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First Civilian Craft Flies Into Space; 3 More Abu Ghraib Guards Begin Hearings

Aired June 21, 2004 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, first of all, we want to apologize for our technical difficulties, if you were watching "COUNTDOWN TO HANDOVER: The Arab Pulse," believe it or not, we were hit by lightning. And that's what caused the problems. But we do want to tell you it will rerun at 4 a.m. Eastern time, that's the overnight time here in the United States. Also access to the show on CNN.com for the next 24 hours.
Now straight ahead on LIVE FROM..., questions for commanders, a trial in the Iraq prison abuse scandal could reach all the way to the Pentagon's top brass.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: The mystery of the body of a man and his two young sons discovered in a lake tied together and weighted down.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Miles O'Brien live in Mojave, California. No lightning strikes here but an electrifying moment as the first civilian earns his astronaut wings by only 400 feet. We'll tell but the minor malfunction and what's next as this team goes for the $10 million X Prize.

PHILLIPS: Osteoporosis, breast cancer, they're not just women's problems. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta on some surprising men's health issues.

From CNN Atlanta, hello, everyone, I'm Kyra Phillips.

NGUYEN: And I'm Betty Nguyen, this hour of CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

PHILLIPS: Three U.S. military guards accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners appeared today in a makeshift courtroom at the old Baghdad Convention Center. The hearings related the images that sparked outrage worldwide. Here's CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At the pretrial hearings today, defense counsel for two of the accused asked for the Abu Ghraib Prison to remain standing, not to be destroyed as a few weeks ago President Bush had suggested that it should be. They're saying that it's a crime scene and that it needs to be kept standing at least through the trials, and the judge agreed. So Abu Ghraib will remain intact and the U.S. government has been ordered to make sure and do everything it can to make sure it is not pulled down until these trials are done.

Now, the three that were in court for pretrial hearings are accused in connection with some of the most violent of these images of abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib Prison, including the image of the prisoner with a hood on his head standing on a box of American military rations and connected by wires. He was told that he would be electrocuted, according to the charges, if he fell off that box.

Another, Specialist Graner is charged in connection with the human pyramids that were made out of naked Iraqi prisoners, with the thumbs up sign by a dead Iraqi, with the image of him pulling back his arm as if to punch an Iraqi that he had in a headlock. These accused were represented by their counsels today in court. Counsel's asking for a change of venue, saying that they could not get a fair trial in Iraq because they couldn't get witnesses to come, they speculated, because how dangerous it is here, it's a combat zone.

In terms of what their defense would be, two of the defense attorneys said that they would use the defense that these people were just following orders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUY WOMACK, SPC. CHARLES GRANER'S ATTY.: The MPs, Specialist Graner and the others, were following what they believed to be lawful orders. They were ordered by military intelligence officers to do certain things, to soften up these prisoners. They were encouraged to do things, they were congratulated for how well they were doing it and they believed they were doing something that was lawful as part of the war on terrorism.

AMANPOUR: The defense counsel also said they wanted access to high level memos, memos that have been passed allegedly between the White House, the Defense Department, and the Department of Justice, the lawyers say indicate the permissibility of an intense level of interrogation which may have influenced these accused and allowed them to continue that kind of abusive interrogation.

The judge said, no, but he did say they could have access to commanders as high as General Abizaid, who is the commander of CENTCOM, all the forces in Middle East and in fact beyond in Central Asia, also the commanders of the forces here in Iraq and all the commanders below them, including those who have been investigating this scandal.

Lawyers said that they did not expect any formal trial, the actual court-martial trials to start before October. Although a military spokesman here, a government -- a military spokesman here in Baghdad said that it could take place mid to late August.

I'm Christiane Amanpour, CNN, in Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Now to some other developments around Iraq today. Four U.S. Marines killed in the Sunni city of Ramadi. The coalition isn't giving details but witnesses say the Marines were ambushed by insurgents. Videotape of the scattered bodies was delivered to a wire service.

South Korea is standing by its decision to send more troops to Iraq despite a hostage's impassioned plea for his life. His captors have threatened to behead the 33-year-old businessman today unless Seoul pulls its troops from Iraq.

And oil is flowing again in southern Iraq. The coalition says one of two pipelines sabotaged last week has been fixed. Officials say Iraqi exports could be up to full capacity, pumping out more than 1.5 million barrels a day by midweek.

NGUYEN: Was the abduction of American Paul Johnson an inside job? Johnson, as you recall, was kidnapped and beheaded in Saudi Arabia last week. Over the weekend an al Qaeda cell said on an Islamist Web site that it was helped by members of Saudi Arabia's own security forces. Now during a conversation today with our Bill Hemmer on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING," a Saudi official emphatically denied this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADEL AL-JUBEIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: It's very easy to obtain military uniforms in Saudi Arabia just like it is here, you can walk into any Army surplus store in Washington and pick up a military uniform. It's also easy to take cars and paint them to look like police cars. We want to be careful, Bill, here. People seem to be giving credence to what the terrorists are saying on Web sites that reminds me of Saddam Hussein's information minister, what if people had believed what he said when he was saying it when it was total nonsense?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia said it is unlikely the kidnappers would want to divulge information about who helped them but he warned the U.S. must stay on its toes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT JORDAN, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SAUDI ARABIA: We've seen time and time again the size and presence of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia has been underestimated. And so I think we've got to assume right now that there is still great cause for concern, great cause to work as absolutely hard as we can and as the Saudis can to penetrate further and to keep these terrorists on the run. This is good news, but I don't think we should be declaring victory today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: Reports say al Qaeda has named a new leader in Saudi Arabia. The former leader was killed Friday in a shootout with Saudi police -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Some other stories from across the America. In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking at how well its disaster drill went early this morning at Penn Station. City police and fire departments and other emergency responders tested rescue and recovery procedures for Amtrak and commuter trains.

His attorney says Connecticut Governor John Rowland will announce his resignation tonight. Rowland is facing a federal corruption probe and a mounting drive to impeach him. He's admitted lying about accepting gifts and favors.

A Supreme Court ruling today favors health maintenance organizations over patients wanting to take malpractice claims to state courts. The high court unanimously ruled that federal law trumped state law in such cases. State courts traditionally allow higher damage awards by juries.

NGUYEN: Well, space enthusiasts are hailing an historic leap in space travel. For the first time ever a privately financed manned rocket plane blasted in orbit today, setting the stage for possible future commercial flights to space. Our own space enthusiast, Miles O'Brien, witnessed the launch and landing in Mojave, California, and he joins us live with the latest.

What a day out there, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Betty, it was something else, it was a little piece of history here, actually a significant piece of space history. Let's see, there's Alan Shepard, Yuri Gagarin and now Mike Melvill, of all people, 62 years old, originally from South Africa, just got his astronaut's wings pinned onto him. But he's the first person to wear astronaut wings that are of a civilian nature.

This was a privately funded endeavor to the tune of about $20 million, which took off here just a little after dawn and the winds had calmed down. That big craft on top is a craft called White Knight. Below it is the 25-foot-long SpaceShipOne, inside it Mike Melvill, soon to be an astronaut.

It took him about an hour to climb up to about 50,000 feet. This odd looking combination of birds, seemingly an unusual thing that would perhaps not fly, did very well. There you see Melvill, cockpit camera, as he reached the apogee and did what astronauts do best, played with M&Ms and enjoyed this spectacular view from in excess of 100 kilometers, 62 1/2 miles or so.

About three-and-a-half minutes of weightlessness he enjoyed, and then, of course, gravity took over and he dropped very precipitously to Earth, pulling about 5 Gs, that's five times the weight of gravity on your body, going down like a shuttlecock and then eventually, as you see here, the wings locked and he came in for a glider landing here at the Mojave, now we'll call it spaceport, officially.

He greased it, in pilot's terms, did really well, walked out and was greeted by the designer of this craft, the aviation legend Burt Rutan, as well as the sugar daddy for this project, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who staked him to about $20 million or so to make all this happen. Now $20 million, that is just pennies on the dollar by -- when you consider what NASA pays for a space flight. Space shuttle mission is about $500 million, $20 million got an entire space program going and Mike Melvill got to relate to all of us what it was like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE MELVILL, SPACESHIPONE PILOT: It was very exciting. I must say, I wasn't scared. I was a little nervous when we got in the airplane but I was not afraid all the way up. But I was a little afraid on the way down. Boy, when you reenter at 2.9 mach and you start hitting the atmosphere, the noises you hear are somebody talking to you very, very sharply, you know, and you begin to believe that, wow, should I really be doing this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: And I'm sure he'll do it again, though, having even said that. That's Mike Melvill, now astronaut Melvill. The team now is -- has to work on a problem that occurred during this flight. The so-called trim, which controls the aircraft during its supersonic portions, didn't operate properly, it sent them off course and as a result they wasted some of their precious energy which should go straight up, they just made it to the threshold of space but because of that problem, they want to look at things before they proceed.

But when they do, they're going to go after the $10 million X Prize which has been staked by some private businessmen to the first civilian team to fly to space, as we saw today, twice in as many weeks. The man who founded that is Peter Diamandis, as he joins us here. Watch the team, clearly these are the frontrunners to win the X Prize. I know you probably can't play favorites here but nevertheless it has been a long time coming, you've been doing this for at least eight years, and to see a team get this far has got to be rather gratifying.

PETER DIAMANDIS, X PRIZE CREATOR: It's -- you know, it's about time from all of us who wanted to go and have been watching the space program. And now, this type of vehicle is going to allow passengers, eventually, to go into space which a new business.

O'BRIEN: What kind of a business will it be, though? Isn't it -- talk about a niche within a niche or do you see something bigger than that?

DIAMANDIS: Well, you've got to remember that aviation started something very rare, something that only a few people could afford to do and now we take it for granted. We get ourselves on -- order our e-tickets and are mad when our luggage is late and we fly around the world. But space is humanity's final frontier. And it's not NASA's job to carry the public into space. They do research and development, exploring the planets. It's commercial business' job to do that. And here the SpaceShipOne and 26 other teams in seven countries are building the ships to try and do that. O'BRIEN: But it's still very expensive, especially when you talk about getting spacecraft into orbit. Do you really see commercial ventures which can take people to orbit and perhaps even beyond?

DIAMANDIS: It is very expensive today, just as expensive as aviation was in the beginning. But there's no reason why the price couldn't come down precipitously to under $20,000. And in the future, you know, we're going to take it for granted and there's lot of capital, lots of money to be made in space. And the -- speaking of...

O'BRIEN: I should point out, that's a NASA T-38. That is NASA's representative to this particular event. The administrator of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, has released a statement congratulating the team here. And I guess the question is, NASA -- are those guys happy about this or would they rather that NASA be doing this kind of thing?

DIAMANDIS: No, they're very happy. The folks up at NASA headquarters, Bill Readdy, that runs the space shuttle program, sent us letters of congratulations and supporting this. They want this to happen because they recognize to make it cheaper they benefit. If they could spend instead of $14 billion -- you know, $5 billion running the shuttle program, if they could spend a fraction of that and use the rest of it on science, we'd all benefit.

O'BRIEN: Peter Diamandis, we might have to write a big check very soon and we'll be glad to see that, the man in charge of the X Prize. Burt Rutan and his team now saying they may very well, depending on how that problem goes, set the clock - we have to give 60 days notice to these guys before they actually begin their effort to fly two times in two weeks. Back to you, Betty.

NGUYEN: Simply fascinating, especially when you look at the big pictures, all right, Miles O'Brien in the Mojave Desert, thank you.

Questions for a juror in the Scott Peterson murder trial. Just what did the juror say to Laci Peterson's brother? That story ahead.

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The bodies of a father and his young sons washed ashore here on Lake Michigan, tied with a rope and weighted down with sand. I'm Chris Lawrence with a look at what police are doing to find out how they died.

NGUYEN: President Bill Clinton opens up about his two biggest fights and how he lost one of them. Will his revelations affect the current campaign for the White House?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: Very suspicious, that's what police in Wisconsin are calling the deaths of a man and his two sons whose bodies washed ashore on Lake Michigan. The three were found tied together and weighed down with sand. CNN's Chris Lawrence is following developments in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and joins us with the latest.

Hi, Chris. LAWRENCE: Well, Betty, we spoke with the medical examiner just a short while ago and he says he will begin the autopsy later this afternoon and could have the results back as early as tomorrow. That's significant because at first look none of these bodies had any visible signs of physical trauma. In fact when they washed up here on the shores of Lake Michigan Kevin Amde had been tied together with 3- and 6-year-old sons with a nylon rope. That nylon rope had been run through their belt loops and around the waist of one child. Each child also had a backpack that contained Ziploc bag that had been filled with sand, and one child even had his pockets stuck with sand.

All told, police say this added 48 pounds of weight to the three people. Police now say they want to find out where exactly they went into the water and how they died. They describe Kevin Amde as a very loving father and say as far as they can tell up to this point, he had no criminal or mental health problems -- Betty.

NGUYEN: All right, Chris Lawrence in Wisconsin, thank you, a lot of questions still surrounding this case -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Questionable juror in the Scott Peterson trial is staying on the case. The judge had subpoenaed a videotape showing juror No. 5 briefly chatting with Laci Peterson's brother last week. The judge ruled today there was no misconduct on the part of the juror or Laci Peterson's brother.

A trial date could be set today in the Kobe Bryant rape case. The NBA star is back in Colorado for a two-day hearing. Much of the hearing will focus on defense arguments that jurors will have to acquit Bryant if they determine his alleged victim consented at any time to sex. Other issues on the table deal with evidence and the relevance of the woman's sexual history.

NGUYEN: A tricky legal question is on the menu for Italian lawmakers. If you're going to put pineapple and pepperoni on it, well, can you legally call it a pizza? A defining moment for one of Italy's most popular exports.

And bend it like Dumbo? An extreme sport that demands a lot from the goalies.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET REPORT)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Old sins cast long shadows. Nowhere does that seem more apparent than in Philadelphia, Mississippi.. Forty years ago it became infamous as the place where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered. Our Eric Philips says many people in the town would like to put that past behind them, but first they have to confront it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you doing? Good afternoon.

ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ben Cheney has a sense of purpose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're traveling around, registering people to vote.

PHILIPS: He's leading a group of young people on a crusade called Freedom Tour 2004 to register African-American voters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My brother died registering people to vote, educating people about their voting rights. And that's what we're doing today.

PHILIPS: His brother, 21-year-old, James Cheney, was one of three civil rights workers killed on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Cheney, along with Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, had gone to investigate the torching of Mount Zion United Methodist Church and the beating of some of its members by the Ku Klux Klan. Jewel McDonald's mother and brother were beaten.

JEWEL MCDONALD, VICTIM'S DAUGHTER: I think that's what upsets me so, that they would beat a woman.

PHILIPS: Residents like McDonald had been pushing for a state murder trial. Mississippi's attorney general is working on that.

JIM HOOD, MISSISSIPPI ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm personally interviewing witnesses. I learned the value as a DA for eight years, and I tried a hundred jury trials. I know the value of personally interviewing those witnesses and not just reading the cold statements.

PHILIPS (on camera): Two years after it burned to the ground, Mount Zion Church was rebuilt and rededicated. And even though things have changed so much, locals say what's still being rebuilt now, even 40 years later, is the reputation of this community.

MAYOR RAYBURN WADDELL, PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI: When you go out of town, and you tell them you're from Philadelphia, Mississippi, and they'll bring up the 1964 murder of the three civil rights people.

PHILIPS (voice-over): That's why public support for a state trial is strong. Though a handful don't want it.

HUGH THOMASON, RESIDENT: The people here are tired of it. We want you all to go home. We want Mississippi to be forgotten.

PHILIPS: But most want Philadelphia, Mississippi, to be remembered for the city of brotherly love they say it's now become.

Eric Philips, CNN, Philadelphia, Mississippi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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 June 21, 2004 - 14:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, first of all, we want to apologize for our technical difficulties, if you were watching "COUNTDOWN TO HANDOVER: The Arab Pulse," believe it or not, we were hit by lightning. And that's what caused the problems. But we do want to tell you it will rerun at 4 a.m. Eastern time, that's the overnight time here in the United States. Also access to the show on CNN.com for the next 24 hours.
Now straight ahead on LIVE FROM..., questions for commanders, a trial in the Iraq prison abuse scandal could reach all the way to the Pentagon's top brass.

BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: The mystery of the body of a man and his two young sons discovered in a lake tied together and weighted down.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: I'm Miles O'Brien live in Mojave, California. No lightning strikes here but an electrifying moment as the first civilian earns his astronaut wings by only 400 feet. We'll tell but the minor malfunction and what's next as this team goes for the $10 million X Prize.

PHILLIPS: Osteoporosis, breast cancer, they're not just women's problems. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta on some surprising men's health issues.

From CNN Atlanta, hello, everyone, I'm Kyra Phillips.

NGUYEN: And I'm Betty Nguyen, this hour of CNN's LIVE FROM... starts right now.

PHILLIPS: Three U.S. military guards accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners appeared today in a makeshift courtroom at the old Baghdad Convention Center. The hearings related the images that sparked outrage worldwide. Here's CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At the pretrial hearings today, defense counsel for two of the accused asked for the Abu Ghraib Prison to remain standing, not to be destroyed as a few weeks ago President Bush had suggested that it should be. They're saying that it's a crime scene and that it needs to be kept standing at least through the trials, and the judge agreed. So Abu Ghraib will remain intact and the U.S. government has been ordered to make sure and do everything it can to make sure it is not pulled down until these trials are done.

Now, the three that were in court for pretrial hearings are accused in connection with some of the most violent of these images of abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib Prison, including the image of the prisoner with a hood on his head standing on a box of American military rations and connected by wires. He was told that he would be electrocuted, according to the charges, if he fell off that box.

Another, Specialist Graner is charged in connection with the human pyramids that were made out of naked Iraqi prisoners, with the thumbs up sign by a dead Iraqi, with the image of him pulling back his arm as if to punch an Iraqi that he had in a headlock. These accused were represented by their counsels today in court. Counsel's asking for a change of venue, saying that they could not get a fair trial in Iraq because they couldn't get witnesses to come, they speculated, because how dangerous it is here, it's a combat zone.

In terms of what their defense would be, two of the defense attorneys said that they would use the defense that these people were just following orders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GUY WOMACK, SPC. CHARLES GRANER'S ATTY.: The MPs, Specialist Graner and the others, were following what they believed to be lawful orders. They were ordered by military intelligence officers to do certain things, to soften up these prisoners. They were encouraged to do things, they were congratulated for how well they were doing it and they believed they were doing something that was lawful as part of the war on terrorism.

AMANPOUR: The defense counsel also said they wanted access to high level memos, memos that have been passed allegedly between the White House, the Defense Department, and the Department of Justice, the lawyers say indicate the permissibility of an intense level of interrogation which may have influenced these accused and allowed them to continue that kind of abusive interrogation.

The judge said, no, but he did say they could have access to commanders as high as General Abizaid, who is the commander of CENTCOM, all the forces in Middle East and in fact beyond in Central Asia, also the commanders of the forces here in Iraq and all the commanders below them, including those who have been investigating this scandal.

Lawyers said that they did not expect any formal trial, the actual court-martial trials to start before October. Although a military spokesman here, a government -- a military spokesman here in Baghdad said that it could take place mid to late August.

I'm Christiane Amanpour, CNN, in Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Now to some other developments around Iraq today. Four U.S. Marines killed in the Sunni city of Ramadi. The coalition isn't giving details but witnesses say the Marines were ambushed by insurgents. Videotape of the scattered bodies was delivered to a wire service.

South Korea is standing by its decision to send more troops to Iraq despite a hostage's impassioned plea for his life. His captors have threatened to behead the 33-year-old businessman today unless Seoul pulls its troops from Iraq.

And oil is flowing again in southern Iraq. The coalition says one of two pipelines sabotaged last week has been fixed. Officials say Iraqi exports could be up to full capacity, pumping out more than 1.5 million barrels a day by midweek.

NGUYEN: Was the abduction of American Paul Johnson an inside job? Johnson, as you recall, was kidnapped and beheaded in Saudi Arabia last week. Over the weekend an al Qaeda cell said on an Islamist Web site that it was helped by members of Saudi Arabia's own security forces. Now during a conversation today with our Bill Hemmer on CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING," a Saudi official emphatically denied this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADEL AL-JUBEIR, SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: It's very easy to obtain military uniforms in Saudi Arabia just like it is here, you can walk into any Army surplus store in Washington and pick up a military uniform. It's also easy to take cars and paint them to look like police cars. We want to be careful, Bill, here. People seem to be giving credence to what the terrorists are saying on Web sites that reminds me of Saddam Hussein's information minister, what if people had believed what he said when he was saying it when it was total nonsense?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: A former ambassador to Saudi Arabia said it is unlikely the kidnappers would want to divulge information about who helped them but he warned the U.S. must stay on its toes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT JORDAN, FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SAUDI ARABIA: We've seen time and time again the size and presence of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia has been underestimated. And so I think we've got to assume right now that there is still great cause for concern, great cause to work as absolutely hard as we can and as the Saudis can to penetrate further and to keep these terrorists on the run. This is good news, but I don't think we should be declaring victory today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NGUYEN: Reports say al Qaeda has named a new leader in Saudi Arabia. The former leader was killed Friday in a shootout with Saudi police -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Some other stories from across the America. In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking at how well its disaster drill went early this morning at Penn Station. City police and fire departments and other emergency responders tested rescue and recovery procedures for Amtrak and commuter trains.

His attorney says Connecticut Governor John Rowland will announce his resignation tonight. Rowland is facing a federal corruption probe and a mounting drive to impeach him. He's admitted lying about accepting gifts and favors.

A Supreme Court ruling today favors health maintenance organizations over patients wanting to take malpractice claims to state courts. The high court unanimously ruled that federal law trumped state law in such cases. State courts traditionally allow higher damage awards by juries.

NGUYEN: Well, space enthusiasts are hailing an historic leap in space travel. For the first time ever a privately financed manned rocket plane blasted in orbit today, setting the stage for possible future commercial flights to space. Our own space enthusiast, Miles O'Brien, witnessed the launch and landing in Mojave, California, and he joins us live with the latest.

What a day out there, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Betty, it was something else, it was a little piece of history here, actually a significant piece of space history. Let's see, there's Alan Shepard, Yuri Gagarin and now Mike Melvill, of all people, 62 years old, originally from South Africa, just got his astronaut's wings pinned onto him. But he's the first person to wear astronaut wings that are of a civilian nature.

This was a privately funded endeavor to the tune of about $20 million, which took off here just a little after dawn and the winds had calmed down. That big craft on top is a craft called White Knight. Below it is the 25-foot-long SpaceShipOne, inside it Mike Melvill, soon to be an astronaut.

It took him about an hour to climb up to about 50,000 feet. This odd looking combination of birds, seemingly an unusual thing that would perhaps not fly, did very well. There you see Melvill, cockpit camera, as he reached the apogee and did what astronauts do best, played with M&Ms and enjoyed this spectacular view from in excess of 100 kilometers, 62 1/2 miles or so.

About three-and-a-half minutes of weightlessness he enjoyed, and then, of course, gravity took over and he dropped very precipitously to Earth, pulling about 5 Gs, that's five times the weight of gravity on your body, going down like a shuttlecock and then eventually, as you see here, the wings locked and he came in for a glider landing here at the Mojave, now we'll call it spaceport, officially.

He greased it, in pilot's terms, did really well, walked out and was greeted by the designer of this craft, the aviation legend Burt Rutan, as well as the sugar daddy for this project, Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, who staked him to about $20 million or so to make all this happen. Now $20 million, that is just pennies on the dollar by -- when you consider what NASA pays for a space flight. Space shuttle mission is about $500 million, $20 million got an entire space program going and Mike Melvill got to relate to all of us what it was like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE MELVILL, SPACESHIPONE PILOT: It was very exciting. I must say, I wasn't scared. I was a little nervous when we got in the airplane but I was not afraid all the way up. But I was a little afraid on the way down. Boy, when you reenter at 2.9 mach and you start hitting the atmosphere, the noises you hear are somebody talking to you very, very sharply, you know, and you begin to believe that, wow, should I really be doing this?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

O'BRIEN: And I'm sure he'll do it again, though, having even said that. That's Mike Melvill, now astronaut Melvill. The team now is -- has to work on a problem that occurred during this flight. The so-called trim, which controls the aircraft during its supersonic portions, didn't operate properly, it sent them off course and as a result they wasted some of their precious energy which should go straight up, they just made it to the threshold of space but because of that problem, they want to look at things before they proceed.

But when they do, they're going to go after the $10 million X Prize which has been staked by some private businessmen to the first civilian team to fly to space, as we saw today, twice in as many weeks. The man who founded that is Peter Diamandis, as he joins us here. Watch the team, clearly these are the frontrunners to win the X Prize. I know you probably can't play favorites here but nevertheless it has been a long time coming, you've been doing this for at least eight years, and to see a team get this far has got to be rather gratifying.

PETER DIAMANDIS, X PRIZE CREATOR: It's -- you know, it's about time from all of us who wanted to go and have been watching the space program. And now, this type of vehicle is going to allow passengers, eventually, to go into space which a new business.

O'BRIEN: What kind of a business will it be, though? Isn't it -- talk about a niche within a niche or do you see something bigger than that?

DIAMANDIS: Well, you've got to remember that aviation started something very rare, something that only a few people could afford to do and now we take it for granted. We get ourselves on -- order our e-tickets and are mad when our luggage is late and we fly around the world. But space is humanity's final frontier. And it's not NASA's job to carry the public into space. They do research and development, exploring the planets. It's commercial business' job to do that. And here the SpaceShipOne and 26 other teams in seven countries are building the ships to try and do that. O'BRIEN: But it's still very expensive, especially when you talk about getting spacecraft into orbit. Do you really see commercial ventures which can take people to orbit and perhaps even beyond?

DIAMANDIS: It is very expensive today, just as expensive as aviation was in the beginning. But there's no reason why the price couldn't come down precipitously to under $20,000. And in the future, you know, we're going to take it for granted and there's lot of capital, lots of money to be made in space. And the -- speaking of...

O'BRIEN: I should point out, that's a NASA T-38. That is NASA's representative to this particular event. The administrator of NASA, Sean O'Keefe, has released a statement congratulating the team here. And I guess the question is, NASA -- are those guys happy about this or would they rather that NASA be doing this kind of thing?

DIAMANDIS: No, they're very happy. The folks up at NASA headquarters, Bill Readdy, that runs the space shuttle program, sent us letters of congratulations and supporting this. They want this to happen because they recognize to make it cheaper they benefit. If they could spend instead of $14 billion -- you know, $5 billion running the shuttle program, if they could spend a fraction of that and use the rest of it on science, we'd all benefit.

O'BRIEN: Peter Diamandis, we might have to write a big check very soon and we'll be glad to see that, the man in charge of the X Prize. Burt Rutan and his team now saying they may very well, depending on how that problem goes, set the clock - we have to give 60 days notice to these guys before they actually begin their effort to fly two times in two weeks. Back to you, Betty.

NGUYEN: Simply fascinating, especially when you look at the big pictures, all right, Miles O'Brien in the Mojave Desert, thank you.

Questions for a juror in the Scott Peterson murder trial. Just what did the juror say to Laci Peterson's brother? That story ahead.

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The bodies of a father and his young sons washed ashore here on Lake Michigan, tied with a rope and weighted down with sand. I'm Chris Lawrence with a look at what police are doing to find out how they died.

NGUYEN: President Bill Clinton opens up about his two biggest fights and how he lost one of them. Will his revelations affect the current campaign for the White House?

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NGUYEN: Very suspicious, that's what police in Wisconsin are calling the deaths of a man and his two sons whose bodies washed ashore on Lake Michigan. The three were found tied together and weighed down with sand. CNN's Chris Lawrence is following developments in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, and joins us with the latest.

Hi, Chris. LAWRENCE: Well, Betty, we spoke with the medical examiner just a short while ago and he says he will begin the autopsy later this afternoon and could have the results back as early as tomorrow. That's significant because at first look none of these bodies had any visible signs of physical trauma. In fact when they washed up here on the shores of Lake Michigan Kevin Amde had been tied together with 3- and 6-year-old sons with a nylon rope. That nylon rope had been run through their belt loops and around the waist of one child. Each child also had a backpack that contained Ziploc bag that had been filled with sand, and one child even had his pockets stuck with sand.

All told, police say this added 48 pounds of weight to the three people. Police now say they want to find out where exactly they went into the water and how they died. They describe Kevin Amde as a very loving father and say as far as they can tell up to this point, he had no criminal or mental health problems -- Betty.

NGUYEN: All right, Chris Lawrence in Wisconsin, thank you, a lot of questions still surrounding this case -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Questionable juror in the Scott Peterson trial is staying on the case. The judge had subpoenaed a videotape showing juror No. 5 briefly chatting with Laci Peterson's brother last week. The judge ruled today there was no misconduct on the part of the juror or Laci Peterson's brother.

A trial date could be set today in the Kobe Bryant rape case. The NBA star is back in Colorado for a two-day hearing. Much of the hearing will focus on defense arguments that jurors will have to acquit Bryant if they determine his alleged victim consented at any time to sex. Other issues on the table deal with evidence and the relevance of the woman's sexual history.

NGUYEN: A tricky legal question is on the menu for Italian lawmakers. If you're going to put pineapple and pepperoni on it, well, can you legally call it a pizza? A defining moment for one of Italy's most popular exports.

And bend it like Dumbo? An extreme sport that demands a lot from the goalies.

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PHILLIPS: Old sins cast long shadows. Nowhere does that seem more apparent than in Philadelphia, Mississippi.. Forty years ago it became infamous as the place where three civil rights workers were brutally murdered. Our Eric Philips says many people in the town would like to put that past behind them, but first they have to confront it.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are you doing? Good afternoon.

ERIC PHILIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Ben Cheney has a sense of purpose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're traveling around, registering people to vote.

PHILIPS: He's leading a group of young people on a crusade called Freedom Tour 2004 to register African-American voters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My brother died registering people to vote, educating people about their voting rights. And that's what we're doing today.

PHILIPS: His brother, 21-year-old, James Cheney, was one of three civil rights workers killed on June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Cheney, along with Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, had gone to investigate the torching of Mount Zion United Methodist Church and the beating of some of its members by the Ku Klux Klan. Jewel McDonald's mother and brother were beaten.

JEWEL MCDONALD, VICTIM'S DAUGHTER: I think that's what upsets me so, that they would beat a woman.

PHILIPS: Residents like McDonald had been pushing for a state murder trial. Mississippi's attorney general is working on that.

JIM HOOD, MISSISSIPPI ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm personally interviewing witnesses. I learned the value as a DA for eight years, and I tried a hundred jury trials. I know the value of personally interviewing those witnesses and not just reading the cold statements.

PHILIPS (on camera): Two years after it burned to the ground, Mount Zion Church was rebuilt and rededicated. And even though things have changed so much, locals say what's still being rebuilt now, even 40 years later, is the reputation of this community.

MAYOR RAYBURN WADDELL, PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI: When you go out of town, and you tell them you're from Philadelphia, Mississippi, and they'll bring up the 1964 murder of the three civil rights people.

PHILIPS (voice-over): That's why public support for a state trial is strong. Though a handful don't want it.

HUGH THOMASON, RESIDENT: The people here are tired of it. We want you all to go home. We want Mississippi to be forgotten.

PHILIPS: But most want Philadelphia, Mississippi, to be remembered for the city of brotherly love they say it's now become.

Eric Philips, CNN, Philadelphia, Mississippi.

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