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American Morning
Drilling Ban Affects Workers, Economy; Lincoln Wins Primary Runoff; Big Trouble in New Orleans; Coast Guard Writes BP; Van Der Sloot to Reenact Murder for Peruvian Police; Reliving Hell on the Water; Plight of the Pelicans
Aired June 09, 2010 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Right now you're looking at live pictures from beneath the floor of the ocean. This is a new high resolution video showing the underwater gusher as it spews out. These are some of the first pictures we're seeing of this.
This is the first time that the ruptured well's pictures have come to us so clearly. This is because the new high quality images from the ocean floor are being broadcast now by BP for the first time.
And good morning to you. It's Wednesday, June 9th. Welcome to a special edition of AMERICAN MORNING. I'm Kiran Chetry here in New York, and John joins this morning live from New Orleans, Louisiana.
Hey, John.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you, Kiran.
For residents here along the Gulf Coast, it's been a sickening thing to watch, these new high-resolution images of the oil spill. This is what it looked like, to take you back, on June the 3rd. But only now are the scientists trying to find out just how much oil is leaking from getting to see this video. You know, there's something called flow asymmetry (ph) where they can take a look at that and the amount of oil coming out and get a fairly reasonable picture for how much oil is coming out of that well.
It's only because lawmakers pressured to BP to get it, that that video was released.
It's also developing this morning, another story, BP's top guy, CEO Tony Hayward, is going to be facing some tough questions from Congress for the first time next week. He's been under a lot of heat for BP's handling of this disaster.
Also coming up next week, President Obama will be making his fourth trip to the Gulf Coast. He's going to be here for two days, visiting Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
Well, this spill and the shutdown of new work in the oil fields is changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The Obama administration said yesterday that it would lift the ban on new shallow-water drilling permits after implementing new safety requirements. But the ban on deep-water drilling, that moratorium, is going to continue for many more months, and that has raised concerns of a potential second economic disaster in southern Louisiana. First fishing shuts down, now oil and gas.
I went to Port Fourchon, Louisiana. It's about 60 miles south of here, right along the Gulf Coast, to see the pain firsthand.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS (voice-over): It's the heartbeat of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana. Port Fourchon, where thousands of workers service the big offshore rigs, more victims of the BP oil spill after President Obama declared a moratorium on deep-water drilling.
SHANE GUIDRY, CEO, HARVEY GULF MARINE: So, we're going to board (INAUDIBLE) 240-foot OSB service of deep water Gulf of Mexico.
ROBERTS: Shane Guidry is the CEO of Harvey Gulf Marine. Louisiana born and bred, he runs the company his grandfather, a one- time oysterman, started in the 1950s.
GUIDRY: The fish industry was killed by the oil and gas industry. Then the government shut down the oil and gas industry. It's just -- when does it stop? What do we shut down next?
ROBERTS: Guidry will soon have a decision to make, keep his idle supply ships in port and potentially lose millions or send them overseas to other oil fields and hire local crews. Either way, it could spell bad news for lifetime mariners like first mate Tom Levins.
(on camera): Are you worried, Tom, about getting laid off?
TOM LEVINS, FIRST MATE, HARVEY PROVIDER: Well, sure. Everybody is. You know? I mean, you do something for 28 years. You put your life into it.
ROBERTS: It's tough when it all comes crashing down.
LEVINS: Sure it is. Sure.
ROBERTS (voice-over): And the ripple effects could spread far and deep, well beyond the crews of these boats. Before the moratorium, Guidry was about to expand his fleet.
GUIDRY: We had three we were going to build in New Orleans with Trinity, but as of yesterday, those were completely canceled.
ROBERTS (on camera): Canceled. And what was the contract worth to Trinity?
GUIDRY: A hundred and forty million.
ROBERTS: There are two themes that you hear repeated so much regardless of who you talked to, that the people who work in oil and gas know somebody in fishing or vice versa, or many time, the same (INAUDIBLE) got to put in both worlds, doing one thing part of the year, the other, the other part of the year. The other thing you hear so much from so many people is that this is all they know how to do. So, if you've got fishing shut down, if you've got oil and gas shut down for a period of time, the economic woe to this area is just going to be devastating.
JAYME SONGY, CAPTAIN, HARVEY PROVIDER: Look around, it makes it real nice and neat.
ROBERTS: Captain Jayme Songy personifies the complex relationship between oil and environment on the Gulf Coast.
SONGY: My wife's entire family does commercial fishing. I'm the oil field side of the family.
ROBERTS: At the moment, it's an uneasy marriage, but one for the sake of the local economy and livelihoods that Songy says needs to be worked out.
SONGY: We've been through problems before in south Louisiana, and we're going to pull through it. We're going to clean it up, fix what we got to fix, and keep going. That's how we do it.
ROBERTS: As the crews of these boats await their fate, it's clear there is little love lost for BP. They, too, say the company needs to be held accountable for the accident and do whatever is necessary to put things right.
The blowout they believe was human error, easily avoidable, and something they say in true Louisiana fashion, you can protect against.
GUIDRY: I'll tell you how you protect against it. You get the guy that caused the human error, you get the guy who didn't follow procedure and policy, and you indict him for 11 murders, the 11 guys that died. Then the next guy is going to do his job right.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: You know, overall, there are about 12,000 people who work on the ships here on the Gulf Coast, according to industry figures, but if you include the land-based operations that support those crews and ships, close to 100,000 jobs may be at risk because of this moratorium -- .Kiran.
CHETRY: Yes. You know, and it's interesting because it's the same thing you saw when you went to West Virginia, where people say, this is all I know. This might not be the best way of life. There might be dangers, but it's a risk I have to take because how am I going to feed my family?
ROBERTS: Yes, it's an uneasy relationship, no question about it. In West Virginia, you have mother who don't want their sons to go in the coal mine, but it's a family tradition, so they allow them to do it. Here, you have people working one side of the family in the fishing industry that could be put at risk by the oil industry.
They say that, you know, somehow, for the sake of the economy, they all have to try to work together. But the big point that I heard down here was, this was human error, this was BP's fault. Why is everybody being penalized for it?
CHETRY: Yes. Same thing echoed when I was down there, as well -- a lot of anger and a lot of disgust for sure.
John, thanks so much.
Well, you might say it was ladies' night at the ballot box, women winning major primary elections from coast to coast.
In California, former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, will run for governor in November. She won the GOP primary. And her opponent will be former California Governor Jerry Brown.
In Nevada, tea party candidate Sharron Angle captured the GOP nomination in a Senate primary. She'll be then taking on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid come November. Reid took the Democratic nomination in his bid for a fifth Senate term.
Also this morning, in Arkansas, the Land of Lincoln, embattled incumbent Senator Blanche Lincoln defying the pundits and the polls, and going on to win the state's Democratic Party runoff.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BLANCHE LINCOLN (D), ARKANSAS: I have heard your message, and let me tell you, I cannot feel any stronger than I feel today as a daughter of the Delta in Arkansas, to know that your message is loud and clear that Washington -- Washington needs to work for us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, senior congressional correspondent Dana Bash has been following the runoff race closely. She's live in Little Rock, Arkansas.
And, you know, the pundits have been saying, it doesn't look good for an incumbent, especially in a runoff. She was getting squeezed on both sides. She had millions of dollars in unions campaigning against her, and she pulled it off. How did she do it?
DANA BASH, CNN SR. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She did. And, you know, look, she told me yesterday, during the polling, that she maybe had underestimated the intense anti-incumbent fever. And make no mistake about it -- it is red hot here in Arkansas, like everywhere else. But she got it.
You played a clip of Senator Lincoln saying we understand. We heard you loud and clear. She said that over and over again, that she understands the anger at Washington. Not just that, but she explained that she is not one of Washington. She said she's really one of you. She is just a daughter of the Delta.
And she really was able to do this in the end by bringing home per base, her base that elected her as the youngest woman ever, 12 years ago, in the United States Senate. And part of the reason she was able to do that is with a favorite son of Arkansas, and that is the former President Bill Clinton. And he came out and he had a big rally for her. They cut an ad with that.
And they believe inside the Lincoln camp that that really helped shocking some of her supporters into realizing, this is big, she could lose, you got to get out there and you've got to -- you've got to vote.
CHETRY: The other interesting thing is, as we talked about the amount of money that the big labor unions spent advertising against her, what does it say about their power and their force, influence in politics?
BASH: Look, this is a big loss for labor. There's no question. That Blanche Lincoln was running against her opponent, the Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, but she was really talking to union sources leading up to this, they will tell you, this was in many ways a race between labor, one of the key Democratic constituencies, and a moderate Democrat who they were furious with because she didn't support their issues.
And they admit that this is definitely a loss for them. They spent $10 million, which is a lot of money here in the state of Arkansas, to try to defeat her. They are still trying to spin this as still a win because they did force her into this runoff and they forced her to talk about their issues on the campaign trail where she might not have in many ways otherwise.
But a lot of second guessing as to whether this is the right way to spend union members' money.
CHETRY: Especially, and we heard the White House this morning, or at least some people were saying that it was a big waste of money, because she still has a tough fight ahead in November. She's got to beat the Republican.
BASH: Huge fight ahead in November. And that is what is very important to keep in mind that this is -- this particular primary race is not something several months ago that Blanche Lincoln even expected. She was already planning for a very tough race against her Republican opponent, who we now know is Congressman John Bozeman, and that is still the case.
This is still a conservative state. And although she is somebody who has represented here for many years, it is obviously an anti- Democratic year.
And so, talk to Democrats close to Lincoln in Washington and they will tell you she still has a very tough fight ahead to keep this out of Republican hands in November.
CHETRY: Dana Bash for us this morning, following all the ins and outs of this race in Arkansas -- thanks so much.
BASH: Thanks, Kiran. CHETRY: And there's much more post-primary coverage. Head to CNN.com/politics. The best political team on television breaks down the primaries and their results -- just head to the Web.
And now, let's head back to New Orleans and John.
Hey, John.
ROBERTS: Thanks, Kiran. Coming up next on the Most News in the Morning, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, his first live interview since this oil spill. He'll talk about New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina and the effect of the oil spill, the shut down of fishing, the dent in tourism it's having on the entire region.
Stay with us. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Right now, live pictures of the ocean floor and the oil and the natural gas continue to come out around that cap. They've closed down one of the four vents on the top cap as they try to capture more oil. They want to be careful thought that they don't increase the pressure too much that they blow the cap off.
And also, there is, at the moment, a limit to how much oil they can process on the surface. They're bringing in another ship and hope to be able to capture more. Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, says they hope within the next few days to be able to capture the majority of the oil that's coming out of that well.
We want to also take a moment to show you again the high- resolution images of the well from last week. This is immediately after that riser had been snipped off by that giant pair of shears, much more detailed pictures here of the oil coming out.
And this is the sort of picture that scientists have been looking for, because when they look at the rate that those particles are coming out of that blowout preventer, they can get an idea of exactly how much oil is leaking. Right now, projected to be somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000 barrels per day that BP says it's capturing more than 12,000. So, it's probably the upper range of that.
Well, most of the coverage of this catastrophe is focused on Louisiana's marshes and the helpless creatures that call that area home. The threat facing the city of New Orleans seems to be flying somewhat under the radar. Major industries in the Big Easy, tourism, seafood, oil -- all in turmoil these days.
New Orleans elected a new mayor just four months ago, and he just took over little while ago as well. He's Mitch Landrieu.
Mitch Landrieu joins us with his first live national interview since the spill began.
And we should say that this spill is older than your administration. MITCH LANDRIEU, (D) MAYOR, NEW ORLEANS: It is. It is. It started a couple weeks before my administration. And as you know, I was serving as Lieutenant Governor before so I was at the Emergency Operations Center for the couple days before I took office.
ROBERTS: So, you were looking at -- coming up on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the city coming back to a great degree but still lagging in some other areas, and now this. We were talking to Julia Reid last hour and she said it's kind of like things are going too well, we had to get another disaster.
LANDRIEU: Well, it is astounding. If you think about Louisiana, we suffered from September 11 because we're a huge travel area, then we had Katrina, and Rita then we had Ike and Gustav and, you know, now we have this event. And it really is -- it's a mind-blowing event for those of us that are here. That's an infuriating picture to most of us that have been looking at that.
ROBERTS: In high-resolution.
LANDRIEU: That high-resolution thing. That oil, no matter how much they capture, what we focus on is how much continues to get into the water, that's what's threatening the livelihood of the people of Louisiana. You know, it's really simple. You have to cap the well, capture the oil and make sure that you clean the coast. Those are the three immediate missions that we have to get on right away. The high level of frustration down here. But, you know, people are resilient. We've seen this before. We know what kind of fight we're in and we are just going to stay at it until we get it right.
ROBERTS: We've been looking at it, sort of, from an individual perspective, the effect on tourism, the effect on the beaches, the effect on fishing and now, today we are taking a look as well at the effect on the oil and gas industry, not the people, not the companies who are actually digging the wells but the people who are supplying those rigs.
When you put it all together, Mr. Mayor, what is the impact in this overall area?
LANDRIEU: The big point is that you can't ever look at it separately and you can't look at it as a local issue. The people of Louisiana have been screaming to the rest of the nation for the last four years that we have been at the tip of the spear for this nation's quest for energy independence and hence national security. And we feel really strongly that we haven't been given the tools necessary to protect ourselves.
You see that coast deteriorates, when the coast deteriorates, the oil and gas becomes much more vulnerable. When the oil and gas breaks, we suffer. When the storm comes, we suffer. What we basically have been telling the rest of the country, if you want us to be in this fight, give us the tools that we need. You can see the chain of livelihood, if you will, whether it's the workers on the oil and gas rigs, whether it's the fishermen who have been there for the past hundred years, whether it is everybody upstream, the oyster shuckers, the restaurateurs, the hotel owners, everybody is in this together. So, even though it's happening on the coast, the livelihood of New Orleans is at risk as well.
ROBERTS: You have said, in recent days, you expect that there will be tensions between local officials, parish presidents, as they fight over resources to try to protect their lands.
And it kind of raises the question, why is there even any limitation on resources?
LANDRIEU: That is exactly right. It's an absurd fight. People say, well how did you know that? I say, because we've been through this six times. Which goes to the issues of whether the United States of America is prepared to fight big fights, whether on the private side or on the public side.
You know, this is the sixth major event that we have had, so we've seen this play out over and over again. If you go back and look at the report from the September -- from the 9/11 commission, no clear command and control, no coordination, no communication, private side, public side, so there are much bigger issues. Some of it has changed, some of it has gotten better, but here's the one thing.
ROBERTS: Because I know that Admiral Thad Allen has tried to flatten out the chain of command.
LANDRIEU: Well, listen, I think he is doing a good job. This is a very tough job. I would have to say that everybody was on the ground as fast as they could. A lot of people are working hard, people are trying to do what they can. But here's the big problem, industry doesn't know how to cap that well, and that's the focus of everybody's attention. Why don't they know how to cap that well? Why did they do this if they couldn't find a way for it to be safe and then have a plan to back it up? So, all of a sudden here in Louisiana, we suffer all of the consequences. Now, Alabama, Florida, all those folks are going to feel it, too.
ROBERTS: So, what do you think when the president comes out talking tough as he did day before yesterday, when he said, "so I know whose ass to kick?"
LANDRIEU: Well, I am glad he did. You know, the president has been down here three times. All of the secretaries have been down here. It's been an all hands on deck piece. But the bigger question, and I think we are going to have to look at further down the road when people want to look back on it, which we don't have time to do right now, is how do we organize ourselves so this doesn't happen again? You can understand now the catastrophic consequences of those of us that are actually on the front lines.
ROBERTS: And speak to this idea too that we've been examining this morning, the moratorium. It's in deep water. There's been a restriction in shallow-water drilling which the mineral management services is going to come off as long as new safety precautions are in place. It's been set up as this fight between people who are in the fishing industry and the environment and big bad oil. When you look at those jobs that service the oil and gas industries being jeopardized, is it simple?
LANDRIEU: First of all, it's not simple at all. And here is the thing, if you look at it from the rest of the nation's view, maybe it's a fight between big oil and the ecosystem, but for people that live down here, both of those things have lived together.
So we live by the oil and we die by the oil. If that moratorium goes on for an unpredictable length of time, you are going to lose ten thousand jobs and the livelihoods of people that work in the oil industry are going to go away. If you don't do the moratorium, and you drill even though it's unsafe, all of the livelihoods of the fishermen are going to go away. Down here we believe that you can do both. And so, I think they have to tighten that up, they have to make that moratorium predictable, they have to have it focused.
So, for example on shallow-water drilling, we think that you can do that safely. We don't think you should drill in deep water until that's safe but there should be strike teams in there, to do that much more quickly than just an open-ended six months. You have to do both of them at the same time. And of course if you look at it from our perspective, it's all about are people going to be able to feed their families and go back to work.
ROBERTS: Mayor Mitch Landrieu, great to catch up with you.
Thanks for joining us this morning and good luck with your new administration and dealing with this.
LANDRIEU: Thank you.
ROBERTS: It's hurricane season, too.
LANDRIEU: Yes, it is. It is going to add another element to it.
ROBERTS: Thanks so much -- Kiran.
CHETRY: Hopefully we'll get a bit of a break, John. They certainly need one. Meantime, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen is now demanding answers from BP. He's written to the CEO of the company, Tony Hayward, saying he wants more detail and more openness. Christine Romans is "Minding Our Business". She has details on that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Twenty- three minutes past the hour right now.
Building up America. BP always waging the PR battle, says that it is selling the oil it's now collecting from the spill and will use the proceeds to help restore wildlife in the Gulf States. We've seen these heartbreaking pictures, and now the race is on to help rescue these oiled birds, clean them, and make sure that they get put back into a safe environment so they can survive. Well, so far BP claims it's collected more than 64,000 barrels of crude. It's not clear how much money the oil company plans to donate from those sales.
Meanwhile, Christine Romans is here "Minding Your Business". She joins us now.
That's not clear. There are other things that are not clear. And that's why Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen who is charged with overseeing all of this, sent a letter to BP's CEO.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That is right. And what is clear is the company is paying about $47 million a day for its cleanup efforts, and recovery efforts and the like.
But what the Coast Guard wants to do is they want to monitor, they want to be right in there with BP monitoring the claims process. They say, the Coast Guard says, it is incredibly important for the American people and the public to know who is being paid, how quickly and how much. And they say that the National Incident Command and that the States have been asking for the status of BP with no results for too long.
There's a meeting today between the company of BP and the Coast Guard to try to figure out how much has been spent on the claims process and where they're going from here. So the Coast Guard, Thad Allen sending a letter that they have just released to us to Tony Hayward in pretty sharp terms saying the Coast Guard wants to monitor the claims process immediately and that that will begin today.
They want a database of who has been paid, how much, why or why not so they can follow the progress here. Now, this is what we know so far from the company BP. As of June 7th there were 37,000 different claims. I mean, these are from shrimpers, from fishermen, from rental boat captains, from people who had claims to clean up their property, I mean, just everything you could possibly imagine. The company has paid 18,000 of those claims for a total of $48 million.
So what the government wants to know is why have half of them not been paid yet and what is the claims process like. So this is what the Coast Guard wants to do. And today there will be a meeting between high-level officials of the company, BP, and the National Incident Command to try to get to the bottom of this. But basically Thad Allen saying the Federal Government, the public expects BP's claims process to be more transparent and wants to know exactly what's happening there.
CHETRY: Moving along. BP has been careful to say all legitimate claims, all legitimate claims. And you know, there are a lot of people who say maybe you don't realize how my restaurant is dependent on this catastrophe -- you know, this catastrophe ending quickly, especially in these tourist areas.
ROMANS: There's also this issue, too, of sometimes people, as John has been reporting from down there, there are sometimes people who are, they are shrimpers but they also have a pleasure cruise business and they work one part of the industry one part of the year and another part of the industry another part of the year. How do you sort that out and figure out what is a legitimate claim there?
Meanwhile, still a little bit of concern and anger from some in Congress that BP is planning to pay its shareholders a first quarter payout of more than $2 billion. Every time we talk about BP and money we're going to be talking about concern from Congress that the money is being put in the right place at right time.
CHETRY: You know, the other interesting thing, and I'm sure you are going to be looking into this, as well, is the money that people are making to go there, to take part of the cleanup. I mean, large amounts of people, who are unemployed right now, who have been long term unemployed, looking for work, are being paid 18 bucks an hour to get out there and clean up, $32 an hour if you're a manager. And you know, in some cases this is helping tide some people over as they look for long-term work.
ROMANS: Yes, but the flip side of that is that some of the people who are living down there saying we're really concerned about the higher paying jobs at these rigs. Higher paying jobs if you're a small business owner, they have been idled. And they are worried about the impact there too. So, it is going to take a while to shake out.
CHETRY: And ongoing.
ROMANS: That's the thing that's really difficult about this. The oil is still coming ashore every single day.
CHETRY: And we still don't know when the end is in sight, unfortunately.
ROMANS: Right.
CHETRY: Christine Romans, good to see you this morning. Thanks so much. Still ahead, we are getting a bird's-eye view of the oil spill. CNN tours the well site with the Coast Guard. You will want to come along for that ride. Twenty-seven minutes after the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Crossing the half hour now, we're back with our special edition coverage of the Most News in the Morning live from New Orleans. It is time for your top stories.
Take a look at this. New high-resolution images of the Gulf oil leak. This is from last week. It's video that BP has kept to itself until now. This clip shows the ruptured well last Thursday right after that riser pipe coming out of the blowout preventer was cut, just before they put that top cap on.
BP only released the video after lawmakers demanded it to try to help scientists get a better idea just how much oil is pouring into the gulf each and every day.
Well, get ready for a showdown inside the capitol. The head of BP, Tony Hayward, has agreed to testify before Congress next week. Lawmakers warning Hayward to come prepared and to bring someone with him who can answer tough questions on the Deepwater Horizon's operations, design, and safety measures.
And President Obama will make his fourth visit to the Gulf next week. This time he plans to stay overnight. He is scheduled to stop in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
The new images from below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico were stunning and much more telling than anything that we've seen before, but to get a real perspective on the size of this spill, you have to see it from above. Hundreds of boats, miles of boom, pools of oil, in some places even fire in the water as they try to burn off some of that oil.
Our Rob Marciano went up with the coast guard for a look at the spill that you're only going to see here on "AMERICAN MORNING." Rob joins us this morning from Pensacola beach in Florida. And Rob, a great opportunity you had yesterday.
ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Certainly did, John. And we have some amazing pictures to share with you. You know, the national incident commander, Thad Allen, he was supposed to retire before this big oil mess happened. Well, his coast guard command successor just recently got on the job, and we got to hang out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MARCIANO (on camera): We're hitching a ride with the coast guard with newly appointed Commandant Admiral Robert Papp. He has yet to be out to the well site and neither have I, and you get to come along for the ride.
MARCIANO (voice-over): The plane is designed for search and rescue, but this is a recon mission.
MARCIANO (on camera): Admiral Papp, Rob Marciano, CNN.
ADM. ROBERT PAPP, COMMANDANT, U.S. COAST GUARD: How are you?
MARCIANO: My pleasure.
MARCIANO (voice-over): He's been the coast guard's top boss for only go weeks and already it's been a historic ride.
PAPP: I don't think in history have we ever put out this much boom to contain a size of -- or a length of coastline as large as this, so this is pretty historic for us.
MARCIANO: Is it something that the coast guard even imagined to have to train for or do?
PAPP: Well, you know, not to this magnitude.
MARCIANO: It's the first time he's seen the spill up close.
PAPP: That's Dauphin Island that you're seeing right now. MARCIANO: Parts of the gulf seem completely clean, its trademark blue water clear. As we get closer to the well site, we see more boats and more oil.
MARCIANO (on camera): We're on top of the spill site now and they just opened it up to get a better look. You can smell it. Oh, my goodness, there it is.
You're looking at the core of this operation, the main platform that's getting up the oil and natural gas and on either side of that the two relief wells that are being drilled to finally put this thing to bed sometime in the middle or end of August.
MARCIANO (voice-over): Oil is being burned off the water, throwing dense plumes of black smoke into the air. Alongside me, Admiral Papp looks over his flotilla battling the spill, pleased with the progress but still awe struck by its scope.
MARCIANO (on camera): In all of your years in the coast guard, did you ever think you'd see an operation like this?
PAPP: Never, never. Not in my wildest dreams. We've dealt with major spills before but nothing ever of this magnitude.
MARCIANO (voice-over): This flight also gives the admiral a chance to thank his team below.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Coast guard cutter, this is coast guard 2301. Commandant on board.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Admiral, good afternoon.
MARCIANO: From the cockpit jump seat he radios his skimmer. His words of encouragement are piped throughout the ship.
PAPP: It does my heart good to see you out here. I wish we didn't have to send you on a mission like this, but I'm also glad that we have you to do a mission like this. So really best wishes to all the shipmates and please keep up the good work out here. Over.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MARCIANO: You know, everybody is frustrated, myself included. Nobody wants to see oil hit the beach or the marsh lands, but this thing is so big and the coast guard is certainly trying to do the best they can.
Two things we noticed on that trip out there. One, compared to a flight that our crew took a week ago, there is noticeably less oil. The weather is better, I should add, for skimming and burning.
Two, the bad news is shortly once we got offshore, that oil is very close to the Alabama shoreline. Here in the Florida panhandle we've been blessed with a north wind the past couple days, kind of kept the tar balls and the oil offshore at least for now. But John, this time of year, north winds don't last very long so, that oil may very well be back on the doorstep of the Florida panhandle before the summer is out. John?
ROBERTS: And with this amount of heat, too, beginning to build up in the Gulf of Mexico, Rob, you have to consider that one of these days a tropical storm could potentially form, move its way up here and bring even more of that oil ashore.
MARCIANO: That is obviously the big fear, and this year it may very well be inevitable. Let's take one day at a time, my friend. John?
ROBERTS: All right, Rob Marciano for us in Pensacola beach this morning. Rob, thanks so much. Kiran?
CHETRY: John, thanks.
After confessing to murder, Joran Van Der Sloot takes authorities through a re-enactment of the crime in his hotel room. We're following the latest from Peru on this re-enactment and what thundershowers are hoping to discover after his confession. It's 36 minutes past the hour.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. It's 39 past the hour.
We'll following the latest developments out of Peru where police are expected to take confessed killer Joran Van Der Sloot back to the Lima hotel room where he confessed to murdering 21-year-old Stephany Flores. The plan is to re-create the events leading to her death.
Joining us now to talk about the case from San Francisco, Tom Fuentes, former head of the FBI's office of international operations, and here with me is criminal defense attorney Paul Callan.
Welcome to both of you.
Tom, first of all, let me just ask you about the situation. How unusual is it that they're actually taking the defendant, the confessed killer in this case, back to the crime scene for re- enactment?
TOM FUENTES, FORMER FBI ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Good morning, Kiran. It's not unusual in the Peruvian system. They will do this in many cases. And normally in a high-profile homicide case, the investigators will withhold from the public very key facts about the crime scene that only the killer would actually know. And this is usually do to the number of false claims of people calling in, wanting to confess.
So they're going to take him there. They're going to videotape having him re-enact the event and see if what he says occurred matches the forensic evidence that they obtained at the scene. CHETRY: Paul, if you were defending this young man, would you allow this?
PAUL CALLAN, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: I clearly would not allow it. And as a matter of fact, this is why you never see this happen in the United States. Usually a lawyer gets involved in the case early, cuts off communication with the police, and you don't see a walk-through like this.
CHETRY: But he confessed.
CALLAN: Well, he did confess, but usually in the United States if a lawyer got involved the lawyer would say it's a coerced confession and you can't believe it, and they certainly wouldn't want to bring the client back to the scene and possibly incriminate himself at the scene.
So this is not a good move for the defense, but the Peruvian system is very different from the American system.
CHETRY: In terms of whether or not it's a good move for getting to the bottom of this case, Tom, as we've seen, this is somebody who has the reportedly lied time and time again by his own admission, as well, dating back to the 2005 disappearance and presumed murder of Natalee Holloway. So how do they believe what he's saying in this case?
FUENTES: I don't think they believe it. That's why they're going to corroborate everything he said. They also run the risk that he'll recant his confession at a future time. So they want to make sure that he provides details now that only the killer would know. And that will be very hard for him to deny any of this later.
But he may be telling many lies or many aspects of the murder already even with the confession trying to manipulate the system.
CHETRY: Unlike the Holloway case, Paul, this is moving extremely quickly. We've seen, you know, the videotape released. You saw video of both of them entering the hotel room and you saw him leaving the hotel room, and now you have his confession, which, as Tom said, he could later recant.
Meanwhile, as this moves along, what stands out to you in terms of what might happen here in terms of his sentencing? He's going to serve jail time in Peru?
CALLAN: Yes. And, you know, I think the difference here is, you know, Aruban authorities struggled with this investigation, but their domestic criminal justice system is more of a western European model based on the Dutch model.
In Peru, you basically have a third world country with sort of an uneven justice system, a history of torture, a history of military coups. They run it very, very differently. And he's facing in Peru very, very harsh sentencing and possibly a very, very harsh --
CHETRY: Wait a second, I thought he could only get 15 to 35. They don't have the death penalty.
CALLAN: When I say harsh, he could get 35 years in a prison. One of their prisons is known for having 3,000 beds for 10,000 prisoners and is a place where conditions are extremely harsh. So I think he would not face the death penalty but he would a face harsh situation in prison.
CHETRY: Tom, they also have things working for them in that in the Natalee Holloway case they had no physical evidence, they never found Natalee Holloway's body, and they didn't have the benefit of these video cameras that clearly capture Joran Van Der Sloot as well as Miss Flores on tape at this hotel.
FUENTES: That's true. They have an entirely different situation in this case.
CHETRY: They also have a body in this case, so, you know, as they go back and do the forensics there, what will they be looking for to corroborate his story?
FUENTES: Well, much of the evidence so far is circumstantial. Yes, he's seen on the camera going into the room with her, yes he leaves later on, it is his room. He obtained the room in his true name. So there are many factors that point directly to him.
But what they're going to want to know is exactly what occurred to cause her death. What exact steps did he take at that time that only he would know, only the killer would know?
CHETRY: And quickly, does he have a bargaining chip here in terms of giving information about the Holloway case that could perhaps end up helping him in some way, shape, or form?
CALLAN: He does have a bargaining chip. The Holloway family desperately wants to know what precisely happened to daughter, and Peruvian officials could use that chip -- he could use that chip with them.
CHETRY: That would take a lot of coordination with --
CALLAN: It would take coordination and there's talk that Aruban authorities are not in that close contact with Peruvian authorities, which is kind of surprising. But, you know, we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. So this will develop over the next couple days.
CHETRY: Thanks for your insight this morning, Paul Callan as well as Tom Fuentes, great to talk to both of you. Thanks so much.
FUENTES: You're welcome.
CHETRY: And lets head back to John in New Orleans.
ROBERTS: Kiran, thanks so much. Our special coverage continues this morning from New Orleans with a CNN exclusive. Oil rig survivors speak out, survivors from the Deepwater Horizon. What they heard and what they saw leading up to the disaster 51 days ago. Stay with us and we'll have that for you coming right up.
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ROBERTS: It's 47 minutes after the hour now.
Fifty-one days ago, they witnessed hell. The explosion and fireball on the DeepWater Horizon drilling rig that started it all and killed 11 of their co-workers.
Now five survivors of that disaster are speaking exclusively to our Anderson Cooper, reliving the horror, describing the heat and their very narrow escape.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR, AC360: So you heard that third explosion?
DANIEL BARRON III, BP EXPLOSION SURVIVOR: Oh, yes. Yes, you heard it and felt it. I mean, it was, like -- I mean, it was, it's like, being in a car accident because you're shaking and the whole rig is moving. And, you know, things are falling down and you're hearing people screaming and yelling. It is complete pandemonium.
COOPER: What was the scene like at the lifeboat when you got there?
BARRON: It was insane. I mean, people were just jumping in the lifeboats. There are other people -- because there's two lifeboats side by side and you're assigned to each one.
COOPER: And each lifeboat could have about 75 people.
BARRON: Yes, but people were just running and jumping in them and, you know, it's dark, you know, people were screaming and yelling. And, you know, we just got on the lifeboat. And, I mean, it was even worse. I mean, that was probably the worst part of it being on the lifeboat.
COOPER: Why?
BARRONS: Because it was just -- it's like you're almost waiting to die because it felt like it took so long for everybody to get on. And there's people screaming, you know, put it in the water, let's go, and it's filling up with smoke and you can feel the heat from the fire.
In fact, one of the guys that was on lifeboat, he actually -- he panicked so much that he got up out of the lifeboat and then jumped overboard.
COOPER: And what was it like sitting there and waiting for the others to come and waiting for it to get lowered?
MATT JACOBS, BP EXPLOSION SURVIVOR: I mean, we were just screaming, you know, to everybody, you know, get on the boat, get on the boat. And I remember another explosion and when it exploded, the lifeboat free fell for about three foot and then just stopped all of a sudden.
I was scared to death sitting in that lifeboat. I said I've done made it out of my room, out of the living quarters, and here I am on a lifeboat that's supposed to help get me off this rig, and I'm going to wind up dying on this lifeboat. And I just -- I started praying.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Again, 11 of their colleagues and friends were killed when the rig exploded that night. The workers also described a corporate culture of cutting staff and ignoring warning signs ahead of that blast.
Well, there's a lot of work being done on the surface of the ocean, under the ocean, but what about on dry land? A lot of work to clean up the wildlife that has been soiled by the oil spill. We'll take you to a wildlife rehab center where we'll show you how they clean up an oiled pelican.
Coming right up. Stay with us.
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CHETRY: Welcome back to The Most News in the Morning. Six minutes until the top of the hour now.
There are few images that are more powerful and disturbing than the ones that we're seeing from the Gulf Coast, pelicans and other sea birds appearing to be gasping for air, coated in crude oil. They're the most helpless victims of the disaster. And as the oil keeps gushing, the casualties keep mounting.
But our Brian Todd brings us a story of rescue and hope from Louisiana.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): In this facility behind me, workers are now treating about 50 oiled birds a day, casualties of the Gulf oil spill that could well have died if not found and brought here.
(voice-over): Huddled in a pen covered with oil, they arrive at the bird cleaning station in Buras, Louisiana. Some are found by state workers, others spotted by volunteers. So far, 600 birds have been brought here; 200 of them dead on arrival. But the others have all survived.
REBECCA DUNNE, MANAGER, BIRD CLEANING FACILITY: The animals we're getting in are heavily covered in oil but they're healthy animals so that makes us feel hopeful that we have a chance to save most of them and we have been pretty successful so far.
TODD: They don't always say thank you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They bite you.
TODD: After a physical and a day in a pen to de-stress, it's time for a scrubbing. The birds are washed with simple dawn soap, then rinsed off and dried. After the scrub, it's out to Pelican Island, the pens where they're kept for recovery and observation.
Stars from the New Orleans Saints football team visited to thank the volunteers and to give locals a boost.
DREW BREES, NEW ORLEANS SAINTS QUARTERBACK: It's all about doing whatever we can down here in South Louisiana, in the Gulf Coast, to help these people come back.
TODD: These pelicans will soon be released in Florida, where they're less likely to run into oil but not all birds are so lucky.
BOBBY JINDAL (R), GOVERNOR, LOUISIANA: You know, for every bird they rescue, there are many more bird out there that are oiled but they couldn't rescue. For every bird they rescue and released there are many nests and many eggs and many baby birds that won't be able to be rescued. And that is what is so heartbreaking to the people of Louisiana.
TODD (on camera): Behind me is a new pen put up to allow workers to treat more oiled birds and officials here tell us they plan to put up at least eight more of these.
Brian Todd, CNN, Buras, Louisiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHETRY: You can find out how you can help as well by going to CNN.com/impact.
We're going to take a quick break. It's 56 minutes past the hour.
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ROBERTS: Day 51 of this disaster and right now live pictures from the ocean floor as the gas and the oil continues to bubble around that top cap. They managed to close one of the vents. They say, BP, that they're collecting about 15,000 barrels of oil a day.
But when you see that much spewing out, it would certainly give credence to the upper estimates of 19,000 to perhaps maybe 25,000 barrels of oil that have been spewing into the Gulf every day. And one more look here, as well, at this new high-resolution video.
It's actually a few days old, but it's new to us, showing underwater images of the ruptured well gushing oil two days after robots made a cut in the well's riser pipe, when they took that bent- over kinked riser off the top of the blowout preventer.
These are the first high-quality images from the ocean floor of this environmental disaster released by BP after the government said we want to have a look because we want to show it to our scientists. There is a method that scientists can use by looking at the rate at which the oil and the gas are coming out that they can get a pretty good idea, a reasonable estimate of just how much oil and gas is spilling into the Gulf every day.
We are going to be reporting live from the Gulf Coast for the rest of the week, not just in the morning but all the way through to "ANDERSON COOPER 360" late at night. So be sure to join us again tomorrow morning right here on AMERICAN MORNING bright and early at 6:00 a.m. Eastern.
Let's send it back to Kiran.
CHETRY: John thanks so much. I look forward to seeing your reports tomorrow as well.
And meantime, continue the conversation on today's stories by heading to our blog, CNN.com/amfix. Thanks so much for being with us today. We will see you back here bright and early tomorrow.
In the meantime, "CNN NEWSROOM" with Kyra Phillips starts right now.
