Fragile Truce Persists in Fallujah; 9/11 Investigation: Law Enforcement Turn
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: This is LIVE FROM. I'm Miles O'Brien.</s>KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Kara Phillips. Here's what's happening at this hour. President Bush prepares to tackles the issues head on. He's scheduled a formal news conference for tomorrow night at 8:30 Easter Time. CNN will carry that live. White House officials say the president wants to update Americans on the mission to Iraq. Prospect for peace in the Middle East? Mr. Bush was discussing that earlier today with Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. The two leaders, meeting at the Bush ranch in Texas, view a possible Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a positive step. The president meets with Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, later this week. Eye on Iran. United Nations inspectors are back there to find out whether Iran has halted work on a method for enriching uranium. They also want details on the weapons-grade uranium that was found on an earlier visit. Iran maintains it is not seeking nuclear weapons</s>O'BRIEN: We begin this hour with fresh reports of freedom for several civilian hostages in Iraq. The official Chinese news agency says seven Chinese men captured last night while en route from Jordan to Baghdad have just been released. So far, as we know, that still leaves a Mississippi man and a few other non-Iraqis in the hands of insurgents despite a purported ban on that practice by Iraqi clerics. Two U.S. soldiers are also said to be unaccounted for. The renegade cleric U.S. forces are determined to capture or kill supposedly has agreed to pull his fighters out of police stations in the holy city of Najaf. That does not seem to be carved in stone, and there do seem to be conditions, however. And two-and-a-half months before the handover of Iraqi sovereignty, Central Command expressing disappointment with Iraqi soldiers and police. CENTCOM commander John Abizaid says in last week's violence a number of Iraqi units did not stand up to the intimidators. He says Americans are working to strengthen the Iraqis' chain of command. A cease-fire declared by U.S. Marines in Fallujah remains in effect this hour despite on-and-off attacks from the other side. CNN's Jane Arraf is watching the Sunni Triangle and beyond from her post in Baghdad. She recently filed this report.</s>JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Signs of progress in the holy city of Najaf, where U.S. forces are massing to reinforce a threat from the head of U.S. Central Command that the U.S. is intent on either capturing or killing radical Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. Now, with those troops moving into Najaf, prepared to act militarily, they say, the chief of police, along with the Sadr organization, say that they have reached an agreement for the militia to withdraw from police stations and government offices. Now, that has not been implemented yet. And there appears to still be fighting. The city is still under control of militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, but signs of the beginning, perhaps, of a political settlement. West of Baghdad, in the city of Fallujah, what is called a tenuous cease-fire. Tenuous, the U.S. says, because insurgents are continuing to shoot at U.S. soldiers. In the middle of all this, the United States taking a lot of political heat for hundreds of civilian casualties who have been caught in the crossfire. The head of U.S. Central Command, though, rejects accusations, as does the chief U.S. commander for land forces here, General Ricardo Sanchez, that the United States is being careless with civilian lives.</s>LT. GEN. RICARDO SANCHEZ, GROUND FORCES COMMANDER: The tactics being used in Fallujah are fairly straightforward. We've been attacking to secure the city of Fallujah, and we're running into active resistance. It is very clear where we're taking fire from. And where we're taking fire from, we're applying the appropriate proportionate combat power to eliminate that resistance. We are being very deliberate and precise in the application of that combat power to prevent any wounding or injuring of noncombatants in the area.</s>ARRAF: One of the more worrying things for the U.S. in the midst of fighting all these battles, a spate of kidnappings. Those are continuing. Some of those nationals belong to countries that have troops here in Iraq. The stated aim is for those countries to get their troops out, and for the U.S to get its troops out as well. Jane Arraf, CNN, reporting from Baghdad.</s>PHILLIPS: Among those taken hostage is Mississippian Thomas Hamill. He's a civilian truck driver for a U.S. contractor who apparently was captured outside Baghdad on Good Friday. The deadline his captors set for U.S. forces to leave Fallujah came and went late Saturday Eastern Time with no more word on Hamill's status. His tiny hometown of Macon, near the Alabama border, remembers a struggling dairy farmer who only wanted to make ends meet.</s>SCOTT BOYD, MACON BEACON: Tommy tried to stick it out in the dairy business but didn't. He sold his farm, and didn't quite earn enough from that sale to satisfy the debt. So he saw an opportunity to go to Iraq for a high-paying job, a lot better than the job that he could get over here. So he went over there and obligated himself for a year to try to earn enough money to support his family and to satisfy his debts from his farm.</s>PHILLIPS: Well, in a video clip from the Arab network Al- Jazeera, a narrator who is supposedly quoting Hamill says he's in good shape and being treated well. Devastated by a daughter's death in Iraq and the danger that still looms for two other daughters, all members of the Wisconsin National Guard posted in Iraq. We get the family's story from Chris Goodman of CNN affiliate WITI in Milwaukee.</s>MICHELLE WHITMER, DIED IN IRAQ: I've seen some amazing things. And I feel like I've lived a lot of life for being only 19.</s>CHRIS GOODMAN, WITI (voice-over): But her short life has ended. Michele Whitmer talks when she and her sisters got to come home before Christmas. Saddam Hussein was captured during the brief visit.</s>WHITMER: Rachel came running into my bedroom, jumped on my bed, on top of me, and started shaking me. And I thought the house was on fire. I had no idea what was going on. And she's like, "They got him! They got him! They got him." And I'm like, "What?" And she's like, "Saddam." And I'm like, "No way." And she's like, "Yes." And we both just started screaming.</s>GOODMAN: Rachel, the oldest, and Michelle's twin sister, Charity, are scheduled to return to Iraq after Michelle's funeral. But will they?</s>JOAN APT, FAMILY SPOKESWOMAN: For the sake of our family, we have appealed to the Army National Guard to grant whatever exceptions necessary to make sure Rachel and Charity are not returned to Iraq.</s>GOODMAN: A family friend talk on behalf of the Whitmers Sunday afternoon. She says the family is also pleading with Wisconsin elected officials to do what they can to keep Michele's sisters out of harm's way.</s>APT: We trust that those in charge of making such a decision will realize that we have already sacrificed enough and that our family must not be asked to bear such an impossible burden.</s>O'BRIEN: The biggest names in law enforcement will sit in front of the 9/11 Commission this week. Exhibit A, the August 6 presidential briefing issued just a few weeks before the attacks. Details from CNN's Elaine Quijano in Washington.</s>ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Bush maintains the information in the now declassified August 6, 2001 PDB, or presidential daily briefing, wasn't detailed enough for the U.S. to prevent September 11.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There was not a time and place of an attack. And it was -- it said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?</s>QUIJANO: But critics, including a Democratic member of the 9/11 Commission, say that PDB contained important pieces of the puzzle that should have been taken into context with the spike in intelligence chatter during the summer of 2001.</s>RICHARD BEN-VENISTE (D), 9/11 COMMISSIONER: There was a lot of focus overseas, but the CIA author of this PDB by stressing the fact that bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States was telling the president that we ought to look here as well.</s>QUIJANO: This week, the commission turns its attention to law enforcement and intelligence officials past and present. Among those scheduled to testify, former FBI director Louis Freeh, as well as Attorney General John Ashcroft, who a source tells CNN is not believed to have received a copy of that August 6 PDB. Ashcroft and others are expected to face tough questions on whether the Justice Department made fighting terrorism a top priority, and what specific steps the FBI took to investigate the terror threats that existed in the summer of 2001. (on camera): The panel is expected to look not only at the FBI, but other agencies, and what one commissioner says were problems getting available information into the hands of those who could make a difference. Elaine Quijano, CNN, Washington.</s>PHILLIPS: Up next, U.S. troops in Afghanistan in their own words. Cameras are rolling when the enemy attacks.</s>O'BRIEN: Mel Gibson's "Passion" makes a comeback at the box office for obvious reasons over the past weekend. And the bet of a lifetime makes this man our pick for today's reality TV watch.