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CNN Talkback Live

Telephone Psychics; Legitimate? Can Marriage Reduce Poverty? Should Governments Use Propaganda To Help War Effort?

Aired February 19, 2002 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
STEVE MALZBERG, HOST: Propaganda: what a campaign of misinformation damage U.S. credibility overseas? Find out what the office of strategic influence has in mind.

Also, the government flirts with playing Cupid, encouraging low income people to tie the knot. Are you willing to finance this romance?

And calling on Miss Cleo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Keep it real, Ms. Cleo.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALZBERG: Somebody should have predicted this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And so I wasn't concerned until I got a bill about a bill about a month later for $250.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALZBERG: Love, more and late night temptations.

Welcome to TALKBACK LIVE: America Speaks Out. I'm Steve Malzberg and I am really a radio talk show shot on WABC in New York, and a columnist for newsmax.com. Today, though, I am your guest host and let's start with the office of strategic influence -- some name, huh?

It was created after September 11, as the U.S. worried about overseas support for the war on terrorism. Its mission: friendly persuasion, and it might not be above spreading around a few lies to get the job done. Let's find out more from CNN Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr.

Barbara, welcome. Thanks for coming on.

BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi there.

MALZBERG: This story, in the "New York times," today, was it leaked and who would have leaked the story? Because, who would want the public to know that our government may lie?

STARR: Well, we don't know whether it was really leaked or this was enterprise reporting on the part of the "New York times." But clearly, some officials in the Pentagon, some in the military, certainly did want to talk about this, although nobody is willing to put their name to any of it.

Now, what you said is absolutely right. This office of strategic influence was established right after September 11, all part of the U.S. effort to get the U.S. message out to the Islamic world. The Bush Administration felt after September 11 the U.S. simply wasn't being heard.

So, what is this office really going to do? Well, senior Pentagon officials tell CNN that the job of this office will be to, quote, "influence the hearts and minds of the opposition." And what does that really mean?

Well, no one is very sure just yet. there are traditional activities, they are basically propaganda activities that the Pentagon undertakes: dropping leaflets in Afghanistan, sending radio broadcasts into Afghanistan, trying to influence the local people there. The question here is whether the Pentagon is preparing to take the next step and try and initiate a campaign, possibly, to influence foreign media abroad and whether they would, in fact, undertake deceptive messages.

Now I should emphasize, Pentagon officials tell CNN today that there is no such plan just yet. But the cold hard fact is that information operations do include classified missions, covert missions, and those can include deception. So for the record, everybody is saying no, it is not happening, there has been no decision to do that. But nobody is entirely ruling it out.

MALZBERG: Barbara Starr, thank you very much for joining us today. We appreciate it. And now let's hash it out, folks. With us here in Atlanta is CNN military analyst Major General Don Sheppard. In San Francisco, Norman Solomon, a syndicated columnist and writer on politics and the media. He is the author of "The habits of Highly Deceptive Media." And in Washington, retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Bob Maginnis is here and he is vice president for policy at the Family Research Council. Let's start with you, General: Good idea, bad idea, the government will lie to foreign nations in order to further their agenda?

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD, MILITARY ANALYST: Real bad idea, to lie intentionally through the news media to foreign nations. Information operations is part of every military campaign, am important part. Even propaganda where we try to put out our message is fair game. But intentionally lying, specially in today's Internet world through the news media, leads you down paths that you really don't want to go, Steve.

MALZBERG: Lt. Maginnis, what do you think about this -- Colonel, sorry. I'll get it straight. LT. COL. ROBERT MAGINNIS, U.S. ARMY (RET): Thank you. The president began this war, quite frankly, by saying we are going to fight it on all fronts, and that includes the information front.

Clearly, deception in battle has always been part of the history of the armed forces, and given that we are fighting this war in the shadows against an enemy, quite frankly, that does things like happened in this country on 9/11, it makes it more difficult.

You know you think about the Iraqi national Congress, and their efforts, perhaps, to go in and take over Iraq from Saddam Hussein, who by the way is trying to run his own PR campaign to persuade his neighbors that he is really not the evil man that we say that he is.

How do we help the Iraqi National Congress to go in there and change things? Perhaps we can use some disinformation. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean lies. It can mean, you know, giving them some of the information, but not all, or perhaps misleading them to do something, prematurely that will help us.

So I think we need to be careful, but also as the general indicated, we are facing, I think, really, a very different environment. The Defense Department has brought in their best legal minds to go over all of these tentative plans, as reported in the "Times" today, and tentative plans, quite frankly, in the Pentagon and I have written many of confidential reports over there that the lawyers went over, they are going to tell Mr. Rumsfeld and the president whether or not to proceed and I suspect, that if there is something illegal here, we won't even go down that path.

MALZBERG: Norman Solomon, what do you think?

NORMAN SOLOMON, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, you know, we are supposed to have a government of, by and for the people, not of by and for the military. And frankly, anybody who thinks that the Pentagon or for that matter the State Department and White House have been fonts of truthfulness in the last few decades really hasn't been paying very close attention.

I mean this entire issue can be put in a context with two words -- Tonkin Gulf. In 1964 the Gulf of Tonkin incident moved into very quickly, a resolution that was as close as anything to a declaration of war that we ever had, in terms of what happened in Vietnam.

And we know that a lot of what was reported as fact, fed by prevaricating and lying Pentagon to the U.S. media was absolutely lies. So you think of all the lives that were lost of Americans of people in Indochina, literally millions, because the disinformation, the propaganda apparatus of the U.S. government was not only aimed at purported enemies but really aimed at the American people and I think that is the crux of what this issue is. Are we going to find acceptable that the American people are targeted by Pentagon propaganda?

MALZBERG: All right. Let's go to the audience and Chris has Warren here -- Warren. WARREN: Well, I think it is important, during the time of war, if you agree that we are in a time of war, propaganda is a necessary tool of war. So, we can't say that, I mean, we don't necessarily want to lie to the world, but on the other hand, disinformation and propaganda sometimes necessary in order to win a war.

MALZBERG: All right, we go to Sam here from right here in Georgia -- Sam.

SAM: I agree with the general. Honesty is always the best policy.

MALZBERG: You don't feel that it is ever in our interests to propagandize, to stretch the truth, you don't see any circumstances under which this would be a good thing?

SAM: I must stick with my first answer: honesty.

MALZBERG: Let me go to the general quick. General, there have to be instances when this is a good thing. It is being done right now. The government has lied to us. We have to believe that. We have to know that that is the truth. It just seems that they somebody wanted to publicize this and that is what is causing this whole discussion. They could have done it without this article appearing and we wouldn't know any different.

SHEPPERD: Well, the government did lie to us in the Tonkin case as was cited here and it almost destroyed the nation. That's the kind of places that you don't want to go that this can cause. And basically, as you may or may not know, the CIA and Pentagon are specifically prohibited by law from using propaganda within the United States. Overseas propaganda is used all the time. But propaganda doesn't mean lying. It means spreading the United States' viewpoint and not trying to shape U.S. public opinion for a war effort.

MALZBERG: All right, let's take a break, let's take a break first, and later we'll find out exactly why Uncle Sam wants you to say I do. Stay there. We will be right back on TALKBACK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALZBERG: All right, welcome back to TALKBACK LIVE. We are talking about the Pentagon possibly mounting a disinformation campaign abroad to further our agenda and what this country feels it needs to do to win the war on terrorism and I would like to address this to the colonel.

Colonel, what about the disinformation that other countries use against us? For instance that we were dropping food in Afghanistan on areas filled with land mines? That in the food bags themselves there was poison? I mean, this takes place in Egyptian newspapers and in newspapers all over the world.

MAGINNIS: Well, that is true, Steve, and we countered by commando solo giving away radios and broadcasting the truth and of course we gave food to starving people. You know deception is something that can cut both ways. General Schwarzkopf in '91 as we were preparing to invade Iraq was constantly talking about the great Marine task force in the Persian Gulf, leading a lot of people to believe that we were going to do a beach landing in Kuwait and try to take the Iraqis that way.

No, we didn't do that! We went away out to the west and encircled them. Is that lying? No. It is using information and allowing your enemy to decipher through the media what it is that you are about to do. The OSI, quite frankly, is an organization that is trying to do way with the turf battles inside the Pentagon, trying to become as effective and as efficient as you possibly can in sorting out the messages that we have to send all over the world, because after all, the war on terrorism is going to be fought, according to the president, in probably 60 different countries.

MALZBERG: General, Aren't we being a little too harsh here? We realize that we are fighting a war on terrorism, yet we haven't closed our borders, we haven't revamped the student Visa program, we know that every bag on the airlines is not being X-rayed or inspected, and we know that. And people are up in arms about it, so why should people really care or object to a disinformation campaign mounted by the Pentagon to further our cause?

SHEPPERD: Because our strength has always been truth and our values. That is what we want to preserve our of all of this. And just because you go to war doesn't mean you throw away your values. You may use tactics, you may use military deception for military reasons, during a military campaign but that is totally different than intentionally lying through the media and through the press to the world. It will come back and bite us.

MALZBERG: We have...

SOLOMON: If I could jump in here for a minute...

MALZBERG: One second, I just want to go to Steve who is on the phone with us from Atlanta -- hi, Steve.

CALLER: How you doing?

MALZBERG: Good. What's your take on this?

CALLER: My take on this, I just was reminded of the move, "The Patriot" with Mel Gibson, where the English general was high and mighty above the soldiers, the American patriots that were fighting against him and they lost because they were so high and mighty.

People like the Lieutenant Colonel, that are tying the hands of the American government by rules that no one else in the world plays by. And the only thing that is important in the world to every single country is their own survival. No matter what it takes, that is what the most important thing is.

MALZBERG: All right, thank you very much, Steve. Norman, what about that? SOLOMON: Let's keep in mind that the president has said this war is essentially a war without end. So we are not talking about even anything temporary. This is an ongoing condition. What I'm hearing, and I think it is very disturbing, we ought to look at it, is this line that, in effect, we can trust our government to lie. Once we get into that zone, once we go there, we are in a big mess.

And it is not that U.S. government policies have changed, because the lies have been part of the war fighting and the diplomatic policies of this nation forever, in terms of foreign policy. What has changed is the flagrant nature of saying look, we lied but it is good. Let's let the American people make their peace with that. That's not Democratic government. That essentially is a government based on lies that has very little do with what our Constitution says we are supposed to have.

MALZBERG: Colonel, let me get you in on this. Again I will go back to the fact that, you know we don't really have enough vaccines. The government tells us it will be OK. No city is really prepared for a bioterrorist attack. The government tells us it will be OK. Again, it is disinformation for our own good, they feel. What's wrong with what's going on or what's proposed here in the "New York Times" in the possible use of it by the Pentagon?

MAGINNIS: Well, you know the situation you just articulated with not enough vaccines, everybody knows we are going to invest and we are investing in more vaccines. We are doing everything we can at airports, we are have combat aerial patrols over our cities, National Guards on our borders. We are doing a lot. And we are moving in that direction, so I don't think it's disinformation.

The use of -- really -- disinformation, can be truth that is shared with someone who is going to use it that, you know, quite frankly, an enemy that would go after one of your own enemies, in their own country, you know, share some information the he doesn't have. And so I think that as we look at the technology through the Internet, as we look at technology here on CNN, or on radios around the world, that we can put a snippet of truth out there can do devastation to our enemy and at the same time accomplish our goals.

So we don't have to lie, because we are, as the general says, we are going to get caught in our lies and that is not going to look for us and is not going to serve our purposes.

MALZBERG: Colonel, thank you. General, very briefly, are we every going to see this instituted and if it's instituted, will we know about it?

SHEPPERD: We are absolutely going to see the office instituted and appropriately, to spread information, but we are not going to let them lie, and I guarantee you that that will be the outcome of this.

MALZBERG: OK, Norman Solomon, Colonel Maginnis, and General Sheppard, thank you for joining us.

We are going to the chapel next, folks, so stick around. Don't go away, on TALKBACK.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALZBERG: Welcome back, folks. Well, should the government be in the business of promoting marriage? Wade Horn, the man who oversees federal welfare wants to spend a $100 million a year to encourage marriage among the poor. Initially, money would be used for experimental programs like pre-marriage counseling and education programs.

OK, is this a place that the government needs to go -- telling people to get married? And here to talk about it, Julianne Malveaux, a syndicated columnist as well as an economist; Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, and Judge Glenda Hatchett, who you might know from Fox Television's Judge Hatchett. She is a former judge for the Fulton County Juvenile Court in Atlanta, Georgia. Let's start with you, Judge. Welcome.

JUDGE GLENDA HATCHETT, FMR. JUVENILE COURT JUDGE: Thank you.

MALZBERG: What do you think? Should the government be in the business of telling people the benefits of marriage?

HATCHETT: Absolutely not. I am more concerned about the amount of money that is being spent. You are talking about $100 million dollars that they are going to earmark for premarriage counseling, encouraging people to be married. I can think of a number of ways that we ought to be spending that money. A more productive example would be to spend the same amount of money in Head Start programs for kids who need to be positioned to be in school. So, a $100 million to encourage people to be married is not appropriate, in my opinion.

MALZBERG: The money is already coming from the welfare program. It is already in there, it is just going to be redirected. The currently reward states for lowering the percentage of unwed moms, but the are going to take that money and redirect it. What about, Julianne, what do you think?

JULIANNE MALVEAUX, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: I am with the judge here. I mean men don't come with warranties, so encouraging poor women to marry as a way of doing poverty prevention is bass-ackwards -- and I didn't curse.

HATCHETT: I absolutely agree.

MALVEAUX: What you need to do here is talk about job training, you have to talk about all the things we know -- we have prevented women from going to college, an AA or a BA degree will keep someone out of poverty forever. If you want to spend $100 million, spend it on that. Marriage is good and all that, I suppose, but that is not the point. The point is, if you are talking about poverty prevention let's do poverty prevention.

MALZBERG: Andrea, you are shaking your head.

ANDREA LAFFERTY, TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION: These ladies -- they must be on the wrong show. They don't understand the subject. The subject is not Head Start. There is tons of money going to Head Start. There is tons of money going to educate folks. We are talking about marriage, and you came in by saying, you know, something about force people to get married or push marriage.

That is not what this is about. This is about promoting healthy marriage. There is nothing wrong with that. We've got classes about whether it is, you know, prenatal, education, whatever it is. But we don't have stuff promoting marriage. We believe...

MALVEAUX: A hundred million dollars, Andrea?

LAFFERTY: There is money going to talk about sex, how to do sex, how to...

MALVEAUX: Not federal money! The federal government is not in sex education.

LAFFERTY: There is lots of federal money, and we are excited that we finally have a president who understands the importance of health marriage.

HATCHETT: Do you really think that spending $100 million is going to encourage people to get into marriages? Is that is really the thing to do, if it is designed to prevent poverty? I mean I can think of a lot of other ways to do that.

LAFFERTY: We are talking about health marriage...

MALVEAUX: And to what end? Really, you are talking about marriage promotion -- to what end? This is a welfare program. Public assistance was designed to help people who are down on their luck and poor. You do not help people get out of poverty by promoting marriage...

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Let me point something out, that if a child is born to a single parent, to a mom, and it grows up in a single parent home, that child is four times more likely to grow up in poverty, and there is all kinds of other statistics along those lines. So what's wrong with the government taking money already allocated, just redirecting it, and teaching people, hey, if you have a child out of wedlock, if you try raise a child on your own, chances are that child will not live the life you want that child to live? What's wrong with that?

HATCHETT: I mean that is just like saying no to drugs. Do you think that a campaign that says that you will be more likely to be in poverty because you had a child out of wedlock is the answer? The answer is for us to attack the issues of poverty at the source of poverty. And to explain to somebody, once they are at the point of considering marriage, that this not that they ought to be married, it is probably not the way to spend the resources.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: All right, let's go to Chris -- hold it, hold it, Julianne, Chris has someone in the audience.

CHRIS: This Andre from Detroit, Michigan -- Andre.

ANDRE: I think that that is a governmental invasion into a private personal institution of marriage, and secondly I view it as a way of the government bribing people to get married and then turn around and getting the extra dollars, you know, because you pay more when you are married, than you do when you are single.

MALZBERG: All right, Andrea, you want to straighten him out in your view? Go ahead.

LAFFERTY: This is not government promoting. We are giving kids opportunities. We are giving young people, even children, to learn that healthy marriage is good. They are going to provide counseling, premarital counseling, it will also help in reducing violence and abuse in relationships...

MALVEAUX: Oh, please -- how?

MALZBERG: All right, Julaianne, Oklahoma does this and several other states do it already, Julianne.

MALVEAUX: And it's a mistake. This is not what the government should be doing with our money. Again, let's go back to the source. Why are we involved in poverty prevention? Because poor people are a drain on our budget, but you know what? Half of all marriages split up. You promote marriage splits up, the poor folks are still poor. Are you going to put peanut butter on the marriage license and serve it up as a meal? Give me a break.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Sharon is on the phone.

Sharon, what do you say about this?

CALLER: I think that we have in years, decades past, looked in the world's eyes as a respectable, stable nation. And we have, in the last 20 years, lost that reputation by leaps and bounds (AUDIO GAP) and single parenthood. And this is why we are no longer looked upon as a Christian nation nor respected around the world.

MALZBERG: All right, thank you very much, Sharon.

MALVEAUX: A Christian nation?

LAFFERTY: Let me point out that a third of children born are born to unwed mothers. That is not good for the child. A majority of women would love to be in a healthy, loving, married relationship. Maybe some of these other guests don't think so, but the majority of women do.

And, again, as I said, I think it is great that the administration is stepping forward and saying: Let's try something. Let's see if promoting healthy marriages works. (CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Let's cool down for a second.

When we come back, we have a welfare mom -- a current welfare mom -- on the line with us. And we will talk to her and continue the discussion when we continue right after the news. Don't go away.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALZBERG: All right, welcome back as we continue our question: Should the government be involved in the business of encouraging marriage?

And we have a welfare mother on the phone right now from California.

And what do you think? Weigh in. Good idea, bad idea?

CALLER: I think it is a bad idea.

I was married when -- I left my abuser with my child. I was a displaced homemaker. I decided to go back to school. However, before I had had time to complete the school, because I was quite a bit behind -- I had been at home with my child -- I was told I could no longer go to school, that I had to do community service activities or lose my money.

MALZBERG: All right, but how does this -- what -- this has nothing to do with whether or not the government should encourage people to be married before they have children.

CALLER: They are encouraging people to be married instead of to get an education, is what my point is.

MALZBERG: Well, if you have a child, again, the statistics show that it is for the good of the child -- Julianne.

MALVEAUX: Steve, this woman has said that she was married when she went on public assistance.

This is a fact. Many people are married. We do not want to encourage people to hook up with their abusers. We don't want to encourage them to hook up with someone who may or may not be able to earn a living. This woman is talking about what the reality is for many women on public assistance. Yes, there are a lot of unwed moms, but there are also people who flee bad marriages. And public assistance is their only

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Andrea, go ahead.

LAFFERTY: This is not specifically addressing the issue of this caller. We are talking about women that haven't been married, men who have not been married. There are different scenarios. And it's a red herring to say they are going to be putting women with abusers. That is not what this is about. This is about promoting healthy marriage.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: Let me go to Judge Hatchett here.

HATCHETT: Ultimately, is that money going to be spent in a way that is going to make a difference, a fundamental difference in people's lives? Are you going to say, because you are pregnant now, we are going to give you counseling so you can get married before the child is born?

We need to equip people to be empowered so that they can make choices for their lives. We don't need to spend this money. We do not need to spend this money giving them marriage counseling. There are so many other ways that we can empower people. And that is what we have to do.

MALZBERG: Again, what we are doing is not working when it comes to reducing the number of out-of-wedlock babies and reducing the number of those babies that wind up in poverty.

What would you suggest for a young woman who is considering having a baby and not getting married? What would you tell her?

MALVEAUX: I would suggest education for her.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: But what would you tell her? That is education. I'm asking you, how would you educate her?

MALVEAUX: Steve, here is what I would tell her. I was a Big Sister once. And I had a young woman who actually was considering pregnancy at 16. She told me she liked my life. I travel. I speak. I'm on the go. I said, you know what, you can't do this with a baby. You have to make choices. And you have to make decisions. If you want a career, you are going to have to make choices.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: One at a time. One at a time.

MALVEAUX: Equal education for girls is poverty prevention for women.

MALZBERG: Andrea, go ahead.

LAFFERTY: Another part of this education is, we know that welfare is cyclical. And it's second and third generation passed on. And so I think it is a great opportunity for kids who haven't known marriage in their home to understand the options and the opportunities that there are with a healthy marriage.

MALZBERG: All right, Judge, let me ask you a question, Judge.

In 1960, 5 percent of babies born to a single mother -- now it's 33 percent in the year 2000. It's alarming. So what is the harm of taking money that is already there -- it is not going to tax us more -- it is not going to take away from anything -- it is already there -- and teach women and men, hey, marriage is a good thing; it's not a bad thing?

HATCHETT: And I agree that marriage is a good thing. What I am suggesting to you: that it is unrealistic, at that point in the process, to think that this counseling is going to have a fundamental impact.

I think that young people, both boys and girls, very early in the process, have to be empowered to raise their standard of vision, and making...

MALZBERG: Well, what does that mean? That sounds good. What does it mean?

(CROSSTALK)

HATCHETT: I was a juvenile court judge for a long time in Atlanta. And what I did is that I challenged young girls in my court to delay the decision of having children and to put the emphasis on dreams, to establish the goals in their lives in ways that they are looking beyond the immediate point of having a baby.

MALZBERG: Andrea?

LAFFERTY: OK, thank you.

We are not just talking about 16-year-old girls. We are also talking about people in their 20s. And so, you know, we keep just talking about kids. Let's talk about the adults and what that means. And, again, people -- some people are fearful because of discussions like this. They don't understand marriage. And we need to

(CROSSTALK)

MALVEAUX: And the government is going to teach them about marriage?

LAFFERTY: No, the government is going to not teach them.

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: One at a time. One at a time.

Julianne, quickly.

MALVEAUX: Judge -- not Judge -- Steve, you said something about the money not costing us anything else. But we are taking this money from another very worthy effort. And that effort is to reward the states to reduce the level of teen pregnancy. That I think is equally if not more worthy. Let's also look at this 2003 budget that Mr. Bush has produced. He is talking about cutting job training by $180 million. Imagine that you can use that job training money. My colleague here talks about traditional values, but economic security is a traditional value and for these people to make a living. Then they can support their children.

MALZBERG: Julianne, as you know, welfare reform is going to be reexamined and hopefully revoted on and approved again this year, because the time is winding down on the welfare reform bill passed in '96.

Chris is here with another member of the audience?

STAFF: Yes.

Hillary, go ahead. Hillary, what are your thoughts?

HILLARY: Well, I am for husbands and wives. What is wrong with the traditional family. And in promoting that, you can promote welfare. You can promote a lot of other things. I believe in a mother and a father. And fathers are not important anymore. It is mostly just the girls, the women and they can bring up children.

I have seen it time and time again. It just does not work. These children go

(CROSSTALK)

MALZBERG: I agree with you. I couldn't agree with you more. It seems fathers, the role of fathers gets less and less important in this society.

Julianne Malveaux, Andrea Lafferty and Judge Hatchett, thank you all for joining us.

LAFFERTY: Thank you.

MALVEAUX: Thank you.

MALZBERG: OK, test your psychic powers and tell us what is next on TALKBACK LIVE. Watch this.

Still ahead on TALKBACK LIVE:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You know what I am talking about, don't you?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALZBERG: Those late-night calls, so hard to resist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was on the phone for about 40 minutes. And I would never, ever have continued to talking to this person had I not been assured more than once that I was not going to be charged.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALZBERG: Do you get what you pay for when you phone a psychic?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALZBERG: All right, folks, we are back.

Do you ever sit up at night and state at the TV, tempted by the ads? Sometimes at 2:00 a.m., you get the urge. Maybe Miss Cleo can channel those psychic (INAUDIBLE) and make everything all right?

Well, Miss Cleo's psychic hot line is in trouble. And you think she would have known, right? It has been hit with a slew of lawsuits charging fraud, people saying they have been overcharged and abused by telemarketers. And Florida people, officials there say they can prove that Miss Cleo is indeed a renowned psychic from Jamaica.

We invited several psychics to join our show today, but every one of them declined. James Randi, however, did agree to come on. And he investigates claims of psychic and paranormal power, generally debunks them. And he is a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. That is hard to put on a T-shirt.

But thank you very much, James, for being here.

What about it? Is there any such thing? Are any of these people who claim to be psychics, are they legit? Could we gain from calling them?

JAMES RANDI, PSYCHIC DEBUNKER: Well, in my opinion, Steve -- we have been investigating this for decades now and offering a $1 million prize through the James Randi Educational Foundation here in Florida -- and they don't seem to want to take us up on that.

One of the famous ones, Silvia Brown, agreed almost six months on the "LARRY KING LIVE" show that she would be tested by our foundation. And she won't answer our letters and our phone calls, our faxes and our e-mail.

MALZBERG: And you have $1 million out to any psychic who could prove to you and your organization that they are legit, really a psychic?

RANDI: Well, it's a little simpler than that. They do not have to prove it to us. They have to prove it to an independent panel that we will both agree on. Because if they were to have to prove it to me, I might very well say," Nope, I don't believe you and I won't give you the million dollars." But we don't do it that way. We do it perfectly fairly. MALZBERG: So there are no psychics. So, nobody, in your view, has special powers, a sixth sense, something special, a gift that they could look into a person's eyes or hear their voice and feel something and know something and sense something? That just does not happen, you say, correct?

RANDI: No, I don't quite say that, Steve. I say that I have never seen any evidence of it. But I have also never seen any evidence of a certain Vietnamese antelope either, though I believe it's there. I have good reason to believe in that.

MALZBERG: All right, but what about the police? They often consult psychics when they can't find a body. And there are claims that it has helped in the past.

RANDI: No, that's untrue, Steve. If you look into the records, you will find the police do not consult psychics. The psychics go to the police, tell them, "I know something about this case." And they do this by the hundreds every day all over the world. Occasionally, one of them gets lucky. And that is the one that hits the media.

MALZBERG: All right, we have a couple of stories. We have one story in particular I want to you hear. And let's go to Chris in the crowd here.

STAFF: This is Selinda from Michigan.

Selinda, go ahead.

SELINDA: Hi.

I wanted to say that I grew up with my mother and grandmother who visited psychics, because they thought that they could give them insight on what was going on in their life. Well, in doing so, they were taken, because what she would tell them was what they already knew.

And if you notice, most psychics always ask you for your birth date. They ask you for who is in your family, if you have children or whatever. And, basically, you are giving them that information.

RANDI: That is right. You are telling them. They are not telling you.

You look at John Edward, for example, if my cousin Harry wanted to come back to me from the dead, why would he say to John, "Ask him if my name starts with H or B"? No, he would say, "It's Harry," wouldn't you think?

MALZBERG: OK. Listen to this horror story. And then we'll get into Miss Cleo and the Florida action against her legally. This is a horror story that this nice lady has told us. And it is really absurd.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My grandson had just gotten out of rehab for a drug problem. And, naturally, he wanted to know what was going on with his life, so he called one of these psychic hot lines, unbeknownst to me. And they put him -- I think it was a 900-number to begin with. And they kept him on, kept him on, kept him on, until I got a $90 phone bill. And I could not figure out where this phone bill came from, because nobody in my family would ever call a psychic.

MALZBERG: Well, of course, that is what happened.

And, James, that is one of the charges against Miss Cleo, is that there is deception and fraudulent advertising, that they don't tell people the number is going to cost them. And then they get $90 phone bills. That is outrageous. This should have been stopped a long time ago.

RANDI: And one of the basic facts here, Steve, is that you are not going to be calling Miss Cleo. You are going to be calling a generalized number which then feeds it out to the nearest person who is going to take those calls. But you don't get to talk to Miss Cleo.

I would like to put your thoughts in perspective just a little bit. You also say that religion -- you have no proof that the claims that are made in various religions are real either, right? So, are you an atheist?

RANDI: I would say that I -- if the definition of atheist is one who says there is no evidence that proves the existence of a deity, then, yes, I am an atheist.

MALZBERG: Do you see a difference between people believing -- and do you excuse more in your own mind and rationalize more that it is OK for people to have religion, which is a faith they place in a being that they know they are not going to see while they're here on Earth, for the most part -- it could happen -- but the psychic, they expect to call up someone they don't know and that person is going to act god-like, if you will. Do you see the difference? Do you recognize that difference?

RANDI: Oh, yes, there is a vast difference.

Mind you, it's part of the same kind of thought pattern. Depending on a friend in the sky or a friend on the other end of the telephone is essentially the same thing.

MALZBERG: All right, we have an e-mail. And it says: "You may not get what you pay for when you call a TV psychic, but you certainly get what you deserve." That's from Bill in Wichita, Kansas.

What do you think about that one, James?

RANDI: I think Bill is thinking exactly the same way I do.

MALZBERG: All right, summing up: Should the government -- besides the government of Florida and in particular Miss Cleo -- should the government and all the states, if it's a federal deal, federally go after all of these telephone psychics? And what about the tarot card readers in the street that you pass by when it's warm out? Or what about the psychics in the streets? Should they all be done away with by the government for one cause or another?

RANDI: Well, here in Florida, Steve, if you want to be a hair dresser or a veterinarian or anything like that which is a public service, you have to be licensed. I say let's license the psychics. And, at the James Randi Educational Foundation, we test psychics every day. We can design a test to find out whether these people really can do what they say they can do.

Bob Butterworth, our state attorney here, says there is no way to test psychics. But there is and we can do it.

MALZBERG: All right, quickly here, we have another audience member.

Sandy, quickly, though.

SANDY: Well, I just want to kind of know how he can judge whether or not they are psychic or not. I believe people have a sixth sense. Some people do.

MALZBERG: All right, let him answer.

James, quickly.

RANDI: Well, they have to tell us what they can do under what circumstances and with what accuracy. And once they have told us that, we can design a test. Anything can be tested.

MALZBERG: All right, well, James Randi, thank you very much.

How many people here have ever called a psychic? Applause?

Nobody here has ever called a psychic. This is a one-of-a-kind audience.

All right, James Randi, thanks for taking on the psychic challenge today. Thanks also to our studio audience and to you at home.

I am Steve Malzberg. This wraps up my watch on TALKBACK LIVE. It's been fun. The people here are great. Thanks to CNN and Mike Toppo and everybody. The show returns tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern.

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