Search Continues for Missing Americans After Tsunami; 109th Congress In Session
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's take a look at what's happening "Now in the News." Secretary of State Colin Powell gets a bird's-eye view of the catastrophe in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Powell says he has seen war and natural disaster, but he has seen nothing like the devastating power of the South Asian tsunami. A New Jersey man is out on bail this morning. He is charged under the patriot act with shining a laser light at two planes. His lawyer says he was playing with the device with his daughter on someone's back deck at someone's home. The Robert Blake murder trial resumes next hour in Los Angeles. Prosecution witnesses are focusing on Blake's demeanor after his wife was found dying of gunshot wounds. They say the actor's shock and grief did not seem genuine. And financially struggling Delta Airlines unveils what they're calling simplafares today. The program will cut ticket prices up to 50 percent. It's going to do away with the Saturday night stayover requirements. Keeping you informed. CNN is the most trusted name in news.</s>RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Secretary of State Colin Powell says he wants to speed up the process of tracking down Americans still unaccounted for since the tsunami disaster. State Department correspondent Andrea Koppel has an update now on the search for missing Americans. There does seem to be a large disparity between those that have been accounted for and those who haven't, Andrea.</s>ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPT. CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's certainly a lot of confusion, Rick. And as you mentioned increasing frustration expressed by Secretary Powell, who's out there traveling in the region right now with the slow process of trying to whittle down the list of presumably unaccounted for Americans, thousands of them. Now that list is based on phone calls that various family and friends have made saying I think my cousin, or my son, or brother may have been in one of those countries. That list was at 20,000 last week. It was whittled down yesterday to just over 4,000 unaccounted for inquiries into these Americans. And today State Department officials tell CNN that number has been whittled down again to about 3,500 inquiries.</s>KOPPEL (voice-over): Karen Foust is glued to her computer in Howell, Michigan, reading e-mails from Thailand.</s>KAREN FOUST, STEPMOTHER OF MISSING WOMAN: There is always hope. I heard stories of miracles yesterday.</s>KOPPEL: Hoping against hope her stepdaughter Angie Foust and boyfriend Luke Scully are still alive. The couple was on vacation in Thailand when the tsunami struck.</s>FOUST: As time passes, it gets much more hard to hear, to even read the e-mails, because you're thinking the worst at every one.</s>KOPPEL: Like thousands of other Americans, Karen Foust called a State Department hotline when she heard the news to let them know Angie was missing. But more than a week after the tsunami, still no news about Angie and still uncertainty as to just how many Americans are actually missing.</s>QUESTION: Can't you, know...</s>ADAM ERELI, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: Right.</s>QUESTION: ... bite the bullet and make some statement...</s>ERELI: I think...</s>QUESTION: ... about Americans probably missing.</s>ERELI: Yes. Yes. I think, frankly, Barry, that we'll soon be in a position to do that.</s>KOPPEL: But other countries like Sweden, which may have lost hundreds, are giving their citizens more concrete updates. Fifty-two Swedes are confirmed dead. Two thousand others are classified as missing.</s>JAN ELIASSON, SWEDISH AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: We have worked through the families, through the travel agencies. We have sent down hundreds of -- up to a hundred people to Thailand to go through the hospitals.</s>KOPPEL: The U.S. insists it, too, has deployed scores of U.S. diplomats in Sri Lanka and elsewhere to search for missing Americans.</s>KOPPEL: And CNN has just learned that in addition to the 16 confirmed dead Americans, in coming hours, that the State Department will be able to announce that it has narrowed the list to what they will say are dozens of additional Americans, Rick, who are presumed to have died -- Rick.</s>SANCHEZ: I guess part of this, Andrea, is just that it's a very delicate thing to do, isn't it? I mean, it's a tough call to have to make an announcement that people have perished when it affects so many people's lives.</s>KOPPEL: I think what has added to the confusion overall of this is that as time passes over in the affected area, the bodies are increasingly difficult to identify, hotel records were destroyed in the tsunami. And so, it isn't really that State Department officials are trying to be difficult, it's that the situation itself is so difficult that they have not been able to just match up the names with the bodies.</s>SANCHEZ: That's a good point. We thank you for following that process along for us. Andrea Koppel from the Pentagon. Now, if you've not heard the status of a loved one in the tsunami-affected region, CNN would like to hear from you. We want to find out about your efforts to try and locate missing friends and relatives. And are you still waiting to hear from them? You can call us, we'll do what we can. It's 404-878-1500. That's 404-878-1500. Give us a call. The phone is going to be staffed from 8:00 a.m. Eastern until 5:00 p.m. Eastern. After those hours, the line will connect to a voicemail. And there's also a link on our Web site, where we can help you out if we can. It's cnn.com/tsunami.</s>KAGAN: Well, this Asian tsunami prompts concerns about whether the U.S. is prepared for such a disaster. CNN's Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve takes a look at that.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If something like this happened here, would we be ready?</s>RICHARD FALKENRATH, FMR. HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISER: It is entirely possible that we will have a disaster or catastrophe in America which was not foreseen and for which our preparedness was completely inadequate.</s>MESERVE: Public warning might allow for evacuations and other preparations, but some disasters...</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my god. Jack, it's a tornado!</s>MESERVE: ... give little or no warning of their arrival. Some experts say the nation's search and rescue capabilities would be overwhelmed by a major event. It's widely recognized that the nation's hospital system is not prepared for a surge of casualties, though some in the health field say the issue is being addressed.</s>DR. CHRISTINA CATLETT, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: It's all about collaboration and really pulling together resources, not only from your own hospital, but also from the whole city.</s>MESERVE: Prepositioned medical supplies are guaranteed to arrive anywhere in the U.S. within 12 hours, but the recent shortage of flu vaccine exposed weaknesses in distribution systems. And what about the dead? Identifying them, storing them, burying them would be a logistical and management nightmare, though many doubt we would ever see in this country what we have seen in Southeast Asia.</s>JOHN FITCH, NATL FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOC.: I do not see, unless it was an absolute dire exigency, where we would ever consider mass graves.</s>MESERVE: There is consensus among the experts that the nation's preparedness and response capabilities have markedly improved since 9/11. (on camera): But there is debate about how much preparation should be made for a low probability, high consequence event like a tsunami. Jeanne Meserve, CNN, Washington.</s>SANCHEZ: Want to let you know CNN "Security Watch" will keep you up to date on safety at all times. Stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security.</s>KAGAN: Well, the new Congress is in town. Lawmakers facing an ambitious second term presidential agenda. You probably know the laundry list by now. There's Social Security, lawsuit abuse, the president talking about that today. Tax code overhaul, choice of judges, it goes on and on. Our political analyst Carlos Watson is in Los Angeles this morning. He's going to talk about the 109th Congress. Carlos, good morning.</s>CARLOS WATSON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Daryn Kagan, good morning. Happy holidays.</s>KAGAN: Happy new year to you. Let's talk about this new year, especially for President Bush as he faces this Congress. Even more Republicans than he faced the last time. So is this going to be a free pass for everything the president wants to get done?</s>WATSON: You know, in some ways, you'd think so. He's got three more Republicans in the House, four more Republicans in the Senate, he's got experienced leadership. But actually, given his ambitious agenda -- Social Security, new judges, other things that you mentioned -- he actually is going to do a lot of good old-fashioned political campaigning. In fact, Daryn, not only will you see him make campaign stops, not only will you see him try and twist the arms of legislators and build coalitions, but look for a record amount of money to be spent on political ads in a non-campaign season. I wouldn't be surprised if between this year and next year, you see close to a quarter of billion dollars spent on ads and non-lobbying activities. So not the lobbyists, but the other kind of activities that you normally would see during a political campaign year.</s>KAGAN: Carlos, the numbers as they stack up right now on Capitol Hill, it almost makes a Democrat wonder do you bother showing up for work? What can the Democrats do to counter all the Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House?</s>WATSON: The truth of the matter is they can do very little institutionally. Certainly in the House, the way the rules are there's not a lot of power there. In the Senate, Republicans essentially need to get to 60 votes in lots of cases, so they need at least five Democrats, so there's some leverage. But really, the main stop gap on Republicans and Republican in general will probably come from, one, from the press; two, from possible interest groups, like remember the 9/11 victims families; three, maybe there will be a foreign policy crisis that could upend things. That certainly happened to LBJ, who had significant majorities in both the House and Senate some 40 years ago. But, four, here's an interesting one, Daryn, you might end up seeing some of the state attorney generals. Remember how important Eliot Spitzer in New York was in bringing up the issue of corporate corruption, and recent issue around Tom Delay in the House has come from a local D.A. there in Texas. So you may hear more activity from some state attorney generals who can pursue investigations, whereas Democrats really don't have the formal investigatory powers.</s>KAGAN: Well, since you are in the hometown of the new national champions, or repeat champions, the USC Trojans, let's look at this like sports -- who are the key players to watch?</s>WATSON: Don't forget we are in your hometown, but I wish University of Miami had won.</s>SANCHEZ: Here, here.</s>WATSON: Go, Rick, huh? There's an interesting generational divide. In the House, besides the leadership, obviously the speaker, you'll going to see more old-guard folks. You're going to people like Bill Thomas, committee chairman, who will be important on issues like Social Security, who will also help the president pass his Medicare prescription drug plan. You'll also see guys like James Sensenbrenner, who will be important on things like tort reform. So a lot of people who were elected before 1994. Flash forward to the Senate, besides the leadership there like Bill Frist, you'll see a lot first-termers who play key roles on Social Security. Lindsey Graham, who was elected to the Senate some four years ago will be important there. You'll also see people like Tom Coburn, who just got elected in 2004, be important on judicial nominations. And on issues like tort reform, you may see a former state attorney general, John Cornyn from Texas who himself is a first- termer, be important there as well. So an interesting pre-1994 versus post-1994 divide in terms of who the key players will be. Carlos Watson, from Los Angeles. Carlos, thank you.</s>WATSON: Good to see you. Have a good one.</s>SANCHEZ: A hurricane, we might add. If you've made the resolution to shed some pounds, well, stay with us. New research on the major diets are out there and what works best. The results are next in our "Daily Dose."