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American Morning

Interview With Commander Terry O'Brien

Aired May 26, 2003 - 07:32   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.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now we're going to pick up the story of the USS Nassau that we talked about a moment ago. A homecoming now for the USS Nassau, not quite as happy a homecoming as they thought they were going to have just a couple of days ago.
Now, let's find out the latest news on the disappearance of two crew members from this ship.

Commander Terry O'Brien is live aboard the USS Nassau this morning and we want to warn folks there may be a bit of microwave interference you see come through the picture, but that's unavoidable due to the method of transmission that we're using to bring this live picture from aboard the USS Nassau.

Commander O'Brien, glad to have you with us today.

First of all, what is the latest news now on this latest disappearance?

CMDR. TERRY O'BRIEN, USS NASSAU: Good morning, Leon.

The latest on Petty Officer Dale is we're continuing a ship wide search in the hopes that he'll turn up. He's still missing. We exhausted all means on the water borne search last night, concluding at sunset, and we've continued to search throughout the night on the ship. We have not, as of yet, he has not turned up.

HARRIS: Do you have any reason to believe that he is still on board the ship and not in the water somewhere?

O'BRIEN: We don't know. We wanted to -- the worst case scenario was that he was in the water. We needed to exhaust all our search efforts there while we were searching the ship. So really we're -- we've tried to explore both possibilities and we'll continue to do so.

HARRIS: And this is an absolutely awful set of circumstances and coincidences, to have Officer Williams there disappear and then now Officer Dale.

Do you have any reason to believe that there may be a connection between the two, even though they did disappear separately and hours apart?

O'BRIEN: Absolutely not. There is absolutely no connection between the two. In the first case with Petty Officer Williams, eyewitnesses saw him go over the side. We marked him right on the spot. We had people there within minutes. We were able to watch -- and very devastating, obviously, but we were right there. It was a tragic accident.

With Petty Officer Dale, he found, he was found missing during a morning muster. Once we got that, we started the search of the ship.

So absolutely not. There's no relation between the two cases except that we have, in fact, lost two sailors. And, as you said, it's very devastating for us all.

HARRIS: You know, as a leader of so many people, men and women, how do you explain something like this? To go through what you went through in the Persian Gulf, to go through everything over there for months out there on the water and then in harm's way and not experience any loss of life and then just be a matter of hours away from reaching your home port and then losing two?

And I'm sorry, it appears that we have lost the signal from the USS Nassau. And I'm sorry that that happened because I really wanted to hear what Commander O'Brien had to say about that. An incredible story for those who are aboard the USS Nassau, to have gone through months of deployment, served through the war there in the Persian Gulf, not lose a single sailor on board that ship and then be on the way back home, in a matter of hours, before Memorial Day, and get within a matter of hours of shore and lose two in two tragic incidents.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 26, 2003 - 07:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now we're going to pick up the story of the USS Nassau that we talked about a moment ago. A homecoming now for the USS Nassau, not quite as happy a homecoming as they thought they were going to have just a couple of days ago.
Now, let's find out the latest news on the disappearance of two crew members from this ship.

Commander Terry O'Brien is live aboard the USS Nassau this morning and we want to warn folks there may be a bit of microwave interference you see come through the picture, but that's unavoidable due to the method of transmission that we're using to bring this live picture from aboard the USS Nassau.

Commander O'Brien, glad to have you with us today.

First of all, what is the latest news now on this latest disappearance?

CMDR. TERRY O'BRIEN, USS NASSAU: Good morning, Leon.

The latest on Petty Officer Dale is we're continuing a ship wide search in the hopes that he'll turn up. He's still missing. We exhausted all means on the water borne search last night, concluding at sunset, and we've continued to search throughout the night on the ship. We have not, as of yet, he has not turned up.

HARRIS: Do you have any reason to believe that he is still on board the ship and not in the water somewhere?

O'BRIEN: We don't know. We wanted to -- the worst case scenario was that he was in the water. We needed to exhaust all our search efforts there while we were searching the ship. So really we're -- we've tried to explore both possibilities and we'll continue to do so.

HARRIS: And this is an absolutely awful set of circumstances and coincidences, to have Officer Williams there disappear and then now Officer Dale.

Do you have any reason to believe that there may be a connection between the two, even though they did disappear separately and hours apart?

O'BRIEN: Absolutely not. There is absolutely no connection between the two. In the first case with Petty Officer Williams, eyewitnesses saw him go over the side. We marked him right on the spot. We had people there within minutes. We were able to watch -- and very devastating, obviously, but we were right there. It was a tragic accident.

With Petty Officer Dale, he found, he was found missing during a morning muster. Once we got that, we started the search of the ship.

So absolutely not. There's no relation between the two cases except that we have, in fact, lost two sailors. And, as you said, it's very devastating for us all.

HARRIS: You know, as a leader of so many people, men and women, how do you explain something like this? To go through what you went through in the Persian Gulf, to go through everything over there for months out there on the water and then in harm's way and not experience any loss of life and then just be a matter of hours away from reaching your home port and then losing two?

And I'm sorry, it appears that we have lost the signal from the USS Nassau. And I'm sorry that that happened because I really wanted to hear what Commander O'Brien had to say about that. An incredible story for those who are aboard the USS Nassau, to have gone through months of deployment, served through the war there in the Persian Gulf, not lose a single sailor on board that ship and then be on the way back home, in a matter of hours, before Memorial Day, and get within a matter of hours of shore and lose two in two tragic incidents.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com