Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
Decoding Author Dan Brown; Cash for Class; Enron Whistleblower
Aired March 16, 2006 - 06:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Wildfires are threatening a half- dozen towns in Texas. People are being urged to get out.
Author Dan Brown admits part of "The Da Vinci Code" is reworked from another source.
And a new idea in education: paying kids to come to class?
Welcome back, everybody. Lots to get to this morning.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I guess that's good training for work. You get paid to come to work, right? Paid to go to class?
S. O'BRIEN: Don't you have to go to class?
M. O'BRIEN: I'm trying to -- no, I'm trying to justify it somehow, trying to figure out whether they can...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, that's not...
M. O'BRIEN: We will get into that in just a little bit.
But first, let's get some headlines in.
Carol Costello back down in the newsroom.
Hello, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, Miles.
Good morning to all of you.
The winds are the thing that are fueling flames as fires grow out of control on the Texas panhandle. The fires broke out Sunday and have since scorched nearly 900,000 acres. Six towns now on alert. Residents being asked to leave. The state's governor planning to tour the devastated areas later today.
Baghdad pretty much on lockdown as Iraq's parliament meets for the first time. The 275 members were sworn in during the session which lasted for about 30 minutes. They now face the task of choosing a new government.
Internet horrors. Authorities call it one of the sickest cases they have ever seen. Children were molested while video of the incidents were streamed live -- streamed live to computer users. Twenty-seven people now face charges. The Justice Department says those charged were participants in the online chat room. The youngest victim identified by authorities, 18 months old.
No big surprises from Enron whistleblower Sherron Watkins. She took the stand on Wednesday. Watkins says she warned founder Ken Lay about the accounting troubles that eventually brought down the company but that he chose to ignore her. The trial picks up again on Monday.
He's keeping the Oscar, but actor George Clooney is donating his so-called swag bag to charity. Good for him.
A spokeswoman for the United Way says the loot will be sold in an online auction to benefit hurricane recovery efforts. Among the must- haves in the back, a BlackBerry, a Tahitian pearl necklace. But the best part is the winning bidder will get a handwritten "thank you" note from Clooney himself.
I don't know if that would be the best part for me. I would like the necklace.
And speaking of hurricane leave, workers found what was left of a couple of Fat Domino's pianos. They were found -- they were found in his flooded-out New Orleans home in the Ninth Ward. The Louisiana State Museum is hoping to get its hands on one of the damaged baby grands to include in an exhibit about hurricanes.
Back to you, Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Glad he got them back, or will at least get some vestige of them.
Thank you, Carol.
Author Dan Brown says he is no copycat. He's been in a London courtroom this week denying claims that parts of his bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" were lifted from another work. That book's authors are suing his publisher for copyright infringement.
Correspondent Malika Kapur is in London.
Mallika, Brown says he kind of reworked passages from other books to write his novel. It seems as if that would undermine his case a little bit.
MALLIKA KAPUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It does seem like that, but all the experts we've checked in with, Miles, say that it actually doesn't undermine his case that much and that it won't damage him enormously, because what Dan Brown admitted in court yesterday is what we knew all along. It's what Dan Brown has admitted all along, that he did take an idea from another book, from "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail."
As for rewriting certain passages, though, he says, well, that's how authors who write fiction, people who write novels, that's what they do. In his words, he said, "That's how you incorporate research into a novel."
Now remember, the book "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail," when it was published back in 1982, it was published as a piece of nonfiction, which typically means that its content is up for public discussion. It could be taken as a historical fact, it's up for reinterpretation. So it's really not that surprising that somebody else, somebody else writing a piece of fiction, got inspired from that book and took an idea from it.
But as for actually copying from that book, copying word for word, experts say, you know, there really isn't any -- any evidence that he has copied words exactly from the other book. So really, legally speaking, it doesn't damage his case that much.
M. O'BRIEN: OK. So, to be clear then, the definition of plagiarism would be taking it word for word. Borrowing an idea, though, that's not plagiarism. Is that the way it would be interpreted under British law?
KAPUR: That's exactly what the lawyers we checked in with this morning say, that, you know, you can't really blame somebody for copying an idea.
First of all, this idea that is central in both books, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that they had a child, his bloodline continues still today, that wasn't an idea that's only been -- that you can only find in "The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail." That is an idea that is across in several books. It's a theory that's widely available.
So you can't really, you know, blame someone for copying an idea. In this case, you know, he hasn't copied -- he hasn't cut and pasted from another book. He hasn't copied elements word for word. So he could get off.
M. O'BRIEN: Mallika Kapur in London. Thank you very much -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Thirty-five minutes past the hour. Time for a check of the forecast.
Chad, good morning to you.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Soledad.
(WEATHER REPORT)
S. O'BRIEN: All right, Chad. Thank you very much for monitoring that for us.
M. O'BRIEN: All right. You know what they tell you in journalism school, a man bites dog is the thing, right?
S. O'BRIEN: That's a story. Dog bites man not a story, man bites dog a story.
M. O'BRIEN: There you go. Right. Thank you for bailing me out. I can't seem to get points out this morning. Anyway, so...
S. O'BRIEN: I hear you had quite a late night, but I'm...
M. O'BRIEN: Speaking of shorthand -- you're way ahead of me this morning.
How about this one: teacher bites student.
S. O'BRIEN: Really?
M. O'BRIEN: We'll find what might have set her off.
S. O'BRIEN: Wow.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: Then, if -- if that makes you want to go running from school, maybe cash or iPods, maybe even a free vacation could entice students to stay.
M. O'BRIEN: Then I would like to go to school.
S. O'BRIEN: I would love to re-enroll in high school again. This is literally what some schools are doing to try to keep up their attendance.
M. O'BRIEN: And a troubling story about Google. Andy Serwer "Minding Your Business."
We'll be back with more in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: Happening in America this morning, in Alabama, three suspects in the church fires that were set in Alabama, you'll recall that story, they'll find out today if they can go free on bond. They're charged with nine counts of setting fire to churches that burned earlier last month. Each count could mean five years in prison.
In California, police cannot explain why a man opened fire in a Denny's restaurant in Pismo Beach. He shot two handguns into a lunchtime crowd on Wednesday. Two people were killed. A husband and wife were wounded. The shooter took his own life.
In Alaska, the oil pipeline spill on the North Slope is costing the state $1 million a day in lost revenue. The state says it will be two weeks at least before some of the oil can flow again.
M. O'BRIEN: So, what do you think it would take to get your kid to never miss day of school? A Boston area school has an idea: cold, hard cash. It's an incentive that's spreading across the country, but the question we have this morning, is it a good idea and does it really work?
AMERICAN MORNING'S Dan Lothian with our story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): At Chelsea High School near Boston, it pays to go to school, quite literally.
MORTON ORLOV, PRINCIPAL: If you had a perfect year, you would have earned $125. We expect no cuts, no tardies.
LOTHIAN: It's pretty simple math: four quarters of perfect attendance equals $100. At the end of the year there's a $25 bonus. Multiplied by four years, and this is what you get with your diploma...
ORLOV: A great challenge, a great opportunity.
LOTHIAN: Principal Morton Orlov says this reward started in the fall is aimed at cutting absenteeism, a problem at the school for years.
ORLOV: It's another tool in the principal's limited toolkit on how to address positively attendance.
LOTHIAN (on camera): Can I see by a show of hands how many students here think it's a good idea to have this incentive program?
(voice over): In this media class, the program gets a lukewarm reception from students like senior Xavier Cabral. He's only missed one day of high school but isn't motivated by money.
XAVIER CABRAL, SENIOR: I feel that it's not a large enough reward to make the kids want to come to school.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They'll probably be like, oh, whatever, I don't care about the $25, I'm just going to go to school.
LOTHIAN: But the lone supporter in this class is convinced that money matters.
BRAULIO GONZALES, SOPHOMORE: There are some people in Chelsea that have trouble living and, you know, it's hard for them. So maybe some change will help them out a little bit.
LOTHIAN (on camera): It's not just happening here. Other schools across the country are also thinking outside the box in order to get more students inside the classroom every day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Congratulations.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.
(voice over): In Kentucky, Oldham High School (ph) senior Krystal Brooks gets the keys to a yellow Mustang for attendance and good grades.
KRYSTAL BROOKS, SENIRO: I about fainted. I was so nervous. My hands were shaking when I went up there. LOTHIAN: In Hartford, Connecticut, there are so many students with perfect attendance that a raffle at this event helps determine the winner of $10,000 reward. Other schools are give away iPods, DVD players, groceries, and a trip to Disneyland, all paid for by foundations, local businesses or school budgets.
But some educators and even students worry this practice sends the wrong message.
MANNY MUNGUIA, JUNIOR: It's giving the students a wrong reason to come to school. It's like telling them, oh, you're going to be paid $25 a quarter to come here. But still, that doesn't give them the academic reason to come to school.
LOTHIAN: While some schools have seen improvements, at Chelsea High the jury is still out.
ORLOV: Across my entire population you can make the argument that it hasn't had a universal positive affect.
LOTHIAN: But some educators seem willing to gamble on the rewards program, hoping the promise of cash pays off.
Dan Lothian, CNN, Chelsea, Massachusetts.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: All right. A pro or con on this one?
S. O'BRIEN: I've got to say, I'm against this one.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: You know, because I don't think it helps any of the kids who are legitimately sick. And I think there's something wrong. I mean, people -- I don't know.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, what about, you know, a kid who is sick who, you know, goes to school and really shouldn't be there spreading illness and...
S. O'BRIEN: But then you have all of these kids who really if they just showed up. And maybe they need to be incentivized to come in. I don't know.
M. O'BRIEN: I don't know. Maybe there's other ways to do that.
But iPods? I don't know about that.
Well, still to come this morning, we're continuing to talk about those Texas fires. Fears this morning the fires are going to spread into another state.
Also ahead this morning, Sherron Watkins living up to the hype. Find out what the star witness said at the Enron trial.
Those stories are ahead as we continue right here on AMERICAN MORNING.
We're back in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: And a beautiful day here in New York City.
M. O'BRIEN: That was the Empire State Building there.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes it is.
M. O'BRIEN: For the record. And a beautiful morning.
S. O'BRIEN: It is.
Let's get right to the headlines this morning. Carol's got that. She's in our newsroom.
Hey, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
Good morning to all of you.
Streets in Baghdad empty this morning. The capital under a curfew. It's set to last three more hours. The curfew is one of the security measures as Iraq's new parliament holds its first session. Lawmakers met for about a half hour this morning, just long enough to be sworn in.
The session comes as 25 more bodies have been found in Baghdad. At least 160 bodies have been found since Sunday.
A Dubai-based company giving Congress what it wanted. It's pulling out completely from the U.S. ports deal.
Dubai Ports World says it plans to sell all $700 million worth of operations to a U.S. company. There were some concerns DP World might try to control some operations. The deal is expected to be complete within six months.
A story from the "What was she thinking?" file. A Kentucky teacher facing a charge for allegedly biting a student who would not spit out a piece of candy.
Caroline Cole (ph) pleaded not guilty to fourth degree aggravated assault. Needless to say, she's been fired. The school said Cole (ph) had previously been warned to avoid physical confrontations with students, and biting was on the list.
Wayne Gretzky's wife Janet Jones will be called to testify in a case involving a betting ring. You remember this story. The gambling ring was allegedly run by Phoenix Coyotes' assistant -- by the Phoenix Coyotes' assistant coach.
Jones is believed to have placed some bets. The case is expected to go before a grand jury within weeks.
And it's payday at the Neverland Ranch. Michael Jackson will pay out more than $300,000 in back pay to workers at his California estate. He also faces other fees, though. State officials had threatened legal action to recoup the money, but the paychecks don't mean workers will be back at Neverland. Their insurance has lapsed.
Jackson's reps say they are working on it.
So Michael Jackson came through, Chad.
MYERS: Yes, he sure did. There you go. What a pretty place.
(WEATHER REPORT)
S. O'BRIEN: All right, Chad. Thank you very much.
Business news now. Let's talk about Sherron Watkins. She was on the stand. She says, you know, what she's been saying, she warned Ken Lay.
ANDY SERWER, EDITOR-AT-LARGE, "FORTUNE": Yes. She did. And I think what was going on there is -- are we going to talk to Chris Huntington about this?
S. O'BRIEN: Yes. Chris Huntington wraps up the trial for us this morning.
Let's get to that.
SERWER: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sherron Watkins lived up to the advance billing that she would be a star witness for the government. In testimony, she was calm, cool and collected, telling a story to the jury that she's told many times in public, that she sensed what she believed to be accounting fraud going on at the company and fired off an anonymous memo to Ken Lay warning that, indeed, Enron might implode in a wave of accounting scandals. In fact, she even read that memo aloud to the jury.
She followed up with the fact that she had met one-on-one with Lay not once but twice to hammer home the point that she believed the accounting for Enron's off-balance sheet transactions would never survive the light of day.
Under cross-examination, she also held firm. In fact, the defense appeared to stumble a bit in the early going of cross- examination, really not making much headway, until they honed in on the fact that Watkins had admitted that she sold some of her own stock before Enron's problems were public knowledge.
When pressed even further by defense attorney Chip Lewis (ph), Watkins was forced to admit that, yes, maybe, maybe she had committed insider trading. It was about the only hit that the defense scored, because, frankly, most observers in the court believe that Watkins had the jury's attention when she said at the end that Ken Lay was making misrepresentation abouts Enron's accounting.
The government says it has about half a dozen more witnesses to go and should finish with its case in the next couple of weeks. Defense maybe continuing on until mid-April, when the jury should get the case for deliberation.
Chris Huntington, CNN, Houston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: All right. I bet you could have guessed Andy is here.
SERWER: I'm here, yes. Her testimony -- Sherron Watkins' testimony left me speechless...
M. O'BRIEN: Speechless is the word, yes.
SERWER: ... as you could tell.
Interesting stuff from Chris there.
Coming up, business news.
The federal government wants to borrow more money. You won't believe how much it is.
Plus, news on the Internet. How do you tell fact from fiction?
Stay tuned for more AMERICAN MORNING coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: Here's a look at some of the stories we're working on, on AMERICAN MORNING this morning.
A new national security report says Iran is the biggest challenge to U.S. security.
Federal authorities charge more than two dozen people in an Internet child porn case.
The body of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic will soon be on display in Belgrade.
The body of a second person killed in a dam break found in Hawaii.
And wind-driven fires plaguing Texas. Residents being urged to evacuate six more towns for -- as 860,000 acres have burned now.
We'll have the latest on all of that.
S. O'BRIEN: Oh, the pictures there are just devastating.
Let's get to business news now. Capitol Hill, key vote today. Andy's got that as he minds your business.
Good morning. Not talking about Sherron Watkins.
SERWER: Good morning. That's OK.
Good morning to you.
The Senate is set to vote today, Soledad, on raising the amount of money the federal government can borrow. Currently, federal law sets that ceiling at $8.18 trillion -- trillion.
Here are the numbers. That's a lot of zeroes.
They're looking to raise it by $781 billion. So it's a little bit less than 10 percent.
This is a Republican measure. The Democrats are complaining, saying the Republicans have raised the ceiling repeatedly, as if they wouldn't if they had to.
Also, the Democrats want to study how much of the debt is held by foreigners, which has been increasing quite substantially over the past several years. So we'll be watching that.
It's just an amazing amount of money. It has to keep up with inflation. And if you're fighting a war, you could argue that you need that money. So...
M. O'BRIEN: Well, it's too bad we can't do that in our own personal finances. Just, you know, raise the ceiling.
SERWER: Get a printing press in your basement and...
M. O'BRIEN: That would help out.
(CROSSTALK)
S. O'BRIEN: I thought about that.
SERWER: Right.
M. O'BRIEN: It's a thought.
SERWER: Want to talk a little bit about Google this morning, Miles mentioned earlier.
Here's a new flash for you. Not everything on the Internet is true. And we're finding that out about Google News.
M. O'BRIEN: It isn't?
S. O'BRIEN: What?
SERWER: Yes, I'm shocked.
Google News is a news source that a lot of people count on, and it turns out that, well, they will put up press releases that it turns out pretty much say anything. A would-be presidential candidate, a gentleman named Daniel Imperto (ph) discovered that when he started putting his opinions up. Then the teenager claimed he had been hired by Google.
And finally, this is what really did it: a news story that said Will Ferrell had died. That was news to Will Ferrell. And he responded by putting up a notice on a Web site.
They said he died in a fake -- freak, excuse me, paragliding accident. And here you can see Will Ferrell says he's not dead.
S. O'BRIEN: It was such a bizarre article, too. I mean, it was full of mistakes. And it didn't even read like a news story. I mean, I saw that and I clicked on it.
M. O'BRIEN: Well, here's a dirty little secret about Google News: there's no human being in the loop. It's all done by computers.
SERWER: It's just -- yes.
M. O'BRIEN: And I think that is a problem. They might want to have an editor.
S. O'BRIEN: Editor.
M. O'BRIEN: Just a thought.
SERWER: Well, how about this: maybe the federal government should investigate that.
M. O'BRIEN: There you go.
SERWER: You know how they're trying to investigate Google.
M. O'BRIEN: And in about 10 years they'll decide whether to fine them.
All right. Thanks.
S. O'BRIEN: Andy, thanks.
SERWER: You're welcome.
M. O'BRIEN: As we approach the top of the hour, let's check the forecast.
(WEATHER REPORT)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
