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Girl, 8, Survives Being Buried Under Rocks; Spokane Mayor Refutes Charges of Inappropriate Use of City Computers; Bank Scam Affects Thousands of N.J. Residents; New Security Rules in Effect at U.S. Ports
Aired May 23, 2005 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Well, the Dumpster could have been a crypt. Instead, an 8-year-old Florida girl, molested, buried under rocks, left for dead, was spotted in a long abandoned landfill by a Lake Worth police officer, and she is expected to fully recover.
Police say she named her attacker, a teenager who purportedly confessed and now faces the possibility of life in prison.
We get the latest from CNN's Susan Candiotti.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're back at the landfill, which as you can see from all those signs behind me, is closed to the public. And here, at CNN's request, the officer who found the 8-year- old little girl buried alive under a pile of heavy rocks showed us the Dumpster, way off in the distance, where he found her and then, he called in a colleague who saw her move a finger.
SGT. MICHAEL HALL, LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, POLICE: Walked up to the dumpster. Stepped up here and within arm's reach, there was a yellow recycling bin with the lid closed on it. I reached over, flipped the lid open. Started looking in. You see behind you, those large, concrete boulders, about halfway filled up.
And as I continued looking down, there was what I believed to be a small hand and a small foot. So I started shaking -- starting shaking the recycling bin, you know, looking for movement, you know, crying out to her, "Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Are you OK?" I get no verbal response.
CHIEF WILLIAM SMITH, LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, POLICE: And I looked -- I actually pulled myself up and looked down into the -- into the recycling bin and saw her hand, and I was there probably two seconds or so and then I saw her finger move.
CANDIOTTI: You saw her finger move?
SMITH: Yes, I did. And that's the first thing that came out of my mouth, "Her finger just moved." And also thinking that these guys are going to think I'm nuts, but it moved again.
CANDIOTTI: Officers said their hearts were pounding as they saw the little girl move. They immediately pulled away the rocks from her, and they said they were able to start asking her questions immediately. Police say she was able to identify her attacker.
Suffering apparently, they said, only from bruises from the rocks, she was somehow able to breathe through pockets of air through those boulders.
The teenaged suspect is 17-year-old Milagro Cunningham, scheduled to make his first court appearance this day. He is charged with attempted murder, sexual battery and false imprisonment. Authorities say he has confessed to the crime. The state attorney's office tells CNN he will be charged as an adult.
And Sergeant Mike Hall refuses to call himself a hero for finding the little girl. Instead he says she is the heroine for surviving such a harrowing ordeal.
Susan Candiotti, CNN, Lake Worth, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN COHOST: We are in between news conference in the mystery of the missing Groene kids of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Eight-year-old Shasta Groene and her 9-year-old brother Dylan have now been missing for a week, ever since their mother, older brother and a neighbor were brutally murdered in the family's home. Police have not found the killer either.
And in the first news conference of the day, they cleared another potential person of interest. Steve Groene, the children's father, has been ruled out, despite his own public assertion that he failed parts of his polygraph test.
Now we expect to hear again from the sheriff and the feds in about three hours, this time concerning a reward for information leading to the kids or the killer. You'll see that live right here on CNN when it happens.
There is a showdown looming ever larger in the U.S. Senate over some of the president's judicial nominees. Right now, lawmakers are embroiled in a marathon debate which threatens to last all night long.
Neither side appears to be giving an inch. Republican leaders are demanding an up-or-down vote on the nominees, while Democrats want to hold their right to the filibuster.
Now Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist may seek to end that filibuster tomorrow and then bring the nomination of Priscilla Owen to a vote. She's a member of the Texas Supreme Court nominated to a seat on the federal appeals court.
O'BRIEN: Over on the House side in the Capitol Hill, another emotional debate is underway over embryonic stem cell research. One bill would ease restrictions on federal money for disease studies.
The bill's sponsor, one from each party, says greater funding would mean greater promise in the fight against diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They're set to speak this hour. Republicans are offering up another bill that would encourage stem cell research by using the blood from umbilical cords. Votes are scheduled on both bills tomorrow.
Sex offenders are getting Viagra for free, courtesy of your tax dollars. Prescriptions are paid by Medicaid to sex offenders who have abused children as young as 2 years old.
Medicaid did not discover this. The New York state comptroller did. He's now asking the federal health secretary to take immediate some action. Before you start thinking only New York would give free Viagra to sex offenders, think again. The Viagra freebie for Medicaid recipients is nationwide.
NGUYEN: Well, one wants more control over U.S. troops on his territory and his countrymen held there and abroad. The other wants to see poppies pushing up daisies in the Afghan countryside. Hamid Karzai and George W. Bush had a lot to talk about when they met today in private, and then in public at the White House.
And though nothing was actually settled, the leaders expressed their mutual thanks and support and even signed a long-term commitment of U.S. aid and defense.
As for allegations that U.S. forces mistreated Afghan detainees, well, President Karzai had this to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAMID KARZAI, AFGHAN PRESIDENT: The prisoner abuse thing is not at all what we attribute to anybody else but those individuals. The Afghan people are grateful, very, very much to the American people. They recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on governments or on societies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: ... said so far.
NGUYEN: Afghanistan's poppy problem is giving rise to a bumper crop of heroin in the west. President Bush says he made it very clear to Mr. Karzai that both nations have to eradicate the crop.
Well, the parents of former NFL player Pat Tillman are blasting the U.S. Army in a "Washington Post" interview. They say the official reporting on his death was, quote, "disgusting."
Tillman walked away from a multimillion dollar NFL contract to join the elite Army Rangers after September 11. He died in Afghanistan in what was officially described as an ambush. But a recent military report revealed that, within days, the Army knew it was a case friendly fire but withheld that information.
Now in a statement, the Army acknowledged it, quote, "made mistakes in reporting the circumstances of his death to the family. And for these, we apologize." Tillman's parents say they believe Army officials made up an heroic tale about their son to bolster patriotism.
O'BRIEN: Live pictures coming into us right now from Spokane, Washington, the mayor of Spokane, Jim West, fiercely denying accusations that he used the Internet to meet gay men in a chat room and offered jobs to young men whom he met. There's a federal investigation under way.
Let's listen to the mayor.
MAYOR JIM WEST, SPOKANE, WASHINGTON: And I have not used the city e-mail system inappropriately.
During this first year and a half as mayor, I have suffered from stage four colon cancer. I underwent major surgery to remove half my liver, after previously having a significant portion of my colon removed. I underwent several rounds of chemotherapy. I worked through that entire time and led the city through that entire time.
During that same year and a half, Spokane has made great progress. Many citizens say that more has been accomplished than in the previous 20 years.
The River Park Square dispute has been resolved. We have launched a solid plan to repair our streets, and I have appointed a citizen's committee to ensure accountability in our construction programs.
We have worked to have a balanced budget for the first time in over 30 years. We have settled every major labor contract, many of which had been pending for years.
A new customer service attitude prevails in city hall. A new division for economic development has been created, and we are already seeing the benefits of that.
We have established a transparency of government so that nothing is hidden from the public. When we make a mistake, we admit it, we work to correct it, and we move on, keeping our head up, and our eyes looking forward.
I worked, along with other community leaders, making several cross-country trips to save Fairchild Air Force Base. There are also many other accomplishments of this first year and a half.
In the past two weeks, I have received literally hundreds of messages of encouragement and support, including over 100 from city employees, asking me not to resign. I am humbled by this support. When I returned to city hall last week, I was incredibly humbled by the reaction and support I received from city employees.
When all -- when all investigations are concluded, I expect to be exonerated. I will continue to work as mayor to improve the lives of the citizens of Spokane and run the city's business efficiently. The people elected me to serve as their mayor, and I intend to serve out the reminder of my term.
I ask that you accept my apology. I ask for your understanding, but more than anything, I ask that together we turn our attention back to making Spokane a better place to live.
Thank you.
O'BRIEN: And Mayor Jim West not taking any questions there as he addressed reporters after taking 10 days off after allegations surfaced, after a series of reports in a newspaper in Spokane, indicating allegations that he had molested two boys in the 1970s when he was a deputy sheriff, and as a Boy Scout leader, and more currently was involved in meeting people at gay web sites and then promising people he met favors. So goes the allegations.
The mayor has acknowledged seeking the dates on Gay.com but does not indicate he offered any favors to them.
Mayor West, up to that point had crusaded against homosexuality publicly in the arena there, the political arena in Spokane. And as a result of all this, there are many in the Spokane community calling for him to step down.
We will keep you posted as that continues, and as federal investigators and the FBI continue their investigation of Mayor West -- Betty.
NGUYEN: Miles, remember when the most important thing you trusted your bank to take care of was your money? Well, that's very important, but they don't call this the information age for nothing.
And the latest to wonder who may be using or abusing their information are a few hundred thousand account holders at some of the largest banks in America, including Bank of America.
We get the facts and figures from CNN's Chris Huntington in Hackensack, New Jersey.
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Betty, good afternoon to you.
Well, the federal authorities are calling this the biggest breach of bank security in U.S. history.
The police department here in Hackensack, New Jersey, has come upon a ring that was trying to get access to as many as 676,000 individuals and their accounts. They believe the number of accounts may be in excess of a million. Again, we're talking about more than 670,000 individuals, almost all of them New Jersey state residents.
Here's the way the scam works. There's a certain Orazio Lembo that police believe was running this organization. What he was doing was going to collection agencies and essentially offering his services as a bounty hunter.
The collection agencies would turn over their files on the folks that they're trying to collect money on. Lembo would then take all of those files and with associates at the inside of several major banks. You mentioned a couple, but let's go over the list here: Wachovia, Bank of America, PNC Financial and Commerce Bank.
Insiders at those banks would then take then lists, 676,000 names, and try and run matches on those and see if they could then give back to Lembo or sell back to Lembo, if you would, further account information, particularly the amount of money in the accounts. That was the crucial bit of the transaction there.
The police here in Hackensack reckoned that Lembo may have made as much as $4 million over four years of this scheme. And they don't believe that it was just limited to the fact that he was dealing with collection agencies. They are concerned about identity theft.
Here's the chief of police in Hackensack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF KEN ZISA, HACKENSACK POLICE: Accounts were being looked at, and certainly that is great cause for concern, as well as being unlawful. But we also have a concern as to how the information would ultimately be used. Certainly, identity theft is a great concern as it relates to this case. We at this point don't know how it was used, if it was used or if it was planned to be used in any other way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTINGTON: Now so far, Bank of America has said that they know of about 60,000 clients for whom there was an actual match. In other words, the raw list of data coming from a collection agency coming up with folks who actually had accounts at Bank of America. They've notified these people. They've made, apparently, credit watch available to them.
Wachovia Bank saying 48,000 matches in the case of their customers. We don't have figures yet from PNC Financial or Commerce.
What is key to stress in this is that most of these folks were New Jersey residents. That does seem to be, in essence, something of a mote around this case. This is New Jersey based.
Phase two of the investigation, we're told by police, will be looking at these collection agencies and law firms that initially paid Mr. Lembo for this illegal service.
Betty, back to you.
NGUYEN: We, of course will be following that as well. Chris Huntington, thank you -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Would you like to earn your degree from the Donald? Well, just when you thought he couldn't come up with another wild idea, he did! He's launched a new business, a new TV show, and now his own university.
NGUYEN: Wow.
O'BRIEN: And you get -- you can go to Pompadour 101 there.
NGUYEN: Look at this, though. An ugly brawl breaks out in the back of the school bus, but the two students aren't the only ones being charged.
O'BRIEN: And later, protecting our ports. Starting today, tighter security. We'll tell you how and take you to the east coast's busiest cargo port.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: Real estate, reality television and now the hallowed halls of higher education. Today's headline, give me a "T"! Trump is starting his own university. Trump U. won't have a campus or even degrees, but it will offer online classes, seminars and CD-ROMs in real estate and, of course, in business.
O'BRIEN: News across America now, a scary morning for some Florida middle school students. Their school bus slammed into a house in Miami after it was struck by a stolen car. The bus was carrying special needs students. No one inside the bus or in the home injured, however.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get off him! Get off him! Get off him! (Expletive deleted). Get off?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: The mother of two boys involved in a school bus brawl says the punishment doesn't fit the crime. The two boys are facing felony charges in connection with the fight you see here. The driver charged with a misdemeanor in all of this.
The boy's mother says the driver should face a stiffer penalty. The boys are facing felonies.
Record-breaking temperatures taking a toll out west. Rivers and streams overwhelmed by runoff from snow packed mountains in Colorado. Many seeking higher ground.
NGUYEN: And many middle class Americans are paying a stealthy tax this year.
O'BRIEN: To tell us what the tax, what's being done about it, is no longer stealthy. Susan Lisovicz is here to tell you about it?
(STOCK REPORT)
NGUYEN: All right, Susan. Up next on LIVE FROM, tightened security at our nation's ports. The new rules go into effect today, but will they work?
O'BRIEN: We'll go to the east coast's busiest port after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
NGUYEN: In our "CNN Security Watch," starting today more safeguards are being put in place at U.S. ports. The Coast Guard is denying entry to ships from five countries. Those countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Naura. Now, the Coast Guard says those countries are not taking adequate anti-terrorism measures at their home ports.
CNN's Chris Huntington explains how that could endanger security right here.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HUNTINGTON (voice-over): Security analysts have long feared that shipping containers are among the biggest chinks in the U.S. armor against terrorists. Close to nine million of them will be unloaded onto U.S. docks this year, and while documents are checked for each one, only six percent of containers are actually opened or X-rayed by customs officers.
That's one reason the United States pushed for new international security standards for commercial ships and ports.
TOM RIDGE, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: There's enormous market pressure on these shipping companies and these countries in order to comply, but there will be a point in time where, if they do not comply, we can conceivably exercise the right to ban them from the United States. And it's the only way we can operate.
HUNTINGTON: The new rules now require all the ships and cargo ports in the world to file security plans on just how they control access and monitor activity. While thousands of ports and ships are not yet compliant, most of the world's major cargo facilities and shipping fleets have filed security plans.
(on camera) Here in the port of New York and New Jersey, which is the busiest on the East Coast, the Port Newark Container Terminal is the first facility to receive its Coast Guard certification for the new security notification.
Any truck coming here to pick up a container goes through three security checkpoints on the way in and four on the way out, including a state of the art radiation detector.
(voice-over) Don Hamm (ph) runs the Port Newark Container Terminal and welcomes the heightened security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're seeing a lot more customs intervention, a lot more Coast Guard intervention. This was never the case before. Before, security was about not letting people steal things. So this is a complete change in the emphasis of what we're looking at right now from a security standpoint in this industry.
HUNTINGTON: Enforcing the new regime, the U.S. Coast Guard plans to board every commercial ship coming into the United States to make sure they're up to code and that they've come from a secure port.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vessel owners do not want to be delayed a second, and so they will look for and encourage those port facilities to ratchet up the security.
HUNTINGTON: No one claims the new security rules can eliminate the possibility of a seaborne terrorist attack, but as shipping industry veteran put it, the world's cargo ports are a whole lot more secure now than they were three years ago.
Chris Huntington, CNN, Newark, New Jersey.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NGUYEN: And CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. You'll want to stay tuned to CNN for the latest information both day and night.
O'BRIEN: And it's time now for our Judy Woodruff watch. There she is in Washington.
NGUYEN: Hi, Judy.
O'BRIEN: Lots ahead.
JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": You trying to make a segue? All right, Miles.
O'BRIEN: It was the best I could do today. I'm sorry.
WOODRUFF: Monday.
O'BRIEN: Kind of tired. That's the best I can do.
WOODRUFF: We'll give you an A plus.
O'BRIEN: You're so nice.
WOODRUFF: OK. Miles, Betty, thank you.
So in Washington, another week of showdowns in the Senate. We'll look at the ongoing fight over judges and ask if it's likely to end any time soon?
Plus does this mark the end of civility in the Senate? Our Bruce Morton looks back on the good old days when senators actually liked and respected one another, and compromise was easier to come by.
"INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
END
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Aired May 23, 2005 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CO-HOST: Well, the Dumpster could have been a crypt. Instead, an 8-year-old Florida girl, molested, buried under rocks, left for dead, was spotted in a long abandoned landfill by a Lake Worth police officer, and she is expected to fully recover.
Police say she named her attacker, a teenager who purportedly confessed and now faces the possibility of life in prison.
We get the latest from CNN's Susan Candiotti.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We're back at the landfill, which as you can see from all those signs behind me, is closed to the public. And here, at CNN's request, the officer who found the 8-year- old little girl buried alive under a pile of heavy rocks showed us the Dumpster, way off in the distance, where he found her and then, he called in a colleague who saw her move a finger.
SGT. MICHAEL HALL, LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, POLICE: Walked up to the dumpster. Stepped up here and within arm's reach, there was a yellow recycling bin with the lid closed on it. I reached over, flipped the lid open. Started looking in. You see behind you, those large, concrete boulders, about halfway filled up.
And as I continued looking down, there was what I believed to be a small hand and a small foot. So I started shaking -- starting shaking the recycling bin, you know, looking for movement, you know, crying out to her, "Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Are you OK?" I get no verbal response.
CHIEF WILLIAM SMITH, LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA, POLICE: And I looked -- I actually pulled myself up and looked down into the -- into the recycling bin and saw her hand, and I was there probably two seconds or so and then I saw her finger move.
CANDIOTTI: You saw her finger move?
SMITH: Yes, I did. And that's the first thing that came out of my mouth, "Her finger just moved." And also thinking that these guys are going to think I'm nuts, but it moved again.
CANDIOTTI: Officers said their hearts were pounding as they saw the little girl move. They immediately pulled away the rocks from her, and they said they were able to start asking her questions immediately. Police say she was able to identify her attacker.
Suffering apparently, they said, only from bruises from the rocks, she was somehow able to breathe through pockets of air through those boulders.
The teenaged suspect is 17-year-old Milagro Cunningham, scheduled to make his first court appearance this day. He is charged with attempted murder, sexual battery and false imprisonment. Authorities say he has confessed to the crime. The state attorney's office tells CNN he will be charged as an adult.
And Sergeant Mike Hall refuses to call himself a hero for finding the little girl. Instead he says she is the heroine for surviving such a harrowing ordeal.
Susan Candiotti, CNN, Lake Worth, Florida.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN COHOST: We are in between news conference in the mystery of the missing Groene kids of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. Eight-year-old Shasta Groene and her 9-year-old brother Dylan have now been missing for a week, ever since their mother, older brother and a neighbor were brutally murdered in the family's home. Police have not found the killer either.
And in the first news conference of the day, they cleared another potential person of interest. Steve Groene, the children's father, has been ruled out, despite his own public assertion that he failed parts of his polygraph test.
Now we expect to hear again from the sheriff and the feds in about three hours, this time concerning a reward for information leading to the kids or the killer. You'll see that live right here on CNN when it happens.
There is a showdown looming ever larger in the U.S. Senate over some of the president's judicial nominees. Right now, lawmakers are embroiled in a marathon debate which threatens to last all night long.
Neither side appears to be giving an inch. Republican leaders are demanding an up-or-down vote on the nominees, while Democrats want to hold their right to the filibuster.
Now Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist may seek to end that filibuster tomorrow and then bring the nomination of Priscilla Owen to a vote. She's a member of the Texas Supreme Court nominated to a seat on the federal appeals court.
O'BRIEN: Over on the House side in the Capitol Hill, another emotional debate is underway over embryonic stem cell research. One bill would ease restrictions on federal money for disease studies.
The bill's sponsor, one from each party, says greater funding would mean greater promise in the fight against diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They're set to speak this hour. Republicans are offering up another bill that would encourage stem cell research by using the blood from umbilical cords. Votes are scheduled on both bills tomorrow.
Sex offenders are getting Viagra for free, courtesy of your tax dollars. Prescriptions are paid by Medicaid to sex offenders who have abused children as young as 2 years old.
Medicaid did not discover this. The New York state comptroller did. He's now asking the federal health secretary to take immediate some action. Before you start thinking only New York would give free Viagra to sex offenders, think again. The Viagra freebie for Medicaid recipients is nationwide.
NGUYEN: Well, one wants more control over U.S. troops on his territory and his countrymen held there and abroad. The other wants to see poppies pushing up daisies in the Afghan countryside. Hamid Karzai and George W. Bush had a lot to talk about when they met today in private, and then in public at the White House.
And though nothing was actually settled, the leaders expressed their mutual thanks and support and even signed a long-term commitment of U.S. aid and defense.
As for allegations that U.S. forces mistreated Afghan detainees, well, President Karzai had this to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HAMID KARZAI, AFGHAN PRESIDENT: The prisoner abuse thing is not at all what we attribute to anybody else but those individuals. The Afghan people are grateful, very, very much to the American people. They recognize that individual acts do not reflect either on governments or on societies.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: ... said so far.
NGUYEN: Afghanistan's poppy problem is giving rise to a bumper crop of heroin in the west. President Bush says he made it very clear to Mr. Karzai that both nations have to eradicate the crop.
Well, the parents of former NFL player Pat Tillman are blasting the U.S. Army in a "Washington Post" interview. They say the official reporting on his death was, quote, "disgusting."
Tillman walked away from a multimillion dollar NFL contract to join the elite Army Rangers after September 11. He died in Afghanistan in what was officially described as an ambush. But a recent military report revealed that, within days, the Army knew it was a case friendly fire but withheld that information.
Now in a statement, the Army acknowledged it, quote, "made mistakes in reporting the circumstances of his death to the family. And for these, we apologize." Tillman's parents say they believe Army officials made up an heroic tale about their son to bolster patriotism.
O'BRIEN: Live pictures coming into us right now from Spokane, Washington, the mayor of Spokane, Jim West, fiercely denying accusations that he used the Internet to meet gay men in a chat room and offered jobs to young men whom he met. There's a federal investigation under way.
Let's listen to the mayor.
MAYOR JIM WEST, SPOKANE, WASHINGTON: And I have not used the city e-mail system inappropriately.
During this first year and a half as mayor, I have suffered from stage four colon cancer. I underwent major surgery to remove half my liver, after previously having a significant portion of my colon removed. I underwent several rounds of chemotherapy. I worked through that entire time and led the city through that entire time.
During that same year and a half, Spokane has made great progress. Many citizens say that more has been accomplished than in the previous 20 years.
The River Park Square dispute has been resolved. We have launched a solid plan to repair our streets, and I have appointed a citizen's committee to ensure accountability in our construction programs.
We have worked to have a balanced budget for the first time in over 30 years. We have settled every major labor contract, many of which had been pending for years.
A new customer service attitude prevails in city hall. A new division for economic development has been created, and we are already seeing the benefits of that.
We have established a transparency of government so that nothing is hidden from the public. When we make a mistake, we admit it, we work to correct it, and we move on, keeping our head up, and our eyes looking forward.
I worked, along with other community leaders, making several cross-country trips to save Fairchild Air Force Base. There are also many other accomplishments of this first year and a half.
In the past two weeks, I have received literally hundreds of messages of encouragement and support, including over 100 from city employees, asking me not to resign. I am humbled by this support. When I returned to city hall last week, I was incredibly humbled by the reaction and support I received from city employees.
When all -- when all investigations are concluded, I expect to be exonerated. I will continue to work as mayor to improve the lives of the citizens of Spokane and run the city's business efficiently. The people elected me to serve as their mayor, and I intend to serve out the reminder of my term.
I ask that you accept my apology. I ask for your understanding, but more than anything, I ask that together we turn our attention back to making Spokane a better place to live.
Thank you.
O'BRIEN: And Mayor Jim West not taking any questions there as he addressed reporters after taking 10 days off after allegations surfaced, after a series of reports in a newspaper in Spokane, indicating allegations that he had molested two boys in the 1970s when he was a deputy sheriff, and as a Boy Scout leader, and more currently was involved in meeting people at gay web sites and then promising people he met favors. So goes the allegations.
The mayor has acknowledged seeking the dates on Gay.com but does not indicate he offered any favors to them.
Mayor West, up to that point had crusaded against homosexuality publicly in the arena there, the political arena in Spokane. And as a result of all this, there are many in the Spokane community calling for him to step down.
We will keep you posted as that continues, and as federal investigators and the FBI continue their investigation of Mayor West -- Betty.
NGUYEN: Miles, remember when the most important thing you trusted your bank to take care of was your money? Well, that's very important, but they don't call this the information age for nothing.
And the latest to wonder who may be using or abusing their information are a few hundred thousand account holders at some of the largest banks in America, including Bank of America.
We get the facts and figures from CNN's Chris Huntington in Hackensack, New Jersey.
CHRIS HUNTINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Betty, good afternoon to you.
Well, the federal authorities are calling this the biggest breach of bank security in U.S. history.
The police department here in Hackensack, New Jersey, has come upon a ring that was trying to get access to as many as 676,000 individuals and their accounts. They believe the number of accounts may be in excess of a million. Again, we're talking about more than 670,000 individuals, almost all of them New Jersey state residents.
Here's the way the scam works. There's a certain Orazio Lembo that police believe was running this organization. What he was doing was going to collection agencies and essentially offering his services as a bounty hunter.
The collection agencies would turn over their files on the folks that they're trying to collect money on. Lembo would then take all of those files and with associates at the inside of several major banks. You mentioned a couple, but let's go over the list here: Wachovia, Bank of America, PNC Financial and Commerce Bank.
Insiders at those banks would then take then lists, 676,000 names, and try and run matches on those and see if they could then give back to Lembo or sell back to Lembo, if you would, further account information, particularly the amount of money in the accounts. That was the crucial bit of the transaction there.
The police here in Hackensack reckoned that Lembo may have made as much as $4 million over four years of this scheme. And they don't believe that it was just limited to the fact that he was dealing with collection agencies. They are concerned about identity theft.
Here's the chief of police in Hackensack.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHIEF KEN ZISA, HACKENSACK POLICE: Accounts were being looked at, and certainly that is great cause for concern, as well as being unlawful. But we also have a concern as to how the information would ultimately be used. Certainly, identity theft is a great concern as it relates to this case. We at this point don't know how it was used, if it was used or if it was planned to be used in any other way.
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HUNTINGTON: Now so far, Bank of America has said that they know of about 60,000 clients for whom there was an actual match. In other words, the raw list of data coming from a collection agency coming up with folks who actually had accounts at Bank of America. They've notified these people. They've made, apparently, credit watch available to them.
Wachovia Bank saying 48,000 matches in the case of their customers. We don't have figures yet from PNC Financial or Commerce.
What is key to stress in this is that most of these folks were New Jersey residents. That does seem to be, in essence, something of a mote around this case. This is New Jersey based.
Phase two of the investigation, we're told by police, will be looking at these collection agencies and law firms that initially paid Mr. Lembo for this illegal service.
Betty, back to you.
NGUYEN: We, of course will be following that as well. Chris Huntington, thank you -- Miles.
O'BRIEN: Would you like to earn your degree from the Donald? Well, just when you thought he couldn't come up with another wild idea, he did! He's launched a new business, a new TV show, and now his own university.
NGUYEN: Wow.
O'BRIEN: And you get -- you can go to Pompadour 101 there.
NGUYEN: Look at this, though. An ugly brawl breaks out in the back of the school bus, but the two students aren't the only ones being charged.
O'BRIEN: And later, protecting our ports. Starting today, tighter security. We'll tell you how and take you to the east coast's busiest cargo port.
ANNOUNCER: You're watching LIVE FROM on CNN, the most trusted name in news.
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NGUYEN: Real estate, reality television and now the hallowed halls of higher education. Today's headline, give me a "T"! Trump is starting his own university. Trump U. won't have a campus or even degrees, but it will offer online classes, seminars and CD-ROMs in real estate and, of course, in business.
O'BRIEN: News across America now, a scary morning for some Florida middle school students. Their school bus slammed into a house in Miami after it was struck by a stolen car. The bus was carrying special needs students. No one inside the bus or in the home injured, however.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get off him! Get off him! Get off him! (Expletive deleted). Get off?
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O'BRIEN: The mother of two boys involved in a school bus brawl says the punishment doesn't fit the crime. The two boys are facing felony charges in connection with the fight you see here. The driver charged with a misdemeanor in all of this.
The boy's mother says the driver should face a stiffer penalty. The boys are facing felonies.
Record-breaking temperatures taking a toll out west. Rivers and streams overwhelmed by runoff from snow packed mountains in Colorado. Many seeking higher ground.
NGUYEN: And many middle class Americans are paying a stealthy tax this year.
O'BRIEN: To tell us what the tax, what's being done about it, is no longer stealthy. Susan Lisovicz is here to tell you about it?
(STOCK REPORT)
NGUYEN: All right, Susan. Up next on LIVE FROM, tightened security at our nation's ports. The new rules go into effect today, but will they work?
O'BRIEN: We'll go to the east coast's busiest port after this.
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NGUYEN: In our "CNN Security Watch," starting today more safeguards are being put in place at U.S. ports. The Coast Guard is denying entry to ships from five countries. Those countries are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Naura. Now, the Coast Guard says those countries are not taking adequate anti-terrorism measures at their home ports.
CNN's Chris Huntington explains how that could endanger security right here.
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HUNTINGTON (voice-over): Security analysts have long feared that shipping containers are among the biggest chinks in the U.S. armor against terrorists. Close to nine million of them will be unloaded onto U.S. docks this year, and while documents are checked for each one, only six percent of containers are actually opened or X-rayed by customs officers.
That's one reason the United States pushed for new international security standards for commercial ships and ports.
TOM RIDGE, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: There's enormous market pressure on these shipping companies and these countries in order to comply, but there will be a point in time where, if they do not comply, we can conceivably exercise the right to ban them from the United States. And it's the only way we can operate.
HUNTINGTON: The new rules now require all the ships and cargo ports in the world to file security plans on just how they control access and monitor activity. While thousands of ports and ships are not yet compliant, most of the world's major cargo facilities and shipping fleets have filed security plans.
(on camera) Here in the port of New York and New Jersey, which is the busiest on the East Coast, the Port Newark Container Terminal is the first facility to receive its Coast Guard certification for the new security notification.
Any truck coming here to pick up a container goes through three security checkpoints on the way in and four on the way out, including a state of the art radiation detector.
(voice-over) Don Hamm (ph) runs the Port Newark Container Terminal and welcomes the heightened security.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're seeing a lot more customs intervention, a lot more Coast Guard intervention. This was never the case before. Before, security was about not letting people steal things. So this is a complete change in the emphasis of what we're looking at right now from a security standpoint in this industry.
HUNTINGTON: Enforcing the new regime, the U.S. Coast Guard plans to board every commercial ship coming into the United States to make sure they're up to code and that they've come from a secure port.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Vessel owners do not want to be delayed a second, and so they will look for and encourage those port facilities to ratchet up the security.
HUNTINGTON: No one claims the new security rules can eliminate the possibility of a seaborne terrorist attack, but as shipping industry veteran put it, the world's cargo ports are a whole lot more secure now than they were three years ago.
Chris Huntington, CNN, Newark, New Jersey.
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NGUYEN: And CNN is committed to providing the most reliable coverage of news that affects your security. You'll want to stay tuned to CNN for the latest information both day and night.
O'BRIEN: And it's time now for our Judy Woodruff watch. There she is in Washington.
NGUYEN: Hi, Judy.
O'BRIEN: Lots ahead.
JUDY WOODRUFF, HOST, "INSIDE POLITICS": You trying to make a segue? All right, Miles.
O'BRIEN: It was the best I could do today. I'm sorry.
WOODRUFF: Monday.
O'BRIEN: Kind of tired. That's the best I can do.
WOODRUFF: We'll give you an A plus.
O'BRIEN: You're so nice.
WOODRUFF: OK. Miles, Betty, thank you.
So in Washington, another week of showdowns in the Senate. We'll look at the ongoing fight over judges and ask if it's likely to end any time soon?
Plus does this mark the end of civility in the Senate? Our Bruce Morton looks back on the good old days when senators actually liked and respected one another, and compromise was easier to come by.
"INSIDE POLITICS" begins in just a moment.
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