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American Morning

Showdown in Gaza; Three Bombs Rip Through Baghdad

Aired August 17, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. Showdown in Gaza. Israeli troops forcing Jewish settlers from their homes. Some people struggling as they're carried away. A possible flash point now. Hundreds of settlers barricaded inside a synagogue. We're live in Gaza as a tense situation unfolds.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. Another developing story in Baghdad. The devastating toll this morning as three bombs rip through the city, one near a hospital, 43 people killed, 76 wounded in the attacks. We're live with the latest.

M. O'BRIEN: And authorities planning to reveal the full horror of the BTK murders just hours from now. Dennis Rader in court for his sentencing on this American morning.

Good morning to you. Good to have you with us.

M. O'BRIEN: Welcome back.

It's good to be back.

S. O'BRIEN: Did you have a nice vacation?

M. O'BRIEN: I'm rested and ready.

S. O'BRIEN: You've been packing and getting ready to move everybody.

M. O'BRIEN: Packing, and moving and all of those good things. It's very, very unstressful. Anyway.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet it is. Good morning. Welcome, everybody.

We've been watching several developing stories we want to tell you about. Let's begin with those Israeli troops. They're now inside the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. For the last several hours, in fact, they've been leading the settlers away. Officials, though, saying that no excessive force is being used to remove about 4,000 settlers who are now violating the mandatory deadline to get out. Another 5,000 to 6,000 protesters of the pullout have infiltrated Gaza. They are being forced out by Israeli troops.

Many settlers still aren't giving up without a fight. About 1,000 have barricaded themselves inside the Neveh Dekalim synagogue. Bulldozers are already knocking down makeshift barricades, evacuated homes as well. Many of them are being burned by the settlers before they leave. All 21 settlement complexes are going to be leveled before Palestinians can move in.

Brings us right to Guy Raz. He is in Neveh Dekalim, which is the center of the resistance this morning.

Guy, some of these pictures look incredibly chaotic. What is the scene like?

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's been a dramatic day here so far today, Soledad. The buses have been moving out, carrying settlers. The soldiers have been moving in, and Israel is effectively beginning the process of ending its presence here in the Gaza Strip after 38 years.

Now in the morning, thousands of soldiers fanned out throughout this settlement, where they were met by fierce resistance. At times, opponents of this plan lighting fires, burning rubbish, trash, trying to thwart any attempt to allow the military vehicles to enter into the settlement. But the soldiers and the police managed to clear paths, and they began the process of removing those remaining residents from this settlement, and those particularly who are prepared to leave voluntarily.

Meanwhile, we're also watching in this settlement about 1,000 demonstrators, opponents of this plan, have barricaded themselves inside this community's largest synagogue. Now, so far the army has not surrounded that building. They're leaving it alone. We understand they will only begin the process of evacuating that building toward the end of the day.

Now, meanwhile, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon just a few hours ago addressing the nation, saying, "I am weeping with you." He was telling the Israeli public and the settler community that the scenes he was witnessing were heartbreaking, but he praised the Israeli soldiers in the way they were handling the operation. And he also called on the settlers not to blame the soldiers, but to blame the prime minister himself -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Guy, how long do they expect the full evacuation, the clearing out of the area is going to take?

RAZ: Well, the estimates range between five days and 20 days. Now, according -- the army estimates that it's going according to plan so far. About half of the residents in this settlement -- this is the largest -- have already left voluntarily. Several hundred settlers from other Gaza settlements have already been evacuated throughout the day. So the army estimates it could take, as I say, about five days. It could take a few more days than that. But ultimately, they say, they are prepared to carry out this evacuation with efficiency -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Guy Raz in Gaza for us this morning. Guy, thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Today is the deadliest day in Baghdad in more than a month. Dozens of Iraqis killed and more than 100 wounded in coordinated bombings, and two U.S. soldiers reported killed in separate incidents.

Aneesh Raman live in Baghdad with the latest -- Aneesh.

ANEESH RAMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Miles, good morning.

A trio of car bombs. That is what Iraqis woke to today in the capital. The first two bombs taking place at just about 8:00 a.m. local at the Al Nadah bus station, one of Baghdad's busiest, where defiant Iraqis would have been trying to travel and go about their daily lives. At least 43 people were killed, upwards of 80 others wounded.

Minutes later, not far away, at the Al Qindi Hospital, one of the facilities where casualties from the first explosion were being taken to, another car bomb.

In all, a disastrous scene for Iraq, one that underscores, Miles, how the need for stability remains and the surreal disconnect for the Iraqi citizens between the politics of a new constitution and the needs of daily life -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Well, connect those dots for us, Aneesh. What we're seeing on the streets there and what's happen can behind closed doors as they try to hammer out a deal and a constitution, how do you suppose that's affecting that effort?

RAMAN: Well, it will certainly underscore the need for the political process to move forward. That is undoubtedly an essential ingredient to stability coming to the streets of Iraq. But it also shows that, for the Iraqi citizens, it is certainly a separate universe, where political leaders are meeting, discussing these huge issues that will confront Iraq as it moves towards a new formation. For them, they still need the basic services of water, electricity, security for them to go out on the daily streets. They need that fixed, and they need it fixed now -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Aneesh Raman in Baghdad, thanks -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: In Crawford, Texas, this morning, Cindy Sheehan and her group of anti-war protesters are packing up and moving, but they're not leaving town.

National correspondent Bob Franken live for us in Crawford this morning.

Bob, good morning to you.

Where are they going?

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a camp that, as we all know, has grown in size. It is attracted other supporters of Cindy Sheehan and her campaign to get President Bush to talk to her as a bereaved mother of the soldier who was lost in Iraq. It has grown, but it has also grown in controversy.

So what's going to happen is they're going to pull up stakes here and move much, much closer to the ranch. And the reason is that there have been a lot of complaints here, complaints from residents of this county, many of whom support the president's policies in Iraq action, but others who are just upset with all the disruption.

It is now a little bit after 6:00 in the morning here. We're on Texas Route 185. And here's what you can always do here, but now you can only do at this time of day, and that's just walk across this highway that doesn't usually have very much traffic. But the traffic gets really, really heavy here. So the pressure on Cindy Sheehan has been to move, and as I said, they're going to be moving much closer to the ranch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CINDY SHEEHAN, SON KILLED IN IRAQ: While we were, like, stressing out about what we were going to do about that, this man walks in and says, use my land. Use my land.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wonderful.

(APPLAUSE)

SHEEHAN: This just shows me that the universe is blessing our efforts out here at Camp Casey. So Camp Casey will be moving.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FRANKEN: Actually, I was incorrect. This is Prairie Chapel Road, even smaller than Texas Route 185. In any case, they're moving much closer to the ranch, but I can guarantee you, Soledad, that even from this distance, President Bush and the administration have heard them from this distance.

S. O'BRIEN: I bet. Bob Franken for us this morning. Bob, thanks -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: About three hours from now, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader will face some of the families of his victims. They'll get a chance to speak at his sentencing hearing in Wichita. Rader has confessed to 10 murders. Prosecutors will push for the maximum sentence, life in prison for each killing. Rader cannot be sentenced to death because the murders took place before Kansas reinstated the death penalty. The judge must decide whether Rader serves 10 sentences consecutively or concurrently. Consecutive sentences would mean a minimum of 175 years without a chance of parole.

Chris Lawrence live in Wichita.

Chris, what's ahead for Dennis Rader today?

CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hard to believe, Miles, but prosecutors say they'll be presenting more evidence that is more graphic about these killings than what we have already heard. First up will be testimony from eight law enforcement officers, who will describe some of the same crimes that Rader did, but with more empathy for the victims themselves. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Dennis Rader admits he is BTK, and has methodically ticked off how he murdered his victims.

DENNIS RADER, BTK KILLER: After I strangled her with the belt, I took the belt off and retied that with pantyhose real tight.

LAWRENCE: We watched the tape of Rader's testimony with Dr. Helen Morrison, an expert who studied serial killers for 30 years.

DR. HELEN MORRISON, PSYCHIATRIST: He reports his crimes as if he were doing a grocery list.

LAWRENCE: Dr. Morrison says he'll thrive in prison, because life there is so structured.

MORRISON: You just do what you need to do, which is exactly like his crimes; you do what you need to do.

LAWRENCE: Rader stalked and murdered 10 people around Wichita, Kansas, beginning in 1974. He was notorious for taunting police and sending messages through the media. The notes stopped coming about 20 years ago, until BTK suddenly resurfaced in March 2004. Within a year came this announcement.

CHIEF NORMAN WILLIAMS, WICHITA POLICE: BTK is arrested.

(APPLAUSE)

LAWRENCE: Dr. Morrison says Rader's ability to elude police will earn him a bit of fame in prison.

MORRISON: Then there will be all the media attention, people who desperately want to talk to him, who say they'll do an exclusive interview, and he'll start keeping scrapbooks. He will become, in his own mind, a very special person.

LAWRENCE: His victims' relatives see a killer, and some of them will testify at Rader's sentencing.

(on camera): At some point during the sentencing, the family will want to see some emotion from him.

MORRISON: They will want remorse, and he has none.

LAWRENCE (voice-over): Dr. Morrison has spent thousands of hours interviewing more than 80 serial killers, including the tape she's seen of Rader.

MORRISON: These families expect that they're going to be closure with any of these cases. There will be nothing. They will get nothing from this man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAWRENCE: Nothing except the knowledge that Rader may never go free.

One of the families who have traveled here told us that they expect to be frustrated and angry over the next couple days, but nevertheless, they had to be here -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Chris Lawrence in Wichita, thank you.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come, meet the Army officer behind recent claims that critical pre-9/11 intelligence was ignored. Why is he going public now, four years after the attacks?

S. O'BRIEN: Also, a computer virus cripples corporate systems throughout the world, including CNN's. We'll take a look at how it happened.

M. O'BRIEN: And later, more on Israel's historic withdrawal from Gaza. We'll get reaction from a young Israeli and a Palestinian who worked together to sow the seeds of peace. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: A military intelligence officer says he tried to warn the FBI about an Al Qaeda cell a full year before the 9/11 attacks, but was prevented from passing on information. Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer was a member of a unit called Able Danger, and he's just now going public with what he says he told the 9/11 Commission.

Colonel Shaffer joins us from our Washington bureau this morning.

Good morning. Thanks for being with us.

LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER, U.S. ARMY INTELLIGENCE: Good morning. Thank you, Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: We're coming up on four years to the anniversary of 9/11. Why are you going public now?

SHAFFER: I understand this will stir up a lot of very difficult memories for folks. That is not why we're doing this obviously. I was tasked by the Navy to look at bringing back some of the aspects regarding the technology of the Able Danger capability earlier this year. Through our research and coordination with Congress, with Congressman Curt Weldon, we came to find that the information we provided to the 9/11 Commission had never got to the commissioners. Subsequent to that being discovered, Congressman Weldon and his staff did additional research, and we came to find that there was a significant amount of information that was totally deleted or not provided to the 9/11 commissioners.

S. O'BRIEN: But the commissioners did their report a while back. I mean, why isn't this six months ago, or even earlier than that? Why now? SHAFFER: I understand. I can't address the report, other than I know I provided information to Mr. Zelikow and Bagram (ph) in October of '03. That information was significant in the fact that in their 12th August statement, they talked about that he call back immediately requesting more information. I was asked to talk to him in January of '04, where I called his office, and they changed their mind about talking to me.

S. O'BRIEN: Forgive me for a moment. I want to kind of walk through this slowly and clearly.

SHAFFER: Sure.

S. O'BRIEN: You sort of are pointing out that things were mired and bogged down in dates. But when this was not part of the 9/11 Commission's report, why didn't you say, this is ridiculous; I must go public now, because there was a crucial drop in information. Someone dropped the ball. I need to tell the American public. Why not do that?

SHAFFER: There were two reasons. To be totally honest with you, we believed that there may have been a classified annex. Not being on the commission, not working at that level, I had no way of knowing. I had to believe that there must have been some reason that that information was not provided to the public, either by follow-on operations of some sort that related to this or something else.

S. O'BRIEN: OK, that explains it for me then at least. You claim that this is information that you had about a terrorist a full year before 9/11...

SHAFFER: Right.

S. O'BRIEN: ... Mohammed Atta, who as obviously part of this team of hijackers. Where did this information that he was a terrorist linked to Al Qaeda, where did this come from that you had that nobody else in the security branches, as far as we can tell, had that information?

SHAFFER: I didn't have the information. I was part of the task force which supported Able Danger. What I did was I married the LAN information warfare activity, LIWA, at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, an Army unit for the capability to the special operations command for the purposes of this exercise, this targeting exercise of Al Qaeda. What the LIWA did, and it was their ability to go through massive amounts of open-source data, 2.5 terabytes, and look for patterns that related to previously known terrorists. It was that information then which popped up.

S. O'BRIEN: So by trolling the Internet and LexisNexis, things like that, I think that's what you mean by open-source data? Am I right about that?

SHAFFER: Open source, anything that's not a classified database. We're talking about commercial databases, financial databases, anything that's out there that relates to the real world, and let me be specific on this.

S. O'BRIEN: And his name pops up?

SHAFFER: Yes, because terrorists live in the real world. As we recognized from the London bombings, there's a picture of a terrorist on a whitewater rafting trip. They live in the real world just like we do. We plan in the real world.

S. O'BRIEN: What were those documents that -- give me a sense of what kinds of documents targeted Mohammed Atta a year before 9/11 as potential terrorist.

SHAFFER: Ma'am, for a couple of reasons, I'm not going to get into specifics for this, because again, we're trying to figure out a way we're going to continue to use this. I don't want to give away anything that someone can use against us.

S. O'BRIEN: But it's open sourcing, right?

SHAFFER: I've covered the sourcing, which is essentially open source. Now how we array that and we use the technology, you know, first off, I'm not the technician. I'm an intelligence officer relating to human intelligence. I was one of the folks who was one of the managers of the process.

What the process actually did, though, was take this information, using advanced algorithms, looking for patterns, and it popped up this information based on all the information that was available out of open-source systems on these individuals.

S. O'BRIEN: The 9/11 commissioners say they do not recall Mohammed Atta's name coming up in their discussions. They also say that his name does not appear in any of the briefings that they had before they filed their report. Are they -- you say you talked to them specifically with that name. Are they lying?

SHAFFER: I can't answer that question. What I know is that their statement on the 12th of August is wrong. I never mentioned anything about that human-asset network being turned off by the HPSI (ph). That's one of their statements that they claim I made. I never said that.

And the other thing they say that I said was I talked about Able Danger being a project in Afghanistan. I never said that. So if they got those two points wrong, I don't know what else they got wrong.

The only thing they got right basically was that there was information about this network that related to the fact that they were interested in it. And Mr. Zelikow's own admission, the next paragraph of their 12 August statement says, they called back immediately after talking to me, which would mean they heard something that I said which resonated.

The other thing is Mr. Zelikow himself gave me his card and asked me to contact him upon my return from the deployment, and I did contact him in January of '04. That's where I was essentially blown off. I called him. They said they wanted to talk to me. I waited a week, and they called back, and said, we don't need to talk to you now.

Now, Soledad, I'm sorry, I forgot the first part of your question you asked before.

S. O'BRIEN: You know, we're actually kind of running out of time, but I was essentially asking you if they were lying, which is sort of a yes or no answer there.

SHAFFER: I can't -- I'm just letting you know what I said. I said specifically that we, as through the Able Danger process, discovered two of the three cells which conducted 9/11 to include Atta.

Now that was, to me, significant in that they actually pulled me aside after the meeting and said, please come talk to us and give us more detail.

Now back to the information that DOD passed to them. DOD passed two containers, approximately briefcased-sized containers over to them in the February/March timeframe of '04. That is not 1/20 of the information which was available out there on Able Danger and the project.

Plus, they asked DIA for it. It was not a DIA project, and I think they asked the wrong questions of DOD in some cases.

And I know for a fact right now DOD is trying to get to the bottom of this. I spoke with DOD leadership yesterday. They are working hard to come to the bottom, to come to terms with what the facts are.

S. O'BRIEN: And I know the Pentagon obviously investigating your claims, along with many other people as well.

SHAFFER: Yes, absolutely.

S. O'BRIEN: Lots of twists and turns. But, essentially, I think I understand what you're claiming now.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer joining us this morning. Thanks for your time -- Miles.

SHAFFER: Thank you, ma'am.

M. O'BRIEN: Still to come, we'll introduce you to Zotob. That's the latest worm that has made its way around the computer world, caused a little havoc here at CNN and some other places. We'll explain why it's a big threat.

Stay with us for more AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Zotob is the name. Where do they come up with these names?

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: They invent them to sound serious.

M. O'BRIEN: Zotob. Ali Velshi is here to tell us about this latest worm, or bot, or virus or whatever it is. But it brought us down to our knees yesterday.

VELSHI: And you know, we work in a secure computing environment at CNN.

M. O'BRIEN: So they say.

VELSHI: So they say. So you're used to reporting these things. When my computer started acting wonky yesterday, I had no idea that's what it was, and it wasn't long before I realized I wasn't alone.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALI VELSHI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): 1:30 p.m. Eastern time, computers running Windows 2000 flashing a warning message, "Shut down in 60 seconds." Then, blank screens.

Moments later, the computer's rebooted, only to show the same warning message. And then they shut down again, and started up again and again. It happened here at CNN, in New York and in Atlanta. But calls went out to fellow journalists and concern grew, as "The New York Times," ABC News, big equipment-maker Caterpillar, and other companies reported outages, as well.

At least 125 companies worldwide all infected by the same computer virus. Emergency services were intact, but in Washington problems on Capitol Hill, in the U.S. Senate, though not in the House of Representatives.

The seed was planted a week ago, on August 9th, when Microsoft released a bulletin warning of a vulnerability. Hackers target Microsoft a lot. Critics say its older operating systems weren't strong enough.

Well, as usual, Microsoft issued a patch. It's a fix for the problem that Windows 2000 users had to download. On Friday, according to Microsoft, a malicious hacker posted information on how to exploit that vulnerability. By Sunday, Microsoft said the attack was under way. They called it Zotob.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Overtime, we've been moving closer and closer to that Day Zero attack. And this Zotob virus is the closest yet. Announced Sunday, exploits were almost immediately available. And 48 hours later, there are over six variants that are currently attacking companies across the world.

VELSHI: Microsoft says it's low-impact, but would not specify how many companies or computers could be at risk. Symantec, which makes virus blockers, called it a major attack, a level three out of five. Virus expert Joe McGee (ph) says communications companies are particularly vulnerable because they communicate through the same network.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My feeling is that these worms, we're not going to see a lot of widespread attacks to and from the Internet, as much as we're going to see exactly what happened at CNN today or the past few days, which is, you know, one machine gets it and then it randomly kind of hits up everybody, because it's built to do that. It's built to stay within the network and infect locally, opposed to globally.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VELSHI: For the moment, it looks contained. But you know, a lot of people are going to be switching their computers on for the first time since hearing about that this morning. And don't be surprised if you have a couple problems.

M. O'BRIEN: Be careful. Be careful. Low impact, but high profile.

VELSHI: Absolutely.

M. O'BRIEN: You can't help but think the worm makers are enjoying this very moment on television.

VELSHI: Smart move to get to media outlets.

M. O'BRIEN: If you're into that, and I guess they are. All right -- Soledad.

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

Coming up in just a moment, summer's almost over. Still time, though, believe it or not, to find some great deals on a vacation. We'll tell you about some last-minute bargains, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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