Beirut Bombing; Election Results In
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's take a look at what's happening right "Now in the News." A massive explosion ripping through downtown Beirut, killing the former Lebanese prime minister. At least nine other people were killed and 100 others wounded. The explosion comes amid increasing political tensions in Lebanon. We'll go live to Beirut in just a minute. Authorities say at least three people were killed in a trio of bombings in the Philippines today. Among the targets a bus in Manila and a department store in the southern Philippines. A caller to a radio station claimed the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf was responsible. Thousands of U.S. troops prepare to leave Iraq after a handover ceremony today in Tikrit. Members of the 1st Infantry Division were replaced by solders from the 42nd Infantry Division. It's the first National Guard division to be activated since the Korean War. The nation's new attorney general takes the oath of office. Alberto Gonzales was sworn in during a ceremony seen live on CNN last hour. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor administered the oath as President Bush looked on. It is 11:00 a.m. on the East Coast, 8:00 a.m. on the West Coast. From the CNN Center in Atlanta, good morning once again. I'm Daryn Kagan.</s>RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Rick Sanchez. A lot of news. And up first this hour, it's a massive explosion in downtown Beirut. And that was not just a bombing, but a political assassination as well. The blast killed one of the most influential power brokers in the Middle East and left the city's fashionable seafront littered with burned-out cars. Senior international correspondent Brent Sadler, he's been tracking the story all morning long. And he's joining us now live. Do we know yet why this happened, Brent?</s>BRENT SADLER, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, we have no suspects in the frame. No real hard information as to why it happened. But you can add the figures together in terms of trying to make sense of it, in terms of an equation. This was a huge blast it. It shook me off my desk earlier this day in our bureau here in central Beirut. Glass shattered through the city's center a mile away from the actual scene of this political assassination, of this very larger than life political figure, Rafiq al-Hariri, who just turned 60 at the end of last year. He was a dynamo in terms of the reconstruction, the post-civil war reconstruction of Beirut. He was seen as a powerhouse of politics by his supporters, but he also had very many political opponents on the scene here, as well as diehard enemies. And Lebanon is facing a parliamentary election in a couple of months from now. One of Hariri's closest allies, there was an assassination attempt against him with a bombing attack a couple of months backed. He survived. Hariri knew the risks of the game in terms of trying to come back again for possibly a sixth term as prime minister in these upcoming general elections here. But there has been fierce political rhetoric. The whole atmosphere of politics has been really thrown back in recent weeks to the years of the civil war. This is a country with a veneer of stability. And that veneer was ripped apart by that massive explosion earlier this day, eliminating one of the most powerful Sunni political players on the field in Lebanon whose reach not just because he was a multibillionaire, but whose reach stretched far beyond the coastal shores of Lebanon to the United States. He had cordial, very good relations with President George W. Bush. Also a personal friend of President Jacques Chirac of France. A player who used his own personal 777 Boeing jet to travel the world to promote Lebanon, to get over the years of civil war and brutal conflict here to try and rebuild the country. And it was Hariri who has now been liquidated. A political assassination it's being seen by his supporters here, and the ramification are indeed potentially seismic -- Rick.</s>SANCHEZ: Why would people suspect the Syrians? And could this then have a backlash against the Syrians? Can you explain that to us?</s>SADLER: Yes, the Syrians have been under growing international pressure, led primarily by the United States, with the support of France to pressure Syria to loosen its grip on Lebanon, to withdraw what are seen by many Lebanese here, particularly among the Christian community, as occupation forces. For Syria to stop supporting Hezbollah, which the U.S. and Israel regards as a terrorist organization. And Hariri behind the scenes was seen as a catalyst to bringing about this U.S.-French pressure on Syria -- Rick.</s>SANCHEZ: Interesting. Brent Sadler, thanks so much for explaining that to us. We'll certainly be checking back with you -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: Now to Iraq, where the horse trading begins today. The election results are in, and a Shiite slate of parties will now try to shape a new unity government. Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is watching developments in Baghdad today. Hello.</s>NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Daryn. Well, perhaps one of the most interesting things to happen today, we've heard from some Sunni politicians who have been mostly marginalized so far in these elections that have been dominated by the Kurds from the north and the Shias from the south. The Sunnis today saying that they feel like they're in a vacuum. The influential and the most popular Sunni party here, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has said that it thinks that the Sunni clerics are to blame for the reason that Sunnis didn't come out to vote. And now they want to be a part of a political process. They want to be involved in the drafting of the constitution that's going to begin soon. And they say that they hope by the end of the year, when next elections are expected to happen, that Sunnis will come out and vote. So that's quite an interesting development, that really the split happening within the Sunni grouping now -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: A couple questions for you. First, about the Kurds, they had what many consider an excellent showing in these elections. My question is, do the Kurds want to be part of Iraq or do they want to have their own independence movement and continue that effort to have their own country?</s>ROBERTSON: Well, they really feel that they got what they were expecting here, which was a quarter of the seats in the national assembly. Right now they say absolutely, they want to play ball, they want to be part of Iraq. Indeed, they want to be -- they want to get one of the top jobs in the new government. They want their representative to become president. And they say that's going to be a real test of how well the ethnic Kurds in the north are going to be dealt with by the ethnic Arabs, if you will, the Arabs in Baghdad. The Baghdad government has never had to deal with the Kurds in this way. And the Kurds say, if they're not accepted in Baghdad on equal terms, if their man cannot be president or take a top job, then that's going to show them that they don't have a future in a united Iraq, and therefore, they'd rather pursue their own interests. But right now, they say Kurds as part of united Iraq, definitely the best place for Kurds to be.</s>KAGAN: Let's talk about some of the other key positions. You mentioned a president, also a prime minister needs to be selected.</s>ROBERTSON: Prime minister, defense ministry is also an important position, the minister of interior as well. Key, key jobs here, and the horse trading for those is going to be very intense. Perhaps what makes it more intense than people had initially anticipated is because that -- the very popular religious Shia party that so dominated in the elections has done well, but not that well that they can ignore what everyone else wants. Now, they're expected to put in a moderate person in one of those influential positions. Indeed, a lot of people are saying, "We want to see an independent player there. We don't want to see party politics coming into top jobs like the prime minister's job, like the interior ministry, key, key positions in determining the future security." Those jobs that would determine whether or not the country stays united and whether or not the person doing those jobs really is a unifier or a divider, and that's very critical for the future of the country -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: Nic Robertson joining us live from Baghdad. Thank you. An expert weighing in on Iraq's election outcome in our next half-hour. We're going to talk with a former Middle Eastern diplomat about the next steps on Iraq's road to democracy.</s>SANCHEZ: Time now for a CNN "Security Watch" report. South Korea's top diplomat goes to the State Department this hour. He's going to talk with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about North Korea's nuclear pursuits. Last week the north declared it had nuclear weapons. It demanded one-on-one talks with the United States, not with five other nations. The Bush administration refused to do it. State Department officials say China, which holds a lot of sway over the north, will try and pressure it now to return to six-party talks, or so the Chinese have promised over the weekend. Now, the Pentagon and the CIA is not going to touch this one that we're about to tell you about. But there is a published report saying that the Bush administration is spying on Iran's nuclear program, using drones, supposedly. National security correspondent David Ensor has been following up on the story, and he's joining us now to let us know what he knows. David, over to you.</s>DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Rick, there have been a couple of developments in the area of intelligence in Iran over the weekend. With the U.S. intelligence community working on a wide-ranging review of its intelligence about Iran, these two revelations are getting attention in town here. First, knowledgeable former officials are telling CNN that in the early 1990s a network of Iranian agents for U.S. intelligence was discovered by Iranian counterintelligence and dozens of agents were jailed or executed, according to these sources. They did say the network was a low-level one, was set up at the request of the Pentagon. Word of the loss came first in recent testimony by former Pentagon official Richard Perle.</s>RICHARD PERLE, FMR. PENTAGON OFFICIAL: I imagine there are many on the committee who are familiar with the terrible setback that we suffered in Iran a few years ago, when in -- in a display of unbelievably careless management we put pressure on agents operating in Iran to report with greater frequency, and did not provide communications, channels for them to do it. The Iranian intelligence authorities quickly saw the surge in traffic and, as I understand it, virtually our entire network in Iran was wiped out.</s>ENSOR: Now, Richard Perle is a frequent critic of the CIA. And knowledgeable former officials dispute him on several counts. They call his testimony "inaccurate" in some details and "misleading." These officials say his description of how the network was rolled up is wrong, and that it was smaller than he described. Meantime, as you mentioned, two well-placed sources are now confirming to CNN a report that the U.S. has used unmanned aerial vehicles to collect intelligence on Iran, though U.S. military and other officials are saying that no such flights have occurred recently. This occurs over a backdrop where some CIA officials are worrying that the Pentagon and FBI may be seeking to take over more of the human intelligence effort in Iran, recruiting spies to report from the ground. We're in a situation now where the president seems to be delaying his choice of a new director of national intelligence. And that, in the view of some senior former officials, lays U.S. intelligence to be vulnerable to what one official called poaching -- Rick.</s>SANCHEZ: David Ensor, national security correspondent, reporting to us on two developments having to do with Iran. And we should tell you that CNN "Security Watch" keeps you up to date on safety, your safety. Stay tuned day and night for the most reliable news about your security.</s>KAGAN: A lot going on this morning. Just as you were talking to David Ensor, Michael Jackson arriving at the courthouse in Santa Maria, California. We have the pictures of Michael Jackson arriving. Jury selection continues. The requisite umbrella on a sunny day on the central coast there. As jury selection goes on, they have it down to nearly 250 potential jurors. They're filling out questionnaires into -- they want to get to down to 12 panelists and eight alternates. Jackson is accused of molesting a 13-year-old former cancer patient, giving the boy alcohol and conspiring to hold him and his family captive. So jury selection continues in Santa Maria. We move back East. A shooting at a crowded New York mall sends panicked shoppers scrambling for cover and leaves at least two people wounded. This morning, police identified the suspect as 24-year-old Robert Bonelli. He's charged with assault and reckless endangerment. Police placed the mall on lockdown immediately after the shooting yesterday. They say the gunman fired an assault-type weapon until he ran out of ammo. A mall employee helped capture the suspect after he stopped firing.</s>KEITH LAZARCHIK, MALL EMPLOYEE: All of a sudden, out of the Best Buy exit I saw a guy with a guns, a rifle coming out. And a couple of shots rang out. And as everybody was running out, I saw him going down the mall entrance. And so for whatever reason I started going down towards that entrance. And people were yelling at me to get back, "He's got a gun, he's shooting people." And, you know, gun's going off and firing. And so I peeked around the corner and saw him go around another corner. So I snuck down that corner and saw him go around.</s>KAGAN: Police say that a National Guard recruiter wounded in the shooting might lose his leg. The other victim had minor wounds to his arm and his leg.</s>SANCHEZ: Thank god he was terrible shot.</s>KAGAN: Yes. It could have been a lot worse.</s>SANCHEZ: There's also another story that we're following. There's a concern about safety as well after yesterday's intense fire in this building. Look at it. It's a fire now out, but authorities have another problem on their hands, and we're going to tell you what it is up next.</s>KAGAN: And then have you heard what Canseco -- Jose Canseco has to say? He's letting loose in a new book. Find out who he says he did steroids with and what he thinks about doing steroids now.</s>SANCHEZ: Also, don't forget about Valentine's Day today.</s>KAGAN: Did you remember?</s>SANCHEZ: Of course I did.</s>KAGAN: OK. Good job.</s>SANCHEZ: I'm all over this one. All over it. I'm convincing myself. Why chocolate may be a tasty and healthy choice, or a great excuse.