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American Morning

Beirut Bombing Targets Minister; Is Rove the Leak?

Aired July 12, 2005 - 08:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, everybody. It is exactly half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. Just ahead, we're going to show you some of the damage from Dennis. We're not talking about the hurricane itself, we're talking about the storm that brought extensive flooding to parts of Georgia.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it's causing more heavy rain elsewhere, possible flooding as it moves north. Rob Marciano will check in with us and tell us what parts of the country are at peril this morning. Before we do that, however, let's check the headlines. Kelly Wallace is here with that.

KELLY WALLACE, CNN ANCHOR: Incredible stuff for those folks down South.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, you know, it's funny, we focus so much on when it makes landfall, but the damage continues.

WALLACE: And it lingers. And we'll talk about that. Thanks, Miles and Soledad. Good morning, everyone. Here are some other stories "Now in the News."

More charges expected today for the suspect being held in connection with the abduction of two Idaho children. Idaho prosecutors say Joseph Duncan III will be charged with three counts of murder. Duncan is suspected of killing Shasta Groene's mother, her older brother and her mother's boyfriend before abducting the 8-year- old girl and her 9-year-old brother Dylan. Officials say charges for Dylan's murder will come later because it took place in another state.

In Aruba, the Texas-based group helping in the search for Natalee Holloway could be calling it quits. Texas EquuSearch has spent the last three weeks in Aruba without turning up any solid leads. The group saying it will decide today whether to leave the island. Meanwhile, two brothers that were once held and then released in the case could go back to jail. A panel of judges will hear arguments today from a prosecutor who wants their release overturned.

News about First Lady Laura Bush. She is putting the spotlight on AIDS during a trip to Africa. The First Lady starting her three- nation tour today with a visit to a mentoring program in South Africa. She heads to Tanzania tomorrow and then Rwanda.

Officials in eastern New Jersey are trying to figure out what caused a giant sinkhole to open up in a man's backyard. The hole is said to be 20 feet in diameter, 15 feet deep, and getting bigger. Take a look at it there. The homeowner says he ran inside to fix his lawn mower. When he came out, there was a giant hole in his yard. The mayor says old mine shafts might be running under the property.

And as we have been telling you this morning, Tropical Storm Emily gaining strength in the Atlantic. Emily is the fifth storm of the season and could hit the Caribbean within the next couple of days. Emily coming on the heels of what was once Hurricane Dennis. Just take a look at these pictures. So much flooding there. That's a submerged roller coaster at a Six Flags theme park near Atlanta, Georgia. The storm dumping nearly ten inches of rain there. Florida emergency officials planning to hold a news conference to discuss the aftermath of Dennis at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

(WEATHER REPORT)

S. O'BRIEN: Let's go to Beirut, Lebanon now. A mass explosion targeting a leading government official. Lebanon's outgoing deputy prime minister was one of 12 people wounded in a bombing aimed at his convoy. Two people were killed. It happened in a predominantly Christian neighborhood just north of Beirut.

Let's go to CNN's producer Arwa Damon, live in Beirut. Arwa, first and foremost, I guess, the question is, who did it?

ARWA DAMON, CNN PRODUCER: Well, and that's the big question that everyone wants to know. I mean, this -- and what's distinguishing today's assassination attempt from previous ones that we have seen in the last six months is that this is the first time when a quote, "friend of Syria," or a Syrian ally within the Lebanese government, has been target.

Now I spoke -- I was at the hospital that he was taken to, the Sarhal (ph) Hospital, also north of Beirut, where I spoke with Emile Emile Lahoud, current president Emile Lahoud's son. And he says that he believes that this is not a local attack, that this is not generating from Lebanon, that these are outside forces that are continuing to trying to destabilize the country. So who did it, why was it done, why are we seeing today a pro-Syrian member of the government being attacked, remains a big question that everyone is asking here.

S. O'BRIEN: How close was the outgoing deputy prime minister Elias Murr to actually being killed in this explosion?

DAMON: Well, we -- he was very, very lucky. We spoke with the main surgeon who treated him, Dr. Samir Sarhow (ph), who says that he only suffered minor injuries. Basically, he had about 100 small wounds, mainly to his hands, two to four on his chest. So he appears to be in stable condition right now. The doctor said that he was expected to be released in two days, but he might be transferred to another hospital tonight for security reasons. However, speaking to eyewitnesses on the ground and other members of the government who spoke with him while he was being treated at the hospital, it seems that he was very, very lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it sure sounds that way. CNN producer Arwa Damon for us. Arwa, thanks. Now to the very latest in the investigation of last week's terror attacks in London. So far, no arrests reported after raids today in five homes in northern England. British anti-terror police were conducting the raids in the town of Leeds in Yorkshire. That's about 185 miles north of London. Police officials say the raids are directly connected to the attacks on the three subway trains and the bus. Meanwhile, the grueling and somewhat gruesome search for the bodies continues at those blast sites in the subway tunnels in London.

Let's get right to CNN's Matthew Chance. He's got more on that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the surface, you don't see much, just the tick of a massive police effort to gather forensic evidence. But it's the nightmarish conditions deep underground authorities say are proving a terrible obstacle. Between King's Cross and Russell Square, emergency teams still struggle to extract body parts and identify fragments of evidence from the mass of twisted metal. And then there are the rats, the massive crime scene that's become infested.

NIGEL HOLNESS, LONDON UNDERGROUND: It's extremely hot down there, as you would imagine. And clearly, I'm sure you heard from the police, there are, you know, biohazards down which they're having to work in. They're having to be very careful about how long they stop working down there.

CHANCE: The tunnel between King's Cross and Russell Square is one of the deepest sections of the London Underground system, more than 70 feet below the surface. More than a century ago, the tunnel was excavated through bedrock and clay, then reinforced with iron rings. It's only 11 feet wide, so narrow it leaves just a few inches for the trains to pass through and little room for emergency teams to work.

Civil engineers like David Brennan, a public transportation specialist, told me a bomb exploding in such a confined space would not necessarily have damaged the tunnel's structure, but would have been devastating for passengers.

DAVID BRENNAN, CIVIL ENGINEER: An explosion in an open air, you could think of the effect as being like dropping a pebble in a pool of water. And you see the initial ripple expanding outwards in all directions from the center of the explosion. But in a tunnel, it's only in one direction, the ripples can't go any further. They get blocked. So the effect is to spread sideways, to be squirted and propelled along the length of the tunnel in that direction.

CHANCE: The bomb exploded in the train's crowded lead car, seconds after it left King's Cross station, heading South towards Russell Square. The second car was also badly damaged. Emergency teams have been working out of Russell Square station to reach the site, burying people, equipment, and human remains more than a third of a mile along the tracks on electric trolley cars. More bodies could yet be found, say police, their progress slow. IAN BLAIR, METROPOLITAN POLICE COMMISSIONER: I have been told about the bodies piled up in the carriages. We know what would happen in a crowded Tube like that when a bomb goes off. It has been a dreadful scene. It is now getting slowly under control. But every square centimeter of it -- and that's hundreds of yards of tunnel, a whole train -- and then that's only one of the four scenes. It has to be meticulously combed. It is a long, long job.

CHANCE: It's still unclear how long the search for clues will take. Slow and painstaking work, but essential if those responsible are to be found.

Matthew Chance, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: And this word just in from Spain. We're getting word that four explosions have taken place at a power station. ETA, in the Basque region, sending a warning call, we are told. We are going to be talking with Madrid's bureau chief Al Goodman in a few minutes to get more information on this. Four explosions at a power station. The town is called Amora Bietta (ph). It's in the Vizcaya province. That is in the Basque region. No immediate reports of any injuries. That word coming from reports from the Associated Press. We're going to continue to follow the story, obviously.

Looks like we have Al Goodman joining us now. Let's go right to the phones.

Al, thanks for being with us. What can you tell us, besides the fact that there's been four explosions?

AL GOODMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Well, the Basque regional police spokesman telling CNN just a few moments ago that they have no reports of injuries. There was a warning call before the four explosions made in the name of the Basque separatist group ETA, which of course has been fighting for an independent Basque homeland for more than three decades, warning a Basque newspaper and a road-emergency service in separate phone calls in the name of ETA that these bombs were at this power plant.

Now this is a soon-to-be-operational electrical power plant, a thermal-type plant, not a nuclear plant. It's not online yet in any case. So police rushed over there, got the workers out of the way, then the explosions occurred shortly around 8:00 a.m. New York time in quick sequence over 10 minutes. And at this point, they have no word on injuries, and they're assessing the damage.

S. O'BRIEN: Why would the power plant be targeted?

GOODMAN: Well, one, it's not online yet. I don't have the precise answer, but ETA, which has taken credit for this, through the warning call with this Basque newspaper, where it typically makes its warning calls, if it chooses to make one. It doesn't always do so. But they picked their targets now. Lately, they've offered a kind of a partial truce against officials from some political parties, but they've held open the rest of the territory. And if this was a particularly symbolic power plant up there in the heart of Basque country at this town of Amora Bietta, which is in the largest Basque province. The nearest city that people might know of is Bilbao, where the famous Guggenheim Museum is designed by Frank Geary. So for whatever reason, ETA decided to take on this one.

Now ETA has been active with car bombs in the capital, in Madrid where I am this year, placing several car bombs that have caused injuries and extensive property damage. This date, they chose to strike up in the north.

S. O'BRIEN: I want you to give me a little more background on ETA for those who don't know it. Of course many people, many politicians in Spain were originally pointing fingers at ETA in the wake of the Madrid bombings that turned out to be more linked to terror -- I guess right-wing Islamic terror groups at the end of the day. ETA, though, has a long history of terror attacks within Spain.

GOODMAN: ETA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and by the European Union, of which Spain is a member. It's been fighting since 1968, more than three decades, for an independent Basque homeland, which would encompass a chunk of northern Spain, and also a small chunk of southwestern France. Now both Spain and France say, forget it. The European Union says forget it to ETA. Eta is blamed for more than 800 killings over that time -- politicians, police officers, military officials. And there are several thousand people in the northern Basque region who at this hour every day are under bodyguards; they can't walk outside of their house for fear of being killed by ETA, because people like them, journalists, politicians, judges, even a priest, have been targeted, and in some cases killed by ETA.

So this is an ongoing struggle. There have been signs recently that maybe, possibly, there might be some moves towards trying to get ETA to lay down its arms, and maybe there might be some peace talks. The socialist government currently in power has said it would be willing to talk to ETA, and it got a measure passed in parliament it would be willing to talk to ETA if ETA first laid down its weapons and renounced violence. This is a parallel situation to what has gone on for all those years in northern Ireland, in this case with the Basque.

S. O'BRIEN: Al Goodman's is CNN's Madrid bureau chief. Thank you for talking with us, updating us on the situation there. Four explosions at a power plant taking place in the Basque region. At this point, no injuries are reported. We are going to, of course, update you on the story as it continues.

A short break, and we're back with more AMERICAN MORNING right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: Politics now. We now know that top presidential adviser Karl Rove was the secret source for "Time" magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, but did Rove actually name knowingly the identity of an undercover CIA agent? Notice all those qualifiers there? Those are important. That was the topic of a contentious White House briefing on Monday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: You sit at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved, and now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation? Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?

SCOTT MCLELLAN, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECY.: David, there will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: All right, it's getting heated up there.

CNN's senior analyst Jeff Greenfield is here now.

And, Jeff, this is the kind of question no reporter likes to hear, but you can tell us about Matt Cooper's notes now. What are in his notes?

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST: Well, thanks to "Newsweek" magazine, we can, because the notes say, according to "Newsweek" that in the course of a conversation, Karl Rove, the top White House political operative, Bush's Brain, some people call him, told Matt Cooper, look, don't put too much stock in Joseph Wilson's trip to Africa, the retired ambassador turned Bush critic, where he said he found no evidence to back up the Bush claim that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material there, because Wilson's trip was set up not by the Defense Department or the vice president's office, but by Wilson's wife, who worked for the CIA. You got to remember here, Miles, the CIA had been in a very angry war with Cheney and Rumsfeld offices in general about Iraqi intelligence, which I think may be part of this.

Now Rove has said in the past and told CNN -- you heard him here a few minutes -- I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name. And if Cooper's notes are accurate, then Rove's statement is literally true. But there was a kind of, forgive the phrase, Clintonian quality to that. Her name, no. But the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, yes. And anyone wanting to find her name could have easily discovered it from Wilson's biography, because she was undercover.

M. O'BRIEN: What is the definition of "is" comes to mind here. It is a crime, however, to reveal the identity of a CIA operative, right?

GREENFIELD: Up to a point, as they say. There's a 1982 federal law that says it's a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of a covert agent whose status the agency is trying to keep quiet. So if, in fact, Karl Rove didn't know her name, then proving the crime within the meaning of the law would be very tough.

But there is a broader question here, about whether Rove and other White House officials were spreading information about Wilson's wife to discredit him, and what the White House thinks about that.

For instance, listen to what President Bush said roughly a year and a half ago. He was asked about this controversy in the fall of 2003. Give a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Now, again, is what is it classified to simply say his wife worked for the CIA. But the question the White House is going to have to answer, I think, is whether the act of questioning the credibility of the critic by revealing the fact that his wife worked for the CIA is part of Washington hardball or whether, Miles, that's something that, even in the White House with this political dynamic, they'd say, you know, that was over the line.

M. O'BRIEN: All right. Hardball is one thing. When do we have an inkling, one way or another, if Karl Rove is in real trouble?

GREENFIELD: Well, the special prosecutor is going to tell us sooner or later whether Rove is in legal trouble, either for perhaps breaking that 1982 law or whether he may have testified falsely to the grand jury. You know, if he said, look, I had nothing to do with this, and then it turns out that he said, hey, Wilson's wife is a CIA worker -- whether that's perjury.

About political trouble, I think we're going to know when and if people on the Republican conservative side of the great divide say, you know what, this is unacceptable behavior. And if the response is, look, Wilson was a well-known critic of the Bush administration, Rove had every right to point out a fact that went to his credibility. In fact, Wilson's own statements have come under fire, whether his wife sent him or not. The British still say they have evidence there was some effort to get nuclear material from Iraq. If all of that happens, then it's just a political dust-up.

But if, in fact, there are people on Rove's side, Republicans, conservatives, say, you know what, you don't point a finger at someone working for an intelligence agency for political motives, then he could be in trouble. And when you look back two years ago, finally, at all the White House statements that there was no involvement from any official, whether there is -- you remember this phrase, Miles -- a credibility gap. But we've already seen on the part of conservative opinion-type thing, this is all a political fight. It's just that liberals and Democrats don't like Rove because he's good at what he does.

M. O'BRIEN: Everything is seen through that prism these days. All right.

GREENFIELD: More and more, yes.

M. O'BRIEN: Jeff Greenfield, thank you. Our senior analyst. OK -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, Andy's "Minding Your Business." So just how much will it really cost to pick up the pieces from Hurricane Dennis? A look at that is up next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Legal win for former Enron employees and the price tag for Dennis' damages. Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." Good morning.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" COLUMNIST: Good morning.

Let's start off with this Enron story. Sort of a mixed bag for former employees of the energy giant that got into so much trouble. Yesterday the company, which actually emerged from bankruptcy last year, settled with the Labor Department, saying that it will look to recover $356 million to pay former employees who lost everything in their pension plans. However, get in line. Because what this means is the pension plan just becomes an approved creditor, and they are going to have to take simply a portion of that $356 million, accept simply a portion, because a lot of other banks and insurance companies want to recover money, too. So, in fact, the employees will probably get less than $100 million of that $356 million that they're owed.

S. O'BRIEN: Better than nothing.

SERWER: So they're going to get something back. Exactly.

S. O'BRIEN: But not great.

SERWER: Right, exactly.

S. O'BRIEN: Want to talk about Dennis?

SERWER: Yes, we do want to talk about that. Of course, yesterday we were talking a lot, Soledad, about the cost of this hurricane. $1 billion to $2.5 billion of damage. You remember Anderson Cooper and John Zarrella, how could forget?

S. O'BRIEN: How could you forget?

SERWER: Against versus this Ramada sign.

S. O'BRIEN: Ooh, there it goes.

SERWER: Watch out, guys. They fought the Ramada sign -- the Ramada Inn sign. The Ramada Inn sign won, I think. And this is down out of Pensacola. 120 mile-an-hour winds. The Bay View Ramada Inn, only minutes from the beach, the Web site says. Wow. Now, we looked into it. How much does a sign like that cost, Soledad? Well, it turns out, $10,000.

S. O'BRIEN: Really?

SERWER: So you can see, you know, how these costs really add up.

S. O'BRIEN When Randi Kaye was standing in front of it the day after, I was surprised that it's actually a giant sign. I mean, she's like five foot something, and the sign was almost twice her size. Big, huge sign.

SERWER: Yes, the sign -- that piece is, you know, ten feet tall maybe, and then the post sort of, you know, goes up to 40 feet. The $10,000 has to include installation costs. But still, you know, you add all these things up, and you can see why the insured costs get to be $1 billion very quickly.

S. O'BRIEN: Right, and you see the damage to homeowners, too. It's obviously -- it's going to cost a lot of money for somebody.

SERWER: Lot of money.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks.

SERWER: You're welcome.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles?

M. O'BRIEN: You know, if you want to go down there, we can put it in for about $7,000.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles and I have a deal we can offer.

(CROSSTALK)

M. O'BRIEN: Give them a deal, yes.

All right. Still to come, some serious news coming out of Spain. Four explosions near a power station in that country's Basque region. The latest details are next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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