Video of ex-astronaut Nowak surfaces

ORLANDO, Fla. — In the hours after police say she confronted a rival, former astronaut Lisa Nowak defends her actions and asks several times to make a phone call as she paces, sits and tries to listen at the door of her holding cell.

Toward the end of the three-hour video released Friday, Nowak says she just wanted to talk to Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman at the Orlando International Airport. In tears, she says she wasn't planning anything bad.

During a conversation with a law-enforcement official, she is told "none of this is going to leave the room." The official later is called out of the cell and returns to say he can listen, and Nowak repeats her defense of her meeting with Shipman, who was dating Nowak's love interest.

In the video, Nowak also can be heard declining several offers from law-enforcement officials to make a call, apparently to her husband, for her. Otherwise, they say, she will have to wait until she gets to the Orange County Jail, where she would be allowed to make the call.

The video was taken after Nowak was arrested in February and placed in a holding cell at the airport.

Nowak, who faces trial next month, is accused of driving from Houston to Orlando to confront Shipman, who was dating Bill Oefelein, then also an astronaut. Nowak was charged with attempted kidnapping and burglary with assault, which is punishable by up to life in prison, and misdemeanor battery.

In March, NASA fired Nowak, who remains on active duty with the U.S. Navy.

In a related development, Nowak's lawyer has asked a judge to free her from the ankle bracelet that monitors her every move, according to court records.

Nowak's attorney Donald Lykkebak wrote in a motion filed Thursday that Nowak cannot go swimming while wearing the bracelet, lace up her military boots, run for exercise or board an airplane without prior arrangements to pass through security.

Lykkebak also complained that the company that provided and monitors the bracelet, Court Programs, has violated Nowak's privacy by tracing her movements for a reporter.

The airport video, which was released after a public-record request from the media, contains about three hours of Nowak in the airport cell. During much of it, Nowak paces close to the cell door, stopping occasionally to listen, once getting on the floor with her ear to the opening at the door's bottom.

Several times, she knocks on the cell door and talks with law-enforcement officials about how long it will be before she goes to jail and whether she can make a phone call right away. At first, she is told she will have to wait to get to jail, but officials later offer to call someone for her.

At one point, she seems to mention feeling sick and is asked when she last ate. She is given an energy bar and an apple, which is when she and the unidentified law-enforcement official sit for an extended conversation.

The video was shot from a camera in the ceiling of the cell. It is not clear if Nowak realized she was being recorded.

Material from Reuters is included in this report.