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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Intelligence Committee Hearings Begin; Bush Maintains Government Could Not Have Stopped 9/11 Attacks; Trial of David Westerfield Begins

Aired June 04, 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 everyone. A viewer noted today that the program seems a bit sad of late. Actually she said she was going to have to run to one of those warehouse stores for Kleenex if we keep this up.

Another viewer noted something similar, and it is probably true. It's not just the events of Ground Zero over the last week and the build-up to them. It goes back a ways. There was the reliving of the Alabama church bombing and that made us sad. The Rilya story is so full of sadness and outrage, I can't stand it sometimes.

So in the birth of a child, Adam Pearl, whose father was murdered in Pakistan, the possibility of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, and then there is that growing sense that all of the sorrow of September 11 might -- might -- have been prevented, if only.

And yes, I think we've been wallowing a bit in our collective misfortune and sorrow, so we'll try and lighten this up a bit, but not right away. It seems that while there are no poems or songs to break your heart tonight, as we go through the whip, you'll see there aren't a lot of yuks either.

Finding the right balance is going to take us some time, unless of course we go cheesy and bring back the accordion guy. I think you'll all agree, a little better to have heartbreak than that, I think.

On we go to the whip.

And that brings us first to Jonathan Karl, who's on Capitol Hill. The Intelligence Committee hearings began today into what happened on September 11, Jon the headline please.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Those proceedings got underway with a moment of silence for the victims of 9/11. But in a related development, CNN has learned that the FBI agent in charge of the radical fundamentalist unit has been reassigned.

BROWN: Jon, thank you. We'll get more on that in a moment.

The president spoke about what might have been and the uproar over the hearings. John King, our senior White House correspondent, is at the White House tonight.

John, the headline from you.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, in his clearest language yet, the president said today, yes, there is no question the FBI and the CIA failed to share information about the terrorist threat before September 11. But the president insisted the problem is solved and said Congress should limit itself to one investigation. Otherwise, he says, the FBI chief and the CIA chief will be distracted from fighting the war on terrorism.

BROWN: John, good to see you and back with you shortly.

On to a crime story tonight, the sad case of Danielle van Dam. The trial of the man accused of killing the seven-year-old began today, Thelma Gutierrez out of our Los Angeles Bureau in San Diego tonight to cover that, Thelma the headline from you.

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, opening statements began today in the trial of 50-year-old David Westerfield. He is the man accused of kidnapping and murdering 7-year-old Danielle van Dam -- Aaron.

BROWN: Thelma, thanks, back with all of you shortly.

Also coming up, we'll talk with Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Also tonight, a very different controversy, the priest abuse scandal. Bishops met today on how to stop it from happening. We'll talk with one of those bishops in just a moment or so.

Also tonight, the odd couple looks back on their two-week, four- nation tour of Africa: a video diary of Bono and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

And, a fascinating story tonight about organized crime trafficking in women in Eastern Europe as sex slaves, the actual cost perhaps as high as $12 billion, the human cost we can only imagine. We'll talk with journalist Sebastian Younger about that. And maybe we'll find a way to lighten things up by tomorrow. We can only hope.

We begin in a very strange place, trying to make a lead story out of a top secret congressional investigation into the events of September 11. Now everyone publicly says about the same thing. We don't want to point fingers. We're not looking to play the blame game. But what people are less likely to say out loud is this.

What is the attack could have been prevented? What if the FBI and the CIA and the INS, what if they had all talked to each other and believed in each other? Might we tonight be writing about and talking about the economy or Social Security reform or just about anything other than the deaths of 3,000 people and all that came with it.

The hearings have started, and we begin tonight with CNN's Jonathan Karl. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KARL (voice over): In a super secret corner of the Capitol attic, the Joint Intelligence Committee used its first meeting to define its mission.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we will be a fact driven, witness driven review inquiry. We will not be driven by outside pressures.

KARL: The committee approved a two-page statement of purpose, saying its investigation of the September 11 attacks would search for "actions that could or should have been taken to learn of or prevent those events, and to determine whether that information indicates systemic problems that may have impeded the intelligence community from learning of or preventing the attacks."

SEN. RICHARD SHELBY (R-AL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: We're going to do a substantive, thorough, credible inquiry and we're going to let the chips fall where we find them. We're going to do a factual inquiry and then the accountability will come with the turf. That's the name of the game. We're all accountable.

KARL: But even as the committee started its work, the president speaking at the National Security Agency had words of warning for Congress.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I am concerned about is tying up valuable assets and time, and possibly jeopardizing sources of intelligence and that's why it is very important that the Congress do investigate but they do so in a way that doesn't jeopardize our intelligence gathering capacity.

KARL: Bush demanded that Congress limit its investigation to the Intelligence Committee, an idea immediately shot down by the Senate's top Democrat.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD) MAJORITY LEADER: Well, I don't understand why he would not want to get all the fact, why he would not want all the information to come to light. You can't put too much light on the questions involving our national security, on the questions involving what happened on September 11.

KARL: In fact, a second committee, Judiciary, is charging ahead with another investigation of the FBI's failures, bringing in FBI Director Robert Mueller to testify later this week, along with Coleen Rowley, the Minneapolis field agent who accused FBI Headquarters of mishandling the investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARL: And today the Judiciary Committee met secretly with Dave Frasca, the former head of the FBI's radical fundamentalist unit and the agent that many up here on Capitol Hill believe is the one person who should have had access to two of the biggest dots that were never connected. Frasca was the point person in FBI Headquarters for the Moussaoui investigation in Minneapolis, and his name was also on the distribution list for the Phoenix memo that warned about the Middle Eastern men training at U.S. flight schools. Frasca told the committee that he actually never saw the Phoenix memo.

But Aaron, in a very interesting development that we have learned this evening, Dave Frasca has been reassigned. Just last week, the FBI reassigned him, moving him off that radical fundamentalist unit into a lateral position within the agency, but not within that antiterrorism unit. Aaron.

BROWN: Well, I don't want to suggest we're quite burying the lead, but that is a tantalizing little piece of information. This was obviously done quietly. Is there any question that it was disciplinary?

KARL: Well yes, the very sources that have told us about that say that nobody at the FBI has yet been disciplined for anything related to 9/11, that this was simply a lateral move, but it comes just as Congress is starting to look at Dave Frasca as again that person who should have had access to both those dots that were never connected.

BROWN: Jon, thank you, Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill tonight. Thank you. We're joined now by Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat from the State of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Senator, it's good to see you again. Thanks for joining us. What do you know now that you didn't know yesterday that you can tell us?

SEN. EVAN BAYH (D), INDIANA: Well, we know the scope of the committee's investigation, Aaron.

We're going to start with the establishment of the counterterrorism center in 1986 in the CIA and walk it forward from there to give this inquiry some context, to figure out what was the scope of the threat of the terrorist threat to the country, what was our response, and most importantly, what can we do better going forward so this kind of thing hopefully never happens again?

BROWN: In Jon's report, we heard someone say that one of the questions to look at is, are there any systemic problems? Are there problems with the systems between the FBI, the CIA, all the intelligence gathering and the rest? Is there any question that there are systemic problems based on what we've learned since September 11?

BAYH: I don't think there's any question. Clearly, we had trouble connecting the dots because not all the dots were on the same page. The CIA knew some things it wasn't communicating to the FBI apparently and vice versa, and there are also some cultural issues here, Aaron.

These are institutions that, by nature have not been as communicative with each other and other agencies as they should be and they need to be more proactive in searching out terrorists and breaking them up, rather than just responding to the threats. BROWN: How do you strike the balance between pointing fingers, I mean we can all sit here and say that it's not about finger pointing, but clearly you need to identify people and systems that didn't work. Pointing fingers and looking forward, how do you strike that balance?

BAYH: Well it's a tough balance to strike, but I think in order to protect the country moving forward, you have to look at what the problems are. Now if there's disciplinary action that comes out of that, well then that will be incidental to the principal reason for the inquiry as to how do we improve the system moving forward?

So you look at the past to improve the future. It's possible that there will be some accountability that comes out of that, but that will be fact driven, rather than as a product of a search for scapegoats.

BROWN: Are you convinced that despite the best intentions of everyone involved that this will not be seen as political?

BAYH: I really don't think it will be political. That's one other thing we learned today at the hearing. In addition to the scope, there was a good bipartisan consensus about where we need to go.

We've covered that already about not scapegoating, about looking forward, and I think, Aaron, pretty clearly the American people would not look favorably upon anyone who tried to politicize this. So, in fact, I think the politics would boomerang and because of that reason, I think it will be played right down the middle.

BROWN: Senator, I do think there is a broader question. Obviously, Senator Daschle looked at this some today and that is whether or not the Intelligence Committees of the House and the Senate is the right or the only forum for this. Do you believe there ought to be an independent commission, the Warren Commission of this, the Rockefeller Commission of this or is Congress the right place to learn the answers?

BAYH: I am predisposed at this time to think that the Intelligence Committee is the right location, but that's going to depend upon a couple of things, Aaron.

First, the kind of cooperation that we get to make sure that the inquiry isn't just sort of papering over something, and we can really get to the heart of the matter, which is how do we do a better job preventing the tragedy next time?

Until about three weeks ago, frankly, there had not been very good cooperation. That seems to be changing now and if it continues moving forward then I think we'll be able to have a thorough inquiry. So that's number one.

Number two is there are some things beyond the scope of the Intelligence Committee, for example the role of the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, some other things that, you know, might be relevant to this inquiry that ought to be looked at that frankly are just beyond our purview and I think that's what Tom Daschle was speaking to.

BROWN: Just quickly here, when you talk about there wasn't adequate cooperation, what is it you weren't getting that you needed?

BAYH: Well, documents, access to witnesses, a whole variety of things. And there was actually a pretty testy exchange in the committee bipartisanly, frustration that we were just not getting the kind of cooperation necessary to make it a meaningful inquiry, so that was the case.

But I want to emphasize that seems to have changed now. We're getting a lot of information, access to witnesses, and if this continues going forward, I think we'll get to the bottom of the kind of facts the American people deserve, and we can make the systemic changes, the cultural changes that we need to make going forward.

But the final point I'd make, Aaron, this is going to take some persistence, not just the inquiry but implementing the decisions necessary to actually make a difference next time. That's not going to be a one day or a one week story. That's going to be a process of months or even years.

BROWN: Let me ask you, one of the things that's difficult here is you're dealing obviously with a lot of classified information, sensitive information, the fact the hearings took place in the most sensitive building, sensitive office in the Capitol. How much can the American people expect to learn from these hearings?

BAYH: A surprising amount. There are ways to protect intelligence sources and methods while still getting many of the facts out that will give the American people a pretty clear picture of what was the nature of the threat we were facing and how did the government handle it?

Is the government doing a good job or was the government doing a good job of addressing that concern, and if not, have a pretty good road map for what we need to do better next time.

So while there won't be names and dates and places in some instances, there will be a lot there for the American people to get a good sense of whether real fundamental change is necessary, as I believe is the case or not.

BROWN: Senator Bayh, it's always good to talk to you. Thanks for coming in tonight, Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and member of the Intelligence Committee.

Obviously, this is all awkward for President Bush. Whether he'd like to or not, and we don't know, he can not come out and oppose an investigation. That's not realistic. At the same time, he's made clear he does not want an independent commission, the Warren Commission of this tragedy if you will, and today he made it clear that one investigation is enough. There is other work to be done and as if to underscore that point, he made the comments at the National Security Agency.

We go back to the White House and our senior White House correspondent John King with the president's side of things.

John, good evening.

KING: Good evening to you, Aaron. The president visited NSA headquarters, the National Security Agency, the chief eavesdropping agency for the intelligence community. A private pep talk to the 5,000 employees there, but then he came out to speak to reporters clearly looking to put his stamp on these investigations.

The president saying for all the revelations -- some would say outrages -- about what the government knew but did not share between agencies before September 11, he still is convinced that there is no evidence at all -- that he has seen, anyway -- that the government could have done anything to stop the attacks.

Still, the president said there is also no question that the FBI and the CIA failed to share clues and suspicions about the terrorist threat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: In terms of whether or not the FBI and the CIA were communicating properly, I think it is clear that they weren't and that now we've addressed that issue and the CIA and the FBI are now in close communications. There's better sharing of intelligence, and one of the things that is essential to win this war is to have the best intelligence possible, and when we get the best intelligence, to be able to share it throughout our government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Implicit in the president's remarks there, votes of confidence in his CIA Director and his FBI Director as these congressional investigations get underway. Again, the president putting his own popularity and prestige on the line, if you will, in insisting Congress stick to just one investigation into what the government knew before 9/11.

The president also publicly playing down the finger pointing of late between the FBI and the CIA, but we are told by several senior officials here at the White House tonight, the president is quite furious about this, that he and other top officials have made clear to Bob Mueller, to George Tenet, and to their deputies the president expects an end to the sniping. As one senior official said tonight, we don't need any self-inflicted wounds -- Aaron.

BROWN: This is such a complicated institutional question that's gone on a lot longer than either of us have been around. Does the president accept, I think the word I want is "responsibility" here, that whatever went wrong at the CIA and the FBI happened on his watch and that he's the guy, and he's responsible?

KING: Yes and no, if you will. The president certainly says he is the man in charge of this government. He is responsible for it. But he also has said and his senior aides are saying it in much more detail, that many of these communication breakdowns go back into the Clinton Administration and indeed, back well beyond that. This is not a new issue, if you will.

Brad Skocroft (ph) was national security adviser in former President Bush's administration. He is now -- I saw him walking down the driveway here just yesterday, the administration's point man in yet another debate about whether all these agencies need to be reformed, whether the Defense Intelligence Agency should be pulled out of the Pentagon and matched up with the CIA.

This debate goes back decades, of course, now getting a great deal of attention because of the tragedy of September 11. Will the president say he's responsible for the government? Yes. Will he say these problems predate him? He'll say that, yes, too.

BROWN: John, thank you, our senior White House correspondent John King tonight.

And so where is the CIA director when all this talk is happening? That's one of the questions our next guest wants to talk about a bit. But there's more on Michael Kramer's mind than that. This is NEWSNIGHT. He's next. We're in New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: September 11 has been called the worst intelligence disaster since Pearl Harbor, which is not exactly a great thing to have on your resume if you're the director of the CIA. So as the hearings began George Tenet was in Ramallah, talking with Yasser Arafat and the men in charge of putting some kind of Palestinian police force back together, talking to the Israelis too.

Our guest tonight, out next guest at least, says that's the wrong place for Mr. Tenet to be with so much on the CIA's plate these days. In fairness though, our guest has other issues with Mr. Tenet there or here. Michael Kramer writes a column for the "New York Daily News," runs the paper, too, in many respects. A number of -- at least two heads on the chopping block in his column today.

It's nice to see you.

MICHAEL KRAMER, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": You too.

BROWN: Well you make the argument that both Mr. Tenet and the FBI Director Mr. Mueller got to go?

KRAMER: Yes, I do -- and reluctantly. I am not one who's hysterically calling for heads to roll generally, but I think they have to in this instance for objective and symbolic reasons.

BROWN: Let me set Tenet aside for a second...

KRAMER: Sure.

BROWN: ... and deal with Mueller first because here's a guy who I think was on the job about seven days before this happened.

KRAMER: That's right. BROWN: Is it really fair to saddle him with either -- with the symbolic failures of the FBI presuming there were some or the real failures?

KRAMER: Maybe not. It may not be fair to saddle Tenet with them either, even though he was there for a lot longer. I think that things have gotten so critical, so out of hand that the only way to get this cooperation that everybody famously says is now going on to really occur, is to put some new people in place and with it a statement by the president, the appointing agency, that he's doing that in order to get these people to work together.

BROWN: It will get their attention. I mean the guy that's fired, he gets their attention clearly.

KRAMER: He'll get everybody's. Well you want to get the agents in the field.

BROWN: Yes.

KRAMER: You want to get to them and to the middle managers. You want to get their attention. They're a permanent bureaucracy. They're generally impervious to changes at the top and you want them to realize that this is a serious business finally.

BROWN: I think there's a problem of human nature here. I suspect in your newsroom the local desk doesn't trust the national desk, and I know we fight with our morning program and they fight with us.

KRAMER: Yes.

BROWN: And there is within organization and within human beings a reluctance to share and trust, and I have this feeling, honestly, that my daughter's going to talk to your kid someday about this and it's essentially going to be the same issue.

KRAMER: I think that's probably right, and one of the reasons I think these guys need to be replaced is because we are talking about it as the same issue. In 1975, you had the Rockefeller Commission, an independent commission, which was investigating CIA activities domestically that were prohibited by law. Great call, hue and cry about things changing, nothing ever changed.

When Oliver James was exposed as a CIA, you know, turncoat, the FBI was pointing fingers at him.

BROWN: Right.

KRAMER: Right. When Hanssen was exposed as an FBI turncoat, the CIA was pointing fingers at the FBI. After each of these instances, both agencies have pledged cooperation. The White House has said we're finally going to all work together on this and here we are again.

BROWN: And here we are, so. KRAMER: I understand, you're saying it's human nature and you can't get by that.

BROWN: Well yes, but I think we made clear where I'm coming from here. Why not and there are some good why-nots here, merge all of this into one kind of over intelligence, foreign and domestic group? Would that help?

KRAMER: I think that might help, yes, certainly not under the aegis of Tom Ridge and Homeland Security, but possibly. On the other hand, you know, you have and we call him CIA director.

BROWN: Yes.

KRAMER: George Tenet. His official title is Director of Central Intelligence. That title implies and in fact is supposed to mean that he is the coordinator of the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, all of the agencies, including part of the FBI that deals with counterterrorism.

BROWN: That has clearly not been the case.

KRAMER: Right. Right, exactly. Why not? Well because of independent fiefdoms from bureaucracy, so it may make sense to merge them together. It may make sense to put somebody else in who has a specific charge to make these things work better.

BROWN: Do you think either of these guys will, in fact, get fired over this?

KRAMER: I think it depends on what comes out of these hearings or what's leaked out of these hearings shall we say. What comes out publicly will probably be a lot less interesting than what's leaked out of the private sessions.

BROWN: And if one or the other was going to go, I assume Mr. Tenet's the most vulnerable.

KRAMER: I would suppose so.

BROWN: He was there for a while.

KRAMER: I would suppose so.

BROWN: It's nice to meet you. Thanks for coming in, a really interesting column this morning.

KRAMER: Thanks a lot.

BROWN: Michael Kramer, thank you. A couple of other quick notes before we take a break here, we've learned the Justice Department will expand the program to fingerprint visitors coming into the United States. Currently this only applies to visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya and the Sudan. Sources tell us the list will now grow to include a number of other countries believed to support terrorism. And there is this also, the ACLU filed five lawsuits today on behalf of five men who say they were thrown off of flights because somebody on those planes thought they looked dangerous.

Four of the five are U.S. citizens. One is a permanent resident. Two of the five are of Arab descent. One of the men, a New Yorker, says that he was removed from a flight after another passenger told the captain, "those brown-skinned men are behaving suspiciously." The ACLU has filed suit.

As NEWSNIGHT continues, the question of aid to Africa explained by Bono, that's later in the program. Up next, a plan for addressing the Catholic Church's priest sex abuse problem, does it go far enough? We'll talk to one of the bishops who helped write it when NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: For weeks now we've been waiting for the American bishops of the Roman Catholic Church to meet in Dallas and unveil their new policy, their plan for dealing with the issue of sex abuse within the priesthood. No matter what the report said, there were going to be many people who will say, why did it take so long and cost so much, so much church money and so much to the church's image?

The report today dealt with a lot in a very Catholic way, confessed, asked forgiveness and relied on words in the Bible. The reports says quite clearly that any priest who sexually abuses a child should be defrocked, but there are some caveats to that, suggestions from the committee buried inside that aren't so black and white.

Joining us tonight to talk about the meetings and the report Bishop George Niederauer. He is the bishop in Salt Lake City. He joins us tonight from Dallas where the meeting is going on. Sir, it's nice to see you.

BISHOP GEORGE NIEDERAUER, SALT LAKE CITY DIOCESE: Thank you.

BROWN: Let's work with the one strike question. It is not absolute but it's pretty close, is that it?

NIEDERAUER: Yes, it is. I think it's very close. Anybody who offends in this way from now on even once, that person would be out of priestly administering; anybody in the past, who has offended more than once, would be out of priestly ministering.

There is a provision for a process of review for someone who has offended only once, and that provision takes it away from being decided just in the bishop's office. It opens up the process very widely.

The person has to have received treatment. The person must not be diagnosed as a pedophile. There must be only one offense. Then there can be a review process, and in that review process, the diocesan review board, which would consist mostly of laity, would make a recommendation. The victim and the victim's family or representative would have input to the recommendation.

And if the person were to be returned to some kind of ministry as a priest, he would have to have his -- there would have to be full disclosure about his past conduct to the community to which he would minister.

BROWN: Does the report require that the police be called in these -- if these complaints are made?

NIEDERAUER: Oh, yes. In one section of the charter, I think it's actually article IV, there is a call for every bishop to report any crime against a minor. And even if someone should come forward, let's say at age 25, and something happened 10 years before, the person is no longer a minor, but to report that as well, and to be sure to say to anyone who comes forward that they have the right to make a report to the civil authorities.

BROWN: But whether they individually make that report or not, the church, the archdiocese in that community, will, in fact, notify the appropriate agencies?

NIEDERAUER: Should make that report, that's correct.

BROWN: And I'm sorry, sir.

NIEDERAUER: Oh, excuse me.

BROWN: Are these recommendations to, or are these directives for?

NIEDERAUER: These are directives for. You know, about nine years ago, Aaron, the bishops voted on very good clear guidelines and suggested model policies for dioceses. And the bishops who voted for that went home, and many of them implemented them, and I think assumed that the other bishops were implementing them, too. And that didn't happen.

So now we need to call for a uniform approach, and we need to establish this national office, which is also, of course, in the charter, to review policies and make periodic suggestions for revision of policies.

BROWN: One of the things that has come up a number of times, and we've talked about this, is a demand by many in the Catholic community that the church, in a sense, open its books, that it lay out how many cases there has been, how much it has paid out in settlements, redact those names of victims if that seems to be appropriate, but to lay it all out in a way that congregants understand what the cost of this has been. Do you address that?

NIEDERAUER: I don't think it actually -- I don't think the charter actually says that every case ought to be laid out and every settlement that's been made. I think that different jurisdictions, different states and jurisdictions might have different rules about how that ought to be done, and laws. And I think that the bishop ought to conform to the laws there, obey the laws as they're stated in that jurisdiction. But the state law in California, or Utah, Alabama might be different from each other.

BROWN: And finally, is this the final word? Or does Rome -- and I'm not always sure what I mean when I say that, to be honest -- does Rome have to sign off on this?

NIEDERAUER: There has to be, certainly, a report made to the Holy See. I can't -- I find it just difficult to imagine, and I think I know Church a little bit, to imagine that there would be any kind of demur about this.

But it is a first step, Aaron. With -- this is the step we must take now. There must be accountability. There must be uniformity of policy. And we must put these things in place and assure people that we're going to abide by them. Now if there have to be some kind of clearance later on, that's fine. But what's important for us to do right now is take this first step.

BROWN: Bishop, thanks for joining us. I know these are difficult days, and a lot of work went into the report today. Thanks for explaining it.

NIEDERAUER: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

We have much more ahead in NEWSNIGHT. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We tend to think of the cost war in terms of people killed, buildings damaged, territories seized, but there are so many other costs. And this is a story about one of them, the chaos and social breakdown that often comes after a war, and the people who take advantage of all that, namely criminals, the gangsters.

Textbook case can be found in the July issue of "Vanity Fair." The story's called "Slaves of the Brothel." It's about the trafficking of Eastern European women as sex slaves in post-war Kosovo and beyond. It is a gripping read, written and reported by Sebastian Junger, who joins us now.

It nice to see you. The difference here is, in some respects, is scope, isn't it? I mean, there's always been, or not always, but in the last decade or so, there's been this problem of Eastern European women who live quite poorly, seeking a way out and ending on the streets in Italy and other parts of Europe?

SEBASTIAN JUNGER, "VANITY FAIR" MAGAZINE WRITER: It's a terrible problem. I was in Moldova, pretty much the poorest country in Europe. The average wage is $30 a month. One quarter of the country has left Moldova in search of work elsewhere. It's unbelievable. It's medieval poverty.

And these women, young women, some of them have children, they think they're going to get jobs as waitresses in Italy, things like that. BROWN: So they don't think they're entering a life of prostitution?

JUNGER: No, no, absolutely not. They're sort of pursuing this dream as a waitress or a nanny in Italy. And they make a deal with a local trafficker, that he will smuggle them into Italy. And at that point, her life is not in her own hands.

In fact, they get trafficked to places like Kosovo and wind up sold to a pimp. And for $2,000, $3,000. And then they can't escape. They don't have their passport. They owe the pimp the money that he paid for her. They have to work it off. It's set up so they can never pay it off. And it's just horrible limbo.

BROWN: And again, this is about scope, it seems to me, because this goes on in Thailand with very young children. It probably goes on, you know, 10 blocks from here in New York in a slightly different way. But it is the numbers of women and the amount of money that strikes me as outsized here.

BROWN: Yes. Well, what's very dangerous about it is that many of the republics of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, Maldova, and also countries like Romania, they're really on the edge of economic collapse. And there's -- well, there's an exodus, a tremendous exodus of desperate people into Western Europe. And they're bringing with them organized crime, prostitution and desperation.

I mean, it really is a destabilizing force in Europe. And a lot of it gets routed through the Balkans. Most of the heroin that comes from Asia goes through the Balkans. I mean, the Balkans are just a conduit for things we don't want in our backyard, basically.

BROWN: And you're right about the other side of this, which is the bad guys running it as a mafia. And I'm curious if you meant that in way that I think of it. That is to say, an organized structure. There's a godfather of some sort. There's a bunch of, you know, underlings, you know. Is that it or is it just a bunch of toughs with guns?

JUNGER: You know, I think - I mean, I was sort of using the word more just to mean organized crime in a looser sense. And it's interesting because the Moldovan mafia, they work with the Romanian mafia. And the Romanian mafia passes these girls on to the Serbian mafia. And then the Serbian mafia works with the Albanian mafia.

And those guys were fighting each other a few years ago. But when it comes to business...

BROWN: Right, I was going to say, business is business.

JUNGER: All their problems are over. Yes, it's amazing. And that connection is very, very hard to break. And of course, Kosovo is quite a lawless place. And there are brothels all over the place. And it's very hard to prove prostitution. These girls look like they're just strip dancers. And in fact, they're prostitutes. And it's almost impossible, given the laws in Kosovo, it's almost impossible for the U.N. police to crack it.

BROWN: It's -- and should, just briefly, the women trying to flee, they regret it?

JUNGER: You know, they really can't. They don't have their passports. They've been told that the police will rape them and put them in jail. In fact, the police sometimes sell them back to the traffickers. So it's a really tough spot. And the U.N., some of the U.N. police are in these brothels. I mean, it's a very complicated problem.

BROWN: Yes. Nice to see you. Thanks for coming in. It's this month's "Vanity Fair." Lots of cool stuff in there. It's nice to see you again.

JUNGER: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

And as we continue, we have more. This is NEWSNIGHT on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There are few stories where that most overused phrase, "every parent's worst nightmare," really applies. But this is clearly one of them, the case of Danielle Van Dam, tucked in one night, gone the next morning, found weeks later murdered.

The man accused of killing the San Diego child back in February went on trial today. And it was clear from opening arguments that this will be an ugly case in more ways than one. The defense is targeting the child's parents and how they lived their lives in trying to create reasonable doubt.

Reporting it for us is Thelma Gutierrez.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

THELMA GUTIERREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): David Westerfield sat in court. He stared straight ahead, and appeared to tremble as the prosecution laid out what they described as a mountain of physical evidence against him.

JEFF DUSEK, PROSECUTOR: The blood in the hallway matched up to Danielle Van Dam. We found three hairs. There were fingerprints found in the motor home, by the bed in the bedroom. Back by the headboard, off to the side, there's a cabinet.

GUTIERREZ: Blood, hair and fingerprints, evidence the prosecution hopes will convince jurors that David Westerfield, a twice-divorced father of two, kidnapped and murdered seven-year-old Danielle Van Dam.

STEVE FELDMAN, WESTERFIELD'S DEFENSE ATTY.: We have doubts as to cause of death. We have doubts as to the identity of Danielle Van Dam's killer. We have doubts as to who left her where she resided, where she remained. And we have doubts as to who took her. Darn.

GUTIERREZ: Snapping his fingers and slamming the podium, defense attorney Steven Feldman told jurors Westerfield is a conservative computer engineer, that it was Damon and Brenda Van Dam's hedonistic lifestyle that could have exposed Danielle to danger, especially the night before Danielle was reported missing. It was Brenda's night out with the girls.

FELDMAN: And they're turning the radio up so loud, it can be heard. And they're rocking out. They are literally rocking out. As the women stayed in the garage getting high, drinking, out comes Damon. Hey, what's up? Give me a hit. Barbara Easton keeps running her hand on down her breast while she's dancing publicly. And she finds it publicly -- not privately -- publicly embarrassing.

GUTIERREZ: That same friend, Barbara Easton, even ended up in Damon van Dam's bed that night, Feldman told jurors.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Now if David Westerfield is convicted, he could face the death penalty. As for Brenda and Damon Van Dam, they will not be allowed to remain in the courtroom during the trial because they are witnesses. When they do testify, they're expected to be asked heartbreaking questions about Danielle's disappearance, also very difficult personal questions about their lives.

Aaron, back to you.

BROWN: Thelma, I feel like I'm missing how these dots connect. Let's just assume that these are the two worst parents in the history of parenting. What does that have to do with whether this guy, the neighbor, killed this child or not?

GUTIERREZ: Aaron, that's a question that many people have raised, especially in light of the defense raising the questions about, and speculating about, the parents' lifestyle.

And there's a problem that they could turn off jurors, as well as, you know, people out there, like ourselves, who are wondering how the two are connected. But again, the defense says that if the Van Dams led a lifestyle where they could have exposed that child to danger or other people, then it's their responsibility to question the Van Dams. After all, they say, David Westerfield's life is on the line.

BROWN: OK. Well, we'll watch how this one plays out. A variation of blame the victim, I guess. Thelma Gutierrez in San Diego tonight.

Next on NEWSNIGHT, Bono's notebook on his tour on Africa. Bono, one last time on NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Finally from us tonight, Bono and Paul's excellent adventure. There's a moment in U2's 1988 live album "Rattle and Hum" when Bono is giving a packed stadium a lecture on apartheid. "Am I bugging you," he says in an Irish accent. "Don't mean to bug you."

You know he really does mean to bug you about the things he cares about. And for decades, the thing he has cared most about is the plight of Africa.

NEWSNIGHT producer Ted Winner recently returned from his African travels with Bono and Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Before they flew home, he asked the rock star and the former CEO for their take on the trip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BONO, MUSICIAN: Well, these trips, I've taken a few of them. I don't really know what to expect every time I go. I sort of don't want to go. Usually, that's my feelin, is just, I just don't want to go.

This time, though, I was quite hung over. I do remember that. Edge is getting married, and we had his bachelor party. And I promised myself I wouldn't drink, because I knew we had important business, but, you know what I mean. So I was kind of holding my head a little as I came over here, and just thinking, you know, "Is this going to be jive? Or are we actually going, to quote the secretary of the treasury, get some results?"

PAUL O'NEILL, TREASURY SECRETARY: When I go on the road, I really want to learn and see things. It really helps me a lot to be able to have a more personal understanding of what lives are like in different places around the world, when I'm thinking about either business or governmental policy issues.

BONO: I love being in Africa, because no one knows who I am here.

My name is Bono. I'm a rock star.

Or if they do know who I am, I'm the debt cancellation guy. I'm the "drop the debt" guy.

O'NEILL: As a general rule, I don't take my family with me. This is the first time my daughters ever traveled with me on an official trip, either in the public or the private sector.

BONO: When I'm on these trips, you know, I don't feel I'm an entertainer. I'm an activist. And I may appear friendly, and I may, you know, try to turn on what little charm I have.

But deep down, I'm very, very serious about these things, and I'm very angry.

(SINGING)

I don't know why I sang there. I just saw these people who, really, I'm sure, hadn't a clue who I was, probably been told, you know, when you do this, this is the Bono song, this is the U2 song. And I just felt for them.

(SINGING)

The only thing that I regret is I didn't get to the verse that I wanted to get to, which is "I believe in the kingdom come, then all the colors will bleed into one, but yes we're still running." I wanted to sing that for them.

If we really thought these lives have a meaning day to day in Ghana, in Uganda, in South Africa, in Soweto, if we thought they were as valuable as ours, we couldn't let them die a death to AIDS because they can't afford a dollar-and-a-half a day. Truly, this is about equality.

O'NEILL: My daughter handed me this -- must have been a three- month old, a little girl in a pink sleeper. And she had the most sparkly brown eyes and the most trusting manner. That was really a tear provider for me.

BONO: He's getting angrier by the day as he sees the great potential of this cause and how it's not been used. Is that fair?

O'NEILL: That's fair.

BONO: That's fair.

O'NEILL: But I think now an essential part for me to do as much it is possible, to transmit to the president of what we saw and how to communicate in a way that it really grabs other people. And it's not just our experience, which never gets communicated.

BONO: Some people say to me you're being used. I say, I'm here to be used, you know? It's really at what price. I really believe these people when they tell me they're serious about starting a new relationship with Africa and with the developing world. They're either lying to me or they are serious. I believe they're serious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Well, we'll see whether this was one of the great media events of all time or something else.

That's the program for tonight. We're all back tomorrow at 10:00. We hope you are, too. Good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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