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CNN Live Today

Kidnapped FOX News Journalists; U.S. Plane Turned Back; Meeting the President

Aired August 23, 2006 - 10:59   ET

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

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Just released earlier today, the first images of two journalists. They were kidnapped last week in Gaza City.
Also, we're going to check the tropics as well. Coming up, Debby gets a name and swirls, but not much else there. And there might be another storm out there as well.

Plus, "In the Footsteps of bin Laden," when the world's top terrorist was cornered. We're going to preview tonight's CNN documentary.

But at the top of the hour, I want to go ahead and say good morning to everyone.

I'm Daryn Kagan.

Welcome to our second hour of CNN LIVE TODAY.

We're going to start off with some breaking news out of the Middle East. And it concerns the two kidnapped FOX journalists. They go in front of their captors' cameras today.

Our Paula Hancocks follows that story from Jerusalem.

Paula, hello.

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn.

Well, this is the first sign that we have had from these two journalists who were kidnapped in Gaza City back on August 14th. Thirty-six-year-old cameraman Olaf Wiig from New Zealand and 60-year- old American reporter Steve Centanni both working for FOX News when they were taken.

Now, they were sitting on the ground in this video. They were looking fairly relaxed, wearing tracksuits. And the group that says they have them is called the Holy Jihad Brigades. This is a previously unknown group, and they have made their demands. They said they want all Muslim prisoners released from jails of America in the next 72 hours.

Let's listen to the tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEVE CENTANNI, FOX NEWS JOURNALIST: We have been taken captive in Gaza and are being held prisoner here. So we are in fairly good condition, we're alive and well, in fairly good health. We get lots of clean water, food every day, access to the bathroom, shower, clean clothes, and our captors are treating us well.

So just want to let you know I'm here and alive. And I give my love to my family and friends and ask you to do anything you can to try to help us get out of here.

OLAF WIIG, FOX NEWS CAMERAMAN: I guess I would add for myself -- and I know my family will already be doing this -- but if you could apply any political pressure on the local government here in Gaza and the West Bank, that would be much appreciated by both Steve and myself. I know, Anita (ph), that you will already be doing that.

To my family, I love you all. Please don't worry. I'll do all the worrying for us. And (INAUDIBLE).

CENTANNI: We love you all and we want to go home. Hope to see you soon.

Thanks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANCOCKS: Now, the families of both men have been appealing over the past week and a half almost. We have seen Ken Centanni, the brother of Centanni, who was making a broadcast appeal on Al-Jazeera network. Also the wife of Olag Wiig, the cameraman on the left of that picture, we have heard from many times. She has been in Gaza as well making televised appeals.

Now, this is interesting, the demand itself, because it is fairly different from what we have been hearing in the past. There have been many foreigners, 26 in the past two years, that have been kidnapped in Gaza, nine of them from the media. But the demand does not mention Palestinian prisoners.

This is the usual demand, Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, they want to be released. This is asking for Muslim prisoners from American jails -- Daryn.

KAGAN: And this would appear to have no connection to that Israeli soldier that is still being held hostage?

HANCOCKS: No. From what we know at this point, and from what we have seen from the tape and the statement that was faxed to us, it has no connection whatsoever as far as we can tell. It's saying it wants all Muslim prisoners from jails of America, is the way that it says it. An interesting direct translation we have from the statement suggesting this could be jails in Guantanamo, it could be jails in Iraq, any jails where Muslims are being held by Americans.

This is the first time that we've had this kind of demand from the kidnappers in Gaza themselves. And, of course, these journalists have been held longer than any other journalists have been held -- have been kidnapped in Gaza as well -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Paula Hancocks, live from Jerusalem.

Thank you.

And there's been no official response yet from the U.S. State Department on those demands.

Now to our CNN "Security Watch". New information on that Northwest Airlines incident we told you about in the last hour. The plane was turned back after it took off from Amsterdam.

Jeanne Meserve is following the story for us from Washington.

Jeanne, good morning.

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

A U.S. official says that there was no intelligence that this Northwest Airlines flight number 42 from Amsterdam to Mumbai was at risk, but there were U.S. federal air marshals on board the flight. According to this official, the air marshals and the flight crew observed suspicious behavior on board the flight by a number of passengers. Quite often, the air marshals would remain under cover and would not reveal who they were, but in this instance they broke that cover.

The flight crew, we are told, told the passengers to obey the air marshals, and they did so while the pilot turned the plane around and took it back to Amsterdam. No word yet on what that suspicious behavior was, but the Transportation Security Administration says that 12 individuals are now being questioned by Dutch authorities. As yet, no indication of how serious the threat might have been against that aircraft.

Why, you might ask, were U.S. air marshals on board an international flight? We are told that quite often they are aboard U.S. carrier flights, even if they are flying between foreign destinations -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Jeanne Meserve, live from Washington, D.C.

Jeanne, thank you.

CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety. Stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security.

Also in Washington, D.C., a lot of praise coming for President Bush today, coming from a south Louisiana man. Hurricane Katrina survivor Rockey Vaccarella and President Bush came to the cameras live. You saw it live here on CNN in the last hour. The two men did this after an Oval Office meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROCKEY VACCARELLA, KATRINA SURVIVOR: And I just wanted to let the president know, please don't forget about us. That the rebuilding is taking a while. A year is sometimes a long time when you don't have your home and your life is interrupted. And the president assured me that he's not going to forget about us and he's going to do everything he can to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: Rockey's trip to Washington is actually part of a documentary that he's filming. Here is part of his message about Hurricane Katrina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're OK! We're OK!

VACCARELLA: My name is Rockey Vaccarella. I'm 41 years old. I'm from St. Bernard Parish. Our parish is five minutes from New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina devastated our parish. It had 20 feet of water from one end of the parish to the other end of the parish.

My son and I decided to ride it out. We held on to a rope for four hours as the storm passed over, and we swam to our safety. Sixty-seven thousand people had to evacuate.

I lost everything. I lost everything possibly that you can think of, other than the clothes on my back.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAGAN: That's Rockey Vaccarella in his own words.

Recovery from Katrina has been incredibly slow process.

Let's go live to our Gulf Coast correspondent, Susan Roesgen, in New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward.

Good morning again.

SUSAN ROESGEN, CNN GULF COAST CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again, Daryn.

You know, Rockey Vaccarella, you have to say, in some ways is one of the lucky ones because he has a FEMA trailer in St. Bernard Parish. But if you take a look at some of these other areas here in the Lower Ninth Ward, not far from St. Bernard Parish, a 20-foot wall of water just swept the homes right off the foundation.

You see some left over iron work, you see some pilings here, but basically this is all that's left in a lot of areas, because you have to remember, the water wasn't just high, it was but moving and it was powerful. So, there are about 110,000 FEMA trailers, Daryn, all across the Gulf Coast area, but thousands of people in New Orleans are still waiting for a FEMA trailer. About 9,000 people in the entire state of Louisiana are still waiting for a FEMA trailer.

So I think it was great to hear Rockey Vaccarella say don't forget us, we need your help, Mr. President. And certainly there's still a lot left to be done even a year after Hurricane Katrina hit.

KAGAN: He was speaking for quite a few people. I will be talking to Don Powell, someone who I know that you've interviewed recently, the federal coordinator of the Gulf Coast rebuilding, in just a bit.

Let me just pick your brain here. If you had the interview in a couple of minutes, what would you want to ask Mr. Powell?

ROESGEN: OK. You're the president's guy.

KAGAN: Yes.

ROESGEN: I think I would want to ask him what a lot of homeowners want to ask, which is, show me the money. When are we going to actually see the money?

And we talked about this a little bit earlier, Daryn. A lot of money has been committed, $120 billion has been committed, but very little of it has actually reached so many homeowners who need that money.

Chairman Powell told me that he is encouraged by one thing in particular that not a lot of people have touched on, and he's encouraged that the educational system in New Orleans, he believes, is going to be much better now after Katrina than it was during Katrina, because the state has taken over a lot of abysmal public schools, a lot of charter schools, to start (ph) it.

So he wanted to focus on education. Certainly that's something that a lot of parents are interested in. But, Daryn, look around.

KAGAN: Yes.

ROESGEN: I mean, this is a city that was 465,000 people before Katrina. Now right around $200,000 people. And if you've been gone for a year, if you've been living in Houston, if you have your kids in public school in Houston and you've gotten an apartment there and you've gotten a job there, are you really ever coming back? That is the big fear here.

KAGAN: Right. And I was able to talk to Sean Riley (ph), who's with the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He says the big lesson he thinks is learned is what a key part housing plays into all of this, how it kind of becomes a catch 22. If people don't have houses, they can't come home. If they don't come home, they can't help rebuild.

ROESGEN: Absolutely, Daryn. And you also have to wonder, do people have the psyche for this?

Where I'm standing is less than a half mile from that big breach in the industrial canal. Do people really believe that they can come back here and the Army Corps of Engineers has sufficiently repaired the levees? So -- and if they do come back, will they have the money, will they have the insurance money, will they have this community development block (ph) grant that's part of this $4 billion kiddy that's been sent here from the federal government? Will they get a piece of that to start over?

KAGAN: Still so many questions.

Susan, thank you.

ROESGEN: You bet.

KAGAN: Susan Roesgen from our New Orleans bureau.

The only one, a network that has a fully staffed bureau there in New Orleans covering the recovery along the Gulf Coast.

Susan, thank you.

Want to share a story like Rockey's or tell us your own experiences in dealing with Katrina? Just go to cnn.com and send an I-Report. CNN would like to see your video, your photos, and hear your stories.

Just send it to us via computer at cnn.com, or on your cell phone you can punch ireport@cnn.com. Your I-Report is your chance to share what you have witnessed.

To world news now, and Baghdad. A startling eyewitness account.

Saddam Hussein's genocide trial centered on the 1987 gas attack on a Kurdish village. At one point, the woman glared at the ousted Iraqi leader and said, "I lost everything." The woman described how the air was suddenly filled with the smell of rotten apples and then she and her children fell violently ill.

Hussein never showed any emotion.

The nuclear dispute with Iran, that could be taking another new turn. Also -- we'll have more on that ahead.

Also, cornered but not captured. "In the Footsteps of bin Laden," a sneak peek at a special "CNN PRESENTS." That's coming up on CNN.

You're watching the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: Breaking news in the political world, one of the most closely watched Senate races.

Our Carol Lin has more -- Carol.

CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: The Associated Press news alert just came over the wires, Daryn, that the Connecticut secretary of state has certified that Senator Joe Lieberman has enough signatures to run officially as an Independent on the November election ballot.

Daryn, he had made this claim a couple of weeks ago, that he gathered 18,000 signatures. He said at the time, twice as many as he needed to run as an Independent. This despite, you know, the fact that the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat, has said that he should drop out of the race. Senator John Kerry came out a short while ago saying that Joe Lieberman is going to be damaging the Republican Party (sic), and that, you know, the predictions on the wire so far is that he's really just going to split the Republican vote.

CNN has just confirmed this as well, Daryn. So it's official.

KAGAN: All right.

LIN: He can run as an Independent on the November election ticket.

KAGAN: It's going to be interesting to watch.

Carol, thank you.

Back to international news now. A diplomatic showdown with Iran over its nuclear program could be just days away. So far, there are no signs that Iran will give into nuclear demands and suspend its nuclear program.

CNN's Aneesh Raman is in Tehran. He is the only U.S. television network reporter in the Iranian capital. He joins us now on the phone.

Aneesh, hello.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, good morning.

The world waited for days for Iran's official response, which came yesterday, a lengthy written reply to the incentives deal meant to get Iran to stop its nuclear program ahead of that U.N. deadline that comes at the end of the month. The only thing that has changed really is that Iran says it is willing to start new negotiations. But it is not willing, it seems, to suspend that program.

What this does is leave the ball directly in the court of the U.N. They have to decide whether it's worth opening up new talks -- we already heard from Russia, signaling that might be their intention -- or whether it's worth keeping Iran to the mandate that came within that U.N. resolution, that it cease its nuclear program by the end of the month.

So we'll see what happens there, but in terms of where we head in Tehran from here, next week Iran's president will hold a press conference. He could change things in terms of any comments he makes. And then we'll have to see what action the U.N. takes, and, in turn, what action Iran takes. Iran has warned that if the U.N. takes action as it pursues a civilian nuclear program, it could kick out U.N. inspectors and pursue that program in secret -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Aneesh, when last we saw you, which I believe was yesterday on the streets there in Tehran, you told us that people -- everyday people there, the Iranians, that this issue was not number one on the top of their concerns, even though it's getting a lot of international attention.

Do you think that that's going to change now that the possibility of sanctions could be a step closer?

RAMAN: It will inasmuch as this issue could start bringing about economic difficulties back at home for Iranians. As you were mentioning, for them it really is of little concern. They're following it closely, but, of course, they have little input that can be given. The government is choosing its own course. And there are a number of domestic concerns.

Iran is dealing with a huge amount of unemployment, given that the median age here is 25. You have a lot of young people who simply don't have work. Inflation is going up.

There are domestic concerns that they are hoping and waiting for their government to deliver on. Instead, their government has really been consumed recently with this international issue, with it's rising international clout, given Hezbollah's, as Iran says, victory over Israel.

So people at the moment are sort of unconcerned, but they are wary, because if sanctions come it will make their life incredibly more difficult. And that is really when the domestic support for this program could start to falter -- Daryn.

KAGAN: Aneesh Raman, live on the phone from Tehran.

Thank you.

So, if the U.S. and Iran ever came to blows, how would Iran's military stack up against U.S. forces?

Here now, a CNN "Fact Check".

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Ever since its devastating war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iran has been struggling to rebuild its military. The biggest obstacle, international sanctions on spare parts which "Jane's Defense Weekly" says are desperately needed for an aging weapons system.

For its part, Iran claims great strides in beefing up its military. Among the weapons it claims to have, flying boats that can fire missiles, radar avoiding missiles, high-speed torpedoes and tanks. Western analysts dismiss most of the claims as mere chest-beating.

"Jane's Defense Weekly" says recent Iranian reports of new missile tests were actually variants of existing missiles and that the high-speed torpedoes are believed to be based on Russian models that would pose little or no threat to the U.S. Navy.

As for Iran's 350,000-strong army, "Foreign Policy" magazine says more than half are conscripts who are poorly trained and undisciplined. The air force apparently is in worse shape. "Foreign Policy" says, in addition to a lack of spare parts, it's been years since pilots have had air combat training.

That aside, analysts say Iran has this ability: it's navy could cause havoc around the world by attacking oil tankers and oil platforms in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAGAN: OK. Two ends of a new spectrum here coming up. Iran, we'll go back there, and its bitter enemy, the nuclear dispute from the Israeli viewpoint.

A live report from Jerusalem coming up on CNN.

And then there's this, an extremely rare home invasion -- well, that wouldn't be the extremely rare home invasion. All right. There we go.

There is our extremely rare home invasion. Good thing the cops moved in. We'll tell you how it went down just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KAGAN: A story out of Virginia that just gets stranger. Remember the guy who led police on a manhunt in Virginia this week and left two people dead and Virginia Tech in lockdown? Well, his brother claims he had no part in his brother William's violent escape from a hospital.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL MORVA, BROTHER OF ESCAPEE: My brother is the killer, all right? I didn't do anything. I wasn't a part of it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You didn't help plan it?

MORVA: No, I did not help plan it. I didn't do anything wrong, all right? The police came and knocked on my door at 3:00 in the morning when I was asleep and woke me up and told me what had happened. I had nothing to do with this.

This is wrong! This is wrong! You know? This is wrong! Why am I here?

(END VIDEO CLIP) KAGAN: So that is the brother of William Charles Morva, who was recaptured, who now faces murder charges. The brother, Michael, who you were just watching, is charged with conspiring to help William get away.

No getting away from weather. Not when Chad Myers is around.

(WEATHER REPORT)

KAGAN: OK. Memo from Paramount to Tom Cruise: Don't let the door hit you on the way out. The breakup, it is messy, it is very public. We're going to talk about it coming up on CNN.

Other end of the news spectrum, cornered but not captured. "In the Footsteps of bin Laden," a sneak peek at a special "CNN PRESENTS" coming up on the most trusted name in news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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