good evening and happy 4th of july. this should have been one of the busiest years in the gulf right now but the disaster on the gulf is keeping some tourists away, whether it's washing up on the beaches or not. now we're hearing that tar balls could start turning up on beaches in the florida keys by the ends of summer. this weekend, lisa jackson, epa chief, visits the gulf coast to monitor the agency's response to the crisis. allen is down there and he's standing by. you got a bird's eye view of the disaster earlier. what did you see? >> exactly, don. we saw that some of the island's off the coast of louisiana and mississippi are now surrounded by a light sheen of oil. the winds are supposed to turn to the south tomorrow and the coast guard fears that more oil is headed towards those islands, particularly the islands off of louisiana. further out, in the gulf, you see ribbons and ribbons of brown oil sitting there and right at the gusher, huge puddles, brown puddles. and the frustrating part is, there's virtually nothing that the government has been able to do about all this since wednesday. the wave heights, they've been too high. well over four feet and that's too high to do any skimming. we were on board with paul zumcoff, rear admiral in charge of the clean-up operations and he shiered his frustration with us. >> we do take it personally. it's portrayed as mission failure any time oil washes ashore. not just with this spill but with any spill. and certainly, the damage it does to the environment. so that's the frustrating part. >> the admiral said the weather you cannot defeat, don? >> allan, what other resources are there if any at all? >> they have a lot of resources on the way. the admiral told us first of all, over the next two weeks he'll have 300 additional skimmers coming on. 550 skimmers already are in the gulf, ready to get back to work, as soon as the waves calm down. also, they are testing the coast guard is testing a supertanker to see if the supertanker can actually do skimming. and they're going to be using barges. there's a barge that's going to be connected to 1500 feet of boom and then two skimmers will be airporting off the barge. so they are trying to use any resource possible. they need more skimmers and they need to pick up the oil off the water, get it tucked away and cleaned up. don? >> thank you, allan. some beaches in the gulf leak eerily deserted like those those in pensacola. the oily mess is coating the stand way faster than clean-up crews can mop it up. as john tells us, some are writing the summer off as a total loss. >> reporter: clean-up crews pore over pensacola's beaches. oil stains and tar balls cover what was just a few weeks ago, pristine, white sand. front loaders literally dump pensacola's economy into waiting trucks. virtually empty beaches are under what the county health department is called "oil impact notice" warning people to stay out of the water and off the oil-stained sand indefinitely. >> does it worry you that the closure of these beaches might not just be for days? it could be weeks? if not longer? >> yeah. we've lost this summer. summer of 2010 is gone for pensacola beach the way i see it. our season is from memorial day to labor day. we're here the week before july 4th and nobody is here. >> disgusting with anger, and for councilman, larry johnson, this show of clean-up force is too little, too late. day after day, the tides shift to the sand and much of the tar and oil is buried before the crews get to it. the oil appears beneath the surface like the rings of a tree that tell its age. >> john, this has been covered up from the night before. how much inches down is this? >> four or five inches down rer pensacola is home to greg hall and diana stephens. >> this kills me and my soul that the gulf of mexico is being destroyed. >> reporter: every day they walk the beach taking pictures. i reporters for cnn, they document what they see. not pretty. greg puts his hands in the water. when he takes them out, tar. diana holds a clean fish tank filter. not for long. >> this is it. just holding it in for a few seconds, you can see you get tar balls. this is the sheen, the foamy orange stuff you see out in the surf. >> reporter: nearly every day more oil washes ashore, blanking with it waves of overwhelming frustration felt by most people here. >> you can't get everything. it's kind of like cleaning the beach with a toothpick. it's an impossible task. >> reporter: and impossible task with no end in sight. cnn, pensacola, florida. let's go overseas. vice president joe biden and his unusual holiday destination this weekend. it is baghdad. biden arrived today with his wife, jill. he says he's optimistic that rooirk politicians set aside their differences and form a government soon. it's been four months since the iraqi voters went to the polls and some iraqis worry the insurgents will exploit the power vacuum to strike. the u.s. is scheduled to end its time there. some would stay behind to train and hunt. in afghanistan, general david petraeus wastes no time getting down to business. he's already met with afghan president, hamid karzai. and at a 4th of july ceremony, he spoke to civilian and military leaders. his message was simple. the way forward depends on working together. >> i'm reminded that this is an effort in which we must achieve unity of effort and common purpose. civilian and military, afghan and international. we are part of one team with one mission. in this important endeavor, cooperation is not optional. this is a tough mission. there is nothing easy about it. >> petraeus is replacing general stanley mcchrystal in afghanistan. mcchrystal's remarks in a "rolling stone" article led to new rules from the pentagon guiding the military's action with reporters. republican national committee chairman, michael steele spends his holiday weekend on damage control. he's calling gop lawmakers and party officials to explain some controversial remarks he made about the war in afghanistan. it is led to calls for his resignation from well-known conservatives like liz cheney and weekly standard editor, william crystal. here's what he said to a fundraiser on thursday in connecticut. >> keep in mind again, this is a war of obama's choosing. this is not something the united states actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. >> would you say that was part of what steel said at a fundraiser there. of course, the afghanistan war started under president bush after 9/11 with a lot of public support at the time. it would take a 2/3 vote in the rnc to get rid of him. president obama is renewing his call for congress to pass an immigration reform bill. he reached out to republican this is week saying a bipartisan solution is the only way forward. the president also criticized arizona's new immigration law and the state's governor pushed right back. >> it's not just that the law arizona passed is divisive. it has fanned the flames of an already-contentious debate. laws like arizona's put hiej pressures on local law enforcement tone force rules that are enenforceable. today we have more boots on the ground near the southwest border than at any time in our history. let me repeat that. we have more boots on the ground on the southwest border than at any time in our history. >> and i say, to the president of the united states, do your job! secure our borders. as for me, i'm not surrendering. i'll continue to do everything in my power to protect this state. no apologies, no quitting, no retreat. and i'll fell you something else. we're not going to pick up the tab either. and straight ahead here on cnn, a look at the oil spill that you haven't seen from bp or the government. >> at 23 miles out, we encountered the heaviest sheens yet. some of it looks as if a child had sprayed silly string all over the surface but there's nothing silly about these strings of oil that float on the gulf of mexico today. >> i'll talk with environmentalist who says he has pictures bp doesn't want you to see. don't just sit there, be part of our conversation. go to cnn on facebook. i want to hear from you. here's your nametag, sir... annnd for you. gecko: uh... no i'll be ok, thanks. woman: but how will people know who you are? gecko: uh... you mean "the gecko"? woman: here lemme help you. gecko: really it's... really it's fine, (laughs) yeeaahhhh. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. man: be kind to your eyes with transitions lenses. transitions adapt to changing light so you see your whole day comfortably and conveniently while protecting your eyes from the sun. ask your eyecare professional which transitions lenses are right for you. woman: discover the protection, comfort and convenience of transitions lenses for the entire family at transitions.com/walmart or visit a walmart vision center today. we invited bp executives to come on the program tonight and they said "no." >> we've got to live with this for the rest of our lives. right now i want to show you some video of the gulf oil spill shot by an environmentalist. and he says he ignored directives not to fly over this area. it's an area where clean-up crews are working and large amounts of oil are visible right on top of the water. let me play for you a portion of what he shot and then i want you to listen to how he carbon dioxides the ecological disaster he's witnessing. >> from the size of these fires it seems as though we're not only trying to kill everything in the gulf of mexico, but everything that flies over it as well. this toxic environment can't be good for the birds that fly over the gulf. and certainly, nothing can live in these rainbows of death that cover the entire horizon. then we found this guy. a sperm well, swimming in the oil had just breached. along his back, we could see red crude on his back as if he was bested for broiling. then this pod of codolphins. some were raising their head looking at the fires wondering, why is my world burning down around me? why would humans do this to me? as we approach chandelier island, i want surprised to see patching of oil along the beach. given the difficulty in putting boom out and making it stay along these islands, it's going to be impossible to try to keep the oil out. i shutter to think what is going to happen. all the oil flown over will be alongside this. the marshes and all the boom you see now will be piled up on the shore covered with oil. >> and the man's voice you heard, jeanne whaten joins us from gulf shores, alabama. my first question to you, do you think that we, as americans, that we're underestimating this spill? >> yeah, i think it's been underestimated from the very beginning. we were told by our inlet keep her alaska, whatever they were telling us, multiply it by five and that's been pretty much the case all along. >> why do you think this is happening? why is it being underestimated? >> well, nobody ever wants to fully accept responsibility for a major disaster like this. the more it's downplayed, the less of an immediate yeah hit or statement that the company has to clean up later. >> so, listen, you were -- you said that you disobeyed orders not to flow over that area. why do you think those orders -- did you get in trouble for that, first of all? >> well, let me explain something. we didn't disobey any orders to fly over there. we didn't defy anybody. what we did, though, is we exercised our right and we filed a flight plan with the federal aviation administration to go out there and do what we did. bp doesn't control the airspace. the federal aviation administration does that. i represent a group here on the coast, "save our gulf" a conglomeration of seven programs that will be impacted by this. and we need to know what's going on in our watersheds. we need this information. >> but can be there was a no-fly rule over that and you said you exercises that and i understand that and i'm not fighting you on that. why do you think they have this no-fly zone or no-fly area there over the area, especially where the explosion happened? >> well i don't think they want the american people to know just how bad this is. this is much worse, if you've flown out there and seen this, it is much worse than you can get in a two-second sound byte on any of the for-profit media stations. this is huge and people need to know that. they need to acknowledge that this is, by far, the largest disaster we've ever had to face and the transparency is absolutely necessary for us to o to inform the public. defying us the right to go out there -- the water keepers in particular, the "save our gulf" group that's working, so hard to help our community, we need this information. we should not be denied the right to the kind of documentation that i've been able to do, simply by standing up for my rights. >> were you surprised by what you found? you were not looking to find anything. you just went up to -- eye just went up there out of curiosity to take a look. just to see. were you surprised by what you found? >> yeah, i was extremely surprised. the "save our gulf" group called me here to help document this thing so we went out the first light to see what it looked like. we were not anticipating find k any criminal acts. that's not what we're about. we're not trying to put blame. we're trying to document what's going on. when i realized the scope and magnitude of this, i was shocked beyond belief and for the first time in ni environmental career, i actually used the word "hopeless." it is hopeless to think we can stop this from coming onshore and decimating our community. >> mr. wathen, we thank you very much. obviously everything is related. good to see there's some people on the beach behind you. probably not as many people that would have been down there barring this disaster. we thank you for your reporting here on cnn. take care of yourself. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. a judge says three accused russian spies are a danger to the community and order them held without bail. what about their kids? >> when you're a spy the focus of your life is to be a spy. to accomplish the operation. to accomplish your objectives. when you're a parent, you're supposed to take care of your kids. you're supposed to put them first in your lives and a spy can't do that. >> plus, the manhunt is over. an accuse cop killer in tampa. for my arthritis, i use capzasin quick relief gel. [ male announcer ] starts working on contact and at the nerve level to block pain for hours. capzasin. takes the pain out of arthritis. a look now at your top stories. thousands attended the funeral today for two police officers in tampa, florida. they were shot to death tuesday during an early-morning traffic stop. the murders triggered an intense manhunt that ended yesterday when suspect donte morris surrendered to tampa police. they called him a cold-blooded killer adding, thank god he's behind bars. >> a russian supply craft that overshot the international space station will make a second docking attempt tomorrow afternoon. the unmanned space ship failed to dock on friday flying two miles past the space shuttle. nasa says the six astronauts and cosmonauts on board were never in danger. the ship is carrying supplies including, food, water, oxygen and scientific equipment. a bizarre twist in the russian spy ring investigation. the four russian couples accused of working deep cover had seven children among them. our brian todd tells us, they could be left in limbo as the investigation unfolds. >> reporter: emerging from what authorities say was a deep-cover operation, three accused russian spies appear in federal court. the judge calls each a danger to the community and a flight risk. orders them held without bail. they include a married calm, patricia mills and michael zatolli one who have separate lawyers and don't make eye contact with each other in court. mills' face showing signs of strain. authorities say she's trying to get their two children, ages 1 and 3, sent to russia to be with her relatives. there are at least seven children among four married couple in this spy operation. children struggling with not only sudden separation from their parents -- but also, the accusation that their parents were not who they said they were. the government's complaint says illegals, spies who don't have diplomatic cover. sometimes they work under the guise of married couples and will often have children together to further deepen an illegal's legend. a asked this child protection advocate about that. >> the children might question if their parents were ever even married. whether their parents felt an emotional bond with each other they could be spies set up to do all of this. how bizarre is that? >> i don't have any precedent on which to base an opinion so i think that it is certainly something that i've not experienced before. but -- and i can't imagine any of kids in this situation are going to feel good about this situation. >> the kids may not have known their parents' names until now. the prosecutors say the suspect, patricia mills had a different name and her apparent husband, he gave his real name. i spoke about that balancing act with eric o'neal, a former fbi operative who helped to catch russia's mole. how hard is it to be a spy when you have kids of any age? >> it has to be incredibly difficult. when you're a spy the focus of your life is to be awe spy. to accomplish the operation. to accomplish your objectives. when you're a parent, you're supposed to take care of your kids. you're supposed to put them first in your life. and a spy can't do that. >> experts say despite the bizarre nature of the case, the children of all of the suspects will very likely be handed over to whomever the parents choose for guardianship, unless there's evidence of abuse on the part of the parents. brian todd, cnn. >> these are recognized holidays but there could be a change in new york city. a group wants the schools to recognize muslim holidays. it can happen anytime. an everyday moment can turn romantic at a moment's notice. and when it does, men with erectile dysfunction can be more confident in their ability to be ready with cialis for daily use. cialis for daily use is a clinically proven, low-dose tablet you take every day, so you can be ready anytime the moment's right for you and your partner. tell your doctor about your medical condition and all medications and ask if you're healthy enough for sexual activity. don't take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. don't drink alcohol in excess with cialis. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed back ache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than 4 hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, stop taking cialis and call your doctor right away. ask your doctor if cialis for daily use is right for you. for a 30-tablet free trial offer, go to cialis.com. in the big apple where i am there's a culture clash going on in the classrooms. a group is pushing for new york city schools to recognize muslim holidays but the mayor, michael bloomberg already shot the idea down. >> everybody would like to be recognized but the truth of the matter is, we need more school days, not less and i've said this a number of times, we're not going to add any more days. our kids need more education, not less. >> so however, supporters of muslim school holidays are not giving up. the author of this post, on our cnn's "belief" blog he's among them. he's a muslim chaplain for new york city police department and he joins us live in new york. good to have you here. you heard the mayor. he has a point. he said the kieds need to be in school but people of other religions whose faith aren't part of the sc