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CNN Live At Daybreak

Condit Breaks His Silence: Modesto Mayor Speaks Out; Police Eye Interview Closely

Aired August 24, 2001 - 07:35   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.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Lots ahead this half hour, we are going to have the Modesto mayor on television here with us. He's a Democrat. Says that Congressman Gary Condit maybe should have gone into a little bit more detail in his interview last night, but we'll here more from him in just a few minutes.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN ANCHOR: Also want to get perspective, D.C. police obviously watching the interview last night. Someone who's going to shed some light on what they may have been looking for.

The family of Chandra Levy is accusing Congressman Gary Condit of lying. In last night's ABC interview, Condit said Susan Levy misunderstood their conversations. Levy claims that Condit told her he did not have an affair with her daughter. Levy family attorney Billy Martin spoke for Susan Levy last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILLY MARTIN, LEVY FAMILY ATTORNEY: Mrs. Levy was outraged that she called -- that Gary Condit called her mistaken and a misunderstanding on her answer. She's very clear that she told Gary Condit -- she asked Gary Condit, were you, Congressman, having an affair with my daughter? And the congressman said no. That's not a mistake, that is an outright lie. Mrs. Levy will not back away. And she told me that I was authorized to say that if Gary Condit says that she was mistaken, he is lying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLOCK: Condit told ABC that he never lied to Susan Levy.

MCEDWARDS: Well, in the ABC interview, Gary Condit talked about the last conversation he had with Chandra Levy before she disappeared. ABC's Connie Chung, "All right, during that conversation did she -- was she upset about anything? Did you say we need to break up, break up our friendship? Anything like that?"

Congressman Condit replies, "No, no, Connie. We never had a cross word. It was simply about her travel plans, that she was talking about going back to California. She was real excited about going through her ceremony at USC. So she was real upbeat."

FLOCK: A source close to Chandra Levy's family says her parents were -- quote -- "very upset" by Congressman Condit's interview. The source tells CNN that Susan and Dr. Robert Levy watched a videotaped copy of the ABC interview. The Levy's were described as being -- quote -- "on the edge of their seats" as they watched. The Levy's have said that they hold Condit partly responsible for their daughter's disappearance.

MCEDWARDS: Also watching the Condit interview in Modesto, California, was the city's mayor, Carmen Sabatino. He's here now with his reaction.

Good morning, Mr. Mayor, thanks for joining us so early.

CARMEN SABATINO, MAYOR OF MODESTO, CALIFORNIA: Good morning.

MCEDWARDS: In your mind, how did the congressman do?

SABATINO: Well, I thought he did better than I expected. I thought, you know, the congressman has made himself a fugitive from the media, last night I guess he turned himself in. What kind of job he did? I think he lacked specificity. And now I guess we're at a stage where we don't have any facts or evidence really to base a decision on and we have people calling each other liars. I don't know how we resolve that.

MCEDWARDS: Well -- and base what decision on? I mean are you talking about the importance of knowing whether this is a person who's fit to represent your district?

SABATINO: Well, you know what I'm talking about is what the congressman did from the time Chandra Levy disappeared to today. And if we were to ask him, I would say -- I would hope he would say I would have done things a lot different. What he said last night he could have told us 90 days ago and that would have solved a lot of problems and prevented a lot of grief that the people in -- and some of the people in this community have gone through. If he had done that and been more forthright, as we all know, we would have all been better off.

MCEDWARDS: You know people talked about the importance of him here reaching out to his constituents, letting them relate to him, appealing to them on quite a personal level. And I'm wondering how you felt about the way he addressed the Levy's in the ABC interview saying that our pain, meaning his family's pain, is minor compared with the Levy's. They're also citizens in your area, did he go far enough in reaching out to them?

SABATINO: Apparently not, not from the quotes I'm getting from the Levy's, but...

MCEDWARDS: But what do you think?

SABATINO: You know I -- well, you know I really think that he's failed to apologize, and perhaps he's failed to apologize because he believes he hasn't done anything wrong. If he believes that, he is wrong.

MCEDWARDS: Well, he said at -- he said at...

SABATINO: At the very...

MCEDWARDS: He said at the end of the interview I am a moral man.

SABATINO: Again, I'm not going to judge his actions before the disappearance of Chandra Levy. I'm not his confessor and I'm not his inquisitor, but if he regards himself as a moral man, he's using his own standard.

MCEDWARDS: Mayor Sabatino, thanks very much for joining us here this morning, appreciate it.

FLOCK: Colleen, more perspective this morning. As you know, D.C. police have devoted any number of hours to the Levy case, but regardless of the bits and pieces they've gleamed and screened very few clues exist. So we want to get some perspective on what they were listening for last night.

And I've got to believe, Mike Brooks, former D.C. police detective now consultant for CNN, I've got to believe that they were watching this interview very closely. What did they see?

MIKE BROOKS, FORMER D.C. POLICE DETECTIVE: They were watching interviews and they were watching it very closely. They really didn't get much more than what they had.

FLOCK: What were they looking for?

BROOKS: They were looking for some of the -- some of the same information or to see if there were any similarities on some of the interviews that they've already had. My sources close to the -- to the interview said -- to the investigation said the interview went basically like the first two or three interviews, if you didn't ask the right questions, you aren't going to get the right answers.

FLOCK: What was their reaction then to his making the point that he has cooperated fully and answered all their questions?

BROOKS: Well, he said early on -- he said in the interview I did nothing to slow down the investigation. He did nothing to speed it up in the beginning either. There was a lot of information the law enforcement fields that they -- he could have given them in the very beginning of the investigation that he didn't. If he -- they asked him a question, he would only answer that question and wasn't forthcoming with other follow-up information.

FLOCK: Now you're a former detective, in that first interview, would you, as a detective, have asked the question about the relationship in terms of an affair? Would you have asked that question up front, because it sort of seemed from the interview last night that perhaps that question didn't get asked?

BROOKS: No, that question did get asked. From my sources, that question did get asked.

FLOCK: How did it get answered?

BROOKS: And it was answered, well, we don't want to go there. And so they would ask a follow-up question. And what can you do if the congressman didn't answer a question? There's not much they could do except to try to follow it up, paraphrase it, ask it again and again. They didn't get that until the fourth -- third or fourth interview.

FLOCK: So the sources seem to indicate that that's -- that that -- they're sticking by that that they didn't get that information until interview three or four?

BROOKS: That's correct.

FLOCK: This concept of this watch box, he kind of blew that off last night and said it really was not germane to the Levy case. Being in law enforcement, what's your perspective on that?

BROOKS: That probably wasn't germane to the Levy case. I think maybe he was trying to cover up. Investigators also feel that he was possibly trying to cover up another affair that he had had and he felt that maybe he just wanted to get rid of that. Again, if he wanted to throw it away, why did he go all the way to Alexandria and throw it in a trash can on the street?

FLOCK: That's a good question.

Quickly, where do we go from here? Where do they go from here?

BROOKS: The investigation is still open. They are still getting information every day. No matter how good or bad the information is they're continuing to investigate. As long as they keep getting in leads, they'll continue to look into those leads. And they basically went back and started at square one again looking at all the interviews, looking at all the statements that were given and doing reinterviews and recanvassing.

FLOCK: Not tremendously encouraging.

Mike Brooks, appreciate the perspective this morning. Thank you so much.

BROOKS: Thank you, Jeff.

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