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American Morning

Huge Heist In England; Safe U.S. Harbors; Olympic Figure Skating; Discovery Ready For Launch

Aired February 23, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: You're watching AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody. And welcome back to you from a couple days of vacation. Nice to have you back.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It was good to have a little break and it's great to be back. I love it when your Monday is a Thursday.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: If every week could be that way . . .

S. O'BRIEN: It would be a short week.

M. O'BRIEN: It would be a wonderful thing.

S. O'BRIEN: Certainly would.

Ahead this morning, we're going to talk more about port security. We're going to hear from some of the folks who actually work at the ports. Some of them absolutely outraged about this new move that would hand over control of the ports to a Dubai-based company. We'll talk about that this morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. And we're going to talk to Senator Joseph Biden. We'll ask him if this is, you know, sort of corporate profiling, if you will. It's an interesting dilemma that the U.S. is posed with.

Also, the space shuttle Discovery, as it stands right now, is slated to launch in May. That is not an astronaut eye test. That is virtual reality. That's how they practice space walks. And there's the rest of the crew pretending that they're inside the space shuttle orbiter. The guy who is -- yes, there, folliclely challenged I was going to say, Mark Kelly, just to identify him, is the pilot who is going to be on board. I'm going to ask him about the danger of this mission coming up.

S. O'BRIEN: All right. Looking forward to that.

First, though, let's get a look at some of the top stories. Kelly's got that this morning from the newsroom.

Hey, Kel. KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello again.

We begin with a developing story out of Moscow. Rescue workers talking to survivors trapped under wreckage. The roof of a market building collapsed earlier today. More than 30 people were killed in that incident with dozens more injured. Officials say a buildup of snow may have caused the breakdown.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the Middle East today making a surprise stop in Beirut, Lebanon, earlier. She met with leaders working to support the country's political independence from Syria, and that visit comes more than a year after Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was working to limit Syrian influence, was assassinated.

President Bush is taking a look back at what went wrong in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. The White House will be releasing its report on the investigation into the disaster later this morning. That review includes recommendations for improving communications, as well as a call for the military to be more active in coordinating emergency relief efforts.

Public health advisers are suggesting a change for who should get a yearly flu shot. A federal panel is recommending all kids from six months to five years of age get a flu vaccine every year. The previous recommendation was for kids up to two years of age.

And the great mystery has been solved. That's right. Eight co- workers in Lincoln, Nebraska, are taking home a record $365 million Powerball jackpot. Each will get, oh, just a little bit of money, $15.5 million after taxes. And one of the winners said that was enough for him to take a very early retirement.

And, Soledad, I think the others are going to follow suit, don't you think?

S. O'BRIEN: That was the guy who had the sunglasses on . . .

WALLACE: Yes.

S. O'BRIEN: And said, I've been retired for four days now.

WALLACE: Exactly, and the crowd cracked up.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, they did.

All right, Kelly, thanks.

WALLACE: Sure.

S. O'BRIEN: Have you heard the story? It literally sounds like the plot of a movie. A security depot manager's family held hostage by a gang. They make him -- they force him, really, to let them into the facility. It's a real story. It happened in England. In Tonbridge. That's about 40 miles southeast of London. And the total take of this gang could reach $73 million. A massive heist. Let's get right to Jim Boulden. He's at the crime scene this morning.

Hey, Jim. Good morning.

Any idea? Any clues at this point?

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the police say that this must have been a well-organized gang. You have to remember, guns are illegal in this country, handguns, semiautomatics. They had to get those guns. They would have to have had cased the joint. They would have had to known a lot about this depot manager. They had to know where his family lives. So they would have been following him for days and days and days. And certainly the police think in order to actually pull this off, there had to have been inside information.

As you say, it could be as much as $73 million. That's cash. That's actually bills. Some 40 million pounds. We will hear in about an hour and a half from the Kent County Police exactly how much money. They've been trying to find out overnight how much was taken. And I have to tell you, Soledad, this happened about 35 hours ago. So this gang could be long gone.

S. O'BRIEN: Quick question for you, Jim, before I let you go. Did they leave any clues behind? I mean is it just a clean job or is there anything that the police is working with at this time?

BOULDEN: They say that it was a white van used and they're asking the public if they saw this specific white van. You can see this building behind me. This is the Securitas (ph) building where the money was being kept and there are CCTV cameras on here. They will certainly be looking at the video evidence. Of course, they will also be interviewing staff and they'll be seeing if anybody here might have had some information that would be vital -- vital clues to this. Of course, this is such a big haul and so sophisticated that -- and many times when this kind of robbery, this kind of heist takes place, it is a lot of times unsolved.

Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Gosh, with all that money involved, that would be incredible if that were the case.

Jim Boulden for us this morning. Hopefully we'll get an update when he gets an update from security officials there. Thanks.

Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: CNN "Security Watch" time.

President Bush on the defensive, battling a tax on that deal that would led an Arab controlled company manage six major U.S. seaports. Here's our Chief National Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Put this president in a port in the post 9/11 world and the result is something like this here in Philadelphia.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will use all our power to keep out the terrorists and the criminals so they can't hurt our citizens.

KING: The Port of Baltimore.

BUSH: We're strengthening the defenses at our most important and venerable locations.

KING: Union Pier, Charleston, South Carolina.

BUSH: We have a solemn duty to protect our homeland, including the seaports of America.

KING: How then did it come to this? The president at war with his party and at odds with public opinion, defending a deal to allow an Arab company to manage six major U.S. ports.

ERIC DEZENHALL, DEZENHALL RESOURCES: Americans often have a harder time with inconsistency than we do dishonesty

KING: As we now know, the White House says the president and other top officials didn't know about the deal until after it was approved by a government review panel lead by the Treasury Department. But Patrick Mulloy, an attorney who helped write the lay, says the president should have known.

PATRICK MULLOY, INTL. TRADE LAW EXPERT: The process was not followed as Congress laid it out in the law.

KING: The law calls for the president to weigh in and to report his findings to Congress if the initial review suggests the foreign investment could undermine national security.

MULLOY: Then senior people get involved and start debating the merits pros and cons.

KING: But Mr. Bush and his top aides were not involved in this deal to the astonishment of critics because the lower view lead by Treasury did not warn of a national security risk that warranted presidential attention. Only six months ago the investigative arm of Congress raised alarms on this very issue, suggesting Treasury is too biased in favor of foreign investments and, as a result, narrowly defines what constitutes a threat to national security and is reluctant to initiate investigations for possible presidential action.

MULLOY: And that's what happens when you don't follow the law, you short circuit it, then you get yourself into trouble.

KING: Looking to get out of political trouble, the administration plays down security worries. Says customs and the coastguard do the policing weather the port manager is based in Abudabi (ph), London or Nebraska, for that matter. That's a hard sell in Washington and among longshoreman at the Port of New Jersey. GLENN GOODWIN, LONGSHOREMAN: You know, for the last four years, we've been hearing about, you know, our president telling us that, you know, the Middle Easterners are the enemies, but yet and still now it's OK to go to the negotiation table with them. You know, I mean, it's ridiculous.

DEZENHALL: Spectacle overwhelms analysis. It doesn't pass the outrage factor and a lot of what crisis management is about is addressing outrage which is irrational, not factual.

KING: And in politics, as a two-term governor turned two-term president surely knows, first impressions and emotion often trump the facts.

John King, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: We invite to you stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, there are two potentially significant developments in the abortion debate. The first one to tell you about is in South Dakota. State senators passed a bill banning abortion except if it is necessary to save the mother's life. The bill is intended to prompt a national legal battle over Roe v. Wade. It now goes back to the state house.

Meanwhile, in Indiana, senators stripped down two bills that challenge abortion rights. The first measure would have required clinics to tell women that life begins at conception. That their fetus may feel pain during an abortion. The second would have mandated new building standards and could also force some of those clinics to close. A Republican lawmaker lead the challenge, saying that the bill did not address the reduction of unwanted pregnancies and also the bill did not encourage adoption.

We're going to follow that story, obviously, much more.

First, though, a check of the weather. Bonnie's got that. She's at the CNN Center.

Good morning again.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: TV viewers will have another choice on the dial. Just what we need, folks, another network. I'm not talking about the CW. It's another network.

S. O'BRIEN: We'll tell you about that.

Also, figure skater Sasha Cohen makes headlines at the Olympics this morning. Though those headlines are about her practice habits. We're going to tell you what happened there.

M. O'BRIEN: And later, astronauts gearing up for the first shuttle launch. The first one since last summer. They're still aiming for May, although we'll ask the pilot whether they're going to make that deadline. Might be more likely July. We'll see what Mark Kelly has to say. There he is. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: I think I have about 1,000 channels now. Why not 1,001, right?

Why do we need another network, Gerri Willis?

GERRI WILLIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We do need another network.

M. O'BRIEN: We need one.

WILLIS: At least News Corps thinks we need another network and I guess that's enough to start a new one called My Network TV.

M. O'BRIEN: What do they know.

WILLIS: We talked about this a little bit earlier. In the wake of the WB and UPN combing, Fox needs some programming for affiliates it has all over the country and in some of the country's biggest markets, so they're creating a network that will have all kinds of exciting and, are they new ideas? Let's see. One would be a reality TV show featuring aspiring models. That's never happened before. Here's some video.

M. O'BRIEN: I might watch that one.

WILLIS: Yes, I thought you might.

M. O'BRIEN: Anyway, press on. OK, that's reality, sort of.

WILLIS: That's reality or not reality really, I guess, depending on how you look at it. It's going to be called "Cat Walk." They're also going to have some soap operas, which sound like they're going to be fun, called "Desires and Secrets."

M. O'BRIEN: Mmm.

WILLIS: Uh-huh. And, you know, just a whole bevy of new programming coming for the Fox affiliates. But this stuff is going to launch September 5th. So they have precious little time to get it under way.

M. O'BRIEN: Wow, October 5th. They are getting right on it.

WILLIS: September 5th.

M. O'BRIEN: OH, September 5th.

What's the business model here? What's the thinking? What is the space that they're trying to occupy that isn't already occupied here?

WILLIS: Well, this is all programming for young adults and teens. As you know, they're replacing the WB and UPN which did shows like "Gilmore Girls," which is a big favorite in our household. But, again, this is who they're programming to and they're really going to lose some programming once the CW goes into play. So they're trying to find programing to replace it.

M. O'BRIEN: I see. So the combination of those two networks has created, they think, a little bit of a void. But the "Gilmore Girls," your important program . . .

WILLIS: It's going to be on CW.

M. O'BRIEN: It's OK. It's still . . .

WILLIS: It's going to be all right. So not to worry.

M. O'BRIEN: It will still mess (ph) up.

Gerri Willis, thanks for dropping by.

WILLIS: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: Our 30, 40, 50 health series is straight ahead. How much do you know about your health? We've got a quiz to test your health I.Q.

And the crew of the space shuttle Discovery getting ready for the first shuttle launch since last summer. We will talk to the -- there's the commander, Steve Lindsey, and we'll talk to his pilot, Mark Kelly, and we'll ask them about the dangers of the mission, what NASA has done to try to fix that persistent problem with falling foam. That's head on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Who will it be? Who will be the next ice princess or ice queen or whatever pun Miles comes up with after the women's free skate tonight?

M. O'BRIEN: That's a lot of pressure.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, yes, it is.

M. O'BRIEN: Got to come up with something now.

S. O'BRIEN: But you had a lot of time.

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

S. O'BRIEN: We're going to, of course, really, in all seriousness, whoever wins is just going to be happy to be known as the Olympic champion. Let's get right to Larry Smith. He's live in Torino this morning.

Hey, Larry, good morning.

You know, big questions about Sasha Cohen today because she didn't show up for practice on Wednesday. What's everybody reading into that?

LARRY SMITH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're understanding right now that she simply just may be feeling very confident about her performance tonight. But she did not practice but we're being told that she's fine and she will be 100 percent healthy to go out and try to win this gold medal tonight in the free skate program. Sasha Cohen, a first time U.S. national champion last month, just 21 years old. And she has a three one hundredths of a point lead over Russia's Irina Slutskaya. Now we asked former Olympic Gold Medalist Scott Hamilton, who's very familiar with the figure skating world, what he thinks we will see tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT HAMILTON, 1984 OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: For Sasha, it's being clean. She's going to have to skate a really clean, long program and perform it. Because the key to her marking is the program component marks, the artistic mark, because she does that like very few people in the history of this sport have done it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMITH: You know, it's a chance right now for USA to get back in the gold medal column. They have not done that since Shani Davis won 1,000 meter gold in the speed skates on Saturday night. It's one of five medals to be awarded today. And we'll see if Sasha Cohen, or maybe Kimmie Meissner or Emily Hughes, both of them are in the top seven as well, can come away with gold tonight.

Let's go back to you.

S. O'BRIEN: Routing for all of them, Larry. I really like all those young ladies.

All right. Thanks a lot. Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Routing for all of them.

S. O'BRIEN: I am.

M. O'BRIEN: All right.

S. O'BRIEN: You can do that.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, you -- yes, of course you can.

Let's talk about the space shuttle. NASA is still aiming for a May launch for the space shuttle Discovery. This would be the second flight since the loss of the space shuttle Columbia. And in many ways, more than a year after the first flight after Columbia, some of the same issues are at play. For example, what's going to happen with that falling foam off the external fuel tank of the space shuttle. Joining me from Houston is the pilot for the next space shuttle mission, Mark Kelly.

Mark, good to see you. Good morning.

How is the training going?

MARK KELLY, DISCOVERY PILOT: Miles -- good morning, Miles.

Training for our flight is going great. We've been doing it for a long time. Probably for a couple years now. We were planning to fly last summer and when that didn't happen, you know, we do a lot of currency training. And we're pretty much ready to go.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about being pretty much ready to go. Because last summer when Discovery flew, what happened was, was kind of -- well, it was a scary thing for a lot of people because, as we all recall, what brought down space shuttle Columbia was a piece of that foam on that external fuel tank hit the leading edge of the wing and, in the case of Discovery, another piece of foam came off.

Let me ask you this. What was that like inside NASA, inside the astronaut office, seeing that foam fall off again?

KELLY: You know, we always expect to lose some foam off the tank. I mean that's inherent in how the space shuttle was designed. What we don't expect is big pieces. And on Discovery last summer when a big chunk of the PAL ramp came off, you know, pretty much everybody was surprised that that happened.

We've done some more testing. We've figured out -- we think we've figured out the reason we lost that piece of foam. We've made some design changes and now we're going to go and test it again.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, let's talk about that. I've got a model here, of course, to give people a little sense of what this is all about. This is called the PAL ramp. There's a long kind of tube here that goes along the side of the external fuel tank. And there's a piece of foam that is kind of hand sprayed along there and that's where that piece came off. There basically -- the idea is to take the foam out of there completely and hope that that works just fine. There's still some testing to be done and there's a lot of concern as to whether all this can come together in time for a May launch.

What's your take on that, Mark? Do you think you can do it by May or is it more likely that next window, July, is going to be the launch?

KELLY: Well, actually, next week starts some wind tunnel testing where we're going to look at the tank and orbiter combination without the PAL ramp in a wind tunnel. They'll do some testing for a couple of weeks and then they've got to analyze the data. If all goes as planned with the wind tunnel testing and the data analysis, it looks pretty good for May.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk -- oh, finish up. Finish up. KELLY: No, go ahead.

M. O'BRIEN: No, because -- and if everything is in alignment, you go to May. Then the next opportunity, because you want to do daylight launches, would, in fact, be July. If another piece of foam falls off, what does that mean?

KELLY: Well, I think that means that we have another problem. Something that we don't quite understand now. The problematic foam on the external tank, however, you know we've removed most of it. So other than acreage foam, which tends not to fall off in big pieces, you know, I think we've got the problem pretty much licked here.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's hope that's the case.

Mark, let's talk big picture here for just a moment. The shuttle is slated for retirement 2010, end of 2010. That is just sort of etched in stone here. NASA wants to move on to fly back to the moon or maybe one day go to Mars. The question is, and a lot of people I think at home might be having this question, if the shuttle is so risky and old and creeky or whatever you want to call it, why not pull the plug now and just press on in these new ventures?

KELLY: Well, you know, I don't think the shuttle is creeky. You know, it is a little old, you know, for a spacecraft. But, you know, a space shuttle's a very capable vehicle. It's a little complicated. Our next spacecraft is going to be a little bit simpler in design. Hopefully a little bit safer.

But, you know, the space shuttle's been the workhorse of our space program for, you know, a good part of 20 years and, you know, we're pretty fond of it in the astronaut office. We have had a couple accidents. But, you know, flying people in space is a risky thing, presents a lot of challenges. We're excited about moving on to something else, but we're also going to be a little bit sad about seeing the retirement of the space shuttle.

M. O'BRIEN: Mark Kelly, who is the pilot of the shuttle Discovery. Happy birthday by the way, a couple days ago, had his 42nd birthday.

KELLY: Thanks, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes. And we wish you well in the mission and the training that lies ahead and we'll see you soon.

You know, he's got a twin brother who's an astronaut too.

S. O'BRIEN: Really? Identical or fraternal?

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, identical twins.

S. O'BRIEN: Really?

M. O'BRIEN: Had the same birthday, then, see, as you would gather. S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I know that.

M. O'BRIEN: You know a little something about these things.

S. O'BRIEN: I know a little something about twins, yes.

M. O'BRIEN: And, yes, it's interesting. The interesting parallel careers here.

S. O'BRIEN: That is interesting. Interesting interview too.

Ahead this morning, we're taking a look at our top stories. That roof collapse in Moscow has killed at least 33 people. Numbers expected to rise there.

Also, the deadly protests are spreading in Iraq after that explosion at a sacred mosque.

The White House is releasing its Katrina report. Senator Joe Biden is going to talk to us about the controversial port deal.

And Condoleezza Rice makes a surprise visit to Lebanon. We'll tell you why.

Plus, British police are investigating what could be a $43 million heist or much more.

All those stories are straight ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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