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CNN Live Today

White House Shuffle; Duke Arrests; Women of Mystery

Aired April 19, 2006 - 10:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: We're out of time. Daryn's here.
BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: That's all. Yes, Daryn is holding it down, down at the CNN Center.

A lot coming up, Daryn.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely. We're starting with a little dance. Have you heard of the White House shuffle?

NGUYEN: Oh, man, have we heard.

MILES O'BRIEN: We've been watching it. Yes.

KAGAN: Yes, we're going to keep watching it, do a few of the steps ourselves.

Thank you, Betty. Thank you, Miles.

Let's start with that White House shuffle. Another top member of the Bush administration is calling it quits. This time it is the White House spokesman. Our White House Correspondent Elaine Quijano is following the movers and shakers as they move on.

Elaine, good morning.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn.

President Bush's Chief Spokesman Scott McClellan announcing just a short time ago here at the White House on the South Lawn, in fact, as the president was en route to an event in Alabama, that he, in fact, will step down as White House press secretary. Here's what he had to say just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: I have given it my all, sir, and I've given you my all, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary over the next two to three weeks. Thank you for the opportunity.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's going to be hard to replace Scott. And, but nevertheless, he's made the decision and I accept it. One of these day he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas talking about the good old days of his time as the press secretary and I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, job well done. (END VIDEO CLIP)

QUIJANO: So the announcement perhaps in and of itself not necessarily a surprise. The timing, though, perhaps a surprise to some. In fact, it was no secret Republican strategists had been telling CNN, as we've been reporting for a couple of weeks now, that a couple of the areas that perhaps might be targeted by the new chief of staff, Josh Bolten, were legislative affairs, as well as White House communications. And today now the announcement by Scott McClellan he is stepping down as press secretary.

Daryn.

KAGAN: Elaine, kind of a related story. As the president walked out there, he was supposed to get onboard Marine One, as I understand, and leave. That trip didn't happen. What's happening there?

QUIJANO: That's right. The engines were fired up. It was ready to go. And then all of a sudden it stopped and we understand that the president actually said there was an issue with the helicopter. That everyone was safe but that he'll be motorcading now to Andrews Air Force Base. And apparently there was some sort of radio failure, Marine One unable to communicate with the tower. So the decision made for the president to take the motorcade rather than the chopper.

Daryn.

KAGAN: Elaine Quijano at the White House, thank you.

Let's bring in another one of our White House correspondent, Ed Henry. Ed is on the phone with more news about a very well-known name from the White House, Karl Rove.

How might his role be changing, Ed?

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, a senior Bush administration official tells CNN that Karl Rove's portfolio is going to be changing a bit amid all of these different -- this tweaking within the Bush administration. But he will continue to serve as the deputy White House chief of staff and senior adviser, not losing those titles.

But the senior administration official also tells CNN that Joel Kaplan, who had been at the Office of Management and Budget, is now coming over and will become a deputy White House chief of staff for policy. That means Karl Rove will basically focus less on policy, more on long-term strategic planning. That, at the end of the day, results in having three deputy chiefs of staff, Joe Hagan, Joel Kaplan, who had been a deputy at OMB with the new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten. And then Karl Rove being the third deputy chief of staff. Bottom line being a bit of the musical chairs continuing. Some tweaking, some changes. Still not quite a shakeup, but there are definitely a lot more changes this morning and we're expecting even more to come, Daryn.

KAGAN: Ed, three deputy chiefs of staff. That sounds like a lot of su (ph) chefs in the White House kitchen. Is that a demotion or a promotion for Karl Rove?

HENRY: Well, I think a lot of people will reading their tea leaves about Karl Rove, obviously, and whether his role will diminish. I think the bottom line he that he still has the president's ear and that's the most important thing for him, regardless of exactly what the portfolio is.

Another point I would make is that Joe Hagan, one of those three deputy chiefs of staff, has been thinking about leaving. It still has not been determined whether he will. But as you know, at the beginning of this week, all this started with Josh Bolten officially taking over for Andy Card as chief of staff and immediately telling senior staff, look, if you're planning to leave in the next few months, don't wait. Go now.

So people like Joe Hagan may, and I stress may, come forward in the next few day and say they're leaving and that might tighten things up a bit and maybe there will not be three deputy chiefs of staff. We'll have to see.

But the bottom line here is that Josh Bolten wants to have a team in place. He doesn't want this to happen in drips and drabs. He wants all of this to happen as quickly as possible. The timetable we had heard from Scott McClellan is over the course of the next seven to 10 days we'll see these changes. And the White House is hoping to turn the page so that this does not look like they're in disarray. They want to get the new team in place and really try to get back on their feet amid these low poll numbers.

Daryn.

KAGAN: White House Correspondent Ed Henry on the phone. Ed, thank you for that.

Let's go to John Roberts, a senior national correspondent, who has spent more than his fair of his time and career coving the White House.

What do you make of all these moves? Do you think it's going to be buckle your seat belts for the next week or so because we're going to hear about a lot of moves coming up?

JOHN ROBERTS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: More time than I'd like to admit, by the way, Daryn.

KAGAN: We'll keep that between us, John.

ROBERTS: Yes. I think that you don't have to keep the seat belts really tight, but just keep them sort of loosely fastened about your waste just in case we run into some turbulence here. I mean Scott McClellan's exit was pretty much, you know, something that everybody had expected was going to happen. Josh Bolten had made no secret of the fact that he believed that there was a communications problem at the White House and Scott being the public figure of the White House on a daily basis, just, I guess, I don't know whether he'd been there too long or if they figured that his run was up or they needed to get somebody else there in there, but I think that Josh Bolten decided pretty early on, probably in the transition period between Andrew Card and himself, that they needed to make a change at the press secretary level.

I mean, you know, and on Scott's behalf here, most press secretaries don't stay much longer than a couple of years. That's the amount of time that Ari Fleischer stayed. Joe Lockhart was press secretary for a little more than two years. Or, sorry, a little -- about two years. Mike McCurry about the same. So, you know, 24 months to 36 months is about as long as you get as a press secretary. So perhaps it was time to leave.

This idea that Karl Rove is giving up some of his policy duties at the White House isn't really surprising. Some very senior and learned Republicans had been suggesting that as recent -- or as early as last November. I remember talking to Ken Duberstein who was one of the top folks for the Reagan administration White House who said Karl Rove is just stretched too thin. He's being spread too far and wide across the White House. He needs to give up one of the jobs and that we think he's so good on politics that he should give up the policy angle and focus on the politics.

I think you're going to probably see a few more moves. There's still this idea of getting a gray beard in there. Somebody who can sort of guide the White House and also help to foster better relations between Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So there's still a chance that we might see somebody like that come along. You know, Josh Bolten is a pretty pragmatic manager. He's got a really good idea of how to run things and I think that you're going to see some of that exercised in the next week to 10 days.

KAGAN: Hey, John, give me some more perspective about the job of White House press secretary. Probably one of the most visible jobs since you're in front of the camera every day. If this job was posted let's say on Monster.com, how would it be described?

ROBERTS: How would it be described? I guess it would be willing to take fuselage of bird shot on a daily basis.

KAGAN: Sounds great.

ROBERTS: You know, can you not melt under the heat? You just have to really -- I mean what the job is really all about is being able to faithfully articulate the policies and positions of President Bush and to stick to those through thick and thin. But you also really need to have some pretty good fencing strategies because you need to be able to thrust and parry with the White House press corps. A White House press corps that while it has been criticized in recent years for being more or less a lapdog in the face of this administration, really has come out and learned to bite again.

There you see the helicopter warming up. I guess even though the radio's not working or perhaps they got the radio working, it will be taking off and going back to the base from which it flies.

But, Daryn, I think that this press secretary's job is something that just -- it really can eat you up and I think that this is why people don't last very long in that job and it's because -- it's the sort of job where it is such an intense type of thing. You are under attack all the time. Every time you open your mouth you know that it's going to be questioned on television programs, newscasts, talk show fests, newspapers across the country.

So you really got to have a pretty steel nerve and a pretty thick hide. And eventually everybody just kind of gets tired of the job. But if that's where the job listing were to be posted, on Monster, I think it would probably say, you know, be willing to take it full in the face every day.

KAGAN: Bring body armor.

John Roberts, thank you.

ROBERTS: And if I could just point out . . .

KAGAN: Yes.

ROBERTS: There was a tradition among press secretaries that they pass along a flak jacket to each other with the change over.

KAGAN: Ah, so, that's kind of like the green jacket in the . . .

ROBERTS: So Scott got the flak jacket from Ari Fleischer. We'll see who gets it next.

KAGAN: We'll be watching. We'll check with you if you hear anything. John Roberts, thank you for that.

It is just about nine minutes past the hour. We look now at a search for new evidence at Duke University. Detectives focusing on the dorm rooms of two lacrosse players. The search comes hours after their arrests. Investigators are also trying to learn the identity of the third possible suspect. CNN's Alina Cho is in Durham this morning.

Alina, what can you tell us about a possible third arrest?

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, the D.A. is not talking about whether an arrest is imminent. Eh would only say in a statement yesterday that he is continuing to work on the case. He is continuing to try to identify with certainly the third assailant. And that, in his words, he hopes to bring that third suspect to justice.

Now having said that, sources close to the case tell us the name of the third lacrosse player the D.C. is targeting. But for now, we are not going to release that name. Meanwhile, friends and neighbors of the two suspects charged in this case say there is no way they committed this crime.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's preposterous even that they've been arrested. I know them well. There's not a chance that they're guilty of this crime.

AAINA AGARWAL, FRIEND OF THE PLAYERS: I just know these boys to be kind and amazing people who wouldn't even be capable of thinking of something like this, let alone participating in it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHO: Defense attorneys say that they do have evidence, proof, that these two suspects were not at the party in question on the night of March 13th, Daryn, during the time of the alleged rape.

KAGAN: What kind of defense do they have? What kind of proof do they say they have?

CHO: Well, they say they have a lot and they have ATM receipts, they say, Daryn. They say that a cab driver remembers driving one of the suspects to that ATM and perhaps there's even a time stamped photo of that transaction. The other suspect, we are told by defense attorneys, was at a restaurant at the time of the alleged rape and right now those attorneys are working to talk to witnesses to try to corroborate that story.

KAGAN: Alina Cho live from Durham, North Carolina. Thank you.

Also this about the Duke rape case. Defense lawyers say there's no DNA, but there are plenty of conflicting stories. Where does the case go from here? A North Carolina law professor will lend his expertise and join me next hour right here on CNN.

Two sex offenders killed. Did an online registry making them easy targets? We'll also get some opinions from a convicted sex offender about how these registries should work. LIVE TODAY keeps rolling on.

Plus, a trailer for hurricane victims disappears. Now a FEMA worker is accused of stealing it.

And caught on tape. A horrifying attack just off the Vegas Strip. The investigation and an update on the victim when CNN LIVE TODAY comes back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Trapped on a tram, dangling for hours high above New York City. The daring rescue comes off without a hitch. Early this morning rescuers safely plucked 68 passengers from two cable cars ending a 12-hour high in the sky ordeal. Nobody was hurt. The tram came to a stop over the East River and then the power failed.

Well, it's painful for watch. A horrifying attack in Las Vegas captured on tape. The victim, a casino employee. One suspect is in custody. Police need your help to catch the others. CNN's Ted Rowlands filed this report for "Paula Zahn Now."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Las Vegas police say 18-year-old Daryle Williams was part of this group of teenagers caught on surveillance video in a parking garage near the back of the MGM Grand Hotel. After the group walks past a private security guard in a golf cart, someone takes the guard's radio. Watch as the guard, now out of the cart, starts to make a phone call.

The attack starts with the young man in the baseball cap sneaking around the front of the cart. Within seconds, the guard is getting punched and kicked by the group. He tries to run, but they chase him down and keep hitting him. This person actually starts whipping him with a chain or a belt.

CAPT. DAVE O'LEARY, LAS VEGAS POLICE: This is truly egregious. This is something that, again, as a community, none of us should tolerate.

ROWLANDS: Las Vegas police are asking for help identifying the suspects. They believe the group had just left the nearby movie theater and the thought is that they are teenagers or young adults. The video is obviously disturbing and police say they want those involved identified.

O'LEARY: Those folks deserve to be identified. Those folks deserve to be brought to justice.

ROWLANDS: Near the end of the attack, one of the suspect, the one in the dark jacket, reaches down and steals the guard's cell phone and then, after one last kick, the group leaves the guard laying in the street.

O'LEARY: I think the videotape speaks for itself. I don't think anybody in this community would tolerate that type of behavior anywhere.

ROWLANDS: In the end, the security guard was able to get up and walk away. Police say, besides numerous bruises, he suffered a broken jaw and collarbone.

Ted Rowlands, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: That is a nasty video.

Be sure to join "Paula Zahn" weeknights at 8:00 Eastern, 5:00 Pacific on CNN.

Right now we are looking at Tennessee. Some severe weather. Chattanooga, Knoxville on alert right now. Chad Myers is watching for you.

Chad.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: Katrina evacuees go home, but not to stay. All aboard the midnight bus from Georgia. That story is just ahead.

Plus, mysteries they wrote. I'm going to talk with the best- selling author Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter. They each have new books out. We're going to talk about writing separately and together and that whole mother-daughter thing coming up in a bit.

But first let's check out the markets. They've been open about 50 minutes. You can see, yes, things are kind of flat today. The Dow is down just a bit, about six or seven points. The Nasdaq barely moving. It is down less than a point as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: They are a dynamic mother-daughter duo. Literary women of mystery. Best selling author Mary Higgins Clark, and her daughter, Carol, have co-authored three suspense novels. They're both out now with new books of their own. Mary's novel is "Two Little Girls in Blue." It's slated to be number one on "The New York Times" best- seller list this Sunday. And Carol's book, it's called "Hitched." It is the latest in the novel of her Regan Reilly series.

Ladies, good morning. Great to have you here with us.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK, AUTHOR, "TWO LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE": Good morning, Daryn.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK, AUTHOR, "HITCHED": Great to be here.

KAGAN: OK, let's pitch the individual books first.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: OK.

KAGAN: Let's start with mom, don't you think?

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: That's fine.

KAGAN: Just out of respect, for no other reason.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Yes.

KAGAN: And number one. You're talking about twins?

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Identical twin kidnapped on their third birthday. They get one back and believe the other one is dead.

KAGAN: But, no.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: The mother realizes they are communicating, but the other one is very, very sick. And that is the story. The mother trying to make people know she's still alive and then the chase to try to find her before it's too late.

And you know your own Anderson Cooper, his grandmother was an identical twin. And in all of my research on twins, her name keeps coming up, Gloria Vanderbilt Senior (ph), because she doubled up with abdominal pain in New York when he identical twin went into labor in London.

KAGAN: Fascinating. It all comes back to CNN, in our family, does it?

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: There you go.

KAGAN: Doesn't it not?

OK, Carol, on to you.

You have this heroine who has gone through a number of your books.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Right.

KAGAN: And you're finally letting her get married.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: She's getting hitched. Yes. I thought it was time. She met her boyfriend, Jack Reilly. He's the head of the major case squad in New York.

KAGAN: A catch.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: He's a catch. He's perfect. And she met him in the first Christmas book we wrote together "Deck the Halls." So they've been together. I decided it was time to get them married. And I thought, well, what mystery am I going to build around that? Well, I always loved those film clips of Filene's basement wedding gown sale where women, you know, throw each other aside.

KAGAN: It's like a sport. It's a contact sport.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Yes, it is. And I thought, what if she goes to pick up her wedding gown from a designer, they're tide up, her gown is gone. Five brides are now without dresses. They're all about to get married. And so things start to happen and she works on the case.

KAGAN: So you have these fabulous careers, both of you. Sometimes you're writing by yourself and sometimes you're writing together and then sometimes the characters from your individual books come together. Is it hard to keep straight who belongs where?

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Oh, no, it's very easy. I do my own book a year.

KAGAN: OK.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Carol does her own book a year. And then three times before we have done a Christmas book together. A smaller book. And we skipped it last year, but a lot of people said, oh, come on, you know?

KAGAN: Yes.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: So we're going one this year. And we enjoy working together.

KAGAN: You do.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Oh, it's really fun. And everybody wants to know about the fights we've had.

KAGAN: Exactly.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: But it's really fun. And we combine my character, Regan Reilly, with her character, Elvira, who won $40 million in the lottery and is -- she was a cleaning woman, now she's an amateur sleuth. And I had actually saved her life when my mother first invented her.

KAGAN: Aren't you great. You were going to kill her off.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: You were going to kill her off.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: I was killing her off, yes.

KAGAN: Oh, you're so brutal, Mary.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: I had killed her off and Carol read the manuscript and said absolutely not. So I left her hanging by the a thread coming out of the coma.

KAGAN: A little piece of humanity in that whole . . .

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Yes, she (INAUDIBLE).

KAGAN: And she looks like such a nice lady.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: That's what people say. Where does your mother come up with these ideas? She's so nice. But they call her scary Mary.

KAGAN: Well, because your style is more scary and you tend to go more towards humor.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Right.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Exactly.

KAGAN: And what would you say the threads of those style are? Where does that come from?

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: I like the psychological. I like to go for footstep on the stairs. The door opening.

KAGAN: Yes. I call those bad dreams.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: The breathing that shouldn't be there. I just always loved it from the time I was a little kid. I used to say when I was with my friends, let's tell scary stories.

KAGAN: Would she do that to you when you were a kid? You and your siblings?

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: She really didn't as much, no. You weren't into telling us scary stories when we were growing up.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Now, children, there is something -- there is something under your bed! Let's have a little talk.

KAGAN: How do you actually work together? I mean, physically, how do you do it? Do you come together?

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Side-by-side.

KAGAN: You do?

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: I have a laptop and we're usually writing these Christmas books over the summer. So we're at her beach house and just siting there and we just talk it out and then we print out the pages and look at them and make the corrections. But it's every word together. At first we thought we might try writing separate chapters, but then we realized one thing follows another and it was just better to really do the whole thing together.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: So when we had the boyfriends starred in "Deck the Halls" three books ago, we hadn't given them a name. It was Jack. And then we were thinking of a last name and we yelled it together, Reilly.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: And Regan's name so we thought that was . . .

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Regan's name. So he's Jack, no relation, Reilly, in all these other books.

KAGAN: There are some fun threads through it. We're going to look for both "Two Little Girls in Blue" and "Hitched." Thank you. And it sounds like you're saying that we can also look for a Christmas book together?

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Yes.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: "Santa Cruise."

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: It's set on a cruise ship, yes.

KAGAN: Love it. So c-r-u-I-s-e, not c-r-u-z?

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: That's right. Not the town in California. Right.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: No, no, no, it's c-r-u-I-s-e.

KAGAN: All right. Very good. Scary stuff and fun stuff ahead. Ladies, thank you and good luck with both the books.

CAROL HIGGINS CLARK: Thank you, Daryn.

MARY HIGGINS CLARK: Thank you so much.

KAGAN: We are talking babies ahead. Baby, oh, baby. We're going to tell you all about Tom and Katie's new bundle and another celebrity birth adds an ironic twist. Details ahead on LIVE TODAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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