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CNN Live Saturday
Girl Killed in Shark Attack; Foul Play Ruled Out in Deaths of NJ Boys; Texas Volunteer Group Joins Search in Aruba; 20 Gunmen Storm Police Station in Ramadi; Italian Judge Issues Arrest Warrants for 13 U.S. Citizens; Fountain of Youth: Detox Diet
Aired June 25, 2005 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: A community in pain tonight, while many questions remain about how three boys died in the trunk of a car in Camden, New Jersey.
Also in the heart of vacation season, a deadly shark attack off the Gulf Coast. A 14-year-old girl has died.
And in Italy, warrants out for the arrest of 13 Americans believed to be CIA agents. Sources say they may be responsible for the disappearance of this Egyptian cleric, a man both the U.S. and Italy suspect is a terrorist.
It is Saturday, June 25th and you're watching CNN LIVE SATURDAY.
Good evening, from the CNN center in Atlanta, I'm Carol Lin. Our top story in just a moment, but first the stories making the news right now.
A shark attack on the Florida panhandle cost a 14-year-old girl her life today. The teen was swimming with a friend about 200 yards offshore near Destin when a shark took off her leg. The teen later died. The beach is snow closed and I'm going to be talking with an investigator from there.
A fact-finding at Gitmo. A group of U.S. lawmakers are on tour of a U.S. prison facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. There have been claims that U.S. interrogators have abused and tortured detainees there. Lawmakers worry the prison is hurting the image abroad.
And a retired Verizon executive has been tapped to lead the most well-known civil rights organization in the country. The NAACP chose Bruce Gordon to be its new president. Gordon will succeed Kweisi Mfume, who resigned in December.
Now be sure to check out CNN's most popular video of the day at CNN.com. All you do is click on video, the video link, at our Web site.
In the meantime, we want to find out more about what happened to that 14-year-old girl whose leg was bit off. She eventually died, after swimming off of Ft. Walton Beach. Joining me on the telephone right now is Captain Danny Glidewell. He's with the Walton sheriff's office. Captain, give us an idea in terms of where this girl was swimming. Was that terribly far out offshore? 200 yards?
CAPTAIN DANNY GLIDEWELL, WALTON COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE (on phone): That's a lot further than generally is expected for a regular swimmer. That's generally what surfers, that's the depth, that's how far out that surfers go. So for a regular swimmer she was pretty far out.
LIN: So, in your mind or in your department's mind, did that make her a more likely target?
GLIDEWELL: Well, anytime you go past right up close to the shore, you increase your chances. When you get out around what we call the first sandbar, where the first drop-off is, then you will experience more sightings of sharks. It's important to know, though, that we've never had an actual attack here.
LIN: So this is a first?
GLIDEWELL: Yes, ma'am, this is the first attack we've ever had.
LIN: And a horrible outcome. You have a flag warning system. Is there any suggestion the family or this girl should have known not to go in the water at this point?
GLIDEWELL: No ma'am, we were under green flag, which is calm surf. There was no indication of any problems.
LIN: So what's going to happen? How will people know whether it's safe to swim out there?
GLIDEWELL: Well, the Gulf of Mexico is a natural environment, and sharks are natural to that habitat, and we -- it's just important to remember that we've never had a shark attack. There's sharks that stay in those waters all the time, but we've never actually had one to attack someone. So it's sort of like a bolt of lightning that hit someone.
LIN: Well hardly I want to believe that it was an act of God here. Are the beaches going to remain closed tomorrow, on Sunday?
GLIDEWELL: We anticipate reopening them. As I said, this is a very unusual occurrence, so we closed the beaches for the rest of the day to err on the side of caution. Because when you deal with public safety that's of paramount importance. But we're talking to experts in the field as far as shark attacks, and as soon as we've gathered all our information, we'll decide about tomorrow.
LIN: An 11-foot shark, too. That's pretty big, don't you think?
GLIDEWELL: That's fairly big for these waters, yes, ma'am.
LIN: All right. Captain Danny Glidewell, please keep us posted. Thank you very much for joining us on the telephone.
GLIDEWELL: Thank you.
LIN: In the meantime these words can only describe what we have seen, horrible and tragic, and unexplainable. In fact, that's how a New Jersey prosecutor is describing the deaths of three boys in Camden, New Jersey. For days, searchers franticly combed the neighborhood, but it turned out the children were trapped just yards from one of the boy's homes. And authorities now know their cause of death. CNN's Mary Snow reports.
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MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A community trying to make sense of it. In the end, it was a search for a jumper cable that ended the mystery of three missing boys in Camden, New Jersey. Friday night David Agosto found the body of his six-year-old son Daniel, and his two-year-old friends, 11-year old Anibal Cruz and five-year-old Justin Pagan in the trunk of a car in the backyard where they were last seen alive.
An autopsy showed the boys suffocated after being trapped in the trunk since Wednesday. Camden's prosecutor called their deaths a tragic accident and said there were no signs of foul play.
VINCENT SARUBBI, CAMDEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR: There's much to this situation that defies explanation, with the hundreds of people, not just law enforcement representatives, but family, friends, relatives, that just swarmed this area, that were in the backyard time and time again.
SNOW: The prosecutor and many others want to know how it is possible that the trunk was not searched. On Friday, police were confident they had canvassed the area.
LT. MICHAEL LYNCH, CAMDEN POLICE DEPARTMENT: That we are covering that entire region literally looking at every trash can, every nook and cranny that a five-year-old child could be.
SNOW: But the Camden police chief says officers searched the car just hours after the boys were reported missing.
CHIEF EDWIN FIGUEROA, CAMDEN POLICE DEPARTMENT: I feel very bad, just like the community and other law enforcement officers that three children were found in the trunk of a vehicle. And I think that alone is a tragic situation that puts us all under, and we certainly feel for the parents.
SNOW: The medical examiner hasn't been able to determine exactly when the boys died. Near the yard where the boys were found, family members and neighbors came to grieve. Some say they are sad and in disbelief.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You have the detectives in the house, you had detectives in front there, detectives in the backyard, and it didn't go through their minds, let me pop the trunk?
SNOW: Neighbor Luisa Gonzalez says while she is angry at police, she also blames herself.
LUISA GONZALEZ, NEIGHBOR: I feel guilty, because they were in there and I could do nothing for those little kids. I feel guilty, and I know it ain't going to go away from me for quite a while.
SNOW: All agree there are many questions, such as whether the boys tried to yell for help. While there may never be an answer for that, officials are reviewing the search and rescue mission to see if any action needs to be taken against the officers involved. Mary Snow, CNN, Camden, New Jersey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: In fact at the half hour, I'm going to be talking with a former FBI special agent as to why the police did not actually search the trunk of that car and whether anyone should be punished.
In the meantime, we're going to move on to Aruba, and an unexpected development in the Natalee Holloway case. Today's scheduled court appearance for the five suspects in her vanishing was actually canceled. Meanwhile, more experts have joined the search for the Alabama teen. CNN's Chris Lawrence is in Palm Beach, Aruba. Chris, has the search at least started with this new team?
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Started and finished for the day, Carol. They just pretty much wrapped up. And that court hearing never even got started. Here's what happened. To avoid any appearance of impropriety, Aruba's been bringing in judges from the nearby island of Curacao to hear these cases. It's high profile, and you've got a deputy judge here who is actually one of the suspects.
Well, that plane that was supposed to bring the judge in got delayed, so now that hearing will take place tomorrow. In all, five suspects will be going to court tomorrow as scheduled, two brothers, Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, a local deejay on a party boat, Steve Croes, and the young man we believe to be the last person to have seen Natalee, Joran Van der Sloot, and his father, who is a judge here on the island, Paul Van der Sloot. Even though their court hearing was canceled, that did not stop the search activity on the island. That search team, volunteer search team from Texas had its first full day out in the field today.
They brought in a search dog, which is believed to be one of the best search dogs in the United States. They have master divers here, and a very special side-scan sonar that can see up to 800 feet down.
RON GILBERT, VOLUNTEER SEARCHER (video clip): It works much like a flashlight. If you would shine a flashlight in the dark on the bottom of the ocean floor, you would see what the flashlight sees. It allows you to see the bottom of the ocean floor. Anything that creates a shadow, you'll be able to see it.
LAWRENCE: Now, they will be back out in the morning again for another full day of searching, trying to find any evidence at all that may have been missed the first time, and those suspects will all be in court around 10:00 in the morning. Carol?
LIN: Chris Lawrence, thank you very much.
In the meantime, the man in charge of the Texas team not searching for Holloway shares a painful bond with her parents. You're going to meet him later in the program.
Overseas now to Iraq, where Ramadi has become the latest flash point in the insurgency. Police say about 20 gunmen stormed into a police station in the western Iraqi city and killed eight officers. Ten more police officers were wounded. Three policemen were shot dead in a separate ambush today southeast of Baghdad.
Now CNN is also learning the identities of some of the Marine s who were killed in Thursday's bloody convoy attack in Iraq. Many of the casualties were women. CNN's Ed Henry is live at the Pentagon with more details.
Ed, what have you learned?
ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Carol. Thursday's tragedy is shining a spotlight on the heavy sacrifice of women in war.
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HENRY (voice-over). Another widow, another painful realization.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the hard part for me will be when they bring him home. Yeah.
HENRY: Corporal Chad Powell, 22, had only three months left on his tour of duty. He leaves behind wife Danielle and their three- year-old child, Elijah, in an all-too familiar scene. But there was something different about the ambush. It was the war's deadliest attack on women in uniform. At least three female Marine s were killed, 11 other women wounded, when a suicide bomber assaulted the U.S. convoy near Falluja. One of the fallen was Lance Corporal Holly Charette, a 21-year-old from Rhode Island, where this Marine officer delivered the news to family.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're still waiting on news for when she will return to Providence.
HENRY: Charette, a mail clerk, was recently profiled on the Marine s' Web site. She loved bringing letters from home to her comrades despite having to lug around 70 pounds of mail with a flak jacket. She had only about a year of service left and dreamed of coming home to a job with the U.S. Postal Service, saying, quote, "it won't be the same as beg a Marine , but at least I'm still be in uniform." Family members are devastated.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Holly was a happy girl, and loved by all of us, everyone that she knew.
HENRY: These deaths have highlighted the difficulty of keeping women out of the line of fire. Pentagon policy bars female troops from serving in direct combat units like special forces but the frontlines are blurred in Iraq, where more than 11,000 American women are serving, before this attack, 36 women had already died in Iraq, 24 by hostile fire.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HENRY (on camera): When a woman like Holly Charette dies, she did not leave behind a widow, but there's still plenty of pain. Holly's aunt says the lance corporal had a fiance, who is still serving in Iraq.
Carol?
LIN: Ed, do you know if this is contributing to any sense of whether this is contributing whether women will be pulled from the combat zone or prohibited from the combat zone?
HENRY: Well, recently some members of congress were trying to get them pulled further out of the combat zone, but a lot of Pentagon officials objected because they need women in key positions all around the globe, especially in Iraq, where some of these women are used on patrols to actually help at checkpoints inspect some of the women in order to be respectful of Muslim traditions. Carol?
LIN: Ed Henry, thank you very much. In fact, we're going to be talking about this much more about this in our 10:00 show tonight. 10:00 Eastern. It is the talk tonight.
In the meantime, the Bush administration is in a full-court press to shore up American support for the war in Iraq. So after the break, what the president did today to advance his cause and what critics have to say about it.
Plus this ...
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (video clip): I separated myself from who I was in the interrogation booth to who I was outside. I would be downright just evil in my voice.
LIN: What's it like to be a woman on the front lines in Iraq? Well, we're going to talk to one soldier who says sacrificing for your country knows no gender line.
And still to come, a preacher's swan song. We're going to take you live to New York where Billy Graham is preparing for an historic night.
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LIN: President Bush is fine-tuning the speech he plans to deliver to the nation next week to try to shore up support for the war in Iraq. The president today tried to convince Americans that he has a strategy for success. CNN's Elaine Quijano is live at the White House with details. Elaine, what are you hearing the president is going to focus on? ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly talking about the way forward is what White House aides are saying, but the question is, what exactly does that mean? Today, however in his radio address, President Bush once again pressed his case that the situation in Iraq is improving. But against the backdrop of daily insurgent attacks, Democrats are continuing to charge that the Bush administration is painting an unrealistic picture.
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GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.
QUIJANO (voice-over): Using cautious tones, President Bush again tried to answer critics of his Iraq policy.
BUSH: Our nation's mission in Iraq is difficult, and we can expect more tough fighting in the weeks and months ahead. Yet I'm confident in the outcome.
QUIJANO: His radio address was a preview of primetime remarks he'll deliver Tuesday to mark the one-year anniversary since Iraq's interim government took power. He'll speak at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, home to the Army's 82nd Airborne Division.
It's part of what aides call a sharpening of his focus on Iraq, and it comes as the president faces falling support for the war. The latest CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup Poll shows only 39 percent of Americans say they favor the war, down eight points from March. Still the president continues to send a positive note.
BUSH: We're optimistic that more and more Iraqi troops are becoming better trained to fight the terrorists. We're optimistic about the constitutional process.
QUIJANO: But Democrats argue Americans are not safer because of the occupation of Iraq.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: As a result, we are not as safe as we should be here at home. In fact, the war has turned Iraq into the world's most effective terrorist training camp.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
QUIJANO: As for President Bush, he remains firmly against the idea of setting a timeframe for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, saying that he believes that would give the insurgents an advantage. Carol?
LIN: We'll soon here more from the president. Thank you very much. Elaine Quijano live at the White House.
Thirteen Americans wanted for arrest in Italy. Are they CIA agents? We're going to explain why a criminal investigation was opened following the disappearance of an Egyptian-born cleric. And still ahead, the volunteers behind the search for Natalee Holloway. How a personal loss is fueling one man's passion to help.
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LIN: A CNN "Security Watch." Pakistan's president says he'd like to be clued in to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. General Pervez Musharraf says that anyone believes who the mastermind is in his country should give him a location. That comments come days after Vice President Dick Cheney and other U.S. officials say they know the general vicinity where bin Laden is hiding. Pakistan's president says if he had the information, he would act on it.
Extraordinary rendition. You may not be familiar with the term, but it is putting a strain on U.S. Italian relations.
Now, at the center of this controversy, a secretive mission that allegedly happened more than two years ago as part of the war on terror. CNN's Alessio Vinci explains.
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ALESSIO VINCI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Egyptian-born cleric known as Abu Omar spent many days at this mosque in Milan, believed by U.S. and Italian officials to be a gathering place for Islamic extremists. He was a long-time suspected terrorist, under surveillance by Italian police. Then, two years ago, he vanished from this street in Milan just around the corner from the mosque.
Now a source close to the investigation tells CNN an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 U.S. citizens, believed by Italian authorities to be CIA agents, for kidnapping Abu Omar. Among those sought for arrest, the source says, the former CIA station chief in Milan.
According to CNN's source, Italian prosecutors accused the agents of abducting Abu Omar and secretly flying him to Egypt for questioning, a little known practice called "extraordinary rendition" in which a suspect is illegally captured and secretly taken to another country to be interrogated.
Abdul Hameed al-Sahhar is the president of the Islamic Cultural Center in Milan. He describes Abu Omar's disappearance as told to him by an eyewitness who has since left the country.
It was right here, he says, she saw a minivan blocking the road, and two people checking Abu Omar's documents. One was wearing a typical Arab gown and had a long beard.
The source confirms investigators based their conclusions on records of cell phones used by the agent, tracking them from Milan then to a U.S. air base.
Italian prosecutors issued a statement saying that had the kidnapping not happened, Omar would not be in Italian custody would have led to other arrests adding, quote, "The kidnapping of Abu Omar is not only a totally illegal act that violates gravely Italy's sovereignty, but it is also a damaging and counterproductive act in the fight against terrorism."
Mosque representatives here deny ties with terrorism.
(on camera): Officials here at the mosque say they have no way of knowing whether Abu Omar was or is a terrorist, but what they do say is they would have preferred for him to be arrested by the Italian police and be put in an Italian jail awaiting due process rather than being sent to Egypt -
(voice-over): -- where al-Sahhar fears Abu Omar was tortured. "A year ago, Abu Omar called his wife and told her after he had been kidnapped he was brought to an American air base and beaten. Then he told her he was brought to Egypt without anybody knowing his whereabouts. And there, too, he said he told her he was tortured and beaten."
According to CNN's source, it was this phone call home to his wife in Milan a year after his disappearance which Italian officials intercepted that led prosecutors to launch their investigation. The CIA says it has no comment. Italian and U.S. officials have yet to be heard. Alessio Vinci, CNN, Milan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security, so stay tuned to CNN for the latest information day and night.
Well, what went wrong in the search for three missing New Jersey boys? Helicopters, ground crews and even boats were deployed, yet it only took the unlatching of a car trunk to end the mystery. I'm going to talk to a former FBI agent about what this means for future missing persons cases.
Plus this ...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (video clip): And I'd walk up to the cross that I made for her, and I was literally hearing a little voice over my left shoulder, saying, dad, don't quit. Please don't quit.
LIN: How one Texas man is turns his personal lost into hope for Natalee Holloway's family.
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LIN: Welcome back. And here's a quick look at what's happening now in the news. A teenage girl was killed today in a shark attack off the Florida Panhandle. A Walton County law enforcement official says the girl and a friend were 200 yards or more offshore. The shark is being described as 11 feet long.
A first in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution, voters elect a non-cleric as the country's new president. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a hard-liner nonetheless and expresses little enthusiasm for resuming ties with Washington. His landslide victory is marred by charges of voter intimidation. Law enforcement officials in Camden, New Jersey will investigate apparent failures in the search for three boys who died in the trunk of a car. Their suffocation deaths have been ruled accidental. Police had checked the car, but not the trunk before the bodies were found last evening.
Now, Camden County's prosecutor has ordered an after-action review in what went wrong in the search for the boys. I want to talk about that with Don Clark. He's a former FBI special agent, and we often bring him in on these heart-wrenching stories, because, Don, you know the mindset of law enforcement. I mean, it had to have broken your hard when you heard that officers actually checked that vehicle, which was sitting right at the house of one of the missing boys, but did not open the trunk. How could that happen?
DON CLARK, FORMER FBI AGENT: Well, you know, Carol, you're absolutely right. This thing is just mind-boggling. And when you hear that kind of thing you all of a sudden start to thing, something else could have happened, maybe there was some other way the kids were killed and placed in that trunk. And not the fact that somebody would overlook something, especially in a case where we know there was some history there of one of the kids playing in cars.
And whether it was or not with these kids, historically kids have been fascinated with cars and places they can lock themselves in. And that should be looked into, but the key thing is that a search should be thorough, and from top to bottom, basements, cars and everything. And that's the key ingredient here is how thorough was this search.
LIN: It sounds like it wasn't very thorough, and it sounds like what you're saying is the officers made a mistake?
CLARK: I would say they certainly did not search this as they should have. And yes, you can call it a mistake. Let's call it what it is. It is a mistake that's a car sitting in a drive. And Carol, what we need to think about is where do you start looking for someone that's disappeared? Well, you go back to the last place the person was seen, in this case where these kids were seen. And that had to have been by someone around the house, around the vehicles. And that's where you look very thorough for, and everybody should be looking in these places.
LIN: Well, why is it taking so long to go through the logs to find out why the trunk was not searched?
CLARK: Well, I think they have to do it right. The authorities have to do it right. While on the surface it may look like, OK , somebody should be punished for this, and we should just really take some action on this immediately, but I think they have to go through and look at everything that happened here. Because the thing about having to punished someone is they either violated rules, procedures, policies, or laws, and that has to be -- they should get a fair day in court themselves to see if they violated any of those, albeit a terrible mistake, they may not have violated those things. LIN: Camden, New Jersey, one of the most impoverished places in the country, lots of drug-dealing going on in Camden, New Jersey neighborhoods, so the reputation goes. Do you think police went to the scene and were not thorough, simply because there were assumptions made about what might have happened to these kids?
CLARK: You know, in today's law enforcement, Carol, I'd like not to think that. I'd like to think -- and my experience has been in both the New York/New Jersey area and down here in Texas is that law enforcement people are out there to try to do a good job. Yes, there are some that go south, as in any other profession, but by and large they're out there trying to do a good job. And I would like to think it's not intentional they would go out and say, well, we don't care about this neighborhood. I would like to think that that's not the case.
LIN: And I'm asking your opinion, because clearly the picture are showing there was a lot of law enforcement out there. Boats were out, officers patrolling the neighborhood, this case did get a lot of attention. I just wanted to get your opinion on that because of the profile of the neighborhood. Don, thank you very much, Don Clark, former FBI special agent in charge.
CLARK: Thank you, Carol.
LIN: Another big missing child case that we're following, friends and family of Natalee Holloway are hoping still against hope that the search for the missing teen has a much different ending. One man knows all too well the suffering they are going through. And he, right now, is at the heart of the new effort to find her. CNN's Alex Quade has the behind the scenes look.
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ALEX QUADE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what it's like to hunt for a missing person with Tim Miller. He and his Texas search team hit Aruba running, mapping out the island, scoping possible sites where Natalee Holloway may be. Targeting areas for their resources and volunteers. All this on just their first full day in Aruba. Miller's work began a week ago in tiny Dickinson, Texas.
Miller is usually on two phones at once.
TIM MILLER, VOLUNTEER SEARCH TEAM: We're busy, and I'm going to lose the battery on this phone and we got nine phones ringing.
QUADE: The calls won't stop.
Miller quit his job to search full time for missing people like Natalee Holloway. This call is with the head of the Aruban search team.
MILLER: I don't want by any means for anybody to think that we're coming over and taking over anybody's job.
Law enforcement is looking forward to us working with them. QUADE: Miller does this, because he shares an unwanted bond with Natalee Holloway's parents.
(on camera): Your daughter Laura was just about the same age as Natalee Holloway.
MILLER: Yes, and Natalee's parents and myself share something: We have a missing daughter.
QUADE (voice-over): Tim Miller knows. He daughter Laura was abducted, raped and murdered 21 years ago.
MILLER: When I walk out tout killing fields where Laura's body was found, only a couple miles from here, and I walk up to the cross that I made for her and I would literally hear a little voice over my left shoulder when I was leaving, saying dad, don't quit, please don't quit.
QUADE: He doesn't slow down, despite a heart attack in February. Four hours before the flight to Aruba ...
MILLER: And get work to him that these dog people ...
QUADE: The cadaver dogs still need certificates, the dive boat sonar still needs insurance. Miller and his advanced team almost missed the flight to Aruba. On board, still too much planning to sleep. Logistic calls, even during layovers.
His team is not getting paid to do this.
MILLER: Laura's given me the strength and the courage to do what I do.
QUADE: Landing in Aruba, the focus is 100 percent Natalee Holloway.
MILLER: We were already doing recon work flying over.
QUADE: Miller gets everyone together in what you might call a secret strategy room. He talks with U.S. consulate members and detectives. He talks with Natalee's parents and their attorney, Vinda de Sousa. Later, they immediate with the Aruban police chief and report back to the group.
MILLER: And we've got the green plight to do whatever we need to do for one reason, and that's to take Natalee home. I feel very, very optimistic that we are going to take Natalee back to Alabama where she belongs.
QUADE: Tim Miller, his volunteers and cadaver dogs are not working literally 24 hours a day until they find her or until they run out of donated funds to keep searching.
MILLER: We have some tough days ahead of us. We have some real emotional days ahead of us. Let's get our plans and let's go to work and let's find our girl. That's what we need to do now. Let's go find her.
QUADE: Alex Quade, CNN, Aruba.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Also every week we like to bring you the more personal stories from the front lines. Official U.S. military policy prohibits women from combat, but the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have blurred what passes for the front lines. In fact, the Islamic culture makes female soldiers a necessity. Here's our Peter Viles.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETER VILES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): She was an interrogator for the army in Afghanistan, valued in part because she is a woman.
DIANE GILLIAM, FORMER ARMY INTERROGATOR: A female, because of their culture, they will not talk to male interrogators, because it is not their family member.
VILES: So if the American military wants to question women in Afghanistan or conduct searches of women in Iraq, it often needs women to do the job. Diane Gilliam says she was recruited by Special Forces which might have meant exposure to combat.
GILLIAM: I laughed at him in my girly way and I said, but I'm a girl. He said, that's exactly what we want. You're a female interrogator, you're a necessity, you're an asset. I was like, ah.
VILES: Once inside the interrogation booth, she said she was as touch as the next guy.
GILLIAM: I separated myself from who I was in the interrogation booth to who I was outside. I would be downright just evil in my voice, and the second I stepped out, I was like, hey, what's up?
VILES: Under official Pentagon policy, women do not serve in combat units.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The policy generally is that women are not on the front lines but in these wars ...
GILLIAM: There's no front lines. You walk down the street. You don't know if that person is the enemy.
VILES: In Afghanistan, Pentagon policy did not protect Diane Gilliam. The helicopter she was riding in was crashed, five Americans died, and she was seriously injured and discharged in May.
GILLIAM: It's unfortunate that anybody has to die in a war. But it is a war. People are going to die. We die for our country, freedom is not free. So why should it just be the men putting their lives on the line?
VILES: In these wars, everyone who puts on a uniform puts their life on the line. Peter Viles for CNN, Huntington Beach, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LIN: Coming up, her diet helped slim down the man who brought you the hit documentary "Super Size Me." Well can it work for Morgan -- it worked for, actually, Morgan Spurlock, can it work for you? I'm going to talk to the woman behind the great American detox diet.
And still to come, the Reverend Billy Graham. Just minutes away from the next speech in what's expected to be his last American crusade. You are looking at one of the performances out there in New York City, that is going to lead to Reverend Graham's appearance before a big crowd. You're going to have a live report coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LIN: In our fountain of youth today, the detox diet. After her fiance turned himself into a gastronomic guinea pig in the documentary "Super Size Me" she helped him regain his health. Well, the regime Alex Jamieson used is the focus of her book, "The Great American Detox Diet."
Alex Jamieson is joining me from Los Angeles. Alex?
ALEX JAMIESON, AUTHOR, "THE GREAT AMERICAN DETOX DIET": Hi, Carol.
LIN: You have a pretty tough regime, I've got to say, in this book. Tell me it's tasty, OK ?
JAMIESON: The recipes are delicious, and it's not as bad as you might think.
LIN: All right. Well, let's start with the notion of what does it mean to detox? When somebody says there's toxins in my body, I think I should by dying of some kind of poison.
JAMIESON: No, well this is really a two pronged attack. There's detoxing your diet, looking at the standard American or SAD, sad diet that most of us are eating, and taking out the harmful aspects of that. And also giving your body really healthy and nutritionally supportive foods that are going to help clean you out and support your organs and systems.
LIN: All right. What's the first step?
JAMIESON: The first step, replace everything you're drinking with water. That's a great first place to start.
LIN: What about coffee?
JAMIESON: We definitely need to talk about coffee. There's a whole chapter on caffeine.
LIN: Come on, a little coffee in the morning, one cup? JAMIESON: I understand, I've been there, I worked in a very intense career and coffee and sugar were the things that got me through the day, but they end up creating a cycle where we're just putting more and more pressure on our bodies getting less quality sleep and craving more and more of those foods that are causing these harms to us.
LIN: All right. I interrupted you. Replace all your drinks with water. What else?
JAMIESON: OK . Look at sugar and caffeine and what role they play in their life. Why are you so attracted to them? What effects are they having on your body? That's another great place to start. Look at the carbohydrates you're eating. There's all this information about whole grains and most people can get a lot of benefit out of eating whole grains, but you need to look at your own body and decide what's best for yourself. This book is written to try to help people start listening to those messages and find out what foods are best for you.
LIN: I mean, what if you have a little baked chicken, a cup of decaf, you know, a little honey on your sweet potato. How harmful can that be? Most people would say, hey, I'm eating pretty healthfully.
JAMIESON: Well, it depends on the quality of these foods as well. Decaf coffee is still processed using a lot of chemicals. So are those things coming through in your cup of coffee in the morning? Now what about the chicken. If you're buying a regular chicken that's not organic, there might be hormones and antibiotics left in there. And that's something you really need to think about.
LIN: OK . I'm assuming you live this, right, Alex, I mean this is ... JAMIESON: Yes, 95 percent of the time.
LIN: I mean, are you saying you're going to live 20 years longer than I am or anybody else in this news room that's munching on birthday cake and coffee?
JAMIESON: I don't know. I could get hit by a bus. I could walk out on the street and it could all be over, but I know I feel so much better now than I did six, seven years ago.
LIN: Better in what sense? What's the payoff here?
JAMIESON: I was a sugar junkie, I was drinking so much caffeine every day, but I got to the point where I was look an alcoholic who hit bottom. I was so miserable, I was having migraine headaches, developed some intense food allergies, depressed, had no energy, and I thought, you know what, anything is better than this, and I think a lot of people out there can relate.
LIN: We want to give some recipes, and you have got some on your Web site as well, right?
JAMIESON: Absolutely. Healthychefalex.com. LIN: OK . And on there, I heard there was a great recipe for coconut curry rice.
JAMIESON: Oh yeah, that's a great one. It's very easy to make, it's really tasty. And it just shows food can be simple and very healthy.
LIN: And you have a thing for cranberries, no sugar, but you can eat cranberries? I'm a little nervous, Alex.
JAMIESON: Cranberries provide a little sweetness and tart. There's a lot of great aspects of all these different foods out there.
LIN: All right. Alex Jamieson, good to see you, and you do look pretty healthy.
JAMIESON: Thanks.
LIN: We'll consider it. Thanks so much.
JAMIESON: Thank you.
LIN: Jamieson's filmmaker/fiance Morgan spur lock is working on a new reality TV series and it gives participants a chance to walk in another man or woman's shoes. I'm going to be talking to him about it tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern. It's a family affair.
In the meantime he spent six decades crisscrossing the world, crusading for Christianity. Tonight the Reverend Billy Graham's seemingly never-ending journey comes a little closer to a conclusion. We're going to have a live report from the Big Apple.
But first here's Al Hunt to tell us what's ahead on the CAPITAL GANG.
Al?
AL HUNT, CNN HOST: The final edition of the CAPITAL GANG. Is President Bush in trouble on Iraq and Social Security? Are the Democrats out of order? Washington lobbyists running wild? We'll look back on some CAP GANG blasts from the past. All that and more next on CNN.
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LIN: Billy Graham's last U.S. crusade continues tonight in New York City. The aging evangelist spoke last night before 60,000 people at the start of a fond farewell. CNN's Alina Cho is in New York where tonight's service is now under way. Alina?
ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Carol, I'm sure this comes as no big surprise to you, but once again another big turnout for Billy Graham as he gets ready to deliver his second of three sermons, that is set to start at any moment now. Consider this, there's seating for 70,000 people and once again nearly every seat is filled. Today we spent some time with some of the people who are here. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHO (voice-over): He calls himself a born-again Christian, but Kevin Griffiths (ph) has never seen Reverend Graham in person until now.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he's a great preacher and I think that God really moves through him.
CHO: Griffiths, who is 20, says he admires Graham for what he calls his simple message. So does Regina Jones (ph).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am just overwhelmed right now.
CHO: Jones, who is here with her son, said she learned about Graham through her mother. She is so dedicated she's a volunteer counselor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, after he preaches, he gives an invitation to persons to receive, you know, Jesus Christ as their personal savior. And once they do that, I would follow them up and speak to them about receiving Christ.
CHO: It's called the altar call. Over the years more than 3 million people have pledged their life to Christ at Billy Graham crusades. Cliff Barrows is a friend of the preacher and has worked with him for 60 years.
CLIFF BARROWS, GRAHAM ASSOCIATE: He stands up in the pulpit, so weak physically, but he holds the Bible and he begins to share his heart and God speaks through him and to him and people listen and they respond. And as long as they do that, he wants to keep preaching until he has his last breath.
CHO: But Graham, who is sick with Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer, said recently this New York crusade will be his last in America and so it is here that evangelical Christians of all colors and all sizes all have come to see him. Griffiths calls it a bittersweet moment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think God has called him to do a certain thing for a certain time, and he's done that, he's been obedient. And it's awesome what he's been able to accomplish. So it's exciting, you know, as well as kind of sad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHO (on camera): So this is widely expected to be Graham's last crusade in America. Carol, we should tell you he is considering an invitation to preach in London this fall, but he says he won't make any announcements about that until he wraps in New York.
Carol?
LIN: All right. Alina Cho reporting live from a very compelling site. In fact Billy Graham's life has been so compelling, his life story comes your way tomorrow on PEOPLE IN THE NEWS. Kyra Philips is going to examine Graham's personal journey and his effect on lives around the globe.
That's tomorrow at 7:00 Eastern, 4:00 Pacific.
In the meantime, that's all the time we have for this hour. Coming up next at 7:00, the final CAPITAL GANG. Then at 8:00 Eastern, CNN PRESENTS will examine if the threat of a nuclear terror attack has grown worse. And at 9:00, Larry King. Larry's guest tonight, Jermaine Jackson talks about his brother's acquittal on child molestation charges. And I'll be back at 10:00 Eastern, so please join us for debate over women serving in a combat zone.
You get to weigh in on the issue as well. Right after a break, check of the headlines, then CAP GANG.
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