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Al Qaeda in Contact With Agents in United States?; Simulated Politics
Aired August 04, 2004 - 15:00 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: Political fans in Davenport, Iowa, got their fill today. Democratic candidate John Kerry was in town meeting with business executives. And President Bush held a rally there just a little while later. Both of them are trying to capture the battleground state.
The woman accusing basketball star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault may drop out of the case. One of her attorneys says that she is considering the action based on mistakes by court officials in Colorado. She says she might leave the criminal case and file a civil lawsuit.
Mary Kay Letourneau got out of prison today. She's the former grade school teacher convicted of having sex with a sixth grade student. That student, father of two children with Letourneau, is now 21 years old and challenging the court order that keeps her from contacting him.
We're keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.
We begin this hour with powerful new developments in the war on terror, intelligence pointing to recent contacts between al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan and people inside the United States.
Joining me with the details you won't hear anywhere else, CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena in Washington and CNN's Ash-Har Quraishi, live from Islamabad.
Kelli, let's start with you.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, two senior U.S. government sources tell CNN that intelligence found in Pakistan shows evidence that suspected al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan contacted an individual or individuals in the United States in the past few months.
Now, these U.S. officials would not characterize that communication, but as Ash-Har, will tell you, Pakistani officials are offering a little more detail. The information is important because it lends credibility to the belief that al Qaeda may have operatives in place in the United States.
The U.S. sources also say that there is other information from Pakistan which is separate from the communication with the U.S. that has led to several investigations in the United States, centered on whether there are any individuals or cells plotting an attack on U.S. soil -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: All right, let's take it from Washington now to Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ash-Har Quraishi standing by to take the developments from there and the response to this breaking news that just came out about an hour ago -- Ash-Har.
ASH-HAR QURAISHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, senior Pakistani intelligence officials here have told CNN that they have specific information that they have gathered from the interrogations and the evidence around the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.
Now, as we've been reporting, Khan is a computer expert who was picked up here in Pakistan back in the middle of July. It was much of the information on his computer that they say led to the heightened terror alert in New York, Washington and New Jersey. They're now telling us that from that evidence and those interrogations, they believe that at least six suspected al Qaeda operatives may be in the United States.
They say that there have been what they called, quote, "recent contacts" between Khan himself and these operatives, so Pakistani officials giving us a little bit more detail about what they think is going on here and what they see is happening. Now, they've also given us information about other terror suspects. They say that Khan had been in contact, regular contact, they say, with a suspected operative in the U.K.
Now, just overnight, the United Kingdom had raids in which at least a dozen people were arrested. So Pakistani officials are saying they're getting very important information from the evidence and from the interrogations of Khan about operatives in other countries, including the United States and U.K. -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Ash-Har Quraishi, live from Islamabad, Pakistan, thank you so much.
In other news, we move to Chicago here in the United States, not the FAA's kind of town, though. Air traffic regulators are erring all sorts of extraordinary grievances today about O'Hare International, depending on the year and how you count, well, the world's busiest or second busiest airport. Feds call O'Hare the aviation bottleneck of the nation. And that could mean caps on takeoffs or landings.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA LEITER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some frequent fliers have one word to describe their experience at O'Hare:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A nightmare.
LEITER: This year, the world's busiest airport in terms of flights is also the most delayed: 14,500 flights failed to arrive on time in May alone. And that's a record.
Because almost five percent of total domestic flights go through O'Hare, the problems in Chicago create a ripple of backups elsewhere. The average arrival delay was up by 25 percent at other top airports between November and May.
JAY FRANKE, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: When O'Hare goes down, it affects the entire system, just as if the central electrical box in your house blew a fuse - blew several fuses, would affect the whole house. Same thing with the air-traffic system.
LEITER: The FAA blames the problem partly on bad weather, but mostly on overscheduling. O'Hare handled 6,000 more flights in June than it did in June of last year. And while the long-term solution may mean more runways at O'Hare, air-traffic controllers say they need relief now.
RAY GIBBONS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSN. : The system is truly being kept together by a thread. And that's what concerns us: not enough people; an aging, overburdened work force handling higher levels of traffic is not necessarily the best recipe for safety.
LEITER: Since March, United and American have cut O'Hare flights during peak hours by seven-and-a-half percent. But the impact was only temporary because smaller carriers added more service, only adding to some travelers' frustration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I always expect delays.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've slept here overnight on a Friday night when there were no hotel rooms locally available and I had to catch a Saturday morning, 9:00 a.m. flight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tuesday night it was four-and-a-half hours, and the last time out of here two-and-a-half hours.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEITER: The flight cutbacks at O'Hare actually could have a big downside for travelers across the country. A smaller supply of flights combined with stronger demand could ultimately mean higher fares -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Higher fares. What other affects on travelers? Lisa, can you hear me OK?
All right, sorry about that. We lost contact with our Lisa Leiter. We'll try and get her back to answer those questions.
Meanwhile, other news across America now.
A surveillance tape released from a Salt Lake City convenience store, it shows that Mark and Lori Hacking on the Sunday before Lori disappeared. Prosecutors say a reliable witness told them that Mark Hacking admitted killing his wife as she slept and tossing her body in a garbage bin. Cadaver dogs will resume searching an area landfill tonight.
Assistant Captain Richard Smith pleaded guilty today to 12 counts related to last October's crash of the Staten Island Ferry, including manslaughter and lying to Coast Guard investigators shortly after the accident; 11 commuters died. Dozens were injured when that ferry slammed into a concrete dock.
A preliminary hearing continues today for Army Private 1st Class Lynndie England, called the poster child of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. England left her preliminary hearing at a break yesterday and didn't return. The pregnant reservists reportedly went to see her doctor. Yesterday, one witness testified that England told them that she and other soldiers took the pictures just for fun.
Frankly speaking, the man who led the U.S. war in Iraq, retired General Tommy Franks, speaks out to CNN about the mistake that he made about weapons of mass destruction. That's straight ahead.
And playing the political game. New software lets you become a campaign adviser as America counts down to Election Day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(WEATHER UPDATE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Some news from Iraq now.
It's been a day of chaos in the northern city of Mosul. At least 12 Iraqis died in a series of battles between Iraqi police and insurgents. At this point, we still don't know which side suffered the worst. And the city was put under a curfew.
Also in Iraq, four Jordanian drivers held by insurgents for eight days were freed overnight in Fallujah. Reports say an Iraqi tribal chief mounted the operation that saved them. The brother of one of the former hostages says all four have arrived safely in Jordan.
And two other quick notes. Two Turkish drivers held hostage in Iraq since story were both released today after their union that they belonged to agreed to stop supplying the U.S. military. Now the State Department has issued a statement that says conceding to terrorists in Iraq will only endanger the multinational force and international workers.
Well, General Tommy Franks is well versed in the dangers in Iraq. The former CENTCOM commander retired from the Army last year. His aptly titled memoir, "American Soldier," is hitting bookstores today.
Franks talked with "AMERICAN MORNING's" Bill Hemmer about the hunt for WMDs in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Why is there no discovery to this point of weapons of mass destruction?
RET. GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, FORMER CENTCOM COMMANDER: I think the first thing that I tell everybody is, I, for one, was wrong. I mean, I absolutely believed that he had weaponized WMD at hand in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. And -- and I was wrong about that. I told a lot of people no one was more surprised than I.
HEMMER: Let me stop you just there.
FRANKS: Sure.
HEMMER: Where did you get your information?
FRANKS: Oh, the same place that the Congress got their information...
HEMMER: CIA?
FRANKS: ... from our intelligence services.
HEMMER: Did that include Russians? Did that include British intelligence as well?
FRANKS: You bet. International -- international intelligence organizations and our ability to -- to associate with them, lots and lots of sources of that kind.
HEMMER: General, knowing what we know today, or perhaps what we don't know today, was this war a mistake?
FRANKS: No, absolutely not with respect to WMD. People -- I've had a couple reporters ask me the same question, Do you think that since we didn't find this WMD, do you think it's a mistake? And I -- and I look and hopefully give a wry smile and say, Do you think it would be better to have left this regime to -- to build it?
I think we're far better served that the regime of Saddam Hussein no longer stands in Iraq. Far better served. HEMMER: When you speak to military families, if you get the opportunity, for those who have lost men and sometime women in Iraq, what do you tell them as to why their son or daughter...
FRANKS: I think that's -- I think it's a great question. You tell them the same thing that you tell the people walking the streets here in New York as they walk by the -- the recent threats down in the financial district and they see -- they law enforcement people carrying their -- you know, carrying these automatic weapons.
You tell them, Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for your service. Thanks a lot for giving my grandkids a chance to grow up in the same kind of world that I grew up in.
And for those moms and dads and aunts and uncles and husbands and wives who have lost -- who have lost someone, you say, Thanks a lot. Thanks for their service and thanks for loving them.
This book is dedicated to all who serve. You know, NYPD, the fire departments, local responders, and the military. And it's also dedicated to all those who love them. It's a corny book. HEMMER: Corny?
FRANKS: Corny book.
HEMMER: It's a thick corny book.
(CROSSTALK)
FRANKS: If there were a subtitle to this book, it would be Ain't This a Great Country?
HEMMER: Go back to the war. When you were finding piles of Army uniforms on the Iraqi side, laying on the sides of the roads and the highways there in Iraq, was your reaction there quitting and going home? Was your reaction at the time, they're going to hide and they're going to come out and fight another day?
FRANKS: Initially -- initially, didn't know. You have to plan on maybe they're going to come out and fight another day. As our troops got further and further and further into this, without a doubt, they're walking home, they're going home. And it's a double-edged sword.
On the one hand you say, gosh, it's great. We don't have to kill all these people because they're voluntarily leaving. On the other hand -- excuse me -- on the other hand, it creates a horrendous problem -- 250,000, 300,000 people who were wearing the uniform of service of Saddam Hussein, and now they've gone home and they have to be taken care of.
They have no jobs, they have been disenfranchised by the war. And so that is the problem with which Jay Garner and Jerry Bremer have to deal, and now Negroponte, have had to deal in Iraq as we try to get the Iraqis and take charge of their country.
HEMMER: And the critics would say they took all the intellectual capital in that country and sent them home. And in a day they were unemployed...
FRANKS: Sure.
HEMMER: ... and out of work, and questioning their own future.
FRANKS: Of course.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well, you can see part two of Franks' interview tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING." And the general will be on "PAULA ZAHN NOW" next Friday.
Well, in a close race for the White House, what would be your strategy to win? How you can become a political player just ahead on LIVE FROM.
Who says talk is cheap? A big phone company raising rates on some customers. Those details ahead in business headlines.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): I can stand on mountains. You raise me up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Who was that guy? He could be the next "American Idol." Cleveland plays host today to this year's first round of "American Idol" auditions. More than 15,000 wannabes have been waiting in line through the night for their chance at stardom.
So, we have got a real scoop for you -- well, a real scoop of ice cream for ice cream lovers out there. If you have ever wanted your own ice cream parlor, well, hustle on over to Dayton, Ohio. Alice Lacompte (ph) is ready to retire, and she's raffling off her shop. Tickets only cost 100 bucks apiece. Now, she says she'll hold the raffle if she sells at least 1,500 tickets. If not, she'll refund ticket buyers their money. It sounds like a sweet deal to us.
Sweet and tough at the same time, that's the disarming combination that has led to the success for one of America's top female wrestlers.
CNN's Jason Bellini introduces us to Tela O'Donnell and her Olympic dreams.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tela O'Donnell is pure sweetness and might.
TELA O'DONNELL, U.S. OLYMPIC WRESTLER: When people first meet me, you're a wrestler? I think they think that wrestlers might be kind of like these brutish, kind of mannish girls.
BELLINI: Around O'Donnell's training camp, it feels more like a pajama party. On the mat, most wrestlers scowl. O'Donnell smiles. O'Donnell was born and raised in Homer, Alaska. The singer Jewel was her baby-sitter.
O'DONNELL: Jewel made me swing one time from this tree. It was really cool, and swung at her (INAUDIBLE).
BELLINI: She learned her first wrestling moves shearing sheep.
O'DONNELL: I didn't wrestle a team of sheep or anything.
BELLINI: O'Donnell's mother, Claire, moved to Alaska while she was pregnant with Tela. She gave up her career as a mime in Chicago to offer her daughter the simple life.
O'DONNELL: My mom built our house. It's a log cabin, and there's -- she cut down the trees.
BELLINI: While still pregnant, Claire wore a pillow to cut down the noise of the chain saw.
In high school, Tela got tired of playing football with the boys. She preferred to wrestle them.
During the Olympic trials, the women didn't see her coming. No one expected her to take one of the four slots on the Olympic team.
(on camera): Tela O'Donnell is considered the rookie on the team. She's never competed in a major international tournament. The Olympics will be her first.
(voice-over): No one knows what to expect when she goes up against the renowned Chinese and Russian female wrestlers. Her teammates are more concerned about her outside the ring.
SARA MCMANN, U.S. OLYMPIC WRESTLER: She has a heart of gold, and we don't want anybody else to like taint that. So if anybody is like, trying to be mean to her or anything, we're all like, we're on them like wild dogs. Don't you hurt our Tela.
O'DONNELL: I'm really emotional, but I'm happy most of the time, like often. Yeah, I'm emotional, I'm like any other girl.
BELLINI: Like any other girl, who's sweet on the outside, but drops, pounces and pins for the fun of it.
Jason Bellini, CNN, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
PHILLIPS: Well, you hear a lot these days about political gamesmanship. Now some video games are taking the term literally. You can try your hand at running these guys' campaigns, or anybody else's, real or imaginary.
CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg is here to tell us how to do it.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I am real, not imaginary.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: Hello. Yes.
PHILLIPS: And you play the games.
SIEBERG: And I play the games as well.
There are 90 days until the presidential election. And a couple of games are coming out now to capitalize on people's interests in both video games and the political election spectrum. And the first game actually lets you simulate the next 90 days until the political election. It doesn't -- but the presidential election doesn't take 90 days, we should point out. It could take a couple hours or longer.
It's called "Frontrunner" from a company called Lantern Games. The whole idea is, you set up your candidate. You're the campaign manager overseeing everything. You choose your candidate. And it can be somebody you know, like John Kerry or George W. Bush. You can create your own candidate. It might even be somebody like Howard Dean. And then you take him out on the campaign trail. And you've got to worry about all the little details.
This might be creating their speeches, where they're going for a particular fund-raiser, putting together their political ads, managing all of their money and making sure they don't get too tired. You have to make sure their stamina is OK as they go out on the campaign trail.
All of this happens in sort of real time. It doesn't happen over 90 days, but it's sort of a real-time picture of how things play out. Then, at the very end of it, just like a typical elections, the votes are tabulated, as you can see there tabulating. And if you have got 270 electoral votes, then you win the White House.
So that's "Frontrunner" from Lantern Games, very much similar to the next one we're going to talk about, which is from Ubi Soft. It's called "The Political Machine." Again, it looks very similar. You create your candidate. You pick the issues that are important to them. It might be the war in Iraq, health care, taxes, job cuts, whatever it is you feel your candidate should worry about.
In this game, you can only choose between Republicans and Democrats. Then you're flying across the country again, going to all these different events. This one adds a few sort of fun things into it. Oh, and a headline might pop up that sort of changes your strategy a little bit.
But, in this one, you can hire a spin doctor or a smear merchant, as they call them in the game, to sort of finagle things on your behalf.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: You can also go on certain talk shows, like "Nighttime," which you can see here is sort of based on "Nightline." You can also go on "Barry King Live."
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: And they tried to make it as real as possible. They're trying to emulate exactly what is going on in the political world right now, whether it's the issues or the sort of detail that a campaign manager has to worry about. All of these things are combined into the game. They tried to research them and make them as accurate as possible, but still make them still fun to play.
PHILLIPS: What did you say, a smear what? SIEBERG: Smear merchant.
PHILLIPS: Smear merchant.
SIEBERG: I think that's a new term that they have coined in that game.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIPS: Yes, we can start using that in our copy.
SIEBERG: Sure. Why not? It works.
PHILLIPS: Smear merchant. Spin doctor.
SIEBERG: People know what it is.
PHILLIPS: So you can get these where now? These are all on sale?
SIEBERG: The first one, "Frontrunner," is available online. It's a downloadable game. It goes for about 25 bucks. Both of these are for P.C.s, by the way.
The other one is going to be in retail shops August 10. It's going to about 20 bucks. And so very similar games, meant for political junkies, maybe even for educators, for school to use. So there's kind of a broad market. They're strategy games. It's political chess.
PHILLIPS: Right.
SIEBERG: This not your typical shoot-'em-up game, where you're jumping in, going after the bad guys.
PHILLIPS: Future campaign managers.
SIEBERG: Future campaign managers.
PHILLIPS: They're practicing, right?
SIEBERG: I'm going to pull out a historical quote just quickly. Winston Churchill said, politics is not a game; it is an earnest business. Well, he didn't realize the $10 billion generated by the video game industry every year. So, they're capitalizing on both things in this case.
PHILLIPS: From techie to historical quoter. All right.
SIEBERG: I looked it up. See, a broad gamut here. You never know what you're going to get, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Thank you, Daniel.
SIEBERG: All right.
PHILLIPS: All right.
Well, speaking of politics, it's time for "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS." Hi, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Hi, Kyra. Thanks very much.
With new information about last weekend's terror warnings, we're going to take a look at where Democrats can attack the president's policies and ask if it's dangerous ground to tread.
Plus, the 9/11 Commission has made its recommendations, but what's Congress doing about them. I'll pose that question to both Congresswoman Jane Harman and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
"INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Now in the news: Two senior U.S. government sources tell CNN that intelligence discovered in Pakistan shows that suspected al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan contacted an individual or individuals in the United States. That evidence also indicates the contacts were made in the past few months. There's no word on how the contacts were made.
The woman accusing NBA star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault may withdraw from the criminal case. An attorney for the woman says that she may file a civil lawsuit instead.
The teacher who made headlines for seducing a 12-year-old student got out of prison today. Now, the former pupil of Mary Kay Letourneau is challenging a court order keeping them apart.
Now, "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS."
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 August 4, 2004 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Political fans in Davenport, Iowa, got their fill today. Democratic candidate John Kerry was in town meeting with business executives. And President Bush held a rally there just a little while later. Both of them are trying to capture the battleground state.
The woman accusing basketball star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault may drop out of the case. One of her attorneys says that she is considering the action based on mistakes by court officials in Colorado. She says she might leave the criminal case and file a civil lawsuit.
Mary Kay Letourneau got out of prison today. She's the former grade school teacher convicted of having sex with a sixth grade student. That student, father of two children with Letourneau, is now 21 years old and challenging the court order that keeps her from contacting him.
We're keeping you informed, CNN, the most trusted name in news.
We begin this hour with powerful new developments in the war on terror, intelligence pointing to recent contacts between al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan and people inside the United States.
Joining me with the details you won't hear anywhere else, CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena in Washington and CNN's Ash-Har Quraishi, live from Islamabad.
Kelli, let's start with you.
KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, two senior U.S. government sources tell CNN that intelligence found in Pakistan shows evidence that suspected al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan contacted an individual or individuals in the United States in the past few months.
Now, these U.S. officials would not characterize that communication, but as Ash-Har, will tell you, Pakistani officials are offering a little more detail. The information is important because it lends credibility to the belief that al Qaeda may have operatives in place in the United States.
The U.S. sources also say that there is other information from Pakistan which is separate from the communication with the U.S. that has led to several investigations in the United States, centered on whether there are any individuals or cells plotting an attack on U.S. soil -- Kyra. PHILLIPS: All right, let's take it from Washington now to Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ash-Har Quraishi standing by to take the developments from there and the response to this breaking news that just came out about an hour ago -- Ash-Har.
ASH-HAR QURAISHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, senior Pakistani intelligence officials here have told CNN that they have specific information that they have gathered from the interrogations and the evidence around the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.
Now, as we've been reporting, Khan is a computer expert who was picked up here in Pakistan back in the middle of July. It was much of the information on his computer that they say led to the heightened terror alert in New York, Washington and New Jersey. They're now telling us that from that evidence and those interrogations, they believe that at least six suspected al Qaeda operatives may be in the United States.
They say that there have been what they called, quote, "recent contacts" between Khan himself and these operatives, so Pakistani officials giving us a little bit more detail about what they think is going on here and what they see is happening. Now, they've also given us information about other terror suspects. They say that Khan had been in contact, regular contact, they say, with a suspected operative in the U.K.
Now, just overnight, the United Kingdom had raids in which at least a dozen people were arrested. So Pakistani officials are saying they're getting very important information from the evidence and from the interrogations of Khan about operatives in other countries, including the United States and U.K. -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Ash-Har Quraishi, live from Islamabad, Pakistan, thank you so much.
In other news, we move to Chicago here in the United States, not the FAA's kind of town, though. Air traffic regulators are erring all sorts of extraordinary grievances today about O'Hare International, depending on the year and how you count, well, the world's busiest or second busiest airport. Feds call O'Hare the aviation bottleneck of the nation. And that could mean caps on takeoffs or landings.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA LEITER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some frequent fliers have one word to describe their experience at O'Hare:
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A nightmare.
LEITER: This year, the world's busiest airport in terms of flights is also the most delayed: 14,500 flights failed to arrive on time in May alone. And that's a record.
Because almost five percent of total domestic flights go through O'Hare, the problems in Chicago create a ripple of backups elsewhere. The average arrival delay was up by 25 percent at other top airports between November and May.
JAY FRANKE, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY: When O'Hare goes down, it affects the entire system, just as if the central electrical box in your house blew a fuse - blew several fuses, would affect the whole house. Same thing with the air-traffic system.
LEITER: The FAA blames the problem partly on bad weather, but mostly on overscheduling. O'Hare handled 6,000 more flights in June than it did in June of last year. And while the long-term solution may mean more runways at O'Hare, air-traffic controllers say they need relief now.
RAY GIBBONS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS ASSN. : The system is truly being kept together by a thread. And that's what concerns us: not enough people; an aging, overburdened work force handling higher levels of traffic is not necessarily the best recipe for safety.
LEITER: Since March, United and American have cut O'Hare flights during peak hours by seven-and-a-half percent. But the impact was only temporary because smaller carriers added more service, only adding to some travelers' frustration.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I always expect delays.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've slept here overnight on a Friday night when there were no hotel rooms locally available and I had to catch a Saturday morning, 9:00 a.m. flight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tuesday night it was four-and-a-half hours, and the last time out of here two-and-a-half hours.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LEITER: The flight cutbacks at O'Hare actually could have a big downside for travelers across the country. A smaller supply of flights combined with stronger demand could ultimately mean higher fares -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Higher fares. What other affects on travelers? Lisa, can you hear me OK?
All right, sorry about that. We lost contact with our Lisa Leiter. We'll try and get her back to answer those questions.
Meanwhile, other news across America now.
A surveillance tape released from a Salt Lake City convenience store, it shows that Mark and Lori Hacking on the Sunday before Lori disappeared. Prosecutors say a reliable witness told them that Mark Hacking admitted killing his wife as she slept and tossing her body in a garbage bin. Cadaver dogs will resume searching an area landfill tonight.
Assistant Captain Richard Smith pleaded guilty today to 12 counts related to last October's crash of the Staten Island Ferry, including manslaughter and lying to Coast Guard investigators shortly after the accident; 11 commuters died. Dozens were injured when that ferry slammed into a concrete dock.
A preliminary hearing continues today for Army Private 1st Class Lynndie England, called the poster child of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. England left her preliminary hearing at a break yesterday and didn't return. The pregnant reservists reportedly went to see her doctor. Yesterday, one witness testified that England told them that she and other soldiers took the pictures just for fun.
Frankly speaking, the man who led the U.S. war in Iraq, retired General Tommy Franks, speaks out to CNN about the mistake that he made about weapons of mass destruction. That's straight ahead.
And playing the political game. New software lets you become a campaign adviser as America counts down to Election Day.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(WEATHER UPDATE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Some news from Iraq now.
It's been a day of chaos in the northern city of Mosul. At least 12 Iraqis died in a series of battles between Iraqi police and insurgents. At this point, we still don't know which side suffered the worst. And the city was put under a curfew.
Also in Iraq, four Jordanian drivers held by insurgents for eight days were freed overnight in Fallujah. Reports say an Iraqi tribal chief mounted the operation that saved them. The brother of one of the former hostages says all four have arrived safely in Jordan.
And two other quick notes. Two Turkish drivers held hostage in Iraq since story were both released today after their union that they belonged to agreed to stop supplying the U.S. military. Now the State Department has issued a statement that says conceding to terrorists in Iraq will only endanger the multinational force and international workers.
Well, General Tommy Franks is well versed in the dangers in Iraq. The former CENTCOM commander retired from the Army last year. His aptly titled memoir, "American Soldier," is hitting bookstores today.
Franks talked with "AMERICAN MORNING's" Bill Hemmer about the hunt for WMDs in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Why is there no discovery to this point of weapons of mass destruction?
RET. GEN. TOMMY FRANKS, FORMER CENTCOM COMMANDER: I think the first thing that I tell everybody is, I, for one, was wrong. I mean, I absolutely believed that he had weaponized WMD at hand in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. And -- and I was wrong about that. I told a lot of people no one was more surprised than I.
HEMMER: Let me stop you just there.
FRANKS: Sure.
HEMMER: Where did you get your information?
FRANKS: Oh, the same place that the Congress got their information...
HEMMER: CIA?
FRANKS: ... from our intelligence services.
HEMMER: Did that include Russians? Did that include British intelligence as well?
FRANKS: You bet. International -- international intelligence organizations and our ability to -- to associate with them, lots and lots of sources of that kind.
HEMMER: General, knowing what we know today, or perhaps what we don't know today, was this war a mistake?
FRANKS: No, absolutely not with respect to WMD. People -- I've had a couple reporters ask me the same question, Do you think that since we didn't find this WMD, do you think it's a mistake? And I -- and I look and hopefully give a wry smile and say, Do you think it would be better to have left this regime to -- to build it?
I think we're far better served that the regime of Saddam Hussein no longer stands in Iraq. Far better served. HEMMER: When you speak to military families, if you get the opportunity, for those who have lost men and sometime women in Iraq, what do you tell them as to why their son or daughter...
FRANKS: I think that's -- I think it's a great question. You tell them the same thing that you tell the people walking the streets here in New York as they walk by the -- the recent threats down in the financial district and they see -- they law enforcement people carrying their -- you know, carrying these automatic weapons.
You tell them, Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for your service. Thanks a lot for giving my grandkids a chance to grow up in the same kind of world that I grew up in.
And for those moms and dads and aunts and uncles and husbands and wives who have lost -- who have lost someone, you say, Thanks a lot. Thanks for their service and thanks for loving them.
This book is dedicated to all who serve. You know, NYPD, the fire departments, local responders, and the military. And it's also dedicated to all those who love them. It's a corny book. HEMMER: Corny?
FRANKS: Corny book.
HEMMER: It's a thick corny book.
(CROSSTALK)
FRANKS: If there were a subtitle to this book, it would be Ain't This a Great Country?
HEMMER: Go back to the war. When you were finding piles of Army uniforms on the Iraqi side, laying on the sides of the roads and the highways there in Iraq, was your reaction there quitting and going home? Was your reaction at the time, they're going to hide and they're going to come out and fight another day?
FRANKS: Initially -- initially, didn't know. You have to plan on maybe they're going to come out and fight another day. As our troops got further and further and further into this, without a doubt, they're walking home, they're going home. And it's a double-edged sword.
On the one hand you say, gosh, it's great. We don't have to kill all these people because they're voluntarily leaving. On the other hand -- excuse me -- on the other hand, it creates a horrendous problem -- 250,000, 300,000 people who were wearing the uniform of service of Saddam Hussein, and now they've gone home and they have to be taken care of.
They have no jobs, they have been disenfranchised by the war. And so that is the problem with which Jay Garner and Jerry Bremer have to deal, and now Negroponte, have had to deal in Iraq as we try to get the Iraqis and take charge of their country.
HEMMER: And the critics would say they took all the intellectual capital in that country and sent them home. And in a day they were unemployed...
FRANKS: Sure.
HEMMER: ... and out of work, and questioning their own future.
FRANKS: Of course.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Well, you can see part two of Franks' interview tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING." And the general will be on "PAULA ZAHN NOW" next Friday.
Well, in a close race for the White House, what would be your strategy to win? How you can become a political player just ahead on LIVE FROM.
Who says talk is cheap? A big phone company raising rates on some customers. Those details ahead in business headlines.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (singing): I can stand on mountains. You raise me up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Who was that guy? He could be the next "American Idol." Cleveland plays host today to this year's first round of "American Idol" auditions. More than 15,000 wannabes have been waiting in line through the night for their chance at stardom.
So, we have got a real scoop for you -- well, a real scoop of ice cream for ice cream lovers out there. If you have ever wanted your own ice cream parlor, well, hustle on over to Dayton, Ohio. Alice Lacompte (ph) is ready to retire, and she's raffling off her shop. Tickets only cost 100 bucks apiece. Now, she says she'll hold the raffle if she sells at least 1,500 tickets. If not, she'll refund ticket buyers their money. It sounds like a sweet deal to us.
Sweet and tough at the same time, that's the disarming combination that has led to the success for one of America's top female wrestlers.
CNN's Jason Bellini introduces us to Tela O'Donnell and her Olympic dreams.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tela O'Donnell is pure sweetness and might.
TELA O'DONNELL, U.S. OLYMPIC WRESTLER: When people first meet me, you're a wrestler? I think they think that wrestlers might be kind of like these brutish, kind of mannish girls.
BELLINI: Around O'Donnell's training camp, it feels more like a pajama party. On the mat, most wrestlers scowl. O'Donnell smiles. O'Donnell was born and raised in Homer, Alaska. The singer Jewel was her baby-sitter.
O'DONNELL: Jewel made me swing one time from this tree. It was really cool, and swung at her (INAUDIBLE).
BELLINI: She learned her first wrestling moves shearing sheep.
O'DONNELL: I didn't wrestle a team of sheep or anything.
BELLINI: O'Donnell's mother, Claire, moved to Alaska while she was pregnant with Tela. She gave up her career as a mime in Chicago to offer her daughter the simple life.
O'DONNELL: My mom built our house. It's a log cabin, and there's -- she cut down the trees.
BELLINI: While still pregnant, Claire wore a pillow to cut down the noise of the chain saw.
In high school, Tela got tired of playing football with the boys. She preferred to wrestle them.
During the Olympic trials, the women didn't see her coming. No one expected her to take one of the four slots on the Olympic team.
(on camera): Tela O'Donnell is considered the rookie on the team. She's never competed in a major international tournament. The Olympics will be her first.
(voice-over): No one knows what to expect when she goes up against the renowned Chinese and Russian female wrestlers. Her teammates are more concerned about her outside the ring.
SARA MCMANN, U.S. OLYMPIC WRESTLER: She has a heart of gold, and we don't want anybody else to like taint that. So if anybody is like, trying to be mean to her or anything, we're all like, we're on them like wild dogs. Don't you hurt our Tela.
O'DONNELL: I'm really emotional, but I'm happy most of the time, like often. Yeah, I'm emotional, I'm like any other girl.
BELLINI: Like any other girl, who's sweet on the outside, but drops, pounces and pins for the fun of it.
Jason Bellini, CNN, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(FINANCIAL UPDATE)
PHILLIPS: Well, you hear a lot these days about political gamesmanship. Now some video games are taking the term literally. You can try your hand at running these guys' campaigns, or anybody else's, real or imaginary.
CNN technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg is here to tell us how to do it.
DANIEL SIEBERG, CNN TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: I am real, not imaginary.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: Hello. Yes.
PHILLIPS: And you play the games.
SIEBERG: And I play the games as well.
There are 90 days until the presidential election. And a couple of games are coming out now to capitalize on people's interests in both video games and the political election spectrum. And the first game actually lets you simulate the next 90 days until the political election. It doesn't -- but the presidential election doesn't take 90 days, we should point out. It could take a couple hours or longer.
It's called "Frontrunner" from a company called Lantern Games. The whole idea is, you set up your candidate. You're the campaign manager overseeing everything. You choose your candidate. And it can be somebody you know, like John Kerry or George W. Bush. You can create your own candidate. It might even be somebody like Howard Dean. And then you take him out on the campaign trail. And you've got to worry about all the little details.
This might be creating their speeches, where they're going for a particular fund-raiser, putting together their political ads, managing all of their money and making sure they don't get too tired. You have to make sure their stamina is OK as they go out on the campaign trail.
All of this happens in sort of real time. It doesn't happen over 90 days, but it's sort of a real-time picture of how things play out. Then, at the very end of it, just like a typical elections, the votes are tabulated, as you can see there tabulating. And if you have got 270 electoral votes, then you win the White House.
So that's "Frontrunner" from Lantern Games, very much similar to the next one we're going to talk about, which is from Ubi Soft. It's called "The Political Machine." Again, it looks very similar. You create your candidate. You pick the issues that are important to them. It might be the war in Iraq, health care, taxes, job cuts, whatever it is you feel your candidate should worry about.
In this game, you can only choose between Republicans and Democrats. Then you're flying across the country again, going to all these different events. This one adds a few sort of fun things into it. Oh, and a headline might pop up that sort of changes your strategy a little bit.
But, in this one, you can hire a spin doctor or a smear merchant, as they call them in the game, to sort of finagle things on your behalf.
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: You can also go on certain talk shows, like "Nighttime," which you can see here is sort of based on "Nightline." You can also go on "Barry King Live."
(LAUGHTER)
SIEBERG: And they tried to make it as real as possible. They're trying to emulate exactly what is going on in the political world right now, whether it's the issues or the sort of detail that a campaign manager has to worry about. All of these things are combined into the game. They tried to research them and make them as accurate as possible, but still make them still fun to play.
PHILLIPS: What did you say, a smear what? SIEBERG: Smear merchant.
PHILLIPS: Smear merchant.
SIEBERG: I think that's a new term that they have coined in that game.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIPS: Yes, we can start using that in our copy.
SIEBERG: Sure. Why not? It works.
PHILLIPS: Smear merchant. Spin doctor.
SIEBERG: People know what it is.
PHILLIPS: So you can get these where now? These are all on sale?
SIEBERG: The first one, "Frontrunner," is available online. It's a downloadable game. It goes for about 25 bucks. Both of these are for P.C.s, by the way.
The other one is going to be in retail shops August 10. It's going to about 20 bucks. And so very similar games, meant for political junkies, maybe even for educators, for school to use. So there's kind of a broad market. They're strategy games. It's political chess.
PHILLIPS: Right.
SIEBERG: This not your typical shoot-'em-up game, where you're jumping in, going after the bad guys.
PHILLIPS: Future campaign managers.
SIEBERG: Future campaign managers.
PHILLIPS: They're practicing, right?
SIEBERG: I'm going to pull out a historical quote just quickly. Winston Churchill said, politics is not a game; it is an earnest business. Well, he didn't realize the $10 billion generated by the video game industry every year. So, they're capitalizing on both things in this case.
PHILLIPS: From techie to historical quoter. All right.
SIEBERG: I looked it up. See, a broad gamut here. You never know what you're going to get, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Thank you, Daniel.
SIEBERG: All right.
PHILLIPS: All right.
Well, speaking of politics, it's time for "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS." Hi, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": Hi, Kyra. Thanks very much.
With new information about last weekend's terror warnings, we're going to take a look at where Democrats can attack the president's policies and ask if it's dangerous ground to tread.
Plus, the 9/11 Commission has made its recommendations, but what's Congress doing about them. I'll pose that question to both Congresswoman Jane Harman and to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
"INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Now in the news: Two senior U.S. government sources tell CNN that intelligence discovered in Pakistan shows that suspected al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan contacted an individual or individuals in the United States. That evidence also indicates the contacts were made in the past few months. There's no word on how the contacts were made.
The woman accusing NBA star Kobe Bryant of sexual assault may withdraw from the criminal case. An attorney for the woman says that she may file a civil lawsuit instead.
The teacher who made headlines for seducing a 12-year-old student got out of prison today. Now, the former pupil of Mary Kay Letourneau is challenging a court order keeping them apart.
Now, "JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS."
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