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American Morning

North Korea's Missile Launches; Dolly the Sheep 10-Year Anniversary

Aired July 05, 2006 - 07:31   ET

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

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Carol Costello in for Soledad today.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Miles O'Brien. Thanks for being with us on this July 5th.

North Korea's missile launches were immediately detected by the North American Aerospace Defend Command, NORAD. NORAD determined the missiles posed no threat almost immediately. But if they did pose a threat, would the missile shield that we've heard so much about been able to protect the continental United States.

Our CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If the launch were an attack, could we shoot down the North Korean missile? A feat described as the equivalent of stopping one moving bullet using another moving bullet. There have been 10 tests of the U.S. interceptor. Only half have worked.

JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: If the missile-defense system was a baseball player, and had a batting average of .500, you'd say it was doing pretty good. If it's only working half of the time, and it's the only thing standing between you and an incoming hydrogen bomb, you'd say it's not working very well at all.

STARR: The five tests that failed, one as recently as last February, had various technical problems. Pentagon officials say those have been solved, and they are now confident that missiles would work during an attack, mainly because there were four consecutive successful hits against target missiles in 2001 and 2002.

But that was four years ago. Since then, much of the technology has been upgraded.

But one defense official familiar with the program acknowledges a major criticism, that the testing done so far is not realistic.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All systems are go for launch. Standby for terminal count.

STARR: That it's all been scripted out ahead of time, as most weapons tests are. Analysts say the U.S. may still have problems shooting down anything more complex than a single warhead. The biggest risk still may be the continuing uncertainty about North Korea's real intentions.

PIKE: And it's possible that one day they'll provoke crisis, get in over their head, and suddenly we'll find ourselves in a shooting war with them. Under those circumstances, you might hope that you had a reliable missile defense, because they might not prove completely deterrable.

STARR (on camera): Later this summer, a new round of anti- missile testing by the U.S. will begin. Officials say that round will be more realistic testing to try and make sure that all of the technology works in the future, in case there is an attack.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Joe Cirincione is the national security analyst at the American Center for Progress. He joins us now from Washington. Let's start, Mr. Cirincione, with that whole notion of a missile shield. We've heard about the tests. We've heard that, at best, it's been mixed success, if that. But given what we're seeing from North Korea, isn't that a pretty strong case for continuing to try to develop this technology?

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: It's a strong case for doing research, but I think Barbara Starr is way too optimistic about our capabilities. She neglected to point out that the administration has actually stopped putting any interceptors in those silos in Alaska because of the substantial operational difficulties with the nine we've placed in. The last two tests, the interceptors didn't even fire. We couldn't get them out of the silos. We're spending about $10 billion a year on that site, and it's got a slim-to-none chance of actually working, should North Korea have a missile that could reach the United States.

Fortunately, for us, as the North Korean tests showed yesterday, they don't have much capability either, so the threat itself has been as exaggerated as our missile-defense capabilities have been.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about this $10 billion. If you stop spending the money, you stop doing the work, you stop doing the testing, there definitely will not be a missile shield, right?

CIRINCIONE: That's why we do research. We've been doing research on missile defense since the 1960s.

O'BRIEN: But research involves testing, doesn't it, research involves testing? Basically you've got to fire some rockets, right?

CIRINCIONE: Oh, absolutely, no question about that. There's complete consensus among Democrats and Republicans you have to do that. What this administration has done is started to put weapons into silos that haven't been tested way before we know if this thing can work. That just wastes a lot of money. When you find out that there's problems with it, you have to pull those missiles out and start all over again. They've been putting the cart before the horse.

O'BRIEN: So if you were to design a missile-defense research program, what would do you then?

CIRINCIONE: Well, I'd pretty much continue the kind of research we have on the Patriot missile, which has got some capability against very short-ranged missiles. We're testing an AEGIS Navy sea-based defense system that's shown some promise. You keep on that. And you keep this long-range missile defense research going, but put realistic tests, really put it up against the kinds of weapons you'd expect an enemy to fire at us, and not rig the tests so that you could keep the money going, but you're not really producing any real capability. That's the main difference I have with the way this administration is wasting money rigging the tests for this missile-defense system.

Fortunately, the North Korean threat itself isn't that serious. As we saw yesterday, we had six Scuds and one dud fired, all landed in the Sea of Japan, all of them thousands of miles away from America's shores. It's a regional threat, but it doesn't represent any serious threat to the American heartland, and probably won't for a good decade or more.

O'BRIEN: And let's talk about this dud. The one dud is the one that was supposedly long range, the one we had been talking so much about in advance. The fact that it was a dud, what does that tell you about North Korean capabilities?

CIRINCIONE: That they're very primitive, and as the vice president said just last week, rudimentary capabilities.

What the North Koreans have is Scud technology. They got this from the Russians. It's basically World War II-era technology. They've succeed in making their missiles go 300 kilometers, 600 kilometers, even 1,000 kilometers. Now what they're trying to stack one missile on top of the other, put one Scud on top of the other and see if they can make a long-range missile out of it. They test fired it only once in 1998. It went about 1,300 kilometers and then fell into the ocean. This was their second test that blew up 40 seconds after launch. It shows that this threat has been exaggerated both by the North Koreans and by proponents of missile defense, who see this as some threat that justifies the expenditure of billions of dollars each year. I think...

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, let's get a proponent, let's work a proponent in here. Last night on "LARRY KING LIVE" we heard from Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter. Let's hear what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DUNCAN HUNTER (R), CALIFORNIA: We have to move ahead with missile defense, because at some point if diplomacy doesn't work it's all physics. If you have a missile in the air and it's coming toward one of your cities, the only way to stop it at that point is not with words, but with interceptors. (END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Two track approach -- keep working on the shield, keep going diplomacy. I know you don't quibble necessarily with that philosophically.

CIRINCIONE: It's right.

O'BRIEN: It's more on how you implement the plan.

CIRINCIONE: Right, where is the balance?

O'BRIEN: Yes, so where is it? Where is the balance? You asked it; you answer it.

CIRINCIONE: Sure. What was North Korea trying to do? You heard some of your commentators earlier this morning say that they wanted attention. Well, they got our attention. Now what do they want the attention for? is it to threaten us? If so, this backfired. This blew up in Kim Jong-Il's face. It looks like he's trying to raise the ante, to raise price of a negotiated deal. This might be exactly the point to both condemn the North Korean actions, which we will do later today at the United Nations, and also to coax North Korea back to the bargaining table.

In fact, by this test failure, they've substantially lowered the value of their missile program. I think they're going to get a little less than they bargained for.

The key is for us to be willing to be strong, but also be flexible enough to cut a deal with North Korea to end these programs once and for all.

O'BRIEN: So it's a high wire act, isn't it? Joe Cirincione, thank you very much for being with us.

CIRINCIONE: My pleasure. Thanks, Miles.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

(WEATHER REPORT)

COSTELLO: Hard to believe, but it's been 10 years since Dolly the cloned sheep was born, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Senior medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta sat down with Dolly's creator to look back at how the historic development did and how it influenced medicine.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On July 5th, 1996 at the Rosalynn Institute in Scotland, a lamb was born, Dolly, an exact replica of another sheep, the world's first clone.

Excitement, though, soon turned to concern. Would humans be next? Dolly represented one of the biggest advances science had ever seen, and taken an obscure medical term mainstream, stem-cell research.

Ian Wilmut is Dolly's scientific father. His goals, like most scientists, were ambitious.

IAN WILMUT, CLONED "DOLLY" THE SHEEP: Our initial objective was to be able to make precise genetic changes in animals. But as we got through the research, we realized that it would be possible to make cells from cloned human embryos, which we could use to study disease, and perhaps one day to treat disease.

GUPTA: But here's the thing, 10 years later scientists aren't much closer to treating and curing disease through stem-cell research, but they are much better at cloning animals, a dozen species, including pigs, cows, horses, and even an endangered ox from Asia, but still nowhere near being able to treat Parkinson's, spinal-cord injuries or other diseases with stem cells. Wilmut faults researchers for raising expectations.

WILMUT: And so I think probably unintentionally in our enthusiasm we give the impression that these things are just around the corner, and they're not.

GUPTA: And one of the biggest setbacks came from within the research community itself. South Korean scientists have led the world to believe they succeeded in creating stem cells from human clones, but earlier this year, we learned the results were fabricated.

WILMUT: For a year or 18 months, you thought that you were being told something -- this can be achieved, it can be achieved by this particular method. We know that's fraud, so you now have to unlearn that.

GUPTA: Stem-cell research has faced another major obstacle as well.

(on camera): Are you surprised at the infiltration of religion into science when it comes to stem cells?

WILMUT: No, I'm not. I think that these are important social and ethical choices. Our role has been to explain the biology, to help people to understand exactly what it is that we're suggesting, and then to make our own decisions.

GUPTA (voice-over): Still, Ian Wilmut remains optimistic.

(on camera): Is it going to happen?

WILMUT: Yes, it will happen.

GUPTA: And so let me just be clear. I'm 36 years old. I have a family history of diabetes. Do you think in my lifetime if I were to develop diabetes stem-cell therapy or stem-cell treatments in some way might be an option for me?

WILMUT: Yes, I do, yes.

GUPTA: That's pretty optimistic.

WILMUT: And I think it's very important. I mean, I mentioned my father was a Type I diabetic. I think it's very likely that stem-cell treatments would be more accurate and more effective than anything else that have at the present time but it will take a few years to develop.

GUPTA: And probably several more decades before medical cures are based on the research that sprung from a lamb 10 years ago.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Dolly died when she was six years old, by the way. She didn't die prematurely because she was a clone. Instead this extraordinary sheep died from an ordinary virus which causes lung cancer. Scientists are still trying to successfully create a human embryo clone so they can harvest those stem cells that Sanjay was talking about.

Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, the fight for Ramadi, an insurgent stronghold in Iraq. We'll look at how U.S. forces think they found a way to turn the tide.

O'BRIEN: And next, a rare and really, frankly, shocking glimpse into life inside North Korea, tales of concentration camps, political prisoners, mass starvation. All of it is ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: North Korea is so tightly controlled and isolated that any glimpse into its walls could mean death. But dissidents are now using small digital cameras and cell phones to smuggle images to the outside world.

"CNN PRESENTS" follows Korean-American journalist Yung Un-Kim as she tracks down these images.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK SESNO (voice-over): In the past year, a movement of dissident filmmakers, some motivated by money, others by the desire for change, have used undercover cameras to expose a chilling picture of North Korea that's never been seen before. If they are caught filming, they will face prison, or death. Korean reporter Jung Un-Kim is searching for some of these dissident cameraman, and for the rare images they've captured and smuggled out of the country, images like these.

This is Yodak, a concentration camp. Authorities deny it exists. The inscription above the entrance says, "Give up your life for the sake of our dear leader, Kim Jong-Il." Human Rights Watch estimates that there are 200,000 political prisoners inside North Korea. These men and women are ferrying buckets of their own waste for fertilizer.

On the city streets, another cameraman captured these images: homeless and hungry children, forced to fend for themselves, steal from the markets.

A pickpocket is caught. And justice is carried out on the street.

This is rice donated by the U.N.'s World Food Program. It should be rationed out to directly to the people, but instead it is sold for profit in the street market. Only the well-off can afford it, leaving the rest with nothing.

This woman is lying in the street dead. North Korean refugees say it's a common site.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Just unbelievable, isn't it? That was Frank Sesno narrating for "CNN PRESENTS."

O'BRIEN: Up next, Andy is "Minding Your Business."

Andy, what do you have?

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Miles, incoming Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gets a big chunk of change before he takes his vows of poverty. And don't mess with actor Michael Douglas. We'll tell you about that, coming up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BUSINESS HEADLINES)

O'BRIEN: In just a few moments, top stories, including that developing story out of North Korea, a barrage of missile firings, a seventh test launched while you were sleeping. How's the world going to react to all of this? We're going to check in with our reporters all around the world. No one is better poised to keep you posted on that one.

Stay with CNN, and stay with AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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