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American Morning
Bomb Explosion at Green Zone Checkpoint Kills Iraqi Governing Council Head Izzadine Saleem
Aired May 17, 2004 - 08:00 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.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A shock for the future government over Iraq. The current president of the Governing Council killed in a terrorist attack.
Did Donald Rumsfeld approve a secret plan allowing Iraqi prisoners to be humiliated? We talk to the reporter making new and controversial allegations.
And the day that same sex couples in Massachusetts have been waiting for -- getting married, and it's legal, on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody.
Eight o'clock here in New York on a Monday morning.
Good to have you along with us today.
We're going to go back to that very uncertain situation in Baghdad today. A terrorist attack several hours ago. The president of the Iraqi Governing Council is dead. We'll talk to the Iraqi foreign minister about whether or not this puts the handover in jeopardy; how, indeed, things change as a result of this assassination today.
O'BRIEN: Also this morning, a new poll shows President Bush's approval rating continues to fall. CNN's Bill Schneider is just ahead. He's going to tell us what's causing the damage and, of course, what it all means for the election. Still lots of time till that election.
HEMMER: That is right.
Jack Cafferty on a Friday -- good morning -- Monday morning.
O'BRIEN: Wishful thinking on your part.
HEMMER: I think so.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: See what I have to deal with on a daily basis?
O'BRIEN: Oh. HEMMER: It's just that I was working all weekend. You know, it just felt like a Friday.
CAFFERTY: You weren't working. You were down at some wedding.
O'BRIEN: Sanjay's wedding.
CAFFERTY: Sanjay's wedding.
HEMMER: He looked great, by the way. He had a great (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
CAFFERTY: I understand he had a thing on his head.
HEMMER: Listen, he and his bride did a wonderful job.
CAFFERTY: Did he have a thing on his head?
HEMMER: And they sat on a white horse and rode into the...
CAFFERTY: Do we have pictures of the doc with the thing on his head?
HEMMER: Eventually.
CAFFERTY: That's what I want...
HEMMER: Eventually.
CAFFERTY: That's what we're working for.
HEMMER: I'm working on it.
CAFFERTY: It's going to make the Cafferty File this week.
HEMMER: He and his bride did a great job there over the weekend.
CAFFERTY: All right. Good. You sound like a P.R. guy for them.
Coming up...
HEMMER: Just helping out my buddy, you know?
CAFFERTY: Yes, I understand that. Just get a the thing on his head. We want to put in the File.
Coming up in the Cafferty File in less than an hour, New York City home to a $1,000 omelet. We'll have the recipe.
And you may not believe some of the Air America apparel that's for sale online. That's that new liberal radio network that's on the air in about five percent of the country. What do suppose they're selling online? I ain't gonna tell you till I...
O'BRIEN: Can you give us a hint?
CAFFERTY: Yes, it's below the waist. You wear it below the waist.
HEMMER: It's a belt.
O'BRIEN: It's not the unmentionables.
HEMMER: Jack, thanks.
CAFFERTY: And it ain't a belt.
HEMMER: A pair of socks.
The top stories here top of the hour.
They're making history in Massachusetts today. A giant wedding cake and hundreds of same sex couples lining up as the City of Cambridge started giving out marriage licenses. Today marks the first day gay couples can legally be married in the State of Massachusetts
The U.S. is apparently making plans to shift some of its military manpower from South Korea to Iraq. According to a South Korean official, there are about 37,000 troops currently stationed in South Korea. Both sides said to be working on details.
President Bush travels to the nation's heartland today. The president is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning segregation in America's schools. Mr. Bush visits the former elementary school at the center of the "Brown v. The Board of Education" ruling.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry blasting President Bush's trade policies. Kerry told Teamsters that he blames the president for causing needless suffering in America. He vowed to end both the Bush presidency and a trade policy that "has not made America stronger," in his words. Kerry accuses the administration of turning a deaf ear to Americans in need.
Firefights in Arizona battling a nearly 1,000 acre blaze in Tonto National Forest. The blaze broke out yesterday. Fire officials say it is not threatening any homes. They expect the fire to be fully contained by today.
O'BRIEN: Of course, all that containment relies very heavily on the weather.
HEMMER: Indeed, it does.
O'BRIEN: If the good weather conditions favor them, they'll do well. And if it changes, they will not.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: The president of the Iraqi Governing Council has been killed after a car bomb attack outside coalition headquarters in Baghdad. The blast this morning killed up to six Iraqis near a coalition checkpoint and the Governing Council has already selected a successor to complete the term until the handover of power come June. Harris Whitbeck live for us in Baghdad this morning -- Harris, good morning.
HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning once again, Soledad.
The Iraqi Governing Council has taken steps to stabilize itself after the killing this morning of Izzadine Saleem, who was acting as the president of the Governing Council for the month of May. The new president, which was named -- who was named just a few hours ago, Ghazi Mashal al-Yawer, is a Sunni Muslim from the northern city of Mosul. And he said in a press conference just a few hours ago that the Iraqi Governing Council will not be intimidated by this killing and that it will continue to work "towards building a new Iraq."
Now, we have some more details on the suicide car bombing this morning that ended the life of the president of the Governing Council. According to senior U.S. military officials, the bombing had the hallmarks of previous attacks led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who, as you'll remember, is an al Qaeda operative who has been tied to several bombings and attacks in Iraq and in the Middle East. In fact, he has been -- is believed to have been responsible for last week's beheading of American Nicholas Berg.
Now, some eyewitnesses at the scene say that they saw a red Volkswagen car parked nearby the U.S. checkpoint at the entrance to the Green Zone where the attack occurred. They said that red car was waiting for the arrival of Izzadine Saleem's convoy this morning and that when it approached the checkpoint, that is when this red car blew up.
So, again, it is now looking like this was a targeted assassination attempt and as June 30, the date of the transfer of power to the Iraqi government nears, the concern here is that there might be more attacks like this one -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Harris Whitbeck for us this morning live from Baghdad.
Harris, thank you -- Bill.
HEMMER: Now to new allegations about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approving himself measures that led to Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. There's an article in the "New Yorker" magazine by Seymour Hersh claiming that Rumsfeld established a top secret program that changed the rules concerning al Qaeda suspects and then OKed the tactics for use at Abu Ghraib Prison.
The Pentagon strongly denies the allegations in the article, saying, "The article in this week's 'New Yorker' magazine by Seymour Hersh is based and what appears to be a single anonymous source that makes dramatically false assertions. The burden of proof for these false claims rests upon the reporter."
The Pentagon denial continues, saying, "These assertions on the activities at Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."
Seymour Hersh is with us today from Washington, D.C. to talk more about it.
Good morning to you.
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Good morning.
HEMMER: It's been some time since we have spoken here at AMERICAN MORNING.
In the article, you claim -- and on the screen -- a source told you the rules are "grab whom you must, do what you want." And you talk about this SAP the special access program that really began during the war with Afghanistan.
How do you allege, then, in your reporting that this from Afghanistan was carried to the prison west of Baghdad?
HERSH: Well, first of all, it's not so much what I'm alleging, not -- I don't want to jump all over what the Pentagon says, but I had many more than one source for what I was told and what I wrote. And the simple point is what happened is after the Afghanistan war began and it settled down and we beat the Taliban, we still found -- Rumsfeld was very frustrated by the fact that we would find al Qaeda somewhere around the world where we wanted to go get 'em. Even with our special forces, there was always bureaucrat obstacles. The local ambassador, the American ambassador will want to know what these teams are doing here, etc., etc., local police officials.
So what he did is he set up a super secret team, as you said, a special access program, which is the highest classification in the Pentagon. This is a -- it's a program that's run in an unarmed room and they have their own budgets. Congress doesn't know much about it.
This group was -- they recruited a number of operatives from Delta Force, the SEALs, competent people. Everybody had aliases. It was a completely off the record operation. They had their separate communications, separate travel, separate aircraft. And they could go without visas anywhere to grab somebody. They had their own prison system. The first cut they took care of. The second cut they sent down to Guantanamo.
This group was operating very effectively and still operates, getting a lot of people...
HEMMER: So you're saying and you're reporting that they had free reign around the world to do what they wanted, then, essentially? Is that right?
HERSH: Well, if the target was al Qaeda -- there were two requirements. You had to be sure they were al Qaeda or terrorists, and, also, you had to know they know something. And I can tell you, I don't know much more than that about it because obviously it works in such -- so much in the dark. HEMMER: Maybe you know a little more about this. Now, you told Wolf Blitzer yesterday, they said they had a series of prisons somewhere around the world. That's a heck of a report.
What do you mean around the world? What were these prisons? How many? And where were they based?
HERSH: My commitment is not to get into operational details in my reporting, and I just haven't. I've been -- this story was very carefully checked just to make sure, by the "New Yorker" staff, even, the checking staff, with various sources to make sure I didn't get into -- I'm not doing anything operational. The point about the operation is that it was successful and ongoing. And last fall, when things began to go very bad in Iraq, we had -- just like this morning in Iraq -- we had a suicide bombing at the U.N. headquarters. The Jordanian embassy was hit. The American officials, the intelligence community had few assets inside the Sunni world in Iraq. And they knew they were, at that time they were talking publicly of 5,000 insurgents. They wanted to get, they wanted to get more information from the prison system out of Iraq.
And so they brought elements of this special unit into Baghdad with two basic requirements -- get some -- get people that are -- go and grab some of the Sunni males, use coercion and also use sexual intimidation if you have to.
One of the things that always works in the Arab world, they're so -- it's such a taboo to photograph a man naked and to pass it around that potential blackmail. The idea was to go and jack it up.
I'm not saying that Rumsfeld or the president or anybody lese had any idea of how this sort of transmogrified into what we saw in the last few weeks in the photographs. But the core, the way it began was with a program in which guys coming in, very sophisticated guys under aliases -- we've all heard about the civilians running around those prisons basically in control of them -- some of them were people from this unit. Some of the people in the military intelligence were red into this unit.
I can tell you right now, the intelligence community went batty about this because they thought it was a very dumb idea.
HEMMER: And you also say the CIA then ended up pulling out of this program in the fall of last year.
In the interests of time, CNN has contacted several senior members of the military and the government. They essentially say this is not true in any way. In fact, some of them describe it -- or at least one person, anyway -- as just flat out border.s.
Earlier today, a spokesperson for Donald Rumsfeld talked with Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Quoting now, he says: "This is the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I have ever observed."
Your response to both of those elements? HERSH: You're talking to somebody that wrote the story about the CIA domestic spying in 1974 that led to the Church hearing. And I heard that then. And I also did My Lai and I heard it then. This, I understand this was going to be the kind of response and I did -- we leaned over backwards to make sure, in my own reporting -- and I'm at multiple sources -- that there was a lot of basis for this.
It'll come out eventually.
HEMMER: Specialist Sivits will be court-martialed -- face a court-martial later this week in Baghdad. On the screen: "Our command would have slammed us had they found out about this. They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay," indicating the command did not know.
Your reaction to that?
HERSH: Other soldiers in the same position as he is have said exactly the opposite -- we were encouraged to do it. If you remember, you've read all those stories from some of the other six or seven that have been charged. They all say that there was a lot of -- look, the truth of the matter is that the civilians were running that prison. And just who they are we don't know. And if anybody thinks that six or seven kids decided the way to get to the Iraqi males is to humiliate them sexually, the idea that some kids from rural America would know the sophistication of that is pretty amazing.
There was somebody much higher up involved.
HEMMER: One final comment, if I could. You heard the statement from the Pentagon talking about a single anonymous source. You're saying you had more than one source?
HERSH: Oh, categorically.
HEMMER: Can you give us how many sources?
HERSH: You know, I never get into that. I can just assure you...
HEMMER: Can you give us a number? Was it two, was it half a dozen, more than that?
HERSH: No, it was fewer than a half a dozen, but certainly more than two. But just in terms of the specifics -- but I can also tell you in terms of left, for example, the CIA pulling out in October because of sort of horror at what was going on, I think on the advice of their general counsel. A lot of people, more than a few, in the CIA know that story. That's a story that should come out soon if the reporters can get looking.
HEMMER: I'm out of time.
Seymour Hersh, thank you for your time this morning in D.C.
HERSH: No problem.
HEMMER: Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Well, let's go back to Baghdad now. Today's bomb attack in Baghdad is the second time a member of the Governing Council has been killed, as the date approaches for the handover of power on June 30.
Reaction now from Baghdad and the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebar.
Nice to see you, sir.
Thank you for joining us.
I understand you're joining us from Amman this morning.
Tell me how you think the this suicide bombing will impact what is happening in Iraq right now, but also in the big picture, the handover, now slated, of course, for June 30.
HOSHYAR ZEBARI, IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER: Yes, well, we have expected, really, as we move forward and closer to the date of June 30 for the transfer of sovereignty and power to an Iraqi interim government, those challenges, those attacks will escalate gradually. And what happened today was a typical assassination attempt of an important Iraqi leader, the current president of the Governing Council for this month, Izzadine Saleem.
As you said in your reports, he is the second member of the Governing Council we lose in this struggle. But I personally don't think it will impact the political process or the transfer of political -- a transfer that we are going through. And we are determined, really, to participate and to work with others in order to pass this difficult state.
With the U.N. help, with the CPA and the Governing Council, we hope that we will be able to bring together a new interim government. But these people will not frighten us, will not cow us and we will go forward.
O'BRIEN: There are indications that President Saleem was actually in a convoy with several other vehicles that were also carrying the high raking and high profile members of the Iraqi Governing Council and some others, as well.
Is it your sense that President Saleem was targeted, that they were picking him out of that convoy? Or was it a sense that they just got anybody in the convoy?
ZEBARI: No, I think this is a deliberate political assassination. And I think this will increase. We face this danger in the streets of Baghdad every day, whether government officials, ministers or a member of the Governing Council. But this is a struggle of will. We want to build a new democratic, a new free Iraq and our enemies, the anti-democratic forces, the terrorists, the remnants of the Baath regime, want to derail this process, want to bring down this process. And we should not allow them to win.
I think this is the main challenge between us and them.
O'BRIEN: There are some who say that this attack carries all the hallmarks of the work of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Do you think that's correct, that he is the one who's behind this?
ZEBARI: Well, he'/s been very outspoken about his intention, in fact, to wreak havoc, to create civil strife, to sectarian war, to target Iraqi leaders and others, also. In fact, remnants of the old regime who have been emboldened recently are also another suspected group that could have done, especially with the car bombs. If it's not a suicidal car bomb, I think it could be the work of a member of Saddam's defeated regime.
O'BRIEN: Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, joining us this morning.
Thank you for your time, sir, joining us from Amman, Jordan this morning.
ZEBARI: You're welcome.
You're welcome.
HEMMER: In a moment here, there has been a lot of fingerprinting in the prisoner abuse scandal. We'll hear how one of the suspects will defend himself, in fact, possibly this week.
O'BRIEN: And we're also going to take you live to Topeka, Kansas, where civil rights history was made 50 years ago today.
HEMMER: Also, new polling numbers. The president's numbers hitting new lows, but apparently not the worst news for the White House. And whether or not John Kerry is benefiting.
Back in a moment with all that on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: In the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Army Specialist Charles Granger is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday for his alleged involvement in the abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison. The Army has filed seven criminal charges against Granger, including assaulting detainees, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to maltreat detainees.
Graner's attorney, Guy Womack, joining us this morning from Houston.
Nice to see you, Mr. Womack.
Thanks for being with us.
GUY WOMACK, GRANER ATTORNEY: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: What exactly is your defense going to be for your client, because, of course, he is in many of these photographs that we have seen come out of Abu Ghraib Prison?
WOMACK: Well, the defense will be that he was following what he believed to be lawful orders. We expect to show that military intelligence officers had assumed control of Abu Ghraib. In fact, in a report that came out yesterday in the "Houston Chronicle," in November, Lieutenant General Sanchez signed over control of Abu Ghraib to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Normally, prisoners would be run by M.P.s, not by intelligence officers. Abu Ghraib had become an interrogation center and appropriately, I guess you would say, it was being controlled by the interrogators, whose mission was now the primary mission of that facility.
And our defense is that the M.P.s, including Specialist Graner, were merely following orders and doing what they were told to do, and it appeared to be consistent with the way the prison was being run.
O'BRIEN: There are two things that might work against this defense that are coming from Jeremy Sivits who, as you well know, is already dealing with investigators.
The first thing is this. He says: "Graner put the detainee's head in a cradle position with Graner's arm and Graner punched the detainee with lots of force in the temple. Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked him unconscious. He was joking, laughing, like he was enjoying it."
Isn't the sort of defense of well, I was just following orders, to some degree not going to work in the military when certainly there are Geneva Conventions that most people would -- or many people might say should have known better?
WOMACK: Well, first of all, a certain amount of physical abuse actually is permitted. And I think we'll be able to show that within Abu Ghraib, quite a bit of physical abuse was encouraged. But more importantly, Sivits himself is very suspect. Should we believe anything he says? Those two same sworn statements that you're quoting from, in both of those statements, Sivits made the claimant that no military intelligence officers were involved in any of these interrogations...
O'BRIEN: And he said that, in fact, the command...
WOMACK: ... yet we have the photographs...
O'BRIEN: And forgive me for interrupting you, but I think this is relevant. He also said that the command did not know.
WOMACK: And we know he's lying about both of those. We'll be able to show that a number of members of the chain of command within the M.P. community had received complaints from my client and from the other M.P.s. We'll be able to establish that the military intelligence officers knew that the M.P.s were unhappy working for them at their direction. Both chains of command knew that the M.P.s were reluctant to do what they were ordered to do, but they were ordered by both chains of command to comply with the directions of the intel community, including civilians and other government agents. And they did.
O'BRIEN: Are you aware -- forgive me for jumping in again. Sorry about that.
I just wanted to ask you about the Seymour Hersh article. I'm sure you've heard about it. It's in the "New Yorker." And he says that a top secret interrogation program that was actually by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is saying untrue in about 25 different ways, completely, completely untrue.
Are you going to use this in any part of your case?
WOMACK: Of course I am. And if necessary, that part of the trial would be classified. I'm a retired marine lieutenant colonel. I had a top secret clearance. That could be opened back up again pretty easily. If we have to get into that kind of thing, the court can handle that, although we have to close the proceedings to any people who are not cleared for that kind of information at that point.
O'BRIEN: Your client used to work, or before he headed off to Iraq worked as a prison guard, a correction guard, and there were certainly numerous prisoners who say that he did similar things inside the prison.
Can that be brought up in this particular trial? Will that happen? Or is it going to be kept out of the trial?
WOMACK: It won't be brought up here because, for a couple of things. One, he was never formally charged or convicted of anything connected with that. From the investigative reporting done by other agencies, we've learned that the prison has said that none of these allegations were substantiated. Prison inmates routinely allege that guards have abused them. Our federal courts are literally filled with such lawsuits, prose by inmates, and they're usually false.
O'BRIEN: Guy Womack is Charles Graner's attorney, joining us this morning.
Nice to see you.
Thanks for your time.
Appreciate it.
WOMACK: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: Bill.
HEMMER: In a moment, Soledad, what does the Pentagon say about Secretary Rumsfeld and the new allegations in the prisoner abuse scandal? We'll get you there live in a moment.
Also, a controversy of Olympic proportions. Details on that with Jack, after this on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.
It's time to check in with Jack and the Question of the Day -- hello.
CAFFERTY: The Question of the Day is why Bill Hemmer comes back from Dr. Sanjay Gupta's wedding with no pictures. That's the Question of the Day.
O'BRIEN: No, that's what happens when you have this discussion in the break...
CAFFERTY: This guy goes to the...
O'BRIEN: ... and then...
CAFFERTY: ... travels to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, comes back with great pictures. Goes down to Charlotte, South Carolina for Dr. Gupta's wedding, no pictures.
HEMMER: I left my digital camera in a taxicab two weeks ago.
O'BRIEN: Disposables cost $9.
HEMMER: That was one expensive cab ride.
CAFFERTY: Did you...
HEMMER: And disposable quality is so dreadful, I cannot even go there.
O'BRIEN: Not true at all.
HEMMER: Bad, bad,
CAFFERTY: It may be, but you know what? The quality of what we got is even worse, which is we've got nothing.
HEMMER: Let me consult with the good doctor and his bride, and if they give me permission...
CAFFERTY: Tell them to send a couple of shots.
HEMMER: I will seek them out and bring them to you.
CAFFERTY: It was a very pretty wedding, a horse, the whole deal.
HEMMER: Yes, wonderful.
CAFFERTY: Neat stuff. All right. HEMMER: An authentic Hindu wedding.
CAFFERTY: I'm killing us here.
HEMMER: Well done.
CAFFERTY: I know Ted's over there screaming. Because we're in the new building, he can't talk to me.
U.S. Olympic officials have warned athletes not to celebrate by waving the flag during the Athens Olympic Games this summer. According to the "London Telegraph," the officials are worried that it'll provoke hostility from the crowd and worsen America's already battered image. The tradition of athletes waving the American flag or athletes at the Olympics waving whatever the flag is of the country they represent, goes way, way back.
The question is this -- should American athletes not wave the flag at the Summer Olympic Games?
Jesse in Omaha: "Absolutely wave the flag. The idea that those who hate us will hate us less if we show no pride in self and country is as infantile as thinking we can wage a squeaky clean war without occasional isolated incidents of brutality. Get real, folks."
Kate writes this: "Under our current circumstances, it'd be a good idea for all of us, including our athletes, to be a bit more humble and understated right now. We're not a country that is as esteemed as we were.
Nesta writes: "Like every nation in the world, America must be proud of its flag. I'm not an American, but I love America. I love the American flag. I consider America as my liberator from my communist co-nationals, a freedom that we wanted for 45 years to get. This flag symbolizes freedom and democracy everywhere in the world. You must be proud of it."
And Rob in Stoughton, Massachusetts has this idea: "Fine," he writes. "How about they wave flags with the color of the current terror threat level instead? I mean these athletes are going to want to have something to wave after all these events they're going to win. We might as well give them something functional to shake around."
Bad idea.
HEMMER: Keep your fingers crossed that things stay safe in Athens come August.
O'BRIEN: Oh, certainly.
HEMMER: Because the Olympics is one of the greatest events this world holds every four years. Wonderful, wonderful stuff, and a good feeling. Hopefully it will stay that way.
CAFFERTY: Maybe the people who attend will take some pictures.
HEMMER: You know, I'm just going to lob a few more softballs in his face, right, because he's kicking 'em out today.
O'BRIEN: You know what? Why don't we just move on?
HEMMER: In a moment, the poll numbers are low for the White House. Bill Schneider tells us why that is not such a bad thing. Inside the latest numbers in a moment on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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Aired May 17, 2004 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A shock for the future government over Iraq. The current president of the Governing Council killed in a terrorist attack.
Did Donald Rumsfeld approve a secret plan allowing Iraqi prisoners to be humiliated? We talk to the reporter making new and controversial allegations.
And the day that same sex couples in Massachusetts have been waiting for -- getting married, and it's legal, on this AMERICAN MORNING.
ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Bill Hemmer
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody.
Eight o'clock here in New York on a Monday morning.
Good to have you along with us today.
We're going to go back to that very uncertain situation in Baghdad today. A terrorist attack several hours ago. The president of the Iraqi Governing Council is dead. We'll talk to the Iraqi foreign minister about whether or not this puts the handover in jeopardy; how, indeed, things change as a result of this assassination today.
O'BRIEN: Also this morning, a new poll shows President Bush's approval rating continues to fall. CNN's Bill Schneider is just ahead. He's going to tell us what's causing the damage and, of course, what it all means for the election. Still lots of time till that election.
HEMMER: That is right.
Jack Cafferty on a Friday -- good morning -- Monday morning.
O'BRIEN: Wishful thinking on your part.
HEMMER: I think so.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: See what I have to deal with on a daily basis?
O'BRIEN: Oh. HEMMER: It's just that I was working all weekend. You know, it just felt like a Friday.
CAFFERTY: You weren't working. You were down at some wedding.
O'BRIEN: Sanjay's wedding.
CAFFERTY: Sanjay's wedding.
HEMMER: He looked great, by the way. He had a great (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
CAFFERTY: I understand he had a thing on his head.
HEMMER: Listen, he and his bride did a wonderful job.
CAFFERTY: Did he have a thing on his head?
HEMMER: And they sat on a white horse and rode into the...
CAFFERTY: Do we have pictures of the doc with the thing on his head?
HEMMER: Eventually.
CAFFERTY: That's what I want...
HEMMER: Eventually.
CAFFERTY: That's what we're working for.
HEMMER: I'm working on it.
CAFFERTY: It's going to make the Cafferty File this week.
HEMMER: He and his bride did a great job there over the weekend.
CAFFERTY: All right. Good. You sound like a P.R. guy for them.
Coming up...
HEMMER: Just helping out my buddy, you know?
CAFFERTY: Yes, I understand that. Just get a the thing on his head. We want to put in the File.
Coming up in the Cafferty File in less than an hour, New York City home to a $1,000 omelet. We'll have the recipe.
And you may not believe some of the Air America apparel that's for sale online. That's that new liberal radio network that's on the air in about five percent of the country. What do suppose they're selling online? I ain't gonna tell you till I...
O'BRIEN: Can you give us a hint?
CAFFERTY: Yes, it's below the waist. You wear it below the waist.
HEMMER: It's a belt.
O'BRIEN: It's not the unmentionables.
HEMMER: Jack, thanks.
CAFFERTY: And it ain't a belt.
HEMMER: A pair of socks.
The top stories here top of the hour.
They're making history in Massachusetts today. A giant wedding cake and hundreds of same sex couples lining up as the City of Cambridge started giving out marriage licenses. Today marks the first day gay couples can legally be married in the State of Massachusetts
The U.S. is apparently making plans to shift some of its military manpower from South Korea to Iraq. According to a South Korean official, there are about 37,000 troops currently stationed in South Korea. Both sides said to be working on details.
President Bush travels to the nation's heartland today. The president is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning segregation in America's schools. Mr. Bush visits the former elementary school at the center of the "Brown v. The Board of Education" ruling.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry blasting President Bush's trade policies. Kerry told Teamsters that he blames the president for causing needless suffering in America. He vowed to end both the Bush presidency and a trade policy that "has not made America stronger," in his words. Kerry accuses the administration of turning a deaf ear to Americans in need.
Firefights in Arizona battling a nearly 1,000 acre blaze in Tonto National Forest. The blaze broke out yesterday. Fire officials say it is not threatening any homes. They expect the fire to be fully contained by today.
O'BRIEN: Of course, all that containment relies very heavily on the weather.
HEMMER: Indeed, it does.
O'BRIEN: If the good weather conditions favor them, they'll do well. And if it changes, they will not.
(WEATHER REPORT)
O'BRIEN: The president of the Iraqi Governing Council has been killed after a car bomb attack outside coalition headquarters in Baghdad. The blast this morning killed up to six Iraqis near a coalition checkpoint and the Governing Council has already selected a successor to complete the term until the handover of power come June. Harris Whitbeck live for us in Baghdad this morning -- Harris, good morning.
HARRIS WHITBECK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning once again, Soledad.
The Iraqi Governing Council has taken steps to stabilize itself after the killing this morning of Izzadine Saleem, who was acting as the president of the Governing Council for the month of May. The new president, which was named -- who was named just a few hours ago, Ghazi Mashal al-Yawer, is a Sunni Muslim from the northern city of Mosul. And he said in a press conference just a few hours ago that the Iraqi Governing Council will not be intimidated by this killing and that it will continue to work "towards building a new Iraq."
Now, we have some more details on the suicide car bombing this morning that ended the life of the president of the Governing Council. According to senior U.S. military officials, the bombing had the hallmarks of previous attacks led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who, as you'll remember, is an al Qaeda operative who has been tied to several bombings and attacks in Iraq and in the Middle East. In fact, he has been -- is believed to have been responsible for last week's beheading of American Nicholas Berg.
Now, some eyewitnesses at the scene say that they saw a red Volkswagen car parked nearby the U.S. checkpoint at the entrance to the Green Zone where the attack occurred. They said that red car was waiting for the arrival of Izzadine Saleem's convoy this morning and that when it approached the checkpoint, that is when this red car blew up.
So, again, it is now looking like this was a targeted assassination attempt and as June 30, the date of the transfer of power to the Iraqi government nears, the concern here is that there might be more attacks like this one -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Harris Whitbeck for us this morning live from Baghdad.
Harris, thank you -- Bill.
HEMMER: Now to new allegations about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approving himself measures that led to Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. There's an article in the "New Yorker" magazine by Seymour Hersh claiming that Rumsfeld established a top secret program that changed the rules concerning al Qaeda suspects and then OKed the tactics for use at Abu Ghraib Prison.
The Pentagon strongly denies the allegations in the article, saying, "The article in this week's 'New Yorker' magazine by Seymour Hersh is based and what appears to be a single anonymous source that makes dramatically false assertions. The burden of proof for these false claims rests upon the reporter."
The Pentagon denial continues, saying, "These assertions on the activities at Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish, conspiratorial and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."
Seymour Hersh is with us today from Washington, D.C. to talk more about it.
Good morning to you.
SEYMOUR HERSH, "THE NEW YORKER": Good morning.
HEMMER: It's been some time since we have spoken here at AMERICAN MORNING.
In the article, you claim -- and on the screen -- a source told you the rules are "grab whom you must, do what you want." And you talk about this SAP the special access program that really began during the war with Afghanistan.
How do you allege, then, in your reporting that this from Afghanistan was carried to the prison west of Baghdad?
HERSH: Well, first of all, it's not so much what I'm alleging, not -- I don't want to jump all over what the Pentagon says, but I had many more than one source for what I was told and what I wrote. And the simple point is what happened is after the Afghanistan war began and it settled down and we beat the Taliban, we still found -- Rumsfeld was very frustrated by the fact that we would find al Qaeda somewhere around the world where we wanted to go get 'em. Even with our special forces, there was always bureaucrat obstacles. The local ambassador, the American ambassador will want to know what these teams are doing here, etc., etc., local police officials.
So what he did is he set up a super secret team, as you said, a special access program, which is the highest classification in the Pentagon. This is a -- it's a program that's run in an unarmed room and they have their own budgets. Congress doesn't know much about it.
This group was -- they recruited a number of operatives from Delta Force, the SEALs, competent people. Everybody had aliases. It was a completely off the record operation. They had their separate communications, separate travel, separate aircraft. And they could go without visas anywhere to grab somebody. They had their own prison system. The first cut they took care of. The second cut they sent down to Guantanamo.
This group was operating very effectively and still operates, getting a lot of people...
HEMMER: So you're saying and you're reporting that they had free reign around the world to do what they wanted, then, essentially? Is that right?
HERSH: Well, if the target was al Qaeda -- there were two requirements. You had to be sure they were al Qaeda or terrorists, and, also, you had to know they know something. And I can tell you, I don't know much more than that about it because obviously it works in such -- so much in the dark. HEMMER: Maybe you know a little more about this. Now, you told Wolf Blitzer yesterday, they said they had a series of prisons somewhere around the world. That's a heck of a report.
What do you mean around the world? What were these prisons? How many? And where were they based?
HERSH: My commitment is not to get into operational details in my reporting, and I just haven't. I've been -- this story was very carefully checked just to make sure, by the "New Yorker" staff, even, the checking staff, with various sources to make sure I didn't get into -- I'm not doing anything operational. The point about the operation is that it was successful and ongoing. And last fall, when things began to go very bad in Iraq, we had -- just like this morning in Iraq -- we had a suicide bombing at the U.N. headquarters. The Jordanian embassy was hit. The American officials, the intelligence community had few assets inside the Sunni world in Iraq. And they knew they were, at that time they were talking publicly of 5,000 insurgents. They wanted to get, they wanted to get more information from the prison system out of Iraq.
And so they brought elements of this special unit into Baghdad with two basic requirements -- get some -- get people that are -- go and grab some of the Sunni males, use coercion and also use sexual intimidation if you have to.
One of the things that always works in the Arab world, they're so -- it's such a taboo to photograph a man naked and to pass it around that potential blackmail. The idea was to go and jack it up.
I'm not saying that Rumsfeld or the president or anybody lese had any idea of how this sort of transmogrified into what we saw in the last few weeks in the photographs. But the core, the way it began was with a program in which guys coming in, very sophisticated guys under aliases -- we've all heard about the civilians running around those prisons basically in control of them -- some of them were people from this unit. Some of the people in the military intelligence were red into this unit.
I can tell you right now, the intelligence community went batty about this because they thought it was a very dumb idea.
HEMMER: And you also say the CIA then ended up pulling out of this program in the fall of last year.
In the interests of time, CNN has contacted several senior members of the military and the government. They essentially say this is not true in any way. In fact, some of them describe it -- or at least one person, anyway -- as just flat out border.s.
Earlier today, a spokesperson for Donald Rumsfeld talked with Barbara Starr at the Pentagon. Quoting now, he says: "This is the most hysterical piece of journalistic malpractice I have ever observed."
Your response to both of those elements? HERSH: You're talking to somebody that wrote the story about the CIA domestic spying in 1974 that led to the Church hearing. And I heard that then. And I also did My Lai and I heard it then. This, I understand this was going to be the kind of response and I did -- we leaned over backwards to make sure, in my own reporting -- and I'm at multiple sources -- that there was a lot of basis for this.
It'll come out eventually.
HEMMER: Specialist Sivits will be court-martialed -- face a court-martial later this week in Baghdad. On the screen: "Our command would have slammed us had they found out about this. They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on, there would have been hell to pay," indicating the command did not know.
Your reaction to that?
HERSH: Other soldiers in the same position as he is have said exactly the opposite -- we were encouraged to do it. If you remember, you've read all those stories from some of the other six or seven that have been charged. They all say that there was a lot of -- look, the truth of the matter is that the civilians were running that prison. And just who they are we don't know. And if anybody thinks that six or seven kids decided the way to get to the Iraqi males is to humiliate them sexually, the idea that some kids from rural America would know the sophistication of that is pretty amazing.
There was somebody much higher up involved.
HEMMER: One final comment, if I could. You heard the statement from the Pentagon talking about a single anonymous source. You're saying you had more than one source?
HERSH: Oh, categorically.
HEMMER: Can you give us how many sources?
HERSH: You know, I never get into that. I can just assure you...
HEMMER: Can you give us a number? Was it two, was it half a dozen, more than that?
HERSH: No, it was fewer than a half a dozen, but certainly more than two. But just in terms of the specifics -- but I can also tell you in terms of left, for example, the CIA pulling out in October because of sort of horror at what was going on, I think on the advice of their general counsel. A lot of people, more than a few, in the CIA know that story. That's a story that should come out soon if the reporters can get looking.
HEMMER: I'm out of time.
Seymour Hersh, thank you for your time this morning in D.C.
HERSH: No problem.
HEMMER: Soledad.
O'BRIEN: Well, let's go back to Baghdad now. Today's bomb attack in Baghdad is the second time a member of the Governing Council has been killed, as the date approaches for the handover of power on June 30.
Reaction now from Baghdad and the Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebar.
Nice to see you, sir.
Thank you for joining us.
I understand you're joining us from Amman this morning.
Tell me how you think the this suicide bombing will impact what is happening in Iraq right now, but also in the big picture, the handover, now slated, of course, for June 30.
HOSHYAR ZEBARI, IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER: Yes, well, we have expected, really, as we move forward and closer to the date of June 30 for the transfer of sovereignty and power to an Iraqi interim government, those challenges, those attacks will escalate gradually. And what happened today was a typical assassination attempt of an important Iraqi leader, the current president of the Governing Council for this month, Izzadine Saleem.
As you said in your reports, he is the second member of the Governing Council we lose in this struggle. But I personally don't think it will impact the political process or the transfer of political -- a transfer that we are going through. And we are determined, really, to participate and to work with others in order to pass this difficult state.
With the U.N. help, with the CPA and the Governing Council, we hope that we will be able to bring together a new interim government. But these people will not frighten us, will not cow us and we will go forward.
O'BRIEN: There are indications that President Saleem was actually in a convoy with several other vehicles that were also carrying the high raking and high profile members of the Iraqi Governing Council and some others, as well.
Is it your sense that President Saleem was targeted, that they were picking him out of that convoy? Or was it a sense that they just got anybody in the convoy?
ZEBARI: No, I think this is a deliberate political assassination. And I think this will increase. We face this danger in the streets of Baghdad every day, whether government officials, ministers or a member of the Governing Council. But this is a struggle of will. We want to build a new democratic, a new free Iraq and our enemies, the anti-democratic forces, the terrorists, the remnants of the Baath regime, want to derail this process, want to bring down this process. And we should not allow them to win.
I think this is the main challenge between us and them.
O'BRIEN: There are some who say that this attack carries all the hallmarks of the work of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Do you think that's correct, that he is the one who's behind this?
ZEBARI: Well, he'/s been very outspoken about his intention, in fact, to wreak havoc, to create civil strife, to sectarian war, to target Iraqi leaders and others, also. In fact, remnants of the old regime who have been emboldened recently are also another suspected group that could have done, especially with the car bombs. If it's not a suicidal car bomb, I think it could be the work of a member of Saddam's defeated regime.
O'BRIEN: Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, joining us this morning.
Thank you for your time, sir, joining us from Amman, Jordan this morning.
ZEBARI: You're welcome.
You're welcome.
HEMMER: In a moment here, there has been a lot of fingerprinting in the prisoner abuse scandal. We'll hear how one of the suspects will defend himself, in fact, possibly this week.
O'BRIEN: And we're also going to take you live to Topeka, Kansas, where civil rights history was made 50 years ago today.
HEMMER: Also, new polling numbers. The president's numbers hitting new lows, but apparently not the worst news for the White House. And whether or not John Kerry is benefiting.
Back in a moment with all that on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: In the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Army Specialist Charles Granger is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday for his alleged involvement in the abuses at the Abu Ghraib Prison. The Army has filed seven criminal charges against Granger, including assaulting detainees, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to maltreat detainees.
Graner's attorney, Guy Womack, joining us this morning from Houston.
Nice to see you, Mr. Womack.
Thanks for being with us.
GUY WOMACK, GRANER ATTORNEY: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: What exactly is your defense going to be for your client, because, of course, he is in many of these photographs that we have seen come out of Abu Ghraib Prison?
WOMACK: Well, the defense will be that he was following what he believed to be lawful orders. We expect to show that military intelligence officers had assumed control of Abu Ghraib. In fact, in a report that came out yesterday in the "Houston Chronicle," in November, Lieutenant General Sanchez signed over control of Abu Ghraib to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
Normally, prisoners would be run by M.P.s, not by intelligence officers. Abu Ghraib had become an interrogation center and appropriately, I guess you would say, it was being controlled by the interrogators, whose mission was now the primary mission of that facility.
And our defense is that the M.P.s, including Specialist Graner, were merely following orders and doing what they were told to do, and it appeared to be consistent with the way the prison was being run.
O'BRIEN: There are two things that might work against this defense that are coming from Jeremy Sivits who, as you well know, is already dealing with investigators.
The first thing is this. He says: "Graner put the detainee's head in a cradle position with Graner's arm and Graner punched the detainee with lots of force in the temple. Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked him unconscious. He was joking, laughing, like he was enjoying it."
Isn't the sort of defense of well, I was just following orders, to some degree not going to work in the military when certainly there are Geneva Conventions that most people would -- or many people might say should have known better?
WOMACK: Well, first of all, a certain amount of physical abuse actually is permitted. And I think we'll be able to show that within Abu Ghraib, quite a bit of physical abuse was encouraged. But more importantly, Sivits himself is very suspect. Should we believe anything he says? Those two same sworn statements that you're quoting from, in both of those statements, Sivits made the claimant that no military intelligence officers were involved in any of these interrogations...
O'BRIEN: And he said that, in fact, the command...
WOMACK: ... yet we have the photographs...
O'BRIEN: And forgive me for interrupting you, but I think this is relevant. He also said that the command did not know.
WOMACK: And we know he's lying about both of those. We'll be able to show that a number of members of the chain of command within the M.P. community had received complaints from my client and from the other M.P.s. We'll be able to establish that the military intelligence officers knew that the M.P.s were unhappy working for them at their direction. Both chains of command knew that the M.P.s were reluctant to do what they were ordered to do, but they were ordered by both chains of command to comply with the directions of the intel community, including civilians and other government agents. And they did.
O'BRIEN: Are you aware -- forgive me for jumping in again. Sorry about that.
I just wanted to ask you about the Seymour Hersh article. I'm sure you've heard about it. It's in the "New Yorker." And he says that a top secret interrogation program that was actually by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. The Pentagon is saying untrue in about 25 different ways, completely, completely untrue.
Are you going to use this in any part of your case?
WOMACK: Of course I am. And if necessary, that part of the trial would be classified. I'm a retired marine lieutenant colonel. I had a top secret clearance. That could be opened back up again pretty easily. If we have to get into that kind of thing, the court can handle that, although we have to close the proceedings to any people who are not cleared for that kind of information at that point.
O'BRIEN: Your client used to work, or before he headed off to Iraq worked as a prison guard, a correction guard, and there were certainly numerous prisoners who say that he did similar things inside the prison.
Can that be brought up in this particular trial? Will that happen? Or is it going to be kept out of the trial?
WOMACK: It won't be brought up here because, for a couple of things. One, he was never formally charged or convicted of anything connected with that. From the investigative reporting done by other agencies, we've learned that the prison has said that none of these allegations were substantiated. Prison inmates routinely allege that guards have abused them. Our federal courts are literally filled with such lawsuits, prose by inmates, and they're usually false.
O'BRIEN: Guy Womack is Charles Graner's attorney, joining us this morning.
Nice to see you.
Thanks for your time.
Appreciate it.
WOMACK: Good morning.
O'BRIEN: Bill.
HEMMER: In a moment, Soledad, what does the Pentagon say about Secretary Rumsfeld and the new allegations in the prisoner abuse scandal? We'll get you there live in a moment.
Also, a controversy of Olympic proportions. Details on that with Jack, after this on AMERICAN MORNING.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O'BRIEN: Welcome back, everybody.
It's time to check in with Jack and the Question of the Day -- hello.
CAFFERTY: The Question of the Day is why Bill Hemmer comes back from Dr. Sanjay Gupta's wedding with no pictures. That's the Question of the Day.
O'BRIEN: No, that's what happens when you have this discussion in the break...
CAFFERTY: This guy goes to the...
O'BRIEN: ... and then...
CAFFERTY: ... travels to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, comes back with great pictures. Goes down to Charlotte, South Carolina for Dr. Gupta's wedding, no pictures.
HEMMER: I left my digital camera in a taxicab two weeks ago.
O'BRIEN: Disposables cost $9.
HEMMER: That was one expensive cab ride.
CAFFERTY: Did you...
HEMMER: And disposable quality is so dreadful, I cannot even go there.
O'BRIEN: Not true at all.
HEMMER: Bad, bad,
CAFFERTY: It may be, but you know what? The quality of what we got is even worse, which is we've got nothing.
HEMMER: Let me consult with the good doctor and his bride, and if they give me permission...
CAFFERTY: Tell them to send a couple of shots.
HEMMER: I will seek them out and bring them to you.
CAFFERTY: It was a very pretty wedding, a horse, the whole deal.
HEMMER: Yes, wonderful.
CAFFERTY: Neat stuff. All right. HEMMER: An authentic Hindu wedding.
CAFFERTY: I'm killing us here.
HEMMER: Well done.
CAFFERTY: I know Ted's over there screaming. Because we're in the new building, he can't talk to me.
U.S. Olympic officials have warned athletes not to celebrate by waving the flag during the Athens Olympic Games this summer. According to the "London Telegraph," the officials are worried that it'll provoke hostility from the crowd and worsen America's already battered image. The tradition of athletes waving the American flag or athletes at the Olympics waving whatever the flag is of the country they represent, goes way, way back.
The question is this -- should American athletes not wave the flag at the Summer Olympic Games?
Jesse in Omaha: "Absolutely wave the flag. The idea that those who hate us will hate us less if we show no pride in self and country is as infantile as thinking we can wage a squeaky clean war without occasional isolated incidents of brutality. Get real, folks."
Kate writes this: "Under our current circumstances, it'd be a good idea for all of us, including our athletes, to be a bit more humble and understated right now. We're not a country that is as esteemed as we were.
Nesta writes: "Like every nation in the world, America must be proud of its flag. I'm not an American, but I love America. I love the American flag. I consider America as my liberator from my communist co-nationals, a freedom that we wanted for 45 years to get. This flag symbolizes freedom and democracy everywhere in the world. You must be proud of it."
And Rob in Stoughton, Massachusetts has this idea: "Fine," he writes. "How about they wave flags with the color of the current terror threat level instead? I mean these athletes are going to want to have something to wave after all these events they're going to win. We might as well give them something functional to shake around."
Bad idea.
HEMMER: Keep your fingers crossed that things stay safe in Athens come August.
O'BRIEN: Oh, certainly.
HEMMER: Because the Olympics is one of the greatest events this world holds every four years. Wonderful, wonderful stuff, and a good feeling. Hopefully it will stay that way.
CAFFERTY: Maybe the people who attend will take some pictures.
HEMMER: You know, I'm just going to lob a few more softballs in his face, right, because he's kicking 'em out today.
O'BRIEN: You know what? Why don't we just move on?
HEMMER: In a moment, the poll numbers are low for the White House. Bill Schneider tells us why that is not such a bad thing. Inside the latest numbers in a moment on AMERICAN MORNING.
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