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CNN Live Saturday
Space Shuttle Discovery Crew Walks in Space; US Navy Ship Deployed to Japan; Terror Plot Aimed at New York's Transit System Foiled
Aired July 08, 2006 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN LIVE SATURDAY, I'm Carol Lin. Now a look at the news that you might have missed today. U.S. assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill is in South Korea trying to get the North Korean talks back on the nuclear bargaining table. The latest developments straight ahead.
In Iraq, the U.S. military says three American soldiers were killed in combat today. More than 2,500 American military personnel have died in the Iraq war.
And Saudi Arabian security forces are looking for seven men who escaped a minimum security lockup in the Saudi capital. The escapees are suspected of helping terrorists. They're described as six Saudis and one Yemeni man.
More violence in Gaza despite pleas for a cease fire. The Palestinian prime minister wants all hostilities to end, but Israel says that is not going to happen until their kidnapped soldier is returned safely.
And live pictures from Mexico City. A rally is under way for the leftist presidential candidate, Andres Obrador. He lost his bid for the presidency this weekend. Obrador is demanding a recount.
It's been a walk in the park, so to speak -- actually really a walk in space for two shuttle astronauts. Mike Fossum and Piers Sellers did some maintenance work and tested a long boom outside the international space station today. The space walk was the first of three on the shuttle's 13 day flight. And our space guru, Miles O'Brien has a report in five minutes.
Atlantic City casinos are back in business. Casino owners got the green light to resume gambling today. Now they lost millions of dollars amid a week long government shutdown. New Jersey lawmakers passed a budget this morning, which allows tens of thousands of state employees to return to work.
Good evening once again I'm Carol Lin. A U.S. warship docks in Japan while Japan's neighbor, North Korea, is facing a mountain of international pressure. North Korea's test of a long range missile failed last week and the provocative action is stirring concern around the globe.
Meanwhile, a U.S. envoy has landed in South Korea. Christopher Hill is leading the effort to back the north away from building nuclear weapons and missiles that could threaten the U.S. Hill is urging North Korea to rejoin talks with five other nations, including the U.S.
Well the U.S. military says the arrival in Japan of the warship Mustin is not connected to the situation in North Korea. But if things were to escalate, the Mustin might come in handy.
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ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As U.S. Navy vessels go, few things floating are more high tech, capable of detecting, tracking and taking out airplanes, submarines and the word of the day, missiles. More than 100 at a time, hundreds of miles away. The USS Mustin sporting the state of the art aegis combat system ported today in Tokyo bay.
VOICE OF MAJ. GEN. THOMAS WILKERSON, U.S. MARINE CORPS (RET.): The capability to stop a missile from entering home air space is something that's very desirable to have. And, in fact, aegis-equipped destroyers of the latest class flight 2 and beyond are more than capable of handling any of the missiles that North Korea attempted to fire, whether they went well or not.
QUIJANO: The navy says it's routine, a deployment they announced months ago.
CMDR. EDWARD CASHMAN, USS MUSTIN: We're aware of the situation in North Korea and the events of the past several weeks. We don't have any particular mission right now. We were tasked to come and turn over as part of the normal rotation of forces.
QUIJANO: What they didn't announce is that steaming eastward from the Persian Gulf is what may be the most formidable military force on earth, a naval aircraft carrier group. When the USS Enterprise arrives in the pacific, half of the navy's carrier fleet will be there, a potent show of military might, impossible for any missile capable and potentially unstable nation to ignore. The navy doesn't even mention North Korea or long range missile tests. They say it's training and the timing is pure coincidence.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
LIN (on-camera): North Korea has long demanded direct talks with Washington. The United States says no. So here's what envoy Christopher Hill had to say earlier today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRISTOPHER HILL, ASST. U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: When they come back in the six-party process, we can have as many meetings as they like. Indeed, we can enhance the number of meetings we will have. But we're not going to do this outside of the six-party process.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
LIN (on-camera): Reaction? Let's go to the White House. Standing by live CNN's Elaine Quijano. Elaine, why does the Bush administration reject direct talks with North Korea?
QUIJANO (on-camera): Well Carol President Bush says that North Korea reneged on a promise back in 1994, an agreement made during the Clinton administration when U.S. officials then did sit down for direct talks with North Korea. So President Bush now believes that the best course for the United States to take is a multilateral approach in order to be effective.
QUIJANO (voice-over): The president said this week he doesn't want to, quote, get caught in the trap of sitting down for one-on-one talks with North Korea. He believes that would give North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il the opportunity to blame the United States if no agreement is reached.
So while the president acknowledges that diplomacy does take time, he is clearly saying that the United States is willing to take a diplomatic approach. That is why we heard earlier today U.S. envoy Christopher Hill in South Korea say that the United States does in fact back a proposal by China for the U.S. and North Korea to hold informal bilateral talks but only within the frameworks of the larger six-nation discussions that have been stalled for months now. Carol?
LIN: Well Elaine, Japan wants sanctions. Why are China and Russia against those sanctions?
QUIJANO (on-camera): Well that's right, China and Russia are in fact opposed to the idea of sanctions against North Korea, which Japan essentially circulated in a draft resolution on Friday. Instead China and Russia want a less muscular U.N. Security Council statement effectively not mentioning sanctions at all. Both China and Russia feel that sanctions would only delay North Korea's return to those six-party talks and would make the situation worse. Also, some analysts believe that China and Russia, while unhappy with North Korea's behavior, really didn't feel necessarily endangered by North Korea's actions.
(voice-over): And finally, analysts also say that China is not only of course North Korea's ally but they point out a neighboring country as well. China does not want to see a destabilized regime in North Korea, which could then result of course in millions of refugees pouring over the border. And for now, diplomats at the United Nations Carol have decided to put off a vote on that draft resolution by Japan through this weekend so countries can mull it over.
LIN (on-camera): Elaine thank you. We are going to have much more this hour on North Korea and its reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il. We're going to speak with former state department official Joe Witt at the bottom of the hour.
Two shuttle astronauts, you might say out on a limb today. They dangled on an extra long robotics arm. It's a combination of the 50 foot one on "Discovery" and an extension piece from the international space station. Miles O'Brien looks at what their efforts could mean for the future space missions.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) Watch the sunrise.
Beautiful.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was an arm's length operation that may bring a new dawn for repairing a shuttle in space. Spacewalkers, Piers Sellers and Mike Fossum latched to the end of a robot arm twice as long as normally carried on an orbiter, seeing if it is stable enough to serve as a work platform that could one day save the day. Fossum and Sellers in high spirits as they popped out and punched in for a better than six hour work shift in the void, taking time to savor their surroundings.
Take a second and look at the earth to your left. And I think we've got Ireland and England coming up there.
My left? Oh. Oh, good heavens! Oh, my goodness! It's a beautiful day in Ireland.
O'BRIEN: They raised the boom and got to work.
I think we're ready for the big --
O'BRIEN: Sellers and Fossum latched themselves into the foot restraint at the end of the six story movable mast and went through the motions of repairing an orbiter. At times it seemed stable. At times they were swaying in the void.
There's a lot of motion with that kind of action. I think that that would probably be too much.
O'BRIEN: If the 100 foot arm works, it could give shuttle crews the ability to fix a damaged heat shield on the orbiter's underbelly in places currently out of reach.
Lots of motion on that one.
O'BRIEN: And this crew may yet get the chance to test out the concept for real. Engineers have their eye on a narrow gap filler protruding between some heat shielding tiles near "Discovery's" tail. The loose gap fillers can create dangerous hot spots on a shuttle during the searing heat of re-entry. Last year spacewalker Steve Robinson successfully plucked two lose gap fillers near Discovery's nose.
(on-camera): This (INAUDIBLE) has yet to determine if that protruding gap filler in the tail section of the orbiter will pose a threat to the crew when they return to earth this time. If it does, the spacewalkers, Fossum and Sellers, might very well be called to emergency duty at the end of that long arm. Miles O'Brien, CNN, New York.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
LIN (voice-over): This just in. 27 people injured at the Sail Fest Summer Festival in New London, Connecticut today. We've got some fresh pictures in. What happened apparently is an elderly man drove into a crowd of people, hitting one and then, after that, the car kept moving, hitting more people. The town's mayor said that the driver was confused and was taken to the hospital.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
We always intervene at the earliest possible opportunity.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
LIN (voice-over): An alleged terror strike avoided but what dangers lie ahead? We're going to have an in-depth look, next.
Also, a wanted fugitive slips out of his handcuffs and talked his way out of another arrest. But that's only part of this incredible story that you're going to see only on CNN.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
There's two perceptions that people have. One perception is that I got paid $50 million and left. That's not what happened. If that was the case, then I'd be running from the law.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
LIN (voice-over): His sudden departure from a lucrative contract sent the entertainment industry buzzing. Straight ahead, comedian Dave Chappelle tells CNN's Anderson Cooper why. You're watching CNN LIVE SATURDAY. Right there.
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LIN (voice-over): His roots extend from southern California, but his allegiance is with Al Qaeda. You're going to hear from the American. He is the face of terror. Next when CNN LIVE SATURDAY returns in 60 seconds.
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LIN (voice-over): When you're clicking on cnn.com today, here are some of the top stories. Take a look at this high rise. It's where a 4-year-old boy fell from an 11 story window. Albany New York's police chief admits he is amazed that that kid is still alive. But the boy is still in the hospital.
Now a bit of volley this afternoon proves Amelie Mauresmo has the merits to win Wimbledon. It's been 81 years since the last time a French woman won the championship at the all England club.
And more Palestinian deaths are reported in Gaza. Now the Palestinian prime minister is calling for calm. Israel says not until a kidnapped Israeli soldier is returned safely.
LIN (on-camera): Topping our security watch tonight, new details in the alleged plot of Islamic extremists to flood New York City tunnels. The FBI says the foiled plot involved martyrdom and explosives. CNN's Kelli Arena has more details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Officials say the plot was in the early stages but well enough along and serious enough to act.
MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse to step in and prevent something from happening. That would be playing games with people's lives. So we always intervene at the earliest possible opportunity.
ARENA: The attack they say was planned for this fall and called for putting suicide bombers with backpacks full of explosives on trains.
MERSHON: They were about to go to a phase where they would attempt to surveil targets, establish a regiment of attack and acquire the resources necessary to effectuate the attacks.
ARENA: This is the alleged mastermind, Assem Hammoud, 31 years old from Lebanon. He's being held in Beirut.
MERSHON: We know that he is acknowledged pledging a bayat or allegiance to Osama bin Laden and he proclaims himself to be a member of Al Qaeda.
ARENA: Lebanese security officials say Hammoud was taken into custody on April 27. The Lebanese government says Hammoud was living a life of quote, "fun and indulgence to hide his extremist views." It also says he was supposed to travel to Pakistan for terror training. The FBI says that in all, eight people are involved. At least two other alleged participants are also in custody but the FBI won't say where. As for the other five, officials say they do not believe they're in the United States.
MERSHON: There are still subjects out there. Mostly known, some only partially identified or unknown and we remain vigilant.
ARENA: The plot was first revealed in a New York newspaper and that infuriated officials who say the disclosure jeopardized the investigation. But there is another view, the story of an apparent law enforcement success came out on the anniversary of the London subway attacks, and suggests the political motivation for leaking.
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: If this was a genuine plot there's nothing wrong with that, but we do have to keep in mind the Department of Homeland Security particularly is under a lot of pressure to show some results.
ARENA (on-camera): The investigation is ongoing. The FBI says at least six countries are actively involved. Sources tell CNN those include Iraq, Canada, and Pakistan. Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE) LIN (on-camera): So we decided to invite one of the most renowned terrorism experts, Brian Jenkins to join us today, he's with the Rand Corporation and coming out with a new book. Brian good to have you.
BRIAN JENKINS, TERRORISM EXPERT: Thank you very much Carol.
LIN: Did this sound like a real threat to you?
JENKINS: Well, it does. You have to keep in mind that in many cases, in the early planning stages, terrorists have these ambitious, almost fantastical ideas. As they go forward, if they're determined to go forward, then operational realities step in and the planning comes down to something that is more realistic, more within their means. If we look at the terrorist plots that have been thwarted, they often involve these extraordinary plots. If we look at the ones that have been carried out, there are explosives where there are congregations of people.
LIN: Well one suspect allegedly pledged himself to Al Qaeda, his allegiance. But what does that really mean? I mean does that mean he's going to get money or material support from anyone, anywhere?
JENKINS: It can mean that. Certainly it is a formal step. The recruiting process itself is multi-step and people move into Al Qaeda's orbit. The formal pledge of loyalty is a formal step whereby this individual is declaring himself determined to engage in violent jihad.
LIN: But whether his ability -- whether he has the ability or not is really the question. I mean, do you anticipate that there are going to be more reports like this? Or is this a PR stunt by Homeland Security, a political move to say, look, we're trying to keep you safe here at home, though things are going pretty badly over there in Iraq?
JENKINS: Let's take a look at the record. Since 9/11, the Jihadist enterprise, those connected directly or indirectly with Al Qaeda, those inspired by Al Qaeda have carried out more than 30 large- scale terrorist attacks. That doesn't count anything that has occurred in Afghanistan or Iraq.
LIN: You're talking about the London train bombing, Spain, the ...
(INAUDIBLE)
LIN: ... hotels in Jordan?
JENKINS: The London bombing, Spain. All of those. More than 30. In addition to those, although it's harder to count events that don't occur, there easily have been more than 30 plots around the world that have been disrupted by the authorities. Now, that's more than 60 attempts in less than 60 months.
LIN: Alright. A threat to be sure. Thank you very much, Brian Jenkins, appreciate it. JENKINS: Thank you.
LIN: Be sure to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security.
Alright. We've got some new information and also some new video coming in on an Israeli air strike in Gaza. What you're looking at here appears to be some evidence of that. Israeli aircraft fired a missile into Gaza City. Israel's military says the target was a group of suspected Islamic jihad militants in Gaza City. Palestinian hospital officials say four were wounded. Another missile hit a bridge in Northern Gaza just a few minutes later. It is now late at night in the Middle East.
An American starring in Al Qaeda's latest video. We are going to trace his roots all the way back to his childhood in southern California.
And U.S. warships make their way towards Japan while the U.S. hopes to ease tensions with North Korea. Is it a coincidence or something more.
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LIN (voice-over): New information about the detainee suicides at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A report indicates the three passed a note to each other before they hanged themselves last month. And government attorneys say that there is some paper evidence that they may have used their own attorneys to pass these notes to each other.
Now Pope Benedict the 16th is urging Spanish leaders to uphold traditional family values. He's on a two day stop in Valencia, Spain. Now in the past year Spain has allowed same sex marriages, relaxed divorce laws and cut religious education in schools.
And German soccer fans will have to be happy with the World Cup consolation prize. Well and apparently they are. Looks like it. Germany beat Portugal today 3-1. Their victory, which gives them third place, is the next best thing to tomorrow's final match between France and Italy.
Iran's president is denouncing Israel again. Today Mahmoud Ahmadinejead called Israel the basic and fundamental problem of the Muslim world. He urged Muslims to mobilize all their capabilities to deal with the issue.
LIN (on-camera): And an American in the midst of Al Qaeda's inner circle. His name is Adam Gadahn and he wore a mask in his first terrorist tape. But no more. For the first time he reveals himself and threatens the country of his birth. Why the change in allegiance? Anderson Cooper finds out in this "AC 360" report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Adam Gadahn has come a long way from his home in California. Why should we target the military only?
COOPER: That's him playing a starring role in the latest Al Qaeda video.
Cause they're the ones who started this dirty war.
COOPER: U.S. officials say this tape shows Gadahn playing a central role in Al Qaeda's inner circle, valued by its leaders for putting an American face on Al Qaeda, a valuable propaganda tool attacking his own country in its own language.
No sane Muslim should shed tears for them.
COOPER: This is Adam Gadahn in the early 1990s. His odyssey began on this goat farm in rural Riverside County, California. His father, Phil, once an acid rock guitarist and his mother dropped out of the L.A. music scene, moved to the farm and home schooled their children. But Adam Gadahn rebelled against the counter culture and his parents' Christianity.
PHIL GADAHN, ADAM'S FATHER: Most of the kids they don't want to be a bumpkin out here, you know living on the farm, so they all move to town.
COOPER: After going through a heavy metal faze, Adam Gadahn embraced Islam and took the Muslim name Yayah. That was in 1995 and Gadahn wrote about it in this website posting. Having been around Muslims in my formative years, he wrote, I knew they were not bloodthirsty, barbaric terrorists.
Two years after becoming a Muslim, he was arrested for allegedly attacking the president of the Islamic Society of Orange County. Federal officials say soon after Gadahn moved to Pakistan in 1998. His family lost touch with him after 2002.
GADAHN: He was sort of detached. He went off and did his own thing.
COOPER: But he surfaced in a big way in 2004, first named by the FBI as someone it was seeking information on in connection with possible terrorist threats, threats he later made when appearing masked in this video, calling himself Azzam, the American.
People of America, I remind you.
COOPER: Now in this latest video he gives a hint of time he spent in Afghanistan during and after the Americans toppled the Taliban and drove out Al Qaeda.
They've murdered thousands of Afghan civilians. I've seen it with my own eyes. My brothers have seen it. I've carried the victims in my arms, women, children, toddlers, babies in their mother's wombs. You name it, they've probably bombed it.
COOPER: Gadahn is now believed to be somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. He appears for more than five minutes in the latest video, his words aimed at both the British and American audience.
Britain is the one who taught America how to kill and oppress Muslims in the first place.
COOPER: Gadahn refers to the recent charges of U.S. killings in Iraq. Saying it's proof that Muslims are being slaughtered by American troops there.
When our mujahedeen take revenge on the unit which committed this outrage, and capture and execute two of its members, they're called terrorists.
COOPER: Gadahn's family isn't talking about the latest tape but a family friend says they are devastated. Anderson Cooper, CNN.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
LIN (voice-over): You can catch "AC 360" with Anderson Cooper weeknights at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 pacific.
A regular deployment might send an extra sensitive message. We're keeping you up to date on the latest from North Korea as more U.S. naval ships enter the region.
Also ahead, he's given police and federal authorities the slip more than once. And he's still on the run. So how did he do it? You're watching CNN LIVE SATURDAY.
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LIN: Now in the news, a deadly battle between U.S. soldiers and Iraqi insurgents. Three American soldiers were killed today while fighting in Iraq's Anbar province.
A wild chase in the waters off Miami. A coast guard boat captured a vessel overloaded with Cuban immigrants. The coast guard boat is the darker colored one in the upper part of the screen. There was a woman though on board. She was severely injured and she died on the way to the hospital. Officials say the boat, which was the white one at the bottom of the screen was carrying 31 Cuban immigrants and three suspected smugglers.
A terrifying crash in New London, Connecticut. Officials say an elderly man drove into a crowd of pedestrians at the Sail Fest Festival. Twenty seven people were injured, two of them seriously. The town's mayor says the driver was confused and was taken to a hospital.
The aftermath of an attack in Gaza. The Palestinian government calls for calm, but Israel says its military operation is going to continue there until an Israeli kidnapped soldier is released. The Hamas-led Palestinian government says it wants to resolve the standoff diplomatically. Thousands rally in support of Mexico's leftist presidential candidate. Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says he's the real winner of last Sunday's vote, not conservative Felipe Calderon. A recount showed Calderon won the election by less than one percentage point. Lopez Obrador called the results fraudulent and he wants a recount.
A 7 1/2 hour walk, 220 miles above the planet Earth. Today two Discovery astronauts ventured out into space to move a cable on the International Space Station and to test a robotic arm. They may use the arm next week to repair a hard-to-reach spot at the bottom of the shuttle.
Making an offer to North Korea during a visit to South Korea today, U.S. envoy Christopher Hill says the U.S. will hold one-on-one nuclear talks with North Korea, if that country agrees to rejoin stalled six-party talks.
Welcome back. A new U.S. warship arrived today in neighboring Japan. The U.S. military says it is not connected to the U.S. tensions with North Korea. The USS Mustin is equipped to down enemy missiles. It's primarily defensive. The ship's captain says that he has not been assigned a specific mission, but he says his crew is aware of what's occurring in North Korea.
So assessing the threat from North Korea. It is no easy task considering the country is cloaked in secrecy. But when North Korea test fired those missiles this week, it may have given away some clues. Here's CNN's national security correspondent David Ensor.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Not surprisingly, on North Korean television, the announcer said nothing about the missile firings and nothing about the failure of the Taepodong-2 long-range missile within 40 seconds of launch.
JOSEPH CIRINCIONE, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS: This backfired. This blew up in Kim Jong-il's face.
ENSOR: Said one U.S. official, "It sounds like they are thinking about how to play this.
BUSH: One thing we are learned is that the rocket didn't stay up very long, it tumbled into the sea.
ENSOR: U.S. officials and analysts say it clearly did not go as planned.
CIRINCIONE: We had six scuds and one dud fired. All of them landed in the Sea of Japan, all of them thousands of miles away from America's shores.
ENSOR: U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon have been watching the Taepodong launch pad for weeks with spy satellites, aircraft and surveillance ships. Officials say North Korea has more Taepodongs, though their reliability is now in question. DAVID KAY, FMR. U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: The most interesting sidebar story is going to be what happens in Pyongyang. Who vouched for the reliability of this missile and what are the consequences now that it failed?
ENSOR: That will be hard for American intelligence to know. North Korea is an extraordinarily difficult society to penetrate. While South Korean intelligence likely has agents in the North, most of the assessment of Kim Jong-il's motives and intentions must be educated guesses and nothing more. On that basis, some analysts say the goal was less to test missiles, more to make a statement.
JIM WALSH, INTERNATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST, MIT: The fact that they shot off another, what, six other short-range missiles that had nothing to do with sort of verifying or collecting data shows that it really is about politics, less about security.
ENSOR: But other analysts and intelligence officers say don't assume Kim Jong-il's missile launches were foolish, from his point of view.
(on camera): The North Korean scientists will learn from the failure of the Taepodong and from the other tests. And Kim has reminded the world how serious the risks of war with North Korea would be and how limited the military options are.
David Ensor, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Former state department official Joel Witt joins me now from Washington. He's with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Joel, good to have you.
JOEL WIT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: Thanks for having me.
LIN: Do some diplomatic translating for us. Christopher Hill, the special envoy in Seoul, South Korea says yes to unilateral talks but only if North Korea joins the six party talks. It sounds like diplomatic ease but what does the United States really mean?
WIT: It's really nothing new. In the context of the six-party talks in Beijing, the U.S. has met with North Korea quite frequently, particularly recently. So there's really nothing new there at all.
LIN: What do you think North Korea really wants here? Recognition, one-on-one recognition by the United States. But what's something more?
WIT: Well, it's hard to tell, of course. And I think everyone understands that. And we -- the thing we should guard against is trying to be too certain about what they want. I think these missile tests serve a military purpose. And if they sent a signal to everyone that North Korea is to be reckoned with, then that's all fine and good for them, too. LIN: Does there come a point that the United States has serious discussions about a military strike, a unilateral military strike to take out North Korea's missile systems?
WIT: Well, we may have discussions, but they won't be serious. Because the fact is, if we try to do something like that, North Korea is just not going to sit still and take it. They're going to respond. And the other fact is we're not in a position to take military action against North Korea because our forces are already stretched thin around the world.
LIN: But what does North Korea think it would gain by attacking the United States or its allies?
WIT: Well, I think that's a good point. They're not irrational, contrary to a lot of popular speculation. And they'd have nothing to gain from attacking us. So I don't think that is anywhere in their minds at the moment.
LIN: So do you expect that the U.N. Security Council is going to be able to accomplish anything practical? I mean, you've got already Japan suggesting sanctions. But two of the key members of the Security Council, China and Russia, disagree.
WIT: I think the most you can hope for is a very mild presidential statement from the Security Council, which falls far short of imposing economic sanctions. The main reason for that, as you've heard, is that Russia and China oppose sanctions. And the main reason for that is that the American diplomatic strategy of building a multilateral coalition in opposition to North Korea has failed miserably.
LIN: The president as he stands on the issue says he wants North Korea at the table looking at the different faces of the world, that the international community speak with one voice. So we will see what happens when Christopher Hill continues his meetings as he travels through Asia. Joel Wit, thank you.
WIT: Thank you.
LIN: Now, for more on North Korea, don't miss "Undercover in the Secret State." It's a CNN PRESENTS special airing tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.
Live pictures, you're looking at, of a plane crash. This is what we know right now. A plane crashed in north Georgia's Union County. It was a Piper 32, which took off from Hilton Head and was heading to a part of Georgia. It landed in Suches, but overshot the runway. The wing hit a house and it crashed into a cornfield. Three people died and there are two people with serious injuries.
All right. A criminal escape artist who slipped out of everything, from a police station to a federal prison. And authorities have no idea where he is. It is a story you will only see on CNN. And a lightning strike. A melted iPod and a victim who lived to tell about it. The story next when we check headlines across the country.
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LIN: Across America now. You're looking at some deep water in the desert. Tucson, Arizona is finally drying out after yesterday's heavy rains. The downpour caused flash floods and cut power to about 1,000 customers. The area got about a half inch of rain in just an hour.
And a Colorado teen's iPod gets hit by lightning while he's mowing the lawn. His ear phones melted and his ear drums were ruptured. It also blew a hole in his pants. Jason Bunch joins CNN Sunday live at 4:00 p.m. to talk about his shocking experience.
She met him online and he gave her a $40,000 engagement ring. And then Dana Parker found out that Brian Callahan's divorce wasn't final. And she says that he was still trying to meet woman online. So she broke off the engagement and he sued to get the ring back. The judge says she gets to keep the ring.
Well, talk about an escape artist. U.S. marshals, the Canadian mounties and Interpol are all looking for one man. His name is Richard McNair, a convicted murder and three-time escapee. CNN's Susan Roesgen followed the trail of this criminal houdini for "PAULA ZAHN NOW."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The story begins with a burglary at a grain elevator in Minot, North Dakota. It was at night and the burglar snuck through the storage facility. He was carrying a revolver but didn't plan to use it because no one was supposed to be there. Inside the company office, he was stopped briefly by a metal gate. But he fiddled with the wiring, got the gate to go up, and headed for the office safe. It was November of '87, and the burglar was Richard McNair, a 28-year-old sergeant at the air force base nearby. Friendly, good-looking, no one suspected that McNair was the one who had been burglarizing Minot businesses for weeks, until that night at the grain elevator when McNair was startled to see the manager who had come in to handle a late shipment.
RICHARD KITZMAN, VICTIM: This is where he shot me.
ROESGEN: McNair's first shot was aimed to kill.
KITZMAN: I think it took me down like this to my back. I ended up -- I don't know if I hit these drawers. I ended up just missing the drawers, I guess, right in here.
ROESGEN: And then he came and stood over you?
KITZMAN: He stood right there in front of the window. ROESGEN: McNair shot Richard Kitzman four more times. And Kitzman who still works at the grain elevator today, is alive only because he fooled McNair into thinking he was dead. With McNair still on the property, Kitzman crawled to a phone and called police.
We have shots fired. Man's been shot at the farmer's union elevator on County Road 19.
ROESGEN: But McNair wasn't finished, because there was another potential witness. A truck driver was waiting for his shipment of grain outside the office and hadn't heard the shots. Minot Sheriff, Vern Erck, says the trucker, Jerry Theis, never had a chance.
SHERIFF VERN ERCK, WARD COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT: He shot five more shots right at the truck driver, point blank and kills Mr. Theis. One of them was a head shot. Poor guy didn't know what hit him.
ROESGEN: Sheriff Erck cracked the case. He had McNair come to the police station, and that's when McNair pulled off his first escape. When the detectives brought him in for questioning, they handcuffed one of his hands to a chair, leaving his other hand free. While he casually chatted with the detectives, he reached for a tube of lip balm on the desk, smeared some of it on his wrist, and slipped out. McNair ran from police across town, racing into this house and onto the roof as the cops closed in, he jumped onto a tree branch that broke and fell to the ground. The police had him again, but not for long.
ERCK: When we had him in custody he was awaiting trial, he would have been in this cell block. And he took the very top two cinder blocks out of his cell, kept chipping away at them.
ROESGEN: McNair didn't get away that time, but he was successful four years later in 1992, escaping from the state prison in Bismarck where he had been sent for the murder. When he was caught, he was transferred through a series of prisons and late last year wound up at the federal penitentiary in Pollack, Louisiana. That's where he pulled off his best escape yet. How did he get out of a maximum- security prison? The answer is amazing.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: I just want to take you back to a story that just came in to the CNN center. You're looking at the scene of a plane crash where at least three people died. Two people seriously injured. This Piper 32 took off from Hilton Head. It was headed to Suches, Georgia. But it overshot the runway. More on this story as soon as we get it.
More vanishing acts than houdini. And the best one is yet to come. The second half of Richard McNair's incredible story coming up in 30 seconds.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Now more on the fugitive killer Richard McNair. He is a convicted murderer who escaped from custody three times. As you'll see in a moment his last escape may be his most ingenious. Once again here's Susan Roesgen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROESGEN: This is Duncan, Oklahoma, population 23,000, Richard McNair's hometown. It's a small town. Everybody seems to know everything about everybody else. But nobody could tell us much of anything about Richard McNair.
VICKI VRIONES, DUNCAN, OKLAHOMA: You've got to understand small town people live different than large people. We're close. We care about each other. And we just -- there's no point making a big issue out of it because we don't want to hurt each other.
ROESGEN: Since we couldn't find anyone on the street to talk about McNair, we went to the library and looked him up in the high school yearbook. There he was, Rick McNair, graduating in 1977. Even back in high school, Rick was in trouble. A report from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation reveals that when he was still a student he was arrested for stealing a car. Investigators say McNair's family in Duncan is embarrassed and hurt by McNair's crimes. And when I tried to talk to his mother, she wouldn't open the door. She knows her son is on the run now after his most dramatic escape yet.
In April, McNair slipped out of the maximum-security federal prison in Pollack, Louisiana. McNair worked at the prison repairing mail bags, similar to these. He used those mail bags to make an ingenious escape. Prison officials won't say exactly how he did it, but somehow McNair made an enclosure inside a stack of mail bags sort of like a beaver dam, crawled inside it, had more mail bags on top, shrink wrapped, and then he was wheeled on a pallet right outside the prison walls. And the chase was on. While law enforcement combed the woods around the prison, one small town police officer stopped a man who fit McNair's description.
OFFICER: What it is, we've got an escapee.
MCNAIR: Oh. Where from?
OFFICER: The prison.
MCNAIR: From the prison here?
OFFICER: Yeah.
ROESGEN: The officer wouldn't talk to us about it, but his dashboard camera caught the encounter on tape.
OFFICER: What color eyes you got?
MCNAIR: Green, well kind of a turquoise blue.
OFFICER: Turquoise blue? You want to give me some more? You know the bad thing about it?
MCNAIR: What's that?
OFFICER: You're matching up to him.
ROESGEN: The similarities were obvious, but McNair was so smooth, he talked his way out of an arrest. And two weeks later, despite a massive manhunt, he was 1,000 miles away across the border in Canada. McNair was spotted in a stolen car but got away before the Mounties could catch him. Inside the car were pictures McNair had taken of himself to make fake IDs. That was on April 28th, the last time law enforcement found a trace. Once again, McNair has vanished.
GLEN BELLGUARD, U.S. MARSHAL: I am living Richard McNair's life right now. This case, getting him, putting him back in prison, is what I'm about right now.
ROESGEN: U.S. Marshal Glen Bellguard has been chasing McNair every step of the way. He's gotten thousands of tips, and he thinks McNair is still in Canada. But where and when McNair might be caught is anybody's guess.
BELLGUARD: He'll eventually make another mistake, and we're going to be there waiting for him.
ROESGEN: A fugitive who's smart, but maybe not smart enough to get away for good.
OFFICER: Be careful, buddy.
ROESGEN: Susan Roesgen, CNN, Alexandria, Louisiana.
(END OF VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Susan's report first aired on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." You can catch that on week nights 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific.
Up next, comedian Dave Chappelle bears all to CNN's Anderson Cooper. He talks about the price of fame and why he walked away.
First a preview on what's coming up on CNN's "This Week At War."
JOHN ROBERTS, "THIS WEEK AT WAR": We'll go to Iraq, London, the White House and the Pentagon to get perspective on "This Week at War. We'll also examine the North Korea missile tests and international reaction to the launches and we'll see how London marked one year since the terror attacks there. Plus, U.S. reaction to a possible plot against New York City tunnels. All coming up all on this week at war.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: As one of the funniest guys on the planet, Dave Chappelle knows how to make people laugh. He's also good at leaving them guessing. He spent Friday night with our Anderson Cooper, talking about his now legendary disappearing act and what he thinks about Comedy Central's airing what they call his "Lost Episodes."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So what do you think about these so-called lost episodes?
DAVE CHAPPELLE, COMEDIAN: It's funny. I have mixed feelings. I mean 90 percent of me feels like I wish they wouldn't do this. There's the 10 percent comedian that's like, I hope the sketches do good.
COOPER: Really? So part of you kind of wants to make sure they do all right?
CHAPPELLE: Oh, yes. But I think the thing that upsets me about it the most is that I was so public about not liking a particular sketch and from my understanding that's included in the three episodes. In that case I'm speaking about one in particular in where I appeared in black face, which is funny. But it's like someone on the set while we were filming it laughed in such a way that I was like, I can't subject my audience to that.
COOPER: There was a white man on the set, one of the people working on the show who laughed.
CHAPPELLE: The way he laughed made me feel like this guy is laughing for the wrong reasons. And I deal in laughs, Anderson, so that's my, it stirred something up in me emotionally that I was like I don't want to subject anyone else to it.
COOPER: Are there moments now when you think you made a mistake or are you happier now than you were a year ago? Stupid question?
CHAPPELLE: No, no. That's a good question, man. Listen, walking away from $50 million --
COOPER: It's not easy.
CHAPPELLE: It's not an easy thing to do. I didn't flee from it. It wasn't like, but it wasn't easy. It wasn't an easy thing to do. At the time it felt like I just want to survive, like I'm not happy. This is not a good environment for me and I got to get out of here.
COOPER: The block party is on DVD. I haven't seen it but I've heard it's fantastic.
CHAPPELLE: It was great. Michelle Gondry (ph) directed it. Big up to Michelle.
COOPER: Is being back on stage good?
CHAPPELLE: It's incredible because I was surrounded by so much negativity at some point that it took me going back and doing stand-up to realize people really like me and there's a lot of people who don't want anything from me but to laugh and have a good time. You see them at the show and they dress up to come see your show and stuff and they pack these auditoriums and it's a lot of fun. This is like how I started and it's still fun for me. If you can just imagine looking out at thousands of people who are just smiling at you, that's a really positive reinforcing things. Good for the ego and the soul. And it's kind of like the basic element of show business. That's what I originally intended to be.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: The world's most fascinating people drop in to talk to Anderson. "AC 360" airs week nights at 10:00 Eastern, 7:00 Pacific.
Lots more ahead on CNN TONIGHT. Up next at 7:00, "This Week at War." Our team of correspondents brings you an in depth look at the North Korean threat and the latest from Iraq and the London bombing anniversary.
And then at 8:00 "CNN PRESENTS" "Undercover in the Secret State." We uncover the brutal world of life in North Korea. And at 9:00, Larry King, and his guest tonight is Ken Lay in his own words, before he died.
I'll be back at 10:00 Eastern tonight with the very latest news. A check of the hour's headlines next and then "This Week at War."
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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