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Tuberculosis Investigation; Presidential Candidates Flock to New Hampshire; Hurricane Force: Can Your Home Survive?

Aired May 30, 2007 - 07:59   ET

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

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning to you. Thanks very much for joining us.
It's Wednesday, May the 30th.

I'm John Roberts.

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry.

Great to see you this morning.

"On Our Radar" today, the whales are nearly home free. They have about two miles to go before they make it into the wide open waters of the Pacific.

Of course we followed this story for the better part of a month now as these whales that made their way into the Sacramento Delta, a mom and a baby, both injured by a boat propeller, and it wasn't looking good for them. But some Herculean efforts on the part of marine biologists and many, many others involved, and now it looks like we're going to have some good news.

Keep our fingers crossed for those whales.

ROBERTS: They're actually looking pretty energetic in those pictures, aren't they?

CHETRY: They were.

ROBERTS: New pictures from the Vatican this morning. They're pretty sad.

The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann met with Pope Benedict XVI this morning. They just talked with reporters, by the way, about that meeting. You'll hear what they have to say coming up in just a couple of minutes. So stay tuned for that.

CHETRY: And we're going to be talking right now about a way to get your hands on Janet Jackson, Michael Jackson, even Tito Jackson memorabilia.

Lola Ogunnaike joins us right now.

Welcome, by the way, to the AMERICAN MORNING family. Great to see you this morning.

LOLA OGUNNAIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

CHETRY: Well, good. We're happy to have you, especially when you're talking about juicy things like being able to purchase a bit of Jackson history.

OGUNNAIKE: Yes, and it's worth purchasing. You cannot leave the world without having bought Marlon Jackson's decoupage jar, right?

CHETRY: That's what I think about every morning when I get up.

OGUNNAIKE: Me, too. That's why I'm here.

CHETRY: All right. Some other interesting items as well -- the red jacket from...

OGUNNAIKE: The red "Thriller" jacket. You've got Janet Jackson's ballet slippers. You've got Michael Jackson's I.D. card to get into Motown. So lots of crazy, interesting things.

CHETRY: And you're going to show us all of that a little bit later.

OGUNNAIKE: Absolutely.

CHETRY: Lola, thanks.

ROBERTS: This morning, a man with an extremely drug-resistant form of tuberculosis is under the first government-ordered quarantine in decades. And federal health officials are searching for people who may have been exposed during the patient's two recent transatlantic flights.

Earlier, we spoke with Dr. Julie Gerberding. She is the director of the Centers for Disease Control, who told us how much risk those other passengers actually face.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JULIE GERBERDING, CDC DIRECTOR: Not zero risk, but fortunately not the highest risk of exposure. What we have learned is that the passengers who were seated close to the person on the airplane could be at a risk, and those are the people where the investigation will be concentrated. But just to be on the safe side, because it's such a bad bacteria, we will be contacting the passengers on the long flights to make sure that they know they can be tested for tuberculosis exposure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is live outside of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where the man is being held with an armed guard posted at his door.

Sanjay, we're trying to clear up what seems to be a little bit of a disconnect here. Dr. Gerberding suggesting that the transmissibility of this man's particular form of tuberculosis is not high, yet, at the same time, he's in an isolation wing with a man with a gun at his door.

So which is it?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know it's a little bit of both, quite honestly.

You know, when it comes to tuberculosis, there are several things that make it more contagious with certain people. For example, if they're actively sick at the time, coughing up the bacteria into the air, that's obviously of concern.

The second concern is, you can actually test to see in their sputum if they actually have the bacteria actually present. And it turns out both those situations with him are nonexistent. It doesn't appear like he's sick, nor does he have the bacteria in his sputum. So that's good.

But, you know, when you know that he has Extremely Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, still the better sense of prudence is to put him in an isolation room. And one thing I'll point out as well that is different now, as compared to four decades ago, is we have a lot of people walking around who are immunocompromised, John.

Obviously, a lot of those people are in hospitals, people with HIV or AIDS, immunocompromised for other reasons. You don't know who these people are, necessarily. The better sense of prudence is to keep him away from all those people, and anybody else who might get the bacterial infection.

ROBERTS: So, we've been hearing all morning, Sanjay, how drug resistant this form of bacterial called -- termed XDR actually is. So what are the treatment options for this fellow?

GUPTA: Yes, they're not a lot. And you know, John, people talk about drug resistance all the time. And it's funny. It's good for a lot of people to hear that in fact you can get resistance to antibiotics by misusing them, not taking them properly, not taking them for the full duration.

People don't worry about that until you hear a case like this, where someone in fact does have the extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis. There are several different lines of drugs.

He appears to be resistant, meaning the antibiotics won't work for his bacteria in several lines of these drugs. They're going to test different antibiotics, the antibiotics that are more toxic, that are harder on the body, to see if one of those might work for him.

Surgery might be an option. So, if he has a focal area of this infection in his lung, for example, sometimes they'll actually go and remove that surgically and then treat him with antibiotics to kill whatever bacteria are left.

This can take a long time. The whole process can take a long time. There have been about 50 cases of XDR-TB in this country over the last decade or so. It's not very common, but the numbers are likely to continue to increase.

ROBERTS: Sanjay Gupta for us outside of Grady Memorial.

Sanjay, thanks very much. We'll get back to you as the developments progress down there in Atlanta this morning -- Kiran.

CHETRY: Well, the parents of Madeleine McCann met with Pope Benedict XVI earlier this morning, attending the general audience today in St. Peter's Square there in Vatican City.

They gave him a picture of Madeleine, asking him to pray for her safe return. And there you see him lay his hands on the photo of the little girl. Gerry and Kate McCann held a news conference after the meeting and talked about how much it meant to them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GERRY MCCANN, MADELEINE'S FATHER: Meeting the pontiff was an experience that has very mixed emotions for us. Under ordinary circumstances, of course, it would be the highlight of any Catholic to come and meet the pope. Of course, we're saddened with the very realization that our daughter is still missing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: And Madeleine has been missing for almost four weeks. The 4-year-old was snatched from her hotel bed while vacationing with her family in Portugal. Her parents were eating dinner about 50 yards away, they said, when it happened.

ROBERTS: This morning President Bush has another loyal ally that he wants to run the World Bank. He's Robert Zoellick, a Goldman Sachs vice chairman, also former deputy secretary of state.

The World Bank will have to vote on Zoellick before the current president, Paul Wolfowitz, resigns on June 30th. He was forced out after authorizing a pay raise for his girlfriend, who also worked at the bank.

President Bush is expected to announce Zoellick's nomination this morning at 11:05 Eastern Time. You can see that right here on CNN.

Stepping up the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says it would be a very big mistake if negotiators dropped their condition that Iran freeze nuclear work before talks begin on a package of incentives. She's in Europe for meetings that will include the European nations that are leading this stalled diplomatic initiative.

CHETRY: Well, a lot of eyes will be on the San Francisco Bay this morning. The wayward whales finally closing in on the open waters of the ocean. Delta and Dawn, as they've been named, are just a couple of miles now from the Golden Gate Bridge. Rescuers hope to keep them on course and to usher them out to sea this morning. It's been two weeks since the whales wandered some 90 miles up the Sacramento River.

"Quick Hits" now.

And a surprise visit to Baghdad. Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut making an unannounced visit today, stopping at a joint security station where U.S. and Iraqi security forces are based.

A man in Miami getting pretty steamed over packets of chili sauce ended up pulling a gun on the manager of Wendy's when he was told he couldn't have more than 10 of those packets. There's the manager. He was hit several times in the arm with bullets.

He's not badly hurt, police say. They're now looking for the shooter who got away.

ROBERTS: The guy obviously wanted chili.

So, we've got the big debates coming up. This weekend, the beginning of next week, the Democrats go at it on Sunday, the Republicans on Tuesday night in New Hampshire, that all-important Granite State which usually does a lot to help nominate the person who could become president.

We'll check in with our Candy Crowley coming up next on who's up and who's down and what to watch for during these debates.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Some "Quick Hits" for you now.

And a major endorsement for the Clinton campaign. It's being announced today.

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa throwing his support behind the New York senator. Villaraigosa is considered to be one of the most influential Democrats in California.

He also took some heat over that L.A. riot that ended up happening after an immigration rally. And today his chief of police is calling it a command and control breakdown. They say that's what happened.

These pictures tell the story. At the end of an immigration rally earlier this month, police broke it up by firing rubber bullets into the crowd. It ended up they didn't even make a single arrest.

It's getting more expense to become a U.S. citizen. The price of citizenship set to double in August to almost $700. A green card or permanent residency will cost nearly triple, just over $900 -- John. ROBERTS: Thank you.

The 2008 presidential candidates are feeling right at home these days in New Hampshire. The '08ers are showing the Granite State an awful lot of love, even though the primary there is still about seven months away.

Our senior political correspondent, Candy Crowley, is up in the Granite State for us this morning. She's been tracking all the political goings on there and joins us now live.

Good morning to you, Candy.

CANDY CROWLEY, CNN SR. POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

ROBERTS: So, these candidates have been crisscrossing the state. Mitt Romney was there yesterday. Hillary Clinton was there yesterday. Barack Obama spent the weekend up there.

Who has got the edge right now on both sides of the political fence?

CROWLEY: You know, what's interesting is sometime the conventional wisdom proves out, at least for a little while. And right now what we're seeing in the polls is that Hillary Clinton, on the Democratic side, and John McCain, on the Republican side. In fact, that holds true for New Hampshire, Iowa, as well as South Carolina.

Now, as you know, these are snapshots. This is just the latest poll. We have at some point what we call the poll of polls, which is adding them all up. But the most recent one we've seen has what conventionally we thought would be the frontrunners, and that is Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

ROBERTS: We are seeing a lot more substance, too, out there on the campaign trail. In Iowa yesterday, Barack Obama laid out his plan for health care for Americans. Hillary Clinton there in New Hampshire was talking about elevating the middle class, creating a society of shared responsibility.

Let's take a quick listen to what she said yesterday there in New Hampshire.

CROWLEY: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few and for the few. Time to reject the idea of an on-your-own society and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity.

(END VIDEO CLIP) ROBERTS: Meantime, on the Republican side of the equation, Mitt Romney was talking about immigration. What is the issue of most importance to people there in New Hampshire?

CROWLEY: Well, certainly an issue that tends to dominate is the war, but I tell you, when you get out there, as Barack Obama indicated a couple of days ago, health care comes up an awful lot. It does so in Iowa, as well as here in New Hampshire.

So, you do get a mix of issues. But the war tends to dominate, particularly when you had that electric vote that you had in the House and the Senate last week. So, the matter of funding has come up.

So, you do see the war coming up, but it really is a sprinkling of other questions. Lots of questions -- at one point up at a college crowd at Dartmouth, how would we fight global AIDS, that sort of thing. So, you're getting a sprinkling of all sorts of things, but the war, definitely, is the one that sort of overshadows all of it.

ROBERTS: Of course these early primaries, the caucuses in Iowa, the primary there in New Hampshire, really exemplifies the importance of retail politics as these candidates get out there and they meet and greet people. It does every once in a while, though, provide a little bit of an uncomfortable moment, such as the one that happened yesterday when Governor Mitt Romney went to a diner to meet and greet people.

Take a quick look at what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MITT ROMNEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hello, sir. How are you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm one person who will not vote for a Mormon.

ROMNEY: Oh, is that right? Can I shake your hand anyway?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.

ROMNEY: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTS: Oops. "I'm one person who won't vote for a Mormon."

You know, obviously that was one person out of 100 who were at the diner this morning. But does it illuminate a looming problem for Mitt Romney here?

CROWLEY: It does. And the campaign is aware of that. And they've been trying from the very beginning to kind of draw that sting, particularly in places like South Carolina.

Now, this man said he was a Hillary Clinton supporter. Generally, the people that have a problem with Mormonism tend to be conservative evangelicals. They tend to look at Mormonism as not a Christian religion.

Now, what Romney has tried to do is change the subject, broaden it a bit, and talk about common values, as opposed to religion. But I will say that Romney and those around him believe that at some point down the road he will have to have a speech a la JFK and his Catholicism, which at the time was groundbreaking, that Romney would have to have a similar speech about his religion, about his relationship to his religion, to kind of try to put some of this to rest.

Now, the last time we talked to Romney about this he was sort of looking down the road, maybe fall, when he thought more people would be paying attention.

ROBERTS: Well, between that fellow at the diner and what Reverend Al Sharpton said not too long ago, perhaps that schedule will have to be accelerated a little bit.

CROWLEY: Right. Yes.

ROBERTS: Candy Crowley, our senior political correspondent, part of the best political team on television, up there in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Beautiful scene behind you.

Thanks, Candy. Good to see you.

CROWLEY: Thanks. Indeed. Thanks, John.

ROBERTS: And a reminder. Two big debates heading your way here on CNN. The Democratic presidential candidates square off on Sunday, June 3rd. The Republicans go at it two days later on Tuesday, June 5th. And, of course, AMERICAN MORNING will be out there to cover it all.

CHETRY: A quarter past the hour now. Time to head over to Chad Myers for a look at what we can expect weather-wise today.

(WEATHER REPORT)

CHETRY: Well, some "Quick Hits" now.

President Bush going to Congress today to ask for $30 billion to battle the AIDS crisis. The money will double the current U.S. commitment. It also extends the AIDS-fighting effort until at least 2013.

Vice President Dick Cheney is fighting to keep his guest list private. His office at the Naval Observatory in Washington says that the records of visitors should be kept private under the Presidential Records Act. An activist group wants to know about conservative religious leaders visiting the vice president.

Just ahead, it's the first test that can tell you if your home would survive a hurricane.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING, the most news in the morning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHETRY: Some "Quick Hits" for you now.

And this is what Chad was talking about a couple minutes ago in his weather report. In Colorado yesterday, it was an unusual storm, grape-sized hail pounding Denver. It wasn't necessarily the size, but just how much they got. Four inches in some parts.

It ended up looking like snow on the ground. Heavy rain also flooding intersections there and stranding drivers. Not fun. End of May in Denver looking much like winter in other places.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin will give his state of the city address tonight. It will be the first since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August of 2005.

The Coast Guard says it's now better prepared to face a disaster like Katrina. Admiral Thad Allen says there is now a special Coast Guard unit to respond to disasters.

We remember how instrumental the Coast Guard was in helping pluck people off of roofs during Hurricane Katrina, saving countless lives, people, as well as animals. Thad Allen, by the way, gave details at a news conference, and he's going to give more of them at a news conference taking place a little later this morning -- John.

ROBERTS: Well, the 2007 hurricane season begins on Friday. Experts say there could be five major hurricanes this year that's Category 3 and up, with winds over 111 miles an hour, the point at which buildings start to take heavy damage.

CNN's John Zarrella is live in Gainesville, Florida, this morning with something new to help us make it through hurricanes.

What have you discovered, John?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, it sure is. Well, engineers and engineering students here at the University of Florida are literally creating hurricane conditions. What they're doing is using these enormous motors here and these huge fans. And the idea is to ultimately build better homes. What's unique about this entire project is that they don't test individual components of homes, but the entire structure in a real-world setting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice over): Two twin turbo diesel engines produce 2,800 horsepower, driving eight enormous fans. The University of Florida engineering team had never done this test on this scale before.

The idea, focus hurricane-force winds in excess of 100 miles an hour on a simulated house. In other words, how will your windows, doors and roof perform in a hurricane as a whole, not as individual pieces?

FORREST MASTERS, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: If you're a homeowner, you want a house that has every single part of that house designed for a particular wind speed, not a range of wind speeds.

ZARRELLA: For this test, a 1970s style window was used. Common today in millions of older homes. How will it perform? And the rest of the structure, the shingles and wood frame, built by the team to new tougher hurricane codes.

Let's see.

Within seconds, hurricane-force winds and rain are pummeling the side of the wood frame. The pressure is too much, the top pane of glass blows in.

Seconds later, the rest gives way. The shingles peel back, but stay in tact, as does the wood frame. Full-scale testing like this may answer what fails and why.

LESLIE CHAPMAN, FEDERAL ALLIANCE FOR SAFE HOMES: Whether it's just a tornado, a hurricane, or even an ordinary thunderstorm. So, we are answering questions by doing this before a storm. It tells us how to build it differently so we can prevent the damage in the first place.

ZARRELLA: Damage like this -- a home obliterated in Hurricane Charley. Its unprotected windows blown in. The outcome clear here in the real world and in the lab.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA: A pretty clear idea right there why you need to put shutters up if you have those old-style windows and don't have impact- resistant glass.

You know, what's unique about this is this is a test bed to test this equipment, but, ultimately, it's mobile, John. They can take this out on the road, you can bring this entire apparatus into a neighborhood or a development and see how the entire structure, as a whole, will perform in a major hurricane -- John.

ROBERTS: So, they're investigating the wind, but as my former colleague who is one of the great hurricane hunters of our generation, Dan Rather, used to tell me, it's not the wind, it's the water. Is there any way to test a building's resistance to that storm surge and the water that comes ashore at the leading edge of a hurricane?

ZARRELLA: No, not really, not at this point. Not that I know of, anyway.

And you're right, water -- you know, nine out of 10 people who die in a hurricanes die in the water. And a lot more now from inland flooding than every before because our technology allows us to get people back from the coast and the initial storm surge. So that is still one of the biggest bugaboos in hurricanes, is death caused by water -- John.

ROBERTS: Of course, though, the majority of the structures are inland, not there on the coastline. And it's always good to have those built to new specifications.

ZARRELLA: Yes.

ROBERTS: All right. John Zarrella, thanks very much. Really interesting stuff, John.

CHETRY: Twenty-five minutes past the hour now. Ali Velshi is "Minding Your Business".

Two new gadgets, I guess you could say, from Microsoft, because they're not even a computer. It's a pen, right?

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. There are two things coming out today. And the thing that's really interesting is -- I'm really into gadgets, but in these particular cases, these two things might actually change the way computing is done.

One of them being unveiled by Microsoft today is called Surface. Now, basically, it's a table. It's 30 inches on the diagonal, and you can see pictures of it there.

The idea is that it's a variation on what we think of as an input device, a keyboard. Fundamentally, when you think of how kids deal with things today, with the various types of devices they use, input is not just key input.

So, this thing is a table. It allows you to touch and move things around. The way it works is there are five wireless cameras situated. So when you put your hand on it, you can move something around the way you would move it on a table.

CHETRY: How do you type, though?

VELSHI: Well, it's getting away from the typing as an input. This is a new way of doing things.

So, you've got a picture on your cell phone, you put the picture on the table. It will read the picture, and then you can move that picture around and store it and do different things. It's like thinking about an iPod or thinking about a cell phone. You use things, get away from the idea that it's technical input.

CHETRY: Right. Like I don't need to ask you, how do you put this cassette tape into the iPod, because you don't even use them anymore.

VELSHI: Right, exactly. That's the point.

The other thing that's coming out is a simple pen. It's from a company called LiveScribe. Now, if you have kids and you've seen this LeapFrog fly pentop, same concept, same technology. It uses a special paper that has dots on it, and a sensor on the pen reads those dots.

By the way, this will be available in October for around $200. The nifty thing here is that the company that makes this wants to create a community of programmers for it. So, it's not just sort of a single purpose or multipurpose pen. The idea is your pen becomes your input device, and computers, people who design software around the world, will find ways for you to compute using this pen.

CHETRY: But it's still making my head spin.

VELSHI: Look at these two. They're looking at me like I have three heads. This could be the future. Save this tape. Today might be the day the future began, or not.

CHETRY: OK.

ROBERTS: Ultimately, when you just talk to the computer, that will be the whole...

VELSHI: We're getting there. We're getting there.

ROBERTS: Thanks, Ali.

CHETRY: You talk to your computer anyway, but it doesn't get you anywhere yet.

ROBERTS: It doesn't do anything. It just sits there and listens.

"Quick Hits" now. The top story on CNN.com.

A 25-year-old woman and her three young daughters were found dead, hanging in a closet in their home in Hudson Oaks, Texas. Amazingly, another child, an 8-month-old, survived the hanging. Police believe it was a murder-suicide because the doors were locked from the inside.

Also on our most popular list this morning, health officials are looking for fellow passengers of a man infected with a highly drug- resistant strain of tuberculosis who took two overseas flights.

Right after the break we're going to talk with the reporter who has spoken with the patient about why he took those flights against doctors' orders.

And tracking your every move. A college professor who came under suspicion after 9/11 devises a way to prove he's not a terrorist.

We'll meet him later on AMERICAN MORNING.

The most news in the morning is on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (NEWSBREAK)

ROBERTS: This morning, a man with an extremely drug resistant form of tuberculosis is under the first government-ordered quarantine in decades. And federal health officials are searching for people who may have been exposed to him during the patient's two recent trans- Atlantic flights. The man told the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" that he was never told explicitly not to fly.

Alison Young wrote that article for the newspaper, and she joins us now from Atlanta.

So, Alison, just to set the stage here. Here's a guy who flew to Greece back on May the 12th, who actually went through Paris first to get married, subsequently went on a honeymoon, and went over there knowing that he had some form of tuberculosis. What happened when he got to Italy?

ALISON YOUNG, "ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION": Well, when he was in Italy he received a call from the Centers for Disease Control saying he needed to cancel his honeymoon and come back and wait for instructions on how he would be flown back, which he said he did. He said that he stopped the plans to move on to Florence the next day and waited for the CDC's call. But when they called back, instead of having travel plans for him, they said that he needed to turn himself over to Italian health authorities for an indefinite period of time. He was very concerned that this would make it impossible for him to have some cutting-edge treatment in Denver that was planned. And he said he feared for his life, and, so, he ran.

ROBERTS: Now, based on what he told you in your article, which is just full of amazing intrigue. He did, as you said, ran, ran to the Czech Republic, where he caught a flight to Montreal, believing that the CDC had put him on a no-fly list, and then he drove back to the United States. But did he tell you why he might have put hundreds of people at risk in taking that flight? I mean, from the Czech Republic to Montreal has got to be somewhere in the area of seven to eight hours, if not more. Did he not think of his fellow passengers?

YOUNG: He wants people to know, and the reason he spoke to the "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" is he did not believe he was putting anyone at risk. He notes that he has been under treatment and under supervision of government health authorities since January when he was first diagnosis, and he said he has done everything they've told him to do.

He said they told him -- prior to the call in Atlanta no one had told him to take precautions or to isolate himself. He said he would never put his family, his child at risk, his fiance. None of these people have tested positive for tuberculosis, and he says he didn't believe he was putting anyone at risk.

ROBERTS: Now, we should point out, too, that there's a little bit of he said, she said going on. He said he was never contacted by the Centers for Disease Control. We talked with Julie Gerberding, who's the head of the CDC, just a while ago, who said, quote, "The irony is when we were no longer able to reach him we were even preparing to send a CDC plane to Europe to bring him home at government expense." But he told you that they withdrew that because they said it was too expense.

YOUNG: Well, he tells a different story. He says that he specifically asked bout the use of the CDC jet, which we have written about quite a bit in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and he says he was told that it was unavailable because it was too costly. After the fact, the CDC is now saying that they were preparing to send it. I don't know which is true.

ROBERTS: All right. Alison Young from the Atlanta Journal- Constitution, great article, very much worth reading.

YOUNG: Thank you.

ROBERTS: I appreciate you coming in.

CHETRY: Fascinating tale, no doubt.

Well, the parents of Madeleine McCann met with Pope Benedict XVI earlier this morning. They attended the general audience today and also gave him a picture of their little missing girl, 4-year-old Madeleine, asking him to pray for her safe return. You see him talking to the parents, touching the picture, also touching their hands. Gerry and Kate McCann held a news conference after the meeting to talk about what it was like to meet the pope.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATE MCCANN, MADELEINE'S MOTHER: He's very kind, very sincere. He said that he'd pray for us and our family, and that he continued to pray for Madeleine's safe return to us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHETRY: Madeleine has been missing for nearly a month. The 4- year-old snatched from her hotel bed while vacationing with her family in Portugal. Her parent were eating dinner with friends about 50 yards away when it happened.

Tomorrow morning we're taking a look at a new way you can protect your kids. It's called Operation Safe Kids, organized by the Secret Service. We're going to show you how it works and what parents need to know, tomorrow on AMERICAN MORNING.

ROBERTS: Those wayward whales in California are almost home free. The mother humpback and her calf are now just a couple miles away from the Pacific Ocean and they look like they're making good progress. They're looking very vigorous. Rescuers hope to keep them on course and usher them out to sea a little bit later on this morning. The sun just barely coming up there now. It's been two weeks since the whales wandered some 90 miles up the Sacramento River.

CHETRY: And it looked bad for them for a while, and now things are certainly looking up, and we'll continue to follow it. (NEWSBREAK)

CHETRY: Well, suppose you're suspected of being a terrorist. One man has come up with software that tracks his every move to prove that he's not a terrorist. We're going to meet with him when we come back. You're watching AMERICAN MORNING, the most news in the morning right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(WEATHER REPORT)

CHETRY: Well, we've heard about Big Brother watching your every move. This time, though, it's self-imposed. A man who was accused of being a terrorist right after 9/11 decided, hey, he's always going to be able to prove where he's been and what he's been up to. This is the Web site right now of Hassan Elahi. It shows his exact location and a picture of where he is. It's streaming live 24/7. In fact there is the arrow pointing at the Time Warner studios right here at CNN where we are. He's the professor of art at Rutgers, and he's also the developer of this special GPS software.

Hassan, good morning. And thanks for being with us.

HASSAN ELAHI, DEVELOPED SOFTWARE TO TRACK EVERY MOVE: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

CHETRY: You've turned an unlikely and very upsetting turn of events into something that is quite interesting, but explain how you became on the radar of the FBI in the first place.

ELAHI: Well, it basically started with an erroneous tip. I was reported as an Arab man that fled on September 12th explosives. Nevermind I'm not Arab, nevermind I didn't leave on September 12th. Nevermind...

CHETRY: Well, you're an American citizen. Your heritage is Bangladesh.

ELAHI: I was born in Bangladesh, yes. Yes, but, I mean, at the time when this happened in a collective state of mind we were in such paranoia that if you looked a little funny and had a strange name, then you must be Arab, and if you're Arab then you have some relation to terrorism. It's very unfortunate, but so many of our fellow citizens think this way.

CHETRY: And what ended up happening is you were detained, you were questioned for hours and also administered lie-detector tests.

ELAHI: I was actually flying in from -- I was out of the country when this tip went in, and basically when I came back to the airport I was pulled aside, initially by INS, but then shortly after I was handed over to the FBI. I was able to go home that day, but basically for the next six months I had to pretty much justify every second of my existence, I mean, down to the micro level. CHETRY: This is something that had quite an impact on you, understandably, probably very disconcerting, and so you sort of turned it around. Explain what you did.

ELAHI: Well, basically, after literally six months of this and after nine polygraphs, repeated back to back, I started thinking to myself, well, what just happened? And I asked them, can I get a letter saying that I'm OK. No, no, it's OK, you can call us and we'll take care of this. I said, OK, so ever since then I would call my FBI agent and say, I have to go this week, I have to go this -- as an artist, you're working all over.

CHETRY: What was their response when you would call and report your activities?

ELAHI: They'd say, OK, no problem, I've got this taken care of, I'll forward this on to the local guys, and then two weeks later I would call again.

CHETRY: So you were still under the umbrella of suspicion?

ELAHI: No, no, absolutely not. But at this point, my concern, my biggest fear is that all we need is the last person not to get the last memo, and here we go all over again.

CHETRY: So what did you do with your Web site. This is it right now, trackingtransients.net.

ELAHI: So basically what I did is I hacked my cell phone and actually just wrote some very primitive software for my cell phone that basically tracks me at all times, and it's a real-time -- almost real-time...

CHETRY: This is your phone actually.

ELAHI: This is it right here, yes.

CHETRY: You carry this around with you all the time, and this is what transmits the real-time information about where you are.

ELAHI: Interesting enough it doesn't necessarily have to be that phone. It's just this one right now that I use, because when I go out of the country I have to use different phones for different carriers in different countries.

CHETRY: Interestingly enough you've been able to find out that there have been various law enforcement agencies that have actually checked your site. What do you say to that?

ELAHI: Well, it's kind of interesting. It's a bizarre feeling watching the government watch you. And it's kind of, you know, it's interesting because a lot of people say you're paranoid. Well, is it really paranoia when you know they're watching and you actually have logs that say that you've been visited by the CIA and visited by the Homeland Security.

CHETRY: Can you show us a couple other things quickly on your site?

ELAHI: Sure. Sure. Basically what happens is as you're watching this. So this is a aerial image of where we are. This is the image that's right outside the studio right here, and if we scroll down, there's all these little thumbnails. These have been images that were previously used up in this area. So these images, as I click on them, they generate a database live, and it depends on which one we'll get.

CHETRY: Everything from when you visited an ATM to...,

ELAHI: Yes, it's coming in a little slow because the sever is being hit really, really, really hard right now.

CHETRY: Because we're talking about it live.

ELAHI: Yes, exactly. So these are all the flights that I've ever been on since birth, and this is something that the FBI is interested in.

So for example, we know that I've been on Northwest 88 from Honolulu to Seattle. Well, let's see what happened. On Northwest 88 I was given this meal. This is my alibi. Look, I mean, couldn't possibly be involved in that terrorist attack because I was busy...

CHETRY: Because you were drinking a drink with an umbrella straw, so you certainly couldn't have been doing anything wrong. This is fascinating, actually.

ELAHI: Time stamping my life every few moments. Literally every few moment there's a different link, there's a different point that proves exactly where I am.

CHETRY: Pretty cool. And we're out of time, but thanks for stopping by and showing this to us. You're certainly unique.

ELAHI: Thank you.

CHETRY: That is really unique and imaginative, very inventive way of doing things. This is Hassan Elahi, also an artist, and you can check it out on trackingtransients.net -- John.

ROBERTS: Hey, thank you very much. Forty-eight minutes after the hour, and some news just coming in to us here at CNN from our good friends over at the politico.com, specifically correspondent Mike Allen, who you know has been on AMERICAN MORNING many times, suggesting that Fred Thompson is going to throw his hat into the presidential ring on the Fourth of July. According to Mike's article, which is out there in the Politico, he is going to form a testing-the- waters, or exploratory committee, on the fourth of June, which allows him to hire staff and raise money. He'll be taking his red pickup truck, which has become synonymous with Fred Thompson, around on the campaign trail. And then in Nashville, on the Fourth of July, make the announcement that he is throwing his hat into the ring on the Republican side of the equation. A lot of people looking to Fred Thompson as the only real conservative out there, and we'll see if he does that. Again, that news coming in from the Politico this morning.

CNN NEWSROOM just minutes away. Betty Nguyen at the CNN Center with a look at what's ahead.

Good morning to you, Betty.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, there, John.

We have these stories coming up on the rundown. International travel possibly exposed to a rare, often fatal form of tuberculosis. A TV patient is in isolation in Atlanta after his European trip. We'll have much more on that.

Plus, Vice President Dick Cheney trying to shield the names of all visitors to his official residence. Now he wants the Secret Service to turn over all those records.

And an NBA player stepping up to the challenge, and it is a big one. He is trying to help the people of Darfur. Tony Harris is with me in the NEWSROOM. That's at the top of the hour right here on CNN -- Don.

ROBERTS: Betty, we'll see you then. Thanks very much.

Ahead, a thriller of a sale -- Jackson family memorabilia being auctioned off in Las Vegas. The whole story when we come back.

You're watching AMERICAN MORNING. The most news in the morning is on CNN.

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CHETRY: Well, from Tito's handwritten lyrics to Michael Jackson's military jacket. I believe it was the one from Thriller, and also Mae West, the outfit worn by a small little preteen Janet Jackson. More than 1,000 pieces of Jackson family memorabilia will be available for bidders worldwide. All of it is starting today, and AMERICAN MORNING's Lola Ogunnaike just moonwalked over here right now to tell us how this whole collection came together.

So this was all obtained by Guernseys (ph) Auction House. How did they get their hands on it?

LOLA OGUNNAIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. There was a New Jersey businessman who sold it to a Florida-based company, and they bought it for $5 million from him, gave it to the auction house, and here we are today, talking about all this memorabilia.

CHETRY: Why did the Jacksons give it up?

OGUNNAIKE: Well, some weird business deal happened, and I think they had to renege on this. There was an extended court battle actually about it, and then they resolved it about two weeks ago, and now we have the auction.

CHETRY: OK. So let's take a look at some of things that are on the auction blocks, some Neat things. Let's take a look. What's the first one?

OGUNNAIKE: I don't know. I mean, there are a number of things. OK, that is the jacket from "Thriller."

CHETRY: From "Thriller" yes, we love that jacket. Remember "Thriller."

OGUNNAIKE: Yes, and the yellow contact lenses.

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OGUNNAIKE: Very scary. But there's a lot of other stuff out there that is very cool. You've got Michael Jackson's Motown identity card. That's when he was still black.

CHETRY: There he is, and it says "recording artist."

OGUNNAIKE: He was so adorable.

CHETRY: He was. He's so tiny and cute.

OGUNNAIKE: And you've got all these Michael Jackson awards. There's Marlon Brando, telegraph from him, encouraging him to have a great show and not fall in the orchestra pit, which, clearly, he was just being a jokester about.

CHETRY: Do we know how much some of this stuff is going for, or estimated to go for?

OGUNNAIKE: Well, you know, a lot of this stuff is also being sold on eBay. They're having a simultaneous sale, so starting bids are a hundred, and they're going up all the way into a million. So we don't have bids yet, but someone -- you've just got to feel passionate about it. If you really want that Tito ABC, then put your bid in.

CHETRY: You have to do it right. Do you think that because of all the strange behavior of Michael Jackson, you know, of late, and, of course, all the allegations and on and on, that the demand for this is less than it would have been?

OGUNNAIKE: I don't know if it's necessarily less. I think the stuff is truly one of a kind. I mean, I joked earlier about getting La Toya Jackson's 1960s library card, but there are all these other great things like the "Thriller" gold plaque. There are still rabid Michael Jackson fans out there who want this kind of stuff. But again, you know, had this been 20 years ago, I think it would have been far more frenzied than it is now, but there a lot of fans out there. And the Elvis sale that Guernseys had a few years ago, there a lot sold under $6 million. So they're predicting that this will do pretty well.

CHETRY: Keep us posted on it, Lola. OGUNNAIKE: I absolutely will.

CHETRY: Thanks a lot -- John.

ROBERTS: Fifty-six minutes after the hour. A quick look now at what CNN NEWSROOM is working on for the top of the hour.

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: See these stories in the CNN NEWSROOM: Health experts tracking down international fliers. A passenger diagnosed with an extreme form of tuberculosis. He is now isolated at an Atlanta hospital.

New World Bank boss. President Bush expected to put Wall Street exec Robert Zoellick in charge. The announcement live in the NEWSROOM.

Denver hit with a big hail storm.

A Miami Wendy's worker shot -- over hot sauce.

NEWSROOM, top of the hour on CNN.

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ROBERTS: And that's going to do it for us here on AMERICAN MORNING. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Hope to see you again tomorrow. See you tomorrow.

CNN NEWSROOM with Tony Harris and Betty Nguyen begins right now.

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