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Bush's Social Security Plan; Mother Charged in Stabbing Deaths of Two Children
Aired April 29, 2005 - 14:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking some stories "Now in the News," the family of the missing bride-to-be says the woman's fiance has passed a private lie detector test, but authorities in Georgia would like him to take a second test. Investigators say they have very few leads in Tuesday's disappearance of Jennifer Wilbanks. $100,000 reward is being offered by the family in this case.
First May, now July. NASA is delaying the lift-off of the space shuttle Discovery. NASA officials say they need more time to ensure foam or -- or chunks of foam or ice won't break off during launch and damage the shuttle. In the wake of the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster, that debris is a big concern.
It's one hail of a storm in Arkansas. A severe storm dumped heavy rain and large hail across central Arkansas today. The storm system could spawn more nasty weather in Mississippi later.
Cleared, but not in the eyes of Italy. U.S. and Italian investigators have reached conflicting conclusions on the death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq. This week the Pentagon cleared U.S. soldiers in the shooting, which occurred after the agent helped free a captive Italian journalist. Italy has launched its own criminal inquiry into the shooting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our duty to save Social Security begins with making the system permanently solvent, but our duty does not end there. We also have a responsibility to improve Social Security by directing extra help to those most in need and by making it a better deal for younger workers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: A day after President Bush hardened his sell on Social Security, House Republicans are promising action. Legislators said today they will draft a Social Security bill by June. Part of the president's plan includes cutting benefits promised to future retirees, on a sliding scale meant to protect lower-income recipients.
How would this work? CNN's Chris Huntington joins us now from New York to break down some of the numbers. Hi, Chris.
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, thanks a lot. Well, let's begin with the facts of what we know about the current status of Social Security and what the president has been offering. Take a look at this. This comes from the folks who currently run the Social Security program. Full benefits, as currently given out, would be extended -- would be able to be paid until 2041, but at that point, the trust fund basically starts to trickle down and you'd only be able to pay out about three-quarters of the benefits. It's a little bit different from what you may have heard about the system going totally broke. But it basically will not be able to pay full benefits after 2041.
The president's push for individual accounts, though, individual investment accounts, will not close the funding gap. So this brings us to what the president is currently proposing. The title of the proposal, as first billed by a guy named Robert Posen, is progressive indexing. But let's not get too hung up on that.
First of all, here's some other suggestions that could come into play. Raising the retirement age. We are all probably going to work a little bit later and that may not be too much of a difficult hurdle politically to get through. You could raise the level of wages that are taxed for Social Security, currently right now capped out at $90,000. That could be a possibility.
Now the progressive indexing. This would peg the low benefit -- low beneficiaries and the boost that their benefits would get to the growth in wages. Keep it there. That protects low wage earners and the folks who get the lower benefits. The big shift, though, would be the sliding scale of pegging the higher beneficiaries to price growth over time.
Let me give you some firm numbers here that might illustrate this. If you earn an average of $25,000 a year over your career, your Social Security benefits under this new plan would stay exactly as they are now. You would be in solid shape. What happens, though, is you get into the middle income range, say about $50,000 a year. The benefits that would be pegged to wage growth start shifting over to being pegged at price growth, which doesn't grow quite as fast. When you get up into the upper income ranges, $100,000 or more, that would be almost entirely indexed to price growth and those folks would feel a benefit cut from the current system.
Now, of course, that's a cut from a hypothetical pay-out because the current system, of course, as we know, can't be sustained after 2041. The big shift in what the president is offering here is basically talking about closing the funding gap instead of just pushing for individual retirement accounts -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: And now, Chris, with the House Republicans trying to pitch their own draft, is it likely to be in concert with the president's ideas?
HUNTINGTON: Very much so. This idea of progressive indexing -- and pardon the technical term, but I guess we're going to have to get used to it -- is indeed, seems to be a solid middle ground politically. The Republicans are happy with it because it certainly preserves a big feature of protecting a lot of income for particularly the lower income folks. Democrats are happy with that.
The fact that it will cut benefits for many recipients, at least from the hypothetical benefits they could get now, while that's not palatable to the Democrats, this does go a long way, perhaps 70 percent of the way, to closing the funding gap that everybody knows is out there.
WHITFIELD: Chris Huntington. Thanks so much for that update -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Well, if you were watching the president's speech on one of the broadcast networks last night, you probably missed the end. I'd say President Bush got trumped. Maybe he got fired by reality TV. You're fired!
WHITFIELD: Also ahead, everybody says good-bye to Raymond. We're live from L.A. with the cast and crew's final hurrah.
O'BRIEN: And a discovery so amazing, it made grown men cry. The ivory-billed woodpecker of legend and lore isn't extinct after all. One of the men who discovered the bird joins us up live next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Bird's the word in scientific circles today. The beautiful ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, spotted in the U.S. The sighting of the rare bird is causing a lot of excitement. CNN's Tom Foreman with that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the deep swamps of Arkansas, a phantom has been captured on video. That's history winging through the woods. This is the first photographic image of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, and amateur naturalist Gene Sparling, who found the bird, almost did not report it.
GENE SPARLING, NATURALIST: With that as background, it was just too difficult for me to accept that I had actually seen one.
FOREMAN: At 20 inches long, the ivory-billed woodpecker was America's largest when this rare film was made in 1935. Back then, researchers knew the bird was suffering from hunting and habitat loss. By the 1940s, it was presumed extinct. Rumors of ivory-billed sightings have persisted ever since, but a year ago, while kayaking, Sparling suddenly saw one land right next to him.
SPARLING: The bird quickly jumped to the back side of the tree, and began to do a typical woodpecker peek-a-boo.
FOREMAN: Moments later, it flew, leaving Sparling fearful he had seen only a large version of the Common Piliated Woodpecker.
SPARLING: And I'm -- was also quite aware of the Sasquatch- alien-abduction connotation of having seen an ivory-billed woodpecker.
FOREMAN: But when bird researchers Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison saw a description of Sparling's bird online...
BOBBY HARRISON, OAKWOOD COLLEGE: I knew it was an Ivory-Billed. I'm not sure he was convinced at the moment, but I was.
FOREMAN: Within days, Sparling led them to the spot, and it happened again.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just the most unbelievable moment of my life.
FOREMAN: Like seeing a ghost?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.
FOREMAN: The discovery has now been confirmed by 15 sightings. The Interior and Agriculture Departments want $10 million to protect the bird.
GALE NORTIN, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Second chances to save wildlife thought to be extinct are extremely rare.
FOREMAN: Scientists have no idea how many of these woodpeckers are out there or how far they range, but major tracking efforts are now under way to ensure this once-lost and spectacular bird stays found.
Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: All right. Who better to talk about this discovery than one of the people who saw the woodpecker early on, Tim Gallagher. You saw him in that piece there. A life-long bird fanatic and an expert on the subject of all this excitement, he is the author of "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker."
He joins us now from Washington. Tim, great to have you with us. Congratulations.
TIM GALLAGHER, AUTHOR, "THE GRAIL BIRD": Good to be here. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: I suspect when you started your book, you didn't think you'd see the bird, right?
GALLAGHER: No, I didn't. But, you know, of course, this is the kind of thing that keeps an ivory-bill hunter going, you know, through the swamps and the cotton-mouth snakes and things like that, just the possibility that you might see one. But on that day when Bobby Harrison and I were canoeing through the bayou and that bird flew past right in front of us, we almost fell out of the canoe. You know, we both yelled at the same second "Ivory Bill!" and spooked the bird, actually.
And you know, we paddled over to the side, hoping to get a picture of it and we got out in the mud, sinking up to our knees and scrambling over branches and logs. And it was just so intense. And then after about 15 minutes of that, I said, we've got to write our field notes. And as soon as we got done, Bobby just hung his head down, and he said, "I saw an ivory bill," and he just started sobbing.
O'BRIEN: Wow.
GALLAGHER: And I was too choked up to talk, myself.
O'BRIEN: Well, let me ask you this. When you saw it, was there any doubt...
GALLAGHER: No.
O'BRIEN: You know what, Tim? I apologize. We do have to interrupt you right now. We have a little bit of breaking news coming out of Chicago, tragic story in Chicago. Authorities there saying a woman has been charged with first degree murder in connection with the stabbing deaths of her two young children. Let's go there now.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
QUESTION: ... scenario. What do you think happened?
LT. RICH RUSSO, HOFFMAN ESTATES POLICE: Again, I don't want to get into -- speculate of what have may have happened, what was going through people's minds. We're not going to get in...
QUESTION: But as far as what happened in the home...
RUSSO: Just that I know that they were stabbed multiple times, there was a struggle. It appears that she was home alone with the two children. I don't know other than that.
QUESTION: Did the mother talk to police?
QUESTION: Did she confess?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were interviews given. I can't talk about whether or not confessions were made or whether they were not made or what they entailed if they were made.
QUESTION: But she did give you a statement or talk to you?
RUSSO: I'm not -- I don't have that much.
QUESTION: Have you ever had anything like this before in Hoffman Estates, you said?
RUSSO: No, not like this.
QUESTION: And so your reaction to...
RUSSO: Disbelief. Grief. Feelings going out for the family. Disbelief. It's hard to put in words.
QUESTION: Have you had a chance to talk with the father since he left the station?
RUSSO: The investigators are currently still working -- they've never stopped working on this case. They may have. I don't know exactly the timeframe of when they talked to him after he had left.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, though, on those knives that you were talking about, were those taken from the house this day or were those taken away immediately?
RUSSO: I believe they were taken the night it happened.
QUESTION: Does the woman have a history of mental illness?
RUSSO: I can't comment on any background of any of the people involved.
QUESTION: Can you say at all what particularly gave you probable cause to charge her?
RUSSO: No. I don't have all that in front of me yet. Like I said, the investigators -- the state's attorney investigated this case, along with M-CAT processing the scene. I just do know that probable cause was made for the state's attorney.
QUESTION: We'd the neighbors who have looked at this thing from afar and trying to figure out what went on and where. Where were they, the victims?
RUSSO: The 9-year-old boy was just inside of the front door and the 3-year-old was found upstairs.
QUESTION: Where upstairs?
RUSSO: I'm not sure exact location upstairs. I know the mother was found upstairs as well.
QUESTION: Was she covered in blood?
RUSSO: I don't have that information. I didn't want to get into describing the scene.
QUESTION: Were the mother and 3-year-old girl in the same area upstairs?
RUSSO: They were both upstairs. I don't know the proximity.
QUESTION: Has she made statements?
RUSSO: I can't comment on any statements, whether or not they were made.
QUESTION: There were interviews done, but you can't say exactly what it was she said...
RUSSO: Right. Correct.
QUESTION: ... regarding the crime.
QUESTION: But there were interviews done with her?
RUSSO: Interviews were made by everybody involved. Whether or not -- like I said, I can't comment if what was said, if things were said.
QUESTION: Does she have a criminal history or have you dealt with this family before?
RUSSO: I don't have any of that, nor could I discuss background on anybody.
QUESTION: Were you familiar with the family or household?
RUSSO: We had no criminal contact, no criminal calls of that nature to that house. So, no, we had no domestic things like that, no.
QUESTION: If we let you go...
QUESTION: You're not cooperating with...
QUESTION: ... will you now start this process...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen, you are not cooperating, I suppose, with the El Grove (ph), with the...
RUSSO: Elk Grove has come to the department yesterday to interview people in this case. I do not know the status of that case. I don't know if they reopened it. I don't know where that is.
O'BRIEN: We've been listening to Lieutenant Rich Russo, Hoffman -- Rich Russo, I should say, of the Hoffman Estates Police Department, Cook County, Illinois. Terribly tragic story there. Tonya Vasilev charged with the stabbing deaths of her two young children there. We'll be tracking that story for you. Back with more in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Well, if you love birds you know the legend and the lore of the ivory-billed woodpecker. And up until yesterday, you were sad about its apparent passing from the planet. But now, we know the ivory-billed is back. At least one. But probably where there is one bird, there are more. And birds of a feather do like to flock together.
And some of the birds who found the birds are quite pleased today. Tim Gallagher, back with us.
Tim, sorry we had to interrupt our story. But I wanted to ask you, when you saw the bird, was there any doubt of what you were seeing?
GALLAGHER: No, absolutely none. I mean it was -- had all the field marks right there. That's what was so shocking. You know, it was about less than 70 feet away. Just in good light, flying across the open slew in front of us.
O'BRIEN: So, let me ask you about that other point. I mean obviously there is more than one of them. Do you care to venture a guess as to how many there might be?
GALLAGHER: Well, it's really impossible to say how many there are. I mean we have to be conservative about this. But all we can say for sure is that there is one. But the odds of us stumbling upon the last ivory-billed woodpecker in 500,000 acres of bottom land forest, the odds against that are astronomical. So that bird had parents somewhere.
O'BRIEN: Let's -- yes. Let's do a quick little back story here. I want to show a graphic which shows the former range of this woodpecker. It's -- used to dominate sort of the southeast, all over the place. And now we know the range is right there. It's that X in the middle there.
Is it possible that there will be additional sightings now, now that people are sort of more sensitized to the possibility they might be out there?
GALLAGHER: Well, think so. I mean there have been sightings -- reported sightings from time to time. Ones just as interesting as Gene Sparling's. And they tended to be ignored.
O'BRIEN: Oh, really?
GALLAGHER: Well, people didn't want to go out on a limb.
O'BRIEN: So to speak.
GALLAGHER: Yes. People compare it to seeing a big foot or something. And people don't want to go out on a limb like that. I mean it was scary for me to say that I saw one. When I went back to the lab of ornithology and was going to tell the director, John Fitzpatrick about it, I didn't sleep for a couple of nights out there in the swamp.
And you know, Kit (ph) got home at 3:00 in the morning. The next morning I was outside his office. And I looked terrible. He told me later, he thought I was going to tell him I had an incurable disease because I looked so shaken up.
O'BRIEN: No, just bird sick. All right.
GALLAGHER: Right, right.
O'BRIEN: Crazy about birds! All right, Tim Gallagher. Sorry about the disjointed nature of our interview. But Tim is the author of "The Grail Bird: The Search For the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker." For him, holy grail indeed. Congratulations to you and all the birders. And don't do what Autobahn did, which was when he saw something he wanted to paint, he shot it, he shot the bird. You're not going to do that, I know.
GALLAGHER: No, I won't do that.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thanks for dropping by. Appreciate it.
GALLAGHER: OK. Thanks, Miles.
WHITFIELD: And don't even give the specific location so that nobody else would.
O'BRIEN: That's a good point. No latitude or longitude.
WHITFIELD: I can understand him not wanting to say anything at first. Folks would say, are you crazy? Haven't seen one in decades.
All right. Well, it's almost the top of the hour. The day's big story straight ahead.
O'BRIEN: Scary story out of Pennsylvania. A third grader brings a needle to school and starts sticking her friends, or maybe her enemies. And now they are worried about spreading HIV as a result.
WHITFIELD: Oh, boy. And we're keeping a close eye on the weather in the south this afternoon. We'll get a live update.
But first, let's look at the markets.
(MARKET REPORT)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Checking some stories now in the news. A $100,000 reward for information about Jennifer Wilbanks. The Georgia woman was set to be married tomorrow. A family spokesman says Wilbanks' fiance has passed a private polygraph, but police want him to take another administered by them. We're on the scene coming up.
Airing on the side of caution. NASA delays launch of the space shuttle Discovery for another two months sending it back to the hangar for more repairs. Here is what NASA administrator Michael Griffin told us last hour.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: Opinions vary. Engineers have differences of opinion. Management exists to sort out those differences of opinion and make a decision. And in this case, that's what we did. And I think the decision of the team to delay from the end of May until mid July is exactly the sort of decision that indicates the team is working well, the culture is improving and no one has launch fever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: At odds: Despite a joint investigation, U.S. and Italian officials say they disagree on what happened when U.S. troops in Iraq fired on a car carrying a just-released Italian hostage. She was wounded, an agent killed. The conclusions reached by both sides haven't been released. Pentagon officials, though, say the soldiers involved have been cleared.
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Aired April 29, 2005 - 14:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Checking some stories "Now in the News," the family of the missing bride-to-be says the woman's fiance has passed a private lie detector test, but authorities in Georgia would like him to take a second test. Investigators say they have very few leads in Tuesday's disappearance of Jennifer Wilbanks. $100,000 reward is being offered by the family in this case.
First May, now July. NASA is delaying the lift-off of the space shuttle Discovery. NASA officials say they need more time to ensure foam or -- or chunks of foam or ice won't break off during launch and damage the shuttle. In the wake of the 2003 shuttle Columbia disaster, that debris is a big concern.
It's one hail of a storm in Arkansas. A severe storm dumped heavy rain and large hail across central Arkansas today. The storm system could spawn more nasty weather in Mississippi later.
Cleared, but not in the eyes of Italy. U.S. and Italian investigators have reached conflicting conclusions on the death of an Italian intelligence agent in Iraq. This week the Pentagon cleared U.S. soldiers in the shooting, which occurred after the agent helped free a captive Italian journalist. Italy has launched its own criminal inquiry into the shooting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our duty to save Social Security begins with making the system permanently solvent, but our duty does not end there. We also have a responsibility to improve Social Security by directing extra help to those most in need and by making it a better deal for younger workers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: A day after President Bush hardened his sell on Social Security, House Republicans are promising action. Legislators said today they will draft a Social Security bill by June. Part of the president's plan includes cutting benefits promised to future retirees, on a sliding scale meant to protect lower-income recipients.
How would this work? CNN's Chris Huntington joins us now from New York to break down some of the numbers. Hi, Chris.
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, thanks a lot. Well, let's begin with the facts of what we know about the current status of Social Security and what the president has been offering. Take a look at this. This comes from the folks who currently run the Social Security program. Full benefits, as currently given out, would be extended -- would be able to be paid until 2041, but at that point, the trust fund basically starts to trickle down and you'd only be able to pay out about three-quarters of the benefits. It's a little bit different from what you may have heard about the system going totally broke. But it basically will not be able to pay full benefits after 2041.
The president's push for individual accounts, though, individual investment accounts, will not close the funding gap. So this brings us to what the president is currently proposing. The title of the proposal, as first billed by a guy named Robert Posen, is progressive indexing. But let's not get too hung up on that.
First of all, here's some other suggestions that could come into play. Raising the retirement age. We are all probably going to work a little bit later and that may not be too much of a difficult hurdle politically to get through. You could raise the level of wages that are taxed for Social Security, currently right now capped out at $90,000. That could be a possibility.
Now the progressive indexing. This would peg the low benefit -- low beneficiaries and the boost that their benefits would get to the growth in wages. Keep it there. That protects low wage earners and the folks who get the lower benefits. The big shift, though, would be the sliding scale of pegging the higher beneficiaries to price growth over time.
Let me give you some firm numbers here that might illustrate this. If you earn an average of $25,000 a year over your career, your Social Security benefits under this new plan would stay exactly as they are now. You would be in solid shape. What happens, though, is you get into the middle income range, say about $50,000 a year. The benefits that would be pegged to wage growth start shifting over to being pegged at price growth, which doesn't grow quite as fast. When you get up into the upper income ranges, $100,000 or more, that would be almost entirely indexed to price growth and those folks would feel a benefit cut from the current system.
Now, of course, that's a cut from a hypothetical pay-out because the current system, of course, as we know, can't be sustained after 2041. The big shift in what the president is offering here is basically talking about closing the funding gap instead of just pushing for individual retirement accounts -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: And now, Chris, with the House Republicans trying to pitch their own draft, is it likely to be in concert with the president's ideas?
HUNTINGTON: Very much so. This idea of progressive indexing -- and pardon the technical term, but I guess we're going to have to get used to it -- is indeed, seems to be a solid middle ground politically. The Republicans are happy with it because it certainly preserves a big feature of protecting a lot of income for particularly the lower income folks. Democrats are happy with that.
The fact that it will cut benefits for many recipients, at least from the hypothetical benefits they could get now, while that's not palatable to the Democrats, this does go a long way, perhaps 70 percent of the way, to closing the funding gap that everybody knows is out there.
WHITFIELD: Chris Huntington. Thanks so much for that update -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Well, if you were watching the president's speech on one of the broadcast networks last night, you probably missed the end. I'd say President Bush got trumped. Maybe he got fired by reality TV. You're fired!
WHITFIELD: Also ahead, everybody says good-bye to Raymond. We're live from L.A. with the cast and crew's final hurrah.
O'BRIEN: And a discovery so amazing, it made grown men cry. The ivory-billed woodpecker of legend and lore isn't extinct after all. One of the men who discovered the bird joins us up live next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Bird's the word in scientific circles today. The beautiful ivory-billed woodpecker, long thought to be extinct, spotted in the U.S. The sighting of the rare bird is causing a lot of excitement. CNN's Tom Foreman with that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the deep swamps of Arkansas, a phantom has been captured on video. That's history winging through the woods. This is the first photographic image of an ivory-billed woodpecker in 60 years, and amateur naturalist Gene Sparling, who found the bird, almost did not report it.
GENE SPARLING, NATURALIST: With that as background, it was just too difficult for me to accept that I had actually seen one.
FOREMAN: At 20 inches long, the ivory-billed woodpecker was America's largest when this rare film was made in 1935. Back then, researchers knew the bird was suffering from hunting and habitat loss. By the 1940s, it was presumed extinct. Rumors of ivory-billed sightings have persisted ever since, but a year ago, while kayaking, Sparling suddenly saw one land right next to him.
SPARLING: The bird quickly jumped to the back side of the tree, and began to do a typical woodpecker peek-a-boo.
FOREMAN: Moments later, it flew, leaving Sparling fearful he had seen only a large version of the Common Piliated Woodpecker.
SPARLING: And I'm -- was also quite aware of the Sasquatch- alien-abduction connotation of having seen an ivory-billed woodpecker.
FOREMAN: But when bird researchers Tim Gallagher and Bobby Harrison saw a description of Sparling's bird online...
BOBBY HARRISON, OAKWOOD COLLEGE: I knew it was an Ivory-Billed. I'm not sure he was convinced at the moment, but I was.
FOREMAN: Within days, Sparling led them to the spot, and it happened again.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was just the most unbelievable moment of my life.
FOREMAN: Like seeing a ghost?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.
FOREMAN: The discovery has now been confirmed by 15 sightings. The Interior and Agriculture Departments want $10 million to protect the bird.
GALE NORTIN, INTERIOR SECRETARY: Second chances to save wildlife thought to be extinct are extremely rare.
FOREMAN: Scientists have no idea how many of these woodpeckers are out there or how far they range, but major tracking efforts are now under way to ensure this once-lost and spectacular bird stays found.
Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: All right. Who better to talk about this discovery than one of the people who saw the woodpecker early on, Tim Gallagher. You saw him in that piece there. A life-long bird fanatic and an expert on the subject of all this excitement, he is the author of "The Grail Bird: Hot on the Trail of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker."
He joins us now from Washington. Tim, great to have you with us. Congratulations.
TIM GALLAGHER, AUTHOR, "THE GRAIL BIRD": Good to be here. Thank you.
O'BRIEN: I suspect when you started your book, you didn't think you'd see the bird, right?
GALLAGHER: No, I didn't. But, you know, of course, this is the kind of thing that keeps an ivory-bill hunter going, you know, through the swamps and the cotton-mouth snakes and things like that, just the possibility that you might see one. But on that day when Bobby Harrison and I were canoeing through the bayou and that bird flew past right in front of us, we almost fell out of the canoe. You know, we both yelled at the same second "Ivory Bill!" and spooked the bird, actually.
And you know, we paddled over to the side, hoping to get a picture of it and we got out in the mud, sinking up to our knees and scrambling over branches and logs. And it was just so intense. And then after about 15 minutes of that, I said, we've got to write our field notes. And as soon as we got done, Bobby just hung his head down, and he said, "I saw an ivory bill," and he just started sobbing.
O'BRIEN: Wow.
GALLAGHER: And I was too choked up to talk, myself.
O'BRIEN: Well, let me ask you this. When you saw it, was there any doubt...
GALLAGHER: No.
O'BRIEN: You know what, Tim? I apologize. We do have to interrupt you right now. We have a little bit of breaking news coming out of Chicago, tragic story in Chicago. Authorities there saying a woman has been charged with first degree murder in connection with the stabbing deaths of her two young children. Let's go there now.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
QUESTION: ... scenario. What do you think happened?
LT. RICH RUSSO, HOFFMAN ESTATES POLICE: Again, I don't want to get into -- speculate of what have may have happened, what was going through people's minds. We're not going to get in...
QUESTION: But as far as what happened in the home...
RUSSO: Just that I know that they were stabbed multiple times, there was a struggle. It appears that she was home alone with the two children. I don't know other than that.
QUESTION: Did the mother talk to police?
QUESTION: Did she confess?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were interviews given. I can't talk about whether or not confessions were made or whether they were not made or what they entailed if they were made.
QUESTION: But she did give you a statement or talk to you?
RUSSO: I'm not -- I don't have that much.
QUESTION: Have you ever had anything like this before in Hoffman Estates, you said?
RUSSO: No, not like this.
QUESTION: And so your reaction to...
RUSSO: Disbelief. Grief. Feelings going out for the family. Disbelief. It's hard to put in words.
QUESTION: Have you had a chance to talk with the father since he left the station?
RUSSO: The investigators are currently still working -- they've never stopped working on this case. They may have. I don't know exactly the timeframe of when they talked to him after he had left.
QUESTION: Just to clarify, though, on those knives that you were talking about, were those taken from the house this day or were those taken away immediately?
RUSSO: I believe they were taken the night it happened.
QUESTION: Does the woman have a history of mental illness?
RUSSO: I can't comment on any background of any of the people involved.
QUESTION: Can you say at all what particularly gave you probable cause to charge her?
RUSSO: No. I don't have all that in front of me yet. Like I said, the investigators -- the state's attorney investigated this case, along with M-CAT processing the scene. I just do know that probable cause was made for the state's attorney.
QUESTION: We'd the neighbors who have looked at this thing from afar and trying to figure out what went on and where. Where were they, the victims?
RUSSO: The 9-year-old boy was just inside of the front door and the 3-year-old was found upstairs.
QUESTION: Where upstairs?
RUSSO: I'm not sure exact location upstairs. I know the mother was found upstairs as well.
QUESTION: Was she covered in blood?
RUSSO: I don't have that information. I didn't want to get into describing the scene.
QUESTION: Were the mother and 3-year-old girl in the same area upstairs?
RUSSO: They were both upstairs. I don't know the proximity.
QUESTION: Has she made statements?
RUSSO: I can't comment on any statements, whether or not they were made.
QUESTION: There were interviews done, but you can't say exactly what it was she said...
RUSSO: Right. Correct.
QUESTION: ... regarding the crime.
QUESTION: But there were interviews done with her?
RUSSO: Interviews were made by everybody involved. Whether or not -- like I said, I can't comment if what was said, if things were said.
QUESTION: Does she have a criminal history or have you dealt with this family before?
RUSSO: I don't have any of that, nor could I discuss background on anybody.
QUESTION: Were you familiar with the family or household?
RUSSO: We had no criminal contact, no criminal calls of that nature to that house. So, no, we had no domestic things like that, no.
QUESTION: If we let you go...
QUESTION: You're not cooperating with...
QUESTION: ... will you now start this process...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen, you are not cooperating, I suppose, with the El Grove (ph), with the...
RUSSO: Elk Grove has come to the department yesterday to interview people in this case. I do not know the status of that case. I don't know if they reopened it. I don't know where that is.
O'BRIEN: We've been listening to Lieutenant Rich Russo, Hoffman -- Rich Russo, I should say, of the Hoffman Estates Police Department, Cook County, Illinois. Terribly tragic story there. Tonya Vasilev charged with the stabbing deaths of her two young children there. We'll be tracking that story for you. Back with more in a moment.
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O'BRIEN: Well, if you love birds you know the legend and the lore of the ivory-billed woodpecker. And up until yesterday, you were sad about its apparent passing from the planet. But now, we know the ivory-billed is back. At least one. But probably where there is one bird, there are more. And birds of a feather do like to flock together.
And some of the birds who found the birds are quite pleased today. Tim Gallagher, back with us.
Tim, sorry we had to interrupt our story. But I wanted to ask you, when you saw the bird, was there any doubt of what you were seeing?
GALLAGHER: No, absolutely none. I mean it was -- had all the field marks right there. That's what was so shocking. You know, it was about less than 70 feet away. Just in good light, flying across the open slew in front of us.
O'BRIEN: So, let me ask you about that other point. I mean obviously there is more than one of them. Do you care to venture a guess as to how many there might be?
GALLAGHER: Well, it's really impossible to say how many there are. I mean we have to be conservative about this. But all we can say for sure is that there is one. But the odds of us stumbling upon the last ivory-billed woodpecker in 500,000 acres of bottom land forest, the odds against that are astronomical. So that bird had parents somewhere.
O'BRIEN: Let's -- yes. Let's do a quick little back story here. I want to show a graphic which shows the former range of this woodpecker. It's -- used to dominate sort of the southeast, all over the place. And now we know the range is right there. It's that X in the middle there.
Is it possible that there will be additional sightings now, now that people are sort of more sensitized to the possibility they might be out there?
GALLAGHER: Well, think so. I mean there have been sightings -- reported sightings from time to time. Ones just as interesting as Gene Sparling's. And they tended to be ignored.
O'BRIEN: Oh, really?
GALLAGHER: Well, people didn't want to go out on a limb.
O'BRIEN: So to speak.
GALLAGHER: Yes. People compare it to seeing a big foot or something. And people don't want to go out on a limb like that. I mean it was scary for me to say that I saw one. When I went back to the lab of ornithology and was going to tell the director, John Fitzpatrick about it, I didn't sleep for a couple of nights out there in the swamp.
And you know, Kit (ph) got home at 3:00 in the morning. The next morning I was outside his office. And I looked terrible. He told me later, he thought I was going to tell him I had an incurable disease because I looked so shaken up.
O'BRIEN: No, just bird sick. All right.
GALLAGHER: Right, right.
O'BRIEN: Crazy about birds! All right, Tim Gallagher. Sorry about the disjointed nature of our interview. But Tim is the author of "The Grail Bird: The Search For the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker." For him, holy grail indeed. Congratulations to you and all the birders. And don't do what Autobahn did, which was when he saw something he wanted to paint, he shot it, he shot the bird. You're not going to do that, I know.
GALLAGHER: No, I won't do that.
O'BRIEN: All right. Thanks for dropping by. Appreciate it.
GALLAGHER: OK. Thanks, Miles.
WHITFIELD: And don't even give the specific location so that nobody else would.
O'BRIEN: That's a good point. No latitude or longitude.
WHITFIELD: I can understand him not wanting to say anything at first. Folks would say, are you crazy? Haven't seen one in decades.
All right. Well, it's almost the top of the hour. The day's big story straight ahead.
O'BRIEN: Scary story out of Pennsylvania. A third grader brings a needle to school and starts sticking her friends, or maybe her enemies. And now they are worried about spreading HIV as a result.
WHITFIELD: Oh, boy. And we're keeping a close eye on the weather in the south this afternoon. We'll get a live update.
But first, let's look at the markets.
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O'BRIEN: Checking some stories now in the news. A $100,000 reward for information about Jennifer Wilbanks. The Georgia woman was set to be married tomorrow. A family spokesman says Wilbanks' fiance has passed a private polygraph, but police want him to take another administered by them. We're on the scene coming up.
Airing on the side of caution. NASA delays launch of the space shuttle Discovery for another two months sending it back to the hangar for more repairs. Here is what NASA administrator Michael Griffin told us last hour.
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MICHAEL GRIFFIN, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: Opinions vary. Engineers have differences of opinion. Management exists to sort out those differences of opinion and make a decision. And in this case, that's what we did. And I think the decision of the team to delay from the end of May until mid July is exactly the sort of decision that indicates the team is working well, the culture is improving and no one has launch fever.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: At odds: Despite a joint investigation, U.S. and Italian officials say they disagree on what happened when U.S. troops in Iraq fired on a car carrying a just-released Italian hostage. She was wounded, an agent killed. The conclusions reached by both sides haven't been released. Pentagon officials, though, say the soldiers involved have been cleared.
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