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Al-Sadr Ready To Back Down; Frey To Take Stand Against Geragos; Police Taser Man Trying To Return To Hurricane Damaged Home
Aired August 18, 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: A radical Shiite leader tells his fighters to lay down their arms in Najaf. But will this really end the battle?
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Tempers and tasers in Florida. Home video raises questions about whether police went too far to stop a man who was trying to get to his beach home.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, I'm Rusty Dornin in Redwood City, California, where we are awaiting a highly anticipated confrontation between Mark Geragos and Scott Peterson's former mistress. Details coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: They came up to me and told me that their mom didn't want them anymore, and that she was sending all of them to Africa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Orphan odyssey -- seven American children abandoned in Africa. The amazing story of their miraculous journey home. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, hello everyone, I'm Kyra Phillips.
WHITFIELD: And I'm Fredricka in for Miles O'Brien. CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now. Up first this hour, al-Sadr standing down. That's the headline from Baghdad where a delegation to a national conference today announced pivotal last second concessions by the renegade cleric of Najaf.
Earlier, Iraqi leaders warned push was about to come to shove against Muqtada al-Sadr and his freelance militia. But all that apparently changed with a letter from al-Sadr's Baghdad representatives, details of which we get now from CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Word that Muqtada al-Sadr was ready to back down came in the form of a letter delivered to the Iraqi National Conference here in Baghdad. Delegates clapped and cheered when they heard that al-Sadr was ready to accept the conditions laid out by a peace delegation, which went to Najaf yesterday.
That delegation demanded that Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Militia leave the Imam Ali Mosque, that he dissolve the Mehdi Militia, and that he join the mainstream political process. In return, al-Sadr gets safe passage from the mosque and will not be arrested. It comes after a day of tough talk and ultimatums from the Iraqi government.
The defense minister warned that the time for talking was over -- that military preparations to liberate the mosque were complete. The Iraqi prime minister said he would not stand with arms folded, that he would restore law and order to Najaf and the rest of the country.
There has been intense military pressure as well. Two thousand U.S. Marines, more than 1,000 Iraqi forces surrounding the Imam Ali Mosque. A ceasefire, though, was negotiated with al-Sadr in June. That lasted six weeks before the outbreak of the current violence in Najaf. John Vause, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Al-Sadr's apparent pledge caps a long history of battles, bad blood, and broken truces between his fiercely loyal fighters and U.S. and Iraqi opponents.
Ed Sanders had a front row seat to much of that, or should we say frontline seat? He's a correspondent for the "L.A. Times." We've got him on the phone. Ed, set the scene for us and tell us what you've been dealing with every day embedded with the Marines, especially there in the cemetery area.
ED SANDERS, REPORTER, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Well, it's been a lot of back and forth and a lot of waiting here -- people waiting to see what happens with these peace talks, which, every couple days, they seem to pop up again. They put things on hold a little bit here, then they fade away and things ramp up again. So, it's been a little bit frustrating for the soldiers to -- ready to go with something, and then to be pulled back a little bit.
As all that's been going on, though, fighting has continued in the cemetery. That's really the cemetery in the North and the old city in the South, is where a lot of the fighting has taken place. It hasn't been intense. It's certainly not as intense as it was about two weeks ago, when you had four days of very fierce fighting. Instead, now, it tends to pop up at certain times.
There will be mortar attacks, RPG attacks, the U.S. will strike back, and then things will die down for a few hours, and that's the kind of thing we've been seeing for the last few days.
PHILLIPS: Now, Ed, when you and I were talking -- and this was months ago -- al-Sadr was sort of looked at as kind of a joke and not really respected, didn't have much power. But that's taken a drastic change. Why?
SANDERS: It has. Well, over the past few months, he's really built quite a following, and I think he's built it basically by opposing the U.S. As you said, a year ago this time, he was considered sort of too young to be a serious cleric. People always snickered that he had to bus in supporters to his rallies.
But he really found a following when he started speaking out against the U.S. occupation...
PHILLIPS: Ed Sanders with the "L.A. Times." He's on a satellite phone. Obviously, it's hard to maintain a connection there. We'll try to bring him back and continue our conversation.
And now, I'm being told there are new developments in the Scott Peterson case. You know this has been a long awaited showdown in northern California -- Scott Peterson's former mistress versus the lawyer who's trying to clear him of murder.
CNN's Rusty Dornin now live from Redwood City with the latest -- Rusty
DORNIN: Well, Kyra, it was a highly anticipated confrontation between defense attorney Mark Geragos and Amber Frey. We had a delay for some unknown reason this morning. It turns out they were in chambers.
There's been some new development -- no other details. They're saying that Amber Frey will not return here for cross-examination until Monday, but they will have three other witnesses on Thursday. The jury's being sent home today.
But three other witnesses will be testifying on Thursday, and the judge apologized to the jury -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Sorry about that, Rusty. I thought we had some sound there from the judge. That's OK. No, that's all right. We know how this goes, right? Developing news, we've got a new development.
DORNIN: You never know.
PHILLIPS: Well, let me ask you a couple questions while I have you, Rusty. We'll obviously wait to find out what this new development is, this new information. I know you're on that. But back to the tapes of Amber Frey, a couple of questions.
So many phone conversations, so many tapes -- while you were in the courtroom, at any point, did you ever see the jury getting annoyed by so many phone calls and so many unanswered questions?
DORNIN: Several times. First of all, I saw the jury be amused by some of it, at times when Scott Peterson was reading poetry -- also when, at one point, when he said something like, you know, "I've never lied to you except for a couple times," the jurors would chuckle at that. But by the end, some of these conversations would go on for 20 minutes at a time.
There were 43 phone calls, over 12 hours. You would see the jurors just shaking their heads and looking very bored. The judge kept apologizing to them too, saying, "We just have a few more. We'll just bring you back again. The phone calls are going to end." So, yes, it looks like some of them were clearly annoyed.
But perhaps the prosecution didn't weed out some of these conversations. Certainly, there was some information there on a lot of them. But on some of them, it just seemed like it was inane chitchat going back and forth, and the jury just seemed like they'd had enough.
PHILLIPS: So, Rusty, do we know yet if Scott Peterson knew if indeed he was being monitored? Have they been able to decipher and sort of figure out if indeed he was sort of on to what was going on?
DORNIN: Well, we're pretty sure that he had contacted an attorney in Modesto by early January, and certainly, you know, according to legal experts here, an attorney would advise you, "Look, you're the number one suspect. Beware, they may be trying to wiretap your phone."
So, he may have been warned about that, which may have been -- I mean, really, he was making a case oftentimes for his innocence, that he was looking for Laci Peterson, that he loved her, and that kind of thing.
Also, at one point, he called Amber Frey from a pay phone, indicating that he may have really begun to be suspicious that they were wiretapping his phones. Remember that Amber Frey was cooperating with police and recording his conversations, but on the other hand, there were also wiretaps of his cell phone, so the police were recording his other conversations as well.
PHILLIPS: Rusty, I don't know how you keep track of all this, but we'll continue to check in with you, especially for the new developments. Thanks, Rusty -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: Well, the Garden State remains fertile ground for intrigue. At this hour, a real estate mogul and top contributor to New Jersey's governor, as seen here behind me, is in federal court in Newark, where the charges scarcely hint at the drama in the alleged details. Charles Kushner is expected to plead guilty to conspiracy, obstructing an investigation, and promoting interstate prostitution.
Allegedly, he hired a prostitute for the purposes of blackmailing his own brother in law, who was helping the feds look into campaign and tax allegations.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick is in court while the hearing unfolds, but we expect to bring her up live in just a few moments.
Prosecutors in Britain say there's a mountain of evidence against eight suspected terrorists, one of them allegedly a senior al-Qaeda schemer and target scout. The men made their first of what's sure to be many court appearances in London today. But no pleas were entered and no bail was set.
Defendant Dhiren Barot, known in Washington as Eisa al-Hindi, is said to have cased the U.S. financial buildings mentioned in a recent code orange terror alert.
A desperate situation in Florida gets pretty ugly. Police officers taser a man trying to get past their barricade. He says he just wanted to see his damaged home. MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Michael Holmes in Athens. We'll be telling you about the track and field getting underway at its ancient home. We'll also be telling you about U.S. women's gymnastics, and also, dog day afternoon here in Athens. We'll explain that later.
PHILLIPS: Getting serious about Silly String? Facing a legal tangle if you play with spray in L.A. All right, we promise no more rhymes. It was bad. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: No calm after the storm in southwest Florida thanks to Hurricane Charley. Hundreds of thousands of residents are still without power, and those who have gotten their water service back are being warned they must purify it before drinking it.
CNN's Bob Franken is on Sanibel Island with more on the many woes facing storm-battered Floridians -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a haven for the wealthy, but nevertheless, it was not spared the brunt of the hurricane, Fredricka. You can see, of course, all the fallen trees. It took over four days, or almost four days, for them to clear away the trees and the fallen power lines to let residents on. Still no electricity here, still no water, but the homes aren't that badly damaged.
But as I said, it took almost four days to allow people on. And those who are still not being allowed on their property sometimes are having it turn into a significant temper tantrum.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): The Lee County sheriff said his deputies had no choice but to temporarily incapacitate this man with a high voltage taser gun, after police say he tried to run over officers who were preventing him from crossing their blockades of this Ft. Myers beach neighborhood.
SHERIFF ROD SHOAP, LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA: That violence can escalate, and it can escalate not just from there, but to other people. Once you get 20, 30, 40 people, now you've really got a problem.
FRANKEN: Attempts by CNN to locate the man for his comment have been unsuccessful. He was briefly jailed and is now charged with failure to obey a lawful command and resisting arrest without violence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Leave him alone, man, he's frustrated.
FRANKEN: It was a case of frustration exploding into anger. Witnesses say the man, with his three children in his minivan, simply wanted to get back to his house.
When he tried to move his van past police, they tasered him and pulled him from the car. He was one of so many prevented from returning to their homes for safety reasons. Structures that aren't destroyed are often unlivable, with no electric power for hundreds of thousands to refrigerate food and provide air conditioning in the intense summer heat.
It all adds up to more and more heated tempers. Supplies are often short, lines long for everyone, patience is thick.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(on-camera): So, even those who are coming back to their homes, Fredricka, are finding that it's not that great a thing anyway -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, those on Sanibel Island are fortunate enough to get a chance to see firsthand now, but the folks on Captiva have got to wait. Bob Franken, thanks very much for that report.
Well, today, the Lee County sheriff defended the use of a taser in that incident we just showed you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHOAP: He was yelling at us, cursing at our officers, and trying to incite a group of citizens across the street into getting involved, and they were. They were starting to yell. In fact, on your video, you could hear them yelling, using the same profanity.
So, finally, we had to arrest him. He's a rather large person, would not cooperate, and we had to do a contact tase, which is about a second shot of taser on the skin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: CNN's Mike Brooks, a 26-year veteran of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, joins us now to discuss the use of police force in this kind of situation. So, the question is, how do you balance public safety with the rights of property owners?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's try to put this into perspective. Here we have a guy who pulls up to a roadblock where hundreds of other people have come up to, and they ask him to pull over to the side. He said he wants to go check on his house. They tell him to pull over to the side, and they explain to him -- there was a lieutenant, four deputies, and other National Guards people there.
So, they ask him to pull over; he tells them he's not going to. In the police report, it says he keeps throwing the f-bomb out there -- tells them, "F-you, I'm not going to move." They tell him four or five times to move. He says, "F-you, I'm not moving." On the fifth time, they ask him to get out of the car. He tells them again, "F- you, I'm not getting out of the car."
Keeps hollering profanity -- he tries to get the people on the side to come over and help him. There's a lot of things that we didn't see that happened before this video. So, now, you've got a guy in a car shouting profanities, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave him in his car? No, absolutely not.
I can tell you, after 26 years with MPD, that you get him out, he's going to be under arrest. And what do you do? Do you drag him through the window? No, they had a taser there. They hit him just shortly -- a contact taser, as the sheriff said. That kind of shocked him back into reality, if you will, Fredricka.
And then, we see in the video them taking him out of the car. He walked out of the car, he wasn't unconscious. There was no injuries to him, no injuries to the police officers there on the scene, and he was arrested. You know, this had absolutely nothing to do, probably, with the storm itself.
This is a community of about 500,000 people. I've talked to some senior law enforcement sources there and in the jurisdiction surrounding Lee County. They said things are back to normal now. There's over half a million people. This is only the second such incident since the storms passed through there that they've had.
Again, an isolated incident. They said that everyone there has been extremely cooperative, this was an isolated incident. And again, no matter what kind of force you use, whether you put your hands on someone, you use a taser, when it's on video like this, people use videotapes like this all the time, going back to the Rodney King incident. But again, this was an isolated incident, and this was the only choice they had.
WHITFIELD: But really, what's at issue here is, you know, people are frustrated.
BROOKS: Sure.
WHITFIELD: And you know, they're hot, it's 90-plus degrees out there. You know, law enforcement folks as well as any other public safety folks out there, they're without their homes too. And so, they're dealing with a lot of emotions coming to clash together. And in this case, this one guy particularly really lost his temper, went too far.
BROOKS: He did. And it could have been either at this or it could have been a roadblock going to a holiday with traffic backed up and the same thing could have happened.
WHITFIELD: Well, you heard the crowd around him. They're all asking, you know, "Why'd you have to use a taser, though -- did you have to use these means?"
BROOKS: But you know, if it hadn't been on video of them trying to pull him through the window physically, you know, it would have been the same thing. It would have been ugly. As the sheriff said in an interview, it's a no win situation for either side. But in this particular case, the police officers did what they felt they had to do, and you know, it would have been even uglier had they pulled him through the window. And the other thing is he's got his children in the car, using these kind of profanities, no matter who you're talking to with those kids in the car, that's also uncalled for as far as I'm concerned.
WHITFIELD: Tough situation down there...
BROOKS: It is.
WHITFIELD: ... made even worse because of...
BROOKS: It was.
WHITFIELD: ... the elements there. All right, Mike Brooks, thanks so much.
BROOKS: Thank you, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Kyra?
PHILLIPS: Other news across America now. Silly safety concerns -- well, not according to elected officials in Los Angeles. Perhaps it's another homeland security issue we just can't seem to figure out. L.A. City Council members unanimously voted to ban the use of Silly String on Halloween. They say environmental reasons are behind the ban. They have to pass another vote before taking effect.
As if the Silly String issue wasn't enough to stymie the left coast, well, Tinkerbell is missing. Tink, in case you've been living in a spider hole somewhere, is the pampered pet of Paris Hilton. The stylish Chihuahua has been prominently featured on Hilton's "Simple Life" reality show.
It's unclear exactly how she managed to disappear with all the attention she gets. Well, at any rate, a bereft Paris is offering a $5,000 bounty for Tinkerbell's safe return.
Finally, parents across the country are feeling a new pinch. The price of school lunches is on the rise thanks to soaring prices for milk, food, plus higher employee benefit costs. The national average is now a buck sixty. A lot of coin for that tray of mystery meat and Jell-O, wouldn't you say? Parents, find that dog, you won't have to sweat it.
WHITFIELD: Well, I'm feeling Paris' pain. I'd be upset if someone stole my Tinkerbell. All right, from hot lunches to a not so hot stock, Google apparently not getting the price it was searching for. That's straight ahead. Plus, a Texas missionary shot when he finds seven American kids in an African orphanage. Wait till you hear how they got there and how they finally got home.
And yesterday, we showed you these amazing pictures of flooding in Britain. Today, Prince Charles gets a firsthand look at the damage. That's right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: Britain's Prince Charles surveys the damage and comforts the victims of a freak flash flood. Many residents of the village in Boscastle in southwestern England still have not been allowed to return home.
On Monday, a short burst of rain triggered a wall of water that roared down a narrow valley. It swept cars out to sea and forced people to take refuge in trees and on rooftops.
Several people remain unaccounted for, but emergency officials don't believe anybody was killed.
WHITFIELD: Man, those were some remarkable pictures there.
PHILLIPS: Well, people anxiously awaiting for Google to go public will just have to wait a bit longer. It's Fred squared day. Fred Katayama joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange with more on that story. Hey, Fred.
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka. It's a Fred and Fred show. Anyway, yeah, it's sort of starting to sound like the ketchup commercial -- anticipation. The Securities and Exchange Commission delayed signing off on Google's IPO last night. But if all goes well today, the number one search engine could finally begin trading on the Nasdaq tomorrow.
Google's also cutting the price and estimated number of shares it will offer to the public. That means the company will raise just under $2 billion in the sale, or about half the amount it had originally expected to raise. Some are seeing this as a sign of weaker interest in tech stocks overall. But keep in mind, even at its reduced price, Google will still be the larger IPO ever for an Internet stock.
Fredricka, that's saying a lot given all the big, huge IPOs we used to see a few years ago.
WHITFIELD: No kidding. One of those great big ideas a few years ago, Microsoft. But apparently, a little delay from them. What's going on?
KATAYAMA: Well, it's all about security, Fredricka. Microsoft is delaying the release of its security update for its Windows XP program. The company was supposed to rollout the update earlier this week, but will now release the software to corporate customers next week so companies can have more time to test it. However, home users of Windows XP will begin getting the updates as early as today.
As for the stock market today, stocks are moving higher. The Dow industrials are adding 18 points. The Nasdaq is up eight tenths of a percent. And that's the latest from Wall Street. Coming up later this hour, the Army backs off Halliburton, and that's raising some eyebrows. I'll explain when LIVE FROM continues after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired August 18, 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: A radical Shiite leader tells his fighters to lay down their arms in Najaf. But will this really end the battle?
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Tempers and tasers in Florida. Home video raises questions about whether police went too far to stop a man who was trying to get to his beach home.
RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, I'm Rusty Dornin in Redwood City, California, where we are awaiting a highly anticipated confrontation between Mark Geragos and Scott Peterson's former mistress. Details coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: They came up to me and told me that their mom didn't want them anymore, and that she was sending all of them to Africa.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Orphan odyssey -- seven American children abandoned in Africa. The amazing story of their miraculous journey home. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, hello everyone, I'm Kyra Phillips.
WHITFIELD: And I'm Fredricka in for Miles O'Brien. CNN's LIVE FROM begins right now. Up first this hour, al-Sadr standing down. That's the headline from Baghdad where a delegation to a national conference today announced pivotal last second concessions by the renegade cleric of Najaf.
Earlier, Iraqi leaders warned push was about to come to shove against Muqtada al-Sadr and his freelance militia. But all that apparently changed with a letter from al-Sadr's Baghdad representatives, details of which we get now from CNN's John Vause.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Word that Muqtada al-Sadr was ready to back down came in the form of a letter delivered to the Iraqi National Conference here in Baghdad. Delegates clapped and cheered when they heard that al-Sadr was ready to accept the conditions laid out by a peace delegation, which went to Najaf yesterday.
That delegation demanded that Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Militia leave the Imam Ali Mosque, that he dissolve the Mehdi Militia, and that he join the mainstream political process. In return, al-Sadr gets safe passage from the mosque and will not be arrested. It comes after a day of tough talk and ultimatums from the Iraqi government.
The defense minister warned that the time for talking was over -- that military preparations to liberate the mosque were complete. The Iraqi prime minister said he would not stand with arms folded, that he would restore law and order to Najaf and the rest of the country.
There has been intense military pressure as well. Two thousand U.S. Marines, more than 1,000 Iraqi forces surrounding the Imam Ali Mosque. A ceasefire, though, was negotiated with al-Sadr in June. That lasted six weeks before the outbreak of the current violence in Najaf. John Vause, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: Al-Sadr's apparent pledge caps a long history of battles, bad blood, and broken truces between his fiercely loyal fighters and U.S. and Iraqi opponents.
Ed Sanders had a front row seat to much of that, or should we say frontline seat? He's a correspondent for the "L.A. Times." We've got him on the phone. Ed, set the scene for us and tell us what you've been dealing with every day embedded with the Marines, especially there in the cemetery area.
ED SANDERS, REPORTER, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Well, it's been a lot of back and forth and a lot of waiting here -- people waiting to see what happens with these peace talks, which, every couple days, they seem to pop up again. They put things on hold a little bit here, then they fade away and things ramp up again. So, it's been a little bit frustrating for the soldiers to -- ready to go with something, and then to be pulled back a little bit.
As all that's been going on, though, fighting has continued in the cemetery. That's really the cemetery in the North and the old city in the South, is where a lot of the fighting has taken place. It hasn't been intense. It's certainly not as intense as it was about two weeks ago, when you had four days of very fierce fighting. Instead, now, it tends to pop up at certain times.
There will be mortar attacks, RPG attacks, the U.S. will strike back, and then things will die down for a few hours, and that's the kind of thing we've been seeing for the last few days.
PHILLIPS: Now, Ed, when you and I were talking -- and this was months ago -- al-Sadr was sort of looked at as kind of a joke and not really respected, didn't have much power. But that's taken a drastic change. Why?
SANDERS: It has. Well, over the past few months, he's really built quite a following, and I think he's built it basically by opposing the U.S. As you said, a year ago this time, he was considered sort of too young to be a serious cleric. People always snickered that he had to bus in supporters to his rallies.
But he really found a following when he started speaking out against the U.S. occupation...
PHILLIPS: Ed Sanders with the "L.A. Times." He's on a satellite phone. Obviously, it's hard to maintain a connection there. We'll try to bring him back and continue our conversation.
And now, I'm being told there are new developments in the Scott Peterson case. You know this has been a long awaited showdown in northern California -- Scott Peterson's former mistress versus the lawyer who's trying to clear him of murder.
CNN's Rusty Dornin now live from Redwood City with the latest -- Rusty
DORNIN: Well, Kyra, it was a highly anticipated confrontation between defense attorney Mark Geragos and Amber Frey. We had a delay for some unknown reason this morning. It turns out they were in chambers.
There's been some new development -- no other details. They're saying that Amber Frey will not return here for cross-examination until Monday, but they will have three other witnesses on Thursday. The jury's being sent home today.
But three other witnesses will be testifying on Thursday, and the judge apologized to the jury -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Sorry about that, Rusty. I thought we had some sound there from the judge. That's OK. No, that's all right. We know how this goes, right? Developing news, we've got a new development.
DORNIN: You never know.
PHILLIPS: Well, let me ask you a couple questions while I have you, Rusty. We'll obviously wait to find out what this new development is, this new information. I know you're on that. But back to the tapes of Amber Frey, a couple of questions.
So many phone conversations, so many tapes -- while you were in the courtroom, at any point, did you ever see the jury getting annoyed by so many phone calls and so many unanswered questions?
DORNIN: Several times. First of all, I saw the jury be amused by some of it, at times when Scott Peterson was reading poetry -- also when, at one point, when he said something like, you know, "I've never lied to you except for a couple times," the jurors would chuckle at that. But by the end, some of these conversations would go on for 20 minutes at a time.
There were 43 phone calls, over 12 hours. You would see the jurors just shaking their heads and looking very bored. The judge kept apologizing to them too, saying, "We just have a few more. We'll just bring you back again. The phone calls are going to end." So, yes, it looks like some of them were clearly annoyed.
But perhaps the prosecution didn't weed out some of these conversations. Certainly, there was some information there on a lot of them. But on some of them, it just seemed like it was inane chitchat going back and forth, and the jury just seemed like they'd had enough.
PHILLIPS: So, Rusty, do we know yet if Scott Peterson knew if indeed he was being monitored? Have they been able to decipher and sort of figure out if indeed he was sort of on to what was going on?
DORNIN: Well, we're pretty sure that he had contacted an attorney in Modesto by early January, and certainly, you know, according to legal experts here, an attorney would advise you, "Look, you're the number one suspect. Beware, they may be trying to wiretap your phone."
So, he may have been warned about that, which may have been -- I mean, really, he was making a case oftentimes for his innocence, that he was looking for Laci Peterson, that he loved her, and that kind of thing.
Also, at one point, he called Amber Frey from a pay phone, indicating that he may have really begun to be suspicious that they were wiretapping his phones. Remember that Amber Frey was cooperating with police and recording his conversations, but on the other hand, there were also wiretaps of his cell phone, so the police were recording his other conversations as well.
PHILLIPS: Rusty, I don't know how you keep track of all this, but we'll continue to check in with you, especially for the new developments. Thanks, Rusty -- Fred.
WHITFIELD: Well, the Garden State remains fertile ground for intrigue. At this hour, a real estate mogul and top contributor to New Jersey's governor, as seen here behind me, is in federal court in Newark, where the charges scarcely hint at the drama in the alleged details. Charles Kushner is expected to plead guilty to conspiracy, obstructing an investigation, and promoting interstate prostitution.
Allegedly, he hired a prostitute for the purposes of blackmailing his own brother in law, who was helping the feds look into campaign and tax allegations.
CNN's Deborah Feyerick is in court while the hearing unfolds, but we expect to bring her up live in just a few moments.
Prosecutors in Britain say there's a mountain of evidence against eight suspected terrorists, one of them allegedly a senior al-Qaeda schemer and target scout. The men made their first of what's sure to be many court appearances in London today. But no pleas were entered and no bail was set.
Defendant Dhiren Barot, known in Washington as Eisa al-Hindi, is said to have cased the U.S. financial buildings mentioned in a recent code orange terror alert.
A desperate situation in Florida gets pretty ugly. Police officers taser a man trying to get past their barricade. He says he just wanted to see his damaged home. MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Michael Holmes in Athens. We'll be telling you about the track and field getting underway at its ancient home. We'll also be telling you about U.S. women's gymnastics, and also, dog day afternoon here in Athens. We'll explain that later.
PHILLIPS: Getting serious about Silly String? Facing a legal tangle if you play with spray in L.A. All right, we promise no more rhymes. It was bad. We'll be right back.
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WHITFIELD: No calm after the storm in southwest Florida thanks to Hurricane Charley. Hundreds of thousands of residents are still without power, and those who have gotten their water service back are being warned they must purify it before drinking it.
CNN's Bob Franken is on Sanibel Island with more on the many woes facing storm-battered Floridians -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a haven for the wealthy, but nevertheless, it was not spared the brunt of the hurricane, Fredricka. You can see, of course, all the fallen trees. It took over four days, or almost four days, for them to clear away the trees and the fallen power lines to let residents on. Still no electricity here, still no water, but the homes aren't that badly damaged.
But as I said, it took almost four days to allow people on. And those who are still not being allowed on their property sometimes are having it turn into a significant temper tantrum.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(voice-over): The Lee County sheriff said his deputies had no choice but to temporarily incapacitate this man with a high voltage taser gun, after police say he tried to run over officers who were preventing him from crossing their blockades of this Ft. Myers beach neighborhood.
SHERIFF ROD SHOAP, LEE COUNTY, FLORIDA: That violence can escalate, and it can escalate not just from there, but to other people. Once you get 20, 30, 40 people, now you've really got a problem.
FRANKEN: Attempts by CNN to locate the man for his comment have been unsuccessful. He was briefly jailed and is now charged with failure to obey a lawful command and resisting arrest without violence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Leave him alone, man, he's frustrated.
FRANKEN: It was a case of frustration exploding into anger. Witnesses say the man, with his three children in his minivan, simply wanted to get back to his house.
When he tried to move his van past police, they tasered him and pulled him from the car. He was one of so many prevented from returning to their homes for safety reasons. Structures that aren't destroyed are often unlivable, with no electric power for hundreds of thousands to refrigerate food and provide air conditioning in the intense summer heat.
It all adds up to more and more heated tempers. Supplies are often short, lines long for everyone, patience is thick.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(on-camera): So, even those who are coming back to their homes, Fredricka, are finding that it's not that great a thing anyway -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, those on Sanibel Island are fortunate enough to get a chance to see firsthand now, but the folks on Captiva have got to wait. Bob Franken, thanks very much for that report.
Well, today, the Lee County sheriff defended the use of a taser in that incident we just showed you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SHOAP: He was yelling at us, cursing at our officers, and trying to incite a group of citizens across the street into getting involved, and they were. They were starting to yell. In fact, on your video, you could hear them yelling, using the same profanity.
So, finally, we had to arrest him. He's a rather large person, would not cooperate, and we had to do a contact tase, which is about a second shot of taser on the skin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WHITFIELD: CNN's Mike Brooks, a 26-year veteran of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, joins us now to discuss the use of police force in this kind of situation. So, the question is, how do you balance public safety with the rights of property owners?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's try to put this into perspective. Here we have a guy who pulls up to a roadblock where hundreds of other people have come up to, and they ask him to pull over to the side. He said he wants to go check on his house. They tell him to pull over to the side, and they explain to him -- there was a lieutenant, four deputies, and other National Guards people there.
So, they ask him to pull over; he tells them he's not going to. In the police report, it says he keeps throwing the f-bomb out there -- tells them, "F-you, I'm not going to move." They tell him four or five times to move. He says, "F-you, I'm not moving." On the fifth time, they ask him to get out of the car. He tells them again, "F- you, I'm not getting out of the car."
Keeps hollering profanity -- he tries to get the people on the side to come over and help him. There's a lot of things that we didn't see that happened before this video. So, now, you've got a guy in a car shouting profanities, what are you going to do? Are you going to leave him in his car? No, absolutely not.
I can tell you, after 26 years with MPD, that you get him out, he's going to be under arrest. And what do you do? Do you drag him through the window? No, they had a taser there. They hit him just shortly -- a contact taser, as the sheriff said. That kind of shocked him back into reality, if you will, Fredricka.
And then, we see in the video them taking him out of the car. He walked out of the car, he wasn't unconscious. There was no injuries to him, no injuries to the police officers there on the scene, and he was arrested. You know, this had absolutely nothing to do, probably, with the storm itself.
This is a community of about 500,000 people. I've talked to some senior law enforcement sources there and in the jurisdiction surrounding Lee County. They said things are back to normal now. There's over half a million people. This is only the second such incident since the storms passed through there that they've had.
Again, an isolated incident. They said that everyone there has been extremely cooperative, this was an isolated incident. And again, no matter what kind of force you use, whether you put your hands on someone, you use a taser, when it's on video like this, people use videotapes like this all the time, going back to the Rodney King incident. But again, this was an isolated incident, and this was the only choice they had.
WHITFIELD: But really, what's at issue here is, you know, people are frustrated.
BROOKS: Sure.
WHITFIELD: And you know, they're hot, it's 90-plus degrees out there. You know, law enforcement folks as well as any other public safety folks out there, they're without their homes too. And so, they're dealing with a lot of emotions coming to clash together. And in this case, this one guy particularly really lost his temper, went too far.
BROOKS: He did. And it could have been either at this or it could have been a roadblock going to a holiday with traffic backed up and the same thing could have happened.
WHITFIELD: Well, you heard the crowd around him. They're all asking, you know, "Why'd you have to use a taser, though -- did you have to use these means?"
BROOKS: But you know, if it hadn't been on video of them trying to pull him through the window physically, you know, it would have been the same thing. It would have been ugly. As the sheriff said in an interview, it's a no win situation for either side. But in this particular case, the police officers did what they felt they had to do, and you know, it would have been even uglier had they pulled him through the window. And the other thing is he's got his children in the car, using these kind of profanities, no matter who you're talking to with those kids in the car, that's also uncalled for as far as I'm concerned.
WHITFIELD: Tough situation down there...
BROOKS: It is.
WHITFIELD: ... made even worse because of...
BROOKS: It was.
WHITFIELD: ... the elements there. All right, Mike Brooks, thanks so much.
BROOKS: Thank you, Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: Kyra?
PHILLIPS: Other news across America now. Silly safety concerns -- well, not according to elected officials in Los Angeles. Perhaps it's another homeland security issue we just can't seem to figure out. L.A. City Council members unanimously voted to ban the use of Silly String on Halloween. They say environmental reasons are behind the ban. They have to pass another vote before taking effect.
As if the Silly String issue wasn't enough to stymie the left coast, well, Tinkerbell is missing. Tink, in case you've been living in a spider hole somewhere, is the pampered pet of Paris Hilton. The stylish Chihuahua has been prominently featured on Hilton's "Simple Life" reality show.
It's unclear exactly how she managed to disappear with all the attention she gets. Well, at any rate, a bereft Paris is offering a $5,000 bounty for Tinkerbell's safe return.
Finally, parents across the country are feeling a new pinch. The price of school lunches is on the rise thanks to soaring prices for milk, food, plus higher employee benefit costs. The national average is now a buck sixty. A lot of coin for that tray of mystery meat and Jell-O, wouldn't you say? Parents, find that dog, you won't have to sweat it.
WHITFIELD: Well, I'm feeling Paris' pain. I'd be upset if someone stole my Tinkerbell. All right, from hot lunches to a not so hot stock, Google apparently not getting the price it was searching for. That's straight ahead. Plus, a Texas missionary shot when he finds seven American kids in an African orphanage. Wait till you hear how they got there and how they finally got home.
And yesterday, we showed you these amazing pictures of flooding in Britain. Today, Prince Charles gets a firsthand look at the damage. That's right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) PHILLIPS: Britain's Prince Charles surveys the damage and comforts the victims of a freak flash flood. Many residents of the village in Boscastle in southwestern England still have not been allowed to return home.
On Monday, a short burst of rain triggered a wall of water that roared down a narrow valley. It swept cars out to sea and forced people to take refuge in trees and on rooftops.
Several people remain unaccounted for, but emergency officials don't believe anybody was killed.
WHITFIELD: Man, those were some remarkable pictures there.
PHILLIPS: Well, people anxiously awaiting for Google to go public will just have to wait a bit longer. It's Fred squared day. Fred Katayama joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange with more on that story. Hey, Fred.
FRED KATAYAMA, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fredricka. It's a Fred and Fred show. Anyway, yeah, it's sort of starting to sound like the ketchup commercial -- anticipation. The Securities and Exchange Commission delayed signing off on Google's IPO last night. But if all goes well today, the number one search engine could finally begin trading on the Nasdaq tomorrow.
Google's also cutting the price and estimated number of shares it will offer to the public. That means the company will raise just under $2 billion in the sale, or about half the amount it had originally expected to raise. Some are seeing this as a sign of weaker interest in tech stocks overall. But keep in mind, even at its reduced price, Google will still be the larger IPO ever for an Internet stock.
Fredricka, that's saying a lot given all the big, huge IPOs we used to see a few years ago.
WHITFIELD: No kidding. One of those great big ideas a few years ago, Microsoft. But apparently, a little delay from them. What's going on?
KATAYAMA: Well, it's all about security, Fredricka. Microsoft is delaying the release of its security update for its Windows XP program. The company was supposed to rollout the update earlier this week, but will now release the software to corporate customers next week so companies can have more time to test it. However, home users of Windows XP will begin getting the updates as early as today.
As for the stock market today, stocks are moving higher. The Dow industrials are adding 18 points. The Nasdaq is up eight tenths of a percent. And that's the latest from Wall Street. Coming up later this hour, the Army backs off Halliburton, and that's raising some eyebrows. I'll explain when LIVE FROM continues after the break.
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