All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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Call it strike two.

When baseball opens its 2009 Spring Training in four days, players will begin to shake off the rust and get in shape. But, I’m afraid the game itself will remain a mess.

For the second time this week one of baseball’s former MVPs has been outed in the steroid scandal. Houston Astros all-star shortstop Miguel Tejada (pictured above right) has been charged with lying to Congress about steroids. Next to yesterday’s bombshell confession from Alex Rodriguez this may not seem like much, but as old rock-and-roll deejays – or Pete Rose – might say: “the hits just keep on coming.”

Tejada’s troubles began when ...

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Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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You can pick your own word: bizarre … eerie … creepy. I settled on surreal.

There he was sitting about 50 feet from me: the man who claims he planned 9/11 from A to Z. But, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or KSM as the terror-crowd prefers, looked nothing like that almost comic image that’s been burned into my brain.

You know the one.

The pudgy disheveled man, who looks a little like John Belushi on a bad night, with a redneck white T-shirt and his hair sprouting all over the place.

No, the Mohammed who appeared today was dressed like a spiritual advisor with a long white tunic, neatly wrapped white turban, reading glasses, and a flowing gray beard that would have made Stonewall Jackson jealous.

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Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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If you’re like millions of Americans hooked on prime time crime dramas like CSI and Criminal Minds then you know that DNA is a cop’s best friend and a crook’s quickest ticket to the slammer.

Except that it isn’t. The DNA science is solid; the problem is labs across America can’t keep up with the forensic demand. The FBI’s own lab in Quantico, Virginia has a two year backlog of samples from convicted offenders just parked on shelves and waiting to be processed.

While that’s frustrating to the crime solvers, the DNA backlog takes a real human toll. There are new crimes happening every day because serial offenders, who’ve left DNA samples at multiple crime scenes, have yet to be caught. And there are victims, like Debbie Smith, who suffered six years of nightmares, because her attacker eluded the DNA system.

Tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric you’ll hear Debbie Smith’s story and we’ll take you inside the lab where DNA still isn’t the crime-fighting weapon it should be.

Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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Since 9/11 the US has spent billions to defend ports, cities and border crossings from terrorists looking to set off a dirty bomb, or worse yet, a nuclear weapon. The radiation-related activities of the Department of Homeland Security have been well documented.

But, at the same time, there's been a little-noticed effort inside the Department of Energy to attack the nuke threat at the source. Teams of scientists have been dispatched to dozens of countries around the world to secure highly-enriched uranium and transport the material to safe storage facilities.

Most recently one team, working at a poorly secured reactor in the Czech Republic, recovered enough highly-enriched uranium to build three nuclear bombs. Tonight on the CBS Evening News we will give you an exclusive look inside that Czech reactor. You'll see US scientists securing the nuclear material and preparing it for safe shipment to a well-guarded facility inside Russia.

Over the past three years, US officials have recovered enough highly-enriched uranium to produce 34 nuclear weapons, and they have also secured enough raw radiological material to make 8,500 so-called dirty bombs.

It is a sobering and fascinating story about the FIRST line of defense: US officials working at the source to stop the flow of loose nukes to the black market.

Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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To hear critics on Capitol Hill say it, “Blackwater” sounds like a four letter word. And the word is not “hero”.

But, supporters say “hero” would be a fair description, and therein lies the rub.

There seems to be no middle ground when it comes to Blackwater, a private security contractor based in North Carolina.

To detractors, Blackwater guards are run-amok mercenaries who have found gold in the war zones of Iraq. Since 2003 taxpayers have paid Blackwater more than a billion dollars to protect diplomats and dignitaries. On top of that, Democrats are particularly annoyed that Blackwater’s founder is a major Republican donor leading to whispers that no bid contracts are a sort of quid pro quo payback.

But, Blackwater is effective. No Blackwater client has ever been killed. And the fact is there aren’t enough soldiers to do the jobs taken on by Blackwater and other security contractors.

Add to that Blackwater’s intense training program and the fact that its employees are not amateurs – most come from elite military commando units, like Delta Force and Navy SEALS.

Still, U.S. officials are more than a little uneasy about last month’s Blackwater shootout in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

There are now five separate investigations into Blackwater, yet most people in America are still pondering the question, “Who are these guys?”

We’ll look for answers tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

Bob Orr is a correspondent for CBS News based in Washington.

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Let me just say upfront this is a tough story to do, and we’ll probably be criticized for hyping a threat that many people feel is improbable, if not impossible.

However, if the FBI is worried and the Russian government is worried, then I’m worried.

As far as we know, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have never gotten their hands on a nuclear weapon, but that’s not for lack of trying. In 1998, bin Laden said acquiring nukes “for the defense of Muslims is a religious duty.” And we know al Qaeda tried on at least one occasion to buy nuclear material from a bogus dealer who was more interested in stealing the terrorists’ money.

Now, the FBI has called together security officials from 28 countries to discuss the nuclear threat and to map strategies for sharing information and cutting off the supply of materials on the black market.

Tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric we’ll talk one-on-one with FBI chief Robert Mueller, who warns in stark terms that the destruction of 9/11 could pale in comparison that caused by a nuclear strike against an American city.

We’ll also take you inside the New York Police Department to show you what cops and technology are doing on the home front -- the last lines of defense.

While we don’t want to exaggerate the threat, we can’t ignore it either. The 9/11 Commission called the government’s missteps leading up to 9/11 “a failure of imagination”. Taking that lesson, no conceivable threat should be off the table for security officials or out of bounds for public discussion.

We’re probably going to get some grief for pointing this out. But, here goes -- our food supply is vulnerable and not just to accidental contamination.

Terrorists have long eyed America’s food chain as a soft and inviting target. More than one counterterrorism official has described the food supply, “as one of the most vulnerable and least protected parts of the United States critical infrastructure.”

Confiscated al Qaeda manuals have noted that attacks on the US agriculture/processing sector could cause the kind of severe economic damage terrorists dream about.

Foot and mouth disease is a prime example. While the virus that causes foot and mouth was eradicated in the US in 1929, it flourishes in much of the world. Safety experts say it would be a snap for a terrorist or, for that matter, an unwitting tourist to import the virus from an infected area on clothing or shoes.

If the highly contagious virus were to be turned loose in a heard of US cattle it would spread like the proverbial wildfire. By some estimates a single outbreak of foot and mouth would force officials to destroy millions of cattle and the damage to the US farm economy would run into the tens of billions of dollars.

The really frightening thing is that once a bio-agent is introduced the germs move faster than investigators. We don’t often find out about an outbreak of E-Coli or salmonella until well after people start getting sick.

Now, we’re not spilling any secrets to terrorists. They already know about these vulnerabilities, but food safety experts say we should all be heads up.
Vigilance is a primary defense.

Tonight on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, we’ll also take a look at a new way scientists are preparing to help defend the food supply. We’ll give you a behind the scenes look at a yet-to-be-opened Agriculture Biosecurity Center at Kansas State University – a facility that’s now on the front lines of the food-related risks most of us rarely think about.

Overall, our food supply remains the safest in the world. And scientists say Americans should shop at supermarkets or dine at restaurants with a high degree of confidence. But, the fact terrorists have even thought about vulnerabilities should force the rest of us to think about solutions. Hopefully our story will add something to the public’s awareness.

New passport regulations take effect tomorrow -- and Bob Orr has some advice for travelers.

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If you are a passport procrastinator, take a seat, because you aren’t going anywhere. Technically, you may be able to “go”, but don’t count on getting home.

Beginning tomorrow, January 23, virtually all travelers flying into the United States from countries within the Western Hemisphere will be required to show a passport. A driver’s license or birth certificate will no longer be enough to allow a vacationer or Spring- Breaker to fly home from Cancun, Bermuda, or even Toronto.

It’s the latest security shoe to drop in our post 9/11 world, and it’s likely to fall on some travelers’ toes.

The government has been warning for months that the passport deadline was looming. It seems many travelers have heeded the alert – the State Department says more than two million new passports were processed in November and December, almost twice as many as the last two months of 2005. And a recent survey of returning US travelers found 94% were already flashing passports instead of other IDs.

But, undoubtedly, some people will be caught short tomorrow at immigration points. The Miami airport comes to mind.

Now the government is not planning to build any holding pens to detain the scofflaws. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security says Immigration and Customs authorities will have discretion in enforcing the new passport rule. Most likely, a non-passport carrying returnee will simply have to undergo more extensive secondary screening as punishment for missing the deadline.

But, officials say patience at the international airports will not be open-ended, and offenders should not expect to get a “third chance” in the future.

As for those of you who prefer to stay grounded and don’t fly, well don’t get too comfortable. The new passport requirement is coming to a land border crossing or seaport near you next year.

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On Aug. 27, a Comair flight took off in the dark from a runway too short for a passenger jet. CBS News correspondent Bob Orr has more about the transcript of the cockpit recording released today.

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Almost from the first moments, we've known WHAT happened — the pilots mistakenly turned on the wrong runway, a runway too short for the takeoff of their commuter jet.

But, five months after Comair flight 5191 crashed in a fireball in Lexington, Kentucky, we still don’t know WHY the pilots made a fatal and inexplicable mistake.

The newly released transcript of the pilots’ final cockpit conversation doesn’t help much. It reveals two experienced airmen doing what pilots do — running checklists, making last minute safety checks and a little small talk while waiting for their turn to fly.

It shows their conversations with the air traffic controller were business-like and by the book, with no horseplay or distractions. The Comair crew accurately "read-back" instructions to depart on runway 22, a 7,000 foot lighted strip regularly used by passenger planes. And the pilots apparently programmed the plane’s autopilot and their cockpit instruments for the correct course.

But, for some reason, they turned off the taxiway too early and lined up on a short, unlighted runway usually reserved for smaller private planes.

It's clear from the transcript that the pilots had no idea they were heading for disaster. Neither questioned the absence of runway lights before the plane started to roll. Neither apparently checked the plane's instrument heading which would have unmistakably told them they were 40 degrees off course. And neither one seemed to notice that their aircraft crossed over the correct lighted runway as it began racing toward destruction.

Seventeen seconds before the jet slammed into a fence the co-pilot finally seemed to suspect that something was wrong on their dark runway. He said to the captain, "dat is weird with no lights." The captain responded, "Yeah." But then the jet accelerated to one hundred miles an hour, before the captain uttered the final word from the cockpit, "Whoa."

Neither pilot ever said anything about trying to stop, and in fairness, there may not have been time. Forty-nine people of the 50 on board were killed by the impact and fire. Only one person survived, the co-pilot who was flying the plane at the time of the crash. But, he's never been interviewed by crash investigators and his family says he remembers nothing about that awful Sunday morning in Lexington.

So, sadly the biggest question in the crash remains unanswered.

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Correspondent Bob Orr reports on merger madness in the airline industry. There could be yet another new one, he has learned.

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Here's the way one veteran airline analyst puts it: "Everybody is talking to everybody!"

It sure seems that way. We learned today that Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines are the latest partners to take the floor at the great airline consolidation dance.

It's not a done deal. But, sources say Northwest and Delta, which both filed for bankruptcy on the same day sixteen months ago, have been talking for weeks about a possible deal.

It's not clear if the two struggling carriers are looking to hook up in a full-blown merger or some kind of strategic alliance that falls short of a corporate marriage. But, what is clear is that Delta is looking for just about any weapon it can find to fend off the unfriendly take-over bid by US Airways, which is now dangling $10 billion in front of Delta's hungry creditors.

While Delta publicly insists if would prefer to keep flying solo, it seems the airline would welcome Northwest to the co-pilot seat if that would leave US Airways back at the gate.

But, that's not the end of this high-flying merger madness. There continues to be speculation about a possible union of United and Continental. In addition, AirTran Airways, which took a run at Midwest Airlines last fall, is still looking for a date.

And analysts fear we may just be seeing the opening bids in a wholesale aviation auction that reduces the numbers of airlines, routes, and passenger seats, and raises the frustrations and ticket prices for the 600-million plus Americans who fly every year.

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