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Bomb-Filled House Up in Smoke; What WikiLeaks Backlash Could Do
Aired December 09, 2010 - 13:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALI VELSHI, CNN ANCHOR: Live pictures from Escondido, California, about 25 miles north of San Diego. That is a house aht was used in the assembly of stuff to make destructive devices and bombs. A guy who lived there was an employed software consultant who plead guilty to making these bombs and robbing three banks.
When police went into the house they discovered so many violatile chemicals that they decided it would be too dangerous - too dangerous - to try and neutralize them, to try and remove them. So they came up with this plan that you're looking at right now, to burn this house down. Now let me just tell you what's going on. They cut holes in the roof, they did everything they could to make this a smooth fire. They also put fire-retardant materials in the houses around this house so that they don't catch fire.
The house was cluttered with unstable chemicals. Even bomb- disposing robots couldn't get rid of them. Nearly every room in the house is packed with piles of explosives materials related to making homemade bombs. So what they're hoping is that this fire reaches a temperature of about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, which would, they hope, be hot enough to neutralize the explosives inside.
And that's why this is such a remarkable thing to look at, because this fire is burning, and those are chemicals for bomb-making that are inside the place. So we don't know what we're going to see. We don't know if all of a sudden, the roof is going to blow off that house.
Officials from about 50 different agencies, law enforcement and government agencies, have been involved in the planning of this to make sure that everybody around is protected, although you can see some very, very thick, black smoke wafting away. They apparently know what a lot of the materials are inside there, but they want this house basically to burn to the ground. They want a very, very hot fire to burn everything in this house, specifically the chemicals in there that have been used for making bombs.
So these are live pictures you're seeing. They have set this house on fire. These are the early stages of this fire.
We don't know how long this could take. It could take hours to get through everything. And I think authorities are not quite sure whether something in there may blow up. We may see different things happening with this fire.
But at the moment, you can see a few angles of it from this side. This is the side that the wind is blowing toward.
You can see heavy, heavy black smoke coming in this direction. And from the other angle that we've got, you see a very, very active, fully-involved house fire.
This is a controlled fire. This is authorities having set this on fire. This isn't a random fire.
As you can see, it looks like a densely-populated area. You can see houses all around it. Apparently, they've sprayed or applied fire-retardant materials to those houses around it, and they are monitoring all the houses. And lots of firefighters on the ground to ensure that nobody is going to get hurt.
They did evacuate neighbors. They had until Wednesday to evacuate. They've closed part of the interstate where this is going to be blowing onto. So this is a very, very involved situation that we are keeping a very, very close eye on for you right now.
Escondido, California, about 25 miles north of San Diego, a house with too many chemicals in it to have been taken out. The authorities have decided that the only way to deal with this house and the dangerous, volatile bomb-making chemicals inside was to burn it, to burn everything in it.
This was a house that was occupied by an unemployed software consultant. He pleaded not guilty to making destructive devices, basically homemade bombs, and robbing three banks. And police then learned of this house, this hideaway, this bomb-making house.
They went there. And for all of the expertise we have in defusing bombs and removing hazardous materials, they could not get the stuff out of the house.
Apparently, it was just all over the place. They couldn't use bomb-removing devices. It was too volatile, too dangerous. So they decided they would burn the house down.
Quite a spectacular sight when you see all the houses in the neighborhood. This isn't some house on a ranch somewhere with acres and acres of land around it. This is a house in an urban area.
Obviously, the people around that house are anxious at this moment. They're watching this live, and they must be very, very concerned that something goes awry, something shoots out of that house, and ends up going through their roof or through their window, and sets their house on fire as a result of that. There are many, many firefighters on the scene, 50 different agencies involved in this in order to control this fire and make sure nothing else burns down.
There's a wider picture of it. You see the plume from that fire going very, very high into the sky at this point. It gives you some sense of the scope of this fire.
This is happening right now in Escondido, California. A deliberate fire set to burn down this house containing chemicals used to make homemade bombs. And that's what we're looking at.
All right. We're going to stay on this to see how this actually works out.
This house has just been ignited. I think about less than 10 minutes ago is when this fire started. They were planning it for 2:00 Eastern, roughly.
This is a controlled fire, as I was telling you. It is a fire that has been set to burn bomb-making materials that were discovered.
A gardener was injured in a backyard blast. And that's what brought authorities to this house.
But what they did is they went in there and found that every room was packed with piles of explosive material, things related to homemade bombs. So the idea was that after trying to figure out how to do this, they said there's no other way to deal with this house except to get everybody out of the house -- out of the neighborhood.
So they gave everybody until Wednesday to evacuate the neighborhood, a very densely-populated neighborhood, as you can see. And then they prepared the buildings and the houses around this house with fire-retardant material, and they have placed firefighters in strategic positions to be able to react if something happens while this house is burning down that allows other houses to catch fire or be in danger.
So they are on top of this. A controlled burn, that's what they'd like to tell us.
The only thing is that there are so -- there's so much in terms of chemicals and materials for building bombs in there, that authorities weren't able to get in there and get them out themselves. So this is what they thought the safest way to do it would be.
They need that fire to burn at about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, they calculate, in order to neutralize the chemicals and the bomb- making materials that are in that house. But normally you would send in -- if it's too dangerous for people to go in, you send in a robot, a bomb-disposal robot, a chemical-disposal robot.
They tried that. They didn't even try that because they couldn't get in there fast enough. They couldn't -- they couldn't get in there and be assured that those things could neutralize the bomb-making stuff without danger to setting them off, to actually creating an explosion.
They certainly didn't want to send humans there. So they actually went up. They went up on the roof, for instance, cut holes in it, sawed holes in the roof so that -- as you can see, a normal house fire burns pretty well. But they wanted as much ventilation to get through that house as possible so when they set fire to it, a deliberate fire, it would burn a lot of the materials in the house. It would burn hot so that it will neutralize the chemicals and the explosives that are in the house. Now, if those are chemicals and explosives used for bomb-making, you might expect that as this burns, something might go awry.
Now, we're looking at a picture that appears to be -- I'm just going to move in so we can take a quick look at that. It does appear that some structure other than the house is burning, but we don't know what that is. That may be intentional. But you can see homes very, very close to this home, satellite dishes on top of those homes.
People have evacuated. There's nobody living in that area right now. They've moved everybody out in order to try and burn this house.
This could go on for a few hours. And authorities are there to make sure that it doesn't burn the neighborhood down.
But this is how they've had to deal with a bomb-maker's house. Too much stuff in there to safely send people in and get it out. Too much stuff. It was just too packed, packed too closely together to actually have a bomb robot, a bomb-disposal robot go in and do it, so they simply set the house on fire.
I say simply, but there's nothing simple about it. This was actually a very, very well-orchestrated and well-engineered event. This house is a controlled burn.
They really -- what can go wrong here is if the house burns, the material in the house burns, the roof burns, the walls burn, but the material that they're trying to get rid of doesn't burn, because that was the problem in the first place. So what they're hoping is that smoke you see and those flames you see is not just the shingles and the wood and the stuff in the house burning, but it's also that material, the chemicals that were used for making bombs, that is burning up in at least 1,800 degrees of fire.
There were police going door to door this last week. They gave everybody until Wednesday to get out. Police went door to door to inform neighbors of the plan, making sure everybody was out. And they are taking care to ensure that houses around here don't burn.
We've seen calculated implosions where a building implodes on itself. Generally, it works. It doesn't affect anything in the neighboring areas.
It's very rare to see a calculated house-burning fire. In most cases, fire teams want nothing less than a house to be on fire in a populated area for all the dangers of an ember floating in the wind, getting caught in a gust, showing up on somebody else's roof nearby, and setting it on fire, flames from a tree jumping to other trees and starting sort of a neighborhood forest fire.
This is never something anybody chooses. This is the kind of thing that fire teams and authorities always want to avoid. So to have deliberately set this fire, you have to have some sense that they were out of other options.
They saw no other way to dispose of chemicals used in making homemade bombs than to do it this way. And we're talking about great, great quantities of them occupying five rooms in this house. And that was the problem, that everywhere they went, there were more and more chemicals, and they couldn't simply remove them and dispose of them.
They're volatile chemicals. They had to do that the way they did.
All right. I want to go to Lindy Hall, a CNN producer who is on the scene monitoring this for us.
Lindy, is this going the way they expected it to go?
LINDY HALL, CNN PRODUCER: So far, Ali, so good. Thick, black smoke, very light winds, going straight up.
The reason why it was delayed earlier this morning a couple of times is because of the weather. There was an inversion layer. They were worried that the thick, black plume that you're seeing couldn't go straight up and out, that it would be held down.
So, so far, so good.
VELSHI: And Lindy, we did see that picture. We saw a wide shot of the smoke going straight up. So that's problem number one largely dealt with, that the smoke's not going all over the place, and the fire is burning straight up.
But from the vantage that we have here, Lindy -- and I don't know where you are in this whole thing, but there are houses all around this. This looks like this place is packed with houses.
HALL: It's about 130 homes or so around there and an apartment building that have been evacuated. It was not a mandatory evacuation. So there was all but about 14 homes that did leave the area.
But they have a big 16-foot wall built by this house that's closest to the neighbor, and it's covered in a fire-retardant gel so that it would prevent it from moving to another house and, God Forbid, the rest of the neighborhood. They've done a lot of tree-clearing, shrub-clearing, everything. They've taken a lot of precautions.
VELSHI: OK. Lindy, you're breaking out a little bit. We're just going to try and establish a better line with you.
That may be the wall that Lindy is talking about, Chad, behind it, a wall that was set up to prevent the fire from getting to the closest neighbors. But as you and I have discussed when -- the Gulf, when they were burning the oil there, it's very calculated.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Absolutely.
VELSHI: One gust of wind going the wrong way or even the danger of that could take a fire into -- make this into a whole other problem.
MYERS: Sure. I mean, we talk about the 10-mile-per-hour rule when it comes to a wildfire. Certainly 20 miles per hour is a huge threshold where sparks will fly miles and miles. They not only are looking at this neighborhood. The sparks are literally going and these embers are going into the sky now --
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: -- 50, 500, 200 feet, depending on the ember itself, and landing other places.
So the reason why they waited for such a dry day, for such a non- windy day, is that they want to try to keep these embers from going a mile down the road, two miles down the road, three miles down the road. Then, all of a sudden, they're chasing the fire as it's making more hot spots down along the way.
This is never a wet place in the wintertime. This is already -- all of this sage, all of this brush, all of this chaparral all along this is already dry. There hasn't really been any type of weather to get all this wet. And I've been kind of waiting, looking for some kind of a pop.
VELSHI: Well, those chemicals in there, something might explode.
MYERS: And I believe we're not seeing that yet because chemicals that are in here literally need to be combined to make the explosives.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: If they are in separate containers, they will burn, but they will not be explosive by themselves.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: But really now the flame is getting significantly bigger than it was just 20 minutes ago.
VELSHI: Yes. But at the moment, we're probably seeing what we normally see in a house fire. It's eating up the housing materials.
MYERS: Yes.
VELSHI: We're not at the chemicals yet, quite possibly, because they didn't set this fire on the chemicals. They set this fire to start burning, to burn up materials in the house and get hot.
MYERS: I wish we could get an aerial of this. And maybe they're keeping the helicopters away from the area. That would be smart, right?
VELSHI: I don't know if we've got a distance shot. We had that distance shot where we saw -- OK.
MYERS: Yes. You will see that this fire is black. And black means burning homes.
I constantly get these fires in Oklahoma saying, oh, grass fire, grass fire. And we'll see that it's black.
VELSHI: Right. That's not grass.
MYERS: Grass doesn't burn black. OK? Grass burns white, it's gray. And so this is housing material that's burning. Shingles are burning, and everything that they cut, it's doing exactly the right thing.
VELSHI: You are one of the few guys here who's been inside a burning house, inside a controlled burn, a firehouse. When we say we want this to burn, or authorities say they want this to burn at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, do we know if that's normal? Does a house that burns for a little while burn at 1,800 Fahrenheit?
MYERS: Have you ever heard of the book "Fahrenheit 451?"
VELSHI: Yes.
MYERS: Yes. Well, what did they burn in there? They're burning books. Right?
VELSHI: Yes.
MYERS: And so, no, this needs somehow to get --
VELSHI: It needs something to get it hotter.
MYERS: It needs some help, and that help is air. And the air, a lot like you would take a bellow and you would make charcoal, or any kind of coal hot enough to bend iron as an old blacksmith -- you don't bend iron just by putting it in a fire and getting it hot enough. You need to get that air, that oxygen, to be the accelerant. And that's why they made so many holes in this house.
VELSHI: Right.
MYERS: Now they have a chimney effect. This thing is going. This thing is sucking air in from the bottom and blowing the air out the top, and the oxygen is the energy that this thing is going to get to be over 1,000 degrees.
VELSHI: Yes. OK. So the danger here is that the house burns before the chemicals burn.
MYERS: I think we're going to be OK.
VELSHI: All right. Well, we're going to --
MYERS: This is a professional job.
(CROSSTALK)
VELSHI: Well, that's important.
For anybody who has just joined us, that is an important thing for you to know. We're not watching an accidental fire. This is a deliberate job.
It is a house that was filled with bomb-making materials that authorities determined was to unstable to send bomb-disposal robots into. Certainly too unstable to send humans into.
So they have decided to evacuate the area. Almost everybody is gone from the area. About 130 homes in the area. And they've set this house on fire in the hopes that the fire will burn everything in it, including those bomb-making materials.
Chad, stick around with us.
MYERS: Yes. And just think about how many hiding places are in this house. You know?
VELSHI: Yes.
MYERS: So they're letting it burn.
VELSHI: All right. Stay with us. We're going to take a quick break.
We are on this. Trust me, we will not -- we will keep an eye on this for you. If anything develops that is not supposed to develop, we will let you know about that immediately.
We're going to take a quick break. I'm going to be back with more.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: All right. Here's that California house fire we've been telling you about in Escondido, California. It's about 25 miles north of San Diego.
It's a controlled fire. That is a controlled fire that you are looking at.
It is the house that was lived in by a guy who admitted to making bombs and to robbing banks. They went in there, authorities went in.
There were just too many things in there. There was too much stuff. They couldn't safely get it out, all these bomb-making materials.
So they decided they would go in and burn it. And that's what they did.
They cut holes in the roof. They wanted a lot of airflow through there so they can get a really hot fire going there. It needs to be at about 1,8000 Fahrenheit in order to neutralize the chemicals.
They tried to get everybody out of the area, about 130 homes in the area. A few people stuck around, but most people left.
They waited for a day that was perfect in terms of wind conditions. And you can see there while -- you can see that the smoke seems to be going in one angle, largely. We looked at it from a distance, and it's largely a plume that's going straight up, so there's not much danger of things going wrong.
But we are watching it very carefully, and we will continue to watch it. I'm going to take it off the TV screen now, but our producers are staying on top of it to tell us what's going on if anything changes.
OK. Here's a story of a site called Wiki, that was putting out some very juicy leaks. I'm going to spare you the song, but I'll grant you that nobody is laughing about the fallout from the WikiLeaks document dump, confidential, diplomatic cables that were made public.
But where some people see the stuff of spy novels, I see classic TV, "Brady Bunch," if you will. Let me reintroduce the cast.
In the role of hero or traitor, if you will, up there on the top left -- let's push in and show everybody -- Julian Assange. He's WikiLeaks' founder.
To his right, doing damage control, diplomatic mess cleaner-upper overseas, Hillary Clinton. She is the head of the diplomatic corps in the United States as the secretary of state.
To her right, Attorney General Eric Holder, the investigator promising action if he can match charges with suspects. OK.
Over here, on the left again, below Assange, is Peter King, representative from New York. He's the outraged lawmaker. He's leading the chorus in Washington demanding WikiLeaks be named a terrorist organization.
And anonymous. Let's go over there to the right. Anonymous.
They don't have a name. They're just anonymous. They're a group that carries out cyberattacks on people or groups that have criticized or cut ties with Assange like Visa, MasterCard, PayPal.
There's Army Private Bradley Manning. He's the suspected source of a ton of secret intelligence from the Iraq and Afghan wars that were released earlier by WikiLeaks, and now by the U.S. State Department. He is in jail. He's been in jail for months.
Assange is jailed now, too, on an unrelated matter in Britain.
And finally, Sarah Palin. Why is she on this thing? Well, she's been the target of hacktivists for demanding Washington hunt Assange down like the Taliban.
Now let me show you how the mess is spreading. The web of intrigue has WikiLeaks in the center, of course. The boxes on the right are the Web sites that have been disabled at times, if only briefly, in apparent revenge for cutting business ties in the case of MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, or in the case of the country of Sweden, the Swedish prosecutors. On the other side, Facebook and Twitter have blocked some communications from Operation Payback, though not from WikiLeaks itself.
But the Internet is a hard thing to contain. All along the bottom, we see something called mirror sites. See those?
Well, they can pretty much match anything that is attacking these Web sites. Anybody can do this from anywhere around the world.
And check out the box there in the middle. Insurance, that's what Julian Assange says he has. He has threatened to release a colossal file of unknown but presumably explosive content if he's imprisoned or killed.
We'll have a lot more on this over the course of the next hour, including coming up right after this break. How could a WikiLeaks backlash actually reach you? I'm going head-to-head with Richard Quest in "Q&A." We're talking about cybersecurity and what it could do if it doesn't change, right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
RICHARD QUEST, HOST, "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS": Hello. "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS," and so does Ali Velshi.
We're both here together in the CNN NEWSROOM and around the world.
Good afternoon, Ali.
VELSHI: Good evening, Richard.
Each Thursday, Richard and I will be coming to you around the world to talk business, travel, innovation. Nothing is off limits.
QUEST: Now, today, as on both our programs, we've been talking at great length about WikiLeaks and the denial of service, and the backlash and how it could all reach us individually.
Ali, get set, on your mark. You've got 60 seconds.
(BELL RINGING)
VELSHI: All right.
Visa, MasterCard and PayPal say don't worry, Richard, their payment systems are far more secure than their corporate Web sites, which have been attacked by WikiLeaks. But these are early days in this cyber war. And we don't yet know what else Julian Assange's supporters have up their sleeves.
Let's face it, Richard. While we all act shocked, we know that hackers have been making digital mischief long before WikiLeaks. Just ask Microsoft how many users it's lost to people tired of hackers penetrating Windows? But now it's real cyber warfare, the stuff of movies. Anarchists versus governments and big business. And you might get caught in the middle as hackers deploy their skills for purely political reasons. And beyond your online purchases, which might be in jeopardy, U.S. federal agencies, Richard, are warning employees that simply reading documents posted by WikiLeaks could cost them their job, while some universities are warning students that reading or distributing leaked material through social networks could hurt their prospects of getting federal jobs in the future.
So from whom do you have more to fear, Richard, WikiLeaks and its anarchist hacker supporters, or your own government, employers and universities?
(BUZZER)
QUEST: All right. Here we go. Give me a minute on the clock, Ali, starting now.
(BELL RINGING)
QUEST: Ever since the first computers in 1945, the hackers have been attacking. But what is different about this time? I'll tell you what's different.
Over the last 20 years, things like this have arrived into every one of our homes and in our offices. The computer is everywhere.
But this was more. What about the smartphones that we are using and, of course, the ubiquitous tablets that will be in everybody's Christmas stocking?
So it's not surprising that in the United States, there is now CyberCom, the new czar against cyber crime. In the U.K., it's part of the -- it's part of the government's security apparatus.
When it comes to cyber crime, you have two types. You have governments. Remember (INAUDIBLE) with the Iranians. And what about Google supposedly under attack from the Chinese?
And then you have all the viruses that we have been hit with, everything from "I Love You" to "Doomsday" and beyond. Don't be fooled. This affects us all.
(BUZZER)
VELSHI: All right, Richard. We may be agreed on that point. But here's where we don't agree on something -- which one of us is smarter.
So it's time to bring in "The Voice" for quiz time to separate the men from the boys.
Hello, Voice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good afternoon, gentleman. I hope you had a hearty breakfast.
It's time to get those bells ready for a test of speed and smarts.
According to the ITU, the leading U.N. agency for information and communication technology, some countries have declared Internet access as a legal right. Which of the following countries has not? Is it A, Estonia; B, Latvia; C, Finland; or D, Spain?
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Richard?
QUEST: I'm going to say Spain.
(BUZZER)
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ali?
VELSHI: Estonia.
(BUZZER)
QUEST: I'm going for Latvia.
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The answer is B, Latvia. Finland was the first country to do so last year.
Now on to question number two. Hopefully you both will fare a little bit better.
Now for a fun one. According to the "Random House Dictionary," where does the prefix "cyber" actually come from? Is it A, cyber, a futuristic 1950s action figure; B, cyberium, an element on the Periodic Table; C, cybrus, a Latin noun for metal structure; or is it D, cybernetics, the science of control between animals and machines?
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ali?
VELSHI: DORGAN: , cybernetics.
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Correct. It's cybernetics. Every other one of those answers has absolutely no factual basis whatsoever.
VELSHI: All right.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you may know this one from last week. "TIME" magazine named WikiLeaks the number one leak, and Watergate as number two, with President Nixon at the center of the controversy.
What was President Nixon's Secret Service code name? Was it A, Searchlight; B, Lancer; C, Renegade; or D, General?
VELSHI: I'm too young to know this. This is going to go to Richard.
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Richard?
QUEST: I don't know this. I'm guessing Lancer.
(BUZZER)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Incorrect.
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ali?
VELSHI: Searchlight.
(BELL RINGING)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are correct. It is Searchlight. Lancer was JFK's secret moniker. Renegade is President Obama's code name. And General was President Harry Truman's.
VELSHI: See, we wouldn't have known that if not for a WikiLeak, probably.
Thank you, Voice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you. Have a good day.
VELSHI: Richard, it feels good to be on top in the quiz. I have never been in this position.
QUEST: And don't get too comfortable, because you won't be there many more times as we head towards 2011.
Ali, that will -- I can't believe I'm so mean to you tonight, but that will do it for this week.
We are here each week, Thursdays, on "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" at 18:00.
VELSHI: And 2:00 p.m. Eastern in the NEWSROOM.
Keep the topics coming. We choose these based on what you tell us. So go to our blogs, CNN.com/QMB or CNN.com/Ali. Tell us each week what you want us to talk about.
We'll see you next week.
See you, Richard.
QUEST: See you next week.
VELSHI: He may be the world's most famous former hacker. We're talking to him about cybersecurity coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: Happening right now, officials are burning a southern California house known as a bomb factory. Those are live pictures of that house burning right now. They say it was too dangerous for bomb squads to enter. We've got an eye on that, and we'll make sure that goes the way it was supposed or let you know otherwise.
In London, angry students are protesting a controversial move by lawmakers that triples the cap on college tuition in London. They're concerned they'll be priced out of an education as that country's lawmakers try to cut the deficit.
And on Capitol Hill, House Democrats voted today not to bring up the tax package President Obama negotiated with Republicans. We will continue to cover that revolt going on in Capitol Hill.
It's time for "Globetrekking" and to the war in Afghanistan. Fourteen hundred Americans have been killed in Afghanistan; many more injured fighting the Taliban. Little is known about the shadowy enemy that disappears into mountainside strongholds and hideouts. No Western reporter has ever behind the lines to film the Taliban for days on end until now.
In the CNN documentary "TALIBAN," Norwegian filmmaker Paul Reftsdel reveals to Anderson Cooper the shadowy Afghanistan fighting force at war and at rest. Preparing weapons, coordinating ambushes, praying, playing, even at home with their families even. Here's a preview.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Taliban fighters prepare for battle. A convoy approaches. This is the Taliban as you've never seen them before. In battle, in their homes, in their hideouts. Rare, exclusive images behind enemy lines.
Norwegian filmmaker Paul Refsdal first came to Afghanistan in the 1980s to report on the Mujahidin. Now he returns on a dangerous assignment, one that will take him to one of the country's deadliest regions. It's an assignment that could get him kidnapped and killed.
(on camera): Why did you want to do this?
PAUL REFSDAL, NORWEGIAN JOURNALIST: Because we've been fighting the Taliban for nine years. I thought it was time that someone met them, and actually tried to show who these people are.
COOPER: Why risk your life to tell the story of these people who are fighting the U.S. government, fighting the Norwegians, as well? REFSDAL: It's very important that people know who we're fighting. Because at the present, people don't have a clue, really.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VELSHI: And that is just a small slice of the documentary. To see more of Refstal's amazing time with the Taliban and to hear him tell Anderson Cooper about his experience of being kidnapped, watch "TALIBAN." CNN, Saturday night - Saturday and Sunday nights, 8:00 and 11:00 Eastern.
All right. What would happen if kids were left to their own devices and had to teach each other in school? One professor thinks that approach just might help kids learn more. We'll talk to him after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
VELSHI: In "Chalk Talk" today, it's a project that inspired the movie "Slumdog Millionaire." Computer stations are put in some of the poorest neighborhoods in India. Kids clamor to get their hands on them and play the educational games. The idea was to leave kid alone and let them teach each other and learn in a more unconventional way. It's called The Hole in the Wall project, and it's a brainchild of professor Sugata Mitra, who joins me now from Newcastle University in England.
Professor, thank you for joining us. Tell us, please, about this Hole in the Wall, how it works.
SUGATA MITRA, EDUCATIONAL TECH PROFESSOR, NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY: Well, it's an experiment that's more than 12 years old now. And it started off by simply putting a -- a computer on a slum wall. More or less the way you would put a bank ATM except that it's just three feet off the ground. And what we -- what we saw 12 years ago was that groups of children can teach themselves to use the computer and the Internet on their own, no matter where they are or who they are or what language they speak. They could do it all over India, in most places in Africa and in Cambodia.
VELSHI: What good does it do them, Professor, if this is the only computer they're going to have access to? Does it somehow - does it help them learn other things or is it just giving them computer literacy?
MITRA: Well, it started off with trying to show that computer literacy can happen without a teacher, but then once they've had the computer for about six or seven months, they discover Google, and everything changes. Because the first things they did was that they started to Google their homework. And the slum teachers said, "You know, the English of these students, it's become fantastic. And their answers are really deep." And I thought to myself, oh, my God, what have I done? They're just copying things off Google.
But seven years later from Inset (ph), England, I found that they were not just copying it down. When they work in groups, they actually are learning off the Internet.
VELSHI: And there's something that's a collaborative about this, by virtue of the fact that not everyone has a computer, so they're sharing it? Is that what it is?
MITRA: Yes. What we thought was the great defect, what you just asked, that they have just one computer and there are so many of them -- it turned out that for learning, that's the most powerful thing you can have. Five children grouped around the computer can figure out the answer to almost anything as long as they can read and as long as they can use Google and Wikipedia and things like that.
VELSHI: Now, where do you go with this? What do you do? What with the learning you've had, the studying that you've done so far on this, how do you make this -- how do you take this further and really sort of enhance people's education, both in developing countries with slums and maybe even in developed countries?
MITRA: Yes, I mean, I started with this in those places where you simply didn't have schools and didn't have teachers. But realized very quickly that if you move this whole system into a school -- for example, here in northeastern England, we are using it in several schools. A teacher can then start off a topic by saying to the children, make yourselves into groups of four. Every group of four can use only one computer and not four computers. And then tell me the answer to this question. Tell me, for example, what's this issue with the environment? Why is everybody so concerned about it?
Then you leave the children alone for about 40 minutes, and they come back with what some teachers believe are almost one term's worth of work -
VELSHI: Wow.
MITRA: -- and they report it back to you.
VELSHI: Very interesting. It's the opposite of "Lord of the Flies." You put a bunch of kids together and they come up with good. Sugata Mitra, what a pleasure to talk to you and learn about this 12- year experiment you've been going on. We will follow it closely and discuss it with you again.
Sugata Mitra is a professor of education technology at Newcastle University in Newcastle, New England. Go to my blog, we'll link you up with his stuff.
Updating you on the latest developments in our top stories right now.
San Diego officials are burning a house described as a, quote, "bomb factory." Those are live pictures right now. It does seem to be less of a flame. In fact, it appears to be water that we're seeing there. Nearly every room in the house was packed with piles of explosive material and items related to making homemade bombs. Officials say the house was too dangerous to go inside, even for bomb disposing robots. The explosives were discovered after a gardener was hurt when some of the materials inside blew up.
In London right now, angry students are protesting a move by lawmakers that triples the cap on college tuition. They're concerned that they'll be priced out of an education as lawmakers in Britian try to cut the country's deficit.
Senate majority leader Harry Reid may be pressing ahead with a vote today on whether to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. But supporters of the repeal say it will likely fail if the vote is today. Some progress was made last night in talked to get Republican senator Susan Collins to vote for the measure. Collins wants to wait until after the tax cut vote to take up "don't ask, don't tell."
We'll be right back. Stay with us.
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VELSHI: Breaking news just in. We've been telling you about the student protests in London after parliament passed a move to increase tuition rates by about 300 percent.
We are just getting this in now. CNN has confirmed a car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla the Dutchess of Cornwall, was attacked by student protesters as the couple arrived at a performance in central London.
This happened Thursday evening. Protesters broke a window and threw paint over the car. Prince Charles and Camilla were unhurt. We're continuing to report on that, but that is the news. Car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla was attacked by protestors in London.
We'll have more on that shortly. I'll be right back.
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VELSHI: Breaking news we just brought you a few moments ago. These activities in London have heated up a little bit. Amid the protests by students who are protesting an increase in their college tuition, a car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla was attacked as it approached a show that they were going to in central London. Apparently windows were broken, paint was thrown at the car.
But Charles and Camilla are unhurt. That is according to reports that we are getting in. We will get you more information on this momentarily. But apparently the car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla was attacked by students protesting the tuition cost increases in London.
Time now for a CNN political update. Senate Republicans are blocking a bill to help ailing 9/11 first responders. Our senior political editor Mark Preston is in Washington to tell us all about it. Mark?
MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL EDITOR: Hey, Ali. How are you?
Fast and furious here in the closing days of this lame duck session. You're absolutely right. Senate Republicans blocked this bill for the 9/11 responders. What it would have done is provide money for those who got sick from the dust after the exposure. Democrats came up three votes short. Vote was 57 to 41, Ali. So, of course, Republicans are going to come under a lot of heat from Democrats for doing this. But, of course, the main priority right now that people are talking about, certainly here in Washington, D.C., is how to deal with these Bush tax cuts, and President Obama is coming under a lot of heat.
In fact, he's coming under so much heat, Ali, that we have liberal groups attacking him now, including the progressive Change Campaign Committee. They are running an ad on national cable as well as in Indiana trying to use his own words that President Obama used when he was on the campaign trail where he accused John McCain and of course President Bush of trying to help out millionaires with the extension of tax cuts.
Now, we do know, of course, that the White House is trying to make things better on Capitol Hill. House Democrats are very much opposed to this. We saw a vote earlier on that. And President Obama is under a lot of heat. At this point right now, Ali, they're trying to do the best they can here in Washington to try to fix things up.
And let's close it on this. Speaking of President Obama, Ali, he is getting swung at, so to speak, by a baseball player in Baltimore. Just up the road here from Washington, D.C. In fact, Luke Scott, who is the designated hitter for the Baltimore Orioles, is quoted in a story in Yahoo! Sports being very critical of President Obama. He says that President Obama does not represent America, nor does he represent anything what our forefathers are for.
But perhaps more importantly, Luke Scott goes on to say that President Obama was not born here and that he thinks that President Obama is hiding something. The Baltimore Orioles are distancing themselves from their player's comments, Ali. But when you thought you heard it all, there you go.
VELSHI: Somebody told him that the rumors have already been out there?
PRESTON: A couple of years, I think it's been out there. I think it's been debunked. But apparently some people out there including this baseball player think that it's still viable.
VELSHI: All right. Very good. Mark, good to see you, as always. Thank you very much, Mark Preston.
All right. Your next political update just an hour away.
If we didn't know it before, the skirmishes over WikiLeaks has shown us how impervious and at the same time vulnerable the Internet is. WikiLeaks defenders have struck back at parties they consider hostile to the mission, and those attacks have been minor so far against Visa and MasterCard and PayPal. Who knows what we'll see tomorrow.
Joining me now by phone is the world's most famous former hacker, Kevin Mitnick. Did prison time for his exploits in the 1990s. Now he's a sought-after consultant in the cyber security industry.
Kevin, good to talk to you. First of all, hackers really are not -- hackers are people who like meddling with computers and inventing stuff. It's a fine line to some people whether they're good or bad.
KEVIN MITNICK, CYBER SECURITY CONSULTANT (via phone): Right. I mean, hacking is a skill. And some -- one definition of hacking is people that like to get around security obstacles and find security holes. Some of those hackers exploit them for mischievous or malicious purposes. It's really -- hacking has many different definitions.
VELSHI: All right. So, let's talk from your perspective, as a guy who's done this before. What's the psychology behind this? Because at one point, it was WikiLeaks getting access to information and putting it out there in the unregulated cyber world. Now it feels like it's a cyber war, it's between governments and WikiLeaks. It's between these major companies and people who don't believe that -- that there should be these rules. How do you define what's going on right now?
MITNICK: Well, it looks like you have two things going on. You have WikiLeaks publishing material that was provided to them by somebody that worked in -- worked with the U.S. government. Maybe it was Bradley Manning. Maybe not. And they're basically publishing material as a journalist, and now because of the government crackdown in the situation, a lot of the funding sources are being stopped. For example, Visa, MasterCard, as you know, PayPal, you know, what they're doing is probably on request to the federal government. They're preventing WikiLeaks from getting any type of funding through these mechanisms.
So, what's happened in some parts of the hacker community, they're pretty upset about this, that the government is trying to take out WikiLeaks by stopping its funding. So then you have people out there that are doing denial of service attacks by trying to disrupt the business of these organizations. It's not a -- you know, it's not the ethical thing to do, but unfortunately, this stuff happens when you anger people who have access to technology.
VELSHI: Kevin, tell me this. They've attacked the corporate Web sites of these companies. It's been limited in its effect to most people. When the news came out that they were attacking Microsoft -- I'm sorry, MasterCard -- people were all worried about their credit cards. Turns out that wasn't the part of the business they were attacking.
How bad can this get, if these groups who believe in Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and have skills at hacking continue to get madder and madder, could it get back to us? Could it hurt individuals? MITNICK: Well, probably the targets won't be individuals. They would be companies. And these particular actors that are doing these things, you know, who knows what their skill sets are. Doing a denial of service attack, you know, a 15-year-old kid could do it. You could rent a boughtnet, meaning - a boughtnet is basically like a cyber army of computers that have been compromised, and you could rent time on these things for a few hundred bucks.
I mean, again, it's -- there's no skill set there. But if a skilled attacker is upset about the situation, it's possible they could compromise the internal networks of these organizations and cause havoc. But I haven't seen that to date. It looks like these individuals are trying to send a message that they're very upset that these organizations have stopped -- have interfered with WikiLeaks funding.
VELSHI: Kevin, good to talk to you. Thanks so much for joining us. Kevin Mitnick, the world's most famous former hacker.
All right. I want to keep you posted on what's going on in London. There are protests. They have not dissipated yet. There are still some students out there protesting the government's decision to increase tuition fees for university students. And in the process, a car carrying Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla, has been attacked.
We do understand that they are unhurt. They were on their way to a concern in London. Some paint was thrown at the car. Wow. There you go. You can see it right there. But apparently they were not harmed. They are okay. And police are continuing to disperse crowds in London.
We'll take a break. Be right back.
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VELSHI: I'm going to -- Brooke will have more on Prince Charles and Camilla in that car that was attacked in London at the top of the hour. I'll give you my "XYZ" right now.
For the last few days, this show has focused on a group of Americans called the 99ers, the long-term unemployed who have already exhausted the 99-week limit on state and federal jobless benefits. The recent tax cut compromise worked out between President Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill could extend unemployment benefits for a huge chunk of America's jobless for another 13 months. It will do nothing for the 99ers.
Forty-two-year-old Rhonda Taylor lost her $60,000 a year job in April of 2008. She's been unemployed since then. She exhausted her benefits, her savings, her 401(k). She's sold off most of her assets. Rhonda is one of the estimated five million 99ers out there nationwide.
She told my colleague Mary Snow nothing motivates you more than losing everything you own. You won't be picky. You'll take what work there is out there. Well, except that Rhonda lives in Rhode Island, which has one of the highest jobless rates in the country. She worries that her family will end up homeless next, even more so because she said the state's homeless shelters are all full. If she's forced on to the streets, she says she'll have no other choice but to put her children in foster care.
Rhonda is trying to do something. She's been organizing with other 99'ers to pressure Congress to extend their benefits by 20 weeks. But the likelihood of that happening anytime soon is very slim. In the meantime, 99ers like Rhonda Taylor will just have to make do somehow. Think about that.
That's my "XYZ." Brooke takes it from here.
