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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

D.C. Police Sweep Through Park as the Search for Chandra Levy Intensifies

Aired July 16, 2001 - 20:00   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Tonight police sweep through a sprawling Washington park, stepping up their search for a missing intern. I'll speak live with former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary.

In a profile of Congressman Gary Condit, "The Los Angeles Times" notes that his name popped up in rumors long before Chandra Levy became a household name. I'll speak live with "L.A. Times" Washington bureau chief Doyle McManus.

Gasoline prices are down, but will they stay down? As members of the Bush cabinet fan out around the country to promote the president's energy plan, they warn the good news may not last.

And as an 8-year-old struggles to recover from a devastating encounter with a shark, more shark attacks are reported in Florida waters.

Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Washington.

D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey says there's something highly unusual about the case of missing Washington intern Chandra Levy. Normally, he says, a search of this magnitude would have generated numerous leads. But 11 weeks later, Ramsey concedes his department has no leads and is no closer to knowing what happened to Levy. That by itself is extraordinary and raises many questions. CNN national correspondent Bob Franken is covering the latest developments and has our top story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOB FRANKEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The search for Chandra Levy intensified as a more than 50 police officers, mainly academy recruits, fanned out on foot and on horseback across two Washington, D.C., parks. In Rock Creek Park, not far from the 24- year-old former intern's apartment, they began near historic Klingle Mansion, an area frequented by joggers. Investigators say during the final hours before she vanished on May 1st, Levy went on the Internet, clicking on a map highlighting the mansion, during more than three hours on her laptop computer.

CHIEF CHARLES RAMSEY, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE: There were a couple of locations here in the local area that she went to. But again, we've gone through those areas. We're in the process now of going through them again to see whether or not there's anything that we may have overlooked the first time. You know Washington, D.C. There are a lot of pretty remote areas.

FRANKEN: The searchers stopped several times when they came across bones. Then evidence teams would move in, cordon off the area and carefully scoop them up, only to find later they were not human remains.

SGT. ROBERT PANIZARI, D.C. METROPOLITAN POLICE: In my opinion there will be a lot of bones like that in the park. There are a lot of wildlife -- there is a lot of wildlife in Rock Creek park, and that wouldn't be uncommon to find something like that.

FRANKEN: Across town from Levy's apartment, in southeast Washington, other police combed another remote area, Fort DuPont Park. More animal bones, but no major finds. And across the country in Modesto, California, Chandra Levy's parents can only watch in agony as the investigators look for their daughter's body.

SUSAN LEVY, CHANDRA LEVY'S MOTHER: I have fear, I'm scared, anxiety. I'm a mother. I'm really in pain a lot. I just want my daughter home. I want her home soon, alive.

FRANKEN (on camera): D.C. police say they'll resume their search with cadaver dogs to speed up the process of determining whether any remains they find are animal or human, hoping to spare the family at least the pain of repeated false alarms.

Bob Franken, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: As an FBI special agent, he specialized in analyzing crimes and crime scenes and became a leading expert in creating profiles of unknown assailants. He's consulted on thousands of cases around the world. Gregg McCrary joins me now live to discuss the Chandra Levy case.

Thanks for joining us.

GREGG MCCRARY, FORMER FBI PROFILER: Happy to be here.

BLITZER: How is investigation going?

MCCRARY: They're doing all the right things, Wolf. What they need to do is start at ground zero, which is the victim, Chandra, and then work out sort of in concentric circles, deal and interview with all the people close to her, and move out to those less -- less close and reconstruct her life, all of the e-mails, anything she was doing. They need to get into that and look at all that. And that seems to be exactly what they're doing.

BLITZER: The fact there's really no hard leads 11 weeks into this investigation, given the extraordinary amount of man hours that have been invested in the investigation, what does that say to you? MCCRARY: These are daunting investigations. And there's a couple of possibilities. Assuming there's foul play and someone has hurt or murdered this young woman, maybe two things. One, remember, the chief is going to protect integrity of the case and probably isn't come on national TV and talk about good suspects or hot leads.

But assuming that maybe he's right, that there are no hot leads or suspects, this tells us one thing. It's probably not a conspiracy. Conspiracies don't hold up well under pressure. It's probably not random violence by some stranger who just happened to cross paths with her and perhaps murder her. The body would certainly have been discovered, I think, by now.

So if that's the case, we're dealing with someone who may have planned this or -- and had some organization to this, or they've just been lucky up to this point.

BLITZER: The police insist that Congressman Gary Condit is not a suspect.

MCCRARY: Right.

BLITZER: Is he.

MCCRARY: Well, we're are all non-suspect, but he's less of a non-suspect than I think the rest of us. They're not asking to search our residences or have us take a polygraph, so -- but he's one of these people close to Chandra, apparently with an intimate relationship, that they have to be comfortable that they can rule him out before they can move on into other areas. Although I'm sure they're looking in other areas, he's someone that needs to be excluded. And they need to take a very good look at him.

BLITZER: Is he behaving like an innocent person or like somebody who has something to hide?

MCCRARY: Well, he's certainly behaving like someone with something to hide. The question is, what is it? And it is -- it may be nothing more than he simply had an affair and tried to cover that up and then has generated all this -- these problems. Or there's certainly -- we can't rule the remote possibility, because we don't know what happened, of who could have been involved in this.

BLITZER: As you know he took a lie-detector test administered by a private expert that his lawyer brought forward. The chief, the D.C. police chief, Charles Ramsey, was not happy with that. I want to you listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAMSEY: I'm not happy with how they did it. It had no input from us at all. I don't know how an examiner could possibly give an exam like that without knowing all the facts in the case.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: The fact that he won't take a lie-detector -- apparently won't take a lie-detector test administered by the FBI or the local police department, what does that say to you.

MCCRARY: Well, that would be best way for him to clear the air. And it certainly doesn't do anything to eliminate any suspicions about that. And the chief is right. The examiner has to know all the facts of the case, and an independent examiner from outside just won't have all the inside facts with which to construct the examinations.

BLITZER: But from his own standpoint -- I interviewed Roy Black, a famed criminal defense attorney, yesterday. He said he wouldn't let any of his clients, no matter how innocent, go into a polygraph like this because you don't know what the end results are going to be and these tests are not perfect, by any means.

MCCRARY: They're not perfect, and that's certainly a defense attorney's mindset on that. But the flip side of that is the investigators' mindset. And if an individual will not come forward and take that examination the way they would like to administer it, then they can't really remove suspicion from that individual.

BLITZER: Is there something that the investigators should be doing that perhaps they're not doing?

MCCRARY: I think they're doing everything. And this has come up -- should it be reclassified as a homicide or something? I don't care what label you put on it. I just don't know what else they would be doing that they're not doing right now.

BLITZER: And as far as you can tell, where does investigation go from here? Are we going to just wait forever to find out what's going on? Is there going to be no solution?

MCCRARY: Well, I hope there's a solution. We all do. But these are daunting investigations. And it's just like being in a maze with the lights turned off when you're in this thing. You just feel your way along because you don't know where you're going. And then the one lead you're looking for, hopefully, you get. And the lights come on, and you have the answer.

BLITZER: So sometimes it's just a lucky break.

MCCRARY: You make your own luck in these cases, and they're working hard to make that happen.

BLITZER: Gregg McCrary, thanks for joining us.

MCCRARY: My pleasure.

BLITZER: In Chandra Levy's home town, her parents agonize while other constituents of Gary Condit have second thoughts about the Congress. Let's go live to Modesto, California, and CNN national correspondent Martin Savidge.

Marty, tell us how the mood is developing in his home district. MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the mood right now politically for Gary Condit is very grim, at this particular point. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans will say that they have done specific polling in the district. However, judging by what you read in the editorial pages, by what you hear on talk radio and what you hear on the street, people are very disappointed with Congressman Condit, a lot of them believing that he was not forthcoming to police and has not been forthcoming at all to them, to try to explain what exactly is going on.

We may get a verbal barometer tomorrow as to how unhappy people are. There is a demonstration planned in front of congressman Gary Condit's office scheduled for noon local time tomorrow.

Wolf?

BLITZER: You know, as you know, the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, among others -- a handful -- of members of Congress are now suggesting that perhaps Gary Condit should think of resigning because of this entire affair. What is the talk in Modesto about possibly resigning?

SAVIDGE: There has been some talk of that, and it is more sort of a gentle background hum right now, not a rousing chorus that you're hearing. And when you talk to Democrats, it would a worst-case scenario for them if he did, in fact, step down. There is some thinking that he, if he were to resign, would hold off to perhaps the middle of September. By that time, he'd have 12 years in Congress and be eligible for full retirement benefits.

However, if he did step down at that point, the Democrats admit they haven't got a strong candidate that could represent them. They never thought that they would have to find someone to follow after him. They never thought he might step down. Meanwhile, the Republicans are lined up like planes at O'Hare, waiting to have the opportunity to possibly grab a seat that they have not held in this area since the days of the Eisenhower administration.

Wolf.

BLITZER: Marty Savidge in Modesto, once again thank you very much.

So just who is Gary Condit? The low-profile congressman was profiled today by "The Los Angeles Times," which finds that the California Democrat has been raising eyebrows for years.

Joining me now is the Washington bureau chief of "The L.A. Times," Doyle McManus.

Doyle, thanks for joining us. You paint a very interesting picture of a very complicated son preacher from Oklahoma, who apparently became something very, very different in the years that he got into politics.

DOYLE MCMANUS, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Gary Condit is a very interesting, complicated man. As you just saw from Modesto, he comes from a conservative district. Modesto, the central valley of California, is not like Beverly Hills, not like San Francisco. It's farm country. It's like he western-most county of Oklahoma, which is, in fact, where Gary Condit's family came from. As you say, son of a Baptist preacher, well known as part of close-knit family. One of his brothers is a cop there in Modesto. Nothing there to suggest anything unconventional.

BLITZER: There's another brother, though, who's had some problems over the years.

MCMANUS: Happens in the best of families. But what happened to Gary Condit, who was a real meteoric rising star as a politician -- he was the mayor of his town at the age of 23. He was elected to the state legislature in California in his early 30s. You know, Sacramento, as a state capital, is a party town -- restaurants, bars, lobbyists, big tabs. And according to the people who knew him then, Gary Condit got caught up in the restaurant and bar scene.

BLITZER: And the reputation that he had developed in those years in Sacramento, which you -- you exposed or you report on extensively -- that was quite a reputation he had over there.

MCMANUS: Well, you know, the funny thing, Wolf, is that everybody in Sacramento has been talking about this for weeks, and the rest of country didn't know about it. Let's be careful on what the reputation was. Gary Condit was young, handsome, dynamic, rising state legislator who spent a lot of time in the company of pretty young women. His own friends say that. Other colleagues of his in the assembly say that. None of them say they know he was having any affairs with anybody. None of them say they have any real suspicions of trouble at home. But they did say that he was one of those guys who raised eyebrows.

BLITZER: And he came to Washington a married man. His wife and kids stayed out in California. Came to Washington in 1989. Talk about what his reputation -- how it emerged in the years that he's been in Congress.

MCMANUS: Well, in the years that he's been in Congress, the first thing, in fact, he did -- he was elected, as you say, in '89, came to Washington in '89, 1990, and brought with him onto his staff a bar hostess, a 21-year-old young woman, very good-looking young woman. And people on his new congressional staff were, in effect, saying, "What is this about?" She stayed for about two years. There were reports of some bitter scenes, that she left in tears and went home to California. She's not talking now.

When he was in the legislature, he had another aide who was a very good-looking young woman about 22 years old. They went on trips to Los Angeles together and even trips to the race track. She's talked. She's on the record. Her name is Pamela Wittingham (ph). She says he was just a lot of fun to be around, there was nothing untoward between the two of them. But it was all the kind of thing that creates a buzz of rumors about a good-looking young politician. BLITZER: And speaking about a buzz, among other thing, your reporters write this in today's "L.A. Times." They say, "Condit's intimates and long-time enemies are now buzzing about more liaisons, more deceptions to be unveiled, more troubling consequences."

MCMANUS: Well, Congressman Condit is in the worst possible situation because, as you've seen over the last two weeks, at this point people who knew something, who thought they knew something, who had a relationship with him or didn't now kind of have a free pass to come out and talk about it. So he's in the -- in the position of somebody where a closet's been opened and a whole lot of stuff is coming out of it. And we don't know yet how much of it is real and how much isn't.

BLITZER: And politically, he had this reputation as a conservative Democrat, as you point out, a so-called "blue dog Democrat." He worked with Newt Gingrich and the "Contract With America." He supported an inquiry of Bill Clinton during the impeachment process.

MCMANUS: He was very tough critic of Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. He comes from a culturally and politically conservative district. His district there in California went for George W. Bush last November by 52 to 44 percent, in a year when the state of California went by a big margin to Al Gore. Now, in that same year when his district went for the Republican George W. Bush, Gary Condit won reelection with 70 percent of the vote. So he's been a terrific, popular politician in a conservative district.

BLITZER: At the same time, he liked to go to rock concerts with John Kasich and other conservative -- a former member of Congress, a Republican. He liked to ride a Harley-Davidson.

MCMANUS: Rode a motorcycle. There's nothing wrong with riding a motorcycle even in Washington. In California, people would say riding a motorcycle's a fine conservative thing to do.

BLITZER: And the bottom line of your article -- correct me if I'm wrong -- despite a lot of allegations about possible affairs and everything else, you didn't find anyone who really could believe, in the end, that he was capable of engaging in anything to do with the disappearance of Chandra Levy.

MCMANUS: There are none of Gary Condit's old friends who believe he is guilty of a crime. That's absolutely right.

BLITZER: All right, Doyle McManus, doing some good reporting with your team from "The L.A. Times." Thanks for joining us.

MCMANUS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Thank you.

And in much of the country, it costs a lot less to fill your gas tank then it did just a few weeks ago. So why is the White House worried? And in Florida waters more shark attacks, more fear.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

It's the middle of the summer driving season. That's when gas prices usually peak. But prices are, dropping. The latest Lundberg survey shows the national average for self-serve regular is $1.47 per gallon. That's 13 cents less than it was just three weeks ago. This comes as members of the Bush cabinet are canvassing the country, promoting the president's energy plan, a plan meant to address an energy crisis.

Let's go live to CNN White House correspondent Major Garrett.

Major, if there's no longer an energy crisis, how does the president generate support for his plan?

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, basically, Bush and his team are basically playing hand that they've been dealt. What's hand they've been dealt? Well, you just outlined it Wolf. Energy prices are falling. There aren't the spate of blackouts in California that many had feared just a couple of months ago. So the Bush team is out promoting the president's energy plan and talking about what? Production? Not necessarily. They're emphasizing conservation. They're even doing so with a big green backdrop for every one of these town hall meetings, green to symbolize the president's support of conservation measures.

But crisis or no crisis, the White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, said today the United States still needs to find more supplies of energy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: We remain a nation that is too dependent on foreign supplies of oil, and we remain a nation that has continued to lurch from crisis to crisis, with periods in between of relative calm, which were marked by a later crisis.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT: Wolf, you could also say that describes most of human history -- crisis, calm, crisis, calm. Be that as it may, the White House says it has a long-term plan. It absorbed a lot of criticism when that plan came out, that there were no short-term solutions. They said, "We don't have any. Let's focus on the long term." And that's what they're doing.

BLITZER: On another front, Major, the president is getting some advice and proposals now what to do with those three million -- estimated three million illegal Mexicans now in the United States. Tell us about that.

GARRETT: Well, the State Department and the Justice Department, at the president's urging, have developed a proposal which will get here to the White House later on this week. It has many suggestions on the entire issue of U.S.-Mexico immigration. One of them is to create a new type of status, a legal status for estimated three million workers who are working here illegally and who came from Mexico.

Now, the White house is very much leery of the word "amnesty." They know that is a politically charged word. What they're coming up with is a word called "regularization." It's very close to amnesty, but not quite a guest worker status. What they're trying to find is something in the middle that will not aggravate conservative Republicans but that will please Democrats. Already, the House minority leader, Dick Gephardt, today put out a press release praising the president for even looking at the idea of amnesty, showing quickly that Democrats are willing to embrace it. But the White House knows all too well conservative Republicans might push back.

Wolf?

BLITZER: As you know, the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, is in the United States right now. In a few months, he'll be coming to the White House. What is he asking the president to do?

GARRETT: Well, he's basically asking President Bush to so as much as can he to deal with all cross-border issues. And he's pushed hard for the amnesty question. And on the entire matter of new U.S.- Mexico immigration policy, the White House wants to have that sewn up by September. Why September? Well, that's when Vicente Fox comes here to White House for the very first state visit of the Bush presidency.

Wolf?

BLITZER: OK, Major Garrett at the White House, thanks once again for joining us.

And in other news tonight: more concerns about how safe it is to go back in the waters off Florida after a pair of weekend shark encounters. Problems began surfacing some 10 days ago, when a shark attacked 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast and tore his arm off. Doctors today say internal bleeding is complicating his recovery.

Yesterday, near Pensacola, not far from Jessie's ordeal, a shark attacked a man paddling through the water on his surfboard. He hit the shark with his surfboard before scrambling back to shore.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SGT. JOE DEJOIE, ESCAMBIA SHERIFF'S OFFICE: He came in, and we saw the blood. And he kept yelling that "It bit me" and "It bit me." And we're, like, "What?" And said, "It was a shark." And he was just psychologically going crazy because I think he was shocked.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a strange summer right now with the two shark bites in less than two weeks. Just hope people try and be aware in the water. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: On the Atlantic side of Florida, a shark encounter with a man on a boogie board. The 18-year-old suffered cuts on his foot. Authorities believe the shark swam by the man with its mouth open, and its teeth dragged across the man's leg.

A man accused of a deadly 1963 church bombing in Alabama won't be tried. Bobby Frank Cherry was ruled mentally incompetent by a judge today. Four African-American girls died at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Two other men have been convicted in the bombing. An August hearing could decide whether Cherry goes to a state hospital for treatment or whether the charges are dismissed.

A judge in a California today told actor Robert Downey Jr. that three years probation on drug charges was not a gift, but something that would be hard work. Downey entered a "no contest plea" to drug possession charges today. The actor is enrolled in a drug rehab program. A new California law allows non-violent offenders to qualify for treatment instead of going to prison.

In the Middle East today, a suicide bomber killed himself and two Israeli soldiers at a train station near Israel's coast. A militant Palestinian group is claiming responsibility for the blast, which injured six other people. Israeli tanks shelled four Palestinian military sites in response.

Also today, two Palestinians died from another bomb blast. Police believe they died when a medium-sized bomb went off prematurely. Authorities say it may have been intended for the Olympic-style Maccabiah Games, scheduled to open nearby.

Talks between India and Pakistan broke down today without reaching an accord on their 50-year-old dispute over the troubled region of Kashmir. The issue dominated the final rounds of a landmark three-day summit between Pakistan's president and India's prime minister. They had met into the night, trying one last-ditch effort to salvage the summit.

Tonight on the leading edge: Doctors are cautiously optimistic about the first patient with a self-contained mechanical heart. The man was suffering end-stage heart disease and received the device two weeks ago. Doctors say the man's new heart is doing well, and he's doing better than they had expected.

The new airlock on the international space station has a small air leak, but a NASA spokesman says it's not a problem. The airlock was installed over the weekend. The crews of the station and the space shuttle will work on the leak and prepare for two more space walks.

A new report says Internet training and better technology can help improve standards of living in poorer countries. According to the Digital Opportunity Initiative, poorer countries should adopt policies for technology infrastructure, human skill development, entrepreneurship, government policy and creation of local Web content. Up next, I'll open our mailbag. Is the Chandra Levy case gripping the nation or just the news media?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

Welcome back. Time now to open our mailbag. The Chandra Levy case dominates your e-mail. This from Dan in Arizona. "Congressman Condit was elected to represent his constituents, not to take advantage of their children."

Linda in Georgia: "What is so surprising about Gary Condit's passing a lie-detector test? Politicians lie so much, they always appear to be telling the truth."

Edward in California: "Any person who can take even a private lie-detector test and pass with such high-flying colors should have no fear and no reason not to take one issued by the D.C. police force or the FBI."

Karen in Colorado: "On a recent show, you made the statement that the Chandra Levy case has gripped the nation. I would like to correct it to the Chandra Levy case has gripped the media."

But Leslie in Indiana writes, "This is a story that has captured my attention, and I think I deserve to be able to know the latest details. Thanks for the wonderful job."

Remember, I want to hear from you. Please e-mail me at wolf@cnn.com. And you can read my daily on-line column and sign up for my email previewing our nightly programs by going to my Web site, cnn.com/wolf.

Please stay with CNN throughout the night. Much more on the Chandra Levy investigation on Larry King Live at the top of the your. Up next, Greta Van Susteren. She's standing by to tell us what she has.

Greta?

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, HOST, CNN'S "THE POINT": Wolf, we've got a packed show tonight. We have Gail Sheehy of "Vanity Fair." She's written a new article about the new senator from the state of New York, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Plus two Democratic congressmen join us to talk about Gary Condit. Is he impeding the work of Congress? We'll have that and more.

Wolf?

BLITZER: OK, Greta. Sounds good. Tomorrow night: Have the news media gone overboard covering the Levy case? We'll discuss that.

Until then, thanks very much for watching. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. "THE POINT WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN" begins right now.

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