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North Carolina Tornado Warning; Restoring Vision: Gene Therapy Offers Hope; Rape, Incest, Captivity in Austria; 21st Century Slavery: Illegal Immigrants Held Captive
Aired April 28, 2008 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): This man, for 24 years, he led a double life. Before, with his wife, he had had his -- had a family of seven children, and then he had another six children with his own daughter, of which he had himself brought up three of them.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, incest is only the beginning of what allegedly went on for decades in this house of horrors in Austria.
We're live with the revolting story.
MELISSA LONG, CNN ANCHOR: And you don't need YouTube to get your fill of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Barack Obama's former pastor is making up for weeks of public silence and he is not making any apologies.
LEMON: He's actually getting more airtime than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or John McCain, or anyone in the race here.
Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta.
LONG: And hello. I'm Melissa Long, in today for Kyra Phillips. And you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.
Some severe weather in really many corners of the country today. We've been following the wildfires outside of Los Angeles, the fires burning outside of Miami, and now a tornado warning in North Carolina?
LEMON: Yes.
LONG: Let's bring in Chad to help us to better understand just how bad this could be.
CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, the storm was rotating a little bit more vigorously about 10 minutes ago, and they put the warning on it now. And now the next pass for the Doppler Radar not so good. But it's good for us, because the rotation isn't so good.
But north of Henderson here in North Carolina, so almost to the Virginia border here. And Henderson, really, this is the Kerr Lake rec area. Here you go -- I-85, right there, there's the storm to the west of I-85. Going to quickly transverse its way on up in to Virginia proper, and there's the spin of the storm there, and the storm is really affecting few people.
What have we got -- 7,154 people affected by this storm, because now we're north of -- there it is Henderson, right there, which would be the biggest populated area in this vicinity. So, we'll keep watching it for you.
Just know that if you see a big storm, if you're in Virginia, North Carolina, or South Carolina, and it's coming at you, you might want to get inside, because the potential is there today for severe weather.
Back to you guys.
LONG: Chad, thanks for keeping us posted.
And one of the other big stories we're following today, brushfires happening in Miami, Miami-Dade County.
LEMON: Absolutely. They're fighting them from the air and from the ground. And you can see this shot here.
This all happening in a very large section, a wooded area. Lots of acreage happening here in Miami-Dade County. And you can see one of the trucks they were using, as our Chad Myers told us a little bit earlier, to try to draw a fire line here has now gotten stuck. It appears in some muck and some mud right here in Miami-Dade County.
But as this helicopter from our station, WSVN, our affiliate here, as it pulls out, you'll see that these fires are flaring up in a number of places. And they're going with this helicopter into a reservoir very near and dropping water on top of it.
Let's bring in again our Chad Myers to talk about the wind conditions here and what is fueling this brushfire in Florida -- Chad.
MYERS: Well, you like to see the smoke go straight up and down, or straight up, if you will, but this is obviously blowing to the side, and that's blowing sparks downwind. And that's why we're getting more than one area here of fire activity. And with that one big truck there, the truck that would be making a fire line because of the big plow in front, with that being stuck, that's not helping things at all.
This is almost due west of the Miami airport, right in between where civilization ends and the Everglades start. And that's why we're seeing so much there. And this -- what you're seeing there, that's actually the prison there.
LEMON: That's the prison, yes.
MYERS: Yes.
LEMON: I neglected to say that at the top. This is very near a women's prison. So we're not -- how is that going to affect that prison there? Any chance they're going to have to move these people?
Look at the smoke. It's really close, Chad.
MYERS: Yes, there are two campuses, really. One to the south and one to the north. The one on the south end, that's not getting as much smoke. I'm sure they're smelling it, but not dangerous, you know, really choking smoke. But the north campus I think is getting a lot there, and they're probably keeping the people inside as much as they can, or maybe even trying to -- this is so close that the stream of smoke isn't even on the west side of the prison, but it's really on the east side of the prison.
So if they can push all the inmates over to the west side, they can probably get them out of this smoke. But it's pretty -- you can see how the wind is blowing this right downstream, and that smoke is really hovering there on the ground, too.
LEMON: And the only good news, Chad, as we wrap it up here, you saw the body of water very near, so when they're fighting it with these water drops from the helicopter, they can go right to that body of water and go over to the fires.
OK. Chad Myers on top of this one. We'll keep checking.
LONG: Now let's go to the other coast now for more on a wildfire that's in southern California, outside of L.A. A wildfire blowing within yards of homes in the foothills east of Los Angeles. And firefighters say they've contained about a quarter of the fire, but the steep terrain and the dry brush is making their job just so difficult today. About 1,000 people have cleared out, and more are being urged to do the very same.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILARY HANEL, SIERRA MADRE, CALIFORNIA: They basically said, this is the Sierra Madre Fire Department and we're requesting that you leave this area and evacuate. So we actually took our children to a friend's house but stayed behind and watered the roof and the trees and the bushes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LONG: Now, that fire started on Saturday. So far it has burned close to 500 acres. And we should also point out, there's a great deal of brush and shrubs in that area because they haven't had fires in that region in three to four decades, so there's a lot to fuel the flames.
LEMON: And just as you're speaking we're getting some new information here coming -- this is out of Terre Haute, Indiana, actually West Terre Haute, Indiana. A leak has led to an explosion at a plant there that turns coal into gas in western Indiana. And this is according to The Associated Press. Also, authorities there saying that at least two people have been killed.
Now, here's what they're saying. Emergency crews have recovered the bodies of two victims of this blast. It happened this morning in the city of West Terre Haute, Indiana.
Now, according to the plant manager, they say the explosion at the SG Solutions coal gasification plant occurred when a metal fitting broke and released pressurized gas which ignited. The operations at the plant near the Duke Emergency Power Station have been halted because of this explosion, but again we're getting reports from The Associated Press and also from the plant manager at SG Solutions coal gasification plant that at least two people have died here because of an explosion.
We'll keep you updated on that one as well.
For the second straight day the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is speaking out about his blistering sermons and a whole lot more. This morning, Barack Obama's former pastor gave a speech and answered questions at the National Press Club in Washington. He was asked, among other things, whether he thinks God wants Obama to be president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REV. JEREMIAH WRIGHT, SEN. BARACK OBAMA'S FMR. PASTOR: What everybody has been saying to me, as it pertains to the candidacy is, what God has for you is for you. If God intends for Mr. Obama to be the president, then no white racist, no political pundit, no speech, nothing can get in the way, because God will do what God wants to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, Wright also lashed out at the critics, saying the attacks are not aimed at him, but aimed at the black church.
OK. So here's a question for you. Should Reverend Wright, should he be -- should he keep quiet, or should he keep talking about this? Some people say he should, some people say he shouldn't. And a lot of you are sharing your thoughts with CNN.com iReport.
LONG: Hundreds of comments, but let's just take a moment to highlight just a few of them.
Kas writes in today, "I do wish the reverend had hushed until after the primaries. He's old enough to know that different is all some people need to be hateful in the true sense."
LEMON: All right. Well, J.M. is a bit more hopeful, and he says, "I am a United Church of Christ member. I give thanks for Reverend Wright's black liberation theology, message of hope, reconciliation and difference. We need to embrace diversity and understand that we are all children of God."
LONG: And again, we welcome all opinions. And here's another one from an iReporter on CNN.com.
"It matters not to me what Mr. Wright has to say. He's just another human with an opinion. The media play on his effect on Obama's campaign is complete idiocy." LEMON: Well, keep your reports coming, and go to CNN.com/ireport and share your thoughts on the Reverend Wright. And of course we'll read them right here in the CNN NEWSROOM -- Melissa.
LONG: And continuing to focus on politics, and leading the political ticker, six votes for photos IDs at a polling place.
Now, that is plenty in this case, because those votes are from the U.S. Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of a voter ID law from Indiana. More than 20 states now require some form of ID at the polls, and critics say it's a thinly-veiled effort to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters.
And of course the Indiana primary is next Tuesday.
The Democratic Party has reason to smile as it tries to win back the keys to the Oval Office. Voter registration shooting through the roof as the campaign continues.
Eight days before the primaries in Indiana, as I just mentioned, and North Carolina. Those states are reporting a swell of new registrations. And "The Washington Post" is reporting the last seven states to hold primaries have registered more than one million new Democratic voters.
And what about Republican John McCain? He says his Democratic rivals are wrong with their push for universal health care.
At a stop today in Florida, McCain challenged doctors, hospitals, drug makers and insurance companies to do a better job holding down the costs.
And all the latest campaign news, you can find it right there on your desktop. Go to CNNPolitics.com. We have analysis from the best political team on television. Again, that's CNNPolitics.com.
LEMON: Helping the blind see again. There's new excitement on the research front as experts push ahead with their gene therapy work. And we'll tell you the latest on this effort to restore sight.
And modern day slavery. Could it really be happening in the 21st century -- in 21st century America? Absolutely. And we'll tell you what investigators in Florida have discovered there.
Incest, rape, captivity -- Austrian police say it was all under this roof in one of the nation's most monstrous crimes ever. Now we're getting a first glimpse inside.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LONG: It could be a ray of hope for thousands of people with failing eyesight. Gene therapy has been shown to boost the vision of patients who were almost blind.
Medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here to help us to better understand. Could this be a cure for blindness?
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's not a cure for blindness, but it is definitely promising for many people who have even been blind since birth. I mean, that's what's so incredible about this, is that the three folks -- a small study -- the three folks who were involved in this study were in their late teens, early 20s, and they had been blind since birth because of a genetic ailment.
Before, before they got the treatment, look what happened when they went to go take an obstacle course. If you keep watching, you'll see they could not navigate this obstacle course. They're bumping into the cones, they could not see what was on the floor in front of them, they couldn't read anything on an eye chart.
However, after the treatment, the three of them were able to navigate these courses on their own without being led by somebody else, and they could read about three lines on an eye chart. And as one of the patients said, he was sitting in a room and some light -- some sunlight came in through a window and he could see that sunlight being reflected on the wall.
Now, how exactly did doctors do it? What they did is something called gene therapy. These folks were missing a protein that's made by a gene, so the doctors injected them with the right gene, it went in and did its job. It made the right protein.
LONG: Again, just three people really reaping the rewards right now.
COHEN: Just three people, right.
LONG: So what about the potential for more people to possibly benefit?
COHEN: They are. They are studying other people, and they're going to see if perhaps maybe in the future it works for people with other congenital diseases. And they're going to give them a higher dose of this gene.
It will be interesting to see if you use a higher dose, could it even boost their vision more? Because these people didn't have completely good vision after the treatment, they just had better vision than they had before -- improved.
LONG: Got it. You said they were essentially missing a protein, so we have gene therapy to help them. But it's not foolproof. There have been tragic results with gene therapy.
COHEN: There have been tragic results with gene therapy, and so doctors move very, very carefully. The researchers on this study say that in the past, gene therapy has been used systemically, kind of throughout the entire body, and that that's very problematic. But that in this case, the new gene was introduced just into the eye. So the eye was the only thing that was affected.
LONG: Injection?
COHEN: Injection. Yes, I know. But if it helps you see, it's worth it.
LONG: Absolutely. Really promising.
COHEN: Right. Right. Absolutely.
LONG: Elizabeth, thank you.
COHEN: Thanks.
LEMON: OK. A very disturbing story that we're about to tell you right now, so we want to give you that caveat, but we want you to pay attention to this. It's unbelievable.
He allegedly made his daughter his slave. He raped her repeatedly. He fathered children with her. And no one, not even his own wife, knew about it until now. This man, in the words of police in Austria, is behind one of that country's worst crimes ever.
CNN's Frederik Pleitgen is in the rural town of Amstetten, and he joins us now with the very latest on that.
This is simply unbelievable, Frederik.
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly, it is unbelievable. And many people here in this town say they are absolutely outraged by what appears to have been going on in this town and nobody seems to have noticed it.
This went on for 24 years, that this man held his daughter captive, allegedly, in a cellar room in this house that you see right behind me. It was in the basement. It's a set of cellar rooms, and he held her in there for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and beating her, and she fathered seven children of his.
One of those children died directly after birth. Three of the children he took away and raised them up here.
So you really have to imagine this, Don. These children were -- three of these children were playing soccer up here in the back yard as their mother and three of their siblings were staying downstairs in that cellar, held captive, never having seen the light of day. And certainly one thing that authorities are asking here is, did not anybody know anything about this?
Here's what they had to say today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANZ POLZER, LOWER AUSTRIA POLICE (through translator): It is hard to imagine that not one single member of the family knew that -- that one of the daughters and the children were living underneath them, and that they simply didn't realize.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PLEITGEN: And this person also had a wife who lived with him, and apparently she didn't know anything about what was going on. That's one thing authorities told us today, they don't believe that she ever realized that four people were being held captive in her basement for 24 years -- Don.
LEMON: OK. Frederik Pleitgen in Amstetten, Austria.
Thank you very much for that story.
LONG: And a hidden world being revealed, and not the one we were just talking about. An alleged case of modern day slavery, and it's our Special Investigations Unit that is on the case.
(BUSINESS REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Hello, everyone. I'm Don Lemon, live at the CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta.
LONG: And hello, I'm Melissa Long, in today for Kyra Phillips.
And you are in the CNN NEWSROOM.
We've been watching some nasty weather today. And looking at the radar on CNN.com, it looks like there's some nasty weather -- what is it, west of Jacksonville and south of Valdosta?
MYERS: Yes, absolutely. A new tornado warning -- and these certainly what we're calling pulse storms. They kind of come up, they spin a little bit, and then they really -- they die off very quickly. But that just means they can put down a very short live tornado any time.
This is near Nova (ph), that's what this pink box means here, tornado warning for you, although the cell was much stronger just 15 minutes ago. This cell dies, but another cell will pop up and maybe somewhere around you're area, across parts of central and northern Florida.
One more thing we're going to watch for today is across the northern sections of North Carolina and maybe Virginia right now, as well. There's -- well, Petersburg and Richmond. One cell still spinning, that same one that was north of Henderson in North Carolina. Not very many people affected right now. But still seeing some rotation on the radar.
If you see a storm headed your way today, get the kids inside. Could be one of those days where it puts down a brief little storm, maybe some thunder, and lightning, some small hail and possibly a tornado, but right now just a couple of those out there.
LONG: Chad, thank you.
And of course, stay safe, but if you happen to see severe weather in your community, don't forget about i-report.
MYERS: There you go.
LONG: Thanks, Chad.
MYERS: You're welcome.
LEMON: All right. We're working on that story and several other stories right here today in the CNN NEWSROOM, including this one. The "Associated Press" is reporting that the father of a Houston area girl is in custody after allegedly stabbing a male student at her high school. The student had allegedly witnessed a reported sexual assault on the man's daughter. He is listed in good condition at a hospital.
A train crash has reportedly killed at least 70 people in eastern China and injured more than 400. China's official news agency says a high-speed passenger train jumped the tracks and slammed into another train.
Home prices are falling, but buyers aren't buying into the struggling housing market. The government says the percentage of vacant homes for sale in the U.S. reached an all-time high in the first three months of this year.
OK. So he is breaking his silence. Is the Reverend Jeremiah Wright shattering Barack Obama's presidential hopes in the process of breaking his silence? We've heard a lot today from Obama's controversial former pastor. He's firing back at what he says are attacks on the African-American church, and also he says attacks on him personally. But, some fear he could end up burning Obama at the polls.
Let's bring in our political roundtable. Mr. Joe Klein is a columnist for "Time." And Jonathan Martin is a senior political correspondent for politico.com.
Thanks for both of you for joining us, know you're very busy.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Nice to see both of you. Thank you very much.
OK. I've got to ask you this. Let's start with Jonathan Martin. Jonathan, why right now?
JONATHAN MARTIN, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO.COM: It's a great question. I'm not sure, but the timing couldn't be worse. Think about this -- we are right now chewing over the results, every inch of data that came out of that Pennsylvania primary last week, much of those stories focused on matters of race. And now what do we have -- one week before the crucial Indiana and Carolina primaries, the reemergence of Wright. So I'm not sure why he's chosen now to go on this sort of PR tour, but for his own parishioner, it couldn't be happening at a worse time.
LEMON: OK. Do you agree with that Joe? JOE KLEIN, COLUMNIST, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Yes, I do agree with that.
I think that what we're seeing right now is all about Reverend Wright trying to build a bigger reputation for himself. Maybe become one of the spokespeople for African-Americans --
LEMON: You said, you said --
KLEIN: -- and he's doing it totally, totally at Barack Obama's expense.
LEMON: You sort of equated him -- you said he kind of would fashion himself the next Reverend Al Sharpton, or something like that. But it's hurting Barack Obama in the process.
KLEIN: I think that after this, you know, these past three days, and -- he's pretty media-genic (ph). He's a pretty smart guy. I think that he's the sort of the guy that we in the mainstream media go to for sound bites when something controversial happens. And he's -- it's going to happen more often now with this guy.
LEMON: OK.
I want to play this sound bite of him last night because we've been talking a lot about either helping or hurting Barack Obama's case. Actually, it's a sound bite from today. We're talking about why now.
Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WRIGHT: On November the 5th and on January 21, I'll still be a pastor. As I said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright, it has nothing to do with Senator Obama, it is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition.
And why am I speaking out now? In our community, we have something called playing the dozens. If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama, and her religious tradition and my daddy and his religious tradition, and my grandpa, you've got another thing coming.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: OK. Obviously, it played well among the audience he was with. It played well at the NAACP. And I've just got to tell you, my mailbox is overflowing here.
Just some of the comments from random viewers, some from people I know, say, you know what, "I support Reverend Wright. That said, I would like him to end this now."
One person says: "It will not silence the opposition from doing their best to give white voters a reason not to vote for Obama." He says, "Do we want to win the White House, or do we want to defend the wrong Reverend Wright? We can't do both."
That's the kind of e-mail I'm getting.
Go ahead, Joe.
KLEIN: Yes, well you know, in my community we have something called shooting the bull, and that's really what he was doing today. This is a guy who was a Marine, who wouldn't step away from his statement that U.S. Marines were like the Roman soldiers who crucified Christ. This is a guy who said, about the AIDS virus rumors, that he wouldn't put anything past the government of this country.
I could show him a few countries that I wouldn't put anything past the governments of. The former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, but for him to say that about this country, I think, is a real stick in the eye.
Now, obviously, if you are an African-American, you have a different view of things. There is a legacy --
LEMON: Right. That's what I was going to get to that. Yes.
KLEIN: -- There's a legacy of slavery, and there's a legacy of outrage. But, as Barack Obama said, this guy is stuck in a racial past. He hasn't acknowledged any of the tremendous progress we've made over the last 30 years.
LEMON: Go ahead, Jon.
MARTIN: Well I was going to say the ultimate irony here, and Joe knows this, is that Barack Obama has spent the better part of a year- and-a-half now trying to establish himself as a post-racial candidate, making the case subtly that he's not Jesse Jackson. And this example, this pastor, I think does him serious damage to that case.
LEMON: And he's bringing up people like Louis Farrakhan, which -- he called him E.F. Hutton, a lot of people listen to -- black America listens when Farrakhan speaks. And also sort of making fun of --
How much time do we have guys? Can we play -- do we have the JFK sound bite? Do we have time to play that?
OK. Let's listen to what he said last night about JFK, sort of mimicking him in his famous speech.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WRIGHT: John Kennedy could stand at the inauguration in January and say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask rather what you can do if your country." How do you spell ask?
Nobody ever said to John Kennedy, that's not English -- ask. What's ask? Only to a black child was it said, you speak bad English. (END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Joe, you first.
KLEIN: Well, this kind of stuff is really pretty depressing. And it's too bad we can't get beyond it. I just -- you know, what can you say to that?
LEMON: Yes, all right.
Jonathan you're going to have to have the last word here.
MARTIN: Well, any day that the news narrative is dominated by Jeremiah Wright and we're having these kind of conversations on cable news, it's a bad day for Obama's campaign. His folks know it. They don't want this guy going out there today and talking to the press. But they're going to have to deal with this, I guess from now on, because Wright is apparently not going away.
KLEIN: Can I just add one last quick point?
LEMON: Yes, real quickly, real quickly, sir.
KLEIN: The biggest problem I had with him today was that -- when he said attacking him was attacking the black church. Well I have been to dozens and dozens and dozens of black churches. I have friends who are black ministers, and they are not like him. He represents one strain of it, not all of it.
LEMON: Joe Klein, Jonathan Martin, thank you both very much.
We want to hear your thoughts on the Reverend Wright's comments. Were they divisive, or divisive, however you want to say it, or descriptive -- as he said? Sound off at i-report.com and we'll read some of your comments right here in the CNN NEWSROOM.
LONG: And the hidden world being revealed. An alleged case of modern day slavery. Our special investigations unit is on the case.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LONG: Slavery in 21st century America? Perhaps hard to believe, but in Florida, investigators and activists have turned up case after case of illegal immigrants held captive, forced to work in the fields.
We get this story from CNN special investigations unit and correspondent, Abbie Boudreau.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ABBIE BOUDREAU, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT: It all begins as a way for migrants to have a better life. But it could very well turn into this -- modern day slavery.
LT. RENE GONZALES, COLLIER CO., FLA. SHERIFF'S OFFICE: Who would have thought we'd be having slavery, 2008? You know, that this would be taking place?
BOUDREAU (on-camera): Authorities say these migrant workers are often smuggled into the United States. They think they're going to be making a decent amount of money that they can then send back to their families. But when they get here, this is what they're faced with. Living in labor camps just like this one.
(voice-over): In some cases, migrants, held against their will, pushed, kicked and cut if they didn't work. Investigators say one man's hands chained behind his back so he couldn't leave.
(on-camera): Do you think by calling them slaves, is that too strong of a term?
GONZALES: No.
BOUDREAU: No?
GONZALES: No, not at all. Like I said, these people can't leave. They're escorted here, they're escorted to do their shopping, they catch a bus right where they work, the bus takes them to the fields, the bus brings them back, and once they're there, you can't leave there.
BOUDREAU (voice-over): Hidden in plain sight just across the street from a busy casino, laborers escorted to this phone booth, allowed to call home but not allowed to say they're being held captive.
Lieutenant Rene Gonzales says he sees it firsthand. In December, Gonzales' team helped break a family-run slavery ring. The Navarrete family and an associate is accused of offering work to a dozen illegal immigrants, then holding them captive, forcing them to work.
(on-camera): This house looks like any other suburban house, but it's not. Authorities say this is where slaves were kept. And if they tried to leave, they were beaten.
GONZALES: They were housed here in the vans. There was also a makeshift wooden -- three pieces of plywood shaped like a little box, and two or three of the people were living in there , as well.
BOUDREAU: Living in a box?
GONZALES: Yes.
BOUDREAU (voice-over): This federal indictment details involuntary servitude, how the Navarretes allegedly locked migrants in a van like this, forcing them to work. They even had to pay $5 to shower, using a hose and a bucket outside.
Those accused claim they did nothing wrong, saying if it weren't for them, the illegal immigrants would be living on the street without jobs.
GONZALES: When we do talk to them, they go, I'm in your country illegally. How can I -- how can I complain about how I'm being treated?
BOUDREAU: Lucas Benitez co-founded the Immokalee Workers Coalition in the early '90s and says his group has rescued more than 1,000 workers from slavery in the last decade.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Armed guards are watching them 24 hours a day in isolated labor camps.
BOUDREAU: In southwest Florida alone, nine human trafficking cases were prosecuted in the last nine years. Seven active investigations are underway. And prosecutors say countless cases go unreported.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): So it is a lucrative business to have people in slavery, because you don't have to pay them, you have them under your control, and you make profits from their labor.
BOUDREAU: Abbie Boudreau, CNN, Immokalee, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LONG: Now prosecutors say the Navarrete case is one of the worst slavery cases in the history of Florida. The defendants face up to 20 years in prison.
Our special investigations unit talked to the Navarrete's attorneys and they say the government has no credible evidence to support the charges against them.
LEMON: Sad story there.
And sad one here. Remember this from over the weekend? The no- swimming signs, well, they're coming down. Seventeen miles of southern California beaches are reopening today, but beach-goers might think twice about jumping back into the water with a killer shark out there.
Sixty-six-year-old triathlete, David Martin, bled to death Friday after a shark bit both his legs. Experts think it was a great white. Air and ground patrols are on the lookout for any signs of trouble there.
Crews are back in the air over Daytona Beach, Florida, searching for the body of a teenager who apparently drowned in a rip current. It happened on Saturday. Authorities say the water was so choppy yesterday, visibility from the air was next to zero. Lifeguards managed to rescue more than 100 other people who also got into trouble in the rough seas.
LONG: Coming up, behind the fence at Camp Bucca. The U.S. military pulls aside the vail on its biggest prison camp in Iraq. And only CNN will take you there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LEMON: Just incredible pictures. Why don't you take a look at some of the aftermath of the heavy fighting in Baghdad -- by some accounts, the most violent clashes in weeks. The United States and Iraqi forces are taking on Shiite militias in the Sadr City slum. The U.S. military says the militants have suffered 38 deaths in the past two days.
LONG: Last hour we took you inside the U.S. military's biggest prison camp in Iraq. Well this hour, CNN's Nic Robertson goes deeper into the heart of Camp Bucca.
Here's Part II of his exclusive report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good to see you. We're going to go in here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Very good, sir.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right.
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As we continue our tour of America's largest detention facility in Iraq, gates normally barred to journalists are opening up. General Douglas Stone leads the way.
He's showing us how he's turning the company from jihadi university, to model lockup. And this is where it begins -- religious reeducation. Suspected insurgents listen to an imam, who preaches a moderate interpretation of Islam far removed from the far ideology that fuels al Qaeda and the very (ph) extremist brethren. In Camp Bucca, classrooms are the new battle ground. Victory is a detainee converted to moderate Islam.
While we've been here, the imams explain to the detainees that they have to respect other people. It is also said, that we all make mistakes, but it's up to us to correct those mistakes. It is also said it's no good just being a good Muslim and keeping to the tenets of Islam if you go ahead and kill people. He said that's wrong.
Stone takes us to his other battle front. Hard-core extremists he keeps isolated to stop them indoctrinating the moderates.
MAJOR GENERAL DOUGLAS STONE, U.S. MARINE CORPS: There's no way we'd put these guys in a class. I don't know what's going to happen right now. And I don't know what's going to happen right now, either.
ROBERTSON: You never brought a camera in this close before?
STONE: I've never seen this, to be honest with you, because we've been working on getting guys out and broken apart.
ROBERTSON: Even the hard-core are getting the chance to reform, but their teacher stands outside their wired cage.
STONE: This is cooperation with the coalition forces.
ROBERTSON: This is what they -- whoever they're with, this is what they do to stop it?
STONE: These guys have systematically stopped anybody else from doing it. So, these are the guys we had to remove to we could get here so that we could get to the other guys.
ROBERTSON: Stone's doctrine doesn't stop with the detainees. He wants to win over their families too. He's improved visitation. Detailed research, he says, shows most detainees at Bucca got familiarly permission to fight to make money.
STONE: The reality is this is the battlefield of the mind. It's all about what they're willing to think and what they're willing to do when they do think it. These family units are integral to that decision.
ROBERTSON: Art therapy, he says, has opened up some of the most extreme. Others get English classes. Even civics courses teaching Western-style democracy. But one of the biggest motivators for reform is the revamped review hearings that Stone instituted.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're not serving a sentence here. You've been held because you're been determined to be a security threat.
ROBERTSON: For the first time, detainees are actually present for their six-monthly review hearings, and can argue their case for release.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we decide to recommend your continued detention, we may also recommend that you participate in the vocational skills training program.
ROBERTSON: Stone has let 7,000 go. Some had been locked up for as long as three years. Only seven have come back. Before Stone arrived, mass releases put al Qaeda indoctrinated detainees right back into the fight. Now Stone's refined release program is even releasing detained imams to spread their new message of moderation.
STONE: Each detainee represents the possibility of being a moderate missile, if you will, fired into a community to spread a degree of moderacy, and that's the way we view it, with 20-some or 19,000 detainees, 23,000 overall, if we had half of them hitting the target, it's makes a huge difference.
ROBERTSON: So why wasn't anyone doing this before?
STONE: I can't answer that.
ROBERTSON: He can answer who is helping.
STONE: General Petraeus.
ROBERTSON: Why hasn't he blocked (ph) in?
STONE: Because General Petraeus understands this war fighting. Because when I walk in with an idea, he'll challenge me, he'll slice and dice it, but if he thinks it has merit and he understands the context in which it's being done, he has the bigger picture. He understands how this population fits in that population.
ROBERTSON: A war where the battle doesn't end when the enemy is captured.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Camp Bucca, Iraq.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEMON: All right.
Well, at least 70 people are dead in eastern China, 420 others are hurt after their passenger trains collided just before dawn. Now, the China News Service reports nine cars from one train left the tracks, landing in the bath path of an oncoming train. Authorities blame human error, and China's news agency reports the first train was just going too fast.
LONG: You might want to hold on, it could be a bumpy ride.
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MICHAEL DYMENT, NEXA CAPITAL PARTNERS: There will be some savings for the airlines. There will be a fair amount of discomfort on the part of passengers. But that is the trend today.
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LONG: How the rising fuel costs are forcing the airlines to cut back.
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LONG: The high cost is fuel is forcing some people to cut down on driving, but what about the airlines? What are they supposed to do? for one thing, lighten up.
CNN's Kathleen Koch takes a look.
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KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fuel is now airlines No. 1 expense. So carriers are throwing out everything but the galley sink to lighten the load.
JIM MAY, CEO, AIR TRANSPORT ASSN.: We're going to spend $60 billion in fuel this year, and that drives a huge amount of creativity. One of our carriers is reducing the number of magazines their carry on board and it saves them 3400 gallons of fuel a year. Another carrier is using ecowashing of their turbine fan engines.
KOCH: Just keeping a jet engine clean can reduce fuel usage by up to 1.5 percent. Airlines are pulling out ovens, trash compactors, waste bins, seat-back phones. U.S. Airways switched to beverage carts that were 12 pounds lighter. JetBlue ripped out an entire row of seats from many of its planes.
SCOTT TURNER, AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT OPS.: When we started Fuel Smart, we went and looked how we did everything.
KOCH: American Airlines created a Fuel Smart team to scour for savings. To structural changes, more aerodynamic tail cones that reduce drag, and upturned winglets on the end of each wing.
TURNER: All it does is allow the airplane to go through the air more smoothly, and those winglets alone, save us 25 million gallons of fuel a year.
KOCH: Airlines are also flying differently to cut consumption, varying speeds in the air, carrying less fuel, cruising longer at higher altitudes and making shorter, steeper approaches. On the ground, planes now taxi out using just one engine. New aircraft are using lighter materials inside and out. And the turbo prop is making a comeback.
Orders this year were more than five times what they were in 2002. While noisy and susceptible to turbulence, a turbo prop uses a quarter to a third less fuel than the same size jet.
DYMENT: There will be a fair amount of discomfort on the part of passengers, but that is the trend today.
KOCH: One that's expected to continue, as long as jet fuel prices remain sky-high.
Kathleen Koch, CNN, Washington.
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