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American Morning
Leaker in Chief?; Immigration Battle; Moussaoui Trial; Avalanche Survivors
Aired April 07, 2006 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good Friday morning to you. I'm Miles O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Soledad O'Brien.
New allegations by Scooter Libby in the CIA leak case that reach all the way to the Oval Office.
And late-night negotiations may not be able to save a compromise on immigration reform. The impasse could seriously delay any action from Congress. We'll talk about that.
M. O'BRIEN: An unexpected spring break trip down the side of a mountain.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADAM THOMAS, SURVIVED AVALANCHE: All I remember is lying and my seatbelt holding me right here and bumping around.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
M. O'BRIEN: Boy, you've got to buckle up for safety, don't you? How this family managed to ride out a major avalanche in their SUV.
And this is the scene in Kansas as a series of tornadoes once again tore across the Midwest.
S. O'BRIEN: We begin this morning with the vice president's former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, who is saying in court papers that authorization to leak classified information on Iraq came from above, and he doesn't mean his former boss.
As CNN's Bill Schneider tells us, those documents are creating a big credibility problem for President Bush.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): In September 2003, President Bush made this pledge.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.
SCHNEIDER: At issue, who leaked the name of a CIA agent. In June 2004, President Bush had this exchange with a reporter.
QUESTION: Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?
BUSH: Yes. And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts.
SCHNEIDER: A year later, the president qualified that pledge.
BUSH: If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.
SCHNEIDER: A new standard, the leak would have to be a crime.
Now we learn that Scooter Libby testified that he was told by the vice president he had authorization from President Bush to leak classified information to a reporter. Libby testified that the vice president's legal counsel told him, "presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document." In other words, when the president authorizes it, the leak is not a crime.
Congressional critics were quick to pounce.
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: The president has said that he'd fire anyone who leaked this kind of information. But it now seems that he authorized leaks just like this in the first place. The American people deserve the truth.
SCHNEIDER: The issue is President Bush's political credibility. That's what got him elected.
Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: Public opinion of President Bush is already at a new low. The latest AP poll has his job approval down to 36 percent. That's down 11 points since his re-election. And with six months to go before midterm elections, 49 percent say they'd rather have Democrats controlling Congress, 33 percent say they prefer Republicans -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: Well after all the debate and demonstrations, immigration reform remains on hold this morning. What seemed like a promising compromise yesterday now looks like an impasse. And now any action by the Senate may have to wait at least a couple more weeks.
CNN's Dana Bash, more from Capitol Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): The state of the immigration bill in the Senate is now very much up in the air. Republicans and Democrats did come together on a broad bipartisan agreement, which was very hard to reach, over how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants. They put many of them on a path towards citizenship.
But whether or not that compromise will actually come for a vote now is a big question mark, because there is a procedural tug of war. Republicans who oppose that compromise want the opportunity to amend it. Democrats say, no. And now they're simply stuck.
Now later this morning there will be a test vote on the issue. But there is a very good chance that after a lot of negotiations and what had been back-slapping and handshaking over what they thought was a breakthrough, that senators could go home for a two-week recess without an accomplishment on immigration.
Dana bash, CNN, Capitol Hill.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: We can expect more heart-wrenching testimony when the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui resumes on Monday. In court on Thursday, the government began its final push for the death penalty with emotional accounts from 9/11 family members and New York's former mayor.
Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Prosecutors want jurors to hold Zacarias Moussaoui responsible for the horrors of 9/11 and decide that he should be executed.
And to remind the jury of exactly how horrible those attacks were, they showed dramatic videotape, like this, and made jurors relive the tragedy of people jumping to their deaths from the World Trade Center. They were shown pictures of body parts lying in the streets, blocking rescue crews. And they heard former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani describe the stench of burned flesh that permeated New York City for weeks.
Abraham Scott, who lost his wife on 9/11, has listened to most of the testimony.
ABRAHAM SCOTT, 9/11 FAMILY MEMBER: And we were all in tears when they were showing the excerpts of the planes hitting the twin towers, people jumping out of the towers trying to save their lives, people on fire. It was just horrific.
ARENA: For the most part, the jury remained stone-faced. But at least two members had to fight off tears during the day. The same panel of nine men and three women who decided that Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty will now decide whether he gets it.
Following Giuliani's testimony, jurors heard from the families and friends of some of the nearly 3,000 victims. New York Police Officer Jim Smith spoke about his wife, Moira, also an officer, who died helping evacuate people from the World Trade Center.
Breaking down, Smith said he now tells his little girl her mom was a hero.
Tony Tony Sensaviro (ph) told of his friend, firefighter Danny Suhr, who was killed when he was struck by a falling body. One expert consulted by Moussaoui's defense says it's going to be very difficult for the jury to focus on the legal facts.
DAVID BRUCK, VA. CAPITAL CASE CLEARINGHOUSE: Whether this jury or any jury composed of human beings is going to be in any shape to do that, after they have been subjected to the extravaganza of grief and agony that the government has carefully, over these last few years, planned and stage-managed, after shopping around for the most heartrending week of testimony it could possibly find, that's a very, very open question.
ARENA: In opening arguments, Moussaoui's defense team urged jurors to keep an open mind. They say their experts have diagnosed Moussaoui a paranoid schizophrenic, reason enough to spare him execution. Moussaoui was in the courtroom listening, laughing at times, at other times, seemingly bored with it all.
(on camera): After hearing testimony about people dying in the flames of the World Trade Center, as he was leaving the courtroom, Moussaoui started singing Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," except that he changed the words to "Burn in the USA."
Kelli Arena, CNN, Alexandria, Virginia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
S. O'BRIEN: The Moussaoui jury is also going to hear cockpit recordings from United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11.
You want to stay with CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security -- Miles.
M. O'BRIEN: They were driving down a mountain road, and in an instant, they were riding a wave of snow in their SUV. And we're happy to report when the snow settled, they were all there to tell their amazing tale.
Here is Jed Boal of our affiliate KSL in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JED BOAL, KSL-TV REPORTER (voice-over): Michael Thomas, his wife and five young kids skied in blizzard conditions all day. But it was the drive down the mountain the St. Louis family will never forget. They had picked up two alta (ph) workers thumbing a ride, and they headed down the ice-packed road.
MICHAEL THOMAS, FATHER: Driving down the road, next thing you knew, we're off the road and tumbling. And you just thought, my god, this must be an ambulance or an avalanche.
BOAL: Their large SUV went over the edge in the White Pine slide area halfway up the canyon. They landed hanging upside down in seatbelts. One of the teenaged workers kicked out a window. Thomas estimated they rolled 100 to 150 feet down the canyon.
A. THOMAS: All I remember is lying and my seatbelt holding me right here and bumping around.
BOAL: Amazingly, no one was hurt. The worst of it was the scrapes and bruises on 10-year-old Adam's face. His two younger brothers and two younger sisters are fine.
Rescue crews were amazed.
SGT. TODD GRIFFITHS, SALT LAKE CO. SHERIFF'S OFFICE: When we got to it, there was little kids climbing up out of the snow and all covered in snow. A little 3-year-old snowballs crawling out of there. So it's was pretty exciting to see that they were all OK.
BOAL: Little Cottonwood Canyon was closed all afternoon for avalanche control. It was reopened around 5:00 p.m., about an hour before the Thomas family drove down.
M. THOMAS: Just a little shooken up, but fabulous conditions. Happy to be alive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
M. O'BRIEN: That report from Jed Boal of our Salt Lake affiliate KSL.
Crews in Little Cottonwood Canyon hope to have the roads reopened a little later this morning -- Soledad.
S. O'BRIEN: Wow, what an amazing story, jeez.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes, it really is.
S. O'BRIEN: More weather news to tell you about. Western Kansas is now under a high wind warning. That's after a string of tornadoes and funnel clouds hit the southeast and north central parts of Kansas on Thursday. No serious injuries were reported. But this tornado you're looking at here in Hanover was recorded moving 50 miles an hour.
Chad, I've got to tell you, every time I see these you know funnel clouds, that's just amazing to me.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is.
S. O'BRIEN: What you know an incredibly clear picture. At 50 miles an hour, that's not -- is that particularly fast for a tornado, though?
MYERS: It's not too fast, but it's probably too fast to try to outrun...
S. O'BRIEN: Yes.
MYERS: ... on roads that don't go in the same direction. You know you want to try to drive 90 degrees away from the oncoming tornado. And they say if you're sitting there watching one and it's not turning left or right, it's coming right at you, so try to get out of the way or get inside.
And that's what these guys were doing yesterday. You can see the hail bouncing off the windshield here. Officially, 19 reports of tornadoes yesterday across parts of Kansas and Missouri.
Wow, that got really big there really quick.
(WEATHER REPORT)
Back to you guys.
S. O'BRIEN: All right, thank you, Chad.
M. O'BRIEN: Thanks, Chad.
Another twist in the saga of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, she now says she's sorry about that little curfuffle (ph) with Capitol police. Now there's another scuffle in her entourage to tell you about.
S. O'BRIEN: Also, an audience member at a speech gives President Bush a little piece of his mind. There's the guy right there. We're going to talk to him this morning, tell you what he said.
M. O'BRIEN: Plus, a verdict is expected this morning in the legal battle over "The Da Vinci Code." Who will get the legal Holy Grail? It's a page-turner and we're following the plot ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
M. O'BRIEN: Good morning, New York City.
S. O'BRIEN: We need better lighting there on the statue. All the other shots are very well lit.
M. O'BRIEN: Well we've got lighting guys here, let's start throwing some camera power on that thing, huh? A couple of k can handle that.
S. O'BRIEN: Absolutely.
M. O'BRIEN: All right.
S. O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.
M. O'BRIEN: They're scurrying out there right now. Quick.
S. O'BRIEN: Lots to get to this morning. Let's get right to Carol. She's got the top stories for us.
Hey, Carol.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I do.
And this is really rocking the political world. New developments in the CIA leak case that goes all the way to the top. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, testified that Cheney told him President Bush had authorized the leaks to counter criticism of the Iraq war. That's according to court papers filed by prosecutors.
Now there's nothing illegal about it, but the revelation is being seen as a political black eye for the White House. Remember when President Bush said he would not tolerate leaks? Well.
In the meantime, the president is getting a chance to swing at a hard ball. The president was confronted by a critic during an event in North Carolina. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HARRY TAYLOR, AUDIENCE MEMBER: You talk about freedom. I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to...
BUSH: Yes.
TAYLOR: ... try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If you're a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice...
BUSH: I'm not your favorite guy?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: Well the president did continue to listen to that audience member who said he was ashamed of U.S. policies. The president later went on to defend his eavesdropping program. That audience member is our guest later on AMERICAN MORNING.
She once called it an incident of racial profiling. In fact, she did that many times, but now she's saying she's sorry. Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney apologizing to fellow lawmakers for that Capitol Hill altercation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. CYNTHIA MCKINNEY (D), GEORGIA: I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all, and I regret its escalation, and I apologize.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COSTELLO: But the grand jury is still looking into possible criminal charges against McKinney. Her name is already linked to another scuffle, one of her men exchanged shoves with a reporter. The Capitol police are now looking into that.
ABC News Anchor Bob Woodruff is back at home. He's been moved to an outpatient facility in the New York City area. ABC has released new photos of Woodruff in his home. That's what you're looking at. He has been rarely seen since January when he was seriously injured while on assignment in Iraq. Woodruff says he has a long road ahead, but he's starting to feel more like himself.
It is official, Meredith Vieira will indeed replace Katie Couric on the "Today" show. Vieira made the announcement on "The View," the show she's co-hosted for the past nine years. She's expected to takeover the "Today" show this summer. Her pay, a reported $40 million over the next four years. Not exactly chump change.
The Texas panhandle hoping for some relief today. The latest round of wildfires destroyed 27,000 acres, forcing two towns to evacuate. Hundreds of people allowed to go back home last night, but many aren't unpacking just yet.
So, Chad, should they pack, should they not?
MYERS: Well the winds are going to be strong today, but not like that. The winds were gusting 60 miles per hour yesterday afternoon and so that's why it was so bad and why those fires were just jumping from county to county as the sparks flew.
(WEATHER REPORT)
S. O'BRIEN: All right, Chad, thank you.
MYERS: Sure.
S. O'BRIEN: Well retail sales, mortgage rates, consumer confidence, lots to cover this morning with Carrie Lee.
CARRIE LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is all on the plate.
S. O'BRIEN: Let's get it all in on Friday.
LEE: Yes, exactly, before the end of the week, right?
Well, first of all, retail sales for March came in. We did see gains, up 1.9 percent, but that's weaker than what Wall Street had been expecting and that marks the slowest growth rate sales year over year for retailers since November of 2004.
Why the slump? Well, some people are blaming high gas prices. Others are blaming cooler weather. And I really think that makes sense this time around. You know it was snowing in New York a few days ago. The last thing I want to do is go out and look for strappy sandals and things like that, so.
M. O'BRIEN: So blame it on the weather.
LEE: Blame it on the weather. Retailers often do it, but I do think in this time around it makes sense, also the late Easter. And some people are talking about the slowing economy, which is, of course, some say pushing interest rates higher, that means mortgage rates are also going up. Mortgage rates, right now, the 30-year fixed stands at 6.42 percent. That's the highest level since September of 2003. Now of course still historically low, but it is a point higher than last year.
One study says though despite all these factors, consumers still feeling pretty good about the economy, mainly because of jobs. We have weekly jobless claims, they keep coming down, first time unemployment filings. And we get the big jobs report for March at 8:30 Eastern this morning. We're expecting the unemployment rate to hold steady at 4.8 percent, 4.8, and we're expecting to add 190,000 jobs, so pretty robust on that front. Futures flat to slightly weak ahead of those numbers.
M. O'BRIEN: The economy is so resilient, this particular economy, in spite of a lot of bad news, it chugs along.
LEE: It really does. You know the housing market, a lot of people were predicting that to crash and burn, and that really hasn't happened. It's slowed a little bit but still pretty robust. And the jobs market has been good. I think those are the two probably most important things for consumers in this country.
M. O'BRIEN: I've been propping up the bubble myself.
S. O'BRIEN: I know.
LEE: Yes, there you go, right?
S. O'BRIEN: There's not a bubble. Everyone's talking about the bubble. There is no bubble.
M. O'BRIEN: No bubble.
S. O'BRIEN: Buy the house you're waiting on.
LEE: Yes, it's still pretty strong. Yes, real estate was the strongest sector in the first quarter.
M. O'BRIEN: Buy.
LEE: So, yes, so far so good.
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you, -- Carrie.
LEE: OK.
S. O'BRIEN: Thank you.
Ahead in our 8:00 Eastern hour, part three of our "A.M. Tax Guide." The executive editor of Forbes.com has some money-saving tips on how to make the best use of your refund.
Carrie, my guess is buying shoes is not going to be on his list of things...
M. O'BRIEN: Do you know what tip number one is?
LEE: You have to have a little fun.
S. O'BRIEN: What?
M. O'BRIEN: Don't have a refund.
S. O'BRIEN: That's true. Why give the government free money?
M. O'BRIEN: Exactly, to not have a refund.
S. O'BRIEN: Absolutely.
LEE: You mean just take that money and put it in to next year?
M. O'BRIEN: Make sure your withholding...
LEE: I see.
M. O'BRIEN: Make sure your withholding is such that you don't give a lot of money to the government.
LEE: Right. Yes.
M. O'BRIEN: I mean, you know, think about it, they're not paying you interest.
S. O'BRIEN: It's a loan, right. It's a loan.
LEE: It's true. Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: So we'll talk about that and much, much more ahead this morning.
First though, Carol with a look at what's coming up in "Morning Coffee."
Hello.
COSTELLO: Remember those schools we told you about that banned patriotic clothes and even the American flag? Well, we've got an update for you. It seems the government has gotten involved.
Plus, a two-ton cannon simply disappears and it looks like nerds are to blame. That's next in "Morning Coffee."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
S. O'BRIEN: What a beautiful shot.
M. O'BRIEN: Wow! That's Aerosmith kind of shot.
COSTELLO: That's like a gift, isn't it?
M. O'BRIEN: It is a gift. It's a gift.
COSTELLO: On a Friday, a Friday and a beautiful sunrise.
M. O'BRIEN: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Wow, that's -- exactly. Exactly.
M. O'BRIEN: (INAUDIBLE).
COSTELLO: It's time for "Morning Coffee."
You know it looks like students in Colorado can once again wear their star-spangled T-shirts and wave their American flags. The state's attorney general says schools cannot ban a reasonable display of the American flag.
Two schools did just that earlier this week banning what they called patriotic clothing and flags. The principal at one of those schools lifted the ban after the attorney general's statement. The other school is still on spring break.
But you remember they were having trouble because some students were wearing the colors of the Mexican flag and waving the Mexican flag, and then some students were waving the American flag in the faces, so the principal said enough of this, I'm banning all flags of any country anywhere. And the state's attorney general says you can't do that with the American flag.
M. O'BRIEN: It's a little lesson of the First Amendment that they all got, right?
COSTELLO: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: I knew that that was going to happen.
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: That had...
M. O'BRIEN: Yes.
S. O'BRIEN: ... the court is going to weigh in soon all written all over it.
COSTELLO: Yes. Well, there could be more trouble, though, so we'll keep you posted.
You can call it the battle of the nerds or the great Cal Tech cannon caper. Their rivals at MIT made off with a two-ton cannon. I don't know how they did that, but they made off with this two-ton cannon that was part of Cal Tech's commencement ceremony.
M. O'BRIEN: There was a pulley and a winch and a lever and then a helicopter.
S. O'BRIEN: OK, stop mocking people who went to MIT. It was actually very clever.
M. O'BRIEN: What did they do?
S. O'BRIEN: They used forged documents and they pretended to be a moving company and went in and took it and then put it with the real moving company and they hauled it out of there.
M. O'BRIEN: Nerds with chutzpah.
COSTELLO: That's right.
(CROSSTALK)
COSTELLO: Well if you look very closely at this cannon -- can we put it up again? Here it is. OK, you can see a big MIT class ring on the barrel of the cannon.
M. O'BRIEN: Really?
COSTELLO: Yes, as Soledad said,...
M. O'BRIEN: Yes. Yes.
COSTELLO: ... they, indeed, posed as movers and they had the thing trucked across the country. Cal Tech simply says you know it wants its cannon back. Give us our cannon back. It was likely -- it's likely the prank was done as part of preview weekend. That's when prospective students make their campus visits. So it wasn't even over sports or anything like that. It was just over...
S. O'BRIEN: No, MIT always has a history, they you know pull pranks and stuff like that.
(CROSSTALK)
COSTELLO: It's a very cute, nerdy thing to do...
M. O'BRIEN: And they'd better watch their -- what do they have at MIT that they -- they have -- they don't have -- they have some kind of thing there they always steal there, too.
COSTELLO: I don't know.
M. O'BRIEN: Whatever it is, they better watch it...
COSTELLO: Anyway.
M. O'BRIEN: ... under armed guard.
COSTELLO: Anyway, let's get to the "Playboy" story, shall we?
M. O'BRIEN: Yes. Yes.
COSTELLO: Because "Playboy" magazine...
M. O'BRIEN: Lets. COSTELLO: Well I don't know what you're going to say after this. "Playboy" magazine is trying something a little different. Its newest magazine hit the newsstands in Indonesia this morning. And there's one thing missing, and that would be nudity. That's right, no pictures of naked women inside. There are about 160 pages in the magazine, 18 pages have pictures of women who are fully clothed.
M. O'BRIEN: Well I just read it for the articles anyway, right?
COSTELLO: Look, she's baring a shoulder.
M. O'BRIEN: Right, guys?
COSTELLO: Anyway, one critic basically said it's still a pornographic magazine even without the nudity. A lot of people in Indonesia think that way. Protesters took the idea of this Indonesian "Playboy" pretty seriously, though some people admit that existing magazines there go quite a bit further than the new "Playboy," but they're underground magazines. They do not want "Playboy" in the country, but it's there. So we'll see if it sells. It's "Playboy's" kind of new tactic to selling magazines.
S. O'BRIEN: Fully clothed, that's a new tactic. We're going to clothe people and see how it goes.
COSTELLO: Well very strict in Indonesia.
S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I know, of course.
COSTELLO: Much stricter than here. And "Playboy" wants to make money because it's not making much money here with their magazine, so they decided, let's go to Indonesia.
S. O'BRIEN: We'll wait and see.
All right, Carol, thank you.
COSTELLO: Sure.
S. O'BRIEN: Speaking of risque magazines, "Desperate Housewives" star, Eva Longoria, just made her biggest cover ever. We're going to tell you about the new desert view in Nevada.
Plus a big day in "The Da Vinci Code" trial, the verdict is expected. Author Dan Brown, is he in for a big loss or a big win? We'll take you live to London just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
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