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Reporter's Decision; How Hurricanes Have Affected the Shrimping Industry

Aired October 03, 2005 - 09:31   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And it's just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. Miles has a couple of days off.
Coming up, "New York Times" reporter Judith miller out of jail, but the controversy over her time behind bars is just getting bigger. We're going to hear from her attorney in just a few moments regarding a dispute over when exactly she received a waiver to reveal the source in the CIA leak investigation.

Let's get back to Port Arthur, Texas, though, first, say hello once to Rob Marciano, who's reporting from there this morning for us.

Hey, Rob. Good morning.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Soledad.

Sun up now as they spent another night with the lights out here in Port Arthur, and crews have been running up and down the streets here, tree crews, utility crews, and even the mail seems to be wanting to get going here in Port Arthur.

One of the businesses here big in Port Arthur, Texas, and across the Louisiana coastline, the shrimping industry, and we'll talk to a gentleman in the shrimping business, and he's one colorful character. You're not going to want to miss that. That's coming up in just a few minutes, Soledad.

Most everybody likes shrimp, Soledad, and so a lot of people are worried about what this storm has done to maybe the shrimp scampi you might be enjoying for lunch. We'll talk a little bit more about that.

O'BRIEN: And not just the shrimp scampi, but everything, the industry as a whole, right? Yes, I love shrimp. I want to know.

All right, Rob, thanks. We'll check in with you later.

First, though, another check of the headlines. Carol has those.

Good morning.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Soledad. Good morning to all of you.

Now in the news, President Bush calls Harriet Miers a trailblazer, and she says she is exceptionally well suited for the Supreme Court. The president officially tapping Miers last hour to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The 60-year-old Miers is a well-respected lawyer, but has never been a judge. Miers says she was humbled by the decision, and that the U.S. Constitution will guide her actions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIET MIERS, SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws in the Constitution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The announcement comes on the first day of the high court's new term. The new Chief Justice John Roberts, set to take his ceremonial oath at the Supreme Court this hour. These are new pictures of Roberts with Justice Stevens.

Divers are returning to a lake in upstate New York, searching for clues of what caused a tour boat to overturn. It killed 20 people and wounded dozens of other, most of them senior citizens. One officials says it does not appear any of the passengers were wearing life jackets.

U.S. scientists and businessman Gregory Olson is aboard the International Space Station. Olson and a two-man Russian-American crew opened a hatch to the station earlier this morning. Olson will stay until next week, when the current crew is rotated back home.

An evacuation order is now lifted as firefighters make progress on a massive fire outside of Los Angeles. The 24,000-acre wildfire destroyed at least six buildings. Some 1,200 people had to flee their homes. The blaze is expected to be contained later today. Of course, that all depends on the winds, the Santa Ana winds.

(WEATHER REPORT)

O'BRIEN: Details about who leaked the name of a CIA operative could come out this month now that "New York Times" reporter Judith Miller has testified to the grand jury. Miller spent three months in jail for not revealing who told her the operative's name. It took a deal with the prosecutor and the source before Miller agreed to talk, but now some of the lawyers are involved are saying last week's deals were on the table before she went to jail.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Robert Bennett is Miss Miller's lawyer. He's in Washington D.C. this morning. It's nice to see you, and thanks for talking with us.

ROBERT BENNETT, JUDITH MILLER'S LAWYER: Good morning, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Thank you. Good morning to you.

The vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, said that Judith Miller, in fact, had the waiver of confidentiality, in fact, had it before she went off to jail.

O'BRIEN: So why did she go to jail for 85 days?

BENNETT: Well, that's not really true, and that's really nonsense.

What happened was that there had been a signed waiver that had been instructed by his superiors, and according to Floyd Abrams (ph), who also represents Judy and "The New York Times," a tape told Abrams that the waiver was coerced.

Judy Miller's position from the beginning was she wanted a personal voluntary waiver from the source, and until she got that, she would not feel she was released from her promise of confidentiality. She did not get that until September 19th, when Mr. Libby called her and personally gave her a waiver.

Now she had been in jail for a long time. Everybody knew where she was, and yet it wasn't until September 19th that she got that personal waiver.

O'BRIEN: Were you, her lawyers, calling Scooter Libby, try to get that waiver while she was sitting in jail?

BENNETT: I did call her lawyer, Mr. Tate, sometime prior to that call.

But in addition to the waiver, one other thing had to be in place, and that was the opportunity to strike an appropriate bargain with this special prosecutor, whereby he would not conduct a fishing expedition into her notes or recollections of conversations with other sources.

When we got that agreement, and when we got the assurance of the special counsel that any communication between Judy Miller and her source would not be viewed as collusion or some form of obstruction, that sort of cleared the way.

So it was really those two things happening. Now she was released on Thursday, and then on Friday she appeared before the grand jury. I know you can't tell me specifics, obviously, of what she said to the grand jury, but can you tell me why her testimony is so important here?

BENNETT: Well, only Mr. Fitzgerald can really answer that. We -- I don't know if her grand jury testimony will help him or will be of no particular value to him. Part of this may be that he feels he cannot either go forward or close down his investigation until he heard from -- I guess, the last remaining source.

I know as a former federal prosecutor, you couldn't just let Judy not testify and wind up with egg on your face six months from now. So I think it will be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks.

O'BRIEN: Robert Bennett is attorney for Judith Miller. Nice to talk to you.

BENNETT: Thank you, Soledad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Time to go back down to Rob Marciano. He's in Port Arthur, Texas this morning.

Hey, Rob. Good morning again.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Soledad.

If you've ever visited the southeast coast of Texas, or south Louisiana, for that matter, you know how good the seafood is, the shrimp, the oysters, it's all good stuff, and that industry took a huge hit with not only Katrina, but the latest Hurricane, Rita, coming onshore. It's an industry that employs 30,000 people, lost some boats, and obviously has stalled some production.

Let's talk about shrimping. We have with me Captain Jack Hemmenway, Captain Jack, as your friends like to say.

CAPT. JACK HEMMENWAY, JBS SHRIMP COMPANY: That's right.

MARCIANO: You're the owner of JBS Shrimp Packing. How has this storm, the latest round of storms, affected you?

HEMMENWAY: Well, we've been shut down now for about three weeks, but we were able to get generators on our freezer to keep our product good and froze, and all of the boats are tied up at the dock, waiting to get unloaded. We haven't started unloading, but we're planning on starting today.

MARCIANO: Tell me about the boats. Are they stuck at the dock? Are they still out to sea somewhere? They're like oil tankers that are filled with supplies, but they can't get to the ports to unload it, is what that what's happening.

HEMMENWAY: No, most of them right now are at the docks tied up, just waiting to get unloaded. When we get all of our employees back -- we're having a problem getting our employees back -- but when we get them back, we'll be back in full swing.

MARCIANO: So, should folks be worried? Are you worried about the shrimp going bad or do they have means of keeping it fresh?

HEMMENWAY: Oh, no, we have auxiliary generators standing by. When the power went off, we got our generators turned on and our freezer has been below zero ever since.

MARCIANO: And same with the boats, do those have generators?

HEMMENWAY: The boats has generators on it, and their shrimp are down below in the big holding rooms, and they're all below zero, also.

MARCIANO: What has this done to the industry as a whole? Do you think it may -- you know, could it mentally have been, maybe killed the industry in some spots?

HEMMENWAY: Well, it's going slow it down, but shrimp fishmongers are a hard-working people, and I've been knowing these people all my life. And they're going to get back in there and they're going to get back on their feet. It may take a little while, but they're going to do it.

MARCIANO: And what about the quality of the fish out there? You know, all that's happened over there in New Orleans, lots of stuff in the water. I mean, folks at home, should they be nervous about the shrimp they put on the table?

HEMMENWAY: No, I don't believe -- most of the fish -- they found some dead fish, but that fresh water coming in has no oxygen in it. But we fish like 100 miles offshore and the water is beautiful out there and everything is fine where we shrimp at.

MARCIANO: And talk about the shrimpers a little bit farther east. You mentioned to me that they were a little bit more hard-head.

HEMMENWAY: We have a lot of Vietnamese fishermen here and they're just hard-working people and if it's a will, there's a way for them people right there. They're going make it.

MARCIANO: How about fresh shrimp? I mean, you're talking about freezing shrimp. Obviously, that keeps them. Is there -- is fresh shrimp hard to come by and if so, what has this storm done to people who demand fresh shrimp?

HEMMENWAY: Well, probably 90 percent of the shrimp coming in are frozen on the boat immediately, which is the freshest it is, but there's a few boats we call ice boats, and they bring in their shrimp iced. And most of them go to little retail shrimp markets around town in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

MARCIANO: Well, you wanted to make a point to me that your business is up and running, and you didn't sustain that much damage. Does that mean you're going to cook us some lunch?

HEMMENWAY: That's right.

MARCIANO: What's for lunch?

HEMMENWAY: Fried shrimp.

MARCIANO: All right, that sounds good. Thank you very much, Captain Jack. All right, good spirits here for a lot of folks. Obviously business damaged, but they're not deterred. And that's -- you know, when you cover these stories, Soledad, that's one thing you see time and time again, at least most of the time, is that they get things back together in a positive way. So shrimps for lunch. We'll try to save you some.

O'BRIEN: Oh, yes, uh huh. Thanks. And they're going to need that spirit. All right, Rob, thanks. Still to come this morning, the power of a single photograph in Katrina's aftermath. We'll tell you how it brought together two cousins who had been separated for 30 years. Stay with us. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Among the many moving images that came out of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one really touched the world. It was that of a mother desperately trying to take care of her infant son amid the chaos at the convention center. Today, both mother and son are in North Carolina, thanks to the help of a distant cousin who saw the picture, but hadn't seen the woman in nearly 30 years.

Joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina, Lee Ann Bemboom and her 1-year-old son Jahan (ph), and her cousin Charlotte Hackman. Nice to see you all and thank you for talking with us.

Le Ann, we'll start with you. The photo, I think, in some ways, said it all. You're holding your son, he's crying, he's miserable, he's naked. You don't have diapers for him. Give me a sense of -- crying like that. Give me of a sense of how, in all seriousness, how he was and how you were feeling when that photo was taken.

LEE ANN BEMBOOM, KATRINA SURVIVOR: Obviously, I was upset. I'm kind of really responding to him through the whole thing just as a mother. So, I wouldn't even have realized really what was going on through almost all of it.

O'BRIEN: Oh, it was such a terrible picture. It really gave you a sense, I think, of just how bad it had gotten for people at the convention center. I want to ask a question of your cousin Charlotte. Because Charlotte is the one who saw this picture and Charlotte recognized not necessarily you, but she hadn't seen you in 30 years, but recognized the name, right, Charlotte? Tell me about your quest to track down your cousin.

CHARLOTTE HACKMAN, BEMBOOM'S COUSIN: Hi seen her on the TV clips and didn't recognize her, although there was something familiar about her and then I just sort of said no, I don't know her. And then her picture appeared in our local newspaper with her name. And our last name is Bemboom and that's not a name that you see in the local paper very often. And the minute I saw the name, I knew it was Lee Ann.

O'BRIEN: What good luck to have an unusual last name this time around, huh?

HACKMAN: Yes.

O'BRIEN: Now, tell me about tracking her down. Because you went through the photographer, right?

HACKMAN: Yes, that was the first thing I did. I really didn't know what to do, other than I just knew that she was alone and needed help desperately. And the first thing I did was try to track down the photographer that had taken the still picture, and was actually, surprisingly enough, able to do that. She's a photographer with "The Houston Chronicle" and I actually got her cell phone number and was able to leave her a message and she called me back.

And the first word of encouragement that we had was that she had seen Lee Ann and Jahan the next day and she knew that he had gotten some fluid and so he was a little better. Because at the time, I think, you know, the whole world felt like that he was really getting pretty critical.

O'BRIEN: Oh, yes, it looked like he was really at risk.

Lee Ann, back to you. When did you discover that, in fact, your cousin, who you hadn't seen in a long time, was trying to reach out to you and find you and help you?

BEMBOOM: It took a while. Being communications were so slow in Louisiana, it took a while. It took a while.

O'BRIEN: And then when she finally said listen, you need to come here and I need to bring you into my family and take care of you because obviously, the situation in New Orleans was terrible. What was that like?

BEMBOOM: Well, the response, being we hadn't seen for 25 years, the response took a little while. I mean, it's -- obviously, it was comforting. It was very, very comforting, which -- I needed that. I needed that. But I just didn't want to let go of Louisiana, I guess the things -- a lot of the things that had gone on there for a while.

O'BRIEN: Yes, I would bet. I see Jahan. Look, he is so comfortable. Look at this picture. He's just -- that's nice to have a set of hands helping you with a little baby. Will you go back to New Orleans if they rebuild and if they clean up and if you have a place again, or will you stay where you are now?

BEMBOOM: I would go back. You know, I hear some people say they wouldn't go back. I would go back really in a heartbeat, but on the other hand, I like it here, too. Everything has taken so long. Everything is day by day, and I'm in no rush. I'm in no rush. We need time to relax.

O'BRIEN: Yes, I bet that's the case. Now, I know Jahan just turned one like literally a couple of days ago. How's he doing? Have you seen effects from really, I think it's fair to use the word trauma, of what he went through at the convention center?

BEMBOOM: No, he -- that's him, though. Luckily, he's just one of those kind of babies who just jumps right back in. So, he's all right.

O'BRIEN: That's what's so good about 1-year-olds. Yes, Charlotte?

HACKMAN: You can tell he's really upset.

O'BRIEN: Is he sleeping?

HACKMAN: Uh-huh. He fell asleep.

O'BRIEN: I wonder if that's the first person I've been interviewing who fell asleep in the middle of my interview.

Ladies, congratulations to you, you know, connecting and getting together. That's really, really, good news. It's nice to hear some good stories out of all the sad stories that we've been reporting. So I appreciate you sharing your story with us today. Jahan, when you wake up, happy birthday, it was nice to see you, too. He is out like a light.

Thanks, you guys. Appreciate it.

HACKMAN: Thank you.

BEMBOOM: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: "CNN LIVE TODAY" is coming up next. Let's get right to Daryn Kagan to talk about what she's working on.

Hey, Daryn. Good morning.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Look at those curls to that little boy.

O'BRIEN: Oh, isn't he cute?

KAGAN: Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.

We have a busy day ahead, Soledad. Dramatic new video from Iraq as American troops mountain an offensive against insurgents. We're embedded with U.S. forces for a look at the realities of war.

Also an energy alert: How long will the pain at the gas pump go on? Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman unveils plans at the top of the hour to confront the crunch.

All of that, plus much more from the Supreme Court. A lot happening there today.

For now, back to you.

O'BRIEN: All right, we'll talk to you then. Thanks, Daryn.

Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, carrying the wrong bag gets workers at one retailer in trouble. You'll find out why. "Minding Your Business" just ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Employees at Sears are being told to prove their loyalty. A look at that and a check of the markets with Andy Serwer, who's Minding Your Business."

Prove it how? ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Well, they're not supposed to carry around bags, shopping bags, that have the names of competing companies on. We're loyal employees here at CNN.

O'BRIEN: I have a CNN hat.

SERWER: Yes, that's right, I saw you wearing it.

O'BRIEN: I'll wear whatever they give me if it's free!

SERWER: You've got it.

Let's check out about the stock market this morning. Did you know, Soledad, today's the first trading day of the third quarter?

O'BRIEN: Yes, I did. You mentioned that the last...

SERWER: There you go.

Stocks trading up this morning, up 31 points. We get off to a good start for Q4, as they say on Wall Street. A bunch of small mergers and some mergers overseas are propelling stocks, and pretty soon, Soledad, we're going to be talking about Halloween candy sales and then Christmas sales. We're heading into that time of the year.

Sears, as we mentioned here, is in a situation where they're telling their employees what to do. You see this at companies. If you work at Coca-Cola, don't walk around with a can of Pepsi. If you work at Marlboro, you're not going to smoke Winstons. If you work at Ford, you're not going to drive a big Cadillac up to the front of the door. And here's what's going on, the new CEO of Sears, Alan Lewis (sic), heard about an employee getting on a plane with a big shopping bag that had the logo of a competitor on it. We don't know which ones, but maybe it said Target, maybe it said Wal-Mart, so I can understand it, I guess. You know, you are sort of advertising the competing store here.

O'BRIEN: What's the penalty, firing, flogging?

SERWER: No. He just said don't do it. A public flogging, caning. He just said don't do it. He sent out a memo to his employees, and I guess he's well within his rights to do that.

O'BRIEN: And you don't want the CEO mad at you.

All right, Andy, thanks very much. A short break and we're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: Let's get right back to Rob Marciano in Port Arthur, Texas.

And, Rob, before we let you go, I want to ask you a question. Everyone you spoke to sounded very hopeful, as bad as things are, that they'd be able to recover and rebuild. Is that fair to say? MARCIANO: Yes, that's fair to say, the folks that are here, you know? And it's a camp full of people who want to put the pieces back together. Not so many residents, but people who are here, they're camping out up of the street and they get up in the morning and put their work clothes on, and they get to work to try to put the infrastructure back together, and they're certainly hopeful, and I'm sure that echoes with the residents who will slowly filter back in here.

It's different. You know, New Orleans was a whole different story. I mean, that was just unbelievable to see and, obviously, the living conditions and what happened to that city, but in other hurricane type of cities, where the water doesn't stick around forever, folks are typically a little bit more hopeful, and that's certainly the case here in Port Arthur. Next stop is somewhere in Louisiana.

O'BRIEN: Yes, I was going say, you're moving on to somewhere in Southwest, Louisiana, so we'll check in with you tomorrow. Thank you very much for your reporting this morning. We'll see you back here tomorrow morning.

MARCIANO: OK, great.

O'BRIEN: All right. That is it for us on AMERICAN MORNING.

Let's get right to Daryn Kagan. She's over at the CNN Center, and she's going to be taking you through the next couple of hours on CNN's "LIVE TODAY."

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