Return to Transcripts main page

Live From...

NASA Prepares for Shuttle Launch; 'Time' Magazine Reporter Testifies to Grand Jury; Police Learn More About Suspected Bombers; LAPD Under Fire for Killing of Baby Girl

Aired July 13, 2005 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: The shuttle astronauts on board ready for liftoff, but will today's launch of Discovery get rained out? We're live from Kennedy Space Center.
Terror investigation focusing on four British citizens believed to be the bombers.

From the CNN Center in Atlanta, hello everyone. I'm Kyra Phillips. CNN's LIVE FROM starts right now.

Well, if you remember Donald Rumsfeld line about known knowns and know unknowns, you have a pretty good idea of what NASA faces two hours and 50 minutes before the first scheduled launch of a space shuttle in two and a half years.

It's Discovery, veteran of no fewer than 34 missions, dating back to 1984. For mission 31, officially, STS, 114. Live pictures as you can see. The astronauts getting pretty excited.

NASA's top boss says everything we know about it is covered. He adds this is a very tough business made tougher by iffy weather and a very narrow launch window.

CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano watching the skies for us. Miles O'Brien is watching everything else at Kenney Space Center in Florida. These are great live pictures inside, Miles. Take it away.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They are, Kyra. You know, I'm undercover because we had a bad thunderstorm come through here just a few moments ago. The sun's back out.

And Soichi Noguchi, of the Japanese space agency, is having a great time mugging for the cameras for us. That's the JAXA banner. That's their version of NASA. He is clearly relishing his first trip to space, about to put on his parachute, get himself ready and get himself strapped in inside the Space Shuttle Discovery.

You see the port, the hatch door open there on the left middle part of your screen.

This is 195 feet above sea level in the place they call the white room. Boy, I wish I could read Japanese. He had a couple of Japanese signs up there a few minutes ago. But he says, "Thank you, I am off," I am told by our crack staff here that did an instantaneous translation. Never let it be said that CNN doesn't bring you the world instantly.

There you are, Kyra. Doesn't it make you want to turn your TV set sideways? That's on the mid deck. They call this the mid deck. And what you're seeing there is Andy Thomas in the far portion of your screen being strapped into his seat. I think that's Wendy Lawrence in the foreground getting strapped in.

They -- you know, when they're riding up into space they don't have a window. I mean, what a bummer that would be.

PHILLIPS: And Miles, for hours they have to sit like this, right?

O'BRIEN: Yes, they do. And there are, you know, of course, Mother Nature calls and so they do wear diapers. Kyra, I've got to be honest with you. That's one of the astronaut equipment is Depends.

So there you see. That's up in the flight deck. And that's Jim "Vegas" Kelly. He is sitting in the right hand seat. He'll be helping out Eileen Collins. He's getting strapped in, as well. This is his second space flight. The pilot is there to assist the commander. The commander really does all the flying and runs the show.

There you see Eileen Collins' arm in the back portion of the screen there as she lifts it up. She's the first to get in. As you can see there are checklists there. There are knee boards that they have on their thighs there. As they get ready. They've got their visors down. They make sure there's no leaks in them, of course, before they get going.

PHILLIPS: Miles, take us through the checklist.

O'BRIEN: It's a little long, Kyra. I think the total...

PHILLIPS: We've got plenty of time. We've got, what, three hours?

O'BRIEN: OK. Check, check and recheck. Throw this switch, throw that. It is a long process to get the orbiter ready.

Actually, when they get in there, in theory the people that are helping them get in they are called Cape's Crusaders. And these are new astronauts who have not flown before. It is their job to strap them in properly, make sure all the communications gear is hooked up.

And it is also their job to make sure every last switch, and there are 2,500 switches and dials in there, is in the right place before the commander and the pilot get in there.

So it's set up presumably just the way they like it. And now they have to go through the whole series of checklists that are involved in the countdown. It's quite a ritual.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk about -- first of all I think it's just amazing that we can have these live pictures. I mean, there was a time, Miles, we couldn't get the minute by minute, play by play of what was, you know, going on inside. We could only see things from the outside. So it's pretty amazing, first of all, that we can really watch, I guess you can say, the human side of this crew getting ready for such a huge mission.

O'BRIEN: Yes, it's kind of fun to see. You know, they do -- I don't know if you ever focused on a Russian launch much, Kyra, but they actually, in a Russian launch, will feed back live pictures during the entire launch all the way up.

And there's nothing that would stop NASA from doing that, except they don't want to show live inside the cockpit or the flight cabin, because of the possibility that something could go wrong. So they put these cameras in when they suit up, and then it goes back to an outside view.

And then eventually, they'll send down some videotape of what the ascent was like. It's quite a ride.

PHILLIPS: Let's talk a little bit more about the crew, Miles. Even today we had the discussion in the newsroom about the pilot. And I said, "Now wait a minute. Let's make sure this is right." Because it's the mission commander that does the majority of the flying. Not everybody is flying.

It was interesting just talking about the crew and all the different roles that they play. Sort of layout from mission commander on down each member of the crew and what their responsibilities are as they're getting ready here.

O'BRIEN: Well, the mission commander is the team leader. She's the person responsible. She sets the tone. She makes sure the training goes well. She helps them decide priorities. She keeps -- shields them from the media.

There you see Soichi Noguchi. He's getting ready, still, and looks a little farther along in the process.

And ultimately, the big job is for her to land the space shuttle. Now, she has done that once in her life. Every other time it's been a simulation. And so this will be, at the end of this mission, her second landing. And that's really an important part of this.

I wish I could read -- that says return to flight. That's English; I can do that one.

And then the pilot is there to back her up in her flying duties. Probably the most important job he does is put the landing gear down. You don't want to forget that one. That's a very important one.

A lot of the pilots get involved in the television work on orbit and also a lot of assisting on the station docking and undocking procedures.

And then the mission specialist, there's one that sits right behind them. In the middle seat behind them is called the flight engineer. Usually, it's mission specialist number two. And that person is there to just be like the third pilot, overlooking both the commander and the pilot, making sure they're throwing all the right switches at the right time. When they're coming in for landing the flight engineer actually calls out specific airspeeds and altitudes and all that kind of thing.

And then, when in space each of these mission specialists, in addition to the flight engineer, have specific duties related to operating the robot arm, for example, which will take that comprehensive photo survey of the orbiter once it's in space to make sure there's no damage to it.

There will be other mission specialists. Wendy Lawrence, for example, is in charge of making sure all -- she's the load master, as they call them in the military. Making sure all the stuff gets in and out of the space station and is in the right place. She's got to be a very organized person. I hear she has a very neat house, so she tells me. And everything organized. Lots of Tupperware.

And there you see No. 7, that's one of the Caped Crusaders, by the way, as he assists Andy Thomas, who's an Australian native. Now a naturalized U.S. citizen.

He spent a lot of time on the Space Station Mir a few years back and is part of this mission, is part of that robotic arm team helping do that photo survey.

And then, of course, we have a couple of spacewalkers on this flight. Soichi Noguchi is one of them. And they're going to do some work on the space station when they get there. And if there is any sort of repair work to be done, they will potentially do that outside. They're going to do a test on what amounts to kind of a space version of Bondo to see if it's possible to patch holes in the heat shield in space. And God forbid if they had a real hole to fill, they might test that notion out.

But the truth is NASA is not fully confident in this whole idea just yet. And if it really were a life and death situation, Kyra, this crew would stay at the space station for, you know, probably a few weeks, pushing a month, and wait for a rescue mission to come get them. We hope we don't have to report on that.

PHILLIPS: Indeed. Miles O'Brien there live from Kennedy Space Center. Miles, stay with us. We're going to continue to follow these live pictures, of course, as the crew gets ready for launch.

But we have been talking about the thunder clouds and the thunderstorms Miles mentioned. That's why we actually couldn't have the live shot set up where you could actually see Miles, also. It was due to the weather.

Sixty percent chance after no go for this launch is what we're hearing. But, of course, that could change at any moment.

Rob Marciano is following the weather for us there in the weather center. What do you think, Rob? How does it look? ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Ominous at this point, Kyra. We're waiting for the typical winds that develop this time of year from the ocean that blow inland sea breeze. You've been to the beach, you know what it feels like. As the ground heats up, as the air rises and the air from the ocean rushes in to replace the air that's rising inland. That's how you get a sea breeze.

We will typically get that to happen later in the afternoon. And then we'll get what's called the sea breeze front. And that will fire up thunderstorms, particularly bring them inland.

We've had very light winds today. This is our Titan radar behind. OK? Here's the Kennedy Space Center, Coco Beach, Titusville up here and then Orlando more than 20 miles to our west.

The reason we've drawn these rings in is that there is -- there's criteria to when they can launch and when they can't launch. Obviously, visibility has something to do with it. But as far as thunderstorms are concerned, 20 miles to the west or inland is where we need to not see any thunderstorms happening. And 35 miles to the northeast, because the shuttle takes off like this and kind of heads towards the north and east. And they need a greater visibility and less thunderstorm activity over here.

You notice that we do have some action on the radar. This is a closer in shot. There's a launch pad. There's the visitor center. There's the radar beam, by the way, cutting across.

And there is a thunderstorm just to the west. So there have been thunderstorms reported around Titusville and south toward Melbourne and Coco Beach, as well. So this trend will likely continue this afternoon unless that sea breeze front picks up later on, Kyra. And that's why we hold a 40 percent hope that we might get a little window of clearing that would allow the shuttle to launch.

But they sent balloons up early this morning. And it calls for a fairly buoyant atmosphere. There aren't any large scale patterns that can really blow any clear air in there. It's going to be a hit and miss kind of thing. We just hope and wait and hope the atmosphere clears up just a little bit.

PHILLIPS: All right. Rob Marciano. We'll continue to follow these live pictures from NASA here as the Space Shuttle Discovery crew gets ready for launch. Hopefully, it will happen. You're seeing everybody getting strapped in there.

Rob Marciano is following, of course, the weather for us. That's been the biggest factor here that might scrap this liftoff, but we're continuing to follow it live minute by minute.

We're going to hear from Miles again later this hour also, along with a veteran of some space shuttle flights.

And a reminder, of course, that CNN will be following the shuttle liftoff all afternoon. We'll carry it live if and when it happens around 3:51 Eastern Time. Now, to the leak investigation that threatens to engulf a very big fish at the White House. Karl Rove sat mum behind President Bush this morning as Mr. Bush broke his silence, sort on, on Rove's confidential outing of a CIA operative in 2003.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have instructed every member of my staff to fully cooperate in this investigation. I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports. We're in the midst of an ongoing investigation, and I will be more than happy to comment further once the investigation is completed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: While Mr. Bush was speaking in public, the recipient of Rove's information was reporting behind closed doors to a grand jury investigating a possible federal crime. Matt Cooper almost went to jail rather than do what he did today.

CNN's Kathleen Koch has the update -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, they have his notes, they have his e-mails and now federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury here in Washington have direct testimony from "TIME" magazine correspondent Matt Cooper.

Just as soon as he wrapped up roughly two and a half hours of testimony, he came up to cameras and spoke about the experience and what he hoped it achieved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT COOPER, "TIME" MAGAZINE: I just testified before the grand jury for about two and a half hours. I testified openly and honestly. I have no idea whether a crime was committed or not. That's something the special counsel is going to have to determine.

What I do hope is that the special counsel can conclude his investigation as quickly as possible. I think today, we should all remember, is Judith Miller's eighth day in jail. And the sooner this grand jury recesses the sooner she can get home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Many, though, on Capitol Hill right now are remembering is the promise by President Bush to fire anyone in the White House who is found to be responsible for leaking Valerie Plame's name. Democrats on the Hill today speaking out, saying that the president needs to do more and quickly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), MINORITY LEADER: The president wants to get to the bottom of it he should have come clean a long time ago. It looks like there have been some effort to obstruct the investigation if someone so high ranking in the White House divulged this information to the press.

The fact is that that is dangerous to our national security. It is a deadly serious matter and the Republicans in the House and the Congress of the United States should be having hearings on this subject.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: Cooper emphasized several times that he was speaking to reporters his belief that only the source can break the reporter's bond of confidentiality. And so he and his attorney passed out to reporters this letter. It is from Karl Rove's attorney to Matt Cooper's attorney, again freeing him from his promise of confidentiality.

And Cooper says that right now he believes his role in this matter is over. He does not believe he will be called to testify further. And he says he is going right away to "TIME" magazine to write up his experiences from inside the grand jury room -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Kathleen Koch. Thank you so much.

Once again Leeds is a mother lode of leads in the U.K. bomb investigation. Scotland Yard is scouring a half dozen homes raided yesterday, some belonging to some of the suspected London bombers. Today we know all four suspects were British nationals, and government officials believe all were killed in the blast.

CNN's John Vause has the latest now -- John.

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Kyra.

Coming to the end of the second day here at Leeds. The search of those homes go on. We're at the street where one of the suspected suicide bombers lived. This is Shahzad Talrini -- Tanweer, sorry.

He actually lived in this house behind me. He is the suicide bomber suspected of blowing up the station at Aldgate Station, killing at least seven people.

Looks like this search will go on for quite sometime. The police are erecting scaffolding around the house. This will be, by all accounts, a detailed search. They'll go through this house inch by inch, piece by piece.

And over the course of this day, we have learned a lot more about Tanweer, about what he did, where he went. His uncle has said that his nephew traveled to Pakistan late last year. He went to a religious school, a madras in Lahore, spent a few months there. But his uncle has denied that his nephew actually went to Afghanistan at any stage.

And like so many other people not just on this street or this city but across this country, Tanweer's uncle has no idea why he did what he did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASHIR AHMED, SHAHZAD TANWEER'S UNCLE: He had everything to live for. He was in our life. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) He had no financial difficulties. So I can't see how could he do that?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Now, of course, Kyra, so far just one arrest in all of this, the man being questioned in London. He was arrested here in Leeds. But the police now looking at who recruited these four suicide bombers. Where did they get the explosives from? Who put up the money? Who helped them in preparing the attacks on London which left more than 50 people dead -- Kyra?

PHILLIPS: John Vause, we'll continue to check in with you. Thank you so much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS (voice-over): Next on LIVE FROM, the SWAT team moves in. Officers say an armed man is holding his infant daughter and firing at police. An agonizing choice for officers: shoot or don't shoot.

Later on LIVE FROM: mayor in the mayhem.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I serve my country more than my family. I prefer it more than my son (ph). It is my country, my city.

PHILLIPS: He wears a flak jacket on the job. A day in the life of the mayor in a war zone.

Also ahead, from riots in Bolivia to the search for a missing teen in Aruba, we go on the story with CNN's Karl Penhaul.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Anger and anguish in Los Angeles in the wake of that standoff involving an armed man, his 19-month-old daughter and LAPD SWAT.

Police say that Jose Pena was using his baby girl as a human shield as he fired his 9mm handgun at SWAT officers trying to get him to surrender. Pena died in that shootout Sunday, and so did his daughter, little Susie Pena.

Now SWAT is under fire again, this time by family members who want to know why Pena and the baby girl had to die. Autopsies have been completed. And LAPD police chief William Bratton now says, in all likelihood, it will probably be the police who killed that young girl, but all the blame falls on the shoulders of Mr. Pena.

While the facts are still under review, SWAT officers are standing by their actions.

Andy Lamprey was on the LAPD SWAT team for 10 years. He knows what it's like to come face-to-face with an armed suspect, where the decision to pull the trigger is never taken lightly.

Andy, it's great to see you again.

ANDY LAMPREY, FORMER MEMBER OF LAPD SWAT TEAM: Nice to be with you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, I think just for the sake of full disclosure, I had the opportunity to train with you and the SWAT team a number of years ago as a reporter in Los Angeles.

LAMPREY: Yes, you did.

PHILLIPS: And I guess there's one thing I want to make clear, and it's something that I learned and remember, is that the use of deadly force for all of you is the last option in any scenario.

LAMPREY: That's absolutely correct. There isn't a single officer that's a member of that SWAT team that gets up in the morning and heads off to work with the thought in his mind that he will have the opportunity to shoot somebody.

PHILLIPS: Well, I remember the majority of you, your parents, you have kids, I remember you always referred to yourselves as rescuers. And there's a mission statement that you repeat every time you get in that briefing room before a call-out.

LAMPREY: We do have a mission statement, Kyra, and very prominently displayed within the body of that mission statement are the words that we have a deep and abiding reverence for human life.

And you're right, we are parents, many of us with small infants still in the home, and "rescuers" is the appropriate word to use. We pride ourselves on being able to confront a deadly, deadly situation and resolve it without having to resort to the use of deadly force.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's talk track record, Andy. Even from when I was in Los Angeles and observed all of you respond to high threat situations, four infants taken hostage in the last 15 years. But let's talk about 1992, very similar to what we saw take place this past week, in October. Tell our viewers about what happened that day.

LAMPREY: We had a similar situation. A young father had taken his 3-year-old daughter hostage and had threatened to kill her. The estranged wife had arrived at the apartment. He fired several shots at her, proceeded to fire several shots at responding police officers and ultimately at a television news crew that had positioned themselves across the street.

After a period of negotiation, multiple threats, exposing his daughter at the doorway, pointing the gun to her head, it was determined that we needed to take some type of action in order to prevent this homicide from occurring. The SWAT team made entry and resolved the situation, applying deadly force. The young girl was rescued unharmed.

But that's -- that is in no way to infer that the officers in this most recent event should have done something differently. By all accounts, and I'm aware of, everything was done according to the training, the information they had at hand. And there are just situations that cannot be resolved any other way.

It's become very commonplace for certain segments of society to pass judgment from the sterile environments of their homes or their offices on what the police do and how they conduct themselves in these high threat situations. But...

PHILLIPS: Well, let's address what happened, Andy, in this scenario, and what we know, what you know, what sources within the team have told me. And that is they gave this suspect, and correct me if I'm wrong, many opportunities to surrender.

And when they finally had to go into that 8-by-10 size room, and he was holding this child, according to what they say, as a shield, firing at officers, they even threw a flash bang in to try and distract him, to make entry, to still try and save both of their lives. But the gunfire continued, even hitting an officer. Still, they didn't take a shot.

And so at what point do you make that decision, OK, we have to do what we have to do? And in the result, as we see, we saw what happened, but why did it come to that point, do you think?

LAMPREY: Well, Kyra, only -- only those officers and their supervisors who were on the scene can really respond to that -- that question completely.

I am confident that every conceivable tactical alternative that could have been implemented was implemented at some point. And throughout the duration of this incident the question is continually in the officer's minds, at some point we're going to have to rescue this hostage. And in doing so there's a distinct possibility that deadly force will have to be used.

This suspect had already presented himself and made it very clear that he was willing to use deadly force, to shoot people, to shoot at people. To commit homicide. And at some point the courageous thing to do is make the decision to rescue that hostage.

And it's always a delicate balance. You have to weigh the time and what is known at that time, the facts that are at hand, what has been witnessed by the officers, the information, the intelligence that they have received. And all of that is thrown into the hopper, and at some point the decision is made -- made to go and rescue the hostage.

PHILLIPS: And just to clarify one thing, a number of reporters I've been watching have talked about why not shoot to injure. Why do have you to shoot to kill? I want you to address quickly why the policy is that way. And also, I want to point out before I let you go, I know it's been 25 years since a hostage has been killed. And when that one hostage was killed 25 years ago it wasn't by a SWAT bullet. So taking a look at that track record, please tell us about the policy and why it does have to be that way.

LAMPREY: Very quickly, right. Only one hostage was shot. And I need to clarify that it was shot -- the hostage was shot by the suspect, the hostage taker, not the SWAT team.

We've had at least four other infant -- hostage situations involving infants and babies where the infant was not harmed in any way and rescued from the armed hostage taker.

The decision to not shoot to wound is based on the fact that we never know how a suspect is going to respond to a bullet wound. The prisons are full of convicted murders who were wounded and lived to commit a murder and immediately following that shot that wounded them.

So the decision to shoot to wound is really an invitation to a disaster. We just don't know what the outcome is going to be. Our decision is to cease the behavior of the suspect, to intervene and rescue that hostage by whatever means necessary.

PHILLIPS: Andy Lamprey, former member of the LAPD SWAT team. Sure appreciate your time today. Thank you.

LAMPREY: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, the countdown is still on for Space Shuttle Discovery. Live pictures from the Kennedy Space Center, where the weather is threatening the launch. But we're going to get a live report from CNN's Miles O'Brien just straight ahead. Stay with us.

(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