protesters security organizations that s here, yesterday found 150 people whose i.d.s showed that they were with the police, plain clothed, but with the police, and they believe they ve come here to stir trouble against the protesters. today very upbeat and determined atmosphere. people are going to stay in this square at the heart of cairo until president mubarak, who has been in power for 29 1/2 years, steps down from power. all right. ben wedeman for us this morning, you ve been out there among the crowds and very different picture today, just from yesterday and the day before, when we saw so much violence taking place, thank you, ben. also coming up next on this american morning college is not for everybody. it may not be for your child. so says a harvard study that says we re putting too much emphasis on college prep.
ambassador, that you see that would cause hosni mubarak to back off this strategy? yes. i think you re also seeing a replication of what the iranian government did after the elections by sending the dread besiege into the streets. this is the equivalent of the egyptian police being plain clothed and going into the streets to act on behalf of the government. what mubarak did was create a fatal error by not announcing his intention to resign before the presidential elections in september that is scheduled to occur and turn this over to a transitional government even to his vice president. it s only going to inflame the situation further. and so i think what is happening here is dan has said that this is the government s strategy. but it s going to be a strategy that in my judgment is going to fail. none of the opposition is going to abide by being thrown off the streets or at least to go underground for a long period of time, merely because the plain clothed police have taken over
calling for, so i m not a political analyst, but i can say that there are (inaudible) that are going to go naturally stem from the the situation. harris: lauren, you mentioned some equipment was taken away from plain clothed police officers and able to gather the story there. geraldo: sure. harris: we re looking forward to seeing more of your pictures and videos before the internet was down. hopefully, yeah, maybe you can talk to mubarak and we ll have the internet up and running and i ll be able to tweet. harris: lauren bohn joining us by phone from the square where we ve seen so much of the action and danger that happened early on and painting a different picture tonight, but still a lot of people in the streets at a very late hour. we re about to dawn a new day there. lauren, stay safe, thank you very much. thank you, please stay tuned, thank you. harris: all right for your home spun journalism, thank you. well, an update now on a very tough story to take in. a doubl
least. the internet has been cut. cell phones have been cut. you can t send an sms and the only way to communicate is via land line. at about 1:00 local time the crew, mary rogers, team evans and i, were right off to haaria square when we were between a large group of protesters and a large group of policemen, plain clothed and otherwise, and they sort of about 12 of them gathered around us, threatening to beat us with their clubs and sticks, and, you know, they wanted to take the camera. we struggled with them to keep the camera, but they broke it. they broke it and then just took it away. i have spoken with the head of the state information service who is a senior egyptian official, and i said do you have any comment upon the repeated incidents that we know of of journalists being attacked and their equipment broken by police, and he said no comment.
the public television station, i suspect, is controlled by the government. they are saying that there are exceptions and extends to journalists like you and ambulances and firefighters. does that make you feel safer about roaming the streets down there? i understand you had trouble earlier. i wouldn t feel safe at all on the street at the moment. earlier today we were attacked by plain-clothed policemen who broke and stole our camera. one of our string gers who shoot for us sometimes, she got hit by several rubber bullets fired by the police. other journalists have been attacked by plain clothed and uniformed police. the problem is not the protesters. the protesters from the very beginning have been welcoming, happy, in fact, they they have been cheering when they see that we are from cnn. it s the government. you can sense that the police