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American Morning
New Details in the Raid that Killed bin Laden; So Long $5 ATM Fee; Sony's Second Security Breach; Killing Osama bin Laden; Questioning Pakistani Intelligence; Gadhafi Must Go; Boy Scout Troop Missing; Saving Cairo, Illinois; Matching bin Laden's DNA
Aired May 03, 2011 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Dramatic new details this morning about the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, and the potentially explosive evidence that was taken from his compound on this AMERICAN MORNING.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome. Good morning to you. Seven o'clock here in New York this morning. It's Tuesday, May 3rd. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Ahead this hour, he was Osama Bin Laden's neighbor, but he didn't know it. We'll talk to the guy who live blogged that Bin Laden raid on Twitter.
CHETRY: We're also going to be joined by the former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. Is there a chance that Pakistan's playing both sides, and if so, what is the U.S.'s recourse? How much credit also should the Bush administration be getting for the death of Bin Laden?
ROMANS: Also, CSI bin laden. His DNA match was made within hours. Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains how it happened so fast.
VELSHI: We begin this hour, though, with important new information about the raid that snuffed out Osama Bin Laden. The al Qaeda chief's body not all that was taken from the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on Sunday. U.S. officials say intelligence officers are now examining a large haul of computer equipment and documents that were also seized from bin Laden's mansion. That includes personal computers, thumb drives, and electronic equipment.
Officials say the cache was a lot larger than they expected. And if there is information about Al Qaeda, it's being examined right now by U.S. intelligence officers at a secret location in Afghanistan.
CHETRY: We're also getting some new details about the compound this morning, where bin Laden spent his final hours. U.S. troops had to deal with two security gates. There were perimeter walls 18-feet high in some cases, topped with barbed wire. And then there was this third floor terrace that you can see right in the middle with that seven- foot privacy wall surrounding it. That is said to be the place where bin Laden slept.
ROMANS: And it was Osama bin Laden's courier and most trusted aide who led U.S. troops to his doorstep. A monitored phone call he made last year tipped off U.S. intelligence agents about bin Laden's compound and they've been following the thread since then.
VELSHI: All right, let's bring in our Barbara Starr who's been leading our reporting on how the raid was planned and executed. Barbara, we seem so hungry for this information. What have you found out that's new this morning?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. This was a classic surgical strike by U.S. special forces backed up by the CIA. It went so well that, you know, thank goodness no one injured, no one hurt on the U.S. side, but we do want to show you a new photo this morning of one of the U.S. military helicopters. It was the one that suffered mechanical failure, had to be left behind on the compound. You can see it now. They set it on fire so no one could get to it. And the commandos all left very safely.
They moved in, however, so quickly, into this compound with all the features you just described -- the 18-foot perimeter wall, the barbed wire, the security measures. And they went right to the area of most interest to them as they fought their way through the compound. They wound up in this center building with two and three stories surrounded by a privacy wall.
By the time they got to it, that building, that's where Osama bin Laden was, living on the second and third floor. That's where the heavy firefight broke out. That's where bin Laden was killed at the very end by a shot to the head and a shot to the chest by U.S. commandos.
But again, this is so amazing for one reason -- they get in, they get out, no one is hurt. This is the real -- the real sort of benefit, the real thing that special forces bring to the battlefield, a very high level of training and the ability to move very, very fast.
CHETRY: Barbara, there's still been some conflicting information from Pakistani officials and, perhaps, from U.S. officials about how much Pakistani security forces knew and when about this mission. Any clarity this morning on that issue?
STARR: Absolutely, and it goes to this very point we're discussing. U.S. officials adamantly say no other government was informed. They didn't want to compromise the mission. They knew these men had to move under cover of night, very stealthy, very covertly to get in and get out safely. They were not about to tell the Pakistanis and risk the mission being compromised. So there was a lot of their own security to make this happen.
And one of the reasons they had to get out so quickly, and not stay on the ground, is because they knew they would be noticed by the Pakistanis and the Pakistanis might launch their own forces, and then there would be some sort of fire fight between them, because the Pakistanis may not have known what was going on. So they wanted to keep this absolutely quiet.
What we are waiting for today, however, is to see whether the White House makes a decision to release the death photos of Osama bin Laden. There's a lot of fakes floating around on the internet. We've checked them all out. Our sources are telling us every picture you see on the internet of a dead Osama bin Laden is a fake.
There are photos. We are told they are very graphic, but if they do release them, you will instantly recognize a dead Osama bin Laden. So what we're waiting for today, is to see whether the White House makes the decision to release those death photos and release any imagery of his burial at sea.
ROMANS: OK. Barbara Starr, thanks.
CHETRY: The White House now releasing photos showing what may have been some of the most tense moments of President Barack Obama's presidency. Here he is in the situation room, on Sunday, alongside Vice President Joe Biden, his national security team, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as they monitor the operation to capture bin Laden.
His decision to go ahead with the more risky op option of sending in Navy Seals likely weighing heavy on his mind. Up until the moment he heard from the field they had ID'd bin Laden and total U.S. casualties were zero. Somebody describing that the president was stone faced and the vice president rubbing his rosary beads while they were watching this.
VELSHI: We've got many questions we're left asking, having to do with Pakistan and its role, how the Al Qaeda leader was able to live in relative comfort literally in Pakistani's -- the Pakistan military, their backyard.
This is new video of his compound posted on YouTube said to dwarf other houses in the area. This is what Barbara has been telling us and pictures we've been showing you. For the first time, Pakistani President Asif al Zardari confirmed his forces had nothing to do with the operation. But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the U.S. could not have done it without them.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: Cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding. You know, going forward, we are absolutely committed to continuing that cooperation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: The former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said the U.S. had no business invading Pakistani air space.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, FORMER PAKISTAN PRESIDENT: American troops coming across the border and taking action in one of our towns Abbottabad, is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan. It is a violation of our sovereignty. It would have been far better if Pakistani special services group had operated and conducted the mission.
(END VIDEO CLIP) VELSHI: The Taliban immediately came out and threatened the U.S. and Pakistani leaders. President Zardari in a "Washington Post" op-ed said "We will not be intimidated. Pakistan has never been and never will be the hotbed of fanaticism often described by the media."
And now to the courier connection, the trusted Osama bin Laden ally who unknowingly led American forces right to the Al Qaeda chief's front door. The Associated Press identifies him as a Kuwaiti born man named Sheikh Abu Ahmed. The phone call Ahmed made last year to someone being monitored by American agents helped the U.S. locate bin Laden's mansion, and the former CIA director Michael Hayden tells John King his agency first learned of Ahmed's existence from detainees over nine years ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: They actually used some information that we had derived from some of our high-valued detainees that gave us some identifying data on the couriers and we watched from that point.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Is this an interrogation or interrogations at Gitmo or at the so-called black sites around the world?
HAYDEN: These would be CIA detainees.
KING: Not at Gitmo?
HAYDEN: No.
KING: Can you say where they were?
HAYDEN: No.
KING: You can't say where they were?
HAYDEN: I cannot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Bin Laden's currier, Sheikh Abu Ahmed and Ahmed's brother, were both killed in the raid that took Osama bin Laden out.
ROMANS: When history is being made these days it seems ordinary people are becoming part of it because of social media.
CHETRY: That's right. A man who lived near bin Laden's Pakistan compound tweeted about the raid in real time. His first post read, quote, "Helicopter hovering above the Abbottabad at 1:00 a.m. is a rare event." His next tweet, "A huge window-shaking bang here in Abbottabad. I hope it's not the start of something nasty."
VELSHI: And then when he learned what was really happening, he tweeted, "Now I'm the guy who live blogged the Osama raid without knowing it." Sohaib Athar joins us to tell us what he witnessed. Thanks for being with us. SOHAIB ATHAR, LIVE-TWEETED RAID ON OSAMA BIN LADEN'S COMPOUND: Thank you.
VELSHI: Tell us what you saw? We're most interested -- were you sitting around looking at the sky or did you hear helicopters and you went outside? How close were you to it? Give us some sense of what you witnessed?
ATHAR: Yes. My house is around two or 2.5 kilometers from this actually. So I did not see the helicopters but I heard the helicopter hovering above my house for a really long time, like five, eight minutes, which is not common in Abbottabad because it doesn't have a real airport and helicopters just come to do shipments sometimes. So if a helicopter is hovering above for that long, it must mean looking at something closely.
So at this time the helicopter was a little suspicious so I was worried about it. I was working and getting irritated by the noise it was making. Initially I heard a fast car going by on the main road and a few seconds after that, I heard the explosion that shook my window panes and then probably a bomb of some kind. I'm from Lahore. I moved here 18 months ago. I heard a few bomb explosions.
ROMANS: Can you tell us what Abbottabad is like today? Can you hear us -- can you tell us what it's like today? You heard what was happening. Now you know, of course, what happened and the significance of it. What is the town like today? How do people who live there feel about being at the center of what is a very big international news story?
ATHAR: Yes. I think besides a few area right now, obviously it is filled with journalists and many curious lookers, but besides that, the town is just going about doing its normal day-to-day business.
VELSHI: Sohaib, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. You are going down as a piece of history for having tweeted out what you saw. Sohaib is joining us from Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he witnessed those helicopters going over him and then he heard the crash.
ROMANS: I wonder how many Twitter followers he has now. Tweeting, minding his business talking about the helicopters in the sky and yesterday re-tweeted around the world, everyone knows he's the one who live-tweeted the raid.
CHETRY: They were talking about 5,000 tweets a minute when the news broke about the death of bin Laden.
VELSHI: One of the busiest times ever for twitter.
All right, coming up next, the man who was involved in the decision to raid bin Laden's compound and then watched it unfold in real time. White house counterterrorism Chief John Brennan joins us live.
CHETRY: Also Sony was hit by a second security breach. Who's at risk now and what are they planning to do about it? It's 12 minutes past the hour. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: There is some justice in the world. The $5 fee to take money out of an ATM that's not your bank was apparently just too much, even the banks have listened.
ROMANS: I think $3 is too much personally.
VELSHI: Right.
ROMANS: But apparently people can stomach paying $3.
CHETRY: McDonald's only charges 99 cents.
VELSHI: I know. I go to McDonald's to get my -- and then I take out a little extra and spend it there. JPMorgan Chase announcing that it has finished testing the $4 to $5 ATM charge for noncustomers in two states and that $5 --
CHETRY: Finished testing. I love that.
VELSHI: That's right. The test is over. The $5 didn't include what your own bank charges you, by the way, for going out of network.
ROMANS: Wow. So that could 7.50.
VELSHI: Yes, that's right.
ROMANS: If you take out 100 bucks, which is 7.5 percent of your money.
VELSHI: So Chase now says it's going back to its original $3 fee.
CHETRY: All right. Well, gas prices now averaging $3.97 a gallon nationwide, up more than a penny even from yesterday. Oil expert Tom Kloza tells CNN that he predicts the nationwide average will hit $4 a gallon this week, and that would be the highest we've seen since July of 2008.
ROMANS: And too many electric cars could reportedly spell trouble for America's power grid. According to a utilities trade group, the average plug-in car adds the equivalent of a new house to a local power grid and that extra demand, researchers say, could blow transformers and cause neighborhood blackouts.
VELSHI: At some point later. I mean, we don't have enough of them out there right now but that's interesting.
All right. Sony has had another security breach or at least they've told us about another security breach. Carmen Wong Ulrich following this to tell us what this is. Is this just new news or is this another --
CARMEN WONG ULRICH, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Interesting you say that, because this is a very, very old security breach. Sony announced yesterday they discovered that their breach was from data from 2007 on around 23,000 users. Now that makes a total of almost 25 million accounts hacked. Now this is on the Sony PlayStation and the Sony Web site, entertainment Web site soe.com.
Now here's what was stolen. User names, home addresses, e-mail addresses, gender, birth date, that's very important, phone number, and passwords. That's enough information to open up new accounts and to perform identity theft. Now you should note, though, that there's no credit card data stolen in the first breach, but in the newest breach, its debit and credit card data was stolen mostly from European users. But you have to protect yourself because the information that I just revealed there, they have that, they can absolutely perform identity theft.
So here's what you have to do. Use upper -- use capital letters and lower case letters in your passwords. Change those right away. Use numbers and symbols. Don't use words found on your Facebook page or Twitters such as like your alum association, your sports team. Don't do that. And always use different passwords for your banking and credit card sites than for your entertainment sites. Keep those very, very separate.
Now note that Sony has shut down their on-line entertainment servers and their Web site to upgrade their protection, but you really have to protect yourself.
CHETRY: So what happens now? I mean, is the cat out of the bag already? Meaning, is it too late to undo this?
VELSHI: Are there more people?
CHETRY: Right.
VELSHI: Is there anybody related to Sony that hasn't had their information given up?
ULRICH: Well, here's the thing. Besides changing your passwords, what you really should do is make sure you keep an eye on all your statements.
VELSHI: Right.
ULRICH: Your credit card statements, your banking statements. And always make sure because a lot of us tend to use the same passwords no matter where we are, don't do that.
VELSHI: Yes.
ULRICH: You have to have separate passwords for banking and credit cards. Keep an eye on all your information. Even put a fraud alert on your accounts if you feel like you've been affected by this.
CHETRY: Not fun.
VELSHI: Markets?
ROMANS: Thought yesterday was going to be a good day but by the end --
ULRICH: That emotional boost kind of fizzled out quite a bit and came back to reality.
Your morning market check here. The Dow down three. Nasdaq down almost 10. S&P down two and futures looking down. We're going to have some reports especially from the auto industry coming up that we'll see how rosy it gets.
ROMANS: It's been a very good spring for stocks and the old phrase sell in May go away. Some of the traders are saying --
CHETRY: But down two points isn't really that bad.
ULRICH: No. Not at all.
VELSHI: It's not fun. It's just that we end up getting no boost out of the Osama bin Laden news.
All right. Carmen, thank you.
ROMANS: Thanks, Carmen.
ULRICH: Thanks, guys.
VELSHI: Coming up on AMERICAN MORNING, saving Cairo, Illinois, by blowing up a levee. Look at these pictures. Three explosions last night to blow up a levee so that one part of the river would flood -- would overturn its banks so that another part could be saved.
ROMANS: Also we're going to talk to Condoleezza Rice. We want to talk to her about this -- the killing of bin Laden. And now 10 years on, for members of the prior administration, how it feels to them to see justice finally and also her thoughts on Pakistan and the U.S. and where we go from here on the war on terror and what did Pakistan know. That's really the interesting part of this story too. That's coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back. It's now 24 minutes past the hour.
When all the celebrating is over a lot of issues will have to be addressed in the aftermath of bin Laden's death.
ROMANS: That's right. What did Pakistan know about bin Laden living within its borders and does this change our mission and our goals in Afghanistan at all?
VELSHI: Well, John Brennan is the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism. That is him, by the way, in the -- he's circled on the right side of that photograph. That's in the White House Situation Room on Sunday night, watching the raid on bin Laden unfold in real time. He joins us live from the White House Briefing Room this morning. John Brennan, thank you for being with us. First of all, tell us about that. The nation has seen that photograph. What is it that you were all looking at? What was happening at that time? You're all focused on one particular place, what is it?
JOHN BRENNAN, WHITE HOUSE COUNTERTERRORISM CHIEF: Well, it was in the middle of the raid and we were intensely focused on the safety and security of the assaulters that had landed in the compound, the status of the engagement with the occupants of that residence, and some very, very tense moments and we just were saying our prayers that everything was going to go according to plan. But as I think you can tell from the photograph, there was a period of intensity there, unlike no other that we had here at the White House to date.
ROMANS: Could you see the mission unfolding? I mean, were you watching the raid or were you watching Leon Panetta and CIA headquarters and watching the raid being executed from here?
BRENNAN: We were able to monitor developments on the compound on a real-time basis. We had direct engagement with Leon and others, but we were able to monitor sort of minute-by-minute developments there and the intensity I think of the stares on the screen show that we were concerned about where things stood and most importantly the safety of our assaulters.
CHETRY: Will the public ever see any of that video or the photo of a dead bin Laden?
BRENNAN: Well, we have been releasing a lot of information over the last 36 or 48 hours about this operation. We want to make sure that we're able to do it in a thoughtful manner. We also want to anticipate what the reaction might be on the part of Al Qaeda or others to the release of certain information so that we can take the appropriate steps beforehand. So any other material whether it be photos or videos or whatever else, we are looking at it and will make the appropriate decisions.
ROMANS: Sir, what kind of intelligence did you take from the compound and I'm sure that there are the best minds going over it right now. What do you hope to glean from that in terms of understanding the capabilities now or the diminished capabilities of Al Qaeda?
BRENNAN: Well, we were on the compound for about 40 minutes and we were able to acquire some material that was there. A lot of that is currently being exploited and reviewed. What we're most interested in is seeing if we can get any insight into any terrorist plot that might be under way so that we can take the measures to stop any type of attack planning. Secondly, we're trying to look and see whether or not there leads to other individuals within the organization or insights into their capabilities, as well as part of our investigation. And I know the Pakistanis are interested in this, how did bin Laden stay at that compound for about six years or so and be undetected? What type of support did he have outside of that compound in the Abbottabad area or more broadly within Pakistan? So we're going to look very carefully at this and get to the bottom of it all. VELSHI: Let me ask you this, the intelligence that got you there, can you tell us -- I know you can't tell us highly specifically but can you tell us broadly where you got the intelligence from that led you to follow this courier that led you to Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad?
BRENNAN: Well, I can tell you that the intelligence was acquired over the last nine years or so. And there was some painstaking work done by some very, very dedicated analysts who were putting together the pieces of information. Sometimes individuals in detention will give up information unwittingly. Sometimes they provide it willingly. And so you take those bits and pieces and then you try to correlate it with other intelligence that's available and try to understand where people might be located overseas, use technical and human sources to track it down.
CHETRY: Right.
BRENNAN: It eventually brought us to that compound in Abbottabad that we were able to take a look at from a distance and make a determination that based on our analysis, we had a high degree of confidence that bin Laden was a resident there. And --
VELSHI: I know that you said -- you said
BRENNAN: Sure enough he was.
VELSHI: Some of it was achieved willingly through people who are incarcerated. Some of it was unwillingly given over. Given that the policies have changed about how to interrogate and enhanced interrogation techniques, could you get that kind of information today?
BRENNAN: There was no one single piece of information that was an "ah-ha" moment that led us to Abbottabad. Again, it was acquired over time. So there was a lot of information from a lot of different sources including some people in detention.
CHETRY: Were some of the --
BRENNAN: We believe that we have the tools available to us right now that if we had individuals, we were able it to capture or detain, that we have some of the best interrogators and briefers in the world and some of the best analysts that we could bring to bear. So yes, we're confident that we could exploit that opportunity.
CHETRY: Let's talk about Pakistan for a minute. We've given them some $20 billion in aid since September 11th, 2001. Is it worth it if we cannot necessarily trust them with information, couldn't tell them about this mission ahead of time and there are some questions about whether they were playing a dual game with us?
BRENNAN: Well, a mission like this, which is the most sensitive that this government has carried out in many, many years, it was kept within a very small circle within the U.S. government itself. In addition, we made a decision early on not to share it with any other foreign government, including Pakistan, because we wanted to make sure we maintained the operational security. That said, Pakistan has been a strong partner in the effort to destroy Al Qaeda. More Al Qaeda and other terrorists have been captured and killed in Pakistan than in any other country since 9/11. Many brave Pakistanis have given their lives in this effort against the scourge of al Qaeda.
So although we may sometimes have differences of view about how this effort should be prosecuted, we are partners with Pakistan, and we'll continue to be. We appreciate their understanding that we undertook this mission. They congratulated us and we are ready to move forward with them.
ROMANS: John Brennan, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Thank you, sir.
BRENNAN: Thank you.
ROMANS: Top stories now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS (voice-over): It was a plane that fell from the sky over the Atlantic, you'll remember, killing all 228 people on board. Now nearly two years later, investigators say they have found the flight data recorders on board Air France Flight 447. It could help unlock finally the mystery of what doomed that flight.
CHETRY: We're following a developing story out of turkey. The Turkish prime minister made a live speech today calling for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to step down. Prime minister calling for Gadhafi to give up power and put an end to that country's violence.
ROMANS: Six missing Louisiana boy scouts and their two troop leaders are believed to be stranded by rising floodwaters this morning. They went camping over the weekend in a state forest in Arkansas.
Police and the National Guard hope to have a helicopter in the air this morning to search for these boy scouts if the weather cooperates. There's no cell service in the area.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, the feds running out of options and time, 61-foot high floodwaters threatening to destroy a small town in Illinois, the town of Cairo.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY (voice-over): This is pictures from overnight as you see several booms explosions. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blowing up a levee where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet.
The point of this, would be to divert water into Mississippi farmlands, thus relieving the pressure in towns like Cairo. This came amid objections from the state and its farmers, but despite those objections, more explosions are set for today. (END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Rob Marciano joins us from Cairo, Illinois. Good morning, Rob, 61 feet, explain to me a little bit what that means really. The river crests and 61 feet means what?
ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, 20 feet above flood stage and they haven't seen this much water in these river channels since 1937. This is a historic amount of river flowing through the Ohio River and the Mississippi, which is where those two rivers meet right here in Cairo, Illinois.
So, desperate times here. At one point yesterday, water was seeping up from underneath as the river was putting so much pressure on the levees that it was actually gouging underneath the levees and coming up within some of the city streets.
We are very close to where the confluence is. The Army Corps of Engineers has instructed the National Guard to put up these sandbags because the Ohio River or the Mississippi River was coming over top of this road at one point.
But since they've blown up that part of the levee last night, the river has dropped significantly, by at least a foot, maybe more than that, since that.
So there has been significant pressure released. Take a look at that video. It's extraordinary to think for all the levees we have across the river systems from the Canadian border down to the Mississippi to Louisiana, to keep the water in, now we're blowing them up to relieve that pressure.
We have put so much manmade obstructions in the way of our river systems to get them to flow where we want to flow. When we get this rainfall and the snowfall we've had over the winter, we get problems in the spring and there's been a tremendous amount of rainfall.
A 15 to 20 inches of rainfall in the past 20 days in some areas here and you have the Tennessee River also flowing down, part of that dammed up. I mean they've put so many Band-Aids and thumbs into holes across the river system in this part of the world.
The pressure has been too high. They've relieved it by about 20 percent. But as you mentioned there's a big struggle between the farmers and the town of residents and -- Major General Michael Welsh understands that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL WALSH, U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: This is a story of the human dimension and certainly it's impacting lots of folks.
As you fly up and down the river you'll see a lot of people have already abandoned their houses and moved to higher ground, and so it is a heart wrenching story. I've been involved with flooding for ten years and it takes a long time to recover from something like this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARCIANO: A 130,000 acres of farmland being flooded right now, very fertile farmland, it's not just being flooded with water, there's all sorts of stuff in the Mississippi including some sit that's going to -- there are -- are affected by this.
It's not just this town that's feeling some relief today, but all this water, guys, is flowing farther to the south down the Mississippi and the boot hill of Missouri is going to be the next order of business where they may have to take some action down there as well.
So this flooding situation even though the rain let up just a little bit this morning, it's not over.
ROMANS: Thanks, Rob. Rob is so right, it's water, a tornado, causes devastation of its own, and then leaves. You can rebuild. When you have water, flooding is just so --
CHETRY: It's tough.
VELSHI: Let's check in with Jacqui Jeras. She's in the Extreme Weather Center right now. Jacqui.
JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, we have a long way to go with this flooding. You know, a lot of these rivers are going to be cresting, we think, later this week, between Thursday and Friday.
However, they're going to stay in flood for probably a week beyond that. We're talking until June before the Mississippi River is going to be finally back to be able to navigate this thing completely. It's going to take that long for all of that water to flow downstream. Look at the huge area where the flooding is occurring.
The red is the flash flood warning, so that's from the recent rains right now, but the long-term flood are these river flood warnings. You can see they impact so many states, so many people. This is going to have a real impact on agriculture, potentially corn planting delayed.
They're saying 130,000 acres there near the birds pot, that could potentially be ruined for the future altogether. Here's where the rain is today. You can see the showers, few embedded thundershowers, it's starting to pull out of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys now. So that's some good news.
We're talking about three or four days of drier weather, from St. Louis northward we might see a little rain come Thursday. The big picture showing you the severe weather threat today is going to be a little further off to the east, parts of Pennsylvania down into the Appalachian states.
Otherwise, we're looking at cool and dry conditions. It's really beautiful in the nation's midsection today.
ROMANS: All right. Jacqui Jeras. Thank you, Jacqui.
CHETRY: Coming up, we're going to be speaking with former secretary of state and former national security adviser under the Bush administration, Condoleezza Rice. We're going to get her take on the raid, on the killing of Osama Bin Laden and also on how this affects our future relations with Pakistan.
VELSHI: And then, you know, we heard that Osama Bin Laden's body was buried at sea very quickly. They did take DNA samples and they were able to get a confirmation.
In a faster time than we're used to. We're going to get this -- Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join us to explain how these DNA matches are done and how in this case it was done so fast after the break. It's 37 minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: After the death of Osama Bin Laden, many of the questions that we are left asking this morning have to do with Pakistan. How the al Qaeda leader was able to live in relative comfort, literally in the Pakistani military's backyard.
CHETRY: And the former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf says he is positive about which side his country is on. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, FORMER PAKISTANI PRESIDENT: I have no doubts in my mind whatsoever, knowing our intelligence and the army, that Pakistan army, Pakistan intelligence, are operating with all their heart and soul against al Qaeda and Taliban. Therefore, there is no question of their abetting or hiding Osama Bin Laden.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Joining us is former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, someone who has watched the hunt for Osama Bin Laden for many years now with great interest.
I'm so curious of your initial response to his killing and also this concern that he was so close to a military facility within Pakistan and that he was living not in the tribal regions, but right there as John Brennan said, most likely with a pretty established support structure within the country?
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, first of all, it was an extraordinary moment and very gratifying. It is a moment when we need to celebrate what our intelligence and military have achieved.
This is something that started a long time ago and they clearly really achieved something very special here and to President Obama and his team for finally bringing this chapter to a close.
But yes, I was surprised at where he was found. I think we all believed he was in the tribal areas between Afghanistan and Pakistan, that he was hiding in plain sight not too far from Islamabad is something of a surprise.
ROMANS: Was it concerning?
CHETRY: What are the implications for our relationship with Pakistan, the fact that he was literally 60 miles from Islamabad?
RICE: Well, Pakistan is an important counterterrorism partner and obviously this is a question that the Pakistanis themselves need to answer. Let's remember that al Qaeda has carried out multiple attacks against Pakistanis, that terrorism costs them the life of Benazir Bhutto, a great Pakistani leader.
They have every reason to ask tough questions of their people as to why this possibly could have happened and I'm sure that the administration will be asking those questions too.
VELSHI: OK, so you're saying the Pakistanis have reason to ask their leaders, the U.S. administration is going to ask them, you have a lot of experience in this. Do you trust the Pakistanis to be helping the U.S. and western powers with the fight against terrorism?
RICE: Well, we have captured many, many al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, so Pakistan has been a cooperation -- cooperating counterterrorism partner. But everyone knows that there are elements within Pakistan that are still tied to extremism, that has been a concern, and it is very important now that the Pakistanis take a hard look at how this possibly could have happened.
I can't say how it happened. I think that we will see that unfold over the next several weeks. But Pakistan is an important partner. We have to continue to remember that. It's a troubled state. We have to continue to remember that.
It's a civilian government that is continually trying to find its footing, but this is a time when Pakistan has got to look in the mirror and ask some hard questions.
ROMANS: Secretary, it's been -- it's been many years of intelligence, all of pieces pulled together led to this moment. Do you think in any way this is a vindication of the strategies, the interrogation strategies, of your administration?
RICE: Well, I do believe that as President Bush said when he said we will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail, he meant the United States of America.
What this shows is the patience and persistence that it takes to bring something like this to an end. Obviously the information gleaned from people that we picked up, people who were al Qaeda's field generals like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Libbi and others, it was important.
But it was also important that President Bush put in place counterterrorism strategies and policies, efforts that the military and intelligence have been making over the years, to work together better. To achieve that kind of level of integration didn't happen yesterday.
CHETRY: Right.
RICE: This is something that has been happening for quite a long time.
CHETRY: Secretary, though, the interesting thing is, things like enhanced interrogation has fallen out of favor. This administration has said they were ending some of those controversial practices like waterboarding that were acceptable under the Bush administration. The other big thing is the so-called black sites, these CIA interrogation sites around the world. All of this met with huge criticism.
As more trickles out about whether or not any of these strategies played a key role in eventually killing Osama bin Laden, do they have to rethink this, this administration?
RICE: Well, we all have to realize that war on terror, the fight against terrorists is a tough fight and the key is information.
Now let's remember that in the early days we knew very little about how al Qaeda operated and the roundup of their field generals like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed let us not just to learn that there was a courier -- I remember when we learned there was a courier who might be a link to Osama bin Laden. But we also, from those people, learned about the structure of al Qaeda unfolding plot lines. It was important.
We also have to remember that it was President Bush who brought Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in to the open at Guantanamo, who told the American people that he was bringing him there and so many of these efforts that we made early on evolved during the Bush administration.
VELSHI: Secretary Rice, thank you for joining us, with us. Secretary Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state, former national security advisor for the United States.
RICE: Good to see you this morning.
CHETRY: Thank you.
Still ahead, 8:10 Eastern, we're going to be talking with a man who was defense chief on 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld. His thoughts on killing bin Laden and whether it will change the mission moving forward in Afghanistan.
VELSHI: It is 47 minutes after the hour.
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CHETRY: We have a lot going on this morning. Here's a look at your top headlines this morning.
U.S. intelligence officials say they're examining computers, hard drives and documents that were seized Sunday morning from Osama bin Laden's compound. They're looking for information about other al Qaeda operatives.
News of bin Laden's death giving stocks a little bit of a boost yesterday morning. That ended up fading, the Dow losing three points, Nasdaq and S&P also closing down.
Overnight, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew up a levee where the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers meet. The river, swollen 20 feet above flood stage right now, threatening to wipe out towns upstream, including Cairo, Illinois. The breached levee will send water flowing into Missouri farmlands, a controversial move but one that was eventually allowed to happen.
National guardsmen hope to use infrared aerial cameras in Arkansas this morning to try to locate six missing boy scouts and their two troop leaders. They're all believed to be stranded by rising floodwaters. The scouts were camping in the national forest over the weekend. It's an area with very poor cell service.
A California company recalling grape tomatoes over fears of salmonella. Taylor Farms Pacific supplies the prepackaged supplies to Wal-Mart and to five other retail chains. The recall applies to 29 types of packaged salads with expiration dates from April 29th to May 9th. The products were sold in 13 western states.
And just days after his son tied the knot, Prince Charles traveling to Washington today. He is scheduled to tour an urban farm in the nation's capital, then visit the Supreme Court. Prince Charles will meet with President Obama tomorrow at the White House.
Now, you are caught up on the day's headlines. It's 50 minutes past the hour. AMERICAN MORNING is right back after a quick break.
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ROMANS: "TIME" magazine's special issue on bin Laden's death hits news this week. It features a picture of bin Laden with a red X over his face. "TIME" ran similar covers following the death of Hitler in 1945, Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda leaders in Iraq, Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.
VELSHI: News of Osama bin Laden death spreading like wild fire on Twitter. Just as the news was breaking -- this is very interesting -- the site says users were sending over 5,100 Tweets per second.
CHETRY: Oh, I thought it was per minute. Per second? That's unbelievable.
VELSHI: Per second. Yes, yes, yes. It was crazy fast. Twitter set a record with the highest sustained rate of Tweets between the hours of 10:00 p.m., which is when we first heard that the president was going to speak, and 2:00 a.m., by which time the information had largely been disseminated. Users sent on average, 3,000 Tweets per second.
CHETRY: During that time period. That's amazing. Well, before Osama bin Laden was buried at sea on Monday, U.S. officials used facial recognition software as well as DNA sampling to confirm that it was, in fact, bin Laden who was killed.
ROMANS: Chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us this morning from CNN Center in Atlanta, to give us an idea of how this technology works.
VELSHI: Yes, Sanjay, you're a certified medical examiner.
How did they get these matches so quickly? We're sort of used to thinking they take a lot more time.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, it's interesting. If you think about DNA sequencing, that process can take a while. But, keep in mind that most of us as human beings on the planet actually share the same DNA, over 99 percent of it. So when you're doing matching, you're not focusing on the 99 percent that's in common, you're focusing on a small percentage that is different from person to person.
So, for example, if you have somebody, you're trying to identify them and you have siblings or even half siblings, you can -- you know that there's going to be a certain amount of genetic material that is shared. You want to find, is there a match between the half sibling or relative and this unidentified person? And the more siblings you have, the more reference samples you have, the easier it becomes to actually create that match.
Now, it is not a perfect science. So you can't say with 100 percent accuracy. But they may say it is 1 in 50 billion chance that it's not this person. That's obviously 10 times the population of the planet. So you can say with a high degree of likelihood. But again, it's these -- this sort of matching that takes place as opposed to an entire DNA sequencing.
CHETRY: So again, just to refresh -- they're not -- they're working off of other DNA, where there got this from his siblings or family members, or how did they do that?
GUPTA: Yes. We're not sure yet exactly. I mean, there's all sorts of theories out there. We don't know, for example, if they actually had any of his DNA, Osama bin Laden's DNA from some time in past history. If they did not, then it's this idea of creating reference samples, they call them, from known relatives.
A child or a parents would be the best reference sample because you're going to have clear amounts of DNA that's shared. But siblings can work, half siblings can work, even more distant relatives can work. And the most relatives you have to sort of cross-preference and cross- match, the more confident you become in identifying the person.
ROMANS: We know he has a lot of relatives. He has many children and he's got a lot of half-brothers and half-sisters. We also see these reports that they used facial recognition software to identify the body. What can you tell us about that, Sanjay?
GUPTA: This is really fascinating stuff. I mean, you know, I've been looking into this for some time. But the whole idea of facial recognition software is you have all these sort of points, biometric points on your face, the sort of distance between eyebrows, the width of your nose, the exact shape of your eyes, the height of your cheekbones. All these things in aggregate start to give someone a real picture, a morphological picture of someone's face.
And by taking a picture and comparing it to, you know, known pictures of a person, in this case, they have a lot of, obviously, pictures of Osama bin Laden, you can get pretty accurate facial recognition. For medical examiners, the first step is actually just looking at the body and doing what's called a visual identification, looking at their face, looking at their body, you know, things like their height. Then doing things like the facial recognition and then doing a lot of confirmatory tests, for example, with DNA.
So, that's sort of the sequence of things. But it's fascinating technology.
CHETRY: It really is. All right, Sanjay Gupta, great to see you, as always.
Thanks so much.
GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.
ROMANS: And our top stories right after the break.
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