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Confessed Sniper Stands up to Partner in Crime; Corruption Investigation Stirs Dissent on Capitol Hill; Bin Laden Tape Claims Moussaoui Not Connected to 9/11

Aired May 24, 2006 - 13:00   ET

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

KYRA PHILLIPS, HOST: I'm Kyra Phillips, live at the CNN world headquarters in Atlanta.
Sniper trial. The sniper trial -- shooting spree terrorized the Washington area. Are we closer to the verdict? We're live from the courtroom.

Cold cash corruption. Congressman investigated. The storm blows up around William Jefferson. He still declares I didn't do it. Will he step aside under pressure?

From mentor to monster maker, that's how Lee Boyd Malvo views the man he once saw as a father figure, a man who he says led him to mass murder and life in prison. CNN's Kathleen Koch is in Maryland where the 2002 sniper shootings are being relived in court -- Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, very different day of testimony in court here in Rockville, Maryland, today. Much more disjointed questioning. This -- again, John Allen Muhammad, cross- examining Lee Boyd Malvo, his fellow sniper suspect.

Initially, he focused on very fact-based questions about where cars were parked during specific shootings, about the gun store in Washington state where Lee Boyd Malvo says that they stole the Bushmaster rifle.

But then the questions got personal. And he started talking to Malvo about their relationship and about his guilty plea in the state of Virginia. And Malvo explained yes he had, indeed, pled guilty in the state of Virginia by reason of insanity.

And Muhammad asked, quote, "Who decided you were insane?"

And Malvo said it was a plea of indoctrination. There were experts who say I was indoctrinated.

And then Muhammad asked Malvo to define indoctrination.

Malvo said, quote, "Indoctrination is a process under which the person who, myself, who came under your influence, is brought to do things he would not have done on his own."

Then Muhammad pursued a very interesting line of questioning, trying to get Malvo to admit one can be indoctrinated to do positive things. He had a back and forth exchange where Malvo described a situation where he saved two of Muhammad's children from drowning. And Muhammad said, "Did I indoctrinate you to do that?"

And Malvo said, "I did that because I loved them."

And but it was very interesting to see Malvo standing up to Muhammad even more today. When they were talking about fact-based questions, where cars were parked, and Muhammad asked Malvo, "Can you show us where the vehicle was allegedly parked."

And Malvo says, "Not allegedly, the vehicle was parked right there."

Or when Muhammad challenged Malvo's testimony that they planned in advance that Malvo would plead guilty to the killings, that he would take the fall because he was a young man and he wouldn't be put to death. And so Muhammad said, "So you said basically we was planning to get caught?"

And Malvo said, "You did the planning, Mr. Muhammad."

It was a very interesting day in court, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Well, Kathleen, even Muhammad is still calling Malvo son, right, even when the judge said not to do that?

KOCH: Indeed, he slipped up a couple of times yesterday. And today, slipped up a lot more. And by the fourth time, what I found very interesting, it wasn't the judge, it wasn't the prosecutor who stood up and admonished Muhammad. It was Lee Boyd Malvo himself who, when Muhammad asked him, he said, "Son, what color is your hair?"

And Malvo stopped, sat up very straight and said, "I would prefer you address me by my name."

So interesting. Very interesting exchanges in the courtroom today.

PHILLIPS: We'll talk a lot through the afternoon. Kathleen Koch, thanks so much.

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to November elections. Democrats were planning to bash Republicans on corruption, but now one of their own is the target of an FBI probe. Embarrassed Democratic leaders are pressuring Representative William Jefferson of Louisiana to resign his seat on the powerful ways and means committee. But there's no sign he will.

CNN congressional correspondent Dana Bash has the latest.

Dana, what do you think is going to happen?

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, I'll tell you what is so fascinating to watch here, is you probably would never have believed, none of us would, that an investigation, a corruption investigation into a Democratic congressman would result in a showdown between Republicans, between Republicans here on the Hill and the Bush administration. And that is exactly what is going on here. And that showdown really stepped up today, when we had the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, come out of a meeting of Republicans and say that he wants the Justice Department to return everything that they took from Congressman Jefferson's office because, of course, he believes that the search, like many do here, was unconstitutional.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We're having conversations with the -- both the executive office department and the attorney general. One of the things that we want to make sure is, first, we are not trying to protect any individual, but we want to protect the House, as far as the Constitution.

And we think those materials ought to be returned. We also think that the -- those people who are involved in that issue ought to be frozen out of that, just for the sake of the constitutional aspect of it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now the deputy attorney general, Paul McNulty, was talking to reporters a short while ago, wasn't asked specifically about the speaker's comments. But speaking generally about the raid on Congressman Jefferson's office over the weekend, he did defend it once again, just like the attorney general did yesterday. He said it was lawful, and it was necessary.

So that still -- it seems as though the Justice Department, the Bush administration is digging in, while Republicans here are really stepping up their pressure on this issue. So it's, once again, showing that there is a divide on yet another issue between Republicans.

Now, on what you mentioned earlier, the other interesting subplot here is what's going on with the Democrats, Kyra. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, wrote a letter just today to William Jefferson, making it clear that she does not support him. She said that she wants him -- she said, "In the interest of upholding the ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus, I'm writing to request your immediate resignation from the ways and means committee." The ways and means committee, one of the most powerful committees here on Capitol Hill.

Well, it did not take long for Congressman Jefferson to respond to that, Kyra. He said that he respectfully -- "Respectfully," he said, "I decline to do so." He said that sitting on that committee is very important for him and specifically for his constituents in New Orleans.

So that is a very interesting thing to be watching here. Democrats -- the Democratic leadership, already the sound of silence has been deafening. But this, clearly a push, making it -- making it clear to him that they want him to get the message that they want him out of Congress. PHILLIPS: Dana, just quickly to go back for a second, did Congressman -- did the congressman ever say why that cash was in his freezer? Or did any one of his attorneys ever answer that question?

BASH: No, I actually asked his attorney that question and his answer was no comment.

PHILLIPS: All right. Dana Bash, thanks so much.

Well, Palestinians won't seek peace; Israel won't wait. That's Ehud Olmert's message to the U.S. Congress.

Well, the Israeli prime minister got a standing ovation from a joint meeting of Congress this morning. He told lawmakers that Israel wants to negotiate, even though the militant group Hamas now heads one Palestinian government.

Sorry, we're having a few technical problems. Are we going to have that? OK. Well, Olmert says that Israel will draw its own borders in the West Bank if Palestinians don't come to the table.

Eye on Iran now. Diplomacy, security, sometimes acrimony. The U.N.'s nuclear chief, Muhammad ElBaradei, is meeting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the U.S. national security adviser in Washington today. The subject, Iranian nukes and a future U.N. resolution. The State Department says Iran wants direct talks with the Bush administration. The White House says no.

Well, you've got the wrong guy. That's Osama bin Laden's latest message, plain and simple, on behalf of self-proclaimed al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui. An audiotape that popped up on the Internet tops our "CNN Security Watch". The CIA confirms that the voice is really bin Laden's. And our justice correspondent, Kelli Arena, has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The latest audio message is simple, without the usual poetry associated with communications from Osama bin Laden. Clearly conscience of Zacarias Moussaoui's recent terrorism trial in the U.S., bin Laden says Moussaoui had absolutely no role in the September 11 attacks.

OSAMA BIN LADEN, LEADER OF AL QAEDA (through translator): I am certain of what I say because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers, Allah have mercy upon them, with those raids, and I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission.

ARENA: During his trial, Moussaoui claimed he was supposed to fly a fifth plane into the White House. And that captured shoe bomber Richard Reid was going to be on his hijacking team. After being sentenced to life in prison, Moussaoui changed his story and said in a court filing that he lied on the stand.

Bin Laden mentions the testimony in an effort, U.S. officials believe, to seem up to date. FLORIA YOUNIS, FORMER FBI AGENT: He clearly is showing that he's still out there. He wants to be in the news. He wants to comment on the Moussaoui investigation.

ARENA: Bin Laden also spoke about the 500 or so detainees held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. He claims none of them have any connection to 9/11 either.

BIN LADEN (through translator): And even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al Qaeda in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al Qaeda's methodology of calling for war with America.

ARENA: Officials believe at least one person being held in Guantanamo, Muhammed al-Kahtani, was connected to 9/11. The U.S. government and 9/11 Commission concluded he was meant to be the 20th hijacker, but couldn't get into the United States.

Bin Laden hasn't been seen on video since October of 2004. This message, like other recent ones that have been released, was audio only.

In this message, bin Laden makes no threats. But he does offer a vague suggestion that one day there might even be peace between the U.S. and the Muslim world.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: Straight ahead on LIVE FROM, on the alert.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): ... in the rooms are air locked. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Sanjay Gupta takes us to ground zero in the battle to protect us from the deadly virus. Our cameras are the first allowed inside. That's all next on LIVE FROM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: A horse barn is coming down in Michigan, which wouldn't necessarily be news if it wasn't part of a weeklong search for Jimmy Hoffa. A demolition company is hard at work on the Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford. Federal agents are working on a tip that the former Teamster chief's remains -- or his remains, rather, are somewhere on that property. The farm was once owned by a Hoffa associate and is near where Hoffa vanished in 1975.

Well, overseas, it's no surprise to see planes at Turkey's biggest airport. But today, they were firefighting planes.

Now, eventually, they got the better of a huge blaze at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul.

CNN producer Kaya Heyse is there.

Kaya, what do we know?

KAYA HEYSE, CNN PRODUCER: Well, the fire's now under complete control. It has been extinguished. They are trying to cool down the area. Still planes are flying over and trying to -- trying to cool the area.

What we know is the cause of the fire now, it's said to be during some kind of welding operation that some sparks just blew out and burnt the place to the ground.

It's a very huge complex. About 20,000 square meters. Inside, there were booths ranging from textiles and leathers to various explosives and chemicals.

So after everything is cooled down, units are going to go in and do the damage assessment. By now, we really don't have any idea of the extent of the damage. But the parts of the hangar which we cannot see from this point are said to be completely destroyed. And so we expect the damage to be in the million dollar ranges.

Also, only three people got injured today in the first minutes of the fire when panic broke out. There were about 2,000 people at the start of the fire, but they had got evacuated just in a matter of a matter -- couple of minutes.

And the other sections of the airport, they were not affected. Flights were -- incoming and outgoing flights continued. And only one small runway was closed for a short period of time. But it -- the fire caused really major panic and concern in Istanbul.

PHILLIPS: Kaya Heyse, there in Istanbul, thank you so much.

We've got to get straight to the president of Mexico now. He's visiting a state today booming with Hispanic immigration. Texas, California? No, you may be surprised to hear Utah. Now let's listen to him now, live in Salt Lake City.

VICENTE FOX, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO: ... where those voters require that government serves the people. Nothing less than a fully democratic Mexico is demanded by its citizens. Nothing less than a fully democratic Mexico has been the guiding principle of our administration.

Over the past five years, the promotion of human rights has been a centerpiece of government policy. This policy upholds a huge rights culture in Mexico society and names, prosecuting all cases of human right abuses by government authorities.

Moreover, we have opened ourselves to international scrutiny. During my administration, for the first time, Mexico called for the establishment of an office of the United Nations high commissioner on human rights. And they have total open doors in every place in Mexico. In recognition last week, Mexico was elected to preside over the new United Nations Human Rights Council.

PHILLIPS: Our Ed Lavandera is in Salt Lake City, where President Vicente Fox is more about dollars and cents than broken borders.

Ed, we've heard him taking a lot of credit for Mexico, in his words, being in better shape since he has taken office. But obviously, when you have a lot of his men and women coming to the United States for a better life, you tend to question that.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is -- and I think as he progresses into the speech, you will hear a little bit about that, where President Fox acknowledges that. And he has a couple of times already. In fact, once this morning, at a breakfast, saying that, you know, part of this immigration problem is also a problem in his own home country, and Mexico needs to do a better job of creating economic opportunities and jobs for his Mexican countrymen. So, in fact that they don't feel the need to have to migrate north.

So perhaps President Fox will get into that as he continues into the speech, which is clearly what many of these people here, some 50 protesters who have shown up here at the state capital, want to hear. In fact, some of the chants that were lobbied at President Fox as he walked in here just a short while ago were saying, "Fox needs to fix Mexico." So President Fox will make that -- will make that point eventually.

But also one of the other things he's been talking about over the last couple of hours is the need to realize that, in his words, that this immigration problem in the U.S. isn't just a U.S. problem, that Mexico needs to be involved in helping fix that problem, as well, because as he sees it, just one country alone can't solve this. And in his words, he said this morning at a breakfast meeting, that Mexico wants to be part of the solution, not part of the problem -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: And Utah's such a conservative state. Does he have a lot of political allies there?

LAVANDERA: Well, you know, that's been kind of the interesting thing about this week, President Fox's visit here to Utah. Clearly, one of the most conservative states in the country.

But there's a booming Hispanic country here. It has tripled since 1990, making up a little more than 10 percent of the population. That's not likely to change any time soon. Perhaps the politicians in the state are realizing that.

And politically speaking, President Fox has some friends here. He was invited here by the governor, John Huntsman, a Republican, to this -- to make this visit here. And Huntsman and other western governors in this association have one -- one of their platforms they have and one of their ideas they have is actually very much in line with what President Fox would like to see, this idea of supporting a guest worker program. They don't agree on everything, but President Fox does have some friends here.

PHILLIPS: Ed Lavandera, Salt Lake City, Utah. We're going to follow, of course, Vicente Fox's travels as he heads to Seattle, Washington, as well.

The news keeps coming. We'll keep bringing it to you. More LIVE FROM after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Experts are stumped. Bird flu has killed six, possibly seven members of one family in northern Indonesia, and doctors have no idea how they got it. There's no visible link to any sick animals. Could they have infected one another? The World Health Organization's investigating.

A spokesperson says tests show the virus did not mutate, which would make it easier to spread and would signal a dangerous development.

So far, no sign of the virus in birds or humans of this country. Scientists, though, say it's only a matter of time, and they intend to be ready.

Our senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has the inside story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): Take a look at these birds. They are swans. And they are dying. The strain of avian flu known as H5N1 has infected their bodies and their brains. They cannot walk. They cannot even hold their heads up.

These birds are not in the United States. But many people in this country are holding their breath, waiting. Waiting for the birds and for the virus that has traveled much of the globe to arrive here.

Welcome to ground zero for bird flu. If -- scratch that -- when H5N1 is first found in the United States, it will likely be in a dead bird, and it will likely be confirmed right here. Here, they have been preparing for that moment for nearly 10 years.

DR. LARRY GRANGER, USDA NATIONAL VETERINARY SERVICES LABS: Whether or not this is H5N1 is an question that needs to be answered. This is where that question would be answered.

GUPTA (on camera): We've made our way to Ames, Iowa. This is one the biggest laboratories around. And if there are bird flu samples, there's a good chance they'll actually end up here to be confirmed.

(voice-over) Luckily, we are not there yet. So the USDA opened their doors to CNN for the first time. Cameras have never been allowed into this unassuming building. A swipe card and a fingerprint just to get through the door.

(on camera) I've got all my garb on now. These are just overalls, gloves, my booties down here, obviously, safety glasses back up here and a hair net. The whole goal, I think, more than anything else is to protect me from the chickens.

And these chickens are not hot, meaning they don't have highly pathogenic avian influenza. But if they did, I'd probably have to take off all my clothes. I'd have to put on some scrubs, be a little more sophisticated in my protection and probably have to take a shower on my way out.

We might not even be able to get some of the images that we're getting right now because the camera could be a potential problem, as well.

(voice-over) The protective gear makes me feel at least a little more safe. The doors and the rooms are air-locked. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.

(on camera) OK, this is the room that I've been talking about. This is the room where the actual chickens are located. Let me show you this. These are some of the chickens that are probably going to have some of the first cases of avian flu in the country. If there's a case of avian flu, those chickens may very well end up here.

I want to give you a sense of what really happens up to a chicken that has avian flu. A lot of people ask me about this. What typically happens is the chicken may develop sinusitis, which is inflammation of the sinuses. And then they develop swelling of the head and of the neck. It actually grows to several times its size.

Then eventually the limbs -- you see there -- and the claws, they're yellow now, but they'll actually turn blue from lack of oxygen. Eventually, the lungs will fail, and that's what will kill the chicken.

And I'll tell you what the most striking thing is, to me, when I heard this, is that entire process that I just described could take place anywhere from 14 hours to 7 days. These chickens can go from being perfectly healthy to dead in a very short amount of time.

And that's why we're here today, to try to figure out exactly what happens when bird flu infects these bird. And more importantly, what happens when that virus becomes something that is spread among humans.

(on camera) And so the fight has begun. Lab workers hurriedly preparing. Here, they use chicken eggs with nine-day-old embryos. Yes, that is a living embryo.

They showed me how to drill a hole in the top of the egg. They've been injected with the virus. The goal, to let the virus multiply so they can identify H5N1 and fight it even better.

Right now the virus is still primarily located in birds. Here in Ames, Iowa, they are hoping with all of their work, it stays that way.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, Ames, Iowa.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PHILLIPS: Well, it seems like every week we hear about information being stolen off a personal computer. So now PC makers are thinking up new ways to protect against data theft.

Susan Lisovicz is live from the New York Stock Exchange with that story.

You want more preventive maintenance, though. We should have been thinking about this a long time ago, Susan.

SUSAN LISOVICZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. This is something we see all the time, that industry is playing catch-up to the criminals.

But PC makers are fighting back. That's the good news. Many are now embedding their computers with security technology to guard against the theft as opposed to software that you buy.

Over the past year, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and others have introduced computers with special security chips, fingerprint scanners and even self-destructing hard drives.

Some Dell laptops, for instance, have special anti-theft software, from Absolute Software Corporation. If a computer is stolen, the owner of the laptop can call and report the theft. The next time the computer connects to the Internet it sends a message flagging its location to Absolute so the police can find it. The data, by the way, is encrypted. So theoretically, the criminals can't get that.

I'm going to throw it back to you, Kyra.

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