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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Israel Targets Assassinations and Palestinians Fire Missile; Details Emerge Regarding Operation Anaconda Fatalities

Aired March 05, 2002 - 22:00   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again. I'm Aaron Brown. It's funny how what seems important one moment can become inconsequential in the next. When last we met, I was the subject of the strange and nasty barrage of e-mails from people who feel the media slants the news to favor conservatives. It got even nastier over the weekend, and I'll confess for a while that seemed important.

It doesn't now. It's small stuff from small people. The big stuff, the stuff that does matter is so apparent today that even my nasty e-mailers must get it.

The bodies of seven U.S. servicemen, killed in action yesterday in Afghanistan, arrived in Germany today. They are on their way home for the last time.

And today, we learned the details of how they died, and came to understand better the nature of the enemy. This isn't about politics. It doesn't matter if you're right of center or left or neither or unsure or sometimes both.

This is about young men sent to a bad place to take care of important business, who died in the service to their country. Their lives and deaths aren't owned by the Republican Party or the Democrats. No one will ask who they voted for, what they thought of John Ashcroft, whether they were worried about oil drilling in Alaska.

Those things matter sometimes, but not right now. What matters tonight is something far more basic, not political. Seven families, parents, brothers, sisters, wives, children, friends, entire communities mourn. And all of us, including my nasty e-mailers I hope, mourn with them.

A reminder of what is important, and because it's important, it's where we start the whip tonight, the battle and the results. David Ensor at the Pentagon for us. David, a headline please.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, whether you put it down to the fog of war or to planning mistakes, this assault in Afghanistan has clearly not gone as well as the Pentagon was hoping. We heard some chilling details tonight about exactly how those Americans died.

BROWN: David, back to you in a moment. To Afghanistan now, Martin Savidge is on the phone with us this evening. He traveled into the east of the country with the 101st Airborne. Marty, a headline please.

OK, phones aren't perfect. We'll try again in a moment.

We'll move on to the Middle East, the violence spiral between the Israelis and the Palestinians, of course. Sheila MacVicar working that in Jerusalem. Sheila, a headline please.

SHEILA MACVICAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Aaron. Well you're right, the violence just doesn't seem to stop here. Overnight, another five Palestinians dead, five Israelis dead in yesterday's three separate attacks, it just doesn't seem to end.

BROWN: No it doesn't, though they try, Sheila back to you in a moment. And shifting to politics, there is a primary going on in California tonight. Judy Woodruff is out West covering the races. So from Los Angeles, Judy a headline.

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, I'm in Los Angeles in California to cover the first big primary of Election 2002, and the big race we are watching is the contest to see which Republican takes on as a challenger the incumbent Democrat, Gray Davis, this November. And as I'll tell you a little later, what started out as a sleepy predictable thing has turned into something that's apparently a real upset.

BROWN: Judy, thank you, and we'll be back with you in a moment. Let's try one more time to see if Marty Savidge can hear us. Marty traveled with the 101st today. Got a headline for us, Marty?

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via videophone): Well, Aaron, this operation that is underway in lower Shahi-Kot Valley, is described as not only the biggest military operation of the war in Afghanistan, it is the biggest military operation since Desert Storm, and for some of the troops that are involved, some of their units, it is the biggest operation they've been involved with since World War II. The fighting continues, but the U.S. is getting the upper hand. Aaron.

BROWN: Back to you shortly. We'll check the phone lines. Quite a mix on the program tonight, we'll talk with one of the most powerful media reporters in the country, the man who broke the story about the possible demise of "Nightline." Bill Carter of the New York Times joins us, on the same day his paper printed the first public response from Ted Koppel.

And a new question emerges in a fascinating case. Former NBA star charged with Manslaughter, after the shotgun killing at his mansion. Did Jayson Williams try and make it look like a suicide?

And something you'll see from time to time on the program, an occasional series called "On the Rise," young entrepreneurs with some bright ideas, and if these pictures don't grab you, then nothing is going to. All of that in the hour ahead, and we begin with the war, and it's been a while since we've said that. It's no easier this time around. A few weeks back when we talked to General Tommy Franks, he said this phase of the war, this mopping up would be the most dangerous. Case closed tonight.

What the military has dubbed Operation Anaconda is not over yet, may not be over for a while. Neither side likely to walk away from the fight and both sides are likely to be burying more dead before it's over. The fight to squeeze the Taliban and al Qaeda fighters out of the caves and mountains of eastern Afghanistan is as bloody as any battle of this strange war.

We have two reports tonight. We begin with CNN's David Ensor.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice over): Chilling details are now emerging on how eight Americans died. Sources say Navy SEAL Neal Roberts (ph) fell off a Chinook helicopter as it rose, was captured, and commanders watched in agony from a Predator drone camera overhead as he was executed.

Another six casualties occurred after a Chinook helicopter was damaged and crash landed, forcing the men to fight under withering enemy fire for 12 to 14 hours.

BRIGADIER GENERAL JOHN ROSA, JOINT CHIEF'S STAFF: It was sometime thereafter that we initiated a rescue operation and extracted, took out all of the folks on the ground there.

ENSOR: Reinforcements are on the way to aid the roughly 2,000 U.S. and allied forces, assaulting entrenched al Qaeda and Taliban forces, U.S. officials say. At least five marine Cobra gun ships and two large troop carrying MH-53 helicopters have been sent from aboard ships in the North Arabian Sea with officials saying all the Apache helicopters flying air support in the first days of battle were damaged.

These pictures, the first of Operation Anaconda released by the Pentagon, show American troops, soldiers of the Army's 101st Airborne Division, moving upwards into positions around the enemy. As they searched a compound on the way up into the mountains, they came under fire.

The reinforcements come as U.S. officials revise upwards their estimates of how many enemy they have surrounded in the high mountain area near Gardez, despite punishing bombing by U.S. and allied aircraft. Officials now say with perhaps 200 enemy dead, there still could be as many as 500 to 600 left. Officials are saying the fight could take over a week to finish.

ROSA: This is like fighting in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in the winter time. It's tough. We have members of the 101st and members of the 10th Mountain that are trained in cold weather and they're doing a fantastic job. (END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (on camera): Officials are saying that once this pocket is defeated, there are other pockets to defeat around Afghanistan, and they are saying that the enemy appears likely to fight to the last man. Aaron.

BROWN: David, just go back for a second to the point you made earlier, that this thing was somewhat nastier and more complicated than the Pentagon first envisioned. Is that an intelligence breakdown?

ENSOR: Their assessment initially, they told us, was that there were around 400 of the enemy in this particular area. They now believe they've killed a couple of hundred at least of those, and they're now talking about 600 to 700. So clearly, they did not estimate correctly how many of the enemy they were up against.

They also perhaps did not realize that the enemy knew they were coming. There were - even the troops that you saw on that video that was early on, were being fired upon. That was before the surprise was supposed to occur. So clearly, the enemy was ready. Aaron.

BROWN: David, thank you. David Ensor working at the Pentagon tonight, thank you very much. On the subject of pictures coming out of Afghanistan, as we speak now, pictures are being fed, Defense Department pool pictures are being fed from Bagram, the air base there.

As we talk to Martin Savidge on the phone from there, we'll be rolling some of these pictures in. Marty, what can you tell us about the mood there, after a couple of tough days of war?

SAVIDGE (via videophone): Well, the mood is still very upbeat, still very positive, and the feeling of the soldiers is they want to get in and they want to get in on the fight.

The video that you're looking at now, there were twice that we loaded in Chinook helicopters. We were embedded with members of the 10th Mountain Division, and we were in the second flight of what was called "the day." The first group from 10th Mountain was Charlie Company. They actually got in the night before. The moment they say, after they got on the ground and after the helicopters left, they landed in a valley.

Forty-five seconds later, they came under intense attack, both from small arms machine gun .50 caliber, sniper, and also from mortars. They say the mortars have the accuracy of the likes they had never seen before. Within half an hour, their own mortar, the ones that they had brought was taken out of action. A mortar round destroyed the ammunition.

There were at least 26 soldiers out of about 80 that were in that initial company that were wounded in the 20-hour fire fight that went all night and into the day. Most of them had suffered shrapnel wounds because of the mortar. Some of them suffered direct fire. None of them were considered life threatening.

They were trying to get a medical flight in, and in fact, this flight here that we were loading up in, was the second lift that we were part of. It was now turning into a rescue mission. It was supposed to launch during the day. We went up one time, was told the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) was simply too hot, couldn't get in.

Then we waited a couple of hours and loaded again at night, and that's what you're looking at here, as we start to fly in. You can understand that the 10th Mountain members that were in the second flight were very anxious to get in. They knew that those on the ground were having one heck of a fight on their hands.

The Apache helicopters that had gone up, that were thought to be a really strong weapon, were suffering tremendous fire from RPGs. Apparently, the Taliban and al Qaeda were setting the RPGs, setting them up in the air at their maximum distance of 600 meters to explode, creating flack. At one time, four of the Apache helicopters were down, meaning they had to return because of damage they had suffered.

That knocked out a lot of air cover. If it hadn't been for the AC-130 Cobra gun ships, well the soldiers say they wouldn't have been brought out at all. Eventually, the had to withdraw Charlie Company. This is the night that we actually got in on the ground. The plan has been reworked several times. They went in too light, too lightly armed, and apparently went in to the wrong positions, not expecting the resistance that they found.

Now they know that those that are there, the Taliban and al Qaeda, are there to fight to the very death. They're happy to try and make that happen. At least the U.S. soldiers feel that way.

This is getting off on the ground. The static electricity you see coming from the rotor blades, and this is basically a brigade that is going in now, a mixture of both the 101st Airborne and 10th Mountain, which had been left behind, to go in now and do a search and destroy mission, to basically go along those upper ridges not go on the valley floor, and try to knock out the mortars, try to knock out the heavy weaponry that was there.

BROWN: Marty.

SAVIDGE: Just warming up and beginning what's going to be a long march in very high altitudes.

BROWN: Marty, thank you. Martin Savidge who's at Bagram, as we look at these. These are pool pictures that are being fed live. We're seeing them with you for the first time. Obviously, these are night scope pictures that you're looking at, as the Americans move out from their helicopters into this area, these caves and mountains where they've encountered such terrible and, as both Martin and David Ensor reported, surprisingly strong resistance from the Taliban and the al Qaeda forces there. Thank you, Marty and David for your efforts today.

At the White House today, President Bush met with the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, trying to put some pressure on the Israelis. But the fact is, that the pressure, and we can argue about whether it's been enough pressure or whether the right people are applying it, but the pressure has not worked, and the words coming out of both sides today are harsher than ever, and the actions, it being the Middle East, follow in kind.

More words, more deeds today, and in the Middle East, of course, that means more dying. So once again, we turn to CNN's Sheila MacVicar, who is in Jerusalem where it is morning. Good morning to you, Sheila.

MACVICAR: Good morning, Aaron. You're right, more words and more deeds overnight. Overnight we've had a series of Israeli attacks in retaliation for things that we've seen take place in the previous number of hours. We've had Israeli troops go back into southern Gaza. We've had what the Israelis euphemistically call a target of assassination, the murder of three key members of Palestinian security force in Ramallah, and that will signal a redline to the Palestinians.

In the past, when those kinds of assassinations have been carried out, there has always been a harsh response from the Palestinians. Equally, for the Israelis last night, a Palestinian missile fired into the backyard of an Israeli neighborhood, wounding two. But again, the firing of the missile a redline for the Israelis.

I wanted to turn the talk away from the streets for a moment and onto the political. Take a look at this headline this morning in the Jerusalem Post. This is Wednesday morning's headline. This is a paper that is largely very supportive of Mr. Sharon's government, certainly has been in the past, asking this morning, Aaron, "How long must we suffer?" People beginning to wonder just what is Mr. Sharon's plan to get out of this mess.

They know from yesterday's security cabinet meeting, a meeting that is now described to the Israeli press as having been very bitter indeed, that basically there are no new ideas here and that the only idea seems to be an increase in intensification of military pressure on Mr. Arafat. Aaron.

BROWN: Well, you have a Mubarak proposal for a summit. You have a Saudi proposal that still needs to be filled in. On both sides of the line in the Israeli press, the Palestinian press, how are those proposals being played?

MACVICAR: The Mubarak proposal was for a summit between Prime Minister Sharon and Mr. Arafat under his good graces, if you will, in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, and that seems to be dead in the water before the ink was even dry on the invitations frankly.

Mr. Sharon has said, you know, he is welcome -- he is willing to meet with President Mubarak anytime, anyplace. He'll get together with him and talk; however, he is refusing to sit down in a room with Mr. Arafat.

And not only that, Mr. Sharon says, "well, Mr. Arafat is going to be very busy in Ramallah" and has made it very clear that he would not give permission for Mr. Arafat to go to such a meeting. So certainly, the time is not right, and clearly the dynamics between those two men are not right to have them in the same room.

The Saudi proposal is a different matter. There are a lot of obstacles before we can even get to the of saying that, yes this really does have legs, and the first point is, Aaron, that the Arab states will have to agree that they will sign on to that Saudi peace plan -- Aaron.

BROWN: Sheila, thank you. Sheila MacVicar in Jerusalem for us this evening, thank you. And ahead on NEWSNIGHT, it is Primary Day out West. NEWSNIGHT goes to California when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Polls are open in California for about another 45 minutes, a little less than that, and we can say that now without worrying about dating ourselves when the program repeats, because we're staying up late and we'll do it all over again. Is this a great job or what?

Fortunately, there's a lot of fascinating stuff on this Primary Day in California. You've got LA's former mayor, a very popular mayor in Los Angeles, a man supported by the White House, and he seems on the verge of blowing one of the biggest leads imaginable, and that would be the big story out West tonight, if it weren't for an otherwise obscure California Congressman and his relationship with a now missing intern.

We have gone almost six months on NEWSNIGHT without saying the words we are about to say, Gary Condit. Here's CNN's Frank Buckley.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Congressman Gary Condit would certainly surprise the nation if he was reelected. He is down in the polls, and he is still dogged by the scandal and the case of the missing intern, Chandra Levy.

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: What do you believe happened to Chandra Levy?

REPRESENTATIVE GARY CONDIT (D) CALIFORNIA: Where are you from?

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: BBC, British television.

CONDIT: Where?

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: BBC.

CONDIT: What city do you live in?

UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT: I live in Los Angeles.

CONDIT: I don't have any idea.

BUCKLEY: Condit's contempt for questions like those seemingly part of the campaign strategy that is, "don't let the media decide." CONDIT: We think the people of the 18th Congressional District will decide, will decide. They should make the decision on who is going to be the representative in the 18th Congressional District, and we're not going to allow the people outside the district to do that.

BUCKLEY: The message resonates with at least some voters who supported Condit as he went from City Councilman to Supervisor to State Assemblyman to Congressman, over the course of 30 years.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a Condit supporter, and I probably will always be a Condit supporter.

BUCKLEY: But the Gary Condit that voted today faced five fellow Democrats on the ballot, an unheard of challenge to a previously dominant incumbent, who won seven of 10 votes in the last election.

But Condit's lack of public contrition of the Levy scandal, say observers, left a bad impression. Sandy Lucas is the chair of the local Democratic Committee.

SANDY LUCAS, DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE CHAIR: The district was looking for that, and he would have been fine.

BUCKLEY: Instead, Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza, a former aide is the frontrunner.

DENNIS CARDOZA, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE: I'm just charged up and ready to go to Washington as soon as we can get this November election over with.

BUCKLEY: Condit says he still expects to win, but if he doesn't, life will go on.

CONDIT: It's just an election. You guys are, you're making this over dramatic. It's an election.

BUCKLEY (on camera): But it's one that sets up a strange dynamic if Condit is able to pull off the upset victory tonight, because the Democratic establishment that once supported Gary Condit, that doesn't support him now, will have to decide whether or not it wants to once again back Gary Condit or risk losing a seat to the Republicans in the General Election in November.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Modesto, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: All right, that's the story the Democrats in Modesto. The Republican side, Judy Woodruff is in Los Angeles. She's at the Republican Party Headquarters now. Judy, let's talk about the gubernatorial race. Mayor Riordan looked like a lock on this thing a while back. It certainly doesn't look that way now.

WOODRUFF: Well, Aaron, it was just a little more than two weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago that the polls were showing Dick Riordan, as you said earlier, the very popular former mayor of Los Angeles to something like a 40 point lead, and everybody just wrote this race off. They thought Riordan, who is a moderate Republican, was going to walk away in a contest with two more conservative Republicans, Bill Simon and Bill Jones.

Well what's happened, a combination of $10 million in ads from the Democratic Governor Gray Davis, who didn't want to run against Riordan and would rather run against a conservative, and also I thing we'd have to say mistakes by Riordan himself had turned this thing completely around. The latest polls now show Simon with a comfortable lead.

BROWN: And the mistakes would be what?

WOODRUFF: Well, a couple of them. Number one, and again you have to realize I'm a real expert, Aaron. I've been here all of a day and a half. I've been covering this primarily from Washington, so, truth in packaging.

But I think most of the people you talk to out here say that he made a mistake by pretty much taking his Republican base for granted, and starting out this campaign focusing on Gray Davis, and focusing on a General Election, when he really had to win over the Republican conservatives to come out to vote in a Republican primary. That was the first.

And then the second, you'd have to say, are some of some of the, you know, Dick Riordan classic lines. For example, he said of the former, again very popular Republican governor out here, George Deukmejian. This may be a little inside, but it's what they talk about here in California.

At one point, Dick Riordan said, "well, he holds grudges." This is after Duekmejian criticized him. Well, this was blasphemy at a Republican State Convention. So those are the kinds of things we're talking about.

BROWN: And, just a technical question, are Democrats allowed to vote in a Republican primary?

WOODRUFF: Democrats are not allowed to vote, but you may vote in either primary, Republican or Democratic, if you are not declared, and I'm told about 15 percent of the electorate here is not declared. And so, it is possible that the "not declared" could go in, assuming the Republican electorate, which is a makeup of about 30, 35 percent of the vote here in California. If they went in and primarily voted for Bill Simon, it's possible that the "not declared" could tilt it back toward Riordan, but people out here who follow this very closely, say that's not really likely.

BROWN: Well, in a couple of hours, we'll have some real news out of there, and we'll just come back and do this segment again. Judy, thank you.

WOODRUFF: You're welcome.

BROWN: Judy Woodruff, at the Republican Party Headquarters in Los Angeles tonight, the California gubernatorial race on the line, coming up in the fall. When we come back, deadly combat in Afghanistan. We talked about that, and a reality check from the Pentagon. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Almost from the first moment of the war, everyone from the President on down made sure to underscore the enduring part of Operation Enduring Freedom. This could take years, they said. It would cost American lives. There might be no clean finish line.

They said it. We reported it, and then all of a sudden, everything seemed to go right, and the question is, did that success lull all of us in the media, and perhaps you at home as well, to sleep? Whatever the answer, today the administration decided a wakeup call was in order.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VICTORIA CLARKE, PENTAGON SPOKESWOMAN: We have always said that the further this went on, the harder it would get. The people who are left fighting, the al Qaeda, are among the toughest, the most violent, the most committed to fighting this out to the end. So we always knew it would get extremely difficult.

Then you add into that the conditions, the terrain in which they are. We saw a map of it yesterday. It is extraordinarily difficult, high altitudes in many cases. The weather, it is very, very cold there. So they are operating under extremely difficult conditions. But as I said, they are forward leaning, and they are approaching this very aggressively.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: This question of complacency is an interesting one. We take it up with Tori Clarke's predecessor. Ken Bacon was the Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton Administration. He is no stranger to missions of managing expectations. He's now the President of Refugees International. Mr. Bacon joins us tonight from Washington. Ken, it's nice to see you again. You're a familiar face I suspect to many of our viewers. It's good to have you on the program.

KEN BACON, FORMER PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: Great to be here, Aaron.

BROWN: Assuming someone messed up here, OK, did the press mess up? Did the Pentagon mess up? Did nobody mess up, but everybody jumped to sort of logical conclusions?

BACON: Well, I'm not sure anybody messed up. For a long while, it's been clear that there have been two real security problems in Afghanistan. The first are the remnants of al Qaeda and Taliban, and these are substantial, because Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are still at large. Second is the internal security problems in Afghanistan, the banditry, the warlordism, this interfering with the distribution of relief supplies throughout the country. These are both problems that had to be addressed. The administration has been very clear that it planned to mop up al Qaeda and that this would be difficult.

BROWN: And so, did we ignore that or at least not report it in with the strength that it ought to have been?

BACON: Probably, you didn't report it with the strength you should have, but predicting is always difficult and let's face it, there were real diversions. First, Daniel Pearl, a very compelling, sad story about the death of a "Wall Street Journal" reporter at the hands of Pakistani kidnappers. Second, the Olympics, another compelling story. Third, the increasing tension in the Middle East which you have covered so well on this program. So there have been diversions for the public and for the press that maybe have deflected attention from what's been happening in the Afghanistan.

Also, remember, over the last couple of months, what we've heard about are preparations and we've seen some hints of the preparations by American troops, but we haven't really focused on the preparations because there was not a battle. There's nothing like a battle to focus the media's attention in what's happening. There's nothing like a quiet period to make the media turn away to other stories. And I think that that's what's happened over the last month or so.

BROWN: Now, just before I ask you the next question, but while we're talking, we're getting some pictures coming in from Afghanistan now. They're literally being fed live as we talk and they'll be on the screen as we continue.

When you're at the Pentagon in moments like this, do you say, look, we need to make this point louder because it's really clear when I go to the supermarket, people think this thing is over?

BACON: Well, I think that the most important thing at the Pentagon is to do everything you can to maintain your credibility. So you can't over manage expectations. You have to basically tell people what you expect to happen as best you can, given the fact that a lot of military operations are going to be secret and you can't talk about plans.

It's very clear, the Pentagon was planning this operation for weeks. General Myers said at the Pentagon yesterday that he had gone to Afghanistan and reviewed these plans over two weeks ago, had gotten a very detailed briefing on the plans and they were well advanced and he had great confidence in the plans. For him to have done that two weeks ago means the military had been planning this at least for several weeks before that.

So they clearly knew that this was coming. They couldn't obviously foreshadow that to the press or the public.

BROWN: In moments like this, do you miss the job? Would you have liked to be at the podium doing the work that...

BACON: You know, I loved it while I was there. It's a wonderful job. But I also love what I'm doing, which is working for refugees and displaced people. There are a lot of problems to deal with and they keep me well occupied. So I think that Secretary Rumsfeld and his team is doing a very good job. I wish them well and I'm glad I'm not there.

BROWN: And you did a terrific job yourself when you were there. It's nice to see you again. We've always enjoyed talking to you.

BACON: Thank you very much.

BROWN: Thank you, Ken. Ken Bacon, the former Pentagon spokesman.

And we have much more ahead on "NEWSNIGHT" on this Tuesday. We'll take a break and be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We are getting in, as we sit here now, more pictures coming from Afghanistan of this battle that's been going on, a battle that has already claimed eight American lives. It's been the most ferocious battle of the war so far. And in many cases, it has not -- perhaps this is self evident. I mean, eight Americans have lost their lives -- but it hasn't gone as well as planned. A rescue operation was mounted to try and pull people out of there. Apache helicopters have been lost. The enemy, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, perhaps, 500 or 600 left, 200 dead, have been fierce.

Marty Savidge has been to the scene, traveled there and back. He's at Bagram now. He's on the phone and he's able to see these pictures as they come in. At least, I assume that's correct, Marty?

SAVIDGE: You're right, Aaron. I can see them as they come in. And what you're looking at right now is we flew in in the middle of the night, Sunday night. It was actually very early Monday morning local time. Landed in darkness, and then began what was at least a six-kilometer hike at an altitude of about 9,000 feet.

The soldiers went in heavily armed this time. They weren't going in lightly as before. And here you can just see that after making part of that hike at that high altitude, it just literally brings you to your knees, so you could only move so far. They would have to rest and then move on.

What you can't tell here is that this is a very narrow valley that we're working our way through trying to get to a cave or a series of caves and a number of thought to be Taliban positions. And trying to get in those caves was key because it's believed that there was al Qaeda leadership there. So it's a very slow, difficult process, because you try to keep people doing overwatches, they call it, those walking on the high ridges while the main body snakes its way up through this very narrow canyon. And it's very, very dangerous in this particular point because anyone, obviously, firing from above could pin down a lot of soldiers trying to shoot straight up in the air.

BROWN: And this battle is being waged by mortars, by what? Is there artillery in play here? Are the Americans getting air support? How is it being waged? SAVIDGE: The air support -- as far as the Americans, what's being brought in is, yes, you have air support, everything from fighter jets that are constantly coming by dropping munitions, as well as B-52s just then come by and drop huge amounts of ordnance. You have the Apache helicopters that have the Hellfire missiles as well as their 30 millimeter cannons. You have also some of the fighter planes that are (UNINTELLIGIBLE) with their cannons.

There is no fixed artillery pieces, but then you have the AC-130 gunships. They have, I believe, a 105-Howitzer that's mounted in the bottom of the airframe that actually fires artillery shells from the air that goes in. And then they have the electric guns that can clear the area the size of a football field with what they call a curtain of steel.

And they bring in mortars. The most effective ones so far have been the 120-millimeter mortars which are a huge mortar. They look like a bomb from an airplane that they've brought in now to assist as forces move forward. So that's what the U.S. has.

As far as al Qaeda and Taliban, they're using mortars and they have used them very effectively, RPGs, 50-caliber machine guns and AK- 47s.

BROWN: Now, Marty, we have got about a minute here. And just to reorient our viewers, we are looking at -- go ahead and take this full screen, you guys -- we're looking at pictures that are being fed live. This is essentially what we call raw video. We haven't seen it before. No edits have been made in it. And this is -- Marty, is this shot by us or by defense department?

SAVIDGE: No this -- everything you're looking at is shot by us. And the difficulty for Scott, and according to the cameraman, of course, is carry a camera that weighs about 30 pounds, plus we took in batteries which weigh close to 100 pounds, plus water and food that you are going to need.

We weren't as loaded down as the soldiers, who carry 100 pounds of equipment on their back. But at that altitude even small distances, as you could see, it's very rugged. Very steep, it's constantly an uphill climb and very difficult terrain, plus the snow and the cold.

They say that there are three enemies, that they face -- the Taliban, the altitude and the terrain. And all three of them together make for a very difficult opponent.

BROWN: Mary, thanks for your reporting and of course for the work you've done in the last couple of days. You look at the faces of the men, they don't look much older than boys, in many cases you see the seriousness of purpose. They understand that what's happening now is somehow different from what's gone on before. The steaks now quite high in the eastern part of Afghanistan. We'll take a break and NEWSNIGHT continues from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BROWN: Op-ed piece in today's "New York Times" went to the heart of a story that's hit the news business at least like a thunderbolt. Ted Koppel, for the first time addressing the possibility that "Nightline" on ABC could be replaced by David Letterman.

Koppel, in a very measured piece said he understood why Disney would be focused on profits these days, but he took exception to the idea that "Nightline" had lost its relevance. That's what an ABC executive said to media reporter Bill Carter of the "New York Times" who broke the story. I talked with Mr. Carter a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

Since you broke the story on Friday, what materially has changed, anything?

BILL CARTER, "NEW YORK TIMES": Yes, I would say there's been progress in the talks. I think the...

BROWN: Progress in the talks between...

CARTER: Letterman and CBS, particularly. The Letterman side and CBS I think have gotten closer than they were. I think they were dangerously adversarial for a while last week. That improved going up to my story on Friday. And then has improved to a degree since then. Whether it's enough for Dave or not is unknown.

BROWN: So -- look, one of the games that all of us have been playing since Friday is who leaked what and why? I know you're not going to give that up, but CBS, it would seem, is the beneficiary of the story so far?

CARTER: I would resist the term leaked totally. There were no leaks in the story? This was just...

BROWN: How about a plant?

CARTER: No plants. It was me pursuing something that I learned. Not through a leak at all. And chasing it. No leak. Nobody wanted the story out.

BROWN: How about the back end of the question? The principle beneficiary so far has been CBS?

CARTER: You may argue that since their position has improved. But at after the initial story they didn't feel that way at all. They didn't feel that way at all.

BROWN: If Letterman stays at CBS, is "Nightline" dead?

CARTER: I think absolutely not. I think as the days go on, the contact between the "Nightline" people and the ABC and Disney hierarchy is growing to a point where they're trying to mend fences and solve that issue by saying it's -- it's a unique situation to get a talent like this. We love your show. We're not trying to get rid of your show. We were never were trying to get rid of your show. We might have tried to move it for Letterman. But that is an extraordinary situation and we don't know that another one will come up.

But if it does we probably will pursue it for the same economic reasons.

BROWN: Well, if -- as I read the story on Friday, they say to Letterman, we have already made the decision, the show is gone.

CARTER: They basically tell Letterman, you will not be the bad guy, we're making the decision. Our decision is we want to improve the time period and get more money out of it, and it's not going to be on you that Ted Koppel is moved out.

And they have to do that because Letterman is extremely sensitive to this Koppel thing. He doesn't want Ted to be hurt. He wants to say, OK, it happened, it was not because of me. It happened.

BROWN: So how could they now -- how could ABC and Disney now go to Koppel and say, well, we actually like the program a lot.

CARTER: Well, that's the tricky one, isn't it? It is a very, very tricky one.

BROWN: I mean, that would be tricky with a dumb person, but it's really hard with a smart guy like Ted.

CARTER: Yes, I think Ted is also smart and I noticed in his Op- Ed piece to recognize that the corporate realities are something he has to live with and always has had to live with and therefore he is acknowledging that by saying, you know, I guess if they make this decision, then we'll have to consider our alternatives.

BROWN: There is obviously, there is the larger question: Which is what does this mean about the broadcast news business, what's the message?

CARTER: I think the message obviously is that any show is vulnerable. I would say that that's a fair point. I think it's saying too much as some people have said, that ABC doesn't care about news and want to get rid of their news division. In fact their news division is performing way better than their entertainment division, and if they didn't have news programs on the air, they would have no hope. "Good Morning America" is doing extremely well. That's one of their best profit centers.

They don't want to destroy the news division, but I think -- if you are saying, what's the message? Any show is vulnerable. Whether it's Barbara Walters or Ted Koppel, clearly the shows are vulnerable.

BROWN: And so you could wake up tomorrow and find a "60 Minutes" gone?

CARTER: I noticed Don Hewitt (ph) said that. He actually was quoted as saying that and I think if that show diminished, if competition came along I guess you could say that. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

BROWN: I wouldn't bet on it either. Let me take it one more step, and that is, do you see a time, based on what you've learned over the last few days and weeks, when the evening news, not all of them, but maybe one of them, is in jeopardy, the network evening newscast?

CARTER: That's interesting, because a few years ago that was an area they thought would be very vulnerable. It seems to have reasserted itself in more recent years. There was all that "the Web is taking over" stuff. Remember that. We were worried about that with newspapers too. I think there's little less of that.

But yes, of course, I think that could be true, and people have said why do we have three of these shows doing exactly the same thing. You might see some reinvention of that. I think they've backed off a little, but I bet that comes back.

BROWN: Do you have one in the paper tomorrow?

CARTER: Yes.

BROWN: What?

CARTER: There will be some information on conversations between ABC and Ted.

BROWN: Thanks.

CARTER: OK.

BROWN: Nice to meet you.

CARTER: Nice to meet you.

BROWN: And it's a heck of a scoop. Heck of a scoop. Bill Carter of the "New York Times."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, the first installment of what's an occasional series called "On the Rise." A look at young people out there with an intriguing way to create something new and make a little money on the way. That's what "On the Rise" is.

And in our first installment, a guy in his 20s who saw a perfect place for advertising, a place where you have a very captive audience of other guys just like him, at least a few times a day.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're looking for Mark Miller.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. I will let him know that you're here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everyone loves the story. Everyone loves to know about the 21-year-old who had an idea, wrote a business plan, tried to make it go at it and began a success.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: While at the University of Michigan, I had the idea of advertising in restrooms at bars and nightclubs. There are really two places where the idea came from. One was there was a Dana Carvey movie called "Opportunity Knocks" and they played on the whole idea of restroom advertising.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS")

DANA CARVEY, ACTOR: The average person spends seven-and-a-half minutes of every day staring at the back of a bathroom door.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And the second thing was, in men's rooms, they would often -- bar owners would often tack up the sports pages. My feeling, though, was that, you know, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30 at night when you're in a bar, you have already read the sports pages, so it's sort of old news. Great idea because everyone loves to read when they're in the restroom, but the idea was let's put something in front of people that's fresh, that's new.

So then, I graduated college in June of 97 and went to go at it, started to pound the pavement in New York. Bars were digging it. The advertisers was digging it. And slowly but surely, we were able to build up a pretty sizable portfolio.

This is just a sampling of some of our clients that we've put out. When you're able to see an ad, when you're captive, one on one, you can't turn the page, you can't change the channel and they're see advertising that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see, but yet it's talking to you.

Advertising in our own bathroom. If we can't convince ourselves to have it up, probably we won't be successful convincing venue owners to have the ads up.

I've really surrounded myself with just really great people who enjoy the culture, enjoy the spirit that goes along with a small company like ours. Greg Libertz (ph), Christine Rauchford (ph), Janet Budnick (ph), Liz Hart (ph), Carolyn Heskin (ph), Randy and Christa (ph). We've got two of my advisers, beefcake and mini-me.

My idea, my vision of the company was really national, hip, trendy cool. You want to be in the coolest, the trendiest, the hippest nightclubs. And you want to go where sort of -- where trends are beginning.

So here we are in Union Bar, one of my very first bars that I ever signed up, been a client ever since. We are now on our way to the restrooms.

Research shows that while in a bar, the average person goes to the restroom 3.2 times. This is my first time in the night, 2.2 to go. Eye level, law dictates that for a man standing at a urinal, you have to look straight ahead. You know, to look to the left, to the right, you become a liability. So here you are standing straight ahead, and this is the marketer's chance to get you, uninterrupted, for one to three minutes.

They say that the average person sees 3,000 advertising messages a day, but how many do they really remember? Well, I'm telling you, you know, if you're standing here for one to three minutes, and you're not looking at anything else other than this ad, this will be one of the impressions that you'll remember in the day. And, you know, obviously, that's our job and that's what we believe and that's what we're selling.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: "On the Rise". That's the work of NEWSNIGHT producer Katherine Mitchell who hadn't spent that much time in a men's room before that.

Nice to see you again. We'll see you tomorrow at 10:00. Good night.

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