Pennsylvania Miners Trapped Underground; Firefighters Race to Save California Monument
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Now on</s>WOLF BLITZER REPORTS: Trapped hundreds of feet down:</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a lot of water down there, but we are going to do everything we can.</s>BLITZER: The race against time at a Pennsylvania coal mine. In California, firefighters race to save a living monument. Confusion in the court: Is Zacarias Moussaoui making a mockery of America? Can terrorists get to our nuclear plants? I'll ask Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FLIGHT ATTENDANT TRAINEE: Help! Help! Help! Help!</s>BLITZER: Many flight attendants say they are helpless to deal with terror in the skies. And is this scrap of paper all that's needed to keep a Hall of Famer frozen? It's Thursday, July 25th, 2002. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. To plea or not to plea. That was the question as the alleged September 11th co -- conspirator, Zacarias Moussaoui, appeared in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, earlier today. CNN's Deborah Feyerick is there.</s>DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It looked like a done deal, Zacarias Moussaoui pleading guilty to four of the six conspiracy counts against him, Moussaoui telling the judge, "It would be easy for me to plead guilty to 90 percent of the indictment." But under questioning by the judge, Moussaoui continued denying a role in the September 11th attacks. Asking for a 15-minute recess, Moussaoui returned, said a prayer and told the judge, "I have to withdraw my guilty plea."</s>FRANK DUNHAM, ZACARIAS MOUSSAOUI STANDBY ATTORNEY: He found out what the repercussions of a guilty plea were, what it was he had to swallow, so to speak, what facts he had to agree to in order to plead guilty. And I don't think he think he understood he had to admit 9/11 to plead guilty.</s>FEYERICK: Moussaoui accused the judge of putting conditions on his guilty plea, telling Judge Leonie Brinkema, "You want to link me to certain facts that will guarantee my death." The judge warned Moussaoui a week ago, when he first tried pleading guilty, that he'd have to admit to everything the government's accusing him of doing. His estranged lawyers tried getting the hearing postponed pending a new psychiatric evaluation, the judge ruling at the start of the hearing Moussaoui remains mentally competent.</s>EDWARD MACMAHON, MOUSSAOUI STANDBY ATTORNEY: Mr. Moussaoui showed no understanding whatsoever of what he needed to do to enter a guilty plea today.</s>FEYERICK: Moussaoui had hoped by pleading guilty, he would be able to tell a jury exactly what he did, not, in his words, what the government says he did. And though he called an American jury his enemies, he said they'd be honest enemies. His mother expressed relief.</s>AICHA EL WAFI, MOUSSAOUI'S MOTHER (through translator): And I am very, very happy that there will be a full trial, in which it's going to be -- well, truth or facts are going to be established.</s>FEYERICK: Prosecutors had said that they were going to wait and see what happened today before making their decision as to what to do next. Now they know they're going to go to trial. What they cannot do is tell a jury that Moussaoui actually tried pleading guilty today. Wolf?</s>BLITZER: Deborah Feyerick at the courthouse, thank you very much. Is Zacarias Moussaoui trying to sow confusion in the courtroom? Should he be acting as his own attorney? What happens next? Joining me now Joe DiGenova. Thank you very much. He's a former U.S. attorney who prosecuted a lot of cases. I don't think you've ever prosecuted anything like this, have you, Joe?</s>JOSEPH DIGENOVA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: No, this is quite unusual, Wolf, that -- here you have a radical Islamic fanatic trying to control a U.S. courtroom and finding out that he cannot do so. In fact, he's not making a mockery of American justice, American justice is working beautifully here. All the procedures are being followed. The judge is superb. He's making a mockery of radical Islam. That's what he's doing.</s>BLITZER: So what can the system do in this kind of a situation?</s>DIGENOVA: Play itself out, allow him to represent himself, unless and until he is incompetent to do so. There's a federal law that says you have to let someone represent themself if they understand the consequences of their actions. He apparently now really understands the consequences because he decided not to plead guilty today. And in fact, rather than what his court-appointed attorney said today, this shows that he is competent.</s>BLITZER: You were a U.S. attorney here in the District of Columbia. You've accepted guilty pleas, plea agreements with some notorious characters. What would it take for you, if you were the U.S. attorney prosecuting this case, to accept a plea agreement with Moussaoui?</s>DIGENOVA: He would either have to know where Usama bin Laden is or where his body is buried. Unless he knew something very particularized about the internal functioning of al Qaeda, he basically cannot possibly know anything that would make a plea bargain with him worth doing, unless the government is worried about breaking sources and methods information into the trial. But they've already made that decision, so I don't think a deal is possible.</s>BLITZER: It is -- is it possible, though, that he could go forward during the course of a real trial and represent himself, given the way he's acted over these past few weeks?</s>DIGENOVA: Well, I think he can do that, but the judge, under the law, has the right to decide that he can no longer represent himself, even if he's competent, if he becomes disruptive or is in any way threatening the propriety of the trial. So the judge still has the right, if he goes to trial, to force him to have a real lawyer represent him.</s>BLITZER: It seems to some observers out there that he's simply seeking some political gains, even at this late moment, for al Qaeda.</s>DIGENOVA: Well, I think that may be part of this, but I think, in reality, what's happening here is you have someone who is displaced. He's a radical Islamist. He's not doing what he was intended to do, which is be the 20th hijacker. He now has to face up to the reality that he's going to have to pay a price for that. And what you're seeing is what happens when a terrorist gets trapped.</s>BLITZER: If you were making a prediction right now, will there be a trial? Will there be a plea agreement? Will just this whole thing end in chaos?</s>DIGENOVA: I think he's going to go to trial. The government cannot, under any set of circumstances, do a deal with him absent unusual circumstances. So I think we're set for a trial, and it's going to be a doozy.</s>BLITZER: And we'll all be watching it very much. Thank you very much, Joe DiGenova.</s>DIGENOVA: Thank you, Wolf. Here's your chance to weigh in on this story. Our Web question of the day is this: Is Zacarias Moussaoui competent enough to represent himself? Go to my Web page, cnn.com/wolf. That's where you can vote. While you're there, let me know what you're thinking. There's a "Click here" icon with comments right on the left side of the page. Send me your comments. I'll try to read some of them on the air each day at the end of this program. That's also, by the way, where you can read my daily on-line column, cnn.com/wolf. It's a race against time in Pennsylvania as rescue workers struggle to save nine men trapped in a flooded mine shaft. The miners are trapped more than 200 feet below ground, 8,000 feet from the entrance to the mine, 55 miles from Pittsburgh. Workers received a huge boost this afternoon with the arrival of a big drilling rig capable of digging an escape tunnel for the miners. CNN's Jeff Flock -- he's standing by live at the site. He has details. Jeff?</s>JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is both good news and bad news to report from this part of Pennsylvania this evening. Those nine miners remain trapped some 300 feet below the surface here. The good news, I guess, is that a sophisticated piece of drilling equipment has been brought in and it is now... I want to get the very latest from David Hess with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection in just a moment. But this sophisticated piece of equipment is in place, and it may even, as we speak, start -- have started the process of drilling this 30-foot hole that they hope to extract the miners from, at some point. The bad news, however, is that they have not -- they're not clear that they have heard anything, in terms of tapping from the miners now for literally hours. I want to give you some sense of what this looks like here. This is the mine that they were working in, the Quecreek mine. This was the mine they somehow gained access to mistakenly, the one that's filled with water and then began to pour in. This is some sense of the elevation, 1,875 foot sea level. That's where the old mine began to pour in, the miners trapped beneath. They think they're in an air pocket there somewhere. And I want to, as I said, get the latest from David Hess, in terms of what you think's going on, as we speak, beneath the ground.</s>DAVID HESS, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION: Well, right now, we're continuing to pump compressed air into the area of the mine we think the miners are in. We think that bubble is expanding underground, creating a safe haven. And we just moved, as you pointed out, a very sophisticated piece of drilling equipment in to drill a 30-inch hole that we think and we hope will be a rescue channel, a rescue way out of that mine for those miners.</s>FLOCK: How big an area do you think they're in right now down there? I mean, how much do they have, and what are they in? Are they in water? What have they got?</s>HESS: It's hard to be very precise, but what we do know is it's wet. It's dark. And it's a space that's very small, no higher than about 48 or 52 inches. So it's a very confined area.</s>FLOCK: Again, clarify for us the last time you're sure you heard something from down there because you had tapping overnight. What was the last that you're sure you heard something?</s>HESS: We regularly tap the casing of the six-inch well that we put down earlier last night...</s>FLOCK: That you're putting the compressed air through?</s>HESS: ... that we're putting the compressed air through, and we tap on it and we heard responses tapping back by someone down there. The last time we heard a clear signal was somewhere around lunchtime. But you have to remember there's a lot of work going on out there, at this point, very noisy, and it's going to get noisier. So we have not, certainly, given up hope.</s>FLOCK: They may be tapping, and you're just not getting it clearly.</s>HESS: That's exactly right.</s>FLOCK: David, can you come over here with me here one second because I do want to just give our viewers some real clear indication of where things are. You believe they're down here in this little dip down here, is that correct?</s>HESS: That's correct.</s>FLOCK: And the water came in up above them, at some point?</s>HESS: That's right. And in fact, the water is rushing into the mine, from the abandoned mine into the new mine, effectively right past them. And although we had nine miners that did get out, these nine did not.</s>FLOCK: And so they've got this little bubble here, which you're trying to expand with your compressed air.</s>HESS: That's exactly right. We drilled down into this area, created a compressed air bubble for them to exist in right now.</s>FLOCK: And what are you doing about the water? Are you trying to get the water out of there?</s>HESS: We've had a steady stream of pumps coming in all day to pump water out, to try to not only use the compressed air to expand the bubble, but take out as much water as we can. And we've had offers of pumps from West Virginia, the Corp of Engineers, all over the eastern coal fields. Everybody's wanting to help out in this situation, and we very much appreciate that.</s>FLOCK: It's way to early to get into this, but I'm going to do it anyway. And that is, the people who are working on this mine clearly knew there was an abandoned mine nearby, correct?</s>HESS: That's correct.</s>FLOCK: What happened?</s>HESS: Well, this mine was abandoned sometime in the 1950s. Pennsylvania generally has a lot of old mines. We've been mining in Pennsylvania for over 100 years.</s>FLOCK: But you knew about this one.</s>HESS: That's correct. And we try to keep at least 200 feet of solid rock between an old and a new mine to prevent the kind of problem we have here. But for some reason -- and we're going to investigate this after the rescue effort is over. For some reason, the old maps were inaccurate or whatever for this particular area, and they broke through.</s>FLOCK: And so you clearly know they broke through...</s>HESS: Yes.</s>FLOCK: ... with the new -- in the new mine, broke into the old mine?</s>HESS: That's right.</s>FLOCK: And we just don't know how that...</s>HESS: We just don't know what -- why that map is wrong, at this point. Like I said, they're -- we're going to put everything into the rescue effort, and then we're going to go back and do an investigation with our federal partners at MSHA (ph) and try to figure out what happened.</s>FLOCK: And that's my last question, in terms of the rescue effort. What does your gut tell you about this sort of thing? I asked you earlier at the press conference about the history of these sorts of things. It's not particularly good. But what does your gut tell you right now?</s>HESS: My gut tells me right now that this -- this isn't something, obviously, that happens every day or every year. This is something that is rather unique. And unfortunately, it had to happen here in Somerset County. We've had these problems in the past, but we try to improve our permitting process to avoid these kinds of problems.</s>FLOCK: But in terms of the survivability of this?</s>HESS: It's very difficult to say what the chances are. Obviously, we hope for the best, but we also have to be prepared, unfortunately, for the worst. And we want to make sure the families understand that and everybody else understands that. We're just laying all the facts out for everyone to see, at this point.</s>FLOCK: Yes. David, I appreciate the time.</s>HESS: Thank you.</s>FLOCK: Thank you. Thank you so much. I know it's a busy time. The same information that you just got here has been passed along to the families. They were out to the site themselves. Reporters being kept from the site. We don't want to get out there and have anybody get in the way or disrupt anything. The families did get out there, though, got this same sort of briefing, so they're up to speed on it. That's all we know at this hour. Some good news, some bad news, and we continue to watch it. They say -- one final note is that they believe when they start with that sophisticated drilling operation, they think it could be 18 hours. They're going to update that once they start into the ground, but they think it could be about 18 hours before they actually get down there. So we got a long way to go. Jeff Flock, CNN, reporting from Somerset, Pennsylvania.</s>BLITZER: Jeff Flock, thanks very much. And thanks to David Hess, as well, for that information. And our prayers, of course, are with those miners. No doubt about it, mining is very dangerous work. According to the Labor Department, more miners are killed on the job than any other profession, based on the number employed. In 2000, for example, the latest year figures are available, 30 miners died per 100,000 on the job. You can find a link to the government's full report on fatal job injuries. Go to my Web page, CNN.com/wolf. Terror in the air. Should flight attendants be trained to fight back? Find out how much protection you can expect on your next flight. Plus, a deadly danger. What does Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's so -- made -- made -- made her so concerned for the country? We're going to ask her. And speaking from the grave, a handwritten letter from Ted Williams on his Final wishes. Which of the following national treasures is the tallest? The Mount Rushmore busts, the Sequoias, the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument. The answer coming up.