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American Morning

Six Anthrax Infections Have Been Confirmed This Month; Look at Possible Use of Unmanned, Armed Aircraft in Afghanistan

Aired October 19, 2001 - 11:16   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's bring you up to date on the anthrax investigation. Six infections have been confirmed this month. Three at network news divisions, two at tabloid publisher American Media, and now, a letter carrier in New Jersey.

We have correspondents who working this story up and down the East Coast today.

Brian Palmer is in New Jersey. Jason Carroll's in New York.

And Kate Snow is on Capitol Hill. We're going to start with Brian, who is near Trenton, New Jersey today.

Brian, good morning.

BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.

Well, the postal facility behind me in Hamilton township is closed today, as is one in West Trenton, New Jersey, as inspectors from a variety of different agencies -- the Centers for Disease Control, the FBI, as well as law enforcement arm of the Postal Service, the inspectors -- try and determine how a letter carrier contracted anthrax back in September. She was confirmed with cutaneous anthrax in blood and skin tests. That's the less severe variety of the disease, less severe than inhalational anthrax that killed the photo editor in Florida.

Now the letter carrier deliver may to 250 businesses and homes in this area. She apparently did not have anything to do, did not service the regular -- those blue collection boxes on the street, and it also isn't known or being at least released whether or not she had contact with either one of those anthrax-tainted letters, the one sent to NBC TV's Tom Brokaw or Senate leader Tom Daschle. Both of those were postmarked in Trenton. But there are 46 branches of the Postal Service that funnel their mail through Trenton. That's something that the investigators are going to be looking into today.

Now, from this facility, there is another report of a possible exposure to anthrax. One of the gentleman who maintains mail sorting machinery here has also been treated for anthrax, but this is not confirmed, and the Department of Health tells us in fact since a complete battery of test was not completed, the chances are they will never know whether he had anthrax -- Daryn. KAGAN: Brian Palmer, thanks very much.

And now we move on, I believe let's take it to Jason Carroll in New York -- Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Daryn, last night I can tell you that a number of CBS employees were tested as a precaution. More will be tested today. Also, health officials will be out here today to conduct environmental tests. They're trying to find the source of the anthrax here. This after a CBS employee, an assistant to Dan Rather, tested positive for skin anthrax, the cutaneous form of the disease.

The woman routinely handles mail for Dan Rather. She first noticed something was wrong back on October 1st. Her face become swollen. She initially thought perhaps she had a spider bite. The doctor prescribed penicillin. She didn't really react to that. A test later revealed that she did in fact have the skin form of anthrax. She is Taking Cipro. And apparently, she's doing well. In fact, Dan Rather said last night that she's only missed one day of work so far, so that's certainly some good news there.

Also, Daryn, I had the opportunity this morning to speak with a number of CBS employees as they were heading to work, and I think given what's happened at ABC and NBC people are -- it seems sad to say, but getting used to this happening. One person say, we know this is going on, we are just going to go to work and do our work as usual.

Right now, I want to turn it over to my colleague Kate Snow, who is standing by live for us in Washington with more on what's happening there -- Kate.

KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, thanks. The environmental testing continues here on Capitol Hill. Last night and through the night, they were working on some of the Senate office buildings, and also the U.S. Capitol right behind me itself. They were doing some environmental testing there.

To date, anthrax has only been found in two locations on Capitol Hill. One is the Hart Senate office building on Capitol Hill where Tom Daschle's office is located. The other is the building next door in the Senate's mail room. They are also testing at a separate location, we understand, which is mail delivery facility. It's off campus here, about 15 blocks south of where I'm standing. This is where all of the mail comes from the U.S. Post Office and gets delivered here before it gets distributed to the various office building on Capitol Hill. They are going to running environmental testing there.

No results back yet from any of the environmental test being done in the building themselves, but we are beginning to get results back on the people who had nose swabs taken from them. So far, only 31 people have shown positive for signs of exposure to anthrax, and all 31 of them were in or around Senator Tom Daschle's office on Monday when that letter was opened. About 1,400 people, though, were tested the following day, on Tuesday. And all of them will get their test results back today. We understand there's quite a line of people 200 or 300 people lined up at a facility near here, waiting to talk to doctors, get those test results, and if in that particular quadrant of the building, of the Hart building, where Senator Daschle's office is, they are being told to take 60 days worth of antibiotics.

Back to you.

KAGAN: Kate, thank you. And I look forward to seeing you tomorrow in Washington D.C., when about 24 hours from now, you, and Jonathan Karl and I take a two-hour in-depth look at this, on anthrax and what's happening on Capitol Hill.

So I well see you tomorrow morning.

SNOW: See you then.

KAGAN: Kate Snow on capitol hill.

There we go. All right, Late developments and in-depth look at anthrax. There are 10 things you should know about anthrax and the germ and the drugs being used to fight it. You can log on to our Web site, which is cnn.com.

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Daryn, I want to go back to the military front now. We talked a lot about weapons here on CNN.

One weapon we want to focus on today is the Predator, the RQ-1A Predator. It's a drone. It drones not have a pilot onboard, but it may have, for the first time, it may have weapons onboard.

The Pentagon won't confirm it, but it is a truly fascinating concept. For that and more, here's Miles on that front -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, Bill.

This is something that makes a lots of the white scarf types in the Air Force a little bit concerned, if you will, because the fact if you think about it and if you project out and the technology improves, you could create some kind of scenario where you would need fewer and fewer pilots to actually go into harm's way in order to send missiles and defeat an enemy.

Let's bring in one of those white scarf types, General Don Sheppard, our military analyst.

General, are you worried about being outmoded by unmanned drones?

GEN. DON SHEPPARD, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, we've got mixed emotions here, Miles. Clearly, it's the way to go for the future, into the drones. That's the bad news for pilots. The good news is that it keeps them out of harm's way when this happens, so I guess it's a mixed blessing.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's look a look at this animation. We'll tell you how this predator works. Now the Predator we've been telling you about, designed initially for reconnaissance capability. What we've done here is we've attached some Hellfire missile to it, which are designed for helicopter antitank usage. Essentially, what it does -- general, help me with this -- is it identifies a target using television, which is on the nose cone, right?

SHEPPARD: Indeed, If it does not have weapons, it's call a UAV -- an uninhabited air vehicle, and if you put weapons on it, it is called a UCAV -- an uninhabited combat air vehicle. Now these are -- have been fitted and tested with two Hellfire missiles, just like the ones that you mentioned from the helicopters, and the idea is that they acquire the targets with their television or IR sensors, and then fire the missile at the ground vehicle, very accurately I might add.

O'BRIEN: Now what we're showing here briefly is just how the communication link works. Satellite technology, the controller in a trailer somewhere out of harm's way, sending and receiving information from the unmanned Predator wherever it might be in a theater, and then the decision is made once that television signal comes back, the target has been acquired, to fire -- the actual decision to fire, though, there is still human being in the link, right?

SHEPPARD: There is, and this can be line of sight with the Predator, or through satellite, as you've have shown. There are two people in the van. One flies the vehicle, the other operates the sensors, and then they talk to a command-and-control center to make sure that they are cleared to fire before they just fire at will, or there could be an ROE, rules of engagement, that allows them to fire and things such as vehicles and tanks of things if they can find them.

O'BRIEN: All right, so the shape of things to come, perhaps. We'll see.

Now one thing that you cannot change when it comes to the world of weaponry and battle, is that ultimately, you need to get people on the ground, and we've been talking about this today quite a bit, the possibility of special operations forces on the ground in the area, in Afghanistan perhaps, in the southern regions, perhaps elsewhere.

Let's take a look at a map quickly, and without telling folks exactly where anyone is, because we don't want to do that, let's just give people a sense of where they could stage from.

First off, the Arabian Sea, the Kitty Hawk. Tell us about that, general.

SHEPPARD: Well, basically the Kitty Hawk, clean decks filled with helicopter rather than jets, and basically special operations can launch from these. They can refuel in the air, C-130 gunships, and then proceed in to insert small teams of people. Those small teams of people when they get there then can become either observers, or they can become what we call GFACs or ground FACs -- forward air controllers -- that see targets and mark them, and then the tell the predator operators where to fly the vehicle, where to look for things on the ground, and then they can attack it from the air, either from the Predator or call in other fighters.

O'BRIEN: While we were talking, we moved the map over to Pakistan, where we have heard reports of U.S. helicopters on the ground at airfields in these locations. One of them a little closer to the border there, only 100 miles from Kandahar, which would be right about here. This is a difficult situation for Pakistan, a lot of diplomatic issues to consider. The public consumption statement is that anything that's on the ground there would be used for humanitarian or search-and-rescue purposes. Is it possible that special operations types would come in on those helicopters nevertheless?

SHEPPARD: It's possible. That's up to Pakistan to characterize those, as the secretary of defense has said. But anything that's close to Afghanistan, closer than the ships is useful, either for refueling helicopters, recovery of downed pilots, humanitarian airlift, special forces operations. It could be any of those, Miles. But the bases are key.

O'BRIEN: All right, just briefly -- we moved the map to the north while you were talking there. Just briefly, we've got Tajikistan, which has a big Russian contingent there, and then moving neck door Uzbekistan, where we know of U.S. military aircraft on the ground, at least these two locations. Given the fact that we're talking about perhaps southern locations of Afghanistan, perhaps not likely, but nevertheless, I guess we can't rule out special operations working in that area.

SHEPPARD: No, you can't. It's been announced that 1,000 troops of the 10th mountain division have been moved into Khanabad. The "k" is not announced. It looks like "Hanabad." But they are there to secure the airfield. Other, larger formations of troops can be moved in later, or they can be protecting special operations forces on the ground.

O'BRIEN: All right, our special military analyst, General Don Sheppard, as always giving good insights as to what's going on in the region. We thank you for your time and good intelligence on this, so to speak.

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