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American Morning

A Rough Day Ahead for Homeland Security Chief Mike Chertoff; A Televised Plea on Behalf of Kidnapped Journalist Jill Carroll

Aired February 15, 2006 - 06:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A rough day ahead for the Homeland Security Chief Mike Chertoff. He faces off with senators over FEMA's failures in the midst of Katrina.
A televised plea on behalf of kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll. Will it rally Iraqis to action? We're live in Baghdad.

And it may not have been Miller time on the mountain, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a golden day for the U.S. ski team. We're live in Turin for you.

ANNOUNCER: You're watching AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR: The sun rises over Manhattan. Isn't that beautiful?

O'BRIEN: It's a beautiful shot, the silhouette of the east side of Manhattan. We've got a lot in store for you this morning, so sit tight.

(NEWSBREAK)

VERJEE: An extraordinary appeal for the life of American hostage Jill Carroll is all over the Iraqi airwaves today.

Aneesh Raman is live in Baghdad and he joins us now.

Aneesh, tell us about these public service announcements that have started to be broadcast.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Zain, good morning.

It is a unique and direct appeal to those holding Jill Carroll, running on the state-run and U.S.-funded channel Iraqiya (ph) starting last night. These public service announcements, in Arabic, include statements from Iraqis calling for Jill Carroll's release. It also includes a statement from Jill Carroll's mother, which is translated into Arabic, saying that she was in Iraq to do good, that she must be released as soon as possible.

A narrator throughout says that they call essentially on anyone with information to alert the authorities, and that Iraq overall needs to respect the humanity that is at stake here.

Now I just came back from that station, Iraqiya. I spoke to the general manager, asked him why he was airing these videos free of charge. He said, it is as simple as humanity as we've mention before. That this is about Jill Carroll's life. This is about a station doing all that it can to get the word out. And so we're seeing this. It's run a few times last night. It's starting to run today, and the hope, of course, is that this will spur some action among those holding Jill Carroll -- Zain.

VERJEE: You've had chance to speak to Iraqis, Aneesh, who have seen this PSA. Tell us what they made of it and whether they have even heard of Jill Carroll before.

RAMAN: Well, it's interesting. We've talked to some who have seen this, and the ones who hadn't were well aware of Jill Carroll's situation. She has really garnered unprecedented support in Iraq from literally all segments of the Iraqi society, virtually all segments, calling for her release, calling for the kidnappers of Jill Carroll to realize that she was not here as part of the American strategy, the military government strategy, that she was here to tell the Iraqi story.

So again today they are calling for the same issues. And because of this PSA, as those that have saw it, said that it could spur further action, because it's been time since she was abducted. In the weeks after we saw demonstrations of support, but it's been, as time goes on, support does start to wane, and so this is, in effect, supposed to try and remind people that this is going on, and that she is still out there, and that a new deadline looms -- Zain.

VERJEE: Aneesh, how much of the Iraqi population will these PSAs reach?

RAMAN: It's unclear. I mean, everyone hear has satellite television. Iraqiya is a major channel here. As I said, it's U.S. funded, state run. No one thought it would do really as well as it is doing. So it clearly will get to a good population here in Iraq. Iraqis are also aware that there are any number of their own journalists two of them right now in custody. Iraqis are kidnapped on a daily basis, so they are aware of the situation, the complexities of it, the emotional difficulties of dealing with it, and so they can relate to this situation, and that is why we have seen unprecedented support among the population here, calling for the lease of Jill Carroll -- Zain.

VERJEE: Aneesh Raman with some good perspective there on the ground in Baghdad. Thanks, Aneesh.

(WEATHER REPORT)

VERJEE: Miles, what would you say if I told you there was a pill you could you take for all of your ills?

O'BRIEN: I'd take it.

VERJEE: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Yes, lifetime supply. VERJEE: All right. Well, you know, there could be good news, because there is a pill like that. It apparently can help you lose weight, quit smoking, lower your risk of diabetes and heart disease as well with one little pill. Best of all, it may be available soon. We're going to take a look at that.

O'BRIEN: All right, I'm holding onto my wallet right now. I'm not buying this one. We'll see. We'll see. It may be too good to be true. We'll see.

Also, bad boy Bode, those three words tend to go together. They roll off the tongue, don't they? He was upstaged at the Olympics by another American skier. The Americans still got gold, just a different skier. We'll give you an update.

VERJEE: It must have been like looking in a mirror. Well, somewhat at least. Conan O'Brien finally gets a face to face meeting with his apparent look-a-like who's the president of Finland. We'll take look at that closely on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: I'm going to carry that trumpet flourish with me on a tape recorder wherever I go, and just play it when I want to say something important. Her Olympic roommate called her Gumby, and she may be on the way to living up to that moniker. We're talking about American skier Lindsey Kildow. She took that nasty fall in practice on Monday we told you about. Now she's aiming to add a gold neck necklace to complement her plastic hospital bracelet. More on that in a moment. But first, the medal count. Those pesky Norwegians. Curses, those Norwegians. They're still on top with 11 medals, but U.S. still leads in the gold count. Phew!

And one of those U.S. golds came in the men's combined alpine event. Quick as you can say lickety-split, it is not a guy named Bode who got it.

Larry Smith is in Turin this morning. We're going with Turin today. We'll do Torino tomorrow maybe.

Can we get the trumpet one more time, quickly just for Larry? No. Because his agent called me and said he wanted it, too. There we go.

OK, Larry, now you may go.

LARRY SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There we go.

O'BRIEN: Yes, let's talk about Ted Liggady (ph). He was 32nd in the first round, and then was able on the amazing slaloms, amazing -- how did he pull it off.

SMITH: Well, he's one of the best slalom racers in the world. You haven't heard of him. He's only 21 years old, making his Olympic debut, but in fact the great Italian slalom racer George O'Roka (ph) just a day earlier said it's Liggady who is his biggest rival in the slalom. That's how widely respected he is worldwide. He was 32nd in the downhill portion of the combined, came through with two great slalom runs to make up the difference to come away with gold.

It didn't take away the sting or the disappointment from Bode Miller's disqualification. Bode, I know he's your favorite skier, Miles, but Bode was leading until he was disqualified for straddling a gate, and therefore disqualified, but not Liggady is the man here in Torino, and certainly basking in his spotlight.

O'BRIEN: Well, he deserves. Boy, he really, really had an incredible way of just his boot was hitting those gates and just going down and having -- and of course that's what Bode was trying to do when he straddled it. It shows you how -- you know, it's just a game of inches and seconds, or fractions of seconds.

SMITH: Yes, it's very tough. Even Bode even said, he said he's not sure even when he even straddled it. That's how close it was, yes.

O'BRIEN: Really?

SMITH: All right, let's talk about Lindsey Kildow. Yesterday we had -- Picabo Street was on, and she was going to counsel her to be careful how many events she would participate in. It sounds like she's just going to go for it, huh?

SMITH: Yes, she's on the course right now. The event began at the top of the hour, the woman's downhill. She conferred with her doctors today and deemed that she's good enough to go. Forty-five racers in this. She's going off 31st. So we're going to check her progress throughout the morning. That severely bruised hip. Certainly if you see the spill, it could have been worse than that. But she's the number-two ranked racer in the world, but if she is able to perform up to the level she's used to, that could bode well for a medal for the U.S.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it will be interesting to see if she's tentative at all.

One final though, Wayne Gretzky is in the house, in town. I'd say better than even money, he's getting a lot of questions about betting?

SMITH: Yes, you can say that. You can make that bet. Canadian hockey team. Hockey gets under way for the men's hockey team. Their the defending champions. Gretzky has said many times over, listen, I don't want to be a distraction.

This really has nothing really to do with me except for his wife's alleged involvement. But you can guarantee he's going to get a ton of questions regardless of how many times he begs to only talk about hockey. This is going to throughout these Games.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much. Let's cue them one more time. That was Larry Smith. Thank you very much, Larry.

He sounds so much more important with that.

We'll go back to Torino, or Turin -- it's a Turin day -- Turin a little later. Joining us at 8:00 Eastern Time U.S. gold medal speedskater Joey Cheek who decided to do something special with his medal bonus.

Zain will get into that.

VERJEE: We will. There is no such fanfare, though, for Andy Serwer.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: I'm sorry to hear that.

O'BRIEN: We can't do it for him?

VERJEE: I can do a little drum roll.

O'BRIEN: You can do it for him, right?

SERWER: I can handle it. Business news coming up.

More trade friction between China and the United States. Do American lawmakers have any leverage at all? What do you think, coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: He's our boss right here.

SERWER: Well, thank you. I was going to say apropos what are we playing the boss.

O'BRIEN: You're the boss. You are it.

SERWER: OK, that makes up for the lack of trumpets, I guess.

(NEWSBREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Andy is here.

SERWER: I am here.

You know, our trade relations with China are complicated. We want to export our goods to them, but there are downsides, lots of downsides. Yesterday the U.S. trade representative released a long- awaited review of our trade relations with that country, and the report basically slammed the situation, saying that our relations with them lacks balance. China is focused on sending goods to us. They are focused on developing their own industries, and that is not at all matched by them opening up their markets to our goods to protecting our intellectual property there, our copyrights, and also human rights.

Now you may remember that we told you there are going to be hearings on Capitol Hill today about this very issue. Tech companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo! and Google will be in focus. Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey will be holding these hearings. And really Yahoo! is in the crosshairs here, because they have a situation where they aided the Chinese government in the 2003 capture of a dissident named Lee Ji (ph), and Representative Chris Smith said, listen to this, "That's like turning Anne Frank over to the Nazis." Wow.

O'BRIEN: Wait, wait, wait how did Yahoo! aid the Chinese?

SERWER: Well, by allowing them to look at the records of his dissident and where he was posting Web sites about corruption and his Internet traffic, they were able to track him down.

Now Yahoo!, this is very interesting. It's subsidiary in China is 60 percent owned by a Chinese company called Ali Babba, so they're saying, we really are hands off here. There's nothing we can do about it. Ask Ali Babba. We have no control over what goes on at Yahoo!.

VERJEE: No, no, but Google is also facing some of the same issues.

SERWER: Yes, you're right, Zain, Google is facing some of the same issues.

O'BRIEN: Well, but nothing to that level. They're just saying that the search response is filtered. They're not saying that they're helping capture dissidents, no?

VERJEE: No, no, no, they're not helping them, but as you know, they are restrictions on what people can search and surf on the Internet, like the three 'T's.'

SERWER: the three T's, Tibet, Tiananmen and Taiwan that we talked about the other day.

VERJEE: Condi Rice heading up a task force also on China?

SERWER: Exactly, Zain. She's getting into the fray as well, as she's examining a bill that Chris Smith is submitting, and she's reviewing trade practices with China as well. This one's really heating up. And it's very difficult. I mean, we need China. China needs us. But on whose terms? And that is a debate that's continue into the future. No question about that one.

O'BRIEN: Andy Serwer, our bull in the china shop, as always, thank you.

SERWER: You're welcome.

VERJEE: Thanks. In a moment, one pill to help you lose weight, quit smoking, reduce the risk of diabetes and heart disease. Does it sound too good to be true? Well, yes, it may be. We'll take a closer look at that. The pill may be out soon. That's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: Why did an American late night comedian have a face-to- face meeting with the president of Finland? Well, because she looks like him and he looks like her. Miles doesn't quite agree with this. What do you think? Take a look.

CNN's Jeanne Moos reports on Conan O'Brien's trip to Finland.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Conan O'Brien gave Finland's president a heart-shaped box of chocolates. He better give her something sweet. After all, he's been doing a separated-at-birth routine for weeks.

Conan's show runs daily on Finnish cable TV so he took credit when his 62-year-old look-a-like won re-election, and since the Olympics have temporarily sidelined Conan's show, why not take a victory trip to Finland.

Two-thousand fans gathered at the airport, temporarily rechristened "Conan O'Brien International Airport." Welcome to "Conlandia." That's a cake. The winner of a Conan look-a-like contest was on hand.

CONAN O'BRIEN, LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW HOST: You are more handsome than I.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. Oh, thank you. Thank you.

MOOS: How did Fins feel about their president agreeing to meet with a comedian?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, why not. It's good PR, I think, for both, especially for Finland.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. In a way, it's kind of funny, but then again, it's actually based on the fact that they are making fun of our president.

MOOS: And he did from, unearthing video of the president dancing with James Brown at the Finnish jazz festival to putting on lipstick at our instigation to make himself appear more presidential.

(on camera): Now you look like her in drag.

(voice-over): But Conan skipped the lipstick when he came face to face with the president, and he toned down his act.

O'BRIEN: Yes, well we can't understand.

MOOS: Earlier Conan had suggested he be rewarded with a post in the Finnish cabinet.

O'BRIEN: I would like to be the inspector of saunas, mostly women's saunas. Occasionally male saunas if the man's good looking and in his late 20s.

MOOS: As for the photo-op photos, somehow the look-a-likes didn't look quite so alike. If only Conan had worn his glasses.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(WEATHER REPORT)

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