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President Bush's Nominee for CIA Director Under Scrutiny on Capitol Hill; CBS Says It Was Misled About Authenticity of Memos

Aired September 20, 2004 - 13:30   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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories now in the news, two U.S. troops are dead following a firefight with insurgents in Afghanistan. It happened in a troubled southeastern province. Two Americans and six Afghan soldiers were wounded. Officials have braced themselves for an escalation of violence leading up to the Afghan presidential elections October 9th.
A stunning admission from CBS in the last hour: The network says it can't vouch for the authenticity of documents about President Bush's National Guard service. The network says that the papers should not have been used in a "60 Minutes" report. It says that it was deliberately misled. CBS announces it will seek an independent review now.

A never-ending war, a picture Democrat John Kerry is painting of Iraq. Today, Kerry strongly criticized bush's handling of the war, and said that the U.S. must get other countries involved.

Bush is expected to defend his Iraq policy before the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow in New York, and at a campaign appearance about 20 minutes from now in New Hampshire. We will take that live as soon as it happens.

Well, be prepared to take off your jacket next time you board a flight in the U.S. New airport security measures take effect today, aimed at finding explosives hidden in clothing and bags. All passengers will have to take off jackets, blazers and the like when they walk through all the metal detectors. Flyers could be subject to more patdown services and carry-on checks.

Now, the TSA says that new technology is in the works to keep bombs off planes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID STONE, TSA ADMINISTRATOR: We have a number of airports that we've put in the "puffer machine," where it blows little puffs of air. And from that, we're able to measure the explosive residue that may be on a person's body, and so those machines have been deployed to five airports, along with document scanners, where at a number of our airports, we've been able to put the document scanner in place, which also focuses on being able to detect explosive residue. And so you can tell from these initiatives that we really are working to ramp up our ability to detect explosives at our checkpoint.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIPS: The new measures were prompted, in part, by the bombing of two Russian aircraft last month.

President Bush's embattled nominee for CIA director is under scrutiny again on Capitol Hill.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor joins us live with more on today's confirmation hearing.

Tell as about it.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATL. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, he is under some fairly tough questioning by Democrats. There's no question really in anyone's mind that he'll be approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in its vote tomorrow, likely to be approved by the full Senate before the week is out. Porter Goss is seen by many Democrats as much too partisan a candidate for director of Central Intelligence. They have doubts that he will tell truth to power in the way that they believe is so much needed.

And some of them use the example of Vice President Kerry's -- excuse me -- Vice President Cheney's mention in some of his speeches of the alleged meeting between Muhammad Atta, the top hijacker of 9/11, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Now the CIA has said multiple times that it does not believe there's any evidence that such a meeting really did occur. But Vice President Cheney has gone on mentioning it.

And what the Democrats want to know from Congressman Goss is that when senior officials like that start saying things that you don't think the intelligence support, what are you going to do about it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PORTER GOSS, CIA DIRECTOR-NOMINEE: If there is a misunderstanding or if there's a question about that, I would be very quick to point it out, and if there were no intelligence...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To the vice president.

GOSS: To anybody, sir.

If there were no -- if I had never myself or caused to have the community present intelligence to anybody and somebody went out, no matter who, and said, this is what our intelligence community said, I would certainly find out and advise that person very quickly that that was not this intelligence community.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you correct the public record on the matter?

GOSS: I would certainly judge the situation at the time. I am not going to let the credibility of our intelligence community be in any way affected by the bottles that swirl around on the question of the use of intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: To press further on this specific example, Mr. Goss said that he would talk privately to someone like Vice President Cheney, who was misstating what the intelligence seemed to indicate. He would try to publicly avoid disagreeing with the individual. So there are likely to be some no votes in the upcoming vote, Kyra, but it looks like Mr. Goss is going to be the next director of Central Intelligence.

PHILLIPS: All right, David, thanks so much.

Well, now to the politics of terrorism. House speaker Dennis Hastert says over the weekend that Al Qaeda could operate better with John Kerry in the White House. Hastert also raised the specter of terrorist attacks, like the Madrid train bombings, before the November elections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think you'll see Al Qaeda trying to influence this election. And if they can't influence here, they're going to try to influence it in Iraq. And you'll see, I think, a blitz. I wouldn't be surprised to even see a blitz in Afghanistan as well. But I think they'll definitely try to influence this election. And if they have to influence it in Iraq, they will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Kerry's running mate accused Hastert of playing up the fear factor. John Edwards said the tactic was a sign of weakness. He balked at the suggestion that Kerry would be soft on terror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He said, and I'm paraphrasing him now, he said last night something to the effect that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be president of the United States.

Let me just say this in the simplest possible terms. When John Kerry is president of the United States, we will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" is doing a special week-long series about what the candidates are promising and whether they can make good on those promises. Tomorrow, it focuses on Iraq. That's on 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

It's on the front page of the CBS News Web site, and is a cautionary tale for every other news outlet in the country right now. After initially defending the source of some documents relating to the president's service in the National Guard, CBS now says it was misled about the authenticity of those memos.

Anchorman Dan Rather has released a statement which includes an apology. Media analyst and frequent "LIVE FROM" guest, Robbie Vorhaus joins us now live from New York with more on this about-face.

Robbie, good to see you.

ROBBIE VORHAUS, MEDIA ANALYST: Hello, Kyra. Nice to see you.

PHILLIPS: Well, you and I, obviously, have been talking about this for days. Look, you were Dan Rather's producer. You worked at CBS for years. All the critics saying he had a political agenda. Is that fair?

VORHAUS: No, it's not fair. And let's say -- let's remind ourselves that we're talking about the critics. I've know Dan Rather for a long time, and I worked for the man. And I have to tell you, if Dan has any flaw, it's the fact that he's a truth cop, he's a bulldog for the truth, and does not want to let go, and wants to make sure if he goes out with a story -- I can assure you that this document was checked to the best of their ability in the time that they could, and now we see that they were duped. Why they were duped, I think that's the bigger story.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about that bigger story. Did CBS rush this story to air? I believe they had the documents, what, for five days. Did this move too quickly? Should it move so quickly?

VORHAUS: Kyra, we all rush stories to air. I mean, the media business, and very much of what we're doing now, we hear about our competitors here from CNN. We know that there are three major news organizations. We know that there is more news gathering at any time in the world, than any time in history. And we need to get the stories out as quickly and as accurately as we possibly can.

I think the bigger issue is that we are not infallible, we are not machines, and I think that the really important things is that as a nation, I think, we need to sit back and let our -- anybody be able to make a mistake, and certainly if they apologize to be able to say, OK, that could have been us, too.

PHILLIPS: Part of the statement from Dan Rather, "but we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment. And for that, I'm sorry. It was error that we made. However, in good faith, and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism." Just part of that statement, actually.

And maybe we can talk about that for a moment, because you were a part of the CBS family for a long period of time.

VORHAUS: I was.

PHILLIPS: Do you remember moments while working with Dan Rather where he said, you know what, we do have a standard here, and you're pushing this, I don't -- it may be a sexy story, but I'm not going there.

VORHAUS: Of course. And this is house of Murrow, Edward R. Murrow. And this is a story where, this is a time where I can tell you that a lot of people are more sad than they are angry. Back in the mid-'80s, the mayor of Chicago died while in office, and we were rushing the get the story on the air. And someone came to Dan and said, let's put in there that he was a convicted -- that he was a felon, that he had been in jail. And Dan Rather grew red in the face and said, absolutely not, this has nothing to do with that story. And this is from the man who wrote "The Camera Never Blinks." No, if Dan Rather has an agenda, it is not political, it is certainly to get the story out in a timely fashion that is fair and accurate and, of course. true.

PHILLIPS: All right, you sifted through the spin a number of times coming on our program, talking about spin. How is CBS handling this? Did CBS make the right move? Did Dan Rather make the right move with these statements? And can CBS recover from this?

VORHAUS: Well, of course they can recover, the same way that Martha Stewart's going to recover, the same way that other people who have done great things. I mean, CBS -- there isn't a person who in the free world who doesn't know Dan Rather, "60 Minutes," "48 Hours."

I mean, the people at CBS News are brilliant, brilliant journalists and understand news gathering I would say as well as anyone -- excluding us, of course.

But I think that Dan Rather has something that he needs to deal with here, and he's doing it. He will apologize. He will go on to explain. You know, Dan Rather always taught us, take all the responsibility and take all the blame and give all the credit to somebody else. So, this is a case where you will hear Dan saying I take personal responsibility for whatever happened, and we'll find out how it won't happen again.

PHILLIPS: And Robbie, I think you can probably say this -- I know I can say this, probably everybody in this business that has reached this level, we can all say we've been in his shoes.

VORHAUS: Oh, Kyra, I'm -- right now I'm praying that I don't curse or drool on TV. I mean, we all make mistakes. We all have opportunities to go out with the story. William Safire went out with an editorial recently telling Dan to have courage in this and to go out and, you know, to admit that they possibly were duped because he, in fact, said that he had given him some information himself.

Look, we are all human beings. And we need to be able to take a breath, step back, and let our leaders, in whatever area -- whether it's journalism, whether it's politics, whether it's in culture -- be able to make mistakes without us throwing stones at them so we want to see blood. It's not fair.

PHILLIPS: Robbie Vorhaus, always a pleasure. Thanks.

VORHAUS: Thanks, Kyra. PHILLIPS: Well, if a loved one suffered a heart attack at home, you don't have to wait for the ambulance to arrive to take action. After the break, we're going to tell you about a new weapon in the battle to save lives.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: New help for people concerned about sudden heart problems. Devices for jump-starting the heart can now be bought without a doctor's prescription for home use.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has the latest on that for us from New York. Hi, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.

Kyra, you've probably seen these what are called AEDs or automatic external defibrillators in sporting events, in stadiums, you see them in airports, sometimes you see them in schools. Well, now they have just been approved by the FDA to be purchased over the counter so that someone can have one at home.

Let's say they have a family member who has some form of heart disease, and they want to make sure that they have one of these defibrillator in case something happens, in case the person has sudden cardiac arrest.

Now, let's take a look at how this works. I'm going to show you with a mannequin and with a training defibrillator that we have here. Don't worry: It's not going to deliver a real electrical shock. And they've even taught schoolchildren to do this. This is really quite easy.

The first thing is you turn it on. And let's see -- it's easy except this is a training one. Here we go.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Call for help now.

COHEN: The first thing it does is tell you to call for help. That's important...

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Remove clothing from chest.

COHEN: ... because you don't want to do this instead of calling 911. You want to do this along with calling 911, and that's very, very important. And you don't want people to not call 911.

And the next thing that you're going to do...

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pull red handle...

COHEN: ... this red handle here opens a bag that contains these stickers here, these pads. And there are lots of different pictures that show you what to do. COMPUTERIZED VOICE: ... to expose chest.

COHEN: So, you apply that here and you apply that here. And then, I have to do this, which ordinarily you wouldn't do, but it's a training one.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Do not touch patient. Evaluating heart rhythm.

COHEN: They're trying to make sure that the person really is in sudden cardiac arrest, because you wouldn't want to do this to someone who's not.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Stand by. Preparing to shock. Everyone clear. Press -- shock delivered.

COHEN: And that is it. As I said, they've actually trained schoolchildren to do it. It's really quite easy. And now these will be available for people to use at home -- Kyra?

PHILLIPS: All right. So, how do you know if someone has had sudden cardiac arrest and needs one, and then how do you know if you're using the right one?

COHEN: You know -- well, if you're using the right pad, you mean?

PHILLIPS: Right.

COHEN: Well, it shows you exactly what to do. You can't really see it, but there are pictures here that are really easy. I mean, you could even not know how to read and follow the red one goes here, the yellow one goes here. So, it's really quite easy to do.

The way that you would know that someone's in sudden cardiac arrest and not having some other problem is that they're unconscious, you shake them, you can't do anything with them. And so, that makes a very big difference. You don't want to do this to someone who is just not feeling well, obviously. They really need to be unshakable, unwakeable.

PHILLIPS: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, acceptance speeches during award shows sometimes have viewers diving for the remote. But many Emmy winners bucked that trend last night. We're going to show you some of the standouts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, the Emmys love dysfunctional families. We'll recap last night's big winners. Bet you can guess, right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Still six weeks away from the presidential election, but the voting is over and done with for this year's Emmy Awards. CNN's Sibila Vargas with the winners, including one show that was a surprise favorite.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Arrested Development" was the surprise winner of the night. The comedy that's been a favorite with the critics, but hasn't quite found an audience, yet took home three Emmys, including the coveted best comedy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We thank you all so much, this is so huge for us. Thank you. You know what, let's watch it. Do you want to?

VARGAS: The Emmy gods were looking over the shoulders of the "Angel in America" crew. The mini-series took awards for best supporting actor for Jeffrey Wright. Mary-Louise Parker won best supporting actress. The program won best writing, best mini-series, best director in a mini-series, best lead actor for Al Pacino and Meryl Streep for best actress.

MERYL STREEP, ACTRESS: There are some days when I myself think I'm overrated.

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: But not today.

VARGAS: "The Sopranos" may be singing their swan song soon, but Sunday was their night. The series won its first-ever best drama prize, as well as statues in the supporting category for Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo.

DREA DE MATTEO, ACTRESS: To have to go up there was probably the scariest moment of my entire life.

VARGAS: The "Sex and the City" girls went out on a high note. Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon won best actress and best supporting actress, their first ever for the hit HBO show.

In another night of firsts, James Spader forgot to practice his speech before accepting his trophy for best actor in a drama.

JAMES SPADER, ACTOR: I should have written something down. You've all made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight.

VARGAS (on camera): However, it's the surprise Emmy moments that will most likely be discussed at the water cooler.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at the company I'm in, just look at it. I mean, and I'm so glad none of them won. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, Marishka (ph), come up and stand with me.

GARY SHANDLING: Welcome to the 56th Annual Emmy Awards. You are live on stage in front of about 200 million people. And I have just made you very famous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my gosh!

VARGAS (voice-over): Sibila Vargas, CNN, Hollywood.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, Ivan may be history, but the recovery from it has just begun. An update on the situation in Pensacola, Florida straight ahead.

LIVE FROM's hour of power begins right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired September 20, 2004 - 13:30   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Checking stories now in the news, two U.S. troops are dead following a firefight with insurgents in Afghanistan. It happened in a troubled southeastern province. Two Americans and six Afghan soldiers were wounded. Officials have braced themselves for an escalation of violence leading up to the Afghan presidential elections October 9th.
A stunning admission from CBS in the last hour: The network says it can't vouch for the authenticity of documents about President Bush's National Guard service. The network says that the papers should not have been used in a "60 Minutes" report. It says that it was deliberately misled. CBS announces it will seek an independent review now.

A never-ending war, a picture Democrat John Kerry is painting of Iraq. Today, Kerry strongly criticized bush's handling of the war, and said that the U.S. must get other countries involved.

Bush is expected to defend his Iraq policy before the U.N. General Assembly tomorrow in New York, and at a campaign appearance about 20 minutes from now in New Hampshire. We will take that live as soon as it happens.

Well, be prepared to take off your jacket next time you board a flight in the U.S. New airport security measures take effect today, aimed at finding explosives hidden in clothing and bags. All passengers will have to take off jackets, blazers and the like when they walk through all the metal detectors. Flyers could be subject to more patdown services and carry-on checks.

Now, the TSA says that new technology is in the works to keep bombs off planes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID STONE, TSA ADMINISTRATOR: We have a number of airports that we've put in the "puffer machine," where it blows little puffs of air. And from that, we're able to measure the explosive residue that may be on a person's body, and so those machines have been deployed to five airports, along with document scanners, where at a number of our airports, we've been able to put the document scanner in place, which also focuses on being able to detect explosive residue. And so you can tell from these initiatives that we really are working to ramp up our ability to detect explosives at our checkpoint.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PHILLIPS: The new measures were prompted, in part, by the bombing of two Russian aircraft last month.

President Bush's embattled nominee for CIA director is under scrutiny again on Capitol Hill.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor joins us live with more on today's confirmation hearing.

Tell as about it.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATL. SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, he is under some fairly tough questioning by Democrats. There's no question really in anyone's mind that he'll be approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in its vote tomorrow, likely to be approved by the full Senate before the week is out. Porter Goss is seen by many Democrats as much too partisan a candidate for director of Central Intelligence. They have doubts that he will tell truth to power in the way that they believe is so much needed.

And some of them use the example of Vice President Kerry's -- excuse me -- Vice President Cheney's mention in some of his speeches of the alleged meeting between Muhammad Atta, the top hijacker of 9/11, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Now the CIA has said multiple times that it does not believe there's any evidence that such a meeting really did occur. But Vice President Cheney has gone on mentioning it.

And what the Democrats want to know from Congressman Goss is that when senior officials like that start saying things that you don't think the intelligence support, what are you going to do about it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PORTER GOSS, CIA DIRECTOR-NOMINEE: If there is a misunderstanding or if there's a question about that, I would be very quick to point it out, and if there were no intelligence...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To the vice president.

GOSS: To anybody, sir.

If there were no -- if I had never myself or caused to have the community present intelligence to anybody and somebody went out, no matter who, and said, this is what our intelligence community said, I would certainly find out and advise that person very quickly that that was not this intelligence community.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you correct the public record on the matter?

GOSS: I would certainly judge the situation at the time. I am not going to let the credibility of our intelligence community be in any way affected by the bottles that swirl around on the question of the use of intelligence.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: To press further on this specific example, Mr. Goss said that he would talk privately to someone like Vice President Cheney, who was misstating what the intelligence seemed to indicate. He would try to publicly avoid disagreeing with the individual. So there are likely to be some no votes in the upcoming vote, Kyra, but it looks like Mr. Goss is going to be the next director of Central Intelligence.

PHILLIPS: All right, David, thanks so much.

Well, now to the politics of terrorism. House speaker Dennis Hastert says over the weekend that Al Qaeda could operate better with John Kerry in the White House. Hastert also raised the specter of terrorist attacks, like the Madrid train bombings, before the November elections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think you'll see Al Qaeda trying to influence this election. And if they can't influence here, they're going to try to influence it in Iraq. And you'll see, I think, a blitz. I wouldn't be surprised to even see a blitz in Afghanistan as well. But I think they'll definitely try to influence this election. And if they have to influence it in Iraq, they will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Kerry's running mate accused Hastert of playing up the fear factor. John Edwards said the tactic was a sign of weakness. He balked at the suggestion that Kerry would be soft on terror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He said, and I'm paraphrasing him now, he said last night something to the effect that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be president of the United States.

Let me just say this in the simplest possible terms. When John Kerry is president of the United States, we will find Al Qaeda where they are and crush them before they can do damage to the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: CNN's "AMERICAN MORNING" is doing a special week-long series about what the candidates are promising and whether they can make good on those promises. Tomorrow, it focuses on Iraq. That's on 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

It's on the front page of the CBS News Web site, and is a cautionary tale for every other news outlet in the country right now. After initially defending the source of some documents relating to the president's service in the National Guard, CBS now says it was misled about the authenticity of those memos.

Anchorman Dan Rather has released a statement which includes an apology. Media analyst and frequent "LIVE FROM" guest, Robbie Vorhaus joins us now live from New York with more on this about-face.

Robbie, good to see you.

ROBBIE VORHAUS, MEDIA ANALYST: Hello, Kyra. Nice to see you.

PHILLIPS: Well, you and I, obviously, have been talking about this for days. Look, you were Dan Rather's producer. You worked at CBS for years. All the critics saying he had a political agenda. Is that fair?

VORHAUS: No, it's not fair. And let's say -- let's remind ourselves that we're talking about the critics. I've know Dan Rather for a long time, and I worked for the man. And I have to tell you, if Dan has any flaw, it's the fact that he's a truth cop, he's a bulldog for the truth, and does not want to let go, and wants to make sure if he goes out with a story -- I can assure you that this document was checked to the best of their ability in the time that they could, and now we see that they were duped. Why they were duped, I think that's the bigger story.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about that bigger story. Did CBS rush this story to air? I believe they had the documents, what, for five days. Did this move too quickly? Should it move so quickly?

VORHAUS: Kyra, we all rush stories to air. I mean, the media business, and very much of what we're doing now, we hear about our competitors here from CNN. We know that there are three major news organizations. We know that there is more news gathering at any time in the world, than any time in history. And we need to get the stories out as quickly and as accurately as we possibly can.

I think the bigger issue is that we are not infallible, we are not machines, and I think that the really important things is that as a nation, I think, we need to sit back and let our -- anybody be able to make a mistake, and certainly if they apologize to be able to say, OK, that could have been us, too.

PHILLIPS: Part of the statement from Dan Rather, "but we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment. And for that, I'm sorry. It was error that we made. However, in good faith, and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism." Just part of that statement, actually.

And maybe we can talk about that for a moment, because you were a part of the CBS family for a long period of time.

VORHAUS: I was.

PHILLIPS: Do you remember moments while working with Dan Rather where he said, you know what, we do have a standard here, and you're pushing this, I don't -- it may be a sexy story, but I'm not going there.

VORHAUS: Of course. And this is house of Murrow, Edward R. Murrow. And this is a story where, this is a time where I can tell you that a lot of people are more sad than they are angry. Back in the mid-'80s, the mayor of Chicago died while in office, and we were rushing the get the story on the air. And someone came to Dan and said, let's put in there that he was a convicted -- that he was a felon, that he had been in jail. And Dan Rather grew red in the face and said, absolutely not, this has nothing to do with that story. And this is from the man who wrote "The Camera Never Blinks." No, if Dan Rather has an agenda, it is not political, it is certainly to get the story out in a timely fashion that is fair and accurate and, of course. true.

PHILLIPS: All right, you sifted through the spin a number of times coming on our program, talking about spin. How is CBS handling this? Did CBS make the right move? Did Dan Rather make the right move with these statements? And can CBS recover from this?

VORHAUS: Well, of course they can recover, the same way that Martha Stewart's going to recover, the same way that other people who have done great things. I mean, CBS -- there isn't a person who in the free world who doesn't know Dan Rather, "60 Minutes," "48 Hours."

I mean, the people at CBS News are brilliant, brilliant journalists and understand news gathering I would say as well as anyone -- excluding us, of course.

But I think that Dan Rather has something that he needs to deal with here, and he's doing it. He will apologize. He will go on to explain. You know, Dan Rather always taught us, take all the responsibility and take all the blame and give all the credit to somebody else. So, this is a case where you will hear Dan saying I take personal responsibility for whatever happened, and we'll find out how it won't happen again.

PHILLIPS: And Robbie, I think you can probably say this -- I know I can say this, probably everybody in this business that has reached this level, we can all say we've been in his shoes.

VORHAUS: Oh, Kyra, I'm -- right now I'm praying that I don't curse or drool on TV. I mean, we all make mistakes. We all have opportunities to go out with the story. William Safire went out with an editorial recently telling Dan to have courage in this and to go out and, you know, to admit that they possibly were duped because he, in fact, said that he had given him some information himself.

Look, we are all human beings. And we need to be able to take a breath, step back, and let our leaders, in whatever area -- whether it's journalism, whether it's politics, whether it's in culture -- be able to make mistakes without us throwing stones at them so we want to see blood. It's not fair.

PHILLIPS: Robbie Vorhaus, always a pleasure. Thanks.

VORHAUS: Thanks, Kyra. PHILLIPS: Well, if a loved one suffered a heart attack at home, you don't have to wait for the ambulance to arrive to take action. After the break, we're going to tell you about a new weapon in the battle to save lives.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: New help for people concerned about sudden heart problems. Devices for jump-starting the heart can now be bought without a doctor's prescription for home use.

CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has the latest on that for us from New York. Hi, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Kyra.

Kyra, you've probably seen these what are called AEDs or automatic external defibrillators in sporting events, in stadiums, you see them in airports, sometimes you see them in schools. Well, now they have just been approved by the FDA to be purchased over the counter so that someone can have one at home.

Let's say they have a family member who has some form of heart disease, and they want to make sure that they have one of these defibrillator in case something happens, in case the person has sudden cardiac arrest.

Now, let's take a look at how this works. I'm going to show you with a mannequin and with a training defibrillator that we have here. Don't worry: It's not going to deliver a real electrical shock. And they've even taught schoolchildren to do this. This is really quite easy.

The first thing is you turn it on. And let's see -- it's easy except this is a training one. Here we go.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Call for help now.

COHEN: The first thing it does is tell you to call for help. That's important...

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Remove clothing from chest.

COHEN: ... because you don't want to do this instead of calling 911. You want to do this along with calling 911, and that's very, very important. And you don't want people to not call 911.

And the next thing that you're going to do...

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Pull red handle...

COHEN: ... this red handle here opens a bag that contains these stickers here, these pads. And there are lots of different pictures that show you what to do. COMPUTERIZED VOICE: ... to expose chest.

COHEN: So, you apply that here and you apply that here. And then, I have to do this, which ordinarily you wouldn't do, but it's a training one.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Do not touch patient. Evaluating heart rhythm.

COHEN: They're trying to make sure that the person really is in sudden cardiac arrest, because you wouldn't want to do this to someone who's not.

COMPUTERIZED VOICE: Stand by. Preparing to shock. Everyone clear. Press -- shock delivered.

COHEN: And that is it. As I said, they've actually trained schoolchildren to do it. It's really quite easy. And now these will be available for people to use at home -- Kyra?

PHILLIPS: All right. So, how do you know if someone has had sudden cardiac arrest and needs one, and then how do you know if you're using the right one?

COHEN: You know -- well, if you're using the right pad, you mean?

PHILLIPS: Right.

COHEN: Well, it shows you exactly what to do. You can't really see it, but there are pictures here that are really easy. I mean, you could even not know how to read and follow the red one goes here, the yellow one goes here. So, it's really quite easy to do.

The way that you would know that someone's in sudden cardiac arrest and not having some other problem is that they're unconscious, you shake them, you can't do anything with them. And so, that makes a very big difference. You don't want to do this to someone who is just not feeling well, obviously. They really need to be unshakable, unwakeable.

PHILLIPS: All right. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

COHEN: Thanks.

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, acceptance speeches during award shows sometimes have viewers diving for the remote. But many Emmy winners bucked that trend last night. We're going to show you some of the standouts.

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(STOCK MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, the Emmys love dysfunctional families. We'll recap last night's big winners. Bet you can guess, right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Still six weeks away from the presidential election, but the voting is over and done with for this year's Emmy Awards. CNN's Sibila Vargas with the winners, including one show that was a surprise favorite.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): "Arrested Development" was the surprise winner of the night. The comedy that's been a favorite with the critics, but hasn't quite found an audience, yet took home three Emmys, including the coveted best comedy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We thank you all so much, this is so huge for us. Thank you. You know what, let's watch it. Do you want to?

VARGAS: The Emmy gods were looking over the shoulders of the "Angel in America" crew. The mini-series took awards for best supporting actor for Jeffrey Wright. Mary-Louise Parker won best supporting actress. The program won best writing, best mini-series, best director in a mini-series, best lead actor for Al Pacino and Meryl Streep for best actress.

MERYL STREEP, ACTRESS: There are some days when I myself think I'm overrated.

(LAUGHTER)

STREEP: But not today.

VARGAS: "The Sopranos" may be singing their swan song soon, but Sunday was their night. The series won its first-ever best drama prize, as well as statues in the supporting category for Michael Imperioli and Drea de Matteo.

DREA DE MATTEO, ACTRESS: To have to go up there was probably the scariest moment of my entire life.

VARGAS: The "Sex and the City" girls went out on a high note. Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon won best actress and best supporting actress, their first ever for the hit HBO show.

In another night of firsts, James Spader forgot to practice his speech before accepting his trophy for best actor in a drama.

JAMES SPADER, ACTOR: I should have written something down. You've all made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight.

VARGAS (on camera): However, it's the surprise Emmy moments that will most likely be discussed at the water cooler.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Look at the company I'm in, just look at it. I mean, and I'm so glad none of them won. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please, Marishka (ph), come up and stand with me.

GARY SHANDLING: Welcome to the 56th Annual Emmy Awards. You are live on stage in front of about 200 million people. And I have just made you very famous.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my gosh!

VARGAS (voice-over): Sibila Vargas, CNN, Hollywood.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, coming up in the second hour of LIVE FROM, Ivan may be history, but the recovery from it has just begun. An update on the situation in Pensacola, Florida straight ahead.

LIVE FROM's hour of power begins right after this.

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