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Live From...
Taguba Testifies on Abu Ghraib; Storm Chaser Shows New Images
Aired May 11, 2004 - 12:59 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.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: General Taguba speaks out. The man who detailed abuses in an Iraqi prison testifies about what went wrong.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Who is to blame for those abuses inside the Abu Ghraib Prison? This hour, who's in the chain of command, who's responsible for the prisoners?
PHILLIPS: Twister caught on tape. The storm chaser who captured these amazing pictures talks about the thrill of the hunt.
O'BRIEN: And you're looking at the one that got away: the steer that went to extreme measures to avoid becoming a steak.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta where all the journalistic beef is, I'm Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Tuesday, May 11. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.
Kirkuk to Capitol Hill, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to Abu Ghraib, we're following events in and about Iraq this hour, beginning with an attack on a civilian convoy near the Jordanian border, contractors working for a Halliburton subsidiary were on their way to Baghdad when they and their 21 vehicles came under fire. We're not yet sure about casualties, but Halliburton says all the drivers are accounted for. We get the latest now on all the day's events from CNN's Karl Penhaul, he's in Baghdad -- Karl.
KARL PENHAUL, POOL REPORTER: Hi, Kyra. Yes, we are told that that convoy was working its way from Jordan to Baghdad along the major highway there, that over the last few weeks has been the subject of frequent ambushes by insurgents.
Now a U.S. official told us this morning that the 21 trucks were attacked by suspected insurgents, and he said at that stage that some of the personnel on board were unaccounted for.
Now since then Kellogg Brown & Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton, and one of the major U.S. contractors here in Iraq, has come out with a statement saying that the convoy had been being run by one of their subcontractors and that all drivers were now accounted for. It didn't go though into any more details about any other personnel or their nationalities who may have been traveling aboard that convoy and whether any of them sustained casualties.
We don't know what happened to the trucks either, whether many of those were damaged, or really what the situation was there. But we do know that no military personnel were traveling with them.
Now also this morning, in the northern city of Kirkuk, that's one of those cities that is jointly claimed by the Kurds, by Arabs, and also Turkmen, a bomb exploded, that went off in a crowded marketplace in a Kurdish neighborhood. And we're told by officials there that three civilians were killed and at least 22 others were injured. No claims yet of responsibility as to who may have been behind that attack.
Now from north to south, down in the holy city of Najaf, the standoff still continues there between coalition forces and members of the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's so-called Mehdi Army militia. Overnight there were clashes between the Mehdi Army members and coalition forces on the outskirts of Najaf. And we're told by U.S. officials that 13 member of the Mehdi Army were killed, around 14 others were captured.
And then during the day we also saw what appeared to be a spontaneous demonstration by about 1000 civilians in Najaf, and those calling on Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia to pull out of the city and save any kind of major bloodshed there -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Karl Penhaul, LIVE FROM... Baghdad, thank you.
O'BRIEN: Who is -- who was in charge at Abu Ghraib? If you've been watching CNN, you know that the issue may be the key to unlocking, or at least understanding, the prisoner abuse scandal that spawned so many investigations and repercussion. Today, the U.S. Army general who corroborated the claims of whistleblower, and then some, told a Senate panel that military interrogators called the shots at Abu Ghraib. At the same hearing, a senior Pentagon intelligence official said military police are in charge. We get the latest on the conflicting, contentious, sometimes combative testimony from CNN's Ed Henry, joining us live now from Capitol Hill -- Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Miles, there were less fireworks than last Friday when Secretary Rumsfeld testified to this same committee. But there were still -- were some dramatic moments, such as when General Taguba was asked what went wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN WARNER (R-VA), CHMN, ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: In simple words, your own soldier's language, how did this happen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: General Taguba testified as well that there's no evidence that these MPs were acting on orders from above, but Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the committee, said the evidence suggests otherwise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: The collars used on prisoners, the dogs, and the cameras did not suddenly appear out of thin air. These acts of abuse were not the spontaneous actions of lower ranking enlisted personnel who lacked the proper supervision. These attempts to extract information from prisoners by abusive and degrading methods were clearly planned and suggested by others.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Another big moment came when Senator James Inhofe became the first Republican on the committee to suggest that the outrage has gone too far and that maybe the abuses were not so bad as the media is portraying them. And in fact, Senator Inhofe said that some of these prisoners are clearly not boy scouts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R-OK), ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: I have to say, and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Now while this is playing out publicly, there's a private dance going on as well. Chairman John Warner pointed out that the committee got 6000 pages of investigative materials yesterday from the Pentagon. They're still trying to sift through some of that. And as well, the Senate is trying to hammer out an agreement to receive the photos and videos of the more dramatic abuse that we've heard about in the last few days.
Senator Warner said that he hopes to have a deal by the end of today for the Senate, perhaps even all Senators, not just committee members, to see these photos and videos in a private, classified room, but then give the material back to the Pentagon so that it's not the Senate that's releasing all this explosive material to the public -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Ed Henry on the Hill, thank you very much. Like the Senate Armed Services Committee, Americans in general are divided over whom they hold responsible for all of this. A new CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans blame the soldiers we've seen in the photos and/or their superiors. Four in 10 blame intelligence officers. A quarter blame Donald Rumsfeld. One in five blamed President Bush. Probably not coincidentally, the president's job approval rating has sunk to its lowest ever, that's 46 percent, it's down 6 points in less than a month, 14 points this year. Live pictures now coming to us from the Pentagon. The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld taking questions from staffers at the Pentagon. Let's listen in.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF STATE: ... and a fair investigation can take some weeks and months if they take care to see that the accused are treated lawfully.
Our enemies will exploit this episode to prove their negative views of our country. But then they were doing that before this episode. We see repeated instances where untruths about our country and about our conduct are put out on the regional media.
But friends of freedom will understand that it is a virtue of our system that the president and most senior officials take responsibility for and are involved in seeing that the punishment for such violations of human rights occur. That stands in stark contrast to the many parts of the world where governments use torture or collude in it and do not express shock or dismay, nor do they apologize when it's uncovered.
So at the end of the day, there is, even here, reason for pride in democracy. And certainly, there's reason for pride in the standards by which the military forces of our country are governed.
So I thank you for your hard work every day, to keep America safe and free. I thank your families for their support as well.
Now General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has a few words to say.
GEN. PETER PACE, VICE CHMN., JOINT CHIEFS: Thank you, sir. We'll get right to your questions. I'd be remiss if I didn't...
O'BRIEN: All right, a brief excerpt of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, as he continues to address this prisoner abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib Prison. We're going to continue to monitor it as the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Peter Pace, continues his address, we'll bring you any newsworthy aspects of that later if they should come up -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, military police and military intelligence forces, both have clearly spelled out duties in military detention centers. But as you've heard, those duties overlap in some places, diverge in others, and even top officials aren't always clear on who answers to whom. For some insight, we call in CNN military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson, he's joining us today out of Washington.
Hi, Ken.
KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Hi, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, first of all, it's something you and I have been talking about for a while, and that is were the military police actually, I guess, encouraged by military intelligence, military interrogators. General Taguba coming out and basically making the point that they were.
ROBINSON: His report says that they were influenced by members of the military intelligence. Really not specified -- I have the copy of the report right here in front of me and I've been trying to read it all morning along and follow along with the testimony. Major General Fay is conducting a investigation right now because of Major General Taguba's report, and his report is due in approximately three weeks to evaluate and say whether there are culpability charges warranted for anyone in military intelligence. It hasn't happened yet. Three weeks from now we should see some results of that investigation.
PHILLIPS: All right. Well, let's lay out the responsibilities. First of all, let's talk about military police. You've put together point by point what military police are responsible for. Obviously to house, protect, account for, and feed prisoners, take us through the next points quickly.
ROBINSON: Let's go ahead and reveal all of them and I'll talk down to them. The first one is very obvious, and wasn't followed properly. Major General -- I mean, Brigadier General Karpinski was hotel keeper of a place called Abu Ghraib, and that's the house. To protect, those responsibilities are by all the military police to protect these prisoners and deliver them in good order to be interrogated properly.
Maintaining security for these prisoners: This prison has had several uprisings, which is why it came on the radar screen initially. Monitor and account for the prisoners: There are allegations made that there were not formal bed counts and head counts done except every few days and sometimes weeks apart, which has led to a lack of accountability of who was actually being held there.
Handle and move the prisoners while in their custody: The military police are supposed to take the prisoners and deliver them for interrogation when the interrogators request it. And that coordination process overlaps because there's a chain of custody handoff from the police to the interrogator, and the issue that's come down here is the issue of defining -- definition of setting the conditions. What does that mean? Let's look at the military intelligence side.
PHILLIPS: Quite different, military police meant to keep the peace, military intelligence obviously taking on a number of different responsibilities.
ROBINSON: As you see in the first bullet here, receive tasking on the collection of intelligence. There's a war going on. There's IED, improvised explosive devices, killing soldiers every day. There are terrorist attacks. So these interrogators have taskings of things to try to collect to prevent the next attack. Simultaneously, they're helping in the screening of prisoners to determine who is an enemy combatant, who is a terrorist who is simply a civilian who was rolled up accidentally.
And then from that process, they coordinate with the MPs to find a way to set favorable conditions. And the favorable conditions that I know of in the interrogation process is that the MPs are to monitor the prisoners and to give information to the interrogators on the demeanor of the prisoners, who they communicate with, what pocket litter they were found with during the screening process, and anything that they have said in language to others that may have been overheard that can then be used as part of the interrogation process to find one of the approaches, which you and I talked about last week, that are appropriate and approved by the Geneva Convention, to extract combat information that's actionable.
PHILLIPS: So when it comes down to it, military police and military intelligence really only have two common responsibilities, and that would be treating prisoners according to the regulations, international law and Geneva Convention, and also reporting actual or suspected violations. So if you lay out the facts here, from responsibilities of MPs to MI, and then we see the pictures, I mean clearly a discrepancy.
ROBINSON: Not just a discrepancy, just something just went brutally, brutally wrong; this issue of tactical control and the issue of Dr. Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, disagreeing with General Taguba, the problem with that is that they're both right. According to doctrine, the military police are in control. According to a frag order issued, a tactical control frag order, which apparently neither the brigadier general, Karpinski, or her chain of command was aware of, the MI brigade commander had control of the facility. So that's what Major General Fay has to sort out. And that report again we'll find out in two to three weeks.
PHILLIPS: And of course, we'll stay on it. Ken Robinson, thanks so much.
O'BRIEN: Finding the big one, a storm chaser hit the jackpot when he spotted this twister on the horizon, pushed the record button, voila. We'll talk with him about what it was like to capture these amazing images.
And later, abuse and torture in the midst of war, two POWs held captive for eight years speak out about abuses in Iraq.
And do you need a jolt of joe to stay awake? Who doesn't? Why a second cup of coffee may not be the best strategy to get a caffeine kick. We'll see you latte.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: ... was his brother really live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he got there $3000 later. Up close and personal: A storm chaser happened to catch this amazing tornado last night south of Denver, Colorado. It was one of the several twisters to touch down in that state. This one destroyed a farm house and a barn, no one was injured.
O'BRIEN: Excellent video of that tornado in the middle of nowhere and just great stuff. That amazing video was captured by Eric Treece, a pilot who guides freighters on the Great Lakes for a living, but who lives to chase storms when he's not hauling iron ore at the helm of a big freighter. He joins us from Denver now to answer a swirl of questions we might have about storm chasing, or more accurately, storm chasing and then living to tell about it.
Eric, good to have you with us.
ERIC TREECE, STORM CHASER: All right, thanks, how are you doing, Miles?
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's roll that tape, this is a spectacular shot. This is, I guess, in your racket, the money shot, what you're after, right?
TREECE: Yes, yes, you could say that, in a sense.
O'BRIEN: Give me a sense of what that -- is it worth a lot of money? Could you sell it to a lot of people?
TREECE: You know, this is really the first time I've ever went down this path. It's been rather intimidating for me, let me say.
O'BRIEN: Really?
TREECE: Yes. I never realized I could get this much attention with this.
O'BRIEN: Well, good. We're glad to give you the attention because you obviously show a degree of courage, depending on how you look at it. Some might say that might be kind of stupid to be so close to a storm. Why don't you tell us the circumstances of what led you to this storm and how you got that great picture.
TREECE: Well, I drove out east of town. And there was two storms that fired up early in the afternoon, about 2:30. They fizzled out. And this storm was known as Tailend Charlie. And it was really the only player in town for a long time. I just jumped on I-70 and headed down towards Limon. And it didn't look that impressive at first. And after about an hour or so, she started gaining some strength. And the inflow started to pick up and she started to look more organized. And I just decided to stick with this storm. There were some storms farther north of me, but this one looked the most impressive on the radar.
O'BRIEN: So a lot of it is choosing which funnel cloud to pursue, right, to see what ultimately turns out to be a real great picture? TREECE: Well, not necessarily. A lot of it has to do with luck and some intuition. I was looking at dew points and the dew points down at the south of me were a little bit better than the ones at the north at the time. And the moisture is what feeds the storm. So I took the chance and went south.
O'BRIEN: All right, we want to go through some of the pictures you've gotten over the years. You've been doing this now for about five years, as I understand it. And over the course of that time, you've gotten spectacular images of weather patterns, not just the funnel clouds themselves, but things like the lightning, which is associated with it. And that's a spectacular shot right there. But whenever you're around a funnel cloud, a lot of things are happening in the sky, aren't they?
TREECE: Yes, yes, yes, I chase alone a lot. And I'm doing four times as much work as a lot of people because I have got to navigate and maintain position with the storm and also maintain a safe position with the storm to, you know, not get myself in trouble.
O'BRIEN: All right. This is a spectacular image, those clouds. That's a wonderful shot. I want to show people your rig, the storm chaser car. Actually, I think you've upgraded since you've seen this shot. But basically you got a computer, you've got a tripod, you've a bunch of radio, to keep yourself -- well, just close enough to trouble, but not in trouble, right?
TREECE: Right, right. I've got a weather program now that downloads real-time radar, using XM Radio. I've upgraded my phone. And I've got Ham radio, I keep in contact with the National Weather Service. They've given me updates. I feed them what I see and it kind of works both way. We help each other out.
O'BRIEN: All right, a lot of people, their only knowledge of this is from the movie back in '96, "Twister." Let's show that clip right here. I know that this gives -- storm chasers don't like this movie. Dispel a few notions that we might have based on just seeing this movie and deciding that's what storm chasing is about.
TREECE: No, no, not really. You know, it's a Hollywood movie. You know, they're going to make a movie to entertain millions of people. It's not that easy. Chasing tornadoes, if it was that easy, everybody would do it because it's an incredible rush when you get something like I got yesterday. And it is just not that easy and, you know, they glorified it and kind of made storm chasers look reckless. Most of us really aren't that renegade, so to speak. And, you know, some of the scenes in it were pretty farfetched. The cow was one that comes to mind. If you've got a cow airborne around your vehicle, you've got bigger problems than going "cow," you know?
O'BRIEN: Eric Treece, thank you very much. And I assume if you're to give a word to the wise, if you're going to do this, try to find somebody that knows what they're doing, don't just drive up to these storms, right?
TREECE: Yes, the biggest thing you can do is learn everything you can about the animal you're hunting before you go out and seek the beast.
O'BRIEN: Eric Treece, good words to live by. And we wish you good luck and good fortune as you seek further storms in the future.
TREECE: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: All right, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right, we've heard about low-carb beer, but what about low-carb wine? Oh yes, instead of that California red or (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Zinfandel, you're now going to have a choice at the wine store that's maybe possibly a little better for you. We're going to pop the cork on that later on LIVE FROM...
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: News around the world now. First the Middle East, an Israeli missile hits a car in Gaza. But it's unclear if anyone is killed. It was part of a day of violence that left six Israeli soldiers and seven Palestinians dead. Israel says it attacked workshops making Palestinian rockets. The troops were killed when their vehicle ran over an explosive devices.
Emergency rescue efforts under way to save people who may be trapped after an explosion in Scotland, it happened at a plastic factory in downtown Glasgow. At least two dozen people were injured. Police say the building collapsed in an industrial accident.
A Canadian man walked away with minor injuries after a plane crash in Alberta. The plane went down in a remote area near Banff National Park. Search crews braved bad weather to recover the body of a second man who died on impact.
(MARKET REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired May 11, 2004 - 12:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: General Taguba speaks out. The man who detailed abuses in an Iraqi prison testifies about what went wrong.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Who is to blame for those abuses inside the Abu Ghraib Prison? This hour, who's in the chain of command, who's responsible for the prisoners?
PHILLIPS: Twister caught on tape. The storm chaser who captured these amazing pictures talks about the thrill of the hunt.
O'BRIEN: And you're looking at the one that got away: the steer that went to extreme measures to avoid becoming a steak.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta where all the journalistic beef is, I'm Miles O'Brien.
PHILLIPS: And I'm Kyra Phillips. It's Tuesday, May 11. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.
Kirkuk to Capitol Hill, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) to Abu Ghraib, we're following events in and about Iraq this hour, beginning with an attack on a civilian convoy near the Jordanian border, contractors working for a Halliburton subsidiary were on their way to Baghdad when they and their 21 vehicles came under fire. We're not yet sure about casualties, but Halliburton says all the drivers are accounted for. We get the latest now on all the day's events from CNN's Karl Penhaul, he's in Baghdad -- Karl.
KARL PENHAUL, POOL REPORTER: Hi, Kyra. Yes, we are told that that convoy was working its way from Jordan to Baghdad along the major highway there, that over the last few weeks has been the subject of frequent ambushes by insurgents.
Now a U.S. official told us this morning that the 21 trucks were attacked by suspected insurgents, and he said at that stage that some of the personnel on board were unaccounted for.
Now since then Kellogg Brown & Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton, and one of the major U.S. contractors here in Iraq, has come out with a statement saying that the convoy had been being run by one of their subcontractors and that all drivers were now accounted for. It didn't go though into any more details about any other personnel or their nationalities who may have been traveling aboard that convoy and whether any of them sustained casualties.
We don't know what happened to the trucks either, whether many of those were damaged, or really what the situation was there. But we do know that no military personnel were traveling with them.
Now also this morning, in the northern city of Kirkuk, that's one of those cities that is jointly claimed by the Kurds, by Arabs, and also Turkmen, a bomb exploded, that went off in a crowded marketplace in a Kurdish neighborhood. And we're told by officials there that three civilians were killed and at least 22 others were injured. No claims yet of responsibility as to who may have been behind that attack.
Now from north to south, down in the holy city of Najaf, the standoff still continues there between coalition forces and members of the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's so-called Mehdi Army militia. Overnight there were clashes between the Mehdi Army members and coalition forces on the outskirts of Najaf. And we're told by U.S. officials that 13 member of the Mehdi Army were killed, around 14 others were captured.
And then during the day we also saw what appeared to be a spontaneous demonstration by about 1000 civilians in Najaf, and those calling on Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia to pull out of the city and save any kind of major bloodshed there -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Karl Penhaul, LIVE FROM... Baghdad, thank you.
O'BRIEN: Who is -- who was in charge at Abu Ghraib? If you've been watching CNN, you know that the issue may be the key to unlocking, or at least understanding, the prisoner abuse scandal that spawned so many investigations and repercussion. Today, the U.S. Army general who corroborated the claims of whistleblower, and then some, told a Senate panel that military interrogators called the shots at Abu Ghraib. At the same hearing, a senior Pentagon intelligence official said military police are in charge. We get the latest on the conflicting, contentious, sometimes combative testimony from CNN's Ed Henry, joining us live now from Capitol Hill -- Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Miles, there were less fireworks than last Friday when Secretary Rumsfeld testified to this same committee. But there were still -- were some dramatic moments, such as when General Taguba was asked what went wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN WARNER (R-VA), CHMN, ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: In simple words, your own soldier's language, how did this happen?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down, lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: General Taguba testified as well that there's no evidence that these MPs were acting on orders from above, but Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the committee, said the evidence suggests otherwise.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: The collars used on prisoners, the dogs, and the cameras did not suddenly appear out of thin air. These acts of abuse were not the spontaneous actions of lower ranking enlisted personnel who lacked the proper supervision. These attempts to extract information from prisoners by abusive and degrading methods were clearly planned and suggested by others.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Another big moment came when Senator James Inhofe became the first Republican on the committee to suggest that the outrage has gone too far and that maybe the abuses were not so bad as the media is portraying them. And in fact, Senator Inhofe said that some of these prisoners are clearly not boy scouts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JAMES INHOFE (R-OK), ARMED SERVICES CMTE.: I have to say, and I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. The idea that these prisoners -- you know, they're not there for traffic violations. If they're in cell block 1-A or 1-B, these prisoners, they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we're so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: Now while this is playing out publicly, there's a private dance going on as well. Chairman John Warner pointed out that the committee got 6000 pages of investigative materials yesterday from the Pentagon. They're still trying to sift through some of that. And as well, the Senate is trying to hammer out an agreement to receive the photos and videos of the more dramatic abuse that we've heard about in the last few days.
Senator Warner said that he hopes to have a deal by the end of today for the Senate, perhaps even all Senators, not just committee members, to see these photos and videos in a private, classified room, but then give the material back to the Pentagon so that it's not the Senate that's releasing all this explosive material to the public -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Ed Henry on the Hill, thank you very much. Like the Senate Armed Services Committee, Americans in general are divided over whom they hold responsible for all of this. A new CNN/"USA Today"/Gallup poll shows a majority of Americans blame the soldiers we've seen in the photos and/or their superiors. Four in 10 blame intelligence officers. A quarter blame Donald Rumsfeld. One in five blamed President Bush. Probably not coincidentally, the president's job approval rating has sunk to its lowest ever, that's 46 percent, it's down 6 points in less than a month, 14 points this year. Live pictures now coming to us from the Pentagon. The Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld taking questions from staffers at the Pentagon. Let's listen in.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF STATE: ... and a fair investigation can take some weeks and months if they take care to see that the accused are treated lawfully.
Our enemies will exploit this episode to prove their negative views of our country. But then they were doing that before this episode. We see repeated instances where untruths about our country and about our conduct are put out on the regional media.
But friends of freedom will understand that it is a virtue of our system that the president and most senior officials take responsibility for and are involved in seeing that the punishment for such violations of human rights occur. That stands in stark contrast to the many parts of the world where governments use torture or collude in it and do not express shock or dismay, nor do they apologize when it's uncovered.
So at the end of the day, there is, even here, reason for pride in democracy. And certainly, there's reason for pride in the standards by which the military forces of our country are governed.
So I thank you for your hard work every day, to keep America safe and free. I thank your families for their support as well.
Now General Pete Pace, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has a few words to say.
GEN. PETER PACE, VICE CHMN., JOINT CHIEFS: Thank you, sir. We'll get right to your questions. I'd be remiss if I didn't...
O'BRIEN: All right, a brief excerpt of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, as he continues to address this prisoner abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib Prison. We're going to continue to monitor it as the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Peter Pace, continues his address, we'll bring you any newsworthy aspects of that later if they should come up -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, military police and military intelligence forces, both have clearly spelled out duties in military detention centers. But as you've heard, those duties overlap in some places, diverge in others, and even top officials aren't always clear on who answers to whom. For some insight, we call in CNN military intelligence analyst Ken Robinson, he's joining us today out of Washington.
Hi, Ken.
KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Hi, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Well, first of all, it's something you and I have been talking about for a while, and that is were the military police actually, I guess, encouraged by military intelligence, military interrogators. General Taguba coming out and basically making the point that they were.
ROBINSON: His report says that they were influenced by members of the military intelligence. Really not specified -- I have the copy of the report right here in front of me and I've been trying to read it all morning along and follow along with the testimony. Major General Fay is conducting a investigation right now because of Major General Taguba's report, and his report is due in approximately three weeks to evaluate and say whether there are culpability charges warranted for anyone in military intelligence. It hasn't happened yet. Three weeks from now we should see some results of that investigation.
PHILLIPS: All right. Well, let's lay out the responsibilities. First of all, let's talk about military police. You've put together point by point what military police are responsible for. Obviously to house, protect, account for, and feed prisoners, take us through the next points quickly.
ROBINSON: Let's go ahead and reveal all of them and I'll talk down to them. The first one is very obvious, and wasn't followed properly. Major General -- I mean, Brigadier General Karpinski was hotel keeper of a place called Abu Ghraib, and that's the house. To protect, those responsibilities are by all the military police to protect these prisoners and deliver them in good order to be interrogated properly.
Maintaining security for these prisoners: This prison has had several uprisings, which is why it came on the radar screen initially. Monitor and account for the prisoners: There are allegations made that there were not formal bed counts and head counts done except every few days and sometimes weeks apart, which has led to a lack of accountability of who was actually being held there.
Handle and move the prisoners while in their custody: The military police are supposed to take the prisoners and deliver them for interrogation when the interrogators request it. And that coordination process overlaps because there's a chain of custody handoff from the police to the interrogator, and the issue that's come down here is the issue of defining -- definition of setting the conditions. What does that mean? Let's look at the military intelligence side.
PHILLIPS: Quite different, military police meant to keep the peace, military intelligence obviously taking on a number of different responsibilities.
ROBINSON: As you see in the first bullet here, receive tasking on the collection of intelligence. There's a war going on. There's IED, improvised explosive devices, killing soldiers every day. There are terrorist attacks. So these interrogators have taskings of things to try to collect to prevent the next attack. Simultaneously, they're helping in the screening of prisoners to determine who is an enemy combatant, who is a terrorist who is simply a civilian who was rolled up accidentally.
And then from that process, they coordinate with the MPs to find a way to set favorable conditions. And the favorable conditions that I know of in the interrogation process is that the MPs are to monitor the prisoners and to give information to the interrogators on the demeanor of the prisoners, who they communicate with, what pocket litter they were found with during the screening process, and anything that they have said in language to others that may have been overheard that can then be used as part of the interrogation process to find one of the approaches, which you and I talked about last week, that are appropriate and approved by the Geneva Convention, to extract combat information that's actionable.
PHILLIPS: So when it comes down to it, military police and military intelligence really only have two common responsibilities, and that would be treating prisoners according to the regulations, international law and Geneva Convention, and also reporting actual or suspected violations. So if you lay out the facts here, from responsibilities of MPs to MI, and then we see the pictures, I mean clearly a discrepancy.
ROBINSON: Not just a discrepancy, just something just went brutally, brutally wrong; this issue of tactical control and the issue of Dr. Cambone, the undersecretary for intelligence, disagreeing with General Taguba, the problem with that is that they're both right. According to doctrine, the military police are in control. According to a frag order issued, a tactical control frag order, which apparently neither the brigadier general, Karpinski, or her chain of command was aware of, the MI brigade commander had control of the facility. So that's what Major General Fay has to sort out. And that report again we'll find out in two to three weeks.
PHILLIPS: And of course, we'll stay on it. Ken Robinson, thanks so much.
O'BRIEN: Finding the big one, a storm chaser hit the jackpot when he spotted this twister on the horizon, pushed the record button, voila. We'll talk with him about what it was like to capture these amazing images.
And later, abuse and torture in the midst of war, two POWs held captive for eight years speak out about abuses in Iraq.
And do you need a jolt of joe to stay awake? Who doesn't? Why a second cup of coffee may not be the best strategy to get a caffeine kick. We'll see you latte.
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PHILLIPS: ... was his brother really live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he got there $3000 later. Up close and personal: A storm chaser happened to catch this amazing tornado last night south of Denver, Colorado. It was one of the several twisters to touch down in that state. This one destroyed a farm house and a barn, no one was injured.
O'BRIEN: Excellent video of that tornado in the middle of nowhere and just great stuff. That amazing video was captured by Eric Treece, a pilot who guides freighters on the Great Lakes for a living, but who lives to chase storms when he's not hauling iron ore at the helm of a big freighter. He joins us from Denver now to answer a swirl of questions we might have about storm chasing, or more accurately, storm chasing and then living to tell about it.
Eric, good to have you with us.
ERIC TREECE, STORM CHASER: All right, thanks, how are you doing, Miles?
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's roll that tape, this is a spectacular shot. This is, I guess, in your racket, the money shot, what you're after, right?
TREECE: Yes, yes, you could say that, in a sense.
O'BRIEN: Give me a sense of what that -- is it worth a lot of money? Could you sell it to a lot of people?
TREECE: You know, this is really the first time I've ever went down this path. It's been rather intimidating for me, let me say.
O'BRIEN: Really?
TREECE: Yes. I never realized I could get this much attention with this.
O'BRIEN: Well, good. We're glad to give you the attention because you obviously show a degree of courage, depending on how you look at it. Some might say that might be kind of stupid to be so close to a storm. Why don't you tell us the circumstances of what led you to this storm and how you got that great picture.
TREECE: Well, I drove out east of town. And there was two storms that fired up early in the afternoon, about 2:30. They fizzled out. And this storm was known as Tailend Charlie. And it was really the only player in town for a long time. I just jumped on I-70 and headed down towards Limon. And it didn't look that impressive at first. And after about an hour or so, she started gaining some strength. And the inflow started to pick up and she started to look more organized. And I just decided to stick with this storm. There were some storms farther north of me, but this one looked the most impressive on the radar.
O'BRIEN: So a lot of it is choosing which funnel cloud to pursue, right, to see what ultimately turns out to be a real great picture? TREECE: Well, not necessarily. A lot of it has to do with luck and some intuition. I was looking at dew points and the dew points down at the south of me were a little bit better than the ones at the north at the time. And the moisture is what feeds the storm. So I took the chance and went south.
O'BRIEN: All right, we want to go through some of the pictures you've gotten over the years. You've been doing this now for about five years, as I understand it. And over the course of that time, you've gotten spectacular images of weather patterns, not just the funnel clouds themselves, but things like the lightning, which is associated with it. And that's a spectacular shot right there. But whenever you're around a funnel cloud, a lot of things are happening in the sky, aren't they?
TREECE: Yes, yes, yes, I chase alone a lot. And I'm doing four times as much work as a lot of people because I have got to navigate and maintain position with the storm and also maintain a safe position with the storm to, you know, not get myself in trouble.
O'BRIEN: All right. This is a spectacular image, those clouds. That's a wonderful shot. I want to show people your rig, the storm chaser car. Actually, I think you've upgraded since you've seen this shot. But basically you got a computer, you've got a tripod, you've a bunch of radio, to keep yourself -- well, just close enough to trouble, but not in trouble, right?
TREECE: Right, right. I've got a weather program now that downloads real-time radar, using XM Radio. I've upgraded my phone. And I've got Ham radio, I keep in contact with the National Weather Service. They've given me updates. I feed them what I see and it kind of works both way. We help each other out.
O'BRIEN: All right, a lot of people, their only knowledge of this is from the movie back in '96, "Twister." Let's show that clip right here. I know that this gives -- storm chasers don't like this movie. Dispel a few notions that we might have based on just seeing this movie and deciding that's what storm chasing is about.
TREECE: No, no, not really. You know, it's a Hollywood movie. You know, they're going to make a movie to entertain millions of people. It's not that easy. Chasing tornadoes, if it was that easy, everybody would do it because it's an incredible rush when you get something like I got yesterday. And it is just not that easy and, you know, they glorified it and kind of made storm chasers look reckless. Most of us really aren't that renegade, so to speak. And, you know, some of the scenes in it were pretty farfetched. The cow was one that comes to mind. If you've got a cow airborne around your vehicle, you've got bigger problems than going "cow," you know?
O'BRIEN: Eric Treece, thank you very much. And I assume if you're to give a word to the wise, if you're going to do this, try to find somebody that knows what they're doing, don't just drive up to these storms, right?
TREECE: Yes, the biggest thing you can do is learn everything you can about the animal you're hunting before you go out and seek the beast.
O'BRIEN: Eric Treece, good words to live by. And we wish you good luck and good fortune as you seek further storms in the future.
TREECE: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: All right, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right, we've heard about low-carb beer, but what about low-carb wine? Oh yes, instead of that California red or (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Zinfandel, you're now going to have a choice at the wine store that's maybe possibly a little better for you. We're going to pop the cork on that later on LIVE FROM...
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PHILLIPS: News around the world now. First the Middle East, an Israeli missile hits a car in Gaza. But it's unclear if anyone is killed. It was part of a day of violence that left six Israeli soldiers and seven Palestinians dead. Israel says it attacked workshops making Palestinian rockets. The troops were killed when their vehicle ran over an explosive devices.
Emergency rescue efforts under way to save people who may be trapped after an explosion in Scotland, it happened at a plastic factory in downtown Glasgow. At least two dozen people were injured. Police say the building collapsed in an industrial accident.
A Canadian man walked away with minor injuries after a plane crash in Alberta. The plane went down in a remote area near Banff National Park. Search crews braved bad weather to recover the body of a second man who died on impact.
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