears and a hasty retreat yesterday, while her husband seemed unscathed.
AMERICAN MORNING'S Bob Franken live from the hearing room on Capitol Hill -- good morning, Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles.
Tough questions, emotions, what more could you ask for?
The emotions came up during the tough questioning. Samuel Alito, the prospective Supreme Court nominee, has been grilled by Democrats about his membership in a club that opposed diversity at Princeton. And Democrats have suggested that perhaps this shows his ultra conservatism, in their view.
Well, that brought some friendly, but sarcastic questioning from a Republican. And the questions had to do with whether Alito considered himself a bigot, which he angrily said he was not.
It was shortly after that his wife decided she really couldn't take much more of this and left the room in tears, coming back just a short time later.
The questioning, of course, has also been intense about abortion. Samuel Alito has really refused to be pinned down on whether he would continue to accept the "Roe v. Wade" precedent and questions about presidential power.
About the least emotional person in the room has been Alito himself -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, Bob, the word of the morning has been comity, comity with a "T," which is what senators like to talk about, being courtly even in the face of great disagreement. That was really put to the test yesterday. The committee chairman got into it with Senator Ted Kennedy.
Tell us about that.
FRANKEN: Well, courtly, polite to the point of boredom in the U.S. Senate an awful lot of the time. And, quite frankly, these hearings have not been exactly fire burners, for the most part. But it did get a little -- a little bit uptight, shall we say, after a while when Senators Kennedy and Arlen Specter decided to duke it out.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: We're going have votes of this committee again and again and again until we have a resolution. I think it is...
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, Senator Kennedy, I'm not concerned about your threats to have votes again, again and again. And I'm the chairman of this committee.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKEN: This had to do with subpoenaing some records, Miles. But by Senate terms, I can tell you, that was a food fight.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, and it turned out the records will be made available, right? (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
FRANKEN: They will be made available. And they kissed and made up later.
M. O'BRIEN: So to speak. We hope.
Let's talk about additional witnesses that will come after Judge Alito. That, in and of itself, is controversial, isn't it?
FRANKEN: It certainly is. Among the witnesses who are scheduled to appear, a panel of judges, a present and former appeals judge, colleagues of Samuel Alito. And the controversy has to do with the fact that they're appearing to be in favor of him. These are people who might, at some point, be writing opinions that Alito would have to rule on if he becomes a Supreme Court justice, which Democrats may charge is a conflict of interest.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, Bob Franken watching it for us on Capitol Hill.
The hearing room getting ready right now.
Live coverage of the hearings begins about 56 minutes from now, 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. Wolf Blitzer with a special edition of "THE SITUATION ROOM." Once again, he'll take you through the full day of the hearings.
Also, Pipeline subscribers can view gavel to gavel coverage, as well, and highlights as they come along. That's at cnn.com/pipeline.
S. O'BRIEN: Much ado about nothing -- that pretty much sums up how Oprah feels about the controversy surrounding "A Million Little Pieces." You might recall that Oprah endorsed the memoir for her book club.
Now critics say many parts are exaggerated, some parts just made up.
In an exclusive interview on last night's "LARRY KING LIVE," Frey defended his work.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM "LARRY KING LIVE")
FREY: I've acknowledged that there were embellishments in the book, you know, that I've changed things, that in certain cases things were toned up, in certain cases things were toned down, that names were changed, that identifying characteristics were changed.
You know, there's a great debate about memoir and about what should be most properly served, the story or, you know, some form of journalistic truth. You know, memoirs don't generally come under the type of scrutiny that mine has. You know, it's not...
LARRY KING, HOST: But people reading a memoir expect it to be the true story, whether it's Alan Alda doing the memoir of his life or James Frey doing a memoir of his, that the facts written down are as they happened, or their perception of their happening.
FREY: I mean, it's an individual's perception of what happened in their own life. This is my recollection of my life. You know, a lot of the events I was writing about took place between 15 and 25 years ago. A lot of the events took place while I was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. You know, I still stand by my book.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
S. O'BRIEN: Then, right toward the end of the show, a surprise phone call. And it's Oprah!
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST: I feel about "A Million Little Pieces" that although some of the facts have been questioned -- and people have a right to question, because we live in a country that lets you do that -- that the underlying message of redemption in James Frey's memoir still resonates with me. And I know that it resonates with millions of other people who have read this book and will continue to read this book.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
S. O'BRIEN: "LARRY KING LIVE" airs weeknights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern.
Time to get a check of the headlines.
Carol Costello has that -- good morning.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
Good morning to all of you.
President Bush is heading to New Orleans for the first time in three months. His focus? Rebuilding the coast. He leaves in just about an hour. The trip also includes a stop in Mississippi. And it comes after the president signed a spending bill last week that includes $29 billion for hurricane relief. Much of that money will go to Louisiana and Mississippi.
A symbolic stoning ritual at the Hajj turning deadly. Details just coming in now from Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It seems a street filled with thousands of pilgrims turned into a stampede. Ambulances now speeding to the scene. You see them there. We're just getting these pictures in. Reuters now saying at least 50 people are dead. We will bring you more information when we know it.
Searchers in northwestern Georgia have found the wreckage of a missing Navy plane. There are no survivors. The twin engine jet was found about 35 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee in Walker County, Georgia. It had taken off from Chattanooga Tuesday morning on a training mission. Communication with the plane was lost 20 minutes later. All four people on board were killed.
And we're going to call this one the all star of surveillance videos, because, take a look. This is in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. A would be robber caught by surprise. The clerk pulled out a baseball bat. You'll see it in just a second. Oh, and he just starts wailing on this guy. Strike three and this guy is out. The suspect actually yells at one point, "I don't need the money no more!" and he absolutely takes off. Not only did the guy get caught, he apparently got beaten so badly, he needed medical attention.
And, Chad, one more thing that we found out. The store owner was very frustrated because this was the fifth time his store was hit. The fifth time.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Right. Right.
That wasn't strike three. That was like strike seven.
COSTELLO: Oh, yes.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: I'm surprised the guy managed to run out of the store.
MYERS: I can't believe he was not out a couple of times.
Exactly.
Good morning, Carol.
(WEATHER REPORT)
S. O'BRIEN: So, you know, these hybrid cars, of course, are very popular.
M. O'BRIEN: Big.
S. O'BRIEN: Certainly...
M. O'BRIEN: They're big.
S. O'BRIEN: ... with people. And not only people, but take a look at these pictures that come to us out of Seattle. If you can't make that out, that is a big old fat sea lion on top of a Toyota Prius. It's in a restaurant parking lot. It decided to catch a couple of rays. Apparently the sea lion felt that the Prius was a little more comfortable than the beach, which was kind of nearby. A worker at the restaurant later was able to coax the sea lion back into the water.
The you know, of course, how do you explain the big dent on the top of your car to your insurance company? I swear to god, it was a sea lion.
M. O'BRIEN: I guess he gave the Prius his seal of approval.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, that's actually not bad, Miles. I'll give you that one.
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.
S. O'BRIEN: You're welcome.
M. O'BRIEN: It's Thursday. She's off tomorrow.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: She's actually going to give me...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: ... two minutes.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I will.
M. O'BRIEN: Good, Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: You know, talk about explaining things to your insurance company, something people in New Orleans have had to do a lot of. Ahead this morning, we're going to talk a little bit about something else they're talking about, that rebuilding plan in New Orleans.
M. O'BRIEN: The question is who gets to rebuild, who will be out of luck? We'll talk to people on both sides of this story. It is very heated.
S. O'BRIEN: Coming up next, an AMERICAN MORNING exclusive. An anniversary on Mount Kilimanjaro. It was supposed to be a celebration of love. Instead, it was a disaster. We've got that couple's story just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
We're back after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Wade and Betty Sapp wanted to celebrate their 35th anniversary with a trip they would never forget. But they didn't think it would turn out the way they planned. A large rock slide killed three people in their climbing party and one of them was betty.
Dan Lothian has this AMERICAN MORNING exclusive.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mount Kilimanjaro soars more than 19,000 feet above Tanzania.
WADE SAPP, WIDOWED HIKER: This was all our preparation for Africa.
LOTHIAN: Wade Sapp and his wife Betty had decided to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary by hiking to the top of Africa's highest peak. They never imagined it would end in disaster.
(on camera): Was there ever any discussion of danger, anything like that?
SAPP: No.
LOTHIAN: Did you ever think it would be dangerous?
SAPP: No.
LOTHIAN (voice-over): For about a week, the two Massachusetts physicists, along with about a dozen people, hiked and marveled at nature. The couple was passionate about protecting the environment.
SAPP: You're essentially looking up at the mountain from right in its lap, effectively. And it's humbling. And it's very awe inspiring.
LOTHIAN: But just above 16,000 feet, on the western slope, a day before the scheduled summit...
SAPP: We all heard some cracking sounds. We weren't sure what it was. And then we looked up and what I remember seeing first when we looked up was a piece of the head wall starting to fall away. And there was dust, you know, around it and pieces of rock that were up on the top, which were falling off of this boulder that was coming down.
The largest chunk I remember, it could have been, say, 20 feet high and, you know, five or six feet wide. And I have a vague recollection of seeing a low flying rock essentially go past me off to the side as I was diving for the ground.
LOTHIAN: A few feet away, Paul Cunha, who was part of the group, also tried to dive to safety.
PAUL CUNHA, INJURED HIKER: My eyes caught one in particular that appeared to have my name on it. But it just glanced off my left shoulder and tumbled me down the hill where I hit my head and knocked myself out.
LOTHIAN: Battered, his left shoulder broken, amazingly, Sapp escaped injury. But where was his wife? Sixty-three-year-old Betty had been hiking about 30 feet ahead. It wouldn't take long for his worst fears to be confirmed, that his wife of 35 years was killed in the rockslide. SAPP: She was hit in the head by a large fragment and it was -- she was carried back about 10 or 15, 20 feet before she hit the ground again. And it was just instantaneous.
The uncertainties of life.
LOTHIAN: A week after the accident, Sapp, who had his wife cremated overseas, is back home, alone.
SAPP: We were soul mates.
LOTHIAN: Sapp has no children, but he's working through his pain with the help of other relatives and close friends and for now, plans to go forward with a trip to China in the spring. It's what, he says, Betty would have wanted.
Dan Lothian, CNN, Melrose, Massachusetts.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Wade Sapp called it Betty's trip, that trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. He wanted her to finish the climb, so he had one of the climbing guides take her ashes with him up the mountain -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, a follow-up on New Orleans' blueprint for rebuilding, or at least one version of it. Can you believe some people might have to give their houses so the city can build parks? We'll take a closer look at that and some other issues that have come out of this, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: There aren't a lot of happy people in or out of New Orleans this morning. The city's much anticipated rebuilding plan landed with a thud yesterday. The commission that crafted it tried to triage the casualties, if you will, calling for some neighborhoods to be abandoned; others, the focus of immediate reconstruction, leaving huge swathes in the middle kind of in a limbo until May, their future dependent on whether enough residents are willing to return, kind of in a chicken and egg scenario.
Listen to some of the reaction yesterday as the plan was rolled out in New Orleans.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our neighborhood is ready to come home. We don't want to wait four months. We want to be able to go down to city hall and get a permit now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What I hear is a long range plan for a rail system. Give me a break. We don't need a rail system.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want to work with you if you'll let us. We really do. We're going to be in touch. We want to be your partner. But if you throw us under the bus, we're going to be your worst damn enemy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
M. O'BRIEN: All right, you get a sense of where it is right now.
Clancy Dubos owns a paper called "The Gambit Weekly." His business in one of the threatened areas. His home was OK, in one of the areas where he can get to work right now.
Cecil Tebo lives in an area which might become one of those planned parks. I'm going to show you a map in just a second.
And Blayne Bondy, who you remember, brother of our boss Kim, lives in a threatened area; as a matter of fact, her next door neighbor. We're going to get Kim in, in just a moment. She'll join in and just weigh in, in just a sec and be with us for a question or two at the end of this discussion.
First of all, I just want to show you the map very quickly, if we could. Let's go to the Google map, zoom in on New Orleans, if we could. And I'll give us a sense -- huge swathes of this city are not considered OK for development. Basically, this area is OK to get to work, this area is OK to get to work, this little sliver up here is OK and this little rim around here, A-OK. But anything outside of there is not so good. And among the ideas that are being thrown out there is to create parks. And here's a few of them -- one here, one here and then one there.
What's interesting is this particular park right here is where Cecil Tebo lives. And this one, we believe, is where Blayne Bondy and Kim have their house. In other words, they face the prospect of not being able to come back at all.
Let's get right to it.
Let's begin with you, Cecil.
What's it like reading a plan like that and seeing a big green dot over your house?
CECIL TEBO, NEW ORLEANS HOMEOWNER: Miles, I nearly died. I was one of those that came back. I followed my mayor's instructions. I came back to the city November 1st. I immediately started the rebuild process. And we are home. We are at my house. We are in my neighborhood. We are building. We are rebuilding. There are other people rebuilding.
I had been doing so much better. I sat down yesterday morning, I opened the paper and I nearly died. I had been inundated with calls going, "Oh my god, Cecil, we're going to be a park."
It is horrible and I'm just so thankful that at this point it is just simply a proposal, because we have a lot to say about it.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, it is...
TEBO: I live in a neighborhood.
M. O'BRIEN: This is just the first chapter, there's no question.
Blayne Bondy, it appears your house, Kim's house, under a green dot, as well. That's -- that puts you in a position where you really can't invest any money in your property, at least for four months, maybe never.
BLAYNE BONDY, NEW ORLEANS HOMEOWNER: Yes, that's absolutely correct, Miles.
You know, it's definitely going to put myself, as well as my neighbors, on hold and, you know, we have absolutely no idea, you know, in four months if this park is going to, you know, come to life or, you know, in four months they're going to say OK, you didn't gather up enough people to say that you want to rebuild so your house is just going to, you know, be in an undeveloped area.
I think it's truly unfair to myself, as well as the rest of the neighborhood.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, and Clancy Dubos, here's the thing. It seems as if in their infinite wisdom the commission decided to kind of split the difference between -- you know, sort of the free market approach is we'll just let whatever the market supports will be built on and whatever doesn't won't work out -- and the whole idea of this draconian lines drawn, and there will be no more building here.
And that middle zone almost, in a sense, does that make things worse?
CLANCY DUBOS, "GAMBIT WEEKLY": I don't know if it makes it worse or not. I think they were trying to accelerate the market forces. We could let the market determine things and it might take two or three years for people to, you know, resolve the issue of whether they're coming back or not. In the meantime, people who came back in areas where not a lot of people came, you might have areas where you have two out of three or three out of four houses abandoned. And that would be horrible.
So I think what they're trying to do is say let's put a deadline. Right now they're saying four months. I think that deadline will be pushed back. But at some point they're saying we need to have a cutoff date by which time we determine which neighborhoods have enough sustainability in terms of people who used to live in that neighborhood coming back and wanting to reestablish themselves. And at least they're leaving the door open for people to say we want to come back, we're here, let's make it work.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, so, Clancy, I was going to...
DUBOS: There's no perfect answer here. This is a very complicated problem, the biggest problem the City of New Orleans has ever faced.
M. O'BRIEN: There's no question about that. That's the half full side of it.
Let's bring in fellow New Orleanean Kim Bondy, who's in the control room, most of the time yelling in my ear, but is now going to share some views with u.
Kim, I know you have a couple of questions for our guests.
But first, this whole notion of kind of being in limbo, is that worse than having a definitive answer?
KIM BONDY, VICE PRESIDENT/CNN MORNING PROGRAMMING: Absolutely. And, you know, I'm all for ambition. You know, I fancy myself a reasonably ambitious person.
However, I just have a bottom line question -- can I rebuild my house and, if so, when? And, you know, light rail system, parks, green space, you know, Storyville jazz, I think they're all lovely ideas for this utopia, if you will.
However, you know, I think that people, what they want to know fundamentally is can they move back into their homes? And then later on let's talk about, you know, the larger, the more beautiful plan for the new New Orleans.
M. O'BRIEN: You know, Cecil, pick up on that point, because you took the bull by the horns and you got right to work. You went out of pocket. You eventually, quite frankly, with a little help of coming on TV, got your insurance claim.
But there is -- now there's a huge disincentive. As a matter of fact, your neighbors won't be able to do the same thing now. And that's unfortunate, isn't it?
TEBO: Oh, absolutely. And I'll ditto what Kim said. When I saw the plan, I thought oh, what a beautiful plan for a brand new city. This isn't a brand new city. This is a very old city with a lot of people that are living here. What we need help with is encouragement to continue to rebuild.
Don't tear down my house. I'm almost completed and my neighbors would be completed, as well, if they had gotten their insurance money and if they could get people to work on their house.
Those are the issues, not whether we're going to tear down or not. We've got houses that we can live in that people are still not getting their insurance money. And for those that have gotten their insurance money, Miles, the other crisis is that you can't get an electrician. You can't get a plumber. You can't get a painter.
Those are the things that we need help with. Those are the programs that need to come into place.
I don't see any of that in this plan. I don't see any encouragement for us to continue to rebuild. And I thought -- you know, obviously the commission has not been in my neighborhood because there are lots of us out on our streets every day working on our houses and cleaning our streets. I'm landscaping people's yards, encouraging them, hey, come home.
M. O'BRIEN: Kim, weigh in.
K. BONDY: My question is for my brother, actually.
Blayne, you know, you're a business owner. You live in our neighborhood. I haven't been there in several weeks. You've talked to people.
Do you feel like our neighbors and the people that you've spoken to, since they heard this plan, almost 24 hours ago, are more informed, better informed?
B. BONDY: No, I think quite the opposite. You know, I think people thought yesterday was going to be a day where, you know, a definitive plan was going to be announced as far as rebuilding. It's ironic the name of this commission is Bringing New Orleans Back. And, you know, it's almost a joke, because people now don't know when they can come back. In four months, you know, people are going to be more settled in their cities and, you know, people are going to put on pause their investments, obviously.
Who's going to want to spend the time, energy of hiring contractors and going to look for contractors that they may or may not be able to hire, to start work on their house in four months?
So, you know, I think this plan has just put us on pause for another four months. And I think you're going to see what little development that has started taking place come to a complete halt.
M. O'BRIEN: All right, unfortunately we're out of time.
I apologize especially to Clancy Debos.
We didn't get you in again.
We'll get you next time. I apologize.
Our guests are Clancy Debos, Cecile Tebo, Blayne Bondy, along with his sister Kim, and our boss.
Thanks to all.
And we'll keep you posted as this plan progresses for the City of New Orleans.
Back with more in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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