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Kansas Woman Due in Federal Court This Afternoon; Police Say Security Guard Admits Involvement in Maryland Fires

Aired December 20, 2004 - 13:31   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.


BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Stories now in the news, at a year-end news conference, President Bush laid out his second-term agenda and backed his defense secretary. The president said Donald Rumsfeld is, quote, "doing a fine job." Now some Republicans are among a growing number of lawmakers questioning Rumsfeld's record.
In the Middle East, an Israeli settler's group is urging resistance to the government's planned withdrawal from Gaza, where many settlers live. But the group is calling for non-violent action. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans an Israeli withdrawal next year from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

And in Chile, an appeals court is upholding the indictment and house arrest of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. He's charged with kidnapping and murder during his regime. The 89-year-old is recovering from a stroke at a Santiago army hospital.

A Kansas woman is due in federal court this afternoon, charged with killing a pregnant woman and stealing her unborn child. Lisa Montgomery was arrested in the strangling of Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Missouri. The stolen baby girl is recovering, and she is with her father at a hospital in Topeka, Kansas.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The grim details of that case of the stolen baby and her strangled mother have shocked the nation. What might lead a person to commit such a monstrous crime? Dr. Michael Welner is a leading expert in forensic psychiatry. He joins us now from New York.

Dr. Welner, good to have you with us.

In a way, it's an unanswerable question. Nevertheless, there are some clues which we can sort of cipher out here. For one thing, there's been a lot of talk about whether she might have been a pregnant woman who miscarried and, thus, was in some way deranged or depressed. How would that factor into this if you're trying to measure what sort of a crime this would be?

DR. MICHAEL WELNER, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: I think it's important for us to avoid jumping to conclusions that she was necessarily ill. This is a crime that was carried out with a great amount of orchestration and calm. I doubt that she would have been able to convince her husband or her family of the unusual circumstances of her giving birth and suddenly appearing with a child, and not only that, carrying on a social dialogue with a stranger, to be able to get into her home and kill her were she to not be intact, to present herself as social and amiable.

So could she have been suffering from some emotional turmoil? Quite possibly. It's a very unusual crime. But this is a crime of desperation. And what it tells us is more that she was invested in carrying off the notion that she bore this child. She may have been doing it to save a marriage, to bolster a sense of herself. But the idea of a psychiatric condition, I'd be very cautious given how organized this crime was, and how organized it had to be in order for her to essentially get away with it, but for the grace of good forensics and an Amber Alert.

O'BRIEN: Well, and when you say organized, the fact that she was able to take the baby out of the womb, there is no gentle way to say this -- and harm the mother greatly, obviously, leading ultimately to her murder, although she had been strangled as well. But the baby is in good shape. Is this something that you learn somewhere? Could you find this in the book?

WELNER: Well, you can learn anything over the Internet, and you can learn anything through study in the library. But what you're touching on here is a very important point with respect to the eventual prosecution of the case, and I'm telling you this based on my professional experience in working for prosecution and defense. If something is impulsive, then it speaks more to the idea of a person's illness. If someone goes about thinking about how to save the baby, even while killing the mother, or targeting someone who is pregnant who's a victim that one could vanquish, that a woman could overcome, could actually kill, take a baby and get away with it, that takes planning, it takes orchestration, and that speaks more to the calculation and study, rather than the illness.

O'BRIEN: If the motive was to get a child, surely there are other ways, just outright kidnapping, to do that.

WELNER: Well, again, if she considered what it would take to kidnap a child and then successfully be able to represent that this child was her own that she bore, that's different from adoption. There is an issue that relates to what it meant to her to be able to represent not only to herself, but to her husband that she bore him a child. And we'll learn more as we inquire more about the marriage, and her life and where she was at emotionally.

O'BRIEN: All right, final thought here. I know you're working on a little project. We want to help you out with it. It's called the Depravity Scale. You're trying to help courts all throughout the nation kind of get a handle on depravity. We think when we see this, this has to peg the scale, if you will, as far as depravity goes. But you're inviting the public to go to this site at depravityscale.org, and sort of weigh in on their sensibilities to help judges make decisions.

WELNER: That's exactly right. The public is needed in order to come up with a consensus across our nation, across ethnic groups and our backgrounds, at www.depravityscale.org. What we're trying to do is to establish a way where courts can see that we all agree on what intent, actions and attitudes about a crime distinguish them as depraved, and possibly more representative, or more worthy of more significant punishment.

O'BRIEN: All right, you may not need a scale on this particular crime. Dr. Michael Welner, thank you for your time. We appreciate it -- Betty.

WELNER: Appreciate your interest.

NGUYEN: Now to the latest on the Maryland arson investigation. In just a little while, three more suspects, including a volunteer firefighter, are scheduled to make initial appearances in federal court. The new arrests were made early Saturday by the ATF and a federal task force investigating the fires that raced through the upscale subdivision two weeks ago. The blazes spread to 45 houses; 10 were seriously damaged. Total damages are estimated at $10 million.

Now police say security guard Aaron Lee Speed of Waldorf, Maryland admitted involvement in the fires last week after failing a polygraph.

CNN's law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks joins me now for more on the Maryland arson investigation. Thanks for being with us.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to be with you.

NGUYEN: Well, let's put this in a timeline, at least as much information as we can, put the pieces together. We have Aaron Speed saying I'm not involved whatsoever. He fails a polygraph test, and then he says, I'm a part of it. What kind of -- how?

BROOKS: Well, even before the polygraph, Betty, back on December 10th, he was interviewed by law enforcement, and they were basically laying out a hypothetical situation. In fact, reading right from the affidavit, it's a very interesting case. It says, how would you do it? And he basically said, someone pouring an accelerant followed by someone lighting it. They asked him how would he light it? He said with a torch. Then he was very specific, and just said, a handheld propane torch. They found that kind of torch at the scene.

Then they get down into possible motive. They still don't know what the motive is. They said, who may have set the fire? And he said to them, quote, "Someone who works at the site and recently experienced a great loss." Well, then investigators also cite in the affidavit that his son, back in April of -- spring of 2004, had died. He felt that the security company he worked for did not treat him well. So they were looking at that as a possible motive.

But then when they gave him the polygraph on the 16th, he talked about -- he failed the polygraph, and then he said he was present when they were lit, along with some acquaintances. And from that, we go to the investigation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Explosives and FBI, finding these other three, one of which at the time he was arrested had on a T-shirt that had AVFD. That stands for Accoceek Volunteer Fire Department. He was supposedly an observer. He had applied to be a firefighter, but had not gotten full firefighter status as of yet.

NGUYEN: All right, so what is the connection between these three guys, and Aaron Speed?

BROOKS: They're acquaintances of somehow. Now talking to two sources -- or law enforcement sources close to the investigation today, I said, well, what, he couldn't get into the specifics, but he said, if you're -- Mike, you're a former investigator. He said, it's as if I called up someone and said, hey, I want to do something, and then he called good friend of his, and then that person knew someone else. That's how they all got together. What they're working on right now is motive. Was it revenge? Was it excitement? Was it someone who wanted to and firefighter and couldn't be a firefighter and now they set a fire for excitement or was it for fraud? They don't know, they don't know the exact motive. They're looking into that. They hope to have that within the next couple of days.

NGUYEN: All right. In the meantime, we want to talk about another fire today, this one in D.C. Let's look at these dramatic pictures from this fire. Tell us what you know about how this was started.

BROOKS: Unbelievable fire, unbelievable footage here, Betty. I just spoke with Alan Etter of the D.C. Fire Department. And this video was actually shot by a CNN producer, Vito Maggiola (ph), who on his own time is a firefighter with the D.C. -- a photographer. Let's watch and listen for a second.

The first arriving unit -- this was a rowhouse in Southeast D.C. When they first got there they encountered heavy, heavy fire. Engine 8, which is right around the corner from there, got on the scene. And this is what they were encountered with right at the front door. Now we hear the air horn. You heard the battalion chief tell everyone to get out, get out. They're trying to make entry.

D.C. Fire Department is an extremely aggressive firefighters. They try to make entry into the front door. You hear them with the air horn, that is a signal for everyone to evacuate the building. The fire, they believe, started in the basement and worked its way up. By the time they had gotten there, it was already out of control. But they tried to make entry.

They -- one man -- a 68-year-old man had jumped from a second storey window. He wound up dying. They found the bodies of a 32- year-old woman, her 11-year-old daughter inside the house and they are is still a 5-year-old girl missing in this fire.

NGUYEN: And part of this building or this house -- this rowhouse, actually collapsed. Why was this fire so hard to fight?

BROOKS: It started in the basement, apparently a very deep- seated fire in the basement, had gotten a head start on firefighters before they got there. You see the think smoke rolling out from the second floor. It went up through the walls into the first floor, up into the attic.

These kind of houses, I can tell you from experience -- rowhouses in D.C., once it gets up into walls and gets to the attic, it's very, very hard to fight. You saw the heavy fire conditions they experienced when they arrived.

You know, this has been an unusually heavy fire season around the country. I just spoke with assistant chief Tim Butters, who is with the Fairfax City Fire Department. And he was saying -- talking about the number of multiple alarms that they've had just in Fairfax County over the last number of weeks. And I just spoke with Chief Dennis Rubin of the Atlanta Fire Department. And they had a multiple alarm fire at a church here in Atlanta on Saturday. In fact, I was at the scene of that fire and they actually have a working fire going on right now. They had fires over the night.

It just seems to be because of the cold weather. People have to be careful. As the temperature drops, people try to use altered heat sources, space heaters, these kind of things. They set them too close to something that's flammable. And with the Christmas season right now...

NGUYEN: Christmas lights.

BROOKS: Christmas trees, and just want to remind people that when they go to dispose of their trees, don't try to put them in their fireplaces. I've seen fires where they've tried actually to feed them into the fireplaces and...

NGUYEN: Really? Bad idea.

BROOKS: Very bad idea. So - and also, ovens, smoking materials, please be careful. We don't want this to happen to your family over the holiday season.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. CNN law enforcement analyst, Mike Brooks, thank you for that.

BROOKS: Thank you, Betty.

NGUYEN: Miles.

O'BRIEN: Don't shove the tree up chimney. That is for sure.

The long and twisting investigation of the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley leads today to opening statements in the trial of her famous widower. CNN's Ted Rowlands brings us up to date on the State of California versus Robert Blake -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, it has been three and a half years since Bonny Lee Bakley was murdered in a car outside of a restaurant in Studio City. The car was Robert Blake's. And today Robert Blake sat and listened as the prosecution started to outline its case to the seven men and five women on the jury that will decide his fate.

Blake is facing first degree murder charges. Shelly Samuels presented the arguments for the prosecution today. She told the jury that Blake hated his wife. She said that he despised his wife to the point where he wanted her dead. And the reason was he wanted sole possession of their child, young Rose, who after a custody battle -- or after it was determined that Blake was the father, Blake attached himself to this baby and he wanted the mother out of the picture.

The most compelling part of the state's case is expected to be testimony from two stuntmen that Blake knew from his old days at "Baretta." And these stuntmen will come on to testify, according to the prosecution, that Blake tried to get them to kill Blakely.

At the point where both stuntmen said they didn't want to do it, the state says that Blake took the matter into his own hands and shot and killed his wife outside of a restaurant after the two had had dinner.

The defense will get their opportunity to address the jury in about 40 minutes. And it is expected that they will harp on the fact that Bonny Lee Bakley had many enemies. And their argument is that Robert Blake may not have liked her, but he did not kill her -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Ted Rowlands, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Securing high-tech targets against terrorists. Find out what experts say needs to be done to avoid a digital Pearl Harbor.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: What if the next terror attack on the U.S. came from cyberspace? Could computer savvy terrorists cause huge regional power blackouts or trigger disasters at nuclear power plants?

CNN's Kareen Wynter looks at what's being done to anticipate and thwart a cyber security nightmare.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: This just in to CNN, word of a significant power outage in New York City.

KAREEN WYNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rush hour in the Big Apple. Thousands of New Yorkers jam the streets of Manhattan after the lights go out.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK MAYOR: There was a power failure in northern New York or southern Canada.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Declare a state of emergency.

WYNTER: The cascading power outage from southern Canada to Detroit to Pennsylvania.

No foul play here. Rather, the aging electric grid.

But what if al Qaeda was just a click away from pulling the switch on a nuclear power plant or tapping into the country's water supply system?

(on camera): Officials are now taking lessons learned during the blackout to protect against what they call the real threat of a cyberterror attack that could be launched from thousands of miles away.

(voice-over): Former White House cyber security czar Richard Clarke called the scenario a digital Pearl Harbor. Years later, experts say the threat is still real.

MATTHEW DEVOST, TERRORISM & RESEARCH CENTER: We've built these critical infrastructures that are incredibly dependent on information technology, and we've found, over time, that that information technology is inherently vulnerable, which provides a perfect target of opportunity for a terrorist organization.

WYNTER: A congressional subcommittee on homeland security issued a report this month, calling for more government resources devoted to combating the cyber threat.

REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX), CHAIRMAN, CYBERSECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE: In cyber, you have to look at the whole range of possibilities. Obviously, the one that concerns people the most is if you use the Internet to affect physical things like a water treatment plant or a dam or a nuclear power plant or something -- or a chemical plant.

WYNTER: Representative Mac Thornberry says it's especially challenging to secure privately owned assets.

THORNBERRY: It's the computers of the banks. It's the privately held fiber optic lines that go across the country. And so there has to be the kind of cooperative partnership with government and with private sector that we haven't seen that much of.

WYNTER: The Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or CERT, monitors the Internet 24-7, ready to act when problems arise.

ANDY PURDY, HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT: So we are acting aggressively and proactively to try to reduce the risk that we face and mitigate the vulnerabilities.

WYNTER: The blackout that gripped the Northeast last year ended when the lights came back on. But it serves as a reminder of what can happen when a vital infrastructure is rocked.

Kareen Wynter, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Our "Security Watch" coverage continues in primetime on CNN's "PAULA ZAHN NOW" at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Civil liberties restrictions and the Muslim community. Stay tuned to CNN day and night for most reliable news about your security.

O'BRIEN: News around the world now. The CEO of eBay's India subsidiary is under arrest. Apparently a video of two teenagers having oral sex turned up for sale on the online auction site. Here in the U.S., the parent firm expressing outrage. eBay says the sale took place without company officials' knowledge. European Union ministers meeting in Brussels on fishing quotas and marine environment protection facing a more immediate problem -- what to do with 11,000 dead fish and other sea animals Greenpeace activists dumped at the EU council building today. Greenpeace is agitating for stronger marine protection measures.

Cuban president Fidel Castro says he ordered the biggest military exercises in 18 years to test his country's ability to withstand U.S. aggression. The exercises concluded yesterday. State media reporting four million Cubans took part. The U.S. has repeatedly insisted it has no plans to attack Cuba.

Putting compact cars to the test. Why some Kia owners may not like what they hear from the insurance industry. Ouch.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NGUYEN: The insurance industry is out with its latest auto safety ratings and CNN's Julie Vallese shows us what car company has a big lump of coal in its stocking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest round of crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety saw a first in three years. But it's not a good one.

ADRIAN LUND, INSURANCE INST. FOR HWY. SAFETY: The Kia Spectra is a first that you don't want to have, the first since 2001 to get a poor rating. It simply didn't do well in any category.

VALLESE: In response to the 40 mile-per-hour crash test, Kia said, "We are evaluating the results of this current test on the Spectra and similar vehicles in its class to determine what improvements can be made to enhance overall vehicle safety." The institute rates cars on a scale of poor, marginal, acceptable and good. Cars that are exceptional get a best pick rating as well.

In complete contrast to the Kia, the Mazda 3 is a good performer and best pick. The third time was the charm for the Hyundai Elantra. In its first test, there was an airbag problem. The second test, there was a fuel leak. But some mechanical changes were made and it is now a good performer and good means...

LUND: If you're in this serious a frontal impact, you can expect to walk away from that crash with only minor scrapes and bruises.

VALLESE: The institute also crashed the Suzuki Forenza and Saturn Ion. Both are rated acceptable and the institute says they are reasonable choices for a safe vehicle.

(on-camera): But it also points out in the small car category, there are 11 cars rated as good, offering the safety-minded consumer a variety of smart choices. Julie Vallese, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) O'BRIEN: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM, "Time" magazine turns to the oval office again for its person of the year. Find out how the president came on top. LIVE FROM's "Hour of Power" begins after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired December 20, 2004 - 13:31   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: Stories now in the news, at a year-end news conference, President Bush laid out his second-term agenda and backed his defense secretary. The president said Donald Rumsfeld is, quote, "doing a fine job." Now some Republicans are among a growing number of lawmakers questioning Rumsfeld's record.
In the Middle East, an Israeli settler's group is urging resistance to the government's planned withdrawal from Gaza, where many settlers live. But the group is calling for non-violent action. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans an Israeli withdrawal next year from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.

And in Chile, an appeals court is upholding the indictment and house arrest of former dictator Augusto Pinochet. He's charged with kidnapping and murder during his regime. The 89-year-old is recovering from a stroke at a Santiago army hospital.

A Kansas woman is due in federal court this afternoon, charged with killing a pregnant woman and stealing her unborn child. Lisa Montgomery was arrested in the strangling of Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Skidmore, Missouri. The stolen baby girl is recovering, and she is with her father at a hospital in Topeka, Kansas.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The grim details of that case of the stolen baby and her strangled mother have shocked the nation. What might lead a person to commit such a monstrous crime? Dr. Michael Welner is a leading expert in forensic psychiatry. He joins us now from New York.

Dr. Welner, good to have you with us.

In a way, it's an unanswerable question. Nevertheless, there are some clues which we can sort of cipher out here. For one thing, there's been a lot of talk about whether she might have been a pregnant woman who miscarried and, thus, was in some way deranged or depressed. How would that factor into this if you're trying to measure what sort of a crime this would be?

DR. MICHAEL WELNER, FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST: I think it's important for us to avoid jumping to conclusions that she was necessarily ill. This is a crime that was carried out with a great amount of orchestration and calm. I doubt that she would have been able to convince her husband or her family of the unusual circumstances of her giving birth and suddenly appearing with a child, and not only that, carrying on a social dialogue with a stranger, to be able to get into her home and kill her were she to not be intact, to present herself as social and amiable.

So could she have been suffering from some emotional turmoil? Quite possibly. It's a very unusual crime. But this is a crime of desperation. And what it tells us is more that she was invested in carrying off the notion that she bore this child. She may have been doing it to save a marriage, to bolster a sense of herself. But the idea of a psychiatric condition, I'd be very cautious given how organized this crime was, and how organized it had to be in order for her to essentially get away with it, but for the grace of good forensics and an Amber Alert.

O'BRIEN: Well, and when you say organized, the fact that she was able to take the baby out of the womb, there is no gentle way to say this -- and harm the mother greatly, obviously, leading ultimately to her murder, although she had been strangled as well. But the baby is in good shape. Is this something that you learn somewhere? Could you find this in the book?

WELNER: Well, you can learn anything over the Internet, and you can learn anything through study in the library. But what you're touching on here is a very important point with respect to the eventual prosecution of the case, and I'm telling you this based on my professional experience in working for prosecution and defense. If something is impulsive, then it speaks more to the idea of a person's illness. If someone goes about thinking about how to save the baby, even while killing the mother, or targeting someone who is pregnant who's a victim that one could vanquish, that a woman could overcome, could actually kill, take a baby and get away with it, that takes planning, it takes orchestration, and that speaks more to the calculation and study, rather than the illness.

O'BRIEN: If the motive was to get a child, surely there are other ways, just outright kidnapping, to do that.

WELNER: Well, again, if she considered what it would take to kidnap a child and then successfully be able to represent that this child was her own that she bore, that's different from adoption. There is an issue that relates to what it meant to her to be able to represent not only to herself, but to her husband that she bore him a child. And we'll learn more as we inquire more about the marriage, and her life and where she was at emotionally.

O'BRIEN: All right, final thought here. I know you're working on a little project. We want to help you out with it. It's called the Depravity Scale. You're trying to help courts all throughout the nation kind of get a handle on depravity. We think when we see this, this has to peg the scale, if you will, as far as depravity goes. But you're inviting the public to go to this site at depravityscale.org, and sort of weigh in on their sensibilities to help judges make decisions.

WELNER: That's exactly right. The public is needed in order to come up with a consensus across our nation, across ethnic groups and our backgrounds, at www.depravityscale.org. What we're trying to do is to establish a way where courts can see that we all agree on what intent, actions and attitudes about a crime distinguish them as depraved, and possibly more representative, or more worthy of more significant punishment.

O'BRIEN: All right, you may not need a scale on this particular crime. Dr. Michael Welner, thank you for your time. We appreciate it -- Betty.

WELNER: Appreciate your interest.

NGUYEN: Now to the latest on the Maryland arson investigation. In just a little while, three more suspects, including a volunteer firefighter, are scheduled to make initial appearances in federal court. The new arrests were made early Saturday by the ATF and a federal task force investigating the fires that raced through the upscale subdivision two weeks ago. The blazes spread to 45 houses; 10 were seriously damaged. Total damages are estimated at $10 million.

Now police say security guard Aaron Lee Speed of Waldorf, Maryland admitted involvement in the fires last week after failing a polygraph.

CNN's law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks joins me now for more on the Maryland arson investigation. Thanks for being with us.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good to be with you.

NGUYEN: Well, let's put this in a timeline, at least as much information as we can, put the pieces together. We have Aaron Speed saying I'm not involved whatsoever. He fails a polygraph test, and then he says, I'm a part of it. What kind of -- how?

BROOKS: Well, even before the polygraph, Betty, back on December 10th, he was interviewed by law enforcement, and they were basically laying out a hypothetical situation. In fact, reading right from the affidavit, it's a very interesting case. It says, how would you do it? And he basically said, someone pouring an accelerant followed by someone lighting it. They asked him how would he light it? He said with a torch. Then he was very specific, and just said, a handheld propane torch. They found that kind of torch at the scene.

Then they get down into possible motive. They still don't know what the motive is. They said, who may have set the fire? And he said to them, quote, "Someone who works at the site and recently experienced a great loss." Well, then investigators also cite in the affidavit that his son, back in April of -- spring of 2004, had died. He felt that the security company he worked for did not treat him well. So they were looking at that as a possible motive.

But then when they gave him the polygraph on the 16th, he talked about -- he failed the polygraph, and then he said he was present when they were lit, along with some acquaintances. And from that, we go to the investigation with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Explosives and FBI, finding these other three, one of which at the time he was arrested had on a T-shirt that had AVFD. That stands for Accoceek Volunteer Fire Department. He was supposedly an observer. He had applied to be a firefighter, but had not gotten full firefighter status as of yet.

NGUYEN: All right, so what is the connection between these three guys, and Aaron Speed?

BROOKS: They're acquaintances of somehow. Now talking to two sources -- or law enforcement sources close to the investigation today, I said, well, what, he couldn't get into the specifics, but he said, if you're -- Mike, you're a former investigator. He said, it's as if I called up someone and said, hey, I want to do something, and then he called good friend of his, and then that person knew someone else. That's how they all got together. What they're working on right now is motive. Was it revenge? Was it excitement? Was it someone who wanted to and firefighter and couldn't be a firefighter and now they set a fire for excitement or was it for fraud? They don't know, they don't know the exact motive. They're looking into that. They hope to have that within the next couple of days.

NGUYEN: All right. In the meantime, we want to talk about another fire today, this one in D.C. Let's look at these dramatic pictures from this fire. Tell us what you know about how this was started.

BROOKS: Unbelievable fire, unbelievable footage here, Betty. I just spoke with Alan Etter of the D.C. Fire Department. And this video was actually shot by a CNN producer, Vito Maggiola (ph), who on his own time is a firefighter with the D.C. -- a photographer. Let's watch and listen for a second.

The first arriving unit -- this was a rowhouse in Southeast D.C. When they first got there they encountered heavy, heavy fire. Engine 8, which is right around the corner from there, got on the scene. And this is what they were encountered with right at the front door. Now we hear the air horn. You heard the battalion chief tell everyone to get out, get out. They're trying to make entry.

D.C. Fire Department is an extremely aggressive firefighters. They try to make entry into the front door. You hear them with the air horn, that is a signal for everyone to evacuate the building. The fire, they believe, started in the basement and worked its way up. By the time they had gotten there, it was already out of control. But they tried to make entry.

They -- one man -- a 68-year-old man had jumped from a second storey window. He wound up dying. They found the bodies of a 32- year-old woman, her 11-year-old daughter inside the house and they are is still a 5-year-old girl missing in this fire.

NGUYEN: And part of this building or this house -- this rowhouse, actually collapsed. Why was this fire so hard to fight?

BROOKS: It started in the basement, apparently a very deep- seated fire in the basement, had gotten a head start on firefighters before they got there. You see the think smoke rolling out from the second floor. It went up through the walls into the first floor, up into the attic.

These kind of houses, I can tell you from experience -- rowhouses in D.C., once it gets up into walls and gets to the attic, it's very, very hard to fight. You saw the heavy fire conditions they experienced when they arrived.

You know, this has been an unusually heavy fire season around the country. I just spoke with assistant chief Tim Butters, who is with the Fairfax City Fire Department. And he was saying -- talking about the number of multiple alarms that they've had just in Fairfax County over the last number of weeks. And I just spoke with Chief Dennis Rubin of the Atlanta Fire Department. And they had a multiple alarm fire at a church here in Atlanta on Saturday. In fact, I was at the scene of that fire and they actually have a working fire going on right now. They had fires over the night.

It just seems to be because of the cold weather. People have to be careful. As the temperature drops, people try to use altered heat sources, space heaters, these kind of things. They set them too close to something that's flammable. And with the Christmas season right now...

NGUYEN: Christmas lights.

BROOKS: Christmas trees, and just want to remind people that when they go to dispose of their trees, don't try to put them in their fireplaces. I've seen fires where they've tried actually to feed them into the fireplaces and...

NGUYEN: Really? Bad idea.

BROOKS: Very bad idea. So - and also, ovens, smoking materials, please be careful. We don't want this to happen to your family over the holiday season.

NGUYEN: Absolutely. CNN law enforcement analyst, Mike Brooks, thank you for that.

BROOKS: Thank you, Betty.

NGUYEN: Miles.

O'BRIEN: Don't shove the tree up chimney. That is for sure.

The long and twisting investigation of the murder of Bonny Lee Bakley leads today to opening statements in the trial of her famous widower. CNN's Ted Rowlands brings us up to date on the State of California versus Robert Blake -- Ted.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, it has been three and a half years since Bonny Lee Bakley was murdered in a car outside of a restaurant in Studio City. The car was Robert Blake's. And today Robert Blake sat and listened as the prosecution started to outline its case to the seven men and five women on the jury that will decide his fate.

Blake is facing first degree murder charges. Shelly Samuels presented the arguments for the prosecution today. She told the jury that Blake hated his wife. She said that he despised his wife to the point where he wanted her dead. And the reason was he wanted sole possession of their child, young Rose, who after a custody battle -- or after it was determined that Blake was the father, Blake attached himself to this baby and he wanted the mother out of the picture.

The most compelling part of the state's case is expected to be testimony from two stuntmen that Blake knew from his old days at "Baretta." And these stuntmen will come on to testify, according to the prosecution, that Blake tried to get them to kill Blakely.

At the point where both stuntmen said they didn't want to do it, the state says that Blake took the matter into his own hands and shot and killed his wife outside of a restaurant after the two had had dinner.

The defense will get their opportunity to address the jury in about 40 minutes. And it is expected that they will harp on the fact that Bonny Lee Bakley had many enemies. And their argument is that Robert Blake may not have liked her, but he did not kill her -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Ted Rowlands, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Securing high-tech targets against terrorists. Find out what experts say needs to be done to avoid a digital Pearl Harbor.

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NGUYEN: What if the next terror attack on the U.S. came from cyberspace? Could computer savvy terrorists cause huge regional power blackouts or trigger disasters at nuclear power plants?

CNN's Kareen Wynter looks at what's being done to anticipate and thwart a cyber security nightmare.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: This just in to CNN, word of a significant power outage in New York City.

KAREEN WYNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rush hour in the Big Apple. Thousands of New Yorkers jam the streets of Manhattan after the lights go out.

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK MAYOR: There was a power failure in northern New York or southern Canada.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Declare a state of emergency.

WYNTER: The cascading power outage from southern Canada to Detroit to Pennsylvania.

No foul play here. Rather, the aging electric grid.

But what if al Qaeda was just a click away from pulling the switch on a nuclear power plant or tapping into the country's water supply system?

(on camera): Officials are now taking lessons learned during the blackout to protect against what they call the real threat of a cyberterror attack that could be launched from thousands of miles away.

(voice-over): Former White House cyber security czar Richard Clarke called the scenario a digital Pearl Harbor. Years later, experts say the threat is still real.

MATTHEW DEVOST, TERRORISM & RESEARCH CENTER: We've built these critical infrastructures that are incredibly dependent on information technology, and we've found, over time, that that information technology is inherently vulnerable, which provides a perfect target of opportunity for a terrorist organization.

WYNTER: A congressional subcommittee on homeland security issued a report this month, calling for more government resources devoted to combating the cyber threat.

REP. MAC THORNBERRY (R-TX), CHAIRMAN, CYBERSECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE: In cyber, you have to look at the whole range of possibilities. Obviously, the one that concerns people the most is if you use the Internet to affect physical things like a water treatment plant or a dam or a nuclear power plant or something -- or a chemical plant.

WYNTER: Representative Mac Thornberry says it's especially challenging to secure privately owned assets.

THORNBERRY: It's the computers of the banks. It's the privately held fiber optic lines that go across the country. And so there has to be the kind of cooperative partnership with government and with private sector that we haven't seen that much of.

WYNTER: The Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or CERT, monitors the Internet 24-7, ready to act when problems arise.

ANDY PURDY, HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT: So we are acting aggressively and proactively to try to reduce the risk that we face and mitigate the vulnerabilities.

WYNTER: The blackout that gripped the Northeast last year ended when the lights came back on. But it serves as a reminder of what can happen when a vital infrastructure is rocked.

Kareen Wynter, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NGUYEN: Our "Security Watch" coverage continues in primetime on CNN's "PAULA ZAHN NOW" at 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Civil liberties restrictions and the Muslim community. Stay tuned to CNN day and night for most reliable news about your security.

O'BRIEN: News around the world now. The CEO of eBay's India subsidiary is under arrest. Apparently a video of two teenagers having oral sex turned up for sale on the online auction site. Here in the U.S., the parent firm expressing outrage. eBay says the sale took place without company officials' knowledge. European Union ministers meeting in Brussels on fishing quotas and marine environment protection facing a more immediate problem -- what to do with 11,000 dead fish and other sea animals Greenpeace activists dumped at the EU council building today. Greenpeace is agitating for stronger marine protection measures.

Cuban president Fidel Castro says he ordered the biggest military exercises in 18 years to test his country's ability to withstand U.S. aggression. The exercises concluded yesterday. State media reporting four million Cubans took part. The U.S. has repeatedly insisted it has no plans to attack Cuba.

Putting compact cars to the test. Why some Kia owners may not like what they hear from the insurance industry. Ouch.

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NGUYEN: The insurance industry is out with its latest auto safety ratings and CNN's Julie Vallese shows us what car company has a big lump of coal in its stocking.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JULIE VALLESE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest round of crash tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety saw a first in three years. But it's not a good one.

ADRIAN LUND, INSURANCE INST. FOR HWY. SAFETY: The Kia Spectra is a first that you don't want to have, the first since 2001 to get a poor rating. It simply didn't do well in any category.

VALLESE: In response to the 40 mile-per-hour crash test, Kia said, "We are evaluating the results of this current test on the Spectra and similar vehicles in its class to determine what improvements can be made to enhance overall vehicle safety." The institute rates cars on a scale of poor, marginal, acceptable and good. Cars that are exceptional get a best pick rating as well.

In complete contrast to the Kia, the Mazda 3 is a good performer and best pick. The third time was the charm for the Hyundai Elantra. In its first test, there was an airbag problem. The second test, there was a fuel leak. But some mechanical changes were made and it is now a good performer and good means...

LUND: If you're in this serious a frontal impact, you can expect to walk away from that crash with only minor scrapes and bruises.

VALLESE: The institute also crashed the Suzuki Forenza and Saturn Ion. Both are rated acceptable and the institute says they are reasonable choices for a safe vehicle.

(on-camera): But it also points out in the small car category, there are 11 cars rated as good, offering the safety-minded consumer a variety of smart choices. Julie Vallese, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) O'BRIEN: Coming up in our second hour of LIVE FROM, "Time" magazine turns to the oval office again for its person of the year. Find out how the president came on top. LIVE FROM's "Hour of Power" begins after this.

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