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American Morning
BP's Worst Case Scenario: Internal Document Says 100,000 Barrels a Day Spilling; Clashing Over Claims: Collecting from BP Proves Challenging; Israel Loosens Gaza Blockade; Partner: BP "Reckless"; Too Much Tech?; Florida Beaches Brace for Oil Spill; Success in Afghanistan; Gaga Not Ejected; Disaster Deception
Aired June 21, 2010 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Monday morning, the 21st of June. Thanks so much for joining us on the Most News in the Morning on, I guess what would be the first day of summer, right? 7:28 this morning.
KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: It's official.
ROBERTS: Yes. I'm John Roberts. Good morning.
CHETRY: I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us. We have a lot to tell you about this morning, so let's get right to it.
It is by far the worst of the worst case scenarios. A hundred thousand barrels of crude oil a day. That would be 4.2 million gallons a day possibly gushing into the Gulf. That's not from government scientists but from BP. The oil giant put that scenario in writing last month but apparently failed to share the information with the American people.
ROBERTS: Victims of the tragedy in the Gulf are finding it hard to get BP to pay up. The oil giant offering one Louisiana fisherman less than a third of what he says he needs to keep from going under. And Stuart Scheer had to jump through hoops just to get that offer, an offer he says he just had to refuse.
CHETRY: Plus e-mails, text messages, Twitter, Facebook, blogs. Are we surrounded by too much technology? An in-depth look at the Internet and what some researchers say it's really doing to your brain ahead on the Most News in the Morning.
By the way, speaking of blogs, the amFIX blog is up and running. Join the live conversation by going to CNN.com/amFIX.
ROBERTS: Well, when it comes to worst case scenarios, this one is the worst by far. An internal BP document puts the upper limit on the amount of oil that could spill into the Gulf of Mexico at 100,000 barrels -- 4.2 million gallons every 24 hours. It's been 63 days now since this disaster began and that new worst case scenario really is an old worst case scenario because the estimate was written by BP back in May, and it's just being revealed now. The oil giant kept those estimates under wraps offering Congress and the American people much lower numbers sparking new acquisitions of deception. And get this, BP CEO Tony Hayward spotted this weekend enjoying some down time onboard his 52-foot yacht in the crystal clear waters off of southern England while his company was getting hammered.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Right from the beginning, BP was either lying or grossly incompetent. First, they said it was only 1,000 barrels. Then they said it was 5,000 barrels. Now, we're up to 100,000 barrels.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, BP is calling the release of its worst case scenario of figures irrelevant. The critics say it is just one more reason not to trust anything the company says.
ROBERTS: Many people on the Gulf Coast are feeling that way already. Our Chris Lawrence live in New Orleans this morning.
And, Chris, BP has pledged to pay all legitimate claims from this spill, but some people that you talked to are calling that an empty promise. What did you find out?
CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. And to be fair, you know, BP has cut over 30,000 checks, paid out over $100 million already but that still leaves thousands of people who are either waiting to get paid or wondering how BP decided how much their claim was worth.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE (voice-over): It took 40 years for Stu Scheer to build his business, running charter fishing boats for tourists in the Gulf. Now it's all falling apart, between the oil spill that shut down business and haggling with BP over his claim.
STUART SCHEER, CHARTER BOAT CAPTAIN: Excuse me. You wonder how a guy my age, 260 pounds, can be emotional. Sorry. But you know, it's like I told you, saltwater runs through my veins. I mean, it's all I've done. All I ever wanted to do was fish.
LAWRENCE: Stu walked into the local claims office but BP classified him large loss and moved his claim 90 miles away. He only speaks with his adjuster by phone.
SCHEER: They wanted 2007, '08, '09 returns. They wanted my log books. They wanted my bank statements. They wanted all my licenses, P&L statement.
LAWRENCE (on camera): So you laid out --
SCHEER: Everything.
LAWRENCE: All this paperwork.
SCHEER: Everything. LAWRENCE: To the number.
SCHEER: To the penny virtually. This is what I calculated from May 9th through the end of December that I had on the books, actual books. Not projections, not people still calling me.
LAWRENCE: And when you itemized these costs for BP, you even accounted for -- that you wouldn't be using fuel.
SCHEER: That's right. If my boat didn't leave the dock I wouldn't have fuel bait, rods, reels, ice contract, labor.
My gross was $162,800. Less expenses, daily boat expenses came out to $107,982. My bookings for this year amounted to a gross net of $107,000 and they basically offered me $33,000.
LAWRENCE (voice-over): He turned down that offer and is now haggling to make up the difference.
(on camera): Are you any more confident in the government running the claims process as you were --
SCHEER: Well, again, I have said there's always an air of optimism and, you know, the fact that the Obama administration has gotten BP to put the $20 billion in escrow and supposedly a new regime is going to come in and handle the claims, yes, there's optimism. I hope it works out but I'm suspicious.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAWRENCE: Now, we called BP and they said they don't comment on individual claims but from what we've been able to figure out, Stu more than likely, bottom line, is probably going to have to take that initial offer. Maybe BP pays just for the first couple months, and then he's going to have to just keep refiling claims. Even though he's already got cancellations for August, September, he's going to have to wait, refile a claim, get the cancellation in September, October, wait, refile another claim. His paperwork probably just beginning.
CHETRY: What a nightmare for him to actually go through. Unreal.
And meantime, I guess this was yet another PR gaffe, as some are calling it. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, spotted. He was at a yachting event this weekend back in England. BP responded by saying, hey, you know, he was spending a couple of hours with his family. But how do people that you spoke with there react to that?
LAWRENCE: Some surprising reaction, one that you would expect. You know, I spoke to a couple of people who said, what? He did what? I mean, we've got our boats here in the waters slopping up oil and there's a 50-foot yacht, you know, cruising around southern England? I mean, they were just shocked. Literally couldn't believe it.
On the other hand, you know, some people said, well, you know, they'd heard that President Obama went golfing this weekend and said, well, you know, what really is the difference? And even one person even said, you know, nobody can work 24 hours a day. The guy's got to see his family at some point. So really an interesting mix of emotion on that, Kiran.
CHETRY: All right, Chris Lawrence for us this morning in New Orleans. Thank you.
ROBERTS: Well, the administration's new man in charge of paying out claims, Kenneth Feinberg. He's going to join us this morning at 7:15 Eastern. We'll ask him how quickly the federal government can cut checks to the people who need them the most. That's coming up in the next hour of AMERICAN MORNING.
CHETRY: Well, you've seen the devastation and now you can also help seafood workers hurt because of the BP oil spill. For just $25, you can buy a bottle of crude collected by clean-up workers. The group's founder, an out-of-work fishermen, says he's doing it because BP is taking too long to pay claims.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KEVIN VOISIN, FOUNDER AND CEO, HORIZON RELIEF: There are thousands of foundation seafood workers, deckhands, dockworkers and plant workers who suddenly are out of work and what's fed their families for eight and nine generations is no longer an option. Looking at that scenario, I said boy, we've got to do something to build awareness. We've got to do something. We thought about what can we sell? We don't have oysters. What we can sell? And in jest, someone said, well, we've got a lot of oil.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: Well, donations of $1,000 or more will get you a limited edition glass bottle. Now if you like to help, we went to the group's Web site. Head to our blog CNN.com/amFIX.
ROBERTS: Tonight, "LARRY KING LIVE" is going to have an all-star cast join the show for a relief effort to help rebuild the Gulf Coast. A special two-hour "LARRY KING LIVE" event takes place 8:00 Eastern tonight, right here on CNN.
CHETRY: Well, new this morning, hundreds of people told to get out of their homes in Flagstaff, Arizona. In the air and on the ground, firefighters were attacking the second wildfire that threatened a town in days. Officials say that the fast-moving blames broke out on the north side of town, scorching seven square miles within hours. So far the fire has stayed behind the containment line about 500 yards from several homes.
ROBERTS: This incredible video shows a tornado in Billings, Montana ripping through a sports arena and throwing debris. The twister took the roof right off the building but also damaged several businesses, including a bar and a casino. The twister first touched down around 4:30 in the afternoon local time yesterday. The system also brought golf ball-sized hail to the area. CHETRY: Wow. Well, as for the first day of summer, it's going to be a hot one for plenty of folks across the nation. And checking all the extreme weather for us this morning is our Reynolds Wolf in the extreme weather center this morning. Boy, it was a hot weekend, too, for many and it looks like it's just going to continue.
REYNOLDS WOLF, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It really is. You know, let's begin exactly where you left off with the start of summer. And here are some of the temperatures we're going to be dealing with later on today.
High temperatures skyrocketing into the 90s across much of the southeast and, of course, the central and southern plains. St. Louis out by the gateway to the west, 98 degrees. High humidity along the Mississippi will make it feel like it tipped to 107. One hundred in Dallas, the expected high. Ninety-three in New Orleans. Eighty-nine in New York but the high humidity there will also make it feel like it's in the upper 90s, 105 in Phoenix.
Today we'll continue to battle those wildfires. They could use in parts of, say, the four corners will be some rainfall. No such luck for them. Looks like the focus of the precipitation is actually going to move into parts of the northern central plains where this morning strong storms rolling through portions of Nebraska, back into Kansas and Missouri. We can expect that to last possibly through the afternoon into the early evening.
It looks like Chicago may have another round of strong storms, hot and muggy for you in the southeast. Windy out towards parts of the Pacific Northwest with some scattered showers along parts of the cascades. And again, the heat is definitely going to be with us all the way through much of the next couple of days and possibly next weekend. So, yes, with a flip of a switch, summer's here. Let's send it back to you in the studio.
ROBERTS: That's all it takes, just about an hour and 20 minutes from now, too. Reynolds, thanks so much.
WOLF: There you go.
ROBERTS: Also new this morning, Joran van der Sloot will go before a judge in Peru today in the murder case of 21-year-old Stephany Flores. The Dutchman has confessed to her killing and remains a suspect in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba.
Anita van der Sloot has told reporters her son, quote, is "sick in his head" and wants him to get psychological help. And right about now, they're going to be hosting a pint or two in Northern Ireland celebrating their native son's improbable victory at the U.S. Open in Pebble Beach. Graeme McDowell becoming the first European in 40 years to capture America's national golf championship. He finished at even par yesterday. Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson tied for fourth, the best finish by the Americans.
CHETRY: All right. Well, still ahead, Israel green lights more materials into Gaza. It's another move by Israel to try to loosen the land blockade in an attempt to stop the international outcry after the deadly flotilla attack. We're live in Jerusalem with the latest developments next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: Welcome back to the Most News in the Morning. Thirteen minutes past the hour right now.
A developing story out of Gaza this morning. Israel is going even further in trying to relax its Gaza blockade. A new policy which was approved last night changes the blockade's list from materials that are allowed to just those that are banned. The banned list, of course, includes weapons and military materials.
ROBERTS: The move comes after a barrage of criticism over Israel's raid last month of a Turkish aid flotilla that was headed for Gaza. Our Paula Hancocks is live in Jerusalem to break all this down.
Paula, we were talking to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair about this last week because he helped broker this deal. Is it actually going to make a difference to the people of Gaza?
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, if what we see on paper is actually implemented, then yes, of course, it will make a difference because there will be more aid, more food, more furniture, more toys and educational goods going into Gaza. So in that respect, it is good news. But what we're hearing from the United Nations on the ground here, the people that really know what's going on, they're saying that they're going to wait and see if these words actually turn into deeds. And what they're also saying is there is one crucial thing that is not been approached at this point -- Gaza still can't export things out.
Now, of course, these Gazans that are on handbags at the moment, 80 percent of 1.5 million people are relying on handbags. And the Gazans want to work. They want their businesses to start off again, and this is the way to rebuild the Gazan economy. And as the British foreign minister said to us, this is the way to actually be in Israel's interests as well. If the Gazans are happy, they are not going to go towards extremism -- John.
CHETRY: Will we start to see an easing of the international pressure on Israel which has really been ratcheted up in the wake of that deadly flotilla attack?
HANCOCKS: Well, Kiran, I think we will. Certainly the last three weeks has been very tough for Israel. The international pressure has been immense for the first week. It was because of that flotilla asking why did nine people get killed? What happened? What went wrong?
And then, after that, there was really a focus on the blockade itself, which was why the flotilla was trying to float to Gaza. They were trying to break this blockade. And this is really why that pressure has come, and it's expected to be the reason why Israel has now said, OK, we will ease this blockade.
Of course, from the Palestinian point of view, they're now worried that if the pressure lifts off Israel, then the blockade wouldn't actually be lifted. This is what the international community wanted. They wanted the blockade canceled. They didn't want it just changed and amended. But certainly, at this point, they have welcomed the first change.
ROBERTS: Paula Hancocks for us this morning. Paula, thanks so much.
Coming up next on the Most News in the Morning, BP's Deepwater -- partner on the Deepwater Horizon rig says the company cut corners. Our Christine Romans "Minding Your Business" here now with a preview.
Good morning. (INAUDIBLE).
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: An already very ugly story gets uglier, John and Kiran. Now you've got former partners turning against each other. You have very big numbers getting worse by the minute in terms of the cost and the liability of the -- of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
We're going to have all of this and what it means for you right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOODY, TOY STORY 3: OK. Now what?
HAMM, TOY STORY CHARACTER: All right. Let's see. "Caution. Do not hold button for more than five seconds."
REX, TOY STORY 3: It's not my fault!
BUZZ LIGHTYEAR, TOY STORY 3: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH).
HAMM: Now what did you do?
REX: I just did what you told me.
LIGHTYEAR: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH).
WOODY: Amigos! We're all amigos.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Twenty minutes after the hour.
"Toy Story 3" blows out the box office. The animated sequel finds Woody, Buzz and the rest of the gang back in action, and although it appears that Andy has outgrown his toys, it's clear that audiences across the country did not. The movie reeled in $109 million in its opening weekend. Best debut for a film from Pixar, topping "The Incredibles" at more than $70 million.
CHETRY: There you go. For, you know, for part three to do that well, it's amazing. They're doing great.
Christine Romans "Minding Your Business" this morning. Hello.
ROMANS: Hello.
CHETRY: We're still talking about BP.
ROMANS: This -- this BP story, I mean, it's like a slow bleed. Every day, there's new news, all of it bad, about what -- I mean the story, 63 days.
ROBERTS: It's like a train wreck in slow motion.
ROMANS: It is, and what's -- with implications for so many different people.
So here's the latest, BP by the numbers. The numbers get worse and uglier, literally by the minute now, partners turning against each other late last week. Anadarko, one of the partners on the -- on the condo well (ph), came out said basically, look, we think that there was gross negligence on the part of BP and that they should shoulder all of the costs.
Of course, they don't want to be stacked with any of what could be humongous bills down the road, so you have partners turning against each other. You also have a worst case scenario released by the office of Congressman Ed Markey of 100,000 barrels per day. BP's sort of downplaying that, saying that that is if you completely removed the -- the containment cap, and that's not something that they're expecting to do.
ROBERTS: Well, the blow-out preventer itself.
ROMANS: The blow-out preventer itself. That's right.
ROBERTS: So if the well was just running free.
ROMANS: If it was just running free, and that's not something that they plan to do.
But, you know, to have a worst-case scenario like that, actually imagine what that could be like, still pretty startling. And also the cost. The company updating us again on the cost, $2 billion so far, 32,000 claims paid but 65,000 claims have been made. There's still a lot of anger in the Gulf that this is not going fast enough.
You guys will be talking to -- to someone later who's going to be in charge of making sure that these --
ROBERTS: Yes. Ken Feinberg. ROMANS: -- that these claims do get made.
Meanwhile, the "Sunday Times" is saying BP is going to have to or will be raising $50 billion. This is according to the "Sunday Times".
$50 billion! By doing a couple of things -- selling bonds, IOUs to the public, bank loans, maybe $20 billion in bank loans, drawing up bank loans, and eventually maybe having to sell some assets. And every time a company like BP has to sell assets, I tell you, that's going to be politically fraught around the world. Who would be the buyer on the other side?
ROBERTS: As you said, the Chinese would love to buy some of this...
ROMANS: Who's got the money? That's right.
So this story just keeps going. It looks uglier by the day, by the second.
CHETRY: But what bothers you the most is that BP's CEO's yacht's name is Bob.
ROMANS; I've read that his yacht's name was -- first of all, the whole yacht thing, but -- but "Bob" is the name of the yacht. I've never heard of a yacht named "Bob". It just really struck me as an interesting little side note to that story.
ROBERTS: Maybe it's a description more than it is anything. Bobbing in the water.
ROMANS: Maybe. Maybe.
CHETRY: Christine, thank you.
Well, it's everywhere we go and quickly becoming part of everything we do, but what's the internet doing to the way we actually think? Is our addiction to technology changing the way that our brains work?
We're getting some interesting answers from researchers, next.
Twenty-three minutes past the hour.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHETRY: How many times a day do you check your e-mail, send a text or update your Facebook status? Well, all this technology makes life a lot easier, but could it also be changing how we think?
Well, journalist and author, Nicholas Carr, think so. It's the topic of his new book, "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain". For this "A.M. Original", I talked to Nick and asked him what he found out.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) NICHOLAS CARR, AUTHOR, "THE SHALLOWS": It's not good news. I mean, on the one hand, the net is providing us with all sorts of new information and it's allowing us to connect with other people, but it's also keeping us in a perpetual state of distractedness.
We can't slow down. You know, we're juggling tasks all the time. We're getting interrupted all the time. And what happens is we never train our brains to pay attention, to get engaged in more deeper kinds of thinking.
CHETRY: Yes. When we were in college, we called it, you know, getting into the zone, and you had to --
CARR: Right.
CHETRY: -- really find a way to sort of shut everything else out to really concentrate and absorb material. But does that really play out neurologically? I mean, is there something to be said for how you absorb information?
CARR: Yes. It's -- there's a lot of evidence that the way we take in information online with lots of links and lots of multi- tasking and multi-media, all sorts of things coming at us at once, kind of break the link between our short-term memory, which is just where, you know, stuff comes in and goes out very quickly, into our long-term memory, which is really where we build deep, conceptual knowledge.
CHETRY: And so, how do you know that eventually we wouldn't adapt in a way and our brains wouldn't adapt in a way that makes us impervious in some ways to the constant barrage of distraction?
CARR: Yes. I think -- I think we will adapt. I mean, one thing we know about the brain is it's very adaptable, but in some ways that's what scares me. Because when we adapt, it means we're changing things in our brain and so we're getting used to be scanners and skimmers and surfers and browsers. And we're probably getting better at that, but we're losing the ability to go deeper.
CHETRY: Is there anything that we can do, some building blocks that we can lay down for our young children to make sure that this doesn't happen or there are times when we are disconnecting?
CARR: Yes. We have to start pulling back from constant connection. And nobody's going to, you know, unplug the internet or go offline all the time, but we've -- we've gotten it into our minds that it's OK if our kids spend -- you know, send and receive a couple of hundred text messages all day long.
CHETRY: Right.
CARR: And we have to think, you know, this is having an effect on their minds just like it's having an effect on our own, and maybe the time has come to start putting limits on these things.
CHETRY: Is this such a leap, I mean, with what we're exposed to on a daily basis in terms of always being plugged in?
CARR: Yes. It's true that there's always kind of fears when -- when a new technology comes along. What's different now from the calculator and from other types of tools that we've used is -- is our connectedness is going on all day long --
CHETRY: Right.
CARR: -- and all the time and it's taking all different forms. You know, we're checking Facebook updates, we're getting texts, we're -- we're scrolling through our e-mail. We're not giving our brains any chance to do anything else basically.
CHETRY: While I was looking through your book, I thought to myself, you know, because of GPS, you don't have to learn the directions anywhere.
CARR: Right.
CHETRY: And it's true. And I -- I have to put the same -- the address in the GPS because I didn't learn it from the last time --
CARR: Right.
CHETRY: -- because a computer was telling me how to get there.
CARR: And there's -- there's an interesting kind of scary point to that, that actually when we depend on software, it's hugely convenient.
CHETRY: Right.
CARR: You know, I get -- you know, I program the GPS, but it's true that it bypasses our ability to learn. To learn something you have to actually struggle with it, OK? And that's the way it kind of lodges in your mind. And if you bypass that and just click and turn on your GPS, you may fail to learn some important concepts.
CHETRY: It makes a lot of sense. It's certainly something to think about. Our Nicholas Carr, author of "The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain". Thanks for spending some time with us this morning.
CARR: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTS: Crossing the half hour now, we're checking our top stories.
At least seven people killed in a suicide attack in Northern Iraq. Officials say six police officers are among the dead. It is the second day of deadly violence in a row there. On Sunday, at least 29 people were killed in Western Baghdad when suicide bombers blew up cars packed with explosives in back-to-back attacks. Officials say their target was The Trade Bank of Iraq. CHETRY: The fight over illegal immigration comes to a head today in the city of Freemont, Nebraska. This morning, in a special election, the community of 25,000 will vote on whether to ban businesses from hiring illegal immigrants and to bar landlords from renting to them. Supporters say the proposal is needed to stop the loss of good jobs for local residents. But opponents say all it does is fuel discrimination.
ROBERTS: The federal government is taking over the claims process for the oil spill in the Gulf, promising to get checks to the people who need them the most -- fast. Many victims say they can't last much longer. We'll talk about that with the new man in charge of cutting those checks, Ken Feinberg -- coming up in about 40 minutes time.
CHETRY: Well, with the huge tourism industry, Florida has a lot at stake from an economic standpoint when it comes to this oil spill.
ROBERTS: Tourism is a $60 billion industry for the state. And for residents there, worried would be an understatement.
Our David Mattingly is live in Okaloosa Island, Florida.
And, David, business is down there by how much?
DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: All across the panhandle, business is down, John. Every single thing that tourists spend money on is hurting. And the more oil that comes ashore, in whatever form it is, the worse the pain gets.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Blue water, sugar-white sand -- a perfect picture from the Florida Panhandle, except for those BP crews picking up tar balls.
(on camera): As you were watching these guys, what was going through your mind?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That they're on top of it. That's what I'm thinking. They're trying to get it before it gets --
MATTINGLY: No second thoughts about the vacation?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not yet at this point. Not yet.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Vacationers I talked to are making day-to-day decisions, go to the beach if the oil stays away, go home if it doesn't. So far, the tar balls seem manageable.
(on camera): They're literally cleaning up tar balls just a few feet away from where you're sitting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, and it's very sad.
MATTINGLY: But you're not worried about it.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, not right now. We're not stepping in it or anything.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But these pieces of the BP spill are killing business -- down 30 percent to 40 percent across the panhandle, worse around the beaches where the tar balls hit. The official strategy: clean it up, and fast.
(on camera): This is what this is all about, right? Making sure people can still come to a clean beach?
COMM. JOHN JANNAZO, OKALOOSA COUNTY, FL.: Exactly. And we're cleaning up. When we did have the -- we had some oil a couple days ago and we picked it up just like that. It's gone.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But the oil threat isn't so easily forgotten. Everywhere I go, there's worry, a feeling of "enjoy it while you can."
(on camera): This is one of the biggest party areas in all the panhandle. This area is called Crab Island. It's not really an island. It's a sandbar just outside of Destin. Literally hundreds of boats gather here every day to enjoy the water and the sun.
Are you worried this might be one of your last weekends out there?
CROWD: Yes!
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Just like BP chief Tony Hayward who spent time on his yacht back home in the U.K., people here can't resist the water when it comes to relaxing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where's he putting his boat in?
MATTINGLY (voice-over): Why do you want to know?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he's probably in some really clean water.
MATTINGLY: What would you like to say to Tony Hayward?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love it here. And we wanted to stay clean and he needs get down here and make sure it stays this way so that we can bring our families out.
MATTINGLY (voice-over): But as the BP spill creeps eastward across the panhandle, questions grow -- not just about the future of this tourist season, but the seasons that follow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: And local authorities are trying to keep pace with wave after wave of tar balls. This is what the culprits look like. These little pebble-like pieces of tar that mix with the sand and mix with those white sand beaches. And once that does that, that means it's going to -- it has more diminishing effect on this already- damaged tourist season.
CHETRY: And, David, it's the first day of summer officially in just a couple of hours. What are they expecting there over the next couple of days in terms of how these waters hold up?
MATTINGLY: Well, this boom behind me going out across the water here is a good indication of what they're waiting for. They've been seeing these tar balls for days now. They're bracing for what's worse, what might be coming after this. And that's those ribbons of emulsified oil that we've seen out in the ocean.
But, at this point, it's very fragmented out there. They're not able to keep track of it the way they could over in Louisiana. Over here, they're expecting to see pieces of it here, pieces of it there. But everyone across the panhandle bracing for worse -- worse than what we've seen with these tar balls.
CHETRY: What a shame. David Mattingly for us this morning -- thanks.
ROBERTS: Well, how do you cope when your partner in life slowly slips away overcome by Alzheimer's disease? It happened to CBS news correspondent Barry Petersen. He's written a book about his wife Jan's battle with the disease and the toll that it has taken on him as well. He'll join us in just a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
ROBERTS: Thirty-eight minutes after the hour now. Jan Charlton and Barry Petersen met in a Seattle newsroom more than 25 years ago and fell absolutely head over heels in love. They married, traveled the world together. Barry is a CBS News correspondent. Jan is a reporter for several news organizations, including here at CNN.
But their lives were shattered in 2005 when Jan was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease at the age of 55. In his new book, "Jan's Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer's," Barry describes seeing his wife and his life disappeared.
Barry joins us this morning.
I got to say, Barry, I've known you for years, we used to work in CBS together. This book is just so sad. And his resonance for me because my mom died of Alzheimer's March 1st of this year.
But when you look at how close the two of you were, you called yourself the darling-darling couple because you both called each other "darling." There can be a point in Alzheimer's disease for many people where simple forgetfulness makes a transition into a real disconnect. And that happened for you, you said in 2005, when you came home from reporting on a story one day and you said that Jan just walked through the looking glass.
What was that day like?
BARRY PETERSEN, AUTHOR, "JAN'S STORY": It was -- left in the morning, perfectly normal. I mean, there had been some indications ahead of time. She had memory lapses and she was repeating herself, but nobody would make that kind of leap. Came back and for the next three days, she was basically in Alzheimer's. She's hearing voices. She dressed in her street clothes, like putting on a suit to come to bed.
She did something I think is really impossible to do, she would make a regular sentence but the words would be out of order. Try it some time, it's really impossibly hard. And I called the doctor at the end of three days and the doctor said, basically, she has Alzheimer's because of the symptoms.
Nobody knows for sure if somebody has Alzheimer's, and this will stop you cold. The doctor will say, we won't know until we do the autopsy.
ROBERTS: Yes.
PETERSEN: That's when you realize you're in a lot of trouble.
ROBERTS: But you also -- you did have some indication though because there were some brain scans that were done. You found that there was a lack of activity, actually atrophy in the front lobe of the brain.
PETERSEN: The front, you know, the Alzheimer's attacks the frontal lobe first. And with Jan, it really became apparent, the short-term memory were having a lot of problems. She'd say, "Hey, John, how are you?" And then you about and two minutes later, she'd say, "Hey, John, how are you?"
And those are significant clues that you really have a problem. Once the short-term memory is gone, the attack really begins to deal with longer term memory which means that she forgets the most recent things but they're now in descending order.
ROBERTS: Yes.
PETERSEN: So she knows she's married to Barry. She talks about Barry all the time to her friends. She's now in an assisted living facility. But sitting like us? She has no idea who I am anymore.
ROBERTS: She knows that you're someone significant in her life but can't make that connection.
PETERSEN: Doesn't make the connection between the Barry that she always talks about and the me who is sitting in front of her.
ROBERTS: You know, the progression of this disease is unique to everybody but there are some commonalities. In reading through the book, I saw a lot of what happened to my mother and what my sister who is her primary caregiver went through, the forgetfulness, the potential of her confusing day with night and walking out of the house to go to the grocery store at 3:00 in the morning.
Anger, my mother progressed to violence. I didn't read any of that about Jan. And also, the caregiver that you hired she rejected her, got angry at her, wanted her out of the house, and you became the primary caregiver. And you talk at length in the book about the stress on an Alzheimer's caregiver.
What was that like for you?
PETERSEN: Well, I think you just described it really well. You know, you -- in my case, I was still doing my day job, then I'd come home at night. And even with a live-in caregiver, you never know at what hour this is going to happen. So you never really get a good night's sleep. And your -- when I came home from work, no matter what the day had been, I had to be upbeat for Jan ready to go.
And I think -- and I'm sure you had the same experience. It doesn't wear you down, it exhausts you. And at the same time while that's happening, the person you're dealing with is going to somehow do something different tomorrow that you hadn't anticipated. So you're like on red alert all the time, never getting sleep and going down.
ROBERTS: What was it like finally having to transition her to assisted living? And having to deal with this -- the slings and arrows that some of her friends, who as you said, quote, "wanted an emotional death for you as slow and final and lonely as Jan's was." They thought you were abandoning her, putting her on a shelf for your own convenience.
PETERSEN: They did. And I think the hardest day of my life, without a doubt, of anything I've ever done in this business, was the day I turned around and walk out of the assisted living facility where I first placed her, realizing that that was the end of my life, that we were never going to be together again. Jan was there forever.
I think the hard thing with other people is -- I really understood this -- they could be angry with me about what happened to Jan. They needed someone to be angry with, and, you know, I understood it because I was angry. I still am angry about what happened to Jan.
So I accepted their reaction and I decided, you know, I would just take it as a measure of their love for her, that it hurt them as much as it hurt me.
ROBERTS: And this is more than just a story about you and your experience with Jan and Jan's experience with Alzheimer's. You call this a forewarning.
Five million people suffer from Alzheimer's in this country right now. Those numbers are expected to skyrocket in the next 20 years.
PETERSEN: By 2015, we're looking at 15 million. The Alzheimer's Association says three people in the family affected, multiply that, you're up to 60 million people now, like you and your sister. I mean, your sister did the hard work, care-giving.
ROBERTS: Yes. She did all the hard work.
PETERSEN: But you lived through the process. And, you know, people come to me and say, well, you know, my mother had Alzheimer's and that's different from what you went through. And I said, you know? No one should have to live with your mother forgetting who you are. Of all the people in the world, she's the one who should always know --
ROBERTS: Yes.
PETERSEN: -- John is my son. And when you go through that, I think it just tears you to pieces.
ROBERTS: It is tough. But I got to say my sister Linda was just a saint through all of this. Her husband as well, they spent so much time with my mom.
And on that point, you know, you say your mother should never forget who you are, neither should your wife.
PETERSEN: Right.
ROBERTS: And the ending in this book is so tragically sad. You wrote, quote, "Can there be somewhere" -- talking to Jan -- "can there be somewhere inside your mind, a way that you can know that I will always love you, always miss you? It's time now. We must go different ways.
Dearest, dearest Jan, with you I once believed in forever. And I believed I would never have to say -- from darling to darling -- goodbye." That's tough. That's just so tough.
PETERSEN: Yes. It's hard -- people say to me -- I'm trying to keep myself together here, John. People say to me, wasn't writing the book a catharsis? And I say to them, Jan was still here. I still watch over here. I've moved on to another relationship now. The two of us are co-caregivers. We watch over Jan.
So you think in any other disease, you do say goodbye, and cancer or things like that which I think are just horrible. With Alzheimer's, you say goodbye over and over and over.
I had a friend who said, it's like you're going to the same funeral over and over again, because she keeps changing and evolving and getting worse -- and, you know, but she's still Jan. She's still vibrant and upbeat. She's just this wonderful, articulate, bright woman who can no longer make a complete sentence.
ROBERTS: Barry, I've known you a lot of years. I've had tremendous respect for you as a journalist. PETERSEN: Thank you.
ROBERTS: And this book is just tragic and terrific all at the same time for anybody who might be dealing with this tragic disease or have a familial history of it. Thanks so much for joining us.
PETERSEN: It's a pleasure.
ROBERTS: Great to see you again, my friend.
PETERSEN: Thank you.
ROBERTS: Coming up on 46 minutes after the hour, Reynolds Wolf got this morning's travel forecast right after the break. Stay with us.
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CHETRY: Beautiful shot this morning of the sunrise in New Orleans. You see the pinks and you see the clouds in the sky on this first day of summer officially.
ROBERTS: Yes. It's going to be a hot one down there again today.
Senators on opposite sides of the aisle squaring off over strategy at America's 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. Our Candy Crowley, host of CNN's "State of the Union," talk to the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democrat Dianne Feinstein. She said the key to turning things around is following the money trail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CANDY CROWLEY, HOST, CNN'S "STATE OF THE UNION": When will we know we've succeeded in Afghanistan?
SEN. DIANE FEINSEIN, (D-CA) CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I believe we've got to begin to follow the money and see where the Taliban, the Haqqani network, the Pakistani Taliban are getting their money. And I'm increasingly concerned that the Taliban is one part terrorist group and another part narco cartel.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: The top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Dick Lugar, fired back saying we don't even know what success in Afghanistan is. Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, got more on all of that coming up in our next hour.
CHETRY: Meantime, it's 50 minutes past the hour. Time for us to get a check of this morning's top weather headlines. Reynolds Wolf is in the Extreme Weather Center on this first day of summer. Good temperatures are following suit. They got the memo.
WOLF: Yes, pretty much. In fact, we had kind of a kick-start to summary few days ago. Many places around the country have been experiencing heat into the 90s and even to the 100s. Today, no exception, but not only do we have the heat and humidity we have, some watches and warnings and advisories in effect for cities like St. Louis, back in Memphis, even over towards Oklahoma City and Wichita where it's going to feel like it's anywhere from 100 to about 105. Just blistering heat.
These surface temperatures are going to be hot enough by this afternoon, 95 in Kansas City, 92 in Washington, D.C. out by the capitol, 95 in Raleigh, 93 in New Orleans, and 95 in Atlanta, Dallas 100 and 105 in phoenix. No relief in terms of rainfall for the firefighters up in parts of the Four Corners. As we look into the afternoon, we might see rain chances actually pop up in some places, maybe even some severe storms. This morning, we've had some rough storms over towards parts of Omaha drifting across the Cornbelt (ph).
Anyone taking a trip on the I-80 going westbound toward Omaha, you're going to see the clouds developing with that, maybe a flash of lightning, heavy rain and maybe even some tornadoes before the day is out. And there is the possibility that we might see more of that stretch up into the northern plains perhaps the Northern Rockies and into the Eastern Great lakes, maybe even into the Ohio Valley before all is said and done. Again, summer gets under way around 7:28 this morning, get the confetti cannons ready. Again, it's going to be a long, very hot summer. No question. Back to you, guys.
CHETRY: All right. Reynolds Wolf for us this morning. Thanks so much.
This morning's top stories are just minutes away, including internal documents showing that BP estimated in its worst case more than 100,000 barrels of crude could be spilling into the sea each day. That's if the blowout preventer and wellhead were removed. We're live on the Gulf Coast with reaction.
ROBERTS: A frightening sight. A tornado tears through Montana causing extensive damage and the threat is not over yet. Our Reynolds Wolf has your travel forecast.
CHETRY: Also the countdown, the coming home. The White House has said that they wanted the troop surge in Afghanistan over in six months. But is the administration on the same page as the military? Those stories and much more coming up at the top of the hour.
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ROBERTS: Fifty-five minutes after the hour. Well, Lady Gaga is definitely a fan of the New York Yankees, but she might have gone a little too far after Friday night's game against the Mets. The singer talked her way past security and into the team club house wearing just a jersey and bikini bottom. At first, it was reported that she was banned from the stadium after that, but the organization says, that's just not true. They just don't want visitors in the clubhouse after a loss.
CHETRY: There you go. She had the right jersey on at least. She made a big -- ROBERTS: Not much else.
CHETRY: Yes, right. She was at the Mets game causing trouble last week, so there you go.
ROBERTS: That's the beauty of the subway series. Back and forth. I don't think she was on the sub.
CHETRY: No, she wasn't. She was in Jerry Seinfeld's box actually at the Mets game unauthorized as well. So, she's just stirring up the baseball world here in New York.
Four minutes until the top of the hour. Your top stories coming your way after a quick break.
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