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American Morning

Building Collapse; Troop Withdrawal Plan

Aired June 27, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Miles O'Brien.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Soledad O'Brien.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's get right to Clinton, Missouri, where they are still combing through the rubble of a 100-year-old building looking for two people who are still inside. It happened all at about 7:30 last night. About 50 people there for an Elks Club meeting. Most of them got out under their own steam. Ten were trapped, however, and mostly they were pulled to safety, slowly but surely, overnight.

Steve Cummings was on the second floor when it happen. He joins us on the line now from Clinton.

Steve, you were inside. You were on the second floor. Just described what happened as building came down.

STEVE CUMMINGS, ESCAPED COLLAPSE: Oh, I was at the rear end of the building and kind of was standing under a suspended ceiling, and part of that suspended ceiling started hitting me in the head, and I turned around and could see the middle of the building just go out from underneath everybody, just drop from the second floor down to the first floor.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. We're looking at live pictures right now, and what we're seeing, what appears to have happened here, armchair engineer here, is that the roof collapsed. Is that your understanding?

CUMMINGS: Either that or the side wall. From what we saw, looked like the side wall where most of us were sitting kind of bowed in and, you know, collapsed the second floor, and then the third floor came in, or the third floor roof came down on us.

M. O'BRIEN: So the wall first, then the roof.

Let me ask you this...

CUMMINGS: yes.

M. O'BRIEN: ... do you know, was there any sort of construction work underway either on has building or the building next door which might have undermined the foundation of the building?

CUMMINGS: No.

M. O'BRIEN: OK.

CUMMINGS: No, there wasn't any.

M. O'BRIEN: Did you hear anything before? Was there a creaking, any sort of noise?

CUMMINGS: Not really, no.

M. O'BRIEN: Just happened that sudden?

CUMMINGS: Almost silent, yes.

M. O'BRIEN: What happened then afterward? Was there -- what went through your mind? Was there any sort of panic inside?

CUMMINGS: No. It was almost eerie how silent it was. There wasn't any screaming, yelling. The people who were available to get out kind of moved. We got out in an adjacent building there to the east, and I happened to be standing near the rear of the building, and there was an exit to that building that I went out, and then four or five others climbed down the fire escape that was at the north end of that building.

M. O'BRIEN: Was this typical number of people there? There were about 50 people there for the Elks meeting. Was this -- that doesn't seem like an unusual number.

CUMMINGS: No, that's pretty average for us. I mean, we had -- happened to be an initiation night. We had four new members joining. So but that's about average of what we have in our lodge meetings, averages 40 to 50.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. And what is your understanding right how about who is still inside there and how they're doing?

CUMMINGS: They got -- everybody's out but one. He happened to be on the third floor at the time, getting ready for the meeting, which is our exalted ruler, or our president, is actually what he is, and that's the one that's still missing. We've got everybody else out.

M. O'BRIEN: So the president of the Elks Club is the one missing. Has anybody heard from him via cell phone or any other way of communicating?

CUMMINGS: No, no communication at all on him.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Steve. Just quickly, before we get away here, have had you a chance to just sort of process what you've been through there?

CUMMINGS: Have I had -- I couldn't hear you.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, just a sense, have had you a chance to reflect on what you've been through? CUMMINGS: I'd say not yet. I mean, it was -- we were getting ready for our 100-year celebration. We had kind of a deal last Thursday, kind of our first part of a week-long celebration, because we just turned 100 on June 22nd, happened to have about 140 people on the third floor just a few days ago, and what kind of goes through my mind now that we would have had probably 300 to 400 people up there on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So...

M. O'BRIEN: Wow.

CUMMINGS: ... including children and wives, and so I guess we can thank the Lord on that part that they weren't there.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Thank you, sir. And as you were speaking, we saw live pictures that says Cummings Clothing Store. That's your brother's store there. He, too, is OK.

CUMMINGS: Right.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you for being with us, Steve Cummings, and we wish you well there in Clinton, Missouri this morning -- Soledad.

CUMMINGS: Thanks.

S. O'BRIEN: President Bush may be called and today to explain his position on troop withdrawals. The White House is standing on a political balance beam, confirming that there is a withdrawal plan, but also insisting it depends on ground conditions.

Suzanne Malveaux live for us at the White House this morning.

Suzanne, good morning.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Well, as you know, Iraq really is the No. 1 issue for American voters. Republicans, Democrats, the White House, all very much aware of this. So as we get closer to the Congress' midterm elections, each one of those group is aggressively trying to shape this debate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Democrats charge that a plan under consideration by the U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, to possibly pull out as many as 10,000 U.S. troops as early as the fall, is politically motivated.

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: We don't need a September or October surprise, with the president and Republicans proclaiming victory and announcing troop redeployment just in time for the midterm elections.

MALVEAUX: The president categorically refuted the charge.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In terms of our troop presence there, that decision will be made by General Casey, as well as the sovereign government of Iraq, based upon conditions on the ground.

MALVEAUX: But Democrats are fuming over not one, but two bills that were shot down by Republicans last week which called for a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. Republicans painted the Democrats' proposal as a move to cut and run.

Both sides, nervous about the midterm elections, are trying to gain the upper hand in the Iraq debate, with Democrats now arguing their proposals are in line with the Pentagon's, and that it's Republican lawmakers who are out of step.

REID: It's clear that congressional Republicans stand alone in opposition to troop redeployments, apart from the American people.

MALVEAUX: But a look at the substance of both Democratic plans show the bill offered by Senators Jack Reed and Carl Levin, which calls for phased redeployment of troops by the end of 2006, is similar to General Casey's reported plan, which aims at pulling out two combat brigades by the end of the year.

But the White House says the Democratic plan was not sound.

TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: What Senator Levin did not mention is conditions on the ground. What Senator Levin wanted to do was to get out.

MALVEAUX: The other Democratic proposal by Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold is substantially different than the Pentagon's. It called for pulling out all U.S. troops by the summer of 2007. The Pentagon reportedly wants to phase out tens of thousand of troops by the end of next year, but it does not have a hard deadline for complete withdrawal.

STUART ROTHENBERG, "THE ROTHENBERG POLITICAL REPORT": The kind of withdrawals that we are talking about are really minimal. And the president probably can argue, reasonably, that circumstances on the ground are driving the decisions.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: But political analysts say possibly what is just as important, maybe even more important than withdrawing troop, really what is happening on the ground in Iraq? If there are more bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, that withdrawing some 10,000 troops by the end of this year may do little to improve the administration's standing -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House for us. Suzanne, thanks.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: A family fight over millions of dollars in the Boston area has prompted a strange tale of accusations, abuse, and even a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

AMERICAN MORNING's Dan Lothian explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's a former MIT professor, and Internet guru, a multimillionaire. So when John Donovan Sr. was shot and wounded in his company's parking lot, the attack grabbed headlines.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Makes you wonder, like, what actually happened and what was going on.

LOTHIAN: Initial reports seemed to indicate a sinister plot with international ties.

MARTHA COAKLEY, MIDDLESEX CO. D.A.: He said that he had -- there were two men, he did not know who they were, spoke in a foreign accent, probably Russian, who had shot at him.

LOTHIAN: Then a stunning revelation.

COAKLEY: He did indicate to police that he believed that his oldest son, James, was probably behind this attempt on his life.

LOTHIAN (on camera): Donovan has been in a long legal battle with his five adult children over the family fortune opinion, and one of the multimillionaire's daughters accused him of sexual abuse, which he denies. Wait until you hear from prosecutors say really happened in this parking lot outside his office.

(voice-over): They say Donovan, who wasn't seriously injured, tampered with a surveillance camera, then shot himself in the abdomen, implicated his son, and then staged a burglary at his mansion north of Boston, all to gain the upper and in a heated family feud over an estimated $180 million trust.

Even more troubling, court documents revealed there was a to-do list found in his coat pocket, allegedly detailing the steps to stage his own shooting. Like this entry, "eight shells -- four in front, four outside."

Donovan's attorney, who declined to be interviewed, on camera says his client firmly denies he was anything other than the victim of a vicious crime.

But the well-regarded businessman, who has started several successful companies, has been indicted and a misdemeanor count of filing a false police report, in a soap opera-style case where prosecutors allege he wrote the script.

Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: Now, Donovan face as maximum sentence of one year imprisonment if convicted -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: An update now on that collapsed building in Missouri we've been telling you about all morning. The assistant police chief in Clinton, Missouri has been telling our affiliates that they have now turned a rescue effort for one of the people trapped inside that building in into a recovery. They are saying that 32-year-old Clinton resident Tony Culmer (ph) has been located by the rescuers, and that he is dead, and that they are now going to try to recover his body. As we've been talking about all morning and talking to some of the survivors of that terrible building collapse in Clinton, 40 people were able to get out under their own steam. But another 10 were trapped inside, seven pulled out in the middle of the night, another couple this morning. And we are just beginning to get word on the very latest on some who are still trapped inside.

We continue to update the story. You're looking at live pictures this morning from Clinton, Missouri, where that building -- I mean, considering that no one seems to have any information about work being done or structural integrity of the building or that it was ever compromised, I mean looking at -- the roof just slid off essentially and it pancaked the third floor, the second floor, where the floor fell right through in to the clothing store that's on the bottom. You know, what a terrible story for such a small community. Only fewer than 10,000 people live there. Real, real tragedy this morning.

We've got a short break coming up. But also ahead this morning, we're talking a big health problem in New Orleans. You're going to meet one of the many residents who is suffering -- no surprise -- from depression. We'll see how she's trying to cope in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

M. O'BRIEN: Also we'll tell you more about that Iraq war vet we introduced you to actually about a month ago or so. He's a double amputee who is really taking it all in stride. Today, with the president, as his running buddy.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: When President Bush goes jogging this afternoon, he probably won't go very far, but the man who's running with him will have come a very long way. Staff Sergeant Christian Baggy's journey began a year ago in Iraq.

AMERICAN MORNING's Kelly Wallace first introduced us to this courageous soldier just a few months ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bring it up and hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it! Hold it! Down.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is a lot that 24-year-old Christian Bagge wants to do. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Attack that cone, attack that cone! Come on, push, push, push! Shuffle, shuffle, keep going, keep going, keep going.

STAFF SGT. CHRISTIAN BAGGE, U.S. ARMY: I want to run. I want to swim. I want to mountain bike. The biggest goal of all is just to do what I did before.

WALLACE: What he did before the attack in Iraq, before the humvee he was driving was blown apart by a roadside bomb...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Arms in. Hip steers, hip steers. There you go.

WALLACE: ...and his life forever changed.

BAGGE: I told one of the guys, tie my wedding ring around my wrist. And they did. And that was the last image I had in my mind was my wedding ring being tied around my wrist. And then I woke up in Germany with my amputated legs.

WALLACE: Before going off to war, Christian's passions included playing drums in a Christian rock band and a gal named Melissa. The two were good friends in high school, who fell in love about a week before he left for Iraq. They married while he was on leave, just three months before he became a double amputee.

MELISSA BAGGE, WIFE OF AMPUTEE: There have been times when I thought it was -- how am I going do it, but there's always someone there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dig in, last cone. Dig in, dig in.

WALLACE: And always someone who knows just what they are going through. The Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio is home to one of only two U.S. Army amputee care centers in the country.

C. BAGGE: It's kind of like a brotherhood in there. We all -- we're rooting for each other and pushing each other to do the best that they can.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Push, pull.

WALLACE: The pushing comes not just from peers, but from a team of physical therapists.

CAPT. JUSTIN LAFERRIER, U.S. ARMY: Some people come in and they say, wow, I would have never thought that I would be able to do that again. And they need to be pushed to be shown that it is possible.

WALLACE: Also available to amputees like Christian, state-of- the-art technology to create custom-made legs for any activity they choose.

Christian's immediate goal, to run with President Bush. When the president visited the center on New Year's Day, Christian asked if they could jog together some time. He says Mr. Bush said yes.

C. BAGGE: He said that I would be an inspiration to other people. And I think he's right. You know, hopefully, then I can be an inspiration.

WALLACE: His positive outlook doesn't mean there haven't been really hard times. In the beginning, he was angry and depressed. And every day, there are reminders of what life used to be like.

C. BAGGE: It takes me longer to shower, it takes me longer to getting my legs on, getting dressed. Putting pants on is a 20-minute process and I hate it.

WALLACE: But Christian and Melissa are adjusting, even thriving.

C. BAGGE: You learn a lot about true love, being away from your family. You learn the important things in life.

WALLACE: Charting a new life with new limbs and new friends who know what it's like to walk in their shoes.

Kelly Wallace, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Assuming the weather holds up, Christian Bagge and the president are going to head out to the White House track at about 3:30 p.m. this afternoon -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Next, Andy will be "Minding Your Business."

Hello, Andy.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Hello, Miles.

We'll tell you how video Web site U2 is all grown up.

Plus, Martha Stewart gets ready for her Kodak moment. We'll tell you about that coming up on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay tuned.

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