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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Graner Found Guilty in Abu Ghraib Scandal; Security Watch

Aired January 14, 2005 - 22:00   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.


AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
As a theoretical question it's actually quite easy. Americans oppose torture. But as a practical question, it's more complicated. What is torture really? Might there be circumstances when your theoretical opposition would give way to practical necessity? And this question, while saying it opposes torture, has the White House tacitly signaled a little torture is OK? It is one of the things we look at tonight. Here are some others.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): A military jury convicts the reputed ringleader in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal. What does the verdict mean for the trials to come?

The battle over death benefits for U.S. troops killed in combat, their families receive $12,000. Some members of Congress call it a travesty.

Remembering the Kennedy you never hear about, Rosemary Kennedy, who suffered from mental retardation. In an exclusive interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff, Eunice Shriver talks about her late sister's life and legacy.

EUNICE SHRIVER, FOUNDER, SPECIAL OLYMPICS: I think the biggest problem and a horrendous problem in those days nobody knew anything about being intellectually slow.

BROWN: And how a school in Tennessee is trying to give meaning to a horrific number raising a penny for every one of the tsunami victims.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Those stories and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with a guilty verdict in the first trial to come out of the Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal. Specialist Charles Graner was portrayed throughout the court martial as the driving force in a cell block out of control.

He claimed he was only doing what military intelligence agents wanted him to do, soften up the prisoners, the verdict tonight from CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Accused Abu Ghraib ringleader, Charles Graner, said this as his trial began.

CHARLES GRANER: I'm going to find out how much of a monster I am today.

CANDIOTTI: The answer came late on a Friday afternoon, one year to the very day when the now notorious photos first surfaced and sparked the Army's investigation. Graner stood ramrod stiff, eyes straight ahead as the verdict was read.

Guilty on nine of the ten major counts, guilty also on one reduced charge for each of these photos, the naked human pyramid, the prisoner on a dog leash, the threat to punch another detainee, this scene of sexual humiliation, guilty of each charge of abuse.

In closing arguments, the defense tried to explain away the photos with, well, a creative argument. The prisoner on the leash, it said, was not being dragged. He crawled out of his cell. "It's not violent. It was done creatively, mission accomplished." The prosecution responds: "Yeah, it was creative. It was creative abuse."

The jury of combat veterans was only out five hours. The same jury is to decide Graner's sentence. Graner did not testify in his own defense, a decision he may now regret. The maximum sentence the former prison guard now faces as much as 15 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI: And about a half hour ago, testimony in the sentencing phase ended for the night. Among those who took the stand Graner's parents begging for mercy, his mother Erma (ph), "He'll always be my hero." His father told the jury, "When he came home from the war, we were going to go fishing. Now that fishing is going to be postponed. For how long" he said to the jury, "it's going to be up to you."

Graner will have one last chance to take the stand tomorrow. His lawyer says he will when deliberations resume in the -- rather when testimony resumes in the sentencing phase tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. followed by deliberations to decide how long Graner will spend behind bars -- Aaron.

BROWN: Susan, thank you, Susan Candiotti tonight.

The conviction of Specialist Graner is just one piece of a story that has been unfolding for months and which now involves accusations of abuse in other U.S. military prisons as well, including Guantanamo.

We're joined tonight by Mark Danner, a staff writer at the "New Yorker," specializing in foreign affairs. He's also the author, probably technically the editor I think of "Torture and Truth," and a contributor to the "New York Review" of books. I say editor because it's really a series, a massive series of documents, isn't it?

MARK DANNER, AUTHOR, "TORTURE AND TRUTH": Well, it's a massive series of documents and also my essay is commenting on them.

BROWN: The central argument I think the administration had made is that Abu Ghraib is really, it's awful but it's a few bad apples. The argument the documents make is something quite different.

DANNER: The argument the documents make is that this was widespread abuse. The photographs that we see are particularly sadistic examples of it and indeed because they're so sadistic and the images are so grotesque and outrageous, it's very easy to believe that these were acts of individual sadism, which is what the government has claimed from the beginning.

The problem is that the reports themselves that were undertaken by the government, by General Antonio Taguba, by General Fay, as well as the Red Cross report suggest that this is much more widespread activity that much of it was connected to interrogation and that even though there were acts of individual sadism for which Specialist Graner's been convicted tonight, this is a much more widespread phenomenon.

And, in fact, the case that the government made, it's a few bad apples, was partly to cover up something much broader, which is a major change in how the government of the United States interrogates prisoners and a use of practices we can call torture.

BROWN: Let's try and cover a number of bases a little quickly. If there's a starting point in this what is it, either a moment where the president or the administration did something?

DANNER: It's clear in the months after 9/11, in the weeks after 9/11 that at the top of the administration the president and others made decisions about interrogation. Look, this is a new kind of war. It relies on information. We're going to need information quickly from prisoners.

Therefore, the Geneva Convention is instead of being a hallowed idea of how you treat prisoners is actually an obstacle in the war on terror; therefore, we will withhold Geneva Convention protection.

Second, we have agreed as a government, as a country not to torture. Well, that's too restrictive. We are going to make it possible to use techniques that the rest of the world and most ordinary people will regard as torture.

BROWN: For example.

DANNER: For example, water boarding, which it was revealed in the "New York Times" yesterday this was made possible and approved by the Department of Justice.

Now, this is a torture procedure by which a prisoner is strapped down on a board usually and his head is submerged in water, usually (UNINTELLIGIBLE) dirty water until he essentially drowns, loses consciousness. It's terrifying. It's used around the world. It was used in Argentina and Uruguay during the dirty war in Argentina.

BROWN: And who approved it?

DANNER: Well, so far as we know lawyers in the Department of Justice approved it.

BROWN: And they said this isn't torture because what?

DANNER: They said that in order for something to be torture it has to cause pain sufficiently severe to be equivalent to major organ failure or death and if that is your definition of torture, there is an awful lot you can do to prisoners before that level is reached and water boarding is one of them.

BROWN: And is that the practice of the U.S. government today as best you know?

DANNER: Well, the answer to that is we don't know precisely what the government is doing. Now we do know that as recently as a couple of months ago in Guantanamo prisoners were being chained in fetal positions on the floor, left for 24, 48 hours and longer in rooms where the temperature went above 100 degrees, no food, no water, sensory deprivation, hooded.

These are reports by the FBI that have been recently released. Now this was months after Abu Ghraib, so we know these practices continued at least that long. We don't know what's being done now. We do know that the parameters on what you can do and not do are much, much broader than they ever have been in American history and a lot of this behavior would be interpreted and called torture by the rest of the world.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in tonight both the essays, the commentary, and the documents themselves are powerful stuff. People ought to take a look at it if they're interested. It's nice to see you.

DANNER: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Thank you.

Other news tonight, the weather again making news, in most of the country the worst of the weather has passed on now but, oh my, what it left behind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Several skiers are reported missing after a massive avalanche wore down the slopes near Park City, Utah. Nine feet of snow has fallen there in the last three weeks. Officials say the skiers were on a section of the mountain that was off limits.

More problems in California from all that rain this week, several thousand people were evacuated near Corona after the Prado Dam started leaking, leaking just enough to scare officials. The Army Corps of Engineers has now taken a look and says the dam is safe, so people can go home if they want to.

That's the same with the residents who live in La Conchita, California. That's where the mudslide claimed ten lives earlier in the week. They can go home too if they want to but it's been declared a geologic hazard area. Rob Coleman says he will probably go home. He was vacuuming when the earth moved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the retaining wall that was quite massive and strong and it snapped and broke. I watched telephone poles life out of the ground. I watched telephone poles fly through the air shaking. I saw the straps and then at that moment we started hearing yelling and screaming and crying.

BROWN: A tornado sparked a fire at a tire distribution center in Lawrence County, South Carolina. It raged through the night. About 100 people were forced from their homes in the dead of night.

Another tornado, this one a huge F3 with winds clocked at over 200 miles an hour, carved a swath of destruction in Union County, Arkansas, at least 15 people hurt.

And, in Ohio, in some areas flood waters are finally backing off. At one point, the town of Marietta was almost completely under water. And there's a lesson to be learned here, not only in Ohio but elsewhere across the country. Home is home.

ROB SCHAFER, BUSINESS OWNER: We all are here because of the river and you take the good with the bad and the good outweighs the bad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Weather related pictures of a different sort today too, images that show a frozen surface, boulders or chunks of ice maybe, hilly terrain, what looked like riverbeds but these pictures are not necessarily what you think. They are images of the surface of Titan, one of the moons of the planet Saturn. They really are.

This time last year a probe, a space probe sent pictures back to Mars. Today a spacecraft has gone truly where no manmade object has ever gone before, reporting, of course, CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Beneath the haze there was plenty to gaze at on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, gullies, rivers and a sea all filled with methane, a strange place but an oddly familiar one too, a day to remember more than 20 years in the making.

CAROLYN PORCO, CASSINI SCIENTIST: Frankly I cannot believe what I am seeing. This is just -- I really didn't think we'd have this kind of view.

O'BRIEN: The astounding view came courtesy of a nine-foot spacecraft that looked like a cheesy prop from a grade B sci-fi movie but it was an alien flying saucer for real, named for the earthling who discovered Titan in 1655, the Huygens probe parachuted as planned to the titanic surface sampling the atmosphere, measuring the winds and snapping hundreds of pictures.

JEAN-JACQUES DORDAIN, ESA DIRECTOR GENERAL: So we are the first visitors of Titan and scientific data that we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world.

O'BRIEN: Huygens' heroes gathered at the European Space Agency control center in Germany out of this world with joy as the improbable descent unfolded and the spacecraft phoned home on time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like we've heard the baby crying.

O'BRIEN: Their baby was handy with its cameras, offering up an image that no one predicted, a rock-strewn landscape that looks like Mars or Arizona for that matter.

PORCO: We just didn't expect it to look this way but there we are on the surface and there are boulders of some sort and we're going to be working out how they came to be.

O'BRIEN: Scientists are fascinated by Titan because they believe it's like looking at earth four billion years ago before life started simmering on the evolutionary range.

DAVID SOUTHWOOD, ESA DIRECTOR OF SCIENCE: I always think of Titan as the cooking pot that is like the early earth and you want to know whether it's really cooking. Once you see this, you see liquid on the surface, I believe we are cooking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Cooking indeed, Aaron. Can you imagine spending 20 years plus stirring the pot on a mission like this and the hoping the two and a half hours that count everything goes just as planned? Today, I guess they had a souffle.

BROWN: I guess. It's just remarkable stuff. Take 30 seconds or so and talk a little bit more about what it is we learn about ourselves or our planet or might learn from what happened today.

O'BRIEN: Well, if you look at this particular planet, it's a nitrogen-rich atmosphere and we know that earth before life took hold here was nitrogen-rich as well.

So imagine if you could look back in time and see what the planet looked like before the slime started crawling out of the ocean. You might very well see those same kinds of rocks and that same kind of flow of liquid. One other question you might want to ask is one day many years ago when Titan was warmer were there little critters perhaps swimming around in the methane?

BROWN: It's just marvelous stuff, Miles. Thank you for staying late tonight, much appreciated.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

BROWN: Miles O'Brien in Atlanta.

Ahead on the program tonight, an exclusive and extraordinary interview with Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She talks about how she was inspired by her older sister Rosemary, how that inspiration led to a program that has now helped countless numbers of Americans.

Also ahead, an eye-opening security project being tested at JFK. We'll look at what this program hopes to accomplish but we'll take a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A week ago today an 86-year-old woman died in a hospital in Wisconsin. Granted that's not unusual. Elderly people pass away every day. But this woman was the member of an American political dynasty, although we knew very little about her.

She was Rosemary Kennedy, a younger sister of President John F. Kennedy, a woman with mental retardation. Families, even famous, wealthy and powerful families, are changed by things like this, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

The Kennedy family was changed and a lot of people are better for it. In a rare conversation Eunice Shriver, Rosemary Kennedy's sister, and her son Tim talked with CNN's Judy Woodruff, tonight a CNN exclusive; Kennedy's legacy the story behind the Special Olympics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHRIVER: I come from a very large family, nine children, and Rosemary was number three in the family after Joe, Jr. and President Kennedy and she was very lively, very good humored.

I remember my great memory of her as a swimmer. We used to go five girls every day have a swimming lesson and Rosemary was by far the superior of all of us, so we were in awe of Rosemary. But she was very well liked.

She was fun. She participated in a lot of things but I think the biggest problem and a horrendous problem in those days, nobody knew anything about being intellectually slow. There was just nobody to talk to.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: It's obviously been reported the decision to have surgery for her, back then that was known to be an option. How did -- what was the discussion in your family about that?

SHRIVER: At that time, Rosemary was in her 20s and she was getting more aggressive and somewhat more demanding but nobody had any answers to it until the suggestion came to my father that if she could have this operation and others had had it and it seemed in a number of cases to work well that Rosemary then would be able to do more and be happier and fit in even more easily.

But those, my father's great ambition was not to make Rosemary like his other eight children but to try to clarify the cloudiness that lived inside her and to allow her to be more aggressive and, as I say, more optimistic and be one of us but there was no desire to think she was going to be like my brothers.

She already was handicapped and we all knew that, so the only question in my father's mind was "Can I help her more?" And that was the reason that she had the operation, completely the reason.

WOODRUFF: And what was your -- what was the family's reaction after that? I mean how did she change?

SHRIVER: Well, she obviously became far slower in all her reactions and she -- but she still lived at home some of the time and we, mother tried to find a place where other children lived so Rosemary could accommodate herself more easily.

WOODRUFF: Tim Shriver, growing up there was this member of your family, your mother's sister, your aunt, what was your earliest awareness of her and what was your sense of what -- of her life and what it meant to the rest of your family?

TIM SHRIVER: Well, as a young person, you know, Rosemary would always come to visit and she did, really I mean her last visit was just before Christmas so here at our house and we had Christmas dinner before the holiday with her.

So, you know, throughout my life Rosemary was a regular visitor just like any other family member, although Rosie would stay longer and spend more time with me than most other family members.

But I have many, you know, images of her from my childhood, most of them are swimming images. She was just an avid swimmer and she had this extraordinary capacity just to swim for seeming like hours, you know. When you're a little kid you're struggling. You go from one end of the pool to the other.

And Rosie would just be out there in the middle of the pool going back and forth, never touching the bottom, as though she sort of had buoyancy tubes under her and I was always marveling like how is it that she stays up like that? And how is it that she has such physical strength and resilience?

Obviously, she had limitations, you know, so it was clear to me that, you know, as it was to anyone later in her life that her disabling conditions were quite severe.

E. SHRIVER: One of the things that's important is Rosie participated in all the things we did. My father was appointed to represent the United States in the coronation of the pope and we all dressed up in black, Rosie as well, and she came to the coronation.

We were presented at court in 1939. Rosie went along with my sister Kathleen and my mother and she was presented at court. This was, of course, before the operation but still everything that we tried to do, we'd go sightseeing.

I used to go with Rosie to Austria. We'd go around to the museums there and she participated. So, my mother was very strong and everybody else in having Rosie do everything we did. We didn't keep her in a room and say, "Well, we'll tell you all about it when we come home."

WOODRUFF: How much was she an -- I think people assume that she was an inspiration to you in coming up with the whole idea of the Special Olympics from its early -- is that true? I mean how did it...

E. SHRIVER: I think it is true because, as Timmy had just pointed out, she could swim like a deer. She just went whacking across that pool like mad and indeed the first games we had with her in Chicago and the mayor called up and said "We're going to do these things. It's wonderful but we can't have a swimming pool."

I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, we don't want to be responsible for these kids drowning." I said, "Well, then we don't -- thank you very much but we won't have the games there. We'll look for somewhere."

And then he called me the next day and said, "Three-foot pool you'll have." I said, "That's good enough" and we went because I knew that if we didn't have swimming a big block in her life would be there. They are wonderful swimmers our special friends.

T. SHRIVER: I think if you look around the world, as my mother said, you know, there are still tremendous obstacles to inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities or any kind of disability. There's a tremendous indifference to their plight. There's a tremendous sense, often not stated, that they don't count as much.

The unstated message is they'll have to wait. There are just too many other things that have to get done. The unstated message of even a wealthy country like ours is well there are other problems that are more important.

We've got to solve Social Security. We've got to address transportation issues. We've got to address the problems in Iraq. You know this is not the right time. What's the unstated assumption? They don't deserve it. They're not quite as deserving of the chance that we expect for others.

And I think, you know, that's part of human nature sadly that if we see someone who on the external looks different, looks slower, looks less capable we're not so good at looking at the internal, you know. We judge the book by its cover. We fail to look at the spirit and that's just I think a constant struggle for all of us.

WOODRUFF: Well, you mention issues that are before us today. You mention transportation. You mention Social Security. These are issues that are before us in 2005. How far has the country come?

E. SHRIVER: Well, I think quite a distance. When President Kennedy was in office in 1960, I went around to various places to try to find out how they were responding to the mentally handicapped. I couldn't really find anything and I spoke to him about it and he did something. He formed a committee on mental retardation immediately within a couple of weeks after he got into power.

WOODRUFF: It's been reported that your son-in-law, who happens to be the governor of California, was considering some cuts in programs affecting people with disabilities, among others, and you were among those who lobbied him not to do that. Is that true? Can you straighten that out?

E. SHRIVER: I think you can straighten out my daughter more than you can straighten (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I think she brought it to his attention in the early days and he did make a change and he did put many of those (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WOODRUFF: So, you didn't play any role in that?

E. SHRIVER: Maria and I talked but Maria is the one that said to Arnold "What are you doing?" And he said -- which I thought took a great deal of courage. You rarely see anybody in the political life that changes their mind and says "I'm going to be for this now" and he did. He changed it so that they did get certain kinds of additional financial rewards.

T. SHRIVER: I think the thing that I would underscore that struck me the most is that Rosemary had a successful life and there are mothers and fathers who wonder about a child with special needs. Can this child have a really meaningful, successful life?

There are siblings who wonder how do I explain my brother or sister who has a special need to the world? There are people with special needs who are themselves trying to figure out how can I have a meaningful life? What can I amount to with my skills, with my capabilities?

I think they can all look to Rosemary. This is a woman who had a successful life, lived 86 years, was happy most days, loved ice cream and chocolate, made other people happy, had a strong faith and made a difference, never wrote a book, never started a company, you know, never got married, never had children but had a really wonderful, successful life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I'm glad we did that and I'm glad they did that. They don't talk about her and those issues often, so that was good.

Coming up on the program training commandos from around the world to fight terrorists at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Deep South.

And children move to help the victims of the tsunami, a penny at a time. We'll take a break.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In tonight's CNN's "Security Watch," we turn our attention to a new technology being tested in the war on terror. Eye scans are being add to existing security checks at New York's JFK. It's part of an effort to speed up the security process, but the program is also raising questions now familiar in the war on terror, including how much privacy are we willing to give up for the added safety and, in this case, added convenience?

Here's CNN's Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These iris scanners could prove to be more than a method to speed up airport lines. Some say they're an eye-opener into a new kind of world.

The Department of Homeland Security is planning to expand a program still in the testing phase at five U.S. airports to include international travelers, starting at New York's JFK airport expected in the coming weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have got our fingerprints and pictures and biodata and everything else, our credit cards, for God's sake. So, why not?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I guess like a mother, I just want anything that makes life easy for me. But, at the same time, I don't want to expose myself. I want to keep part of myself, my information private.

SNOW: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the pilot as he traveled in Europe, saying it could be part of a global effort to fight terrorism using eye and finger scanners and face-recognition technology. Flyers volunteering for the program will have to be fingerprinted and interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. They would check in at a kiosk, possibly using a so-called smart card. Some tout its convenience. Others say there's a price.

BARRY STEINHARDT, ACLU: I don't think that, in this case, the benefits outweigh the risks.

SNOW: Barry Steinhardt is with the American Civil Liberties Union.

STEINHARDT: In the end, these programs don't work, in large part because so much of the information that they rely on is simply accurate.

SNOW: Reagan National Airport is one of the airports testing the eye scanner and smart card.

MARK HATFIELD, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION: The retrieval time is just a matter of seconds. The accuracy level is extremely high. And we're actually testing it in two formats.

SNOW: The Transportation Security Administration says having a big data bank on travelers allows it to concentrate more on unknown travelers who could be trouble.

HATFIELD: What we're really doing is, we're reducing the size of the haystack. People have always described the TSA's job as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

SNOW: But just like the movie "Minority Report," some see a different view of that futuristic world.

STEINHARDT: We're really moving towards the creation of what amounts to a national identification system that, at the end, is going to come back to haunt us.

SNOW: Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: An advanced degree in world politics isn't required to conclude the threat of terrorism will be with us for many years to come. The CIA said as much yesterday in a report that looks at the state of the world 15 years from now.

Terrorists may lurk anywhere around the globe, much as they do today. As part of the effort to root them out, the U.S. trains commandos from around the world.

A look at the program tonight from Andrea Koppel. But due to security considerations, the State Department asked CNN not to reveal the location of the training facility.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may look and sound like a terrorist hijacking, but it's not. The terrorists and the SWAT team in this highly choreographed training exercise are all senior officers in the Philippine national police, learning new skills from U.S. trainers to help them fight terrorism.

Why are Americans training Philippines?

MARTIN BURNHAM, HOSTAGE: I, Martin Burnham, and my wife, Gracia.

KOPPEL: Months before the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., terrorism in the Philippines hit home for Americans when Abu Sayyaf guerrillas took two American missionaries hostage. The saga lasted over a year and only ended when U.S.-trained Philippine police helped the military to launch a daring rescue operation.

Senior police superintendent Alex Monteagudo was among those U.S.-trained officers.

ALEX MONTEAGUDO, SR. PHILIPPINE POLICE SUPERINTENDENT: There's always an element of risk. But with the training, this becomes calculated risks, calculated decisions.

KOPPEL: In the case of the Burnhams, Martin was killed during the rescue effort, while his wife survived. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll need a cover team, assault team.

KOPPEL: Although this State Department-run program has been around since 1983, training 36,000 law enforcement personnel from 130 countries, after September 11, it took on a new urgency and tripled in size.

AL BERGERON, ATA REGIONAL MANAGER: The first line of defense we have for any aircraft or any ship coming into the United States, the best line of defense is there in that country.

KOPPEL: The primary goal of the program, to arm U.S. allies around the world with the necessary tools to catch the terrorists where they live.

(on camera): What did you learn over the last couple of days that you didn't know before?

MONTEAGUDO: Some communication get lost in the process. And it was very important and led to the death of a -- to the injury of an individual.

KOPPEL: Of a hostage?

MONTEAGUDO: Yes, of the hostage.

KOPPEL (voice-over): A real mistake, but without real consequences this time.

Andrea Koppel, CNN, in the southern United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on this Friday night, a call for some in Congress for the government to do a better job when it comes to easing the financial burden of families of soldiers who die during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Plus, CNN's anniversary series. We look back as new Russia rose from the dust of the Soviet Union, led by Boris Yeltsin.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Since we were with you last night, three Americans died in Iraq, one soldier, two Marines. As of today, 1,364 Americans have died during the war in Iraq. Nobody can bring them back, but two members of Congress maintain the federal government can at least try better than it currently does to ease the financial burden of the families of those soldiers.

Here's CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Right now, when a member of the military is killed in action, the government gives the family a funeral with full military honors, a folded American flag and a check for $12,000 tax-exempt to cover their immediate needs.

DONNA GILMORE, WIDOW OF U.S. SOLDIER: It's a total slap in the face.

JOHNS: Donna and Cornell Gilmore had been married almost 21 years, with two kids in college. He was about to retire from the JAG Corps when he was shot down in a helicopter in Iraq and died.

GILMORE: You know, I put my career on hold for 22 years supporting my husband. Now, I don't regret that, but I do resent the fact that, immediately after his death, and when I say immediately, within a couple months, I had to go back to work. I had no choice, no choice in the matter. I had to go back to work.

JOHNS: Senator Jeff Sessions calls the $12,000 death benefit check woefully inadequate.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: They're so proud. They don't ask for anything. They accept what they're given. But it just is -- as the months have gone by and I've looked at the numbers, we see other people getting far, far more than soldiers do when they give their life in defense of their country.

JOHNS: Sessions and co-sponsor Democrat Joe Lieberman want to increase the death benefit for combat zone deaths from $12,000 to $100,000. It would make the changes retroactive to cover Americans already lost in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of more than $400 million in the first year.

(on camera): Advocates don't anticipate much of a fight in Congress over the price tag because of how constituents might react.

ADM. NORBERT RYAN, MILITARY OFFICERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: We know that the average American citizen wants to send a signal to these young men and women desperately that they are truly valued and that their service and their sacrifice is on a pedestal.

JOHNS: Still, there are unresolved issues. Kathy Moakler is an expert on survivor benefits for the National Military Family Association. She and her counterparts from similar groups are already questioning whether the government should make distinctions on death benefits between service members killed in combat zones and those who die in training accidents, or from illness while on active duty.

JOHNS: Still, there are unresolved issues. Kathy Moakler is an expert on survivor benefits for the National Military Family Association. She and her counterparts from similar groups are already questioning whether the government should make distinctions on death benefits between service members killed in combat zones and those who die in training accidents or from illness while on active duty. KATHY MOAKLER, NATIONAL MILITARY FAMILY ASSOCIATION: We consider that all service members are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

JOHNS: Sergeant Major Gilmore's widow believes the bill will pass.

GILMORE: I have faith. It better go through, or some people are going to have to answer. And they're going to answer to me and a whole lot of my friends.

JOHNS: Even if the bill does pass, it is still little solace to those who have lost loved ones in battle.

Joe Johns, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tonight, CNN's anniversary series "Then and Now" looks back at one of the more colorful figures of the post-Cold War era, Boris Yeltsin, who helped create the post-Cold War era, former mayor of Moscow and Russia's first democratically elected president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NARRATOR: He'll always be the man astride a tank, facing down a hard line coup in 1991.

Boris Yeltsin remains a creature of contradiction, a communist who helped destroy communism, a democrat who opened fire on his own parliament, a man who seemed on the verge of dying so many times, who, now nowadays looks healthier than ever. In 1980, Yeltsin was a Communist Party boss in the Urals Mountains city of Sverdlovsk. Ten years later, he was a president of the Russian Republic. The Soviet Union was about to collapse. When it did, Yeltsin moved into the Kremlin. At the height of his powers he told CNN.

BORIS YELTSIN, FORMER RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I am not thinking about history at all. And I'm not planning on thinking about it. I am thinking about deeds.

NARRATOR: But in 1999, in the New Year's address, Boris Yeltsin shocked the world, announcing he was stepping down as Russian president, handing the reigns of power to Vladimir Putin. Years of heavy drinking and heart attacks took their toll. But in retirement, Yeltsin is following a healthier life style surprising the world with his resilience and unpredictability.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Throughout the year, CNN will take a look back at major stories from the last 25 years, as we mark a quarter-of-a-century of bringing you the news. We visit the stories that touched our lives, changed our lives. Find out what happened to yesterday's newsmakers.

Ahead on the program tonight, how the tsunami is making an unforgettable imprint on a small Tennessee town through the eyes and hearts of some remarkable children.

And morning papers, how remarkable, too.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A few weeks back, we introduced to you the children of Whitwell, Tennessee, and a wonderful film made about them called "Paper Clips." When we fist met these kids, they were grappling with how to understand a horrific number, six million Jewish Holocaust victims.

The way they were doing it, they way they went about changing their world, in a way, changed their town forever. We went back to see them recently and found that, once again, they are struggling to comprehend an incomprehensible number, the nearly 160,000 people killed in the tsunami over their holiday break.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANDRA ROBERTS, TEACHER: If you wiped out everybody in this valley, you would not equal the number estimated dead in Indonesia. Think about that.

I think it's important for children to try to get a grasp on such enormous numbers. I think we have to teach them to look at this and say, what can I do to assist? What can I do to make their life a little better?

Taylor, what's the worst for you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the families ripped apart by not having a sister anymore or not having a brother anymore.

ROBERTS: They're just children, and they see just children in need. And I think it's real crucial that they help them get just a little bit of hope back.

After the Holocaust, the United States said never again will we let anybody suffer. They're suffering. We're not going to stand for that. We're going to do some posters. I want some posers around this school taking up money for the tsunami relief victims. We're going to paper this school, literally.

LINDA HOOPER, PRINCIPAL, WHITWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL: Our goal right now is to raise at least one penny for every victim that we're aware of.

ROBERTS: Let's see, Tim. What do you got? Give a donation to tsunami victims. Good.

TIMMY SMITH, STUDENT: They don't have anything. They don't have family, friends or anything. And we have got everything we need, food, shelter and everything.

HOOPER: Think how blessed you are. Now, you go out and bless somebody else. That's the lesson we want to leave with them. And if you see a tragedy occurring, do something about it, whether it's in Thailand or Whitwell or wherever it is. Look for something that needs to be done and do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does anybody have any money for the tsunami relief fund?

CHASE GREEN, STUDENT: I hope the money that we're raising provides enough food for the children and just helps get them back with their families and help them live a long life and a prosperous life.

TYLER SMITH, STUDENT: I think it's important, because if the tsunami would have hit us, we would want the people over there to give us money.

ROBERTS: I am not surprised by anything that these children do. They are the most amazing, loving children. There are children all across this country who are doing great things, just like my kids. They're raising money. They're selling water. They're doing everything they can to help these children, because they want them to be kids again. They want to give them 10 minutes, five minutes of being a kid.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The kids of Whitwell, Tennessee.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check the morning papers from around the country and the world. This being Friday, we may throw in a tabloid or two. We may.

"International Herald Tribune." "Israelis Cut All Ties With Palestinians, Sharon Sending Very Clear Message to Abbas After Militants' Attack Kills Six." That honeymoon didn't last long. It's a wonderful picture on the front page. I'm sure not how good of a shot you can get of that, guys. "Wary Sri Lankan Fisherman Venture Back to the Sea."

But down in the corner, down here is a story that has got me riled again. "Harry Still in Storm's Grip, But Palace Says Prince Will Not Visit Auschwitz." This is Prince Harry. You will recall he wore the Nazi outfit to a costume party. His P.R. people issued an apology on his behalf. And the palace says, hey, that's enough. Leave the kid alone. Not yet.

"Stars and Stripes." "Women in Combat Prohibition to Remain. Army Secretary Says Policy Has Been Reviewed and Upheld." They also put the weekend football games on the front page, "The MVP vs. the Champs. Colts-Patriots Matchup Highlights Second Round of NFL Playoffs." That's also a big story in "The Philadelphia Inquirer," though those folks will be disappointed, I think, come Sunday, when the Vikings win, maybe.

"The Guy with the Goods." Leo Carlin, the Eagles ticket manager. "Boy, is he popular," says "The Inquirer"." And they put the Charles Graner story on the front page as well. "Graner Convicted in Prison Abuse Scandal."

"The Park Record" out in Park City, Utah, moved pretty quickly to get this headline out. "Rescuers Rush Against Time. Massive Avalanche," as we reported earlier tonight, "Claims an Unknown Number of Victims." They just don't know how many people may be trapped, may have been skiing in an area they weren't supposed to be skiing.

How we doing on time here? Oh, my goodness. OK.

"The Des Moines Register." It's cold in the north -- in the Midwest, that would be. Iowa is in the Midwest, though there is a Des Moines in Washington state. So don't send me any notes. "Coping With the Cold" is the headline. "Shelters Full. Many Depart For Warmer, Sunnier Sites." I don't blame them.

And, OK, one tabloid here really quickly. This is "The Weekly World News." With apologies to my friend James Carville, "Carville and Bat Boy Kin. A Blood Test" -- that's a question, OK? That's not a statement. "A Blood Test Will Prove It." But they put those pictures right there.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "Siberian."

And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Coming up on the program on Monday, which is Martin Luther King Day in the country, a special edition of NEWSNIGHT looks at race in America. We'll replay the whole "I Have a Dream" speech, interesting group of guests and stories. Join us Monday.

Have a good weekend. And good night for all of us.

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 January 14, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again everyone.
As a theoretical question it's actually quite easy. Americans oppose torture. But as a practical question, it's more complicated. What is torture really? Might there be circumstances when your theoretical opposition would give way to practical necessity? And this question, while saying it opposes torture, has the White House tacitly signaled a little torture is OK? It is one of the things we look at tonight. Here are some others.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): A military jury convicts the reputed ringleader in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal. What does the verdict mean for the trials to come?

The battle over death benefits for U.S. troops killed in combat, their families receive $12,000. Some members of Congress call it a travesty.

Remembering the Kennedy you never hear about, Rosemary Kennedy, who suffered from mental retardation. In an exclusive interview with CNN's Judy Woodruff, Eunice Shriver talks about her late sister's life and legacy.

EUNICE SHRIVER, FOUNDER, SPECIAL OLYMPICS: I think the biggest problem and a horrendous problem in those days nobody knew anything about being intellectually slow.

BROWN: And how a school in Tennessee is trying to give meaning to a horrific number raising a penny for every one of the tsunami victims.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Those stories and more in the hour ahead.

We begin with a guilty verdict in the first trial to come out of the Abu Ghraib Prison abuse scandal. Specialist Charles Graner was portrayed throughout the court martial as the driving force in a cell block out of control.

He claimed he was only doing what military intelligence agents wanted him to do, soften up the prisoners, the verdict tonight from CNN's Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Accused Abu Ghraib ringleader, Charles Graner, said this as his trial began.

CHARLES GRANER: I'm going to find out how much of a monster I am today.

CANDIOTTI: The answer came late on a Friday afternoon, one year to the very day when the now notorious photos first surfaced and sparked the Army's investigation. Graner stood ramrod stiff, eyes straight ahead as the verdict was read.

Guilty on nine of the ten major counts, guilty also on one reduced charge for each of these photos, the naked human pyramid, the prisoner on a dog leash, the threat to punch another detainee, this scene of sexual humiliation, guilty of each charge of abuse.

In closing arguments, the defense tried to explain away the photos with, well, a creative argument. The prisoner on the leash, it said, was not being dragged. He crawled out of his cell. "It's not violent. It was done creatively, mission accomplished." The prosecution responds: "Yeah, it was creative. It was creative abuse."

The jury of combat veterans was only out five hours. The same jury is to decide Graner's sentence. Graner did not testify in his own defense, a decision he may now regret. The maximum sentence the former prison guard now faces as much as 15 years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CANDIOTTI: And about a half hour ago, testimony in the sentencing phase ended for the night. Among those who took the stand Graner's parents begging for mercy, his mother Erma (ph), "He'll always be my hero." His father told the jury, "When he came home from the war, we were going to go fishing. Now that fishing is going to be postponed. For how long" he said to the jury, "it's going to be up to you."

Graner will have one last chance to take the stand tomorrow. His lawyer says he will when deliberations resume in the -- rather when testimony resumes in the sentencing phase tomorrow, 10:00 a.m. followed by deliberations to decide how long Graner will spend behind bars -- Aaron.

BROWN: Susan, thank you, Susan Candiotti tonight.

The conviction of Specialist Graner is just one piece of a story that has been unfolding for months and which now involves accusations of abuse in other U.S. military prisons as well, including Guantanamo.

We're joined tonight by Mark Danner, a staff writer at the "New Yorker," specializing in foreign affairs. He's also the author, probably technically the editor I think of "Torture and Truth," and a contributor to the "New York Review" of books. I say editor because it's really a series, a massive series of documents, isn't it?

MARK DANNER, AUTHOR, "TORTURE AND TRUTH": Well, it's a massive series of documents and also my essay is commenting on them.

BROWN: The central argument I think the administration had made is that Abu Ghraib is really, it's awful but it's a few bad apples. The argument the documents make is something quite different.

DANNER: The argument the documents make is that this was widespread abuse. The photographs that we see are particularly sadistic examples of it and indeed because they're so sadistic and the images are so grotesque and outrageous, it's very easy to believe that these were acts of individual sadism, which is what the government has claimed from the beginning.

The problem is that the reports themselves that were undertaken by the government, by General Antonio Taguba, by General Fay, as well as the Red Cross report suggest that this is much more widespread activity that much of it was connected to interrogation and that even though there were acts of individual sadism for which Specialist Graner's been convicted tonight, this is a much more widespread phenomenon.

And, in fact, the case that the government made, it's a few bad apples, was partly to cover up something much broader, which is a major change in how the government of the United States interrogates prisoners and a use of practices we can call torture.

BROWN: Let's try and cover a number of bases a little quickly. If there's a starting point in this what is it, either a moment where the president or the administration did something?

DANNER: It's clear in the months after 9/11, in the weeks after 9/11 that at the top of the administration the president and others made decisions about interrogation. Look, this is a new kind of war. It relies on information. We're going to need information quickly from prisoners.

Therefore, the Geneva Convention is instead of being a hallowed idea of how you treat prisoners is actually an obstacle in the war on terror; therefore, we will withhold Geneva Convention protection.

Second, we have agreed as a government, as a country not to torture. Well, that's too restrictive. We are going to make it possible to use techniques that the rest of the world and most ordinary people will regard as torture.

BROWN: For example.

DANNER: For example, water boarding, which it was revealed in the "New York Times" yesterday this was made possible and approved by the Department of Justice.

Now, this is a torture procedure by which a prisoner is strapped down on a board usually and his head is submerged in water, usually (UNINTELLIGIBLE) dirty water until he essentially drowns, loses consciousness. It's terrifying. It's used around the world. It was used in Argentina and Uruguay during the dirty war in Argentina.

BROWN: And who approved it?

DANNER: Well, so far as we know lawyers in the Department of Justice approved it.

BROWN: And they said this isn't torture because what?

DANNER: They said that in order for something to be torture it has to cause pain sufficiently severe to be equivalent to major organ failure or death and if that is your definition of torture, there is an awful lot you can do to prisoners before that level is reached and water boarding is one of them.

BROWN: And is that the practice of the U.S. government today as best you know?

DANNER: Well, the answer to that is we don't know precisely what the government is doing. Now we do know that as recently as a couple of months ago in Guantanamo prisoners were being chained in fetal positions on the floor, left for 24, 48 hours and longer in rooms where the temperature went above 100 degrees, no food, no water, sensory deprivation, hooded.

These are reports by the FBI that have been recently released. Now this was months after Abu Ghraib, so we know these practices continued at least that long. We don't know what's being done now. We do know that the parameters on what you can do and not do are much, much broader than they ever have been in American history and a lot of this behavior would be interpreted and called torture by the rest of the world.

BROWN: Thanks for coming in tonight both the essays, the commentary, and the documents themselves are powerful stuff. People ought to take a look at it if they're interested. It's nice to see you.

DANNER: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Thank you.

Other news tonight, the weather again making news, in most of the country the worst of the weather has passed on now but, oh my, what it left behind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Several skiers are reported missing after a massive avalanche wore down the slopes near Park City, Utah. Nine feet of snow has fallen there in the last three weeks. Officials say the skiers were on a section of the mountain that was off limits.

More problems in California from all that rain this week, several thousand people were evacuated near Corona after the Prado Dam started leaking, leaking just enough to scare officials. The Army Corps of Engineers has now taken a look and says the dam is safe, so people can go home if they want to.

That's the same with the residents who live in La Conchita, California. That's where the mudslide claimed ten lives earlier in the week. They can go home too if they want to but it's been declared a geologic hazard area. Rob Coleman says he will probably go home. He was vacuuming when the earth moved.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With the retaining wall that was quite massive and strong and it snapped and broke. I watched telephone poles life out of the ground. I watched telephone poles fly through the air shaking. I saw the straps and then at that moment we started hearing yelling and screaming and crying.

BROWN: A tornado sparked a fire at a tire distribution center in Lawrence County, South Carolina. It raged through the night. About 100 people were forced from their homes in the dead of night.

Another tornado, this one a huge F3 with winds clocked at over 200 miles an hour, carved a swath of destruction in Union County, Arkansas, at least 15 people hurt.

And, in Ohio, in some areas flood waters are finally backing off. At one point, the town of Marietta was almost completely under water. And there's a lesson to be learned here, not only in Ohio but elsewhere across the country. Home is home.

ROB SCHAFER, BUSINESS OWNER: We all are here because of the river and you take the good with the bad and the good outweighs the bad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Weather related pictures of a different sort today too, images that show a frozen surface, boulders or chunks of ice maybe, hilly terrain, what looked like riverbeds but these pictures are not necessarily what you think. They are images of the surface of Titan, one of the moons of the planet Saturn. They really are.

This time last year a probe, a space probe sent pictures back to Mars. Today a spacecraft has gone truly where no manmade object has ever gone before, reporting, of course, CNN's Miles O'Brien.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Beneath the haze there was plenty to gaze at on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, gullies, rivers and a sea all filled with methane, a strange place but an oddly familiar one too, a day to remember more than 20 years in the making.

CAROLYN PORCO, CASSINI SCIENTIST: Frankly I cannot believe what I am seeing. This is just -- I really didn't think we'd have this kind of view.

O'BRIEN: The astounding view came courtesy of a nine-foot spacecraft that looked like a cheesy prop from a grade B sci-fi movie but it was an alien flying saucer for real, named for the earthling who discovered Titan in 1655, the Huygens probe parachuted as planned to the titanic surface sampling the atmosphere, measuring the winds and snapping hundreds of pictures.

JEAN-JACQUES DORDAIN, ESA DIRECTOR GENERAL: So we are the first visitors of Titan and scientific data that we are collecting now shall unveil the secrets of this new world.

O'BRIEN: Huygens' heroes gathered at the European Space Agency control center in Germany out of this world with joy as the improbable descent unfolded and the spacecraft phoned home on time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like we've heard the baby crying.

O'BRIEN: Their baby was handy with its cameras, offering up an image that no one predicted, a rock-strewn landscape that looks like Mars or Arizona for that matter.

PORCO: We just didn't expect it to look this way but there we are on the surface and there are boulders of some sort and we're going to be working out how they came to be.

O'BRIEN: Scientists are fascinated by Titan because they believe it's like looking at earth four billion years ago before life started simmering on the evolutionary range.

DAVID SOUTHWOOD, ESA DIRECTOR OF SCIENCE: I always think of Titan as the cooking pot that is like the early earth and you want to know whether it's really cooking. Once you see this, you see liquid on the surface, I believe we are cooking.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: Cooking indeed, Aaron. Can you imagine spending 20 years plus stirring the pot on a mission like this and the hoping the two and a half hours that count everything goes just as planned? Today, I guess they had a souffle.

BROWN: I guess. It's just remarkable stuff. Take 30 seconds or so and talk a little bit more about what it is we learn about ourselves or our planet or might learn from what happened today.

O'BRIEN: Well, if you look at this particular planet, it's a nitrogen-rich atmosphere and we know that earth before life took hold here was nitrogen-rich as well.

So imagine if you could look back in time and see what the planet looked like before the slime started crawling out of the ocean. You might very well see those same kinds of rocks and that same kind of flow of liquid. One other question you might want to ask is one day many years ago when Titan was warmer were there little critters perhaps swimming around in the methane?

BROWN: It's just marvelous stuff, Miles. Thank you for staying late tonight, much appreciated.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

BROWN: Miles O'Brien in Atlanta.

Ahead on the program tonight, an exclusive and extraordinary interview with Eunice Kennedy Shriver. She talks about how she was inspired by her older sister Rosemary, how that inspiration led to a program that has now helped countless numbers of Americans.

Also ahead, an eye-opening security project being tested at JFK. We'll look at what this program hopes to accomplish but we'll take a break first.

From New York this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A week ago today an 86-year-old woman died in a hospital in Wisconsin. Granted that's not unusual. Elderly people pass away every day. But this woman was the member of an American political dynasty, although we knew very little about her.

She was Rosemary Kennedy, a younger sister of President John F. Kennedy, a woman with mental retardation. Families, even famous, wealthy and powerful families, are changed by things like this, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

The Kennedy family was changed and a lot of people are better for it. In a rare conversation Eunice Shriver, Rosemary Kennedy's sister, and her son Tim talked with CNN's Judy Woodruff, tonight a CNN exclusive; Kennedy's legacy the story behind the Special Olympics.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHRIVER: I come from a very large family, nine children, and Rosemary was number three in the family after Joe, Jr. and President Kennedy and she was very lively, very good humored.

I remember my great memory of her as a swimmer. We used to go five girls every day have a swimming lesson and Rosemary was by far the superior of all of us, so we were in awe of Rosemary. But she was very well liked.

She was fun. She participated in a lot of things but I think the biggest problem and a horrendous problem in those days, nobody knew anything about being intellectually slow. There was just nobody to talk to.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: It's obviously been reported the decision to have surgery for her, back then that was known to be an option. How did -- what was the discussion in your family about that?

SHRIVER: At that time, Rosemary was in her 20s and she was getting more aggressive and somewhat more demanding but nobody had any answers to it until the suggestion came to my father that if she could have this operation and others had had it and it seemed in a number of cases to work well that Rosemary then would be able to do more and be happier and fit in even more easily.

But those, my father's great ambition was not to make Rosemary like his other eight children but to try to clarify the cloudiness that lived inside her and to allow her to be more aggressive and, as I say, more optimistic and be one of us but there was no desire to think she was going to be like my brothers.

She already was handicapped and we all knew that, so the only question in my father's mind was "Can I help her more?" And that was the reason that she had the operation, completely the reason.

WOODRUFF: And what was your -- what was the family's reaction after that? I mean how did she change?

SHRIVER: Well, she obviously became far slower in all her reactions and she -- but she still lived at home some of the time and we, mother tried to find a place where other children lived so Rosemary could accommodate herself more easily.

WOODRUFF: Tim Shriver, growing up there was this member of your family, your mother's sister, your aunt, what was your earliest awareness of her and what was your sense of what -- of her life and what it meant to the rest of your family?

TIM SHRIVER: Well, as a young person, you know, Rosemary would always come to visit and she did, really I mean her last visit was just before Christmas so here at our house and we had Christmas dinner before the holiday with her.

So, you know, throughout my life Rosemary was a regular visitor just like any other family member, although Rosie would stay longer and spend more time with me than most other family members.

But I have many, you know, images of her from my childhood, most of them are swimming images. She was just an avid swimmer and she had this extraordinary capacity just to swim for seeming like hours, you know. When you're a little kid you're struggling. You go from one end of the pool to the other.

And Rosie would just be out there in the middle of the pool going back and forth, never touching the bottom, as though she sort of had buoyancy tubes under her and I was always marveling like how is it that she stays up like that? And how is it that she has such physical strength and resilience?

Obviously, she had limitations, you know, so it was clear to me that, you know, as it was to anyone later in her life that her disabling conditions were quite severe.

E. SHRIVER: One of the things that's important is Rosie participated in all the things we did. My father was appointed to represent the United States in the coronation of the pope and we all dressed up in black, Rosie as well, and she came to the coronation.

We were presented at court in 1939. Rosie went along with my sister Kathleen and my mother and she was presented at court. This was, of course, before the operation but still everything that we tried to do, we'd go sightseeing.

I used to go with Rosie to Austria. We'd go around to the museums there and she participated. So, my mother was very strong and everybody else in having Rosie do everything we did. We didn't keep her in a room and say, "Well, we'll tell you all about it when we come home."

WOODRUFF: How much was she an -- I think people assume that she was an inspiration to you in coming up with the whole idea of the Special Olympics from its early -- is that true? I mean how did it...

E. SHRIVER: I think it is true because, as Timmy had just pointed out, she could swim like a deer. She just went whacking across that pool like mad and indeed the first games we had with her in Chicago and the mayor called up and said "We're going to do these things. It's wonderful but we can't have a swimming pool."

I said, "Why?" He said, "Well, we don't want to be responsible for these kids drowning." I said, "Well, then we don't -- thank you very much but we won't have the games there. We'll look for somewhere."

And then he called me the next day and said, "Three-foot pool you'll have." I said, "That's good enough" and we went because I knew that if we didn't have swimming a big block in her life would be there. They are wonderful swimmers our special friends.

T. SHRIVER: I think if you look around the world, as my mother said, you know, there are still tremendous obstacles to inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities or any kind of disability. There's a tremendous indifference to their plight. There's a tremendous sense, often not stated, that they don't count as much.

The unstated message is they'll have to wait. There are just too many other things that have to get done. The unstated message of even a wealthy country like ours is well there are other problems that are more important.

We've got to solve Social Security. We've got to address transportation issues. We've got to address the problems in Iraq. You know this is not the right time. What's the unstated assumption? They don't deserve it. They're not quite as deserving of the chance that we expect for others.

And I think, you know, that's part of human nature sadly that if we see someone who on the external looks different, looks slower, looks less capable we're not so good at looking at the internal, you know. We judge the book by its cover. We fail to look at the spirit and that's just I think a constant struggle for all of us.

WOODRUFF: Well, you mention issues that are before us today. You mention transportation. You mention Social Security. These are issues that are before us in 2005. How far has the country come?

E. SHRIVER: Well, I think quite a distance. When President Kennedy was in office in 1960, I went around to various places to try to find out how they were responding to the mentally handicapped. I couldn't really find anything and I spoke to him about it and he did something. He formed a committee on mental retardation immediately within a couple of weeks after he got into power.

WOODRUFF: It's been reported that your son-in-law, who happens to be the governor of California, was considering some cuts in programs affecting people with disabilities, among others, and you were among those who lobbied him not to do that. Is that true? Can you straighten that out?

E. SHRIVER: I think you can straighten out my daughter more than you can straighten (UNINTELLIGIBLE). I think she brought it to his attention in the early days and he did make a change and he did put many of those (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WOODRUFF: So, you didn't play any role in that?

E. SHRIVER: Maria and I talked but Maria is the one that said to Arnold "What are you doing?" And he said -- which I thought took a great deal of courage. You rarely see anybody in the political life that changes their mind and says "I'm going to be for this now" and he did. He changed it so that they did get certain kinds of additional financial rewards.

T. SHRIVER: I think the thing that I would underscore that struck me the most is that Rosemary had a successful life and there are mothers and fathers who wonder about a child with special needs. Can this child have a really meaningful, successful life?

There are siblings who wonder how do I explain my brother or sister who has a special need to the world? There are people with special needs who are themselves trying to figure out how can I have a meaningful life? What can I amount to with my skills, with my capabilities?

I think they can all look to Rosemary. This is a woman who had a successful life, lived 86 years, was happy most days, loved ice cream and chocolate, made other people happy, had a strong faith and made a difference, never wrote a book, never started a company, you know, never got married, never had children but had a really wonderful, successful life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: I'm glad we did that and I'm glad they did that. They don't talk about her and those issues often, so that was good.

Coming up on the program training commandos from around the world to fight terrorists at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Deep South.

And children move to help the victims of the tsunami, a penny at a time. We'll take a break.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: In tonight's CNN's "Security Watch," we turn our attention to a new technology being tested in the war on terror. Eye scans are being add to existing security checks at New York's JFK. It's part of an effort to speed up the security process, but the program is also raising questions now familiar in the war on terror, including how much privacy are we willing to give up for the added safety and, in this case, added convenience?

Here's CNN's Mary Snow.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARY SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These iris scanners could prove to be more than a method to speed up airport lines. Some say they're an eye-opener into a new kind of world.

The Department of Homeland Security is planning to expand a program still in the testing phase at five U.S. airports to include international travelers, starting at New York's JFK airport expected in the coming weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They have got our fingerprints and pictures and biodata and everything else, our credit cards, for God's sake. So, why not?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I guess like a mother, I just want anything that makes life easy for me. But, at the same time, I don't want to expose myself. I want to keep part of myself, my information private.

SNOW: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced the pilot as he traveled in Europe, saying it could be part of a global effort to fight terrorism using eye and finger scanners and face-recognition technology. Flyers volunteering for the program will have to be fingerprinted and interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security. They would check in at a kiosk, possibly using a so-called smart card. Some tout its convenience. Others say there's a price.

BARRY STEINHARDT, ACLU: I don't think that, in this case, the benefits outweigh the risks.

SNOW: Barry Steinhardt is with the American Civil Liberties Union.

STEINHARDT: In the end, these programs don't work, in large part because so much of the information that they rely on is simply accurate.

SNOW: Reagan National Airport is one of the airports testing the eye scanner and smart card.

MARK HATFIELD, TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION: The retrieval time is just a matter of seconds. The accuracy level is extremely high. And we're actually testing it in two formats.

SNOW: The Transportation Security Administration says having a big data bank on travelers allows it to concentrate more on unknown travelers who could be trouble.

HATFIELD: What we're really doing is, we're reducing the size of the haystack. People have always described the TSA's job as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack.

SNOW: But just like the movie "Minority Report," some see a different view of that futuristic world.

STEINHARDT: We're really moving towards the creation of what amounts to a national identification system that, at the end, is going to come back to haunt us.

SNOW: Mary Snow, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: An advanced degree in world politics isn't required to conclude the threat of terrorism will be with us for many years to come. The CIA said as much yesterday in a report that looks at the state of the world 15 years from now.

Terrorists may lurk anywhere around the globe, much as they do today. As part of the effort to root them out, the U.S. trains commandos from around the world.

A look at the program tonight from Andrea Koppel. But due to security considerations, the State Department asked CNN not to reveal the location of the training facility.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDREA KOPPEL, CNN STATE DEPARTMENT CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It may look and sound like a terrorist hijacking, but it's not. The terrorists and the SWAT team in this highly choreographed training exercise are all senior officers in the Philippine national police, learning new skills from U.S. trainers to help them fight terrorism.

Why are Americans training Philippines?

MARTIN BURNHAM, HOSTAGE: I, Martin Burnham, and my wife, Gracia.

KOPPEL: Months before the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., terrorism in the Philippines hit home for Americans when Abu Sayyaf guerrillas took two American missionaries hostage. The saga lasted over a year and only ended when U.S.-trained Philippine police helped the military to launch a daring rescue operation.

Senior police superintendent Alex Monteagudo was among those U.S.-trained officers.

ALEX MONTEAGUDO, SR. PHILIPPINE POLICE SUPERINTENDENT: There's always an element of risk. But with the training, this becomes calculated risks, calculated decisions.

KOPPEL: In the case of the Burnhams, Martin was killed during the rescue effort, while his wife survived. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll need a cover team, assault team.

KOPPEL: Although this State Department-run program has been around since 1983, training 36,000 law enforcement personnel from 130 countries, after September 11, it took on a new urgency and tripled in size.

AL BERGERON, ATA REGIONAL MANAGER: The first line of defense we have for any aircraft or any ship coming into the United States, the best line of defense is there in that country.

KOPPEL: The primary goal of the program, to arm U.S. allies around the world with the necessary tools to catch the terrorists where they live.

(on camera): What did you learn over the last couple of days that you didn't know before?

MONTEAGUDO: Some communication get lost in the process. And it was very important and led to the death of a -- to the injury of an individual.

KOPPEL: Of a hostage?

MONTEAGUDO: Yes, of the hostage.

KOPPEL (voice-over): A real mistake, but without real consequences this time.

Andrea Koppel, CNN, in the southern United States.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Still to come on this Friday night, a call for some in Congress for the government to do a better job when it comes to easing the financial burden of families of soldiers who die during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Plus, CNN's anniversary series. We look back as new Russia rose from the dust of the Soviet Union, led by Boris Yeltsin.

A break first. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Since we were with you last night, three Americans died in Iraq, one soldier, two Marines. As of today, 1,364 Americans have died during the war in Iraq. Nobody can bring them back, but two members of Congress maintain the federal government can at least try better than it currently does to ease the financial burden of the families of those soldiers.

Here's CNN's Joe Johns.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JOE JOHNS, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Right now, when a member of the military is killed in action, the government gives the family a funeral with full military honors, a folded American flag and a check for $12,000 tax-exempt to cover their immediate needs.

DONNA GILMORE, WIDOW OF U.S. SOLDIER: It's a total slap in the face.

JOHNS: Donna and Cornell Gilmore had been married almost 21 years, with two kids in college. He was about to retire from the JAG Corps when he was shot down in a helicopter in Iraq and died.

GILMORE: You know, I put my career on hold for 22 years supporting my husband. Now, I don't regret that, but I do resent the fact that, immediately after his death, and when I say immediately, within a couple months, I had to go back to work. I had no choice, no choice in the matter. I had to go back to work.

JOHNS: Senator Jeff Sessions calls the $12,000 death benefit check woefully inadequate.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: They're so proud. They don't ask for anything. They accept what they're given. But it just is -- as the months have gone by and I've looked at the numbers, we see other people getting far, far more than soldiers do when they give their life in defense of their country.

JOHNS: Sessions and co-sponsor Democrat Joe Lieberman want to increase the death benefit for combat zone deaths from $12,000 to $100,000. It would make the changes retroactive to cover Americans already lost in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of more than $400 million in the first year.

(on camera): Advocates don't anticipate much of a fight in Congress over the price tag because of how constituents might react.

ADM. NORBERT RYAN, MILITARY OFFICERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA: We know that the average American citizen wants to send a signal to these young men and women desperately that they are truly valued and that their service and their sacrifice is on a pedestal.

JOHNS: Still, there are unresolved issues. Kathy Moakler is an expert on survivor benefits for the National Military Family Association. She and her counterparts from similar groups are already questioning whether the government should make distinctions on death benefits between service members killed in combat zones and those who die in training accidents, or from illness while on active duty.

JOHNS: Still, there are unresolved issues. Kathy Moakler is an expert on survivor benefits for the National Military Family Association. She and her counterparts from similar groups are already questioning whether the government should make distinctions on death benefits between service members killed in combat zones and those who die in training accidents or from illness while on active duty. KATHY MOAKLER, NATIONAL MILITARY FAMILY ASSOCIATION: We consider that all service members are on duty 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

JOHNS: Sergeant Major Gilmore's widow believes the bill will pass.

GILMORE: I have faith. It better go through, or some people are going to have to answer. And they're going to answer to me and a whole lot of my friends.

JOHNS: Even if the bill does pass, it is still little solace to those who have lost loved ones in battle.

Joe Johns, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Tonight, CNN's anniversary series "Then and Now" looks back at one of the more colorful figures of the post-Cold War era, Boris Yeltsin, who helped create the post-Cold War era, former mayor of Moscow and Russia's first democratically elected president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NARRATOR: He'll always be the man astride a tank, facing down a hard line coup in 1991.

Boris Yeltsin remains a creature of contradiction, a communist who helped destroy communism, a democrat who opened fire on his own parliament, a man who seemed on the verge of dying so many times, who, now nowadays looks healthier than ever. In 1980, Yeltsin was a Communist Party boss in the Urals Mountains city of Sverdlovsk. Ten years later, he was a president of the Russian Republic. The Soviet Union was about to collapse. When it did, Yeltsin moved into the Kremlin. At the height of his powers he told CNN.

BORIS YELTSIN, FORMER RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): I am not thinking about history at all. And I'm not planning on thinking about it. I am thinking about deeds.

NARRATOR: But in 1999, in the New Year's address, Boris Yeltsin shocked the world, announcing he was stepping down as Russian president, handing the reigns of power to Vladimir Putin. Years of heavy drinking and heart attacks took their toll. But in retirement, Yeltsin is following a healthier life style surprising the world with his resilience and unpredictability.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Throughout the year, CNN will take a look back at major stories from the last 25 years, as we mark a quarter-of-a-century of bringing you the news. We visit the stories that touched our lives, changed our lives. Find out what happened to yesterday's newsmakers.

Ahead on the program tonight, how the tsunami is making an unforgettable imprint on a small Tennessee town through the eyes and hearts of some remarkable children.

And morning papers, how remarkable, too.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: A few weeks back, we introduced to you the children of Whitwell, Tennessee, and a wonderful film made about them called "Paper Clips." When we fist met these kids, they were grappling with how to understand a horrific number, six million Jewish Holocaust victims.

The way they were doing it, they way they went about changing their world, in a way, changed their town forever. We went back to see them recently and found that, once again, they are struggling to comprehend an incomprehensible number, the nearly 160,000 people killed in the tsunami over their holiday break.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANDRA ROBERTS, TEACHER: If you wiped out everybody in this valley, you would not equal the number estimated dead in Indonesia. Think about that.

I think it's important for children to try to get a grasp on such enormous numbers. I think we have to teach them to look at this and say, what can I do to assist? What can I do to make their life a little better?

Taylor, what's the worst for you?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All the families ripped apart by not having a sister anymore or not having a brother anymore.

ROBERTS: They're just children, and they see just children in need. And I think it's real crucial that they help them get just a little bit of hope back.

After the Holocaust, the United States said never again will we let anybody suffer. They're suffering. We're not going to stand for that. We're going to do some posters. I want some posers around this school taking up money for the tsunami relief victims. We're going to paper this school, literally.

LINDA HOOPER, PRINCIPAL, WHITWELL MIDDLE SCHOOL: Our goal right now is to raise at least one penny for every victim that we're aware of.

ROBERTS: Let's see, Tim. What do you got? Give a donation to tsunami victims. Good.

TIMMY SMITH, STUDENT: They don't have anything. They don't have family, friends or anything. And we have got everything we need, food, shelter and everything.

HOOPER: Think how blessed you are. Now, you go out and bless somebody else. That's the lesson we want to leave with them. And if you see a tragedy occurring, do something about it, whether it's in Thailand or Whitwell or wherever it is. Look for something that needs to be done and do it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does anybody have any money for the tsunami relief fund?

CHASE GREEN, STUDENT: I hope the money that we're raising provides enough food for the children and just helps get them back with their families and help them live a long life and a prosperous life.

TYLER SMITH, STUDENT: I think it's important, because if the tsunami would have hit us, we would want the people over there to give us money.

ROBERTS: I am not surprised by anything that these children do. They are the most amazing, loving children. There are children all across this country who are doing great things, just like my kids. They're raising money. They're selling water. They're doing everything they can to help these children, because they want them to be kids again. They want to give them 10 minutes, five minutes of being a kid.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: The kids of Whitwell, Tennessee.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check the morning papers from around the country and the world. This being Friday, we may throw in a tabloid or two. We may.

"International Herald Tribune." "Israelis Cut All Ties With Palestinians, Sharon Sending Very Clear Message to Abbas After Militants' Attack Kills Six." That honeymoon didn't last long. It's a wonderful picture on the front page. I'm sure not how good of a shot you can get of that, guys. "Wary Sri Lankan Fisherman Venture Back to the Sea."

But down in the corner, down here is a story that has got me riled again. "Harry Still in Storm's Grip, But Palace Says Prince Will Not Visit Auschwitz." This is Prince Harry. You will recall he wore the Nazi outfit to a costume party. His P.R. people issued an apology on his behalf. And the palace says, hey, that's enough. Leave the kid alone. Not yet.

"Stars and Stripes." "Women in Combat Prohibition to Remain. Army Secretary Says Policy Has Been Reviewed and Upheld." They also put the weekend football games on the front page, "The MVP vs. the Champs. Colts-Patriots Matchup Highlights Second Round of NFL Playoffs." That's also a big story in "The Philadelphia Inquirer," though those folks will be disappointed, I think, come Sunday, when the Vikings win, maybe.

"The Guy with the Goods." Leo Carlin, the Eagles ticket manager. "Boy, is he popular," says "The Inquirer"." And they put the Charles Graner story on the front page as well. "Graner Convicted in Prison Abuse Scandal."

"The Park Record" out in Park City, Utah, moved pretty quickly to get this headline out. "Rescuers Rush Against Time. Massive Avalanche," as we reported earlier tonight, "Claims an Unknown Number of Victims." They just don't know how many people may be trapped, may have been skiing in an area they weren't supposed to be skiing.

How we doing on time here? Oh, my goodness. OK.

"The Des Moines Register." It's cold in the north -- in the Midwest, that would be. Iowa is in the Midwest, though there is a Des Moines in Washington state. So don't send me any notes. "Coping With the Cold" is the headline. "Shelters Full. Many Depart For Warmer, Sunnier Sites." I don't blame them.

And, OK, one tabloid here really quickly. This is "The Weekly World News." With apologies to my friend James Carville, "Carville and Bat Boy Kin. A Blood Test" -- that's a question, OK? That's not a statement. "A Blood Test Will Prove It." But they put those pictures right there.

The weather tomorrow in Chicago is "Siberian."

And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Coming up on the program on Monday, which is Martin Luther King Day in the country, a special edition of NEWSNIGHT looks at race in America. We'll replay the whole "I Have a Dream" speech, interesting group of guests and stories. Join us Monday.

Have a good weekend. And good night for all of us.

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