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New Immigration Goal: Hold Employers Accountable; Zacarias Moussaoui's Defense; Duke Rape Case

Aired April 20, 2006 - 14:00   ET

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

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: The crackdown on illegal immigration, it is not only at the source. Now, also, a destination.
It's the feds' new focus. The people who hire undocumented workers, who exploit them and underpay them, the so-called bad apples, well, several alleged bad apples are in trouble today after a record nationwide raid.

CNN Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve joins me now from Washington.

Jeanne, what do you know about the raid?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Carol, almost 1,200 illegal workers were picked up in 26 states during raids on 40 plants of IFCO Systems, a company that makes wooden pallets, crates and containers. But perhaps more significant, seven current and former IFCO managers were arrested and charged with conspiring to transport and harbor illegal aliens for their own financial gain.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says his department is putting more muscle into enforcing immigration laws inside the country, and he hopes workplace actions like this one will deter illegal workers and their employers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: And that means what we're focused on is not just individual cases involving a single violator here or a single violator there, but actually looking at those people who adopt as a business model the systematic violation of United States law. We target those organizations. We use intelligence to define the scope of the organization. And then we use all of the tools we have, whether it's criminal enforcement or the immigration laws, to make sure we come down as hard as possible and break the back of those organizations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MESERVE: Officials allege that more than 50 percent of the Social Security numbers used by IFCO employees in 2005 were invalid or mismatched. Some of them belonged to dead people. And Chertoff says his department needs more access to Social Security records to help focus its enforcement efforts on big violators.

IFCO, in a statement, says it complies with all federal and state employment requirements and says is it cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Carol, back to you.

LIN: Jeanne, is this a shot across the bow? Are we expect to see more raids like this one?

MESERVE: Well, we have seen a couple in recent times. There was a guilty plea just last week in a case involving some sushi restaurants up in Baltimore. The company end up forfeiting several hundreds of thousands of dollars, properties, and luxury vehicles.

And Chertoff says, yes, we are going to see more of this. He says there are more investigations under way. They're beefing up their personnel in this area to try and bring in more results -- Carol.

LIN: Jeanne, thank you.

MESERVE: You bet.

LIN: Now, we just got word that the defense has rested its case in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. They are calling it the end of the trial and they're introducing more evidence, they hope, will show their client doesn't know what he was saying.

Our Justice Department correspondent, Kelli Arena, has the latest from the courthouse.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Just before the break, the defense entered a document into evidence which basically contradicts what Zacarias Moussaoui had claimed about Richard Reid. If you remember early in this trial, Moussaoui said that he was supposed to be part of September 11th, that he was supposed to fly a plane into the White House on that day, and that Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was supposed to be on that flight with him.

Well, the jury heard the defense read a summary today saying that -- it's an intelligence summary, basically saying that, Moussaoui and Reid, there was no preknowledge, that they were supposed to be part of 9/11, or instructed by al Qaeda leadership to conduct a mission together. That, yes, they were associates that had met and trained in Afghanistan, but that Reid named Moussaoui as the beneficiary of all of his belongings in his will, which was written on December 2001, and that FBI analysts say if they were supposed to be part of the same operation, that Reid would have never left anything to Moussaoui because they would have both been killed.

It said that Reid and another U.K. citizen were actually tasked to work together in that shoe bombing mission, but that that other U.K. citizen backed out for some unknown reason, and that all of the 9/11 participants were in the United States by July, including Moussaoui, but that Reid had been traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Amsterdam, The Hague, Israel and Turkey. So, according to FBI analysts, it was very unlikely that he was supposed to be part of the September 11th operation.

Of course, all of this meant by the defense to try to prove that Moussaoui was lying about what his role was supposed to be in September 11th.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Alexandria, Virginia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: We have been working a story here and have been able to sadly confirm that a legendary test pilot, Scott Crossfield, has died. His son-in-law says that rescue teams have found his body in the wreckage of his small plane.

The plane was found today about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta. It had been missing since yesterday, when it took off from Alabama and was heading for Virginia.

Scott Crossfield was the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. He was flying for the government's forerunner to NASA back in 1953 when he set the Mach 2 flight record. He flew a Douglas Skyrocket aircraft 1,300 miles an hour.

Crossfield later worked for Eastern Airlines and other aviation companies. He was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame in 1983.

Scott Crossfield was 84 years old.

Now, if you were one of thousands of delayed travelers at the Atlanta airport yesterday, you can blame a computer glitch. You heard me.

Checkpoints were closed for two hours after a screener reported seeing a suspicious image in luggage going through her x-ray machine. At least 120 flights were delayed. But now the Transportation Security Administration is blaming what it calls a software malfunction.

It turns out that the image the screener saw was a routine test. Except the screener failed to display the words, "This is a test."

Forcible rape, sexual offense, and kidnapping, all in the first- degree murder -- in first degree, rather. Those are the formal charges against two student athletes from Duke University. Defense attorneys say a key witness and the clock prove their clients didn't do it.

CNN's Alina Cho is following the case from Durham, North Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In the fight to defend Duke lacrosse players Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann, defense attorneys have declared war, and their strongest weapon so far may be a cab driver. MOEZ MOSTAFA, CAB DRIVER: Nothing looked familiar (ph) to me.

CHO: Moez Mostafa is a driver, and the owner, of On Time Taxi, a cab company in Durham. On the night of the alleged rate, Mustafa says he remembers driving suspect Reade Seligmann. Phone records show the Duke sophomore called him at 12:14 a.m. to order a cab. Mostafa says he picked up Seligmann and a friend at the home where the lacrosse party was taking place at 12:19.

MOSTAFA: They seemed calm, like normal. I didn't recognize anything different.

CHO: Mostafa says Seligmann needed money, so they drove to this Wachovia Bank. Defense attorneys say an ATM receipt will show he withdrew cash at 12:24. MOSTAFA: After they took the money out from the machine, they asked if we can go to the Cookout (ph) restaurant.

CHO: After ordering food, Mostafa says Seligmann wanted to go home. Lawyers say he swiped his dorm card at 12:41. Prosecutors say the accuser was raped after she was coaxed back into the home by lacrosse players. A next-door neighbor said he saw the alleged victim go back to the house around 12:30. At this point, defense attorneys say Seligmann was long gone.

Lawyers say suspect Collin Finnerty was, too. They say Finnerty was having dinner with teammates at a restaurant, and a waitress will confirm it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm very confident. We have great evidence.

CHO: On Duke University's campus, students are showing support for the suspects by making, it T-shirts. Meanwhile, Duke administrators have joined forces with North Carolina Central University, the college attended by the alleged victim, and with Durham's mayor, to put out a statement calling for unity. The ad will run this week in all the local papers.

Alina Cho, CNN, Durham, North Carolina.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LIN: A tearful farewell to a 10-year-old girl. Family and classmates of Jamie Rose Bolin crowded into a high school gym in Purcell, Oklahoma, a short time ago so say their final good-byes. They remember Jamie as a fun-loving girl who loved to sing and sew.

Police say she was killed by a neighbor who had fantasies about eating a corpse. Kevin Ray Underwood is charged with first-degree murder. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

A kingdom on the edge of collapse turns guns on its own people. Coming up on LIVE FROM, the latest on the crisis in Nepal.

The news keeps coming. And we're going to bring it to you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) LIN: A short time ago we gave you some breaking news that a legendary test pilot -- his name is Scott Crossfield -- that he had died in a plane crash. CNN's Miles O'Brien is a pilot and our space correspondent, as well as the anchor of "AMERICAN MORNING." We got him on the telephone so that we could fully appreciate this man's life.

Miles, Scott was famous for being the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. That's remarkable.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, Carol, if you looked up the term "test pilot" in the dictionary, there would be Scott Crossfield, not far away from Chuck Yeager. Of course, they were contemporaries and flew that rocket plane, the X-1.

Chuck Yeager, of course, the first to take it supersonic. And Scott Crossfield, in 1953, the first to fly at twice the speed of sound.

He later was involved in the X-15 project. You'll remember that. That was the NASA/Air Force project based in the high desert of California which really flew to the absolute edge of space, flying it to all kinds of new levels. He really defined "test pilot" in so many ways.

I was just at an air show a couple of weeks ago in Lakeland, Florida, and saw him there. And he was hail and hearty and sharp as he could be, and really enjoying, always enjoying being around airplanes and pilots. And that is where he was most truly alive.

And what a terrible thing. I hear he was flying on an instrument flight plan and apparently there was some bad weather, might have gotten involved in some bad thunderstorms. But, you know, imagine all of his accomplishments in aviation and to have it end this way.

LIN: He was flying from Alabama, headed for Virginia. Miles, the man was 84 years old. What was he still doing up in the sky?

O'BRIEN: You had to meet and know Scott Crossfield to understand. You wouldn't have guessed he was 84. I can show you a picture I took of him at the centennial flight in front of the reproduction of the Wright Flyer, the 1903 Wright Flyer.

He -- there was nothing about him that acted an octogenarian or looked an octogenarian. And, you know, the truth is, in order to fly an airplane, for me and for Scott, and for anybody, legally you have to have medical checkups every couple of years and you have to pass those checkups. And if you can't, you don't go in the air.

So, you know, everybody ages differently. Put it that way.

LIN: Yes. I bet he had the spirit.

So, what did he think of the state of aviation today? I mean, he was -- you talk about him being on the edge of space, edge of, you know, technology in 1953. You know, and here we are sending space probes to Mars. You know, would he have -- if he had lived longer, if he could have a second youth, what do you think his wish would be?

O'BRIEN: Well, you know, I think a lot of the people that were involved in the X-15 program would tell you their wish would have been that that project would have gone on to another generation, another generation. And what happened was, of course the X-15 kind of proceeded and was overlapped a little bit the early days of NASA's Mercury space program and Gemini space program. And a lot of people who were involved in that considered -- you know, this is the stuff in Tom Wolfe's book "The Right Stuff."

A lot of that -- people considered that the real test flying, and that the capsules which flew in Mercury and Gemini, the (INAUDIBLE) the test pilots used were Spam in a can. And what they would tell you was, if, in fact, the X-15 project, and all that it brought about, in other words, a rocket-powered ship that actually flew back to the -- to Earth and glided down to a landing on a runway, if that had been pursued that the time, who knows where that technology might have led. So, in some sense, he might have derided the lost opportunity in that sense that goes along with all of that.

Having said all of that, you know, I think he was -- you know, what you saw in the space shuttle ultimately was, there were a lot of lessons learned out of the X-15, a lot of lessons of what he accomplished in that program that led to that.

LIN: You got it. Miles, thanks for sharing a life well lived.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

LIN: Scott Crossfield died in a plane crash at the age of 84.

At the White House today, perhaps a bit of history made. President Bush and President Hu Jintao of China raised a toast last hour to future relations between their two countries. Their White House meeting covered everything from the U.S. trade deficit with China, to the nuclear aims of Iran and North Korea.

At this morning's welcoming ceremony, Mr. Bush went oust his way to praise China's efforts to buy more goods made in the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our two nations share an interest in expanding free and fair trade which has increased the prosperity of both the American people and the Chinese people. Trade in goods between our two nations has grown to $285 billion a year. And U.S. exports to China grew nearly 21 percent in last year alone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: Even this protest was translated at the White House appearance of the Chinese president and the president of the United States. But the Chinese government blocked the signal of CNN International in China when CNN aired these live pictures of a protester at the morning ceremony. The woman criticized President Hu. The official Chinese news agencies are not reporting on the heckler or other protests, for that matter.

Now, it's been a year since John Negroponte started work as the nation's first director of National Intelligence. Last hour in Washington, he gave a rare public speech about his job and the events of the past year.

Our national security correspondent, David Ensor, joins us now.

David, do you this he answered his critics today?

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, he certain had some answers for the criticisms. This is a man, Carol, that the president sees almost every morning and we almost never see. This was, as you said, a very rare public speech by John Negroponte, who, as you say, has been the director of National Intelligence for one year.

This was a job created post-9/11 to try to make sure that the intelligence community can connect the dots next time and stop the next attack. And there has not been an attack in this year.

Mr. Negroponte talked about how he believes the intelligence community is doing better, is more interactive, that all the 16 agencies are working better with each other than they did, that various types of intelligence, whether it be satellites or signals intelligence or human intelligence, are being gathered better, that more people are being trained for the jobs.

He also talked in concrete terms about some of the threats the nation faces. He said that he hopes that in two years -- that at the two-year mark, in a year's time, he'll be able to have some good news about chasing to the top leadership in al Qaeda. That came after a question about why we haven't gotten Osama bin Laden.

He also talked about the Iranian nuclear program. And here, of course, there's been a lot of concern expressed in recent weeks about Iran's move to start enrichment of uranium to try to build a nuclear program which Iran insists is peaceful in nature but the U.S. and other intelligence services have said they believe Iran is moving towards a bomb. Mr. Negroponte offered some, in a way, calming language about how far off they are from a bomb.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN NEGROPONTE, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: Even though we believe that Iran is determined to acquire or obtain a nuclear weapon, that we believe that it is still a number of years off before they are likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: So, while it's a matter of concern, and perhaps it's not quite as pressing as some people suggest, Mr. Negroponte said, however, that he thinks that the U.S. intelligence believes North Korea may have several nuclear weapons -- Carol.

LIN: Well, I would expect calming language from a former diplomat, wouldn't you?

ENSOR: That's the style, generally, of Mr. Negroponte. That's right.

LIN: We saw it today. Thank you very much, David.

Well, a penny for your thoughts? A nickel for your retirement? A few lucky coins turn into a major pile of cash. More on granny's jackpot coming up. And I can tell you one thing, she's going to need a bigger purse.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: All this week, CNN continues its year-long look into the future, your future. And this month our focus is transportation.

There is a new trend when it comes to air travel. Think of it as a yellow cab in the sky.

CNN's Miles O'Brien has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I travel at least one a week. You've got to be face to face.

Travel's become much more difficult. Travel's become exhausting. Travel's kind of become a job in itself, getting from your home or your office to the airport, through the airport, to the plane. Can there not be an easier way to do this?

One of my wishes is that this concept of the air taxi, a plane just sort of pulling up, I need to go here and now, who's going there? Taxi service, but it happens to go through the air, and it goes more than just around one city. I'd hop in one right now.

O'BRIEN: Hailing an airplane may seem like a fanciful notion, but business travelers may be ready to pay a little more for more tailored service. Those long lines, overcrowded, delayed and canceled flights might render old-fashioned airline travel obsolete.

(voice over): Ken Stackpoole of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University says the future of air travel is in smaller planes flying to smaller airports.

KEN STACKPOOLE, EMBRY-RIDDLE AERONAUTICAL UNIVERSITY: One of the positives of using smaller aircraft in the small airports is that the small airports are normally closer to the real destination that you want to get to.

O'BRIEN: Just one reason why Stackpoole says the air taxi concept is ready for takeoff. In fact, he says air taxi operators are already lined up to buy a new fleet of very light jets once FAA certification comes through. And the taxi fare for passengers? About a dollar per mile.

STACKPOOLE: Within the next couple of years, you're going to be able to go to your nearest airport, flag down the air taxi pilot, and fly to your destination quicker, less expensive, and at the time that you choose to fly rather than on an airline schedule as we fly today.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LIN: I mean, really, possums and raccoons in the back yard are one thing, but what you're about to see is just too much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LOIS HOGAN, NEIGHBOR: All of a sudden, the bear made this horrible noise, and I look up and there's the bear. He's right over my head.

Well, I couldn't even believe that it was a bear up my tree. When I called 911, she said, "A bear?" And I said, "That's what it look like to me."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIN: Yes, 200 pounds of she-bear, as a matter of fact. It turned out she escaped from a wildlife research area and followed a river more than 150 miles to the Shreveport neighborhood. But before they all figured out where that bear belonged, the bear had to be tagged with a tranquilizer dart.

And we hope that in the future the Shreveport bear catchers will use LIVE FROM's approved drug bear retrieval method. Ouch! Headache!

And it looks like the price of a place to hibernate may be, I don't know, going up or down, Susan? What's this about a housing bubble?

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not a bear market in housing, OK? It is a bull market in housing. And that is the problem.

It's been a speculator's market, practically, in some areas, certainly, and that's why there's been all of this talk of whether it's a housing bubble and whether it will burst. Well, in a new survey, 71 percent of people responding say that they believe it will burst. Home prices will collapse, according to them, within next year. But two of the three people responding say it won't happen in the area where they live.

This is a new survey by Experian and Gallup. And one of the reasons why they don't think it will happen in their back yard is that they don't live in some of these hot markets like Manhattan, Miami, and San Francisco. Smaller towns, thankfully, for instance, areas in the Midwest, haven't seen the same price increase. But one thing that we have been telling you about anecdotally for last few months is that the housing market unquestionably is cooling off. Housing starts this week, earlier this week, we got data showing slowest starts in a year. And, of course, mortgage rates are going up. They topped 6.5 percent last week for the first time in nearly four years. A year ago the rate was 5.8 percent.

Big difference when you're taking out a 10, 15 or 30-year loan -- Carol.

LIN: Well, Susan, so how are people dealing with the thought of high prices and the possibility of a bubble? Because, you know, if you're in the market, you may want to wait a year or think you should wait a year to buy if that house is going to be a lot cheaper.

LISOVICZ: Well, you may do that, or you may just simply move far, far away. And that is -- that is a trend we've seen for years, and it just has continued unabated, because housing prices are so different, especially in the South. So we're seeing this continued migration from the high-priced Northeast, the West Coast, to more affordable places in the sunbelt, where you live right now, Carol.

This is according to a new Census Bureau Report -- cities with biggest declines, the city where I work in at this very moment, New York City, lost more than 200,000 people between 2000 and 2004. I might point out that the median house price here in New York is $428,000. That is about double the median price nationwide. Los Angeles, of course, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, all saw declines as well.

Cities with big net gains? Well, actually, in California, Riverside/San Bernardino, California, was one of them. But Atlanta, Hotlanta, was one of them, as well, in the top five -- Carol.

LIN: And the world headquarters for CNN. Not a bad deal.

(MARKET REPORT)