Return to Transcripts main page
Your World Today
CIA Videotape: Agency Destroyed Interrogation Tapes; Omaha Mall Shooting; Interview with Moazzem Begg, a Former Guantanamo Bay Detainee
Aired December 07, 2007 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JIM CLANCY, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Two terror suspects survived, but the tapes of their interrogations did not. Now Capitol Hill investigators want to know why.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: A panicked call to police, the first indication of a mass murder that, given what we know now of the killer's background, seems almost inevitable.
CLANCY: Canoe, kayak, now catamaran. For a dead man, John Darwin sure had a things for boats.
MCEDWARDS: And...
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you're literally holding the nose of a dinosaur here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that would be a first.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCEDWARDS: Say hello to Dakota, a 67 million-year-old mummified dinosaur who's helping scientists rewrite the prehistory books.
It is noon at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, it's 11:00 a.m. in Omaha, Nebraska.
Hello and welcome to our report seen all around the globe.
I'm Colleen McEdwards.
CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy.
From London to Paris, from the front lines in Afghanistan to the badlands of North Dakota, this is YOUR WORLD TODAY.
MCEDWARDS: Well, the CIA says it shot the tapes as an internal check on the U.S. of harsh interrogation techniques.
CLANCY: And now, the CIA is having to explain why the videotaped questioning of two terror suspects were then destroyed.
MCEDWARDS: The admission raises some new concerns about the use of techniques that some say amounts to torture. CLANCY: Also raising questions about truthfulness and accountability. Some members of Congress say they were left in the dark and now they want a full investigation.
MCEDWARDS: Now, the tapes were made in 2002 after President George W. Bush had authorized the use of harsh questioning methods, hoping to gain some information about the September 11th attacks. We now know those tapes were, in fact, destroyed in 2005.
Let's bring in Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr for more details on this.
Barbara, how big a deal is this?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Colleen, it is getting quite a reaction here in Washington on Capitol Hill.
It was yesterday that CIA Director General Mike Hayden sent a letter to the employees at the agency saying that two years ago, indeed, the CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes of two suspects, interrogations that were conducted back in 2002. By all accounts, the CIA issued the statement to employees because "The New York Times" said it was about to publish an article about the destruction of the tapes.
General Hayden said the tapes no longer had any intelligence value, but posed a security risk because he said if they ever were to leak, they would permit identification of CIA colleagues who had served in that program. That program, of course, being the program of harsh interrogation techniques that are widely said to have included waterboarding, that interrogation technique of the sensation of drowning.
Now, government sources are saying that one of the interrogations was that of Abu Zubaydah, one of the first detainees really to be held in custody by the CIA, and that the information they gained sent them to get Ramzi Binalshibh and later Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, three key players. All of this, it should be said, is about the detainees that the CIA held in custody, not about the detainees that the U.S. military holds at Guantanamo Bay. But a lot of reaction on Capitol Hill.
Very quickly, listen to what one senator is already saying.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: It is a startling disclosure. The United States of America, a nation where the rule of law is venerated, has now been in the business of destroying evidence. Evidence of a very sensitive nature, evidence which clearly should have been protected for legal and historic purposes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STARR: Now, the CIA, of course, saying that they vetted all of this and that they made the tapes basically to make sure that these interrogations were following the standard procedures, and that they were very careful before they destroyed the tapes to make sure they had no intelligence value and were not related to any court case. Whether that still holds water, if you will, remains to be seen.
"The New York Times" already today quoting one of the attorneys for the 9/11 Commission talking about the possibility of obstruction of justice, saying that the 9/11 Commission didn't get these tapes and that they had requested all available information about the 9/11 attacks -- Colleen.
MCEDWARDS: Yes. You know, that obstruction of justice issue is an interesting one.
Barbara Starr, thanks a lot for bringing us up to date on that.
There is going to be lots of reaction to this, and we'll have more of it right here on YOUR WORLD TODAY. So stay with us.
We're going to be talking to a prominent senator, Dianne Feinstein, who has been out in front of this issue, trying to make things like waterboarding illegal. And we are also going to speak to a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay about the kinds of things that went on there.
So stay with us. Much more on this just ahead -- Jim.
CLANCY: All right. Let's look at the European Union and NATO ministers having an agreement.
They're going to push for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Russia, though, appears to be unwilling to increase the pressure. Not entirely unexpected.
During meetings Friday in Brussels, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov pointed to the new U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran. That assessment said Iran puts its pursuit of nuclear weapons on hold four years ago. Lavrov wants negotiations with Iran to continue.
MCEDWARDS: Well, we have more troubling details now to tell you about the 19-year-old gunman who carried out a deadly shooting in a Nebraska shopping mall earlier this week.
CLANCY: Robert Hawkins was rejected by the Army, he had a police record, he spent four years bouncing from various treatment centers and foster care.
MCEDWARDS: Meanwhile, a 911 call that was placed by a terrified store worker just gives you a sense of the chaos in very chilling detail here.
CNN's Gary Tuchman reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The first call to 911 had no voice at the other end. (BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
(GUNSHOTS)
911 DISPATCHER: 911. what's your emergency?
(GUNSHOTS)
(END AUDIO CLIP)
TUCHMAN: Just the chilling sound of gunshots.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
(GUNSHOTS)
(END AUDIO CLIP)
TUCHMAN: The operator couldn't be sure what was going on. But then he heard the voices.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is someone with a gun shooting people in Von Maur at Westroads.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. We are on our way out there. Have you seen anybody that was shot?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. No.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. They're on their way out there. Did anybody see the person shooting?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a bunch of people shot.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) shot up (INAUDIBLE). Oh, my God! Help us.
911 DISPATCHER: Ma'am, ma'am, get away from that woman, so I can hear what you are saying, will you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, Jesus.
911 DISPATCHER: Now...
(CROSSTALK)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said there are a bunch of people shot inside of Von Maur.
911 DISPATCHER: OK. Then (INAUDIBLE) The police are on their way.
(END AUDIO CLIP) TUCHMAN: One of those gunshots was a self-inflicted one that killed 19-year-old Robert Hawkins after he murdered eight other people. The question is why?
Flags were at half-staff all over Omaha, including the McDonald's where Hawkins worked before apparently being fired this week. People who knew him, including friend Shawn Sanders, said he long suffered from depression.
SHAWN SANDERS, FRIEND OF ROBERT HAWKINS: I'm not sure to the level of his depression. I just know he was on antidepressants for the last couple of months. And I guest -- I guess it was just getting worse over time, with the loss of his job. And I guess he had issues going on with a girlfriend at the time.
TUCHMAN: Hawkins was placed in a mental health treatment center in 2002, after making homicidal threats against his stepmother. He spent much of his teenage years in treatment centers.
And, in a police report filed last year, he alleged he was molested by a roommate at a group home. The state defends its treatment of him.
TODD LANDRY, DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES: Based on our review, we believe that this tragedy was not a failure of the system to provide appropriate quality services for a youth that needed it.
TUCHMAN: He wanted to join the Army, saying he wanted to leave Omaha, but was turned down by recruiters.
SERGEANT EDWARD DUST, ARMY RECRUITER: I wouldn't say that I even had the perception that he was troubled. I would say that I had the perception that, you know, he had some difficult -- a difficult past, to say the least.
TUCHMAN: In the Omaha suburb of Papillion, Nebraska, Hawkins went to Papillion-La Vista High School, but dropped out. The principal says he did not appear to be bullied, but was uninvolved in school, and added, he met with Hawkins many times, but just couldn't inspire him.
JIM GLOVER, PRINCIPAL, PAPILLION-LA VISTA HIGH SCHOOL: While he was here at Papillion-La Vista High School, he had a number of infractions that were minor. Robert never, ever showed any hostility toward our staff or to our students.
TUCHMAN: Hawkins no longer lived with his family, moving into this home with a friend and the friend's mother.
DEBORA MARUCA KOVAC, LANDLORD OF ROBERT HAWKINS: He was a depressed person. He had been very depressed. But it looked like he was getting better. He had gotten a job. He got a car, got his driver's license. So, things looked -- were looking better for him.
TUCHMAN (on camera): Neighbors we talked with say they would see Hawkins going in and outside the house. They say he seemed like a nice kid, no problems whatsoever. They assumed he was part of the family.
(voice-over): Now they know differently.
GLOVER: You know, it is tough, because, somewhere along the line, somebody failed, and -- and probably all of us.
TUCHMAN: Gary Tuchman, CNN, Omaha, Nebraska.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: There has been another twist in the investigation of a missing American teenager in Aruba. All three of the suspects, all three young men, are now free again.
An Aruban judge ordered the release of Joran van der Sloot, alleged to be involved in the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway while she was vacationing in Aruba. The other two suspects, brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe, were freed last week. They were charged in being involved in what was termed the voluntary manslaughter of Holloway, as well as assault and battery.
All three have been maintaining their innocence.
MCEDWARDS: French police are questioning a suspect over that deadly explosion from a parcel bomb. A secretary at a Paris law office who opened the package was killed. This happened on Thursday.
Police say the box was rigged with homemade explosives and that it was addressed to the law firm. The suspect had allegedly harassed a lawyer at that office two years ago. Officials also say terrorism is no longer a focus in this investigation.
Well, we have much more to come on our top story, the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.
CLANCY: Straight ahead, a former detainee talks with CNN about his experience at Guantanamo Bay.
And then later, a prehistoric discovery like no other, why an autopsy of sorts is shedding new light on the appearance of dinosaurs.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MCEDWARDS: Welcome back to CNN International and YOUR WORLD TODAY.
CLANCY: We're covering the news the world wants to know, giving you a little bit more perspective, talking to some of the real players in the stories of the day.
Let's get some more now on our top story, that the CIA has admitted destroying at least two videotapes that showed the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Now Moazzem Begg joins us. He has firsthand experience of what it's like, some of the harsh techniques that might be used in these questionings. He's a former British detainee at both Bagram in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
He's also co-author of "Enemy Combatant: A British-Muslim's Journey to Guantanamo and Back." He was released back in January 2005.
Moazzem, thanks for joining us.
Are you surprised at all that you hear that the CIA destroyed some tapes of interrogations?
MOAZZEM, BEGG, FMR. GUANTANAMO DETAINEE: That is surprising, but what's even more surprising in a sense is the arguments for why they say that it would be of possible breach for the security of the CIA agents that are involved in these interrogations. They could -- their faces could easily be obscured in the way that most sensitive documents and videos can be obscured.
CLANCY: So, why do you think they did it? Why do you think they destroyed them, really?
BEGG: I think -- I think the reality is that it would have proved beyond a doubt that they were involved in interrogation techniques that are far from just robust, but actually moved into the realms of torture. And I think that that's really important, particularly in the light of the fact when President Bush earlier this year said we will now prohibit the use of torture, it was an inadvertent admission that torture was being practiced. And, of course, in the secret detention sites that existed and continue to exist around the world, why are they so secretive? What's the necessity for these places to be so secretive?
(CROSSTALK)
CLANCY: Give us your firsthand account. You were taken -- you were picked up in Pakistan at a period in time when a lot of people were fleeing Afghanistan because it was just too hot to handle. The U.S. military was in there, a lot of bombings, a lot of the al Qaeda fighters tried to regroup in Pakistan. You got snagged and taken to Bagram.
What happened?
BEGG: Well, Bagram, I can tell you that it was so bad that I was actually looking forward to going to Guantanamo by the time I finished my whole almost 11 months there. And part of the interrogation techniques there included using the sounds of a woman screaming next door, which I was led to believe was my wife, waving pictures of my children in front of me, suggesting that they also were in custody and being tortured. It also included further torture which meant being tied up, hog-tied, almost, with my hands tied behind my back to my legs, being punched and kicked. But the worst of it was being threatened to being sent to Egypt, where they told me another man, Ibnal Sheikh Libi (ph), a supposed friend and collaborator of Abu Zubaydah, had been sent to Egypt and had been tortured. And unbeknownst to me at the time, he confessed to working on obtaining mass weapons of destruction from Saddam Hussein.
And in 2003, Colin Powell and President Bush cited that as credible evidence and used it to invade Iraq. A year later, that statement was retracted. Ibnal Sheik Libi has since disappeared. He never made it to Guantanamo, and that's one of the burning questions. Why didn't people like this, their stories -- why are they so afraid of the stories coming out? And of course the obvious answer would be it would be a huge embarrassment to the Bush administration.
CLANCY: Moazzem, let me just ask you a basic question here. Did you tell them everything they wanted to know?
BEGG: And more. I think that's the reality of being in a situation where you are tortured, where you are threatened, where you are threatened with being killed, where you are threatened with being executed in certain circumstances.
They asked me many things, and they asked me many things that I didn't know about, and they jumped to conclusions, they asked me to sign a confession. And I did sign a confession, and that confession included being supposedly and allegedly a member of al Qaeda. And despite that confession, I still wasn't charged.
CLANCY: You know, you were not charged. You were released without charge after being held for a total of three years.
Now let me ask you a tough question for you. You remain a Muslim act advice it. You remain opposed to the war in Iraq, the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, and many other things that people would say, well, that puts you on the other side in this war on terror.
Let me ask you something. Do the people that carry out the suicide bombings and everything, do they really expect that somebody isn't going to -- you know, arm-twisting and much, much worse in these kinds of interrogations, to get at the other side?
BEGG: You know, the problem with this is that, you know, we've had Guantanamo Bay for the past six years, not one person has been charged with a crime that's any way remotely related to Guantanamo -- to the reason why Guantanamo was set up, and that's September the 11th. So this notion that the terrorists can't expect any rule or any justice, it seems to be ludicrous, because then where -- who can take the moral high ground at this point?
And then after all, how many people have been convicted of the reason why this war of terror -- war on terror was launched in the first place? One person, Zacarias, Moussaoui, and nobody else. And so it seems rather ludicrous to launch a war that engulfs a whole world on the brink of a third world war, just for the sake of -- of the real threat of terrorism, but exaggerating it to the level that millions of people have been killed -- have to be killed? It's ludicrous.
CLANCY: Moazzem Begg, I have to leave it there. We are going to lose your satellite. I appreciate your viewpoints and you coming on the air here to share them with all of us.
Moazzem Begg.
BEGG: Thank you.
MCEDWARDS: Well, a British judge has granted police an extra 36 hours to question the so-called "Canoe Man." That's John Darwin, and he is suspected of insurance fraud after disappearing five years ago and then reappearing at a police station on Saturday.
Meanwhile, there's some new information now about his whereabouts during that time when he was missing and the current whereabouts of his wife.
Paula Hancocks explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): His first court appearance over, John Darwin is whisked back to this police station in northern England, his home until at least midnight Saturday. But his wife Anne is proving to be more elusive.
Police know she left her apartment in Panama and flew somewhere. They're just not quite sure where. Anne Darwin has been talking to a British tabloid newspaper but not as yet to the police.
ANDY GREENWOOD, Cleveland POLICE: The last information that we had, that she was in North America. But, of course, that is unconfirmed. I'm certainly not going to be chasing Mrs. Darwin around the country. Again, I'll just repeat the fact that if she wants to come forward and speak to me, then I'm willing to speak to her.
HANCOCKS: Anne Darwin begged forgiveness from her sons Friday after admitting in a tabloid she knew her husband was still alive but didn't tell them. The sons publicly disowned their parents Thursday, saying they feared they had been victims of a huge scam by their own parents.
Anne Darwin insists she only recently learned of her husband's return from the dead but a boat seller in Gibraltar, the British territory on Spain's southern tip, says John Darwin tried to buy a $90,000 boat from him in 2005, using a fake name and a fake passport, and he received e-mails and a deposit from Anne.
ROBERT HOPKINS, BOAT DEALER: When he flew out to Gibraltar and I spent time with him onboard the boat, showing him -- you know, showing him around the boat, he indicated that his idea was to -- was for him and his partner to go and -- go off sailing around the world and live on the boat long term.
HANCOCKS (on camera): The police say they're in daily contact with the Darwins' sons, Anthony and Mark, and at this point they are just trying to keep their heads down. The police also said that Thursday's statement from Anthony talking of their anger and their confusion shows just how badly they have been affected.
Paula Hancocks, CNN, Cleveland, northern England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: Millions of dollars are being spent in Afghanistan. The question, is the money making any difference?
MCEDWARDS: Yes. Still to come here, U.S. diplomats follow the troops and the money to see if humanitarian aid can keep the Taliban from regaining ground.
CLANCY: Also coming up, graffiti in the name of peace. An artist tries to use a security wall in Bethlehem to send a message about a possible path to peace.
(NEWSBREAK)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers joining us from more than 200 countries and territories all around the globe, including this hour in the United States. This is YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Colleen McEdwards.
JIM CLANCY, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Jim Clancy. And these are some of the top stories we're following right now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DISPATCHER: 911. What's your emergency?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: A 911 call recorded during Wednesday's Omaha mall shooting is being released. Only gunshots can be heard during the first few seconds, followed by terrified store workers describing the scene. State officials say the teenage gunman spent four years being shuffled through foster care and various treatment centers after trying to kill his stepmother. Nine people, including the shooter, were killed.
MCEDWARDS: French police have detained a suspect in Thursday's deadly parcel bomb blast in Paris. A secretary at a law office there was killed. Officials say the suspect had allegedly harassed a lawyer at the same office two years ago.
CLANCY: The CIA admits it destroyed videotaped interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects in 2005. It says the tapes were made three years earlier as part of an effort to monitor harsh questioning methods. The CIA says the tapes no longer had any intelligence value and posed a security risk ,in its words, for the interrogators. MCEDWARDS: Well, you know, those tapes have renewed questions about the use of harsh interrogation methods and about government honesty and accountability. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are vowing to conduct a thorough review in this case. And joining us to talk more about the political ramifications of the CIA's disclosure, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein. She's a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and joins us now with more.
Senator, thanks a lot for being here.
You know, we sort of have to go back in time, don't we, to get the significance of this. There was a 9/11 commission going on at the time. There were legislative inquiries going on at the time. How helpful would tape like this have been in that process?
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, U.S. SENATE DEMOCRAT: Well, of course, legally they have one respect. And in terms of what the CIA has said they were made for, it was a totally different thing.
Now, I'm not really at liberty to discuss it in-depth. The Intelligence Committee will be doing their own investigation. We will go back and look at the timing of the tapes, when they were done, why they were done, when they were destroyed, why they were destroyed, who said to do what. So we will get all of that information and then be able to make some more informed decisions.
MCEDWARDS: What does the law say about that? I mean, is the CIA obliged in any way to turn any of this over or to keep it?
FEINSTEIN: Well, that's a very good question. And that's another thing to look at because there are a lot of materials that the CIA would have that, if made public, would reveal sources and methods. And so tapes would be one of them, certainly. But whether -- it's the destruction, I suspect, that raises the question now.
I'm one that believes we should not be doing the kind of heavy torture. I'm one that believes that all of the United States government should function under the same rules, regulations and protocols that govern coercive interrogation. And I was successful in being able to put into the big bill for intelligence, which is called the Intelligence Authorization Bill, in the conference between the House of Representatives and the Senate, an amendment which essentially said that the CIA will now use the Army Field Manual so that things like waterboarding or other extraordinary techniques that are outlawed in this manual would be outlawed for CIA use as well.
MCEDWARDS: Senator, it is possible, and some say quite likely, that the president will veto some of the efforts to make these techniques illegal. Is there not a fair argument to say, because some do believe, that it would hamstring interrogators too much in their efforts?
FEINSTEIN: No, I do not believe it would. I believe that the Army Field Manual's techniques are certainly adequate. I believe that when you're dealing with people, you have to have some knowledge of psychology. You have to have some knowledge of other tactics. And I think to resort to torture is the wrong thing. It is alien to the principles of the United States and I don't want to be a country that says, don't do as I do, do as I say.
MCEDWARDS: Senator, just on the issue of the destruction of these tapes, do you believe this could approach the level of obstruction of justice?
FEINSTEIN: I have no way of knowing at this time. And I am very -- obviously, that legal experts have said this. To be honest, I do not believe that was the intent. However, we need to do our investigation.
MCEDWARDS: All right. Senator Dianne Feinstein, thank you so much for joining us. Always appreciate it.
FEINSTEIN: You're very welcome. Thank you.
MCEDWARDS: Jim.
CLANCY: All right. Now to the war in Afghanistan and U.S. efforts, costly efforts, to fight the Taliban. Now in addition to security, U.S. troops are also focused on reconstruction projects and humanitarian programs. It's to win hearts and minds, to keep insurgents from regaining ground. Senior international correspondent Nic Robertson is there on the front lines where this is all taking place. He says U.S. diplomats are watching the efforts in one of the most crucial areas, right along Pakistan's border. Here's his report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NIC ROBERTSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): As warm winter jackets are handed out at a health clinic, plenty of big smiles. U.S. troops are taking their counter insurgency war against the Taliban direct to the communities who might help them the most. Close to the border with Pakistan. Part of a $38 million province-wide program funded by the U.S. military, including school, road, dam and well construction.
LT. COL. DAVE ADAMS, U.S. NAVY: Our goal here, as a perpetual reconstruction team is very clear. First, to separate the people from the enemy. And that's not as much our role. But also to connect them to their government.
ROBERTSON: On the fringe of this mission, U.S. diplomats are monitoring the impact of humanitarian assistance or HA.
JOHN KAEL WESTON, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: I had a conversation with the village elders at the health clinic we were at. And I said, OK, this HA drop, is that good for 50 years of friendship or not? And they kind of smiled and laughed.
ROBERTSON: Weston's job is to meet Afghans.
WESTON: So I usually start with, you know, are you seeing improvements in your area? ROBERTSON: Get a reality check and give his political masters advice. A critical task as Washington wants a return on the billions spent here.
One significant test of the community's attitude to the Afghan government and the coalition, is the health clinic itself. After more than two years, it's still standing. In some parts of the country, the Taliban have been blowing up such facilities.
WESTON: I hear from the market people downtown, all of the prices are going up because of the problems across the border. Are you seeing that as well?
ROBERTSON: Western aims for precise feedback. Not just checking on aid programs, but here at the border, monitoring the rebuilding of institutions, finding out from customs officials if the taxes Afghanistan will need to help rebuild itself are being collected.
WESTON: One of the main points he did say is that since the Taliban had left town, business has gotten a lot better. And that was good to hear because I hadn't heard that at a border checkpoint before.
ROBERTSON: But what Weston is finding might surprise leaders back home. To succeed here will take decades of financial commitment.
WESTON: You can talk to the kids or their elders. And provided we do our part, I think the welcome mat will be out for a couple of decades. But we can't assume it will be.
ROBERTSON: The slender gains that have been made could easily be lost.
Nic Robertson, CNN, Gorbuz (ph), Afghanistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MCEDWARDS: Up next, we are going to go from biblical lands to an ancient discovery.
CLANCY: Still ahead, a controversial canvas for a controversial artist. A famed British urban artist strikes again.
Also coming up . . .
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's an autopsy like none other, with the largest, high resolution CT scan ever attempted. We unseal the tomb of the dinosaur mummy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MCEDWARDS: An autopsy on the remains of a 67 million-year-old dinosaur. What do scientists hope to learn? We'll tell you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Welcome back, everyone. You're with YOUR WORLD TODAY on CNN International.
MCEDWARDS: That's right. We're seen live in more than 200 countries and territories all around the world.
And now we want to tell you about a provocative exhibit, because this thing is raising some eyebrows in the Middle East.
CLANCY: Well, it is. And it involves a reclusive artist who already has quite a following and he's turned the security wall that's so controversial -- turned it around into -- it's become now one of the world's largest canvases. The message is still a bit political.
MCEDWARDS: Yes, it's a good way to describe it, though. Ben Wedeman has more now on the spray painted images and their often political messages.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): There's an art show in Bethlehem adorning the somber walls around this town. Famed British urban artist, known simply as Banksy (ph), showed up a few weeks ago and went to work, without fanfare or publicity. He came, he painted, he left. Just one of many artists to put the wall to use.
Israel's official reason for building this wall was to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. Little did Israeli officials realize at the time that this wall would become the world's biggest canvas for international and local artists.
In Manger Square, a British company has set up a temporary gallery called Santa's Ghetto where some of the wall art, almost all with a sharp political message, is on display and on sale.
"TRISTAN", SANTA'S GHETTO: For an art to see paint on the walls or an artist to make a statement, this is the wall to paint on.
WEDEMAN: Bethlehem artist, he goes by the name of "Trash," is the author of this piece. He sees wall art as a way to break out of the narrow confines of this town and send a message.
"TRASH," PALESTINIAN WALL ARTIST: I try to say that the wall is a fragile wall. The wall will never bring a security for both Palestinians and Israelis. So the wall is kind of killing our hope as Palestinians.
WEDEMAN: The proceeds and some of this work is going for tens of thousands of dollars, will go to local children's projects. But beauty, as they say, is in the eyes of the beholder. And some of the beholders who live in the shadow of the wall don't see the beauty.
"Those drawings are useless," says Bethlehem resident Abdal Majid. "Even if they painted day and night, it wouldn't make any difference." But at least for some here, art is a way out.
Ben Wedeman, CNN, Bethlehem on the West Bank.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CLANCY: All right. Well, coming up, the mummified remains of a 67-million-year-old dinosaur teaching scientists a lot about new things in prehistoric life.
MCEDWARDS: Yes, for example, it now appears that the duck-billed hadrasaur could actually out run the tyrannosaurus rex.
CLANCY: Well, I didn't know that.
MCEDWARDS: Although it doesn't seem to obviously happen all the time, as you see right here.
CLANCY: Well, no, I guess not. We're going to talk with one of the paleontologists behind the dino autopsy right as soon as we come back. Don't go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sixty-seven million years ago, a giant lives, dies, and is squapped (ph) by the earth. But this dinosaur left behind more than just bones, it's a mummy.
PHILLIP MANNING, PALEONTOLOGIST: When you first lay eyes upon such a remarkable specimen, you're absolutely gob smacked.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Its scales and skin, muscle and tissue have been frozen in time. And now may change our understanding of dinosaurs. Bringing long, extinct secrets to life.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CLANCY: Gob smacked. Got to love that word. But it might actually apply in this case. You were looking here at a scene from an upcoming special on the National Geographic Channel talking about one of the greatest discoveries in the history of paleontology. For scientists, the most fascinating aspect of the specimen named Dakota is the amount of soft tissue that was preserved, the muscle and flesh. This could provide researchers with answers to questions about prehistoric life that they could only guess at previously.
Well, earlier, we sat down and talked with the man that you saw in that clip, Dr. Phillip Manning, who's been working on the autopsy. He's also the author of "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs." And he explained the significance of this discovery.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIP MANNING, PALEONTOLOGIST: Dakota, as a find, is quite remarkable for the simple reason, we're used to finding fragmentary bones, occasional, partial skeletons. But to find a animal which has got a complete skeleton but it's surrounded by huge amounts of fossilized skin is quite remarkable. So we're extremely pleased to see such a wonderful fossil.
CLANCY: Now you have described this as saying that, Dakota makes other dinosaurs looks like road kill. How much can you learn from this?
MANNING: There's an awful lot that can be learned from a dinosaur with so much additional information that's been preserved had. It's like having a book with only a few sentences preserved and from that you could reconstruct the full-blown volume. The more information that you have, such is in this fossil, the more that you can retrieve from such fossils. So it's very, very important.
CLANCY: Now Dakota was a hadrosaur. What is a hadrosaur? What did it look like, do we think?
MANNING: A hadrosaur is a distinct group of ormafiskin (ph), bird-hip dinosaurs that were quite common at the end of the cretaceous, which was literally the last gasp of the age of dinosaurs. And it's a group we know an awful lot about. But they're not as studied as much as the predatory dinosaurs, such as t-rex, which was the contemporary of the hadrosaurus.
CLANCY: But there are things that you can learn from this dinosaur. What are some of the amazing things you think change with this three-dimensional view that's coming out in the autopsy, so to speak?
MANNING: There's an awful lot we can do with regards to muscle volume, especially at the base of the tail. It's a bit like lifting up the hood of a car and understanding the cubic capacity of that engine so you can know how fast it would have gone. Likewise, we can constrain how much muscle there is on the back side of this animal, which is where the main muscle groups were to pull the legs of the animals, so we can start working out a lot about the locomotion. This is what we published last month in the "Royal Society."
CLANCY: Well, you know, a lot of times I've heard people say that, well, dinosaurs may not have been camouflage. They may have been bright colors. Is there anything -- how well maintained is all of this? What can we tell from it?
MANNING: The skin itself does show variation and patterns across, especially the arms and on the tail as well. While it doesn't tell us anything about color, it gives us a monochrome view of skin textures. And the skin textures do indicate sort of striping patterns in some portions of the animal. So this might correlate, as it does with modern species of reptiles, where such patterns are relevant to color changes. However, we will never know color, of course, unless we invent time travel.
CLANCY: All right. What do we know about Dakota? How tall did he stand? How fast could he run? What did he weigh? MANNING: Dakota would have stood approximately sort of eight to nine feet at the hip, and would be about 25, 30 feet long. It was a sub adult. It wasn't a fully grown individual. Probably weighing in round about two and a half to three tons. And our work that we've been doing on locomotion indicates that it was moving or certainly had a potential to run at speeds of 28 miles per hour. Which is quite significant. Faster than tyrannosaurus rex from our models that we've been generating.
CLANCY: Now this specimen was uncovered by, I guess we could say, a farm boy, Tyler Lyson, in North Dakota back in 1999. How did he come to pick you and the university? What's your relationship with him today?
MANNING: Tyler Lyson is absolutely far from a farm boy. This is a brilliant young paleontologist who's now at Yale doing his PhD. And I think he has an incredibly bright future in paleontology. He set up the Mammoth Research Foundation when he was in his early 20s and he runs digs with volunteers in the Badlands of North Dakota and does wonderful work. And I think he's going to be one of the names in paleontology you will be hearing a lot about in the future.
CLANCY: All right. We thank you very much, Dr. Phillip Manning, for being with us, telling us a little bit more about Dakota. Looking forward to seeing the program on National Geographic as we do the autopsy on a full blown dinosaur. Thank you.
MANNING: Thank you.
CLANCY: Again, paleontologist Phillip Manning speaking with us earlier about -- I guess we can go ahead and say it -- Dakota. Be sure to tune in this National Geographic channel special. "Dino Autopsy" premiers in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom on Sunday, December the 9th and in other regions on December the 16th. There's even a new children's book out about this Dino mummy, "The Life, Death and Discovery of Dakota." It's in the stores right now. And the National Geographic book for adults, "Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs, Soft Tissues and Hard Science." That's going to be coming out in January. Dakota is going to be one of the most popular, best known dinosaurs ever.
MCEDWARDS: Thank you for that. I just now know what to buy my five-year-old son who a month or two ago asked me how do they know what color dinosaurs were and I didn't know how to answer. Well now I know the answer is, they don't know, right?
CLANCY: They don't know.
MCEDWARDS: But, I mean, how interesting is that. That's great. Loved it.
CLANCY: It's fascinating.
MCEDWARDS: If those dinosaur pictures weren't interesting enough, we've got some other interesting images to show you now.
CLANCY: Here's a look at some of our favorite pictures of the day.
Now have you ever wanted a donut. I mean really wanted a donut? Police officers in the U.S. state of Wisconsin have released this video. The suspected thief is driving off in a donut delivery truck. The driver was ultimately caught and arrested.
MC: I guess they don't go fast enough.
CLANCY: I mean, you know, it's kind of risky. I mean, aren't all the donut shops filled with cops? That's a stereotype.
MCEDWARDS: All right. Well, tis the season for Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Christmas music, of course. What about Christmas buses? Well, yes. Bus drivers in Sydney, Australia, competing to see who has the most festive ride. The contest marks the 75th anniversary of New South Wales busses. And in keeping with the holiday spirit, the winner gets 500 Australian dollars and then gets to donate that to charity.
CLANCY: What a great idea.
MCEDWARDS: Exactly. It's a great cause.
CLANCY: You know, make everybody's season. They should do that monthly. There's an idea for you, decorate your bus.
Here's another way to get around traffic I'm going to show you. Take the term extreme sports to a whole new level, I'll tell you that. Look at this. Yes.
MCEDWARDS: What's he doing?
CLANCY: He went kite sailing off an incline and over a major roadway.
MCEDWARDS: Uh-huh, yes, nice.
CLANCY: You know, stick to the santa bus, I think. This is not to be recommended.
MCEDWARDS: Yes, do not try this at home. That's crazy. That's nuts.
CLANCY: All right. Well, there you go. A little bit of crazy video. Got a little bit of the dinosaur stuff.
MCEDWARDS: And that is it for this hour of YOUR WORLD TODAY. I'm Colleen McEdwards.
CLANCY: I'm Jim Clancy. Where ever you are in the world, stay with CNN.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: CIA interrogations caught on tape by the agency itself. Terror suspects in the hot seat. And I do mean hot.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.voxant.com
