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American Morning

'Morning Buzz'

Aired January 28, 2002 - 07:22   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: It is time now for us to buzz here on AMERICAN MORNING. We do this three times a morning, once each hour, and lo and behold, it's time for the first one right now.

So, on a very serious note, a story in the "New York Times" yesterday. Keep in mind the number of visas that were probably issued by the United States government to Saudi Arabian men between the ages of 21 and 45 to come to this country. I don't know how many there were, but I'll bet you there was more than six.

Ninety-five percent, according to an intelligence report that was gotten a hold of by American officials, 95 percent of educated Saudi men between the ages of 21 and 45 support Osama bin Laden. Ninety- five percent.

PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Wow.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's amazing.

CAFFERTY: And we go on pretending that we have some kind of situation. I mean it's, it's crazy.

ZAHN: Well, it's interesting, it was hard for them to measure what this level of support was, what exactly it means. And obviously what they tie it to is the perception that the U.S. supports Israel in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

COOPER: Right. It's unbelievable, especially when you consider, I mean, just last week, you know, we heard reports that possibly Saudi Arabia may want the U.S. to pull out, pull its bases out of Saudi Arabia. Extremely...

ZAHN: And Senator Carl Levin asking that we remove them from Saudi Arabian soil.

COOPER: Yes.

CAFFERTY: Yes.

COOPER: Unbelievable. Also, I mean another serious story coming out of the Middle East, Daniel Pearl, a reporter for the "Wall Street Journal" apparently has been taken hostage by a group over the weekend. On Sunday the "Wall Street Journal" received some e-mail from him, from the group allegedly holding him, along with some photos that we're showing now. It just brings it home again. I mean it's an unbelievable story.

ZAHN: Can they determine whether these e-mails are a hoax or not at this point?

COOPER: They don't know. I mean these e-mails...

ZAHN: But they have reason to believe that these pictures of him are not doctored?

COOPER: The pictures are very serious -- right. I mean in one of them he's holding up a newspaper that's relatively recent. Another picture has a gun to his head. And the e-mails, it seems, were sent out to several e-mail addresses, I think a half dozen or so at the "Wall Street Journal," also at the "New York Times."

So it looks like someone got them off the Web site, actually, of the "Wall Street Journal," because they were sort of sent randomly. It doesn't necessarily make sense to who they were sent to. They were just sort of generic e-mails sent out.

CAFFERTY: You're going to talk to somebody more about this later in the program?

COOPER: Right. We'll be talking to someone from the Committee To Protect Journalists about that. So...

ZAHN: A lot of speculation, too, about this alleged first female suicide bomber in Israel over the weekend. If this is true and it's proven that, in fact, she was a woman -- sort of conflicting accounts on whether this is a terrorist whose bomb went off before it was supposed to or a suicide bomber -- it could represent a big change in strategy --

COOPER: It's pretty alarming.

ZAHN: ... on the Palestinians' part.

COOPER: I mean it's very alarming when, you know, the profile has always been a male. Suddenly to have a female in this part of the world doing that, I mean, if it is, in fact, true, it's a big change, it could be a big change. I mean there have been female suicide bombers in Sri Lanka for years now. But I don't think anyone really in Israel would have expected a female suicide bomber.

ZAHN: We're going to be talking with the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, in our next hour about the significance of this and what impact this might have on any efforts to get the peace talks going again.

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