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American Morning

Politics of Withdrawal; Abu Ghraib Release; Buffett's Big Giveaway

Aired June 27, 2006 - 09:00   ET

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

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

A fatal finish to that rescue effort at a collapsed building in Missouri. One person is dead in the collapse in Clinton, about 80 miles southeast of Kansas City. Rescuers did free nine who were trapped in the rubble.

It all began last night. Fifty or so gathered for an Elks Club meeting. The 100-year-old building buckled and gave way.

This is how it was described by one of the men rescued from the rubble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON EATON, PULLED OUT OF BUILDING COLLAPSE: We're on the second floor in the dining room and we're all eating, and I'm sitting with my back basically to the -- well, the west wall. And all of a sudden there was a loud noise, and I turned to see what it was, and the floor had disappeared.

And so as I turned back around, before I had a chance to move, the floor underneath me caved in, and myself and nine other members of the Elks Lodge dropped with the floor down halfway between the first floor and the second floor, with the third floor and the roof caving in on top of us. It all happened so fast, but yet it seemed like everything was moving in slow motion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: The man killed in the collapse had just gone up to the top floor -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, such a sad story there.

Cleanup crews are still pumping water out of Washington, D.C., this morning. Flooding has crippled the city. Yesterday the roads and the rails were under water. People couldn't even get to work.

Most government offices are expected to reopen today. The National Archives, though, is going to remain closed.

Further north, in Albany, New York, there are now rivers in place of roads. Take a look at some of the pictures. Hundreds of basements flooded. No word, though, this morning about any evacuations.

Let's get right to the forecast and Chad.

Chad, where do you want to start?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I want to start in Pittsburgh, because I'm concerned about the city now, McKeesport and over to Dukane. Very heavy rainfall in Pittsburgh at this time, and it extends all the way down into West Virginia.

So, Pittsburgh, you have hours of this rainfall in store for you.

Here's a picture from Pittsburgh. You can kind of see Point State Park there barely in the foreground and downtown in the background. And it's going to be a very rough day for people in Pittsburgh.

Showed you a lot of flooding in D.C., but Pittsburgh is more of a hilly area. The water running down into the valleys and through the streams and then out through the -- through the rivers there.

So be careful if you live in Pittsburgh. Waters will be rising today as that rain, that train of water runs all the way down here, all the way down into North Carolina. Look how it's just streaming right up into Pittsburgh now.

So you're in it. You're in it to win it today. Be careful out there.

We do have quite a few airport delays that are going to be with us most of the day. We'll push the button and make them work here. Push the button and make them work here. There we go.

From Newark to LaGuardia, and also into Philadelphia and JFK, between 30 minutes, and now at LaGuardia two hours and some minutes.

Here's the rainfall totals expected through D.C. I want you to notice what happens in D.C. here. We'll zoom right up from D.C. to Baltimore, right up the I-95 to BW Parkway, down to Fredericksburg, I- 95. Everywhere you see White, three inches of rain or more.

And Miles, D.C. has had nine inches of rain in two days already.

Back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, Chad.

Happening "In America" this morning, a prescription for more trouble for Rush Limbaugh. Customs agents detained the radio talk show host at Palm Beach International Airport for over three hours yesterday.

Limbaugh was inbound from the Dominican Republic on his private jet. The prescription not in his name but he says it is his, nonetheless. His lawyer says the pills were in the doctor's name for privacy purposes. A southern California port is open this morning after a scare that turned out to be a hoax yesterday. A threatening message found in the hold of a cargo ship there. It said, "Nitro, plus glycerin, my gift for G. W. Bush and his Jewish gang." The FBI found no nitroglycerin or any other threat. The port was reopened after several hours.

A Navy fighter pilot is dead after his F-18 Hornet jet collided with another during a training exercise yesterday morning in California. Smoke could be seen rising from the scene, as you can see there. The other pilot ejected and survived the crash. It is under investigation.

Hundreds of people evacuated their homes near Sedona, Arizona, returning homes today. Officials say a 4,200-acre fire there more than 65 percent contained. They expect it to be fully out by tomorrow -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: President Bush could be called on 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 that it all depends on conditions on the ground.

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

Good morning, Suzanne.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Soledad.

As you know, Iraq really is the number one issue for American voters. And Republicans, Democrats, the White House all very much aware of that point. As we get closer to congressional midterm elections, each one of those groups is becoming more aggressive in trying to shape this debate. At the center of the debate now, when to bring U.S. troops home.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX (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 election, 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 calls 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 does not have a hard deadline for complete withdrawal.

STU ROTHENBERG, POLITICAL ANALYST: The kind of withdrawals that we're talking about are really minimal. And the president probably can argue reasonably that circumstances on the ground are driving the decisions.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: And political analysts say what may be just as important as withdrawing troops is really what does happen on the ground in Iraq? Whether or not we see more bombings or kidnappings or beheadings, that withdrawing some 10,000 troops by the end of the year may do very little to improve the administration's standing in Iraq -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Suzanne Malveaux at the White House for us this morning.

Thanks, Suzanne.

M. O'BRIEN: In Iraq, a controversial amnesty program means hundreds of Iraqi prisoners held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison are now free. The Iraqi government hopes it will be an olive branch to the insurgency, but here in the U.S. there's a lot of concern terrorists could be skirting justice.

CNN Senior International Correspondent Nic Robertson was at the prison as those gates opened up today.

Nic, what do we know about who was released?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I asked the very specific question to Iraq's national security advisor who was on hand to give a pep talk to the prisoners before they left, explaining to them that their release was do with national reconciliation and telling them to support the government. He told me that none of the people being released were responsible for killing or attacking U.S. soldiers. He told me that they had not attacked Iraqi security forces or Iraqi civilians. He did say that they had been arrested for security reasons.

Now, when I talked to some of those prisoners, one of them told me he had been arrested for having a cell phone with a camera in it. He told me he had been doing nothing wrong with it at the time, just standing outside the front of his house. But another prisoner showed me his charge sheet, and the charge sheet very clearly said that he had been involved or was accused of being involved in making car bombs and had been picked up with explosive residue on his hands. He said he denied that he had done anything wrong or been involved in any terrorist-type activities.

But the government says, no, no one who has attacked U.S. soldiers is being set free -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Nic, give us a sense -- obviously a brand new plan, this is just new. But is there a sense, is there a feeling particularly among disenfranchised Sunnis, or Sunnis who feel as if they are disenfranchised, that this is going to do some good?

ROBERTSON: Well, if you take the prisoners as a straw poll here -- and mostly they were Sunni prisoners -- they said there were plenty of other people in the jails like them, they said, who were innocent. And really, they said, a government offer of reconciliation is not going to go very far until everyone that is detained unjustly, in their opinion, is released.

Now, the government says it is getting some positive indications from intermediaries. It's not clear what that means, but certainly the government at the moment is not saying, well, we are doing so well we're having insurgents lay down their weapons. They're just saying that there are positive indications from these intermediaries -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: We'll watch it. Nic Robertson in Baghdad.

Thank you -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: The Bush administration is ratcheting up criticism of "The New York Times" this morning. The president calling yesterday the paper's story on a secret program to track terrorists through bank transactions disgraceful and causing great harm to the country. It's part of a broad administration attack on "The Times" that some Democrats say amounts to shooting the messenger.

CNN's Mary Snow has our report this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Is disclosing a secret government program to track the money trail of terrorists a matter of public interest or a blow to national security? The debate is so fierce the president is weighing in after "The New York Times" first reported the story last week, followed by the "Los Angeles Times" and "Wall Street Journal."

BUSH: The disclosure of this program is disgraceful. For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America.

SNOW: Radio talk shows and conservative blogs have targeted "The Times" with sharp criticism, and so has Vice President Dick Cheney.

RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: "The New York Times" has now made it more difficult for us to prevent attacks in the future.

SNOW: On Sunday, "New York Times" editor Bill Keller took the rare step of explaining the decision to publish the story saying, it "... followed weeks of discussion between administration officials and 'The Times.'" And he called the administration's arguments against publishing the story puzzling and half-hearted.

Republican Congressman Peter King, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, says "The New York Times" may have violated the Espionage Act.

REP. PETER KING (R), NEW YORK: I believe that the attorney general of the United States should begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of "The New York Times." And that would include the writers who wrote the story, the editors who worked on it, and the publisher.

SNOW: King also criticized the paper for disclosing the NSA telephone wiretapping program last year. Media observers say journalists have the responsibility to ask the question, does the public have enough information about the war on terror?

TOM PATTERSON, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT: So the press asked itself essentially who's going to shine the light on this administration if it's not us? And so I think the press is feeling a different kind of burden than it normally does, and it's somewhat less inclined to bend over to, you know, the imploring of the administration that it not take things public.

SNOW (on camera): We also contacted the "Los Angeles Times" but did not receive an immediate response. "The Wall Street Journal" did say in a statement, in part, "We believe both our readers and the government were well served and that no laws were broken in reporting this story."

Mary Snow, CNN, New York. (END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Mary's report first aired in "THE SITUATION ROOM" with Wolf Blitzer. You can watch "THE SITUATION ROOM" weekdays at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Eastern -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: U.S. soccer fans at the World Cup could bring home more than souvenirs. We'll look at why doctors are worried about the measles.

S. O'BRIEN: That's scary.

Also this morning, billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates joining forces for charity. Are there any pitfalls to having $66 billion under one foundation? We'll take a look this morning.

M. O'BRIEN: Stephen Colbert, he's gone from the little screen to the big screen. He's got a movie out, "Strangers With Candy." It's got good buzz.

S. O'BRIEN: Oh, he's funny.

M. O'BRIEN: Didn't get great (INAUDIBLE) on his White House dinner performance, however.

S. O'BRIEN: We talk about that, too.

M. O'BRIEN: You don't pull your punches, Soledad. That's good.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: In Washington, hot air meets heavy rain. And that spells trouble.

Chad Myers with more.

MYERS: You know what? We have some pictures now, Miles, of Bowie, Maryland, which is right there, the Patuxent River, at least the northern part of the Patuxent River right there.

I believe this is Governor Bridge Road. I haven't been able to zoom out and see where this is going, but I've lived in so many places that it appear that this is the old Governor Bridge Road. Patuxent River State Park not that far away.

Not really an area where a lot of homes are, so to speak, but you can see how far those floodwaters now have come up all the way to the base of that bridge. And obviously when that happens there's a threat of the sides of the bridge getting eroded away. And also, obviously, now the force of the water pushing on that bridge.

This is Bowie, Maryland. New video just in there from our affiliates in Washington, D.C. And there's an awful lot more of rain where that came from. Let's go back to the maps just for a moment, and I'll show you all the way from Baltimore, down through Columbia, into D.C., Bowie right about there. That's the Patuxent River separating there.

That Washington, D.C., area, three inches of rain or more. And, in addition to that, there's a tropical system trying to form south of North Carolina that will move right on top of D.C. in the next 24 hours. Not with a lot of wind, but more rain that they don't need -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, just what they don't need.

MYERS: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Chad Myers, thank you very much.

MYERS: You're welcome.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, Bill and Melinda Gates have their charitable work cut out for them now that billionaire Warren Buffett has signed much of his fortune to the Gates foundation. It is already the world's largest philanthropic organization.

So, is there a downside to having so much money in the hands of just one huge charity?

Stacy Palmer edits the "Chronicle of Philanthropy" -- easy for me to say -- newspaper. She joins us this morning.

Nice to see you. Good morning.

STACY PALMER, "CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY": Great to see you.

S. O'BRIEN: This is so much money. And when you look at the amount of money that the Gates foundation has given out, something like $8 billion over 12 years, now with the Warren Buffett gift they've got to give out $3 billion every year. What kind of pressure does that put on a foundation, do you think?

PALMER: And it's possibly even more than that, because Warren Buffett has vowed that he wants to make even more money for them to be able to give away. So that's a lot of pressure to make sure they are doing the right things.

But one of the reasons Warren Buffett said he wanted to give to them is that they have a track record of success and that they're at a point they are ready to spend a lot more. And the problems they're trying to tackle are pretty expensive kinds of things. Trying to tackle global health, that costs a lots lot of money.

And the Gateses make it pretty clear that government is going to need to help, too. They can't do it by themselves.

S. O'BRIEN: When you look at problems, and they often focus on African nations or extremely impoverish impoverished countries, certainly, as you know, on the ground you sort of have to funnel money in, which means there has to be some kind of infrastructure to actually manage a lot of money. Sometimes you've got to spend money to make the spending of money possible. What are the big risks and the big problems here, potentially?

PALMER: That's the really big challenge, is making sure that they are investing with the right people and finding the best groups that are going to be accountable on the ground. And that's what the Gateses are going to have to spend a lot of time doing, making sure that they are investing in others who will use their money well.

And to be sure, they will probably make some mistakes and some money won't be used well. But they feel that it's worth it to innovate and do different kinds of things. But they're going to have to watch it very carefully, and they feel a strong sense of responsibility to do it now that it's not just their money, but Warren Buffett's money as well. So I think they are going to be watching it extremely carefully.

S. O'BRIEN: You don't want to be known as misspending Warren Buffett's millions...

PALMER: Absolutely not.

S. O'BRIEN: ... in addition to your own.

You know, you look at the percentage of fraud in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, 11 percent, which is a huge percentage. I think that's maybe four times the sort of standard rate in these kinds of things. How do you avoid those kinds of problems? How do you avoid the fraud of just misspending of money when you don't have government oversight or reporters chasing around and crunching the numbers in a private charity where the trustees are Bill and Melinda, and now Warren Buffett?

PALMER: I think they will have journalists and government watching them so that even though they are not officially regulated by those folks, the same kinds of rules apply as they do with government. So they'll watch very carefully. And they know that they have to look at the best ways of ensuring accountability the same way that they did in business to make sure that things work well.

But that's going to be an experiment. And if they don't do it well, that could be a phenomenal risk, and Congress could say that all foundations need to be better regulated if the Gates don't do it well.

S. O'BRIEN: It's a ton of money. And when you look at the top five charities -- if you throw this list up, this list doesn't even yet include Warren Buffett's gift, and it's still incredibly breathtaking.

The Gates Foundation, $29.1 billion. The Ford Foundation $11.6 billion. The Robert Wood Johnson foundation, $9.1 billion. Lilly Endowment, $8.4 billion. W.K. Kellog Foundation, $7.3 billion.

I mean, that is just a ton of money.

Would there be any benefit in saying, putting them all under one big umbrella, and when you have a major problem like -- I mean, you know, they crunched the numbers of what it would cost to get rid of malaria, $6 billion, what it would cost to treat everybody who needs some kind of treatment for HIV-AIDS, $16 billion.

Why not put it all under one umbrella and solve these problems in a year, let's say?

PALMER: That's one of the things the Gateses are trying to encourage, much more money going in the direction of some of these problems. But what these other philanthropies are going to focus on is the problems that aren't getting solved in education, the environment, other kinds of things that get left out by what Gates and Buffett are doing. So there's always that downside to putting everything in one area and then you lose out in the other kinds of things that foundations care about.

S. O'BRIEN: Hopefully what he has done will encourage other people to say...

PALMER: That's clearly what they want to do.

S. O'BRIEN: ... put money into charities that are established already.

PALMER: Absolutely. And that's one of the things Buffett was saying, that you don't have to invent your own charity, you can go to one that's already working and has a good track record.

S. O'BRIEN: And if you've got billions of dollars you can fund it for a really long time.

Stacy Palmer, nice to see you. Thanks for talking with us this morning. Appreciate it.

PALMER: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: She's with the "Chronicle of Philanthropy." I managed to say it correctly that time.

Appreciate it -- Miles.

PALMER: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up on the program, a family feud gives way to a bizarre court case. Now a businessman is accused of trying to stage an attempt on his own life. We'll explain.

And later, how much does global warming have to do with all those fires we're seeing out West? We'll take a look ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) S. O'BRIEN: A bizarre family feud to tell you about in Massachusetts. A father at war with his children over his multimillion-dollar fortune now leading to a strange tale of accusations from abuse to a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

AMERICAN MORNING'S Dan Lothian has the story.

(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)

S. O'BRIEN: Donovan faces a maximum sentence of a year in prison if in fact he is convicted -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, some consolation prize. The U.S. soccer team got nil at the World Cup, but U.S. fans may return with the measles. We'll tell you why doctors are worried.

Plus, the latest on those wildfires raging out West. We'll look at whether global warming might have some role in all this.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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