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American Morning

New York's Seven Million Commuters Waiting for Word on Transit Strike; Treacherous Morning for Millions Up and Down East Coast

Aired December 16, 2005 - 07:00   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Soledad O'Brien. New York's seven million commuters are just waiting for word there is no crippling transit strike yet. No deal though, either.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Miles O'Brien. A treacherous morning for millions of people up and down the East Coast. Drivers fighting ice-covered roads. We'll take you to the dangerous spots, and we'll give you a forecast.

S. O'BRIEN: And did President Bush OK spying on Americans? A report on a secret program is just ahead, on this AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning. Welcome, everybody.

M. O'BRIEN: Good morning.

We begin with subways and buses that are still running in New York City. A little bit of a relief of sigh here in the city. But it ain't over yet, as they say. So far, no transit strike. Talks breaking off early this morning. The union talking among themselves right now. We're waiting for a news conference.

And senior CNN correspondent Allan Chernoff is at Penn Station. AMERICAN MORNING's Carol Costello is outside. She'll be joining us very shortly near Columbus Circle.

Let's begin with Allan.

And, Allan, Tell us what you're hearing there.

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Miles. Well, the union's executive council is meeting behind closed doors. They've been meeting for well over an hour now. And what's happening here is that the union's leader, Roger Touissant is discussing a proposal from the Metropolitan Transit Authority. The proposal, we understand, according to union sources, is a raise of three percent a year for three years. Now the union has been demanding a raise of eight percent a year. So certainly not exactly what the union had wanted, but nonetheless, an improvement from the prior offer from the MTA.

There are also proposals from the MTA on the key issues of health insurance and pensions as well, so the executive council of the union discussing all of this right now. They are expected to vote on it. And as soon as they do vote, after that, we would expect to have a press briefing. As we've been reporting, they are all set up for a press briefing. That has been scheduled for 6:00 in the morning. And we're an hour after that. So the clock continues to click here, and we're still waiting to hear.

Miles, back to you.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Allan Chernoff, we hear the news conference may happen very shortly. We're going to keep you posted on that one.

In the meantime, let's head to Columbus Circle, our front door there, where we find Carol Costello this morning.

Good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm right by the subway entrance. And we're awaiting that press conference, and I hope it comes soon because a lot of people in -- in fact, every single person in this city is waiting for them to say, we've reached some sort of agreement, and we are not going to strike.

They were supposed to strike at 12:01 this morning. So a lot of New Yorkers couldn't sleep, because they're wondering, how the heck do you get to work? Seven million people ride public transit in the city, including Tony, who came from 96th Street.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

COSTELLO: And you weren't even scared?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, no. I was hoping that the trains was working, you know.

COSTELLO: So this was just a throw of the dice?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, a throw of the dice.

COSTELLO: What if you get stuck in this city?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It ain't too far to walk, you know? A good walk, if it wasn't raining.

COSTELLO: So you're not going to get into a cab, because it's required there has to be more than one person in the cab, and then have you to negotiate the price. Tell us what that would be like?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Terrible!

COSTELLO: Have you ever negotiated with a cab driver?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, no.

COSTELLO: And you're not going to start?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then I got to find three other people to ride with me. That's going to be hectic, you know?

COSTELLO: There's so many rules, because if you're coming into the city, like, say, from Connecticut, you have to have four people to a car. If you don't, the fine could be $500. Do you even understand the contingency plan?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, yes, yes -- well, not really. It's just too much.

COSTELLO: Yes, be truthful, Tony!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it's too much, you know, running around. You got to get this, or can't go here, you know.

COSTELLO: Do you think that the transit workers should strike, because it is illegal for them to do so?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. You know, they got to live, too, you know? So they got to do what they got to do.

COSTELLO: So you won't be angry?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I'm not angry. I just wish they would did it on a better day than today!

COSTELLO: Well, good luck, Tony. Thank you very much.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You, too. You have a good day.

COSTELLO: You, too.

OK, so we're awaiting that news conference, which was supposed to occur at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time, so I guess we'll continue to wait -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: All right, Carol, we've got live picture there. We're watching it. As soon as it begins, we will keep you posted on the situation here in New York City. Thanks very much -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: It really could be a mess here in New York City. And part of that reason is not only the transit strike that's looming, but also the weather at the same time.

Take a look right outside our window. It turned into rain. We were expecting some snow maybe, not quite cold enough to freeze over yet, and then of course north and south of us, not quite so lucky. Boston and Maine just pounded by snow, and then the folks in the Mid- Atlantic and Southeast are waking up to the effects of a powerful ice storm.

Let's get to Kiet Do. He is of our affiliate WAGA. He is in Atlanta today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KIET DO, WAGA REPORTER: Good morning.

We're at the interchange of I-85 and 285 in metro Atlanta, otherwise known as Spaghetti Junction, and a potential for a huge traffic nightmare here, because black ice has completely shutdown the interchange. There is no going on 285 from 85, or vice versa because black ice has made it too treacherous to go on the bridges and the overpasses out here. We've got a lot of rain last ninth, and temperatures dipped below freezing overnight, and it's making it for a virtual skating rink out here on some of the bridges and overpasses.

That's the Dekalb County Police Department, along with DOT. They are out here on scene, spreading sand and salt, getting ready, and trying to make it safer for the morning commuters this morning.

But no good word on when it will reopen. The accidents are countless out here. We've seen dozens all along this morning. No huge or major injuries to speak of out here in metro Atlanta, but again, no exact word on when Spaghetti Junction will open up in Atlanta.

This is Kit Do reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

S. O'BRIEN: Kit from our affiliate WAGA.

(WEATHER REPORT)

M. O'BRIEN: CNN security watch now. A report that the government may be spying on Americans without a court order. "The New York Times" saying President Bush vet secretly approved the spying after 9/11. Kathleen Koch live from the White House now.

Kathleen, lots of questions for the president this morning?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Miles.

And so far, no confirmation or no reaction from the White House to this report in "The New York Times." It says that in the months after 9/11 that President Bush signed a presidential directive that basically gave the National Security Agency the authority to tap into, to spy on Americans international telephone calls and international e- mails. Now that is the sort of thing that would normally require a warrant from a judge. And if this were actually the case, this would signal a massive expansion of the NSA's jurisdiction, since normally its mission is to spy on international communications.

Miles, this comes as a heated debate will be underway on the floor of the U.S. Senate today over expanding, or extending, I should say, several revisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, in just a few weeks. President Bush has been lobbying hard to make those revisions of the Patriot Act permanent, claiming that they help fight terrorism, that they are vital to keeping the United States safe. But critics in Congress worry that the act simply gives the government too much power to investigate Americans private lives.

It was just on Wednesday that the Pentagon revealed the existence of a classified Pentagon database that may have improperly included -- this was database on potential threats to national security, and it may have improperly included the names of innocent Americans and innocent organizations. So this latest report this morning, again, if it is, indeed the case, if it is confirmed, it will raise more questions for the Bush administration about whether Americans right to privacy may have been compromised in the name of national security -- Miles.

M. O'BRIEN: Kathleen Koch at the White House, thanks very much. Be sure to stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: I want to take you now to New Orleans, and a major commitment from the Bush administration to rebuild the Crescent City. AMERICAN MORNING's Alina Cho is live at the 7th Street Levee in New Orleans.

Hey, Alina, good morning.

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Soledad, good morning to you.

As you well know, whenever you talk to residents or business owners about coming back to New Orleans, often, you hear the first question, what are they going to do about the levees? Well, now, the federal government has a plan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DON POWELL, DIR., FED. GULF COAST RECOVERY: The levee system will be better and safer than it has ever been before.

CHO (voice-over): The president's point man for reconstruction delivered a White House promise for an additional $1.5 billion, $3.1 billion in all, to rebuild the city's flood defenses before the next hurricane season in June, if Congress approves the spending. Breaches will be repaired, concrete and stone will reinforce the existing levee system and state-of-the-art pumping stations will be built.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who's lobbied hard for federal help, was pleased.

MYR. RAY NAGIN, NEW ORLEANS: If another Katrina hit New Orleans and this system was put in place, we wouldn't have the devastation and amount of flooding that we had with this last storm. That makes me feel very -- a lot better.

CHO: It was the catastrophic failure of the levees that left 80 percent of the city underwater. Katrina hit New Orleans as a category-three hurricane. And people here want a levee system that's not just fixed, but improved, one that can withstand the most powerful storm, a category-five.

IVOR VAN HEERDEN, LEVEE EXPERT: Bringing it back to pre-Katrina is only going to give us, at best, protection for a category-two or maybe a fast-moving three. If we had a slow-moving category-three past west of the city, we could still well flood the whole city.

CHO: Still, officials see the White House action as a victory for the state. GOV. KATHLEEN BLANCO, LOUISIANA: Three-billion dollars is a good down payment on our future. We have to have the beginning, and it's a great beginning.

NAGIN: This commitment, this action today, says come home to New Orleans.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHO: There's no doubt that state and local officials consider this a victory, but certainly a modest one. What you hear over and over again is that this is a good start, good beginning, but as one official says, Soledad, there is still a long way to go.

S. O'BRIEN: Well, the elected officials think it's a victory. How about the people there? I mean, do they feel that there's been a big victory won? And when they're welcomed back that, indeed, they're going to start coming back into New Orleans?

CHO: Well, of course, it depends on who you ask. As you and I both know, Soledad, there are those residents who are vowing to return to the city, no matter what. They say it is important to the rebirth of New Orleans.

With that said, preliminarily, I can tell you that some residents, many residents, are skeptical about the plan. They say the levees should be rebuilt to withstand a category-five storm. And one resident said to us, the only thing that's going to convince this city that we have a future is an absolute commitment from the federal government that it is going to protect it from another hurricane, and so far, this man said, Soledad, the federal government has failed to do that.

S. O'BRIEN: All right, Alina, thanks a lot. We're going to have more on this a little bit later this morning as well, with Donald Powell, the federal coordinator of the Gulf Coast Rebuilding Effort, the guy who basically has promised this $3.1 billion.

Ahead this morning, was the most wanted man in Iraq actually caught and then allowed to walk free by mistake? The story you're going to see only on CNN.

M. O'BRIEN: And a huge reversal of fortune for one of the big tobacco companies. A $10 billion lawsuit is involved. How it might impact other cases. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

S. O'BRIEN: Union labor leaders are talking. This is Roger Toussiant. He's the head of the Transport Workers Union. Let's listen to what he's saying.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

ROGER TOUSSAINT, TRANSPORT WORKERS UNION PRES.: ... tonight, TW local 100 executive board voted to begin a series of strike, first out on certain private bus lines, and then extend it on to MTA properties.

Our members who operate these lines, soon to be part of the MTA bus, have been without contracts for almost three years and that is unacceptable. Our members move New York, and we're prepared to work. We're prepared to continue negotiations with the MTA. But the MTA cannot continue to negotiate through threats. They cannot continue to demand a contract that guarantees next generation of transit workers will be worse off than this generation.

What they can do is come to the table ready to bargain in good faith, ready to walk with us toward a deal that is fair both to transit workers and to our riders.

Thank you.

S. O'BRIEN: You're listening to a press conference held at the Union Hall. This is the Transport Workers Union leader, Roger Toussaint. And we've seen his face a lot here, not only in the New York media, but really across the country, because this is the largest transit system in the country. Seven million people will be affected.

But what we've heard him announce now is that the workers have voted to begin a series of strikes, so it's not the overall strike that was at first threatened, which would of literally shut down New York City and the surroundings areas as well, and put into place strict rules about how you can come into this city. It sounds as if they're going to begin with private bus lines being affected first, then I guess if there's no success in their minds, move that on to MTA areas and businesses as well. So it would expand, I guess, expand slowly the strike. So...

M. O'BRIEN: I think these are formerly private bus lines. They were private, which were subsumed by the MTA, is that correct?

S. O'BRIEN: They're about to be. They're on the very of being officially -- yes.

ANDY SERWER, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: And it's a very interesting strategy, kind of a squeezing strategy by the union. I think it's still going to be crippling to the city, because it's going to deter people from coming in, because they anticipate the strike might spread. So it's kind of a hardball tactic. I mean, it's halfway, but it's still a pretty severe tactic by the union at this point, don't you think?

S. O'BRIEN: Yes, and I think that you will have the ripple effect, especially when you're talking about the bad weather that we've been talking about, not only here in New York, but up and down the East Coast, and then shopping season. These are the final days when people are trying to get out, come into Manhattan, to do their shopping. And as you have talked about, a huge price at the end of the day.

SERWER: Big economic fallout. The mayor said hundreds of millions of dollars a day, if there was a complete shutdown. You won't see that, but still, a lot of money at stake. M. O'BRIEN: Well, you've got to wonder, a lot of people watching right now might just make the decision to stay home today.

SERWER: Yes.

M. O'BRIEN: I think that's probably what is going to happen.

S. O'BRIEN: So let's reiterate. They voted to begin a series of strikes, beginning with private bus lines, and they have threatened then to increase that strategy really depending upon their success, or lack thereof, to other MTA areas as well. So we will follow it. It is not the transit strike that everyone was predicting and fearing, but it certainly is something. We're going to see what the implications are a little bit later this morning.

Let's continue to talk business news, because there is this other big news about Philip Morris' verdict overturned now?

SERWER: That's right, Soledad. A big victory for Big Tobacco yesterday, with huge implications for Wall Street and for investors. The Illinois Supreme Court throwing out a $10 billion verdict against Philip Morris. The victory is, in itself, obviously, very important. But it makes it more difficult for so-called "light cigarette" cases to proceed against tobacco companies. And I actually think this is the right move by this court here, because if you're going to have a legal tobacco industry, these kind of suits really don't make a lot of sense.

The plaintiffs here are alleging not health damages, but economic damages, saying the company misled them by advertising that light cigarettes are more safe.

But the FTC had mandated that the companies could advertise light cigarettes in this way. And in fact, the plaintiffs were suing these companies under the RICO Act, which seems like a bit of a stretch.

Altria, which owns Philip Morris, the tobacco company in question here, wants to spin off its craft unit, and it's going to be able to do that, because plaintiffs were trying to prevent it from doing that, wanted to gather those assets and sue against that. You can see here Altria's stock on a tear, up 32 percent, and spiking at the end from the news just the other day -- Soledad.

S. O'BRIEN: Wow, yes, that's a pretty amazing graph right there. All right, Andy, thank you very much.

SERWER: Thank you.

M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, Howard Stern packs up his stuff. He says so long -- although he probably didn't say so long. He probably said something a little more colorful to free radio today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOWARD STERN, RADIO PERSONALITY: Should the American public bow to me, accept me, cater to me? Well, what else can they do? Accept the fact that I am the greatest entertainer of the millennium.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

M. O'BRIEN: Yes, like I said, color, color.

SERWER: Inferiority complex there.

M. O'BRIEN: No, no, no.

The self-proclaimed king of all media. That's what he says. He's moving to Sirius satellite radio, but will his fans pay to hear him, or could he be cutting edge when there's no FCC to get in his case? all that ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

M. O'BRIEN: And now Howard Stern. Whether you love him or you hate him, you certainly know who he is. Today, he signs off from free radio. Next stop? The satellite.

CNN entertainment correspondent Sibila Vargas takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does it feel like to wear a dress, Howard?

SIBILA VARGAS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nearly 30 years of stunts, characters and controversy. It made Howard Stern one of the country's most popular and controversial radio personalities, and he's more than willing to remind you.

STERN: Should the American public bow to me, accept me, cater to me? Well, what else can they do? Accept the fact that I am the greatest entertainer of the millennium.

VARGAS: The self-proclaimed king of all media has found a new medium -- satellite radio.

A stripper on Howard's Web site welcome fans to his new home at Sirius Satellite Studios, where he begins broadcasting January 9th.

The entertainer, who broadcasts his nationally syndicated number- one rated show from New York's KROC, will receive a package from Sirius valued at about $100 million a year for five years.

DEVIN LEONARD, "FORTUNE" MEDIA COLUMNIST: Well, what Sirius is doing, it's a bet that they can get a million new subscribers through the Stern signing, and if they do that, they say they'll break even.

STERN: Down with the FCC.

VARGAS: After repeated fines from the FCC and problems with owned-and-operated stations that broadcast him on traditional, or terrestrial radio, Stern will be without any censors on the subscription-based satellite. ADAM ROGERS, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Howard stern is funny because of transgression, right? Howard Stern is funny because he's doing stuff he's not supposed to be doing. Now he gets to do whatever he wants.

VARGAS: Subscribers have to pay $12.95 a month for the service, not including the cost of the actual radio receiver, a concept that may still be new to traditional radio listeners, but Sirius is betting that Stern will bring Satellite mainstream.

ROGERS: If you lure arguably one of the biggest celebrities in the country, certainly one of the best-known radio personality, to your radio network, that seems like a good thing to do, if you've got the money to do it. I've never been a huge fan, but I know people who are, and they are thinking about getting Sirius.

VARGAS: If Howard's legion of fans follow, Sirius is also betting that satellite radio could finally live up to its promise to become radio's next revolution.

Sibila Vargas, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

M. O'BRIEN: So is that all that that worth paying for, you might ask?

S. O'BRIEN: A hundred million dollars a year for five years? That is a ton of money!

M. O'BRIEN: I think you might call that a lost leader for Sirius, at this point. It's pretty hard to come to the business medal for that deal.

But nonetheless, this satellite radio business, they are vying, Sirius and XM are the two big players.

Coming up in about 20 minutes, we'll check in with "Consumer Reports," and they're kind of walk us through this. If you're curious about it, if you're trying to decide which one to get, and so on and so on.

S. O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning as well, the year in review, according to the guys at JibJab. We're going to show you their new cartoon. That's just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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