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American Morning
Marine Massacre?; Raid Investigation; Fighting Back; Marriage Crunch?
Aired May 31, 2006 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The New York City skyline and then a very nice shot. What was that? A cruise ship? I can't see that. Do we know what that was?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I think it was the Intrepid. Was that the Intrepid?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: No, that wasn't the Intrepid this morning. One of the cruise . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: No, it's a flat top. That's a natural, real flat top.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, that's a flat top.
MILES O'BRIEN: I don't know if that's the Intrepid. I think it might be.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's Fleet Week.
MILES O'BRIEN: It's Fleet Week. It's one of these ships in Fleet Week. We'll try to get you the name of the vessel.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: I spent a lot of time on the Intrepid. It's not the Intrepid.
MILES O'BRIEN: No, it's not because it's more chockerblocked (ph) with airplanes, isn't it?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes. Yes.
MILES O'BRIEN: And they wouldn't have their radar spinning there, which they do.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: No. I'm sorry I raised that question.
MILES O'BRIEN: Do we know? Does anybody know?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We're going to find out for you. Good morning and welcome, everybody.
MILES O'BRIEN: So embarrassed.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So sorry.
MILES O'BRIEN: A beautiful vessel though. SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It is a beautiful day, too. Welcome. I'm Soledad O'Brien.
MILES O'BRIEN: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Glad to have you with us.
A widening investigation into that alleged Marine massacre in Haditha, Iraq. Iraq's prime minister now promising his own investigation into what happened when two dozen civilians were shot there last November. Nuri al-Maliki says the Marine killings were not justified. He says U.S. troops need to show more care. Meanwhile the White House says it will publish results of the Pentagon investigation into all of this. CNN's Ryan Chilcote live now from Baghdad with more.
Ryan.
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, we've all seen those pictures of the bodies at the morgue in Haditha. The question is, how did they get there? In order to try to answer that question, we sent a camera back to Haditha to talk to survivors. I will warn you, some of the images you're about to see you may find disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHILCOTE, (voice over): The story begins here where a roadside bomb struck a Humvee carrying American Marines killing one of them. It was 7:30 in the morning. Twelve-year-old Safa Unis (ph) was getting ready for school. She says she was the only survivor in her house, eight relatives killed.
SAFA UNIS, (through translator): A bomb exploded on the street outside. We heard the sound of the explosion and we heard shouting. We were inside the house when U.S. forces broke through the door. They killed my father in the kitchen. The American forces entered the house and started shooting with their guns. They killed my mother and my sister, Noor (ph). They killed her when they shot her in the head. She was only 15 years old. My other sister was shot with seven bulllets in the head. She was only 10 years old. And my brother, Mohamed (ph), was hiding under the bed when the U.S. military hit him with the butt of a gun and they started shooting him under the bed. The U.S. military then shot me and I was showered in blood. We couldn't leave the house because the U.S. military surrounded the area with a large number of soldiers.
CHILCOTE: Safa's cousins eight-year-old Abdul Rahman Walid (ph) and nine-year-old Aman Walid (ph), were next door in the first house entered by the Marines. They say seven were killed in this house.
AMAN WALID, (through translator): They entered the house. They burned the room and my father was inside the room. Then they attacked my grandmother and my grandfather and they threw a bomb. Me and my brother, Abdul Rahman, were injured. I saw how they killed my mother Asthma (ph).
CHILCOTE: Aman is initially poised. She has clearly told the story many times. She needs no questions to prompt her. WALID: My grandmother, she decided to open the kitchen door. Before she opened it, she said, maybe they will break it otherwise. I wish she hadn't.
CHILCOTE: Aman's brother, Abdual Rahman, doesn't say much. The interviewer asks him to show his wounds. Off camera, a voice in the room is heard asking, he didn't have a weapon. What danger did he pose? All three children were wounded. Aman and Abdual Rahman were treated at a U.S. hospital in Baghdad. Safa Unis says she wants tough justice for those who killed her family.
UNIS: I want them to be tortured and killed and I want them to leave our country.
CHILCOTE: The people in these houses were not the only ones to have been killed. Others died in this house, too. But the survivors here did not want to talk.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHILCOTE: Miles, we've also heard from several other individuals in Haditha. From a member of the city council there, from a doctor, from a lawyer, who all provide accounts that are strikingly similar to the accounts we heard from the children.
Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: Ryan Chilcote in Baghdad, thank you.
Soledad.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It is heating up in Washington, D.C. and we're not talking about the weather. House leaders are clashing with the Justice Department. They're fighting over the FBI's raid on Congressman William Jefferson's office. AMERICAN MORNING's Bob Franken in Washington.
Good morning, Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
And as if we needed it, we have further proof of that idiom of D.C. physics, Washington abhors a vacuum.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRANKEN, (voice over): What do you do when the nation's capital is nearly empty and the media are desperate for news? You hold a hearing with anybody who's left, that's what. The issue doesn't even need to be sexy. Rehashing debate over the FBI's recent nighttime raid on Congressman William Jefferson's office certainly is not sexy. But no matter.
PROF. JONATHAN TURLEY, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: To put it bluntly, the president did not prove to be a good constitutional neighbor. FRANKEN: It was definitely not a good day in the neighborhood office of a congressman accused of accepting kickbacks. He's denied the allegations.
PROF. CHARLES TIEFER, UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE LAW SCHOOL: Now this raid had all the elements of unconstitutional executive intimidation.
FRANKEN: Intimidation. That's what the Constitution's authors were concerned about. They were mindful of the raid King Charles I ordered on parliament in 1642 that started the British civil wars. Nothing quite so severe seems to be in the works this time around.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The intelligence activities I authorized are lawful.
FRANKEN: But many critics charge this Congress has been intimidated by President Bush for years.
PROF CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, (D) MARYLAND: There are many other areas where this executive branch has exerted their authority and I think overstepped their bounds.
FRANKEN: Many in Congress complain, for instance, the administration never bothered with adequate consultation over national security matters like the Dubai ports deal and electronic surveillance.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The house will be in order.
FRANKEN: Of course, the power struggle between the two branches is nothing new. President Clinton was impeached for his activities with Monica Lewinsky. President Johnson was accused of deceiving Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that led to a massive commitment to the Vietnam War. Fast forward to 2006 and the FBI raid on a congressman's office.
TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Nobody called up and said this is going to happen. The White House was informed after the process had begun.
REP. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, (R) HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN: I want to have Attorney General Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller up here to tell us how they reached the conclusion that they did.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FRANKEN: In a court filing, the Justice Department insists that it acted with abundant caution. That's a quote. And, of course, there are many in Congress, Soledad, who believe that the caution was not abundant enough.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Yes, I think that's the case. But at the end of the day you end up with a Republican Congress fighting with a Republican president and that could spell out big trouble for the next two years, certainly. FRANKEN: Well, it's interesting because, yes, it is Republicans taking on Republicans seemingly. But these same Republicans have been bedeviled by corruption charges. And each time they raise this issue, they talk about the alleged corruption of a Democrat, William Jefferson.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, what a tangled web. Bob Franken for us this morning. Thanks, Bob.
Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN: Here's a story you see only in the movies, right? Five people attack one guy and the one guy wins. Meet Thomas Autry. He is a real life action hero. Rusty Dornin has his story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): 6'6" and former Marine, not many people mess with Thomas Autry. Soft spoken but street wise, Autry was walking home from work late Monday night in the street lined Atlanta neighborhood. He heard a car rev its engine. He figured it was the cops coming to tell him, a black man, to get out of the neighborhood.
You hear this car. Something's not right.
THOMAS AUTRY, ATTACK SURVIVOR: Something's not right. I'm turning around to see if it's a police officer.
DORNIN: Right. How far away are they from you at this point?
AUTRY: They're about -- the back door is right here.
DORNIN: And they jump out?
AUTRY: They jump out and one of them had a weapon of some sort. I don't know what it was. But at the time, I seen them running toward me. And I was in a spot like this, because I don't never walk on the sidewalk because it's too blind. Because there's a dark spot.
DORNIN: Right. You start running, though?
AUTRY: I start running. And the only reason why I was running was to get to a spot that's well lit.
DORNIN: Pursued by four or five would be robbers, he aimed for a house like this, one where there was plenty of light, all the while screaming fire. Then he turned and made his stand just like the Marines taught him.
AUTRY: I'm just trying to assess if I got to run again or just fire (ph). Because I'm still yelling fire while this is all going on.
DORNIN: Right.
AUTRY: And this young lady comes out and starts throwing punches at me.
DORNIN: That lady was 17-year-old Amy Martin (ph). Autry says one of the gang pulled a gun but it seemed to jam.
AUTRY: And he was gesturing like it is a gun. And he raised it up toward me. And they both split out of the way. So when he was trying to raise it up, I kicked the gun. The only thing I can think of is he's trying to kill me with this gun. So, I brought out my -- brought out the blade of a knife.
DORNIN: A knife he pulled out of his backpack. Autry claims the young woman kept hitting him.
AUTRY: I remember hitting her and that was -- it was more of a punch because at this time I'm trying to get everybody off of me.
DORNIN: Autry stabbed the young woman and killed her. Nineteen- year-old Christopher Daniel (ph) also received stab wounds.
You hear some people call you a hero?
AUTRY: Yes.
DORNIN: But that little girl died.
AUTRY: No way, shape, or form am I a hero. In no way, shape or form am I a hero. At the most, I'm just a victim of circumstance.
DORNIN: Autry's only injuries, a cut hand from the blade of his own knife. Police say Daniel and three juveniles allegedly involved in the attack have been charged with robbery and aggravated assault. As for Autry, you have not been charged with anything?
AUTRY: I have been charged with something. I've been charged for the rest of my life with this. Whether I'm charged for murder or internally know that another human being has left this earth because of me, that hurts.
I love you (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you, too.
DORNIN: Autry and his girlfriend, Suzett (ph), are planning to marry. He's a man planning to get on with his life. But one who says his heart will always be heavy for the life he took to save his own.
Rusty Dornin, CNN, Atlanta, Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MILES O'BRIEN: Wow. Good for him.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Quite a story. Yes, I guess. Sad, though, that, you know, I mean he's right, he saved his life but killed a teenager. You can see he's still dealing with that.
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, exactly.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Always will probably.
MILES O'BRIEN: Let's get a check of the weather. Before we go, we did figure out the vessel that we saw.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, what was it?
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Oh, yes, what was it?
MILES O'BRIEN: It's an amphibious assault ship that is number three, meaning it is the Kersarg (ph). The Kersarg. Which is sort of like a mini aircraft carrier. Marine expeditionary units are carried aboard these vessels. Lots of helicopters. Not fixed wing aircraft. So smaller aircraft carrier. It's 840 feet long, 1,100 people aboard. All of them now enjoying New York City.
MYERS: So is it still Fleet Week?
MILES O'BRIEN: It is still Fleet Week.
MYERS: I thought last week was Fleet Week?
MILES O'BRIEN: Well, you know.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Last week was Fleet Week. But it's, you know . . .
MYERS: So this is just fleet month?
MILES O'BRIEN: This is fleet hangover week.
MYERS: I've got so many e-mails . .
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Fleet year if you live on the west side.
MYERS: There you go. Yes, so many e-mails last week about, oh there's so many of these -- there's so many planes flying around New York. What's going on? Well, that's what it was. It was just Fleet Week air show or kind of flying around. Just kind of some aerobatic maneuvers by some of these planes and people not used to it, seeing them around New York City like that.
(WEATHER REPORT)
MILES O'BRIEN: Today is General Michael Hayden's first full day as CIA chief. So what's the biggest challenge ahead of him? Well, we'll ask the real-life inspiration for that George Clooney character in "Syriana" what he thinks.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We're also going to talk to actor Matt Damon. He'll tell us what he's doing to fight AIDS in Africa. Some really charming video from the trip he took.
MILES O'BRIEN: And next, if you're in your 30s or older, is it too late to find a husband or a wife? A look at the so-called marriage crunch. Ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, what appropriate music there. Do you remember the "Newsweek" cover story that sent shutters down the spines of single women everywhere? Remember it said a women's chances of marriage dropped significantly after the age of 30. Well now, 20 years after that infamous article, "Newsweek" is changing its tune and tweaking the numbers, too. AMERICAN MORNING's Alina Cho joins us with more on this story.
Remember that, of course, the big phase was you're more likely to be killed by a terrorist.
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that actually was a joke and we'll get more into that a bit later, Soledad. But you know the news at the time was startling. "Newsweek" magazine, citing a Harvard and Yale study, said a single woman age 30 had only a 20 percent chance of getting married. By 35, the chances dropped to just 5 percent.
Now those statistics were enough to send a whole generation of women into a tail spin. That was then. Twenty years later, we tracked down two of the women interviewed for the original article and you may be surprised at what we found.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHO, (voice over): The year was 1986. "Top Gun" was the most popular movie. "Higher Love" record of the year. And this headline captured the attention of women all over the country. College educated women who failed to marry in their 20s had only a slim chance of ever tying the knot. The article's most infamous line has even appeared in movies.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE, ACTOR: You know it's easier to be killed by a terrorist than it is to get married over the age of 40.
MEG RYAN, ACTRESS: That is not true. That statistic is not true.
ROSIE O'DONNELL, ACTRESS: That's right. It's not true. But it feels true.
CHO: Sally Jackson was 39 when "Newsweek" first interviewed her.
SALLY JACKSON, HAPPILY MARRIED: Because I was in the story, a lot of women came to me and acted as if I were the author of the study. And they said, oh how can this be? How can this be? And I said, it probably isn't accurate.
CHO: Unlike many other women, Jackson wasn't worried. She wasn't anxious to have kids. She had a successful P.R. business and plenty of friends. Including Paul Nakes (ph), a man she met on a blind date.
PAUL NAKES, SALLY JACKSON'S HUSBAND: I was quite taken and she was not.
JACKSON: Not my type.
CHO: The two were married in 1994. She was 47. She's now 59 and married for 12 years.
JACKSON: It's great. But it's great at the right time with the right person. The institution in itself isn't great. A relationship is great. And I would never compromise on a great relationship.
CHO: The latest research shows 90 percent of baby boomers will eventually walk down the aisle, a far cry from the 1986 statistics which stated a single woman of 35 had just a 5 percent chance of getting married. But not everyone wants to be a wife. Nancy Rigg is 56 and happily single.
NANCY RIGG, HAPPILY SINGLE: My life has been fulfilled without children. My life has been fulfilled without a husband.
CHO: Rigg was 29 when she lost her fiance is a flash flood. She has dedicated her life to water rescue programs, spends a lot of time with her dog, and rarely thinks about the benefits of marriage. Except recently when she moved into her new house.
RIGG: It's times like that, I mean, the very practical times that you think, oh my goodness, I really could use a couple of strapping young sons to come and help and not to mention a husband with a good back.
CHO: Salary Jackson and Paul Nakes say finding love later in life can be a blessing.
JACKSON: People who wish away their lives because they're not married are cheating themselves.
NAKES: Yes, don't worry about it. It will either happen or it won't. And there really isn't a whole lot you can do about it.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO: They are right.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Good advice.
CHO: Now keep in mind -- that's right, good advice. Keep in mind, much has changed since the "Newsweek" article first came out in 1986. There have been significant advances in fertility treatment. There's online dating, of course. And these days so many women go to college that that no longer is a roadblock to marriage either. And, by the way, the median age for a first marriage is 25 for women, 27 for men. That's the median age. And, Soledad, that is higher than it's ever been.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That married couple, they didn't sound like the kind of people who have any regrets. But I'm curious to know, since they got married she was 47 . . . CHO: And he was 50.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And he was 50.
CHO: Right.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So sort of outside the range for many people for having kids. Do they have regrets? You know, they find the right person, right time. If it happened 20 years earlier, maybe they would be the parents of four or five or . . .
CHO: That's right. And I asked them that. I said listen, you found love. What about children? Do you have regrets about that? And they said, listen, if we would have met 20 years ago, 30 years ago, maybe 30 years ago, it probably would have happened. But it's not something they think about. And, you know, this is a couple that is really in love and you really can sense that when you're with them.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Interesting. I remember that study so well. Don't you remember that study when it came out?
CHO: Oh, I think everybody does. And that terrorist line, by the way, we spoke about earlier.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: We all thought it was true.
CHO: That's right, everybody thought it was true. And "Newsweek" even admits now this article probably would not have been this popular were it not for that line. It happened to be a joke. I mean what happened was a writer sort of scribbled it down on an internal memo and it became part of the article. It was never meant to be a serious statement, but people took it as such though.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right. Right. They thought it was a joke and it didn't read that way with many. To many of us didn't read it that way.
CHO: No, it didn't.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Alina, thanks.
CHO: Sure.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business" up next.
Hey, Andy.
ANDY SERWER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Soledad.
Exxon reports to its shareholders today in Dallas. Most are delighted but some are peeved.
Plus, what's a fair price for a barrel of oil? According to Venezuelan strong man Hugo Chavez? We'll tell you about that coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MILES O'BRIEN: Exxon shareholders meeting in Dallas. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at that one.
Andy Serwer.
SERWER: Hello, you guys.
Well, you have to remember, first of all, that most shareholders at Exxon Mobil's annual meeting today in Dallas are going to be delighted. After all, these are the best of times for the world's largest oil company. In fact, the world's largest company. $8.4 billion of profits in the first quarter. So that would make most people happy.
Rex Tillerson's the new CEO, taking over from Lee Raymond, who, of course, was an oil hawk. There's Rex Tillerson. And he promises to be a little bit more conciliatory than Lee Raymond, who didn't like environmentalists, didn't like, you know, conservationists, didn't care about consumers, particularly. But . . .
MILES O'BRIEN: Other than that, a great guy.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: They made a lot of money.
SERWER: Other than that, he was fun. They made a lot of money.
Now the state of New York, the state of North Carolina retirement funds plan to withhold votes for these directors. They're concerned about the high compensation that went to Mr. Raymond. Also, environmentalists are going to be agitating, as well as perhaps feminists Martha Burke (ph) who's been concerned about things going on there as well.
Now other oil news. Hugo Chavez, the head of Venezuela, is going to be hosting -- there he is. He's going to be hosting the meeting of OPEC in his country later this week. An interesting point. He comes out and says that a fair price for a barrel of oil is $60. And this is interesting because he's usually a price hawk. And you'd think that he would say it would be $70, $75, $80.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: $90.
SERWER: He's being somewhat conciliatory there himself. So maybe some good news for us coming up.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: So what does that have to do with -- I mean does that mean that then the price drops? That everyone says, oh, you know . . .
SERWER: Well, he was saying that they should cut production and keep prices up. So maybe he will change his mind and say they shouldn't cut production.
MILES O'BRIEN: Aren't they pretty maxed out on production anyway? SERWER: Yes. Well, but cutting it would make things worse.
MILES O'BRIEN: Oh, I know that. But . . .
SERWER: So, right, he could make things better is what you're saying.
MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Right.
MILES O'BRIEN: How would you get to 60 is the point?
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: He's just making it up.
MILES O'BRIEN: Just doing that supply/demand thing.
SERWER: Talking.
MILES O'BRIEN: Talking. All right. Thank you, Andy.
SERWER: That's what he's doing.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thanks, Andy.
SERWER: Thank you.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Coming up in just a moment, a look at our top stories. That's ahead. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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