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American Morning
NYC Terror Arrests; Education in America: Don't Fail Maria; Revenge Attack in Pakistan; U.S. Interviews "Hostile" Bin Laden Wives; Gates: SEALs Have Safety Concerns; Why Wasn't Bin Laden Raid Info Kept Classified?; Homes, Crops, Casinos Washed Out; TV's Mary Tyler Moore to Undergo Brain Surgery; Keeping the SEALs Safe
Aired May 13, 2011 - 06:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Two suicide bombers taking more than 80 lives at a military base in Pakistan. The Taliban calling it revenge for the death of Osama Bin Laden on this AMERICAN MORNING.
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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. It's Friday, May 13th. We're following some news about terror arrests in New York.
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: But very New York specific and thwarted very early on in the planning stages, but another big terror bombing, though, in Pakistan we're following.
VELSHI: And let's tell you about that. Less than two weeks after the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban may be exacting its revenge. Their group is claiming responsibility for two suicide bombing attacks overnight at a military training facility in Northwest Pakistan. At least 80 people were killed, many of them, Pakistani military recruits. A spokesman for the Taliban is threatening more attacks.
ROMANS: Meantime, the Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden now have concerns about their own safety. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he met with the elite unit last week, and the SEALs are especially worried about their names being exposed and made public and their families being harmed.
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ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: I think there has been a consistent and effective effort to protect the identities of those who participated in the raid, and I think that has to continue.
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ROMANS: Pentagon Correspondent Chris Lawrence is live in Washington this morning. Chris, how do defense officials plan to keep the identities of the Seals under wraps? The whole operation is supposed to be secret and these teams operate in absolute secrecy, but we know an awful lot.
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Christine. And I think this is the defense secretary's way of indirectly maybe signaling to other people in the government, look, shut up and stop talking about the details of this mission, because remember, we're not talking so much about physical security. We're really talking about protecting the names of this team so that their families would never even be in danger. But obviously it's something that the Seals themselves have brought up to some of the officials.
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GATES: When I met with the team last Thursday, they expressed a concern about that and particularly with respect to their families. And so we're -- as you say, I can't get into the details in this forum, but we are looking at what measures can be taken to pump up the security.
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LAWRENCE: So on one hand you want to make sure that the officials who are in the loop on this, you know, stop talking about the details. But also, they're going to fall back probably on some of the things that they used in the wake of WikiLeaks, perhaps redacting the names of some of the Seals in the official reports, going back to some of the restricted access, to things like thumb drives, things like that, so that no one at a lower level is able to either on purpose or inadvertently release the name of one of the team members.
VELSHI: You know more about this than I do, but I know after it happened I was a little surprised by the amount of information that was coming out of the White House and from the government on, you know, specific detail about the attack. I suppose that was driven by pride and the fact that it was done. Secretary Gates seems a little irritated by all of that.
LAWRENCE: I mean, were you surprised at the amount of information coming out or were you surprised at how much wrong and bad information was coming out? The story was changing every day and I think that was because there was a rush to sort of, you know, naturally, to take some amount of pride in this operation in which you got the man that the United States has been targeting for a better part of a decade now.
But, yes, I think the secretary is basically saying, he was under the impression there was some sort of agreement not to get into the operational details, and then that all went away pretty quickly.
VELSHI: Chris, thanks for that.
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GATES: Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the situation room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.
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LAWRENCE: We first heard publicly about this specific Seal team a few days after the president's announcement and we first heard publicly about it from CIA Director Leon Panetta and Vice President Joe Biden. But secretary gates' spokesman says he's not pointing the finger at any one person or any one building. He's just saying look we have to stop talking about these details, otherwise it defeats the purpose of having a secret team.
VELSHI: Good point. Chris, thanks for that.
U.S. intelligence officers have interviewed three of Osama bin Laden's wives in Pakistan. Now, a senior Pakistani government official describes the women as hostile. The questioning was done under the supervision of Pakistan's intelligence service. The U.S. wanted to interview the women separately to see if there were inconsistencies in their stories but they didn't get to do that. The eldest of bin Laden's widows reportedly spoke for the other two and we're being told that nothing new was learned.
ROMANS: Irish authorities are holding a man suspected of making death threats against President Obama. Police say the suspect Khalid Kelly is a converted Muslim who subscribes to Al Qaeda's ideology. Police arrested Kelly after his search in Dublin. He can be held for three days of questioning under Irish law. President Obama is scheduled to visit Ireland later this month.
VELSHI: The head of one Libyan rebel group is headed to Washington today to meet with a White House official hoping America will recognize his group. This comes a day after they claim a critical victory. You're seeing the rebels in their vehicles, hearing them shooting their guns in celebration in the war torn city of Misrata. After months of fighting, hundreds of civilian deaths, the opposition saying that once and for all, the city is theirs.
ROMANS: Everything they owned washed away. This morning we're hearing the painful stories of flood victims in the south, this wall of water still surging along the Mississippi River. Officials say three million acres of farmland have been washed out. And 600 people who live in Vicksburg, Mississippi, have already been told to pack up and get out and people returning home upstream are returning home and they are in total shock.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A nightmare, a big nightmare. Everything you worked hard for got washed away.
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ROMANS: Further south, Louisiana bracing for the rising water. Saint Mary Parish they're piling up sandbags to save a church. Some 26 parishes in the state have declared states of emergency. People have been working so hard for so long and it's still coming. VELSHI: Floods are tough. We're going to keep following it for them.
We're expecting a major announcement today from Republican Ron Paul. He's expected to officially toss his hat into the ring in the 2012 presidential race. The news is likely to come during a rally in New Hampshire this morning. It would be his third run for president, 1988, and 2008 were his previous runs.
But in a lot of ways, Christine, the message he held in those two campaigns, was outside of the mainstream. Now it's a little more common, this idea of government get out of my life.
ROMANS: Smaller government, lower taxes. It's interesting, I wonder if the Tea Party helps Ron Paul or hurts Ron Paul because it competes with what was until now pretty much his story.
All right, can Ashton Kutcher save CBS? Reports say the network is close to a deal with Kutcher to replace Charlie Sheen as the new star of that sitcom "Two and a half men." it's said to be a huge pay day for Kutcher, about $1 million per episode. The show's original star, Charlie Sheen, you might not know this, he was fired back in March.
VELSHI: Of course. Charlie sheen, who's that?
A high school student in Texas, found an envelope with $2,000 in cash. So what did she do? She turned it in to police. That's the right thing to do. Three months later police say they're keeping the money.
ROMANS: Police are keeping it?
LAWRENCE: Yes. They say a new policy requires unclaimed funds to go to the city's general fund not the person who found it. For now it seems the only way for Ashlee Donaldson to get the money back is to find a loop hole. Why didn't she keep it in the first place?
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It could be someone's, and I thought if I took it, I could never live down that guilt that would be in me.
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VELSHI: The mayor of Dallas says she feels Ashley should keep the money but says the policy is in place and needs to be enforced. Good question. I mean.
ROMANS: What about $400 or $500 as a reward. Ashley did the right thing for the right reasons.
VELSHI: Regardless of whether she gets the money she did the right thing.
ROMANS: And she learned a valuable life lesson too somewhere along the way.
VELSHI: The lesson is don't turn in money you find.
(LAUGHTER)
ROMANS: Don't expect a pat on the back.
Ahead on "American Morning," the New York terror arrests. Two suspects with big plans. Who were these guys? They have the will, did they have the way? Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will be with us live.
VELSHI: Education in America -- we've got a report card. Soledad O'Brien has a story of a girl with big dreams, but schooling that may have failed her. We'll tell you that story when we come back. It's eight minutes after the hour.
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ROMANS: Time now for your security watch. New information this morning about the two terror suspects charged in New York City yesterday. They're accused of a plot to blow up a synagogue.
VELSHI: In the city. Separately breaking overnight, the Taliban is claiming responsibility for two suicide bombing attacks at a military training facility in northwest Pakistan, and they're calling it retaliation for the killing of bin Laden.
You'll recall the enormous amount of evidence seized in bin Laden's killing. The terror mastermind kept diaries detailing he was plotting a fresh wave of attacks hoping to kill more people than were killed in 9/11.
Joining us now is New York police commissioner Ray Kelly. Commissioner, thanks for being here. These retaliatory attacks this one happened in Pakistan, but we heard after bin Laden's death there was certainly some feeling that could happen anywhere else.
RAY KELLY, NEW YORK CITY POLICE COMMISSIONER: I think it's only common sense that we have to be prepared for a possible retaliatory attack. We've done a lot here, and obviously we've raised our security level since 9/11. We've been doing it for almost ten years. But we've done some additional things in the aftermath of bin Laden's death. We've increased our coverage of the subway and we've done other things with our patrol forces. Every day we devote over 1,000 police officers to our counterterrorism efforts.
ROMANS: Let's talk about these two guys you just arrested with this plot to bomb a synagogue. What do you know about these two guys and we always hear about aspirational versus operational. Were they really able to pull something like this off?
KELLY: They were driven by a pathological hatred for Jewish people. And their rhetoric got more and more emotional in the last month, in particular. And yes, certainly they were willing to do it. And two days ago they showed they were willing to buy guns and a hand grenade to effect this plot.
So I think what's important here is to take away, yes, this homegrown threat is very real. There are people out there who want to kill us. You have to remain vigilant, and that's what we're doing.
VELSHI: What's the difference between aspirational and operational?
KELLY: That's sort of a federal term, aspirational. I think if you're close to being able to do an act of violence, then that's operational. But aspirational can go the operational pretty quickly.
ROMANS: That's what you were seeing with these two guys, seeing it ramp up quickly from talking a lot, some bad language, to actually trying to buy the weapons.
KELLY: Exactly. Yes, particularly in the in the last two to three weeks.
ROMANS: Could they have pulled it off, do you think?
KELLY: We don't know.
ROMANS: Who knows? You caught them ahead of time.
KELLY: It's our job to stop them before they can get close.
VELSHI: You said every day you have a thousand police officers in New York devoted to anti-terrorism stuff. We've seen the demonstrations you have, you know, when these forces gather in particular parts of the city and visitors always wonder why there are 50 police cruisers, lights and sirens going down the street, but you're always prepared for it.
In these diaries of Osama bin Laden's, they're talking about targeting smaller cities, places that don't have the degree of expertise and protection that New York has. Do you share this information? Is there some widespread sharing of anti-terrorist technique across police forces?
KELLY: Sure. The joint terrorist task force, the FBI joint terrorist task force, now I believe there are almost 100 throughout the country, that's probably the best flow of information, the best source of information for smaller communities. We work closely with them here. We have over 120 New York City police officers in the joint terrorist task force.
But yes, I mean, you know, we're -- what we're doing here is to prevent an attack. So, that may mean that, you know, smaller cities are at a greater risk. I don't know. But we're doing everything we think we have to do to protect this city.
ROMANS: You know, the conventional wisdom is after the death of Osama bin Laden, that in the short term there could be an increased risk of something happening, either from homegrown terror threats or from Al Qaeda around the world but that longer term the world is safer without him, without his ideological drive, (INAUDIBLE) organization. What is your take running this big American city?
KELLY: That's our hope, no question about it. But I think you're right in the short term we have to be particularly vigilant because we don't know if a lone wolf is going to strike out or Al Qaeda is going to do something just to show that they still can do something. So, there's a lot that we don't know. But we're hopeful that this means certainly diminishment you might say of the threat as we go forward.
VELSHI: Let me ask you this. With respect to these two guys who've been arrested, the FBI isn't involved in this.
ROMANS: Right.
VELSHI: So they chose not to go forward in this and you're handling this. Why is that? What's the distinction?
KELLY: Well, you know, obviously you're going to have to talk to the FBI, but they have the right of first refusal of all cases that come in. This -- in this instance, this individual was already -- he had -- actually wasn't indicted but he went to a grand jury and there was no true bill, but it was already with the local district attorney.
ROMANS: Right.
KELLY: New York county district attorney. So it seemed logical to keep it going in that form. But again, the federal government certainly could have superseded if they chose to.
ROMANS: One of the things that so interesting about one of the guys in this case, he sold at one point at Saks Fifth Avenue --
VELSHI: Yes.
ROMANS: -- he sold perfume.
VELSHI: They're cosmetics, yes.
ROMANS: The cosmetics counter or something, and he was a would- be actor and model, you know, wearing a very fine suit.
VELSHI: You see it in the pictures in court. He is a well- dressed guy.
ROMANS: And it's just -- it's not sort of the public image you have of a radical terrorist, you know, hiding out in New York.
KELLY: Interesting because he addressed that. He wanted to make sure as we have undercover officers involved here. We want to make sure that they wore suits and ties so they didn't stand out.
ROMANS: I see.
KELLY: That was his sort of operational security approach.
VELSHI: You certainly see that guy in the street you wouldn't get some impression that he's got something radical going on about him. But I guess that's the issue, isn't it?
KELLY: That's right.
VELSHI: All right, Commissioner Ray Kelly --
KELLY: The world which we live.
VELSHI: Good to see you as always. Thanks very much.
KELLY: Thank you.
ROMANS: Best of luck to you.
ROMANS: All right. The question of the day, is America safer after the death of Osama bin Laden? We want to know what you think. E-mail us at CNN.com/AM. Give us a tweet at CNNam, or you can -- you can tell us on Facebook, Facebook.com/American Morning. You can, of course, go to either of our Facebook pages or our Twitter handles and we'll read everything. We'll read some of these later in the program.
VELSHI: Seventeen minutes after the hour. We'll be right back.
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ROMANS: Twenty-one minutes past the hour. "Minding Your Business."
Stocks bounce back from their lows to end the trading day higher yesterday. The Dow added 66 points. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 were also higher. Gas prices down slightly this morning. According to AAA, the national average $3.98 a gallon. Though in 16 states and the District of Columbia, that average price is over $4.
Mortgage rates are hitting their lowest level of the year. Home prices are down but mortgage rates are down too. That means these might be the cheapest rates in a long time to actually lock in money to buy a house. According to Freddie Mac, the average rate on a 30- year fixed rate loan dropped to 4.63 percent.
General Mills raising the price of its cereals like Cheerios. Also raising snack prices by up to five percent. They say the price hike is simply needed to offset higher ingredient costs.
The aluminum maker Alcoa introducing some new building panels which reportedly have the ability to clean the air around them. Alcoa says these panels are coated with a chemical that will break down pollutants like smog into harmless matter.
And Facebook was behind an e-mail campaign to journalists accusing Google of violating users' privacy. Facebook admits it did hire a PR firm to bring attention to this issue but it denies it was a smear campaign.
AMERICAN MORNING back right after a quick break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) ROMANS: Beautiful view right outside of our window. New York City cloudy right now and 55, but it will be sunny and 69. And not that we're all ready for the weekend or anything.
VELSHI: A little cool for sunbathing in Central Park.
OK. All this week we've been previewing Soledad O'Brien's special "Education in America" report "Don't Fail Me." She examines the crisis in public education. It's something we know you care a great deal about which is why we report on it so much here. And Soledad is looking into how our education problems could threaten our financial future.
ROMANS: And she's going to introduce to a young woman who might change your life, actually.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, yes.
ROMANS: Soledad joins us now with one student's story, this girl Maria. I mean, she -- she's amazing.
O'BRIEN: She's amazing. She's also representative of millions of American students and also representative of the growing demographics. She's a Latina in Arizona.
Now, to be prepared as we all know for the jobs of the future, American students have to be taking those hard math and science courses like physics and calculus, but they're not. Only 16 percent of American students are because either they opt out or because their schools don't even offer them. Maria, however, this is where she's very different, she decided to do something about it. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maria, what is the ratios of the 45?
MARIA CASTRO, STUDENT: The one, the one and the radical two.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): Maria wants a career that pays well and is pushing herself and her school to get it.
CASTRO: I was like cool, well, why isn't anybody like challenging me? I mean, I would do a whole week's lesson in (INAUDIBLE) and, you know, it's like, OK, this is too simple for me. OK, what's next?
O'BRIEN (on camera): Do you worry that when you go off to college you're not going to be prepared to compete?
CASTRO: Yes. I -- and especially like, an example, English, we're learning how to capitalize and when to capitalize. I mean, that's things that my little sister should be learning, you know.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): It's because more than half of the 2,200 students at Maria's school don't pass statewide tests in reading and math. FREDI LAJVARDI, TEACHER: When they come to school, you know, they come with a fourth grade reading level and behind in math. So we really have a lot of catching up to do.
CASTRO: It's just my little sister and I.
O'BRIEN (on camera): Everybody is older and moved out?
CASTRO: Everybody moved out.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): She's the sixth of seven children.
CASTRO: All of my brothers and sisters were straight A students.
O'BRIEN (on camera): And they went from being A students to --
CASTRO: Dropping out.
My sister, she got pregnant when she was younger. And like everybody was kind of just expecting me to follow into their same footsteps, you know.
O'BRIEN (voice-over): Everybody including her father. She overheard him two years ago at her Quinceanera (ph), her 15th birthday party.
CASTRO: He was like, it's just a matter of time before she fails.
O'BRIEN (on camera): Fails?
CASTRO: Yes.
CASTRO: He was just like -- it doesn't really matter what she does right now. I mean, she'll eventually give up.
O'BRIEN: Did it motivate you in any way?
CASTRO: Yes, it did.
O'BRIEN: It did?
CASTRO: Yes. No, it's like, OK, if I'm going to get straight A's, it's not just for you anymore, it's for me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Maria Castro, she's a remarkable kid. But the thing is all the other kids as you know, there are so many jobs today available now, but they require American students to take the STEM classes.
VELSHI: That's right.
O'BRIEN: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.
ROMANS: Proficiency in all these things. O'BRIEN: Most American students are not prepared, not taking those classes, opting out of taking those classes or they're not even offered in their school and they don't have the wherewithal to fight for it like you saw Maria did.
ROMANS: And the schools to defend themselves often say look, you know, we have -- there's a Maria and then there's 400 other kids who are struggling just to get up to basic reading and writing skills.
VELSHI: And don't necessarily want to pursue what she does.
ROMANS: So she is smart, we can't worry about her.
VELSHI: Wow.
ROMANS: We have to worry about all these others, and so someone like Maria really has to fight.
VELSHI: The numbers continue to prove that what Maria is doing is going to guarantee her a lucrative future.
ROMANS: Right.
O'BRIEN: Costs money.
VELSHI: Yes.
O'BRIEN: It requires -- you know, I think there's this blame game as we all know.
VELSHI: Sure.
O'BRIEN: It's the teachers are terrible or the administrators are wrong, or the unions are this or the parents aren't committed, or the students are lazy or the buildings are crumbling. I think we need to move past the blaming game and just say here's what is required to succeed today in an economy where manufacturing jobs have left.
VELSHI: Yes.
O'BRIEN: And now the jobs are in technology.
ROMANS: She wants to go to Stamford in engineering, right?
O'BRIEN: Yes, she does.
ROMANS: Hello Stamford -- Stamford and engineering.
VELSHI: Seriously.
ROMANS: I would be --
VELSHI: I just hope that a lot of young people see this who are Maria's age and get to -- get to understand that if you make that decision, you can carry through. O'BRIEN: You'll see a lot of young people in our documentary, because we take a look at a competition, robotics competition full of high school students who are really competing and trying to win. It's called "first" and that's the focus of our documentary on Sunday.
ROMANS: All right. Thank you, Soledad.
VELSHI: All right. Well, the documentary is Sunday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Soledad O'Brien special report "Don't Fail Me," Sunday, 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN. We know how interested you are and as we are. Watch the special.
ROMANS: And it will change your view of all those, as Soledad was saying, the stereotypes about education. It's not - it's really now like you think.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
All right, top stories, a revenge for Bin Laden. Taliban says two suicide bombings at a military training center in northwest Pakistan were retaliation for the killing of Bin Laden. Those attacks overnight killed at least 80 people most of them Pakistani military recruits.
U.S. intelligence officers are now interviewed three of Osama Bin Laden's wives in Pakistan. A senior Pakistani government official describes these women, the widows of Bin Laden, as hostile. The eldest Bin Laden widow reportedly spoke for the other two and we're being told nothing new was learned from her.
And the Pentagon says it's studying ways to pump up security for the elite Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden. Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with members of that unit last week. Some of them are worried about their names being released and their families being harmed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERT GATES, DEFENSE SECRETARY: A week ago, Sunday in the situation room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out Bin Laden. That all fell apart on Monday, the next day.
The one thing I would tell you, though, is that I think there has been a consistent and effective effort to protect the identities of those who participated in the raid and I think that has to continue.
We are very concerned about the security of our families, of your families, and our troops and also these elite units that are engaged in things like that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: So you heard Secretary Gates saying that the operational details from the Bin Laden raid were supposed to stay classified, but that all fell apart.
We watched it fall apart. I mean, it all sort of surprised us the way people were jumping over each other to brief the media on what happened.
ROMANS: And then the White House, you know, a day or two into it --
VELSHI: Starts to pull back.
ROMANS: -- like pullback and give a new series of events with some nuance and detail. Joining us now to talk about it from our Washington, D.C., bureau, this morning, take a look at all of this, is Robert Miniter -- Richard Miniter, the author of "Mastermind, The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed."
Thank you so much for joining us. What do you think about Gates' comment that too much information was out there too quickly and he's actually concerned about the SEALs?
RICHARD MINITER, AUTHOR OF "MASTERMIND, THE MANY FACES OF THE 9/11 ARCHITECT, KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED": Well, he should be concerned about the SEALs. I mean, the only way these people can do their jobs is if their identities remain secret. That has been one of the defining elements of the SEALs and Special Forces in general from the beginning.
In fact, the agreement on Sunday that he referred to, the day that the Bin Laden raid occurred, was they weren't supposed to mention the SEAL unit at all. They would just say Special Forces, but, of course, Vice President Biden let that cat out of the bag by referring to the SEALs openly and then that became the thing that everyone was interested in.
The problem with releasing these operational details is they're still exploiting the computers, the hard drives and thumb driving so on that was captured in the raid that could lead to the locations of al Qaeda sleeper cells and other al Qaeda operations around the world.
And with the -- without that knowledge being leaked, presumably the SEALs or other special forces or the CIA could swoop in with surprise on these al Qaeda units around the world and kill or capture them. That's not -- that surprise is gone now that the -- these guys have been leaked everywhere.
VELSHI: Richard, let me ask you this, your book is about information gathering as it relates to al Qaeda and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. A lot of -- since the raid, we spoke the morning after Osama Bin Laden was killed, many former top Bush administration officials are crediting this enhanced interrogation, which we don't do any more.
Some people call it torture, waterboarding for the information that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden. Now Senator John McCain, who is a war veteran, who is a former prisoner of war in Vietnam has spoke out about those tactics to our John King just last night. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I think it's pretty clear you could have gotten the same good information through using standard techniques, which don't entail waterboarding and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: Your book argues that it is exactly those techniques that would have led to even though your book came out before Osama Bin Laden was killed, that led to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and got a whole lot of information out there. Where do you stand on this?
MINITER: Well, you know, Senator John McCain has been waging a jihad against President Bush since -- ever since he lost the nomination in the year 2000 to president -- to future President Bush.
VELSHI: Come on, he's had a view on torture a lot longer before that.
ROMANS: And he was tortured.
MINITER: Well, the bill that he pushed in the U.S. Senate in 2003/2004 and ultimately 2005 is what ended the enhanced interrogation program that Bush and other Bush administration officials say was essential for gathering information.
So there's been a long-term animosity between Senator McCain and the elements of the Bush administration. I'm not taking a side in that fight. I'm just saying he's not sitting on the sidelines. He's a player.
VELSHI: But in your book you are taking a definite side, right? In your book, you say that without enhanced interrogation, we would not have the information we have today. And I'm assuming now that Osama Bin Laden is dead, if your book were written after that, you would have said without enhanced interrogation, we wouldn't have gotten the details about that courier from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others that would have led to the death of Osama Bin Laden, am I putting words in your mouth that are not fair?
MINITER: Not entirely. I mean, look, certainly enhanced interrogation worked. It produced a lot of useful information and stopped a lot of plots and led to arrests around the world.
It stopped assassination attempts against U.S. ambassadors, attempts to blow up U.S. embassies, sink U.S. warships, blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building and so on.
So clearly the benefits of this have to be weighed against the costs. The benefits of innocent lives have been saved and terrorists have been arrested. But there's got to be a balance between inhumane treatment and harsh interrogation.
And you got to decide between those two extremes where on the spectrum you decide to make the trade off. I'm sort of more in favor of using some of those enhanced interrogation measures in order to get the information, which is life saving.
ROMANS: All right, Richard Miniter, author of "Mastermind." Thanks for joining us this morning and it flows nicely into our question of the day, which is do you think America is safer now that Bin Laden is dead?
We want to know what you think. You can e-mail us at cnn.com/am. You can tweet us @cnnam or you can tell us on Facebook at facebook.com/american morning. We're going to read those - some of them later in the program.
VELSHI: A lot of responses. In great variety so - but you know what? Even -- rather than just telling us yes or no, tell us why you think yes or no and we'll read those responses.
All right, the Mississippi River, it is not done. It is taking aim at Cajun Country right now. Millions of acres inundated with floodwaters. Some of those acres are places where people live, some is farmland.
Coming up next, Mike Womack, he's the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. He's going to tell us what things look like on the ground now. It's 37 minutes after the hour. We'll be right back.
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ROMANS: It could be the most destructive year of weather we have ever seen. A new report in "USA Today" says the U.S. is on pace to spend a record amount of money cleaning up weather disasters. So far there have been five weather disasters costing more than a billion dollars each.
That includes a blizzard that slammed the Midwest and northeast in January and early February then there was the most destructive tornado outbreak in American history, and back-to-back spring storms in April, that terrorized the Midwest and the south.
Total costs so far estimated at $4.25 billion. And now, the Mississippi flood disaster, they're only beginning to survey the damage upstream. Some areas still waiting to be hit, but already the tally for that is over a billion dollars, Ali.
VELSHI: That's hard to capture all of this. It's good to get that kind of breakdown of the numbers. The flooding has drowned crops and casinos in Mississippi. It's taking its toll on some of the most poverty stricken areas of the country.
They're already talking losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, could be billions by the time the river settles down. Mike Womack has been keeping an eye on the damage. He's the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency joining us now from Jackson.
Mike, thanks for being with us. You know, we've been covering the story over a week. The flooding has been slow moving and it is actually hard to capture on TV because you don't see rushing waters, you just see water rising. You can't tell what it's really getting at. How devastating is this flood to Mississippi?
MIKE WOMACK, DIRECTOR OF THE MISSISSIPPI EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY SINCE 2006: Well, we've had some families out of their homes in our northern most counties for about two weeks now. And all along the Mississippi River, there are people who have built elevated homes on the riverside of the levees.
And, you know, they had hoped that those homes would never be flooded because of the elevations. But of course, the record crest of this river is pushing water into those homes. In fact, we estimate that every home that's been built on the river side of the levee from Memphis all the way down to the Louisiana line, is flooded.
VELSHI: Wow.
WOMACK: With the exception of -- if you look at, you know, Vicsburg in the middle of the state, there's about three or four counties just to the south of Vicsburg where it's high elevation along the river and so those homes largely are spared.
But then our southern most county, Wilkinson, there's a community of Lake Mary where 75 to 100 homes are flooded and then Fort Adams as well. So really all the way from Memphis to the Louisiana line.
VELSHI: You're talking about houses that are built on elevation, but between the levee and the river where you wouldn't have expected flooding to occur, you're saying from Tennessee all the way down, you're seeing flooding possibly all of those homes there.
A lot of people in Mississippi in the areas that are being affected by the river, there are a lot of places where there are people with -- nine of the 11 counties, in fact, have poverty rates that are double the national average. How is that affecting the ability to get these people, the information and the help that they need?
WOMACK: Well, we're working very hard with the local officials who can best communicate the risk to the citizens that potentially are going to be flooded. We're trying to use local media as well to try to explain what the threat is.
And starting Sunday, we'll have a national guard and highway patrol and our wildlife fisheries and parks who will be deployed to the areas that are going to flood, or potentially going to flood, and they'll be assisting in not only trying to make sure the citizens know what the risk is but with the evacuation as necessary.
VELSHI: It's interesting to note that in Mississippi 98 percent of the state's agricultural holdings and farms are family owned, not the big corporate owned farms that you think.
So they're really are people who are going to take a big hit in Mississippi. Our thoughts are with you, Mike. Thanks for letting us know what's going on there.
Mike Womack is the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency joining us from Jackson, Mississippi. And of course, CNN's coverage of these floods will continue even though we're not expecting some places to crest for another couple of weeks.
ROMANS: All right. It's bad enough to have a fender-bender, that usually involves you and another driver and you're irritated. Maybe all the people would slow down on the highway.
VELSHI: Sure.
ROMANS: How about a fender-bender at an airport? Two planes. Then you've got a lot of people and a -- and air travel that starts to come to a grinding halt. We're going to tell you about a Delta jet that clipped another plane and what happened there.
VELSHI: And brain surgery for TV sitcom icon Mary Tyler Moore. Dr. Sanjay Gupta comes -- is going to join us to tell us about the surgery that she chose to have to remove a tumor and how it went, right after the break. It is 45 minutes after the hour.
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ROMANS: A lot going on this morning. Here's what you need to know to start your day.
The Pakistani Taliban taking blame for a pair of suicide bombings at a paramilitary training center in northwest Pakistan. At least 80 people are dead. The attacks said to be retaliation for the death of bin Laden.
The Pentagon is concerned about the security of the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says he met with the elite team last week and they're worried about their identities being revealed and their families being harmed.
Just a short time ago Ron Paul formally announced his run for the White House in 2012. It's his third time entering the presidential race.
New evacuations downstream, 600 people in Vicksburg, Mississippi, told to get out of the way of the Mississippi River. Entire neighborhoods already under water upstream.
A Delta jet clipped another jet at Atlanta's international airport last night. That jet was taxiing to the gate when its wing hit the tail of another jet sitting at a gate. A Delta spokeswoman says no one was hurt.
The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour back at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. They arrived there yesterday to get ready for the shuttle's final, final launch this Monday.
You're caught up on the day's headlines. AMERICAN MORNING back right after a break.
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VELSHI: Those are the folks making it all happen.
ROMANS: That's the real work in there.
VELSHI: Legendary TV star Mary Tyler Moore is set to undergo brain surgery. The procedure is elective. She's choosing to do it. Neurosurgeons will be removing a slow-growing tumor known as meningioma. It's something they've been monitoring for some time.
ROMANS: That's right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, our chief medical correspondent, and a neurosurgeon himself, he's going to join us from the CNN center in Atlanta to explain why they decided not to have this removed right away.
Hi, Sanjay.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning.
Yes, this is one of those interesting things. Because it is benign, because it is sometimes found as we refer to it incidentally, so someone may be going in for -- to the doctor for headaches or maybe after a car accident or a fall and they get a CAT scan, and they find that there is no bleeding or anything as a result of the accident. But there's this meningioma, this brain tumor, sitting there as well.
It might be small at the time. And at that time usually a discussion takes place between patient and doctor saying look, there's a small thing there, it may not affect you in your entire life, it's not causing any problems. We don't know that we need to do anything except sort of observe this sort of tumor.
Let me show you on this model of the brain, if I can, really quickly.
As Ali mentioned, these are tumors that are called meningioma. They're typically found on top of the brain. They may be sort of pushing into the brain somewhat. They come from a lining right outside the brain, but they're not sort of in the brain, in the substance or sort of the spongy part of the brain as much.
So it's a fairly straightforward operation. But again to your question, a lot of times the decision just as -- you know, look, if the person may not need the operation at all in their lifetime, let's just watch this.
VELSHI: Sanjay -- you know, Christine, Sanjay and I had occasion to discuss this a couple of weeks ago by chance and he explained to me in great detail what these are about. And I ask now, Sanjay, if it is slow growing and it's not -- it doesn't seem to be presenting any danger, why the decision? Why did Mary Tyler Moore make the decision to operate on it now why does a doctor and a patient ever make that decision?
GUPTA: Yes. Well, there's really three major reasons. One is that it starts to grow more quickly. So you get this pattern -- you get these bits of information. You're maybe getting a scan every year and the tumor doesn't seem to be changing much or just very slow rate of growth as mentioned.
And then all of a sudden in one year to the next, there's a rapid growth. That could be a sign to operate. That says look, this thing is starting to grow in a different -- different pace.
It could change in its nature. So looking at it, it's got a very distinctive appearance when you look at these. If it starts to look different, you may wonder, is this turning from a benign tumor into a more malignant tumor. Or in the third case, as you might expect, if it starts to present any --cause any problem, if someone starts to have headaches because of it, starts to have blurriness of vision, if it's pushing on areas that cause weakness or loss of sensation in part of the body, those can also be signs, as well.
So, you know, it's really a balance, though, between, you know, she's 74. She has this tumor. It may have grown. Putting her -- it's a big operation to do, although, you know, successfully done every day in this country. Balancing that versus, you know, may she not need this operation for the rest of her life.
VELSHI: Correct.
GUPTA: They decided in this case it was time to operate.
VELSHI: Good information, Sanjay. Thanks very much for that.
GUPTA: Thank you. You got it.
ROMANS: A programming note for you, too. Be sure to watch CNN this Saturday and Sunday morning at 7:30 Eastern for "SANJAY GUPTA REPORTS: SAVING GABBY GIFFORDS". Sanjay is going to meet the paramedics and doctors credited with saving the life of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, of course, who was shot in the head and survived an attack on her life.
VELSHI: Not only remarkably inspirational, but I think we all got smarter about the brain thanks to that incident and of course thanks to Sanjay knowing so much about it. So I'm going to be interested to watch that.
ROMANS: Me too.
VELSHI: Our top stories are coming up right after the break. It's 54 after the hour.
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