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CNN Live Today

Zacarias Moussaoui Trial; Senate Holds Hearing on Domestic Spy Program; Terror Communications

Aired February 06, 2006 - 10:59   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go ahead and take a look at what's happening "Now in the News."
Live pictures from Capitol Hill. Live pictures of Senator Ted Kennedy there, but he is talking to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is on Capitol Hill to explain the Bush administration's rationale for its domestic spying program.

The program allows the government to conduct surveillance without warrants. Gonzales says it's legal and indispensable to U.S. defense.

A live report just ahead.

In southern California, dozens of firefighters are battling a fast-moving brushfire. It's burning in the Cleveland National Forest and high winds are pushing it toward the Anaheim Hills area. Right now no homes or businesses are threatened.

Mourners are paying their respects this hour to Coretta Scott King. Public viewing is now under way at Ebenezer Baptist Church here in Atlanta as we look at live pictures. This is the church where King's late husband, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., once preached. President Bush plans to attend tomorrow's funeral services for Mrs. King, who died last Monday.

More details straight ahead.

On Capitol Hill, some heavy reading for members of Congress. President Bush has sent lawmakers his budget for the next fiscal year. The $2.7 trillion spending plan includes some big increases for the military and homeland security, but it puts the squeeze on some other government programs, including Medicare.

The Federal Reserve's new chairman is starting his first full week on the job. A ceremonial swearing in for Ben Bernanke took place a short time ago. He replaces longtime Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who retired last week.

Pandemonium in Pittsburgh as the Steelers win their fifth Super Bowl title. Fans are all keyed up and the city is ready to welcome its football heroes home. The team arrives back in Pittsburgh today. A big parade is on tap for tomorrow.

Good morning once again on this Monday morning. Welcome back to CNN LIVE TODAY. Let's check some of the time around the world.

Just after 11:00 a.m. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also the same time in Washington, D.C.

From CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Daryn Kagan.

Up first this hour, the Zacarias Moussaoui case. Jury selection in his sentencing trial is under way. Moussaoui is the only person charged in connection -- in the U.S. in connection with the September 11 terror attacks. It has taken four years to get to this point with the case, and the long legal road has been marked by some dramatic moments. Today was no different.

Our Jeanne Meserve joins us from the court outside Alexandra, in Alexandria, Virginia, where there were already some fireworks in the courtroom.

Jeanne, good morning.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, it was very dramatic. I was in the courtroom, when about a minute into jury instruction, Zacarias Moussaoui got to his feet and said, "I want to be heard." The judge told him this was not his time for speaking, but he persisted, saying, "I do not want these people to represent me."

As she summoned the marshals to go over and escort him out of the room, he said, "They are not my lawyers. I am al Qaeda. They do not represent me. They are American." And as he exited the courtroom, he said, "This trial is a circus."

He left. It all took only about a minute. And then the jurors got their instructions from the judge, and they got at the end a 49- page questionnaire which they have to fill out in its entirety. It is a number of questions about what they were doing on 9/11, where they were, if they knew anyone who was killed or injured, how they might have responded, whether or not they even gave donations to the cause.

It goes o to ask other questions about how much they know about Islam, how many Arab acquaintances they may have. It asks them whether or not they know anybody who was killed or injured in Iraq or Afghanistan or anything like that. And, of course, it will plum the issue of the death penalty.

That's what this case is all about. Zacarias Moussaoui has already said he is guilty to the charges, but it's a question of whether or not he will live or die.

They have more than 500 potential jurors coming to this courthouse today hearing the instructions, getting this questionnaire. Those will be culled down to 18 who will hear the case and ultimately 12 who will vote on whether Zacarias Moussaoui should live or whether he should die.

Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: Jeanne Meserve, live from Alexandria, Virginia.

Thank you. Congress is wrestling with wartime powers of the presidency today. President Bush says if al Qaeda is calling you, he needs to know about it. But can he find that out without a warrant? That's the question before the Senate Judiciary Committee at this hour.

Let's begin with our extended coverage of today's hearing with our congressional correspondent, Ed Henry.

Ed, good morning.

ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

That's right, the attorney general is sharply defending what the administration calls its terrorist surveillance program. Of course critics call it a domestic spying program.

The attorney general under harsh questioning right now from Democrats. Also some tough questioning by the Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, after the attorney general's opening statement.

The attorney general has been lashing out at some of those critics, saying that in fact they are misinformed, this is not a dragnet. He also said the administration bypassed the FISA court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for speed purposes, that it could -- a delay could mean the difference between stopping a terrorist attack.

Here's the attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALBERTO GONZALES, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: The terrorist surveillance program is necessary, it is lawful, and it respects the civil liberties that we all cherish. It is well within the mainstream of what courts in prior presence have authorized. It is subject to careful constraints, and congressional leaders have been briefed on the details of its operation. To end the program now would be to afford our enemy dangerous and potentially deadly new room for operation within our own borders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, Democrats like Senator Patrick Leahy say the briefings they got from the administration were very limited in nature, only a select few actually got those briefings. And they also insist that Democrats, as well as Republicans, want to make sure the administration has every tool at its disposal to stop a terrorist attack.

Here's Senator Leahy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: Mr. Attorney General, in America, our America, nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States. There's much that we do not know about the president's secret spying program. I hope we're going to get some more answers, some real answers, not self-serving characterizations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, the attorney general's task made a bit more difficult by the fact that it's not just Democrats lashing out at this program. In fact, the Republican chairman, Arlen Specter, has said it could be in flat violation of the law -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Ed Henry live on Capitol Hill.

Thank you.

Our senior legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, is on the phone from San Francisco.

Jeff, good morning.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Daryn.

KAGAN: We heard in opening statements in some of the early questions mention of the FISA court and the FISA system. What is that, and why might it not be appropriate or might be appropriate here?

TOOBIN: After a similar controversy in the early '70s over domestic and foreign intelligence wiretapping, Congress passed a law in 1978 called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And it said that any time there is wiretapping involving an American -- a person in the United States, whether that person is talking to someone within the United States or talking to someone abroad, the government has go to this court, a new court that was invented for this law called the FISA court, and you have to get a warrant.

The issue in this case, in this controversy, is this Bush administration program bypassed the FISA court. The National security Agency, the wiretapping operation of the government, did this without going to the FISA court. And the question is, is that legal?

KAGAN: And with all the debate back and forth, who will ultimately decide if this way of doing things is legal or not?

TOOBIN: Well, Daryn, that's really one of the puzzling aspects of this controversy, is that it is likely to be unresolved because it's -- no court will probably address the question directly of whether this is constitutional because, at least so far, there is no individual who has what's called standing. That is, the right to sue in court to say this is illegal, because no one knows who's been tapped. No one -- so it's likely to remain very much in the political arena, not in the courts, because even trial courts, much less the U.S. Supreme Court, are probably not going to be able to -- are not going to have the opportunity to address it.

KAGAN: But wouldn't ultimately somebody's case go -- you know, somebody be arrested based on these -- on this surveillance, and then that would be challenged as admissible or inadmissible during a trial?

TOOBIN: It's possible. But here's where we get into how much we don't know.

We don't know if any of these tapes have been used to develop a criminal case. Certainly, they haven't been introduced -- the government hasn't tried to introduce them in any courtroom.

That is not the administration's purpose in this wiretapping. It's very much to stop terrorism, not to bring criminal cases. So they haven't made an effort to introduce them in court. And defendants, as far as I'm aware, have not been able to identify anywhere where these tapes have been used in a court case.

So, you're right that in theory, an individual who has had these tapes used against them could challenge them. But no such individual exists at this point that we know of.

KAGAN: Jeffrey Toobin, live on the phone with us from California.

Enjoy your assignment there. Thank you.

And here's a reminder, that you can watch the domestic surveillance hearing on our Web site. Our pipeline service has live coverage at CNN.com.

Twenty-first century technology has led to quick, easy and often anonymous ways for terrorists to communicate.

National Correspondent Kelly Wallace takes a look at that.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DENNIS HOPPER, ACTOR, "E- RING": What did NSA get from us?

BENJAMIN BRATT, ACTOR, "E- RING": They intercepted a call to DIMA from an American.

HOPPER: Get out of town.

BRATT: The problem is, we can't listen to it.

HOPPER: Says who?

KELLY WALLACE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hollywood's take on super-sensitive spying by the National Security Agency on American citizens, a program so secret no one in the know will talk about it. So, we had to rely on experts like Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst turned computer security guru who wrote the book "Spies Among Us: How To Stop Spies, Terrorists, Hackers & Criminals You Don't Even Know You Encounter Every Day."

Winkler says to avoid detection, bad guys might scramble data before it's transmitted.

IRA WINKLER, FORMER NSA ANALYST: A nice simple file like this looks like that. WALLACE: Other ways would-be terrorists try to fly below the radar online -- hiding data inside a picture, setting up free e-mail accounts -- numerous providers offer these -- and using codes to communicate.

WINKLER: There's just so much data out there that it's almost impossible to find the right people that you're looking for just randomly.

WALLACE: Like Winkler, Rebecca Givner-Forbes spends her days monitoring the Internet. She's an analyst with the Terrorism Research Center. Her specialty? Jihadist Web sites and chat rooms.

REBECCA GIVNER-FORBES, TERRORISM RESEARCH CENTER: This particular discussion thread has an amateur aspiring jihadist asking for help with his explosives recipe.

WALLACE: She says it's hard to know if a posting is coming from inside or outside the United States.

GIVNER-FORBES: The software that they use, these message forums, allows for private messaging between members through the Web site. So then they never even have to do so much as give out an e-mail address.

DAVID STRATHAIRN, ACTOR, "SNEAKERS": I'm going to bounce this call through nine different relay stations throughout the world and off two satellites.

WALLACE: Hackers in the movie "Sneakers" show just what the NSA may be up against when it comes to monitoring phone calls. Adding to the challenge, Winkler says, terrorists taking advantage of disposable cell phones and specialized telephone cards that can't be easily traced.

WINKLER: I could walk into any store and buy a card like this. And then I could plug it into this phone that I bring with me all over the place and that card is basically good anywhere in the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, "E-RING": Find out where the phone was when it received the signal.

WALLACE: But as we see in "E-Ring," NBC's drama set inside the Pentagon, surveillance is just one part of the mission. Figuring out what it all means may be even more difficult.

(on camera): And that's a real-life challenge for the NSA no matter how the debate ends over the legality of its eavesdropping on American citizens.

Kelly Wallace, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KAGAN: An urgent global security alert has been issued for about 13 al Qaeda terrorists and 10 others who escaped from a prison in Yemen. Interpol says that this man is among the fugitives. He's identified as the mastermind behind the attack of the USS Cole back in 2000. Seventeen Americans sailors were killed in that attack.

Interpol issued the security alert yesterday. The prisoners escaped Friday.

CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety. Stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Another day of Muslim violence responding to cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Here's just a snapshot from around the world.

Riots in Afghanistan leaves at least one dead. Protesters in four Indonesian cities demand a Danish apology. And banners in New Zealand call for an end to the blasphemy.

The cartoons first appeared in Denmark, but now they've been republished in more than a dozen countries, matched by call for religious understanding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IMAM MAHDI BRAY, MUSLIM AMERICAN SOCIETY: Let me make it very clear. We at the Muslim American Society, we're not asking for censorship or the negation of free speech, but a little common sense and self restraint might be in order. Just because one is free do something does not mean that it is prudent to do so. Along with rights come responsibility. It really boils down to choice and respect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Still to come this hour, as the nation mourns Coretta Scott King, there's new focus directed at those holistic healing centers, like the one where she died.

Plus, renewing the tourism biz in New Orleans. I'll talk with a writer from one of the world's premier travel magazines for an update on the revival effort in the Gulf.

And she has a whole new face, and she's letting the world get a glimpse for the first time. Hear what this transplant patient says now.

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KAGAN: Well, you can't lick it or stick it, but it is postage all the same. AOL and Yahoo! plan to charge bulk e-mailers a fee, a penny or less per e-mail. If a business signs up for the new optional service, AOL and Yahoo! promise to route their e-mails directly to your inbox. It would bypass spam and phishing filters and keep the e- mails out of your junk box. That is unfortunate.

Let's go ahead and check in on business news.

(STOCK MARKET REPORT)

KAGAN: Well, if someone saved your life, you'd probably like to return the favor, wouldn't you? Stick around and hear how this teenager had an opportunity to show thanks in a belated and a very bizarre twist of fate.

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KAGAN: Let's go ahead and check on the weather. Jacqui Jeras has that for us.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: Well, not in Los Angeles, but elsewhere around the country it might be winter outside your window, but in New York, it's already time for fall fashion. Coming up, we're live backstage at the kickoff for this annual fest. You'll see what's hot in terms of long legs, short skirts and high fashion.

We're back after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: So you might be dreaming of spring, but in New York on the catwalks, they're already thinking forward, fashion forward to fall. It is Fall Fashion Week, and we find our Sibila Vargas behind the scenes at the Carolina Herrera show.

A good vantage point for you to get a look at what's coming up.

Hello, Sibila.

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And I'm backstage right now. Carolina Herrera just got through with her show, and Oscar de la Renta is actually going to start doing his show. So in a few minutes we'll see a lot of models, we'll see a lot of his clothes. So you might get a sneak peek at that for fall fashion.

But here to join us is Kat Betts. She's the editor in chief of TIME Style and Design.

Thank you so much for joining us.

KATE BETTS, TIME STYLE & DESIGN EDITOR: Oh, thank you. Thank you.

VARGAS: You're going to break some of this down for us. OK?

BETTS: I'm going to try, yes.

VARGAS: Tell us about New York fashion week. Why is it so important?

BETTS: Well, you see, this is the time when all the buyers from all over the world and all of the press come to see New York fashion. And it's a huge business. And all the designers show their clothes and hopefully sell them, and kind of give an idea of the trends.

So it's not just the buyers from department stores and specialty stores and online retailers, it's also people are looking at the trends so that they can eventually knock them off. And, you know, everybody from, I don't know -- well, I'm not going to name names, actually -- so they can get an idea for what the whole look for the next season is going to be. And it's usually right out of the gate you can see it.

I've been to three or four shows already and, you know, there's a whole '80s thing, there's a whole return to minimalism, high-wasted pants, the suit is back, the dress is still strong. I mean, you know, you'll hear over the course of the week everybody saying things like this which don't really make sense maybe to the average person on the street. But there -- it's big fashion news, so that's what happens.

VARGAS: Now, you saw Carolina Herrera's line just now. She uses a lot of colors, and I saw a lot of oranges or burnt oranges, something that seems to be the trend.

BETTS: Yes, that's kind of the trend for the fall. The color palette is very burnt orange, brown. It's a little bit rustic. I think we're going to see some forest green, loden (ph) kind of colors. And what I loved what Carolina did was she added in flashes of turquoise and flecks of gold and sort of gave it a little more flash so it's not too heavy.

And she also -- I think she has much more of a European approach in terms of color palette and she takes risks that way, whereas in the American market you'll see that the designers are much more conventional in colors, like what you can wear with gray, only camel -- and, you know, certain colors don't go together. You know, they have rules about that.

VARGAS: All right. So what do you think is going to be this year -- the new trend this year? What's going to set this apart?

BETTS: Well, I think there's a lot of attention to a sort of more paired down silhouette. You know, there's like not a lot of print out there. And that's going to be an important move, sort of away from the lady-like look.

VARGAS: Well, that sounds good. Thank you so much for sharing that with us.

Back to you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Sibila Vargas, live from New York City.

Thank you.

Coming up, New Orleans has long been a city that thrives on visitors like us who want a taste of its unique culture. After some tough times, though, the Big Easy tourism industry is trying to experience a reawakening. How that is going just ahead.

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