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Eye on North Korea; Missing Children; Jackson Trial

Aired May 19, 2005 - 11:59   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.


WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. government must make a decision today on whether to charge Cuban militant Luis Posada with an immigration violation. Posada was arrested Tuesday after slipping across the Mexican border in March. The former U.S. intelligence asset is wanted in Venezuela in connection with the bombing of a Cuban airliner nearly 30 years ago.
Women in the U.S. armed forces possibly could be banned from direct combat if a House committee gets its way. Just hours ago, the House Armed Services Committee approved legislation that would keep women out of ground combat units. Currently, there are about 9,400 female troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thirty-five of them have been killed in action.

Her guilty plea was thrown out earlier this month. Now the U.S. Army is once again pursuing the case against Lynndie England. An Article 32 hearing akin to a civilian grand jury investigation begins next week. England is accused of mistreating detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Up first this hour, a story that's just literally breaking. A major development, at least potentially, concerning the United States and North Korea. Let's quickly go over to the White House. CNN's Elaine Quijano standing by -- Elaine.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Wolf.

Well, the Bush administration has publicly made clear that it would like North Korea to return to those six-way, six-nation talks about North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Those talk, of course, involving not only North Korea, but also South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, as well as the United States.

Well, now we understand that back on May 13, last Friday, a U.S. special envoy met in New York with North Korean officials to deliver that very same message in private in a face-to-face meeting. We understand from administration officials that there were no new incentives offered, no plan -- no new plan, rather, offered to try to get North Korea to the table. But all, of course -- all of this, of course, is happening against the backdrop of the U.S. very much hoping that North Korea's neighbors, specifically South Korea and China, would be able to get Pyongyang back to that discussion table.

That, of course, has not worked. The last time those six-way talks took place was almost a year ago in June of 2004. But this was an avenue just this past Friday that was used to reiterate that message directly to the North Koreans. Again, this is a channel, though, that the United States says has been used before. Administration officials, in fact, saying that most recently it was just a few months ago, in December of last year, that they decided to use this channel. But this word coming from White House officials, and just a short time ago, White House spokesman Trent Duffy traveling with the president in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, telling reporters about that. But saying that there were not any new incentives offered as a result of those talks -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Elaine, December, it's now May, what, about six months since they had that dialogue. Why -- what is the administration's position on refusing what the North Koreans say they want? Namely, they want a bilateral discussion with the United States, in addition to these six-party talks, including Russia, South Korea, Japan, China, the United States and North Korea.

Why not engage in this direct dialogue? What's the downside?

QUIJANO: Well, the Bush administration says that avenue has been pursued by the U.S. in the past. And they point out, during the Clinton administration, they say, that approach did not work. And so they feel that the best way to handle the North Korean situation is to go ahead and utilize some of the other countries, the leverage that some of the other countries in the region may provide. Namely, China, which has such close ties, as well as South Korea, with the North Koreans themselves.

They believe that by approaching it from a multiparty aspect, that they will, in fact, be more effective in ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions, or at least getting some kind of more open discussion on the table. They don't believe that the bilateral approach is necessarily the way to go.

BLITZER: And one final question. Is the White House saying yet whether the meeting on Friday in New York involving the North Korean diplomats and a U.S. envoy, whether that meeting was the initiative of the North Koreans, it came in response to a request from North Korea? Or did the U.S., did the Bush administration decide to take the initiative and establish that direct dialogue?

QUIJANO: No word on that, Wolf, right now. But again, administration officials pointing out that this is an avenue they have used before, that this is not the first time that the U.S. has met face to face with the North Koreans, again pointing out that it was just last December that they tried this approach as well -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Elaine Quijano over at White House. Thanks, Elaine, very much.

Let's move to a domestic story now, the desperate search for two missing Idaho children. They were not with a man detectives had described as a so-called person of interest, a man who has now been located and questioned.

Let's get the latest. CNN's Sean Callebs standing by with that in Idaho -- Sean. SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we can tell you that the FBI, as well as members of Kootenai County sheriff's office, spent several hours yesterday interviewing 33-year-old Robert Roy Lutner. He is the person that authorities have given that somewhat nebulous title of "person of interest."

We asked the sheriff, does that mean this individual is a suspect? A material witness? Someone perhaps connected to the case? They said, "We're not saying anything other than he is a person of interest." But Lutner could not provide any insight on the two missing children, 9-year-old Dylan Groene and his younger sister, 8- year-old Shasta.

We can tell you Lutner is in custody right now on a probation violation, but it has nothing to do with this case. They're going to continue to question him.

Meanwhile, the crime investigation for the triple murders in the house not terribly far behind me continues. The sheriff told me yesterday that he doesn't believe this was a random act of violence. He believes that this was something that was a very premeditated -- in his words, someone was out on a mission.

Now, getting back to Lutner for just a minute, the sheriff's office does say that he is someone important because he was here about the time the crimes were committed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPT. BEN WOLFINGER, KOOTENAI COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE: Every minute that goes by, we're -- we do fear even more and more. Our hope is that this is one of the miraculous cases where those kids are still being well taken care of, and someone somewhere is going to see them at a restaurant, at a gas station, somewhere, and they'll -- they'll call either the sheriff's office or their local law enforcement agency, and we'll recover those children and get them back to what family they have left here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLEBS: That's why authorities here believe that those two children are still alive. They would question why three victims would be left dead in a house and the two children taken away.

Now, we know that the three victims were bound. They were tied before they were killed. And the past 48 hours, this area has really been filled with searchers looking through the woods, the brush here. But that has pretty much come to an end.

The Amber Alert is still out there. Once again, these two children, nine-year-old Dylan, he is about four foot tall, 60 pounds. He has a blonde crew cut and blue eyes.

His younger sister, a slight child. She's eight years old. She only weights 40 pounds. She is less than four feet tall. She has long auburn hair and hazel eyes. Now, we can tell you that divers are expected to go into some of the ponds, some of the small creeks in this area later on today, Wolf. And yesterday, we even saw some investigators on horseback going up into these very steep mountains that are really covered by very thick brush.

BLITZER: Sean Callebs reporting for us from Coeur d'Alene, out in Idaho. Sean, thanks very much for that. We'll continue to watch this story together with you.

Let's head further west, the Michael Jackson trial. CNN's Larry King arrived at the courthouse today. He was called by the defense to testify about a conversation he supposedly had with a lawyer representing the family of Jackson's accuser. But the judge ruled that King's testimony was not relevant, and the talk show host never testified before the jury, only spoke before the judge.

Let's get some analysis of what's going on. Our senior legal analyst, Jeff Toobin, is joining us on the phone now from New York.

What do you make of this little twist in this case, Jeff?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Well, this was kind of a minor sidelight, though it was, of course, interest to all of us here at CNN because of our colleague, Larry. But it's certainly a victory for the prosecution.

What the defense said Larry King would testify to was that he, Larry, was told by Larry Feldman, who represented the accuser's family for a time, that the accuser's story was not believable. That this was apparently a lunch conversation between Larry Feldman and Larry King.

Larry Feldman, when he testified earlier in the trial, said, "I had no such conversation with Larry King." The judge apparently greed that it was not sufficiently a clear admission by the accuser's lawyer. So Larry King won't testify at all.

BLITZER: So this is sort of a ruling that hearsay -- of hearsay is not necessarily admissible before a jury. Is that what the judge is basically saying?

TOOBIN: Yes. It's even more vague than that. It's vague hearsay of hearsay. And, you know, it is so far from a judgment of the actual credibility of the accuser, that the judge, it seems to me, probably wisely kept whole thing off limits and spared Larry King testifying.

BLITZER: For the viewers out there who are not necessarily following this story on a day-to-day basis, the prosecution has made its case, the defense is now making its rebuttal, its case. So where does it stand? Give us a little thumbnail how it looks for Michael Jackson right now.

TOOBIN: Well, I think most of us who has followed the case closely have found that the case is really somewhat weaker than we expected. Most of the prosecution witnesses have had problematic testimony in one way or another, that they have changed their story over time, they have at times said there was absolutely nothing to complain about in Michael Jackson's behavior. Three of the five alleged prior victims of Michael Jackson's child abuse testified that no abuse took place.

So I think the case has not gone very smoothly for the prosecution. However, you know, there is an accuser who looked that jury in the eye and said, "Michael Jackson abused me." And if the jury believes that, nothing else matters.

BLITZER: Jeffrey Toobin reporting for us, giving us some analysis. Jeff, thanks very much.

We'll continue to watch the Michael Jackson story. The bottom line, though, is our Larry King will not be testifying before the jury after all.

Let's head back here to Washington, the filibuster fight in the United States Senate. With the Republicans holding the White House and both houses of Congress, Senate Democrats desperately fighting to keep their party's last lever of power. This hour, the contentious debate continuing on the Senate floor amid another round of behind- the-scene negotiations trying to come up with some sort of compromise.

Our Joe Johns has been following this story. He's on the Hill. He's joining us now live.

Any movement, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, "movement" is a relative word, as you know, Wolf. First, let me say, out on the Senate floor right now, Senator Mitch McConnell. He's been out there for some time talking about the status of this. As all of that goes on in front of the cameras, behind the scenes this high-stakes negotiation continues, which is essentially the prologue to a future Supreme Court battle, which could come, as a matter of fact, as early as this summer.

What we've gotten a hold of is a copy of a memorandum. It's the latest attempt at putting together some type of language of an agreement in order to head off a showdown over blocking judicial nominees on the floor.

I can give you some sense of it. It came out around 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday. This agreement that we've gotten a hold of, which is obviously something that everyone has not signed off on, would allow votes for certain nominees, including some of the most contentious ones, Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, Priscilla Owen, whose nomination is on the floor right now. It would also allow continued blocking of other nominees, including William Myers for the 9th Circuit and Henry Saad of the 6th Circuit.

It's important also to note that this document essentially would condition future attempts to block nominees on good faith and discretion of United States senators. So they're still trying to work something out, but that gives you a sense of the latest language that's been floating around Capitol Hill on this matter.

I talked to one senator who's been intimately involved in these negotiation earlier today. He said there was some new language, apparently this, floating around, and some of the senators who had been involved in the negotiations to try to work something out, basically wanted to sleep on it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: So am I right in suggesting that this new language, as you quoted, "good faith and discretion," they would only, the Democrats, threaten to use the filibuster for future judicial nominees and would have to base it on -- they wouldn't do it unless there was some good faith and discretion? Because earlier languages they would only use the filibuster in what they call extreme circumstances.

JOHNS: Yes. To be clear, there is still language in this document which I'm just reading through again relating to the question of extraordinary circumstances. But what I've seen that's new is this talk about good faith and discretion on both sides.

You know, the question is whether you can head off an attempt to block these nominations on the floor by essentially changing the rules, which is what Republicans are trying to do right now, to lower the standard by which senators vote to get somebody through. So that's one of the things that's going on right now there.

There has been a meeting. It just broke up. And we expect another meeting to start sometime soon to go into this a little bit further -- Wolf.

BLITZER: One final question, Joe. There are six moderate Democrats, six moderate Republicans that have been meeting to try to find some sort of compromise. Given the 55-45 split, the Republican majority in the Senate, those six and six Democrats and Republicans presumably hold the balance. They can determine whether there's going to be this nuclear option and a shutdown of the Senate or not.

My sense is that they really desperately want to avoid that worst-case scenario. The question, though, to you is, do they have the power, those 12 senators, six Democrats, six Republicans, to avert disaster?

JOHNS: Well, yes, it seems pretty clear that if six Democrats and six Republicans sign on, each agreeing not to take that extra step, it means that you can't go forward with an attempt to change the rules on the Senate floor. It would also presumably change the circumstances under which Democrats would try to block a nomination on the floor.

So that's what they're talking about. It's essentially a truce that they're trying to work out using those six Democrats and six Republicans -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Shuttle diplomacy. Maybe they should bring back Henry Kissinger and see if he can come up with some sort of agreement between these warring factions on the Hill. But Joe Johns doing an excellent job as usual, explaining to our viewers what's going on. Joe, thanks very much.

The president hits the road, again seeking support for changes in Social Security, while the first lady readies -- gets ready for another trip around the world again to a different part of the world, the Middle East specifically. I'll talk about her trip with an historian, the importance of Laura Bush's new role in her husband's second term.

Plus, the vital role of America's fourth estate and the repercussions when reporters wind up getting things wrong. Sometimes lies as well as the truth are at stake. We'll go in depth. That's coming up this hour.

You're watching NEWS FROM CNN, and we're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

President Bush is back on the campaign trail, so to speak. He's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this hour, once again pushing his plan to try to overhaul Social Security. That, as you no doubt know by now, includes creating what are called private investment accounts. We'll monitor what the president is saying.

The first lady, meanwhile, is heading in a very different direction with a different focus. Laura Bush leaves later today for the Middle East, a trip aimed at promoting democracy and women's rights. It's the second solo trip for the first lady this year. She was in Afghanistan in late March.

Carl Anthony is an expert on the subject of presidential wives and families. He's written nine books. The latest on Nellie Taft, wife of the 27th president. That book entitled "Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era."

Carl is joining us now live from L.A.

Carl, thanks very much for joining us.

This is a very important trip that the first lady is taking. Leaving tonight, she'll be going to Jordan, where there is an economic meeting under way, then to Israel, then Egypt, three key players in that part of the world at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process potentially could get back on track. Also at a time when the president is promoting his democracy initiative.

What do you make of this decision by the White House to send her to such a sensitive region right now?

CARL ANTHONY, AUTHOR, "NELLIE TAFT": Wolf, first of all, it's an enormous vote of confidence by the political operatives within the White House, because it is inevitable that Mrs. Bush will be asked questions even if she's going to talk about either historical or women's related issues. She will be asked about the "Newsweek" question. She will be asked about the insurgency arising again in Iraq. And they have every faith that she can handle it.

She's proving to be much more political and much more politically savvy than I think a lot of people assumed she was when she first came in.

BLITZER: Well, she certainly did something rather unusual a few weeks ago at that White House Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, where in good taste and in jokingly she sort of nudged her husband aside and took over the podium. That was a side of Laura Bush that a lot of Laura Bush watchers were not familiar with.

ANTHONY: I think so. And it also provides a glimpse, Wolf, I think of the kind of role of both domestic -- in domestic policies and as a diplomat internationally that a first lady can have that, for example, a woman president, or a woman secretary of state can't have. Because the first lady is not necessarily accountable for the policies, she can go and listen, and people can voice their grievances with her in a way that isn't a full-on attack, and she can then report that back to the president.

That's the other side of all of this that we're not seeing. Yes, it's an important symbol. It's a vote of confidence from the U.S. government sending the first lady there, but it's also a way for her to make observations and report them back.

BLITZER: And all these leaders with whom she'll be meeting, they know this is one person for sure who has the president's ear. And they can try to make points that they would like her to then relay to the president.

ANTHONY: Absolutely. And, you know, sometimes when a first lady travels, even though she has a planned schedule, and she has an entourage around her, she can oftentimes observe things. And, you know, it's throughout history, sometime rather acidly, make observations to her husband that nobody else is making to him, and telling him about situations that need some work and correction.

I think the other thing that's going on here is you're seeing Laura Bush emerge in a way that frankly is a little bit more like Hillary Clinton. And I think it's a generational shift from the earlier generation, those women born in an earlier time before World War II.

I think Laura Bush certainly not as political as Hillary, but almost more like Rosalynn Carter. Certainly not as traditional as her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, was.

BLITZER: And so, as you well know, every first lady is unique, different. They have their own personal styles. But you see her and Hillary Clinton, when she was first lady, almost in the same kind of way, as compared to Barbara Bush or Rosalynn Carter for that -- or Nancy Reagan, for that matter?

ANTHONY: Well, yes, I do, in this respect. Certainly, she's not as policy-oriented as Hillary Clinton was. Not by any means. I'm not meaning to say that. But if you really start examining and looking at some of the issues she's interested in, early childhood development. This particular -- one of the things she's doing in the Middle East, the small micro loan programs to women to start businesses in areas that need business. This was something that Hillary Clinton did after health care failed, traveled throughout the world and promoted this.

Historic preservation. Some of what she's doing in the Middle East also relates to historic preservation there.

So I think, again, it's much more of a generational thing. You know, these are women, both of whom are the only ones with higher degrees beyond college degrees. And I continuing very much speaks to worldly people.

BLITZER: Well, we wish Laura Bush a safe journey to Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Good luck to her.

Carl Anthony, as usual, thanks very much for helping us.

We're going to take another quick break. When we come back, more on that filibuster fight unfolding here in Washington.

We'll profile one of the judicial nominees caught in the middle of the debate, Janice Rogers Brown. What's made her such a lightning rod in this debate? Our John King has been investigating, and we'll go in depth when the NEWS FROM CNN continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: When it comes to President Bush's judicial nominees, they don't come much more conservative than California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Like Priscilla Owen, Brown's nomination was resubmitted after a Democratic filibuster. As CNN's John King reports, Brown isn't bashful when it comes to speaking her mind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Janice Rogers Brown, a college liberal turned courthouse conservative, a Shakespeare and poetry-lover with a penchant for provocative words of her own.

These are "perilous times for people of faith," she warned in a speech last month, suggesting liberals want to divorce the country from its religious heritage. "It's not a shooting war," she said, "but it's a war."

JANICE ROGERS BROWN, APPEALS COURT NOMINEE: The question for you will be whether the regime of freedom, which they founded, can survive the relentless enmity of the slave mentality.

KING: She calls the New Deal, which created Social Security and Medicare, "our socialist revolution," suggesting it created reliance on big government, a new slavery, contrary to the Constitution's authors' vision of limited government. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's so radical that she says with programs like Social Security and Medicare, seniors are cannibalizing their grandchildren.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hear ye, hear ye, the honorable supreme court...

KING: Perhaps her most noteworthy judicial decision, a sweeping attack on affirmative action, saying society should be colorblind and not allow "entitlement based on group representation."

EVA PATERSON, FOUNDER, EQUAL JUSTICE SOCIETY: As a black woman I'm here to say it doesn't matter what the color of her skin is, it matters how she is going to rule.

KING: Skin color very much mattered to young Janice Rogers in Luverne, Alabama. Whenever possible, her sharecropper father kept the family from establishments that had separate entrances and facilities for blacks.

STEVE MERSKSAMER, LONGTIME BROWN FRIEND: I know they didn't have indoor plumbing. I know that it was a very, very rough existence. I can only imagine what it must have been like growing up as a youngster in the segregated South.

KING: She was six when, 50 miles away in Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. Fred Gray was Parks' lawyer, an African American, and to young Janice, an inspiration.

Rogers Brown graduated UCLA Law School in 1977, making her dream of becoming an attorney a reality. Raising a son as a single mother made personal responsibility a guiding theme, and her political views trended more conservative.

BILL MOUNT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF: She believes the judiciary's single duty is to protect individuals from government overreaching.

KING: Critics see her provocative writings as evidence of ambition, including her 2000 ruling criticizing racial quotas or even goals as contrary to a society based on equal opportunity for all.

OWEN SELLSTROM, LAWYERS CMTE. FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: It was not a typical opinion that you would see of a judge looking at the facts and applying the law. It was much more something that appeared to be specifically drafted to catch the attention of ultra-right wing conservative groups.

KING: Former Chief of Staff Bill Mount says it is not personal ambition but, instead, a deliberate effort to stir debate on the evolving role of courts and government.

MOUNT: She believes that something of a wrong turn was taken, maybe half a century ago, when the welfare state grew. And I think she thinks that the national experience of African-Americans has been, in some ways, regrettable.

PATERSON: I think the Bush people are very brilliantly playing the race card.

KING: Eva Paterson's Equal Justice Society in San Francisco is one of an array of state and national civil rights organizations opposing the Brown nomination.

PATERSON: She is a sister and she has suffered many of the indignities that black women throughout history have suffered. And, so, that tends to make you want to just be quiet and not oppose her. But then my sense of political chess makes me realize that that's exactly what Karl Rove and President Bush want to have happen.

KING (on camera): Justice Rogers Brown is a regular here at the Church of Christ in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento. Friends say her deep Christian faith is a critical part of both her personal and professional life, though some critics say that faith plays too much of a role in her judicial philosophy.

BROWN: What we ultimately pursue is a true vision of justice and ordered liberty, respectful of human dignity and the authority of God.

KING (voice-over): In a 1997 case, the state supreme court declared unconstitutional a law requiring parental consent before a minor could receive an abortion. But Justice Brown dissented, suggesting the majority's reasoning gave courts a green light "to topple every cultural icon, to dismiss all societal values, and to become the final arbiters of traditional morality."

Friend Steve Mersksamer says they have never discussed abortion.

MERSKSAMER: I don't know what her views would be. I think she views the Constitution in a fairly strict, constructionist sense, which is what the president says he wants to appoint people like that. But I also think that she is -- I think it's a big mistake to try to pigeonhole her.

KING: She is, for example, not always adverse to government power. "Sometimes beauty is fierce; love is tough; and freedom is painful," she wrote in a ruling upholding drug testing for government job applicants. She also allowed cities to disperse suspected gang members without proof of illegal conduct.

MERSKSAMER: Janice is an extremely private person. She is hard to, you know, she won't open up to just anybody.

KING: Mersksamer met with Brown recently to discuss her nomination. He says she preferred to talk about her latest intellectual pursuit.

MERSKSAMER: I couldn't believe it when she said to me, you know I really -- could you connect me with somebody who can teach -- I want to learn Hebrew. And I mean it just amazed me. I said, why? Because I want to read the Torah in the original Hebrew.

KING: Friends say two years of hearing herself labeled combative, temperamental, extremist and worse have taken a toll. But Mount says Justice Brown isn't one to flinch from a fight. MOUNT: She told me that she went to see the Ray Charles film and she loved the line when they said, "They're scandalizing my name." And that's exactly how she feels. I think she finds it brutal, just brutal. In another sense, I think she's in the eye of the storm and she's quite calm about it all.

KING: John King, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: CBS has canceled the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," as you probably know by now. But what does that mean for the future of Dan Rather, and how much of that decision dates back to the controversy surrounding that CBS report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard? I'll talk about that with my guests Frank Sesno and Marvin Kalb, and we'll talk about the overall role of the media in reporting, especially the use of confidential source.

First, though, checking some the most popular stories this hour on CNN.com. Tired of swiping your credit card over and over because the magnetic strip is worn? Guess what. Help is on the way! Cards that you wave rather than you swipe. You want to get some more details? We've got two ideas for you. One can you go to CNN.com. Two, can you watch "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" today coming up at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. We'll have a report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. Let's focus a little on the news media right now. This week, a popular news magazine retracted an explosive story, and CBS announced it's pulling the plug on a news show whose credibility may have been damaged by a questionable report about the president some eight months ago.

Here to talk about that, and more, our two guests, Frank Sesno is a CNN special correspondent. He's a professor of public policy and communications at George Mason University in Virginia. He's a former senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of CNN.

And the veteran journalist Marvin Kalb. He's now a senior fellow at the Jones Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He worked many years at both CBS and NBC. Thanks to both of for joining us.

Let's talk, Marvin, first of all, about the death of "60 Minutes II" or Wednesday, whatever they call it, not the death of the original "60 Minutes," but the death of the second "60 Minutes." What do you make of this?

MARVIN KALB, SHORENSTEIN CTR., HARVARD UNIV.: I make of it that it had very bad ratings. I believe Leslie Moonves with he gave that as an explanation.

I don't think it had fundamentally to do with Rather. But it's that the whole show was tainted. And when these big shots look down the line and say, what is vulnerable, "60 Minutes II" is clearly vulnerable.

BLITZER: This was Don Hewitt's original fear of having a spinoff from "60 Minutes?"

KALB: Exactly. And I was about to make the point, Wolf, that the people at "60 Minutes I" on Sunday, I think -- I haven't talked to them, but I have a feeling that they are delighted that "60 Minutes Wednesday" is now dead because they are now "60 Minutes," and they want that legendary broadcast to survive without any kind of distractions.

BLITZER: Frank, what's your thought?

FRANK SESNO, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think very much what Marvin just said. I don't think we should weep too much, because there is still "60 Minutes." On the other hand, what is disturbing is that there is no documentary tradition left of the broadcast networks anymore. As good as it got was happening in these news magazines. The news magazines -- and this affects everybody -- have, in effect, been muscled aside by the fictitious entertainment reality television.

So anybody who's trying to tune into the broadcast networks and expecting to find good, solid long-form journalism, documentary journalism, get to the bottom of the story, forget it. It's not going to happen there. It's going to happen on cable, probably.

KALB: There's another problem here, too, just to add to what Frank was saying. I have a feeling that what we're seeing is the impending death of network news, in a way, or the evening newscast, in a way. The CBS "Evening News" ought to feel very jeopardized now by what just happened to "60 Minutes II."

No matter what Leslie Moonves says, the history of the last 15 years is not a happy history at the once Tiffany network, which is sort of copper-trimmed these days. It is not what it was. The people who work there are extremely uneasy. If have you difficulty presenting the news in an honest way, if you're not happy coming into work in the morning, you're not really going to be presenting it to the American people in a way that they deserve -- and they deserve.

SESNO: And the larger issue here, just to go to 20,000 feet for a minute, let's look at a larger trend. Once upon a time, when you went to work in the morning, if you were working in news or you were working in the trenches, you could turn on your radio and you'd hear news every hour on the hour on practically every radio station. That's gone. There were documentary units at every major broadcast networks. Those are gone.

If there's a retrenchment of the evening news, that will be gone. It's not, you know, Armageddon, because there are plenty of other places to get news. But the ability to reach the mass audience, to engage the American people in an ongoing discussion and give them real information, is getting harder and harder as the audience fades.

BLITZER; Do you think the Dan Rather story or the Texas Air National Guard on President Bush contributed to the death of this second "60 Minutes"?

SESNO: In a way. I mean, I think that it helps to set the tone. It makes it more difficult to save it. It makes it more difficult to wave the flag and say hey. But you know, CBS and all networks are about doing business and the news program is going to have a bottom line in ratings and everything else, like other programs.

BLITZER: What does this mean for Dan Rather?

KALB: I think it's a very bad sign for Dan. Of course, they say that he's going to now work for "60 Minutes," the original. And Dan himself, I think, was quoted as saying that he is simply going to move his shop right over to the old "60 Minutes."

BLITZER: So he'll wind up doing some pieces for the Sunday "60 Minutes"?

KALB: Yes, but, Dan Rather is a big man at CBS, and he still is. Is he going to be one of the guys who introduce "60 Minutes"? You know, hello, I'm Morley Safer, that sort of thing? I doubt it. I doubt it. And if he is going to have to live in that reduced status, how long is he going to accept that?

BLITZER: One of the problems -- in the Dan Rather piece involving the Texas Air National Guard, in the "Newsweek" piece that caused this big uproar about the Koran being desecrated at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- the use of confidential sources. Frank, a lot of our viewers have lost so much trust in us journalists because of the scandals of recent years. There was a poll you saw the other day that suggested there should be censorship?

SESNO: Oh, let me tell you, yes, nearly a quarter -- this is a University of Connecticut public policy poll that released just this week, that talked about -- I think it was last week, perhaps -- that talked about nearly a quarter of public believes that the government should be able to censor newspapers.

Even more -- and to your point about anonymous sources, same poll asked people, you know, do you -- in a story that relies on an unnamed source, would you question the accuracy of that story? 89 percent say they'd question the accuracy of the story. The fact of the matter is that you can't have journalism the way we know it that holds governments, corporations, churches, to account, institutions to account without some reliance on anonymous sources.

And let me make it simple and bring it -- if there's a supermarket in your neighborhood or a school in your neighborhood that's abusing its trust, putting out tainted products, what have you, it may be an anonymous source in that place that comes forward to expose that. Do you want to know?

BLITZER: But is the use of the anonymous source overused by the mainstream news organizations?

KALB: Without any doubt. Without any doubt. And Wolf, this has been going on for decades now. I remember a time when "The Washington Post," back in the early '70s, said we will never again use an anonymous source. And the two diplomatic correspondents at that time went up in an uproar and they said, hey, we can't cover the State Department, we can't cover issues of national security, unless we talk to people who will not give us their names.

SESNO: Precisely.

KALB: The issue is not whether you have one source, but whether you have the right source. And in "Newsweek"'s case, they thought they had the right source, but they didn't.

SESNO: What has to happen is that I think people expect transparency now in virtually all aspects of their lives.

KALB: If you're going to use an (INAUDIBLE) word.

SESNO: No, it's not a (INAUDIBLE) word.

KALB: It is.

SESNO: No, because -- and there will be times when you can't do this, Marvin, but you can let your readers or viewers or listeners know how many...

KALB: As much as possible.

SESNO: Right. How many sources, what they told you, what's a quote, what's not.

BLITZER: In other words, instead of simply saying a high-ranking official, you say a high-ranking official with a specific agenda who's opposed to a policy or whatever. You have to explain in greater detail.

KALB: You have to explain it in greater detail and as much as possible stay away from the use of anonymous sources. But please recognize that you're going to have to use them in the coverage of some kind of a news story. There's no doubt about that.

BLITZER: Otherwise we'll be reporting press releases and that's...

KALB: Press releases. Stenography number one instead of journalism.

SESNO: In journalism or any other industry, they'd be hiring a lot of consultants now to figure out how to restore public trust. That's a very important thing.

BLITZER: Yes, I totally agree. Marvin Kalb, Frank Sesno. We'll continue this. Thanks.

We'll take a quick break. Much more NEWS FROM CNN right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BLITZER: Larry King, after all, will not be testifying before the jury in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. Let's go out to Ted Rowlands. He's joining us now live from Santa Maria, California. He just emerged from inside, Ted, I take it. What exactly happened?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Larry King showed up here, Wolf, ready to testify in front of the jury. Before the judge brought the jury in, he wanted to have what's called a 402 hearing, to see exactly what Larry King was going to be offering to this case. Larry king took the stand, was under oath, and answered questions from the both the judge and from Tom Mesereau.

The gist of what Larry King was going to offer from the defense standpoint, is that he was involved in a conversation with attorney Larry Feldman in Los Angeles. Larry Feldman had met with the accuser and the accuser's mother in this case, and King claims that Feldman said that the mother was a, quote, "wacko," and Mesereau continued to ask questions and asked about that conversation.

On the surface, this would fly in the face of what Larry Feldman, the attorney, had already testified to. The problem with this is that it is hearsay, and it is one witness impeaching the credibility of another, which is not allowed. And in the end, the judge said what Larry King had to offer would not be allowed in court because he didn't have specific recollection about what Feldman claims the mother said specifically. It was more Larry Feldman's opinion here, according to Larry King. The bottom line, Larry King will not take the stand in front of this jury.

Another person who was at same conversation was also told what they had to offer, Michael Wiener, could not testify as well. A blow to the Jackson defense team, because clearly, Larry King on the stand talking about this woman minced no words, saying that Larry Feldman had called her, quote, "a wacko," and the jury will not hear it. Right now there's another witness on the stand as the defense continues to finish up their case.

Yesterday they told the judge it would be sooner rather than later they finish, saying that they have pared down the witness list. The fact that King and Michael Weiner will not take the stand will bring it down even shorter. We do expect Jay Leno early next week. But after that, it looks like the defense is finishing up -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Ted Rowlands reporting for us. I guess Larry King is done with the trial for now. He can head back to L.A. and get ready for his show tonight.

Ted, thanks very much. You still have a very busy day, so stay put.

CNN's "LIVE FROM" coming all of our way at the top of hour. Let's get a little preview. Miles O'Brien, standing by.

Miles, what've you got.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, it's good to see you.

We've got a lot going on today. First of all, that Idaho case, a terrible tragic case, a triple murder, two kids missing. That Amber Alert still in play. We're going to hear from the father of these two missing kids. He should talk in about 40 minutes or so. We'll bring it to you live.

Also Buzz Aldrin will be our guest. Buzz is out with a children's book. There he is, walking on the moon 36 some years ago and some change. The book is called "Reaching for the Moon." We'll talk to Buzz about it, why 36 years later he's writing a book for kids, and what he thinks about the president's moon/Mars initiative.

And our word of the day, Wolf, is balladromic, balladromic. LIVE FROM is coming to you in a balladromic manner.

BLITZER: All right, what does that mean?

O'BRIEN: It's directly on course. I just gave it away, so there's no reason to watch now. I have to come up with a new word of the day.

BLITZER: You can spell that, Miles. for us?

O'BRIEN: I've got a cheat sheet. B-A-L-L-A-D-R-O-M-I-C.

BLITZER: Miles O'Brien, spelling words for us. Much more coming up at the top of the hour, Miles. Thanks very much.

O'BRIEN: Thank you, Wolf. See you.

BLITZER: We'll take a quick break. We'll have more NEWS FROM CNN right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: I'll be back later today, every weekday, 5:00 p.m. Eastern for "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS." The U.S. struggling with China for a better balance of trade. What does this mean for U.S. manufacturers and for consumers? Our Mary Snow investigates.

Also I'll speak live with White House chief economist Al Hubbard. All that coming up, 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

Until then, thanks very much for watching NEWS FROM CNN. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

LIVE FROM with Fredricka Whitfield and Miles O'Brien, walking over to the set, that's coming up after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired May 19, 2005 - 11:59   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. government must make a decision today on whether to charge Cuban militant Luis Posada with an immigration violation. Posada was arrested Tuesday after slipping across the Mexican border in March. The former U.S. intelligence asset is wanted in Venezuela in connection with the bombing of a Cuban airliner nearly 30 years ago.
Women in the U.S. armed forces possibly could be banned from direct combat if a House committee gets its way. Just hours ago, the House Armed Services Committee approved legislation that would keep women out of ground combat units. Currently, there are about 9,400 female troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thirty-five of them have been killed in action.

Her guilty plea was thrown out earlier this month. Now the U.S. Army is once again pursuing the case against Lynndie England. An Article 32 hearing akin to a civilian grand jury investigation begins next week. England is accused of mistreating detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Up first this hour, a story that's just literally breaking. A major development, at least potentially, concerning the United States and North Korea. Let's quickly go over to the White House. CNN's Elaine Quijano standing by -- Elaine.

ELAINE QUIJANO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello to you, Wolf.

Well, the Bush administration has publicly made clear that it would like North Korea to return to those six-way, six-nation talks about North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Those talk, of course, involving not only North Korea, but also South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, as well as the United States.

Well, now we understand that back on May 13, last Friday, a U.S. special envoy met in New York with North Korean officials to deliver that very same message in private in a face-to-face meeting. We understand from administration officials that there were no new incentives offered, no plan -- no new plan, rather, offered to try to get North Korea to the table. But all, of course -- all of this, of course, is happening against the backdrop of the U.S. very much hoping that North Korea's neighbors, specifically South Korea and China, would be able to get Pyongyang back to that discussion table.

That, of course, has not worked. The last time those six-way talks took place was almost a year ago in June of 2004. But this was an avenue just this past Friday that was used to reiterate that message directly to the North Koreans. Again, this is a channel, though, that the United States says has been used before. Administration officials, in fact, saying that most recently it was just a few months ago, in December of last year, that they decided to use this channel. But this word coming from White House officials, and just a short time ago, White House spokesman Trent Duffy traveling with the president in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, telling reporters about that. But saying that there were not any new incentives offered as a result of those talks -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Elaine, December, it's now May, what, about six months since they had that dialogue. Why -- what is the administration's position on refusing what the North Koreans say they want? Namely, they want a bilateral discussion with the United States, in addition to these six-party talks, including Russia, South Korea, Japan, China, the United States and North Korea.

Why not engage in this direct dialogue? What's the downside?

QUIJANO: Well, the Bush administration says that avenue has been pursued by the U.S. in the past. And they point out, during the Clinton administration, they say, that approach did not work. And so they feel that the best way to handle the North Korean situation is to go ahead and utilize some of the other countries, the leverage that some of the other countries in the region may provide. Namely, China, which has such close ties, as well as South Korea, with the North Koreans themselves.

They believe that by approaching it from a multiparty aspect, that they will, in fact, be more effective in ending North Korea's nuclear ambitions, or at least getting some kind of more open discussion on the table. They don't believe that the bilateral approach is necessarily the way to go.

BLITZER: And one final question. Is the White House saying yet whether the meeting on Friday in New York involving the North Korean diplomats and a U.S. envoy, whether that meeting was the initiative of the North Koreans, it came in response to a request from North Korea? Or did the U.S., did the Bush administration decide to take the initiative and establish that direct dialogue?

QUIJANO: No word on that, Wolf, right now. But again, administration officials pointing out that this is an avenue they have used before, that this is not the first time that the U.S. has met face to face with the North Koreans, again pointing out that it was just last December that they tried this approach as well -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right. Elaine Quijano over at White House. Thanks, Elaine, very much.

Let's move to a domestic story now, the desperate search for two missing Idaho children. They were not with a man detectives had described as a so-called person of interest, a man who has now been located and questioned.

Let's get the latest. CNN's Sean Callebs standing by with that in Idaho -- Sean. SEAN CALLEBS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we can tell you that the FBI, as well as members of Kootenai County sheriff's office, spent several hours yesterday interviewing 33-year-old Robert Roy Lutner. He is the person that authorities have given that somewhat nebulous title of "person of interest."

We asked the sheriff, does that mean this individual is a suspect? A material witness? Someone perhaps connected to the case? They said, "We're not saying anything other than he is a person of interest." But Lutner could not provide any insight on the two missing children, 9-year-old Dylan Groene and his younger sister, 8- year-old Shasta.

We can tell you Lutner is in custody right now on a probation violation, but it has nothing to do with this case. They're going to continue to question him.

Meanwhile, the crime investigation for the triple murders in the house not terribly far behind me continues. The sheriff told me yesterday that he doesn't believe this was a random act of violence. He believes that this was something that was a very premeditated -- in his words, someone was out on a mission.

Now, getting back to Lutner for just a minute, the sheriff's office does say that he is someone important because he was here about the time the crimes were committed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPT. BEN WOLFINGER, KOOTENAI COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE: Every minute that goes by, we're -- we do fear even more and more. Our hope is that this is one of the miraculous cases where those kids are still being well taken care of, and someone somewhere is going to see them at a restaurant, at a gas station, somewhere, and they'll -- they'll call either the sheriff's office or their local law enforcement agency, and we'll recover those children and get them back to what family they have left here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CALLEBS: That's why authorities here believe that those two children are still alive. They would question why three victims would be left dead in a house and the two children taken away.

Now, we know that the three victims were bound. They were tied before they were killed. And the past 48 hours, this area has really been filled with searchers looking through the woods, the brush here. But that has pretty much come to an end.

The Amber Alert is still out there. Once again, these two children, nine-year-old Dylan, he is about four foot tall, 60 pounds. He has a blonde crew cut and blue eyes.

His younger sister, a slight child. She's eight years old. She only weights 40 pounds. She is less than four feet tall. She has long auburn hair and hazel eyes. Now, we can tell you that divers are expected to go into some of the ponds, some of the small creeks in this area later on today, Wolf. And yesterday, we even saw some investigators on horseback going up into these very steep mountains that are really covered by very thick brush.

BLITZER: Sean Callebs reporting for us from Coeur d'Alene, out in Idaho. Sean, thanks very much for that. We'll continue to watch this story together with you.

Let's head further west, the Michael Jackson trial. CNN's Larry King arrived at the courthouse today. He was called by the defense to testify about a conversation he supposedly had with a lawyer representing the family of Jackson's accuser. But the judge ruled that King's testimony was not relevant, and the talk show host never testified before the jury, only spoke before the judge.

Let's get some analysis of what's going on. Our senior legal analyst, Jeff Toobin, is joining us on the phone now from New York.

What do you make of this little twist in this case, Jeff?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SR. LEGAL ANALYST: Well, this was kind of a minor sidelight, though it was, of course, interest to all of us here at CNN because of our colleague, Larry. But it's certainly a victory for the prosecution.

What the defense said Larry King would testify to was that he, Larry, was told by Larry Feldman, who represented the accuser's family for a time, that the accuser's story was not believable. That this was apparently a lunch conversation between Larry Feldman and Larry King.

Larry Feldman, when he testified earlier in the trial, said, "I had no such conversation with Larry King." The judge apparently greed that it was not sufficiently a clear admission by the accuser's lawyer. So Larry King won't testify at all.

BLITZER: So this is sort of a ruling that hearsay -- of hearsay is not necessarily admissible before a jury. Is that what the judge is basically saying?

TOOBIN: Yes. It's even more vague than that. It's vague hearsay of hearsay. And, you know, it is so far from a judgment of the actual credibility of the accuser, that the judge, it seems to me, probably wisely kept whole thing off limits and spared Larry King testifying.

BLITZER: For the viewers out there who are not necessarily following this story on a day-to-day basis, the prosecution has made its case, the defense is now making its rebuttal, its case. So where does it stand? Give us a little thumbnail how it looks for Michael Jackson right now.

TOOBIN: Well, I think most of us who has followed the case closely have found that the case is really somewhat weaker than we expected. Most of the prosecution witnesses have had problematic testimony in one way or another, that they have changed their story over time, they have at times said there was absolutely nothing to complain about in Michael Jackson's behavior. Three of the five alleged prior victims of Michael Jackson's child abuse testified that no abuse took place.

So I think the case has not gone very smoothly for the prosecution. However, you know, there is an accuser who looked that jury in the eye and said, "Michael Jackson abused me." And if the jury believes that, nothing else matters.

BLITZER: Jeffrey Toobin reporting for us, giving us some analysis. Jeff, thanks very much.

We'll continue to watch the Michael Jackson story. The bottom line, though, is our Larry King will not be testifying before the jury after all.

Let's head back here to Washington, the filibuster fight in the United States Senate. With the Republicans holding the White House and both houses of Congress, Senate Democrats desperately fighting to keep their party's last lever of power. This hour, the contentious debate continuing on the Senate floor amid another round of behind- the-scene negotiations trying to come up with some sort of compromise.

Our Joe Johns has been following this story. He's on the Hill. He's joining us now live.

Any movement, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, "movement" is a relative word, as you know, Wolf. First, let me say, out on the Senate floor right now, Senator Mitch McConnell. He's been out there for some time talking about the status of this. As all of that goes on in front of the cameras, behind the scenes this high-stakes negotiation continues, which is essentially the prologue to a future Supreme Court battle, which could come, as a matter of fact, as early as this summer.

What we've gotten a hold of is a copy of a memorandum. It's the latest attempt at putting together some type of language of an agreement in order to head off a showdown over blocking judicial nominees on the floor.

I can give you some sense of it. It came out around 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday. This agreement that we've gotten a hold of, which is obviously something that everyone has not signed off on, would allow votes for certain nominees, including some of the most contentious ones, Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, Priscilla Owen, whose nomination is on the floor right now. It would also allow continued blocking of other nominees, including William Myers for the 9th Circuit and Henry Saad of the 6th Circuit.

It's important also to note that this document essentially would condition future attempts to block nominees on good faith and discretion of United States senators. So they're still trying to work something out, but that gives you a sense of the latest language that's been floating around Capitol Hill on this matter.

I talked to one senator who's been intimately involved in these negotiation earlier today. He said there was some new language, apparently this, floating around, and some of the senators who had been involved in the negotiations to try to work something out, basically wanted to sleep on it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: So am I right in suggesting that this new language, as you quoted, "good faith and discretion," they would only, the Democrats, threaten to use the filibuster for future judicial nominees and would have to base it on -- they wouldn't do it unless there was some good faith and discretion? Because earlier languages they would only use the filibuster in what they call extreme circumstances.

JOHNS: Yes. To be clear, there is still language in this document which I'm just reading through again relating to the question of extraordinary circumstances. But what I've seen that's new is this talk about good faith and discretion on both sides.

You know, the question is whether you can head off an attempt to block these nominations on the floor by essentially changing the rules, which is what Republicans are trying to do right now, to lower the standard by which senators vote to get somebody through. So that's one of the things that's going on right now there.

There has been a meeting. It just broke up. And we expect another meeting to start sometime soon to go into this a little bit further -- Wolf.

BLITZER: One final question, Joe. There are six moderate Democrats, six moderate Republicans that have been meeting to try to find some sort of compromise. Given the 55-45 split, the Republican majority in the Senate, those six and six Democrats and Republicans presumably hold the balance. They can determine whether there's going to be this nuclear option and a shutdown of the Senate or not.

My sense is that they really desperately want to avoid that worst-case scenario. The question, though, to you is, do they have the power, those 12 senators, six Democrats, six Republicans, to avert disaster?

JOHNS: Well, yes, it seems pretty clear that if six Democrats and six Republicans sign on, each agreeing not to take that extra step, it means that you can't go forward with an attempt to change the rules on the Senate floor. It would also presumably change the circumstances under which Democrats would try to block a nomination on the floor.

So that's what they're talking about. It's essentially a truce that they're trying to work out using those six Democrats and six Republicans -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Shuttle diplomacy. Maybe they should bring back Henry Kissinger and see if he can come up with some sort of agreement between these warring factions on the Hill. But Joe Johns doing an excellent job as usual, explaining to our viewers what's going on. Joe, thanks very much.

The president hits the road, again seeking support for changes in Social Security, while the first lady readies -- gets ready for another trip around the world again to a different part of the world, the Middle East specifically. I'll talk about her trip with an historian, the importance of Laura Bush's new role in her husband's second term.

Plus, the vital role of America's fourth estate and the repercussions when reporters wind up getting things wrong. Sometimes lies as well as the truth are at stake. We'll go in depth. That's coming up this hour.

You're watching NEWS FROM CNN, and we're back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

President Bush is back on the campaign trail, so to speak. He's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, this hour, once again pushing his plan to try to overhaul Social Security. That, as you no doubt know by now, includes creating what are called private investment accounts. We'll monitor what the president is saying.

The first lady, meanwhile, is heading in a very different direction with a different focus. Laura Bush leaves later today for the Middle East, a trip aimed at promoting democracy and women's rights. It's the second solo trip for the first lady this year. She was in Afghanistan in late March.

Carl Anthony is an expert on the subject of presidential wives and families. He's written nine books. The latest on Nellie Taft, wife of the 27th president. That book entitled "Nellie Taft: The Unconventional First Lady of the Ragtime Era."

Carl is joining us now live from L.A.

Carl, thanks very much for joining us.

This is a very important trip that the first lady is taking. Leaving tonight, she'll be going to Jordan, where there is an economic meeting under way, then to Israel, then Egypt, three key players in that part of the world at a time when the Israeli-Palestinian peace process potentially could get back on track. Also at a time when the president is promoting his democracy initiative.

What do you make of this decision by the White House to send her to such a sensitive region right now?

CARL ANTHONY, AUTHOR, "NELLIE TAFT": Wolf, first of all, it's an enormous vote of confidence by the political operatives within the White House, because it is inevitable that Mrs. Bush will be asked questions even if she's going to talk about either historical or women's related issues. She will be asked about the "Newsweek" question. She will be asked about the insurgency arising again in Iraq. And they have every faith that she can handle it.

She's proving to be much more political and much more politically savvy than I think a lot of people assumed she was when she first came in.

BLITZER: Well, she certainly did something rather unusual a few weeks ago at that White House Correspondents Association dinner in Washington, where in good taste and in jokingly she sort of nudged her husband aside and took over the podium. That was a side of Laura Bush that a lot of Laura Bush watchers were not familiar with.

ANTHONY: I think so. And it also provides a glimpse, Wolf, I think of the kind of role of both domestic -- in domestic policies and as a diplomat internationally that a first lady can have that, for example, a woman president, or a woman secretary of state can't have. Because the first lady is not necessarily accountable for the policies, she can go and listen, and people can voice their grievances with her in a way that isn't a full-on attack, and she can then report that back to the president.

That's the other side of all of this that we're not seeing. Yes, it's an important symbol. It's a vote of confidence from the U.S. government sending the first lady there, but it's also a way for her to make observations and report them back.

BLITZER: And all these leaders with whom she'll be meeting, they know this is one person for sure who has the president's ear. And they can try to make points that they would like her to then relay to the president.

ANTHONY: Absolutely. And, you know, sometimes when a first lady travels, even though she has a planned schedule, and she has an entourage around her, she can oftentimes observe things. And, you know, it's throughout history, sometime rather acidly, make observations to her husband that nobody else is making to him, and telling him about situations that need some work and correction.

I think the other thing that's going on here is you're seeing Laura Bush emerge in a way that frankly is a little bit more like Hillary Clinton. And I think it's a generational shift from the earlier generation, those women born in an earlier time before World War II.

I think Laura Bush certainly not as political as Hillary, but almost more like Rosalynn Carter. Certainly not as traditional as her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, was.

BLITZER: And so, as you well know, every first lady is unique, different. They have their own personal styles. But you see her and Hillary Clinton, when she was first lady, almost in the same kind of way, as compared to Barbara Bush or Rosalynn Carter for that -- or Nancy Reagan, for that matter?

ANTHONY: Well, yes, I do, in this respect. Certainly, she's not as policy-oriented as Hillary Clinton was. Not by any means. I'm not meaning to say that. But if you really start examining and looking at some of the issues she's interested in, early childhood development. This particular -- one of the things she's doing in the Middle East, the small micro loan programs to women to start businesses in areas that need business. This was something that Hillary Clinton did after health care failed, traveled throughout the world and promoted this.

Historic preservation. Some of what she's doing in the Middle East also relates to historic preservation there.

So I think, again, it's much more of a generational thing. You know, these are women, both of whom are the only ones with higher degrees beyond college degrees. And I continuing very much speaks to worldly people.

BLITZER: Well, we wish Laura Bush a safe journey to Jordan, Israel and Egypt. Good luck to her.

Carl Anthony, as usual, thanks very much for helping us.

We're going to take another quick break. When we come back, more on that filibuster fight unfolding here in Washington.

We'll profile one of the judicial nominees caught in the middle of the debate, Janice Rogers Brown. What's made her such a lightning rod in this debate? Our John King has been investigating, and we'll go in depth when the NEWS FROM CNN continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: When it comes to President Bush's judicial nominees, they don't come much more conservative than California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown. Like Priscilla Owen, Brown's nomination was resubmitted after a Democratic filibuster. As CNN's John King reports, Brown isn't bashful when it comes to speaking her mind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN KING, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Janice Rogers Brown, a college liberal turned courthouse conservative, a Shakespeare and poetry-lover with a penchant for provocative words of her own.

These are "perilous times for people of faith," she warned in a speech last month, suggesting liberals want to divorce the country from its religious heritage. "It's not a shooting war," she said, "but it's a war."

JANICE ROGERS BROWN, APPEALS COURT NOMINEE: The question for you will be whether the regime of freedom, which they founded, can survive the relentless enmity of the slave mentality.

KING: She calls the New Deal, which created Social Security and Medicare, "our socialist revolution," suggesting it created reliance on big government, a new slavery, contrary to the Constitution's authors' vision of limited government. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's so radical that she says with programs like Social Security and Medicare, seniors are cannibalizing their grandchildren.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hear ye, hear ye, the honorable supreme court...

KING: Perhaps her most noteworthy judicial decision, a sweeping attack on affirmative action, saying society should be colorblind and not allow "entitlement based on group representation."

EVA PATERSON, FOUNDER, EQUAL JUSTICE SOCIETY: As a black woman I'm here to say it doesn't matter what the color of her skin is, it matters how she is going to rule.

KING: Skin color very much mattered to young Janice Rogers in Luverne, Alabama. Whenever possible, her sharecropper father kept the family from establishments that had separate entrances and facilities for blacks.

STEVE MERSKSAMER, LONGTIME BROWN FRIEND: I know they didn't have indoor plumbing. I know that it was a very, very rough existence. I can only imagine what it must have been like growing up as a youngster in the segregated South.

KING: She was six when, 50 miles away in Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. Fred Gray was Parks' lawyer, an African American, and to young Janice, an inspiration.

Rogers Brown graduated UCLA Law School in 1977, making her dream of becoming an attorney a reality. Raising a son as a single mother made personal responsibility a guiding theme, and her political views trended more conservative.

BILL MOUNT, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF: She believes the judiciary's single duty is to protect individuals from government overreaching.

KING: Critics see her provocative writings as evidence of ambition, including her 2000 ruling criticizing racial quotas or even goals as contrary to a society based on equal opportunity for all.

OWEN SELLSTROM, LAWYERS CMTE. FOR CIVIL RIGHTS: It was not a typical opinion that you would see of a judge looking at the facts and applying the law. It was much more something that appeared to be specifically drafted to catch the attention of ultra-right wing conservative groups.

KING: Former Chief of Staff Bill Mount says it is not personal ambition but, instead, a deliberate effort to stir debate on the evolving role of courts and government.

MOUNT: She believes that something of a wrong turn was taken, maybe half a century ago, when the welfare state grew. And I think she thinks that the national experience of African-Americans has been, in some ways, regrettable.

PATERSON: I think the Bush people are very brilliantly playing the race card.

KING: Eva Paterson's Equal Justice Society in San Francisco is one of an array of state and national civil rights organizations opposing the Brown nomination.

PATERSON: She is a sister and she has suffered many of the indignities that black women throughout history have suffered. And, so, that tends to make you want to just be quiet and not oppose her. But then my sense of political chess makes me realize that that's exactly what Karl Rove and President Bush want to have happen.

KING (on camera): Justice Rogers Brown is a regular here at the Church of Christ in Rancho Cordova, near Sacramento. Friends say her deep Christian faith is a critical part of both her personal and professional life, though some critics say that faith plays too much of a role in her judicial philosophy.

BROWN: What we ultimately pursue is a true vision of justice and ordered liberty, respectful of human dignity and the authority of God.

KING (voice-over): In a 1997 case, the state supreme court declared unconstitutional a law requiring parental consent before a minor could receive an abortion. But Justice Brown dissented, suggesting the majority's reasoning gave courts a green light "to topple every cultural icon, to dismiss all societal values, and to become the final arbiters of traditional morality."

Friend Steve Mersksamer says they have never discussed abortion.

MERSKSAMER: I don't know what her views would be. I think she views the Constitution in a fairly strict, constructionist sense, which is what the president says he wants to appoint people like that. But I also think that she is -- I think it's a big mistake to try to pigeonhole her.

KING: She is, for example, not always adverse to government power. "Sometimes beauty is fierce; love is tough; and freedom is painful," she wrote in a ruling upholding drug testing for government job applicants. She also allowed cities to disperse suspected gang members without proof of illegal conduct.

MERSKSAMER: Janice is an extremely private person. She is hard to, you know, she won't open up to just anybody.

KING: Mersksamer met with Brown recently to discuss her nomination. He says she preferred to talk about her latest intellectual pursuit.

MERSKSAMER: I couldn't believe it when she said to me, you know I really -- could you connect me with somebody who can teach -- I want to learn Hebrew. And I mean it just amazed me. I said, why? Because I want to read the Torah in the original Hebrew.

KING: Friends say two years of hearing herself labeled combative, temperamental, extremist and worse have taken a toll. But Mount says Justice Brown isn't one to flinch from a fight. MOUNT: She told me that she went to see the Ray Charles film and she loved the line when they said, "They're scandalizing my name." And that's exactly how she feels. I think she finds it brutal, just brutal. In another sense, I think she's in the eye of the storm and she's quite calm about it all.

KING: John King, CNN, San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: CBS has canceled the Wednesday edition of "60 Minutes," as you probably know by now. But what does that mean for the future of Dan Rather, and how much of that decision dates back to the controversy surrounding that CBS report on President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard? I'll talk about that with my guests Frank Sesno and Marvin Kalb, and we'll talk about the overall role of the media in reporting, especially the use of confidential source.

First, though, checking some the most popular stories this hour on CNN.com. Tired of swiping your credit card over and over because the magnetic strip is worn? Guess what. Help is on the way! Cards that you wave rather than you swipe. You want to get some more details? We've got two ideas for you. One can you go to CNN.com. Two, can you watch "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS" today coming up at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. We'll have a report.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. Let's focus a little on the news media right now. This week, a popular news magazine retracted an explosive story, and CBS announced it's pulling the plug on a news show whose credibility may have been damaged by a questionable report about the president some eight months ago.

Here to talk about that, and more, our two guests, Frank Sesno is a CNN special correspondent. He's a professor of public policy and communications at George Mason University in Virginia. He's a former senior vice president and Washington bureau chief of CNN.

And the veteran journalist Marvin Kalb. He's now a senior fellow at the Jones Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He worked many years at both CBS and NBC. Thanks to both of for joining us.

Let's talk, Marvin, first of all, about the death of "60 Minutes II" or Wednesday, whatever they call it, not the death of the original "60 Minutes," but the death of the second "60 Minutes." What do you make of this?

MARVIN KALB, SHORENSTEIN CTR., HARVARD UNIV.: I make of it that it had very bad ratings. I believe Leslie Moonves with he gave that as an explanation.

I don't think it had fundamentally to do with Rather. But it's that the whole show was tainted. And when these big shots look down the line and say, what is vulnerable, "60 Minutes II" is clearly vulnerable.

BLITZER: This was Don Hewitt's original fear of having a spinoff from "60 Minutes?"

KALB: Exactly. And I was about to make the point, Wolf, that the people at "60 Minutes I" on Sunday, I think -- I haven't talked to them, but I have a feeling that they are delighted that "60 Minutes Wednesday" is now dead because they are now "60 Minutes," and they want that legendary broadcast to survive without any kind of distractions.

BLITZER: Frank, what's your thought?

FRANK SESNO, GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY: Well, I think very much what Marvin just said. I don't think we should weep too much, because there is still "60 Minutes." On the other hand, what is disturbing is that there is no documentary tradition left of the broadcast networks anymore. As good as it got was happening in these news magazines. The news magazines -- and this affects everybody -- have, in effect, been muscled aside by the fictitious entertainment reality television.

So anybody who's trying to tune into the broadcast networks and expecting to find good, solid long-form journalism, documentary journalism, get to the bottom of the story, forget it. It's not going to happen there. It's going to happen on cable, probably.

KALB: There's another problem here, too, just to add to what Frank was saying. I have a feeling that what we're seeing is the impending death of network news, in a way, or the evening newscast, in a way. The CBS "Evening News" ought to feel very jeopardized now by what just happened to "60 Minutes II."

No matter what Leslie Moonves says, the history of the last 15 years is not a happy history at the once Tiffany network, which is sort of copper-trimmed these days. It is not what it was. The people who work there are extremely uneasy. If have you difficulty presenting the news in an honest way, if you're not happy coming into work in the morning, you're not really going to be presenting it to the American people in a way that they deserve -- and they deserve.

SESNO: And the larger issue here, just to go to 20,000 feet for a minute, let's look at a larger trend. Once upon a time, when you went to work in the morning, if you were working in news or you were working in the trenches, you could turn on your radio and you'd hear news every hour on the hour on practically every radio station. That's gone. There were documentary units at every major broadcast networks. Those are gone.

If there's a retrenchment of the evening news, that will be gone. It's not, you know, Armageddon, because there are plenty of other places to get news. But the ability to reach the mass audience, to engage the American people in an ongoing discussion and give them real information, is getting harder and harder as the audience fades.

BLITZER; Do you think the Dan Rather story or the Texas Air National Guard on President Bush contributed to the death of this second "60 Minutes"?

SESNO: In a way. I mean, I think that it helps to set the tone. It makes it more difficult to save it. It makes it more difficult to wave the flag and say hey. But you know, CBS and all networks are about doing business and the news program is going to have a bottom line in ratings and everything else, like other programs.

BLITZER: What does this mean for Dan Rather?

KALB: I think it's a very bad sign for Dan. Of course, they say that he's going to now work for "60 Minutes," the original. And Dan himself, I think, was quoted as saying that he is simply going to move his shop right over to the old "60 Minutes."

BLITZER: So he'll wind up doing some pieces for the Sunday "60 Minutes"?

KALB: Yes, but, Dan Rather is a big man at CBS, and he still is. Is he going to be one of the guys who introduce "60 Minutes"? You know, hello, I'm Morley Safer, that sort of thing? I doubt it. I doubt it. And if he is going to have to live in that reduced status, how long is he going to accept that?

BLITZER: One of the problems -- in the Dan Rather piece involving the Texas Air National Guard, in the "Newsweek" piece that caused this big uproar about the Koran being desecrated at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- the use of confidential sources. Frank, a lot of our viewers have lost so much trust in us journalists because of the scandals of recent years. There was a poll you saw the other day that suggested there should be censorship?

SESNO: Oh, let me tell you, yes, nearly a quarter -- this is a University of Connecticut public policy poll that released just this week, that talked about -- I think it was last week, perhaps -- that talked about nearly a quarter of public believes that the government should be able to censor newspapers.

Even more -- and to your point about anonymous sources, same poll asked people, you know, do you -- in a story that relies on an unnamed source, would you question the accuracy of that story? 89 percent say they'd question the accuracy of the story. The fact of the matter is that you can't have journalism the way we know it that holds governments, corporations, churches, to account, institutions to account without some reliance on anonymous sources.

And let me make it simple and bring it -- if there's a supermarket in your neighborhood or a school in your neighborhood that's abusing its trust, putting out tainted products, what have you, it may be an anonymous source in that place that comes forward to expose that. Do you want to know?

BLITZER: But is the use of the anonymous source overused by the mainstream news organizations?

KALB: Without any doubt. Without any doubt. And Wolf, this has been going on for decades now. I remember a time when "The Washington Post," back in the early '70s, said we will never again use an anonymous source. And the two diplomatic correspondents at that time went up in an uproar and they said, hey, we can't cover the State Department, we can't cover issues of national security, unless we talk to people who will not give us their names.

SESNO: Precisely.

KALB: The issue is not whether you have one source, but whether you have the right source. And in "Newsweek"'s case, they thought they had the right source, but they didn't.

SESNO: What has to happen is that I think people expect transparency now in virtually all aspects of their lives.

KALB: If you're going to use an (INAUDIBLE) word.

SESNO: No, it's not a (INAUDIBLE) word.

KALB: It is.

SESNO: No, because -- and there will be times when you can't do this, Marvin, but you can let your readers or viewers or listeners know how many...

KALB: As much as possible.

SESNO: Right. How many sources, what they told you, what's a quote, what's not.

BLITZER: In other words, instead of simply saying a high-ranking official, you say a high-ranking official with a specific agenda who's opposed to a policy or whatever. You have to explain in greater detail.

KALB: You have to explain it in greater detail and as much as possible stay away from the use of anonymous sources. But please recognize that you're going to have to use them in the coverage of some kind of a news story. There's no doubt about that.

BLITZER: Otherwise we'll be reporting press releases and that's...

KALB: Press releases. Stenography number one instead of journalism.

SESNO: In journalism or any other industry, they'd be hiring a lot of consultants now to figure out how to restore public trust. That's a very important thing.

BLITZER: Yes, I totally agree. Marvin Kalb, Frank Sesno. We'll continue this. Thanks.

We'll take a quick break. Much more NEWS FROM CNN right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BLITZER: Larry King, after all, will not be testifying before the jury in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial. Let's go out to Ted Rowlands. He's joining us now live from Santa Maria, California. He just emerged from inside, Ted, I take it. What exactly happened?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Larry King showed up here, Wolf, ready to testify in front of the jury. Before the judge brought the jury in, he wanted to have what's called a 402 hearing, to see exactly what Larry King was going to be offering to this case. Larry king took the stand, was under oath, and answered questions from the both the judge and from Tom Mesereau.

The gist of what Larry King was going to offer from the defense standpoint, is that he was involved in a conversation with attorney Larry Feldman in Los Angeles. Larry Feldman had met with the accuser and the accuser's mother in this case, and King claims that Feldman said that the mother was a, quote, "wacko," and Mesereau continued to ask questions and asked about that conversation.

On the surface, this would fly in the face of what Larry Feldman, the attorney, had already testified to. The problem with this is that it is hearsay, and it is one witness impeaching the credibility of another, which is not allowed. And in the end, the judge said what Larry King had to offer would not be allowed in court because he didn't have specific recollection about what Feldman claims the mother said specifically. It was more Larry Feldman's opinion here, according to Larry King. The bottom line, Larry King will not take the stand in front of this jury.

Another person who was at same conversation was also told what they had to offer, Michael Wiener, could not testify as well. A blow to the Jackson defense team, because clearly, Larry King on the stand talking about this woman minced no words, saying that Larry Feldman had called her, quote, "a wacko," and the jury will not hear it. Right now there's another witness on the stand as the defense continues to finish up their case.

Yesterday they told the judge it would be sooner rather than later they finish, saying that they have pared down the witness list. The fact that King and Michael Weiner will not take the stand will bring it down even shorter. We do expect Jay Leno early next week. But after that, it looks like the defense is finishing up -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Ted Rowlands reporting for us. I guess Larry King is done with the trial for now. He can head back to L.A. and get ready for his show tonight.

Ted, thanks very much. You still have a very busy day, so stay put.

CNN's "LIVE FROM" coming all of our way at the top of hour. Let's get a little preview. Miles O'Brien, standing by.

Miles, what've you got.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, it's good to see you.

We've got a lot going on today. First of all, that Idaho case, a terrible tragic case, a triple murder, two kids missing. That Amber Alert still in play. We're going to hear from the father of these two missing kids. He should talk in about 40 minutes or so. We'll bring it to you live.

Also Buzz Aldrin will be our guest. Buzz is out with a children's book. There he is, walking on the moon 36 some years ago and some change. The book is called "Reaching for the Moon." We'll talk to Buzz about it, why 36 years later he's writing a book for kids, and what he thinks about the president's moon/Mars initiative.

And our word of the day, Wolf, is balladromic, balladromic. LIVE FROM is coming to you in a balladromic manner.

BLITZER: All right, what does that mean?

O'BRIEN: It's directly on course. I just gave it away, so there's no reason to watch now. I have to come up with a new word of the day.

BLITZER: You can spell that, Miles. for us?

O'BRIEN: I've got a cheat sheet. B-A-L-L-A-D-R-O-M-I-C.

BLITZER: Miles O'Brien, spelling words for us. Much more coming up at the top of the hour, Miles. Thanks very much.

O'BRIEN: Thank you, Wolf. See you.

BLITZER: We'll take a quick break. We'll have more NEWS FROM CNN right after this.

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BLITZER: I'll be back later today, every weekday, 5:00 p.m. Eastern for "WOLF BLITZER REPORTS." The U.S. struggling with China for a better balance of trade. What does this mean for U.S. manufacturers and for consumers? Our Mary Snow investigates.

Also I'll speak live with White House chief economist Al Hubbard. All that coming up, 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

Until then, thanks very much for watching NEWS FROM CNN. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

LIVE FROM with Fredricka Whitfield and Miles O'Brien, walking over to the set, that's coming up after a short break.

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