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Cheney Makes Controversial Security Comment; NASA Investigating Crashed Space Capsule; Designers Debut Spring Lines at Fashion Week

Aired September 08, 2004 - 14:30   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Welcome back to the CNN Center. This is LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: And I'm Kyra Phillips. All new this half hour, a documentary alleging that a nuclear plant near New York City is a sitting duck for terrorists. How close can anyone get to Indian Point? Maria Hinojosa reports, coming up.

O'BRIEN: But first here's what's happening now in the news.

PHILLIPS: A big disappointment for NASA. Three-year mission to find clues to the origin of the solar system ended in disaster today. A capsule carrying samples of solar wind crash-landed in Utah. NASA expected to hold a press conference any minute now. We'll bring that to you live.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lashes out at President Bush's Iraq policy. In Cincinnati, Kerry says Bush made wrong choices by rushing to war without a strong coalition or post-war plan. Kerry says those choices are hurting Americans.

Just as Kerry was beginning his campaign speech in Ohio, a protester stood up, began shouting about so-called atrocities. Well, the man was immediately held down by two Kerry supporters while another man put him in a headlock. He was later escorted out.

Now live pictures in -- just moments ago. You're seeing the president -- actually, this is a tape turn around. Not long ago, President Bush -- you can see, side by side with his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, he was visiting with hurricane victims at Fort Pierce, Florida.

You'll remember the long lines that we showed you there at Fort Pierce of victims trying to get supplies. Well, the president visited that area today.

Well, with the Labor Day holiday over, both candidates have come out swinging in the presidential campaigns. First, Vice President Cheney suggested a vote for Kerry might lead to more terrorist attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today on November 2 we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice and the danger is that -- that we'll get hit again. It will be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And the vice president's statement set off an angry reaction from the Kerry camp. Running mate John Edwards said it was simply just un-American what the vice president had to say.

Well, that's fuel for debate between CNN contributor Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, and Julianne Malveaux, syndicated columnist in Washington.

Julianne, let's start with you. Let's talk about Dick Cheney coming forward, saying, "Hey, if John Kerry is president, this puts America at risk of another devastating terror attack."

Pretty strong comments.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Extremely strong and extremely out of order, frankly.

The Republican Party has been running on the bones of September 11. They have been running, attempting to frighten us into voting for them. And this is proof positive of it.

The fact is that John Kerry does not make this nation more dangerous. In fact he makes it more safe. The rhinestone cowboy approach of going at it alone is what has made us more dangerous.

It wasn't under John Kerry's watch that, you know, September 11 happened or Bill Clinton's. It was under George W. Bush's.

It wasn't under their watch we lost over a thousand American lives. Not only a thousand American lives: 5,000 wounded. I don't know how many Iraqi lives.

The -- the way that Dick Cheney has attempted to manipulate terror in order to promote his party is absolutely repugnant. It's -- it is un-American, as John Edwards has said, and I'm frightened by it. I'm frightened enough to make sure that as many people as I know vote Democratic.

PHILLIPS: Bob, is he manipulating terror? Is 9/11 being exploited here? Did he cross the line with these scare tactics?

BOB BARR, FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN IN GEORGIA: Well, certainly 9/11 and the war on terror is front and central to the Republican presidential effort, no doubt about that. And anybody on the Republican side that tries to claim otherwise I think is being disingenuous. Certainly it is a factor. I think there is a fine line between going to the American people and saying, "Vote for our team because we have better ideas, we have a better way to protect America," and saying, "If you vote for the other guys there are going to be more terrorist attacks."

I think that's a fine line that should not be crossed. I don't think that's appropriate either.

PHILLIPS: Well, could Dick...

MALVEAUX: Bob, don't you think he crossed it?

BARR: Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't think that's appropriate. I would like to see both sides, if they are, in fact, as they ought to make an issue out of 9/11 and how to protect us against the recurrence, to talk about what they would do to make us safer and then let the voters decide who has the better program.

PHILLIPS: Julianne, should Dick Cheney back that comment up and said, "Look, if John Kerry becomes president we're at risk of another terrorist attack because of he has done this or voted on this"? Make a point-by-point statement?

MALVEAUX: Well, if he can back it up I think he should. But I don't think this is something you can back up.

The fact is that nobody, Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Kerry, nobody could have anticipated September 11. So I frankly am repulsed when I hear it put in the political chessboard.

If Dick Cheney can prove that John Kerry makes our country more dangerous at president, I think he should. I think he can't. I think it's very dangerous ground.

Anybody who is president of the United States is going to want to keep our nation safe. The issue is that different people may go about it differently. The American people have a right to decide which is the appropriate way.

BARR: And I think, Julianne, I think they will decide. And I think the overall point that the vice president is making is a legitimate one. I think he phrased it improperly.

I would like to see Mr. Kerry step forward and talk specifically about what anti-terrorism programs would he make, what he would do with regard to the 9/11 Commission recommendations specifically, not in broad brush.

And if the Republicans would do the same thing from a positive standpoint I think that the American people would have a very clear idea.

PHILLIPS: John Kerry...

MALVEAUX: Well, Bob, I can agree with you on that. I think that both sides need to look at that 9/11 report. But John Kerry has talked about it and far more specific terms than the president has. And he's talked about embracing those recommendations because he finds them important.

George Bush has to pick and choose among those recommendations

BARR: I think -- all I have seen that he's done, Julianne, all I've seen that he's done is say that, "Well, I would adopt it."

The Bush administration -- and I don't agree with everything the Bush administration has proposed here. I don't think we need more bureaucracy for intelligence. But at least the president has come forward and said -- said, "These are some specific things that I would implement."

I don't think Kerry has been specific. And I think it would help him and behoove his campaign if he came forward and said specifically in response, particularly, perhaps, to the vice president's comments, "This is not appropriate. This is what we would do specifically to make America safer."

PHILLIPS: Well he did -- Julianne...

MALVEAUX: Bob, you'd like -- Bob, you'd like nothing more than if John Kerry got into a back and forth with Dick Cheney.

The fact is that what's been wrong with the Democratic campaign to date is that y'all have engaged us in this rope-to-rope kind of discussion. John Kerry should do what he's going to do in his own time. He has laid out a platform...

BARR: His own time is getting short. He'd better do something pretty quick.

MALVEAUX: Well, you know, but you'd better watch out. Fasten your seat belt. He -- he has been compelling. He will continue to be. And he should just ignore Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney was utterly un-American in asserting that John Kerry...

BARR: They ignored the Republican and the attacks of the swift boat attacks. And it's hurt them.

He really shouldn't -- I don't think if he were asking me, of course he isn't, I would not ignore these -- these charges. I would go right at them and be positive and tell the American people specifically what would he do. If he waits until November 1 it's going to be too late.

PHILLIPS: John Kerry -- John Kerry coming out...

MALVEAUX: ... wallow in the mud with Dick Cheney.

PHILLIPS: Julianne, John Kerry camp coming out with its first ad focusing on Iraq. And evidently, it's going to air in battleground states. Why now?

MALVEAUX: It's an important time. We've given the Republican their time. They've had the convention. They've gotten their bounce. Now we've got to answer them.

Not only answer them, really, because that's not what we're doing: laying out positions. The battleground states are important states. They swing, and some of them swing with less than three or four percent. And so there are undecided voters who will be swayed.

And it's important to note that these polls that say likely voters, don't deal with the voters that we all have to turn out.

So going to the battleground states right now and talking about Iraq, goes to America's heartland where people are losing sons and daughters and brothers and sons. And they need to understand what's wrong with our administration's policy and, indeed, what John Kerry...

BARR: And I think that if Mr. Kerry does that, Kyra, that -- that this campaign will tighten up once again. That's what the American people want to hear.

They want to see the candidate come out to the heartland and talk specifically about Iraq, talk specifically about the 9/11 Commission, talk especially about federal spending and healthcare. Not generalities but specifics.

And if Mr. Kerry is now going to do that, I think that that will make this campaign much tighter and much more interesting.

MALVEAUX: He's been doing it all along. He's been giving out specifics, but your folks have been playing dirty. The specifics will continue, and the American people, both likely voters and those that people aren't counting, are going to make a choice.

PHILLIPS: All right, guys. We've got to talk NASA now. You made my job easy today. You two just took it and ran. I only had to facilitate one comment and there we went. All right.

Julianne Malveaux, Bob Barr, thanks you guys -- Miles.

BARR: OK.

MALVEAUX: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: That news conference we've been telling you about is just under way right now in Utah. Let's listen in as members of NASA's team there, engineering and scientific as well as representatives of that helicopter team that didn't get to do their job, read a statement and take questions.

ANDREW DANTZER, NASA HEADQUARTERS SOLAR SYSTEM DIVISION DIRECTOR: ... landed in a remote location on the base where we had planned, planned it would land. No people or no structures were anywhere near the area.

We have declared a spacecraft contingency, which means we will -- we NASA will appoint a mishap review board in 72 hours. NASA has a contingency plans for this sort of thing and we are already implementing that plan. Safety for all personnel is our top priority. Our first immediate objective is to ensure that our ground teams are in no danger from any potential unexploded ordnance in the payload as we save the spacecraft. There might be unexploded ordnance because that's what would have deployed the parachutes.

Regarding the science returns, it is important to understand that we have considered this scenario as one of our contingencies. The site samples have been returned to earth, but we don't know the condition of the collectors that hold the science just yet. And we'll be learning that over the hours and days and weeks to come.

Once we get the capsule into the clean room and can examine it in detail, we'll be able to determine how much science we'll be able to do.

As always, NASA is committed to sharing whatever we learn about the situation with the American public as soon as we can.

I'd like to turn it over to Chris Jones who has a lot more details on exactly what happened.

CHRIS JONES, NASA SCIENTIST: OK. Thank you, Andy.

Let's see. Everything Andy said was true. We are going to embark on a very intensive data review, a review of data that takes us back to the pre-separation event while the Genesis spacecraft and the capsule were still in space.

Then reviewing all the data of all the tracking assets that we had as the capsule came into the Earth's atmosphere and ultimately landed here at UTTR.

A few facts: we estimate that the capsule hit the ground at about 193 miles per hour. It's located about 31 miles from this facility, well within the impact target ellipse that the navigators predicted for the entry.

And so to reiterate something that Andy said, there is no safety concern, certainly, to the public. And the recovery team that the project has in place is well prepared with the equipment necessary to avoid any threats that the capsule might present.

The project, you know, part of this risky business of ours is we prepare for contingencies. And the project developed, in fairly good detail, step by step procedures for what would happen if.

And it just turns out that, this being one of the more obvious possible, though remote, we felt, outcomes, the project does have such a procedure to recover the science, recover the capsule to the extent that we can so that we can learn from this mission, from the failure that obviously has occurred, and feed that information back into future sample return missions.

Let's see. That's all I had. I'll pass it on to the Vertigo folks. ROY HAGGARD, VERTIGO INCORPORATED: I'd like to give you a brief onsite report. I was in left seat in the lead helicopter as the director of flight operations and managed to -- and can tell you what I saw when I examined the SRC slightly after landing.

The SRC penetrated the soil about half its diameter. It was leaned over maybe ten degrees off vertical. It was clear that the mortar hadn't fired and the canister was slightly breeched, maybe just a few inches due to the high velocity impact.

It appeared that the science canister also had been breeched a couple of inches, although it was difficult to tell looking into the canister just how much damage it -- it took.

But -- but it was actually quite surprising how little damage there was, considering how -- at the velocity that it touched.

And from our perspective, you know, we're sorry we didn't get to perform the midair retrieval that we trained so hard to perform. But our hearts really go out to the science team, who is going to have a tougher job reducing the science that they have. So that's our focus -- John.

DON SWEETNAM, GENESIS PROJECT MANAGER: Thank you, Roy.

I'd like to talk a little bit about what we've done and what we will be doing.

First of all, I haven't talked to them yet, but I see my family is in the second row here en masse, and I really appreciate you guys being here.

Started out this morning at JPL. Things were great. Navigation was great; spacecraft was great. And we flew up here at the last minute so we could be here. This wasn't my first choice to be talking to you about.

But anyway, this is what the project has been doing.

We have a contingency plan in place. We did develop it before -- before arrival for this case. We did secure the site. It is secured now.

We have assembled our recovery team. It includes folks from the Genesis Project, at the Johnson Space Center and at Lockheed Martin. They have the procedure and some of the tools that they'll need to go deal with the capsule out on the range.

We did go through the procedure step-by-step, walk through with the recovery teams just in the last hour to ensure that their steps were OK, and we did dispatch them out to the site to initiate the recovery activity. In fact, if you just heard the Black Hawk helicopter take off, some of the members of that recovery testimony went out on the helicopter.

So we are now in the process of beginning the recovery and assessing in more detail the state of the science canister.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Thank you very much. We're going to be taking questions from reporters. We have reporters at some of the NASA centers, but we'll start out here at Dugway. Please wait for the microphone to be brought to you and state your name and affiliation.

Let's start out in the fourth row.

STEVE BUTTERMAN, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Steve Butterman from CBS News.

Obviously, this is a very big disappointment. I'm wondering if you could put in personal terms the -- the emotions you're going through today. How difficult it was to see it crash into the ground. What was going through your mind as you saw this? I know you guys have put many years of your lives into this project.

SWEETNAM: I've probably been on the project longer than anybody else on the podium here. Not as long as Don Burnett, the principle investigator.

But I started working on this in 1997 in the proposal stage, went all the way through the proposal stage through development, through testing, through launch, through over three years of flight operations.

It's a difficult moment right now. The -- you know, I have run through my -- in my head the mental scenario of every step of the way.

And boy, did it -- it clicked off perfectly today. But there's a lot of serious steps and a lot of things that have to happen in series. And we got just about all of them done, and we just didn't get the last two or three done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Next question, front row here. Can we get a mic over to him?

HOWARD BERKES, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Howard Berkes, National Public Radio.

You mention that the -- both capsule, both portions of the capsule were breeched, that the internal capsule was breeched. What is the concern, then, for contamination of the payload, of the cargo?

And Mr. Burnett had said earlier that there was a critical time factor in getting the samples back to the clean room. What -- what is happening now in terms of that? How is time a concern with assuring the validity of the samples now with that cracked interior capsule?

SWEETNAM: I think at this stage we've abandoned the requirement for the two-hour initiation of the purge of the capsule -- excuse me, the science canister breech. The purge doesn't have enough gas load to ensure a positive outflow.

O'BRIEN: All right. We will continue to monitor this briefing. You were listening to Don Sweetman -- Sweetnam, I should say, who's been on the team since 1997, which compared to Don Burnett, who is the primary investigator on this, is not a lot of time. He began this in the mid-80s.

So a lot -- obviously, a lot of emotions in that room as they go through the difficult process of quite literally picking up the pieces and seeing if there's any capability of science on this $264 million mission.

Twenty years after it was first thought up and then about three years after launch they are left with, really, more questions than answers.

We're going to -- as you heard, there's a team heading out to that scene right now, hoping to assess the situation, carefully see the danger of the actual wreckage because of the possibility of explosives inside. And then once it is returned to a hangar they'll get a better sense of not only what happened but what lies ahead for the science team, if anything.

We'll keep you posted on it, of course.

Back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC)

O'BRIEN: That must be our Fashion Week ditty.

Simple silhouettes, rich with subtle details. Just some of the looks lighting up the catwalks and the runways in New York for today's start of Fashion Week.

A host of designers, including Kenneth Cole, Tommy Hilfiger -- Hilfiger?

PHILLIPS: Hilfiger.

O'BRIEN: And Imitation of Christ -- Imitation of Christ -- this is nothing to do with Mel Gibson -- are debuting their new spring lines. It's so big it's captured the attention of "TIME's" style and design quarterly magazine.

Kate Betts is the magazine's editor in New York.

Kate, give us a sense. How big of a deal is this outside of Manhattan?

KATE BETTS, EDITOR, "TIME" STYLE AND DESIGN QUARTERLY: Well, we're here backstage at Imitation of Christ. The show just started. And this is a pretty big deal for Tara Subkoff. She's not -- she's the designer. She's not, maybe, well known all over America. But she will be, probably, after this show.

I think...

O'BRIEN: Whoa! I'm sorry, what does that have to do with Christ right there? Just out of curiosity.

BETTS: I don't know.

O'BRIEN: OK. All right. Just curious.

BETTS: Anyway, she -- she's having her first big show in the tent here in Bryan Park. And there's a big crowd outside.

And I guess you could call this season -- in the first day I would sum it up as the new romantics, because the look is very soft. Here we have a very Grecian inspired look with toga looking dresses and lace-up sandals.

O'BRIEN: Do you remember -- do you remember Raquel Welch in -- what was it -- "40 Million B.C." or whatever that was? You remember that?

BETTS: Yes. You've got the idea.

O'BRIEN: Yes. It's kind of got that -- yes, Tarzanny look.

Give us a sense of what else is going on in the fashion world this year.

BETTS: Well, there's a lot of -- we're seeing a continuation of beautiful color. At Kenneth Cole this morning, we saw beautiful tangerine colors mixed with a kind of turquoisey, aqua, and still very feminine feeling to the clothes. Very streamlined and sort of sporty and sexy.

So it -- it's looking to be a very feminine sort of romantic season so far.

O'BRIEN: All right, Kate Betts. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We'll be checking in with you all throughout the week as we check out some rather attractive runways. As a pilot I've never seen runways quite like that.

Kate Betts, thanks very much.

PHILLIPS: Well, something that's definitely not very attractive and is very hard to watch. And that's NASA's Genesis capsule going straight into the desert.

O'BRIEN: Two hundred sixty-four million dollars, years of work smashed. And there's Annie Lennox.

PHILLIPS: We are moving quickly ahead.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we are. I was probably a little bit behind the curve. But here's the deal. You don't want to miss tomorrow who gets to interview Annie Lennox. Right?

PHILLIPS: We actually want to know who you think should interview Annie Lennox, because we think we're going to flip a coin because we both want to do it. Now Miles wants me to arm wrestle. O'BRIEN: Arm wrestle.

PHILLIPS: Can I use two -- two hands?

We've got to take a break. Send e-mail.

O'BRIEN: All right. Annie Lennox tomorrow. Someone's going to interview her.

PHILLIPS: I'm interviewing her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Cracking down on Fallujah. For a second straight day, U.S. warplanes bomb the Sunni stronghold. Elsewhere, fighting raged in Baghdad's Sadr City, and two U.S. troops were killed in roadside attacks. The U.S. death toll now stands at 1,004.

And a frightening picture of what went on inside a Russian school during last week's terror attack. Russia's prosecutor general says the ringleader detonated explosives on two of the female attackers to silence any and all criticism during the standoff.

Russian officials are offering a $10 million reward for the capture of top Chechen rebels.

Stalking the Caribbean. Hurricane Ivan churning toward Bonaire, Aruba and Curacao at this hour. It is expected to skirt those islands, possibly slamming into Jamaica on Friday. The Category 4 hurricane is packing 140-mile-an-hour winds. The storm is blamed for the deaths of nine people in Granada.

A crash landing puts a three-year space mission at risk, to say the least. The Genesis space capsule crash-landed in the Utah desert today, after its parachute failed to open. The capsule is carrying solar particles NASA hopes will answer questions about the origin of the solar system. At a news conference this past hour, scientists and engineers said it's still not clear whether any of the data on board can be saved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS JONES, NASA SCIENTIST: ... that the capsule hit the ground at about 193 miles per hour. It's located about 31 miles from this facility, well within the impact target ellipse that the navigators predicted for the entry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: NASA says the crash landing site has been secured. A team assembled to recover the Genesis capsule, they are on their way.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Topping the hour, for the third time in less than a month, the president finds himself in Florida, Mr. Bush joining his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, surveying the mess that Hurricane Frances left behind. The president assures residents that help is on the way. The mayor of one of the hardest-hit cities said that he talked to the president about the specific needs of Fort Pierce.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB BENTON, MAYOR OF FORT PIERCE: I just told him we needed help. We needed money. We need housing. There was some discussion with his brother about four days ago that it might be two weeks before we could get housing. At that time, we didn't know it was as bad as it is. So we're hoping we can get better housing in here quicker.

QUESTION: What did he say to you?

BENTON: He assured me it would be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Catching up with the Kerry campaign now. The Democratic presidential nominee was in Cincinnati today, and he spoke at the same venue where the president made his case in October 2002 for going to war in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The cost of the president's go-it-alone policy in Iraq is now $200 billion and counting; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford after-school programs for our children; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford to keep the 100,000 police officers we put on the streets during the 1990s.

We are here today to tell them they're wrong. It's time to lead America in a new direction.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Kerry wasn't entirely preaching to the choir. His speech was just getting under way when a protester started yelling about atrocities. The man was quickly shown the door by Kerry supporters.

Back at the White House today, Mr. Bush said, we're making good progress in the war against terror. And the same could probably be said of congressional attempts to turn the 9/11 panel's recommendations into law. On that front, Mr. Bush today abandoned his reluctance to let a new intel director hold the purse strings now controlled mainly by the Pentagon. This afternoon, all eyes are on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

CNN's David Ensor following events on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for us -- David. DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, as you say, an important signal from the president today in his meeting with congressional leaders that he will support giving a new national intelligence director real budget and hire-and-fire power over the whole intelligence community.

By uttering those words, full budgetary authority, Mr. Bush appeared to support the position of the 9/11 Commission, but some skeptical Democrats said they will wait to see the fine print in the administration's reform proposals.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: The president did not say -- he didn't even indicate that it was a change of mind, but he did say that he supported it and the budgetary authority. But, as you know, with all of this, it's the devil is in the details. In what manner do they support the budgetary authority going to the national intelligence director? Well, that remains for us to see in print on paper so that we can make a judgment about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: At stake is whether the Pentagon really will relinquish budgetary control over 80 percent of the intelligence budget, which reportedly totals around $40 billion a year. That's real power that will be changing hands. And that does not happen easily in this town.

In the hearing you mentioned today, acting intelligence director John McLaughlin was asked why he thinks the reform is needed and what the national intelligence director must be able to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, ACTING CIA DIRECTOR: A national intelligence director needs be able to say to his operating or her operating agencies, I need five from you and five from you and five from you and I need them in two or three days and they need to be up and running in this room with these computers and these information technology, these systems, with these databases flowing to them in order to move with maximum agility and speed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: Congress is trying to us agility and speed to reach an intelligence reform bill the president can sign by the end of October, well before the elections. That's not much time.

But the political pressure on both Republicans and Democrats to get this thing done is very strong indeed, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, and the concern might be that, with all that pressure to get something done with an election looming, that the approach might ultimately be the wrong one and not be well-thought through. ENSOR: There are those on Capitol Hill and in the administration who worry that, if this thing is rushed, it could be botched. A number of people in the intelligence community have said, look, the thing isn't broken. You could make it worse. So there are those around town who are worried about that, but the train does seem to have left the station and there does seem to be a consensus that there can and should be a national intelligence director.

Just how much power he or she is going to have is the key question that still remains, though.

O'BRIEN: All right, David Ensor, thank you very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Drive-by shootings, Fallujah firefights and more dead Americans are making news in Iraq this hour.

We get the latest from CNN's Walter Rodgers in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are days when Iraq very much seems like a country up for grabs. Last week, the distinguished British Royal Institute of International Affairs released a report saying if current trends continue in Iraq the country could well slip into a bloody civil war.

There was an upswing of violence again today, yesterday, and the day before. The fighting was centered in Sadr City. U.S. soldiers fighting the Mahdi Army there. Today, however, the fighting seems to be in Fallujah, in the Sunni Triangle. U.S. aircraft bombing suspected Iraqi rebel command and control centers there.

Recall that on Monday of this week, seven U.S. Marines were killed outside Fallujah in a deadly suicide car bomb attack on their transport vehicle. In the last four days, 17 U.S. service personnel have been killed in Iraq. Still, the American generals' here strategy, at least with regard to Fallujah, seems to be to encircle the city, lock it down, but do not commit American troops to more ferocious fighting there as we saw in April, earlier in this past year.

Another reason for that restraint at this point could well be political. No president running for reelection wants to go into an election with a spike in American casualties just a few weeks before the public goes to the polls.

But if Americans are dying in moderate numbers, the Iraqis continue to die in more substantial numbers. There has been a rash of assassinations of public figures here, hospital directors, police detectives, even politicians. The assassinations, of course, are launched by the insurgents, aimed at destabilizing the American attempt to build a Democratic society here.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PHILLIPS: Other news across America now.

Bill Clinton could be going home at the end of week. Doctors say the former president is continuing to recover well after undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery in New York on Monday. Clinton is said to be awake and alert and talking with his family.

More legal movement in the Michael Jackson case. Jackson's attorneys filed a motion today questioning whether Santa Barbara County's former sheriff violated a court order by recently discussing an 11-year-old investigation of Jackson. The pop star is currently fighting child molestation charges.

Trouble again for Lionel Tate. He's the Florida boy whose conviction for killing a 6-year-old playmate was overturned. Tate was arrested early Friday after he was found two blocks from his home. He's supposed to be under house arrest.

O'BRIEN: OK, so maybe it sounded a little farfetched, even if things went according to plan. But when the parachute fails on a collection of solar particles microscopic in size, some pricey NASA dreams crash to Earth with a resounding thud. We'll get behind the scenes on the picture of the day in just a bit.

Football ticket prices making business news. Get that along with your market check.

More LIVE FROM after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired September 8, 2004 - 14:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Welcome back to the CNN Center. This is LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: And I'm Kyra Phillips. All new this half hour, a documentary alleging that a nuclear plant near New York City is a sitting duck for terrorists. How close can anyone get to Indian Point? Maria Hinojosa reports, coming up.

O'BRIEN: But first here's what's happening now in the news.

PHILLIPS: A big disappointment for NASA. Three-year mission to find clues to the origin of the solar system ended in disaster today. A capsule carrying samples of solar wind crash-landed in Utah. NASA expected to hold a press conference any minute now. We'll bring that to you live.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry lashes out at President Bush's Iraq policy. In Cincinnati, Kerry says Bush made wrong choices by rushing to war without a strong coalition or post-war plan. Kerry says those choices are hurting Americans.

Just as Kerry was beginning his campaign speech in Ohio, a protester stood up, began shouting about so-called atrocities. Well, the man was immediately held down by two Kerry supporters while another man put him in a headlock. He was later escorted out.

Now live pictures in -- just moments ago. You're seeing the president -- actually, this is a tape turn around. Not long ago, President Bush -- you can see, side by side with his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, he was visiting with hurricane victims at Fort Pierce, Florida.

You'll remember the long lines that we showed you there at Fort Pierce of victims trying to get supplies. Well, the president visited that area today.

Well, with the Labor Day holiday over, both candidates have come out swinging in the presidential campaigns. First, Vice President Cheney suggested a vote for Kerry might lead to more terrorist attacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today on November 2 we make the right choice. Because if we make the wrong choice and the danger is that -- that we'll get hit again. It will be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: And the vice president's statement set off an angry reaction from the Kerry camp. Running mate John Edwards said it was simply just un-American what the vice president had to say.

Well, that's fuel for debate between CNN contributor Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, and Julianne Malveaux, syndicated columnist in Washington.

Julianne, let's start with you. Let's talk about Dick Cheney coming forward, saying, "Hey, if John Kerry is president, this puts America at risk of another devastating terror attack."

Pretty strong comments.

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Extremely strong and extremely out of order, frankly.

The Republican Party has been running on the bones of September 11. They have been running, attempting to frighten us into voting for them. And this is proof positive of it.

The fact is that John Kerry does not make this nation more dangerous. In fact he makes it more safe. The rhinestone cowboy approach of going at it alone is what has made us more dangerous.

It wasn't under John Kerry's watch that, you know, September 11 happened or Bill Clinton's. It was under George W. Bush's.

It wasn't under their watch we lost over a thousand American lives. Not only a thousand American lives: 5,000 wounded. I don't know how many Iraqi lives.

The -- the way that Dick Cheney has attempted to manipulate terror in order to promote his party is absolutely repugnant. It's -- it is un-American, as John Edwards has said, and I'm frightened by it. I'm frightened enough to make sure that as many people as I know vote Democratic.

PHILLIPS: Bob, is he manipulating terror? Is 9/11 being exploited here? Did he cross the line with these scare tactics?

BOB BARR, FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN IN GEORGIA: Well, certainly 9/11 and the war on terror is front and central to the Republican presidential effort, no doubt about that. And anybody on the Republican side that tries to claim otherwise I think is being disingenuous. Certainly it is a factor. I think there is a fine line between going to the American people and saying, "Vote for our team because we have better ideas, we have a better way to protect America," and saying, "If you vote for the other guys there are going to be more terrorist attacks."

I think that's a fine line that should not be crossed. I don't think that's appropriate either.

PHILLIPS: Well, could Dick...

MALVEAUX: Bob, don't you think he crossed it?

BARR: Yes, that's what I'm saying. I'm saying I don't think that's appropriate. I would like to see both sides, if they are, in fact, as they ought to make an issue out of 9/11 and how to protect us against the recurrence, to talk about what they would do to make us safer and then let the voters decide who has the better program.

PHILLIPS: Julianne, should Dick Cheney back that comment up and said, "Look, if John Kerry becomes president we're at risk of another terrorist attack because of he has done this or voted on this"? Make a point-by-point statement?

MALVEAUX: Well, if he can back it up I think he should. But I don't think this is something you can back up.

The fact is that nobody, Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton, Mr. Kerry, nobody could have anticipated September 11. So I frankly am repulsed when I hear it put in the political chessboard.

If Dick Cheney can prove that John Kerry makes our country more dangerous at president, I think he should. I think he can't. I think it's very dangerous ground.

Anybody who is president of the United States is going to want to keep our nation safe. The issue is that different people may go about it differently. The American people have a right to decide which is the appropriate way.

BARR: And I think, Julianne, I think they will decide. And I think the overall point that the vice president is making is a legitimate one. I think he phrased it improperly.

I would like to see Mr. Kerry step forward and talk specifically about what anti-terrorism programs would he make, what he would do with regard to the 9/11 Commission recommendations specifically, not in broad brush.

And if the Republicans would do the same thing from a positive standpoint I think that the American people would have a very clear idea.

PHILLIPS: John Kerry...

MALVEAUX: Well, Bob, I can agree with you on that. I think that both sides need to look at that 9/11 report. But John Kerry has talked about it and far more specific terms than the president has. And he's talked about embracing those recommendations because he finds them important.

George Bush has to pick and choose among those recommendations

BARR: I think -- all I have seen that he's done, Julianne, all I've seen that he's done is say that, "Well, I would adopt it."

The Bush administration -- and I don't agree with everything the Bush administration has proposed here. I don't think we need more bureaucracy for intelligence. But at least the president has come forward and said -- said, "These are some specific things that I would implement."

I don't think Kerry has been specific. And I think it would help him and behoove his campaign if he came forward and said specifically in response, particularly, perhaps, to the vice president's comments, "This is not appropriate. This is what we would do specifically to make America safer."

PHILLIPS: Well he did -- Julianne...

MALVEAUX: Bob, you'd like -- Bob, you'd like nothing more than if John Kerry got into a back and forth with Dick Cheney.

The fact is that what's been wrong with the Democratic campaign to date is that y'all have engaged us in this rope-to-rope kind of discussion. John Kerry should do what he's going to do in his own time. He has laid out a platform...

BARR: His own time is getting short. He'd better do something pretty quick.

MALVEAUX: Well, you know, but you'd better watch out. Fasten your seat belt. He -- he has been compelling. He will continue to be. And he should just ignore Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney was utterly un-American in asserting that John Kerry...

BARR: They ignored the Republican and the attacks of the swift boat attacks. And it's hurt them.

He really shouldn't -- I don't think if he were asking me, of course he isn't, I would not ignore these -- these charges. I would go right at them and be positive and tell the American people specifically what would he do. If he waits until November 1 it's going to be too late.

PHILLIPS: John Kerry -- John Kerry coming out...

MALVEAUX: ... wallow in the mud with Dick Cheney.

PHILLIPS: Julianne, John Kerry camp coming out with its first ad focusing on Iraq. And evidently, it's going to air in battleground states. Why now?

MALVEAUX: It's an important time. We've given the Republican their time. They've had the convention. They've gotten their bounce. Now we've got to answer them.

Not only answer them, really, because that's not what we're doing: laying out positions. The battleground states are important states. They swing, and some of them swing with less than three or four percent. And so there are undecided voters who will be swayed.

And it's important to note that these polls that say likely voters, don't deal with the voters that we all have to turn out.

So going to the battleground states right now and talking about Iraq, goes to America's heartland where people are losing sons and daughters and brothers and sons. And they need to understand what's wrong with our administration's policy and, indeed, what John Kerry...

BARR: And I think that if Mr. Kerry does that, Kyra, that -- that this campaign will tighten up once again. That's what the American people want to hear.

They want to see the candidate come out to the heartland and talk specifically about Iraq, talk specifically about the 9/11 Commission, talk especially about federal spending and healthcare. Not generalities but specifics.

And if Mr. Kerry is now going to do that, I think that that will make this campaign much tighter and much more interesting.

MALVEAUX: He's been doing it all along. He's been giving out specifics, but your folks have been playing dirty. The specifics will continue, and the American people, both likely voters and those that people aren't counting, are going to make a choice.

PHILLIPS: All right, guys. We've got to talk NASA now. You made my job easy today. You two just took it and ran. I only had to facilitate one comment and there we went. All right.

Julianne Malveaux, Bob Barr, thanks you guys -- Miles.

BARR: OK.

MALVEAUX: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: That news conference we've been telling you about is just under way right now in Utah. Let's listen in as members of NASA's team there, engineering and scientific as well as representatives of that helicopter team that didn't get to do their job, read a statement and take questions.

ANDREW DANTZER, NASA HEADQUARTERS SOLAR SYSTEM DIVISION DIRECTOR: ... landed in a remote location on the base where we had planned, planned it would land. No people or no structures were anywhere near the area.

We have declared a spacecraft contingency, which means we will -- we NASA will appoint a mishap review board in 72 hours. NASA has a contingency plans for this sort of thing and we are already implementing that plan. Safety for all personnel is our top priority. Our first immediate objective is to ensure that our ground teams are in no danger from any potential unexploded ordnance in the payload as we save the spacecraft. There might be unexploded ordnance because that's what would have deployed the parachutes.

Regarding the science returns, it is important to understand that we have considered this scenario as one of our contingencies. The site samples have been returned to earth, but we don't know the condition of the collectors that hold the science just yet. And we'll be learning that over the hours and days and weeks to come.

Once we get the capsule into the clean room and can examine it in detail, we'll be able to determine how much science we'll be able to do.

As always, NASA is committed to sharing whatever we learn about the situation with the American public as soon as we can.

I'd like to turn it over to Chris Jones who has a lot more details on exactly what happened.

CHRIS JONES, NASA SCIENTIST: OK. Thank you, Andy.

Let's see. Everything Andy said was true. We are going to embark on a very intensive data review, a review of data that takes us back to the pre-separation event while the Genesis spacecraft and the capsule were still in space.

Then reviewing all the data of all the tracking assets that we had as the capsule came into the Earth's atmosphere and ultimately landed here at UTTR.

A few facts: we estimate that the capsule hit the ground at about 193 miles per hour. It's located about 31 miles from this facility, well within the impact target ellipse that the navigators predicted for the entry.

And so to reiterate something that Andy said, there is no safety concern, certainly, to the public. And the recovery team that the project has in place is well prepared with the equipment necessary to avoid any threats that the capsule might present.

The project, you know, part of this risky business of ours is we prepare for contingencies. And the project developed, in fairly good detail, step by step procedures for what would happen if.

And it just turns out that, this being one of the more obvious possible, though remote, we felt, outcomes, the project does have such a procedure to recover the science, recover the capsule to the extent that we can so that we can learn from this mission, from the failure that obviously has occurred, and feed that information back into future sample return missions.

Let's see. That's all I had. I'll pass it on to the Vertigo folks. ROY HAGGARD, VERTIGO INCORPORATED: I'd like to give you a brief onsite report. I was in left seat in the lead helicopter as the director of flight operations and managed to -- and can tell you what I saw when I examined the SRC slightly after landing.

The SRC penetrated the soil about half its diameter. It was leaned over maybe ten degrees off vertical. It was clear that the mortar hadn't fired and the canister was slightly breeched, maybe just a few inches due to the high velocity impact.

It appeared that the science canister also had been breeched a couple of inches, although it was difficult to tell looking into the canister just how much damage it -- it took.

But -- but it was actually quite surprising how little damage there was, considering how -- at the velocity that it touched.

And from our perspective, you know, we're sorry we didn't get to perform the midair retrieval that we trained so hard to perform. But our hearts really go out to the science team, who is going to have a tougher job reducing the science that they have. So that's our focus -- John.

DON SWEETNAM, GENESIS PROJECT MANAGER: Thank you, Roy.

I'd like to talk a little bit about what we've done and what we will be doing.

First of all, I haven't talked to them yet, but I see my family is in the second row here en masse, and I really appreciate you guys being here.

Started out this morning at JPL. Things were great. Navigation was great; spacecraft was great. And we flew up here at the last minute so we could be here. This wasn't my first choice to be talking to you about.

But anyway, this is what the project has been doing.

We have a contingency plan in place. We did develop it before -- before arrival for this case. We did secure the site. It is secured now.

We have assembled our recovery team. It includes folks from the Genesis Project, at the Johnson Space Center and at Lockheed Martin. They have the procedure and some of the tools that they'll need to go deal with the capsule out on the range.

We did go through the procedure step-by-step, walk through with the recovery teams just in the last hour to ensure that their steps were OK, and we did dispatch them out to the site to initiate the recovery activity. In fact, if you just heard the Black Hawk helicopter take off, some of the members of that recovery testimony went out on the helicopter.

So we are now in the process of beginning the recovery and assessing in more detail the state of the science canister.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Thank you very much. We're going to be taking questions from reporters. We have reporters at some of the NASA centers, but we'll start out here at Dugway. Please wait for the microphone to be brought to you and state your name and affiliation.

Let's start out in the fourth row.

STEVE BUTTERMAN, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Steve Butterman from CBS News.

Obviously, this is a very big disappointment. I'm wondering if you could put in personal terms the -- the emotions you're going through today. How difficult it was to see it crash into the ground. What was going through your mind as you saw this? I know you guys have put many years of your lives into this project.

SWEETNAM: I've probably been on the project longer than anybody else on the podium here. Not as long as Don Burnett, the principle investigator.

But I started working on this in 1997 in the proposal stage, went all the way through the proposal stage through development, through testing, through launch, through over three years of flight operations.

It's a difficult moment right now. The -- you know, I have run through my -- in my head the mental scenario of every step of the way.

And boy, did it -- it clicked off perfectly today. But there's a lot of serious steps and a lot of things that have to happen in series. And we got just about all of them done, and we just didn't get the last two or three done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. Next question, front row here. Can we get a mic over to him?

HOWARD BERKES, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Howard Berkes, National Public Radio.

You mention that the -- both capsule, both portions of the capsule were breeched, that the internal capsule was breeched. What is the concern, then, for contamination of the payload, of the cargo?

And Mr. Burnett had said earlier that there was a critical time factor in getting the samples back to the clean room. What -- what is happening now in terms of that? How is time a concern with assuring the validity of the samples now with that cracked interior capsule?

SWEETNAM: I think at this stage we've abandoned the requirement for the two-hour initiation of the purge of the capsule -- excuse me, the science canister breech. The purge doesn't have enough gas load to ensure a positive outflow.

O'BRIEN: All right. We will continue to monitor this briefing. You were listening to Don Sweetman -- Sweetnam, I should say, who's been on the team since 1997, which compared to Don Burnett, who is the primary investigator on this, is not a lot of time. He began this in the mid-80s.

So a lot -- obviously, a lot of emotions in that room as they go through the difficult process of quite literally picking up the pieces and seeing if there's any capability of science on this $264 million mission.

Twenty years after it was first thought up and then about three years after launch they are left with, really, more questions than answers.

We're going to -- as you heard, there's a team heading out to that scene right now, hoping to assess the situation, carefully see the danger of the actual wreckage because of the possibility of explosives inside. And then once it is returned to a hangar they'll get a better sense of not only what happened but what lies ahead for the science team, if anything.

We'll keep you posted on it, of course.

Back with more in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MUSIC)

O'BRIEN: That must be our Fashion Week ditty.

Simple silhouettes, rich with subtle details. Just some of the looks lighting up the catwalks and the runways in New York for today's start of Fashion Week.

A host of designers, including Kenneth Cole, Tommy Hilfiger -- Hilfiger?

PHILLIPS: Hilfiger.

O'BRIEN: And Imitation of Christ -- Imitation of Christ -- this is nothing to do with Mel Gibson -- are debuting their new spring lines. It's so big it's captured the attention of "TIME's" style and design quarterly magazine.

Kate Betts is the magazine's editor in New York.

Kate, give us a sense. How big of a deal is this outside of Manhattan?

KATE BETTS, EDITOR, "TIME" STYLE AND DESIGN QUARTERLY: Well, we're here backstage at Imitation of Christ. The show just started. And this is a pretty big deal for Tara Subkoff. She's not -- she's the designer. She's not, maybe, well known all over America. But she will be, probably, after this show.

I think...

O'BRIEN: Whoa! I'm sorry, what does that have to do with Christ right there? Just out of curiosity.

BETTS: I don't know.

O'BRIEN: OK. All right. Just curious.

BETTS: Anyway, she -- she's having her first big show in the tent here in Bryan Park. And there's a big crowd outside.

And I guess you could call this season -- in the first day I would sum it up as the new romantics, because the look is very soft. Here we have a very Grecian inspired look with toga looking dresses and lace-up sandals.

O'BRIEN: Do you remember -- do you remember Raquel Welch in -- what was it -- "40 Million B.C." or whatever that was? You remember that?

BETTS: Yes. You've got the idea.

O'BRIEN: Yes. It's kind of got that -- yes, Tarzanny look.

Give us a sense of what else is going on in the fashion world this year.

BETTS: Well, there's a lot of -- we're seeing a continuation of beautiful color. At Kenneth Cole this morning, we saw beautiful tangerine colors mixed with a kind of turquoisey, aqua, and still very feminine feeling to the clothes. Very streamlined and sort of sporty and sexy.

So it -- it's looking to be a very feminine sort of romantic season so far.

O'BRIEN: All right, Kate Betts. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. We'll be checking in with you all throughout the week as we check out some rather attractive runways. As a pilot I've never seen runways quite like that.

Kate Betts, thanks very much.

PHILLIPS: Well, something that's definitely not very attractive and is very hard to watch. And that's NASA's Genesis capsule going straight into the desert.

O'BRIEN: Two hundred sixty-four million dollars, years of work smashed. And there's Annie Lennox.

PHILLIPS: We are moving quickly ahead.

O'BRIEN: Yes, we are. I was probably a little bit behind the curve. But here's the deal. You don't want to miss tomorrow who gets to interview Annie Lennox. Right?

PHILLIPS: We actually want to know who you think should interview Annie Lennox, because we think we're going to flip a coin because we both want to do it. Now Miles wants me to arm wrestle. O'BRIEN: Arm wrestle.

PHILLIPS: Can I use two -- two hands?

We've got to take a break. Send e-mail.

O'BRIEN: All right. Annie Lennox tomorrow. Someone's going to interview her.

PHILLIPS: I'm interviewing her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Cracking down on Fallujah. For a second straight day, U.S. warplanes bomb the Sunni stronghold. Elsewhere, fighting raged in Baghdad's Sadr City, and two U.S. troops were killed in roadside attacks. The U.S. death toll now stands at 1,004.

And a frightening picture of what went on inside a Russian school during last week's terror attack. Russia's prosecutor general says the ringleader detonated explosives on two of the female attackers to silence any and all criticism during the standoff.

Russian officials are offering a $10 million reward for the capture of top Chechen rebels.

Stalking the Caribbean. Hurricane Ivan churning toward Bonaire, Aruba and Curacao at this hour. It is expected to skirt those islands, possibly slamming into Jamaica on Friday. The Category 4 hurricane is packing 140-mile-an-hour winds. The storm is blamed for the deaths of nine people in Granada.

A crash landing puts a three-year space mission at risk, to say the least. The Genesis space capsule crash-landed in the Utah desert today, after its parachute failed to open. The capsule is carrying solar particles NASA hopes will answer questions about the origin of the solar system. At a news conference this past hour, scientists and engineers said it's still not clear whether any of the data on board can be saved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS JONES, NASA SCIENTIST: ... that the capsule hit the ground at about 193 miles per hour. It's located about 31 miles from this facility, well within the impact target ellipse that the navigators predicted for the entry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: NASA says the crash landing site has been secured. A team assembled to recover the Genesis capsule, they are on their way.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Topping the hour, for the third time in less than a month, the president finds himself in Florida, Mr. Bush joining his brother, Governor Jeb Bush, surveying the mess that Hurricane Frances left behind. The president assures residents that help is on the way. The mayor of one of the hardest-hit cities said that he talked to the president about the specific needs of Fort Pierce.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB BENTON, MAYOR OF FORT PIERCE: I just told him we needed help. We needed money. We need housing. There was some discussion with his brother about four days ago that it might be two weeks before we could get housing. At that time, we didn't know it was as bad as it is. So we're hoping we can get better housing in here quicker.

QUESTION: What did he say to you?

BENTON: He assured me it would be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Catching up with the Kerry campaign now. The Democratic presidential nominee was in Cincinnati today, and he spoke at the same venue where the president made his case in October 2002 for going to war in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The cost of the president's go-it-alone policy in Iraq is now $200 billion and counting; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford after-school programs for our children; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford health care for our veterans; $200 billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can't afford to keep the 100,000 police officers we put on the streets during the 1990s.

We are here today to tell them they're wrong. It's time to lead America in a new direction.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Kerry wasn't entirely preaching to the choir. His speech was just getting under way when a protester started yelling about atrocities. The man was quickly shown the door by Kerry supporters.

Back at the White House today, Mr. Bush said, we're making good progress in the war against terror. And the same could probably be said of congressional attempts to turn the 9/11 panel's recommendations into law. On that front, Mr. Bush today abandoned his reluctance to let a new intel director hold the purse strings now controlled mainly by the Pentagon. This afternoon, all eyes are on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

CNN's David Ensor following events on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue for us -- David. DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, as you say, an important signal from the president today in his meeting with congressional leaders that he will support giving a new national intelligence director real budget and hire-and-fire power over the whole intelligence community.

By uttering those words, full budgetary authority, Mr. Bush appeared to support the position of the 9/11 Commission, but some skeptical Democrats said they will wait to see the fine print in the administration's reform proposals.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: The president did not say -- he didn't even indicate that it was a change of mind, but he did say that he supported it and the budgetary authority. But, as you know, with all of this, it's the devil is in the details. In what manner do they support the budgetary authority going to the national intelligence director? Well, that remains for us to see in print on paper so that we can make a judgment about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: At stake is whether the Pentagon really will relinquish budgetary control over 80 percent of the intelligence budget, which reportedly totals around $40 billion a year. That's real power that will be changing hands. And that does not happen easily in this town.

In the hearing you mentioned today, acting intelligence director John McLaughlin was asked why he thinks the reform is needed and what the national intelligence director must be able to do.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, ACTING CIA DIRECTOR: A national intelligence director needs be able to say to his operating or her operating agencies, I need five from you and five from you and five from you and I need them in two or three days and they need to be up and running in this room with these computers and these information technology, these systems, with these databases flowing to them in order to move with maximum agility and speed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: Congress is trying to us agility and speed to reach an intelligence reform bill the president can sign by the end of October, well before the elections. That's not much time.

But the political pressure on both Republicans and Democrats to get this thing done is very strong indeed, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Well, and the concern might be that, with all that pressure to get something done with an election looming, that the approach might ultimately be the wrong one and not be well-thought through. ENSOR: There are those on Capitol Hill and in the administration who worry that, if this thing is rushed, it could be botched. A number of people in the intelligence community have said, look, the thing isn't broken. You could make it worse. So there are those around town who are worried about that, but the train does seem to have left the station and there does seem to be a consensus that there can and should be a national intelligence director.

Just how much power he or she is going to have is the key question that still remains, though.

O'BRIEN: All right, David Ensor, thank you very much -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Drive-by shootings, Fallujah firefights and more dead Americans are making news in Iraq this hour.

We get the latest from CNN's Walter Rodgers in Baghdad.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are days when Iraq very much seems like a country up for grabs. Last week, the distinguished British Royal Institute of International Affairs released a report saying if current trends continue in Iraq the country could well slip into a bloody civil war.

There was an upswing of violence again today, yesterday, and the day before. The fighting was centered in Sadr City. U.S. soldiers fighting the Mahdi Army there. Today, however, the fighting seems to be in Fallujah, in the Sunni Triangle. U.S. aircraft bombing suspected Iraqi rebel command and control centers there.

Recall that on Monday of this week, seven U.S. Marines were killed outside Fallujah in a deadly suicide car bomb attack on their transport vehicle. In the last four days, 17 U.S. service personnel have been killed in Iraq. Still, the American generals' here strategy, at least with regard to Fallujah, seems to be to encircle the city, lock it down, but do not commit American troops to more ferocious fighting there as we saw in April, earlier in this past year.

Another reason for that restraint at this point could well be political. No president running for reelection wants to go into an election with a spike in American casualties just a few weeks before the public goes to the polls.

But if Americans are dying in moderate numbers, the Iraqis continue to die in more substantial numbers. There has been a rash of assassinations of public figures here, hospital directors, police detectives, even politicians. The assassinations, of course, are launched by the insurgents, aimed at destabilizing the American attempt to build a Democratic society here.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PHILLIPS: Other news across America now.

Bill Clinton could be going home at the end of week. Doctors say the former president is continuing to recover well after undergoing quadruple heart bypass surgery in New York on Monday. Clinton is said to be awake and alert and talking with his family.

More legal movement in the Michael Jackson case. Jackson's attorneys filed a motion today questioning whether Santa Barbara County's former sheriff violated a court order by recently discussing an 11-year-old investigation of Jackson. The pop star is currently fighting child molestation charges.

Trouble again for Lionel Tate. He's the Florida boy whose conviction for killing a 6-year-old playmate was overturned. Tate was arrested early Friday after he was found two blocks from his home. He's supposed to be under house arrest.

O'BRIEN: OK, so maybe it sounded a little farfetched, even if things went according to plan. But when the parachute fails on a collection of solar particles microscopic in size, some pricey NASA dreams crash to Earth with a resounding thud. We'll get behind the scenes on the picture of the day in just a bit.

Football ticket prices making business news. Get that along with your market check.

More LIVE FROM after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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