Iran Nuclear Threat; Bad Call?
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Iran's nuclear ambitions may be prompting talk of a nuclear response. Or so it is written in the new issue of "The New Yorker" magazine. Investigative Reporter Seymour Hersh wrote the piece, claiming the Pentagon already is in an operational phase with boots on the ground inside Iran, and the White House is insisting on keeping a nuclear option on the table. Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr joining us live now from the Pentagon. Barbara, what are you hearing?</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Miles, here at the Pentagon, like the White House, officials still say that all of the focus is on diplomatic options, and there are a lot of reasons for that. Mainly, officials say, that any planning that is going on for Iraq (sic) right now is what they call contingency planning, not operational planning, not looking at yet trying yet to match troops, airplane ships, assets against any type of plan in order to make it happen. One of the other things, they say, that is not true is the contention in the "New Yorker" article that U.S. troops are inside Iran ready to paint targets, if you will, to guide in U.S. weapons or U.S. bombs. It's extremely unlikely that that is true at this point. There would be no clear reason to put U.S. troops at risk. And, the other question, of course, on the table in this article is that nuclear option. Very unlikely, officials say, that that is something that is being considered realistically -- Miles.</s>M. O'BRIEN: What do you make of the piece then?</s>STARR: You know, it's a question here, officials say, of what is planning really all about? The U.S. military always plans. There's always contingency planning. But moving it to the next step, that question of operational planning, in the military world is something that's very different. And targeting inside Iran, officials say, is a very tough business at this point. There is not sufficient intelligence about where all of Iran's nuclear facilities are. And the question, a very interesting one, of nuclear weapons, what experts say is those nuclear bunker-busters, the kind of weapons that penetrate deep underground, that are nuclear, simply don't have the capacity to penetrate deep enough underground to destroy these targets and contain any resulting nuclear fallout. So officials here say their focus remains on diplomacy, and that they don't see an evidence that the president is looking at any type of military options in the near future -- Miles.</s>SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you very much -- Soledad. Well, 911 in Detroit is going to be sued over a woman's death. Back in February on February 20th, 46-year-old Sherrill Turner collapsed. Her 5-year-old son called 911. The operator, though, who answered did not believe him. Listen to the call.</s>DISPATCHER: Emergency 911, what is the problem?</s>ROBERT TURNER, CALLED 9-1-1 FOR DYING MOTHER: My mom has passed out.</s>DISPATCHER: Where's the grownups at?</s>DISPATCHER: Let me speak to her. Let me speak to her before I send the police over there. TURNER</s>DISPATCHER: I don't care. You shouldn't be playing on the phone. Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble.</s>TURNER: Ugh!</s>S. O'BRIEN: Sherrill Turner died. Robert Turner, who's now six years old, joins us this morning. His attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, as well. They're in Southfield, Michigan. Thanks for talking with us.</s>GEOFFREY FIEGER, FAMILY ATTORNEY: Thanks, Soledad.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Let me talk to you, Robert, first, if I may. I know your mom, you found your mom and she was sick and she wasn't talking. Can you tell me what you tried to do to revive her?</s>TURNER: Wake her up.</s>S. O'BRIEN: You tried to wake her up. Did you touch her? Did you shake her?</s>TURNER: Uh-huh.</s>S. O'BRIEN: And nothing happened, nothing worked. Then you called 911. Who taught you how to call 911, Robert?</s>TURNER: My mom.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Your mommy taught you. And when you called, the woman said she wasn't going to send police until she could talk to your mom. So I know You waited a pretty long time, like three hours, and you called back again. When she scolded you, which is what we just heard, when she scolded you and said, stop playing around, what did you think?</s>TURNER: No, she said stop playing on the phone.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Stop playing on the phone, uh-huh. So you must have been pretty worried. What did you think?</s>TURNER: Uh-huh. I was worried about my mom.</s>S. O'BRIEN: I bet you were. Geoffrey, let me ask you a question. It was even long after that before police came to the house.</s>FIEGER: Hours, hours.</s>S. O'BRIEN: And found Sherrill Turner and she was dead by then. This is a case that has lawsuit written all over it, and probably criminal charges, too. What are you looking for in this case?</s>FIEGER: I'm not sure about criminal charges, but certainly we need to alert the public and hopefully 911 to take the lead in not allowing this to happen again. There is no excuse for this. Children are taught. My children are two and four years old. Robert has just turned six. They're taught by their parents in the face of an emergency, call 911. When they call, they can't be intimidated. They can't be scolded. They can't be threatened. That's just counter productive, and in this case, it resulted in the loss of a life. It also isn't an isolated occurrence. This happens far more often than people think. And if we didn't have this tape, no one would believe Robert that he had done this.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Wow. You know, here's what the police department had to say about all of this. I'm going to read their statement.</s>FIEGER: Sure.</s>S. O'BRIEN: "It's important not to rush to judgment in these types of situations. The citizens of Detroit can be assured that our department is meticulously examining every aspect of what occurred. And if disciplinary action is recommended following the completion of the investigation, then that's the course that's going to be taken." Tell me a little bit about Robert's situation is now. His mother's died. Where is he living?</s>FIEGER: Well. He's with his sister, who loves him very, very much, and she has two children about Robert's age, so he's being taken care of wonderfully, but of course this is a situation that no child should ever have to go through. And I want to also commend the city of Detroit for not having this tape disappear. In my experiences, these tapes tend to disappear, so Detroit can take the lead. However, it's quite obvious that something needs to be done in this situation to make things right.</s>S. O'BRIEN: The 911 Operators Union, I believe, a spokesperson, said the quality of the tape we played, which was hard to hear, frankly, was even worse. I mean, we sort of played a cleaned-up version of it, and that might have played a role in operators thinking that this was a prank.</s>FIEGER: No, no, no, no. We have the tape directly from 911. It's quite clear. The operator understood exactly what was being said, and occurred twice. I mean, almost identical situation. The call, Soledad, at 6:00 p.m. and the call at 9:00 p.m. are almost identical, and the reaction to Robert is almost identical. He's being scolded. He's being threatened. And in fact, at 9:00, all that was sent was not at EMS, an officer to come and arrest Robert for allegedly playing a prank when his mother was lying there passed away.</s>S. O'BRIEN: You know, my daughter, who's four, I just taught her how to call 911, and I'm thinking, I'm not sure that she would be able to articulate herself very clearly as a 4-year-old if she finally got through to someone, God forbid there was some kind of emergency. Are you...</s>FIEGER: And remember, they knew where he was. They have access immediately to address and the names of the people at the address.</s>S. O'BRIEN: So what kind of changes do you want? The operators have said, listen, we get a tremendous percentage, a huge percentage of the calls we get are pranks. What change do you want, in addition to whatever the lawsuit calls for?</s>FIEGER: I think rules are that all calls are considered life and death situations until proven otherwise. The fact that a large percentage, even 25 percent, are prank calls, can't make a difference. If that means that one out of four calls are not going to be treated realistically or seriously, that means that one out of four calls might result in a death. That's far too high of a percentage. So every call has to be treated -- and Detroit can really lead the nation in that, in recognizing, notwithstanding prank calls, that's got to be true in the system. They understand that going in. They have the system. They carry it out as if every call is a life or death situation.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Hey, Robert, let me ask you a question. You're six years old now. I know you're living with your sister, and she's got a couple of kids, too. You must miss your mom a whole lot.</s>FIEGER: Robert?</s>TURNER: Uh-huh.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Yes, I bet you do. It's got to be so tough. Listen, I thank you both for talking with us, Robert Turner and Geoffrey Fieger, who's attorney who's now taken on the case. Oh, what a brutal story. And anybody I think, Miles, who's -- you know, you teach your kids, dial 911.</s>M. O'BRIEN: He did everything he was taught to do.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Oh my gosh. Like my 4-year-old, she would be as inarticulate as a 4-year-old would be or a 5-year-old would be, not really spelling out clearly this is an emergency. You just sort of hope that they pick up the phone and get connected to 911 and you'd be happy. What a brutal story.</s>M. O'BRIEN: I was always under the assumption, with enhanced 911, it didn't matter what you said. If you called in, you get dispatched.</s>S. O'BRIEN: Right, they could get connected because they knew your address. I mean, three hours between the first call and second call, and then hours after that before they even sent the police. This poor woman didn't have a chance. Oh, so sad. Wow.