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CNN Live Today

Fuel for Thought; Killing Spree in Iraq; Deadly Wildfires in Texas

Aired March 14, 2006 - 11:00   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: First, in Alexandria, Virginia, the judge in the Zacarias Moussaoui sentencing trial is questioning seven witnesses who were coached by a government attorney. The judge recessed the trial yesterday after she found out the attorney disclosed trial information to the witnesses.
The attorney is Carla Martin. She was ordered to return to court tomorrow morning after telling the judge she hasn't been able to line up her own lawyer yet.

The hearing could determine whether Moussaoui gets the death penalty.

President Bush is on a quick trip to upstate New York to push his embattled Medicare prescription drug plan. A short time from now, he drops in on the senior center near Rochester. While the White House calls the program a success, critics say many elder elderly people are bewildered by all of the coverage plans being offered.

A second autopsy rules out natural disease in the death of a teenager who died at a Florida boot camp after a beating that was caught on surveillance tape. That word from a coroner hired by the boy's family. The initial autopsy determined that Martin Lee Anderson died from complications of sickle cell trait. State officials are still investigating Anderson's death.

Well, good morning, and welcome to CNN LIVE TODAY. It is Tuesday morning.

I'm Daryn Kagan at CNN Center in Atlanta.

First up, gas prices. You've got to ask yourself, what's going on here? Oil prices are down, but you're paying more at the pump? How does that work? In fact, about a dime more a gallon than just two weeks ago.

With that backdrop, senators wants answers this hour from big oil executives. Most of the companies tanked up on huge, if not record, profits in 2005.

Andrea Koppel is in Washington this morning.

Andrea, what -- who are the players we're looking forward to hear from today?

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPT. CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Well, there are two panels, the people that you're looking there -- were looking there, some of the various professors, lawyers, and even the state attorney general from Iowa, I believe it is, who had actually sued some of the oil executives. But the people that we're really going to be watching for and the one that -- the ones that senators really want to grill are the presidents and CEOs from some of our country's biggest oil and gas producers. We're talking about Shell, BP America, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Valero Energy Corporation -- Daryn.

KAGAN: You know, we watch these hearings time and time again. It just seems like a cycle. Is there anything that's going to happen for the consumer here, Andrea?

KOPPEL: Oh, gosh, you know, as you mentioned there, I mean, gas and oil prices have just continued to rise. In the last two weeks, senators were saying they've risen 11 cents a gallon. And, quite frankly, the chairman of the Judiciary committee, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has introduced -- well, he's really floating a bill that would call the oil and gas companies to task, it would try to restrict the number of mergers that have taken place in the last decade, Daryn.

We're talking about 2,600 mergers that have happened. There are now five major oil and gas companies.

So, you know, those are some pretty tough customers to come up against, and you can bet that they're going to be fighting this tooth and nail. So I think we can expect a few sparks to be flying this afternoon.

KAGAN: All right. Andrea, thank you.

Andrea Koppel, live in Washington, D.C.

Now to Annapolis, Maryland. We're watching some pictures of a runaway barge. As you can see, it kind of got stuck on a bridge there.

State police closing Route 50 and the Route 450 bridge that's over the Severn River because of that barge that is up against the bridge. The State Highway Administration in Maryland says it's possible the barge could hit the bridge within minutes, which it appears that it has done. They're not really sure how that barge got loose or where it came from.

We'll continue to watch those pictures and get more information as that becomes available.

Meanwhile, we're going to keep it back on gas prices. Wondering what is down the road for gas prices. The summer driving season, for one thing, a time when prices usually go up even more.

Our business correspondent, Susan Lisovicz, is in New York.

(BUSINESS REPORT)

KAGAN: Want to update this breaking news story we're following from Annapolis, Maryland, a runaway barge. As the camera zooms in -- well, it just zoomed past the barge, but because the barge is up against this bridge -- and this is Route 50 and Route 450 -- they've had to close the bridge, because I don't think they're sure about the integrity of the bridge with the barge up against it.

This barge is carrying rock, and they don't know where it came from or who it belongs to. But they've been watching it for a while. And as it approached the bridge, they had to make the decision to close the bridge. So now traffic in Annapolis, Maryland, on Route 50 coming to a standstill.

Getting back to an oil story, braving incredibly cold weather, crews in Alaska are making slow but steady progress in cleaning up the biggest oil spill, the biggest ever, on Alaska's North Slope. So far, they've scooped up a little less than a quarter of the spill. It's believed that about 267,000 gallons of oil leaked out of a ruptured transit line.

That leak was discovered 12 days ago. And oil has now seeped into nearly two acres of tundra. Now, the spill is major. It's much smaller than the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, when 11 million gallons of oil spilled into Prince William Sound. The workers there facing 40-degree-below temperatures in that cleanup effort.

On to Iraq now, the war. Iraq seemed a little -- to unravel a little more today with what appears to be a vigilante-style killing spree. Police say they have found more than 80 bodies since Monday morning. Many victims are bound and shot in the head. Some are buried in shallow graves, others dangle from lampposts. Some reportedly bear notes reading "Trader."

Let's talk to our international correspondent, Nic Robertson, live from Baghdad.

Nic, what can you tell us more about this discovery of bodies over the last 30 or so hours?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, the total sense that 86 bodies discovered over the -- since Monday morning, and that total has really grown through today.

Beginning in the morning, in the west of Baghdad, in a Sunni neighborhood, 15 bodies were found in the back of a pickup truck. According to police, they had all been strangled. Then we had a report that to two bodies were found in the south of the city. They had been shot in the head.

And then, that's when the numbers really began to grow. We had a report from police in the east of Baghdad in a Shia neighborhood. Discovered in a shallow grave, they told us, were seven bodies. That went up to 14, went up to 21. That total in that shallow grave in the east of Baghdad now stands at 29 bodies discovered. Police say they had their hands tied, they had blindfolds on. Some had masking tapes over their mouths. They had all been shot in the head, according to police. And some of them, the police say, appeared to show signs of torture.

It appears to be sectarian killing. The government isn't saying that. When I talked to Iraq's prime minister yesterday, Ibrahim al- Jaafari, I asked him if the death toll due to the sectarian violence was now outpacing the insurgent violence.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IBRAHIM AL-JAAFARI, INTERIM IRAQI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): If you're asking if we are in the midst of a civil war or not, of course a civil war is the most dangerous thing for a country to go through, like this happened in America during the times of Abraham Lincoln in 1861. That we are now in a civil war? There is the risk of it. There has been an escalation of violence, but we are not in a civil war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: Now, the police say they're investigating these killings. But with only about two dozen police in the city of Baghdad dedicated to investigating killings, they say they're just unable to cope with the number of killings to find out exactly who was responsible. In some cases, to find out, indeed, who the bodies -- who the bodies are, who was killed -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic, Saddam Hussein's trial about to get under way again. What are you watching for there?

ROBERTSON: I think what we're going to see, Saddam Hussein's half-brother, Barzan al-Tikriti, he will be questioned by the judge. If that goes quickly, we may see Saddam Hussein being questioned by the judge tomorrow.

This is a process that over the last couple of days -- on Monday, Saddam Hussein's chief judge admitted that he had signed the death warrants for 148 people put on trial in front of him. He said that they all had signed confessions.

It was simply a case, he said, they belonged to a political party affiliated with Iran. The country was at war with Iran, and it was quite right that these sentences had been passed down. They were all legitimate, he said.

We can expect to see the judge follow up this line of tough questioning with Saddam Hussein's half-brother, possibly Saddam Hussein, tomorrow -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Nic Robertson live in Baghdad.

Nic, thank you.

Here in the U.S., fire and storms. We have weather for you. Also, we'll breach the sanctity of the cubical and ask, what irks you at the office? We're going to hang out at the water cooler.

And one hump or two? We're going camel shopping. These desert workhorses aren't just for travel nowadays.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Once again, we're watching this story unfold. That on the left part of your screen, that's a barge, a runaway barge carrying rock. Other than that, authorities don't know a lot about it. They don't who it belongs to or where it came from.

They do know nobody's on board. But once it got away today, it came down and it ran into this bridge. This is Annapolis, Maryland, Route 50 and the Route 450 bridge. And as it did and hit the pilings there, they made the decision, authorities did, to close it to traffic.

So you can see officials are kind of going over the part of the bridge, looking over to get a look at the bridge. They're not really sure about the safety there, and that's why they made the decision to close it.

Meanwhile, that means on the back side of the bridge, traffic on Route 50 in Annapolis, Maryland, backing up, and a big problem today.

Let's move on to Texas. Miles after mile of scorched earth, that is the scene along the panhandle and south plains, where wildfires have burned more than 1,000 square miles. Firefighters say they're making some progress battling the blazes, but it is tempered by a rise in the death toll. Authorities blame the fires for 11 deaths.

Our Ed Lavandera has more from Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Some people like to say that the ground in this part of the Texas panhandle is as hard and flat as a skillet. And this is what it looks like when the heat of the wildfires is turned on the ground here.

This portion of this field has been charred by the wildfire. It butts up right against a field that hasn't been burned. So you can see the contrast of what firefighters have been battling here as these wildfires quickly move through many of the fields and the wide open spaces of the Texas panhandle.

And authorities hear say that only about 50 percent of the wildfires have been contained so far. Fortunately, much of this is burning in remote areas that aren't near populated areas. So the main concern is protecting the small towns that dot the Texas panhandle and making sure that those towns and the residents who live there are safe. But authorities have forced the evacuation of about 2,000 people in seven counties, have allowed those people to come back home. The worst appears to be over for now. The winds have died down, so they're hoping they get a little bit of a respite and be able to continue battling some of the flames that are still raging throughout portions of the Texas panhandle today.

But, of course, the concern will be in the coming days, where the winds are expected to pick back up, lower humidity. And they say that even though these fields might already look like they've been burned, that any of these fields can re-ignite and cause more problems for the firefighters that are already exhausted on the ground here.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, near Groom, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: Meanwhile, people in the Midwest trying to figure out where to go from here after a weekend assault by deadly tornadoes, powerful thunderstorms and hail. Early reports show more than 100 tornadoes touched down across five states from Oklahoma to Illinois. Ten people were killed. Nine of those deaths were in Missouri.

One person died in Indiana. Parts of the states were inundated with heavy rain, high water and flooding. Three southern Indiana counties remain under a state of emergency due to flooding.

Let's go ahead and check in with Chad Myers. He's keeping an eye on the entire country.

Chad, good morning.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Daryn.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: Thank you so much.

Let's get back to the story in Annapolis, Maryland. This barge, as you can see if you look at these live pictures here, ran into this bridge in Annapolis.

Right now we have on the phone with us -- tell me again who we have.

Roy Taylor.

ROY TAYLOR, WBAL HELICOPTER PILOT: Yes. Hello. Can you hear us?

KAGAN: I can me hear you, Roy. What's going on with this runaway barge?

All right. Well, we're flying over the barge. This is Route 50, which goes between the Eastern Shore and Washington, D.C., in Maryland. And it appears that this barge has broken away from its mooring, which is over the Severn River. Now, this is a major thoroughfare for anybody traveling between Washington, D.C. and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. And they've shut the bridge down in both directions because they're concerned about damage done to the Route 50 bridge from this barge breaking.

OK, we've got you you in site.

And if you're wondering what's going on here, there are several news helicopters here. We're in the NBC News helicopter here out of Baltimore.

KAGAN: Well, keep your eye on the other helicopters before you keep your eye on the barge. Don't...

TAYLOR: If you hear me (INAUDIBLE), it's because I'm talking to them as well.

KAGAN: That's fine.

TAYLOR: But they have a construction analysis that is -- a bridge inspector that's been inspecting the bridge to find out if there's any damage. Another issue is the winds are just really blowing here in Maryland today from a frontal system that we've had going through here. So they've got to get a tug somehow up here to the barge to hook up to it to remove it from the bridge so they can secure it. And because of the winds, the water is rather shallow where the barge is at right now.

So we really don't know how long Route 50 is going to be shut down. But it's going to be obviously quite some time. There's (INAUDIBLE) in Maryland, especially around the Annapolis area.

KAGAN: That sounds like some slow-going to be sure. We were seeing -- we've seen a chance to see both sides of the bridge and traffic backed up.

You're saying this is a main thoroughfare for folks from Annapolis trying to get into Washington, D.C. Are there other ways, though, to do it?

TAYLOR: Well, there are some other ways, but those roads were not designed to handle the volume of traffic. And traffic is backed up for miles both eastbound and westbound at this location.

KAGAN: Oh.

TAYLOR: Plus, if you have people that are coming from Baltimore to try and get to the Eastern Shore, they normally end up utilizing this bridge because of the major highways, the way they're set up. So it's created a lot of issues.

They had the Department of Natural Resources on scene. It looks like they have a crew that just pretty much showed up, along with the Anne Arundel County Fire Department is here, Coast Guard's notified.

That's a crew boat that's trying work its way up there to it now to try and assess, you know, what type of damage is done. A lot of the homes that are being rebuilt on the Severn River here, they're doing everything they can to shore up the property and -- with bulkheads and riffraff. And this is just one means of, you know, trying to shore it up with rock.

And that's what was on the barge, as you can see, was rock. And they only had gotten a little bit of it off but were not working today because the weather here, even though it's very clear, it's extremely windy and rough.

KAGAN: Not a lot we know about this barge, except, as you're saying, there's rock on it and that there were no people on board.

TAYLOR: No people on board. Just rock.

We could see where they were working upstream about a quarter of a mile to a half a mile. We're not quite sure exactly how it was moored up there. But the way the winds are coming out of the northwest here, very strong, anywhere between 30 to 40 knots, and it just broke away from its mooring.

KAGAN: All right.

TAYLOR: Probably hit the bridge with decent speed, which is why they're so concerned.

KAGAN: Roy Taylor with WBAL, we'll let you keep an eye on the winds and on the other helicopters in the area. We'll get back to that.

And we're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Let's get the latest now on what's happening in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. The judge in the case very angry about possible prosecutorial misconduct.

Our Jeanne Meserve has been in the courtroom as this has been unfolding and is just out now.

Jeanne, what took place?

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, we haven't heard much yet from the central character in this part of the drama who is a Transportation Security Administration lawyer by the name of Carla Martin. She is the one who sent e-mails and transcripts to seven witnesses in violation of a court order against coaching.

She did appear in court today. She was put on the stand; however, she did not have legal representation. And so questioning of her was put off until she does have that representation. The judge asked her to try and get that this afternoon, if possible.

We did hear, however, from two of the seven witnesses to whom she sent those e-mails and transcripts. They were two FAA officials, Lynne Osmos (ph) and Claudia Mono (ph). Both of them said they had read the e-mails and had read -- excuse me -- all of the transcripts or portions of the transcripts that were sent to them.

They said, also, that they did not feel that reading these -- these communications had had any impact whatsoever on their testimony, that they were going to testify to the facts as they knew them in this case. However, under cross-examination by defense attorneys, they did concede that the e-mails had revealed to them certain areas which might be probed by either the prosecution and the defense in the course of either direct or cross-examination.

Now, the defense attorneys in this case have asked the judge to dismiss the death penalty as a sanction for this having taken place. They said today that the genie's out of the bottle, that the process has been infected. However, the prosecution argued strongly against such a dismissal, saying that that was too strong a sanction, that the truth had not been affected here.

No indication yet what the judge is going to do about this matter.

Back to you.

KAGAN: And with this lawyer, Carla Martin, the stakes not as high as the death penalty, of course. But she's in some hot water of her own potentially.

MESERVE: Yes, she is. She had -- had been working with some of these witnesses; however, she had been removed as their attorney. An attorney for the FAA was representing them. And she went about this apparently freelancing.

The prosecution didn't know about it until Friday night. When they found out, they told the judge, who, as you mentioned, was quite angry at that development -- Daryn.

KAGAN: All right. Jeanne Meserve in Alexandria, Virginia.

Jeanne, thank you.

Let's go ahead and take a look at what's happening right "Now in the News."

The family of Slobodan Milosevic will be allowed to bury the former Yugoslav president in Serbia. That is according to a statement on the Web site for Serbia's prime minister. Serbia also decided to drop the arrest warrant for Milosevic's wife, clearing the way for her to attend the funeral.

The Israeli military raided a West Bank prison in Jericho today, forcing dozens of inmates out. The Israelis are targeting six Palestinian prisoners linked to the killing of an Israeli cabinet minister. In response, angry Palestinian militants in Gaza attacked Western offices, and six people were kidnapped across the Palestinian territories, including one American. In Rhode Island, Coast Guard crews are back out this morning in Narragansett Bay. They are looking for three missing college students. The University of Rhode Island students disappeared on a rowboat yesterday. Police say all three went missing after a party.

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