Moussaoui Jurors to Hear Flight 93 Recordings; What U.S. Intelligence Knows About Iran's Nuclear Program
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Jeanne Meserve at the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where today the Moussaoui jurors will hear the Flight Number 93. That story coming up.</s>DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: I'm David Ensor in Washington. What U.S. intelligence knows about Iran's nuclear program. That story coming up.</s>PAULA NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Paula Newton at the Royal Military Academy near London, where Prince Harry has just graduated. Will his next stop be Iraq? I'll have that story coming up.</s>BRANDON SHAFER, FOURTH GRADER: If I get hit in the stomach it might -- it will be bad and stuff.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Also ahead this morning, this little boy is just in fourth grade. He needs a new kidney. Well, guess who is a perfect match? We're going to tell you just ahead.</s>MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: And gentlemen and ladies, start your engines. There's the BMW 651. That's a nice looking one. And that one needs a hood. We're live at the New York Auto Show on this</s>AMERICAN MORNING. S. O'BRIEN: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. I'm Soledad O'Brien.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Good morning. I'm Miles O'Brien. We're glad you're with us. We begin this morning with the life and death struggle aboard United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11. The chilling final words from the cockpit of that doomed plane will be played for a federal jury today. Prosecutors will use them to wrap up their death penalty case against the al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui. Homeland security correspondent Jeanne Meserve live now from the courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia -- Jeanne, it's already been so emotional, so gripping, it's just hard to imagine what it's going to be like when those recordings are played today.</s>MESERVE: It will likely be one of the most harrowing, if not the most harrowing day of this trial. Jurors will be hearing that cockpit voice recorder from Flight Number 93. It is the first time it's been played publicly. It has been played for some family members. They have said it's about 31 minutes long. Large portions of it are inaudible, but, they say, at the beginning u can make out the struggle as the hijackers take over the cockpit of the plane. They call that excruciating. They also say that at the end, you can hear the passengers in revolt, trying to get into that cockpit to take control of the plane back from those hijackers. Likely to be very difficult for everyone in the courtroom to hear that today. The jury is also expected to hear some more victim testimony today and the prosecution will wrap up its case by scrolling the names of all of those who died on September 11 -- that's 2,973 names. And with that, the prosecution will wrap, hoping that it has persuaded this jury to give Zacarias Moussaoui the death penalty -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Jeanne, will that cockpit voice recording be made public?</s>MESERVE: No, it will not. A transcript will be let out to the public. There was some discussion about making the tape public, but some of the 9/11 family members objected to that. The judge ruled earlier this week that she would only release a transcript. I spoke to one family member yesterday who wanted to see the entire tape released. He is afraid that only releasing the transcript will miss an opportunity to educate the American public to what he says is the lesson of this tape, which is, he says, that good can triumph over evil -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Well, if nothing else, it recorded tremendous acts of heroism. What happens after the prosecution wraps up? The defense gets an opportunity to state its case. How long do you expect that to go?</s>MESERVE: Much shorter than the prosecution, we're advised. It will start tomorrow. It is likely that Moussaoui will again take the stand, as he has. We also do expect to hear testimony about his mental state. The defense expected to put on some witnesses who say he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Also, we'll hear some -- some testimony about his difficult youth as a Moroccan in France. Back to you -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Jeanne Meserve at the very noisy courtroom there in Alexandria, as they continue some construction there. We apologize for that. Stay tuned to CNN day and night for the most reliable news about your security -- Soledad.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Iran today ratcheting up concerns over its nuclear program. Tehran says it's moving toward large scale uranium enrichment, which is a possible step toward nuclear weapons development. Let's get live now to Washington and national security correspondent David Ensor -- David, good morning to you.</s>ENSOR: Good morning.</s>S. O'BRIEN: When you give -- when you're given what happened in Iraq, how -- how confident is the intelligence community in knowing what's really going on in Iran?</s>ENSOR: You know, intelligence officers are a little like us journalists, they're never happy. They always want to know more and they'd always like to have more and better sources. But that said, intelligence officers that I've spoken to just in recent days, including some senior ones, express high confidence in the key judgment of U.S. intelligence about all this. And that is that Iran is not just seeking nuclear power, it's also seeking a nuclear bomb -- Soledad.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Let me ask you a question about what makes it so hard to gather intelligence in Iran. I mean, obviously, there are some obvious things. But I'm curios, do they -- are there just not enough intelligence officials who are able to make their way into Iran and get a good sense of what's happening there?</s>ENSOR: Well, you know, this is not the hermit kingdom. This is not North Korea. So, in fact, there are quite a few people coming and going from Iran, and that does open up opportunities for gathering human intelligence in Iran. Now, they don't talk about how they do this, but I think we can ex -- we can have some confidence that the U.S. has human intelligence sources inside Iran, given the number of people who speak Farsi in this country, just for one example. And, of course, there are the overhead imagery. There's signals intelligence, listening to -- to any kind of communications that are going on. So this has been a targeting that U.S. intelligence has been going after for many years now, Soledad, and they -- they're fairly good at it. That said, they'd always like -- they don't know what they don't know and they'd always like more.</s>S. O'BRIEN: David Ensor for us this morning. David, thanks -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: In America this morning, we're watching a few stories. The prosecutor in Durham, North Carolina vowing to press on. That's despite lacking DNA evidence linking members of the Duke University lacrosse team to an alleged sexual assault. So say the defense team. The prosecutor said the absence of a DNA link "doesn't mean nothing happened. It means nothing was left behind." That is a quote. A victim of 9/11 four years later. The January death of the New York City police detective James Zadroga is being blamed on his work at ground zero. He was there for the cleanup just after the attacks for many hours. A New Jersey medical examiner says exposure to the toxic fumes and dust in the remnants of that attack led to his death from respiratory failure four years later. The most controversial part of an immigration reform bill will probably be changed. Top Republicans now say they don't support the part of the House bill that would make illegal immigration a felony. That provision has led to the lion's share of the protests we've been seeing this past week or so. In Northern California, rain continues to pour this morning, breaking rainfall records left and right. At least one city has gotten over 74 inches -- 74 inches since July. That's more than six feet of rain, for those of you who are keeping score at home. All that rain increases the chance of mudslides, of course, like this one in Brisbane just south of San Francisco. No one hurt there, but at least three homes had to be evacuated. Which brings us to Chad Myers -- Chad, any relief in sight there?</s>CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Not today, no.</s>M. O'BRIEN: No?</s>MYERS: The rain is still here still coming down. The area that was so hard hit just south of San Francisco, between San Francisco and Monterey, really, yesterday, three inch bull's eyes of rainfall there and there'll be more rain, Sacramento, right up to Reading, Eureka. That's what the area is -- Crescent City -- those are the areas that have picked up 60 and 70 inches of rain over the past nine months or so.</s>M. O'BRIEN: Coming up, ex-FEMA chief Mike Brown may soon have a new job. This will surprise you, as to who might be interested in hiring him. That's ahead.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Also, an in depth look at the link between hormone replacement therapy and breast cancer. We're going to tell you why a new study could be good news for lots of women. We'll walk you through the confusing and sometimes contradictory studies this morning.</s>M. O'BRIEN: And more on the latest twist in that Duke lacrosse rape allegations investigation. No DNA evidence linking players to the alleged victim. We're going to check in and get some campus reaction from both schools involved in this. That's ahead on AMERICAN MORNING.