>> reporter: anything but tranquil liesing right on, trump. >> excuse me, excuse me. i told you exactly what i do. >> i'm candy crowley. join us from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. eastern and every saturday 6:00 p.m. on cnn, and at this time every weekend on cnn international. the news continues next on cnn. right now on cnn, a tornado takes dead aim at an airport. >> get down. >> passengers scrambled as a twister slams into the airport at st. louis and for miles around, hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed. tonight, it's not over. active tornado watches right now. we have team coverage for you. plus -- demonstrators under attack in syria. government forces open fire and

kill at least ten people. what was the emt montmoment realized this is turning into something no one expected? >> and cnn's senior international correspondent nic robertson amid the chaos and in the line of fire as egyptians and libyans line up against their governments. the stories behind the stories you saw right here on cnn. it's going to happen this hour. i'm don lemon. you're in the cnn "newsroom." the most powerful tornado to hit st. louis in more than four decades of view from a surveillance camera inside st. louis airport at the moment it hit. people just barely getting to cover as the gusts go through the hallway there. the tornado's winds reached 166 miles per hour, or more. >> get down!

>> as you can imagine, panic inside the terminal as a tornado bared down. the airport is operating at a very limited capacity, only a handful of incoming flights. a live report from the airport just seconds away here at cnn. the airport wasn't the obviously spot to take a pounding. nine communities, impacted. 750 homes damaged. some of them blasted to splinters. incredibly, no reports of deaths or serious injuries. people had a 34-minute warning ahead of that tornado. the national weather service says the twister was a powerful ef-4. >> the public did what we have told them to do. they had a plan in place, they talked to their families, they were all in the basement. they came out without a scratch. i've talked to numerous families who went down in the basement, not a scratch. they come out, there's nothing left. an amazing story of victory over

this tornado. >> now, as promised live to the airport and cnn's dan simon, he's standing by. the images we have seen from this are both amazing and eerie at the same time, aren't they? >> reporter: really is, don. let me tell you where we are. we are here at the main terminal. this is what it looks like when you pull up. you can see all these windows have basically been blasted out. what crews are doing right now, as can you see some of them up there, they're knocking out these windows that have cracks in them. you can see on the ground all those windows there just waiting to be cleaned up. crews have been out here all day trying to get the airport basically in working order. and a little while ago authorities said they were optimistic that they could actually get some flights in tonight and they think they can be about 70% operational tomorrow. the key to getting the airport operational of course is getting the power back and that's really true for most of this community. we can't really understate how much of this community has been

devastated. the tornado cut through several communities, 750 homes damaged, many of them destroyed. at this point, crews are still assessing the damage trying to clean up the roads, trying to get this area passable so utility crews can get in there and get the power back. but right now they're dealing with a number of things. there are a number of people dislodged. the red cross of course has set up several shelters, so that's the situation we're dealing with right now. still a bit tenuous and crews still trying to assess the damage. >> i know that airport, i lived there for a while. you're standing in the main terminal of the airport, that was damaged. what about the other parts of the airport? >> concourse c which actually has four airlines, including american, had so much debris that they really don't know when they're going to get that concourse back up. there is a vacant concourse, concourse b. there's nothing in there right now, so they can move those airlines over there on a temporary basis. but you've seen some of this

surveillance video, and you've seen some of this debris come in. it just looked like a wind tunnel. you had all this debris sort of come in through the various concourses, all these windows breaking, but you know, it's really amazing, the fact you had the safety glass that nobody was really seriously hurt. that's really true throughout the community. only minor injuries. and crews say the reason why nobody was seriously injured or died, it's because people really heeded the safety warnings. in this case, the media did their job. they alerted everybody, and the folks went to the basements, and that's why you're not dealing with any significant injuries, don. >> dan simon, thank you very much for that. and for details on the strength of the tornado and how many tornadoes were spotted, let's turn to bonnie schneider in the cnn severe weather center. bonnie, the st. louis airport is in a suburb but not far from the city. a very dense area. it could have had much, much more damage. it could have had dire consequences. >> absolutely, don. i think part of the reason we didn't see that, as you heard from the officials, people had

their family disaster plan in place. know where you'll go if a warning is issued and have a point person in another city, a relative or friend, that in case the family is separated that you all contact this person and this way everyone can be accounted for. we'll take a look at an ef-4 tornado. 166, 200, those are three-second wind gusts. 200-mile-per-hour wind gusts. it is possible right now just preliminary reports as survey teams are on the ground, at least four of them, we had reports just a few miles away from the airport that right now this is looking like an ef-4. we'll get the report as we go over the next couple days, but it certainly was damaging and devastating, absolutely. i want to show you what things are looking like right now. we have a tornado watch that's in effect just for the rest of the hour. it's actually diminished since our last report. you can see it's caved in here in the kentucky area, meaning the threat is further east. so we're watching for tornadic activity to work its way through kentucky, possibly in ohio. in warnings are in place right now.

there is a severe thunderstorm watch across west virginia. remember, a watch is important, too. it means a tornado or severe thunderstorm can occur, so you should be prepared. have your noaa weather radio on and always be ready with that disaster plan and also an emergency supply kit as well, just in case you do have to evacuate quickly due to severe weather. severe thunderstorms erupting now south of st. louis and the problem is as we go forward, over the next few days what we're tracking here is a threat for major flooding. look at all the flood watches and warnings posted across kentucky, cincinnati and ohio and kentucky have already seen a lot of rain. we have pictures to show you of the flooding that's been occurring. the problem is, this is ohio and a lot of places under water. the problem is more rain is coming. our computer models are forecasting things to get much, much worse. on our scale here, the purple and white, ten inches to 12 inches of rain. this is over a five-day period. this is going to be devastating for parts of illinois, kentucky and ohio and indiana as well. because it's just so much rain, the ground is saturated, so we're going to have a lot of

issues with flooding as we go into the rest of this week. >> bonnie schneider, thank you. stand by, because we're going to be needing you throughout the evening here on cnn. still ahead -- >> i really did think that i would go and start bawling when i saw it, but it's just so -- it's just so gone. there's nothing really to cry over. >> those pictures are unbelievable. victims of the devastating wildfires in texas return home, but for many, nothing there is left, as you can see. and princess diana didn't live to see her first born get married. why the seating arrangement at prince william's wedding next week means some of diana's family may not see it either. and reach out to us on social media. we're on twitter, facebook, cnn.com/do not and on four square.com as well. building up our wireless network all across america. we're adding new cell sites... increasing network capacity... and making a substantial investment to improve your wireless network experience.

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personal pricing now on brakes. tell us what you want to pay. we do our best to make that work. deal! my money. my choice. my meineke. on the corner of hellsgate and hellsgate loop. that fire in texas has turned about just every pocket of the state. exhausted firefighters have done their best to corral the flames and they say they've contained about a fourth of that blaze. one of the hardest-hit areas where fire destroyed nearly 200 homes in palo pinto county. residents are trickling back in to see what if anything is left behind. cnn's patrick oppmann is there. patrick? >> reporter: don, days after

wildfires ripped through one texas community, residents are finally seeing the aftermath up close. hundreds of evacuees wait in a line stretching miles. worried and frustrated, trying to check on their homes. >> we're allowing residents from four of the affected communities around pk lake to go back in and check on the status of their property just for a few hours today. >> what can i do here? i'm free to go or what? >> yes, sir. >> reporter: residents from this wildfire-ravaged corner of texas brace themselves for more heart breaking news. >> we're going to take a bunch of pictures for the insurance and then start sifting and see if there's anything we can put in some of our tubs and bring back home. >> not knowing is the hardest part. we love coming out here and it's just a beautiful lake and it's just hard. >> trying to just see what we can salvage. if there's anything to salvage. >> reporter: when they finally get back, a burned out moon scape awaits them where many homes once were. some fires burned hot enough to

leave rivers of metal in their wake. >> this is an event that's going to mark time in our history. it's something that's going to change forever the looks and the community itself. it will be life before the fire and life after the fire. >> reporter: for peter and carolyn venice, there's no going home. >> i kept saying to myself, you can't prepare yourself for this. you know? and you really can't. and i really did think that i would go and start bawling when i saw it, but it's just so -- it's just so gone. there's nothing really to cry over. >> reporter: you're a little bit shocked. >> yeah, you just -- you just drive up and go, really? how did this happen? because last saturday it was there. >> reporter: all that's left now of their home of five years is ashes. the fire consumed everything the couple had there. but it's a home they say they will rebuild. >> cnn's patrick oppmann. in other news, big brother is watching you, or in this case your iphone is watching you.

how it happens and how you can stop it. what's this option? that's new.

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personally, i'm not particularly concerned myself. i don't think people should panic. but i don't think that this necessary to keep the data in the file and people should be aware of it. >> that's one of the guys who

discovered something very disturbing about a phone that a lot of you have in your pockets right now. i even have it. it's in my brief case somewhere. apple's iphone has been tracking users' movements without their knowledge. i want to bring in managing editor of thisismynext.com. how is this collecting information, and more importantly, why? >> i think the thing is, to be clear, it's not apple that's collecting the information. there's a certain amount of location data from your iphone that apple anonymously collects to serve as and do things. they're very up front about that. the problem here is that the phone itself stores kind of all the locations you've been to since you've had the phone. months, years in some cases. and it's on the phone, and it's on your computer, any computer that the sync the phone to, in a way that's easy to get to. these guys have developed an app called iphone tracker and it shows you everywhere your phone has been over time. you can map your travels over

the past few months and that's what's troubling. it's troubling that there's already so much data in your phone. your e-mail, your facebook, your banking, and now there's this bit of data about everywhere you've been that i don't think users wereanticipating and it's there. >> can you get rid of it? can you just delete it or is it there for ever? >> well, i think that's an apple to change the way the phone stores the data and change how much data and how easy it is to get to. you know, if you are basic user, the thing you should do right now is open your itunes, the one you sync your iphone for and click "encrypt backups." that will keep people from getting at it. if you're more advanced user, you can jail break your phone, run software that apple doesn't approve and run an app called untrackered, which will erase as it goes. you have to be a little more paranoid. in the short term if you just encrypt your itunes backups and keep an eye on where your phone is and make sure you don't lose it you'll be fine. in the larger context --

>> go ahead. >> in the larger context, every phone kind of does this. >> it's nothing unique, the android phones track you and i'm not sure about blackberries, but google's android will track so it's not unique. >> androids don't store as much data, they only store, you know, maybe a month or so of data. it's not clear. i think the bigger conversation everybody needs to have is we all have these devices that are so smart, they know so much about us, how much really do we want them to know and, you know, the manufacturers devices need to be really up front with the customer about how much data they're storing. when it comes to location, i think people are precious about where they are and the data about where they are. that can be u.s. othersed in a ways by people good and bad in your life. >> good information, thank you very much. i hope apple doesn't mind you told people how to jail break their phone but that's okay, you didn't say it, you did. >> it's out there. if you're really worried you've

got to do it. >> thanks. have a good one. london is bustling with royal wedding enthusiasts trying to get a glimpse of where william and kate will tie the knot. but controversy is brewing with the seating chart and who's been pushed to the back of the church. copd makes it hard to breathe

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take the lead. ask your doctor if including advair could help improve your lung function. get your first full prescription free and save on refills at advaircopd.com. and all we need to do is change the way we're thinking about them. a couple decades ago, we didn't even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleanly burning natural gas. this deposits can provide us with fuel for a hundred years, providing energy security and economic growth all across this country. it just takes somebody having the idea, and that's where the discovery comes from. i know everybody's excited. let's talk about the royal wedding. london's westminster abbey is buzzing with activity as the

final touches are being made for prince william and kate middleton's wedding just six days from now. it's warmer than normal for this time of year, but that didn't keep crowds of people from coming to the abbey to get a glimpse of where the royal couple will tie the knot. cnn caught up with some american tourists who say they prefer a preview instead of the event itself. >> the world definitely needs it, and it's exciting to be here. everybody's very excited, people are happy, so it's a great atmosphere. >> yes, i'm excited for them, but i'm here as a tourist so i'm trying to avoid the royal wedding so that the people from england can have their -- their time with the royals and we americans will come in and see the beautiful sights and then boogie out of town. >> i'm pretty excited. i didn't want to be here on the day because it would be way too busy. but i'm having my mom tape it for me, even though i'm going to be in the uk when it's on. >> the guest list has been released, it includes high profile names like sir elton john, david and victoria beckham

and film director guy richie. details on where everyone will be seated were also made public and some might say the late princess diana's family is being snub the by their seating arrangement. the spencer family will be sitting on the bride's side in the section behind the middleton family seated with william and kate's friends. vicious weather rocks the midwest as the sun goes down, hundreds of families in missouri sift through what little is left after a massive tornado ripped through less than 24 hours ago. and a reporter's notebook from our very own nic robertson. this is a camera he and his cameraman were using in the hotel when the woman ran in and told them she had been roughed up by henchman. this is the camera they broke. nic robertson coming up in moments here on cnn.

but first, a new literacy project is using unusual methods to get kids interested in writing, including a store that resembles a pirate ship and a row of published books made by the students themselves. steve perry has this and more in this week's "perry's principles." >> reporter: a literacy organization with eight chapters across the country. today we're at the original location in san francisco called 826 valencia. here kids get tutoring, attend creative writing workshops and watch their own books get published. >> what you doing there? >> there you go! >> reporter: and did i also mention it's a pirate supply store? these kids are writing a story for a grumpy pirate named mr. blue. >> can we please try? >> i hope so, it better be a good story. it better be exciting and suspenseful! >> reporter: they offer one-on-one tutoring in any subject students need help with.

host field trips and has a special focus on working with students whose parents don't speak english at home. but today they're all about creative writing. >> or it could be a crocodile mixed with an iguana. >> reporter: and you are helping kids in this community use writing to do what? >> it all begins with writing. and so you have to build from that sort of basis. and so the students that we work with, if their writing is great, it follows everything else they'll do in english, math and science. >> reporter: how do they pay for that? >> it's all free. >> reporter: how do you pay for that? >> a lot of fundraising. a lot of goodwill from the community. >> reporter: 826 valencia has nearly 1700 active volunteers from all different types of careers. >> so you think that's going to be a good story so far? >> there's a lot of potential there. i like what i'm hearing so far. >> excellent. let's get back to work, guys.

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get down!

the sounds of extreme winds whipping around outside a terminal, passengers running for cover as a tornado slams the st. louis airport. it's the most powerful tornado in the city in four decades. reaching as high as 160 mooilesn hour. >> we look out next to us, and we see the plane and the gate right to our left just immediately slides about 15 or 20 yards away from the gate. at that point everyone on our plane just immediately started streaming for the exit. luckily we were still connected to the gate so we were able to run off. by the time you get to the terminal, we got to the terminal, lights were out, there was glass everywhere. it was just open, there was blood everywhere from where people had been cut. >> the airport was just one of the spots that got hit hard. nine communities are impacted, 750 homes damaged. some of them obliterated, but there are no reports of deaths or serious injuries. the governor has declared a

state of emergency. want to check our top stories right now. no letup in the brutal month-long government crackdown in syria. witnesses tell cnn security forces opened fire from rooftops today killing ten protesters who turned out to mourn dozens killed on friday. yesterday's crack down was one of syria's bloodiest battles yet. nearly 80 people were killed after security forces and demonstrators clashed in several cities. yemen's embattled leader could soon be stepping down. alley abdullah saleh has agreed to turn over power in 30 days. yemen's gulf nations brokered the agreement which grants immunity for saleh and his regime. a major victory for libyan rebels in the key coastal city of misrata.

opposition leaders say they've successfully pushed gadhafi forces out of the city's center. they've also regained the critical port there. libya's government admits its soldiers are retreating but vows tribal fighters will remain. a rebel spokesman says gadhafi is simply trying to disguise his army's defeat there. events in the middle east have been so explosive and fast moving it's sometimes hard to step back and take in the big picture. cnn's senior international correspondent nic robertson has been in the thick of all these stories as they have swept across the arab world. he was there for the first al allied coalition fighting and he was also there -- take a look at this. this is a camera inside the hotel virtually annihilated by moammar gadhafi forces. but our nick rob e robertson, i with him about close calls to

bring news to viewers around the world. you started out in egypt. did you have any idea when you started in egypt with what might be a revolution that you'd end up where you ended up? >> not really. when we were in egypt, it was sort of what was going on, we went to a funeral of someone who burnt themselves but there was no spark at the funeral, there was no mass of people coming out on the streets, just a few family members. so even though this egyptian man had emulated what the tunisian street vendor did, setting himself on fire, it didn't create a big ground movement and the people i was talking to in egypt were saying, what the tunisians have done is broken that barrier of fear. >> reporter: yeah. >> and that was as far as it was going. the egyptians could see it, but they hadn't done it themselves. >> reporter: what was the moment, i should ask you, because i'm sure there was, that you realized, oh, my gosh. this is turning into something no one exspengted. >> i have to say, i was in beirut and watching ben wedeman on the air and i could hear in ben's voice on the 25th of

january what he was witnessing on the streets, in the center of cairo. >> reporter: basically, the crowds and protesters have taken over tahrir square, the heart of cairo. >> i was thinking about the interviews i'd done in cairo and the people i'd talked to. and what ben was saying was suddenly matching what they were saying. people had lost their fear. no one could imagine a scenario just a few days earlier. we'd been shut down by police on the streets of cairo for just shooting a standup. no one could imagine people coming up, taking to the streets and running in the face of the police, running against the police. so i think that was it. it was the expression in ben wedeman's voice that i think convinced me above what we've seen already that it was really happening. >> reporter: much was made about journalists being roughed up. and you had your moments as well as other journalists. was it frightening? has too much been made out of it? is that what we do, we go into danger and have the possibility of being roughed up. >> when we get roughed up by government forces i think we

have to call it for what it is. and the situations that we were in in alexandria, which was sort of outside of tahrir square in the center of cairo, where i think people had a far worse time, you know, anderson cooper and others had a far worse time at the hands of sort of government loyalists there. what we experienced was on a smaller scale but it was very intimidating. these people looked like everyone else on the street. you think you're in a crowd full of people who are out there protesting against the government. and suddenly they're not. suddenly they're taking you away down the street and you don't know where you're going, and you can't stop it happening. we were lucky, we didn't really have any sort of physical blows laid on us. >> reporter: yeah. >> there was one time when the cameraman did get beaten up. >> so hosni mubarak, are people satisfied with the way things are now? >> some are, some aren't. some are saying give time. these are some of the leaders in the revolution, too, give time for the army to create the space to have the elections.

let's trust them on this and others are saying, look, the army is part of the institution here. we need them to take more steps and take these steps more quickly. essentially, we don't trust them. it seems at the moment that the weight is with the people saying, let the process play out. and in reality, if there's going to be a steady transition to democracy, perhaps taking it a slightly slower pace will be better. but that's not satisfactory for everyone. they're afraid of the old days when they say we'll do it and then they don't. >> reporter: but you think about the way that they've lived there. building a democracy is not going to happen overnight. you may have a revolution, you can have a coup, you can have an uprising, but building a democracy does not happen. >> everyone wants to go vote for the guy they like but who do they like, can they trust them, and which political party and who are his allies and what's he going to stand for. so all of a sudden these questions pop to the forefront because you haven't had to ask them for. there's been one choice and it's been the leadership pretty much. >> if we can jump forward to libya, the allied coalition get

involv involved. you're standing there, you're on a balcony and i can tell you probably had not had much sleep and you said, don, they're starting the bombing, and you can hear it in the background and i'm talking to you and there's a delay and we're stepping on each other. what's that moment like? >> it's a pretty incredible moment because you sort of know that it was going to come but you don't know how it's going to be and how it's going to play out. so you're aware of the immediacy of what's happening. how many bombs are dropping, where's the anti-aircraft gunfire coming, how long is it going to go on for. are we in danger here? we're probably not because this building isn't a target. those are immediate things. then you're thinking, okay, what is the population's reaction going to be? because there are people here that are going to be angry by it. is gadhafi going to enable these people and say, why don't you storm the hotel where all these journalists we've been talking about on state television, us, foreign journalists, why don't you storm the hotel and show them how angry you feel.

or is gadhafi going to take the line of, everyone sit tight. we can weather through this. so you're kind i have wondering how it's going to play out. and that night in the early hours of the morning there was a protester came into the hotel and security guards wouldn't let us out, were letting people come in and protest in the middle of the hotel. it's worrying, because really that was the biggest threat to us there. an angry mob that's uncontrolled and unrestrained. >> our nic robertson. okay, so listen. these are just pieces of the camera. this really is a sort of symbol of the danger and what those journalists face over there. you've heard nic what he said about the risks. the woman who ignited a clash in which these pieces of camera were a casualty there, coming up next. i can my own homemade jam, apricot. and i really love my bank's raise your rate cd. i'm sorry, did you say you'd love a pay raise asap ? uh, actually, i said i love my bank's raise your rate cd.

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you just heard our nic robertson talk about the risks of covering the uprisings in the middle east among highly charged and emotional crowds. this is the camera he and his photographer were carrying during one story. this was all broken apart by gadhafi's henchmen when someone, a woman, burst into the hotel and said she had been roughed up by gadhafi forces and raped. and in my conversation with nic robertson, he recounts the event that led up to that altercation. but first, the night coalition

forces launched their first airstrikes against gadhafi, nic covered those moments live on this show. you were among the first, if not the first, to report on the airstrikes and to bring that to the american public. live. >> that's our job. i mean, i'd gone to bed and i heard the anti-aircraft gunfire start and the cameraman was in another room. >> who's your photographer again? >> haleil abdullah. >> he did a great job. >> he was incredible. he speaks arabic, he's got an excellent editorial head on his shoulders. a great guy, a great asset. he was in his room setting up, he heard this, he got the camera out and he was setting up to go live with our transmission equipment to do that. i was in my room and i could hear it. i remembered back to 2003 in baghdad hearing are the first bombs coming in then, and

calling through to the international desk to get the story on the air. and i was -- my cell phones were dead because the government cut those services off. i was trying to use the hotel phone, and then i realized i still had internet in my room so i could skype. so i was connecting here to atlanta through skype. got put through to the show, and then i think you were saying, well, let us hear what's going on and i think by that stage i'd opened my balcony doors, i'd taken my laptop on the balcony because it was wireless internet, so my computer was open and you could hear the noise of everything going on. then i realized, you were saying wait a minute, wait a minute, live pictures coming in and that made me realize, haleil's got his camera up and running. let me get there. give me a minute to move. i put my shirt on and raced down the hall. that's the first time i've relived that moment. >> that moment has replayed, it's all over the internet, and

we said it was perhaps one of the most dramatic moments of the conflict. imam al abattie goes into the hotel and causes quite a raucous, quite a stir around the world. >> and, really, because if she'd been allowed to speak to the journalists, probably we would have heard her story and it would have made headlines, but it wouldn't have made headlines in the way that it did, because the government enforcers came in, took her away. hotel staff pulled a knife on her, a bag was put over her head, she was taken away. this just told everyone, everything they feared about the regime, that it was there, that it was stifling the voice of decent. this was all happening if you spoke up against the government. this is what everyone thought and feared and here it was playing out in front of our eyes. >> was it a decision on her part to go to that hotel and do it that way and not just grant an interview? she knew jurnlt journalists are

staying there, she knew what she was doing. >> government officials say why didn't she go to the police station? of course she wasn't going to the police station because the check point she says raped her. i realized when i met her two weeks later this is a very strong lady. she's full of passion, she believes in what she's doing, and she's not going to be put down. i mean, i saw her talking face to face with one of gadhafi's sons and answering back to him. most people would not do that. >> where does that come from on her part? >> she's trained as a lawyer, she's clearly come from a family where women are, you know, enabled. some women in the muslim culture are not given such a strong voice in a family, but clearly she had in her family, and she felt empowered to speak. >> does she represent in that part of the world the sort of, the fear as we said, about egypt, that barrier slowly being broken down, that people feel

they can come forward and talk? >> she'd lost everything. she'd been violated, she lost her dignity, her honor, her family had lost their honor. i mean, this is a very conservative muslim society that's still very tribal. a woman can be killed for that easily and it wouldn't be her fault. she would just be killed because she has brought dishonor on the family. that's how it would be viewed. so i think that she in some ways is sort of an exception because she was willing to stand up. but it was because she'd lost everything. she had nothing else to lose. she could, you know, she was strong enough character, but there was no going back for her. whatever she did it wasn't going to get any worse. >> it's interesting. she cared so much that she didn't care anymore, right? >> exactly. >> is she going to be okay? >> we don't know. she's still -- she's still in tripoli. she can't leave the city. she still faces people calling her names, taking her to the police when she's out on the police. the police can't do anything, they don't have charges outstanding against her.

is she going to get her case heard in court and bring these alleged rapists to trial? it seems unlikely. there are some in the government that say that should happen. others are saying that she should be allowed to leave and go and join her family. but she's become essentially i think a pawn in a much bigger political military game that's being played out now, and she's suffering for it. >> americans would say, why doesn't she leave? why doesn't she come to america? she would have a safe haven here. why doesn't she go to another country with safe haven? >> she did, she got to the border and was turned around. when you drive through the border in tripoli you go through 20, 30, 40 check points. i lost count and i was trying to count. i lost count of how many check points you go through. not only do they check your passport but they check you have travel documents and you're authorized to drive through the border. she just wouldn't get there without government permission. >> one bombing target in tripoli ignited a war of words between cnn and fox news.

you'll hear what happened and how nic robertson fought back against what he said were flat out lies by fox. just ahead. it flows with clean water. it makes its skyline greener and its population healthier. all to become the kind of city people want to live and work in. somewhere in america, we've already answered some of the nation's toughest questions. and the over sixty thousand people of siemens are ready to do it again. siemens. answers.

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listen, as nic robertson

pushes back hard against a competitor who falsely accused him of being used by the gadhafi regime as a human shield after moammar gadhafi's compound was bombed by nato forces. >> for them to say and call this -- to say they didn't go and for them to say this was government propaganda to hold us there as human shields when they didn't even leave the hotel -- the correspondent didn't go see for himself is ridiculous. >> let's talk about going inside gadhafis's compound. that caused a bit of a spark, didn't it? >> it did. >> there was controversy. the whole fox thing. you were all over with the fox news thing. >> i don't like distracting from the story we are doing. we're journalists and shouldn't be a part of the story. i felt at that moment in time fox crossed the line, lied about the situation, maybe unwittingly but they lied about what happened. i felt they should be called out

on that. i didn't want to talk about it again afterwards and i think we are much better moving on. >> and you moved on. you said your piece and moved n on. so you think it's what? >> i think we laid a marker down at that point that they need to get their facts right. it's that simple. and the rest of us will carry on and do good journalism. >> end of story. let's talk about going inside the compound. what's that like? do they round you up? what happened. >> they have a p.a. system in the hotel. it just got to be around 2:00 in the morning for a press conference. this time i think it was 11:30 at night and they said, the bus will take you somewhere to see something. we didn't me the where we were going or what we would see but we heard bombs falling that

sounded like the compound area. we were guessing that's where we were going but even the people on the bus didn't seem to know. there was so much traffic on the road that night because everyone that was a gadhafi supporter was out on the streets hooting horns, waving flags, showing support for gadhafi and defiance in the face of the bombing which is a spectacle to see. it's amazing. >> you're not naive. you know the possibilities that there could be a bombing or strike while you're there. you get that. >> yeah. i was in iraq in 2003. we know what governments will try and do and we know the dangers you can be in from air strikes. >> but you're there to get the story so you went to see. >> we went to see. they took us into the compound. we had been there before. we went through several layers of security. they took us to the building and even before we got to the building we didn't know what we were going to see. we got in, walked up to the

building and saw, okay, this looks like it's been struck by missiles. ten minutes later maybe after we were taking pictures a government spokesman comes up, standing by the rubble. we did an interview with him. after ten minutes or so they took us to gadhafi's tent which was close to the building that was hit. we had a couple of minutes there by the tent, which they wanted to show us basically this is how close it was to gadhafi's famous tent. then that was it. we were taken away. >> as you go in, tell us what we are seeing in the video that you sent back that you and your cameraman are doing. >> we didn't start rolling until we got right up on the building itself. it's dark and there are a lot of people standing in front of it. the only lighting is the lighting from the camera light. so there is a small light. you're not getting an overall picture, but you can see the building has collapsed. the front part and the roof collapsed so it's at an angle.

>> how big? >> four stories high, heavy concrete. you can see puncture holes in the roof and the roof collapsed down two, three stories like this. there is a lower level that doesn't have a lot of destruction. this end isn't heavily destroyed. there were so many people crowded around the front section i said, let's go inside the right hand end of the building. we did walk and talks there with the minimal destruction inside the building. >> as you're walking through people are looking at you, actually showing you some of the equipment they believe -- >> that's right. on the left-hand side of the building i called over the wall and people were passing out pieces of still-hot -- what seemed to be missile fragments. we could look at the serial numbers and examine them in daylight. it was clear they were parts of what seemed to be a cruise missile.

>> was there nefarious behavior on the part of gadhafi and the militia inside? was there a war effort being generated from there? >> command and control was how the pentagon later described what the building may have been. it wasn't possible to see that. if you imagine a building in three parts, a center and two end parts, the end parts were relatively undamaged and the center was completely collapsed which showed me that these were precision munitions fired accurately but designed to have low collateral damage. i have seen huge craters blown in the ground before. this wasn't that type of bomb. it seemed to be more of a message but it did leave the building intact. the rest of the building didn't appear to have what i would expect from command and control which would at least be monitors of some kind. phone lines, wires, cables. there wasn't a complex array of antennas on the roof. journalists who were there present at the time had been to

the building several days earlier because they were used as a glorified tea house or waiting room to meet gadhafi in the tent nearby. so it appeared to us to be what these other journalists thought it was which was just a holding room where vips would wait before they would meet gadhafi. it seemed to me on the ground at the time, and analyzing it subsequently, a message -- a very personal, direct message to gadhafi. we've got precision weapons. if we see you, we might be able to take you out. >> next, a st. louis tornado. we have information about efforts to restore flights to the airport. a couple decades ago, we didn't even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleanly burning natural gas. this deposits can provide us with fuel for a hundred years, providing energy security and economic growth

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