Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Battle Continues Over Bush Wiretap Program; Cheney to Face First Public Audience Since Shooting Incident

Aired February 17, 2006 - 08:00   ET

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

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.
I'm Miles O'Brien.

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Zain Verjee in for Soledad.

O'BRIEN: The battle over the president's wiretap program. Is more information coming to Congress on secret National Security Agency operations? We're live on Capitol Hill.

The investigation is over. Texas police make a decision on whether to charge the vice president over his hunting accident. We'll take you live to the White House.

VERJEE: A mountainside gives way in the Philippines. Right now, rescue crews are looking for hundreds who may be trapped under tons of mud.

American icons take a hit overseas. But can the U.S. repair its image in the Arab and Muslim world? We're going to take a closer look.

O'BRIEN: And it's the stuff dreams are made of. A record lottery jackpot up for grabs. And the grand prize could be yours, but you have to stay with us here on AMERICAN MORNING for the scoop.

There will not be with Senate probe of the National Security Agency's controversial wiretapping program. That comes from the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

CNN Congressional correspondent Ed Henry on Capitol Hill -- Ed, explain the decision.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, the bottom line is the White House does not want a second Senate investigation. As you know, the Senate Judiciary Committee has already been probing all of this, the NSA domestic surveillance program. The White House pushing back. They do not want a second investigation. That's why Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican, came out yesterday and just moments before his Intelligence Committee was going to vote on whether to launch that second investigation, he said that a last minute agreement had been sealed with the White House where the White House was going to do two things.

First of all, they were going to agree to a legislative fix to FISA. Of course, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that's in the middle of all this as to whether or not the program is legal. And, secondly, the White House agreeing now to start briefing members of Congress more frequently about the operations of the program.

So Senator Roberts says there's no need for an investigation. The White House is meeting us half way.

Democrat Jay Rockefeller said nonsense. He said the White House had put heavy political pressure on Republicans to shut this probe down. He said they just don't want any oversight.

Take a listen to the back and forth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R-MS), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I believe that such an investigation at this point is -- basically would be detrimental to this highly classified program and our efforts to reach some -- some accommodation with the administration. This program is one which I believe is vital for the protection of the American people.

SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER (D-WV), VICE CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: It is apparent to me that the White House has applied -- more than apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent days, in recent weeks, to prevent the committee from doing its job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: Now, Senator Rockefeller charged that this committee is now slipping into irrelevancy because they're not providing any oversight of this very important program.

Senator Roberts insists, though, if the White House does not follow through on these promises, he will launch an investigation in March -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Let's shift gears here a little bit, Ed, and talk about the ethics questions surrounding Senator Arlen Specter's office. There's now a probe underway. The senator has called for it. And it goes to -- it relates to an aide and the wife of an aide.

Why don't you explain that.

HENRY: That's right, conflict of interest charges against a top staffer to Senator Specter. CNN confirms that he has now asked the Senate Ethics Committee to get to the bottom of all of this. What it basically is, is a "USA Today" story revealing that, in fact, a lobbyist had basically gotten his clients to get about $50 million in defense contracts steered by Senator Specter.

It turns out that the lobbyist's wife is a top Specter aide in charge of steering these very spending projects.

Specter insists there was no wrongdoing, but he wants the Ethics Committee to look at this to try to clear the air -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Ed Henry on Capitol Hill.

Thanks very much.

HENRY: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Zain?

VERJEE: Miles, the vice president will be on home turf today. He's going to be speaking to the Wyoming legislature. And word is he could have something to say about that shooting accident in Texas.

CNN's Kathleen Koch is live at the White House and she joins us now -- Kathleen, what can we expect today?

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly, Zain, you do have to point out that Mr. Cheney will be facing a friendly audience in this, his first public appearance since the weekend shooting incident.

This trip was previously scheduled. And, as you mentioned, he'll be speaking to the legislature, the Wyoming state legislature, touting the Bush agenda.

But we are told that at the very least he will make some remark about his friend, Harry Whittington, who, of course, remains hospitalized after the shooting.

President Bush, in his first public remarks about this yesterday, was very, very supportive of the vice president. The president insisting that Mr. Cheney was profoundly affected by the shooting and that he handled the situation just fine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was a deeply traumatic moment for him and obviously for the -- it was a tragic moment for Harry Whittington. And so I thought his explanation yesterday was a very strong and powerful explanation. And I'm satisfied with the explanation he gave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOCH: And President Bush, for his part, heads to Tampa, Florida this afternoon. He will be getting a briefing from top military leaders at Central Command before making a speech on the war on terror. And that comes as the White House sent up to Capitol Hill yesterday a supplemental request for another $72 billion to fight that war on terror -- Zain.

VERJEE: From the White House, CNN's Kathleen Koch.

Let's check in now on the headlines with Carol Costello -- good morning, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Zain.

Good morning to all of you.

The Danish embassy in Pakistan is now closed. The doors shut a short time ago. Officials say it's a temporary measure amid the protests over the Prophet Muhammed cartoons.

We're seeing more of those riots, too, right now. Groups throwing stones at security forces, troops shooting blanks and using tear gas to try to disperse the crowds.

We're also watching the situation in the eastern Philippines. Two weeks of steady rain causing massive mudslides there. Entire villages swallowed up. The Red Cross estimates some 300 people were killed. At least 1,500 others are still missing. One man telling police he saw the elementary school where his wife and four children were entombed in seconds.

New developments in the death of a teenager at a Florida boot camp. It's a story we told you about on Thursday. The mother of 14- year-old Martin Lee Anderson maintains her son was murdered by guards at the camp. But now a medical examiner has ruled the boy died of internal bleeding, a complication of a sickle cell condition. In the meantime, the U.S. attorney's office says federal investigators will be looking into the boy's death.

Last May's disappearance of Natalie Holloway back in the news. Holloway's parents are suing one of the teens in question -- or one of the teens questioned in Aruba about the matter. Joran van der Sloot is accused of malicious, wanton and willful disregard. He is described in the suit as the predator who spends his free time trolling for victims. Van der Sloot said he had nothing to do with Holloway's disappearance -- Miles, that's a look at the headlines this morning.

O'BRIEN: All right, thank you very much, Carol Costello.

Let's check the weather now.

Bonnie Schneider has more on that -- Bonnie, good morning.

BONNIE SCHNEIDER, ATS METEOROLOGIST: Good morning, Miles.

(WEATHER REPORT)

VERJEE: Bonnie, if you had millions of dollars at your disposal and you won it, what would you do?

SCHNEIDER: That's a very good question. I don't know. But I probably would come back.

VERJEE: You don't know?

SCHNEIDER: It's so much money, that's a lot to think about.

O'BRIEN: The correct answer is save the children. SCHNEIDER: Ah, right. Give it all away to charity.

VERJEE: Yes.

O'BRIEN: There you go. Save the children.

VERJEE: That's after spoiling ourselves, though, with $365 million and a zillion dreams, right?

O'BRIEN: That's right.

VERJEE: Well, tomorrow's Powerball jackpot is that amount of money, $365 million. What would you buy with that much money, Miles?

A Rolls Royce, maybe.

O'BRIEN: World peace.

VERJEE: A full service butler. So you don't have to buy...

O'BRIEN: You know me -- you know I've got a...

VERJEE: ... you don't have to run any errands.

O'BRIEN: You know I've got airplanes on my mind. But these cars are fine.

But what do you do with them?

VERJEE: With this car?

O'BRIEN: You know, really, you can't drive them anywhere.

VERJEE: You can drive them.

O'BRIEN: Yes, but you can't use them to their full utility.

VERJEE: No, you pose in them.

O'BRIEN: Ah, I get it now.

VERJEE: Yes.

O'BRIEN: You know, Danielle Romano can't be too far away when we're talking about things like this. The Daily Candy lady is going to tell us what we can't afford, what we'd like to afford. And we'll just have a little dream moment here on this Friday, coming up.

Also ahead on the program...

VERJEE: Oh, sorry.

O'BRIEN: ... some kids in Florida might know what to do with all that money. Police say their teacher was taking bribes so they could skip class. Now that's an interesting twist.

VERJEE: It is.

Also, a middle school science project gets international attention. It's a story that'll have you thinking twice about just how clean your ice is.

O'BRIEN: Plus, it's been a rough week, shall we say, for the president. His approval ratings taking another turn for the worse. The hunting flap, all these issues kind of coming home to roost this week.

What should he do to turn it around?

We'll ask an adviser to, I don't know, at least four presidents I can think of right off the top of my head, in just a moment.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VERJEE: President Bush might want to take a Mulligan on this past week. The Cheney hunting accident, the report on government Katrina failures, more Abu Ghraib pictures, the U.N. report on Guantanamo Bay, anti-American protests around the world, just bad news all over the place.

David Gergen has been an adviser to four presidents.

And he joins us now from Boston.

David, a really bad week for President Bush.

Just how damaging has all this been to the White House?

DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Well, it certainly has set them back on their -- their central enterprise, and that was to restore the authority of the president and to get his numbers up in the polls.

You know, just before this hunting accident story broke, he was not going up. The president was going down. He hit the high 30s in the CNN polls. And given that, this was a really important time, two weeks after the State of the Union, to be asserting his agenda, putting it forward, trying to persuade people. This was a week that was to be devoted to health care reform, and we've heard precious little of that because it's all been overwhelmed.

They've been flooded with bad reports led by this story on the hunting accident. And I think that's a real setback for trying to rebuild his presidency at a pivotal moment.

After all, time is running out on this presidency. He is -- when you become a lame duck, it's really hard to get things done. And he's ever closer to that status.

VERJEE: Right.

GERGEN: And I think that's why this has been difficult.

VERJEE: Adding to that difficulty, Ron Brownstein had a piece in the "Los Angeles Times" and he said look, you know, there's a problematic impression of the president here, both with the Katrina report as well as the way the Cheney shooting accident was handled. And essentially you have an impression of a president not getting the right information and then acting too late, at the end of the day, and not being as proactive as perhaps he ought to be.

What do you make of that?

GERGEN: Well, I, again, in terms of bad breaks, having the Cheney hunting accident story blow up the way it did -- now there are many in this country, by the -- let's be clear. Many in this country believe the press was hyperventilating on this story. They're very symptomatic to the vice president. And the vice president did take the heat out of this story with his interview with Britt Hume. So I think he's turned it now. It's no longer a front page story and that's very important to understand.

So the story is the heat's going out.

But, I think the damage has been done and it's the juxtaposition, the back to back quality of the hunting accident coming right along with the Katrina reports, which are so damning of the administration and the way it handled it, I think has deepened an impression in the country that the administration seems tired and unable to respond in the crisp way it did after 9/11.

And I think that's -- I think that is very definitely a setback for the administration.

VERJEE: What does the administration have to do to change it, to get out of this slump and this negative perception?

GERGEN: Well, you know, the first thing you'd say is you've got to pull together as a team so that you can response properly and decisively. I think they have to look at some point about whether they're going to keep the same team they've got all the way through this. But maybe that's not going to happen. We all were told it was going to happen in January and so far no signs.

But there will be new issues that are going to come along and I -- the president is going to have his hands full in the next few months with the end game in Iraq, the growing threat in Iran and the problems he's got with Hamas. And that is -- that alone is going to require a dexterous, you know, well run administration. The country needs that here, and potentially as we go down with Iraq.

So, my sense is that you're going to see some power shift -- and it's already been shifting, but it's going to increase as we go that way now over to the State Department and to Condi Rice. But I think that she's going to become, on foreign policy, even more of a lead player. I think the vice president may find that he's, you know, they're not going to put him on television very much in the next few weeks. I can guarantee you that. It's going to be a while before he's going to want to come back out. He doesn't want to face a barrage of continuing, lingering questions.

But I, you know, I -- I wish there would be a change of culture in the administration to more openness, to more responsiveness, get the documents out, tell people what's been going on in all these myriad programs. I think that would help a lot.

But I cannot -- I just -- at this point, Zain...

VERJEE: OK.

GERGEN: ... who can be optimistic about that?

VERJEE: David Gergen, thanks so much for being with us.

GERGEN: Thank you.

VERJEE: Appreciate it, as always -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: Coming up on the program, maybe you've noticed the U.S. has a little bit of an image problem overseas. What can be done to fix it? We'll get an advertising executive's take. This is the country that gave us -- the world -- Madison Avenue. Maybe we can work on that image.

And tough choices for Katrina victims -- do families rebuild their devastated homes or should they just move on? We will meet a family divided over that question. It is a very compelling tale. Stay tuned for it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: About $20 billion for Katrina relief -- that's what the White House is asking for from Congress. And that includes $4.2 billion for what is called community development block grants. Not quite clear how that money is going to be dispersed. It could be just for housing, but we're waiting to see how that all shakes out.

Also in the new funding, about $1.3 billion for strengthening levees.

The total request, as you see there, $19.8 billion.

Also in there, $100 million to try to restore the wetlands, which are Mother Nature's barrier against killer storms like Katrina.

The Ernest Morial Convention Center reopens today in New Orleans. You know that convention center, of course. It became the face of the dark side of the Katrina aftermath. And these pictures will be seared in our memory.

That's where we saw thousands of people just stuck, waiting for food and water and a way out. FEMA unaware. A

A jewelry show will open there today. Also opening today is Harrah's Casino in New Orleans. The casino was an emergency command post in the days and weeks after the storm. And Mardi Gras is just 11 days away. Actually, the party kicks off tomorrow because one day is just not enough when you have to party like that. Marchers stepping out for the first of a dozen Mardi Gras parades over the next week-and-a-half. The theme this year, appropriately, "May God Bless New Orleans."

And AMERICAN MORNING is going to be live from New Orleans Mardi Gras week. Soledad and I will be there to see how the event is playing. We'll be there Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. And we're not just going to focus on the parades and the costumes and the good times. We're also going to take a look at the neighborhoods which still, six months after Katrina, are in need of desperate help.

For the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the wounds are still very fresh, of course. Many still face a vexing decision -- do they return to their home, that may not exist at all or barely exist, or do they just start over somewhere new?

This weekend, a special "CNN PRESENTS."

Kathleen Koch went back to her hometown in Mississippi and has spent a lot of time there. And she has a compelling hour of what the recovery is like there.

Let's look at a little preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

DARLA GOODFELLOW, KATRINA VICTIM: As I pulled out of my driveway it never, ever crossed my mind that it would be completely gone. Never.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Instead of a beautiful waterfront home, the Goodfellow family now shares a cramped three bedroom apartment in Birmingham, Alabama.

D. GOODFELLOW: I mean there are days, I'll tell you right now, when the alarm goes off at 6:10, we just kind of, you know, I'm not getting out of bed. You want to pull the covers up over your head and say forget it.

You want it all in one or half a packed down (ph)?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: All in one.

D. GOODFELLOW: And then you think, oh, no, I can't. I have four children.

KOCH: Months after Katrina, Darla and the children finally muster the nerve to return to Bay St. Louis. Keith has been back before.

UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST: Our members of Christ...

KOCH: Devout Catholics, the first stop for the Goodfellows is mass in the community center. Their church, Our Lady of the Gulf, where two of my sisters were married, was gutted by the hurricane.

UNIDENTIFIED PRIEST: Today's mass is all about connecting, really connecting with someone.

D. GOODFELLOW: Oh, hello!

KOCH: But for the Goodfellows the connections are painful. For him, a reminder of how desperately he wants to return. For her, a reminder of trauma and how much she doesn't.

D. GOODFELLOW: When I turn this corner, my house will be at the end of the block -- or where my house was.

Oh, god. That's all that's left of my house.

And we had a big, beautiful willow tree right here. We had one tree, a willow tree.

KOCH: The Corps of Engineers is about to bulldoze what's left of the neighborhood. The Goodfellows want to try to salvage something.

DESIREE GOODFELLOW: Hillary, I found something of yours.

D. GOODFELLOW: Do you want it, Hillary?

No. Desiree (ph), bring it back.

DESIREE GOODFELLOW: It's a (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

D. GOODFELLOW: That's all right.

Hillary has said she does not want to take anything that's here, remember? She doesn't want anything -- anything from here.

Oh, the little picture frame.

Oh. There's -- I think it's the picture.

SAMANTHA GOODFELLOW, KATRINA VICTIM: Things I found, things I would never in a million years have brought with me, even if I knew the entire house would be gone, I took those because those are -- it's like the only proof that the last -- the past 11 years of my life were real and that it wasn't just a dream.

KOCH: The Goodfellows had flood insurance on their house, but it only covered a fraction of their loss, and their insurance company won't pay the rest.

D. GOODFELLOW: They're claiming flood, which means they're not paying it, the federal government and taxpayers are paying it, because they claim our house had no wind damage whatsoever. I mean I had an adjuster who told me he understood that he was to live in a difficult situation because he was sharing a hotel room with another adjuster. And he hadn't even...

KOCH (on camera): The poor guy. D. GOODFELLOW: Right.

I said I really feel sorry that the complete loss of my entire life has ruined your day. He said, "Well, thank you for understanding and stop calling me because I'm not even your adjuster," and hung up the phone.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

O'BRIEN: You can watch all of Kathleen's reports on a special "CNN PRESENTS -- SAVING MY TOWN." It's Saturday and Sunday night, 8:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.

VERJEE: And coming up on AMERICAN MORNING, what will it take to fix America's image problem overseas? We're going to ask an advertising executive what she would do.

Also, more outrage over those cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammed. But there's a new twist in the story -- a price on the head of a Danish cartoonist.

That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com