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http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/20/acd.01.html

Nagin Interview with Anderson Cooper

So, what did Mayor Ray Nagin mean when he called New Orleans a "chocolate city"? Tonight, you will hear his explanation. I talked to the mayor about the present and the future of this great city.

Also tonight, the new victims of Katrina -- a look at the alarming suicide rate in New Orleans. Why are some of the most respected men and women here taking their own lives? What, if anything, does it have to do with Katrina?

From New Orleans and around the world tonight, you're watching 360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And welcome back to 360.

As you can see, we are kind of surrounded by police cars right here. There seems to be some sort of an incident on Bourbon Street and -- and Contay (ph). There's probably half-a-dozen police vehicles. We saw a number of officers running. And they have cordoned off an area outside the Saint Anne Hotel -- police officials going in and out of the hotel.

We're not sure exactly what's going on. As you can tell here on Bourbon Street, probably about the only part of New Orleans of which this can be said, life returning to normal. Elsewhere, of course, it's not. The bars are open. The music is playing. And, well, the police are out in force, as you can see.

We have said it before, but it remains true. Even almost five months after Katrina, you can't really imagine just how daunting the task of rebuilding New Orleans is. You know, it feels like a lot of the country has just moved on. And when you go out just -- you know, you -- you go a few miles from where Bourbon Street is, and -- I mean, it's all the same.

Everyone's possessions are still just laying all out in the street. The homes haven't been rebuilt. The debris is everywhere. It is -- it is just -- it's an eye-opening experience. The disaster is still continuing here in New Orleans, even if much of the country doesn't seem to be paying much of attention to it.

Right now, the challenge of rebuilding New Orleans falls to Mayor Ray Nagin. That, of course, could soon change. He's up for reelection coming up in a few months. And it's fair to say he has taken a pretty good beating from Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Before coming mayor, Ray Nagin never held an elected office. His tendency to speak bluntly, some might even say recklessly, has made him a target at times, most recently this past Monday, when he talked about New Orleans as a "chocolate city" and about God seeking, well, to punish America.

We talked about that -- about that and much more with Mayor Ray Nagin today.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Wherever New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin goes, he's the center of attention and often the center of controversy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How you doing, Ray?

COOPER: We met with the mayor in Lakeview, just one of several neighborhoods in New Orleans still in ruins.

(on camera): Do you get used to seeing your city like this?

RAY NAGIN (D), MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS: I -- you know, I don't ever get used to it. I really -- it's depressing. I mean, when you come out here and you see it, you know, it's pretty depressing, because you think, after -- after four months, you know, you wouldn't see as much.

COOPER (voice-over): It's been a difficult week for Ray Nagin. On Monday, comments he made at a Martin Luther King rally stunned many in the city and around the country.

NAGIN: This city will be chocolate at the end of the day. This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be.

COOPER: Four days later, the mayor is still doing damage control.

(on camera): So, I got to ask you about it.

NAGIN: Yes, go ahead.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGIN: I would be surprised if you wouldn't.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: All right.

"Chocolate city." What were you thinking?

NAGIN: You know what, man?

You know, I have thought about this and thought about this a long time. You know, I'm African-American, OK? Just to kind of put that out there. It's part of our culture to talk about chocolate cities.

You know, D.C. was the first chocolate city that ever came on the map, Newark, Detroit, New Orleans. So, for me, the vernacular of saying chocolate city was not a big deal. I have used that in speeches for three-and-a-half years now. And I have even used it on Capitol Hill. So, I didn't really think it was a big deal.

Where I crossed the line was bringing God into the whole, you know, discussion.

COOPER: Do you think it hurt or will hurt relief efforts, perception of you, perception of the leadership here in Louisiana, especially in Washington?

NAGIN: Let me tell you what -- what is happening. As far as Washington is concerned, I don't think so.

And I -- and I will tell you why. The day after the event, I talked to Secretary of HUD Alphonso Jackson. We talked about it. He kind of kidded about it, because he made a comment in Houston...

COOPER: Right.

NAGIN: ... about the city not being black again.

COOPER: I remember.

NAGIN: So, he got admonished by the president and all that. So, he was fine.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: There's a lot people in Washington who have said things they would like to take back.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGIN: I said -- I said, does the president care about this or does he have any issues? He said no.

The secretary of commerce was in yesterday. Talked to him about it. He said, man, you're fine. We are going to continue to help us. The president has everybody focused on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. So, I'm not seeing any evidence of anything.

As a matter of fact, this is kind of -- you know, there's lot of people upset about the comments. Don't get me wrong. And I'm not trying to minimize that. But it's grown into this whole kind of whimsical, you know, chocolate city with bars and T-shirts.

COOPER: Yes. They're making T-shirts on Bourbon Street, Willy Wonka bars, T-shirts.

NAGIN: Yes. I mean, so it has kind of turned. You know, if I had to do it over again, I would do it differently.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: ... want to get into that.

Well, that's not all Mayor Nagin and I talked about. Coming up, the biggest mistakes he says he made during the Katrina crisis in his own words, the first elected politician to actually come out and admit specific mistakes he made. Hear what he has to say coming up.

Also, disaster still unfolding in New Orleans along the Mississippi. Nature's speed bumps are disappearing. We will explain coming up on 360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Don't you wish politicians would just admit the mistakes they made? Well, tonight, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans does just that -- next on 360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We're live from Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

What you see behind me and all around me is just a -- a snapshot of this city, not a very accurate one. To get a true picture, an accurate picture of what the city and the people who live here are facing, you have to travel beyond the corner.

Today, I went with Mayor Ray Nagin to a neighborhood northwest of here. It borders Lake Pontchartrain. That's about the only thing that hasn't changed there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NAGIN: And, sure, they didn't like it.

COOPER (voice-over): We met with Mayor Ray Nagin in the devastated neighborhood of Lakeview, where the streets are still lined with personal possessions and homes still stand as they were after the storm.

(on camera): I mean, when you see a house like this, what -- what do you think?

NAGIN: Well, I think, you know, like that song, this house was a home. And now look at it. It's devastated. It's turned upside-down by the force of nature. And somebody used to live here. And -- and now they can't live here. And that's -- that's just something that's pretty amazing.

COOPER: I mean, these are like shrines, almost. You know, people put up their certain memories of better days, a little boy with his suit. These -- I guess these are his clothes.

NAGIN: Yes.

I mean, it's -- you know, people want to remember. And they want to think back to what it used to be. And it's going to be a long time before we ever get back to what it used to be.

COOPER (voice-over): Mayor Nagin has received a lot of criticism for the way he handled Hurricane Katrina. One of his critics, former FEMA Director Michael Brown, on Wednesday, talked for the first time about mistakes he himself made, saying he should have demanded the military intervene in New Orleans sooner.

I asked Mayor Nagin what he thought of Brown's admission.

NAGIN: You know, I -- I was a little surprised, but kind of expected it. You know, at some point in time, the truth needs to rule.

COOPER (on camera): The first couple weeks after Katrina, you were saying the mistake that you made was sort of being naive, in thinking that the cavalry was going to come after two days.

NAGIN: Yes.

COOPER: It's been now a couple of months. Have you -- as you have looked back and reassessed, were there other mistakes, specific things that you did you feel that...

(CROSSTALK)

NAGIN: Absolutely.

There's three things that I would do totally differently now. I wish I had talked to Max Mayfield earlier, number one.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: When was it he called it? Was it Saturday or Sunday?

NAGIN: It was a Saturday evening.

COOPER: OK.

NAGIN: And I wish I had talked to him earlier, so the possibility of a mandatory evacuation would have been done 24 hours later -- earlier.

COOPER: Max Mayfield from the National Hurricane Center.

NAGIN: National Hurricane Center.

COOPER: And he called you Saturday. And he said that that was the -- only the second time in history he has ever called a politician directly to -- to personally warn them.

NAGIN: Absolutely.

And he -- you know, I knew we had done a great job as getting people out -- as far getting people out. Eighty, 85 percent had gotten out. But, when I got that call, and he was so emphatic and so passionate, we had never -- this city had never done a mandatory evacuation in its history. I immediately called my city attorney and said, look, in the morning, I don't care what you have to do. Figure out a way for us to do this. I wish I had done that earlier.

COOPER (voice-over): It wasn't until Sunday that Mayor Nagin made the evacuation mandatory. Crucial hours had been lost. The mayor now admits his second mistake was the buses. Hundreds of school and city buses that could have been used to evacuate stranded residents were left in low-lying areas.

NAGIN: If I had to do it again, I would probably go to the school board, cut a cooperative endeavor agreement with them, move all the city-controlled buses to another section of the state, probably up north, so that they're readily available, and we will just deal with the driver issue later.

COOPER (on camera): You knew, based on the census, there were about 100,000 people who didn't have access to a vehicle.

NAGIN: We got everybody out, except for 50, which I think is kind of incredible. Fifty thousand people, at the end of the day, were in the Superdome and in the Convention Center. So, there was 50,000 people that we needed to deal with. You're right.

COOPER: OK. So, it was really -- for you, it's -- now looking back, it's the buses and it's the mandatory evacuation?

NAGIN: Right.

And the third thing is what you mentioned earlier. We always said, if the big one happened, we would get as many people to, you know, shelters of last resort and out of the city as possible. And then we would hunker down for three days, and the cavalry will arrive. I'm not going to depend upon the cavalry anymore. We're going to be as self-sufficient as possible from start to finish going forward.

COOPER: You're the only elected official up to now who has actually said that they made mistakes, that -- and actually named a -- two specific things that they have done.

Are you aware of that?

NAGIN: No.

COOPER: That -- that I asked the governor last night specific mistakes. She said she couldn't think of any. The president, of course, has said, you know, general -- general mistakes.

Why don't more politicians just -- just do what you did?

NAGIN: You know, I don't know, man.

And, you know, people ask me all the time why I do what I do.

(LAUGHTER)

NAGIN: And, sometimes, I can answer them, and, sometimes, I can't.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER (voice-over): More than four months after Katrina, there's not much in New Orleans to laugh about. Half the businesses are still closed. And unemployment is around 17 percent.

(on camera): What do you want people to know about what's happening here, about what's -- what has happened here and what -- what continues to happen here?

NAGIN: Well, it's kind of an issue of, you know, contrasting views, from the standpoint, I want America to understand, the city of New Orleans took on so much water, that 80 percent of it's flooded.

And we still have a tremendous amount of work to do. And we need tremendous amount of more help from the federal government. And it's coming slow. And we're frustrated. And I can't get people back here quick enough.

The second thing I want people to understand is that the storm spared our culturally unique sections of the city, downtown, French Quarter, uptown, Convention Center, all of that good stuff. We're in a position now to handle tourists and people visiting. And they need to come support us, so that we can stand up our economy and get back on our feet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Mayor Ray Nagin.

To rebuild New Orleans, the mayor and the city must also recover the marshlands that surround this city. It's the first line of defense against a hurricane. It may soon disappeared.

CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano has more -- Rob.

ROB MARCIANO, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Anderson, you're right.

The wetlands are disappearing. And, ironically, the main reason is the levees that are built to protect New Orleans from the Mississippi flooding. Since about 1927 -- they had a major flood then -- they have built up those levees.

Now all of the water and silt from the Mississippi has dumped deep into the Gulf of Mexico, away from those marshes. And the landscape has changed. The wetlands in Louisiana are actually disappearing. So, that's a big problem, not only for wildlife, but for humans as well. Humans in southeast Louisiana are protected by those wetlands when killer hurricanes roll in. The storm surge, the battering waves, are absorbed by those wetlands.

Coming up, we are going to talk about what can be done to stem the tide of those vanishing wetlands. It's a big-time problem, Anderson. We will see you in about 20 minutes.

COOPER: Rob, thanks for that.

Coming up, we want to remind you, we are expecting a news conference on the mine fire in West Virginia -- two missing miners. Here -- we are going to bring you that press conference live, as well as also from the governor of West Virginia.

Here in New Orleans, a deadly problem that may only be getting worse. Why are so many professionals committing suicide? And why many believe Hurricane Katrina may be to blame.

Also tonight, the long road back -- months after the hurricane, the people who have lost everything finally returning home in some places.

From Bourbon Street in New Orleans and around the world, you're watching 360.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: So many of the stories of this city after Katrina are heartbreaking, perhaps none more so than those of the people who made it through the storm and then simply could not go on. A report on that in a little bit.