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Republicans Hold First Presidential Debate; Barack Obama Under Secret Service Protection; Queen Elizabeth Visits Jamestown Today
Aired May 04, 2007 - 08:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, everyone. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM.
I'm Tony Harris.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.
Watch events come in to the NEWSROOM live on Friday morning, the 4th of May.
Here's what's on the rundown.
Ten on stage. Republicans hold their first presidential debate of the 2008 campaign.
This hour, taking stock of the political performances.
HARRIS: British invasion. Queen Elizabeth in Jamestown, Virginia, this morning. Live coverage throughout the day as she and Prince Philip mark the settlement's 400th anniversary.
COLLINS: It's the last one in Germany, and it's melting fast. Shielding ice from global warming.
We'll talk about it coming up right here in the NEWSROOM.
First up this hour, the Iraq war, abortion rights. Republican presidential candidates face off on those issues and more in their first debate.
Senior Political Correspondent Candy Crowley looks at where they stand and who stood out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): They talked Iraq, abortion, immigration, taxes, and the legacy of Ronald Reagan. And the greatest of these was the war.
MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to get our troops home as soon as I possibly can, but at the same time, I recognize we don't want to bring them out in such a precipitous way that we cause a circumstance that would require us to come back.
TOMMY THOMPSON (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe the al- Maliki government should be required to vote as to whether or not they want America in their country.
CROWLEY: Of all the candidates' muscular talk, John McCain, struggling to fire up his campaign, was the fiercest. On Iraq...
JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If we withdraw, there will be chaos, there will be genocide, and they will follow us home.
CROWLEY: On Osama bin Laden...
MCCAIN: We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down, we will capture -- we will bring him to justice, and I'll follow him to the gates of hell.
CROWLEY: Of the 10 Republican presidential candidates debating at the Ronald Reagan Library, nine supported the war effort and warned against leaving too soon. And then there was one.
REP. RON PAUL (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Go to war, fight it, and win it, but don't get into it for political reasons or to enforce U.N. resolutions, or pretend the Iraqis were a national threat to us.
CROWLEY: In a party where opposition to abortion is an article of faith, the group was nearly unanimous that it would be a good day if Roe v. Wade was overturned. And then there was one. Rudy Giuliani struggled with the issue, saying it would be OK if Roe were repealed, but later conceded while he is personally opposed to abortion, he is pro-abortion rights.
RUDY GIULIANI (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Since it is an issue of conscience, I would respect a woman's right to make a different choice.
CROWLEY: Debating in the shadow of Ronald Reagan's legacy, yards from his final resting place, the 10 candidates all sought to pick up his mantel, a tough foreign policy, smaller government, and tax cuts.
MIKE HUCKABEE (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would work for the FairTax, which meets the four criteria -- flatter, fairer, finite, family-friendly. We'd get rid of the IRS.
SEN. SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would put forward an alternative flat tax and allow people to choose between the current tax code and system, which doesn't work, which ought to be taken behind a barn and killed with a dull axe...
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Wow.
Candy Crowley, part of the best political team on television, she's joining us now live from Los Angeles.
Candy, I watched most of these debates last night, but I wonder your thoughts on whether or not it actually changed the field in any way. CROWLEY: I don't think so. And I don't think anyone expected it would.
This has been described before as spring training. We're not -- we're not really in the regular season yet, so it's tough, unless you have just a bafo performance by somebody, or just a really bad one. And I don't think we had anything at either end of that spectrum that would change it.
Having said that, Mitt Romney, who has been trying to get his name out there, certainly showed he could go toe to toe with some of the better-known names. So he may have done himself some good there in his continuing effort to get his name out there, but I don't think it shook up the race in any way, shape or form.
COLLINS: Yes. And, you know, there's a lot of candidates. I mean, there's 10. And most people know maybe about four of them well, I would say.
Do you think that it exposed any major differences between the candidates so that people maybe would either identify or alienate themselves from them?
CROWLEY: Well, it did, particularly when you realized that most of the audience that they were playing to at this point, the broader audience, not the one in the room, were conservatives. Those are the people that are going to go out and vote in the primaries.
So, what did we see? We saw that they differed on stem-cell research.
John McCain said -- embryonic stem-cell research. John McCain said that he would expand federal funding for that. That's a little outside party orthodoxy.
You heard Rudy Giuliani say, look, I'm pro-abortion rights.
Immigration, they differed on whether it should all be about border security or there should be some path to citizenship, as they call it.
So we saw some real differences here, and some distancing as well from George Bush.
COLLINS: What about Rudy Giuliani and his stance on abortion?
CROWLEY: Absolutely. It was really interesting to watch, because the question was, "What sort of day would it be if Roe v. Wade were overturned?" And so, leading up to Giuliani, there were all these people who said, oh, it would be a wonderful day, it would be great, it really would.
And then they get to Rudy Giuliani, who is pro-abortion rights, and, you know, he's an outlier on this. And, you know, it seemed like he sort of wanted to go with the spirit of the night, and he said, well, it would be OK. So -- but then, of course, they pressed him further down the line, and Chris Matthews said, well, you know, "Aren't you pro- abortion rights?" And Giuliani had to say, look, you know, my conscience is that abortion is wrong, but a woman needs to choose, because he's pro-abortion rights.
So, that is one way where he is different from the rest of the field.
COLLINS: Yes. I thought that was an interesting moment.
CROWLEY: Yes.
COLLINS: All right. Candy Crowley, part of the best political team on television.
Thanks, Candy.
CROWLEY: Thanks, Heidi.
HARRIS: Safety concerns for Senator Barack Obama. He is now under Secret Service protection, the earliest ever for a presidential candidate.
Our Jim Acosta joins us live from New York.
Jim, good morning to you. Why is this not a big surprise?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not a big surprise, Tony, because let's face it, Barack Obama is the first top-tier African-American presidential candidate, and there is no specific threat that prompted this move. The Secret Service said Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff made this request after consulting with a congressional advisory committee that handles these issues.
That committee and Homeland Security aren't discussing exactly why they wanted this protection for Obama, but Illinois Senator Dick Durbin confirmed that he made the request to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saying Obama was drawing larger crowds than what's expected at this stage of the campaign, and that there were concerns about what was being said about Obama in hate mail to his campaign and on certain Web sites.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Unfortunately, some of the information that we found was racially motivated. And it is a sad reality in this day and age that Mr. Obama's African-American heritage is a cause for very violent and hated reactions from some people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ACOSTA: Now, technically, Hillary Clinton already has Secret Service protection. She's had it from the get-go being a former first lady. And Joe Lieberman had extra protection during his 2004 run. But just to draw the contrast, John Kerry and John Edwards did not have their Secret service detail until February of '04. That's nine months before where things stand right now -- Tony.
HARRIS: Hey, Jim, what does Senator Obama's wife, Michelle, have to say about this threat?
ACOSTA: Yes, she talked about this publicly yesterday, talking to "The New York Times". She said that while this is a concern for the campaign, and this is something that they really don't like to talk about, she conceded that this is a part about -- a part of taking this campaign to the next level. And really the campaign has welcomed this, from all indications, but at the same time this congressional committee and Homeland Security had to get involved to make it happen.
HARRIS: Yes.
CNN's Jim Acosta for us in New York.
Jim, thank you.
ACOSTA: Sure.
COLLINS: British royalty and American history, it all comes together next hour in Jamestown, Virginia. Queen Elizabeth II visits the first permanent English settlement in the United States. It's a place where celebrating the past is part of the present.
Details now from CNN's Richard Quest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Picture the scene -- 1607, and this is probably what it was like when the first ship arrived. It was the end of one journey and the beginning of another. The English colonization of the new world.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Set your pace! Fire!
QUEST: Today's Jamestown settlement has made a cottage industry out of those early arrivals. Even the young know about the royal visitors.
(on camera): Who is coming here tomorrow?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Queen Elizabeth.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The queen of England.
QUEST (voice over): One high point of today will be a tour of the ruins of that original fort. When the queen was last here in 1957, it was believed the fort had been washed away. The archaeologist, Bill Kelso, stubbornly refused to accept that theory and continued to search.
BILL KELSO, ARCHAEOLOGIST: Oh, it is a treasure chest of artifacts, just everywhere. But that's over a million objects. We can find a thousand a day. It's just a very, very concentrated area where people lived and worked and died and struggled and succeeded.
QUEST: In this part of the U.S., there's no shortage of people who are proud that the queen is here.
SANDRA CARRINGTON, COLONIAL DAMES: We are so excited that she's coming. We truly are. It's wonderful she'll be here.
QUEST: So, Jamestown has been preparing for weeks. The visit is being seen as an important reminder of Virginia's original English ties.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Richard Quest joining us now live from Jamestown with more on the queen's visit.
Richard, nice to see you.
QUEST: Good morning to you, Heidi.
Do you know, I'd hoped that the sun might come out, that Her Majesty might enjoy a little ray of Virginia warmth. But it doesn't seem it's the case. It's a bit brisk and breezy this morning. But perhaps that's rather appropriate for what she's going to be seeing, because here at Virginia settlement, and over at the historic Jamestown, well, she's going to be getting a first-hand idea of what it was like for those early settlers -- nasty.
They were at each other's throats half the time. Pretty much, maybe, like politics today.
Overall, though, the visit gets under way today in extremely good mood. What I've heard from the palace and from people with the party, they're very pleased with way it's going.
COLLINS: Richard, I know that she's greeted by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife. Will she be meeting with the president later today? It's a state dinner or something, is there not?
QUEST: Well, let me talk you through the next couple of days. You're jumping ahead of yourself a bit, Heidi.
COLLINS: I'm sorry. I just can't a take it.
QUEST: And you don't -- you Don't want to do that with a royal visit. You've got to take it calmly.
COLLINS: That's true. That's true.
QUEST: Because, you know, you'll get confused with the hats. Her Majesty has brought a lot of hot hats.
COLLINS: How many did she bring?
QUEST: Well, who knows? You see, you'll see all these hats coming off the plane...
COLLINS: Oh, look.
QUEST: And there's one hat, and then there's another hat, and then there's another hat. But you've got to remember, everybody concerned with the royal party is wearing hats. The queen's -- the queen's lady in waiting, the Countess Erly (ph), she'll be wearing a big hat.
COLLINS: Those are the biggest hatboxes -- the biggest hatboxes I have ever seen, Richard Quest, without a doubt.
QUEST: Well, you clearly don't have many hats yourself. That's all I can say.
COLLINS: I'm not a good hat person. That's true.
QUEST: Well, you know, go to the milliner. Now, let's talk act what you were saying.
COLLINS: Yes.
QUEST: When does she meet President Bush? Back to the serious stuff.
She meets President Bush when she goes to the nation's capital, Washington, D.C. That, in many ways, is when we call the state part of the visit, as opposed to the official part, begins.
She's in Washington on Monday and Tuesday. She'll be doing official state things with the president. On Monday night, there's a state banquet. On Tuesday night, the queen -- but before we get to that, we have the Kentucky Derby.
The queen has always wanted to go and see it. She is probably one of the world's leading experts of -- women experts on horse flesh. And by that, she's always wanted to go to the derby.
She's going to get to go. And then on Sunday, it's a day, a private day, when I suspect she'll be talking more about horses with her close friends in Kentucky.
COLLINS: Well, we show she has the hats for it, absolutely.
Richard Quest, so nice to see you. Thank you very much. We'll keep our eye on this visit. It's an exciting day.
Thanks, Richard.
QUEST: That's right. Thank you.
HARRIS: How to segue.
Richard Quest, live shot.
Still to come in the NEWSROOM, a sad story. Cage for a boy. Police say parents placed their 10-year-old son in a two-foot-tall cage, and the story gets worse.
It's straight ahead for you in the NEWSROOM.
COLLINS: Washington on edge. Waiting for more names to drop in the alleged D.C. madam case coming up in the NEWSROOM.
HARRIS: It is, they admit, a losing battle. But an extraordinary effort, nonetheless. Saving Germany's last glacier -- in the NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Nervous in the nation's capital. More names on an alleged madam's client list may be revealed today.
CNN's Brian Todd reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From K Street to Capitol Hill, nervousness abounds. Will this woman, her alleged clients or employees, or the news outlets covering her case, expose a major scandal, or at least embarrass Washington's power elite?
DEBORAH JEANE PALFREY, ALLEGED "D.C. MADAM": Mine is a very bizarre and rather unusual case.
TODD: Deborah Jeane Palfrey, accused by the government of running a high end prostitution ring in Washington. She denies it. But some of her alleged clients are trying hard to keep their names out of this case. ABC News, scheduled to run a special based on phone records given to the network by Palfrey, says it has gotten a letter from the lawyer for one of Palfrey's alleged clients, saying he has reason to believe his client might be revealed in the story.
ABC says the lawyer didn't name his client, but demanded they not air the name. According to the network, the attorney claims his client is a government witness against Palfrey and airing the name would violate a court order preventing Palfrey from intimidating witnesses.
Legal analysts say it's a weak argument.
KEITH WATTERS, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Remember, Deborah Palfrey and the attorney gave ABC the records prior to this order being issued. So they're not violating the order in any way.
ABC is not part of this case.
TODD: The news media also facing tough questions over whether they're really serving the public.
HOWARD KURTZ, CNN'S "RELIABLE SOURCES": This whole story makes me queasy, because ordinarily journalists don't publicize, on a national basis, the names of clients of an escort service. And so then you get to the question of what is newsworthy about it? What if it had nothing to do with somebody's job, had nothing to do with any federal money, had nothing to do with any official role?
TODD (on camera): An ABC spokesman tells us they're very mindful of that standard for newsworthiness and are proceeding very carefully. They point out that one of those exposed was a former State Department officials whose job had been to promote policies against prostitution.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COLLINS: Dozens of wildfires, dry conditions, and concerns about what might be coming next. State of emergency in Florida -- in the NEWSROOM.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Frederik Pleitgen on Germany's tallest mountain. This is where the country's last glacier is melting rapidly, but people here are banding together and they're trying to save it.
And that's coming up in the NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Making their mark. The queen visits a former colony. Elizabeth II observing the 400th anniversary of Jamestown.
Do we have a live picture there? I think that's a live picture.
HARRIS: Yes.
COLLINS: There it is. Now that they put that live thing up.
The first permanent English settlement, of course, in America. Her host, Vice President Dick Cheney.
We'll have live coverage of the royal visit coming up next hour.
HARRIS: Germany's highest mountain is losing part of its character, a feature that has been around for centuries.
CNN's Frederik Pleitgen reports on efforts to save Germany's last glacier.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PLEITGEN (voice over): Tourists on Germany's Zugspitze Mountain don't realize they're looking at a battlefield. The authorities here are fighting to save Germany's last glacier, a battle they know they can't win, one in which they can only buy time.
Manfred Haas (ph) is in charge of putting up what's called a glare shield to try and protect the glacier. It's a set of tarpaulins held together by ropes and wooden planks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We bring the cover ore the snow and the ice, and it helps us to reflect the sunshine, or the sun. And it also keeps the warm summer rain away.
PLEITGEN: But it's not enough. Every year, this glacier melts a little more. The ice becomes a little thinner. The glacier has lost almost half its original size in the last hundred years, and meteorologist predict in just 20 years it will be gone.
Christian Moser (ph) grew up in this area. He says the glacier is simply part of his life.
"I don't think my grandchildren, if I have some, will ever be able to see the glacier. It's just melting too fast," Moser (ph) says.
The end of the glacier would endanger the economy of this entire region in Germany. It's a ski slope in the winter and an alpine tourist attraction in the summer.
(on camera): The workers here are doing more than just putting up the sun shield. As you can see, there still is a lot of snow on the glazier. And the reason for that the workers here over the past couple of weeks have been pushing snow onto the slope, and they hope that some of the snow will turn to ice and reinforce this glacier.
(voice over): But they know that no matter what they do, their efforts to stall the ice melt are futile, and that in just a few years the last glacier in Germany will be history.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PLEITGEN: And Tony, the implications of this are potentially really massive. If all the glaciers here in Europe melt, you will see rivers drying out on this continent in the summers, and you will see massive droughts here in summers. That's what scientists here tell me.
And the people here that I've talked to, they say they are absolutely angry at their government, at the German government, which is the sixth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. And they say they can cover up their glacier as much as they want. If the emission greenhouse goes on the way it is, that glacier will just continue to melt away.
HARRIS: CNN's Frederik Pleitgen, Germany's highest mountain for us.
Frederik, thank you.
COLLINS: One man's journey into the world of radical Islam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And what makes a young teenager from a pious Muslim household become a radical?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In my case, I think initially I was duped. (END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: CNN's Christiane Amanpour investigates straight ahead in the NEWSROOM.
HARRIS: Taking a dive? A flat tire on a bridge almost leads to tragedy, but there's not a scratch on her. A free fall, the rescue, ahead in the NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: And from the world headquarters here in Atlanta, where we can take you anywhere around the world, even to Germany's tallest mountain...
COLLINS: Zugspitze.
HARRIS: ... good morning, everyone. I'm Tony Harris.
COLLINS: I finally got that right.
HARRIS: There you go. Outstanding.
COLLINS: Yes.
Meanwhile, we want to move on to Iraq today. The U.S. military today confirming the deaths of two more senior members of al Qaeda.
They were killed during an operation near Taji. One identified as a religious adviser. The other called a foreign fighter facilitator.
In Baghdad today, more insurgent attacks. A roadside bomb leaving five Iraqi police dead.
HARRIS: The mental health of U.S. troops. A Pentagon panel raising a red flag today.
CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr with details on this alarming report.
Alarming indeed, Barbara. Good morning to you.
What can you tell us about the findings?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Tony.
This report about to be unveiled in an hour and a half here in the Pentagon. CNN, however, has had an advanced look at some of the findings.
The bottom line, about one-third of the troops who have been in heavy combat in Iraq and Afghanistan report that they are suffering from anxiety, depression and acute stress. In this survey of the mental health of the troops on the frontline, for the first time the Pentagon asked about morals and ethics on the battlefield. Some of the results may startle you.
Let's have a look.
Less than half of the soldiers and Marines said they would report a team member for unethical behavior. Over a third of them reported it was their belief that torture should be allowed if it would save the life of a fellow buddy.
BARBARA STARR, PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: In this survey of the mental health of the troops on the front line, for the first time, the Pentagon asked about morals and ethics on the battlefield.
Some of the results may startle you.
Let's have a look.
Less than half of the soldiers and Marines said they would report a team member for unethical behavior. Over a third of them reported it was their belief that torture should be allowed if it would save the life of a fellow buddy.
Less than half, 47 percent of soldiers, 38 percent of Marines, said that civilians, non-combatants, should be treated with dignity and respect. And approximately 10 percent of the soldiers and Marines responding reported mistreating non-combatants -- of course, that's civilians -- or damaging their property when it was not necessary.
Tony, this is not just some survey, this is an official Defense Department survey of soldiers and Marines on the battlefield -- Tony.
HARRIS: Boy, it speaks to a lot of stress for service personnel in country there in Iraq.
Barbara, how do we expect the military brass to respond to these findings?
STARR: Well, you know, they already are, Tony.
For some time now, the top commanders in Iraq have ordered additional training for the troops on morals and ethics behavior on the battlefield.
But, you know, torture is not allowed. That is simply a no go area. So they are doing training for the troops and they are trying to step up mental health services on the front line so if the troops need to get some help, they can.
But one of the issues that's really beginning to emerge in all of this is the question of repeated deployment.
HARRIS: Yes. Yes.
STARR: So many of the troops now, second, third tours of duty, some coming up soon on perhaps a fourth tour of duty.
What is the cumulative effect? How much time on the battlefield can any one person really take -- Tony.
HARRIS: A great point.
Barbara Starr for us at the Pentagon.
Barbara, thank you.
STARR: Sure.
COLLINS: A missed opportunity -- many around the world had hoped to see Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interacting with her Iranian counterpart. But it didn't happen.
Both were at an international conference on Iraq.
Iran's foreign minister bolted from a diplomatic dinner just as Rice was arriving.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, first of all, the opportunity simply didn't arise for the foreign minister of Iran and me to, as I said, I would have taken that opportunity. The opportunity didn't arise.
But our officials did, as they did in Baghdad, have an opportunity to exchange views about the substance of this meeting, which is how to help Iraq be more secure and the responsibilities of neighbors and those who are active in Iraq to help the Iraqis secure themselves.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: The two day talks at Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt wrapped up today.
HARRIS: Here comes the queen. Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Jamestown, Virginia next hour. The royal visit marks the 400th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in America.
The queen will be accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne.
We will have live coverage in THE NEWSROOM with Richard Quest.
Wow!
COLLINS: And that'll take the rest of the hour. HARRIS: Ooh.
After Jamestown, the queen visits The College of William and Mary. From there, it is on to Kentucky for the Derby. That's tomorrow.
COLLINS: Still no power for tens of thousands of people in North Texas this morning. Wednesday's thunderstorms knocked out power to more than 300,000 homes and businesses. Utility officials say some 60,000 customers are still in the dark. The lights should be back on, though, by Sunday.
Officials say a lightning strike set off this house fire in Bellaire. The severe weather is blamed for 10 deaths now in Texas in the last two weeks. Most recently, two people struck by lightning and a third struck in a submerged car.
HARRIS: A couple of clear days would help the situation in Texas.
COLLINS: Yes.
HARRIS: And we heard Richard Quest a little earlier -- Chad, talking about the cool conditions there in Virginia.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes.
(WEATHER REPORT)
(STOCK MARKET REPORT)
HARRIS: Still to come this morning in THE NEWSROOM, a flat tire on a bridge. The next thing she knows, a Florida woman is knocked into the water.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARLENE PAYAN, SURVIVED ACCIDENT: I hear screeching of the other car hitting my car. I -- I didn't even know what it was or anything, until they told me it was a Hummer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARRIS: The accidental swimmer, in THE NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: OK, very quickly, we want to remind you again, Queen Elizabeth II in Jamestown, Virginia this morning. The queen and Prince Philip being welcomed by the vice president and Lynne Cheney this morning to the Jamestown Settlement, all to mark the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America.
And the plan?
The vice president will deliver remarks about 10:15 a.m. We will bring those to you right here live in THE NEWSROOM.
COLLINS: Inside the heart of radical Islam -- one man's struggle to escape and his warning to the world.
CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Like most British Muslims, Ed Husain grew up in a hard-working household of immigrants from colonial India.
As a child, his parents would bring him to pray here, at the moderate Brick Lane Mosque, in London's East End. But they could never have predicted the journey he would later take into the heart of radical Islam.
(on camera): Ed, what makes a young teenager from a pious Muslim household become a radical?
ED HUSAIN, AUTHOR, "THE ISLAMIST": In my case, I think, initially I was duped. It's a slow, gradual process, developing ideas that were confrontational, that were radical, that were extremist. Nobody questioned me other than my parents.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Tired of their questions, he ran away from home at 16 and immersed himself in political Islam that was taught here, at the East London mosque.
HUSAIN: I bought this book here. And it's prominently displayed there, attached to the mosque.
AMANPOUR: The book "Milestones" is by Sayyid Qutb, who advocates using Islam to seize political power.
HUSAIN: "We have realized that attacking the non-believers in their territories is a collective duty."
So it is being sold as a religious duty to kill innocent people on the basis of their religion.
AMANPOUR: And Qutb's ideas still form part of weekly lectures at the mosque.
HUSAIN: So here's an event linked to Sayyid Qutb Maududi here at the East London mosque on a weekly...
AMANPOUR (on camera): Every Wednesday evening.
HUSAIN: The author, Qutb, for example, of this particular book, is the same man who is an inspiration to bin Laden and Ayman al- Zawahiri and others. So these are the godfathers of al Qaeda.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Those running this mosque declined to answer Ed's criticism. But back then, Ed was soon searching for something even more radical, like this message of Muslim separatism.
HUSAIN: We can just about read the "Stay Muslim"...
AMANPOUR (on camera): "Stay Muslim. Don't Vote!"
HUSAIN: It's to prevent Muslims from becoming part and parcel of the system here, but to keep them separate. And this is a message put up by a group called Al Muhajirun, which is an offshoot of Hizb-ut- Tahrir.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): And just this week, Al Muhajirun were protesting the arrest of six members on charges of inciting and financially supporting terrorism.
HUSAIN: It's the ideology, which is to remain separate from mainstream Western political discourse.
AMANPOUR: And that ideology was the next stop on Ed's road to radicalism.
(on camera): You joined Hizb-ut-Tahrir?
HUSAIN: Yes.
AMANPOUR: Which is what, as an organization?
HUSAIN: They like to call themselves a political party. They're a group of individuals who have members right across the world who are dedicated to overthrowing every single Arab government, every single Muslim government, and setting up an expansionist global state in the Middle East. And, in their words, it's a launch pad for a jihad to go out to other countries.
So it's basically creating an Islamist empire.
AMANPOUR: And they operate here in England?
HUSAIN: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: Openly?
HUSAIN: Openly, in large numbers, on university campuses, to this day.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Ed says he was a campus recruiter for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whose long-term goal is a sort of United States of Islam, a caliphate ruled by fundamentalist Islamic law called Sharia, just as it was a thousand years ago.
HUSAIN: It was here that I and extremist organizations in the mid-1990s -- and even now -- found it easy to recruit, because people in these parts of Britain don't have a clear identity as to who they are, whether they're Asian, whether they're Muslims, whether they're British. We claimed that India, for example, was Muslim land, to be conquered again by the army of a coming caliph. That was the sort of rhetoric we were putting out, and nobody questioned us. AMANPOUR: So we went to question the spokesman for Hizb-ut- Tahrir, who openly admits they are working towards a caliphate.
TAJI MUSTAFA, SPOKESMAN, HIZB-UT-TAHRIR: Today the Muslim world is a very unstable place. Under Islamic rule, under the caliphate, there was stability even in Palestine. Jews, Christians, Muslims lived in harmony under an Islamic political order.
AMANPOUR (on camera): What you say sounds, you know, reasonable. But clearly your methods are suspect because you're banned in just about every country that exists...
MUSTAFA: No, we're...
AMANPOUR: ... except for this one.
MUSTAFA: No, we're not. Not at all. No, let's clear. There is the tyrants in the Muslim world who are afraid of the revival of the masses. And as for the British government, if Blair seeks to ban us, he is going down the same road as the tyrants in Egypt and in Sudan.
AMANPOUR: We've obviously talked to some people who've been inside the group and members of the group -- Ed Husain, for instance.
MUSTAFA: Ed Husain was never a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. We need to have our facts very clear.
AMANPOUR: So you're denying that?
MUSTAFA: That Ed Husain was a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir? Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: And as a recruiter for Hizb-ut-Tahrir?
MUSTAFA: He wasn't a member.
HUSAIN: That's false. I attended cell structure meetings for two years. My direct instructor was Farid Hasim (ph). It wasn't anybody ordinary. It was the deputy leader of Hizb-ut-Tahrir. I radicalized this entire college. In two years, there were Muslim women walking around in veils and face covers, Muslim men going around putting up posters.
AMANPOUR: What turned you off this strain of Islam that you were propagating?
HUSAIN: On one afternoon I was studying in the library and I heard young British Muslim students who were shouting "Allah Akbar" aloud, as if they were at war in the Middle East. And then soon afterwards -- we classified at the time a Christian student -- was stabbed in his heart and he fell here and he died. That, to my mind, was Britain's first Islamist murder.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Ed says he left Islamism there and then, but that it would take another 10 years to fully decontaminate his mind. (on camera): Why did you write this book?
HUSAIN: It was written because all around me in Britain I see a form of Islam that's being developed which is highly literal, deeply political and exceptionally confrontational.
AMANPOUR: Are you not afraid?
HUSAIN: I am afraid. I am afraid. But I feel that my duty to fellow human beings is more important than my duty to Islamists.
AMANPOUR (voice-over): Christian Amanpour, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: Transforming trash -- how a Georgia landfill provides electricity for a local business. They say it's a win-win-win situation. The story for you in THE NEWSROOM.
COLLINS: Well, I don't know if that's the case for this story.
HARRIS: Yes.
COLLINS: It's water under the bridge now. But a woman knocked overboard by a Hummer and she lives to talk about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PAYAN: It's a scary feeling. It is.
Oh, yes. I'm amazed. I am amazed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: The big plunge in THE NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: See, here's what I love about the pod cast. It is linking traditional media, Heidi, with -- with new media. That's what's happening. And you can catch us, of course, of course, of course, with traditional media every day, 9:00 until 12:00 right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
OK, fine. Great. We love that you're here in bigger and bigger numbers. But now you can take us with you anywhere on your iPod. The CNN NEWSROOM pod cast -- new media, new media, new media, available 24-7 right on your iPod.
COLLINS: Seriously, how long did you work on that?
That was a great spin...
HARRIS: Was that all right?
COLLINS: ... on... HARRIS: Was that OK?
COLLINS: ... on us talking about this every day.
HARRIS: Keeping it fresh.
COLLINS: Yes.
HARRIS: Keeping it fresh and new.
COLLINS: That was excellent.
Meanwhile, this story starts with a flat tire and ends with a young woman knocked off a bridge.
What happened and how did she live to tell the tale?
We get that from reporter Jennifer Bauer. She's with CNN affiliate WJXT.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
PAYAN: It's a scary feeling. It is.
JENNIFER BAUER, WJXT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Arlene Payan says she can't find the words to describe what was going through her mind as she flew over the side of the Dames Point Bridge and into the water below.
Standing on the side of 9A soaked from head to toe, Payan says she's lucky to be alive.
PAYAN: Oh, yes. I'm amazed. I am amazed. BAUER: This is how Florida Highway Patrol says it happened. Payan was driving southbound in the right lane when she got a flat. She pulled over to the side of the road and got out of her car. The car immediately behind Payan swerved to avoid hitting her. A Hummer behind that car then clipped Payan's car, sending the 21-year-old over the side.
PAYAN: When I was walking toward the side of the car, I hear the screeching of the other car hitting my car. I -- I didn't even know what it was or anything until they told me it was a Hummer that hit my car.
BAUER (on camera): Standing here at the base of the Dames Point Bridge, you can sort of get an idea at how far the drop was from where Payan was hit to where she entered the water. FHP says it's about 20 feet, but Payan says it felt a lot taller.
(voice-over): On her way to work when the accident happened, Payan took the afternoon off and says she's going home to put on some dry clothes.
PAYAN: I'm going to go home and try to fix everything, call my insurance company in. (END VIDEO TAPE)
COLLINS: Man.
HARRIS: Yes.
COLLINS: The officer who rescued that woman, Detective Chris King, says he was just doing his job and does not consider himself a hero.
HARRIS: He is a watched man -- a leading Democratic presidential candidate now guarded by the Secret Service. We will tell you why in THE NEWSROOM.
COLLINS: Already strained, U.S. troops at greater risk -- an alarming Pentagon report ahead in THE NEWSROOM.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And we are in Jamestown in Virginia.
I'm Richard Quest.
Very soon, the queen will be moving amongst us in THE NEWSROOM.
NICOLE LAPIN, CNN INTERNET REPORTER: It's fire, it's ice, it's a horrific crash and it's all caught on tape by our I-Reporter for this week, and you're going to find it all at cnn.com.
While renovations were underway, a fire broke out at the historic in Georgetown. So our I-Reporter, Thomas Blackburn (ph), shot this video as flames were engulfing the roof of the library. And even as firefighters fought the blaze, the fire basically consumed the tower of the roof, and it later collapsed.
And here's a very different story to tell you about out of New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Obranio Chicle (ph) captured quarter sized hail that fell for 15 minutes following severe thunderstorms.
And, hey, if you missed this clip, here it is again. Our I- Reporter Laura Kennedy (ph) shot this video of a speeding train hitting an 18-wheeler stuck on the railroad tracks. Luckily, amazingly, nobody was hurt. Laura also shot some aftermath video from the other side of the tracks showing the debris that's scattered all around this crash site.
And you can view all of those clips and many more by going online to cnn.com/exchange.
For the Dot-Com Desk, I'm Nicole Lapin.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Hi, everybody.
I'm Heidi Collins and you are in THE NEWSROOM.
Her Majesty in America -- Queen Elizabeth II in Jamestown, Virginia honoring the first colonists.
We've got live coverage throughout the morning, so stay right here in THE NEWSROOM and you'll see it.
HARRIS: How about this -- ever imagine owning a race horse and cheering as it came down the stretch in the Kentucky Derby?
This morning, we bring you the story of someone who retired from Wall Street with the hope of getting to the winner's circle at this year's race.
Ali Velshi has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Kentucky Derby -- the run for the roses. It's the horse race of horse races.
Jim Scatuorchio is betting on Scat Daddy, a horse he co-owns. Jim says investing in horses is as risky, if not more so, than trading stocks.
JIM SCATUORCHIO, CO-OWNS RACE HORSES: I worked on Wall Street for over 30 years at one particular firm, Donaldson, Lufkin Jenrette. And all those years, I had some involvement in horse racing.
VELSHI: While he worked on Wall Street, Jim invested in race horses with small groups of people. He liked it and made enough money off of it that he decided to spend more time and more money on the ponies after he retired in 1998.
SCATUORCHIO: Well, I was fortunate enough to get involved with a horse called Tail of the Cat, I was successful in the partnership I was in and after that, I went on my own. And then right about the time of my retirement, I came up with a horse called More Than Ready that rain in the 2000 Derby and finished fourth. And now it's more of a business.
VELSHI: Scatuorchio now owns about 30 horses and he says they can be more unruly than the traders he used to manage on Wall Street.
Despite it being a business, don't think Scatuorchio is immune to the emotions of race day.
SCATUORCHIO: Owning a race horse is an experience like no one ever experienced. I said when you stop getting cotton mouth two minutes before they go into the gate, then probably you shouldn't own any race horses anymore. I still get it. So it's quite a thrill.
VELSHI: Ali Velshi, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLINS: Good morning, everybody. I'm Heidi Collins.
HARRIS: And I'm Tony Harris.
Stay informed in the CNN NEWSROOM.
Here's what's on the rundown for you this morning.
Queen Elizabeth II touring historic Jamestown this hour. The monarch in Virginia to mark the settlement's 400th anniversary.
Live coverage just moments away.
COLLINS: Republicans debating in the shadow of Ronald Reagan -- sizing up the presidential candidates after their first side by side appearance.
HARRIS: Are the lyrics are sometimes racist, sexist or just plain vulgar?
Now, civil rights activists hit the streets calling on music companies to clean up hip-hop.
It is Friday, May 4th, and you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.
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