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American Morning
Highway Collapse; D.C. Sex Scandal; Tenet Backlash
Aired April 30, 2007 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: State of emergency. Flames melt a stretch of California highway.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, CALIFORNIA: The state has to help the local community here as quickly as possible. They are right now working already on rebuilding this mess.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: A Monday morning nightmare for the San Francisco Bay area that could last months. And backlash this morning from George Tenet's tell-all book. Could he have stopped the war. Should he return his medal of freedom? Outrage from fellow CIA officers.
And we talk with White House Spokesman Tony Snow on his first day back to work on this AMERICAN MORNING.
And good morning to you. It is Monday, April the 30th. I'm John Roberts in the nation's capital.
Good morning to you, Kiran.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see you as well.
I'm Kiran Chetry here in New York.
We have a lot of stories on our radar this morning. The juiciest, of course, comes from Washington, D.C., John.
ROBERTS: It does. You know, they love a scandal down here. And this one is being played exactly the way that people in Washington love it to be played.
This alleged Washington, D.C., madam, who ran this escort service for years, going back to court, now saying that she has got the names of some 10,000 clients. A couple of names have leaked out already. Are there any big fish in this pond? That's what people are waiting to hear.
Also reaction to George Tenet's interview last night on "60 Minutes" and the book, here it is, "At the Center of the Storm." A lot of former CIA agents are slamming Tenet, calling him the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow is going to be reacting to Tenet's charges as we welcome him back to the White House this morning.
And we've got some other people to talk about just as well, Kiran.
CHETRY: Right. Another Tenet critic is someone who actually ran the CIA's bin Laden task force. Michael Scheuer is going to be speaking to us a couple minutes from now as well.
Also, a pilot finishing a 13,000-mile trip in Australia overnight. But what caught our attention about this story, he's blind. So we're going to have much more on how he made that historic journey.
ROBERTS: Yes, it's amazing. It's incredible enough that he made the journey himself in that type of an aircraft. But then on top of it he's blind.
CHETRY: That's right. And he certainly doesn't let his disability stand in his way. He's done a lot of other things too, including running marathons. But this one's the biggest.
All right. Also this morning, commuters in the San Francisco Bay area are bracing for what's going to be a traffic nightmare and it could drag on for some time. A tanker truck carrying gasoline crashed and caught fire Sunday. The intense heat at thousands of degrees melted the ramps of one of the busiest interchanges in the Bay area and it could take months to repair the damage. AMERICAN MORNING'S Chris Lawrence is live in Oakland with what is going to be a nightmare commute this morning.
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kiran, you could not pick a worst place for this tanker to have crashed. Right where three major highways converge and lead off into the Bay Bridge, which connects Oakland and San Francisco. Now police say the driver may have been speeding, but commuters are going to have a hard time getting anywhere near the speed limit today.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE, (voice over): This is what it looks like when a tanker crashes and 8,000 gallons of gasoline ignite on a major highway. Flames shoot up 200 feet and the air boils to nearly 3,000 degrees. Steel beams buckle and bolts holding up the overpass melt.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger inspected the freeway Sunday night and declared a state of emergency.
GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, CALIFORNIA: No one has to fight over who is going to pays for the first few days. It's all taken care of. How fast you move people and goods and services, that's economic power. We don't want the economy in the Bay area to be disrupted, nor the economy of California to be disrupted.
LAWRENCE: The state of California's picking up the tab to provide free, public transportation Monday. But the months to come could be a nightmare. COMMISSIONER MIKE BROWN, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL: I would love to be able to say it's going to be easy, but I don't think it will be.
LAWRENCE: Every day, more than 250,000 take the bridge into San Francisco.
ROSEANNE WINCEK, BAY AREA COMMUTER: I live in the city and I work at Berkeley, so I don't want to be here tomorrow when it's going to be insane.
MOSTAFA EL DESOKY, BAY AREA COMMUTER: I think I'm going to have like probably at least two, three hours before I hit (INAUDIBLE). It usually takes me 20 minutes, 25 minutes max.
LAWRENCE: Repair costs could top tens of millions of dollars and it could cause the worst traffic disruption since the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. To fix the freeways then, it took about seven years and $2 billion.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE: Now, demolition teams are already here on the scene starting to remove the debris. But the mayor of San Francisco called this a real wake-up call, saying it showed how vulnerable the Bay area's transportation system is to not only an accident like this one, but an earthquake or even a terrorist attack.
Kiran.
CHETRY: So are there other ways to get around that particular interchange, because I understand it links up three highways in the area?
LAWRENCE: There are other ways, but none of them all that good. You know, you've got to come off the Bay bridge, get off on a side street, cut through an Army base, jump back on the highway. There are ways for people to get around, they'll still be able to get to work, but it is going to add a long, long time to some people's commutes.
CHETRY: Oh, what a nightmare because that area is notorious for having long commutes to begin with.
Chris Lawrence, thanks so much.
Well, police in Kansas City are still trying to figure out why a gunman opened fire in the parking lot of a shopping center. A gunman shot and killed two people before police shot and killed him. At least two others were hurt. Witnesses describe the sheer panic at the crowded mall.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILES B., WITNESSED SHOOTINGS: We were in the mall. I was getting a tent. And we were in the candy department. And then this woman's like run, run, there's someone shooting. And then we heard five shots go off and then we all just started running out to the exits and there was everybody just dropping their stuff and throwing it on the ground.
TRAVIS JOHNSON, WITNESSED SHOOTINGS: People were screaming and yelling and I look up and people are just running and crying. And I started to step out into the aisle and like two people just like knocked into me, knocked me to the ground. And someone helped me up and said, you need to get out of here. Someone's shooting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, that gunman has not yet been identified. Police say that his crime spree may have started in an elderly woman's home. She was found dead yesterday afternoon, her car stolen. Police say the gunman then shot and wounded an officer at a gas station before he went on to the mall.
ROBERTS: There's already a backlash this morning aimed at former CIA Director George Tenet and his new book, which goes on sale today. Senator John McCain is criticizing Tenet's defense of "enhanced interrogation of terror suspects." And we're hearing from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about Tenet's famous "slam dunk" comment. Tenet told CBS' "60 Minutes" that his comment was unfairly used by the Bush administration to justify going to war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE TENET, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: The hardest part of all this has just been listening to this for almost three years. Listening to the vice president go on "Meet the Press" on the fifth year of 9/11, you know, and say, well, George Tenet said "slam duck." As if he needed me to say "slam dunk" to go to war with Iraq. And they never let it go.
I mean I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. You know, look what the idiot told us and we decided to go to war. Well, let's not be so disingenuous. Let's stand up. This is why we did it. This is how we did it. And let's everybody tell the ruth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: That claim by White House Spokesman Tony Snow on our next half hour. He's back at work at the White House today. And George Tenet will be Larry King's guest tonight at 9:00 Eastern.
New this morning, a just released government report lays out a bleak assessment of Iraq's reconstruction. That Iraq is still plagued by power outages and a lack of clean water and health care. Also, that the Iraqi government fails to maintain the facilities once it takes them over from the United States. The Iraq rebuilding project has already caused U.S. taxpayers some $400 billion.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is heading to a top level conference in Egypt today, aimed at finding solutions to violence raging in Iraq. Iran will also attend the conference, which is being supported by the United Nations. And Rice said there's a possibility she may even talk with the Iranians.
Kiran.
CHETRY: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert may be about to face a whole new wave of criticism. Today, an Israeli government commission releases its first findings on last year's war in Lebanon. Leaked portions say that Olmert and Israel's defense minister made hasty decisions that were made worse by their lack of military experience. Some are calling for the prime minister to resign.
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is fighting for his job. Today he's going to speak to a special panel investigating whether he should be fired for helping his girlfriend transfer to a higher paying job. Many have called for his resignation, but Wolfowitz says the bank's ethics committee knew what he was doing. A decision on his future is expected before the end of the week.
ROBERTS: Will she name more names? Washington is on edge this week waiting for the answer to that question. A woman accused of running a prostitution ring for the rich and powerful here in D.C. is going to court this morning. At least one high-profile former client has already stepped down from his government job. CNN's Jim Acosta is live at the federal courthouse in Washington.
And, Jim, this one's got Washington all abuzz, doesn't it?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It does, John. There are mounts worries in Washington that this alleged D.C. madam will disclose reams of phone records that could embarrass scores of high level government officials in this case. But so far, federal prosecutors aren't backing down.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA, (voice over): Deborah Jeane Palfrey denies accusations she ran a D.C. prostitution ring.
DEBORAH JEANE PALFREY, PAMELA MARTIN AND ASSOCIATES: The firm, Pamela Martin and Associates, operated as a legal, high-end erotic fantasy service.
ACOSTA: But there are fears in the nation's capital that the woman behind the business, Pamela Marten and Associates, has every intention of naming names to stay out of jail.
PALFREY: This is on the head of the government. This is not on me. They had a chance at any given point in the last six or so months to stop this thing. But they don't seem to care.
ACOSTA: In an interview with the Internet radio site, WSRadio, Palfrey says she plans on disclosing more than a decades worth of phone records from her self-described erotic fantasy service as part of her defense.
PALFREY: Look, we're going to use some, if not many of these 10,000 people who used the service for the 13 years as defense witnesses. And many of these people have government clearances, security clearances, high-level individuals. Do you really want this to happen?
ACOSTA: High level individuals like Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. He resigned last week for personal reasons after confirming to ABC News that he was one of Palfrey's clients. Tobias, a proponent of abstinence based AIDS prevention, and seen here with President Bush, told ABC he had only received massages from Palfrey's service.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: And Deborah Palfrey, who also goes by Jeane, is expected to be back in court here at the U.S. District Courthouse in Washington at 10:00 this morning to request a public defender in this case. She claims that she is broke after the government seized all of her assets last fall as part of this sting. And we should also note that that interview that you just heard in this piece, clips from that interview, she is now trying to sell those clips to raise money for her legal defense.
John.
ROBERTS: You know, originally, Jim, she was trying to sell all of the information, all of these telephone numbers. She couldn't get a buyer, so she gave them to ABC News. What's your sense of this, though? Are these names all just going to be known inside the beltway names or could there be a big fish or two in here?
ACOSTA: Well, I think Tobias is a fairly big fish, although he wasn't well-known around Washington. He is well-known in Republican circles. And there is some speculation -- I talked to one of the other names mentioned in the case over the phone yesterday. And there is some speculation that what she is trying to do is, you know, name drop some key Republican or at least conservative oriented names out there to see if she could perhaps rattle these federal prosecutors and pressure them to drop this case. But so far that isn't happening.
John.
ROBERTS: Well, she's certainly managing to create a buzz here in the district.
Jimmy, thanks very much.
ACOSTA: Sure.
ROBERTS: Kiran.
CHETRY: A blind pilot landing in Sydney, Australia, after a 13,500-mile, 59-day flight from London. Fifty-eight-year-old British Adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber had the help of a sighted co-pilot. He completed the trip in a micro light aircraft, which looks like, as you can see, a cross between a tricycle and a motorized hang glider. Hilton-Barber lost his eyesight about 20 years ago. He says he's hoping his trip will raise money to prevent blindness in developing countries. And still to come, fellow CIA agents are speaking out about George Tenet's claims in his new book. They want to know why he waited so long to speak out. We're going to talk to the former head of the CIA's unit on Osama bin Laden.
Also, those Georgia wildfires, the worst in the state's history. Are firefighters making any progress?
You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning here on CNN.
Firefighters in Waycross, Georgia, making progress overnight battling the state's biggest wildfire ever. The fire is now 70 percent contained, but low humidity and high winds could cause more flare-ups today.
Coming up now to 15 minutes after the hour. Chad Myers in the CNN Weather Center.
The extreme weather center, Chad. Gosh, every time that little animation goes, I know there's going to be a problem somewhere in the country.
(WEATHER REPORT)
CHETRY: The Bush administration facing some very tough criticism from former CIA Director George Tenet. His book, "At the Center of the Storm," comes out today. But there are some who are asking why George Tenet waited until now to express his outrage. In an interview on "60 Minutes" on CBS, he did express his outrage as being pegged as the scapegoat for the runup to the war and also the questions about the "slam dunk" comments about WMD. And also he answered why they failed to get Osama bin Laden before 9/11. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE TENET, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: People were inundated with data and operations and they missed it. We're not trying to control information. We're not trying to intentionally withhold. Human beings made mistakes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's unit on bin Laden, and the author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," joins me now from Washington to discuss Tenet's tough talk.
Thanks for being with us.
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FORMER CIA OFFICIAL: Yes. Good morning. Thank you.
CHETRY: Well, it's not hard to see where you stand. Your op-ed in "The Washington Post" says "Tenet tries to shift the blame. Don't buy it." Do you think he's being disingenuous in his interview?
SCHEUER: You know, it's an extraordinary interview. I think he's being less than truthful, certainly in regard to Osama bin Laden, saying that we didn't have the opportunity to kill him. That, at least in my mind, having been there firsthand, that's a lie. He could have been dead in '98 or '99. And the idea that he said last night that he didn't have the courage to tell the president about the nature of the threat in August of 2001, really struck me as an extraordinary admission.
CHETRY: Well, he -- the argument I think he was trying to make, and he writes this in the book, is that there was intelligence but they didn't know if it would actually lead to a capture or a kill and that they felt there was too much at stake. His quote is that "every one of the senior operations officers above Mike," he's speaking about you, "recommended against undertaking the operation. They believed the chances of success were too low."
SCHEUER: That's a lie. Both of the committees within the Central Intelligence Agency that approved covert action operations approved it, including the director was out of town at the moment, but his associate, General Gordon, the entire program was approved by everyone above me. It was canceled at the last moment for reasons unknown.
But that's not the best chance we had, ma'am. We had not (ph) eight different chances for the U.S. military to kill Osama bin Laden between May of '98 and May of 1999. One of the . . .
CHETRY: So you're talking about both administrations. Both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. And Tenet also talks about this at the time. Then who is to blame? It seems everyone's shifting it to someone else.
SCHEUER: It seems to me if Mr. Tenet didn't speak up for the nature of the intelligence that was available to the United States government, some blame has to fall on him. The story is, he denigrated the intelligence regarding bin Laden and he overestimated the intelligence in regard to Iraq. That seems to me he was trying to please both political masters.
CHETRY: Well let me ask you about the Iraq situation. He was very agitated and clearly enraged about being made the scapegoat, as he calls it, for the "slam dunk" comment. He said he was simply talking about the intelligence, making the case that there was the possibility and that those comments were misconstrued and twisted as a talking point to make him the scapegoat. What do you say about that?
SCHEUER: Ma'am, if I can say, if Mr. Tenet had the intelligence, and I think he did because his officers were telling him, that the war in Iraq was going to turn into the disaster that it did, his responsibility was, a, to tell the president, but, b, if no one listened, to resign and go to the public. Because this was the first American war that depended solely on the intelligence information to justify it. And if he had that information and it wasn't being listened to, it would seem to me his duty was to resign and tell the American people.
CHETRY: I don't think that he was making the argument that he knew things were going to go as bad as they did. He was upset by the fact that after the fact his comments about the "slam dunk" seemed to be used as the only justification by the administration for why they thought they had enough intelligence about WMD.
SCHEUER: Well, I think that clouds the issue. You know, the "slam dunk" comment, the Medal of Freedom, that's all water over the dam. But before the water went over the dam, Mr. Tenet does say in his book and in his interview last night, that the agency was sure that this was going to end up in a disaster. Whether or not Saddam had WMD, the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Tenet said, and correctly, the agency was quite sure that we were headed for the disaster we're in today.
CHETRY: All right, interesting words today from Michael Scheuer, the author of "Imperil Hubris," and former CIA official.
Thanks for joining us.
SCHEUER: You're welcome.
ROBERTS: Coming up, it's his first day back on the job. Tony Snow returns to the White House press room this morning. And coming up, he's going to tell us about his fight against cancer and we'll put some tough questions to him. He says he's ready for them.
And a revamped Delta flies out of bankruptcy today. What it means for your next flight, ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: It's 25 past the hour now. Ali Velshi is "Minding Your Business." He joins me this morning.
Good news for Delta.
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Out of bankruptcy. Delta has emerged after a year and a half from bankruptcy. Now, I remember interviewing Richard Branson once who said that the thing about U.S. airlines is that they go into bankruptcy but no one ever realized that it happened because changes for the consumer are not going to be substantial.
There might be a new paint job. Delta saying that there will be some changes. We're waiting for that announcement. They're definitely looking for a new CEO. The outgoing CEO will wait until someone's appointed. And they might shed Kentucky-based Comair, which is the regional airline.
But the shares will start trading again on Thursday. The old ticker symbol, DAL. But those are not your old shares. So if you happen to be holding on to any of them, sorry, they're not worth anything. The new company's going to be worth around $10 billion, which will make it the second most valuable airline in the United States after Southwest.
Over the last year and a half, Delta has cut about a billion dollars mainly from payroll. Now it's going to give its employees, about 50,000 employees, they're going to get a lump sum payment. They're going to get a share of equity.
But the airline is coming out of bankruptcy. And that means that Northwest Airlines remains the only major U.S. carrier in bankruptcy. No word yet on when that's going to emerge.
But Delta, out of bankruptcy.
CHETRY: All right. Good for them. Hope it works.
Thanks, Ali.
John.
ROBERTS: Top stories of the morning are coming up next.
Freeway meltdown. We'll hear firsthand from the California highway department about the huge mess there on one of the busiest interchanges in the Bay area. Here's the fire that took the bridge down.
And we'll talk with White House Press Secretary Tony Snow about his battle against cancer and about George Tenet's allegations that he was made a scapegoat.
You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: The San Francisco Bay Area is waking up to a commuter's worst nightmare. It could last for months. A tanker truck caught fire, exploded. It actually melted the highway. Now drivers are preparing for their worst ride since the 1989 earthquake on this AMERICAN MORNING.
And it's Monday, April 30th. I'm Kiran Chetry in New York.
Hi, John.
ROBERTS: Hey, good morning to you, Kiran.
I'm John Roberts in Washington.
You know, back in 1989, the San Francisco Bay Bridge was closed for a month and a day after that earthquake, but it looks like this one's going to take much longer than that to replace. Just unbelievable. CHETRY: Yes. We were asking the question, so what's the alternative? I mean, apparently they're paying for some public transportation. I read one article, though. that said they're asking people to telecommute.
How's that going to go over with the bosses for two or three months?
ROBERTS: Yes, exactly. "I think I'll work from home today. No you won't. Get in here."
Hey, we're going to be talking with a representative from the Department of Transportation in California about all of that.
Other stories on our radar this morning.
Tony Snow returns to work at the White House today. He's been off since the late part of March for colon cancer surgery. As well, he's going to be undergoing chemotherapy beginning either later this week or the beginning of next week.
We'll talk to him live about the upcoming summit in Iraq, in Egypt, as well, a major offensive against the Taliban this week. We've got a lot to talk with him about this morning -- Kiran.
CHETRY: He's a wonderful individual and a fighter. And we've all been praying for him. So it's so great that he's back.
Also, blue skies for flyers. Delta is coming out of bankruptcy today. We're going to have a sneak peek at what will change, if anything, for passengers. Will anyone even notice?
ROBERTS: It's going to be a rough commute for people in the San Francisco Bay Area for weeks to come, as we just mentioned. Two major roadways still closed this morning. Sections of highway collapsed after a tanker truck crashed and caught fire. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the damage last night. He has declared a state of emergency there and ordered free rides on Bay Area buses, trains and ferries today.
Will Kempton is the director of the California Department of Transportation. He joins us now on the phone.
Good morning to you, Mr. Kempton.
It's very, very early in the morning, but I imagine that you probably have been up most of the night trying to work the situation out.
WILL KEMPTON, DIRECTOR, CALIFORNIA DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION: Well, good morning.
Yes, we've been -- we've been at it for many hours. We -- thanks to the governor's emergency proclamation, we have got crews out already doing the demolition work to remove the bridge structure that collapsed, and we'll be moving expeditiously to get the repair work under way.
ROBERTS: I recall after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the city of Los Angeles, and I guess the state of California, as well, almost set a record by replacing some of the bridges that had fallen down.
How much damage is there at this area called the MacArthur Maze, and how long do you think it's going to take to repair?
KEMPTON: Well, there were two 85-foot slabs or sections of the bridge that were involved in the fire, and that collapsed on a bridge below. And this is obviously a very serious incident. But again, we're going to be looking to get our repair crews out very, very quickly, and we're not speculating on the time it's going to take us to open the roadway, but we've had, as you point out, experience in this kind of situation. And so we're looking to get the work completed as quickly as possible.
ROBERTS: After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the bridge itself was closed for a month and a day. I mean, total renovations and repairs took much longer than that. Is this going to be more difficult to fix than the section that fell down after that earthquake in 1989?
KEMPTON: Well, I think it's going to be a little more difficult. That was a single section of the cantilever section of the Bay Bridge that went down. We were able to just hoist up the section and reconnect it, so that was I think an easier job for us.
This is a more significant collapse for a longer section of roadway, but, again, we've had experience in this kind of work. And the ability to get the crews out as quickly as we've been able to move them into place is going to be a big help for us.
ROBERTS: Two hundred and eighty thousand cars are estimated to use that bridge every day to and from San Francisco. How -- what words would you use to describe the effect that this is going to have on traffic?
KEMPTON: Well, it's not going to be positive, certainly, but there -- these are only two connector ramps of a much larger interchange complex, so we expect that about 80,000 or so vehicles will have to find a new route or use alternative modes. We're telling -- we're telling the motorists to either find an alternative route or to use an alternative mode, and that's one of the reasons why we're financing free transit trips throughout the Bay Area today to get people interested in using transit. And we're hoping that through the use of transit and by being cautious and careful, that folks will be able to make it through this period of the destruction.
ROBERTS: Well, Mr. Kempton, we certainly wish you a lot of luck in trying to get this situation straightened out.
That's Will Kempton. He's the director of the California Department of Transportation.
And Kiran, as he said, not going to have a positive effect on commuting.
CHETRY: Yes, that's putting it lightly. I feel sorry for the people that are out there today.
ROBERTS: The master of understatements.
CHETRY: Yes, exactly.
Well, we've also been talking a little bit about Delta Air Lines coming out of bankruptcy and what it will mean for your next flight.
CNN's Rusty Dornin is live at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
Good morning, Rusty.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Kiran.
You know, it's good news for Delta Air Lines. Of course, it's been a very painful 20 months that they've had payroll cutbacks, job cutbacks. But now they are emerging from bankruptcy with a big splash, trying to prove the old adage, you have to spend money to make money.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DORNIN (voice over): Delta cut 6,000 jobs and $3 billion in annual operating costs. And smack dab in the middle of the bankruptcy, the airline spent a bundle on remodeling at Atlanta's Hartsfield-International Airport.
JIM WHITEHURST, DELTA CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER: We spent $30 million over the last year redoing the lobby. We have many more check-in positions, we have many more kiosks. It means shorter lines, easier to get through the lobby.
DORNIN: Millions more to spruce up plain interiors, live TV in the consoles, even new flight attendant uniforms. And the jets will get new paint jobs.
But what about the thousands of workers it was forced to lay off?
WHITEHURST: We have brought back most everyone who was out on furlough. And in most areas, we're hiring new people.
DORNIN: According to "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution," the legal bills facing Delta could top $200 million. That's about the equivalent of the annual salaries of 3,000 mechanics.
Other airlines have faced similar financial problems. Northwest also filed for bankruptcy on the same day as Delta in September of '05. But unlike Northwest, which has yet to emerge from bankruptcy, Delta benefits from a largely non-union labor force. Chapter 11 has also allowed Delta to streamline its costs and ship more jets to more profitable overseas routes. The new sleeker, more efficient Delta could mean a nicer experience also. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for flying Delta.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thanks.
DORNIN (on camera): Does this mean we're going to get our pillows back?
WHITEHURST: We're looking hard at pillows. I don't want to promise you that, but we are looking hard at it. We are going to roll out food again.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DORNIN: Well, it looks like Delta claims food is coming back next fall for flights lasting three hours or more.
Now, for those employees that suffered those very painful cutbacks, apparently tomorrow 39,000 Delta employees will split up $480 million in cash and stock options -- Kiran.
CHETRY: All right. Rusty, thanks so much.
And also coming up, how about a $10 fare? We're going to be speaking with the CEO of a startup airline called Skybus, and we're going to see what your ten bucks actually buys you.
Immigration day rallies are scheduled tomorrow. Remember last year when thousands hit the streets from coast to coast? Did it change any minds?
We're going to see what's in store this year.
Also, a former "American Idol" finalist arrested. The details ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.
The most news in the morning right here on CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING.
Tomorrow is May Day. And like last year's May Day, it's going to be a national day of protests over immigration in the United States, with rallies stretching from coast to coast.
AMERICAN MORNING'S Alina Cho is here to tell us what we can expect.
Hi there, Alina. Nice to see you.
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, Kiran. Good morning to you.
You know, who could forget last year's immigration rallies? Those were really about shining the spotlight on the larger issue of immigration. Well, this year, organizers are narrowing their focus. They're talking about families of mixed immigration status.
Now, that means American-born children of illegal immigrants and their parents who are in danger of being deported. The result, thousands of families are being separated. In many cases, painfully so. So tomorrow you could hear hundreds of thousands of immigrants shouting this has got to stop.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (SPEAKING SPANISH)
CHO (voice over): In Los Angeles Sunday, hundreds of children in the streets. Young faces, U.S. citizens. Many of their parents are in this country illegally. The children argue they too are victims when their parents are targeted for deportation.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Children in our group, they're aware that all of -- they are born here, they are from immigrant parents. And the possibility the way the immigration laws are now of them being separated from their parents is very likely, and that's something that children don't want absolutely to have happen.
CHO: Last year's immigration rallies were much larger and louder than expected. Hundreds of thousands are expected to gather in cities like L.A., New York and Chicago. The rallying cry, how U.S. immigration raids are uprooting families and tearing them apart.
Shortly after last year's rallies, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Return to Sender. The goal, round up illegal immigrants and deport them. To date, the operation has netted more than 23,000 arrests nationwide.
President Bush renewed his call for immigration reform during a commencement speech Saturday at Miami Dade College.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We need a system where our laws are respected. We feed a system that meets the legitimate needs of our economy. And we need a system that treats people with dignity.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO: So, a year after last year's rallies and a day before tomorrow's, the president and Congress have yet to work out the details. So some cities are actually taking matters into their own hands. They're not cooperating with federal authorities as they try to arrest and deport illegal immigrants, like I talked about in the piece.
Now, these are called sanctuary cities. And this movement is growing. San Francisco is one of them. And tomorrow we'll actually take you to a town in New Jersey that is becoming a sanctuary city.
We'll tell you about the mayor's "don't ask don't tell" policy. He says it's good for the local economy, but other long-time residents are not so happy about the way things are going there. That's the mayor, Bob Patten, by the way. We'll tell you about what they have to say about it tomorrow.
You know, Kiran, we also talked to some illegal immigrants. Of course, they are happy about this "don't ask don't tell" policy. It's clearly a controversial one, but it seems to be working in this small town. At least for now.
CHETRY: And Congress is going to be taking this issue up again. It seems like one of the biggest sticking points is the argument or the debate over what to do with the 12 million already here in the country. And that number they believe is vastly underreported of people that are undocumented.
CHO: You're talking about 12 million. And if it is underreported right as it stands, that is one in 20 workers here in the United States. That's a lot of people, and the big question is what to do about them.
You know, amnesty or deportation? I think it will probably fall somewhere in the middle. You know, there's little disagreement on border security. A lot of people believe the borders should be secure.
But what to do with those 12 million people, that's the big question. And hopefully Congress will come up with some sort of solution in the coming months.
CHETRY: All right. Alina Cho, thanks so much.
CHO: Sure.
CHETRY: And coming up, CNN will have coverage of the immigration rallies and all the underlying issues all day tomorrow. We have correspondents fanned out across the country, we kick it off here on AMERICAN MORNING. It all begins at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.
ROBERTS: If you live in Texas, you're in for a wet one today. It's 45 minutes after the hour. Chad Myers in the extreme weather center in Atlanta.
(WEATHER REPORT)
Coming up, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, he's back at work today. First time since he took time off at the end of March for cancer treatment, cancer surgery. I'll ask him about his battle with cancer and get White House reaction to comments from George Tenet, because Tony says he's back and ready to field the hard questions.
Stay with us on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: And we have this just in to CNN. A jury in London finding five British Muslims guilty of plotting a series of bombings in the U.K. Investigators say they planned to use a 1,300-pound fertilizer bomb to try to destroy either a shopping mall or one of London's biggest nightclubs. The jury deliberated for seven weeks. We're going to be live in the courthouse in London in just a few moments.
ROBERTS: A welcome sight at the White House today. Press Secretary Tony Snow is back on the job this morning, a month after leaving his post because of a recurrence of his cancer. And Tony joins us now from the north lawn f the White House.
Good morning to you, Tony. How are you doing?
TONY SNOW, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Good morning, John. I'm doing fine. Glad to be back.
ROBERTS: Hey, it's really good to see you back, and see you last Saturday at that Correspondents Association dinner.
Just give our viewers a quick update sort of on where you are with the cancer, where you're going with the treatment, what's been happening with you in the last month.
SNOW: Sure.
Well, as a lot of people know, about five weeks ago I left, and we did some exploratory surgery. They found a recurrence of cancer. And so what we're doing now is we're treating it.
I recovered from the surgery, more or less. I've got a little more recovering to do. I'll start doing chemo on Friday. We'll do that every other week for four months. We'll do eight treatments.
And then if everything goes according to plan, once a month we'll do a maintenance chemo just to make sure that we got the thing knocked out and put into remission.
ROBERTS: Now, of course, it was a concern to all of us when we heard that the cancer had reoccurred, but particularly this idea that the liver was involved. How involved was the liver?
SNOW: You know, I don't want to try to be a medical expert, but I think a lot of people got a little overly concerned. It is attached to the liver, it is not a liver cancer, per se.
It is treatable. It is -- the way they describe this is not curable, at least by standards, but, you know, you never know given what happens. Some people, in fact, do have complete remission on this.
What we're trying to do is to knock it into remission, turn what used to be a fatal disease into a chronic disease, which we will treat with regular chemo for, you know, however long we need to.
ROBERTS: Now, of course you use the bully pulpit there at the podium every day to talk about the president's policies, but do you plan at all to use that to try to give hope to cancer survivors, as well?
SNOW: Yes, I hope so, at least by example. You know what happens -- and you and I have seen this a lot, John -- is the mere mention of cancer throws people into this absolute panic. You know, 20, 30 years ago it used to be that kind of condition. But it is unbelievable what medical researchers have been able to come up with in recent years, and conditions that used to be incurable are curable now; conditions that used to not be treatable are treatable today.
And there are a lot of people with situations worse than mine that have been living 20, 30 years by simply dealing with it with regular chemo. They've been leading full and happy lives, and that's certainly what I hope to be doing.
ROBERTS: So you say that you're ready for the tough questions this morning. Are you?
SNOW: Yes. Let's go.
ROBERTS: All right. Let's start off with Tenet here.
His whole book seems to be precipitated around this idea that you folks -- not you in particular, because I don't think you were there at the time -- talked about this idea of a "slam dunk" when it comes to the intelligence.
Here's what Tenet said about it in his interview with "60 Minutes" last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE TENET, FMR. CIA DIRECTOR: Listening to the vice president go on "Meet the Press" on the fifth year after 9/11, you know, and say, "Well, George Tenet said 'slam dunk,' as if he needed me to say "slam dunk" to go to war with Iraq...
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: So, Tony, did the White House throw him overboard? Was he made a scapegoat here?
SNOW: No. As a matter of fact, the president defended George Tenet through thick and thin. He continues to thank George Tenet for his service as CIA director.
Look, I think it sounds to me -- and I have not read the book. I'm going to try to read the book in the next few days. But it seems to me that there is a lot of umbrage taken with the term "slam dunk".
You know, that was in Bob Woodward's book. But on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any dispute about the fact that the best intelligence available to the United States, to the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, to intelligence services around the world, was that Saddam had some weapons of mass destruction and was pursuing further weapons of mass destruction. You know, the United States Senate in 1998 passed a resolution talking about as much. President Clinton discussed it. The fact is, the best intelligence we had indicated weapons of mass destruction, but obviously we haven't been able to find them.
ROBERTS: Well, there are some former CIA officers, one of them who will be coming up in the next hour, who say there was plenty of evidence to the contrary, that there wasn't any weapons of -- there weren't any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Let me move on though to the supplemental. The president is probably going to get that in the next couple of days. Where does he go from here?
SNOW: He vetoes it. And then we sit down of members of Congress. Democrats will have made their political point. Now they can do their job, which is to go ahead, put together a clean bill that will support the troops, that will not tie their hands, that will not weaken them by imposing artificial timetables, and also that will not cause qualms and questions among our allies about whether we're going to finish the job.
ROBERTS: Right.
SNOW: So I think, you know, Democrats have known for three months that this bill was not going to get a presidential signature. They have also known that they would not be able to sustain a -- I mean, would not be able to override a veto.
ROBERTS: Now Tony, the Democrats are floating a potential compromise which takes out the language of timetables but keeps language about benchmarks in there. What's wrong with benchmarks? Shouldn't the Iraqi government be held to at least some sort of set of goals?
SNOW: The Democratic Party hasn't even made its own benchmarks for legislation this year. Are you kidding me?
I mean, the fact is, of course there are benchmarks. And you have to understand that the way this strategy works is that you create conditions of security and also prosperity so that you're able to say to Shia and Sunni and everybody else, now you've got the opportunity to work together.
This is a very complex problem, and simply to try to impose a timeline on that is to say, even if there's progress, we're going to leave. Well, no. What you have to have is a situation where you encourage progress and you also keep your eye on the facts on the ground.
The problem with benchmarks, at least as it's been described, is something where it doesn't even matter if there is progress, it doesn't matter if there is success. If Democrats really want to join and try to make benchmarks a reality, support the president's policy...
ROBERTS: Right.
SNOW: ... which is to give the Iraqis the strength to do the same things. I mean, we all want the same thing.
ROBERTS: Tony...
SNOW: We want our troops to be able to come home, and we want a strong and safe Iraq.
ROBERTS: Tony, good to see you back, my friend.
SNOW: Good to be back, John. Thanks.
ROBERTS: Thanks for joining us. Appreciate it.
CHETRY: He looks great.
ROBERTS: He does.
CHETRY: Well, coming up, a live report from Oakland, California. We're going to see how a freeway collapse will affect the Monday morning rush and many more rush hours to come.
Also, the alleged D.C. madam says she's about to go public with more than just her little black book. There are a lot of people nervous in Washington this morning.
You're watching AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: We've got a minute before the top of the hour. Ali Velshi is "Minding Your Business" today.
And maybe some bad news for some of the automakers.
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You know, car sales -- homes are the biggest purchase, cars are your second biggest purchase. Homes you do for certain reasons. Cars are supposed to be enjoyable, at least.
Ford coming out and saying that tomorrow we're going to get the auto sales numbers for April and it's going to be bad for Ford. GM sort of hinted at that a week ago.
Both these companies are saying that it's a spillover from weaker housing sales and lower home prices and rising gas prices. A bit of a mystery, because all of those things were present in March as well.
GM rolled out an incentives program just this weekend to offer lower credit buyers a lower rate on their cars. We'll see if that worked out.
I'll keep covering this news, but the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING begins right now.
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