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Looking into London Terror; Rice Entourage Manhandled in Sudan

Aired July 21, 2005 - 14:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Federal agents have arrested at least three people and sealed a drug smuggling tunnel running under the U.S.-Canadian border. Agents say the tunnel had been under construction for nearly a year and was recently put into operation. They say it's the first tunnel ever discovered between the U.S. and Canada.
A national sex offender public registry is up and running. The free Web site is sponsored by the Justice Department. It allows parents and other members of the public to search online for sex offenders. It also provides links to various sites maintained by U.S. states and territories.

A congressional report indicates pilots are having a hard time steering around restricted air space. The report lists that 3,400 airspace violations since 9/11 and it says jets have been scrambled more than 2,000 times. That report suggests that one agency, instead of the current three, be assigned to steer planes away from those restricted zones.

PHILLIPS: Also this hour, the big story out of London, explosive devices apparently failed to work as intended today on three London trains and a bus. Police say that evidence left at the scene will aid their investigation. The closely-timed incidents produced panic and later confusion, but caused no deaths. Two weeks ago today, multiple blasts in London killed 52 people and four of the attackers. Police say they don't know yet if a link exists between those two events.

Two weeks later, we're learning new details, though, about the suicide bombers who struck London on the 7th of July. And the new information is potentially crucial in decoding the minds of terrorists.

CNN's Nic Robertson reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Internet images like these, of Saudi warriors announcing their intent to kill, may well have helped transform the four London bombers from sports-loving young Muslims into killers.

MARC SAGEMAN, FORMER CIA OFFICER: There really is no need of a mastermind because all the guidance and all the strategy and tactics are already on the Internet and those people can download what's already on the Internet. ROBERTSON: Investigators will be looking for that kind of material on the computers that were among the first items seized at the Hamara Community Center in Leeds. That's where three of the four men in the terror cell are known to have met. Mohammad Saddiq Khan, the oldest, is believed to have befriended sports-loving Shahzad Tanweer and Hassib Hussain by having them join him in weight-training classes.

But what happened to transform them into bombers?

SAGEMAN: The three of them, that core group, the one of Pakistani descent, came together over a period of about a year-and-a- half and seemed to have mutually escalated their devotion to Islam.

ROBERTSON: At the time, videos of jihadists fighting in Bosnia and Chechnya were circulating in that close-knit Muslim community, along with manuals on the Internet on how to carry out attacks.

LORD AHMED, BRITISH PARLIAMENT MEMBER: There's been an identity crisis within these young people who have been looking out for the answers.

ROBERTSON: Lord Ahmed of Rotherham and other British Muslim leaders are under pressure from the prime minister to silence extremist Muslim clerics, whom the British government says radicalize Muslim youth.

AHMED: These young people have been involved with some violent ideology, political ideology, which has been taught either in this country or abroad.

ROBERTSON: Khan and Tanweer went to Pakistan last year and British investigators want to know more about who they met and what they did. But Sageman suggests the bombers may already have been committed to terror before they ever went there.

SAGEMAN: Those people motivate each other. They don't really need to go to Pakistan or to any training camp.

ROBERTSON (on camera): British investigators are still far from drawing their own conclusions. But the prospect a terror cell could create, educate and radicalize itself without ever leaving home, compounds concerns that just weeks before the bombing, the country's terror threat level was lowered.

Nic Robertson, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Now, since we continue to report on those attacks in London, we're getting word now out of New York City that bag searches are going to begin on the transport system. This just into CNN. New York City police officers and the Metropolitan Transit Authority will begin to conduct random searches of bags and backpacks belonging to people who travel on New York's transportation system. Our Kelli Arena, though, telling us no racial profiling will be allowed, that a systematized approach to checking bags will go forward from this point on today.

Well, straight ahead, a trip to the Darfur region in Sudan turns into a bit of a scuffle for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's staff and members of the press. That story when CNN LIVE FROM continues.

And, then, average looking women in TV commercials. Will consumers buy it?

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(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

J.J. RAMBERG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's been two weeks since a morning commute turned into a nightmare for many Londoners. And while it was the deadliest attack in Britain since World War II, the country has long been the target of terrorism, mostly related to the conflict in Northern Ireland.

CNN.com takes a look at some of the biggest attacks in Britain over the last 30 years. During the fall of 1974, a wave of IRA bombs in British pubs killed 28 people, and wounded more than 200. Ten years later, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's cabinet narrowly escaped another IRA bomb which exploded during the Conservative Party's annual conference at an English resort, killing five people.

Also on CNN.com, a look at other train attacks from around the world in this interactive. On March 20th, 1995, 12 people were killed and thousands hurt when the Aum Shinrikyo cult released deadly sarin gas into the Tokyo subway. And just last summer, a female suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside a subway station in Moscow, killing nine people.

For details on these events as well others, go to CNN.com/london. From that dot-com news desk, I'm J.J. Ramberg.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, we've heard a lot lately from the Bush administration about the president's pick, John Roberts, for the U.S. Supreme Court. Of course, he's his number one nominee. Well, now for the first time, we are hearing from John Roberts' family. You're seeing video here, just in, of his parents, John Roberts' parents, and his sister Peggy. And Peggy evidently came to the microphone and made a few comments.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PEGGY ROBERTS, SISTER OF SUP. CT. NOMINEE: This is a very proud moment for our family. John treasures his service to the country and we feel the country will be well-served with John on the Supreme Court. My parents are extremely proud of their son, and are thrilled with this moment. We are very close-knit family and take pride in the accomplishments of all our family members. However, this is currently number one on the list. John is a dedicated son, husband, father, brother and uncle, and he takes these roles seriously and shines in each of them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Of course, the next step for us will be following the confirmation hearing of John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Senate Judiciary Committee. That will be the next step for us. We'll be following that.

Meanwhile, the U.S. turns up the heat in Sudan. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has just visited the East Africa country. She met with women refugees and children in the embattled Darfur region, and got assurances from the government that the violence there will stop. Journalists traveling with the secretary also made news. Rice's entourage has since moved onto Israel.

Our Andrea Koppel joins us now live from Jerusalem with both of that story -- both of the stories, rather. Andrea, we'll get to the scuffle in a moment. But, first, let's talk about trip and the importance of that trip.

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, Secretary Rice believes this is a critical moment in Sudan's history. The longest- running war in Africa has just ended. That is the war between the north and the south in Sudan. And there is a new national unity government that Secretary Rice hopes is going to use the new people that are in the government -- that they're going to use their clout to try to end what's happening in West Sudan, in Darfur, where you have over two million refugees and perhaps between 180,000 to 300,000 of the ethnic Arabs there who were killed.

And Secretary Rice wants to -- went to Sudan because she wants to turn up the heat on that government, the new government, to say you've got a serious job to do now. She also is concerned about the increasing violence against women, in particular in these refugee camps. And the one we visited today has 55,000 men, women and children living in them. Secretary Rice got a warm welcome from the children there, but they also welcomed Secretary Powell a year ago, and they have seen in the last year that the violence has continued.

Specifically, one woman I spoke with said that she knows of at least 70 women in that camp alone who were raped when they went out just to collect fire wood. And they say that they were raped by members of the Sudanese military. Now, they could also be police officers. This is something that Secretary Rice heard firsthand when she met with about 15 of these women behind closed doors.

She also feels, Kyra, that this is a time in which, if the world community doesn't get more involved and specifically the African Union doesn't send more troops in there to act as monitors and peacekeepers, that things could deteriorate. And today she welcomed about 40 more Rwandan African Union peacekeepers. They're expecting the number to increase from 3,000 to about 7,700 in the next several months.

PHILLIPS: Andrea, hopefully you can still hear me. We're having a little issues with audio there. But I want to ask you the -- of course, you pointed out the importance of this visit. And we've been doing so much coverage about Sudan and the violence that's going on there and the political struggles and the struggles of the refugees.

And when it comes down to people like you, journalists like you, wanting to ask questions -- direct questions, it's not always received in a very positive manner. Tell us what happened today and this scuffle that took place when a number of you started asking questions of the government.

KOPPEL: Well, what happened, Kyra, is that for the first time, Sudan's now new unity government allowed American journalists into what's known as a photo opportunity between Secretary Rice and the new president, who is Lieutenant Colonel John Garang. And there were what we've later learned -- there were secret police who probably had other orders.

They don't have a free press in Sudan, it's not a democracy. And they're not used to allowing members of the media to ask questions. And that is exactly what one of my colleagues tried to do at the end of this press conference. We sort of went in in different groups. I wasn't in that batch. She tried to ask a question and was roughed up, manhandled by some of the Sudanese secret police who were there and we were really kind of thrown out of the palace there.

But, again, this is something -- for anybody who's worked in some of these third world countries, it's no surprise that the media would be manhandled, what was also surprising today is that you would have members of Secretary Rice's own entourage who were manhandled. Secretary Rice was furious about this. She came back on the plane on our way to Darfur and said that she was demanding an apology from the Sudanese government. By the time she landed there, she did get that, Kyra, from the Sudanese foreign minister.

PHILLIPS: What about you? Did you get -- did you receive any resistance, Andrea?

KOPPEL: I did. You know, we were trying to get inside. They let Sudanese reporters go in. But again, the Sudanese press is not free. And we were pushing and shoving and trying to get in. But, you know, you can only do so much when you've got some pretty strong guys that are blocking the doorway. But we -- I eventually did get in the room. And we were allowed to take pictures. It wasn't until the end of this meeting between Secretary Rice and the Sudanese president that one of my colleagues threw out a question, as we do all the time in the United States and in many other countries, and it was at that point that she was manhandled.

PHILLIPS: Well, I know that you always get the story. You don't let anybody manhandle you, Andrea Koppel. Live from Jerusalem, thank you so much.

Well, straight ahead, the latest check of the markets just ahead, plus this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am well aware that I don't fit the stereotypical, you know, form of beauty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Meet the new faces and bodies of advertising. We'll explain, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(MARKET UPDATE)

PHILLIPS: Well, will reality -- and by that we mean using average women with everyday curves wrinkles and full bottoms sell beauty products. Well, however the makers of Dove products think so and it's aiming to redefine beauty in more ways than one. CNN's Valerie Morris has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VALERIE MORRIS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The models you are used to seeing wear anything from a size two to a size zero, Stacy Nado (ph) is a size 10.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am well aware that I don't fit the stereo typical form of beauty.

MORRIS: But Dove is using her in a new ad campaign for its firming lotion line, one that features very unusual models: Women with fuller figures, tell-all scars, kinky hair and super-pale skin. In other words: Models who look like real people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It really debunks what the beauty industry has been doing for a long time.

MORRIS: Dove has been targeting the average American woman. The campaign was launched first in Great Britain and sales skyrocketed over 700 percent. But will it work in the United States?

(on camera): according to federal government statistics, the average U.S. woman is 5'4", 155 pounds. That's technically overweight. For this reason, Dove is betting on this ad campaign winning over consumers who are looking for more realistic and more attainable images of beauty.

DOROTHY CANTOR, PSYCHOLOGIST: They all smile and they say those are really women and they're identifying with the women in the ad in a way that they can't with the gorgeous super models.

MORRIS: But skeptics argue, featuring these average looking models won't play in our weight-obsessed culture. Women want to see what they might be and not what they are. JAMIE ROSS, TREND EXPERT: Beauty is all about fantasy. It really is. It's about a fantasy. It's about what women hope to look like.

MORRIS: Will these ads prove so effective that we'll see average people on billboards hocking expensive products? Not likely.

LINDA WELLS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, ALLURE: The high ends are selling something else. They're selling a dream. They're selling a luxury and people don't necessarily want to see their reality reflected there.

CANTOR: I don't think you will sell a car Ferrari with a chubby lady, yet.

MORRIS: Whatever the result, one thing is clear: People are talking; talking a lot about the ordinary women in their underwear.

WELLS: This ad campaign gives Dove a lot of attention and that's a really good thing when you're in a competitive business. But the key thing is: Is it going to sell products? And we don't know that yet? If it sells products, terrific. If it doesn't sell products, then there'll be a new campaign in a few years.

MORRIS: We all know the politically correct response would be support and praise. That's's a nice sentiment, but sometimes the most telling response is also the most anonyms.

Valerie Morris, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Stay tuned. Our Jason Carroll will be joining us to talk more about the New York transportation system. If you're getting ready to travel, say by subway or bus in New York, prepare to get your bag searched. We'll have more on that when CNN's LIVE FROM continues.

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