Return to Transcripts main page
American Morning
On Board "Kill Well" Rig; Families of 11 Oil Workers Killed Go to the White House; Oil Drilling Ban Under Review; AT&T iPad Users Hacked; Oil Spill Damage in Louisiana; Efforts Underway to Clean Wildlife Affected by Oil; Republican Women Dominating in Elections; Caps, Kills & Robot Subs
Aired June 10, 2010 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. It is Thursday. It's June 10th. Welcome to the special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Kiran Chetry here in New York.
And John joins us live from New Orleans again this morning. It's day 52 of the Gulf oil disaster.
Good morning, John.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Kiran.
We have seen the pictures from the ocean floor, an underwater volcano of oil erupting now in its 53rd day. But you may not know what's going on at the surface to stop this leak. It is incredible, it is unprecedented, it is very risky and it has to work.
I saw the effort in person when I went out ground zero, 50 miles offshore with the man in charge of this effort, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production, Doug Suttles.
An army of oil workers, many who live along the Gulf Coast that they are trying to save, they are trying to hit something smaller than a basketball hoop five miles down on the first shot. Now, this is the closest that BP has allowed anyone to get to their operations to kill the well. And it's something that you'll see only on CNN.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOUG SUTTLES, COO, BP: That's the drill ship Enterprise. So, that's the vessel that's right over the top of the well. That's the vessel that's taking that production from the cap assembly up to the surface. And what you can see -- that flare is the gas that's with the oil that's being burned off.
ROBERTS (voice-over): He has flown over the sea many times. But for BP's chief operating officer, Doug Suttles, this was his first opportunity to actually touchdown in the rig attempting to kill his runaway well.
SUTTLES: You're actually looking at something that's never been done before. In fact, we would never have thought about having this equipment this close together working like this.
ROBERTS: We land on the Development Driller 3, the DD3, a brand new rig sinking the first kill well deep beneath the ocean floor. Immediately, we see a stark reminder of how we got to this point.
(on camera): As you arrive on the Development Driller 3, you're met by this sign, it's a safety sign, days without last time injury, days without major events. And you come over here, the number is 52 -- 52 days since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank.
(voice-over): But we also get our very first ship board look at the first piece of good news since this disaster unfolded.
SUTTLES: First of all, you can see down here in the water now, and as I can tell you when I was out here right -- in the days right after it started, this would have been brown oil. So, even though it's horrible to look at it, it looks a lot better than what it looked like these first few days. And part of it it's what's happening right there. That is sitting right on top of the well.
And, of course, there's about -- yesterday, we got 15,000 of barrels up through there. And if that hadn't been there, we would have been oiling the sea.
ROBERTS: It's clear that the catastrophe aboard the Deepwater Horizon has had a profound effect on this drilling crew. Brian West shows me one of his remarkable ROVs that serve as the technicians' hands and eyes in the crushing depths of the ocean.
(on camera): What can be put on these arms?
BRIAN WEST, TECHNICIAN: Anything you can think of. We put shears, cutters, grinders.
ROBERTS (voice-over): But look on the side of the submarine, and there it is again, Horizon 11.
WEST: The industry is changing because of this event. It's never going to be the same.
ROBERTS (on camera): How do you think it's going to change the industry?
WEST: There'd be a lot of safety changes, I'm sure -- a lot of procedural changes. Everybody is going to look at drilling these wells and doing these operations totally different.
ROBERTS (voice-over): One difference, there is now an ROV in the water 24/7, keeping careful watch over the relief well's blowout preventer.
James Lusk is the ROV's pilot. A native just Slidell, just north of New Orleans, he takes his professional assignment personally.
JAMES LUSK, ROV PILOT: We all live by the coast. We're just here to hopefully stop it, sir. ROBERTS (on camera): For all the containment domes, the siphon pipe, the top kill operation, the top cap, what you see behind me on the Discoverer Enterprise is probably as good as it's going to get until the month of August, because the last best chance to kill that well, to stop the oil from coming up from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico rests here with the 189 people on board the DD3. And to a person, they say, they are committed to make sure a job gets done.
(voice-over): In the driller's shaft where cameras have not been allowed until now, a highly skilled crew guides a drill down 13,000 feet. They have 5,000 left to go. Their target -- a hole smaller than a dinner plate. A seemingly impossible shot, yet toolpusher Ted Stukenborg says it's a point of pride to hit it on the first try.
TED STUKENBORG, TOOLPUSHER: It weighs on my mind. I know it weighs on a lot of people's mind that this is something we have got to do right, got to do it -- got to do it safe and we got to do it the first time.
ROBERTS: The work, long hours in the searing heat for the most part has been pretty thankless. Few people are saying anything good about the oil industry at the moment. But they press on in extreme conditions to extreme depths.
STUKENBORG: I think a lot of people don't understand. They don't know. And if they -- if they understood, if they knew, they probably wouldn't be as hard on us, I think.
ROBERTS: Ted, we look forward to the day when you tell us the well is dead.
STUKENBORG: Me too.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Well, you know, it's easy in a disaster like this and the scope of the environmental tragedy to demonize anything and everything dealing with the oil industry, but I can tell you that yesterday, I met some very dedicated and very professional people who are working very hard to try to fix this problem -- Kiran.
CHETRY: A very, very fascinating look as well, John. Thanks.
And this oil spill was much more than just a disaster. It was also a tragedy. In just a few hours, President Obama is going to be meeting with the families of the 11 men who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The families of these men are looking for more than just condolences.
Suzanne Malveaux spoke with one of them and she joins us live at the White House today.
Good morning, Suzanne.
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hey. Good morning, Kiran. Well, President Obama is going to offer more than condolences. He's going to offer -- also offer some help. But as you said, you know, the question is, is that going to be enough? There are some families, quite frankly, who feel forgotten when you talk about this, the largest environmental catastrophe in our country's history.
I had a chance to talk to one of the families, the Joneses. And what are they going to say to the president, they want him to help them change the law, the Death on the High Seas Act, to help the relatives cope and provide for their families.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MALVEAUX (voice-over): Twenty-eight year-old Gordon Jones was a mud engineer on the Deepwater Horizon rig when it exploded and sank. His father Keith and brother Chris --
KEITH JONES, FATHER OF GORDON JONES: We don't know exactly what happened to Gordon. We're not certain exactly where Gordon was. And there was mud that began shooting out of the well which means that a blowout was about to happen.
MALVEAUX: Chris got a call shortly after the rig went down.
(on camera): When you found out what happened, that your brother was one of those who was killed on the rig, what's going on through your head and your heart?
CHRIS JONES, BORTHER OF GORDON JONES: Disbelief. After a while, I got into the car and drove down to Port Fourchon, because I wasn't satisfied, number one, with what everybody was telling me.
MALVEAUX (voice-over): Gordon's family has been fighting for answers ever since, visiting Washington to testify on Capitol Hill, to get better benefits for the families of those who perished on the rig explosion.
And now, an invitation from President Obama to the White House.
(on camera): Do you think the president has been doing enough?
K. JONES: I do. I don't know what people expect him to do, if they expect him to go down and clean pelicans. But I think that the criticism of the president that I've seen is from a public relations standpoint.
MALVEAUX (voice-over): The last memories of Gordon with his wife, Michelle, and son, Stafford, are still fresh for the family.
K. JONES: We were at the golf course. Michelle had just taken the picture of Gordon giving Stafford his first golf lesson. And I was standing right behind Michelle when she took that picture. I remember driving away thinking they are so happy. Everything I remember about my last time with Gordon was good.
MALVEAUX: Gordon had just a couple of days left on the rig before he was scheduled to take seven weeks off for the birth of his second son. What was that like that day where his wife delivered his second son, the son that he never even saw born?
K. JONES: It was the ultimate bittersweet experience. There was the joy of delivering a healthy baby boy who from the start looked like Gordon. And there was the sorrow with the realization that he would never meet his dad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MALVEAUX: Kiran, really, the Jones family remarkably, a courageous family, full of faith. Gordon's dad wants the president to know that Gordon had a light heart. He had a good spirit. He loved to make people laugh and that they will do everything in their power to support his widow, Michelle, and those two young boys that she has there. And they just simply want this president and the rest of the country not to forget Gordon and those 10 others.
CHETRY: It's just horrible though. What a loss for the family.
Great story, Suzanne, bringing their story to us. And we'll find out how the conversations went with the president later today. Thanks, Suzanne.
Right now, we go back to John.
ROBERTS: And, Kiran, a growing point of controversy here along the Gulf Coast is the six-month moratorium on deep water drilling that the Interior Department declared. And it's interesting that it was Ken Salazar who said, "I have consulted with my experts. And I'm putting a six-month hold on drilling."
Well, some of those experts are saying, "We never recommended that." And we'll talk to one of them -- coming right up.
It's nine minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Live pictures now from the ocean floor. Day 52 of this crisis as the oil continues to spew from beneath that top cap. Although we should see, according to BP, less oil surrounding that cap in the days to come because they now have a second ship able to capture some of that oil at the top of the ocean, besides the Discoverer Enterprise, which was only capable of handling about 15,000 barrels a day. So, maybe some more progress in the next couple of days with limiting the amount of oil that's spewing into the Gulf.
Well, right now, 33 offshore oil rigs are shut down while the Obama administration conducts a six-month environmental and safety analysis. One Louisiana lawmaker says the drilling moratorium could cost her state 330,000 jobs.
This morning, we're hearing from some of the experts that the White House consulted before shutting down those rigs. They are saying the decision is not something they supported then or now. Ken Arnold is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He also serves as a consultant for the oil and gas industry. He joins us from Houston this morning.
Ken, great to see you.
So, what did you recommend to the Interior Department?
KEN ARNOLD, OIL & GAS CONSULTANT: Well, it's nice of you to invite me here, John, to explain this. The problem that we saw is that a group of us, several of us are declared as reviewers who peer reviewed the report, others as contributors to the report, who contributed to the report. I was kind of an in-between role. I was both a contributor and a non-formal reviewer.
The report says that we peer reviewed the report which implies we looked at the final recommendation of the moratorium. But when we looked at the report, the moratorium was completely different than the one that's been enacted today. And it's a moratorium that we think actually has the effect of marginally increasing risk of future oil spills, rather than decreasing risk.
And so, so we have two points here. One is, we don't want our names associated with this moratorium because we didn't review it. We didn't think it was good.
ROBERTS: OK.
ARNOLD: And secondly is -- we are concerned that it actually hurts the environment, rather than helps it.
ROBERTS: OK. Well, let's expand on those two points then. What was the moratorium that you thought would have been useful?
ARNOLD: Well, it is not necessarily what I thought would have been useful. What was in the report when I last reviewed it was a moratorium on drilling from floating, mobile offshore drilling units, if you will, in more than 1,000 feet of water. The current moratorium is on all drilling, whether it is from a mobile offshore drilling unit or a platform or a tension leg platform or whatever, in anything more than 500 feet of water. I actually thought the original moratorium was too strict as it was.
ROBERTS: OK, OK. So then let me get to the point where you say you thought it could actually increase risk.
On what basis do you make that recommendation?
ARNOLD: OK, there are three items here. I mean, keep in mind, we are talking about instituting some recommendations which will marginally decrease risk, not dramatically, but marginally. In the report, and it is a very good report, by the way, surprising that a government group in thirty days could come up with that. They had a lot of support from industry for that report. There is specific recommendations on what can be done immediately. And on Tuesday, the MMS issued a notice to lessees mandating that these be done. We are fully in agreement with that. That should be done and it should be done before any further drilling is allowed.
ROBERTS: Well, get us back to the point of how you say that you thought that the moratorium, as declared now, could increase the risk.
ARNOLD: There are three things. The first one is, it forces everybody to stop doing what they are doing and to temporarily abandon the wells that they were drilling on. Keep in mind that the blowout occurred on the deep-water horizon, not when they were drilling it was when they were temporarily abandoning the well.
We talked a lot about a blowout in the Timor Sea. That also occurred when an operator was re-entering a well that had been temporarily abandoned. So, forcing people to quickly, temporarily, abandon wells is safe. It is OK. But it has a marginal increase in risk associated with that. The second point is that once we've put the moratorium into effect and people don't know for sure whether they will be able to drill in six months or not, rigs are going to start to leave the Gulf of Mexico. They will go to other parts of the world where they will be on long-term contracts.
It will take a long time to get those rigs back. And not only that, but the rigs that are likely to get back are the ones that are not the newest, most modern rigs, like the rig that you just showed on your show, just before the break. We want the good rigs back. OK? And number three.
ROBERTS: We should point out though, Ken - Sorry, go ahead. Say your third point.
ARNOLD: Number three is, we're already seeing a decrease in production as a result of the moratorium. There is one independent who has already told their investors that they will produce 2 million barrels less this year than they thought because they were forced to stop operations on the platform that they were operating on. As this moratorium goes on, as it takes time to get the rigs back into the Gulf of Mexico, we will lose production more and more. And that has to be made up by tankers coming into our ports. And we all know that spills from tankers are much more likely than spills from offshore oil and gas production.
ROBERTS: So this wasn't a consensus recommendation by the scientific and engineering panel.
How do you think the decision got made?
ARNOLD: That's up for the Department of Interior to answer. I don't think I am competent to answer that. All I'm saying is we were selected as the experts to give them advice. The advice we are giving them is they have made a mistake.
ROBERTS: All right. Ken Arnold for us this morning. Ken, it is good to talk to you.
Thank you so much for joining us.
ARNOLD: OK, thank you, John for inviting me. ROBERTS: All right. Well, sensitive information exposed on the web because of a glitch in your 3G wireless network. Should you be worried about your iPad security. Well, if you are Mayor Michael Bloomberg, you probably would. Christine Romans, "Minding Your Business", coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY FALLON, HOST, LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON: There was a major screw up at Delta Airlines yesterday, you guys hear about this? They switched up the tickets for two children and accidentally sent a kid from Cleveland to Boston and a kid from Boston to Cleveland. The parents were very upset but the Celtics were like, can you do that with LeBron James? Will that work?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Wow. Can you imagine? Christine Romans is here, "Minding Your Business". Can you imagine? First of all, I would be petrified to send my kids by themselves. I mean, most people do it sometimes but --
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I cannot even get myself from point A to point B. I mean I am worried about sending a kid unaccompanied from point A to point B, and you know, stuck on the tarmac, enough.
CHETRY: Can you imagine?
ROMANS: I know. Listen, another major screw up to tell you about. AT&T fixing a major iPad 3G security problem. A big security problem, Kiran. You know, these iPads, the first movers on iPads are some pretty famous people. Right? They got them right away. A hacker group, an internet security group was able to tap into AT&T's database and get the e-mail addresses and IDs of a whole bunch of really famous people. 114,000 people altogether and some names that you will recognize are people in politics like Rahm Emanuel, in entertainment like Harvey Weinstein and in media like Diane Sawyer, among others.
CHETRY: Rahm Emanuel has sensitive information, unless he doesn't use his iPad for any of that?
ROMANS: We are told that it wasn't information that was sensitive but the actual e-mail addresses that were exposed and that AT&T was told about this by these, the people who managed -- the hackers basically, who managed to get in there. AT&T issued a response, a very terse response, actually. This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday. We were told that people whose e-mail addresses were breached will be told and contacted that their e-mail addresses were breached.
CHETRY: This is always a case where you can't really put, you know, the cat back in the bag. You can't really put the horse back in the barn, so to speak. I mean, once they have that information, they have it. Whether they correct it or not, it is already out there.
ROMANS: And, you know, it showed just a hole, a breach in the software, basically. Actually, a tough couple of weeks for AT&T because it was just a few days ago we were telling you how the CEO got a letter from a concerned customer.
CHETRY: About his data plan, right?
ROMANS: About his data plan, the concerned customer was given a voice mail back that said, we will issue a cease and desist order, if you continue to directly contact our CEO. So, it made this company look like it was a little out of touch. Now, this hacker group or internet security group makes it look like AT&T couldn't keep a hold of some really important data. And we know that the iPad has been a huge success.
CHETRY: Do you have one yet?
ROMANS: I don't have one, do you?
CHETRY: No. I want one though.
ROMANS: I don't have time and I'm too cheap.
CHETRY: Do you have a numeral for us this morning?
ROMANS: I do. Every three seconds.
CHETRY: Someone buys an iPad?
ROMANS: Yes. Can you believe that? In just two months, that is what it has been. Every three seconds, someone is buying one of these. It just shows you that AT&T has a bit of a black eye here on this one. Because this is a very wildly popular product. They need to keep control of the information.
CHETRY: I was at a digital conference yesterday and Martha Stuart was there with her iPad. She was tweeting while she was taking part in the panel.
ROMANS: I'm afraid it would make me just much too efficient.
CHETRY: Yes, you prefer to still write things down in your little Moleskin.
ROMANS: Exactly. That is actually true.
CHETRY: Christine, thanks. Well, rescuing oil birds, who is in charge of the bird rescue operations taking place on the gulf? Our Jim Acosta, set out to find out. Twenty-five minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Here we go, now on the half hour, in our top stories this morning. The oil sickness is spreading in the Louisiana Department of Health and hospitals reported, 71 cases of oil-spill related illnesses as of yesterday. 50 of them were involved in the cleanup effort. But 21 came from the general public. There were also 15 cases reported in Alabama. But, it survived the end of reconstruction, a great depression, a great recession and hurricane Katrina. Now the oldest oyster business in America is in grave danger thanks to this oil spill. I spoke to the man in charge of P&J oysters about whether the industry will ever recover.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Economically, what are we talking about here?
AL SUNSERI, PRESIDENT & GM, P&J OYSTERS: From myself, I'm a medium sized oyster business. But economically, for people in the fisheries, both commercial and recreational, we're talking significant amount of economic damage.
ROBERTS: Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions?
SUNSERI: Billions of dollars. Depending on how many years. You know, I'm starting to think now years and years, rather than in months.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Louisiana is the largest oyster producer in the country with as much as 40 percent of the domestic crop.
It's been heartbreaking to see birds and other wildlife coated in oil and fighting for every breath. Rescuing these birds and nursing them back to health is a complicated and complex operation, tedious and times-taking as well.
Our Jim Acosta discovered that firsthand. He joins us now.
To some degree as well, Jim, there is some question as to who is in charge here.
JIM ACOSTA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, John. While we were out there, we noticed that federal and state authorities are doing all they can to rescue these birds that are caught up in the oil spill. But there are certain aspects of this critical mission where it appears there is a higher authority in charge -- BP.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: Recovering contaminated birds from the BP oil spill is no easy task. As we found out following this crew with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service off the Louisiana coast, the birds don't want to be rescued. We watched this crew try time and again to net two oil- covered pelicans.
ACOSTA (on camera): This pelican has oil on him along his head and back. He is strong enough to where he can hop around from rock to rock and dock to dock.
TODD BAKER, LOUISIANA FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE: There are still quite a few that have varying degrees of oil. They are not to the point where they can't fly. So they're still flying, which makes them very difficult to catch.
ACOSTA (voice-over): Earlier in the day, we saw other crews bring in crate after crate of polluted wildlife for this triage center in grand isle. That's where we found the rules for capturing images of these birds have changed.
We were asked to turn our cameras off. And this official with the Louisiana state animal response team, a contractor hired by BP, told us we could not enter the bird triage center even though we received permission to do that from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
ACOSTA: Elsart makes the final call?
BAKER: I make the final call based on the condition of the birds coming in.
ACOSTA: Todd Baker with the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Service says it is out of an abundance of caution.
BAKER: It is more important for the animals to have a quiet, calm, controlled area at this point.
ACOSTA: Talking to the rescuers was another problem. One volunteer said he signed a document that he would not talk to the media. Another rescue worker told us he would be fired if he spoke up. He instead gave us these images, birds being scooped up out of the water.
The wife of the rescuer who snapped the photos states her husband is having a hard time coping with the job.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is pretty rough on him. He doesn't like doing it. It is his job. He is an animal fan.
ACOSTA: But why the silence? This BP contract that was initially used to hire rescue and cleanup workers appears to ban any comments to the media. It states, "Vessel openers and ploy eyes will not make news releases, marketing presentations, or any public statements."
Now BP insists it's not ordering workers to keep quiet. Asked about that contract, a BP spokesman tells CNN, "BP has not enforced this provision in the master vessel charter agreement." If that's the case, the rescue workers we found have yet to receive that message.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ACOSTA: And one thing we should point out is that the rules for bringing cameras into that triage center may be changing, John. An official with the Louisiana State Fish and Wildlife Service said they are working on getting a life streaming camera into that triage center so the public can catch every moment of these birds being nursed back to health.
ROBERTS: You can understand these animals would be traumatized by being trapped in oil and to have other stressors would not be a good thing. But when it comes down to BP, this is a company that is not used to living in the public spotlight.
ACOSTA: That's right. Yesterday, talk about an Alice in Wonderland moment. We had somebody come up and tell us to turn off our cameras even though we were -- on behalf of BP, a foreign company -- even though we were in an area where we were told by state and federal officials that we could videotape outside that triage center.
So it was one of those things where you said, what's going on? Who's in charge?
ROBERTS: Jim Acosta this morning, thanks so much.
Let's send it back to New York. Here is Kiran.
CHETRY: John, thanks.
We are learning more about just what happened when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig went up in flames back on April 20th. CNN's Anderson cooper spoke with the wives of some of the survivors. One of them talked about the fear of not knowing whether her husband was alive or dead.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANGELA HOPKINS-JACOBS, WIFE OF BP OIL RIG SURVIVOR: When she said that we've had to evacuate the rig, and I was hysterical. I said, is he OK, is he OK? She said I don't know any details. I can't tell you anything. I had just lost it. My son was, you know, was asking, what's wrong, what's wrong? I said -- I couldn't speak.
MATTHEW JACOBS, BP OIL RIG SURVIVOR: I prayed for my family to let God know I love my wife and that I love my kids and that he would help me and everybody else get off the rig safely. The whole time, it's going through my mind, I'm never going to see my family again. This is it. We're done.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: You were sure that was it for you?
MATTHEW JACOBS: Yes, sir.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: So for Angela Hopkins-Jacobs, it ended up being her husband was alive. Of course, for 11 others, that was not the case. Also, the wives who spoke with Anderson said they all think that the Transocean Company was not prepared to handle a crisis the size of the Deepwater Horizon.
Still ahead, some are asking, is it the year of the conservative woman? Republican women dominating in the elections. We are going to be talking about it with Patricia Murphy and Leslie Sanchez, coming up.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. It's 39 minutes past the hour right now.
After a round of high profile primaries this week, the big winners in the GOP, all women. So can these candidates give Republicans a comeback in fall's mid-term elections?
For more, we bring in Patricia Murphy, Capitol Hill Bureau Chief for Politicsdaily.com, and Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez.
Great to see both of you this morning, thanks for being here.
LESLIE SANCHEZ, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Good morning.
CHETRY: It is interesting when you take a look at the numbers, four big victories for Republican women. It has long been the case when we talk about women in politics, it is usually Democrats that have more women, especially in Congress. What are Republicans doing right or different this year, Leslie.
SANCHEZ: Lets' look at the bottom line that 2008 was a momentous year for women, both Republican and Democrat, and I think we're seeing that after effect of that.
The advantage is these are strategically smart candidates. These are candidates who are running on the Republican side as very strong fiscal conservatives in many cases but not as women candidates. That's tremendously important. They are running in open seats.
And of the 21 candidates that are running right now, overwhelmingly there are more women. I think they are taking advantage of the anti-incumbency attitude around the country. And they are also coming in with a lot of state experience and their own credentials, what's really refreshing and what they are going to need to reform state government first.
CHETRY: Does anti-incumbent really bode well for women? When there is that sentiment out there, is the viewpoint that typically when you take a look at the history of who has been in charge of the country, women are viewed as the outsiders?
PATRICIA MURPHY, COLUMNIST, THEPOLITICSDAILY.COM: Women are viewed as the outsiders. And in an anti-incumbent year, that is the biggest advantage. In the past, it has been the biggest disadvantage. There is this old boys network you need to break through.
For the first time in a long time, these are candidates who are qualified, women, as Leslie said, who do have experience at the state level. But they are fresh faces, people who we haven't seen before, and people who voters can't blame for messing everything up.
(LAUGHTER)
And for the first time, that is the best thing some of these women have going for them.
For the GOP, this is so important. The GOP has got to broaden their base. They have to expand their numbers. They are having a hard time with Hispanics and a really hard time with African- Americans. Women are an area they can do better. With more female candidates, they probably will do better.
CHETRY: In the headlines we just say Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, those are political novices. Is this less about winning and more about looking for people who have already done other things. These are CEOS, both of them, executive experience both of them. Does that provide an edge?
SANCHEZ: The advantage is they are really a fascinating package in the sense that they are incredibly smart individuals, titans of industry and big business. And with that respect, they started, I think you will look at eBay, a company that Meg Whitman grew to the size it was, very receptive, used a lot of this new media and social media technology. It looks innovative coming out of California.
But also understanding a balance sheet and fiscal responsible. The Republican part that people are frustrated about is that we moved away from the value of fiscal constraint, responsibility. And you are hearing a lot of that now and the issues of debt. These women have the credentials to be able to play on a very tough field.
CHETRY: Do you think it is interesting, Patty, that three of the four candidates that Sarah Palin endorsed, female candidates, won.
MURPHY: It is one of the most fascinating dynamics that is out there. When you look at what Sarah Palin had an effect on women around the country that it is almost impossible to underestimate.
When I've gone around to talk to women voters and some of these female candidates, they saw Sarah Palin, especially for Republican women, as a new role model. They didn't have a lot of women they could look to and look to and emulate. She was on the campaign trail.
And she also had her very young children with her. And so a lot of these women candidates looked at her and said, I can do that. Not only did she do a lot for these women, but she set an example for women who want to follow that particularly within the GOP. You can't underestimate that Sarah Palin effect.
SANCHEZ: The biggest part of that, I want to add, and you talked about California, but also with the Palin effect, if you want to call it that -- Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton broke the money test. They showed they could raise significant amounts of money which, in politics, is the threshold for whether or not you are taken seriously.
The Palin effort is she focuses on candidates with a lot of grassroots support intensity -- CHETRY: But she is also very divisive. You either really love Sarah Palin or you really do not. We saw that when Hillary was running for the Democratic primary as well. Is there something about outspoken and successful women candidates that sometimes mean that they rub some people the wrong way?
(LAUGHTER)
SANCHEZ: Well, that's a whole other chapter. There is no doubt about that.
CHETRY: Oh, come on.
SANCHEZ: We know the names that a lot of women get called, especially as they are ascending to some of these offices in the professional world or political offices where we are talking about. The reality is, you have to be tough. You have to be the mettle for these campaigns. These women have shown they can do that. These were not easy primaries. The other thing to keep in mind, these are primaries. That's where somebody like a Sarah Palin can have an effect because she riles up the base.
We are going to need that intensity in off-year elections for those candidates to win these elections. That's what we all have to watch.
CHETRY: It was an open mike. I want to show you this quick. It was caught on tape. It often happens when people are doing interviews. This is Carly Fiorina. She made comments about her opponent, Barbara Boxer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARLY FIORINA, (R) CALIFORNIA SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: I saw Barbara Boxer her briefly on television this morning and said what everyone says -- god, what is that hair?
(LAUGHTER)
So yesterday.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, again these moments happen but does that reinforce some of the stereotypes that women are catty, that so many women are trying to break.
PATRICIA MURPHY, CAPITOL HILL BUREAU CHIEF, POLITICSDAILY.COM: You know, I actually don't think so. I mean, I think that you don't have to be a woman to know that sometimes women's worst enemies can be other women. This is not anything new on the scene. I think that really could have gone frankly a lot worse for Carly Fiorina. She could have said something a lot worse about Barbara Boxer.
So it wasn't a great moment for her. I think it's going to be -- I think it will give a lot of ammunitions to people who already don't like Carly Fiorina. That's just going to reinforce that. I don't think this says anything larger about woman in politics, or women fighting against other women.
The good news for women in this race in particular is that they are going to be two strong women candidates on both sides of the aisle. And one thing though, that Fiorina has to be aware of, is that just because you're a woman that doesn't mean more women are going to vote for you necessarily. So she's going to do a lot better.
And reaching out to other women in a moment like that against Barbara Boxing, cutting her down about her hair. Saying, "So yesterday" in this sort of this little tackle afterwards is not going to be helpful. Sarah Palin is somebody who suffered with women at the ballot box. There was a huge gender gap, even with her on the ticket.
CHETRY: Right.
MURPHY: So just because you are a woman doesn't mean you're not -- it doesn't mean you're going to win the women's vote in the elections.
CHETRY: All right, well, just cutting races to watch for sure. They spent a ton of money just now in the primaries. We'll see what happens during the Midterms. Leslie Sanchez and Patricia Murphy, great to see both of you this morning, thanks.
SANCHEZ: Thanks Kiran.
CHETRY: Right now, we are going to head back to John in New Orleans -- hey John.
ROBERTS: Kiran thanks so much.
The Coast Guard has told BP it's got three days to come up with a new plan to capture as much oil as possible from that leaking blowout preventer. So what are they doing on that front? We go live out -- we got out to the rigs rather, with an exclusive interview with Doug Suttles, the COO of Exploration and Production for BP.
We'll tell you what they're doing coming up next. It is now 46 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Live pictures coming to you from the ocean floor one mile beneath the surface of the Gulf of Mexico as that top cap continues to have oil and gas bubble out around it. But BP is going to try in the next couple of days to capture even more of that oil as it has brought in another ship to up its capacity in the surface for taking in that oil.
I had a rare chance to visit the DeepWater Horizon disaster site with BP COO of Exploration and Productions, Doug Suttles. He has become the public face of this disaster. He's also in charge of overseeing this unprecedented operation to collect the oil and kill the well. We've seen a lot go wrong in the past 52 days. But in an exclusive interview -- in an exclusive interview Suttles talks about some of the things that he sees that are actually going right. And I also asked him flat out whether Senator Bill Nelson's doomsday scenario that the well is leaking beneath the sea floor might already be here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DOUG SUTTLES, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BP: First of all, you can kind of see down here in the water. Now as I can tell you when I was out here right -- in the days right after it started, this would have been brown oil.
So even though it's horrible to look at, it looks a lot better than what it looked like those first few days. And part of it is what's happening right there. Which is -- that's sitting right on top of the well.
And of course, it's about yesterday, we got 15,000 barrels of oil up through there. And if that hadn't been there, it would have been oil in the sea.
ROBERTS: Since you put this top cap on top of that blowout preventer, people have been glued to the television, to the Internet looking at the pictures of the oil bubbling out around the cap, why can't you capture all of it? As my understanding is there are vents on that cap. Why can't you close them all and capture all that oil?
SUTTLES: Well, right now, what's -- what's keeping us from capturing more is the capacity of that ship. It can only process somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 barrels a day. So we'll get every drop we can through there. But ultimately we can't get every drop because there is not a tight mechanical seal.
You saw us cut that pipe. It is not something that we can bolt up to. There will always be a little bit coming by. We need to it to come by because if we draw the water in, we will go back to the hydrate problems we had at the beginning with the dome.
ROBERTS (on camera): The question that's been asked in the past 24 hours is why it took so long for BP to release those high- definition pictures of the sheared-off riser from the top of the blowout preventer. Can you explain why? Our understanding is it wasn't until the government actually asked for that video that you released it.
SUTTLES: The challenge we have as you can see these big vessels right here. That's what actually has the -- that runs these robotic submarines. They actually capture that data right there so we don't -- the high-definition videos are not on shore. We actually beam lower-definition to shore. The high-definition stuff is captured on DVDs here.
We actually have to fly those in and get those to people. But I can tell you since very early on, and it will be -- I can't remember the exact date, day three, day four, everyone associated with this event, all the government groups, all the BP and industry folks were able to see all the videos from these remote vehicles we're operating.
ROBERTS: Senator Bill Nelson said in the past 24 hours that he has information that there may be some sort of a defect in the casing of the well bore. And that oil may be seeping up through the seabed as opposed to just coming out the blowout preventer which he suggested would be a very, very serious scenario, much more serious than you have now because that oil you couldn't stop.
Is there any evidence to suggest that there is some sort of breach of integrity of that casing in the well bore and oil is seeping up through the floor of the ocean?
SUTTLES: We don't have any evidence at all that we have oil coming out anywhere other than the top of that lower marine riser package. One of the reasons we decided not to go in and try to stop the flow completely like the BOP on BOP option, some of the data we delivered during the top kill operation suggested that if you shut it in, and under the right conditions it might be possible for what he described to occur.
And if you remember since the very beginning, we said, we are not going to do anything that makes this worse. And even because there is just a remote possibility that it could make it worse, we won't do that. So that's why we have moved entirely to a containment option as to the option to fully shut the well until we get this relieve well done.
ROBERTS: Your concern is that if you shut it down too much, the pressures may go too high it may blow out a different part of the well?
SUTTLES: Exactly. Exactly. And we don't want that to happen because that would be very bad. Because in this situation where it is coming up through the top of the well, we can capture it like we have here. If it came out around the well, it would be very difficult to do that. As I've said, we have gone from the very beginning. We don't ever want to take an action which could make things worse.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: With that option off of the table, and just to lay it out for you in a little bit more detail, there is the leaking blowout preventer now. They were thinking that maybe they could put another one of those 5-story high contraptions on top of that and shut out the flow of oil. It may increase the pressure in the well bore so much that if the casings integrity is not quite what they want it to be, they could blow it out.
Because they won't be able to do that, that means that their absolute, last best options are those two wells that are being drilled toward that well bore, 18,000 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. That's not going to happen probably until at least the beginning and maybe not until the middle of August. Last best chance to kill that well. We'll be back right after a break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: A shot of New Orleans waterfront along the Mississippi River this morning where according to Bonnie Schneider it is going to be really, really hot with the heat index above 100 and probably up to 110, which is going to make, of course, the cleanup operations of this oil spill even more difficult today.
Finally this morning, if Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal ever decides to quit his day job, he could always be a door to door vacuum cleaner salesman. The governor and CNN's Anderson Cooper headed out into the Gulf yesterday to try out the latest oil fighting weapon.
Jindal calls it a little bit of Cajun ingenuity. They are vacuums that are made up of simple PVC pipes sucking oil right off of the water surface. Someone in the governor's office came up with the idea. So Jindal had three prototypes built, and tried them out yesterday. And lo and behold, they work.
The governor, calling on the federal government to approve more of them with BP footing the bill.
We find that very often across the Gulf Coast here, innovative ideas to clean up the oil on a beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama. When BP officials went there to see what they were doing, they were running around with what I guess you could nickname it a Sand-boni, almost like an ice cleaning machine that is designed to clean up the beach.
And they found with a little bit of modification, they could clean the tar balls up off of the beach and all of the seaweed that comes in off the ocean matted in the oil, so BP officials said to town officials, how many of these do you have? And they said, well we only have one. They said, OK, we'll buy you 10 more.
So, everybody's trying to pitch in as much as possible to try to keep the beaches clean and clean the oil up off of the water but it's just -- it's such a huge job -- Kiran.
CHETRY: Calling it Cajun ingenuity just fits perfectly. They're also talking about using rice husks to try to absorb some of the oil in areas that were very sensitive, like the swamps. And these are all ideas, that you said, that are coming out of the Gulf. So, more power to them. They're going to need all the help they can get.
We will see you back tomorrow, John, again.
And in the meantime, we invite everyone to continue the conversation on any of today's stories by heading to our blog, CNN.com/amfix. And again, we will see you back here tomorrow, bright and early, 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time.
"CNN NEWSROOM" with Kyra Phillips starts right now.
