Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Artillery Shell in Iraq Tested for Sarin; IGC President Killed in Bomb Blast
Aired May 17, 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Dangerous discovery. U.S. forces in Iraq find a bomb that could be laced with sarin nerve gas. Where did it come from?
Baghdad blast and Iraq security. The head of Iraq's Governing Council assassinated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to represent what it means to be a United States soldier. We have to be better and more honorable than any other country's soldiers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Learning to face the front lines of the war on terror. Inside the training at one of America's oldest private military schools.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When the brick and the Coca-Cola bottle came through my window, I remember thinking to myself, oh, so this is how it is in the middle of a riot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a true hero. The personal impact of a Supreme Court ruling desegregating schools 50 years ago today.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips, Miles is off. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.
We begin this hour with a nerve gas bomb shell in Iraq. As you may have seen right here live on CNN, coalition forces announced their first encounter to date with the potentially deadly nerve agent sarin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155 millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found. The round had been rigged as an IED which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy. A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small amount of agent. The round was an old binary type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced. The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece. Mixing in dispersal of the agent from such a projectile as an IED is very limited.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Two soldiers were treated for what Kimmitt calls "minor traces of exposure," but has since been cleared for duty. We also learned today that a shell containing mustard gas turned up a week or so ago. Both are being studied by the survey group, not to mention CNN's national security correspondent, David Ensor.
David, what do you know?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, this shell with traces of what they believe is sarin gas was discovered on Saturday near Baghdad Airport, and as you mentioned it, it slightly hurt, affected the health of two soldiers.
They have taken the shell now back to the Iraq Survey Group laboratories and they are looking at it. I understand that the shell only partially broke up and that there's still some liquid in both of the two binary channel -- you know, containers within the artillery shell. So they may be able to really get to the bottom of what this is.
Now, the big question, of course, is how many more of these are there out there and have the insurgents got their hand on more of them because of course this is quite dangerous material? In this case it did not spread, it did not turn into a cloud of deadly gas. But who knows what may happen next time, and what happens if terrorists get their hands on shells.
Now they all look like -- the shell looked exactly like these ones that we're showing on the screen. It was just -- it looked like a normal artillery shell from the outside. There were no special markings saying "chemical weapons" or anything like that.
The working assumption of U.S. officials is that the individuals who tried to use it as an explosive device did not realize what they had their hands on. But now the question is how many more of them have they got? -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: David, how do know it was sarin gas? How did they figure it out?
ENSOR: Apparently the soldiers weren't feeling well and as a result they decided to do some testing on the remnants of this shell. And the preliminary field test concluded that it's sarin gas -- the compounds that make sarin gas.
Now it is only a preliminary look and we understand from a senior Pentagon official, who my colleague Barbara Starr has spoken to, that the definitive laboratory test has not yet been done, but preliminarily they think it is sarin gas. And as you mentioned earlier, they found a mustard gas shell about 10 days ago. So that -- if these two both test out, that's two weapons of mass destruction that have so far been found inside Iraq -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: David Ensor, thanks so much. Well, let's talk more about the potential new threat to coalition forces with CNN analyst Ken Robinson.
First of all, Ken, let's kind of talk about this field test. How does that go down? Once the soldiers weren't feeling well, how do you do a field test?
KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTEL ANALYST: Well, they have an assay a kit that they're able to use to test for the presence of both chemical and biological agents. And they have a field testing kit. They have chemical paper that they use because this agent is tasteless, it's odorless.
And so really the first effects -- the noticeable first effects are what happens to the human body with dilation of the pupils, runny nose, et cetera. And when they notice those, those first noticeable effects, they immediately go into their testing kit, take chemical paper and test for either the presence to confirm or deny.
The problem is is sometimes those tests in the field are inaccurate and it really requires, as Barbara Star cautioned earlier, a more thorough sealed (ph) test. Charles Duelfer, who is the Iraqi Survey Group leader, is the former deputy commissioner of UNSCOM who is very familiar with this type of round because they're literally littered all over the battlefield and Iraq was terrible about marking their munitions, they just didn't do it.
PHILLIPS: Well, Ken, let's talk about agent purity. How will the U.S. figure out if indeed this is something that Saddam was hiding possibly or was the sarin gas just leftovers from the Cold War?
ROBINSON: Well, one of the things about the agent when they're put into a round is they never stay the same. They either get -- they degrade over a period of time and that's affected by the environment, it's affected by heat and it's affected by where the round has been stored. And that degradation can be measured. And so if this agent shows a high amount of purity in it, then it is very likely that it will not be from a time period of 1989 or 1990/-91. If, however, it shows that its degradation was down to maybe 10 percent of its original purity, then it will clearly indicate that it probably is from that time period. And that's what the further tests will show.
PHILLIPS: And now that it has been discovered, of course how is that going to change MOPP in the field for soldiers?
ROBINSON: Well, the military operational preparedness posture, this couldn't come at a worse times in terms of the weather there as you know; 120, 125-degree weather. And now soldiers and their preparedness posture is going to change because the threat has now changed as David Ensor reported.
The real question is, is did the people who placed this IED know what they were doing? As he mentioned earlier, when you use an IED explosive device and you use high explosive rounds, it can cause what we call agent defeat.
In other words, the very act of the explosion of the explosive can defeat the agent that you're trying to disburse. However no one really knows the long-term effects of long level exposures to sarin. Sarin is an organo-phosphate, and so it's like a fertilizer. And there is some thought that from the first Gulf War low-level exposures to sarin are causes of some things which were touted in the media as being Gulf War illnesses. And the studies are still under way as to what effects those will be.
PHILLIPS: Ken Robinson, thanks so much.
Well, the other headline out of Baghdad, Governing Council president assassinated in suicide bombing. Izzedine Salim was at a checkpoint outside Baghdad's highly protected Green Zone when his car was rammed by another car packed with artillery rounds. Several other Iraqis were also killed in the second deadly attack on a Governing Council member in eight months.
CNN's Ben Wedeman now has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF: The blast that killed Governing Council Rotating President Izzedine Salim went off at 9:55 in the morning near a checkpoint leading to the Green Zone where the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is located. In that blast, seven people were killed, five civilians wounded and two U.S. soldiers wounded as well.
Now the blast created a huge crater, throwing cars across the street. Now according to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the back of the car that hit the vehicle in which Salim was sitting was packed with artillery shells.
Now according to the coalition spokesman, they believe that this attack bears all the hallmarks of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national linked to a series of attacks in Iraq. Most recently, of course, the beheading of U.S. citizen Nicholas Berg.
Now immediately after this blast, the Iraqi Governing Council picked a new rotating president. That will be Ghazi Ajil, he is from the northern town of Mosul, a Sunni engineer. He was originally designated to take the post on the first of June, now he is taking it over today and will hold it until the thirtieth of June when the scheduled handover from the coalition to some sort of Iraqi entity or government will take place.
I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN, reporting from Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: The coalition authority notes that Salim's security forces were made up as family members who had opted not to receive training, weapons or other resources from the coalition. The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal reignites this week with new assertions in "The New Yorker" magazine. In his third straight article investigative writer Seymour Hersh reports a so-called "special access" program was set up to crack down on terror suspects in Afghanistan and later exported to Baghdad. Well, Hersh writes that the group's operating principle was "grab whom you must, do what you want." And he says no less than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave the green light to the program at Abu Ghraib.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": What happened is after the Afghanistan war began, it was settled down, we beat the Taliban; we still found Rumsfeld was very frustrated by the fact that we would find al Qaeda somewhere around the world where we wanted to go get them.
Even with our Special Forces there was always bureaucratic obstacles. The local ambassador -- the American ambassador would want to know what these teams are doing here, et cetera, et cetera, local police officials.
So what he did is he set up a super secret team, as you said, a special access program, which is the highest classification in the Pentagon. This is -- it's a program that's run in an unmarked room and they have their own budgets, Congress doesn't know much about it.
This group was -- they recruited a number of operators from Delta Force, the SEALs, competent people. Everybody had aliases. It was a completely off-the-record operation. They had their separate communication, separate travel, separate aircraft and they could go without visas anywhere to grab somebody. They had their own prison system, the first cut they took care of, the second cut they sent down to Guantanamo. This group was operating very effectively and still operates.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Now by way of denial, a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubs Hersh's allegations "the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I've ever observed." Here's CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with more -- Barbara.
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, that's exactly right. Lawrence DiRita, the personal spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, issued a statement over the weekend strongly taking exception to the Seymour Hersh article and he continued today talking to reporters, not only did he say "this is the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I have ever observed," he also went on to say: "There were 280,000 jobs created last month and apparently there is still a shortage of fact checkers at 'The New Yorker.'"
So the Pentagon continuing to say there is simply no truth to the Seymour Hersh article and Pentagon officials also saying that all detainees in Iraq fall under the Geneva Convention except for -- perhaps for those who might have a direct affiliation with al Qaeda, again, saying there just simply is no truth to this article -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Barbara Starr, LIVE FROM... the Pentagon, thank you.
The U.S. soldier who is almost synonymous with the prison scandal reportedly told investigators she saw nothing wrong with the tactics at Abu Ghraib. "The New York Times" quotes Private First Class Lynndie England as explaining why photos were taken of inmates' sexual humiliation. "We thought it looked funny." Question: "Was there anything done to these detainees that you felt was going too far?" Answer: "No." But England's lawyer isn't taking anything of that at face value.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIORGIO RA'SHADD, ENGLAND'S ATTORNEY: Not having been given full discovery, as you know, of all the information that the Senate Armed Services Committee has, which is why I'm here, to request that discovery, I would be concerned that one, it's out of context, two, that the document, in fact, may not be true, and, three, that if it is true, we don't know the context, but if it is true that the Army has been acting nefariously to get statements from soldiers by circumventing their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Now that would be consistent with their behavior of circumventing the Geneva Conventions. And that's outrageous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: The first of four scheduled courts martial of U.S. soldiers is set to begin on Wednesday.
Straight ahead, a shocker on the Virginia coast. Human remains discovered in three separate suitcases. More on that mystery ahead.
ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: History is being made here in Massachusetts as thousands of same-sex couples are being allowed to legally wed. I'll Eric Philips in Boston and I'll have that story coming up.
PHILLIPS: And will you be crossing paths with Danielle or Otto in the next few months? Forecasts and the name game for this year's hurricanes, blowing ashore right ahead on LIVE FROM...
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Tearing down the walls of inequality. Live pictures now. We're talking about 50 years later. They're marking the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling on Brown V. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. The watershed ruling banned segregation and forever changed race relations in America. Monroe Elementary, the formerly all-black school where the case began, is now a museum and being declared a historic site.
President Bush will be on hand for the dedication ceremony today. He is expected to speak about 45 a minutes from now. CNN will bring you his comments live. Other news across America begins with anti-terror measures at the home of fantasy and fun. Walt Disney World is installing hydraulically powered barricades at its four theme parks in Florida. The barricades can stop a 20,000 pound truck bomb traveling at 70 miles per hour. These are high profile, Disney's parks have long been considered a possible terrorist target.
Along the South Florida coast, the danger of rip currents. Five people drowned in the past week. Rip currents don't suck swimmers under, they pull them away from the shoreline.
In Virginia, more body parts in the bay. A third suitcase has been found with human remains inside. Investigators believe they're linked to the remains found in two other suitcases earlier this month. The remains are of a white male, but so far, his identity has not been determined.
Making matrimonial history. For the first time in this country, it's legal for same-sex couples to marry, but only in Massachusetts. Our Eric Philips is watching them exchange get licenses and exchange "I dos" in Boston.
Hi, Eric.
PHILIPS: Kyra, good afternoon to you. We're here in Boston, Massachusetts where couples have been lining up all day long to attain those much-awaited marriage licenses, but I can show you today, there is definitely some opposition here today. We've seen people singing and waving banners; some of the banners really spewing some rather hateful messages such as "God hates fags" and that type of thing.
But they've been singing words as well, some spiritual hymns. But then just a little bit closer to the building, you can see where the crowds have been lining up, waiting to go in there, same-sex couples have been going in and getting their marriage licenses, coming out and waving them in the air as a sign of victory; only to be greeted by crowds cheering and clapping for them as they come through the doors. This has been going on here all day long and the wedding bells across the state of Massachusetts are ringing for same-sex couples.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I now pronounce that you are married under the laws of Massachusetts.
PHILIPS (voice-over): Same-sex weddings are starting to take place across the Bay State. In Boston, cheers from the crowd each time a couple emerges with marriage license in hand. All day long couples like original plaintiffs Julie and Hillary Goodridge will be shuffling from city halls to local courthouses to apply for a waiver of the three-day waiting rule so they can get married today.
It's a day Maureen Broadoff (ph) and Ellen Wade (ph) weren't sure they'd ever see, they have been together for 24 years, now they'll be legally married. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm usually a pretty unsentimental character, but I'm really kind of -- it's very exciting.
PHILIPS: Excitement that's had months to build. It was last November when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor to a challenge of the state marriage laws, clearing the way for gay and lesbian couples to marry.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt like it was something we were entitled to and something we really wanted to do. But when we filed the lawsuit it did seem like at least a possibility.
PHILIPS: Those oppose gay marriage maintain this is a dark day in history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it represents to me a tragic breakdown of 6000 years of the most precious institution that we have in civilization.
PHILIPS: Appeals against the Massachusetts high court decision had been filed and rejected. A proposed law banning gay marriage can't be approved before 2006.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILIPS: In Massachusetts there is a law that says couples who apply for their marriage licenses must wait three days before legally marrying. But many of today's applicants are filing for a waiver of that law so they can marry immediately -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Eric Philips in Massachusetts, thank you.
Straight ahead, discipline, diplomas and the war on terror. These cadets will go from the classroom to the front lines. How is their training preparing them? We're going in depth at the Marion Military Institute.
And high octane impact. The gas pump isn't the only place you're paying higher prices. That story straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, fast-rising gasoline prices are taking a bigger chunk of family budgets and that extends well beyond the pump. The latest on that from CNN's Kathleen Hays in New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN HAYS, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Soaring gas prices at the pump, that's an in-your-face, can't avoid it impact on rising energy prices. Gasoline prices have surged nearly 30 percent over the past year to almost two bucks a gallon nationwide. On average, American families are spending $2500 a year to fill their tanks. That's up from $1900 a year ago.
But this is probably eating more out of your family's budget than you realize.
BILL CHENEY, MFC GLOBAL INVESTMENT MGMT.: It's hard to think of any part of the economy which is not affected by the price of oil or of energy in general. Anything which is shipped anywhere is subject to the cost of fuel for shipping it, whether it's air, road, whatever.
HAYS: Take FedEx and UPS, the world's largest express shipping companies, they currently tack on a surcharge of 6 percent or more to pay for higher fuel costs. That comes directly out of your pocketbook. What you may not notice is the added cost of trucking products across the country, but your local merchants are certainly paying the freight.
JOHN FELMY, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE: There's no question that the increases in diesel costs have really been a burden for farmers, for truckers, for many who transport goods around the country.
HAYS: Going on vacation any time soon? Get ready to pay for higher jet fuel costs. Major U.S. airlines already slap fuel surcharges on passengers and cargo. Less obvious but even more pervasive, petroleum products are used to produce everything from the silicon wafer chips that go into computers to the paint to use to brighten up baby's nursery. A few pennies here, a few dollars there, it all adds up to a big chunk of change taken away from American households.
FELMY: If you combine gasoline with the other forms of petroleum, every penny change in the cost of petroleum is more like $3 billion because we consume 300 billion gallons a year.
HAYS (on camera): Wal-Mart said this week that higher gas prices are costing its customers about $7 a week. And other retailers have complained recently that because of higher gas prices, shoppers are making fewer trips to the mall.
Kathleen Hays, CNN Financial News, New York.
(MARKET REPORT)
PHILLIPS: We want to take our viewers now live to Topeka, Kansas, listen in on the 16th Street Baptist Church Choir as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown V. Board of Education.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired May 17, 2004 - 12:59 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Dangerous discovery. U.S. forces in Iraq find a bomb that could be laced with sarin nerve gas. Where did it come from?
Baghdad blast and Iraq security. The head of Iraq's Governing Council assassinated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to represent what it means to be a United States soldier. We have to be better and more honorable than any other country's soldiers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Learning to face the front lines of the war on terror. Inside the training at one of America's oldest private military schools.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When the brick and the Coca-Cola bottle came through my window, I remember thinking to myself, oh, so this is how it is in the middle of a riot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, a true hero. The personal impact of a Supreme Court ruling desegregating schools 50 years ago today.
From the CNN Center in Atlanta, I'm Kyra Phillips, Miles is off. CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.
We begin this hour with a nerve gas bomb shell in Iraq. As you may have seen right here live on CNN, coalition forces announced their first encounter to date with the potentially deadly nerve agent sarin.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: The Iraqi Survey Group confirmed today that a 155 millimeter artillery round containing sarin nerve agent had been found. The round had been rigged as an IED which was discovered by a U.S. force convoy. A detonation occurred before the IED could be rendered inoperable. This produced a very small amount of agent. The round was an old binary type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced. The cell is designed to work after being fired from an artillery piece. Mixing in dispersal of the agent from such a projectile as an IED is very limited.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Two soldiers were treated for what Kimmitt calls "minor traces of exposure," but has since been cleared for duty. We also learned today that a shell containing mustard gas turned up a week or so ago. Both are being studied by the survey group, not to mention CNN's national security correspondent, David Ensor.
David, what do you know?
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, this shell with traces of what they believe is sarin gas was discovered on Saturday near Baghdad Airport, and as you mentioned it, it slightly hurt, affected the health of two soldiers.
They have taken the shell now back to the Iraq Survey Group laboratories and they are looking at it. I understand that the shell only partially broke up and that there's still some liquid in both of the two binary channel -- you know, containers within the artillery shell. So they may be able to really get to the bottom of what this is.
Now, the big question, of course, is how many more of these are there out there and have the insurgents got their hand on more of them because of course this is quite dangerous material? In this case it did not spread, it did not turn into a cloud of deadly gas. But who knows what may happen next time, and what happens if terrorists get their hands on shells.
Now they all look like -- the shell looked exactly like these ones that we're showing on the screen. It was just -- it looked like a normal artillery shell from the outside. There were no special markings saying "chemical weapons" or anything like that.
The working assumption of U.S. officials is that the individuals who tried to use it as an explosive device did not realize what they had their hands on. But now the question is how many more of them have they got? -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: David, how do know it was sarin gas? How did they figure it out?
ENSOR: Apparently the soldiers weren't feeling well and as a result they decided to do some testing on the remnants of this shell. And the preliminary field test concluded that it's sarin gas -- the compounds that make sarin gas.
Now it is only a preliminary look and we understand from a senior Pentagon official, who my colleague Barbara Starr has spoken to, that the definitive laboratory test has not yet been done, but preliminarily they think it is sarin gas. And as you mentioned earlier, they found a mustard gas shell about 10 days ago. So that -- if these two both test out, that's two weapons of mass destruction that have so far been found inside Iraq -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: David Ensor, thanks so much. Well, let's talk more about the potential new threat to coalition forces with CNN analyst Ken Robinson.
First of all, Ken, let's kind of talk about this field test. How does that go down? Once the soldiers weren't feeling well, how do you do a field test?
KEN ROBINSON, CNN MILITARY INTEL ANALYST: Well, they have an assay a kit that they're able to use to test for the presence of both chemical and biological agents. And they have a field testing kit. They have chemical paper that they use because this agent is tasteless, it's odorless.
And so really the first effects -- the noticeable first effects are what happens to the human body with dilation of the pupils, runny nose, et cetera. And when they notice those, those first noticeable effects, they immediately go into their testing kit, take chemical paper and test for either the presence to confirm or deny.
The problem is is sometimes those tests in the field are inaccurate and it really requires, as Barbara Star cautioned earlier, a more thorough sealed (ph) test. Charles Duelfer, who is the Iraqi Survey Group leader, is the former deputy commissioner of UNSCOM who is very familiar with this type of round because they're literally littered all over the battlefield and Iraq was terrible about marking their munitions, they just didn't do it.
PHILLIPS: Well, Ken, let's talk about agent purity. How will the U.S. figure out if indeed this is something that Saddam was hiding possibly or was the sarin gas just leftovers from the Cold War?
ROBINSON: Well, one of the things about the agent when they're put into a round is they never stay the same. They either get -- they degrade over a period of time and that's affected by the environment, it's affected by heat and it's affected by where the round has been stored. And that degradation can be measured. And so if this agent shows a high amount of purity in it, then it is very likely that it will not be from a time period of 1989 or 1990/-91. If, however, it shows that its degradation was down to maybe 10 percent of its original purity, then it will clearly indicate that it probably is from that time period. And that's what the further tests will show.
PHILLIPS: And now that it has been discovered, of course how is that going to change MOPP in the field for soldiers?
ROBINSON: Well, the military operational preparedness posture, this couldn't come at a worse times in terms of the weather there as you know; 120, 125-degree weather. And now soldiers and their preparedness posture is going to change because the threat has now changed as David Ensor reported.
The real question is, is did the people who placed this IED know what they were doing? As he mentioned earlier, when you use an IED explosive device and you use high explosive rounds, it can cause what we call agent defeat.
In other words, the very act of the explosion of the explosive can defeat the agent that you're trying to disburse. However no one really knows the long-term effects of long level exposures to sarin. Sarin is an organo-phosphate, and so it's like a fertilizer. And there is some thought that from the first Gulf War low-level exposures to sarin are causes of some things which were touted in the media as being Gulf War illnesses. And the studies are still under way as to what effects those will be.
PHILLIPS: Ken Robinson, thanks so much.
Well, the other headline out of Baghdad, Governing Council president assassinated in suicide bombing. Izzedine Salim was at a checkpoint outside Baghdad's highly protected Green Zone when his car was rammed by another car packed with artillery rounds. Several other Iraqis were also killed in the second deadly attack on a Governing Council member in eight months.
CNN's Ben Wedeman now has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CAIRO BUREAU CHIEF: The blast that killed Governing Council Rotating President Izzedine Salim went off at 9:55 in the morning near a checkpoint leading to the Green Zone where the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority is located. In that blast, seven people were killed, five civilians wounded and two U.S. soldiers wounded as well.
Now the blast created a huge crater, throwing cars across the street. Now according to Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the back of the car that hit the vehicle in which Salim was sitting was packed with artillery shells.
Now according to the coalition spokesman, they believe that this attack bears all the hallmarks of Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian national linked to a series of attacks in Iraq. Most recently, of course, the beheading of U.S. citizen Nicholas Berg.
Now immediately after this blast, the Iraqi Governing Council picked a new rotating president. That will be Ghazi Ajil, he is from the northern town of Mosul, a Sunni engineer. He was originally designated to take the post on the first of June, now he is taking it over today and will hold it until the thirtieth of June when the scheduled handover from the coalition to some sort of Iraqi entity or government will take place.
I'm Ben Wedeman, CNN, reporting from Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: The coalition authority notes that Salim's security forces were made up as family members who had opted not to receive training, weapons or other resources from the coalition. The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal reignites this week with new assertions in "The New Yorker" magazine. In his third straight article investigative writer Seymour Hersh reports a so-called "special access" program was set up to crack down on terror suspects in Afghanistan and later exported to Baghdad. Well, Hersh writes that the group's operating principle was "grab whom you must, do what you want." And he says no less than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave the green light to the program at Abu Ghraib.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": What happened is after the Afghanistan war began, it was settled down, we beat the Taliban; we still found Rumsfeld was very frustrated by the fact that we would find al Qaeda somewhere around the world where we wanted to go get them.
Even with our Special Forces there was always bureaucratic obstacles. The local ambassador -- the American ambassador would want to know what these teams are doing here, et cetera, et cetera, local police officials.
So what he did is he set up a super secret team, as you said, a special access program, which is the highest classification in the Pentagon. This is -- it's a program that's run in an unmarked room and they have their own budgets, Congress doesn't know much about it.
This group was -- they recruited a number of operators from Delta Force, the SEALs, competent people. Everybody had aliases. It was a completely off-the-record operation. They had their separate communication, separate travel, separate aircraft and they could go without visas anywhere to grab somebody. They had their own prison system, the first cut they took care of, the second cut they sent down to Guantanamo. This group was operating very effectively and still operates.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Now by way of denial, a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dubs Hersh's allegations "the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I've ever observed." Here's CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr with more -- Barbara.
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, that's exactly right. Lawrence DiRita, the personal spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, issued a statement over the weekend strongly taking exception to the Seymour Hersh article and he continued today talking to reporters, not only did he say "this is the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I have ever observed," he also went on to say: "There were 280,000 jobs created last month and apparently there is still a shortage of fact checkers at 'The New Yorker.'"
So the Pentagon continuing to say there is simply no truth to the Seymour Hersh article and Pentagon officials also saying that all detainees in Iraq fall under the Geneva Convention except for -- perhaps for those who might have a direct affiliation with al Qaeda, again, saying there just simply is no truth to this article -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Barbara Starr, LIVE FROM... the Pentagon, thank you.
The U.S. soldier who is almost synonymous with the prison scandal reportedly told investigators she saw nothing wrong with the tactics at Abu Ghraib. "The New York Times" quotes Private First Class Lynndie England as explaining why photos were taken of inmates' sexual humiliation. "We thought it looked funny." Question: "Was there anything done to these detainees that you felt was going too far?" Answer: "No." But England's lawyer isn't taking anything of that at face value.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIORGIO RA'SHADD, ENGLAND'S ATTORNEY: Not having been given full discovery, as you know, of all the information that the Senate Armed Services Committee has, which is why I'm here, to request that discovery, I would be concerned that one, it's out of context, two, that the document, in fact, may not be true, and, three, that if it is true, we don't know the context, but if it is true that the Army has been acting nefariously to get statements from soldiers by circumventing their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. Now that would be consistent with their behavior of circumventing the Geneva Conventions. And that's outrageous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: The first of four scheduled courts martial of U.S. soldiers is set to begin on Wednesday.
Straight ahead, a shocker on the Virginia coast. Human remains discovered in three separate suitcases. More on that mystery ahead.
ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: History is being made here in Massachusetts as thousands of same-sex couples are being allowed to legally wed. I'll Eric Philips in Boston and I'll have that story coming up.
PHILLIPS: And will you be crossing paths with Danielle or Otto in the next few months? Forecasts and the name game for this year's hurricanes, blowing ashore right ahead on LIVE FROM...
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Tearing down the walls of inequality. Live pictures now. We're talking about 50 years later. They're marking the anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling on Brown V. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. The watershed ruling banned segregation and forever changed race relations in America. Monroe Elementary, the formerly all-black school where the case began, is now a museum and being declared a historic site.
President Bush will be on hand for the dedication ceremony today. He is expected to speak about 45 a minutes from now. CNN will bring you his comments live. Other news across America begins with anti-terror measures at the home of fantasy and fun. Walt Disney World is installing hydraulically powered barricades at its four theme parks in Florida. The barricades can stop a 20,000 pound truck bomb traveling at 70 miles per hour. These are high profile, Disney's parks have long been considered a possible terrorist target.
Along the South Florida coast, the danger of rip currents. Five people drowned in the past week. Rip currents don't suck swimmers under, they pull them away from the shoreline.
In Virginia, more body parts in the bay. A third suitcase has been found with human remains inside. Investigators believe they're linked to the remains found in two other suitcases earlier this month. The remains are of a white male, but so far, his identity has not been determined.
Making matrimonial history. For the first time in this country, it's legal for same-sex couples to marry, but only in Massachusetts. Our Eric Philips is watching them exchange get licenses and exchange "I dos" in Boston.
Hi, Eric.
PHILIPS: Kyra, good afternoon to you. We're here in Boston, Massachusetts where couples have been lining up all day long to attain those much-awaited marriage licenses, but I can show you today, there is definitely some opposition here today. We've seen people singing and waving banners; some of the banners really spewing some rather hateful messages such as "God hates fags" and that type of thing.
But they've been singing words as well, some spiritual hymns. But then just a little bit closer to the building, you can see where the crowds have been lining up, waiting to go in there, same-sex couples have been going in and getting their marriage licenses, coming out and waving them in the air as a sign of victory; only to be greeted by crowds cheering and clapping for them as they come through the doors. This has been going on here all day long and the wedding bells across the state of Massachusetts are ringing for same-sex couples.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I now pronounce that you are married under the laws of Massachusetts.
PHILIPS (voice-over): Same-sex weddings are starting to take place across the Bay State. In Boston, cheers from the crowd each time a couple emerges with marriage license in hand. All day long couples like original plaintiffs Julie and Hillary Goodridge will be shuffling from city halls to local courthouses to apply for a waiver of the three-day waiting rule so they can get married today.
It's a day Maureen Broadoff (ph) and Ellen Wade (ph) weren't sure they'd ever see, they have been together for 24 years, now they'll be legally married. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm usually a pretty unsentimental character, but I'm really kind of -- it's very exciting.
PHILIPS: Excitement that's had months to build. It was last November when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in favor to a challenge of the state marriage laws, clearing the way for gay and lesbian couples to marry.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I felt like it was something we were entitled to and something we really wanted to do. But when we filed the lawsuit it did seem like at least a possibility.
PHILIPS: Those oppose gay marriage maintain this is a dark day in history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it represents to me a tragic breakdown of 6000 years of the most precious institution that we have in civilization.
PHILIPS: Appeals against the Massachusetts high court decision had been filed and rejected. A proposed law banning gay marriage can't be approved before 2006.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILIPS: In Massachusetts there is a law that says couples who apply for their marriage licenses must wait three days before legally marrying. But many of today's applicants are filing for a waiver of that law so they can marry immediately -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Eric Philips in Massachusetts, thank you.
Straight ahead, discipline, diplomas and the war on terror. These cadets will go from the classroom to the front lines. How is their training preparing them? We're going in depth at the Marion Military Institute.
And high octane impact. The gas pump isn't the only place you're paying higher prices. That story straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Well, fast-rising gasoline prices are taking a bigger chunk of family budgets and that extends well beyond the pump. The latest on that from CNN's Kathleen Hays in New York.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATHLEEN HAYS, CNN FINANCIAL NEWS ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Soaring gas prices at the pump, that's an in-your-face, can't avoid it impact on rising energy prices. Gasoline prices have surged nearly 30 percent over the past year to almost two bucks a gallon nationwide. On average, American families are spending $2500 a year to fill their tanks. That's up from $1900 a year ago.
But this is probably eating more out of your family's budget than you realize.
BILL CHENEY, MFC GLOBAL INVESTMENT MGMT.: It's hard to think of any part of the economy which is not affected by the price of oil or of energy in general. Anything which is shipped anywhere is subject to the cost of fuel for shipping it, whether it's air, road, whatever.
HAYS: Take FedEx and UPS, the world's largest express shipping companies, they currently tack on a surcharge of 6 percent or more to pay for higher fuel costs. That comes directly out of your pocketbook. What you may not notice is the added cost of trucking products across the country, but your local merchants are certainly paying the freight.
JOHN FELMY, AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE: There's no question that the increases in diesel costs have really been a burden for farmers, for truckers, for many who transport goods around the country.
HAYS: Going on vacation any time soon? Get ready to pay for higher jet fuel costs. Major U.S. airlines already slap fuel surcharges on passengers and cargo. Less obvious but even more pervasive, petroleum products are used to produce everything from the silicon wafer chips that go into computers to the paint to use to brighten up baby's nursery. A few pennies here, a few dollars there, it all adds up to a big chunk of change taken away from American households.
FELMY: If you combine gasoline with the other forms of petroleum, every penny change in the cost of petroleum is more like $3 billion because we consume 300 billion gallons a year.
HAYS (on camera): Wal-Mart said this week that higher gas prices are costing its customers about $7 a week. And other retailers have complained recently that because of higher gas prices, shoppers are making fewer trips to the mall.
Kathleen Hays, CNN Financial News, New York.
(MARKET REPORT)
PHILLIPS: We want to take our viewers now live to Topeka, Kansas, listen in on the 16th Street Baptist Church Choir as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown V. Board of Education.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
