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Darfur Crisis; Still Searching

Aired May 19, 2006 - 13:30   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: The Darfur crisis comes to U.N. headquarters. The U.N.'s pointman is briefing the Security Council on his recent hair-raising visit to the shame of Sudan. We get the details now from CNN's Sr. U.N. correspondent Richard Roth.
Things heating up, Richard.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: Yes, though they've been heating up for years, and the world has not really acted. Jan Egeland, senior U.N. humanitarian coordinator, just back from tension- filled trip to eastern Chad and Darfur, briefed the U.N. Security Council about his visit. He says, in the next six weeks, everything, in effect, is at stake. Egeland says food shortages, lack of security. Their needs to be momentum built right now to act on a peace agreement signed between the government and main rebel groups a few weeks ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAN EGELAND, U.N. EMERGENCY RELIEF COORDINATOR: What I saw in Darfur and in eastern Chad drove home how much really now is at stake. The next few weeks will be absolutely critical for millions of lives in this region.

With the Darfur peace agreement signed the day before I arrived in Sudan, there is finally real hope that we are turning the corner. But we can also still enter a downward spiral that will pull millions even further into the abyss.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROTH: The big problem right now is the U.N. has no permission to bring in its own peacekeepers, expanding on an African Union force that's already there, because the government has given mixed signals, or has objected. And now the U.N. a few you hours ago has announced another diplomatic team is going in to try to win permission, this despite a Security Council resolution a few days ago which gave the government of Sudan one week in which to let a military-planning team into the country -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Shouldn't U.N. troops be responding immediately?

ROTH: The problem is there is no U.N. army, and they need governments to supply the troops and the countries say, we can't supply them until we know where they're going, what they have to do. So then the U.N. has to send in this planning mission. September or October is when the main four should be there. It's not exactly a rush job.

PHILLIPS: Richard Roth, I know we'll stay on the story. Thanks so much.

Well, new warnings on the Darfur crisis. The President of Chad says that he can't guarantee the safety of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees.

CNN's Nic Robertson is just back from there, and he joins me from London.

We've been following all your reports, Nic. Pretty incredible stuff.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: The president of Chad has said that he cannot look after his borders, where the problem from Darfur is coming across. The Janjaweeb militia, backed by the Sudanese government, striking deeper and deeper into Chad, issues of refugees being forcibly recruited from those refugee camps, taken across the border or taken to the border, told that they have to go back and fight in Sudan, fight against the Sudanese government. Their president of Chad saying he can't cope with all of that, and he needs the U.N., and he needs it there now, and he says if he doesn't get it, he says the whole conflict is spread way beyond Chad, throughout the whole region -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: You know, we've been following your reports. You spent a lot of time in the region. Now, what's deal with the African Union troops. They're supposed to be protecting these refugees, but they're also not paid very well, are they?

ROTH: There are times when they don't get paid for months at a time, and then they're mandate that they're under doesn't allow them to be robust, if you will. It certainly doesn't allow them to go on the offensive. They've lost the respect of the refugees in the camps they're supposed to be protecting. Refugees there don't want them around. When we were there, the refugees were demonstrating, saying bring in international troops now.

Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator, who was speaking today at the U.N., when I asked him how soon, do you need the U.N. troops? He actually said yesterday. The people in Darfur have lost faith in those African Union peace keepers, because they don't see them as being strong enough -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And I was talking to Richard Roth about this and the holdup of U.N. troops. I mean, they're supposed to take over the mission in that region. So what's the deal? Why not get it moving now?

ROTH: The U.N. has to get in and have this assessment team, then they have to agree who's going to send troops? Who's going to do what? Agree exactly who's going to get which bit of the country, then put them in.

But the reality is, and this is what most people will tell you, humanitarian officials in Darfur and Chad -- the reality is that they're only talking about 20,000 to 30,000 U.N. peacekeepers. That area is massive. It's almost as big as the size of Texas. It's impossible for that number of troops to keep peace and stability. It's only going to work, they say, if the parties signing up to it really mean peace. And talking to a lot of refugees, and yesterday I was talking to rebel leaders who haven't signed up to the peace deal yet, they're not there. They want changes on concessions. A lot of the people at the grassroots level just aren't there, just don't accept the deal, so a lot of issues left -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So are you saying then the U.N. will not send troops, Nic, until there's more a certified peace deal on the table?

ROTH: No, I think the U.N. fully intends to send troops in the normal timeframe. The issues are on the ground that not everyone agrees with it.

What the U.N. and the whole international community is hoping for is that these steps that they've taken so far, getting one part of the Sudanese rebels to sign up with the deal with the Sudanese government, is that if they do that step, everyone else will follow in lockstep. That may not be the case. That's what these other rebel leaders were telling me yesterday.

But it doesn't mean that the international community won't go ahead, because everyone says, this is the best opportunity, the best chance there is.

And the reality is, the sooner you get the U.N. troops in on the ground, the people tell us there, the sooner you get them in, the more likely this deal can actually work. The longer you leave it, the less likely. Just couple of days ago, a village we were in. I saw a man there protecting a village with bows and arrows. A couple of days after we left the Janjaweeb went into that village and killed two villagers, wounding six other. Why? They can't protect themselves?

Kyra?

PHILLIPS: Nic Robertson, appreciate your stories. Thanks, Nic.

Jimmy Hoffa makes headlines again. Does Hidden Dreams Farm hold hidden clues? We'll fill in the blanks after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: It's a cold case all right. After 30-plus years, you could even call it frostbitten. Still there's red-hot interest in learning what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.

CNN's Susan Candiotti has the latest on the newest efforts to dig up the truth.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The searchers have been busy. Armed with sticks, they probed the grounds of a horse farm. The FBI even enlisted University of Michigan students to help.

News helicopters showed sections of fields dug up by FBI agents who revealed that they are, in fact, looking for Hoffa's remains. A spokesman said the search could go on for weeks and that it was based on a solid tip.

DAN ROBERTS, FBI: In the last two years I've been here as the agent in charge, this is the best lead I've seen come across on the Hoffa investigation.

CANDIOTTI: According to a law enforcement official who asked not to be identified, the latest search for the missing teamsters boss is based on old information that has only recently been verified.

Part of it has to do with suspicious activity at the farm the day Hoffa disappeared, and a backhoe spotted near a barn where mob meetings were once held. The FBI said they even brought in architects to look more closely at that barn.

ROBERTS: We may have to actually physically remove at least one structure here on the property in order to adequately finish our search of the property.

CANDIOTTI: Hoffa vanished on July 30th, 1975, about 20 miles from this farm. He was due to meet Tony Provenzano, a New Jersey teamster official with Mafia connections; and a Detroit mobster named Anthony Giacalone. In 1982, Hoffa was officially declared dead.

As the teamster's most powerful boss, he had been famous for organizing truckers and for using underworld allies to get what he wanted. Years later, Hoffa did time for jury tampering, his sentence later commuted by Richard Nixon.

For three decades, there have been many claims, for example, that he was buried inside Giants Stadium or that he'd been murdered in a Detroit house where blood was found. Nothing has ever panned out.

And nothing will pan out at this horse farm either predicts a lawyer for the farm's former owner. Mayer Morganroth says the place was searched with quote, "a fine-toothed comb" shortly after Hoffa disappeared.

MAYER MORGANROTH, ATTORNEY: I think that what's going to come out of it is egg on the face.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): Still, the search is likely to be much more thorough than anything that's ever been done here before. And if nothing is found, the FBI is promising, as it has before, that it will never stop looking for Jimmy Hoffa.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Milford, Michigan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, it's only fitting that his middle name was Riddle. Riddles are all we have left of Jimmy Hoffa, this one in particular. Why do people, especially the Feds, still care about the decades-old missing person case?

Well, Bill Kurtis is a career journalist, host of "Cold Case Files" on the A&E Network, and a Jimmy Hoffa buff. He's been following that case since Hoffa vanished in 1975. Bill joins me from Chicago. What an honor to have you, Bill.

BILL KURTIS, JOURNALIST: Kyra, thank you very much. Nice to be here.

PHILLIPS: Well, let's give it a little context here. Do we know if Hoffa was ever involved in any hits? Did he ever have anyone killed? And how close was he with the mob on a regular basis?

KURTIS: Well, he was close with the mob because they helped him build one of the -- what was to be one of the great power structures in America. The Kennedys were desperately afraid that he would unite union workers all across America and could shut down the country, so they began investigating him as far back as the late 50s.

So, there was a feeling of betrayal when Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, suddenly started investigating Jimmy Hoffa. Connected with murders, no. As a matter of fact, in '64 they got him on jury tampering. He did go to jail for five years, but that was as close as they could get to real hard crimes.

PHILLIPS: All right, so take me back. You're a reporter and an anchor in Chicago. You've been all over this story from the very beginning. What do you remember?

KURTIS: Well, it was a huge crime, and the pieces were pieced together much like they are today in a cold case. We knew exactly the restaurant, the parking lot, the players that you have just named, Chuckie O'Brien who drove the car.

And as the car was coming out of the restaurant parking lot, a truck driver -- how ironic -- almost runs into it, and identifies Jimmy Hoffa as sitting in backseat and beside him what appeared to be a shotgun.

Chuckie O'Brien later was dead, Provenzano dead, Giacalone was dead eventually, and no one has ever been charged with a crime, nor has there been a valid body of circumstantial evidence that was strong enough to actually bring any indictments. So it's a mystery, the Holy Grail of cold cases.

PHILLIPS: And that led to another question. Why do you think so many resources are being put into this, specifically this tip? Because aren't they flooded with so many other cold cases? I mean, why do they want this one so badly?

KURTIS: Well, they must think that this is really strong. They also may want to send the signal that no cold case is going unturned. But it is -- or perhaps the lead prosecutor just has a thing about the Hoffa case.

I have caught the spirit. I actually went running on one of those tips. It came from an inmate, very similar to this, a felon inside a penitentiary who claimed to be the driver.

Who else would know that he looked back, saw Hoffa, eventually got to a little lake/river combination in upper Michigan and there, Hoffa dead, now was wrapped in a canvas, chains around the body, rode out to the middle of this large body of water and dumped? So we went up with a diving crew, I will admit, and went out ...

PHILLIPS: Did you help fund this search? Is this the one that you actually helped fund, this search?

KURTIS: Yes, it is. So a number of journalists have been sort of duped, so we smile at the FBI. We didn't have those resources, found nothing, and speculated that the current had taken it out to the lake or covered it up with mud and so we went back licking our wounds.

But imagine that someone comes to you with a tip, I absolutely know where that body is. I mean, it's almost impossible if you're a reporter not to do it.

PHILLIPS: Oh, that's a reporter's dream. You're probably thinking yes.

KURTIS: It's a dream.

PHILLIPS: I'm going to find the remains of Jimmy Hoffa and I'm going to be Bill Kurtis one day but you are Bill Kurtis, so it's OK. You didn't need to find his remains.

KURTIS: It was worth every cent.

PHILLIPS: Now you're -- no doubt. All the theories that are out there, Bill, from, you know, entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, ground up and thrown to the fishes in a Florida swamp, obliterated in a mob-owned fat rendering plant that has since burned down, burned in a mob-owned incinerator in Detroit and put in a car that was sold as scrap metal -- did you ever have to report on any of those leads? And do you think that any of those leads could be true -- any of those theories?

KURTIS: I don't happen to think they are true. These are professionals dealing with a highly visible figure. They were afraid that he was going to take over the teamsters again.

They were afraid that traces, even -- and this is out there, please stay with me -- that a connection to the Kennedy assassination might even be proven. So they wanted to do it and do it right in their terms and not have anybody to find. I think that's what happened.

PHILLIPS: OK, all right.

KURTIS: There was nothing.

PHILLIPS: We're going to hold you to that. Forty years in this business.

KURTIS: You will.

PHILLIPS: Happy anniversary.

KURTIS: Thank you, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And hopefully we'll do this again.

KURTIS: Thank you very much. Well, and who knows? If they find the body, then we should talk.

PHILLIPS: I agree. I know you'll be there. Bill Kurtis, thanks so much.

KURTIS: Indeed. Thanks. Thank you.

PHILLIPS: Well, straight ahead, students stun their school janitor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To me, it was unbelievable that Olympus Junior High wants to help me out doing what they want to do. It's unbelievable.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: An all-star fund-raiser for a special friend in need. We'll have that story straight ahead on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: So how often do you think about the people who clean your office or factory or store, school, or even your house? Well, students at a junior high school in Utah sure haven't forgotten their janitor. They're helping him realize a dream.

Reporter Keith McCord of CNN affiliate KSL has this heartwarming story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEITH MCCORD, KSL REPORTER (voice-over): This is Terry, Terry Birch. He's the custodian at Olympus Junior High. Because of medical problems as an infant, Terry is totally deaf is one ear and has very marginal hearing in the other.

TERRY BIRCH, SCHOOL CUSTODIAN: Because I've lost so much of my hearing making it really difficult to communicate with people.

MCCORD: For our interview, we wrote our questions on a big board to make it easier for him to understand. To improve his hearing, Terry needs a cochlear implant, a costly surgery. At home, his wife, also deaf, recently had breast cancer surgery. Two of his children are hearing impaired. Medical bills are big.

So the students at Olympus came up with a plan to collect donated items to sell in an online auction. They sent out 1,200 letters to their favorite celebrities and sports stars. Now they have boxes of stuff. Want an autographed photo of the professor on "Gilligan's Island," tennis Star Roger Federer? Steve Young autographed a football. Magic Johnson sent a basketball. Sting signed his name to a CD. Students Will Gockner (ph), Cy Noah (ph) and Emily Blackum (ph) are thrilled with the response.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We thought it would get some stuff back, but we never expected all this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This much. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like big stuff. We just expect kind of pictures or...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just pictures and nothing like footballs or basketballs. We kind of just expected small items.

MCCORD: The items are being sold on eBay through May 26th. All proceeds will go to Terry who is extremely grateful.

BIRCH: To me it is unbelievable that Olympus Junior High was to help me out doing what they want to do. It's unbelievable.

MCCORD: The students have raised $23,000 so far for Terry and they hope a bidding war on eBay brings in a lot more.

Keith McCord, Eyewitness News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Well, bright lights, big money. Remember yesterday, we told you about an auction of spectacular and historic advertising relics from Times Square, New York? Well, today some results. The biggest winning bid, $20,000, bought the model used to build a 1990 sign promoting Coca Cola. A design for a Camel cigarette bill board in the 1940s went for $7,000. A marquee sign from the 1962 Broadway production "The Sound of Music" went for $27,000.

Well, it ain't easy being green, but now Kermit the Frog is officially red, white and blue. He's headlining a summer long exhibition of muppets at the National Museum of American History in Washington. The gang is also celebrating its 50th anniversary -- yes, I said 50th. The late Jim Henson created Kermit and eight other characters for a local TV show in Washington back in the 1950s.

Fast food in the south of France? It's got to be Cannes, where America's burger and fry fixation is served up tonight to some pretty discriminating palettes. First, though, sumptuous appetizers.

CNN's Brooke Anderson is sampling a little bit of everything.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BROOKE ANDERSON, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT (on camera): The glitz and glam that is Cannes continued last night with the premiere of a film from a Cannes favorite. The veteran British director Ken Loach brought his film "The Wind that Shakes the Barley" to the famed Palais Theater last night. Now, this is the eighth time that Loach has actually been nominated for the coveted Palme d'Or prize. He's never actually won that award, though. Maybe this year is his year.

Now, two films coming to Cannes this weekend which are competing against Loach. The first, "Volver," from another Cannes favorite, Pedro Almodovar. It stars Penelope Cruz and it's already a huge hit in Spain.

Also, the movie "Fast Food Nation" based on the best-seller by Eric Schlosser. It explores the dark side of the American meal.

Now, the Cannes Film Festival, which is considered a launching pad for many films, will run through May 28th.

Reporting from the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, I'm Brooke Anderson.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: More from Cannes in the next hour of LIVE FROM. We're going to hear from "Da Vinci Code" director Ron Howard. We're back after a quick break. You're watching LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Well, hurricane season is just 13 days away.

(WEATHER REPORT)

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