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American Morning
'Morning Buzz'
Aired January 16, 2002 - 07:19 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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Time now to see what's going on elsewhere in the news, a little segment called the Morning Buzz.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Morning Buzz.
CAFFERTY: Only two of us buzzing today because the chief buzzer is not with us.
COOPER: That's right.
CAFFERTY: Paula is on assignment this morning.
Looks like the war is going to grow against terrorism.
COOPER: Yes, big story out of the "New York Times," the "Wall Street Journal," everyone's reporting it. Basically what they're calling, what the "Times" is calling the first major expansion in the war on terrorism, the U.S. sending a lot of special forces to the Philippines. It could get up, I think, what, about 600 guys over the next couple of weeks.
CAFFERTY: All being done with the cooperation of the Philippine government. Apparently they've signed off on this thing, go in there and try and get the bad guys out of there.
COOPER: Right. It's going to be like 150 special forces guys within the next 30 days.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
COOPER: It's, and the group is Abu Sayyaf. It's a pretty little -- I mean it's interesting to me how little coverage that this story has gotten. You know, that two American missionaries are being held captive.
CAFFERTY: Right.
COOPER: One American has already been beheaded several months ago. And, you know, we talk about Gadhafi coming back onto the world stage, trying to sort of reform, make over his image, he actually apparently gave like a $25 million ransom to this group, Abu Sayyaf, to get out some other hostages long ago. So it's...
CAFFERTY: They're also tied to Osama bin Laden apparently. COOPER: That's right. Right.
CAFFERTY: The other story that's interesting, you know this idiot that tried to blow up the airplane by setting his shoes on fire...
COOPER: Richard Reid.
CAFFERTY: Yes. Now, there's some speculation, apparently they've gone back and tracked some of his travels, that he may have actually served as some sort of an advanced scout looking for potential targets for al Qaeda, that some of his travels match the travels of someone that -- they think they recovered some records from a PC and that's interesting...
COOPER: Yes, it's an amazing story. And it was the "Wall Street Journal" that broke the story. And what's great about the story is how they actually got this information. This information was on a personal computer, on a laptop that was stolen from an al Qaeda compound in Kabul from a looter and the looter tried to sell it to a computer store in Kabul. I didn't even really know there were computer stores in Kabul. But this guy tries to sell it to a computer store in Kabul and somehow the "Wall Street Journal" gets hold of it, pays, I think they said $1,100.
CAFFERTY: Right.
COOPER: And they had this computer with hundreds of files on it with, you know, all this information.
CAFFERTY: It's a gold mine, apparently.
COOPER: So they have translators. I guess they've shown it to the U.S. government also. But they translators who are working on it and decoding it and this is the latest thing they've taken off the hard drive.
CAFFERTY: One of the real great pieces of reporting to come out of the World Trade Center situation was a photograph taken by a reporter for one of the New Jersey newspapers -- it might be the "Bergen Record" over in Hackensack -- of firefighters raising the American flag. And the photo is reminiscent of the raising of the American flag on Mount Sirabachi (ph) at the conclusion of the invasion of Iwo Jima in WWII.
Now, there is some talk -- there's the WWII picture -- some talk of taking that photo and using it as a basis for a memorial down at ground zero.
COOPER: Right. And the big question is, is this like, you know, political correctness gone out of control? I guess basically they want, you know, in the photo the three firefighters are Caucasian. In the statue they want to make it one Caucasian, an African-American and a person of Hispanic descent.
CAFFERTY: So the owners of the photo, which is the newspaper, the "Record" of Hackensack, said the photograph "captured a historic moment that should not be altered." So apparently they're not...
COOPER: Well, it would be interesting to know what you at home think. If you want, you can e-mail us at am@cnn.com.
Also, a new study says Americans are taking far too much medication. What do you guys think? Send us your thoughts by e-mail and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta will address them in our next hour. So if you want to send in the questions to Dr. Gupta, the e-mail address is am@cnn.com. Title your e-mail on that specific question Paging Dr. Gupta. And, of course, you can send us e-mail on other topics, as well.
CAFFERTY: It could be one of those medical shows in prime time, paging Dr. Gupta.
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