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Flash Floods Hit Houston; Two U.S. Troops Reportedly Kidnapped in Iraq; Secretary Rice Speaks Out About Possible North Korean Missile Test; U.N. May Take Up North Korean Missile Issue

Aired June 19, 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: Thanks for joining us, everyone. At the top of the hour right now.
Water is the big worry in Houston. As much as 10 1/2 inches of rain fell overnight and this morning, creating flash floods over much of the city. It's mainly roads but also some homes. Emergency crews have rescued about 500 people from the high water.

Bill White, the Houston mayor, is talking right now. Let's listen in.

BILL WHITE, MAYOR OF HOUSTON: ... getting off. The good news is that the heavy flooding was localized. You saw the weather pattern. There are some neighborhoods that got hit hard, but other neighborhoods are safe and dry.

So I still encourage people, employees, as we did this morning, if you're not an essential service, check with your employer. Employers, talk to your employees so that people don't put themselves in harm's way trying to get to work today if they don't need to.

With that, I'd like to turn it over to Judge Eckels.

JUDGE ROBERT ECKELS, HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS, JUDGE: Thank you, Mayor.

And again, following along with the mayor's comments, it has been a broad event across the community, but most of the emergency management offices have been responding -- all of them -- in the local communities, and municipalities in the city of Houston, the other cities in the region, the smaller emergency management offices beyond the city of Houston have been able to handle within their jurisdictions the event.

Flooding in Halls Bayou (ph), reporting out of flood banks (ph) and some conditions in those areas have caused some flooding. Many other bayous in the region are at the top of bank, bank full but they are beginning to recede. And depending upon the weather patterns, we expect that those would be ready and back to capacity in the next 12 hours or so.

Again, as the mayor mentioned, we have had reports of extensive flooding in some of the northeast portions of Harris County due to the intense rainfall and the channels in those areas. But we'd point out that there are thousands of people who did not flood this time. That is hard to make the story (ph). That is because of improvements that have been made in this community through storm water detention basins, buyouts and channel improvements.

We'll continue to monitor the situation from Harris County and our management office and provide support to areas in the region. We have had conversations with the governor's emergency management division, and they are preparing to station facilities here if needed to help evacuate folks in the event of a continued rain. And again, that depends upon the rainfall later this afternoon.

I guess we move over to the emergency management preparation. Gloria Roland (ph) from -- what's our next step?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take questions. Some of those can be directed to emergency management personnel.

ECKELS: Sure.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mayor, have you at this point had any calls for boat rescues? We saw some boats driving around. Have you been doing boat rescues that you know of?

WHITE: I'll check with that. I haven't had the report of boat rescues, and I did see airborne at least one of our boats that was mobilized. We have 11 Houston fire department boats that are mobilized and ready to go, but I haven't had a report for the need. I know they've been mobilized, but I don't know the number of rescues that they've done, is the answer to that question. I did see some situations where people looked like they were in the need of rescuing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What part of town is it worst at this point, Mayor?

WHITE: Well, you know, if anybody -- anybody -- if there is water in anybody's house, that's pretty bad for that person. So I'm not minimizing any damage. But, obviously that area around -- in southeast Houston, you had block after block after block flooded. And water wasn't just up to the driveway, but it was invading the structure. And that's what looked the worse.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mayor, were you surprised at the intensity of the flooding damage thus far that's been reported?

WHITE: Well, we live in Houston, Texas, and you can't be surprised at flooding in Houston. As judge pointed out, we put in a lot of flooding and drainage improvements, and we have a lot in progress right now. The Harris County flood control district has major projects under way in two of our bayou systems. These will take awhile, but it's taken awhile for us to build up this environment.

I'm so pleased of the work that the city of Houston has done in tightening the requirements on developers who are building new subdivisions to reduce flooding. Some of the flooding projects we put in in the northwest, for example, that helped that Acres Home (ph) area, I think we probably saw some of the results of those flooding projects today. The detention that's going in off Bray's Bayou, I think that type of project can help. But when you have this much rain in a short period of time at a place that's near sea level, then you still have some real risk.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you had additional emergency responders on the streets that you've called in (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

WHITE: Yes -- I mean not extra outside the region, but I'll tell you what. At the hack (ph) center is bustling right now. And the fire and EMS personnel are working very hard. Our police are deployed, our people's property is protected.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The county -- in the county, the commissioners' precincts have all been activated, and they're out there doing -- particular in southeast Commissioner Garcia, the southeast part of the community, as well as the folks up in the Jersey Village area watching the White Oak Bayou (ph) very closely at this time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What sort of assistance is the state sending, calling on the state (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mike, we just got off the conference call with the state. And why don't you tell us exactly what the state resources are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We just got off the conference call with the state at 11 a.m. We have requested no assets at this time, nor have we received any request for assistance from any of the jurisdictions. Everybody is keeping up with the emergencies as they exist.

What the state does -- this is the division of emergency management -- has put on standby, are swift water rescue teams from Texas Task Force One and also air/ground coordination teams. Assisting with that would be high-water rescue vehicles if we need them, National Guard-type trucks. And if the weather patterns indicate that we may need to staff up for that, then we certainly are prepared to do so.

KAGAN: We're following a live news conference now with the mayor of Houston, Bill White, who was just speaking a few seconds, and the rest of his staff talking about, of course, water, the huge worry right now in Houston, Texas. As you can see by these pictures via one of our affiliates, KTRC, out of Houston.

As much as 10 1/2 inches of rain fell overnight and this morning. You can see flash floods over much of the city, the back up on the roads. You can see a lot of people had to evacuate from their homes. We're told emergency crews have rescued about 500 people from the high water now.

These pictures coming from our other affiliate, KT -- KTRX, out of Houston.

Jacqui Jeras also monitoring all the weather conditions for us right now.

Jacqui, what can you tell us? Are they going to get a break, or have they already sort of gotten a break at this point?

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, they're getting it right now, basically, Kyra. The water is starting to recede now, so we're getting some reports of that. But it's going to take awhile for all that water to go on down and channel it out. And eventually, it's all going to be going out into the Gulf of Mexico.

There you see our live Doppler radar picture here. There is the Houston metro area. This is the south loop area right there where the worst of the flooding had occurred. So maybe just a couple of sprinkles going on here as all of this wet weather is pushing on down to the south.

So we're looking at maybe a good six hours-plus of dryer weather into the Houston area. But, unfortunately, I think we're going to start to see some more rain pull into that area later on tonight.

You can see south on 45, around Texas City, down towards Galveston, still getting some wet weather here. Maybe an additional half of inch to an inch of rain here.

Now all that weather is pulling offshore. Now take a look at what's happening here into eastern Texas. This is southwestern parts of Louisiana. This is all pulling on shore. What's going on here is we have an upper level area of low pressure, as we call it, and it's sitting right in between the two and just spinning here.

Usually when we have a low pressure system, it pushes eastward. Right? With the westerly winds pushing it. But the winds are very, very light in this area, so it's actually what we call retrograded. This thing is going to be moving backwards.

So this on shore flow that you get now into southwestern Louisiana is going to be moving back towards the Houston area, we think, later on tonight. So we could have another big event going on here in the late evening, through the overnight hours, into early tomorrow morning.

So, unfortunately, those rainfall totals could be extremely hefty, possibly even rivaling what we saw here last night in the early morning hours for today.

This is Doppler radar. This is an estimate of the rainfall that we've seen from this storm. There you can see the worst of it. In this purple area, Kyra, tha's a good 10-plus inches of rain.

One possible good note out of all of this, Kyra, is that we think the worst of the wet weather tonight could possibly be a little bit farther to the south and west.

PHILLIPS: All right, Jacqui. We'll stay on top of this story, of course, throughout the day, keep checking with you. Thank you so much. We also want to let our viewers know we're monitoring a live event right now with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and also the Spanish minister of foreign affairs in cooperation. Q&A should take place shortly. And we are waiting to see if Condoleezza Rice talks about the missile test that emerged last week out of North Korea, and also if she has anything to say about the soldiers that are missing in Iraq. We'll take that Q&A live as soon as it happens.

Well, it's more intense, more urgent by the hour, the search from the air, on the ground, thousands of U.S. soldiers looking for two of their own in one of the most hostile parts of Iraq.

A group linked to al Qaeda claims to be holding the missing G.I.'s, but there's no proof yet.

CNN's Arwa Damon brings us up to date.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On Sunday the Department of Defense released the names of two U.S. soldiers who have been missing in Iraq since their checkpoint came under attack Friday night. Private First Class Thomas Tucker, 25 years old, and 23-year-old Private First Class Kristian Menchaca.

Their checkpoint came under attack south of Baghdad in an area known as the Triangle of Death. U.S. forces nearby reported hearing gunfire and an explosion. They've called quick reaction forces. When those forces arrived on the scene they found one soldier dead and the other two missing.

Eyewitnesses have told the Iraqi police that they saw four or five suspected insurgents putting these two soldiers into a vehicle and driving them away from the scene.

Over the weekend the Pentagon has said that they found a vehicle with blood stains and boot prints, footprints, leading away from it. Those footprints are believed to match the boots worn by U.S. forces here.

Now the U.S. military has launched a massive operation, sparing no cost to find its two soldiers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAJ. GEN. WILLIAM CALDWELL, SPOKESMAN, COALITION FORCES IN IRAQ: Over 8,000 U.S. military and Iraqi army and police are working together, conducting an intensive search (ph) operation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Condoleezza Rice now talking about that missile test out of North Korea. Let's listen in.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, and we are working very closely with our allies. I, over the weekend in the last few days, have had several conversations with regional allies.

Indeed, Foreign Minister Moratinos and I talked about the North Korean situation. We regard it as an abrogation of obligations that North Korea undertook in the moratorium that they signed onto in 1999, that they reiterated in 2002. That is clearly a part of the framework agreement that was signed in September of this past year between the six parties. And so it would be a very serious matter and, indeed, a provocative act, should North Korea decide to launch that missile.

We will obviously consult on next steps, but I can assure everyone that it would be taken with utmost seriousness. I think it is already taken with utmost seriousness by regional states and by the world, because it would, once again, show North Korea determined to deepen its isolation, determined not to take a path that is a path of compromise and a path of peace, but, rather, instead, to once again saber rattle. And so from our point of view it would be a very serious matter indeed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hello. Madam Secretary -- this is a question actually for both of you. But starting with Secretary Rice. Since this government was selected and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the relations between our two countries is more intense than we saw before. In Spain we see proof of that the fact that our president has never been invited to the United States to meet with President Bush.

Since the relationships seem to be much more smooth now, I wonder if that was a topic in your discussion today. Or do you have any plans for that in the future?

RICE: Well, we -- obviously are here working together. We're determined to look forward. There is no secret; we had our disagreements in the past. But I am impressed with the degree to which the foreign minister came prepared to talk about the future agenda, including how to support the democratically elected government of Iraq.

After all, this is now a government that has been elected by more than 12 million Iraqis. It's a national unity government. It's a government that the entire international community ought to be prepared and ready to get behind and push to success. And that's the attitude that I saw expressed by the foreign minister, and as I said, I expect to be visiting Madrid fairly soon, so let's take it from there.

MIGUEL ANGEL MORATINOS, SPANISH FOREIGN MINISTER: Yes. (speaking foreign language)

PHILLIPS: We'll continue to monitor -- monitor, rather, a live event with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Spanish minister of foreign affairs in cooperation. We wanted to hear what she had to say about North Korea, because North Korea appears to be close to testing a missile that could reach the U.S. And that's prompting a lot of consultations at the United Nations right now.

CNN senior U.N. correspondent Richard Roth has more details. You heard what she said, obviously saying it would be a pretty provocative act if North Korea decided to launch that missile -- Richard.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Secretary Rice's U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, had a meeting with his Japanese counterpart here at the United Nations. And the U.S. has been talking to other key Security Council members about the nature of a response diplomatically, should there be some type of missile launch.

U.S. Ambassador Bolton saying consultations have taken place. The U.S. has talked to the French, the British and others to find out what might be some options.

John Bolton telling the press it all may depend on, certainly, if there's a launch and what's under the nose cone, what type of missile are we talking about.

The United Nations Security Council, though, would be likely deadlocked on any significant action, because China in the past has not been interested in having the council move against North Korea, which is an ally of Beijing -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: So, if that missile -- missile test does happen, what kind of reaction could we expect not only from the United Nations, but U.S. military?

ROTH: Well, the U.S. military -- I think everything is always on the table. Certainly, a missile that would in some way get much closer to the United States than ever before would certainly raise stakes considerably. Japan would certainly want to militarize in some way, and China, Japan, the whole South Korean peninsula area, tensions would be hitting new heights. But so far, there is no launch.

PHILLIPS: Richard -- Richard, thank you. We want to get right back to Condoleezza Rice again. She's talking about those missing soldiers in Iraq.

RICE: ... discuss matters when they arise, but I'm not going to get into that issue. I will, on the matter of our missing soldiers, the -- this is obviously a matter of great, great concern to all of us. And the American military has made very clear that they are going to do everything possible -- I think they have said air, land and sea -- to try and find them. And obviously their safe return is something that every one will work for, and their safe return is something that everyone will pray for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Madam Secretary, have you talked with Mr. Moratinos about the future of the military base in Guantanamo, the prison and military base?

RICE: We actually did not talk about this.

PHILLIPS: Condoleezza Rice also responding to the other top story of the day, and that's those two soldiers that are missing in Iraq. We're going to talk with our Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Also retired Brigadier General David Grange. He actually efforted -- made an effort toward those type of rescue missions -- missions, rather, in Vietnam. We'll get his first-hand experience.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICE: This is obviously a matter of great, great concern to all of us, and the American military has made very clear that they are going to do everything possible -- I think they've said air, land and sea -- to try and find them. And obviously their safe return is something that everyone will work for, and their safe return is something that everyone will pray for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILLIPS: Manning a checkpoint in the Triangle of Death, one of the most dangerous jobs for any soldier anywhere. And this story proves it.

Let's get more from CNN's Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

What more do we know from your end, Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, as the secretary of state says, military doing everything it can. And that now includes a search indeed by 8,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops throughout this area, trying to find these two men who have been missing since Friday night when they came under attack.

They have now identified who these men are. They are Private First Class Kristian Menchaca, 23 years old, of Houston, Texas. And Private First Class Thomas Lowell Tucker. You see him here, 25 years old, of Madras, Oregon. Under attack Friday night at a checkpoint near Yusufiya south of Baghdad, an area, indeed, known as the Triangle of Death, an insurgent stronghold.

Military officials are still trying to piece together, of course, what exactly happened, what went wrong. But they do have some initial assessment of the situation.

They have interviewed some Iraqi farmers in the area who have told them that they saw seven, eight, maybe nine insurgents taking the two men away at some point. Later, a truck was found abandoned. It had blood in it, sources have confirmed to us. All of this, officials say, leading them to believe at this point that it was a coordinated and well-planned attack against U.S. troops, that they had this in mind. Maybe, just maybe, they had been watching U.S. troops, seeing how they operate.

It is believed again, but not certain, that perhaps the insurgents staged some sort of diversionary attack that drew other forces away, and then left these three troops on their own. Because of course, especially in this violent area of Iraq, you normally would not see three U.S. soldiers operating on their own. There would be more vehicles, more fire power, more manpower with them. So something happened here. The assessment is it was some sort of very well- planned, coordinated attack.

And General Caldwell earlier today in Baghdad making it very clear, the hunt, search, goes on and that the military says they will not stop until they find these men -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Barbara Starr from the Pentagon, thanks so much.

We've been talking about the boots on the ground and on the hunt, but the search could hinge on that one key piece of intelligence. Let's bring our military analyst, retired Army Brigadier General David Grange, a man who knows first-hand what it takes to pull off one of those searches.

And I want to get to the soldiers and what's happening right now, General. But if we could just back up for a minute and talk about those three American POWs that were captured in Macedonia -- Macedonia. You were in charge of that rescue effort. How do you even begin to put together a rescue plan like that?

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Well, first of all, the three individuals that we had captured in Macedonia, that were taken into Serbia, they were captured by Serb Special Forces. I was a division commander, and of course, there's many different commanders between me and these soldiers, but I knew two of them fairly well.

What happens is you immediately send out search and rescue, immediately, air and ground in this case, try to seal off the area to prohibit the -- in this case, the Serbian Special Forces from taking your people away to another place. And so it's -- all effort goes to this particular mission. I can't think of a mission that the military performs more -- with more priority than this.

PHILLIPS: Now you say they were captured by Serb Special Forces. Now we're looking at these two soldiers missing in Iraq. We're not quite sure all the details surrounding the situation, but let's say they've been kidnapped by insurgents.

Dealing with these insurgents in Iraq, versus dealing with what you dealt with, these Serb Special Forces, do you see a big difference in tactics, mentality, objective?

GRANGE: Well, first of all, the political objective, the propaganda objective, is the same for all of them. I mean, to capture someone alive, you get more psychological impact than if you killed people. Or just attack the site and then left, saying that you can reach someone, reach out and touch someone. So capturing is a big deal to the enemy. And so regardless of who did this, that motive is the same.

Now, it could be, though, also, besides the psychological impact is, is it for ran some, is it for showing that, hey, we're still alive and well and just because you got our leader, we can still strike. It could be some of that involved here. And we again, at least we don't know -- the military may know -- who actually conducted the operation.

PHILLIPS: These two young soldiers, 23, 25 years old, what kind of training have they had? I mean, boy, you already have a lot of hands-on training, both physically and mentally, you know, being in Iraq as it is. But their chances of survival, dealing with the situation, trying to negotiate. What are their chances at that age, in looking at their experience?

GRANGE: Well, the chances for our soldiers is very -- is very high. We can't get into detail of what level of training they went through, because then the enemy would use that against them right now. So we better just leave that right where it is.

PHILLIPS: Sorry. I lost contact for you for a second there. We don't want to talk about the tactics with regard to survival. Is that what you said, General?

GRANGE: Yes. We don't want to -- yes, we don't want to talk about the level of training they received, because then the enemy would use that against them. So we'll just leave that where it is.

PHILLIPS: Got it. I missed the last part of that. I apologize.

So, then all assets have been brought in on this. They're talking even about divers. You've got air assets. You've got troops on the ground. You've got divers. When you start hearing about divers, that makes you a little nervous because you're thinking, OK, well, that means they could be looking for bodies in the water. But at this point, you've just have got to search out all your options. Right?

GRANGE: Yes. You have to search out all your options. And you're quite familiar with the different specialties that our military has to do that.

I would not think that that would happen, that they would kill these soldiers, and then leave them, for instance, in a river or something like that. They have more payoff by keeping them alive.

And my experience -- I've had five soldiers missing in action, MIA. And we got back four of those five. And one -- one of the ones from Vietnam we still don't know about. But four of the five we got back.

PHILLIPS: Final question, these men that were captured in Macedonia, and you put -- had forces in full force trying to find them, this was eventually negotiated through Jesse Jackson. Right? When they were released?

With regard to these two men in Iraq, do you think negotiations are even possible, considering the U.S. doesn't negotiate with insurgents, if indeed that's who has these men?

GRANGE: Well, the U.S. doesn't negotiate with the terrorists. They would do some negotiation with, let's say, Iraqi insurgents that are just -- that are fighting against, let's say, the Iraqi government. It depends on the entity.

But I think that there's a lot of behind the scenes activities going on right now with -- working with Iraqi indigenous personnel, using many means to get these soldiers back. So, again, every means that you can imagine, all agencies that you can imagine, are working this issue right now.

PHILLIPS: General David Grange, thanks a lot for your time.

GRANGE: My pleasure.

Well, a couple of mason jars and a paint can. How did al Qaeda plan to use such simple objects to turn New York City subways into death traps? Chilling details straight ahead on LIVE FROM.

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