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American Morning

Tropical Storm Harvey Aims at Bermuda; London on Alert

Aired August 04, 2005 - 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 developing story for the astronauts on the shuttle Discovery. Fresh off their successful repair mission on Wednesday. Will they have to do another space walk, this time to repair a torn blanket?
Thursday and London brings out massive police presence. Four weeks since the deadly transit bombings, two weeks since the attempted bombings. What are we learning about how those bombs were made?

And in Iraq, the military announcing more U.S. troops killed overnight, four in all, 27 since Sunday. We take a look at the battle tactics on this AMERICAN MORNING.

ANNOUNCER: From the CNN broadcast center in New York, this is AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.

S. O'BRIEN: It doesn't look like it's going to be 97 degrees today in that shot, but it is.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, what does it look like when it's 97 degrees? Do people start melting? I guess so.

S. O'BRIEN: Puddles on the sidewalk.

M. O'BRIEN: Puddles of people. I guess that could happen, conceivably.

Good morning.

We're also looking at tropical storm Harvey. Not an imaginary storm. It's the real deal. It's in the Atlantic. And there could be another big storm behind it.

S. O'BRIEN: We'll get the hurricane forecast ahead with Chad in just a few moments.

First, though, let's get a look at some of the other stories that are making headlines this morning with Carol Costello -- good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, new details are coming out about the July 7th attacks in London. According to the New York Police Department, police in London believe the bombers used a type of explosive that can be made with ordinary household items like hydrogen peroxide. Officials also warn that the materials and methods used in the London attacks could be easily used in a potential attack in New York. We'll head live to London, where security is extra tight today, in just a minute.

A memorial service is being planned in Ohio to honor 21 Marines killed over the past week, 14 of them killed in a roadside bomb attack near Haditha on Wednesday. They were from the same battalion based in Brook Park, which is a suburb of Cleveland. Many families now anxiously awaiting word about their loved ones. One couple found out about their son's death while making plans to attend funerals for other Reservists.

President Bush says the sacrifices made by those Marines will be honored with the completion of the mission in Iraq. The president also repeated his stand that there is no timetable for the troops to come home.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It makes no sense for the commander-in-chief to put out a timetable. We're at war. We're facing an enemy that is ruthless. And if we put out a timetable, the enemy would adjust their tactics. The timetable is this -- and you can tell your Guard troops and Reserve troops and mothers and dads of those serving. The timetable depends on our ability to train the Iraqis, to get the Iraqis ready to fight. And then our troops are coming home with the honor they have earned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Today, President Bush is back at his Texas ranch hosting Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe. They're expected to discuss efforts to halt drug trafficking.

And on the topic of no one is above the law, Martha Stewart will have to be a homebody for another three weeks. Her house arrest had been extended, which means she'll have to keep wearing that electronic ankle bracelet. It was supposed to be taken off next week. Stewart's attorney would not give an explanation, but the "New York Post" is reporting that Stewart had been spotted riding around her estate on a utility vehicle called a mule. And also supposedly she went to yoga class with her daughter and then went shopping for some books, which would be in violation.

Tropical storm Harvey is picking up speed in the Atlantic, just off Bermuda. And there is another growing storm heading west across the Atlantic -- let's head to a very busy Chad Myers.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It could be Irene probably even by tomorrow, Carol. It's very impressive, although it's too far out there in the Atlantic for the hurricane hunters to fly. It's actually much closer to Africa than it is even to the islands.

There goes Harvey, though, right by Bermuda, about a couple of hours ago. Now it's just -- it's going to get into this colder water and there's not going to be anything left of Harvey here in probably, I don't know, five or six hours. It's going to be almost completely gone. And by tomorrow, you won't even know it.

But there is the storm that we're worried about. Look at the size of this mass. Here's Venezuela down here. Here are islands. There's Puerto Rico and Cuba. So it's still way, way out there, but, man, it's just huge already. The size of the storm is enormous. The spin maybe isn't there yet, but it has a lot to work with. It came off, obviously, it came off of Africa a couple of days ago and now it's in the warm water.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Officials at NASA say another space walk is a remote possibility for the Discovery crew. There's a damaged thermal blanket just below Commander Eileen Collins' left cockpit window, seen here. NASA engineers were testing samples of that material to determine if it is likely to fray or tear off during reentry. They're not concerned about it overheating, they're just concerned about this as a debris issue.

NASA officials say the worst case scenario, mach three or mach four, even a fraction of an ounce could cause structural damage to the orbiter. Now, a news conference is scheduled at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. And we should hear the decision on whether there will be space walk number four then. If, of course, we'll see it here live on CNN.

Look at these pictures from space right now. Beautiful pictures.

S. O'BRIEN: They're beautiful.

M. O'BRIEN: This is 100 -- excuse me -- 219 miles above the Indian Ocean and the space shuttle crew taking some down time today. And as we speak, offering up a tribute to the crew of the shuttle Columbia, who perished, of course, two-and-a-half years ago. This is the first flight back since then. Remembering their friends, Rick Husband, Willie McCool, Elan Ramon, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown and Laurel Clark, who, of course, died on reentry February 1, 2003.

And their memory is very much alive and fresh among the crew members, as well as NASA. And it certainly has changed the way this whole mission has unfolded as NASA tries to learn the lessons of Columbia -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: It is a beautiful picture, isn't it?

M. O'BRIEN: It is, yes.

S. O'BRIEN: What a remarkable thing, to be in space looking down.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, and I think maybe somewhere up there the crew of STS-107, Columbia, is with them.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes. I think that's very true to say.

All right, we'll check in on that a little bit later, throughout the morning, in fact.

London now on high alert. Four weeks since those deadly transit bombings. Two weeks since the failed second attempt. So London police say while there's no specific threat of another attack, they've got a massive security operation underway. And it's really to reassure commuters.

Let's get right to Walter Rodgers.

He's live at Oxford Circus station in London -- so, Walter, do the commuters seem reassured to you?

WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Somewhat. But if you look at the recent polls, Soledad, you'll still see that those who feel safe riding the subways and buses here in London are a minority. I saw one figure that said well over 50 percent of London's commuters do not feel safe even now.

To counter that and to reassure the public, the Metropolitan Police in London have put some 6,000 police officers on the streets today. This is the four week anniversary of the first of the London bombings.

When you go through the underground stations, you ride on the train, you see something unusual, something you don't usually see here, that is, uniformed police underground, sometimes on the trains themselves.

And so the attempts to reassure the public are very real. There is, perhaps, some deterrent effect in all of that. But right now, you can see Londoners going about their business rather normally, or trying to go about it normally. And the reason for that, of course, is that this was nowhere near as traumatic an event, as bad as it was. But still nothing like what happened in New York and Washington on September 11.

And Londoners had been warned frequently about the possibility of an attack on their transport system. So perhaps, as bad as it was, 56 dead, including the suicide bombers, perhaps as bad as it was, it came as no surprise. And, again, not as traumatic as what happened in the States -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: At the same time, Walter, you've got, on the other front, the investigation making headway, too.

At this point, are they linking that first attack and that second attack?

RODGERS: A good question. This morning the London police did, indeed, issue a statement saying so far they've found no evidence to link the July 7th bombers to the less successful July 21st bombers. So, again -- and remember, the July 7th bombers made their bombs go off. The later bombers were quite unsuccessful. They only fired detonators. There were not fatalities in that second attack. And what -- part of the purpose of the investigation is to sift through the forensic evidence, the explosive residues and the detonators. And, again, no similarities yet found, according to the police. So they could have been two entirely separate incidents trying to deliver two separate messages -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: That investigation obviously ongoing.

Walter Rodgers for us this morning.

Walt, thanks -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: The 14 Marines killed Wednesday near Haditha, Iraq were riding in an amphibious assault vehicle.

Our next guest suggests the vehicles really aren't strong enough for what they're being used for and that maybe the Marines haven't adapted to the fighting as well as they should have or quite as well as the insurgents have.

CNN analyst, General James "Spider" Marks joining us now.

General Marks, good to have you back with us this morning.

MAJ. GEN. JAMES MARKS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Good morning, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Let's talk about these amphibious assault vehicles and run through a few statistics. First of all, the design, because they're amphibious, to carry troops over water. And by that very definition, a limited amount of armor. You don't want it to sink. That's number one. They don't have a lot of speed. They can only travel about 20 or 30 miles an hour. And it has tracks as opposed to wheels, so while it can do probably some rough terrain, it's not a highly maneuverable vehicle.

Doesn't -- it sort of seems like a sitting duck type of vehicle.

MARKS: Well, I wouldn't call it a sitting duck. It clearly was designed and the unit's mission is from ship to shore type of engagements. And so that's what the AMTRAC certainly is designed for. And it truly is unfortunate that it does not have the thick skin that you would see on maybe the Abrams tank or even on the Bradley. And, again, different kinds of mission sets that those pieces of equipment are designed for.

M. O'BRIEN: But don't our Marines deserve some thick skin?

MARKS: Sure they do. Absolutely, Miles. The question is the unit has a specific mission, has a specific amount of equipment and the type of equipment that it has is the type of equipment that it's going to take to combat. And it will adapt those mission sets and the kinds of functions that they perform based on the terrain, the enemy and the requirements that they're placed within.

And so when you keep all this in perspective, I mean clearly you can say is the enemy adapting? Absolutely, Miles. The enemy is an adaptive enemy. It's a thinking enemy. It's got a vote in how it's going to engage.

So does the Marine Corps. And the Marines understand that. They obviously had done an assessment of the mission, the terrain, the conditions and the requirements for this mission. And that piece of equipment is what they had and they used it.

Now, can they put armor, can they up armor it? Can they make it stronger? Of course they can and the Marine Corps knows that. And I guarantee you that efforts are being made in -- across-the-board to ensure that that is being done.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, we focused an awful lot about the issue of armored Humvees. That came to light when the defense secretary went into theater and took a hard question from somebody who was in, you know, just a soldier who said why aren't these Humvees armored.

MARKS: Right.

M. O'BRIEN: And since that time, the Pentagon has stepped up that effort. Most of the Humvees now, as we're told, are, in fact, armored.

Have the Marines not gotten this message for some reason?

MARKS: No, the Marines have gotten the message. I mean this is just a tragic incident, Miles, where you have a piece of equipment, you've got 14 Marines that are involved and embedded in that AMTRAC and it truly is just -- and it's also a combination of what the enemy has done to adapt. This is just a matter of physics in a very confined space, a heck of a lot more explosives and some shrapnel and you have this explosive, improvised explosive device was probably as strong and as large as anyone that's been detonated to date.

M. O'BRIEN: I've got to tell you, General, before we get away, the quote that is ringing in my mind this morning is from the family of one of the Marines lost. They just told Soledad a few months ago, in his brief kind of cryptic letters back that he felt that the whole mission was less and less worthwhile.

What are your thoughts on that?

MARKS: The mission is truly, first of all, let me add, if I can just take a few seconds and send my condolences personally to the families that suffered this loss. The unit is devastated and the Marine Corps is devastated. This is a very, very tough mission and this is very difficult to look into the eyes of those family members. And, as you and I have shared, my wife's father was killed in Vietnam at the very tail end of that conflict. So this is very personal.

Miles...

M. O'BRIEN: But is it worthwhile?

MARKS: Miles, let me explain. Yes. It is worthwhile because we have got to ensure that the Iraqi people and the Iraqi military has the capability to stand up and prosecute this fight against the insurgents. So is the U.S. presence divisive? Yes, it is divisive. Again, you have an alliance that exists between firefighters and Iraqi nationalists who want to do harm and they use the United States' presence in Iraq as a motivation for that alliance.

So as long as we're there, of course it's going to be divisive. But our requirement is to ensure that the Iraqi people, number one, have a democracy. We're in place to enable that democracy and we've got to have an Iraqi military that's in place in order to facilitate that, as well.

M. O'BRIEN: CNN military analyst General James "Spider" Marks.

Thank you.

MARKS: Thanks, Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, DNA evidence clears a Florida man convicted of rape more than 20 years ago. So why is that state ready to deny other inmates the same opportunity? We'll take a look with Jeff Toobin.

M. O'BRIEN: And next, the story of a brain dead mother came to a bittersweet end this week. An update on the condition of her newborn daughter next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A story we've been following now. Doctors telling us that a baby born to a brain dead woman in Arlington, Virginia has an excellent chance of survival. Susan Torres, you'll recall, had been on life support since May. It was trying to allow her baby more time to grow. Well, now the baby, also named Susan, is in the neonatal intensive care unit and weighs less than two pounds.

Justin Torres is Susan Torres' brother-in-law and he joins us.

It's nice to see you.

Thank you very much for talking with us.

JUSTIN TORRES, BABY SUSAN'S UNCLE: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Our condolences, of course, because, in a lot of ways, this has a very sad ending. And then a very happy ending, too, because the baby is born and she looks like she's fine.

How is everybody holding up in the family? It's been a real roller coaster.

TORRES: It has. It's been a very difficult two days with a lot of ups and downs. But we're doing OK. I mean we have a lot more time left in the hospital. She'll be there for probably eight to 12 weeks. So we have a ways to go. But it certainly was very good to see that baby.

S. O'BRIEN: Twenty-seven weeks, is that right, how far the baby made it before she was delivered?

TORRES: Um-hmm.

S. O'BRIEN: Under two pounds. It seems like the doctors, though, are feeling very confident, even with that early delivery, that she's going to be fine.

Is that what they're telling you?

TORRES: Well, you know, we're certainly not out of the woods yet. But 27 weeks is very good. The chances, the survival rate at 27 weeks is above 90 percent. And so far, she seems to be doing very well. This morning she's breathing on her own with just a little bit of extra oxygen and responding very well to all the tests that they're doing.

So it's looking very good.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, it is really looking very good. I know that the doctors, you know, set these milestones and they say, first, well, let's try to make it to 26 weeks, then we'll try to make it to 32 weeks, then if we can make it to 38, you know, as you're talking about, a pregnancy, you were very lucky getting to 26 weeks. That was the first milestone.

Why go ahead and deliver baby Susan now?

TORRES: Well, the doctors at Virginia Hospital Center decided that the risks of continuing the pregnancy had become greater the risks of a premature birth. Susan's cancer had progressed and there was increasing instability with blood pressure and heart rate and things like that. So, you know, Monday morning they made the decision that it was time, it was time to go. Twenty-seven weeks is a very good, very good date considering where we started from on May the 7th.

So, it, you know, we've just -- we were waiting for the doctors to tell us when it was time and Monday they said, you know, it's time to go.

S. O'BRIEN: Is there any way to tell, any way that the doctors can tell if baby Susan is cancer-free? Your sister-in-law, of course, had melanoma and that eventually led to a stroke and then the cancer spreading around her body.

Is the baby going to be OK?

TORRES: Well, we don't know yet and we're not going to really know with any finality probably for years to come. The doctors tell us that there was no visible sign of cancer in the placenta, although it has been sent to a pathologist and they'll do a microscopic evaluation so we'll know something a little bit more probably in a couple of days or weeks. But, you know, baby Susan is going to have to be monitored for years to come. Susan had had -- her mother had had melanoma when she was a teenager and apparently it laid dormant for something like 10 years. So it's, you know, it's something we'll have to watch for a long time.

But the chances look good and we're continuing to pray.

S. O'BRIEN: Your brother Jason has been really remarkable. I had a chance to talk to him and I was just impressed with how he held up. I mean, in addition to all of this, he has a 2-year-old, as well.

TORRES: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: How is he doing and how is the little boy doing? And I know financial issues are a big concern, too. I think the price tag for all of this is over $1 million.

How is it going on that front?

TORRES: Well, in terms of fundraising, we've had, you know, tremendous success and we've probably raised, we think, over $450,000, which is just remarkable. We are immensely grateful to everyone who's donated, but especially grateful for people's prayers, because we know a lot of people were praying for us.

Jason is, you know, obviously this is a very difficult time and he's just spending time with Susan's parents and my family and his son Peter. Peter actually visited the hospital yesterday and met his sister for the first time, which was good to see.

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I bet.

Well, Justin Torres, thanks for talking with us.

We really appreciate it.

I know your family knee deep in a lot going on.

TORRES: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: So we appreciate the update.

Thanks.

TORRES: Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: A little bit of news coming into us right now. Al Qaeda's second in command, Osama bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman el- Zawahiri, is out with a videotape. You see it there. It aired very recently on the Al Jazeera Arab language television network. Our translators are working on getting an accurate translation for u.

Now, the Associated Press has translated at least a portion of it and we'll just quote that portion. According to Zawahiri, according to the A.P., he says: "Blair's policies will bring more destruction to Britons after the London explosions."

Ayman el-Zawahiri out with yet another videotape on the Al Jazeera network.

We'll get you an accurate translation and more information as soon as we can.

Still to come on our program, another potential problem for the crew of the shuttle Discovery. We'll look at whether they have to take another space walk to fix it, as you look at some live pictures there, the Destiny laboratory on board the International Space Station.

And that's next on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: One more issue for NASA to resolve before the shuttle Discovery can return to Earth. A damaged blanket outside one of the cockpit windows. As you can see, it's puffed out. That is the technical term. There is concern it could tear off and hit the orbiter during reentry, as you heard a little while ago with astronaut Mike Fink. They're not so concerned about the thermal problems, it overheating, just the debris issue.

Mike Cabbage, space editor for the "Orlando Sentinel," joining us from the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Let's talk about the blanket first.

I understand they've been working 24 hours, overnight, doing some wind tunnel tests. We haven't heard what they found yet.

What are you hearing about this issue in general, Mike?

MICHAEL CABBAGE, SPACE EDITOR, "ORLANDO SENTINEL": Well, this is something they've been looking at very hard, Miles.

They sent samples of some blankets out to Ames Research Center in California yesterday, where they put them in the wind tunnel, as you mentioned, and they're doing analyses to see how these blankets come apart during reentry.

The fear, as you noted a second ago, was that when you get to lower speeds in the atmosphere during the shuttle's reentry and you hit the denser parts of the atmosphere, that parts of this blanket can come loose. And they're not worried about heating on Discovery. They're worried that these could become projectiles or debris that might strike other parts of the orbiter and do damage.

The mission management team is supposed to look at this long and hard this afternoon and I think they'll probably have some sort of resolution by the end of the day.

M. O'BRIEN: It seems as if there might be, might be, a little bit of a crisis of confidence in the team here.

Is that possible or is that going too far?

CABBAGE: I'm not sure if it's a crisis of confidence, is the way I would put it, but I will say this. I mean clearly NASA is doing business very, very differently than the way they did before the Columbia accident. I think what might be at work here is that, if anything, they've decided to err on the side of caution when they have these issues come up and when they decide what they're going to do about them.

As you remember from the Columbia accident, mission managers just got withering criticism for the fact that they dismissed the foam strike early in the mission. They didn't really talk it through the way that they should have. Analyses were done hastily and not terribly well. And it looks like NASA has really decided to step back and look at these things very thoroughly and err on the side, again, of caution, if they're going to look at these things as they move forward.

M. O'BRIEN: It seems as if all these years ignorance has been bliss. They've put a bunch of additional cameras on the orbiter and lo and behold, all kind of problems come to light. We always knew it was a complicated machine. Now it's an old complicated machine.

What's the thinking there as on the future?

CABBAGE: Well, there's no question that the addition of the all the camera views is showing NASA things that they've never seen before. The gap-filler issue, for example, where they had the two protrusions from the orbiter's belly and Steve Robinson, the spacewalker, went out and fixed those yesterday, that's a perfect example of a problem they wouldn't have seen before.

But the shuttle is aging. It's 24 years old. If you go back to the first flight that Columbia flew in 1981 -- although Discovery isn't quite that old -- but as the orbiter ages and as it nears its retirement in 2010, you're probably going to see a lot more of these sorts of issues.

M. O'BRIEN: Mike Cabbage, aerospace editor for the "Orlando Sentinel," author of the book "Comm Check," thanks.

CABBAGE: My pleasure.

M. O'BRIEN: Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, science going to the dogs -- we'll take a look at a cloned canine that could, some say, lead to medical breakthroughs.

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Stay with us.

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