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CNN Live Saturday
9/11 Commission Wants Condoleezza Rice To Testify Publicly; NASA Calls Jet Experiement Complete Success; Interview With Scott Rogers
Aired March 27, 2004 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: CNN SATURDAY is ahead, but first these headlines. Israeli TV reports prosecutors want Prime Minister Ariel Sharon indicted. They've already indicted a business man they say bribed Sharon several years ago. Today's report says it will be up to a month before Israel's attorney general decides whether to follow the prosecutor's recommendation.
Senator John Kerry will have shoulder surgery Wednesday to repair a torn rotator cuff. No, he didn't hurt it skiing. His campaign says he aggravated an old injury when he grabbed a bus seat while campaigning in Iowa. The bus made a sudden stop.
In Los Angeles, a rock and roll legend is dead. Jan Berry of the duo Jan and Dean died last night at 62 after a seizure. The pair's 1960s hit included "Surf City," "Dead Man's Curve," and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena."
I'm Carol Lin and welcome to CNN LIVE SATURDAY. Also this hour, he was the big story all week, but will Richard Clarke's digs at President Bush bleed into the presidential campaign?
Who pays the most for healthcare? And who's getting squeezed?
Also, he's got only one leg, but a whole lot of heart. We're going to talk to one man on his incredible journey.
But right now there is new and bipartisan pressure on Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly before the 9/11 Commission. As a new polls shows, the president's approval rating in his fight against terrorism may be slipping. Here's CNN's White House correspondent Dana Bash.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The White House insists National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice refuses to publicly testify before the 9/11 Commission as a matter of executive privilege. But a Republican member of the commission says by standing on legal principle, they're shooting themselves in the foot politically.
JOHN LEHMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I think the White House is making a political blunder, an important miscalculation of the political impact of this. Condoleezza Rice should testify before our commission.
BASH: Democrats aren't letting it go. SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do "60 MINUTES" on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath.
BASH: The stepped pressure for Rice to testify even from within GOP ranks comes as the White House continues to blanket the airwaves, to try to stop political hemorrhaging over Richard Clarke's charge the president wasn't aggressive enough in confronting terror threats leading up to 9/11.
ANNOUNCER: Steady leadership in times of change.
BASH: Mr. Bush is building his re-election campaign around his stewardship against terrorism. It has been, aides say, his best political asset. But a new poll suggests approval of how the president handles terrorism has dropped eight points since last month from 65 percent to 57 percent.
Republicans say the counteroffensive to discredit Clarke as someone's whose changed his story must continue.
GLENN BOLGER, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: There's going to be a very small group of voters in the middle who have to kind of weigh both sides and make up their mind on who they trust, Richard Clarke before he wrote his book or Richard Clarke after he wrote his book.
BASH: Democrats call this character assassination and predict it will further hurt, not help, the president.
MICHAEL FELDMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: The ferocity of the attacks against Dick Clarke this week could backfire against the Bush administration because I think Americans deserve and expect real answers to be underlying charges.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: And Senator Kerry wouldn't answer a reporter's question on whether he thinks the president did everything possible to prevent the September 11th attacks. For its part, the Bush campaign issued a statement very quickly on the senator's new pressure on Condoleezza Rice to publicly testify at a hearing, saying he is now politicizing the commission - Carol?
LIN: All right, so Dana, are there no other options then for Condoleezza Rice to at least answer some of these questions in some sort of form?
BASH: Well, what the White House is trying to do and what the White House counsel sent a letter asking for on Thursday is a chance for her to meet again privately with members of the commission. She's done so once before back in February. But today, members of the commission said that they're not all that eager, if you will, to set that up as soon as possible because they are still hoping that she will testify publicly. If they give her a chance they believe to testify privately - or publicly, it will make it hard for her to at least do so at this time.
LIN: Right. Her interview with "60 MINUTES" is going to air tomorrow night, Sunday. Any preview on that? Any word on what she actually said to the reporters?
BASH: Well, Carol, she has been very, very angry in some private meetings with reporters about the charges that Richard Clarke has made, specifically even against her and what her knowledge was leading up to September 11th, and of course what the administration knew or didn't know on the September 11 attacks. So that is likely what we are going to hear from her. It is her chance, the White House believes, to hit back. Obviously as we've talking about, what the commission wants is for her to do so at a public hearing under oath - Carol.
LIN: All right, thank you very much, Dana Bash, traveling with the president.
Well, CNN is going to have much more on the 9/11 Commission hearings. Sunday's "Late Edition" tackles Richard Clarke's testimony. In fact, Richard Clarke will be one of Wolf's guests. That's tomorrow at noon Eastern.
Well, this week, testimony before the 9/11 Commission was particularly painful for those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks.
CNN's Elaine Quijano met with some family members of the victims.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some days, Rosemary Dillard can't bear to step outside.
ROSEMARY DILLARD, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOW: And I lay there and I hold his picture, and I talk to him, because he's all I had.
QUIJANO: Her husband, Eddie, was on board American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. This week, Dillard tried to move closer to accepting her husband's death by attending the September 11th Commission hearings.
DILLARD: Because the answers to these questions, the answers to how this happened, we have all got to know.
QUIJANO: Abraham Scott knows that pain, too. His wife of 24 years, Janice, was working at the Pentagon that day.
ABRAHAM SCOTT, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOWER: She was a loving and kind wife, an honorable mother.
QUIJANO: Scott was also there, as U.S. officials past and present testified. Both neither he nor Dillard was completely satisfied.
DILLARD: When the questions were answered, they were never answered.
QUIJANO: What the families did appreciate, the apology by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.
DILLARD: Yes, that was the most amazing thing. This man turns around and tells the families I'm sorry. You know, your heart just dropped.
SCOTT: It meant that he was sincere. He was - that I've heard of, the first one from that administration or any administration to apologize for what occurred on 9/11.
QUIJANO: And while both are disappointed National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice may not be publicly with the commission, other victims' family members accept that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I think if she gives her testimony in private behind closed doors, and gives it to the authorities that I trust the system.
QUIJANO: Ultimately families hope the commission's work will give them some peace.
DILLARD: I think it will kind of help soften the blow in my heart. And I can say, Eddie, I worked on this. Eddie, I got involved in everything. I can feel good about what I did in my husband's name.
QUIJANO (on camera): Rosemary Dillard knew the flight attendants on board American Airlines flight 77. She was their supervisor. Dillard plans to travel to Madrid to lend support to family members who lost loved ones in the terrorist train bombings there on March 11th.
Elaine Quijano, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: And now we move on to the Middle East. It is not violence that's making news there today. It's potential legal trouble for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
CNN's Paula Hancocks reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONENT: Israeli television network channel 2 is reporting this evening that prosecutors have recommended indicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.
Now the story is that this bribery scandal has been going on some time. And David Apple, an Israeli business man, has been charged back in January of bribing Ariel Sharon. He is alleged to have given $690,000 to Sharon's son, Gilad, to try and bring Ariel Sharon to help him in a real estate development that he was planning back in the late 1990s when Ariel Sharon was foreign minister. Now he was trying to build a tourism venture on a Greek island, which wasn't going well. And allegedly, he paid this money to the Sharon family so that Ariel Sharon and his deputy prime minister Ehud Almet (ph), who was at the time was the mayor of Jerusalem, would go and talk to Greek government officials to try and push the project forward. In return, allegedly, Apple would help the two in their political campaigns.
Now this evening, the justice ministry and the prime minister's office are refusing to comment, although Ariel Sharon had denied any wrongdoing in the past. And David Apple himself had denied any wrongdoing when he was indicted back in January.
We spoke to a legal expert a little earlier on. And he said not to read too much into the situation until we find out whether or not Ariel Sharon is going to be indicted. Channel reporting we could hear that from the attorney general within the next month or so.
There's no law stating that if Ariel Sharon is indicted, he has to step down. But pressure and public pressure and pressure from the opposition parties is likely to mean that if he is indicted, he could have to suspend himself from office during legal proceedings.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Remember when Mach 1, 2, and 3 were such a big deal? NASA attempts Mach 7. That's about 5,000 miles an hour. And...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence, threats, and insults are forbidden. From an operational standpoint, particularly in the long run, humiliating the civilian population leads to the widening of the cycle of violence.
LIN: A new CD-ROM program in Israel teaches checkpoint etiquette. And our grossest moment of the day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tarantula tastes a bit like fried shrimp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I brought my own fork. I just want to be prepared for anything that might crawl or creek or run around on the plate.
LIN: Yum. Tarantulas are not the most bizarre things on the menu.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Top stories this hour, John Kerry will have shoulder surgery Wednesday. NASA tests of a jet flying at seven times the speed of sound is a success.
And the Arab summit is postponed because the members can't agree on the agenda. NASA scientists had some fun testing their unmanned hypersonic aircraft. A B-52 bomber released the unmanned X-43A in the skies over the Pacific Ocean last hour. Well, the Mach 7 aircraft can go as fast as 5,000 miles per hour.
And technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg joins us by telephone with more details. Daniel, what was it like?
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you can say that the flying surf board has finally reached the ocean. NASA is calling today's launch of the X-43A aircraft/spacecraft a complete success. They say it performs all of the aerial dynamic maneuvers they were hoping for it to do.
You're seeing here what happened today. At 3:40 p.m. Eastern time, this B-52 took off from Edwards Air Force Base. It eventually released this Pegasus rocket. Strapped to the front of it is the X- 43A aircraft/spacecraft, which looks more like a flying surfboard. It's about 12 feet long. Pegasus rocket got up to about 100,000 feet, going about Mach 5. It then released the X-43A. And under its own power, NASA says it did perform these maneuvers for about six minutes, before then plunging down into the ocean.
The reason this is so key and so crucial is that this X-43A was not carrying any fuel tank. Well, it actually scooped in oxygen that's required to combust the engines, mixes it with some hydrogen, and then creates this enormous thrust. And that's different than the traditional vehicle, like a space shuttle, which has to carry this liquid oxygen, which is very heavy. So this unique design makes it lighter, makes it more sort of aerodynamic. But it's a very tricky process. And NASA was very - with the preparations going into it.
LIN: Daniel, what would they use this aircraft for eventually?
SIEBERG: Well, eventually, they're hoping, Carol, somewhere down the line, that this technology could be adapted to be used for commercial air travel. It could shorten the trip between say New York and London to do under five hours. It could change the way that supplies are ferried into space. It really has a lot of different applications.
LIN: Very cool.
SIEBERG: In fact, NASA's saying by the end of the year, they could test the vehicle at Mach 10.
LIN: Oh, my gosh.
SIEBERG: So you know, the sky's the limit, the sky's the limit.
LIN: All right. We can get to the West coast in a couple of hours. Sounds good to me. Thanks very much. Daniel Sieberg on the telephone with us.
Well, another remarkable story here. Since Monday morning, Scott Rogers hiked 30 miles along the Appalachian Trail. Now walking six miles a day may not sound like a very big deal, but if you only had one leg, the story changes.
Scott Rogers joins us now by telephone with an update from the trail. Scott, where are you?
SCOTT ROGERS, HIKER: Actually, I'm standing in the living room of Roger and Pat Dyer (ph).
LIN: And they're friends of yours?
ROGERS: No, well, they're trail angels.
LIN: Trail angels. And you need some angels here. A quick wrap-up on your story? I mean, you were - you lost your leg in an accident when you were - you tripped and a 12 gauge shotgun went off. Here you are, the bionic hiker now, with a specialized leg. And you're going to be doing this, hiking the trail, for what, the next eight months or so?
ROGERS: I'm hoping not quite that long. I'm figuring somewhere around mid October I'll be finished.
LIN: And I'm looking at a picture of you with your family, your six kids. Some of them even have joined you on the trail?
ROGERS: That's correct. My older son, Tyler, he started out with me and hiked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with me. And then on Wednesday afternoon, he changed out with my daughter Cassie, who is nine. She hiked one of the roughest sections of the trail with me and didn't complain the first time.
LIN: Yes. And at the time, there have been some very emotional days when the trail has gotten pretty rough. The terrain so bad, that sometimes you're actually face to face with the ground that you're trying to climb up. How do you do it?
ROGERS: You just do it one step at a time. Just put one foot in front of the other.
LIN: Is it painful?
ROGERS: At times, yes, it is. But you know, hiking the Appalachian Trail isn't hard. If you get tired, you just stop and rest. And then when you feel like going again, you go.
LIN: Well, that's what I might say about myself, but for example, you have written on your website that on Day 2, you fell six times. Day 3, you fell 15 times. What does that...
ROGERS: That's right.
LIN: What does that do to your - to basically your mental attitude about what you're trying to accomplish here?
ROGERS: Well, you just - I guess it's just pretty much exemplary of anything you do in life. If you fall down, you just get up, dust yourself off and keep going. It's when you fall down and don't get up that you find yourself in trouble.
LIN: What has been so far the most remarkable experience that you've had?
ROGERS: Probably on the morning of Day 4, which would be Thursday when my daughter Cassie and I summited Blood Mountain. We camped there. And we woke up scenery of the four state view with an awesome sunrise.
LIN: Oh. And what do you say to your kids about what you want them to learn from this experience?
ROGERS: I just want them to know that no matter how tough things get, that they don't ever have to give up and they don't have to accept circumstances as they are, that they can do things to change them.
LIN: Yes, well you're certainly doing just that. Scott, we're going to be following your progress and wish you well.
ROGERS: Why thank you.
LIN: Eat healthy tonight and watch that sunrise tomorrow.
ROGERS: Oh, yes.
LIN: All right, thanks very much, Scott Rogers.
ROGERS: OK, bye-bye.
LIN: Hey, if you want to follow Scott Rogers' progress as he hikes 2100 miles of the Appalachian Trail, you can log onto this website at www.onelegwonder.com.
More attacks in Iraq today. The Israeli army gets lessons on checkpoint dos and don'ts. And the Los Angeles police department tells African-Americans if you want to change the force, you need to join.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: A violent weekend in Iraq began when guerillas gunned down a police officer in Kirkuk last night. They reportedly killed an Iraqi truck driver transporting goods for Japanese troops in southern Iraq today. Also today, a roadside bomb in Baghdad hit a passing SUV and wounded five Iraqis. The U.S. military says their injuries are not life threatening. Authorities say insurgents attacked Mosul's City Hall with rockets and small arms fire. The assault killed two Iraqis and wounded at least five, including some police.
Reuters reports a three-year old boy died after his family car was fired on by U.S. troops in Tikrit. Other women and other children in the family were wounded. A U.S. military spokesman says the car failed to stop at a checkpoint.
Now to the Middle East. In the West Bank, a seven-year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed today while he played inside his home. Israeli military officials say the boy was killed by a Palestinian gunman aiming at an army jeep. But the boy's family believes the bullet came from Israeli troops after some Palestinian youth started throwing stones. The Associated Press reports video at the scene shows a bullet hitting an Israeli jeep and ricocheting to the family's second floor apartment.
And tension in the Middle East is especially high after Israel's assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Akmed Yassin. Israeli troops are paying even closer attention at checkpoints. And that is where many Palestinians have long accused Israel of abuse.
Now Israel is doing a little sensitivity training. Here's our Chris Burns.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Israeli checkpoint outside Nablus, one of more than 150 across the West Bank. The wait can take hours.
QUASSEF BUSHRA, FRENCH TEACHER: (through translator) When women have veils, it's more difficult.
BURNS: They think you're a suspect right away. They think you did something.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BURNS: Some are detained. Two men are held, bound and blindfolded.
Construction worker Muyaz Nasser cries out for water, complaining the plastic handcuffs cut into his wrists. Israeli soldiers unbind him for a moment to drink. They say Nasser was picked up on a nearby road and their computer said he's a terror suspect.
BURNS: You mean was he in a terrorist attack?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BURNS: Or was he - yes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Terrorist.
BURNS: But Nasser denies it. The Israeli organization checkpoint watch arrives on a regular visit. Dali Agolum calls an Israeli lawmaker asking for help.
How do they put pressure? What do they do?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They call the head of the army. And they do (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BURNS: Does it work sometimes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BURNS: After more than three hours, Nasser is taken to jail. The other blindfolded detainee, a student, is released. Israeli soldiers are trained in checkpoint conduct. How to maintain security, yet avoid abuses. The Israeli army has a new CD-ROM for it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence, threats, and insults are forbidden. From an operational standpoint, and particularly in the long run, humiliating the civilian population leads to the widening of the cycle of violence.
BURNS (on camera): Though he can't comment on camera about the CD-ROM, one Israeli soldier here says training is one thing, but experiences worth far more in learning how to deal with the innocent, and yet be ready for a deadly situation.
(voice-over): We showed the checkpoint scene to the CD-ROM's author.
LT. COL. AMOS GLORA, ISRAELI ARMY: What I saw here, I think pretty much is something that I believe fits or matches what it is that they're being taught, what we're teaching them.
BURNS: Some Israeli documentaries on the checkpoints, including this one, suggest there are abuses.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are humiliated. They are sometimes even beaten.
BURNS: Well, that is what this training program means to do is try to get the soldiers to - to not to humiliate the...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need for this training program for not hating people?
BURNS: At the same checkpoint, troops recently caught one boy transporting a bomb. Another was stopped wearing a suicide belt. Israeli officials say the CD-ROM is not in response to a problem or criticism. It's merely additional training, but that might be an indication that while Israel plans at least a partial pullout from the West Bank and Gaza, some checkpoints and scenes like these could remain a reality.
Chris Burns, CNN, near Nablus on the West Bank.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: The blame game continues. Could the September 11th attacks have been prevented? Could Democrat and Republican administrations have done more? Is the United States ready to prevent another attack? A political roundtable when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: More news ahead, but first here's a look at what's happening this hour. Mounting political pressure in Taiwan, after a massive demonstrations in the capitol. Taiwan's president cleared the way today for a recount of last weekend's razor close presidential elections. The president faces allegations he staged a failed assassination attempt to get sympathy votes. That's a charge he strongly denies.
President Bush is talking up the economy during his weekly radio address today. He boasted saying Americans - the American economy is strong and growing stronger. Bush also touted a Census Bureau report that home ownership grew 24 percent last year.
John Kerry, meanwhile, says the president still doesn't get it. That's a quote when it comes to the economy. He make the comment today in a written statement. The Democratic presidential hopeful says if he's elected, he'll create 10 million new jobs in the new four years.
Well, economic hardship is felt by millions of Americans without health insurance. Few people realize that the uninsured are billed as much, at a much higher rate.
CNN financial correspondent Peter Viles has more on this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ed and Dianna Jellison are still paying the price for a trip to the hospital two years ago. Suffering from encephalitis, a viral infection, Ed was hospitalized 17 days.
JELLISON: My whole world had been turned completely upside down. We lost our business. My husband wasn't going to be the same again. Everything had changed.
VILES: They paid $30,000 in doctor's bills, but then another bill came from Florida Hospital, $116,000. The Jellisons had no health insurance. If they did, the insurance company would have been charged a fraction of that amount.
JELLISON: It makes me very mad, very mad.
VILES: But that's the way hospital billing works. List prices are wildly inflated, but insurance companies don't pay those high prices. Only the uninsured do.
K.B. FORBES, WWW.CONSEJOHELP.ORG: It is outrageous that they price-gouge a working-class, middle-class family here in the United States. It's all about greed. All they wanted to do was suck out the hard-earned assets of this family.
VILES: These are cases K.B. Forbes has analyzed. An appendectomy, the bill to Medicare would be $10,000, to an insurance company, $12,000, but if you are uninsured, $29,000. A broken leg cost Medicare $4,800. It costs an insurance company $5,400. Cost if you have no insurance, $15,000.
Still, the hospital industry says it loses money treating the uninsured.
CARMELA COYLE, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: We have 44 million Americans who have no health insurance coverage at all. And while they come to America's hospital emergency departments and are able to receive care, there is no payment that's ultimately received for many of those patients.
VILES: The Bush administration's point man on this, Tommy Thompson, is urging hospitals to offer discounts to the uninsured and some hospitals are doing so.
Peter Viles, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: All right, we're going to focus again on the 9/11 Commission. This week's testimony pitted one administration against another over who did more to prevent terrorism. What is the political fallout from the hearings?
Joining us now is Ann Lewis, national chair of the Democratic National Committee's Womens Vote Center and Frank Donatelli, a former political director for President Reagan.
Good evening to both of you.
FRANK DONATELLI, FMR. REAGAN POLITICAL DIR.: Hi, Carol.
ANN LEWIS, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CMTE.: Good evening.
LIN: It seemed like a blame game there at the 9/11 Commission hearings, but the bottom line is, Frank, what is this going to do to Bush - President Bush's re-election effort?
DONATELLI: Well, you have some short term opinion that indicates that the public is more skeptical on what the president has done on terror. But I think that it is very, very important to note that the president is going to have to continue and the administration is going to have to continue to make the case, Carol, about all the things that the president has done since 9/11 to make America safer. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act, the funding for intelligence agencies.
So the administration's going to have to continue to make that case. I think when the public hears the whole story, the president will continue to score highly on this measure.
LIN: What do you think, Ann?
LEWIS: Well, I'll agree with Frank that we're beginning to see some short term effect, which is not surprising given that something like 90 percent of the public tells us they're paying attention to this. There really could not be a more important issue to all of us. It goes directly to the question of security. But I've got to say I was surprised this week the Bush White House began to act so politically. By making these personal charges against Richard Clarke, instead of talking about the substance of what was being said or what the commission was doing, they really turned it into almost a mini political campaign.
I think that has increased the likelihood that this will have political impact.
LIN: But you know John Kerry is already jumping in - I mean just moments ago, he issued a statement saying Condoleezza Rice needs to come forward and come forward fast to testify publicly.
LEWIS: Well, there is that contradiction, which I think a number of people have noted, including a number of Republicans, that Condoleezza Rice has been going around, making the rounds to every television camera apparently within the Beltway, but refusing to testify in public before the commission.
And you know, people think there's something sort of mistaken about that. That's a real conflict. If you've got the time, if you've got the interest, if you've got the information to go to all the television shows, then you ought also to go to the commission that has the authority to listen to this and to deal with this.
LIN: And how much gas, though, does this give John Kerry out on the campaign trail?
LEWIS: Well, I'm not - I don't think this is about giving John Kerry gas. I mean, when John Kerry went to choose the subject for his first speech on Friday since coming back, he did it on the economy. That's the subject he wanted to talk about.
But they also felt that this issue was so prominent, he had to make a statement to be on record. This isn't one that he's making a political priority.
DONATELLI: Can I just say I'll accept Ann's challenge and talk about Mr. Clarke's testimony before the commission this week. He said that the Bush administration did not place a high enough priority on terror. But then he went on to say number one, he had no specific disagreement with any Bush policies. Number two, he knew of no specific intelligence that would have prevented 9/11. And number three, he said that he didn't think 9/11 could be prevented.
So what you have here, Carol, is a very sensational charge, but nothing to back it up.
LIN: All right, so how much of - I mean, how much staying power do those charges have then? Are we going to be hearing about this at the conventions? Or do you think that this is going to die out once the commission folds up and Condoleezza Rice does or does not do whatever it is that she might do?
LEWIS: I think the debate has changed fundamentally. As we saw in George Bush's first political ads, when he began, he wanted to talk about himself as a leader in the fight against terrorism. Well, because of Richard Clarke's book, and by the way, because of some other books, news accounts that have come out, we're now seeing that this is not at all an unmixed story, if you will. This Bush administration did decide, for example, to stop flying the predator planes, which had been doing such valuable surveillance work. There were some policy decisions made that could have been made differently.
I think, again, it changes the debate. And people will now see that there are two sides to the national security question.
DONATELLI: OK, what this is going to show - what this commission is going to show is that everything changed after 9/11. That's the whole point of what happened. The country is now focused. And when 9/11 occurred, the president stepped up to the plate many times against intransigent Democratic opposition to create the Department of Homeland Security, to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan, and to give us the Patriot Act, which John Kerry says he's now against.
LIN: So what I'm hearing...
DONATELLI: I'm very comfortable talking about President Bush's security record.
LIN: Right, but what I'm talking about is how much of this - you know, there are charges and counter charges about who did - did President Clinton - should President Clinton been more aggressive in going after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. You know, to heck with what Pakistan and Afghanistan governing bodies might think, and whether President Bush...
DONATELLI: I'm not one to...
LIN: ...and how much are we going to hear about this on the campaign trail? Or is this just one piece of the puzzle in a bigger picture of campaigning?
LEWIS: I think this is going to be one piece of the puzzle, but I would agree again, one, I think it continues to be talked about because until now, President Bush has talked about national security and his efforts in fighting terrorism as if it was again wholly and asset for him. What this conversation has done is changed it so people will now look and say well, did we do all we could? Are we doing all we can now?
Richard Clarke has also said that in fact he believes that going to war in Iraq, as we did, diverted resources, diverted attention from the war on terrorism, and that we would have been better served to take those resources, keep those assets directly...
LIN: Frank?
LEWIS: ...against the people that were doing the terrorism.
DONATELLI: OK, I...
LIN: All right. LEWIS: So I think that's a debate.
DONATELLI: ...I think what - what this commission shows is that everything changed after 9/11.
LIN: All right, that's it. That's all the time that we have. The two of you, thank you very much.
DONATELLI: Thank you.
LIN: Frank Donatelli, Ann Lewis.
Well, there's something different about the class of '0803 of the Los Angeles police department. We're going to tell you when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Top stories this hour, NASA calls its test of the hypersonic jet aircraft a success. Israeli TV says prosecutors are recommending Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted in connection with a bribery scandal. And Jan Berry of the '60s singing group Jan and Dean dies at the age of 62.
The Los Angeles police department has had some troubles - has had a troublesome image in the past. But the force is trying to change that. And it's reaching out to new recruits.
Our Miguel Marquez takes a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Eric Jones is one of 46 in LAPD Recruit Officer Group 0803.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eric Jones.
ERIC JONES, OFFICER, LOS ANGELES POLICE: It's actually a dream come true. It's a lot of hard work.
MARQUEZ: Jones was inspired by his police officer uncle to join the force. L.A.'s police chief wishes there were more like him.
WILLIAM BRATTON, CHIEF, LOS ANGELES POLICE: Around the country, we're having trouble in every police organization I'm aware of, attracting African-American candidates.
MARQUEZ: Bratton says in L.A., the percentage of African- American cops is actually higher than the percentage of blacks in the population at large. But high crime rates in black communities, combined with the distrust of police, makes more recruitment necessary, but difficult.
BRATTON: Within the African-American community, oftentimes for these young people, policing is not seen as a profession that you want to go into because you're concerned of being alienated from your peer group.
MARQUEZ: So LAPD is recruiting African-Americans with this pitch. Changing LAPD means joining it.
ERIC JONES, OFFICER, LOS ANGELES POLICE: Sir, were you watching me while I load the bean bags shot gun sir?
MARQUEZ: Jones, now a few weeks into his new job in L.A.'s rampart division, says when he decided to join, he got some jokes. But joining won out.
JONES: With having your department mirror what the community looks like, you know as I said before, it - you can better relate to people.
MARQUEZ: At a barber shop in L.A.'s Lemerd (ph) Park, many African-Americans needed a lot of convincing that LAPD is on their side.
DYONONE HICKS, LOS ANGELES RESIDENT: Lots of time when you think about cops, you kind of think about, you know, staying away from them.
MARQUEZ: Chief Bratton says high incarceration rates of African- Americans makes for a smaller pool of potential recruits. Plus an anti-cop message in pop culture doesn't help.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gangster rap, which is the heroes, if you will, to so many of these kids. You know, Snoop Dogg, and the rest of these characters.
MARQUEZ: As Eric Jones heads out for another day, the big issues aren't his concern. He's focused on the basics.
JONES: It actually does my heart good to help anybody. So - you know, and that was one of the reasons why, you know, I chose to do this as far as a professional.
MARQUEZ: Miguel Marquez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: March Madness, a tiger on the prowl, and a changing of the guard in the world of women's figure skating. Larry Smith will be here with sports news with CNN LIVE SATURDAY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: It helped launch the careers of legends like Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, and Michael Jackson. And it continues to give many of today's most popular African American and Latino performers their start. Now Harlem's world famous Apollo theater is celebrating its 70th birthday with a star studded party.
Adaora Udoji reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ADAORA UDOJI: From the beginning, the Apollo theater catapulted young unknowns to stardom. The legend, beginning with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, who brought down the house in 1934.
OSSIE DAVIS, ACTOR: Oh, my God. How many times did I go to heaven sitting in those seats out there? How many times.
UDOJI: Celebrated artists Ossie Davis began his pilgrimmages in 1939. He recalls electrifying performances that inspired new dreams. The theater became a focal point national wide. For the first time, African-Americans perform for African-American audiences both in the seats and on radio.
DAVIS: There was this beautiful man, Willie Bryant, who was the MC at that time. And it seems to me as I remember now that Willy's job was to convert us from country hicks and boobs and whoever we were and wherever we come from, and to people who at the click of a finger were on top of a heap.
UDOJI: Never before had the door opened so widely for the country to experience treasures few realized it had, the tap dancing wonders of the Nicholas brothers, the Hinds brothers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody say yeah!
UDOJI: Steve Wonder, James Brown, Lena Horne, and so many others.
DAVIS: It was here in Harlem that we began to establish a sense of who we were as Americans, who we were now that we were no longer Africans, now that we were no longer slaves.
UDOJI: But like all great blues singers, the theater has had its share of troubles.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE, THE SCHOMBURG CENTER: They persevered through the turmoil in the '30s and the '40s and also the '60s. Some of the financial problems that occurred in the '70s, but it hadn't closed down. It just persevered, which is really part of Harlem itself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a very young Aretha Franklin.
UDOJI: Its fans have never forgotten. Nearly half a million visit the theater every year, making it one of New York City's most popular tourist attractions.
The performers still come. The names are just different. Chris Rock, Tom Jones, already famous before they got here.
And these streets where the Apollo has outlived its original neighbors has also changed. Today, among others, there are Starbucks and Disney stores. But still, if you listen closely, you can almost hear the voices of the past.
Adaora Udoji, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Now we move on to sports. The Huskies have been rolling through their March Madness match-ups in the college basketball playoffs. And today, they took aim at the Crimson Tide.
How'd they do? Our Larry Smith here to fill us in.
LARRY SMITH, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Well, truly in the NCAA tournament, UConn bite is as bad its bark, I guess you could say to use a really bad analogy. For the first time since they won it all back in 1999, Yukon back in the final four. The two seat in the Phoenix regional never even let Cinderella Alabama in the game. 87- 71, the final. The big story, though, heading into next weekend for the Huskies is the health of all American Center and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). He battled back problems earlier this month and in this game suffered a pinched nerve in his back. We'll see how - the next week, how he does.
So UConn is San Antonio bound. A second final four ticket will be punched tonight in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Top seat St. Joseph's vies for its first final four appearance, as 1961 versus second seated Oklahoma State. Now the Hawks and St. Joe's have a nation's best 30 and 1 record, but still considered by some to be an underdog to the cowboys.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHIL MARTELLI, ST. JOSEPH'S HEAD COACH: I haven't mentioned to them that, you know, it looks like we're an underdog tomorrow. I haven't mentioned that at all to them. Not one time have I told them, "Fellows, we're an underdog tomorrow, even though we're 30 and 1 in the number one seat." I haven't said that once to them. So the - you know, that's wasted motivation to me. The motivation that we have is that these guys love basketball. And every single guy on our team plays basketball for one reason - to win the game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: And again, that game is tonight in about 10 minutes. To golf, third round of the Players' Championship. How about Tiger Woods had to really come on strong on Friday just to make the cut. Great shot there. The chip in on the par five 9th hole. Then later, second shot on the par for 18. This kind of erratic play right now for Tiger. Bogey here. 68 on the day. He is at four under par. Six shots behind leader Adam Scott. How about Mac Gogle's (ph) two shots on the always interesting 17th hole. That island green. Watch this, hitch the wood on the very front edge, bounces high into the air, lands on the green Gogle (ph).
Yes, hey, I'd be excited, too. As he moves on. He is three under par right now. Again, seven shots behind Adam Scott.
14-year old Michelle Wie holding her own and then some against the pros at the Kraft/Nabisco Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year. Wie burning the first two holes of her round on the way to shooting a three under 68. Only 18 of the 78 golfers to make the cut are under par after the third round. Wie heading into Sunday's final round at six under par, trailing Grace Park and Ari Song by two strokes.
World figure skating championships, American Sasha Cohen takes silver behind Japan's Suzuka Erikawa. Five time champion Michelle Kwan settles for a bronze. The ninth year in a row she's earned a medal in this event. It was a bizarre ending to a strange week for Kwan. A streaker jumped onto the ice, just as she was ready to start her free program today.
And yes, they caught him and got his clothes back on. And once again, basketball at Yukon. Advantage at the NCAA final four tournament, they beat Alabama. St. Joe's and Oklahoma State playing tonight. The other two regional finals take place tomorrow afternoon. And again, the San Antonio is the place for the final four next weekend. They hosted it for the first time back in '98.
LIN: All right, terrific. Thanks, Larry.
SMITH: OK.
LIN: Well, how is your appetite? Prepare to say good-bye to it when a group of explorers gather for their centennial meeting. The menu is enough to give Indiana Jones indigestion.
CNN's Jeanne Moos offers a report that is not for the squeamish.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Instead of getting bitten, take a bite of tarantula tempura.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Little to eat, but great.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This one's hairier.
MOOS: Or maybe you'd prefer succulent roasted beaver, or steamed and roasted rattlesnake.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you get the rattle with the snake, it's like a Happy Meal.
MOOS: Forget a Big Mac attack. These appetizers really could attack from Louisiana alligator to...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Meal worm scorpions on a puff pastry.
MOOS: What better way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Explorers Club.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to explore quite a bit tonight.
MOOS: Maybe the Madagascar hissing cockroach kabob would go down better with a cocktail.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The martini with the high ball in here. MOOS: Hog eyeball or cow eyeball fritters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we're trying to do here is not be gross.
MOOS: Could have fooled her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where's the shrimp?
MOOS: The Explorers Club boasts members like Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mount Everest. So why make a mountain out of an eyeball?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Slimy, yet satisfying.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
MOOS: The Explorers say don't confuse our tarantulas in brandy with "FEAR FACTOR."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go, you got to go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You live on this. This is sustenance. This is not grotesque material.
MOOS: Makes regular food seem like a bore. Uh-oh, a steak hors- d'oevre. Some of the reviews sounded like faint praise.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I was stuck out in the woods, I would eat it.
MOOS: Past the gator.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It does kind of taste like chicken.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tarantula tastes a bit like fried shrimp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I brought my own fork. I just want to be prepared for anything that might crawl or creep or run away on the plate.
MOOS: Don't bother complaining, waiter, there's a fly in my soup here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Waiter, there's a grasshopper in my sushi.
MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: On that note, "CAPITAL GANG" up next. Hi, Mark.
MARK SHIELDS, CO-HOST: Carol, "THE CAPITAL GANG" will look at Richard Clarke's blast of President's Bush's performance in fighting the war against terror and what else was heard by the 9/11 Commission. We'll debate Senator Kerry's tax cut plan, plus developments in Haiti and in the Middle East. All that and much more, right here next on CNN.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired March 27, 2004 - 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: CNN SATURDAY is ahead, but first these headlines. Israeli TV reports prosecutors want Prime Minister Ariel Sharon indicted. They've already indicted a business man they say bribed Sharon several years ago. Today's report says it will be up to a month before Israel's attorney general decides whether to follow the prosecutor's recommendation.
Senator John Kerry will have shoulder surgery Wednesday to repair a torn rotator cuff. No, he didn't hurt it skiing. His campaign says he aggravated an old injury when he grabbed a bus seat while campaigning in Iowa. The bus made a sudden stop.
In Los Angeles, a rock and roll legend is dead. Jan Berry of the duo Jan and Dean died last night at 62 after a seizure. The pair's 1960s hit included "Surf City," "Dead Man's Curve," and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena."
I'm Carol Lin and welcome to CNN LIVE SATURDAY. Also this hour, he was the big story all week, but will Richard Clarke's digs at President Bush bleed into the presidential campaign?
Who pays the most for healthcare? And who's getting squeezed?
Also, he's got only one leg, but a whole lot of heart. We're going to talk to one man on his incredible journey.
But right now there is new and bipartisan pressure on Condoleezza Rice to testify publicly before the 9/11 Commission. As a new polls shows, the president's approval rating in his fight against terrorism may be slipping. Here's CNN's White House correspondent Dana Bash.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The White House insists National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice refuses to publicly testify before the 9/11 Commission as a matter of executive privilege. But a Republican member of the commission says by standing on legal principle, they're shooting themselves in the foot politically.
JOHN LEHMAN, 9/11 COMMISSION MEMBER: I think the White House is making a political blunder, an important miscalculation of the political impact of this. Condoleezza Rice should testify before our commission.
BASH: Democrats aren't letting it go. SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If Condoleezza Rice can find time to do "60 MINUTES" on television before the American people, she ought to find 60 minutes to speak to the commission under oath.
BASH: The stepped pressure for Rice to testify even from within GOP ranks comes as the White House continues to blanket the airwaves, to try to stop political hemorrhaging over Richard Clarke's charge the president wasn't aggressive enough in confronting terror threats leading up to 9/11.
ANNOUNCER: Steady leadership in times of change.
BASH: Mr. Bush is building his re-election campaign around his stewardship against terrorism. It has been, aides say, his best political asset. But a new poll suggests approval of how the president handles terrorism has dropped eight points since last month from 65 percent to 57 percent.
Republicans say the counteroffensive to discredit Clarke as someone's whose changed his story must continue.
GLENN BOLGER, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: There's going to be a very small group of voters in the middle who have to kind of weigh both sides and make up their mind on who they trust, Richard Clarke before he wrote his book or Richard Clarke after he wrote his book.
BASH: Democrats call this character assassination and predict it will further hurt, not help, the president.
MICHAEL FELDMAN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: The ferocity of the attacks against Dick Clarke this week could backfire against the Bush administration because I think Americans deserve and expect real answers to be underlying charges.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BASH: And Senator Kerry wouldn't answer a reporter's question on whether he thinks the president did everything possible to prevent the September 11th attacks. For its part, the Bush campaign issued a statement very quickly on the senator's new pressure on Condoleezza Rice to publicly testify at a hearing, saying he is now politicizing the commission - Carol?
LIN: All right, so Dana, are there no other options then for Condoleezza Rice to at least answer some of these questions in some sort of form?
BASH: Well, what the White House is trying to do and what the White House counsel sent a letter asking for on Thursday is a chance for her to meet again privately with members of the commission. She's done so once before back in February. But today, members of the commission said that they're not all that eager, if you will, to set that up as soon as possible because they are still hoping that she will testify publicly. If they give her a chance they believe to testify privately - or publicly, it will make it hard for her to at least do so at this time.
LIN: Right. Her interview with "60 MINUTES" is going to air tomorrow night, Sunday. Any preview on that? Any word on what she actually said to the reporters?
BASH: Well, Carol, she has been very, very angry in some private meetings with reporters about the charges that Richard Clarke has made, specifically even against her and what her knowledge was leading up to September 11th, and of course what the administration knew or didn't know on the September 11 attacks. So that is likely what we are going to hear from her. It is her chance, the White House believes, to hit back. Obviously as we've talking about, what the commission wants is for her to do so at a public hearing under oath - Carol.
LIN: All right, thank you very much, Dana Bash, traveling with the president.
Well, CNN is going to have much more on the 9/11 Commission hearings. Sunday's "Late Edition" tackles Richard Clarke's testimony. In fact, Richard Clarke will be one of Wolf's guests. That's tomorrow at noon Eastern.
Well, this week, testimony before the 9/11 Commission was particularly painful for those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks.
CNN's Elaine Quijano met with some family members of the victims.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some days, Rosemary Dillard can't bear to step outside.
ROSEMARY DILLARD, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOW: And I lay there and I hold his picture, and I talk to him, because he's all I had.
QUIJANO: Her husband, Eddie, was on board American Airlines flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. This week, Dillard tried to move closer to accepting her husband's death by attending the September 11th Commission hearings.
DILLARD: Because the answers to these questions, the answers to how this happened, we have all got to know.
QUIJANO: Abraham Scott knows that pain, too. His wife of 24 years, Janice, was working at the Pentagon that day.
ABRAHAM SCOTT, SEPTEMBER 11 WIDOWER: She was a loving and kind wife, an honorable mother.
QUIJANO: Scott was also there, as U.S. officials past and present testified. Both neither he nor Dillard was completely satisfied.
DILLARD: When the questions were answered, they were never answered.
QUIJANO: What the families did appreciate, the apology by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.
DILLARD: Yes, that was the most amazing thing. This man turns around and tells the families I'm sorry. You know, your heart just dropped.
SCOTT: It meant that he was sincere. He was - that I've heard of, the first one from that administration or any administration to apologize for what occurred on 9/11.
QUIJANO: And while both are disappointed National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice may not be publicly with the commission, other victims' family members accept that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And I think if she gives her testimony in private behind closed doors, and gives it to the authorities that I trust the system.
QUIJANO: Ultimately families hope the commission's work will give them some peace.
DILLARD: I think it will kind of help soften the blow in my heart. And I can say, Eddie, I worked on this. Eddie, I got involved in everything. I can feel good about what I did in my husband's name.
QUIJANO (on camera): Rosemary Dillard knew the flight attendants on board American Airlines flight 77. She was their supervisor. Dillard plans to travel to Madrid to lend support to family members who lost loved ones in the terrorist train bombings there on March 11th.
Elaine Quijano, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: And now we move on to the Middle East. It is not violence that's making news there today. It's potential legal trouble for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
CNN's Paula Hancocks reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONENT: Israeli television network channel 2 is reporting this evening that prosecutors have recommended indicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.
Now the story is that this bribery scandal has been going on some time. And David Apple, an Israeli business man, has been charged back in January of bribing Ariel Sharon. He is alleged to have given $690,000 to Sharon's son, Gilad, to try and bring Ariel Sharon to help him in a real estate development that he was planning back in the late 1990s when Ariel Sharon was foreign minister. Now he was trying to build a tourism venture on a Greek island, which wasn't going well. And allegedly, he paid this money to the Sharon family so that Ariel Sharon and his deputy prime minister Ehud Almet (ph), who was at the time was the mayor of Jerusalem, would go and talk to Greek government officials to try and push the project forward. In return, allegedly, Apple would help the two in their political campaigns.
Now this evening, the justice ministry and the prime minister's office are refusing to comment, although Ariel Sharon had denied any wrongdoing in the past. And David Apple himself had denied any wrongdoing when he was indicted back in January.
We spoke to a legal expert a little earlier on. And he said not to read too much into the situation until we find out whether or not Ariel Sharon is going to be indicted. Channel reporting we could hear that from the attorney general within the next month or so.
There's no law stating that if Ariel Sharon is indicted, he has to step down. But pressure and public pressure and pressure from the opposition parties is likely to mean that if he is indicted, he could have to suspend himself from office during legal proceedings.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Remember when Mach 1, 2, and 3 were such a big deal? NASA attempts Mach 7. That's about 5,000 miles an hour. And...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence, threats, and insults are forbidden. From an operational standpoint, particularly in the long run, humiliating the civilian population leads to the widening of the cycle of violence.
LIN: A new CD-ROM program in Israel teaches checkpoint etiquette. And our grossest moment of the day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tarantula tastes a bit like fried shrimp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I brought my own fork. I just want to be prepared for anything that might crawl or creek or run around on the plate.
LIN: Yum. Tarantulas are not the most bizarre things on the menu.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Top stories this hour, John Kerry will have shoulder surgery Wednesday. NASA tests of a jet flying at seven times the speed of sound is a success.
And the Arab summit is postponed because the members can't agree on the agenda. NASA scientists had some fun testing their unmanned hypersonic aircraft. A B-52 bomber released the unmanned X-43A in the skies over the Pacific Ocean last hour. Well, the Mach 7 aircraft can go as fast as 5,000 miles per hour.
And technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg joins us by telephone with more details. Daniel, what was it like?
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, you can say that the flying surf board has finally reached the ocean. NASA is calling today's launch of the X-43A aircraft/spacecraft a complete success. They say it performs all of the aerial dynamic maneuvers they were hoping for it to do.
You're seeing here what happened today. At 3:40 p.m. Eastern time, this B-52 took off from Edwards Air Force Base. It eventually released this Pegasus rocket. Strapped to the front of it is the X- 43A aircraft/spacecraft, which looks more like a flying surfboard. It's about 12 feet long. Pegasus rocket got up to about 100,000 feet, going about Mach 5. It then released the X-43A. And under its own power, NASA says it did perform these maneuvers for about six minutes, before then plunging down into the ocean.
The reason this is so key and so crucial is that this X-43A was not carrying any fuel tank. Well, it actually scooped in oxygen that's required to combust the engines, mixes it with some hydrogen, and then creates this enormous thrust. And that's different than the traditional vehicle, like a space shuttle, which has to carry this liquid oxygen, which is very heavy. So this unique design makes it lighter, makes it more sort of aerodynamic. But it's a very tricky process. And NASA was very - with the preparations going into it.
LIN: Daniel, what would they use this aircraft for eventually?
SIEBERG: Well, eventually, they're hoping, Carol, somewhere down the line, that this technology could be adapted to be used for commercial air travel. It could shorten the trip between say New York and London to do under five hours. It could change the way that supplies are ferried into space. It really has a lot of different applications.
LIN: Very cool.
SIEBERG: In fact, NASA's saying by the end of the year, they could test the vehicle at Mach 10.
LIN: Oh, my gosh.
SIEBERG: So you know, the sky's the limit, the sky's the limit.
LIN: All right. We can get to the West coast in a couple of hours. Sounds good to me. Thanks very much. Daniel Sieberg on the telephone with us.
Well, another remarkable story here. Since Monday morning, Scott Rogers hiked 30 miles along the Appalachian Trail. Now walking six miles a day may not sound like a very big deal, but if you only had one leg, the story changes.
Scott Rogers joins us now by telephone with an update from the trail. Scott, where are you?
SCOTT ROGERS, HIKER: Actually, I'm standing in the living room of Roger and Pat Dyer (ph).
LIN: And they're friends of yours?
ROGERS: No, well, they're trail angels.
LIN: Trail angels. And you need some angels here. A quick wrap-up on your story? I mean, you were - you lost your leg in an accident when you were - you tripped and a 12 gauge shotgun went off. Here you are, the bionic hiker now, with a specialized leg. And you're going to be doing this, hiking the trail, for what, the next eight months or so?
ROGERS: I'm hoping not quite that long. I'm figuring somewhere around mid October I'll be finished.
LIN: And I'm looking at a picture of you with your family, your six kids. Some of them even have joined you on the trail?
ROGERS: That's correct. My older son, Tyler, he started out with me and hiked Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday with me. And then on Wednesday afternoon, he changed out with my daughter Cassie, who is nine. She hiked one of the roughest sections of the trail with me and didn't complain the first time.
LIN: Yes. And at the time, there have been some very emotional days when the trail has gotten pretty rough. The terrain so bad, that sometimes you're actually face to face with the ground that you're trying to climb up. How do you do it?
ROGERS: You just do it one step at a time. Just put one foot in front of the other.
LIN: Is it painful?
ROGERS: At times, yes, it is. But you know, hiking the Appalachian Trail isn't hard. If you get tired, you just stop and rest. And then when you feel like going again, you go.
LIN: Well, that's what I might say about myself, but for example, you have written on your website that on Day 2, you fell six times. Day 3, you fell 15 times. What does that...
ROGERS: That's right.
LIN: What does that do to your - to basically your mental attitude about what you're trying to accomplish here?
ROGERS: Well, you just - I guess it's just pretty much exemplary of anything you do in life. If you fall down, you just get up, dust yourself off and keep going. It's when you fall down and don't get up that you find yourself in trouble.
LIN: What has been so far the most remarkable experience that you've had?
ROGERS: Probably on the morning of Day 4, which would be Thursday when my daughter Cassie and I summited Blood Mountain. We camped there. And we woke up scenery of the four state view with an awesome sunrise.
LIN: Oh. And what do you say to your kids about what you want them to learn from this experience?
ROGERS: I just want them to know that no matter how tough things get, that they don't ever have to give up and they don't have to accept circumstances as they are, that they can do things to change them.
LIN: Yes, well you're certainly doing just that. Scott, we're going to be following your progress and wish you well.
ROGERS: Why thank you.
LIN: Eat healthy tonight and watch that sunrise tomorrow.
ROGERS: Oh, yes.
LIN: All right, thanks very much, Scott Rogers.
ROGERS: OK, bye-bye.
LIN: Hey, if you want to follow Scott Rogers' progress as he hikes 2100 miles of the Appalachian Trail, you can log onto this website at www.onelegwonder.com.
More attacks in Iraq today. The Israeli army gets lessons on checkpoint dos and don'ts. And the Los Angeles police department tells African-Americans if you want to change the force, you need to join.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: A violent weekend in Iraq began when guerillas gunned down a police officer in Kirkuk last night. They reportedly killed an Iraqi truck driver transporting goods for Japanese troops in southern Iraq today. Also today, a roadside bomb in Baghdad hit a passing SUV and wounded five Iraqis. The U.S. military says their injuries are not life threatening. Authorities say insurgents attacked Mosul's City Hall with rockets and small arms fire. The assault killed two Iraqis and wounded at least five, including some police.
Reuters reports a three-year old boy died after his family car was fired on by U.S. troops in Tikrit. Other women and other children in the family were wounded. A U.S. military spokesman says the car failed to stop at a checkpoint.
Now to the Middle East. In the West Bank, a seven-year old Palestinian boy was shot and killed today while he played inside his home. Israeli military officials say the boy was killed by a Palestinian gunman aiming at an army jeep. But the boy's family believes the bullet came from Israeli troops after some Palestinian youth started throwing stones. The Associated Press reports video at the scene shows a bullet hitting an Israeli jeep and ricocheting to the family's second floor apartment.
And tension in the Middle East is especially high after Israel's assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Akmed Yassin. Israeli troops are paying even closer attention at checkpoints. And that is where many Palestinians have long accused Israel of abuse.
Now Israel is doing a little sensitivity training. Here's our Chris Burns.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): An Israeli checkpoint outside Nablus, one of more than 150 across the West Bank. The wait can take hours.
QUASSEF BUSHRA, FRENCH TEACHER: (through translator) When women have veils, it's more difficult.
BURNS: They think you're a suspect right away. They think you did something.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BURNS: Some are detained. Two men are held, bound and blindfolded.
Construction worker Muyaz Nasser cries out for water, complaining the plastic handcuffs cut into his wrists. Israeli soldiers unbind him for a moment to drink. They say Nasser was picked up on a nearby road and their computer said he's a terror suspect.
BURNS: You mean was he in a terrorist attack?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BURNS: Or was he - yes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Terrorist.
BURNS: But Nasser denies it. The Israeli organization checkpoint watch arrives on a regular visit. Dali Agolum calls an Israeli lawmaker asking for help.
How do they put pressure? What do they do?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They call the head of the army. And they do (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
BURNS: Does it work sometimes?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
BURNS: After more than three hours, Nasser is taken to jail. The other blindfolded detainee, a student, is released. Israeli soldiers are trained in checkpoint conduct. How to maintain security, yet avoid abuses. The Israeli army has a new CD-ROM for it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violence, threats, and insults are forbidden. From an operational standpoint, and particularly in the long run, humiliating the civilian population leads to the widening of the cycle of violence.
BURNS (on camera): Though he can't comment on camera about the CD-ROM, one Israeli soldier here says training is one thing, but experiences worth far more in learning how to deal with the innocent, and yet be ready for a deadly situation.
(voice-over): We showed the checkpoint scene to the CD-ROM's author.
LT. COL. AMOS GLORA, ISRAELI ARMY: What I saw here, I think pretty much is something that I believe fits or matches what it is that they're being taught, what we're teaching them.
BURNS: Some Israeli documentaries on the checkpoints, including this one, suggest there are abuses.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They are humiliated. They are sometimes even beaten.
BURNS: Well, that is what this training program means to do is try to get the soldiers to - to not to humiliate the...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You need for this training program for not hating people?
BURNS: At the same checkpoint, troops recently caught one boy transporting a bomb. Another was stopped wearing a suicide belt. Israeli officials say the CD-ROM is not in response to a problem or criticism. It's merely additional training, but that might be an indication that while Israel plans at least a partial pullout from the West Bank and Gaza, some checkpoints and scenes like these could remain a reality.
Chris Burns, CNN, near Nablus on the West Bank.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: The blame game continues. Could the September 11th attacks have been prevented? Could Democrat and Republican administrations have done more? Is the United States ready to prevent another attack? A political roundtable when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: More news ahead, but first here's a look at what's happening this hour. Mounting political pressure in Taiwan, after a massive demonstrations in the capitol. Taiwan's president cleared the way today for a recount of last weekend's razor close presidential elections. The president faces allegations he staged a failed assassination attempt to get sympathy votes. That's a charge he strongly denies.
President Bush is talking up the economy during his weekly radio address today. He boasted saying Americans - the American economy is strong and growing stronger. Bush also touted a Census Bureau report that home ownership grew 24 percent last year.
John Kerry, meanwhile, says the president still doesn't get it. That's a quote when it comes to the economy. He make the comment today in a written statement. The Democratic presidential hopeful says if he's elected, he'll create 10 million new jobs in the new four years.
Well, economic hardship is felt by millions of Americans without health insurance. Few people realize that the uninsured are billed as much, at a much higher rate.
CNN financial correspondent Peter Viles has more on this.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ed and Dianna Jellison are still paying the price for a trip to the hospital two years ago. Suffering from encephalitis, a viral infection, Ed was hospitalized 17 days.
JELLISON: My whole world had been turned completely upside down. We lost our business. My husband wasn't going to be the same again. Everything had changed.
VILES: They paid $30,000 in doctor's bills, but then another bill came from Florida Hospital, $116,000. The Jellisons had no health insurance. If they did, the insurance company would have been charged a fraction of that amount.
JELLISON: It makes me very mad, very mad.
VILES: But that's the way hospital billing works. List prices are wildly inflated, but insurance companies don't pay those high prices. Only the uninsured do.
K.B. FORBES, WWW.CONSEJOHELP.ORG: It is outrageous that they price-gouge a working-class, middle-class family here in the United States. It's all about greed. All they wanted to do was suck out the hard-earned assets of this family.
VILES: These are cases K.B. Forbes has analyzed. An appendectomy, the bill to Medicare would be $10,000, to an insurance company, $12,000, but if you are uninsured, $29,000. A broken leg cost Medicare $4,800. It costs an insurance company $5,400. Cost if you have no insurance, $15,000.
Still, the hospital industry says it loses money treating the uninsured.
CARMELA COYLE, AMERICAN HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: We have 44 million Americans who have no health insurance coverage at all. And while they come to America's hospital emergency departments and are able to receive care, there is no payment that's ultimately received for many of those patients.
VILES: The Bush administration's point man on this, Tommy Thompson, is urging hospitals to offer discounts to the uninsured and some hospitals are doing so.
Peter Viles, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: All right, we're going to focus again on the 9/11 Commission. This week's testimony pitted one administration against another over who did more to prevent terrorism. What is the political fallout from the hearings?
Joining us now is Ann Lewis, national chair of the Democratic National Committee's Womens Vote Center and Frank Donatelli, a former political director for President Reagan.
Good evening to both of you.
FRANK DONATELLI, FMR. REAGAN POLITICAL DIR.: Hi, Carol.
ANN LEWIS, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CMTE.: Good evening.
LIN: It seemed like a blame game there at the 9/11 Commission hearings, but the bottom line is, Frank, what is this going to do to Bush - President Bush's re-election effort?
DONATELLI: Well, you have some short term opinion that indicates that the public is more skeptical on what the president has done on terror. But I think that it is very, very important to note that the president is going to have to continue and the administration is going to have to continue to make the case, Carol, about all the things that the president has done since 9/11 to make America safer. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act, the funding for intelligence agencies.
So the administration's going to have to continue to make that case. I think when the public hears the whole story, the president will continue to score highly on this measure.
LIN: What do you think, Ann?
LEWIS: Well, I'll agree with Frank that we're beginning to see some short term effect, which is not surprising given that something like 90 percent of the public tells us they're paying attention to this. There really could not be a more important issue to all of us. It goes directly to the question of security. But I've got to say I was surprised this week the Bush White House began to act so politically. By making these personal charges against Richard Clarke, instead of talking about the substance of what was being said or what the commission was doing, they really turned it into almost a mini political campaign.
I think that has increased the likelihood that this will have political impact.
LIN: But you know John Kerry is already jumping in - I mean just moments ago, he issued a statement saying Condoleezza Rice needs to come forward and come forward fast to testify publicly.
LEWIS: Well, there is that contradiction, which I think a number of people have noted, including a number of Republicans, that Condoleezza Rice has been going around, making the rounds to every television camera apparently within the Beltway, but refusing to testify in public before the commission.
And you know, people think there's something sort of mistaken about that. That's a real conflict. If you've got the time, if you've got the interest, if you've got the information to go to all the television shows, then you ought also to go to the commission that has the authority to listen to this and to deal with this.
LIN: And how much gas, though, does this give John Kerry out on the campaign trail?
LEWIS: Well, I'm not - I don't think this is about giving John Kerry gas. I mean, when John Kerry went to choose the subject for his first speech on Friday since coming back, he did it on the economy. That's the subject he wanted to talk about.
But they also felt that this issue was so prominent, he had to make a statement to be on record. This isn't one that he's making a political priority.
DONATELLI: Can I just say I'll accept Ann's challenge and talk about Mr. Clarke's testimony before the commission this week. He said that the Bush administration did not place a high enough priority on terror. But then he went on to say number one, he had no specific disagreement with any Bush policies. Number two, he knew of no specific intelligence that would have prevented 9/11. And number three, he said that he didn't think 9/11 could be prevented.
So what you have here, Carol, is a very sensational charge, but nothing to back it up.
LIN: All right, so how much of - I mean, how much staying power do those charges have then? Are we going to be hearing about this at the conventions? Or do you think that this is going to die out once the commission folds up and Condoleezza Rice does or does not do whatever it is that she might do?
LEWIS: I think the debate has changed fundamentally. As we saw in George Bush's first political ads, when he began, he wanted to talk about himself as a leader in the fight against terrorism. Well, because of Richard Clarke's book, and by the way, because of some other books, news accounts that have come out, we're now seeing that this is not at all an unmixed story, if you will. This Bush administration did decide, for example, to stop flying the predator planes, which had been doing such valuable surveillance work. There were some policy decisions made that could have been made differently.
I think, again, it changes the debate. And people will now see that there are two sides to the national security question.
DONATELLI: OK, what this is going to show - what this commission is going to show is that everything changed after 9/11. That's the whole point of what happened. The country is now focused. And when 9/11 occurred, the president stepped up to the plate many times against intransigent Democratic opposition to create the Department of Homeland Security, to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan, and to give us the Patriot Act, which John Kerry says he's now against.
LIN: So what I'm hearing...
DONATELLI: I'm very comfortable talking about President Bush's security record.
LIN: Right, but what I'm talking about is how much of this - you know, there are charges and counter charges about who did - did President Clinton - should President Clinton been more aggressive in going after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. You know, to heck with what Pakistan and Afghanistan governing bodies might think, and whether President Bush...
DONATELLI: I'm not one to...
LIN: ...and how much are we going to hear about this on the campaign trail? Or is this just one piece of the puzzle in a bigger picture of campaigning?
LEWIS: I think this is going to be one piece of the puzzle, but I would agree again, one, I think it continues to be talked about because until now, President Bush has talked about national security and his efforts in fighting terrorism as if it was again wholly and asset for him. What this conversation has done is changed it so people will now look and say well, did we do all we could? Are we doing all we can now?
Richard Clarke has also said that in fact he believes that going to war in Iraq, as we did, diverted resources, diverted attention from the war on terrorism, and that we would have been better served to take those resources, keep those assets directly...
LIN: Frank?
LEWIS: ...against the people that were doing the terrorism.
DONATELLI: OK, I...
LIN: All right. LEWIS: So I think that's a debate.
DONATELLI: ...I think what - what this commission shows is that everything changed after 9/11.
LIN: All right, that's it. That's all the time that we have. The two of you, thank you very much.
DONATELLI: Thank you.
LIN: Frank Donatelli, Ann Lewis.
Well, there's something different about the class of '0803 of the Los Angeles police department. We're going to tell you when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: Top stories this hour, NASA calls its test of the hypersonic jet aircraft a success. Israeli TV says prosecutors are recommending Prime Minister Ariel Sharon be indicted in connection with a bribery scandal. And Jan Berry of the '60s singing group Jan and Dean dies at the age of 62.
The Los Angeles police department has had some troubles - has had a troublesome image in the past. But the force is trying to change that. And it's reaching out to new recruits.
Our Miguel Marquez takes a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Eric Jones is one of 46 in LAPD Recruit Officer Group 0803.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Eric Jones.
ERIC JONES, OFFICER, LOS ANGELES POLICE: It's actually a dream come true. It's a lot of hard work.
MARQUEZ: Jones was inspired by his police officer uncle to join the force. L.A.'s police chief wishes there were more like him.
WILLIAM BRATTON, CHIEF, LOS ANGELES POLICE: Around the country, we're having trouble in every police organization I'm aware of, attracting African-American candidates.
MARQUEZ: Bratton says in L.A., the percentage of African- American cops is actually higher than the percentage of blacks in the population at large. But high crime rates in black communities, combined with the distrust of police, makes more recruitment necessary, but difficult.
BRATTON: Within the African-American community, oftentimes for these young people, policing is not seen as a profession that you want to go into because you're concerned of being alienated from your peer group.
MARQUEZ: So LAPD is recruiting African-Americans with this pitch. Changing LAPD means joining it.
ERIC JONES, OFFICER, LOS ANGELES POLICE: Sir, were you watching me while I load the bean bags shot gun sir?
MARQUEZ: Jones, now a few weeks into his new job in L.A.'s rampart division, says when he decided to join, he got some jokes. But joining won out.
JONES: With having your department mirror what the community looks like, you know as I said before, it - you can better relate to people.
MARQUEZ: At a barber shop in L.A.'s Lemerd (ph) Park, many African-Americans needed a lot of convincing that LAPD is on their side.
DYONONE HICKS, LOS ANGELES RESIDENT: Lots of time when you think about cops, you kind of think about, you know, staying away from them.
MARQUEZ: Chief Bratton says high incarceration rates of African- Americans makes for a smaller pool of potential recruits. Plus an anti-cop message in pop culture doesn't help.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gangster rap, which is the heroes, if you will, to so many of these kids. You know, Snoop Dogg, and the rest of these characters.
MARQUEZ: As Eric Jones heads out for another day, the big issues aren't his concern. He's focused on the basics.
JONES: It actually does my heart good to help anybody. So - you know, and that was one of the reasons why, you know, I chose to do this as far as a professional.
MARQUEZ: Miguel Marquez, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: March Madness, a tiger on the prowl, and a changing of the guard in the world of women's figure skating. Larry Smith will be here with sports news with CNN LIVE SATURDAY continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: It helped launch the careers of legends like Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, and Michael Jackson. And it continues to give many of today's most popular African American and Latino performers their start. Now Harlem's world famous Apollo theater is celebrating its 70th birthday with a star studded party.
Adaora Udoji reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ADAORA UDOJI: From the beginning, the Apollo theater catapulted young unknowns to stardom. The legend, beginning with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, who brought down the house in 1934.
OSSIE DAVIS, ACTOR: Oh, my God. How many times did I go to heaven sitting in those seats out there? How many times.
UDOJI: Celebrated artists Ossie Davis began his pilgrimmages in 1939. He recalls electrifying performances that inspired new dreams. The theater became a focal point national wide. For the first time, African-Americans perform for African-American audiences both in the seats and on radio.
DAVIS: There was this beautiful man, Willie Bryant, who was the MC at that time. And it seems to me as I remember now that Willy's job was to convert us from country hicks and boobs and whoever we were and wherever we come from, and to people who at the click of a finger were on top of a heap.
UDOJI: Never before had the door opened so widely for the country to experience treasures few realized it had, the tap dancing wonders of the Nicholas brothers, the Hinds brothers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everybody say yeah!
UDOJI: Steve Wonder, James Brown, Lena Horne, and so many others.
DAVIS: It was here in Harlem that we began to establish a sense of who we were as Americans, who we were now that we were no longer Africans, now that we were no longer slaves.
UDOJI: But like all great blues singers, the theater has had its share of troubles.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE, THE SCHOMBURG CENTER: They persevered through the turmoil in the '30s and the '40s and also the '60s. Some of the financial problems that occurred in the '70s, but it hadn't closed down. It just persevered, which is really part of Harlem itself.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Here's a very young Aretha Franklin.
UDOJI: Its fans have never forgotten. Nearly half a million visit the theater every year, making it one of New York City's most popular tourist attractions.
The performers still come. The names are just different. Chris Rock, Tom Jones, already famous before they got here.
And these streets where the Apollo has outlived its original neighbors has also changed. Today, among others, there are Starbucks and Disney stores. But still, if you listen closely, you can almost hear the voices of the past.
Adaora Udoji, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Now we move on to sports. The Huskies have been rolling through their March Madness match-ups in the college basketball playoffs. And today, they took aim at the Crimson Tide.
How'd they do? Our Larry Smith here to fill us in.
LARRY SMITH, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Well, truly in the NCAA tournament, UConn bite is as bad its bark, I guess you could say to use a really bad analogy. For the first time since they won it all back in 1999, Yukon back in the final four. The two seat in the Phoenix regional never even let Cinderella Alabama in the game. 87- 71, the final. The big story, though, heading into next weekend for the Huskies is the health of all American Center and (UNINTELLIGIBLE). He battled back problems earlier this month and in this game suffered a pinched nerve in his back. We'll see how - the next week, how he does.
So UConn is San Antonio bound. A second final four ticket will be punched tonight in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Top seat St. Joseph's vies for its first final four appearance, as 1961 versus second seated Oklahoma State. Now the Hawks and St. Joe's have a nation's best 30 and 1 record, but still considered by some to be an underdog to the cowboys.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PHIL MARTELLI, ST. JOSEPH'S HEAD COACH: I haven't mentioned to them that, you know, it looks like we're an underdog tomorrow. I haven't mentioned that at all to them. Not one time have I told them, "Fellows, we're an underdog tomorrow, even though we're 30 and 1 in the number one seat." I haven't said that once to them. So the - you know, that's wasted motivation to me. The motivation that we have is that these guys love basketball. And every single guy on our team plays basketball for one reason - to win the game.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: And again, that game is tonight in about 10 minutes. To golf, third round of the Players' Championship. How about Tiger Woods had to really come on strong on Friday just to make the cut. Great shot there. The chip in on the par five 9th hole. Then later, second shot on the par for 18. This kind of erratic play right now for Tiger. Bogey here. 68 on the day. He is at four under par. Six shots behind leader Adam Scott. How about Mac Gogle's (ph) two shots on the always interesting 17th hole. That island green. Watch this, hitch the wood on the very front edge, bounces high into the air, lands on the green Gogle (ph).
Yes, hey, I'd be excited, too. As he moves on. He is three under par right now. Again, seven shots behind Adam Scott.
14-year old Michelle Wie holding her own and then some against the pros at the Kraft/Nabisco Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year. Wie burning the first two holes of her round on the way to shooting a three under 68. Only 18 of the 78 golfers to make the cut are under par after the third round. Wie heading into Sunday's final round at six under par, trailing Grace Park and Ari Song by two strokes.
World figure skating championships, American Sasha Cohen takes silver behind Japan's Suzuka Erikawa. Five time champion Michelle Kwan settles for a bronze. The ninth year in a row she's earned a medal in this event. It was a bizarre ending to a strange week for Kwan. A streaker jumped onto the ice, just as she was ready to start her free program today.
And yes, they caught him and got his clothes back on. And once again, basketball at Yukon. Advantage at the NCAA final four tournament, they beat Alabama. St. Joe's and Oklahoma State playing tonight. The other two regional finals take place tomorrow afternoon. And again, the San Antonio is the place for the final four next weekend. They hosted it for the first time back in '98.
LIN: All right, terrific. Thanks, Larry.
SMITH: OK.
LIN: Well, how is your appetite? Prepare to say good-bye to it when a group of explorers gather for their centennial meeting. The menu is enough to give Indiana Jones indigestion.
CNN's Jeanne Moos offers a report that is not for the squeamish.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Instead of getting bitten, take a bite of tarantula tempura.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Little to eat, but great.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This one's hairier.
MOOS: Or maybe you'd prefer succulent roasted beaver, or steamed and roasted rattlesnake.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And if you get the rattle with the snake, it's like a Happy Meal.
MOOS: Forget a Big Mac attack. These appetizers really could attack from Louisiana alligator to...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Meal worm scorpions on a puff pastry.
MOOS: What better way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Explorers Club.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're going to explore quite a bit tonight.
MOOS: Maybe the Madagascar hissing cockroach kabob would go down better with a cocktail.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The martini with the high ball in here. MOOS: Hog eyeball or cow eyeball fritters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we're trying to do here is not be gross.
MOOS: Could have fooled her.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Where's the shrimp?
MOOS: The Explorers Club boasts members like Sir Edmund Hillary, who conquered Mount Everest. So why make a mountain out of an eyeball?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Slimy, yet satisfying.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
MOOS: The Explorers say don't confuse our tarantulas in brandy with "FEAR FACTOR."
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go, you got to go.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You live on this. This is sustenance. This is not grotesque material.
MOOS: Makes regular food seem like a bore. Uh-oh, a steak hors- d'oevre. Some of the reviews sounded like faint praise.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If I was stuck out in the woods, I would eat it.
MOOS: Past the gator.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It does kind of taste like chicken.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The tarantula tastes a bit like fried shrimp.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I brought my own fork. I just want to be prepared for anything that might crawl or creep or run away on the plate.
MOOS: Don't bother complaining, waiter, there's a fly in my soup here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Waiter, there's a grasshopper in my sushi.
MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: On that note, "CAPITAL GANG" up next. Hi, Mark.
MARK SHIELDS, CO-HOST: Carol, "THE CAPITAL GANG" will look at Richard Clarke's blast of President's Bush's performance in fighting the war against terror and what else was heard by the 9/11 Commission. We'll debate Senator Kerry's tax cut plan, plus developments in Haiti and in the Middle East. All that and much more, right here next on CNN.
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