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AMERICAN MORNING

Immigration Battle; Sniper Trial; Fighting The Taliban; Fast Filmmakers; U.S.-Israel Talks

Aired May 23, 2006 - 07:30   ET

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

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Ahead this morning, Lee Boyd Malvo is set to take the stand in the second trial of convicted second John Allen Muhammad. We'll tell you why Boyd's testifying against his accomplice.
Plus, the Mexican president, Vincente Fox, visits Utah state. He's talking about immigration. We'll tell you why the visit's already stirring up some controversy. That's ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That's a pretty little shot, isn't it?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: A beautiful morning. Columbus Circle. The fountain looking good as it's up and running here for the season.

Good morning to you. I'm Miles O'Brien.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And I'm Soledad O'Brien.

Mexico's president, Vicente Fox, crossing the border today to make his case in the U.S. for immigration reform. Mexico, obviously, has a huge stake in that reform. Fifteen percent of Mexico's labor force works in the U.S. Ed Lavandera has our report this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Mexican President Vicente Fox's visit to Utah might not appear to make a lot of sense, but when you realize the state's Hispanic population, made up mostly of Mexicans, has tripled since 1990, it does. Fox will use Utah as an example of what the illegal workforce mean to the United States, but he's walking a fine line, especially among critics who say a Mexican president should not interfere in American politics.

PRESIDENT VICENTE FOX, MEXICO: U.S. economy needs this energy, needs this working force. At the same time, we know that we have to do the part of our responsibility that has to do with building up opportunities in Mexico.

LAVANDERA: Fox's government says it opposes President Bush's plan to use the military to support efforts to protect the border. Fox also says the U.S. should make it easier for Mexican immigrants to earn legal status. Some Utah politicians in this conservative state say they support President Bush's idea of a guest worker program but that puts them at odds with the organizers of the Utah Minutemen who are planning protests at Fox's events.

ALEX SEGURA, UTAH MINUTEMEN: To me it's mind-boggling that the conservative state that we are continues to pander to Mexico's wants and desires.

LAVANDERA: But the business of this visit is business. Mexico is Utah's third largest trading partner. President Fox is scheduled to meet with Utah's governor, local business and Mormon church leaders, as well as members of Salt Lake City's growing Mexican community.

When Vicente Fox ran for president of Mexico six years ago, he made a point of campaigning in the United States, looking for votes among Mexican nationals living here. It's election year again in Mexico. And even though Vicente Fox can't be re-elected, it never hurts to press the flesh among his own countrymen to help his own political party.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, Salt Lake City, Utah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Vicente Fox will also go to Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. He's going to meet with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger there in California. He'll wrap up his trip in Los Angeles on Friday.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: D.C. sniper and Virginia death row inmate John Allen Muhammad is back on trial, this time in Maryland. Muhammad is defending himself and today he may cross-examine his accomplice in the shooting spree that left 10 dead in October of 2002. Lee Boyd Malvo, seen there, apparently is poised to cut a deal to testify against Muhammad whom he considered a mentor. Neal Augenstein has been covering all this for WTOP Radio in the Washington area. He joins us from Rockville, Maryland.

Good morning, Neil.

NEAL AUGENSTEIN, WTOP RADIO: Good morning, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: What do we expect to see today? That should be an awfully dramatic moment.

AUGENSTEIN: Well, the prosecution is wrapping up its case against John Allen Muhammad today. He's charged with six counts of first degree murder here in Montgomery County. And the final witness that's expected to take the stand will be the younger sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo.

The sources tell us that Malvo will detail each of the shooting. He will explain the dynamics of his relationship with Muhammad. And he'll also express remorse for his role in the shootings.

Now before he answers any questions at all, we've heard from sources that Malvo and his attorneys will indicate to the judge that Malvo intends to plead guilty to six counts of first degree murder. He was scheduled to go on trial in October. That, of course, won't be needed because he will pleading guilty to six counts of first degree murder.

MILES O'BRIEN: OK. So Malvo is facing a life term. And Muhammad, of course, has a death sentence on his head. What this trial? What is the point of having this trial?

AUGENSTEIN: Well that depends on who you ask. The persecutor here in Montgomery County, Doug Gansler, has said from the very beginning that the people in this area who had the most murders, six people were killed here, that this county deserved to have justice and he wanted to put the trial on here. You'll remember there was a big fight between him and the federal government for the first prosecution.

The trial did go to Virginia. Virginia they, as you said, Muhammad got the death penalty and Malvo got life. But Gansler said that it was still important to have justice here and the people here demanded it. Now some people question that, but we haven't heard too much. There haven't been any protests, for instance, here at the court with people opposing having the trial. I think the people realize that Montgomery County needs to have its day in court.

MILES O'BRIEN: Is there reason to believe we're going to get a good answer maybe from Malvo as to what the motive was?

AUGENSTEIN: That's a very good question. Probably not. I would imagine that the prosecutor will lead Malvo a fairly narrow line here. There is always the risk of a mistrial in a case like this. And I think they've -- I'm sure they've discussed what they're going to testify. We reported that there were at least six meetings between Malvo, his attorneys and prosecutors behind closed doors in which they talked about what would be said on the stand today.

MILES O'BRIEN: Neal Augenstein of WTOP Radio in the Washington area, thanks very much.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A major U.S. strike is now underway in Afghanistan. It's believed that the Taliban is back on the rise there and U.S. forces doing everything possible to stomp them out. Janis Mackey Frayer from affiliate CTV joins us. She's in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Janis, good morning. Thanks for talking with us.

What are you hearing about the number of people injured and killed on the streets?

JANIS MACKEY FRAYER, CTV: Well, the coalition is confirming as many as 60 Taliban killed. This is the third coalition operation in that area called Cransway (ph) where foreign troops have been called in to back up Afghanistan forces. But as we also know, the airstrikes killed at least 16 civilians. Another 16 were wounded. Those numbers were confirmed by the governor of Kandahar providence.

But there seemed to be wide gaps in versions of the truth if you talking to villagers. Many at the hospital say that as many as 26 innocent people were killed. Reports from the villages in the Cransway area say that the dead are being buried today and included in those the bodies of Taliban fighters that were left behind.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: You know, they've long talked about winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. You know that story. But I wonder, when you look at those numbers of civilians that you're reporting there, that's got to make the task much harder, obviously.

FRAYER: Oh, obviously, a coalition official say that any civilian casualties are regrettable, but, in this case, they are very firm in blame the Taliban for hiding behind the Afghan public. They say the coalition went into this village because Afghans themselves stepped up and said that the Taliban were taking over their homes, were taking over their schools and they wanted some help in rooting them out.

This has been very key. This is why the coalition was brought into these battles in the first place. It indicates a sense of trust that Afghans are offering this sort of information. So these are the sort of achievements that the coalition has been striving for. But it may also indicate that people might be a little more reluctant in the future to provide that kind of information given what happened.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Janis Mackey Frayer joining us by phone from Kandahar in Afghanistan. Janis, thanks for the update.

Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN: Happening in America now.

A daring rescue in Los Angeles. A helicopter rescue crew able to reach a homeless man stuck on a small island in the rushing L.A. River. The river rose quickly when a late spring storm dumped a record amount of rain on L.A. over the weekend.

An Amber Alert in North Dakota for a three-year-old girl. Police say Reachelle Smith was last seen when she was put to bed Tuesday in Minot. They believe she was with this man, 22-year-old Leigh Cowen. He claims to be her father.

The feds just piling it on, on junior. The suspected boss of the Gambino crime family is expected to be arraigned for a third time tomorrow. John Gotti Jr. faced a jury twice before. Each time they deadlocked. Prosecutors claim Gotti ordered a hit on Guardian Angles Founder Curtis Sliwa after Sliwa criticized Gotti's father, the Dapper Don, John Gotti.

In Riverside, Ohio, a city manager could face charges over his desire to see exotic dancers. "The Dayton Daily News" reporting James Onello spent about $1,100 in one strip club over the past year. That in itself is not illegal, but records show Onello used the city's credit cards to pay his tab. Onello claims he was at the club for government meetings.

In Florida, a man mistakenly jailed for more than a dozen years is going to asks a judge for his release in about three hours. Orlando Visket (ph) was convicted in the 1982 rape of a woman in Key West but new DNA evidence has now cleared him. His two prison escapes are also likely to be forgotten.

A tornado or just strong winds? Forecasters aren't sure what caused extensive damage near Colorado Springs you see here. Luckily no one was seriously hurt. The National Weather Service plans to tour the wreckage today and they'll try to figure out precisely what happened.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thousands of college grads about to enter the real world. The job market couldn't be better for them apparently. Coming up, the best jobs and how much those jobs pay. We'll take a look.

MILES O'BRIEN: We're also going to talk to a remarkable seven- year-old not seen here. There he is. There he is. Braxton Bilbrey. He swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco and -- but he's not done. He has another goal in mind. And we'll tell you what it is in just a little bit.

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's a race to shoot a movie in 48 hours. Some fall asleep. Some get sick. Some don't finish. That story ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: Directors, take your mark, set, action. In cities across the U.S. and in Europe, aspiring filmmakers are racing the clock to make a cinematic statement. AMERICAN MORNING's Dan Lothian now on the 48-hour film festival.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): It's like making a short movie in fast forward. Just 48 hours to write, shoot and edit. Every second counts.

BEN GUARALDI, 48-HOUR FILM PROJECT: I mean, most of these people wouldn't do this with their weekend. And usually a short film will take anywhere from three months to two years to make.

LOTHIAN: Seventy teams show up with no idea about what they'll be doing until they reach into a hat, pick a genre . . .

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unfortunately I got comedy this time.

LOTHIAN: And are assigned a prop, a character and this line of dialogue.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's why I don't trust her anymore.

LOTHIAN: The clock then starts the race to shoot a four to seven-minute movie. They are small-time filmmakers, actors or people just seeking a creative rush.

PETE PILLITTERI, SOPHOMORIC PRODUCTIONS: It's a collective improve and you see the best in people when they're pushed up against the wall.

LOTHIAN: Four teams agreed to shoot behind the scenes for AMERICAN MORNING. Team Tapioca begins brainstorming a historical fiction flick about Y2K.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Maybe it starts with the news and then you cut back and you actually see this -- the family watching this.

LOTHIAN: They'll have to work in the mandatory prop, a bicycle pump. Team Kinny Hill (ph) decides right away sleep is overrated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Basically, if you sleep, you're losing minutes.

LOTHIAN: The challenge, turning mandatory character, G. Goforth (ph), a professional eating competitor, into a story.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Action.

LOTHIAN: Within hours of the start, teams Sophomoreic Productions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Show some respect for the dead.

LOTHIAN: And Red Balloon (ph) are rolling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You should be further to the left.

LOTHIAN: The pressure on all these teams is intense.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're about two hours behind schedule.

LOTHIAN: Some can't stay awake.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is 2:30 in the morning.

LOTHIAN: Some can't stay healthy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had two of my sound people get sick.

LOTHIAN: Mistakes are made.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We tried two locations that didn't work.

LOTHIAN: Dashing to beat the deadline, sound tracks are polished. Editing machines are on fire. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cut right there. That's amazing.

LOTHIAN: Forty-eight hours later . . .

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hand in your tapes now!

CROWD: Three, two, one! Yeah!

LOTHIAN: Team Tapioca misses the deadline.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we picked a genre that we were not prepared for.

LOTHIAN: All the films are screened over five days. Team Red Balloon wows the audience with a story about the Cold War conflict with a twist.

The U.S. loses to the Soviets in thumb wrestling.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Soviets win hands down.

LOTHIAN: Balloon twisting and hulahooping. But ultimately wins the food eating competition. G. Goforth becomes an American hero. A creative competition where many are hoping for the ultimate prize.

GUARALDI: We hope that somebody can enter our contest just off the street and get discovered.

LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN: The 48-hour film project will visits more than 30 cities this year from Portland to Paris. Check it out.

Soledad.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: That looks like fun.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Stressful fun.

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes. It's like of like what we do every morning. Stressful fun.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Andy Serwer's "Minding Your Business" up next.

Andy.

SERWER: Soledad, what will corporate crooks think of next? The stock option scandal widens.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right. We'll look at that.

Also ahead this morning, the best places for college grads to find a job. We'll tell you who's hiring and how much they're paying. Those stories all ahead as we continue right here on AMERICAN MORNING. We're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Andy's deconstructing creative math for us this morning. The practice of back dating stock options so they're worth much more when you get them and cash them in, right?

SERWER: That's right, Soledad.

And this all started a couple days back, you may remember, when we were talking about United Health Group and that CEO, William, show me the money, McGuire, who ended up with $1.6 billion of stock options. This is a scandal now that is spreading and 20 companies have now been named in this ever widening scandal. This practice, as Soledad said, of back dating stock options. In other words, taking a piece of paper and saying that an executive was given an option to buy stock on April 24th and then seeing the stock was actually priced more favorably, say on March 5th earlier and just crossing it out an writing a new date on a document.

New companies such as Juniper Networks, KLA-Tencor. Companies that you may remember from the stock market bubble, they have been implicated. Another company, C-net Networks in San Francisco has begun an internal investigation.

And what's interesting to me is, you know, this decade's going to go down as the decade of scandals. We, obviously, had the accounting scandals with Enron and WorldCom. Then we had the CEO pay with Tyco. Then we had mutual funds. I sort of thought this was kind of wrapping up. But here we go again.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Apparently not.

SERWER: Just a whole another part of this scandal wave.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Is it illegal? I'm not trying to ask a stupid question.

SERWER: No.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: But is it just sort of immoral or is it illegal.

SERWER: It's a good question. I think it is blatantly illegal. And I think it is much more clear-cut than in a case like Enron where you have creative accounting. If someone crosses a date off of a legal document, you're caught. You're done. That's it. So I think you're going to see some prosecutions here post haste.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Huh. Interesting. Interesting practice.

SERWER: Yes.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: All right, Andy, thanks.

SERWER: You're welcome.

MILES O'BRIEN: Andy Serwer, thank you very much.

In a moment, our top stories, including New Orleans staging a hurricane evacuation drill today.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meets with President Bush in Washington.

The search is on for a stolen computer disk. It contains the personal information of more than 26 million U.S. veterans.

Mortgage giant Fannie Mae expected to be fined hundreds of millions of dollars for alleged accounting irregularities.

And the class of 2006 is graduating. It's that time of year. We'll look at the job market that awaits them. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MILES O'BRIEN: A dry run for a wet disaster. New Orleans practices today. What to do if another Katrina hits, God forbid.

ED HENRY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Ed Henry at the White House where President Bush is prepping for the first meeting with the new Israeli prime minister, with a slew of thorny issues on the agenda.

DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Dana Bash on Capitol Hill where a congressman under investigation for taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes is back at work vowing not to resign.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And some excellent news for new grads. The job market's looking pretty good. How good is it? We'll take a look.

MILES O'BRIEN: And the Dixie Chicks are back. They're out with a new record and making no apologies for the anti-war comments. We'll look an listen ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.

Good morning to you. I'm Miles O'Brien.

SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And I'm Soledad O'Brien. Welcome, everybody.

Let's get right to it. The U.S.-Israeli summit set for the White House today. It will be the first personal meeting between President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has succeeded the ailing Ariel Sharon. Aside from the talk of what lies ahead with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the two will also discuss the nuclear standoff with Iran.

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