Return to Transcripts main page
Live From...
Turbulence at TSA; Suspicious Man Apprehended After Brief Standoff
Aired April 11, 2005 - 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: The stories now in the news, an intense standoff enters its third hour in New Jersey between police and a shooting suspect. Police have surrounded the car, believed to contain a man, who shot his daughter's grandfather then fled with the infant and her mother. All three are believed to be inside the car.
The kidnapping and killing of a Florida girl is prompting calls for tighter enforcement of sex offenders. A Florida congresswoman today unveiled the Jessica Lunsford Act. It's in memory of the 9- year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped and killed by John Couey, a registered sex offender who was staying at a neighboring home.
Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial is in its seventh week, and it got off to a rocky start for the prosecution. A former Jackson publicist denied seeing the pop star lick his accuser's head. That surprised prosecution lawyers. However, the witness did testify to other contact between Jackson and the boy.
Fans are streaming into Boston's Fenway Park for a moment of 86 years in the making. Next hour, the Red Sox will receive their world championship rings and watch the banner go up. Later they play the home opener against the archrivals the New York Yankees.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Security watch time. A Dutch airline disputing the Transportation Security Administration's account of why it refused a commercial jetliner access to U.S. airspace on Friday. The incident follows an incident that yet another TSA head is stepping down, the third in as many years of the history of that agency, reports that the agency itself might be in jeopardy, losing a lot of money, losing some of its purview.
CNN security analyst Richard Falkenrath is at the Brookings Institution in Washington, joins us now, has some background in all of this as a former official, the Homeland Security Department.
Good to see you again.
RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Happy to be here.
O'BRIEN: Let's, first of all, talk about this KLM flight. The plane was en route, 278 people, 15 horses in the hold. Not that that's anything relevant to this discussion, but nevertheless, gets turned around in midair, cannot go into U.S. airspace, was on its way to Mexico after the list is double checked by TSA and two names pop up as possible terror links. I guess the question a lot of people at home might have is, and this goes back to the whole Cat Stevens story, why don't they check the list before they take off?
FALKENRATH: Well, they don't really have the technical system to do it yet. This happens pretty routinely. The international airline will transmit the manifest to TSA after the airplane has departed. And so while it's flying over the Atlantic, we'll be analyzing a list of the people on the plane against our terrorist watchlist. And fairly often they'll find someone they don't want on the plane, and then have to take some action, depending on how serious the person is believed to be. They might be denied entry into the airspace make it turn around. So this happens pretty often.
O'BRIEN: OK, the way to circumvent that would be to get all the passengers seated, shut that door, hold the plane, and then send the list before it takes off. Is that just completely impractical?
FALKENRATH: No, it's actually what we're working on, and it will happen in the next couple of years. What you really want to do is get a direct link in to the computer-reservation system for the airplane to our terrorist watchlist. And there's a program called "Secure Flight" that the department will be unveiling in the next couple months and year, which hopefully will solve this problem.
O'BRIEN: That means that, of course, Transportation Security Administration would have to release a pretty sensitive list, a bunch of names that it feels are suspect names, and that could tip the hand of people they're looking for, and that's not good either.
FALKENRATH: Well, that's what they're doing right now, and it's a very bad practice. They routinely e-mail out to the airlines a list of a couple thousand names they're worried about, and that list is basically a change-your-alias list; it's something that a terrorist who could see they were on the list would know they have to change their identity. What you want to do is get to the situation where the list is privately held inside the U.S. government. And you use a computer system to compare the manifest against the list, and then take appropriate action so nobody ever sees is the list. That's what we're trying to get.
O'BRIEN: So in other words, the computer does it in the blind and people at the other end don't necessarily know who's at the other end?
FALKENRATH: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Makes sense.
All right, let's move on and talk about what's going at TSA. Three administrators now in as many years. In some respects this agency has been quite a success. In other respects, a big failure. How would you grade the TSA at this point?
FALKENRATH: Well, the most important thing they needed to do was take care of our civilian-aviation system and make sure what happened on 9/11 could not happen again, that is that these aircraft could not be hijacked so easily and flown into buildings. And I believe they basically accomplished that mission, that our airplanes today are close to impossible to hijack. There's multiple layers of defensive mechanisms that would need to be breached for anyone to hijack an airplane, and I doubt that this will ever happen again in the United States.
Some other areas, they've struggled, frankly, but on their main mission, their most important mission, I think they've succeeded.
O'BRIEN: All right, when you talk about the struggles, though, concurrent with all this and the departure of the latest head of TSA, is talk about cutting the TSA budget. Why -- is that a prudent thing to do in this day and age?
FALKENRATH: Well, it's a very large budget. It's about $6 billion per year. And there are a lot of targets that al Qaeda could choose to hit, and that we have not taken care of to the same degree that we've taken care of airplanes.
O'BRIEN: So you're talking about things like ports, for example?
FALKENRATH: Ports, hazardous materials, subways, trains. A lot of different targets out there. And we've invested a huge amount of money in one particular target, namely airplanes, not very much in everything else, and so I think a case could be made for some rationalization.
O'BRIEN: All right, you also could make a case that it's the Transportation Safety Administration, not the aviation safety administration. Why not expand its reach? If it's been successful in aviation, why not give it more money and give it an opportunity to make those other places safe? That could be one line of reasoning.
FALKENRATH: That is one line of reasoning, and that was exactly the reasoning when people when it was part of the Department of Transportation. Now it's part of the Department of Homeland Security and the new secretary really has to make some decisions about who he wants to be in charge of everything else besides aviation -- Seaports, waterways, ground-transportation systems. Maybe it will be TSA. Maybe it won't. He hasn't -- the new secretary hasn't made his views known on that, and the law permits him to reallocate that responsibility as he sees fit.
All right, in a word, are we safer as result of the TSA?
FALKENRATH: We are definitely safer as a result of the TSA. They've got a lot of work still to do, but the hijacking threat, what happened on 9/11, is almost impossible today.
O'BRIEN: All right. Our security analyst is Richard Falkenrath, thank you, as always, for your time. Appreciate your insight.
FALKENRATH: Happy to be here.
O'BRIEN: And as you know, CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. Stay tuned to CNN for latest information day and night.
PHILLIPS: Well, he made Tiger Woods work hard for the green jacket. So hard for it, honey, and now golfer Chris DiMarco joins us to talk about living his dream. Hey, second place is good enough for us. It's even better. LIVE FROM tips a hat to a history maker, coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: At the Masters, it was one of those putts you'll never forget.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think young Abigail (ph) had a word she wanted to say, how proud she was of her dad. This is the hole, though, that likely will define this Masters, even though it went to a playoff and a winning birdie putt. Just an unbelievable shot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Boom! Yes, Tiger won the green jacket. However, for me and many other golf fans here at CNN, it was Chris DiMarco's fearless fight to the finish that was simply remarkable. Chris DiMarco stared down Tiger Woods in one of the greatest duels in Masters history, a scintillating sudden death competition that DiMarco says was probably the most fun he has ever had.
Our Masters champ, Chris DiMarco, joins us now live from Heathrow, Florida. Good to see you, Chris.
CHRIS DIMARCO, PGA GOLFER: Oh, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
PHILLIPS: Well, we appreciate having you very much. Listen, whether it's a win or a tight finish, you always seem to keep an incredible attitude, a great perspective. You even said to your caddie at one point, if you're not having fun doing this, then something's wrong with you.
DIMARCO: You know, absolutely. Any time you can play on Sunday in the last group at Augusta with Tiger Woods, I mean, I don't think anybody else -- that's a dream of most people. So I was having a lot of fun. It was just probably the best time of my life out there, and to be able to perform with that much pressure on you even makes it that much more fun.
PHILLIPS: Well, you also said into having such a great time, that you were quote, "throwing up on yourself all day." Tell us about those nerves, and was it really that nerve-racking to where your stomach was in knots?
DIMARCO: Well, you know, for everybody it's different. For me, my stomach is a little upset normally. But you know, when I said that, I basically was saying that, you know -- I mean, it's hard to imagine. We don't ever look it, but your knees are shaking, your hands are shaking. Your arms are shaking. You know, but it's how you -- as a professional, you have deal with that and you have to move on and you have to do better with it, and hopefully we can, you know -- you can perform when it counts. And that's what it's all about, is performing when everything's on you.
PHILLIPS: Well, you and Bobby Jones went through the same thing. Now, Chris, hold on two seconds. We got a little bit of breaking news at the Capitol. We're going to come back, though, to you, I promise -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Sorry to interrupt, but this an important piece of news. We were telling you what appeared to be a burgeoning standoff on the steps of the Capitol, the west front the Capitol. Joe Johns, our congressional correspondent, was there. Apparently there's been a development there. Joe, can you hear me?
JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles, yes, I can hear you. Apparently just a little while ago, U.S. Capitol police took the man away. This is a man who had walked off and caused a bit of a stir among the emergency personnel, with two bags. He stood right between them, facing the Capitol, from what I could tell pretty still. I couldn't tell whether he was making any noise or saying anything, but police, basically, surrounded him, came from all different directions in anticipation of grabbing him and taking him away. And so apparently they have done that.
There was a lot of inconvenience to tourists around the United States Capitol. A lot of people came streaming out of the building. There was a report, unconfirmed, that they were considering evacuation, or had even perhaps started evacuations, perhaps on the Senate side. I can tell you that I personally have not talked to anyone who confirmed that there was actually an evacuation order.
Still, this man, now, has been taken away, in the bright sunshine in Washington, D.C., and, you know, for those of us who have been through this before, he couldn't have picked better weather to cause an evacuation or to cause a stir at the Capitol. A lot of people are outside looking around. Looks like everything's calm and hopefully very soon getting back to normal -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Joe, let's underscore a few points here. First of all, there was, at one point, some talk about evacuating the Capitol. Did that ever actually occur?
JOHNS: That -- as I said, I have talked to no one who said there was an evacuation order. Now, there were some e-mails flying around among CNN staffers that there was going to be an evacuation. I don't know just how far along they got with that.
I can tell you, I did see people streaming out of the Capitol. Mostly tourists, and you can usually tell them from the people who work in the Capitol, because, of course, everybody who works in the Capitol, suit and tie and dress clothes, for women, of course.
O'BRIEN: All right. And as far as you know, throughout all this, there's no injuries, of course. Do we have any inkling? Was anything said? Anything that would give you any ideas to what motive might have been?
JOHNS: Well, you know, as I said earlier, when you have a situation like this, a lot of information gets traded very quickly. Some of it turns out to be wrong. One of the reports we heard, and have not been able to confirm with emergency sources, is that he had some employment issue, perhaps with the federal government, Perhaps with people here in Washington or at the Capitol. But, again, that's just not certain.
I mean, basically, what we know is, he stood there for a long time. He had bags. Obviously, the bags of concern to it U.S. Capitol police, because they don't know what's in them and what kind of threat those bags might cause. So they dealt with him with an inordinate amount of caution. Not surprising, given the environment here in Washington and on Capitol Hill, where virtually anything unusual is always scrutinized as a potential threat -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: We're just getting some video that's coming into CNN right now. I'm watching the monitor as it comes in. And I just -- before we roll that tape for folks and get it cued up and so forth, just situate us, for people who've been at the Capitol. Give us a sense of where this all occurred.
JOHNS: It's the west front of the United States Capitol. It is the side of the Capitol that looks out on the National Mall. He was at the bottom of the stairs, sort of standing directly in the middle, and if were you up in the windows of the third floor of the Capitol on the Senate side, like I was a little while ago, you're able to get a good eyeball on him.
You could also see him from various points, if you knew what you were looking for through the trees on the lawn of the United States Capitol. It did not appear to me that he had behaved, at least in the time I was watching, in any particularly threatening manner. Nonetheless, it's those bags, virtually certainly, that got the attention of the U.S. Capitol police.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And as this comes in, I'm seeing them rerack it back and forth. Hopefully we can get on the air sometime soon here, I'm hopeful. You see a fully -- there we go. We finally got the tape going there. This is -- obviously, these are Capitol police folks dressed in their SWAT gear here, Joe Johns. I don't know if you can see CNN, if you can tell us precisely where this occurred? But this is obviously as they approached him. Was there a determination made one way or another as to whether there were explosive devices in those bags?
JOHNS: I have no way of knowing that, but you can sort of infer from the fact that the police went ahead and grabbed him that they came to the conclusion that the threat was not so high that they had to stay away that they had to stay away. They are not going to risk their lives by confronting a person they're certain is armed with something dangerous. So -- so, they obviously made a determination that, you know, using a reasonable amount of caution, they can go up and get this guy out of the way. I mean, now you say all that, but it would be a lot nicer, of course, to sit down and have a news conference or something with the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police to tell us how all of this factually came along so that we don't have to guess.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And as we watch this tape, which I'm not sure you can see, Joe, but what we see is three members of the SWAT team there, for the Capitol police, crouched down, taking cover. The two bags at the side of the person there, his hands held behind his back, dressed almost entirely in black. Completely cool as a cucumber. Really not -- it does not appear to be engaging. He turned around at looked at one point, but did not appear it be engaging. And as I look at it, it looks to me as what you first described it, some sort of protest.
JOHNS: Yes, that's right. That's very much what it looked like to me when I first laid eyes on him. It looked to me like he was protesting something. And you see this kind of thing on Capitol Hill from time to time, which would -- made it a little interesting that the police started dealing with it in such a serious matter, but again and again, you know, you never know what's going to be a threat and what's not, and that's sort of the position the police have taken in a lot of situations on Capitol Hill of late.
O'BRIEN: Well, and also the two rolling suitcases there I'm sure changed the occasion quite a bit, because that is a very significant X factor that the SWAT teams have to consider.
JOHNS: No question. When you see something like that -- obviously, when we walk into the United States Capitol, people who work inside the building, our bags are screened with X-ray machines, and we go through magnetometers. If someone walks up with a couple bags like that, and the police make the determination that they're not going to be there, or they're not supposed to be there, police are really going to take a hard look at it -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Joe, as you were speaking, we saw the actual takedown, and they did it in a very, very aggressive way. He got -- well, he was seeing some stars, no doubt, after that one.
JOHNS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: Taken away, dragged away by two members of the SWAT team, separated from those two rolling suitcases, and on his way, he went to face booking. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost consciousness after that hit. That was a fairly significant blow.
But given the circumstances, I am sure many people would bear this out, that that was the appropriate maneuver to neutralize, as is the term, this situation.
All right, Joe Johns, thank you very much.
You saw it there just moments ago, SWAT team members, with the Capitol police there in Washington, the west side of the Capitol, neutralizing has appeared to be some sort of protest activity, made a little more menacing by the fact that there were two suitcases there. I don't know the disposition and how they're handling those suitcases right now. Presumably the bomb squad also called to the scene, but at this juncture, I think we can safely say this problem there at the Capitol has ended without serious incident or injury.
Back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Developing story we're continuing to follow here at CNN, that standoff between police and a man by the name of Almutah Saunders. This is -- we're working to get our live picture up and going again, as you can imagine. With the helicopter, it's hard to establish a good signal. So this is tape, via our affiliate WABC.
What this was, was it was an Amber Alert that turned into a police chase and now a standoff in Laffetscong (ph), New Jersey. That's about 50 miles from Irvington, New Jersey. Police say that Saunders is believed to be inside this car with his 4-month-year-old daughter, Jada, and the mother of that child, Erika Turner. They believe it was some type of domestic dispute. We've got our live picture up now once again. You can see the car in question, the silver car in question, and then the police SWAT Team And the negotiator behind one of the police cars there. Evidently they have established contact with the suspect. They're trying, of course, to negotiate him out of that car. They believe the daughter and the mother still inside.
Deborah Feyerick has been covering this from the very give beginning. I guess we're going on about four hours now, Deb, is that right?
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been a little bit longer than that, but we can tell you that the hostage negotiator actually made it as close to the side of the car. He was shielded by somebody from the SWAT team. This was just about 10 minutes ago, and you can see the car there, the police, the juxtaposition of both of them. The hostage negotiator was shielded by somebody from the SWAT team. They walked sort of in an arc to the back of the car, then up to the driver's side and dropped what looked like either a white package or some sort of a white piece of paper and then they backed away. We don't exactly know what it was that the suspect, Almutah Saunders, had asked for. We do know that earlier he had asked some for water.
Again, this has been going on for more than six hours. There is a woman in the car. There is a 4-month-old baby in the car. So, clearly, there are some needs that have to be met. But again, you can see the whole surroundings, and the standoff, while very, very serious, members of the SWAT team there stationed behind, there's not an overwhelming presence of police on the scene. They're there, but they're not intimidating.
Go ahead.
PHILLIPS: Deb, do we know for sure if the baby is inside the car and if the mom and the baby are both OK? Because, of course, this suspect was threatening to kill both them, in addition to himself?
FEYERICK: Well, local police have told us, that, yes, the woman is in the car, as is the baby. It's a couple's baby, but apparently the behavior of Almutah Saunders was getting erratic over the course of the last month. His girlfriend, Erika Turner, actually took out a restraining order against him, and she was just waiting for that restraining order to be filed. Last week he even kidnapped her against her will, obviously, for a period of time, last Monday. And so she was really, really scared, and asked her father to even escort her back and forth from work. So erratic behavior, and now she's in that car hoping that she and her baby get out.
PHILLIPS: All right, Deb Feyerick, thank you so much. We'll continue to follow the story. And the good news is, we're being told the negotiator has made contact with that suspect. They are talking. So far no one is injured. We'll stay on the story.
Quick break. More LIVE FROM 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 April 11, 2005 - 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: The stories now in the news, an intense standoff enters its third hour in New Jersey between police and a shooting suspect. Police have surrounded the car, believed to contain a man, who shot his daughter's grandfather then fled with the infant and her mother. All three are believed to be inside the car.
The kidnapping and killing of a Florida girl is prompting calls for tighter enforcement of sex offenders. A Florida congresswoman today unveiled the Jessica Lunsford Act. It's in memory of the 9- year-old girl who was allegedly kidnapped and killed by John Couey, a registered sex offender who was staying at a neighboring home.
Michael Jackson's child-molestation trial is in its seventh week, and it got off to a rocky start for the prosecution. A former Jackson publicist denied seeing the pop star lick his accuser's head. That surprised prosecution lawyers. However, the witness did testify to other contact between Jackson and the boy.
Fans are streaming into Boston's Fenway Park for a moment of 86 years in the making. Next hour, the Red Sox will receive their world championship rings and watch the banner go up. Later they play the home opener against the archrivals the New York Yankees.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Security watch time. A Dutch airline disputing the Transportation Security Administration's account of why it refused a commercial jetliner access to U.S. airspace on Friday. The incident follows an incident that yet another TSA head is stepping down, the third in as many years of the history of that agency, reports that the agency itself might be in jeopardy, losing a lot of money, losing some of its purview.
CNN security analyst Richard Falkenrath is at the Brookings Institution in Washington, joins us now, has some background in all of this as a former official, the Homeland Security Department.
Good to see you again.
RICHARD FALKENRATH, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Happy to be here.
O'BRIEN: Let's, first of all, talk about this KLM flight. The plane was en route, 278 people, 15 horses in the hold. Not that that's anything relevant to this discussion, but nevertheless, gets turned around in midair, cannot go into U.S. airspace, was on its way to Mexico after the list is double checked by TSA and two names pop up as possible terror links. I guess the question a lot of people at home might have is, and this goes back to the whole Cat Stevens story, why don't they check the list before they take off?
FALKENRATH: Well, they don't really have the technical system to do it yet. This happens pretty routinely. The international airline will transmit the manifest to TSA after the airplane has departed. And so while it's flying over the Atlantic, we'll be analyzing a list of the people on the plane against our terrorist watchlist. And fairly often they'll find someone they don't want on the plane, and then have to take some action, depending on how serious the person is believed to be. They might be denied entry into the airspace make it turn around. So this happens pretty often.
O'BRIEN: OK, the way to circumvent that would be to get all the passengers seated, shut that door, hold the plane, and then send the list before it takes off. Is that just completely impractical?
FALKENRATH: No, it's actually what we're working on, and it will happen in the next couple of years. What you really want to do is get a direct link in to the computer-reservation system for the airplane to our terrorist watchlist. And there's a program called "Secure Flight" that the department will be unveiling in the next couple months and year, which hopefully will solve this problem.
O'BRIEN: That means that, of course, Transportation Security Administration would have to release a pretty sensitive list, a bunch of names that it feels are suspect names, and that could tip the hand of people they're looking for, and that's not good either.
FALKENRATH: Well, that's what they're doing right now, and it's a very bad practice. They routinely e-mail out to the airlines a list of a couple thousand names they're worried about, and that list is basically a change-your-alias list; it's something that a terrorist who could see they were on the list would know they have to change their identity. What you want to do is get to the situation where the list is privately held inside the U.S. government. And you use a computer system to compare the manifest against the list, and then take appropriate action so nobody ever sees is the list. That's what we're trying to get.
O'BRIEN: So in other words, the computer does it in the blind and people at the other end don't necessarily know who's at the other end?
FALKENRATH: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Makes sense.
All right, let's move on and talk about what's going at TSA. Three administrators now in as many years. In some respects this agency has been quite a success. In other respects, a big failure. How would you grade the TSA at this point?
FALKENRATH: Well, the most important thing they needed to do was take care of our civilian-aviation system and make sure what happened on 9/11 could not happen again, that is that these aircraft could not be hijacked so easily and flown into buildings. And I believe they basically accomplished that mission, that our airplanes today are close to impossible to hijack. There's multiple layers of defensive mechanisms that would need to be breached for anyone to hijack an airplane, and I doubt that this will ever happen again in the United States.
Some other areas, they've struggled, frankly, but on their main mission, their most important mission, I think they've succeeded.
O'BRIEN: All right, when you talk about the struggles, though, concurrent with all this and the departure of the latest head of TSA, is talk about cutting the TSA budget. Why -- is that a prudent thing to do in this day and age?
FALKENRATH: Well, it's a very large budget. It's about $6 billion per year. And there are a lot of targets that al Qaeda could choose to hit, and that we have not taken care of to the same degree that we've taken care of airplanes.
O'BRIEN: So you're talking about things like ports, for example?
FALKENRATH: Ports, hazardous materials, subways, trains. A lot of different targets out there. And we've invested a huge amount of money in one particular target, namely airplanes, not very much in everything else, and so I think a case could be made for some rationalization.
O'BRIEN: All right, you also could make a case that it's the Transportation Safety Administration, not the aviation safety administration. Why not expand its reach? If it's been successful in aviation, why not give it more money and give it an opportunity to make those other places safe? That could be one line of reasoning.
FALKENRATH: That is one line of reasoning, and that was exactly the reasoning when people when it was part of the Department of Transportation. Now it's part of the Department of Homeland Security and the new secretary really has to make some decisions about who he wants to be in charge of everything else besides aviation -- Seaports, waterways, ground-transportation systems. Maybe it will be TSA. Maybe it won't. He hasn't -- the new secretary hasn't made his views known on that, and the law permits him to reallocate that responsibility as he sees fit.
All right, in a word, are we safer as result of the TSA?
FALKENRATH: We are definitely safer as a result of the TSA. They've got a lot of work still to do, but the hijacking threat, what happened on 9/11, is almost impossible today.
O'BRIEN: All right. Our security analyst is Richard Falkenrath, thank you, as always, for your time. Appreciate your insight.
FALKENRATH: Happy to be here.
O'BRIEN: And as you know, CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. Stay tuned to CNN for latest information day and night.
PHILLIPS: Well, he made Tiger Woods work hard for the green jacket. So hard for it, honey, and now golfer Chris DiMarco joins us to talk about living his dream. Hey, second place is good enough for us. It's even better. LIVE FROM tips a hat to a history maker, coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: At the Masters, it was one of those putts you'll never forget.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think young Abigail (ph) had a word she wanted to say, how proud she was of her dad. This is the hole, though, that likely will define this Masters, even though it went to a playoff and a winning birdie putt. Just an unbelievable shot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Boom! Yes, Tiger won the green jacket. However, for me and many other golf fans here at CNN, it was Chris DiMarco's fearless fight to the finish that was simply remarkable. Chris DiMarco stared down Tiger Woods in one of the greatest duels in Masters history, a scintillating sudden death competition that DiMarco says was probably the most fun he has ever had.
Our Masters champ, Chris DiMarco, joins us now live from Heathrow, Florida. Good to see you, Chris.
CHRIS DIMARCO, PGA GOLFER: Oh, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.
PHILLIPS: Well, we appreciate having you very much. Listen, whether it's a win or a tight finish, you always seem to keep an incredible attitude, a great perspective. You even said to your caddie at one point, if you're not having fun doing this, then something's wrong with you.
DIMARCO: You know, absolutely. Any time you can play on Sunday in the last group at Augusta with Tiger Woods, I mean, I don't think anybody else -- that's a dream of most people. So I was having a lot of fun. It was just probably the best time of my life out there, and to be able to perform with that much pressure on you even makes it that much more fun.
PHILLIPS: Well, you also said into having such a great time, that you were quote, "throwing up on yourself all day." Tell us about those nerves, and was it really that nerve-racking to where your stomach was in knots?
DIMARCO: Well, you know, for everybody it's different. For me, my stomach is a little upset normally. But you know, when I said that, I basically was saying that, you know -- I mean, it's hard to imagine. We don't ever look it, but your knees are shaking, your hands are shaking. Your arms are shaking. You know, but it's how you -- as a professional, you have deal with that and you have to move on and you have to do better with it, and hopefully we can, you know -- you can perform when it counts. And that's what it's all about, is performing when everything's on you.
PHILLIPS: Well, you and Bobby Jones went through the same thing. Now, Chris, hold on two seconds. We got a little bit of breaking news at the Capitol. We're going to come back, though, to you, I promise -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: All right. Sorry to interrupt, but this an important piece of news. We were telling you what appeared to be a burgeoning standoff on the steps of the Capitol, the west front the Capitol. Joe Johns, our congressional correspondent, was there. Apparently there's been a development there. Joe, can you hear me?
JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Miles, yes, I can hear you. Apparently just a little while ago, U.S. Capitol police took the man away. This is a man who had walked off and caused a bit of a stir among the emergency personnel, with two bags. He stood right between them, facing the Capitol, from what I could tell pretty still. I couldn't tell whether he was making any noise or saying anything, but police, basically, surrounded him, came from all different directions in anticipation of grabbing him and taking him away. And so apparently they have done that.
There was a lot of inconvenience to tourists around the United States Capitol. A lot of people came streaming out of the building. There was a report, unconfirmed, that they were considering evacuation, or had even perhaps started evacuations, perhaps on the Senate side. I can tell you that I personally have not talked to anyone who confirmed that there was actually an evacuation order.
Still, this man, now, has been taken away, in the bright sunshine in Washington, D.C., and, you know, for those of us who have been through this before, he couldn't have picked better weather to cause an evacuation or to cause a stir at the Capitol. A lot of people are outside looking around. Looks like everything's calm and hopefully very soon getting back to normal -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Joe, let's underscore a few points here. First of all, there was, at one point, some talk about evacuating the Capitol. Did that ever actually occur?
JOHNS: That -- as I said, I have talked to no one who said there was an evacuation order. Now, there were some e-mails flying around among CNN staffers that there was going to be an evacuation. I don't know just how far along they got with that.
I can tell you, I did see people streaming out of the Capitol. Mostly tourists, and you can usually tell them from the people who work in the Capitol, because, of course, everybody who works in the Capitol, suit and tie and dress clothes, for women, of course.
O'BRIEN: All right. And as far as you know, throughout all this, there's no injuries, of course. Do we have any inkling? Was anything said? Anything that would give you any ideas to what motive might have been?
JOHNS: Well, you know, as I said earlier, when you have a situation like this, a lot of information gets traded very quickly. Some of it turns out to be wrong. One of the reports we heard, and have not been able to confirm with emergency sources, is that he had some employment issue, perhaps with the federal government, Perhaps with people here in Washington or at the Capitol. But, again, that's just not certain.
I mean, basically, what we know is, he stood there for a long time. He had bags. Obviously, the bags of concern to it U.S. Capitol police, because they don't know what's in them and what kind of threat those bags might cause. So they dealt with him with an inordinate amount of caution. Not surprising, given the environment here in Washington and on Capitol Hill, where virtually anything unusual is always scrutinized as a potential threat -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: We're just getting some video that's coming into CNN right now. I'm watching the monitor as it comes in. And I just -- before we roll that tape for folks and get it cued up and so forth, just situate us, for people who've been at the Capitol. Give us a sense of where this all occurred.
JOHNS: It's the west front of the United States Capitol. It is the side of the Capitol that looks out on the National Mall. He was at the bottom of the stairs, sort of standing directly in the middle, and if were you up in the windows of the third floor of the Capitol on the Senate side, like I was a little while ago, you're able to get a good eyeball on him.
You could also see him from various points, if you knew what you were looking for through the trees on the lawn of the United States Capitol. It did not appear to me that he had behaved, at least in the time I was watching, in any particularly threatening manner. Nonetheless, it's those bags, virtually certainly, that got the attention of the U.S. Capitol police.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And as this comes in, I'm seeing them rerack it back and forth. Hopefully we can get on the air sometime soon here, I'm hopeful. You see a fully -- there we go. We finally got the tape going there. This is -- obviously, these are Capitol police folks dressed in their SWAT gear here, Joe Johns. I don't know if you can see CNN, if you can tell us precisely where this occurred? But this is obviously as they approached him. Was there a determination made one way or another as to whether there were explosive devices in those bags?
JOHNS: I have no way of knowing that, but you can sort of infer from the fact that the police went ahead and grabbed him that they came to the conclusion that the threat was not so high that they had to stay away that they had to stay away. They are not going to risk their lives by confronting a person they're certain is armed with something dangerous. So -- so, they obviously made a determination that, you know, using a reasonable amount of caution, they can go up and get this guy out of the way. I mean, now you say all that, but it would be a lot nicer, of course, to sit down and have a news conference or something with the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police to tell us how all of this factually came along so that we don't have to guess.
O'BRIEN: Yes. And as we watch this tape, which I'm not sure you can see, Joe, but what we see is three members of the SWAT team there, for the Capitol police, crouched down, taking cover. The two bags at the side of the person there, his hands held behind his back, dressed almost entirely in black. Completely cool as a cucumber. Really not -- it does not appear to be engaging. He turned around at looked at one point, but did not appear it be engaging. And as I look at it, it looks to me as what you first described it, some sort of protest.
JOHNS: Yes, that's right. That's very much what it looked like to me when I first laid eyes on him. It looked to me like he was protesting something. And you see this kind of thing on Capitol Hill from time to time, which would -- made it a little interesting that the police started dealing with it in such a serious matter, but again and again, you know, you never know what's going to be a threat and what's not, and that's sort of the position the police have taken in a lot of situations on Capitol Hill of late.
O'BRIEN: Well, and also the two rolling suitcases there I'm sure changed the occasion quite a bit, because that is a very significant X factor that the SWAT teams have to consider.
JOHNS: No question. When you see something like that -- obviously, when we walk into the United States Capitol, people who work inside the building, our bags are screened with X-ray machines, and we go through magnetometers. If someone walks up with a couple bags like that, and the police make the determination that they're not going to be there, or they're not supposed to be there, police are really going to take a hard look at it -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Joe, as you were speaking, we saw the actual takedown, and they did it in a very, very aggressive way. He got -- well, he was seeing some stars, no doubt, after that one.
JOHNS: Yes.
O'BRIEN: Taken away, dragged away by two members of the SWAT team, separated from those two rolling suitcases, and on his way, he went to face booking. I wouldn't be surprised if he lost consciousness after that hit. That was a fairly significant blow.
But given the circumstances, I am sure many people would bear this out, that that was the appropriate maneuver to neutralize, as is the term, this situation.
All right, Joe Johns, thank you very much.
You saw it there just moments ago, SWAT team members, with the Capitol police there in Washington, the west side of the Capitol, neutralizing has appeared to be some sort of protest activity, made a little more menacing by the fact that there were two suitcases there. I don't know the disposition and how they're handling those suitcases right now. Presumably the bomb squad also called to the scene, but at this juncture, I think we can safely say this problem there at the Capitol has ended without serious incident or injury.
Back with more LIVE FROM in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Developing story we're continuing to follow here at CNN, that standoff between police and a man by the name of Almutah Saunders. This is -- we're working to get our live picture up and going again, as you can imagine. With the helicopter, it's hard to establish a good signal. So this is tape, via our affiliate WABC.
What this was, was it was an Amber Alert that turned into a police chase and now a standoff in Laffetscong (ph), New Jersey. That's about 50 miles from Irvington, New Jersey. Police say that Saunders is believed to be inside this car with his 4-month-year-old daughter, Jada, and the mother of that child, Erika Turner. They believe it was some type of domestic dispute. We've got our live picture up now once again. You can see the car in question, the silver car in question, and then the police SWAT Team And the negotiator behind one of the police cars there. Evidently they have established contact with the suspect. They're trying, of course, to negotiate him out of that car. They believe the daughter and the mother still inside.
Deborah Feyerick has been covering this from the very give beginning. I guess we're going on about four hours now, Deb, is that right?
DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been a little bit longer than that, but we can tell you that the hostage negotiator actually made it as close to the side of the car. He was shielded by somebody from the SWAT team. This was just about 10 minutes ago, and you can see the car there, the police, the juxtaposition of both of them. The hostage negotiator was shielded by somebody from the SWAT team. They walked sort of in an arc to the back of the car, then up to the driver's side and dropped what looked like either a white package or some sort of a white piece of paper and then they backed away. We don't exactly know what it was that the suspect, Almutah Saunders, had asked for. We do know that earlier he had asked some for water.
Again, this has been going on for more than six hours. There is a woman in the car. There is a 4-month-old baby in the car. So, clearly, there are some needs that have to be met. But again, you can see the whole surroundings, and the standoff, while very, very serious, members of the SWAT team there stationed behind, there's not an overwhelming presence of police on the scene. They're there, but they're not intimidating.
Go ahead.
PHILLIPS: Deb, do we know for sure if the baby is inside the car and if the mom and the baby are both OK? Because, of course, this suspect was threatening to kill both them, in addition to himself?
FEYERICK: Well, local police have told us, that, yes, the woman is in the car, as is the baby. It's a couple's baby, but apparently the behavior of Almutah Saunders was getting erratic over the course of the last month. His girlfriend, Erika Turner, actually took out a restraining order against him, and she was just waiting for that restraining order to be filed. Last week he even kidnapped her against her will, obviously, for a period of time, last Monday. And so she was really, really scared, and asked her father to even escort her back and forth from work. So erratic behavior, and now she's in that car hoping that she and her baby get out.
PHILLIPS: All right, Deb Feyerick, thank you so much. We'll continue to follow the story. And the good news is, we're being told the negotiator has made contact with that suspect. They are talking. So far no one is injured. We'll stay on the story.
Quick break. More LIVE FROM 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
