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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Martha Stewart Sentenced; Carson City Chaos

Aired July 16, 2004 - 19:00   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.


ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from New York. I'm Anderson Cooper.
Martha Stewart is going to jail but keeps a stiff upper lip.

360 starts now.

Martha Stewart sentenced. Five months behind bars and five months house arrest. Could this actually help her brand?

Carson City chaos. A wildfire bears down on thousands of homes. We'll have a live report.

Convention drama. Hillary Clinton, bumped in Boston. Now she'll have a speaking role. The raw politics surrounding the former first lady.

Case closed for a soldier accused of cowardice. Did a drug make him do it? The strange side effects of Lariam.

And spy versus spy. How the intelligence game sometimes ends up between the sheets.

ANNOUNCER: Live from New York, this is ANDERSON COOPER 360.

COOPER: Good evening again.

We begin tonight with a success story tarnished. Martha Stewart sentenced today in federal court in New York for lying to government investigators about the sale of her ImClone stock back in 2001. The judge didn't throw the book at her, just a couple of pages.

CNN's Allan Chernoff has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart left court after getting the minimum possible, five months in prison, five months of home detention, as well as a $30,000 fine.

MARTHA STEWART: I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid whatsoever.

CHERNOFF: Earlier, in a far softer voice, Stewart had asked Judge Miriam Cedarbaum to "remember all the good that I have done, consider all the intense suffering that I have endured every single moment of the past two and a half years. I seek the opportunity to continue serving my country," Stewart said. Judge Cedarbaum responded, "You have suffered and will continue to suffer enough."

Stewart's attorney asked that she serve her time at a minimum security prison camp in Danbury, Connecticut, and do home detention at her house in Bedford, New York. But Stewart intends to keep fighting to say out of prison. She's hired the former top attorney in the Clinton administration.

WALTER DELLINGER, STEWART'S APPEAL ATTORNEY: We believe there are very significant issues to be brought before the court of appeals.

CHERNOFF: Ms. Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, received the same minimum sentence, with a smaller $4,000, fine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHERNOFF: Judge Cedarbaum agreed to stay both sentences pending appeal. However, the judge did agree to let them work it out until the appeal process is all done. Legal analysts say that there is little chance of success for the two defendants here, and they will almost certainly do their time in prison, Anderson.

COOPER: Allan Chernoff, thanks very much.

When Martha Stewart arrived at the courthouse this morning, her supporters were there to greet her and applaud. One shouted, "Hold your head high, Martha." The crowd stuck around for the outcome, and when Stewart came back out, the crowd hushed to hear her speak.

CNN's Adaora Udoji was listening.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Minutes after Martha Stewart was sentenced, she spoke more forcefully, say observers, than she had in court.

STEWART: What was a small personal matter came over the last -- became, over the last two years, an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions. I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time...

PAUL CALLAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This is very unusual behavior by a criminal defendant.

UDOJI: Attorney Paul Callan has been on both sides, once as a prosecutor, now a defense attorney.

CALLAN: Usually defendants are remorseful at this point in the proceedings, and she seems to be just the opposite of that.

STEWART: I'm just very, very sorry that it's come to this, that a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion, and with such venom and such gore. I mean, it's just terrible.

UDOJI (on camera): A small personal matter, she calls it.

CALLAN: She's been convicted of obstruction of justice, conspiracy, lying to federal authorities concerning the stock market. That's hardly a small personal matter. That's a very public matter.

UDOJI (voice-over): A public matter involving her employees. To them, she expressed regrets.

STEWART: More than 200 people have lost their jobs at my company, and as a result of this situation. I want them to know how very, very sorry I am, for them and their families.

CALLAN: To the extent that she's taking responsibility for that, and expressing sorrow for that, I think that makes her a more human figure.

UDOJI: Ever a businesswoman, even her thanks to supporters included a sales pitch.

STEWART: All of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine, by buying our products, by...

CALLAN: Here's somebody who just appeared in front of a federal judge, the most important event in her life, probably, being sentenced on a very, very serious crime, and she's on the courthouse steps hawking magazines. It seems to lack a certainly dignity...

UDOJI: In speaking out, Stewart's walking a thin line, trying to boost her business while pursuing a, quote, "vigorous appeal" of her conviction. Every word counts.

CALLAN: Your very expression of remorse would be an admission of guilt that could be used against you in a retrial if you win on appeal.

STEWART: I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid.

UDOJI: Adaora Udoji, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A quick news note for you. Investors reacted euphorically to Martha Stewart's sentence. Shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia soared 36 percent today. That is more than $3 a share.

Well, out of the thousands of U.S. service men and women who have served in Iraq over the last year, one may be unique. He's believed to be the one person accused of being a coward and facing the harsh punishment reserved for such people in times of war. But it turns out that cowardice wasn't this soldier's problem. A drug the Army gave to him was. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): For nine months, Staff Sergeant George Andreas Pogany has been preparing with his lawyer to clear his name. The label of coward stems from an incident on Pogany's first night at war. After a tense convoy ride into central Iraq, he glimpsed the bloody body of a dead Iraqi.

His reaction surprised him. He says he had hallucinations, nausea, and anxiety so extreme he asked his commanders for help.

SGT. GEORG-ANDREAS POGANY, 10TH SPECIAL FORCES GROUP: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we were to go on a patrol the next morning, and I not functioning out on the patrol, what if somebody gets killed because I couldn't do my job? So I have the responsibility to let my leadership know that something is wrong, and that's what I did.

COOPER: What the commanders did was ship him home to face a charge of cowardice. That's when Pogany discovered that the reason for his reaction may have had little to do with the war but more to do with this drug. He'd been taking Lariam, a drug also known as mefloquine, that the Army gave him to prevent malaria.

But Lariam also carries the risk of side effects, which the Pentagon warns include nausea, and, in rare cases, panic attacks, depression, and hallucinations -- some of the very symptoms Pogany says he experienced.

Since returning, Pogany has been diagnosed by a military doctor as having likely Lariam toxicity. In a statement to CNN, U.S. Army Special Forces command said, "The command reviewed all of the information as well as Staff Sergeant Pogany's medical condition and decided the best course of action was to drop the charges."

There was no mention of the original cowardice charge, and now Pogany's lawyer wants one more thing from the Army -- a public apology.

RICH TRAVIS, LAWYER: Otherwise, that stigma of being a coward will follow him for the rest of his life. He'll be branded. And the only way to undo that brand is through a letter of apology.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, the diagnosis by military doctors has prompted the Navy to begin a study on the effects of Lariam among military personnel serving in Iraq.

A new FBI warning on al Qaeda tops our look at news happening right now cross-country. In Washington just moments ago, the FBI warned al Qaeda may be recruiting non-Arabs, less likely to attract the notice of security personnel, to carry out attacks inside the U.S. The new warning comes amid a continuous stream of intelligence apparently indicating that the terrorist group is determined to strike the United States sometime before election day. Lansing, Michigan, the Bush-Cheney ticket hoping to make the most of John McCain. Vice President Cheney campaigns with the senator who won Michigan's GOP primary in 2000. Senator John McCain, once a rival, of course, of George Bush, McCain is now a very public supporter of the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Carson City, Nevada, the state announces it will be the first in the union to use touch-screen voting machines with printers in the November elections. The concern is that without a paper trail, electronic voting could lead to ballot fraud.

East St. Louis, Illinois, former St. Louis Blues pro hockey player Mike Danton admits he tried to have his agent killed. Danton was apparently worried his agent would give information to the Blues that could have damaged his career. Danton faces up to 10 years in prison when he's sentenced in October.

Atlanta, another hockey star in trouble. Danny Heatley of the Atlanta Thrashers has been charged with vehicular homicide. He was involved in a car wreck last fall that killed his teammate Dan Snyder.

In Washington, D.C., a federal appeals court throws out new government rules that would have let truckers drive up to 11 hours straight without taking a break, one hour more than would the old rules allowed. The court said a federal safety board must reconsider the impact on truckers' health.

That's a quick look what's happening cross-country tonight.

360 next, up in flames. Fires raging really too close for comfort. Weary firefighters battling for the upper hand. We'll take you there live.

Plus, tricks of the spy trade. How far will some spies go to get information? You might be surprised.

And the raw politics of Hillary Clinton. Why some Democrats hate to love her, some Republicans seem to love to hate her.

All that ahead. First, your picks, the most popular stories on CNN.com right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Unbelievable pictures. A week ago, a big local story in the Carson City, Nevada, newspaper was the fire that destroyed a historic schoolhouse in a nearby town. Well, today the local story is still a fire, but one that threatens destruction on a much wider scale.

Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Firefighters spent another day attacking flames mainly from the air. Helicopters and planes dropped water and retardant, as the wind shifted the blaze away from Carson City towards the Sierra peaks leading to Tahoe. Meanwhile, some of the people who were evacuated were allowed to come home, seeing for the first time the devastation left behind from the fire.

Some found their home completely destroyed.

GLORIA GOODNIGHT, CARSON CITY RESIDENT: It's pretty amazing to have nothing, just to all of a sudden, you know, you realize, you know, friends are calling, saying, Well, you know, I can give you some of my clothes. And you picture yourself wearing somebody else's clothes and sleeping in somebody else's home, but you have nowhere to go. And it's been amazing.

ROWLANDS: Fourteen homes have burned down, but many more have been saved. In fact, dozens of people came home to find that the fire had burned to their front door, only to be turned away by firefighters.

LYNN ANDERSON, CARSON CITY RESIDENT: And I don't know why it was us and -- that were spared, and they lost theirs. I don't know why.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS: And as predicted, late this afternoon, another dramatic wind shift, pushing the fire back towards Carson City, sending a huge blanket of smoke over the city and putting those homes in danger again, Anderson.

COOPER: Hard to believe. Ted Rowlands, thanks very much.

Fiery trouble on the other side of the globe. A massive school fire in India, that story tops our look at what's going on around the world in the uplink. Southern India now, at least 90 children are dead, 40 others hospitalized, after a horrific fire tore through this middle school. Investigators say it may have been caused by an electrical short and spread very quickly along the thatched roof.

In Baghdad, some Philippine soldiers pack up and leave Iraq, bowing to the demands of militants holding a Filipino hostage. Eleven soldiers have headed back to Manila. The 32 remaining troops are expected to leave Iraq in the coming days in hopes the hostage will be released.

In Urbru (ph), Sweden, ex-Gitmo prisoner speaks out. This man, a Swede, says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay, forced to stay in freezing cold -- in a freezing cold room for hours and exposed to noise and bright lights. U.S. officials deny the charges. The man was released last week after pressure from Swedish officials.

Tokyo, Japan, endgame for ex-chess champion Bobby Fischer. Now a U.S. fugitive, Fischer was detained in Japan for allegedly trying to leave the country without a valid passport. Fischer could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he attended a 1992 Yugoslav chess tournament in violation of U.N. sanctions. Since then, he's been on the run, amid rumors he's been playing chess on the Internet under assumed names.

And that's tonight's uplink.

Recent criticism of the CIA has focused a lot on the failure of its human intelligence-gathering. Humint, as it's known, means real people on the ground doing the dangerous and dirty work involved in finding out information. And it's as old as war itself.

But how far can a spy go? Confederate spies, Rose O'Neill Greenhow (ph) professed during the Civil War. She said, quote, "God gave me both a brain and a body, and I shall use them both."

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor now on one little-discussed trick of the spy trade.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN CONNERY, ACTOR: You're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the classic Hollywood version, it's usually two spies in the bedroom, each trying to entrap the other. Real life may not be so glamorous, but Hollywood is right in this sense, historian Keith Melton told a sell-out crowd at the International Spy Museum. Sex and spies have always mixed.

KEITH MELTON, HISTORIAN: Everybody does it. Every intelligence service utilizes sex in some capacity.

ENSOR: In Moscow hotels, the Soviet KGB did it routinely and filmed the whole thing. Here, two KGB women entice a Spanish diplomat in the '70s. Blackmail film designed to induce treason.

MELTON: When confronted with this, many diplomats were faced with a ugly reality. Do I accept what I've done and contact security? Or do I agree to give some small, seeming innocuous piece of information to the KGB?

ENSOR: But it was East German spy chief Marcus Wolfe, says Melton, who turned sexpionage into an art form, finding that women often make more promising targets than men, and love works better than blackmail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SPYING FOR LOVE," BRITISH GOVERNMENT FILM)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to know when the plane will leave, where they are going, how many, and what type of aircraft will be involved.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, Victor, that's classified information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you really love me, you will do this for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: Agents like Herbert Schroeder were taught to first woo, second propose to secretaries like Gerta, with access to secrets, and then go to step three.

MELTON: The third thing is, confess that you are indeed an East German agent who came here for another purpose entirely. But unless somehow you can get some information, they're going to recall you, and you're never going to be able to spend your life together. Blatant honesty worked.

ENSOR: And it still does. These more permissive times, blackmail is less effective, but honey traps based on the yearning for real love will always be there.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, if you think sexpionage went the way of the cold war, we're told you'd be wrong. A quick flashback to a more recent case. Katrina Leung, a Chinese-American businesswoman, had a 20-year sexual affair with FBI agent James Smith. Over the course of their tryst, Leung stole sensitive documents and gave them to Chinese officials. Leung is free on bail and awaits sentencing now. Smith took a plea deal and admitted to the crime, avoiding jail.

360 next, the lightning rod of politics. Hillary Clinton, the polarizing politico, gets to speak, and you can bet, like her or not, people will be listening. That is raw politics.

Also tonight, Martha Stewart going to prison. Some advice for surviving from one who's been there, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. I'll talk to her live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We just checked the Web site for the Democratic National Convention. And if anybody from that group is watching, you have some work to do. On the list of people who speak the first night of the convention, her name doesn't appear. And you know the "her" we're talking about. As we've seen in the past few days, by leaving her off, you risk the wrath of raw politics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Last Tuesday, the Kerry camp announced its roster of speakers for the upcoming Democratic convention in Boston. The story was not about Senator Clinton, yet somehow it did become about her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Howard Dean will speak, but no Hillary.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone not on that list, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: Why did John Kerry dump Mrs. Clinton?

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

COOPER: The effect the junior senator of New York has on the political scene defies the laws of inside-the-Beltway gravity. This year, she repeatedly denied for being in the run for the democratic VP slot.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I don't think I would ever be offered. I don't think I would accept.

COOPER: Still, that wasn't enough to prevent political commentators who kept floating her name as a potential candidate. Where does the fascination come from?

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Ambition. Look, she was the first lady of the United States who ran for and won a Senate seat from a major state, New York. That's not nothing. No first lady has ever done that before, pursued her own political career.

COOPER: Some Americans no doubt love her for that, others seem to hate her. But there's also something else that explains why Hillary Clinton is a constant presence in the political news pages, experts say.

SCHNEIDER: Hillary makes politics infinitely more interesting. She's a colorful figure, and everyone has been speculating -- look, I've been covering politics for decades, and there's always been speculation, When will a woman be elected president? And now, finally, after all these years, it has a character right out of Central Casting.

COOPER: So will Hillary Clinton be the first woman elected president in 2008? What if John Kerry wins? Will there be a matchup between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton in 2012? Keeping the pundits guessing, that's Hillary Rodham Clinton's raw politics.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Martha Stewart sentenced, five months behind bars, and five months' house arrest. Could id this actually help her brand?

And Will Smith battles the box, but can he dethrone Spider-Man?

360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Martha Stewart asked a judge for leniency today, and she got it, the lightest possible sentence for lying about the sale of her ImClone stock. In federal court in New York, she was sentenced to five months in prison, five months of home detention, and ordered to pay a $30,000 fine.

Moments before the sentencing, she asked the judge in a soft vote to, quote, "consider all the intense suffering that I have endured every single moment of the past two and a half years." The judge responded, "You have suffered and will continue to suffer enough."

Outside the courthouse, Stewart's demeanor was upbeat. She smiled boldly into the cameras and vowed a comeback. Here she is, in her own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Today is a shameful day. It's shameful for me and for my family, and for my beloved company, and for all of its employees and partners. What was a small personal matter came over the last -- became over the last two years an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions.

I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time, all the while more concerned about the well-being of others than for myself, more hurt for them and for their losses than for my own, more worried for their futures than the future of Martha Stewart the person.

More than 200 people have lost their jobs at my company, and as a result of this situation, I want them to know how very, very sorry I am for them and their families.

I would like to thank everybody who stood by me, who wished me well, waved to me on the street, like these lovely people over here, smiled at me, called me, wrote to me. We received thousands of support letters, and more than 170,000 e-mails to Marthatalks.com. And I appreciate each and every one of those pieces of correspondence.

I really feel good about it. Perhaps all of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine, by buying our products, by encouraging our advertisers to come back in full force to our magazines. Our magazines are great, they deserve your support. And whatever happened to me personally shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on the great company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. And I don't want to use this as a sales pitch for my company, but we love that company. We've worked so hard on that company, and we really think it merits great attention from the American public.

And I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid whatsoever. I'm just very, very sorry that it's come to this, that a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion, and with such venom and such gore. I mean, it's just terrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: We should also point out, Martha Stewart will be making her only live appearance on Monday on "LARRY KING LIVE." That's, of course, Monday 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. So watch for that.

Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, received the same sentence, but a smaller fine, $4,000. Both sentences are on hold pending appeal.

In the courtroom today, and covering the case for us tonight, Court TV anchor Lisa Bloom, and celebrity justice correspondent Carolina Buia. Good to see both of you.

Lisa, let's start off with you. What was it like in the courtroom when Martha was there?

LISA BLOOM, COURT TV ANCHOR: Everyone was straining to hear and frankly I think most of us were not expecting her to speak in the courtroom because she's in that Catch-22 position. How could she express remorse if she doesn't take responsibility for the crime? The case is going to be up on appeal. Nevertheless, she did rise to her feet. She read from a prepared statement and I thought it was a staccato, dull, kind of flat tone. I was surprised by some of the things she said. She said this is shameful, I think she was referring to the prosecution, not her crimes. She ended by saying to the judge peace be with you. I thought it was a rather odd performance on her part.

COOPER: Carolina, how was she -- I mean her demeanor in the courtroom versus what you just saw outside?

CAROLINA BUIA, CELEBRITY JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, in the courtroom, I thought that she was almost at the point of tears. Not only was she staccato, but she was unsteady and wobbly. I found some of it very heartfelt, some of it a little bit dramatic. She talked about this has been a fatal circus, spurned oil (ph), she almost suffocated to death, but when she went outside, she was very composed. She was the Martha Stewart we're used to seeing on television, on Larry King and she pretty much gave us a sales pitch, buy her magazine.

COOPER: It's interesting though. I mean her lawyers say that there are some really good possibilities for appeal. Do you buy that, Lisa?

BLOOM: No, I don't. Most of them have already been rejected by the trial judge on motions for a retrial. Chappell Hartridge, the juror who they accused of perjury who denies that, Larry Stewart, the ink expert, also accused of perjury by the government, rejected as a grounds for a mistrial. There is a Supreme Court case that affects the Federal sentencing guidelines. That's called the Blakely case, which the second circuit, which is the New York circuit, has certified for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Cedarbaum today used that as the reason for giving Martha Stewart bail, saying, I want to get that sorted out before Martha Stewart has to go to prison.

I've read the Blakely case. I don't think it has any effect on this case whatsoever. It has to do with upward departures. There was no upward departure in this case. Nevertheless, I think Judge Cedarbaum is bending over backwards. Every area where she had discretion, she exercised it, leniency for Martha. She did it on bail. She did it on electronic monitoring. She did it on no drug testing for Martha and gave her the lowest possible sentence.

COOPER: Dotting ever "I," crossing every "T." How long is this appeals process likely to take Carolina?

BUIA: It could take -- we could see, if they decide to look at it, it could be as early as the spring, or could take up to two years.

COOPER: What about Douglas Faneuil? What happens to him now? He was really the star witness, really surprised a lot of people on the stand.

BLOOM: I spoke to his lawyer today. He's going to be sentenced next week on a misdemeanor charge. He is forever barred from the business. He has not been able to work as a broker.

COOPER: I've read he's working in an art gallery now.

BLOOM: Apparently something like that. We all expect that he'll be granted probation, no jail time because he did cooperate. He was the witness who testified longer than anybody else, four days at this trial. I would be shocked if he got one day behind bars.

COOPER: And really stood up just in pretty tough cross- examination. They really tried to go after this guy. They brought up past and minor drug use, all sorts of things. What surprised you most about today?

BUIA: What surprised me more was that Martha Stewart actually spoke. I mean during her trial, she did not get up on the witness stand. She didn't speak to reporters, actually asked her in the courtroom, I said how do you feel about the sentence? And she said that it was expected that she had expected it.

COOPER: What surprised you, Lisa?

BLOOM: Her statements made outside the courtroom, this Job-like attitude, that this was so monumental. This was such a huge event. Certainly it was a huge event for her, but people do get sentenced for their Federal crimes every day of the week. She got the lowest possible sentence. She's never showed any remorse for what she did to Doug Faneuil, her own assistant Annie Armstrong, her best friend, Mariana Pasternak, lives she's just run over in the course of fighting this absurd battle that she's been fighting for about two years. Everybody knows that she's guilty. There's overwhelming evidence. Yet she's going to continue to fight this on appeal. I think the time has come for her to say I did something wrong. Show up. If she served her time now Anderson, she would be out in time for Christmas. She'd have a book deal. She could move on with her life, instead continuing to fight this for potentially a couple of years. I think that's the wrong path.

COOPER: All right. We're going to leave it there. Lisa Bloom, good to talk to you, Carolina Buia, thanks very much, fascinating today.

As we mentioned, Martha chose for her Danbury, Connecticut as her home as the place she'll serve her five months of home confinement. She did have a couple of choices. Here's a quick fast fact on her real estate options. So-called Turkey Hill is considered her main home in Westport, Connecticut. She owns the former Ford estate in Seal Harbor, Maine. There's also an apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City and there are two homes in the Hamptons in Long Island, New York, some options.

Coverage of Martha Stewart's sentencing today was, well, let's just say extensive. When celebrities go to jail, right or wrong, the media is all over it, but less well-covered is what happens when they get out of jail. How easy is it for them to resume their former life? CNN's Jason Bellini takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart has only been sentenced to five months in jail but will her reputation and that of her business be locked in for good? Leona Helmsley, the hotel diva dubbed queen of mean served 21 months behind bars. Only little people pay taxes, she said before her tax evasion conviction. That was 1989. Today, she's still a very wealthy woman and still owns the hotels bearing her name, but Helmsley herself keeps a low profile.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Staying her and her problems have no influence on it.

BELLINI: Steve Madden, the shoe designer is still in the big house for a 2002 tax fraud conviction. But most people who love Madden the shoes don't hate Madden the man. They don't know who he is and don't seem to care. Do you know anything about Steve Madden?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No, I don't think I do.

BELLINI: Reverend Jim Bakker served five years of what was reduced to an 18-year sentence after his 1989 conviction for swindling $158 million from followers. His Christian theme park and resort Heritage USA was sold to foreign investors. Today there's no sign left of the holy ghost at Heritage USA. It's now a ghost town. But resurrecting a reputation is possible. Just ask Michael Milken. The junk bond king jailed for securities fraud has made a white-collar comeback. He's now a crusader for cancer research. So there is hope, Martha Stewart of making a comeback, but it will be hard. Going to jail? It's not a good thing. Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: In Martha Stewart's case, rehabilitating her reputation isn't just a matter of making public getting to like her again. She's also got a publicly traded company to run with hundreds of employees. So the question is how can she come back? I'm joined now by someone who might know, Michael Levine, who runs a PR firm in Los Angeles where he advises many celebrity clients. Michael, good to see you tonight. Can Martha Stewart come back from this?

MICHAEL LEVINE, LEVINE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE: You know, prophecy is dubious business, but I kind of sniffed a resurrection today. I sense that there is some possibility and this is a distinctly different opinion than I had a year ago or six months ago.

COOPER: What was it that you heard today? I mean I take it you're talking about maybe her statement outside the court?

LEVINE: Yes.

COOPER: What did you hear that makes you think resurrection?

LEVINE: Well, I hear -- it's an interesting thing about celebrities when they get in trouble. I've represented a vast number. I can tell you pretty candidly that people respect wisdom, but obey pain. And when you get in enough trouble, you start to soften. And though I don't think Martha's ready to open up a charm school or teach a class on humility, I think that she has softened quite a bit from some earlier days in which she was just a little more in your face. I don't think that's the approach to take at all.

COOPER: Do you think it's just a question of her softening? Do you think it's also perhaps a change in public opinion that as they've watched sort of these charges dwindle, as they've seen through the arc of this case, the public has sort of changed their mind?

LEVINE: I think that's a profound point you're making. Everything has got to be viewed in the context of what else is happening to you. In this case, I think that the public has witnessed some, what I think would appear to be zealousness on the part of prosecutors, and so I think that -- also the sentence today, which was much more lenient than most people suspected it would be, has also created a context in which I think that she can look a little more -- less angry about it.

COOPER: It fascinated me how early on there was such almost vitriol in some quarters, in some cable news, sort of an overwhelming sense of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) joy, glee at other people's downfall. It seems to me that's sort of lessened a little bit, so it's interesting to hear your comments on that. But her appeal now we're being told could take up to two years. What does she got to do in that time in order to sort of help her comeback?

LEVINE: To the extent that she wants to continue to communicate with her customer base, I think that things that Americans find very appealing of fallen celebrities are humility, personal responsibility, charity, I mean, look at what Michael Milken has done. He is such an extraordinary example of a man who sincerely resurrected an image. And I think that they don't -- Americans just don't react well to arrogance and to a victim-like mentality from people who are enormously wealthy and successful.

COOPER: It does seem though that this country allows people a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance.

LEVINE: If, if you act with contrition, personal responsibility and speed. So if you take, for example, let's take Hugh Grant, who acted with all those things, he got off rather easily, but if you're O.J. Simpson and you're awfully arrogant, I don't think Americans are all that forgiving in that kind of situation.

COOPER: Interesting. All right. Michael Levine, thanks for joining us tonight.

LEVINE: Thanks, thanks.

COOPER: Today's buzz question is this. What do you think? Can Martha Stewart make a comeback after prison? Log on to cnn.com/360. Cast your vote. We'll have results at the end of the program tonight.

"360" next, advice for Martha Stewart from former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, what it's like inside a prison, an exclusive interview ahead.

Also tonight, inside the box, the hall of mirrors, affect us looking at them, them looking at us.

And a little later, a classic sci-fi book tale unfolds on the big screen. We'll look at the new options at the box office in tonight's weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, advice on prison life tonight from a former Hollywood madam to the maven of home decorating. Heidi Fleiss telling Martha Stewart how to survive behind bars. Fleiss knows about what she's talking about. She spent three years in prison on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, charges related to her running of a Hollywood brothel that catered to the rich and famous. She's also the author of the players' handbook. Heidi Fleiss joins us live exclusively from Los Angeles. Heidi, thanks for being with us tonight.

HEIDI FLEISS, FORMER HOLLYWOOD MADAM: My pleasure.

COOPER: Your advice to Martha Stewart, first of all.

FLEISS: First of all, wait, first of all, I want to say that I bought my subscription today and I also bought one for my roommate that's still in the penitentiary.

COOPER: So you paid attention to her post-hearing statement?

FLEISS: Yes, and I was very -- I think that she's a very gutsy woman. She handled this whole thing with a lot of class, a lot of dignity and a lot of pride.

COOPER: Is it important to go into prison sort of fearless? She says she's not afraid.

FLEISS: Hey, I was afraid and maybe she's been much more prepared or seasoned than I have but no one told me things like coffee matters, tennis shoes matter, toothpaste matters, no one told me little things like that. So it was hard for me to grasp. My first day there, I was dropped off in this prison camp and I was surrounded by a whole group of lesbians and they're saying do you want toothpaste? Do you want tennis shoes? Do you want sweatpants? I had no idea what anyone was talking about.

COOPER: What were they talking about? I don't quite understand. What the significance of the coffee and the tennis shoes?

FLEISS: Because, it's like, you get -- a prisoner, you get a government issue, or if you have money, you can go to the commissary and buy better sweatpants or better tennis shoes or coffee, things of that nature. I didn't know about any of this.

COOPER: When you got there, do they all know who you were? Obviously you were a celebrity at that point. You had been in the papers a lot, been on television, obviously Martha Stewart would be in the same situation.

FLEISS: Of course, they were waiting for me. It's like throwing Ricky Martin to his fans. I was bait. It's going to be easy for her because, it's going to be much easier for her. She'll come back stronger than ever.

COOPER: Why do you think it will be easier for her?

FLEISS: Because I think she's got five months. I did three years, and I'm a little more feisty and I was 30 years old at the time, and it seems that the way -- just by her speech today, as she went through it, it seems she's more prepared for what's going to happen.

COOPER: Does it help being a celebrity? I mean does the celebrity help or does it hurt?

FLEISS: It does not help at all. But there's not going to be -- look it, mostly it's lesbian hell there. I would say 3 percent gay going in, 97 percent gay while you're there and 4 percent gay going out. So she could have her pick of the litter. She can go in the hobby crafts room and take a napkin and turn it into the house. The prison could benefit by her.

COOPER: Do you think -- sorry. I mean, as you look back on your experience now, what do you think you learned that you didn't know going in?

FLEISS: I think that it was -- I'm humbled. I have a broader perspective. I think it made me, I hate to say this, a better person. No one should have to go to prison to be a better person. I could have maybe grown to be a better person anyways, but look it, it was a terrible experience but in my head, to justify it, I say I'm a better person. Although I have been released quite a few years, it seems like it was a million years ago.

COOPER: But it's probably something you'll never forget.

FLEISS: Of course not. Of course, after player's handbook, this one, I'll have my prison memoir available as well.

COOPER: All right. Heidi Fleiss, good to talk to you. Thanks for being with us tonight.

FLEISS: Thank you.

"360" next. Will Smith back on the big screen with a sci-fi thriller. We'll talk new movies in the "weekender."

Plus "inside the box," Jon Stewart and I back and forth and back and forth through the looking glass. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Will Smith playing detective in the movie "I, Robot" 31 years in the future and a new HBO series based on the life experiences of Mark Wahlberg, all in tonight's weekender with "360" film guru Elvis Mitchell. Elvis, "I, Robot" opened today, kind of excited about it. We're going to show a clip and then talk about it. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL SMITH, ACTOR: You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice.

SMITH: What makes your robot so perfect?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're not irrational and potentially homicidal maniacs for starters.

SMITH: That's true, they are definitely rational.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are the dumbest dumb person I have ever met.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I kept expecting something to crash through the window during that clip. Is this good? ELVIS MITCHELL, MEDIA CRITIC: You mean like your attention span? God, no, it's not good. One thing that's fascinating about Will Smith as a movie star, he's actually an incredibly honest actor. He can't sell bad material. His real gift is listening to other actors and playing off that. Even when he gets bad lines doing that, at least you get the sense that his attention kind of makes the other person worth listening to. But here he just sort of like walking through as of course another tortured good guy who has a secret in his past. What, too many "Magnum PI" episodes?

COOPER: Ouch.

MITCHELL: Who cares? But the thing is that those Isaac Asimov stories that use "I, Robot" as kind of a foundation, are really kind of interesting. They talk about a society where things may be on the verge of change, but here it's just sort of a standard, post "Blade Runner," post "Alien" sort of dystopic future where things are going to be actually worse than they seem. This movie could actually use some politics, instead of just being about business bad and -- who made this? Oh, Fox. I guess they're a business of some sort, right?

COOPER: I guess then I'll just rent "Blade Runner" and sort of get the same -- get a better vibe. Now also HBO this weekend on Sunday, Mark Wahlberg has this new series. He's the exec producer of "Entourage." Is it any good? Have you seen it? What do you know about it?

MITCHELL: I've seen the first three episodes. What's really great about any HBO show is that, generally the premise seems to be, boy, what's the worst human beings can possibly be? Oh, I know, the sort of the awful, sort of green, terrible fungus sycophants that hang around movie stars. Let's do a series about this. Just when we thought "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as low as humanity could go, oh, no.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: That's the cool thing about HBO, they do this well. Is this worth seeing?

MITCHELL: I think it's really really funny, because it's totally unapologetic about the guy, the fact that these guys are completely and utterly superficial. They make Larry David look like Shakespeare. It's kind of -- yeah.

COOPER: Excellent. I'm there in my new Sunday viewing. The other Sunday show I know both you and I love, "Deadwood." How stunned were you? I was stunned. I didn't hear their names mentioned a lot in Emmy nominations.

MITCHELL: You know what's really funny about that is that you think about that great Ian McShane performance. I mean it's the most profane thing you can think of this side of you know, an old Redd Foxx album.

COOPER: The guy who plays Al Swearengen. MITCHELL: Yes, yes and it is incredible, the aptly named Al Swearengen, I guess. Not only that, but the great work by Keith Carradine as Buffalo Bill, this wonderful kind of elegiac performance, a man who knows he's at the end of his rope, and if you know history, you know exactly where that character is going to end up, but still you're paying attention to it. It's this horrible kind of amazing society where basically everybody is dependent on everybody else to be the worst they can be and there's this kind of familial bond that builds between them. So when outsiders come in who are capable of being decent, they're all kind of repulsed by them.

COOPER: Elvis Mitchell, great to see you.

MITCHELL: Good to see you too, thanks.

COOPER: Now the unveiling of a new segment here on "360,", a humble attempt on our part to look at some of the oddities of the television world and there are a lot of them. Why things are the way they are, what gets covered and why, who's hot, who's not, all a part of life "inside the box."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Sometimes what happens inside the box begins to look like a hall of mirrors, us looking at them, looking at us, looking at them. It began with us looking at the Whoopi Goldberg story.

Good evening. Some breaking news to report tonight. In a country where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, there's free speech and then there's costly speech.

Then them in the form of Jon Stewart began looking at us.

JON STEWART, HOST, DAILY SHOW: Last night, CNN's Anderson Cooper lent the proper gravitas to an important story that warranted it.

COOPER: Tonight, fallout from a raucous political fund-raising party held by the Democrats in New York last week.

STEWART: That's right, last night Anderson Cooper reported that the diet company Slim-Fast has fired Whoopi Goldberg!

COOPER: And of course when they begin looking at us, well we have to look back at them looking at us.

The "Daily Show"'s Jon Stewart had something to say about John Kerry's Democratic fundraiser, where Whoopi Goldberg made her remarks and had a little fun with yours truly, too.

STEWART: Whoopi Goldberg fired by Slim-Fast -- Anderson.

COOPER: We're going to cover this a lot tonight.

But when you're anchoring more than one program during the day, that really multiplies the hall of mirrors effect, meaning it's us looking at us, looking at them, looking at us. Got it?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: I got it.

"360" next. Martha Stewart's sentence, everyone with different opinions on the judge's decision, we take that to "the nth degree."

First today's buzz. Can Martha Stewart make a come back after prison? What do you think. Log onto cnn.com/360, cast your vote. Results when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Time now for the buzz. Earlier we asked you, can Martha Stewart make a comeback after prison? More than 13,000 of you voted, 78 percent of you said yes, 22 percent no. Not a scientific poll but it is your vote. Thanks for voting.

Tonight, taking the eye of the beholder to "The Nth Degree." Now that the saga of Martha Stewart is all but over -- we say all but, because an appeal has been filed -- there seems nothing at all left to say, except perhaps this. Not since the first abstract paintings began appearing have there been so many completely different reactions to the very same sight. Martha has had the power that a big Jackson Pollock must have had way back when, to make people look in the same place but to see different things entirely. Very important some have said at the Martha mess, as surely some also said even at first a Pollock. Totally trivial, others replied, serious, silly, meaningless, meaningful, a travesty, a tragedy, a commentary on our times, trash, unworthy of attention, deserving of deeper study and on and on and on. Actually, we think it makes a certain sense. After all, scandal is the modern art of our day, isn't it? I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com


Aired July 16, 2004 - 19:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from New York. I'm Anderson Cooper.
Martha Stewart is going to jail but keeps a stiff upper lip.

360 starts now.

Martha Stewart sentenced. Five months behind bars and five months house arrest. Could this actually help her brand?

Carson City chaos. A wildfire bears down on thousands of homes. We'll have a live report.

Convention drama. Hillary Clinton, bumped in Boston. Now she'll have a speaking role. The raw politics surrounding the former first lady.

Case closed for a soldier accused of cowardice. Did a drug make him do it? The strange side effects of Lariam.

And spy versus spy. How the intelligence game sometimes ends up between the sheets.

ANNOUNCER: Live from New York, this is ANDERSON COOPER 360.

COOPER: Good evening again.

We begin tonight with a success story tarnished. Martha Stewart sentenced today in federal court in New York for lying to government investigators about the sale of her ImClone stock back in 2001. The judge didn't throw the book at her, just a couple of pages.

CNN's Allan Chernoff has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALLAN CHERNOFF, CNN FINANCIAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart left court after getting the minimum possible, five months in prison, five months of home detention, as well as a $30,000 fine.

MARTHA STEWART: I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid whatsoever.

CHERNOFF: Earlier, in a far softer voice, Stewart had asked Judge Miriam Cedarbaum to "remember all the good that I have done, consider all the intense suffering that I have endured every single moment of the past two and a half years. I seek the opportunity to continue serving my country," Stewart said. Judge Cedarbaum responded, "You have suffered and will continue to suffer enough."

Stewart's attorney asked that she serve her time at a minimum security prison camp in Danbury, Connecticut, and do home detention at her house in Bedford, New York. But Stewart intends to keep fighting to say out of prison. She's hired the former top attorney in the Clinton administration.

WALTER DELLINGER, STEWART'S APPEAL ATTORNEY: We believe there are very significant issues to be brought before the court of appeals.

CHERNOFF: Ms. Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, received the same minimum sentence, with a smaller $4,000, fine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHERNOFF: Judge Cedarbaum agreed to stay both sentences pending appeal. However, the judge did agree to let them work it out until the appeal process is all done. Legal analysts say that there is little chance of success for the two defendants here, and they will almost certainly do their time in prison, Anderson.

COOPER: Allan Chernoff, thanks very much.

When Martha Stewart arrived at the courthouse this morning, her supporters were there to greet her and applaud. One shouted, "Hold your head high, Martha." The crowd stuck around for the outcome, and when Stewart came back out, the crowd hushed to hear her speak.

CNN's Adaora Udoji was listening.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Minutes after Martha Stewart was sentenced, she spoke more forcefully, say observers, than she had in court.

STEWART: What was a small personal matter came over the last -- became, over the last two years, an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions. I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time...

PAUL CALLAN, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: This is very unusual behavior by a criminal defendant.

UDOJI: Attorney Paul Callan has been on both sides, once as a prosecutor, now a defense attorney.

CALLAN: Usually defendants are remorseful at this point in the proceedings, and she seems to be just the opposite of that.

STEWART: I'm just very, very sorry that it's come to this, that a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion, and with such venom and such gore. I mean, it's just terrible.

UDOJI (on camera): A small personal matter, she calls it.

CALLAN: She's been convicted of obstruction of justice, conspiracy, lying to federal authorities concerning the stock market. That's hardly a small personal matter. That's a very public matter.

UDOJI (voice-over): A public matter involving her employees. To them, she expressed regrets.

STEWART: More than 200 people have lost their jobs at my company, and as a result of this situation. I want them to know how very, very sorry I am, for them and their families.

CALLAN: To the extent that she's taking responsibility for that, and expressing sorrow for that, I think that makes her a more human figure.

UDOJI: Ever a businesswoman, even her thanks to supporters included a sales pitch.

STEWART: All of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine, by buying our products, by...

CALLAN: Here's somebody who just appeared in front of a federal judge, the most important event in her life, probably, being sentenced on a very, very serious crime, and she's on the courthouse steps hawking magazines. It seems to lack a certainly dignity...

UDOJI: In speaking out, Stewart's walking a thin line, trying to boost her business while pursuing a, quote, "vigorous appeal" of her conviction. Every word counts.

CALLAN: Your very expression of remorse would be an admission of guilt that could be used against you in a retrial if you win on appeal.

STEWART: I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid.

UDOJI: Adaora Udoji, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: A quick news note for you. Investors reacted euphorically to Martha Stewart's sentence. Shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia soared 36 percent today. That is more than $3 a share.

Well, out of the thousands of U.S. service men and women who have served in Iraq over the last year, one may be unique. He's believed to be the one person accused of being a coward and facing the harsh punishment reserved for such people in times of war. But it turns out that cowardice wasn't this soldier's problem. A drug the Army gave to him was. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): For nine months, Staff Sergeant George Andreas Pogany has been preparing with his lawyer to clear his name. The label of coward stems from an incident on Pogany's first night at war. After a tense convoy ride into central Iraq, he glimpsed the bloody body of a dead Iraqi.

His reaction surprised him. He says he had hallucinations, nausea, and anxiety so extreme he asked his commanders for help.

SGT. GEORG-ANDREAS POGANY, 10TH SPECIAL FORCES GROUP: (UNINTELLIGIBLE), we were to go on a patrol the next morning, and I not functioning out on the patrol, what if somebody gets killed because I couldn't do my job? So I have the responsibility to let my leadership know that something is wrong, and that's what I did.

COOPER: What the commanders did was ship him home to face a charge of cowardice. That's when Pogany discovered that the reason for his reaction may have had little to do with the war but more to do with this drug. He'd been taking Lariam, a drug also known as mefloquine, that the Army gave him to prevent malaria.

But Lariam also carries the risk of side effects, which the Pentagon warns include nausea, and, in rare cases, panic attacks, depression, and hallucinations -- some of the very symptoms Pogany says he experienced.

Since returning, Pogany has been diagnosed by a military doctor as having likely Lariam toxicity. In a statement to CNN, U.S. Army Special Forces command said, "The command reviewed all of the information as well as Staff Sergeant Pogany's medical condition and decided the best course of action was to drop the charges."

There was no mention of the original cowardice charge, and now Pogany's lawyer wants one more thing from the Army -- a public apology.

RICH TRAVIS, LAWYER: Otherwise, that stigma of being a coward will follow him for the rest of his life. He'll be branded. And the only way to undo that brand is through a letter of apology.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, the diagnosis by military doctors has prompted the Navy to begin a study on the effects of Lariam among military personnel serving in Iraq.

A new FBI warning on al Qaeda tops our look at news happening right now cross-country. In Washington just moments ago, the FBI warned al Qaeda may be recruiting non-Arabs, less likely to attract the notice of security personnel, to carry out attacks inside the U.S. The new warning comes amid a continuous stream of intelligence apparently indicating that the terrorist group is determined to strike the United States sometime before election day. Lansing, Michigan, the Bush-Cheney ticket hoping to make the most of John McCain. Vice President Cheney campaigns with the senator who won Michigan's GOP primary in 2000. Senator John McCain, once a rival, of course, of George Bush, McCain is now a very public supporter of the Bush-Cheney ticket.

Carson City, Nevada, the state announces it will be the first in the union to use touch-screen voting machines with printers in the November elections. The concern is that without a paper trail, electronic voting could lead to ballot fraud.

East St. Louis, Illinois, former St. Louis Blues pro hockey player Mike Danton admits he tried to have his agent killed. Danton was apparently worried his agent would give information to the Blues that could have damaged his career. Danton faces up to 10 years in prison when he's sentenced in October.

Atlanta, another hockey star in trouble. Danny Heatley of the Atlanta Thrashers has been charged with vehicular homicide. He was involved in a car wreck last fall that killed his teammate Dan Snyder.

In Washington, D.C., a federal appeals court throws out new government rules that would have let truckers drive up to 11 hours straight without taking a break, one hour more than would the old rules allowed. The court said a federal safety board must reconsider the impact on truckers' health.

That's a quick look what's happening cross-country tonight.

360 next, up in flames. Fires raging really too close for comfort. Weary firefighters battling for the upper hand. We'll take you there live.

Plus, tricks of the spy trade. How far will some spies go to get information? You might be surprised.

And the raw politics of Hillary Clinton. Why some Democrats hate to love her, some Republicans seem to love to hate her.

All that ahead. First, your picks, the most popular stories on CNN.com right now.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's all right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Jeff, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Unbelievable pictures. A week ago, a big local story in the Carson City, Nevada, newspaper was the fire that destroyed a historic schoolhouse in a nearby town. Well, today the local story is still a fire, but one that threatens destruction on a much wider scale.

Here's CNN's Ted Rowlands.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Firefighters spent another day attacking flames mainly from the air. Helicopters and planes dropped water and retardant, as the wind shifted the blaze away from Carson City towards the Sierra peaks leading to Tahoe. Meanwhile, some of the people who were evacuated were allowed to come home, seeing for the first time the devastation left behind from the fire.

Some found their home completely destroyed.

GLORIA GOODNIGHT, CARSON CITY RESIDENT: It's pretty amazing to have nothing, just to all of a sudden, you know, you realize, you know, friends are calling, saying, Well, you know, I can give you some of my clothes. And you picture yourself wearing somebody else's clothes and sleeping in somebody else's home, but you have nowhere to go. And it's been amazing.

ROWLANDS: Fourteen homes have burned down, but many more have been saved. In fact, dozens of people came home to find that the fire had burned to their front door, only to be turned away by firefighters.

LYNN ANDERSON, CARSON CITY RESIDENT: And I don't know why it was us and -- that were spared, and they lost theirs. I don't know why.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS: And as predicted, late this afternoon, another dramatic wind shift, pushing the fire back towards Carson City, sending a huge blanket of smoke over the city and putting those homes in danger again, Anderson.

COOPER: Hard to believe. Ted Rowlands, thanks very much.

Fiery trouble on the other side of the globe. A massive school fire in India, that story tops our look at what's going on around the world in the uplink. Southern India now, at least 90 children are dead, 40 others hospitalized, after a horrific fire tore through this middle school. Investigators say it may have been caused by an electrical short and spread very quickly along the thatched roof.

In Baghdad, some Philippine soldiers pack up and leave Iraq, bowing to the demands of militants holding a Filipino hostage. Eleven soldiers have headed back to Manila. The 32 remaining troops are expected to leave Iraq in the coming days in hopes the hostage will be released.

In Urbru (ph), Sweden, ex-Gitmo prisoner speaks out. This man, a Swede, says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay, forced to stay in freezing cold -- in a freezing cold room for hours and exposed to noise and bright lights. U.S. officials deny the charges. The man was released last week after pressure from Swedish officials.

Tokyo, Japan, endgame for ex-chess champion Bobby Fischer. Now a U.S. fugitive, Fischer was detained in Japan for allegedly trying to leave the country without a valid passport. Fischer could be extradited to the U.S. to face charges that he attended a 1992 Yugoslav chess tournament in violation of U.N. sanctions. Since then, he's been on the run, amid rumors he's been playing chess on the Internet under assumed names.

And that's tonight's uplink.

Recent criticism of the CIA has focused a lot on the failure of its human intelligence-gathering. Humint, as it's known, means real people on the ground doing the dangerous and dirty work involved in finding out information. And it's as old as war itself.

But how far can a spy go? Confederate spies, Rose O'Neill Greenhow (ph) professed during the Civil War. She said, quote, "God gave me both a brain and a body, and I shall use them both."

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor now on one little-discussed trick of the spy trade.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN CONNERY, ACTOR: You're one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the classic Hollywood version, it's usually two spies in the bedroom, each trying to entrap the other. Real life may not be so glamorous, but Hollywood is right in this sense, historian Keith Melton told a sell-out crowd at the International Spy Museum. Sex and spies have always mixed.

KEITH MELTON, HISTORIAN: Everybody does it. Every intelligence service utilizes sex in some capacity.

ENSOR: In Moscow hotels, the Soviet KGB did it routinely and filmed the whole thing. Here, two KGB women entice a Spanish diplomat in the '70s. Blackmail film designed to induce treason.

MELTON: When confronted with this, many diplomats were faced with a ugly reality. Do I accept what I've done and contact security? Or do I agree to give some small, seeming innocuous piece of information to the KGB?

ENSOR: But it was East German spy chief Marcus Wolfe, says Melton, who turned sexpionage into an art form, finding that women often make more promising targets than men, and love works better than blackmail.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "SPYING FOR LOVE," BRITISH GOVERNMENT FILM)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want to know when the plane will leave, where they are going, how many, and what type of aircraft will be involved.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, Victor, that's classified information.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you really love me, you will do this for me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENSOR: Agents like Herbert Schroeder were taught to first woo, second propose to secretaries like Gerta, with access to secrets, and then go to step three.

MELTON: The third thing is, confess that you are indeed an East German agent who came here for another purpose entirely. But unless somehow you can get some information, they're going to recall you, and you're never going to be able to spend your life together. Blatant honesty worked.

ENSOR: And it still does. These more permissive times, blackmail is less effective, but honey traps based on the yearning for real love will always be there.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, if you think sexpionage went the way of the cold war, we're told you'd be wrong. A quick flashback to a more recent case. Katrina Leung, a Chinese-American businesswoman, had a 20-year sexual affair with FBI agent James Smith. Over the course of their tryst, Leung stole sensitive documents and gave them to Chinese officials. Leung is free on bail and awaits sentencing now. Smith took a plea deal and admitted to the crime, avoiding jail.

360 next, the lightning rod of politics. Hillary Clinton, the polarizing politico, gets to speak, and you can bet, like her or not, people will be listening. That is raw politics.

Also tonight, Martha Stewart going to prison. Some advice for surviving from one who's been there, former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss. I'll talk to her live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: We just checked the Web site for the Democratic National Convention. And if anybody from that group is watching, you have some work to do. On the list of people who speak the first night of the convention, her name doesn't appear. And you know the "her" we're talking about. As we've seen in the past few days, by leaving her off, you risk the wrath of raw politics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): Last Tuesday, the Kerry camp announced its roster of speakers for the upcoming Democratic convention in Boston. The story was not about Senator Clinton, yet somehow it did become about her.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL: Howard Dean will speak, but no Hillary.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Someone not on that list, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: Why did John Kerry dump Mrs. Clinton?

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

COOPER: The effect the junior senator of New York has on the political scene defies the laws of inside-the-Beltway gravity. This year, she repeatedly denied for being in the run for the democratic VP slot.

SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: I don't think I would ever be offered. I don't think I would accept.

COOPER: Still, that wasn't enough to prevent political commentators who kept floating her name as a potential candidate. Where does the fascination come from?

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Ambition. Look, she was the first lady of the United States who ran for and won a Senate seat from a major state, New York. That's not nothing. No first lady has ever done that before, pursued her own political career.

COOPER: Some Americans no doubt love her for that, others seem to hate her. But there's also something else that explains why Hillary Clinton is a constant presence in the political news pages, experts say.

SCHNEIDER: Hillary makes politics infinitely more interesting. She's a colorful figure, and everyone has been speculating -- look, I've been covering politics for decades, and there's always been speculation, When will a woman be elected president? And now, finally, after all these years, it has a character right out of Central Casting.

COOPER: So will Hillary Clinton be the first woman elected president in 2008? What if John Kerry wins? Will there be a matchup between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton in 2012? Keeping the pundits guessing, that's Hillary Rodham Clinton's raw politics.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Martha Stewart sentenced, five months behind bars, and five months' house arrest. Could id this actually help her brand?

And Will Smith battles the box, but can he dethrone Spider-Man?

360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Martha Stewart asked a judge for leniency today, and she got it, the lightest possible sentence for lying about the sale of her ImClone stock. In federal court in New York, she was sentenced to five months in prison, five months of home detention, and ordered to pay a $30,000 fine.

Moments before the sentencing, she asked the judge in a soft vote to, quote, "consider all the intense suffering that I have endured every single moment of the past two and a half years." The judge responded, "You have suffered and will continue to suffer enough."

Outside the courthouse, Stewart's demeanor was upbeat. She smiled boldly into the cameras and vowed a comeback. Here she is, in her own words.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEWART: Today is a shameful day. It's shameful for me and for my family, and for my beloved company, and for all of its employees and partners. What was a small personal matter came over the last -- became over the last two years an almost fatal circus event of unprecedented proportions.

I have been choked and almost suffocated to death during that time, all the while more concerned about the well-being of others than for myself, more hurt for them and for their losses than for my own, more worried for their futures than the future of Martha Stewart the person.

More than 200 people have lost their jobs at my company, and as a result of this situation, I want them to know how very, very sorry I am for them and their families.

I would like to thank everybody who stood by me, who wished me well, waved to me on the street, like these lovely people over here, smiled at me, called me, wrote to me. We received thousands of support letters, and more than 170,000 e-mails to Marthatalks.com. And I appreciate each and every one of those pieces of correspondence.

I really feel good about it. Perhaps all of you out there can continue to show your support by subscribing to our magazine, by buying our products, by encouraging our advertisers to come back in full force to our magazines. Our magazines are great, they deserve your support. And whatever happened to me personally shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on the great company Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. And I don't want to use this as a sales pitch for my company, but we love that company. We've worked so hard on that company, and we really think it merits great attention from the American public.

And I'll be back. I will be back. Whatever I have to do in the next few months, I hope the months go by quickly. I'm used to all kinds of hard work, as you know, and I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid whatsoever. I'm just very, very sorry that it's come to this, that a small personal matter has been able to be blown out of all proportion, and with such venom and such gore. I mean, it's just terrible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: We should also point out, Martha Stewart will be making her only live appearance on Monday on "LARRY KING LIVE." That's, of course, Monday 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. So watch for that.

Stewart's former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, received the same sentence, but a smaller fine, $4,000. Both sentences are on hold pending appeal.

In the courtroom today, and covering the case for us tonight, Court TV anchor Lisa Bloom, and celebrity justice correspondent Carolina Buia. Good to see both of you.

Lisa, let's start off with you. What was it like in the courtroom when Martha was there?

LISA BLOOM, COURT TV ANCHOR: Everyone was straining to hear and frankly I think most of us were not expecting her to speak in the courtroom because she's in that Catch-22 position. How could she express remorse if she doesn't take responsibility for the crime? The case is going to be up on appeal. Nevertheless, she did rise to her feet. She read from a prepared statement and I thought it was a staccato, dull, kind of flat tone. I was surprised by some of the things she said. She said this is shameful, I think she was referring to the prosecution, not her crimes. She ended by saying to the judge peace be with you. I thought it was a rather odd performance on her part.

COOPER: Carolina, how was she -- I mean her demeanor in the courtroom versus what you just saw outside?

CAROLINA BUIA, CELEBRITY JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, in the courtroom, I thought that she was almost at the point of tears. Not only was she staccato, but she was unsteady and wobbly. I found some of it very heartfelt, some of it a little bit dramatic. She talked about this has been a fatal circus, spurned oil (ph), she almost suffocated to death, but when she went outside, she was very composed. She was the Martha Stewart we're used to seeing on television, on Larry King and she pretty much gave us a sales pitch, buy her magazine.

COOPER: It's interesting though. I mean her lawyers say that there are some really good possibilities for appeal. Do you buy that, Lisa?

BLOOM: No, I don't. Most of them have already been rejected by the trial judge on motions for a retrial. Chappell Hartridge, the juror who they accused of perjury who denies that, Larry Stewart, the ink expert, also accused of perjury by the government, rejected as a grounds for a mistrial. There is a Supreme Court case that affects the Federal sentencing guidelines. That's called the Blakely case, which the second circuit, which is the New York circuit, has certified for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Cedarbaum today used that as the reason for giving Martha Stewart bail, saying, I want to get that sorted out before Martha Stewart has to go to prison.

I've read the Blakely case. I don't think it has any effect on this case whatsoever. It has to do with upward departures. There was no upward departure in this case. Nevertheless, I think Judge Cedarbaum is bending over backwards. Every area where she had discretion, she exercised it, leniency for Martha. She did it on bail. She did it on electronic monitoring. She did it on no drug testing for Martha and gave her the lowest possible sentence.

COOPER: Dotting ever "I," crossing every "T." How long is this appeals process likely to take Carolina?

BUIA: It could take -- we could see, if they decide to look at it, it could be as early as the spring, or could take up to two years.

COOPER: What about Douglas Faneuil? What happens to him now? He was really the star witness, really surprised a lot of people on the stand.

BLOOM: I spoke to his lawyer today. He's going to be sentenced next week on a misdemeanor charge. He is forever barred from the business. He has not been able to work as a broker.

COOPER: I've read he's working in an art gallery now.

BLOOM: Apparently something like that. We all expect that he'll be granted probation, no jail time because he did cooperate. He was the witness who testified longer than anybody else, four days at this trial. I would be shocked if he got one day behind bars.

COOPER: And really stood up just in pretty tough cross- examination. They really tried to go after this guy. They brought up past and minor drug use, all sorts of things. What surprised you most about today?

BUIA: What surprised me more was that Martha Stewart actually spoke. I mean during her trial, she did not get up on the witness stand. She didn't speak to reporters, actually asked her in the courtroom, I said how do you feel about the sentence? And she said that it was expected that she had expected it.

COOPER: What surprised you, Lisa?

BLOOM: Her statements made outside the courtroom, this Job-like attitude, that this was so monumental. This was such a huge event. Certainly it was a huge event for her, but people do get sentenced for their Federal crimes every day of the week. She got the lowest possible sentence. She's never showed any remorse for what she did to Doug Faneuil, her own assistant Annie Armstrong, her best friend, Mariana Pasternak, lives she's just run over in the course of fighting this absurd battle that she's been fighting for about two years. Everybody knows that she's guilty. There's overwhelming evidence. Yet she's going to continue to fight this on appeal. I think the time has come for her to say I did something wrong. Show up. If she served her time now Anderson, she would be out in time for Christmas. She'd have a book deal. She could move on with her life, instead continuing to fight this for potentially a couple of years. I think that's the wrong path.

COOPER: All right. We're going to leave it there. Lisa Bloom, good to talk to you, Carolina Buia, thanks very much, fascinating today.

As we mentioned, Martha chose for her Danbury, Connecticut as her home as the place she'll serve her five months of home confinement. She did have a couple of choices. Here's a quick fast fact on her real estate options. So-called Turkey Hill is considered her main home in Westport, Connecticut. She owns the former Ford estate in Seal Harbor, Maine. There's also an apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City and there are two homes in the Hamptons in Long Island, New York, some options.

Coverage of Martha Stewart's sentencing today was, well, let's just say extensive. When celebrities go to jail, right or wrong, the media is all over it, but less well-covered is what happens when they get out of jail. How easy is it for them to resume their former life? CNN's Jason Bellini takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Martha Stewart has only been sentenced to five months in jail but will her reputation and that of her business be locked in for good? Leona Helmsley, the hotel diva dubbed queen of mean served 21 months behind bars. Only little people pay taxes, she said before her tax evasion conviction. That was 1989. Today, she's still a very wealthy woman and still owns the hotels bearing her name, but Helmsley herself keeps a low profile.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Staying her and her problems have no influence on it.

BELLINI: Steve Madden, the shoe designer is still in the big house for a 2002 tax fraud conviction. But most people who love Madden the shoes don't hate Madden the man. They don't know who he is and don't seem to care. Do you know anything about Steve Madden?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No, I don't think I do.

BELLINI: Reverend Jim Bakker served five years of what was reduced to an 18-year sentence after his 1989 conviction for swindling $158 million from followers. His Christian theme park and resort Heritage USA was sold to foreign investors. Today there's no sign left of the holy ghost at Heritage USA. It's now a ghost town. But resurrecting a reputation is possible. Just ask Michael Milken. The junk bond king jailed for securities fraud has made a white-collar comeback. He's now a crusader for cancer research. So there is hope, Martha Stewart of making a comeback, but it will be hard. Going to jail? It's not a good thing. Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: In Martha Stewart's case, rehabilitating her reputation isn't just a matter of making public getting to like her again. She's also got a publicly traded company to run with hundreds of employees. So the question is how can she come back? I'm joined now by someone who might know, Michael Levine, who runs a PR firm in Los Angeles where he advises many celebrity clients. Michael, good to see you tonight. Can Martha Stewart come back from this?

MICHAEL LEVINE, LEVINE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICE: You know, prophecy is dubious business, but I kind of sniffed a resurrection today. I sense that there is some possibility and this is a distinctly different opinion than I had a year ago or six months ago.

COOPER: What was it that you heard today? I mean I take it you're talking about maybe her statement outside the court?

LEVINE: Yes.

COOPER: What did you hear that makes you think resurrection?

LEVINE: Well, I hear -- it's an interesting thing about celebrities when they get in trouble. I've represented a vast number. I can tell you pretty candidly that people respect wisdom, but obey pain. And when you get in enough trouble, you start to soften. And though I don't think Martha's ready to open up a charm school or teach a class on humility, I think that she has softened quite a bit from some earlier days in which she was just a little more in your face. I don't think that's the approach to take at all.

COOPER: Do you think it's just a question of her softening? Do you think it's also perhaps a change in public opinion that as they've watched sort of these charges dwindle, as they've seen through the arc of this case, the public has sort of changed their mind?

LEVINE: I think that's a profound point you're making. Everything has got to be viewed in the context of what else is happening to you. In this case, I think that the public has witnessed some, what I think would appear to be zealousness on the part of prosecutors, and so I think that -- also the sentence today, which was much more lenient than most people suspected it would be, has also created a context in which I think that she can look a little more -- less angry about it.

COOPER: It fascinated me how early on there was such almost vitriol in some quarters, in some cable news, sort of an overwhelming sense of (UNINTELLIGIBLE) joy, glee at other people's downfall. It seems to me that's sort of lessened a little bit, so it's interesting to hear your comments on that. But her appeal now we're being told could take up to two years. What does she got to do in that time in order to sort of help her comeback?

LEVINE: To the extent that she wants to continue to communicate with her customer base, I think that things that Americans find very appealing of fallen celebrities are humility, personal responsibility, charity, I mean, look at what Michael Milken has done. He is such an extraordinary example of a man who sincerely resurrected an image. And I think that they don't -- Americans just don't react well to arrogance and to a victim-like mentality from people who are enormously wealthy and successful.

COOPER: It does seem though that this country allows people a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance.

LEVINE: If, if you act with contrition, personal responsibility and speed. So if you take, for example, let's take Hugh Grant, who acted with all those things, he got off rather easily, but if you're O.J. Simpson and you're awfully arrogant, I don't think Americans are all that forgiving in that kind of situation.

COOPER: Interesting. All right. Michael Levine, thanks for joining us tonight.

LEVINE: Thanks, thanks.

COOPER: Today's buzz question is this. What do you think? Can Martha Stewart make a comeback after prison? Log on to cnn.com/360. Cast your vote. We'll have results at the end of the program tonight.

"360" next, advice for Martha Stewart from former Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, what it's like inside a prison, an exclusive interview ahead.

Also tonight, inside the box, the hall of mirrors, affect us looking at them, them looking at us.

And a little later, a classic sci-fi book tale unfolds on the big screen. We'll look at the new options at the box office in tonight's weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Well, advice on prison life tonight from a former Hollywood madam to the maven of home decorating. Heidi Fleiss telling Martha Stewart how to survive behind bars. Fleiss knows about what she's talking about. She spent three years in prison on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, charges related to her running of a Hollywood brothel that catered to the rich and famous. She's also the author of the players' handbook. Heidi Fleiss joins us live exclusively from Los Angeles. Heidi, thanks for being with us tonight.

HEIDI FLEISS, FORMER HOLLYWOOD MADAM: My pleasure.

COOPER: Your advice to Martha Stewart, first of all.

FLEISS: First of all, wait, first of all, I want to say that I bought my subscription today and I also bought one for my roommate that's still in the penitentiary.

COOPER: So you paid attention to her post-hearing statement?

FLEISS: Yes, and I was very -- I think that she's a very gutsy woman. She handled this whole thing with a lot of class, a lot of dignity and a lot of pride.

COOPER: Is it important to go into prison sort of fearless? She says she's not afraid.

FLEISS: Hey, I was afraid and maybe she's been much more prepared or seasoned than I have but no one told me things like coffee matters, tennis shoes matter, toothpaste matters, no one told me little things like that. So it was hard for me to grasp. My first day there, I was dropped off in this prison camp and I was surrounded by a whole group of lesbians and they're saying do you want toothpaste? Do you want tennis shoes? Do you want sweatpants? I had no idea what anyone was talking about.

COOPER: What were they talking about? I don't quite understand. What the significance of the coffee and the tennis shoes?

FLEISS: Because, it's like, you get -- a prisoner, you get a government issue, or if you have money, you can go to the commissary and buy better sweatpants or better tennis shoes or coffee, things of that nature. I didn't know about any of this.

COOPER: When you got there, do they all know who you were? Obviously you were a celebrity at that point. You had been in the papers a lot, been on television, obviously Martha Stewart would be in the same situation.

FLEISS: Of course, they were waiting for me. It's like throwing Ricky Martin to his fans. I was bait. It's going to be easy for her because, it's going to be much easier for her. She'll come back stronger than ever.

COOPER: Why do you think it will be easier for her?

FLEISS: Because I think she's got five months. I did three years, and I'm a little more feisty and I was 30 years old at the time, and it seems that the way -- just by her speech today, as she went through it, it seems she's more prepared for what's going to happen.

COOPER: Does it help being a celebrity? I mean does the celebrity help or does it hurt?

FLEISS: It does not help at all. But there's not going to be -- look it, mostly it's lesbian hell there. I would say 3 percent gay going in, 97 percent gay while you're there and 4 percent gay going out. So she could have her pick of the litter. She can go in the hobby crafts room and take a napkin and turn it into the house. The prison could benefit by her.

COOPER: Do you think -- sorry. I mean, as you look back on your experience now, what do you think you learned that you didn't know going in?

FLEISS: I think that it was -- I'm humbled. I have a broader perspective. I think it made me, I hate to say this, a better person. No one should have to go to prison to be a better person. I could have maybe grown to be a better person anyways, but look it, it was a terrible experience but in my head, to justify it, I say I'm a better person. Although I have been released quite a few years, it seems like it was a million years ago.

COOPER: But it's probably something you'll never forget.

FLEISS: Of course not. Of course, after player's handbook, this one, I'll have my prison memoir available as well.

COOPER: All right. Heidi Fleiss, good to talk to you. Thanks for being with us tonight.

FLEISS: Thank you.

"360" next. Will Smith back on the big screen with a sci-fi thriller. We'll talk new movies in the "weekender."

Plus "inside the box," Jon Stewart and I back and forth and back and forth through the looking glass. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Will Smith playing detective in the movie "I, Robot" 31 years in the future and a new HBO series based on the life experiences of Mark Wahlberg, all in tonight's weekender with "360" film guru Elvis Mitchell. Elvis, "I, Robot" opened today, kind of excited about it. We're going to show a clip and then talk about it. Let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILL SMITH, ACTOR: You are the dumbest smart person I have ever met in my life.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nice.

SMITH: What makes your robot so perfect?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They're not irrational and potentially homicidal maniacs for starters.

SMITH: That's true, they are definitely rational.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You are the dumbest dumb person I have ever met.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I kept expecting something to crash through the window during that clip. Is this good? ELVIS MITCHELL, MEDIA CRITIC: You mean like your attention span? God, no, it's not good. One thing that's fascinating about Will Smith as a movie star, he's actually an incredibly honest actor. He can't sell bad material. His real gift is listening to other actors and playing off that. Even when he gets bad lines doing that, at least you get the sense that his attention kind of makes the other person worth listening to. But here he just sort of like walking through as of course another tortured good guy who has a secret in his past. What, too many "Magnum PI" episodes?

COOPER: Ouch.

MITCHELL: Who cares? But the thing is that those Isaac Asimov stories that use "I, Robot" as kind of a foundation, are really kind of interesting. They talk about a society where things may be on the verge of change, but here it's just sort of a standard, post "Blade Runner," post "Alien" sort of dystopic future where things are going to be actually worse than they seem. This movie could actually use some politics, instead of just being about business bad and -- who made this? Oh, Fox. I guess they're a business of some sort, right?

COOPER: I guess then I'll just rent "Blade Runner" and sort of get the same -- get a better vibe. Now also HBO this weekend on Sunday, Mark Wahlberg has this new series. He's the exec producer of "Entourage." Is it any good? Have you seen it? What do you know about it?

MITCHELL: I've seen the first three episodes. What's really great about any HBO show is that, generally the premise seems to be, boy, what's the worst human beings can possibly be? Oh, I know, the sort of the awful, sort of green, terrible fungus sycophants that hang around movie stars. Let's do a series about this. Just when we thought "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as low as humanity could go, oh, no.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: That's the cool thing about HBO, they do this well. Is this worth seeing?

MITCHELL: I think it's really really funny, because it's totally unapologetic about the guy, the fact that these guys are completely and utterly superficial. They make Larry David look like Shakespeare. It's kind of -- yeah.

COOPER: Excellent. I'm there in my new Sunday viewing. The other Sunday show I know both you and I love, "Deadwood." How stunned were you? I was stunned. I didn't hear their names mentioned a lot in Emmy nominations.

MITCHELL: You know what's really funny about that is that you think about that great Ian McShane performance. I mean it's the most profane thing you can think of this side of you know, an old Redd Foxx album.

COOPER: The guy who plays Al Swearengen. MITCHELL: Yes, yes and it is incredible, the aptly named Al Swearengen, I guess. Not only that, but the great work by Keith Carradine as Buffalo Bill, this wonderful kind of elegiac performance, a man who knows he's at the end of his rope, and if you know history, you know exactly where that character is going to end up, but still you're paying attention to it. It's this horrible kind of amazing society where basically everybody is dependent on everybody else to be the worst they can be and there's this kind of familial bond that builds between them. So when outsiders come in who are capable of being decent, they're all kind of repulsed by them.

COOPER: Elvis Mitchell, great to see you.

MITCHELL: Good to see you too, thanks.

COOPER: Now the unveiling of a new segment here on "360,", a humble attempt on our part to look at some of the oddities of the television world and there are a lot of them. Why things are the way they are, what gets covered and why, who's hot, who's not, all a part of life "inside the box."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Sometimes what happens inside the box begins to look like a hall of mirrors, us looking at them, looking at us, looking at them. It began with us looking at the Whoopi Goldberg story.

Good evening. Some breaking news to report tonight. In a country where freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, there's free speech and then there's costly speech.

Then them in the form of Jon Stewart began looking at us.

JON STEWART, HOST, DAILY SHOW: Last night, CNN's Anderson Cooper lent the proper gravitas to an important story that warranted it.

COOPER: Tonight, fallout from a raucous political fund-raising party held by the Democrats in New York last week.

STEWART: That's right, last night Anderson Cooper reported that the diet company Slim-Fast has fired Whoopi Goldberg!

COOPER: And of course when they begin looking at us, well we have to look back at them looking at us.

The "Daily Show"'s Jon Stewart had something to say about John Kerry's Democratic fundraiser, where Whoopi Goldberg made her remarks and had a little fun with yours truly, too.

STEWART: Whoopi Goldberg fired by Slim-Fast -- Anderson.

COOPER: We're going to cover this a lot tonight.

But when you're anchoring more than one program during the day, that really multiplies the hall of mirrors effect, meaning it's us looking at us, looking at them, looking at us. Got it?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: I got it.

"360" next. Martha Stewart's sentence, everyone with different opinions on the judge's decision, we take that to "the nth degree."

First today's buzz. Can Martha Stewart make a come back after prison? What do you think. Log onto cnn.com/360, cast your vote. Results when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Time now for the buzz. Earlier we asked you, can Martha Stewart make a comeback after prison? More than 13,000 of you voted, 78 percent of you said yes, 22 percent no. Not a scientific poll but it is your vote. Thanks for voting.

Tonight, taking the eye of the beholder to "The Nth Degree." Now that the saga of Martha Stewart is all but over -- we say all but, because an appeal has been filed -- there seems nothing at all left to say, except perhaps this. Not since the first abstract paintings began appearing have there been so many completely different reactions to the very same sight. Martha has had the power that a big Jackson Pollock must have had way back when, to make people look in the same place but to see different things entirely. Very important some have said at the Martha mess, as surely some also said even at first a Pollock. Totally trivial, others replied, serious, silly, meaningless, meaningful, a travesty, a tragedy, a commentary on our times, trash, unworthy of attention, deserving of deeper study and on and on and on. Actually, we think it makes a certain sense. After all, scandal is the modern art of our day, isn't it? I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching. Have a great weekend.

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