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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees

Custody of Saddam Hussein Given Back To Iraqi Government; Al Sharpton Gets Reality TV show; Convicted Child Killer Joel Steinberg Paroled

Aired June 30, 2004 - 19:00   ET

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

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


ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from Baghdad. I'm Anderson Cooper.
The Beast of Baghdad faces those he terrorized for nearly a quarter century.

360 starts now.

A shaken Saddam is handed over to Iraqi control. But are they really ready to put him on trial?

Fighting in Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt sounds off on the insurgency and fighting jihad in Iraq.

New information about an American captive, and how he might have wound up in enemy hands.

His conviction for killing his daughter changed America's view of child abuse. Seventeen years later, he's freed from prison and unrepentant.

And she introduced Scott Peterson to Amber Frey. What does she think happened to Laci?

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, with Anderson Cooper in Iraq and Heidi Collins in New York.

COOPER: Good evening again from Baghdad.

An interesting juxtaposition today between the man who once terrorized this country, Saddam Hussein, and the man who is terrorizing it now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Zarqawi, the Jordanian who's believed to be behind dozens of terror attacks in the last year. Late today he and his network were the target of yet another attack by U.S. war planes at a suspected safe house in Fallujah.

Also today, Iraq's former dictator met some of his countrymen, men who will be prosecuting him for crimes he was told of his rights today, which he apparently didn't find all that pleasing an experience.

Those who saw Saddam Hussein today described him as shaken. He and the 11 other former regime members were read their rights under Iraqi law by members of the tribunal that will try them. MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, IRAQ NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Saddam will be given every right to defend himself. Saddam will be given the right to appoint attorney for himself, whether that is an international one or Arab or an Iraqi.

COOPER: Tomorrow, Saddam and the others will appear in an Iraqi court, though no actual trial is expected to start for months.

RUBAIE: We have a long, long, long list of crimes against Saddam Hussein, starting from the homicide, to genocide, to using chemical weapons in Halabchi (ph), doing the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the mass graves, tens of thousands of people executed in Abu Ghraib prison, starting and -- starting three wars, two of them against our own neighbors.

So these are crimes against the humanity, homicide and genocide.

COOPER: The U.S. will remain in charge of security for the foreseeable future to ensure both that he remains safe and in custody.

DAN SENOR, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO THE COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY: The last thing they want is Saddam Hussein being killed or being freed, but as far as the legal proceedings are concerned and the fate of Saddam Hussein, it is in the hands of the Iraqi people.

COOPER: As word spread of his handover, the Iraqi people seemed to be of mixed opinions about what should happen to their former leader.

AHMAD AL-LAMI, BAGHDAD RESIDENT: Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, and anyone all over the world know this. Saddam Hussein should trial in front of Iraqi people.

QUTAIBA NADHIM, BAGHDAD RESIDENT: The Iraqi demands (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the Iraqi is the security for them. Because Saddam is -- became history and in the past. So we need secure our country from any violence, from terrorists. This is the main point. This is the main important things for the Iraqis. Not the trial of Saddam Hussein.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Thirty-five years Saddam has been working for the interest of Iraq, and now the agents are calling for putting him on trial? It is a crime.

COOPER: And we get our first look at Saddam Hussein tomorrow, and that should be very interesting indeed.

Soldiers will tell you that they want two things, to do their jobs and go home. The trouble is that the first may make the second impossible. The longer they stay, the greater the chance that something may go wrong.

In Baghdad today, insurgents fired at least 10 mortar rounds onto a U.S. Army base outside the international airport, leaving 11 American soldiers hurt, two of them seriously. We hope they all make it home, as we hope that soldiers of the 1st Armored Division's Task Force 237 all make it home as well after a much longer tour of duty than they ever expected to serve.

CNN's Guy Raz reports from Najaf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Sergeant Timothy Worline, the warrior. And Timothy Worline, the musician.

SGT. TIMOTHY WORLINE, U.S. ARMY: I can't say that there wasn't a possibility of things turning out the way they were. I mean, obviously, they happened. It happened this way. Whether we were prepared for it or not, it's hard to say. We reacted. We did what we had to do.

RAZ: When Worline and his fellow soldiers rolled into Iraq last year, they believed they were embarking on a mission to protect America from weapons of mass destruction. Just when it seemed things were winding down, all hell broke loose for Task Force 237.

SPC. WILL VANDENBERG, U.S. ARMY: Basically, I think we're, you know, we're pawns in a game that maybe shouldn't be played. But that doesn't -- I don't think that in any way lessens the sacrifices and the struggles of the men that have been here.

RAZ: Disillusionment often breeds reflection. These soldiers have seen it all from an unassailable perspective unencumbered by spin and double-speak.

Guy Raz, CNN, in Najaf, southern Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: When U.S. troops do get to go home, the psychological effects of what they did and saw here in Iraq do not just disappear. Moments like this, a major battle, linger at home, at work, even as they try to sleep. And for many, it is simply too much to bear.

A study released just hours ago in the "New England Journal of Medicine" suggests post-traumatic stress disorder is going to be a huge problem for many U.S. troops.

CNN's senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is in Atlanta. Sanjay, good evening.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Anderson.

The consequences of those booms and explosions, really the focus of this unprecedented study in the "New England Journal of Medicine," the first of its kind, really, looking at pre-, during, and post-war deployment, and specifically some of the results here, the first study examining that, 6,000, over 6,000 soldiers and Marines, looking specifically at combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Anderson, the first study of its kind, they were actually done through anonymous questionnaires, asking these soldiers and Marines about specific issues with regards to stress and post-traumatic stress while major combat operations still going on.

What they found that was that one in eight of those folks actually have significant post-traumatic stress disorder. Those numbers actually higher than predicted. The bad news is, the worst news is, I should say, that less than half those people, about less than 40 percent, actually seeking any kind of help.

One of the main concerns, why aren't they doing it? These things stay the same. Concerns about stigmatization, concerns that that might come back to haunt you, a scarlet P, so to speak, and also military career impact, what would that do to your military career?

Now, if you look just really quick at the various conflicts over time, this study really looking historically. Nine percent or so of folks who go -- before they go to a conflict like that have symptoms of stress, about 11 percent after the Afghanistan conflict, and 17 percent now during the Iraq conflict. So pretty startling numbers there, Anderson.

Again, an unprecedented study coming out of the "New England Journal" just a couple of hours ago.

COOPER: All right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much, live from Atlanta tonight.

A young American Marine's official classification was changed yesterday from missing to captured. We talked about that last night. Today that classification may have to be qualified even further, with the addition of the letters AWOL. Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Since Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared on June 20, U.S. military officials have suspected he voluntarily walked away from a base near Fallujah and might have been trying to get to his family, living in Lebanon. Those officials say Hassoun was carrying a pistol and some cash when he was last seen.

Now a "New York Times" report says Hassoun became, quote, "emotionally traumatized after seeing a fellow Marine killed in action" and that "he wanted out of Iraq." The newspaper quotes an unnamed U.S. Marine officer in Baghdad as saying Hassoun befriended some Iraqis that worked on the base and that they helped the 24-year- old sneak away.

Then, the story says, those Iraqis turned on him and delivered him to the Islamic militants who are holding him hostage. On the videotape showing Hassoun blindfolded, broadcast on Arab television, the captor says Hassoun was lured away from the base. U.S. military officials say they're still investigating.

But Hassoun's family remains in seclusion in their Utah home. But they continue asking the world to pray for Corporal Hassoun's safe release. TAREK NOSSEIR, HASSOUN FAMILY SPOKESMAN: Obviously, Wassef's capture is what has been destined upon us. And we accept it. Yet we believe that our and your prayers will be answered. Please continue to pray for his safe release.

LAVANDERA (on camera): We've made several attempts to get reaction to these latest details from the spokesman for Hassoun's family, but each time we've asked, he says they have no comment.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, West Jordan, Utah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, there are a number of other developing stories around the world and in the United States to talk about tonight. For that, let's go back to New York and Heidi Collins. Hey, Heidi.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson. Thanks so much.

A shootout with al Qaeda tops our look at global stories in the uplink. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, security police acting on a tip surrounded a house in a residential neighborhood. In the gun battle that followed, one policeman was killed, as was a man believed to be the top spiritual guide for the terror group in Saudi Arabia.

Jalalabad, Afghanistan, two bombs loaded in two street vendors' carts exploded. One man was killed, 26 people hurt. And in the southern part of the country, an Australian journalist and her Afghan driver are missing.

Seoul, South Korea. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be getting mandatory inoculations to guard against exposure to anthrax and smallpox. The move is a major expansion of the Pentagon's vaccine program. U.S. forces in the Middle East will also be rolling up their sleeves for the vaccinations.

And in Doha, Qatar, two Russians accused of assassinating a former Chechen leader with a car bomb are convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The judge in the case said the two men were spies and were acting for the Russian government when they carried out the hit.

And that is tonight's uplink.

360 next, a child killer goes from the big house to a big limo. Joel Steinberg, the man who changed the face of child abuse, walks free. Find out why he only served part of his sentence.

Plus, sex, lies, and testimony. The woman who introduced Scott Peterson to his mistress takes the stand against him.

And cutting off Cuba. President Bush looks to Florida in 2004, but will a new round of sanctions backfire at the ballot box? That's raw politics.

But first, your picks, the most popular stories on CNN.com right now. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: It was a local story here in New York, but it had national effects. A 6-year-old beaten to death, her father convicted of the killing, a crime so shocking that it changed child abuse laws and burned the name Joel Steinberg into our memories.

Today, without ever showing even a shred of remorse, he was released from prison.

CNN's Adaora Udoji reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joel Steinberg was met by a swarm of reporters as he arrived at a Harlem halfway house. After nearly 17 years in prison, his infamous crime still evokes intense emotion. A successful lawyer, he was convicted of beating his illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, to death.

The 6-year-old, found naked, filthy, and battered, revealed child abuse horrors in Manhattan's upscale Greenwich Village neighborhood.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HEDDA NUSSBAUM, LISA'S MOTHER: My daughter's stopped breathing.

911 OPERATOR: Is she having difficulty breathing?

NUSSBAUM: She's not breathing. I'm giving her mouth-to-mouth.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

UDOJI: That night in 1987, Steinberg's common law wife, Hedda Nussbaum, a children's book editor, called police. They discovered she too had severe bruises.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOEL STEINBERG: I do not hit, strike, or use any form of forceful discipline of any sort.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UDOJI: But Nussbaum, given immunity in exchange for testimony, described escalating beatings. She claimed Steinberg smoked cocaine for hours before letting her call police the night Lisa was hospitalized. The girl died four days later. Last year Nussbaum, now counseling battered women, looked back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LARRY KING LIVE")

NUSSBAUM: I was really brainwashed.

(END VIDEO CLIP) UDOJI: The case revealed a disturbing pattern, neighbors, school teachers, and co-workers ignoring signs of abuse, all afraid of getting involved. Reforms followed in many states. New York mandated abuse awareness programs for those licensed to work with children.

DR. KATHERINE GRIMM, CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER: I would say the biggest impact has been increased surveillance and increased knowledge.

UDOJI: Steinberg, five times denied parole, served the mandatory two thirds of his 25-year sentence for manslaughter. Not enough, says the jury foreman.

JEREMIAH COLE, FORMER JURY FOREMAN: I think it's outrageous. He should have served every day of that sentence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI: Today, Steinberg came to New York City with $104 in his pocket and probation restrictions, which include staying away from children and Nussbaum. And Heidi, she has been in hiding to avoid him.

COLLINS: Wow, I imagine. All right. Thanks so much, Adaora. Appreciate the story.

In other news today, interest rates are going up just a bit. That story tops our look at news cross-country now. Washington, the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve says it will hike its short-term lending rate a quarter of a percentage point. This is the first increase in nearly four years.

In low earth orbit, two astronauts living at the International Space Station are now outside the habitat, in what is planned as a five-hour space maintenance mission. The astronauts are replacing a failed circuit board on one of the station's gyroscopes.

In New York, Howard Stern announced that his program will soon be broadcast on nine new stations across the country. Stern, whose program has been attacked often by the FCC for indecency, took aim in his news conference at the FCC, the Bush administration, and Clear Channel Communications, a company that canceled his program on their stations because of its content.

And in Louisville, Kentucky, former boxing heavyweight champ Mike Tyson says he deserves another chance. The boxer, who says he's broke and in debt and has been homeless for parts of the last two years, has won an estimated $400 million over the years. Tyson says he's planning a fight this July.

That's a look at stories cross-country tonight.

And tonight at midnight, the clamp tightens around Cuba. President Bush is imposing tough new sanctions on the communist country. It's a move designed, some say, to get votes for the president in November. But where raw politics is concerned could cost him as well.

Here's national correspondent Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For many exiles, trying to tighten the screws on Cuban president Fidel Castro is one thing. Trying to interfere with traditionally strong Cuban family ties is another.

Many anti-Castro Cubans are up in arms over new White House rules restricting family visits to the island once every three years instead of each year and limiting how much money and to whom it can be sent to cash-starved relatives.

Cuban-born Norma Kalig (ph) calls the new policy antifamily.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have family, you have sons, daughters, parents that buried their kids, and they can't see their tomb.

CANDIOTTI: The Bush administration's strongest supporters argue the new rules are a necessary hardship.

REP. LINCOLN DIAZ BALART (R), MIAMI: Because there's only one kind of this totalitarian dictatorship in this hemisphere. If that's the case, then you don't go back whenever you want.

CANDIOTTI: The get-tough policy has the full support of mainly older exiles, who left the island years ago with no intention of returning till Castro's exit. Newer arrivals have regularly returned to visit family. And in a key battleground state like Florida, where Cuban voter turnout can be critical, anti-Castro activists, including the Cuban-American National Foundation, worry about fallout.

JOE GARCIA, CUBAN AMERICA NATIONAL FOUNDATION: When government gets in between or in the middle of a family, nothing good can come of it.

CANDIOTTI: Not surprisingly, opponents of the new rules are seizing on the travel restriction flap as another example of the wrong way to bring down Castro.

SILVIA WILHELM, CUBAN AMERICAN COMMISSION FOR FAMILY RIGHTS: In an election year, that can definitely backfire. And I predict this is going to backfire on the president.

CANDIOTTI: One Cuba analyst says other new measures, such as more help for island dissidents, may help soften the blow.

PROF. JAIME SUCHLICKI, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: I think this community will see that there's a real interest on the part of the administration to undermine the Castro regime.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): With the election only four months away, some anti-Castro activists say the timing of the new get-tough measures are clearly meant to boost the president's standing among Cuban exiles. The question is whether the controversy may hurt him in the long run.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: 360 next, Saddam Hussein facing justice. So how does a notorious dictator get a fair trial? We'll ask a man who took on the Nazis. Anderson Cooper has that live from Baghdad.

Also tonight, a mistress and a murder. The woman who introduced Scott Peterson to his lover takes the stand against him.

And a little later, Al Sharpton, keeping it real on a new TV show all his own. Will he become the next Donald Trump? We'll take a sneak peek.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Prosecutors say Scott Peterson murdered his pregnant wife so he could be with Amber Frey. Today, the woman who introduced Peterson to Frey took the stand and spoke of sex, lust, and lies.

CNN's Ted Rowlands has the latest from the courtroom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jurors listened intently as Shaun Sibley (ph) testified that she met Scott Peterson at an agriculture convention in October of 2002. Sibley said the night she and Peterson met, they stayed up until 3:00 a.m. talking about everything from business to sex.

Sibley said Peterson told her he was tired of one-night stands and was looking for a new soulmate. Sibley, who was engaged at the time, said she believed Peterson was single and was so taken by him that she decided to set him up with her friend, Amber Frey.

Then on December 6, three weeks before Laci Peterson was reported missing, Sibley said she confronted Scott Peterson by phone about being married. Sibley said Peterson at one point was sobbing uncontrollably and told her that it was very difficult to talk about because he had recently lost his wife.

Sibley testified that she asked him, Are you married now? to which Peterson replied, Absolutely not.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS (on camera): Sibley finished her testimony this morning. Afterwards, the judge put the court in recess until next Tuesday, going along with jurors' requests for an extended Fourth of July holiday, Heidi.

COLLINS: All right, Ted. Thanks so much. Live from Redwood City, California tonight.

And covering the case for us tonight in Justice Served, 360 legal analyst Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom.

Kimberly, good evening to you.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE NEWSOM, LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Heidi.

COLLINS: So good day for the prosecution?

NEWSOM: Great day for the prosecution, just when you thought it couldn't get better for them. And believe me, they could use it. We've heard from over 50 witnesses, and finally getting some meat of the case.

We had a woman, essentially the woman who set up Scott Peterson and Amber Frey, and her testimony was so compelling, saying this is a guy who kept asking about getting hooked up, talking about sex all the time, wanting to be set up with Amber Frey, saying that he had lost his wife, and then three weeks later, his wife goes missing?

COLLINS: Right.

NEWSOM: Unbelievable. I think it's too much for the defense to be able to explain away that this is just a coincidence.

COLLINS: Right. And also, you know, you, we were talking earlier about saying you're single is one thing, but saying that your wife is dead is another. How do you think the jury will react to that?

NEWSOM: I think the jury is going to say enough is enough at the end of the day. When you add all these things together, common sense shows that this can't be explained away as yet another coincidence.

What it suggests, and what the prosecution will argue, is this is a man who was unhappy in his life, wanted to be a bachelor, a swinging single. He was obsessed with these thoughts, would say and do anything to achieve it, ultimately getting rid of his wife that was the encumbrance.

COLLINS: And then you have Geragos, who's saying, Well, yes, he's a cad, but not a murderer.

NEWSOM: Yes, he's a lover, not a killer. And that's Mark Geragos's theme throughout this case.

COLLINS: Will that work?

NEWSOM: My guy may be a man about town, but he's someone who loved his wife, was devoted, and this is something where he is a victim in this case too.

I don't think so. At the end of the day, too many things are going to add up that point directly back to Scott Peterson. And that's a problem the defense is going to have.

COLLINS: All right. Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom in Justice Served tonight, thanks so much, Kimberly. NEWSOM: Thank you.

COOPER: A shaken Saddam is handed over to Iraqi control. But are they really ready to put him on trial?

Fighting in Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt sounds off on the insurgency and fighting jihad in Iraq.

ANNOUNCER: A special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to 360 from Iraq, where coalition forces launched another strike late today on a safe house in Fallujah believed to have been used by the terrorist network of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.

And where in Baghdad on the first full day of its sovereignty, the interim government took legal possession of the man who was head of state here and who is now a defendant in criminal proceedings the likes of which the world has rarely seen.

Saddam Hussein, once lord of all he surveyed, who ended lives and made people disappear with a snap of his fingers, is now the responsibility of the country and the people he nearly brought to ruin.

But Saddam is still being guarded by U.S. troops. Earlier I asked Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt about Saddam's status.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): General Kimmitt, why is the United States maintaining custody of Saddam Hussein?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: Well, that was the request by Prime Minister Allawi. I think he recognized that at present Iraq doesn't have a facility secure enough to handle a high-profile prisoner like Saddam Hussein. So for a period of time he's asked us to maintain physical custody.

COOPER: How concerned are you about security, particularly tomorrow at the court proceedings?

KIMMITT: Well, we always treat the security of the high-value detainees as a matter of utmost importance. We're watching it every day.

COOPER: Are you concerned that someone could try to make an effort to break him out in some way?

KIMMITT: Oh, I think we're concerned about security every day, Anderson, and we're not too concerned that that's going to happen tomorrow.

COOPER: Is the insurgency here, is it morphing, is it mutating, is it changing the face of it?

We've been talking to "Time" magazine's Michael Ware, who has an article in this week's issue, basically saying that in the Fallujah area there is increasing cohesion between the old Saddam Fedayeen, Ba'athist elements and these foreign fighters, Musab Al Zarqawi, for example.

KIMMITT: Well, he brings up a good point. There is one strain, there is one theory that says these former regime elements that were pretty well -- given a pretty heavy blow after the fall of Saddam, the capture of Saddam, and the combat operations we ran for the next couple of months may in fact be changing colors and becoming jihadis. Now, whether they're doing that for the purpose of just joining a group such as Zarqawi, which is having some measure of success, or they're doing it because they've truly embraced the jihadi notion of fighting for a holy war, yet to be determined. But we are seeing some evidence of that, and we are seeing that in places such as Baquba, we're saying that in places such as Fallujah.

COOPER: Does that change the tactics on the part of the coalition, on the part of the U.S. as well as the Iraqi government?

Do you need to fight that war differently than if it was more home grown nationalist movement?

KIMMITT: Well, it's really the difference between fighting the paramilitary threat, as we saw so much last fall, and more of a counterterrorist operation. I think even more different is not necessarily how we fight it. but it is how the enemy fights. This is one where all gloves were off. The terrorist is going to go use all the civilians that he can find as his targets. It's mostly for political purposes, terrorize the country, intimidate the population, try to assassinate the leadership, go after the infrastructure, but this is backfiring on them, and it's backfiring in a way I don't think they anticipated by the fact that they're losing tremendous support, or losing any kind of support amongst the people of Iraq.

COOPER: One more question about Saddam Hussein. Have you seen Saddam Hussein?

KIMMITT: No, I have not seen Saddam Hussein.

COOPER: Are you curious to see what he looks like tomorrow?

KIMMITT: Oh, I'm more than prepared to watch it on television like the remainder of the world.

COOPER: All right. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, thanks very much.

KIMMITT: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And certainly, the world will -- certainly, the world will be watching tomorrow when Saddam Hussein goes into court. First time we will have seen him since he was first apprehended.

Also, just some news into CNN, the State Department has now raised the reward they are offering for the kill or capture of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi to $25 million. That reward had been at $10 million for the last several months. You see wanted posters throughout Iraq. Coalition forces hand them out. The reward now raised to $25 million.

Something new on the face of the Earth is about to begin here in Baghdad, really. Oppressors on the scale of Saddam Hussein simply do not end up in court.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER, (voice-over): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for decades, then tried to vanish down a hole hardly big enough to lie down in. Now, soon it appears he will go on trial. This just does not happen.

Adolf Hitler saw to it that he would never be tried. Having cost millions of others their lives, he finally took his own or had someone else take it in a bunker in Berlin. Some of those who served him did go on trial. We'll talk about Nuremberg later. But he escaped justice. Not even his body ever was found.

There was summary justice for Hitler's ally, Benito Mussolini, execution and hanging, but no trial. Neither he nor Hitler ever faced a stream of people on the witness stand, ever heard from them what pain their dreams of imperial glory caused.

Nor did Josef Stalin face witnesses or trial. He died a natural death, though there's a hint now he may have been poisoned after purges, pogroms, displacements, and banishments that may have killed tens of millions.

Pol Pot of Cambodia was going to be tried, years after covering his country with pyramids of skulls, but old age took him before justice could. Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, charged as Hitler and Pol Pot would have been with genocide, is facing trial but not in his own country by his own people. It looks as if that unique circumstance may be reserved for Saddam Hussein. Live by the sword, die by the sword is the saying. This time for the first time the sword may be not in vigilante but in authorized hands.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: We mentioned Nuremberg before, one of the very rare instances in which figures were brought to trial to face charges of crimes against humanity. We're lucky to have with us this evening in New York a man who played a part in those historic proceedings as a 27-year-old chief prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz. Thanks very much indeed for joining us tonight.

Benjamin, how would you go about trying Saddam Hussein?

How would you go about organizing this trial?

BENJAMIN FERENCZ, A CHIEF PROSECUTOR, NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIAL: I would follow exactly the Nuremberg precedents. We did establish a number of legal precedents there which inspired the world at the time, which have been upheld throughout the world during the many years. You would charge him, first of all, with the crime of aggression for having the invasion of Kuwait, a friendly neighboring Arab state. All of the evidence of that was already presented to the United Nations. Crimes against humanity, committed against the Kurds.

The use of poison gas, war crimes committed against the Shiites and the Kurds. These are standard international crimes under existing law. And I think that the sooner we get on with the trial the better off we'll be. We should not go into too many details. You don't have to prove every crime that he committed.

But as in Nuremberg, those who conspired and were the leaders, who acted with him in planning the crimes which he was guilty of should also be tried with him and they should all have a limited time in which to present their cases, for prosecution and defense, so that we don't drag it out for a number of years.

COOPER: A lot of witnesses?

I bring this up because, you know, for instance, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a large part of that was witnesses coming forward and just talking -- talking about what they had experienced, sort of a national reconciliation. At Nuremberg there really weren't that many witnesses, if I remember correctly.

Fedayeen: We relied mostly on documentary evidence, but by this time I would hope that the allied powers, led by the United States as well as others, have collected enough evidentiary materials so that you don't have to have a long, drawn-out trial. The reconciliation will come from the awareness by the Iraqi public that justice has been done. The trial must be absolutely fair in every respect, and once that is done I think the country will be able to move more quickly toward normalcy.

COOPER: You know, Benjamin, Saddam Hussein seems to have lawyers popping up all over, people claiming to be representing him. I talked to one of them, this guy in France who claims to be a lawyer, don't know really if he is at this point, but he said he would want to call President Bush to testify, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

How do you not let this trial devolve or degenerate into sort of a kangaroo court?

FERENCZ: Well, you allow him to choose counsel of his own choice, but you limit the nature of the argumentation. He can argue any argument he likes. And of course, he will try to say that he did everything in his national interest and he did it in self-defense and that everything was humane and the others are doing the same thing. But a competent judge, and I hope they will have competent judges, I assume they will, will be able to make short shrift of those arguments, as we did with Hermann Goering and others at Nuremberg.

COOPER: Well, Benjamin Ferencz, you've played a remarkable role in history, and we appreciate you coming on tonight to talk about that role as well as what you would do with Saddam Hussein. Thank you very much, Benjamin.

FERENCZ: Take care of yourself, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. You too.

Today's buzz question is this -- what do you think?

What is the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he is found guilty, execution, life in prison, or exile?

Log onto cnn.com/360. Cast your vote. We will have results at the end of the program tonight.

It struck us the other day that we may think we know a lot about Iraq, but really beyond its problems and dangers and rivalries we actually don't know all that much at all. Here's a bit of a crash course in the realities of a place as old as human history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The land we call Iraq was part of the cradle of civilization, with a history that dates back to 4,000 B.C. But when it comes to modern culture, compare Iraq to the United States, a young 228, and you can see there's some work to be done. On education, for a start. According to the CIA fact book, Iraq has a literacy rate of 40.4 percent, 55.9 percent for men, only 24.4 percent for women. That compares to 97 percent in the U.S. for both genders.

PHEBE MARR, AUTHOR, "THE MODERN HISTORY OF IRAQ": Iraq is suffering from a really radical decline in education, health, and other statistics over the last couple of decades.

COOPER: A lack of technology could prove a challenge. There's one cell phone for every 1,268.5 people in Iraq. There's one for every 2.2 in the U.S. There are only 74 radio stations in Iraq. There are 10,322 in America. Iraq has just 13 television stations, compared to more than 1,500 in the U.S. But satellite service is growing at a staggering rate.

Under Saddam Hussein's regime those families with satellite TV were breaking the law, facing fines and imprisonment. But perhaps most surprising is Iraq's lack of Internet access. Only one person in every 1,014.8. In the U.S., it's one for every 1.8.

And that technological divide could make the road to democracy even more rocky. But Iraq is an ancient land with a young population. 40.3 percent of its more than 25 million residents are under 15, as compared with 20.8 percent in the U.S. and Iraq has a continuing musical heritage, with its very own pop idol. That's Kathem Al Saher, who lives in exile in Jordan. He's sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

With the handover complete it's clear that rebuilding Iraq will be as much about brick and mortar as it is about turning an ancient civilization into a modern society.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, with all the drama in this country, it may be that we have not paid enough attention to what is happening east and south of Iraq on the other side of the Red Sea and another continent altogether. That is where Secretary of State Colin Powell is right now, in Sudan, to meet with its ministers on what looms as a catastrophe of vast proportions, so vast, in fact, that it can be seen from space. CNN's Zain Verjee reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Are we witnesses to genocide in slow motion? Images trickling from a poor region in western Sudan piece together the disaster that is Darfor. Refugees fleeing bloodshed, bombed or burned out villages. Recent satellite pictures show the destruction in Darfor. The black circles here indicate burned villages. Almost 400 villages are said to be damaged or destroyed.

In neighboring Chad about 200,000 terrorized survivors tell of massacre and mass rape. Burning and butchery by Arab militias called Janjawid, targeting them because they are black. International rights groups say there is evidence atrocities have been committed by the Arab militias, backed by Khartoum. Khartoum denies the charges. It's estimated up to 30,000 people have been killed in more than a year of war. Experts say there are indications the killing is systematic.

SAMANTHA POWERS, LECTURER, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVT., HARVARD UNIV.: You have a scale now that certainly meets that which we usually require for genocide findings.

VERJEE: Journalists have been barred from entering much of the region, the size of France or Texas. Pictures from one photojournalist show a ghost town in Darfor, punctuated only by fresh graves and rubble. More than a million refugees like these are internally displaced, huddled in government-controlled camps in Darfor. Aid agencies say a million people could die not by the bullet but by other weapons of war.

POWERS: What you're going to have is death by starvation, death by thirst, death by disease.

VERJEE: Experts say the United Nations needs to take action. It can do a couple of things. One, publicly condemn the Sudanese government for the disaster in Darfor, and two, consider targeted sanctions and armed intervention against Sudan. Zain Verjee, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Now back to Heidi Collins in New York for the day's other top stories. I'll be back from Baghdad in a moment -- Heidi.

COLLINS: All right, Anderson. Thanks.

360 next, a Florida teacher accused of going too far with one of her students while another state spreads a stern warning on sex with minors. We'll talk about that just ahead.

Plus, reality Al. The Reverend Al Sharpton is adding yet another career to his resume.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The theme from the movie "Lolita." Young girl, older guy. It's exactly what's gotten one state to crank up a new ad campaign. The message in Virginia on billboards to young adult men is straightforward and blunt. Don't have sex with underage girls. The state's Department of Health began its new effort when officials realized that men older than 21 had fathered more than 200 babies with underage girls in just a two-year period.

With me now from Baltimore is Dr. Fred Berlin. He's an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. Doctor, thanks for being with us tonight.

I want to begin by looking at a pretty alarming statistic, if we could. In Virginia, health officials there have cited this nationwide statistic showing men older than 21 are three times as likely to father children with junior high school girls than are junior high school boys. What's going on here?

DR. FRED BERLIN, ASSOC. PROF. OF PSYCHIATRY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV.: Well, it certainly is pretty alarming. And the fact of the matter is it's not uncommon for teenage girls, 14, 15, 16 years old, to be infatuated by young men in their 20s, and some of these men particularly with modern dress and makeup, will find some of these girls who may look more like 19 than 15 to be very attractive. So I'm not condoning the behavior, but given those realities I don't find it so difficult to understand why this may be happening.

COLLINS: So is that why guys are -- older guys are interested in younger girls, then? It's the dress? Is there more to it?

BERLIN: Again, this hasn't been carefully studied, but you're talking about young girls who are just having their emerging sexuality. You're talking about young men where their hormones are raging. Again, they're not necessarily thinking this thing through logically. The girls seem interested. They may seem older than they actually are. And that's an equation that can lead to problems.

COLLINS: All right. Let's talk about age of consent here. It varies from state to state. Would it help to have a national age of consent?

BERLIN: I think it would help to have a dialogue about that. In our country we tend to think every time there's a problem let's just rush in with some new legislation or modification of legislation. I think what's being done to try to educate people to have dialogue with youngsters, to try to sensitize older people to the impropriety of this, the importance of not going down that path, I think combining it with education and not just leaping too quickly towards changing legislation in my judgment might be the better way to go. COLLINS: I would bet that any parent who finds out that their young daughter is dating someone quite a bit older is going to go into instant freakout mode. Do you have any advice for parents on what they should do?

BERLIN: The advice is the common sense advice. You need to be open with your youngsters, you need to try to instill the values that are important, you need to listen to them. But the truth of the matter is most of us when we were 14, 15, or 16 weren't talking with our parents about our emerging sexual interests, we were talking with our peers. So I think we also have to try to get into the schools, try to have some peer discussions, try to get to the kids where it often is very important at that age what other youngsters are saying, not only what their parents have to say.

COLLINS: You know, Virginia is focusing here obviously on men, but sometimes it does happen with women as well. Just on Monday we talked about a case where a female school teacher was charged with relations with a 14-year-old. How common is this? And are we going to see more of it?

BERLIN: Well, it happens. We had the Mary Kay Letourneau case a few years back. It's certainly not nearly as common as what we see with men it. Also takes it to another dimension when we're talking about a teacher in terms of the even further abuse of trust both to the student and to the extended family. But whatever number of times it happens, it is a problem, and we as a society need to look at the best ways to try to address that.

COLLINS: We sure do. All right. Dr. Fred Berlin, thanks so much for your time tonight.

BERLIN: Thank you.

COLLINS: Flashback now to Mary Kay Letourneau: In 1996 the 35- year-old teacher began a sexual relationship with her sixth grade student. The pair had two children together and even co-authored a book about their affair. It became a best-seller in France. Letourneau was sentenced to 7 1/2 years for rape. She's due to be released on July 17.

Al Sharpton: A career counselor? Just ahead, the one-time presidential candidate has a new job and a new TV show. That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: What's a former presidential candidate to do when his race for the White House is over? Well, if you're Reverend Al Sharpton, you do the only logical thing: Reality TV, of course. CNN's Jeanne Moos explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's been arrested. He's been acquitted. He's even been stabbed. He's run for Senate. He's run for president. He's run after a TV crew. He's been decked by another guest on a TV talk show. The reality is, it was only a matter of time till Al Sharpton ended up on a reality show.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think Al Sharpton has any connection to reality whatsoever.

MOOS: Nevertheless, coming this fall on Spike TV, eight guys vie for their dream job in a show called I Hate My Job."

(on camera): Al Sharpton is going to be like the career counselor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my god. Al Sharpton never had a J.O.B.

MOOS (voice-over): But he's wowed them on SNL.

REV. AL SHARPTON, FRM. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I feel good.

MOOS: Some don't feel good about Sharpton doing a reality show.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This seems like a farce, put it like that. You know, like a gimmick.

MOOS (voice-over): So you're afraid they won't take him seriously after this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. Right. You know, how about if Al Gore did something like this?

MOOS (voice-over): That other Al doesn't have Al Sharpton's sharp humor.

SHARPTON: Every time I look at George Bush, I know that I'm qualified to at least do what he does.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Reverend Sharpton is larger than life. OK? Whether you like him, or whether you dislike him, he's a reality show in his own right.

MOOS: But as one wag wrote on the Web, "isn't there already a reality show about an overexposed New Yorker with bad hair?"

DONALD TRUMP, REAL ESTATE MOGUL: You're fired.

MOOS: But Sharpton, you're hired, despite the bad hair jokes.

JAY LENO, TONIGHT SHOW HOST: Whose hairdo is that? I realized today. Look. You see?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He does have bad hair, but he wears it well.

MOOS: And when it comes to ratings, maybe it's good to have bad hair as a punchline.

SHARPTON: Hey! MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And you know, I bet people will watch.

360 next: Reality here versus reality in Iraq. We have Donald Trump. They have something far more real. We take that to the "Nth Degree" next.

But first, today's "Buzz." What's the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he is found guilty? Execution, life in prison, or exile? Log on to CNN.com/360 to vote now. We'll have the results when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Now for the "Buzz." Earlier we asked you, "What's the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he's found guilty?" 59 percent of you said execution, 34 percent of you said life, 6 exile. More than 132,000 of you voted. Not a scientific poll, but it is your "Buzz." Thanks for voting.

Tonight, taking reality to the "Nth degree." A lot of thoughts pop into an American's head in a place like Iraq. Here's one of them: the U.S. is a heck of a lucky country.

Consider reality back home and reality here. Being told you're fired by the Donald, that's reality in the U.S. of A. Reality here, raw sewage, rubble, the possibility that anywhere at any time there will be a blast.

In America, reality is being told to pack up your bikini, or your libido, or your ambitions and take a hike. In Iraq, people do not lose competitions, they lose their sons and their daughters.

In America, lucky America, Paris Hilton passes for a real person, as do Joe Schmo and Outback Jack and who wants to marry my dad is a real question. Really.

Yes, we know, we're talking about television in one place and life in another. But that's the point. In America, lucky American, we look for reality on TV. Not in Iraq. Here, reality is all around us.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching. "PAULA ZAHN NOW" is next.

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


Aired June 30, 2004 - 19:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, HOST: Good evening from Baghdad. I'm Anderson Cooper.
The Beast of Baghdad faces those he terrorized for nearly a quarter century.

360 starts now.

A shaken Saddam is handed over to Iraqi control. But are they really ready to put him on trial?

Fighting in Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt sounds off on the insurgency and fighting jihad in Iraq.

New information about an American captive, and how he might have wound up in enemy hands.

His conviction for killing his daughter changed America's view of child abuse. Seventeen years later, he's freed from prison and unrepentant.

And she introduced Scott Peterson to Amber Frey. What does she think happened to Laci?

ANNOUNCER: This is a special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360, with Anderson Cooper in Iraq and Heidi Collins in New York.

COOPER: Good evening again from Baghdad.

An interesting juxtaposition today between the man who once terrorized this country, Saddam Hussein, and the man who is terrorizing it now, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Zarqawi, the Jordanian who's believed to be behind dozens of terror attacks in the last year. Late today he and his network were the target of yet another attack by U.S. war planes at a suspected safe house in Fallujah.

Also today, Iraq's former dictator met some of his countrymen, men who will be prosecuting him for crimes he was told of his rights today, which he apparently didn't find all that pleasing an experience.

Those who saw Saddam Hussein today described him as shaken. He and the 11 other former regime members were read their rights under Iraqi law by members of the tribunal that will try them. MOWAFFAK AL-RUBAIE, IRAQ NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Saddam will be given every right to defend himself. Saddam will be given the right to appoint attorney for himself, whether that is an international one or Arab or an Iraqi.

COOPER: Tomorrow, Saddam and the others will appear in an Iraqi court, though no actual trial is expected to start for months.

RUBAIE: We have a long, long, long list of crimes against Saddam Hussein, starting from the homicide, to genocide, to using chemical weapons in Halabchi (ph), doing the hundreds of thousands of people killed in the mass graves, tens of thousands of people executed in Abu Ghraib prison, starting and -- starting three wars, two of them against our own neighbors.

So these are crimes against the humanity, homicide and genocide.

COOPER: The U.S. will remain in charge of security for the foreseeable future to ensure both that he remains safe and in custody.

DAN SENOR, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER TO THE COALITION PROVISIONAL AUTHORITY: The last thing they want is Saddam Hussein being killed or being freed, but as far as the legal proceedings are concerned and the fate of Saddam Hussein, it is in the hands of the Iraqi people.

COOPER: As word spread of his handover, the Iraqi people seemed to be of mixed opinions about what should happen to their former leader.

AHMAD AL-LAMI, BAGHDAD RESIDENT: Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, and anyone all over the world know this. Saddam Hussein should trial in front of Iraqi people.

QUTAIBA NADHIM, BAGHDAD RESIDENT: The Iraqi demands (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for the Iraqi is the security for them. Because Saddam is -- became history and in the past. So we need secure our country from any violence, from terrorists. This is the main point. This is the main important things for the Iraqis. Not the trial of Saddam Hussein.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Thirty-five years Saddam has been working for the interest of Iraq, and now the agents are calling for putting him on trial? It is a crime.

COOPER: And we get our first look at Saddam Hussein tomorrow, and that should be very interesting indeed.

Soldiers will tell you that they want two things, to do their jobs and go home. The trouble is that the first may make the second impossible. The longer they stay, the greater the chance that something may go wrong.

In Baghdad today, insurgents fired at least 10 mortar rounds onto a U.S. Army base outside the international airport, leaving 11 American soldiers hurt, two of them seriously. We hope they all make it home, as we hope that soldiers of the 1st Armored Division's Task Force 237 all make it home as well after a much longer tour of duty than they ever expected to serve.

CNN's Guy Raz reports from Najaf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUY RAZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet Sergeant Timothy Worline, the warrior. And Timothy Worline, the musician.

SGT. TIMOTHY WORLINE, U.S. ARMY: I can't say that there wasn't a possibility of things turning out the way they were. I mean, obviously, they happened. It happened this way. Whether we were prepared for it or not, it's hard to say. We reacted. We did what we had to do.

RAZ: When Worline and his fellow soldiers rolled into Iraq last year, they believed they were embarking on a mission to protect America from weapons of mass destruction. Just when it seemed things were winding down, all hell broke loose for Task Force 237.

SPC. WILL VANDENBERG, U.S. ARMY: Basically, I think we're, you know, we're pawns in a game that maybe shouldn't be played. But that doesn't -- I don't think that in any way lessens the sacrifices and the struggles of the men that have been here.

RAZ: Disillusionment often breeds reflection. These soldiers have seen it all from an unassailable perspective unencumbered by spin and double-speak.

Guy Raz, CNN, in Najaf, southern Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: When U.S. troops do get to go home, the psychological effects of what they did and saw here in Iraq do not just disappear. Moments like this, a major battle, linger at home, at work, even as they try to sleep. And for many, it is simply too much to bear.

A study released just hours ago in the "New England Journal of Medicine" suggests post-traumatic stress disorder is going to be a huge problem for many U.S. troops.

CNN's senior medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is in Atlanta. Sanjay, good evening.

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Anderson.

The consequences of those booms and explosions, really the focus of this unprecedented study in the "New England Journal of Medicine," the first of its kind, really, looking at pre-, during, and post-war deployment, and specifically some of the results here, the first study examining that, 6,000, over 6,000 soldiers and Marines, looking specifically at combat duty in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Anderson, the first study of its kind, they were actually done through anonymous questionnaires, asking these soldiers and Marines about specific issues with regards to stress and post-traumatic stress while major combat operations still going on.

What they found that was that one in eight of those folks actually have significant post-traumatic stress disorder. Those numbers actually higher than predicted. The bad news is, the worst news is, I should say, that less than half those people, about less than 40 percent, actually seeking any kind of help.

One of the main concerns, why aren't they doing it? These things stay the same. Concerns about stigmatization, concerns that that might come back to haunt you, a scarlet P, so to speak, and also military career impact, what would that do to your military career?

Now, if you look just really quick at the various conflicts over time, this study really looking historically. Nine percent or so of folks who go -- before they go to a conflict like that have symptoms of stress, about 11 percent after the Afghanistan conflict, and 17 percent now during the Iraq conflict. So pretty startling numbers there, Anderson.

Again, an unprecedented study coming out of the "New England Journal" just a couple of hours ago.

COOPER: All right. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks very much, live from Atlanta tonight.

A young American Marine's official classification was changed yesterday from missing to captured. We talked about that last night. Today that classification may have to be qualified even further, with the addition of the letters AWOL. Here's CNN's Ed Lavandera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Since Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared on June 20, U.S. military officials have suspected he voluntarily walked away from a base near Fallujah and might have been trying to get to his family, living in Lebanon. Those officials say Hassoun was carrying a pistol and some cash when he was last seen.

Now a "New York Times" report says Hassoun became, quote, "emotionally traumatized after seeing a fellow Marine killed in action" and that "he wanted out of Iraq." The newspaper quotes an unnamed U.S. Marine officer in Baghdad as saying Hassoun befriended some Iraqis that worked on the base and that they helped the 24-year- old sneak away.

Then, the story says, those Iraqis turned on him and delivered him to the Islamic militants who are holding him hostage. On the videotape showing Hassoun blindfolded, broadcast on Arab television, the captor says Hassoun was lured away from the base. U.S. military officials say they're still investigating.

But Hassoun's family remains in seclusion in their Utah home. But they continue asking the world to pray for Corporal Hassoun's safe release. TAREK NOSSEIR, HASSOUN FAMILY SPOKESMAN: Obviously, Wassef's capture is what has been destined upon us. And we accept it. Yet we believe that our and your prayers will be answered. Please continue to pray for his safe release.

LAVANDERA (on camera): We've made several attempts to get reaction to these latest details from the spokesman for Hassoun's family, but each time we've asked, he says they have no comment.

Ed Lavandera, CNN, West Jordan, Utah.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, there are a number of other developing stories around the world and in the United States to talk about tonight. For that, let's go back to New York and Heidi Collins. Hey, Heidi.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Anderson. Thanks so much.

A shootout with al Qaeda tops our look at global stories in the uplink. In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, security police acting on a tip surrounded a house in a residential neighborhood. In the gun battle that followed, one policeman was killed, as was a man believed to be the top spiritual guide for the terror group in Saudi Arabia.

Jalalabad, Afghanistan, two bombs loaded in two street vendors' carts exploded. One man was killed, 26 people hurt. And in the southern part of the country, an Australian journalist and her Afghan driver are missing.

Seoul, South Korea. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops will be getting mandatory inoculations to guard against exposure to anthrax and smallpox. The move is a major expansion of the Pentagon's vaccine program. U.S. forces in the Middle East will also be rolling up their sleeves for the vaccinations.

And in Doha, Qatar, two Russians accused of assassinating a former Chechen leader with a car bomb are convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The judge in the case said the two men were spies and were acting for the Russian government when they carried out the hit.

And that is tonight's uplink.

360 next, a child killer goes from the big house to a big limo. Joel Steinberg, the man who changed the face of child abuse, walks free. Find out why he only served part of his sentence.

Plus, sex, lies, and testimony. The woman who introduced Scott Peterson to his mistress takes the stand against him.

And cutting off Cuba. President Bush looks to Florida in 2004, but will a new round of sanctions backfire at the ballot box? That's raw politics.

But first, your picks, the most popular stories on CNN.com right now. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: It was a local story here in New York, but it had national effects. A 6-year-old beaten to death, her father convicted of the killing, a crime so shocking that it changed child abuse laws and burned the name Joel Steinberg into our memories.

Today, without ever showing even a shred of remorse, he was released from prison.

CNN's Adaora Udoji reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ADAORA UDOJI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joel Steinberg was met by a swarm of reporters as he arrived at a Harlem halfway house. After nearly 17 years in prison, his infamous crime still evokes intense emotion. A successful lawyer, he was convicted of beating his illegally adopted daughter, Lisa, to death.

The 6-year-old, found naked, filthy, and battered, revealed child abuse horrors in Manhattan's upscale Greenwich Village neighborhood.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HEDDA NUSSBAUM, LISA'S MOTHER: My daughter's stopped breathing.

911 OPERATOR: Is she having difficulty breathing?

NUSSBAUM: She's not breathing. I'm giving her mouth-to-mouth.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

UDOJI: That night in 1987, Steinberg's common law wife, Hedda Nussbaum, a children's book editor, called police. They discovered she too had severe bruises.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOEL STEINBERG: I do not hit, strike, or use any form of forceful discipline of any sort.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UDOJI: But Nussbaum, given immunity in exchange for testimony, described escalating beatings. She claimed Steinberg smoked cocaine for hours before letting her call police the night Lisa was hospitalized. The girl died four days later. Last year Nussbaum, now counseling battered women, looked back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LARRY KING LIVE")

NUSSBAUM: I was really brainwashed.

(END VIDEO CLIP) UDOJI: The case revealed a disturbing pattern, neighbors, school teachers, and co-workers ignoring signs of abuse, all afraid of getting involved. Reforms followed in many states. New York mandated abuse awareness programs for those licensed to work with children.

DR. KATHERINE GRIMM, CHILDREN'S ADVOCACY CENTER: I would say the biggest impact has been increased surveillance and increased knowledge.

UDOJI: Steinberg, five times denied parole, served the mandatory two thirds of his 25-year sentence for manslaughter. Not enough, says the jury foreman.

JEREMIAH COLE, FORMER JURY FOREMAN: I think it's outrageous. He should have served every day of that sentence.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UDOJI: Today, Steinberg came to New York City with $104 in his pocket and probation restrictions, which include staying away from children and Nussbaum. And Heidi, she has been in hiding to avoid him.

COLLINS: Wow, I imagine. All right. Thanks so much, Adaora. Appreciate the story.

In other news today, interest rates are going up just a bit. That story tops our look at news cross-country now. Washington, the Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve says it will hike its short-term lending rate a quarter of a percentage point. This is the first increase in nearly four years.

In low earth orbit, two astronauts living at the International Space Station are now outside the habitat, in what is planned as a five-hour space maintenance mission. The astronauts are replacing a failed circuit board on one of the station's gyroscopes.

In New York, Howard Stern announced that his program will soon be broadcast on nine new stations across the country. Stern, whose program has been attacked often by the FCC for indecency, took aim in his news conference at the FCC, the Bush administration, and Clear Channel Communications, a company that canceled his program on their stations because of its content.

And in Louisville, Kentucky, former boxing heavyweight champ Mike Tyson says he deserves another chance. The boxer, who says he's broke and in debt and has been homeless for parts of the last two years, has won an estimated $400 million over the years. Tyson says he's planning a fight this July.

That's a look at stories cross-country tonight.

And tonight at midnight, the clamp tightens around Cuba. President Bush is imposing tough new sanctions on the communist country. It's a move designed, some say, to get votes for the president in November. But where raw politics is concerned could cost him as well.

Here's national correspondent Susan Candiotti.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For many exiles, trying to tighten the screws on Cuban president Fidel Castro is one thing. Trying to interfere with traditionally strong Cuban family ties is another.

Many anti-Castro Cubans are up in arms over new White House rules restricting family visits to the island once every three years instead of each year and limiting how much money and to whom it can be sent to cash-starved relatives.

Cuban-born Norma Kalig (ph) calls the new policy antifamily.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You have family, you have sons, daughters, parents that buried their kids, and they can't see their tomb.

CANDIOTTI: The Bush administration's strongest supporters argue the new rules are a necessary hardship.

REP. LINCOLN DIAZ BALART (R), MIAMI: Because there's only one kind of this totalitarian dictatorship in this hemisphere. If that's the case, then you don't go back whenever you want.

CANDIOTTI: The get-tough policy has the full support of mainly older exiles, who left the island years ago with no intention of returning till Castro's exit. Newer arrivals have regularly returned to visit family. And in a key battleground state like Florida, where Cuban voter turnout can be critical, anti-Castro activists, including the Cuban-American National Foundation, worry about fallout.

JOE GARCIA, CUBAN AMERICA NATIONAL FOUNDATION: When government gets in between or in the middle of a family, nothing good can come of it.

CANDIOTTI: Not surprisingly, opponents of the new rules are seizing on the travel restriction flap as another example of the wrong way to bring down Castro.

SILVIA WILHELM, CUBAN AMERICAN COMMISSION FOR FAMILY RIGHTS: In an election year, that can definitely backfire. And I predict this is going to backfire on the president.

CANDIOTTI: One Cuba analyst says other new measures, such as more help for island dissidents, may help soften the blow.

PROF. JAIME SUCHLICKI, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI: I think this community will see that there's a real interest on the part of the administration to undermine the Castro regime.

CANDIOTTI (on camera): With the election only four months away, some anti-Castro activists say the timing of the new get-tough measures are clearly meant to boost the president's standing among Cuban exiles. The question is whether the controversy may hurt him in the long run.

Susan Candiotti, CNN, Miami.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: 360 next, Saddam Hussein facing justice. So how does a notorious dictator get a fair trial? We'll ask a man who took on the Nazis. Anderson Cooper has that live from Baghdad.

Also tonight, a mistress and a murder. The woman who introduced Scott Peterson to his lover takes the stand against him.

And a little later, Al Sharpton, keeping it real on a new TV show all his own. Will he become the next Donald Trump? We'll take a sneak peek.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Prosecutors say Scott Peterson murdered his pregnant wife so he could be with Amber Frey. Today, the woman who introduced Peterson to Frey took the stand and spoke of sex, lust, and lies.

CNN's Ted Rowlands has the latest from the courtroom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Jurors listened intently as Shaun Sibley (ph) testified that she met Scott Peterson at an agriculture convention in October of 2002. Sibley said the night she and Peterson met, they stayed up until 3:00 a.m. talking about everything from business to sex.

Sibley said Peterson told her he was tired of one-night stands and was looking for a new soulmate. Sibley, who was engaged at the time, said she believed Peterson was single and was so taken by him that she decided to set him up with her friend, Amber Frey.

Then on December 6, three weeks before Laci Peterson was reported missing, Sibley said she confronted Scott Peterson by phone about being married. Sibley said Peterson at one point was sobbing uncontrollably and told her that it was very difficult to talk about because he had recently lost his wife.

Sibley testified that she asked him, Are you married now? to which Peterson replied, Absolutely not.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS (on camera): Sibley finished her testimony this morning. Afterwards, the judge put the court in recess until next Tuesday, going along with jurors' requests for an extended Fourth of July holiday, Heidi.

COLLINS: All right, Ted. Thanks so much. Live from Redwood City, California tonight.

And covering the case for us tonight in Justice Served, 360 legal analyst Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom.

Kimberly, good evening to you.

KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE NEWSOM, LEGAL ANALYST: Hi, Heidi.

COLLINS: So good day for the prosecution?

NEWSOM: Great day for the prosecution, just when you thought it couldn't get better for them. And believe me, they could use it. We've heard from over 50 witnesses, and finally getting some meat of the case.

We had a woman, essentially the woman who set up Scott Peterson and Amber Frey, and her testimony was so compelling, saying this is a guy who kept asking about getting hooked up, talking about sex all the time, wanting to be set up with Amber Frey, saying that he had lost his wife, and then three weeks later, his wife goes missing?

COLLINS: Right.

NEWSOM: Unbelievable. I think it's too much for the defense to be able to explain away that this is just a coincidence.

COLLINS: Right. And also, you know, you, we were talking earlier about saying you're single is one thing, but saying that your wife is dead is another. How do you think the jury will react to that?

NEWSOM: I think the jury is going to say enough is enough at the end of the day. When you add all these things together, common sense shows that this can't be explained away as yet another coincidence.

What it suggests, and what the prosecution will argue, is this is a man who was unhappy in his life, wanted to be a bachelor, a swinging single. He was obsessed with these thoughts, would say and do anything to achieve it, ultimately getting rid of his wife that was the encumbrance.

COLLINS: And then you have Geragos, who's saying, Well, yes, he's a cad, but not a murderer.

NEWSOM: Yes, he's a lover, not a killer. And that's Mark Geragos's theme throughout this case.

COLLINS: Will that work?

NEWSOM: My guy may be a man about town, but he's someone who loved his wife, was devoted, and this is something where he is a victim in this case too.

I don't think so. At the end of the day, too many things are going to add up that point directly back to Scott Peterson. And that's a problem the defense is going to have.

COLLINS: All right. Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom in Justice Served tonight, thanks so much, Kimberly. NEWSOM: Thank you.

COOPER: A shaken Saddam is handed over to Iraqi control. But are they really ready to put him on trial?

Fighting in Iraq. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt sounds off on the insurgency and fighting jihad in Iraq.

ANNOUNCER: A special edition of ANDERSON COOPER 360 continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to 360 from Iraq, where coalition forces launched another strike late today on a safe house in Fallujah believed to have been used by the terrorist network of Abu Musab al- Zarqawi.

And where in Baghdad on the first full day of its sovereignty, the interim government took legal possession of the man who was head of state here and who is now a defendant in criminal proceedings the likes of which the world has rarely seen.

Saddam Hussein, once lord of all he surveyed, who ended lives and made people disappear with a snap of his fingers, is now the responsibility of the country and the people he nearly brought to ruin.

But Saddam is still being guarded by U.S. troops. Earlier I asked Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt about Saddam's status.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): General Kimmitt, why is the United States maintaining custody of Saddam Hussein?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY: Well, that was the request by Prime Minister Allawi. I think he recognized that at present Iraq doesn't have a facility secure enough to handle a high-profile prisoner like Saddam Hussein. So for a period of time he's asked us to maintain physical custody.

COOPER: How concerned are you about security, particularly tomorrow at the court proceedings?

KIMMITT: Well, we always treat the security of the high-value detainees as a matter of utmost importance. We're watching it every day.

COOPER: Are you concerned that someone could try to make an effort to break him out in some way?

KIMMITT: Oh, I think we're concerned about security every day, Anderson, and we're not too concerned that that's going to happen tomorrow.

COOPER: Is the insurgency here, is it morphing, is it mutating, is it changing the face of it?

We've been talking to "Time" magazine's Michael Ware, who has an article in this week's issue, basically saying that in the Fallujah area there is increasing cohesion between the old Saddam Fedayeen, Ba'athist elements and these foreign fighters, Musab Al Zarqawi, for example.

KIMMITT: Well, he brings up a good point. There is one strain, there is one theory that says these former regime elements that were pretty well -- given a pretty heavy blow after the fall of Saddam, the capture of Saddam, and the combat operations we ran for the next couple of months may in fact be changing colors and becoming jihadis. Now, whether they're doing that for the purpose of just joining a group such as Zarqawi, which is having some measure of success, or they're doing it because they've truly embraced the jihadi notion of fighting for a holy war, yet to be determined. But we are seeing some evidence of that, and we are seeing that in places such as Baquba, we're saying that in places such as Fallujah.

COOPER: Does that change the tactics on the part of the coalition, on the part of the U.S. as well as the Iraqi government?

Do you need to fight that war differently than if it was more home grown nationalist movement?

KIMMITT: Well, it's really the difference between fighting the paramilitary threat, as we saw so much last fall, and more of a counterterrorist operation. I think even more different is not necessarily how we fight it. but it is how the enemy fights. This is one where all gloves were off. The terrorist is going to go use all the civilians that he can find as his targets. It's mostly for political purposes, terrorize the country, intimidate the population, try to assassinate the leadership, go after the infrastructure, but this is backfiring on them, and it's backfiring in a way I don't think they anticipated by the fact that they're losing tremendous support, or losing any kind of support amongst the people of Iraq.

COOPER: One more question about Saddam Hussein. Have you seen Saddam Hussein?

KIMMITT: No, I have not seen Saddam Hussein.

COOPER: Are you curious to see what he looks like tomorrow?

KIMMITT: Oh, I'm more than prepared to watch it on television like the remainder of the world.

COOPER: All right. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, thanks very much.

KIMMITT: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: And certainly, the world will -- certainly, the world will be watching tomorrow when Saddam Hussein goes into court. First time we will have seen him since he was first apprehended.

Also, just some news into CNN, the State Department has now raised the reward they are offering for the kill or capture of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi to $25 million. That reward had been at $10 million for the last several months. You see wanted posters throughout Iraq. Coalition forces hand them out. The reward now raised to $25 million.

Something new on the face of the Earth is about to begin here in Baghdad, really. Oppressors on the scale of Saddam Hussein simply do not end up in court.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER, (voice-over): (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for decades, then tried to vanish down a hole hardly big enough to lie down in. Now, soon it appears he will go on trial. This just does not happen.

Adolf Hitler saw to it that he would never be tried. Having cost millions of others their lives, he finally took his own or had someone else take it in a bunker in Berlin. Some of those who served him did go on trial. We'll talk about Nuremberg later. But he escaped justice. Not even his body ever was found.

There was summary justice for Hitler's ally, Benito Mussolini, execution and hanging, but no trial. Neither he nor Hitler ever faced a stream of people on the witness stand, ever heard from them what pain their dreams of imperial glory caused.

Nor did Josef Stalin face witnesses or trial. He died a natural death, though there's a hint now he may have been poisoned after purges, pogroms, displacements, and banishments that may have killed tens of millions.

Pol Pot of Cambodia was going to be tried, years after covering his country with pyramids of skulls, but old age took him before justice could. Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, charged as Hitler and Pol Pot would have been with genocide, is facing trial but not in his own country by his own people. It looks as if that unique circumstance may be reserved for Saddam Hussein. Live by the sword, die by the sword is the saying. This time for the first time the sword may be not in vigilante but in authorized hands.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: We mentioned Nuremberg before, one of the very rare instances in which figures were brought to trial to face charges of crimes against humanity. We're lucky to have with us this evening in New York a man who played a part in those historic proceedings as a 27-year-old chief prosecutor, Benjamin Ferencz. Thanks very much indeed for joining us tonight.

Benjamin, how would you go about trying Saddam Hussein?

How would you go about organizing this trial?

BENJAMIN FERENCZ, A CHIEF PROSECUTOR, NUREMBERG WAR CRIMES TRIAL: I would follow exactly the Nuremberg precedents. We did establish a number of legal precedents there which inspired the world at the time, which have been upheld throughout the world during the many years. You would charge him, first of all, with the crime of aggression for having the invasion of Kuwait, a friendly neighboring Arab state. All of the evidence of that was already presented to the United Nations. Crimes against humanity, committed against the Kurds.

The use of poison gas, war crimes committed against the Shiites and the Kurds. These are standard international crimes under existing law. And I think that the sooner we get on with the trial the better off we'll be. We should not go into too many details. You don't have to prove every crime that he committed.

But as in Nuremberg, those who conspired and were the leaders, who acted with him in planning the crimes which he was guilty of should also be tried with him and they should all have a limited time in which to present their cases, for prosecution and defense, so that we don't drag it out for a number of years.

COOPER: A lot of witnesses?

I bring this up because, you know, for instance, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, a large part of that was witnesses coming forward and just talking -- talking about what they had experienced, sort of a national reconciliation. At Nuremberg there really weren't that many witnesses, if I remember correctly.

Fedayeen: We relied mostly on documentary evidence, but by this time I would hope that the allied powers, led by the United States as well as others, have collected enough evidentiary materials so that you don't have to have a long, drawn-out trial. The reconciliation will come from the awareness by the Iraqi public that justice has been done. The trial must be absolutely fair in every respect, and once that is done I think the country will be able to move more quickly toward normalcy.

COOPER: You know, Benjamin, Saddam Hussein seems to have lawyers popping up all over, people claiming to be representing him. I talked to one of them, this guy in France who claims to be a lawyer, don't know really if he is at this point, but he said he would want to call President Bush to testify, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

How do you not let this trial devolve or degenerate into sort of a kangaroo court?

FERENCZ: Well, you allow him to choose counsel of his own choice, but you limit the nature of the argumentation. He can argue any argument he likes. And of course, he will try to say that he did everything in his national interest and he did it in self-defense and that everything was humane and the others are doing the same thing. But a competent judge, and I hope they will have competent judges, I assume they will, will be able to make short shrift of those arguments, as we did with Hermann Goering and others at Nuremberg.

COOPER: Well, Benjamin Ferencz, you've played a remarkable role in history, and we appreciate you coming on tonight to talk about that role as well as what you would do with Saddam Hussein. Thank you very much, Benjamin.

FERENCZ: Take care of yourself, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. You too.

Today's buzz question is this -- what do you think?

What is the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he is found guilty, execution, life in prison, or exile?

Log onto cnn.com/360. Cast your vote. We will have results at the end of the program tonight.

It struck us the other day that we may think we know a lot about Iraq, but really beyond its problems and dangers and rivalries we actually don't know all that much at all. Here's a bit of a crash course in the realities of a place as old as human history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The land we call Iraq was part of the cradle of civilization, with a history that dates back to 4,000 B.C. But when it comes to modern culture, compare Iraq to the United States, a young 228, and you can see there's some work to be done. On education, for a start. According to the CIA fact book, Iraq has a literacy rate of 40.4 percent, 55.9 percent for men, only 24.4 percent for women. That compares to 97 percent in the U.S. for both genders.

PHEBE MARR, AUTHOR, "THE MODERN HISTORY OF IRAQ": Iraq is suffering from a really radical decline in education, health, and other statistics over the last couple of decades.

COOPER: A lack of technology could prove a challenge. There's one cell phone for every 1,268.5 people in Iraq. There's one for every 2.2 in the U.S. There are only 74 radio stations in Iraq. There are 10,322 in America. Iraq has just 13 television stations, compared to more than 1,500 in the U.S. But satellite service is growing at a staggering rate.

Under Saddam Hussein's regime those families with satellite TV were breaking the law, facing fines and imprisonment. But perhaps most surprising is Iraq's lack of Internet access. Only one person in every 1,014.8. In the U.S., it's one for every 1.8.

And that technological divide could make the road to democracy even more rocky. But Iraq is an ancient land with a young population. 40.3 percent of its more than 25 million residents are under 15, as compared with 20.8 percent in the U.S. and Iraq has a continuing musical heritage, with its very own pop idol. That's Kathem Al Saher, who lives in exile in Jordan. He's sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.

With the handover complete it's clear that rebuilding Iraq will be as much about brick and mortar as it is about turning an ancient civilization into a modern society.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, with all the drama in this country, it may be that we have not paid enough attention to what is happening east and south of Iraq on the other side of the Red Sea and another continent altogether. That is where Secretary of State Colin Powell is right now, in Sudan, to meet with its ministers on what looms as a catastrophe of vast proportions, so vast, in fact, that it can be seen from space. CNN's Zain Verjee reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Are we witnesses to genocide in slow motion? Images trickling from a poor region in western Sudan piece together the disaster that is Darfor. Refugees fleeing bloodshed, bombed or burned out villages. Recent satellite pictures show the destruction in Darfor. The black circles here indicate burned villages. Almost 400 villages are said to be damaged or destroyed.

In neighboring Chad about 200,000 terrorized survivors tell of massacre and mass rape. Burning and butchery by Arab militias called Janjawid, targeting them because they are black. International rights groups say there is evidence atrocities have been committed by the Arab militias, backed by Khartoum. Khartoum denies the charges. It's estimated up to 30,000 people have been killed in more than a year of war. Experts say there are indications the killing is systematic.

SAMANTHA POWERS, LECTURER, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVT., HARVARD UNIV.: You have a scale now that certainly meets that which we usually require for genocide findings.

VERJEE: Journalists have been barred from entering much of the region, the size of France or Texas. Pictures from one photojournalist show a ghost town in Darfor, punctuated only by fresh graves and rubble. More than a million refugees like these are internally displaced, huddled in government-controlled camps in Darfor. Aid agencies say a million people could die not by the bullet but by other weapons of war.

POWERS: What you're going to have is death by starvation, death by thirst, death by disease.

VERJEE: Experts say the United Nations needs to take action. It can do a couple of things. One, publicly condemn the Sudanese government for the disaster in Darfor, and two, consider targeted sanctions and armed intervention against Sudan. Zain Verjee, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Now back to Heidi Collins in New York for the day's other top stories. I'll be back from Baghdad in a moment -- Heidi.

COLLINS: All right, Anderson. Thanks.

360 next, a Florida teacher accused of going too far with one of her students while another state spreads a stern warning on sex with minors. We'll talk about that just ahead.

Plus, reality Al. The Reverend Al Sharpton is adding yet another career to his resume.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: The theme from the movie "Lolita." Young girl, older guy. It's exactly what's gotten one state to crank up a new ad campaign. The message in Virginia on billboards to young adult men is straightforward and blunt. Don't have sex with underage girls. The state's Department of Health began its new effort when officials realized that men older than 21 had fathered more than 200 babies with underage girls in just a two-year period.

With me now from Baltimore is Dr. Fred Berlin. He's an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. Doctor, thanks for being with us tonight.

I want to begin by looking at a pretty alarming statistic, if we could. In Virginia, health officials there have cited this nationwide statistic showing men older than 21 are three times as likely to father children with junior high school girls than are junior high school boys. What's going on here?

DR. FRED BERLIN, ASSOC. PROF. OF PSYCHIATRY, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV.: Well, it certainly is pretty alarming. And the fact of the matter is it's not uncommon for teenage girls, 14, 15, 16 years old, to be infatuated by young men in their 20s, and some of these men particularly with modern dress and makeup, will find some of these girls who may look more like 19 than 15 to be very attractive. So I'm not condoning the behavior, but given those realities I don't find it so difficult to understand why this may be happening.

COLLINS: So is that why guys are -- older guys are interested in younger girls, then? It's the dress? Is there more to it?

BERLIN: Again, this hasn't been carefully studied, but you're talking about young girls who are just having their emerging sexuality. You're talking about young men where their hormones are raging. Again, they're not necessarily thinking this thing through logically. The girls seem interested. They may seem older than they actually are. And that's an equation that can lead to problems.

COLLINS: All right. Let's talk about age of consent here. It varies from state to state. Would it help to have a national age of consent?

BERLIN: I think it would help to have a dialogue about that. In our country we tend to think every time there's a problem let's just rush in with some new legislation or modification of legislation. I think what's being done to try to educate people to have dialogue with youngsters, to try to sensitize older people to the impropriety of this, the importance of not going down that path, I think combining it with education and not just leaping too quickly towards changing legislation in my judgment might be the better way to go. COLLINS: I would bet that any parent who finds out that their young daughter is dating someone quite a bit older is going to go into instant freakout mode. Do you have any advice for parents on what they should do?

BERLIN: The advice is the common sense advice. You need to be open with your youngsters, you need to try to instill the values that are important, you need to listen to them. But the truth of the matter is most of us when we were 14, 15, or 16 weren't talking with our parents about our emerging sexual interests, we were talking with our peers. So I think we also have to try to get into the schools, try to have some peer discussions, try to get to the kids where it often is very important at that age what other youngsters are saying, not only what their parents have to say.

COLLINS: You know, Virginia is focusing here obviously on men, but sometimes it does happen with women as well. Just on Monday we talked about a case where a female school teacher was charged with relations with a 14-year-old. How common is this? And are we going to see more of it?

BERLIN: Well, it happens. We had the Mary Kay Letourneau case a few years back. It's certainly not nearly as common as what we see with men it. Also takes it to another dimension when we're talking about a teacher in terms of the even further abuse of trust both to the student and to the extended family. But whatever number of times it happens, it is a problem, and we as a society need to look at the best ways to try to address that.

COLLINS: We sure do. All right. Dr. Fred Berlin, thanks so much for your time tonight.

BERLIN: Thank you.

COLLINS: Flashback now to Mary Kay Letourneau: In 1996 the 35- year-old teacher began a sexual relationship with her sixth grade student. The pair had two children together and even co-authored a book about their affair. It became a best-seller in France. Letourneau was sentenced to 7 1/2 years for rape. She's due to be released on July 17.

Al Sharpton: A career counselor? Just ahead, the one-time presidential candidate has a new job and a new TV show. That story next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: What's a former presidential candidate to do when his race for the White House is over? Well, if you're Reverend Al Sharpton, you do the only logical thing: Reality TV, of course. CNN's Jeanne Moos explains.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's been arrested. He's been acquitted. He's even been stabbed. He's run for Senate. He's run for president. He's run after a TV crew. He's been decked by another guest on a TV talk show. The reality is, it was only a matter of time till Al Sharpton ended up on a reality show.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think Al Sharpton has any connection to reality whatsoever.

MOOS: Nevertheless, coming this fall on Spike TV, eight guys vie for their dream job in a show called I Hate My Job."

(on camera): Al Sharpton is going to be like the career counselor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my god. Al Sharpton never had a J.O.B.

MOOS (voice-over): But he's wowed them on SNL.

REV. AL SHARPTON, FRM. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I feel good.

MOOS: Some don't feel good about Sharpton doing a reality show.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This seems like a farce, put it like that. You know, like a gimmick.

MOOS (voice-over): So you're afraid they won't take him seriously after this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right. Right. You know, how about if Al Gore did something like this?

MOOS (voice-over): That other Al doesn't have Al Sharpton's sharp humor.

SHARPTON: Every time I look at George Bush, I know that I'm qualified to at least do what he does.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Reverend Sharpton is larger than life. OK? Whether you like him, or whether you dislike him, he's a reality show in his own right.

MOOS: But as one wag wrote on the Web, "isn't there already a reality show about an overexposed New Yorker with bad hair?"

DONALD TRUMP, REAL ESTATE MOGUL: You're fired.

MOOS: But Sharpton, you're hired, despite the bad hair jokes.

JAY LENO, TONIGHT SHOW HOST: Whose hairdo is that? I realized today. Look. You see?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He does have bad hair, but he wears it well.

MOOS: And when it comes to ratings, maybe it's good to have bad hair as a punchline.

SHARPTON: Hey! MOOS: Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And you know, I bet people will watch.

360 next: Reality here versus reality in Iraq. We have Donald Trump. They have something far more real. We take that to the "Nth Degree" next.

But first, today's "Buzz." What's the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he is found guilty? Execution, life in prison, or exile? Log on to CNN.com/360 to vote now. We'll have the results when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Now for the "Buzz." Earlier we asked you, "What's the best punishment for Saddam Hussein if he's found guilty?" 59 percent of you said execution, 34 percent of you said life, 6 exile. More than 132,000 of you voted. Not a scientific poll, but it is your "Buzz." Thanks for voting.

Tonight, taking reality to the "Nth degree." A lot of thoughts pop into an American's head in a place like Iraq. Here's one of them: the U.S. is a heck of a lucky country.

Consider reality back home and reality here. Being told you're fired by the Donald, that's reality in the U.S. of A. Reality here, raw sewage, rubble, the possibility that anywhere at any time there will be a blast.

In America, reality is being told to pack up your bikini, or your libido, or your ambitions and take a hike. In Iraq, people do not lose competitions, they lose their sons and their daughters.

In America, lucky America, Paris Hilton passes for a real person, as do Joe Schmo and Outback Jack and who wants to marry my dad is a real question. Really.

Yes, we know, we're talking about television in one place and life in another. But that's the point. In America, lucky American, we look for reality on TV. Not in Iraq. Here, reality is all around us.

I'm Anderson Cooper. Thanks for watching. "PAULA ZAHN NOW" is next.

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