Julian Assange Wanted by Interpol For Sex Crimes; Tornadoes Hit The South; Michigan Police Search For Three Missing Brothers; WikiLeaks Founder Calling Clinton to Resign
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Fast and furious, massive storm system bearing down on the East Coast. Homes torn apart, trees knocked down, and the worst may be yet to come. Good morning. Thanks for being with us on this AMERICAN MORNING. It's Wednesday. It's the first day of December. I'm John Roberts.</s>KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kiran Chetry. Glad you're with us. We're going to have a lot more on the severe weather in just a moment. First, though, the other top stories. He is now the most wanted man, the man behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, being hunted by Interpol, the world police, this morning. But he is in an undisclosed location and still talking, saying in an interview that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should resign. We're live in London with the latest on the search and live reaction from the White House.</s>ROBERTS: Hopes for a happy ending fading fast in Michigan. Three young boys are still missing. Their father is under arrest for kidnapping, but he's not helping the police out. Insight this morning from an expert on missing kids and why we shouldn't give up just yet.</s>CHETRY: And also the next time you give your child medicine, there's a 50/50 chance you'll be dosing a child incorrectly. And it's not your fault. Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has more on labels that can be misleading coming up in the next hour.</s>ROBERTS: Up first, though, we've got a big and dangerous storm to talk about this morning. To give you an idea of how big this system is, have a look at this. Rain clouds drenching folks from the Florida panhandle all the way up to New England.</s>CHETRY: And here in the east, the weather's been going downhill all night. Tornadoes touching down in Georgia, dozens of homes damaged there. Conditions are ripe for tornadoes. Watches are posted from the Carolinas all the way to Washington, D.C. Our Jacqui Jeras is live on the ground in Buford, Georgia, for us this morning, an area that did get hit. Now that it's lighter outside, Jacqui, how is it looking in terms of damage?</s>JACQUI JERAS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, it's not looking great. We're not actually able to get into the neighborhood any further than we are right now. But from what I understand, you know, take a look at this home. You can see that one of the walls is off the side, a lot of roof damage here, all the shingles are out and the garage has been blown in, as well. But it's my understanding that there's some homes that are basically demolished and you can't live in them that are down the line. And once it gets a little bit brighter, we're told authorities are going to let us get in there and get a better look at some of this damage. The storms came through with very little warning yesterday afternoon and caught residents off guard. There are 56 homes damaged, 12 of them are basically looking at major, major damage. What's amazing, though, is that nobody was injured in these storms as they rolled on through. Residents say that there was no warning. They were surprised when it came through.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The wind was pushing really hard on the house, and it was pushing like really hard. And I've never felt it push that hard. And I heard some stuff start ripping. And then the next thing I knew, it sounded like a train was coming through it.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, it was terrifying at the time. I'm just thankful to be alive.</s>JERAS: And it's unclear at this time whether or not this was a tornado or a microburst or even straight-line winds. The National Weather Service will be out to assess the damage later on this morning. There was also quite a bit of flooding across the area. Record rainfall in Atlanta, more than two inches, and that flooded the streets across much of the area. And this happened, unfortunately, during that rush hour drive home. This is a picture of Interstate 85 where cars were actually getting stuck in the water and just caused total mayhem on some of the interstates yesterday afternoon. Now, this storm system has continued to cause problems at this hour. The severe weather threat is still out there. As we take a look at the national map, we'll show you where we have the watches in effect now. This thing stretches from Montreal all the way down to Florida. The tornado watches from North Carolina on through Virginia, up towards the Delmarva region. And these should expire by about 10:00 this morning as some of the energy from the storm shoots a little further northward. And the wind then will be the big focus and they could be gusting up to 50 miles an hour in the northeast. And that's one of the things that folks here in Buford, Georgia, are going to have to deal with now that they don't have any power. They've got damage to clean up, temperatures in the 30s this morning. But you add in that wind-chill factor as the winds gust up to 20 miles per hour. And it's going to be feeling like 20s throughout the day, pretty nippy for Georgia.</s>CHETRY: Absolutely. All right, Jackie Jeras in Buford, thanks so much. Speaking of tornadoes, why would anyone rush towards these storms to record it? We're going to find out when we talk to Reed Timmer of the Discovery Channel's "Storm Chasers" coming up at 8:40 eastern.</s>ROBERTS: New this morning, back to class today at the Wisconsin high school where a 15-year-old sophomore took classmates and a teacher hostage before turning the gun on himself on Monday. The gunman, by the way, has died of his wounds. Students revealed they tried to calm him down with small talk about hunting and fishing during their ordeal.</s>CHETRY: A drug bust for the ages in suburban Atlanta, more than 900 pounds of meth, street value more than $4 million, all of it seized after the DEA got a tip. Agents then stormed the home. One arrest so far.</s>ROBERTS: Well, these are desperate hours in the search for three missing boys in Michigan and Ohio. Still no sign of brothers Andrew, Alexander, and Tanner, and a gloomy outlook from Morenci Michigan's police chief. Listen to him.</s>CHIEF LARRY WEEKS, MORENCI, MICHIGAN POLICE DEPARTMENT: We continue to talk to virtually all parties involved in this investigation, including Mr. Skelton. Statements that he's made to investigators would indicate that it's not going to be a positive outcome.</s>ROBERTS: Skelton is John Skelton. He's the boy's father. He's under arrest and charged with parental kidnapping. So what might have gone wrong here, and how unusual is this situation? Joining us now is Ernie Allen, the president and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Ernie, good to see you this morning. So he's been charged with parental abduction. Does this sound like a typical case?</s>ERNIE ALLEN, NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN: John, it's really not. Parental abduction is certainly not unusual. There are more than 200,000 of them a year in this country. But it's very rare that the abductor actually harms the child. Less than one percent of these cases involve physical harm to the children. So if that is, in fact, what's happened, this is not a typical case.</s>ROBERTS: What do we know about this situation? My understanding is he was estranged from his wife.</s>ALLEN: Well, they are going through a divorce process. Obviously there was conflict. He had taken two of the boys previously, which certainly was a signal. But what we know in these situations is that in 80 percent of the cases the motive for taking the child is not love of the child, it's anger or revenge directed at the ex-spouse. So these are very volatile situations that many people don't take very seriously.</s>ROBERTS: It's a very bizarre story here that the kids were taken by Skelton on the afternoon of thanksgiving. He said he was going to drop them off with a caregiver whom he knew. And apparently police have not been able to find out if this is a real person that he was talking about. But he was going to drop them off with a caregiver because he was going to go commit suicide?</s>ALLEN: Well, that's not a very positive signal here. We certainly are aware of examples in which parental abductors kill the child, kill themselves with a message that if I can't have them, you can't either. We don't know that in this case. There's still unresolved facts. And we believe that there's still hope. And until we find -- till we know where these three little boys are and what's happened to them, the public still can help. We really need information about what people might have seen, what people might suspect.</s>ROBERTS: Yes. There was an APB, if you will, out for anybody who might have seen a blue dodge caravan year 2000 traveling in the area of the home because it was believed he took them for a ride, at least down a highway for a time. So people who might have seen this van are being asked to call police. But you say you believe there's reason for hope. The police chief didn't sound too hopeful in that press conference.</s>ALLEN: Well, I'm not trying to suggest false hope. Our point here -- and we say this in every case -- is until these children are actually found, until we know with certainty what happened to them, there's always some hope. There are a whole range of scenarios under which these children could still be alive. We know that Skelton has not been telling the truth. We know he's been misleading law enforcement. The response of the police and the Michigan state police and the FBI and Ohio authorities has been extraordinary. I'm not second-guessing the Chief Weeks at all. But all I'm saying is these children are still out there somewhere. And somebody knows where they are. Somebody knows what's happened to them. We just need that break, that key piece of information.</s>ROBERTS: Let's hope you're correct. Ernie Allen from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, thanks for joining us this morning. Good to talk to you.</s>ALLEN: Thank you, John.</s>CHETRY: Such a sad story.</s>ROBERTS: It really is.</s>CHETRY: Well, there's that new twist this morning in the Amtrak situation where you were not able to bring guns on, but there was really no system to check whether or not passengers had guns.</s>ROBERTS: Yes, since there is no security.</s>CHETRY: But they're now saying that they are lifting that ban on passengers transporting guns. It's a policy been in effect since 9/11. So now passengers will be able to check unloaded firearms and as much as 11 pounds of ammunition in checked bags onboard some Amtrak trains. And the new rules set to take effect December 15th.</s>ROBERTS: And the weapon has to be unloaded and has to be in checked luggage which goes into a locked baggage car, right?</s>CHETRY: On some cars, so hopefully.</s>ROBERTS: The head of the TSA says they may tweak new airport pat-down procedures. The goal is to be more sensitive when screening certain passengers like those with external medical devices. In the meantime, all passengers will be screened against government watch lists before getting their boarding passes. The TSA hopes that's going to cut down on a lot of the false positives they've been getting.</s>CHETRY: Brand new fallout this morning over the huge document leaks by whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks. Julian Assange landing on Interpol's most wanted list along with the likes of Usama bin Laden, not for the leaks but for alleged sex crimes. He's also feeling the heat over releasing thousands of classified State Department documents. But even from his hideout, he is still haunting the U.S. government. Atika Shubert is live from London this morning. And in an interview, he took aim at Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.</s>ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This time around, Julian Assange is keeping a very low profile. He's only given out very few interviews, and even then from an undisclosed location. No one knows where he really is right now.</s>SHUBERT: On the run, the mysterious man behind WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, holed up and hiding out in an undisclosed location this morning. But that's not stopping him from speaking out. "TIME" magazine Richard Stengel speaking exclusively to Assange via Skype, Assange blasting secretary of state Hillary Clinton.</s>JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: She should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diploma diplomats to engage in espionage in violation of the international covenant to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign.</s>SHUBERT: No response so far from the secretary, but the State Department is coming to her defense this morning, insisting that Hillary Clinton did not order State Department staff to spy on diplomats as the WikiLeaks document suggests.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Any document that leaves the State Department has the secretary of state's name on it. She was responsible, but she was not the author of that particular document. The contents of that came from outside the Department of State.</s>SHUBERT: In the meantime, Assange is now a most-wanted man. The international police organization Interpol issuing a red notice, similar to an arrest warrant, saying he is suspected of rape, sexual molestation, and illegal use of force in August incidents in Sweden. Despite this, Assange is warning of a new document released, this time targeting, quote, "a big U.S. bank." The Web site "Huffington Post" reported that Assange claims he has information from the computer hard drive of one of Bank of America's executives. Bank of America this morning flatly denying and dismissing the speculation.</s>SHUBERT: It was thought that WikiLeaks may have information on Bank of America to put out already seems to be affecting -- in fact, Bank of America stock closing yesterday went down by three percent.</s>CHETRY: We'll have to wait and see if, indeed, that is the case when he supposedly releases it, as you said, perhaps after the first of the year. Atika, thanks so much. Also coming up at the bottom of the hour, we're going to hear from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, the diplomatic mess they're dealing with, and the potential fallout in the Middle East.</s>ROBERTS: And as you can imagine some people have managed to find the humor in all of this. "The Daily Show" had a little fun with all the WikiLeaks drama last night and also stumbled upon another little- known Web site.</s>JON STEWART, HOST, "THE DAILY SHOW": The release of many embarrassing and possibly diplomatic cables has introduced the world to a new super-villain, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Am I pronouncing that right?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: WikiLeaks and its founder, this man, Julian Assange.</s>STEWART: Oh, Assange. Thank you. Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, the site not to be confused with "Wookie Leaks" where for $10.99 a month you can --</s>CHETRY: That's a paid site, "Wookie Leaks."</s>ROBERTS: Still to come, the last check in the mail for many Americans, Congress so far failing to extend unemployment benefits. But is there an indication that the two sides might come to an agreement?</s>CHETRY: We have an "AMERICAN MORNING" health alert for you as well. An alarming new study this morning about over-the-counter medicines you give to your kids. Well, even if you read the directions, there's a 50/50 chance you could be giving your child the wrong dose. We'll explain why and how you can fix that.</s>ROBERTS: And the new magazine with no pages and no ink. It is for, you guessed it, iPads only. The creator calls it the future of publishing. Does this mark the end of the printed magazine? We'll ask that question. It's 14 minutes after the hour.