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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

A Look at Embeds' Role in Coverage of Iraq War

Aired December 31, 2003 - 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, HOST: Good evening again, everyone. Welcome to a special edition of NEWSNIGHT. Tonight we'll spend an hour with some of the people who helped tell the story of the war in Iraq, our reporters who were on the front lines, some reporting on their own, some part of the Pentagon's program for embedding reporters with troops in the field.
We are always hesitant to focus on journalists and their experiences. This war wasn't about them. It certainly wasn't fought by them. But there's no denying that they had some extraordinary journeys, and they are all well worth hearing about. Maybe not the broadest picture of the war, but the pieces and the most fascinating ones we could find.

Before we get started on their stories, an update on some of the other stories that made news today.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And now to the story that dominated the year, seen through the eyes of our embeds. CNN's Walter Rodgers was with the Army's Cavalry 3rd Division. Marty Savidge assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. Jason Bellini spent the war with the Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. And CNN medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, left the newsroom to join the Devil Docs behind the front lines.

We begin our look at reporting the war in Iraq with Walter Rodgers, who even through the herky-jerky technology of the videophone brought back some of the most vivid images of the war as he raced north through the desert.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The situation here appears to be increasingly tense. A few moments ago, out on the horizon, not very far ahead of the U.S. Army's 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, we heard more than a few explosions.

The U.S. Army's 3rd Squadron 7th Cavalry has compiled a rather extraordinary record in the past several days. It was the Army which assigned me to the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, and that was extremely fortuitous. It was like sitting in a poker game and drawing four aces, because this is a crack unit. It's the tip of the spear. We've had an absolutely terrific story, pushing forward north towards Baghdad. Seventy-two hours of that was under constant fire coming at us from both sides of the road.

We just heard a -- what the hell? No, no, I don't know what it is.

What you try to do is stay calm and continue your broadcasting, but the worst thing you can do, either as a soldier or a war correspondent, is panic.

We're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is. We see some stuff in the sky. We may have to break this off. I think we're going to break off this live shot for the time being. We're not sure what we see up there. Goodbye. We've got to dive for vehicles, we think. See you, bye.

We have been under heavy fire for the past couple of miles, mostly a small arms fire. But the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road.

Let me give you an example of what the dust is like. Look at this tarp. We have been through days of dust like that.

The dust and sand are blowing so badly, you're getting these vague images. It's like being in a blizzard, except, unfortunately, the sand doesn't melt as the snow does.

The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Cavalry racing across the desert. You've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. What you're watching here is truly historic television and journalism.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Next on this special NEWSNIGHT, the other embeds. Marty Savidge, Jason Bellini, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Being an embed in Iraq meant eating and sleeping, waiting out the sandstorms right along with the troops. It also meant putting yourself in the line of fire with them as well. On the battlefield, the most routine missions can turn deadly in an instant. CNN's Martin Savidge spent the war with the 1st Battalion 7th Marines.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Behind you! Behind you! Behind you!

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Usually the scariest moments are the ones you did not anticipate at all. One particular case, it was supposed to be a routine mission. We did find a team of demolition experts that were going about trying to blow up some abandoned Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers located behind a small village. It was as milk toast as it could be.

Suddenly out of an alleyway, wham, here comes an RPG that just fizzles through the air. We had been trying to get a live report out all morning with no success. As soon as the shooting starts, bingo, the satellites all click in, and now we're going live in the middle of what was a firefight.

It's getting hot. Let's go.

That looks like the armored personnel carrier. We're going to keep moving back because these also have ammunition inside of them. There goes your tank down the end.

I volunteered to be an embed. I wanted to be in a unit as close to the front or as close to the action, as we say.

Commanders with the 1st Battalion 7th Marines who we are embedded with say that, yes, they have had a problem with guerrilla tactics that have been deployed against the supply lines.

Many military conflicts, it's about 90 percent of frustration or doing nothing.

What have you been doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sitting.

SAVIDGE: What you think about sitting?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not too happy about it.

SAVIDGE: There's an avenue of trust that has to be involved here that perhaps does stretch the boundaries when it comes to true journalism. And what I mean by that is we are in as much danger as the military force with which we are embedded.

Do you have any knives or anything on you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negative, sir.

SAVIDGE: By far, we're probably the most blacked out of any military embed. We can film and videotape during these blackouts. You just cannot file, which in our case means live reporting or beaming signals and images back to Atlanta. When you come out, it's like a black cloud has been lifted and bingo, let's get to work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We started out with the veteran of our war correspondents. Now we turn to the youngest, CNN's Jason Bellini. Jason provided some especially incisive reporting from post-war Afghanistan, and in Iraq he brought fresh eyes, a big heart and a keen feel for the people he encountered as he and the Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit made their way toward Baghdad. Here's his account.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been traveling by helicopter, and that's not a bad way to go. I know they're dangerous. But you get such a great view when you fly in, and they fly those helicopters very low. When we first entered Iraq, we saw villagers waving towards us. That was the very first thing -- one of the very first things we saw entering the country.

I remember what excited me about the opportunity to be an embedded reporter, and that was covering this war, be able to be at the ground level, get to know the Marines who I'm with, get to -- with this experience with them. You're eating the same food, or you're sleeping under the same conditions they are. You're waking up at the same hour that they are. And I think that earns you respect, it earns you trust.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're taking gunfire from them!

BELLINI: We're going to get things raw, the way things really are out here, and that's what we're really out here seeking.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what? We don't want this to be seen. All right? You need to stay back.

BELLINI: You don't have a choice.

There are very strict rules under which we operate. In the event of a casualty, we're not going to show the person's face, we're not going to give the person's name, until the next of kin is notified. And you have to respect that. We have a job to do out here. We're here to be witnesses. We're here to report what's going on as accurately as we can.

Down here, we have some Marines who are listening to the radio, trying to get a sense of the big picture in this war. It's often difficult when you're out here, when you're only hearing about your own mission, to know where you fit into the larger picture.

You're going to hit home that this is really a war, this is not a video game going out there and shooting inanimate objects. You're going out there and you're going to be putting your life on the line in a very serious way. And that's been sobering in the last 24 hours.

One of the things that added to the richness of this experience for me personally is the fact that my father was in the Marines. He served during the war in Vietnam. And from the moment he heard that I was to be embedded with the Marines, he became very excited. So I kind of do him proud.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: When CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was assigned to cover Operation Iraqi Freedom, it wasn't exactly clear to him or to us what he would see. But within days, his tale became greater than he could ever have imagined. Dr. Gupta became one of the fixtures for CNN's coverage of the war, embedded with the Devil Docs. He reported how the unit would receive and treat the injured, perform surgery in a tent when the elements outside were treacherous.

But during his assignment, Dr. Gupta, who is a neurosurgeon by trade, would have to make a crucial and a personal decision. This is his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In the middle of the desert of northern Kuwait, the U.S. military is going over their ABC's.

We started that, you know, back in February, several weeks ago, we were looking at medical preparedness. We knew this would be a different sort of conflict. Chemical and biological weapons would be discussed like never before. And have the troops to prepare back then was an important story.

We ended up in northern Kuwait, in the desert for some time, and then ended up on a convoy, a multiple car convoy, multiple vehicle convoy, 89 vehicles, three miles long. They told us it would take about five hours to get to the location where we were going to get. It took 17.

As you can see, we're wearing our masks, our kevlar and our helmets. That's because we're instructed to do so, as we're instructed also to be here in this bunker.

You know, I'm used to being in the studio, wearing a suit on the set. But this has been obviously a huge change for me.

We are here just behind the front lines in an FRSS, front line resuscitative surgical suite. Right behind me for the first time ever, an operation has been done on the abdomen for a gunshot wound.

There is dust and sand blowing everywhere, yet they're able to keep these operating rooms clean. They're able to do operations. We've seen them do it now, four or five operations just over the last couple of days.

And as soon as they found out I was a neurosurgeon, they immediately said to me, well, if we get any head injuries, we're calling you.

You have to be scared if you're here. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) killed in action. We are hearing about possible chemical and biological stuff. Absolutely, we're scared. We have been really pleased with the stories we've been able to tell. I think that really -- that's what makes it worthwhile. We're getting the truth out there, we're getting the truth about how people take care of their fallen comrades, how they take care of the Iraqi soldiers as well, how that all happens. We not only get to tell that story but we get to see it firsthand, we get to be a part of it. I mean, I think that's part of the embedding process, too, to not only just do the stories but to know what it's like for the people that you're doing the stories on.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: As we continue on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we'll update the latest news, plus hear from Walter Rodgers and former Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The embeds assigned to cover the war realized they would be breaking new ground on the battlefields of Iraq. Many, if not most, pressed for the job for that very reason. It was journalism as never practiced before, every embed a pioneer, even the most veteran of war correspondent. Even CNN's Walter Rodgers, who barreled all the way to Baghdad with the army's 7th Cavalry 3rd Division. We talked to him after he came back, after he had some time to reflect on what was a remarkable journey which began back in March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Cavalry racing across the desert. They will -- it will be days before they get to Baghdad, but you've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. You have to realize they've been riding along, bouncing along in these tanks for probably six or more hours now. And if you ride inside that tank it is like riding in the bowels of a dragon. They roar. They screech. But what you're watching here is truly historic television and journalism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The familiar voice and now the familiar face of our old friend and colleague, Walt Rodgers. It's nice to have you here.

We -- the people who watch this program shared many of those moments with you over the course of the war, including that one. That day, racing across the desert, the exhilaration in your voice matched the exhilarating pictures that you sent back.

When you think of it now, after far more dangerous days, how do you see it?

RODGERS: It's every bit as exciting and more so because I use an assignment as a graduate seminar. So I crammed for that assignment. And when we were rolling across the Iraqi desert with the 7th Cavalry, I thought of the Pantheons, the Chaldeans (ph) rolling across that same desert. Alexander the great with the Macedonians and Greeks rolling the other direction across that desert. To me, the Americans were the latest invaders to go across Iraq in a tapestry of history through 4,000 years.

BROWN: None of those people you mentioned had videophones.

RODGERS: That's true.

BROWN: The fact that you were able to file live while this was happening, that times you're going to say it well and perfectly and sometimes you're not.

Increase the pressure, would you have preferred to do spots than do it live?

RODGERS: No. I mean, I love spots. I love to do the creative process of videotape crafting and, again, creating a tapestry. But there's nothing -- nothing more exciting. I've never done drugs but I'm telling you there is no drug in the world as high as live television and particularly live television in times of war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: We are moving in the direction of Baghdad. We're taking small arms fire to the right. For the past 15 or 20 minutes, our tank in front of us has been firing. It's 120 millimeter gun off to the right of us, shooting targets no more than 200 to 300 meters away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When things got nasty and they would get nasty really a couple of days later down the road, did you ever worry about live television and war colliding in the worst possible moment?

An artillery shell hitting one of those tanks, hitting one of those guys?

RODGERS: That sort of thing was happening the first night in the ambush as we approached the canal -- 7th Cavalry approached the canal before it crossed the Euphrates River defense line. The 7th Cavalry and we were just seven or eight vehicles back was ambushed by a battalion of Iraqis on both side of the road and I saw tracers coming in at night. Two vehicles ahead of me bouncing off and going straight up in the air. I saw rocket-propelled grenades. I thought the tank in front of me had been hit. And in point of fact, it bounced in the dirt beside it. That made great television, but, you know, you didn't think in terms of great television. You just said, this is where I'm supposed to be. This is the story I'm supposed to tell and I will tell it.

BROWN: You said to me one night -- I don't remember quite what was happening. It was early. And I think the expression you said was, "this is great fun."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: Thanks, Aaron. This is great fun. Listen we're out here with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry on a muddy road in south central Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I think some people heard that in a way you didn't mean it.

RODGERS: I love what I do. I really love what I do. And if it's reporting from a war zone, I love it passionately -- passionately. And if I can't do it -- if I don't enjoy it, I won't do it.

BROWN: How close did you come to Captain Clay Lyle, who became well known to all of the regular "NEWSNIGHT" viewers and that group that you traveled with?

How close were you?

RODGERS: You mean physically?

BROWN: No, I mean...

RODGERS: I mean, we were right behind his tank the whole time.

BROWN: No, I don't mean physically. I mean emotionally.

RODGERS: Well, he was from Texas and I'm from New England so he is a Confederate and I'm a Yankee. We could tease each other about that. But I respected him immensely, because he was a first class professional soldier in the United States Army. I consider soldiering an honorable profession. I -- it was easy to report on him and he was extraordinarily useful as a source. And it was a great colorful individual to report on. I knew his family. I mean, I knew his name. He's got a daughter named Emily (ph). I think she's 3 years old. Never met his wife, his wife Stephanie (ph). I got to know these people just because it was important to me and it helped me understand them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: We have a surprise for you. We think we've established contact with your wife on the phone back at Fort Stewart. We're going to try to see if she can speak to you at this point. We hope it's working. Go ahead, talk to her.

CLAY LYLE, U.S. ARMY: Stephi.

STEPHANE LYLE, WIFE OF CLAY LYLE: Hi, Clay. Hi, sweetie.

C. LYLE: Can you hear me?

S. LYLE: I hear you. Hi.

C. LYLE: Hi. We're all safe.

S. LYLE: I know.

C. LYLE: We're all safe and a little tired.

S. LYLE: We've all been watching you and we're all very proud of you.

C. LYLE: Good to hear your voice.

S. LYLE: We've all been watching and we're proud of everything you're doing. Your in our thoughts and prayers.

C. LYLE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). As long as and Emily are doing OK, I'm doing, OK.

S. LYLE: We're fine. We love and miss you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Of the criticism that some people have that the process, the embed process, put you too close to sources and inherently, because you come to feel affection towards them, makes it less likely that you will report the bad things, if bad things do happen, you would say what?

RODGERS: I've covered the White House and I like some of the people I covered. And I like people I didn't cover. I covered the Senate. I like some senators. I didn't like other senators. It's any other beat.

But what made the embedding process so remarkably unique was here you are in a football game and you're in the huddle. You are literally in the huddle. The quarterback is Lieutenant Colonel Terry Ferrell. He lays his maps out on the back -- or on the hood of a humvee and his captains are all standing around. I poke my neck in. I'm taking notes off the objectives following the route. And I raised my hand and I said, "Colonel, are we going to have close air support over there?"

You know, because you know it was going to get dodgy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS (voice-over): The Air Force was called in with a number of A-10 Warthogs. They have big gatling guns in the front. They plowed through the Iraqi lines over there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: You were not in -- you were in the huddle. You weren't playing the game.

BROWN: And how did they see you?

RODGERS: It was very interesting. You know, it was a gradual process of getting to know and trust each other. And for them trusting me was knowing I would not blow their objective and get us all shelled with artillery.

How did they get to know us? I think they got to like us a lot. The interesting thing, Aaron, in retrospect, is I think our presence actually helped morale in the unit. They liked having us there. They liked me calling Atlanta and saying, these are the 16 teams in the sweet 16. They liked me handing a phone to a Puerto Rican medic who hadn't talked to his mother in two months. Here, call your mother.

BROWN: And that's down the road in the process. At the beginning, when you first met them, were they wary of you?

RODGERS: Sure, as rightly they should be and I was wary of them. But what was remarkable was when Colonel Ferrell briefed us the second day we were there, he just laid it all out in front of us. Here's where we're going, here's the route, and this is the way it's going to be. And you're sitting on the story before you ever cross the line, before it begins. You say, my God, I've got the greatest story in the world and I can't file.

It was really something, but you have to exercise restraint and you know what the rules are and you play by the rules. And when you played by the rules, it worked beautifully for everyone.

BROWN: What was the diciest moment?

RODGERS: A lot of those ambushes. And there was one time in...

BROWN: Were these during the sandstorms or after?

RODGERS: Well, sometimes it was during sandstorms. The 7th Cavalry was under fire almost continuously for two weeks straight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We have been under heavy fire for the past couple of miles, mostly small arms fire, but the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road. And if I sound a little nervous, it's because we're in a soft skin vehicle and everybody else is in armor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: The diciest moment I never knew about, my cameraman, Charlie Miller and I, were standing outside our vehicle in a huge firefight at night. There was no point being in the vehicle, because it was soft skin. There was no protection. And maybe if we stood out in the front and back a little, nobody could hit us.

And shooting the guy in the tank was shooting in front of us, Mercutio Posey (ph), a loader, in Captain Lyle's tank. And somebody came up to me the next day and said you ought to thank that man. And I said, "Why?" And he said because there was a guy creeping up in the ditch five meters away from you with a Kalashnikov and he was about to blow you and your cameraman away. And Specialist Posey (ph) had night vision goggles on. So he could see the guy. We couldn't. The guy was just over there. Five meters, that's halfway to a first down in a football game. And Posey (ph) saw him, swung his 7.62 around, cut the Iraqi down. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We just heard an incoming -- what the hell? No, no, I don't know what it is. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Did you ever wish were you armed?

RODGERS: Good question. There was one point in the sandstorm when the Iraqis were shooting at us. And I was so mad -- you know, somebody's trying to kill me. I said to myself privately, "I wish I had a gun so I could shoot back," just to vent my frustration. You know, I was really angry somebody was trying to kill me. It wouldn't have done any good. And I'm glad I wasn't.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I'm sure you're aware of some of this, that there has been a fair amount of criticism that television in particular, and these days when you talk about news on television, pretty much talking about cable, sanitized the war, that the reality of the horror of war was kept off the screen. Do you think from the perspective you had, which was a limited perspective -- you had a view of one story, one part of the story -- that there's truth in that or not?

RODGERS: There is truth in it in that there were no embeds with the Iraqi army.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: You can see smoke rising from a Soviet vintage BMP, an armored personnel carrier. Again, just to the right of that, you see a figure lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: They were so overmatched that their story couldn't be told. But if someone has a complaint that the Iraqis don't let Western reporters in with their soldiers, that's not an issue that you should take up with a CNN correspondent. We wouldn't -- I know our management. If we could have had an embed with the Iraqi army, we would have -- CNN would have done it.

BROWN: Would that have been appropriate?

RODGERS: Sure. When we were in Sarajevo, we covered the Serbs and we covered the Bosnian Muslims. When we're in Russia, we covered...

BROWN: Well, here -- but here you had American forces. This wasn't Serbs and...

RODGERS: That's an excellent question. I don't know. But if I were assigned, I would have done it.

BROWN: You would have gone?

RODGERS: Sure. BROWN: Yes. You're 62?

RODGERS: 63 in a couple of months, about 10 weeks. And would I do it again? You bet.

BROWN: Did you have any concerns going in that this sort of work, this particular kind of work, covering a war, particularly a war in these conditions -- there's no going back to the hotel at night -- that this was young man's work?

RODGERS: I knew David Bloom well. And I knew how excited he got. He thought he -- he told me the night -- you know, before we parted and he went to his unit, that he was going to be the ace reporter of this war. And David was only 38. And you know, awful tragedy. He's dead.

Do I think it's young man's work? Well, not for me. I'll go back any time they send me back, because I believe in our craft. It's honorable. We're in the truth-telling business. And the best thing was I lost 14 pounds. I got stronger at the every day. And at the end of the time, I was keeping up with the soldiers 19, 20 years old.

BROWN: We've known each other literally for 12 years in two different places. You are to me the quintessential foreign correspondent. You spent much of your career overseas. Were you aware -- I'm sure you're aware now -- were you aware at all then that people talked about you as the "scud stud" of the war?

RODGERS: Only you.

BROWN: No.

RODGERS: And I think that's hilarious, because remember the first stud scud was Arthur Kent.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: And then his ex-wife came out and said he was the scud dud. Having said that -- I mean that was in all the papers. I'm not making that up. I -- whenever asked about that, I say my wife would be amused. And she was. The important thing, you know though as Oscar Wilde said, men get older, they never get very good. I think that's probably true.

BROWN: When you got to Baghdad...

RODGERS: Right.

BROWN: There was a couple of days spent just outside the airport.

RODGERS: Right.

BROWN: The first of those days, you and I were on the air for a long time together that night.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: What you're looking at is the furthest advance northward of the U.S. Army's 3rd squadron 7th Cavalry. They are not trying to advance any closer to the airport. That's not their mission, but the Bradley fighting vehicle, which you see in the distance and a tank beyond that is assigned to hold this position.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Talk about what it was like for the unit to have finally arrived there?

RODGERS: The 7th Cavalry and the CNN embedded with it was under fire all the time. It was a -- as long as you're under fire, it isn't over. And as soon as things started to quiet down, the unit and we as well had to be especially alert, because again, we were still in a combat zone. There were still people trying to kill us. That was when we were under the heaviest fire, well, at least as heavy as any other point when we were just two miles west of the airport. I had to hedge our distance.

BROWN: Right.

RODGERS: We're just two miles west of the airport. So 7th Cavalry was here. 3rd battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division was at the airport. And then here's Baghdad. And we were out there on a limb. We were the blocking unit in case the Hammurabi division or the Adnan division tried to flank and roll up the 3rd Infantry Division.

And what it's like is we're 7th Cavalry Apache troop was only 18 vehicles. I couldn't tell you that at that time. It was 10 bradleys and 8 tanks. And if they roll in 500 tanks or 30, 40, 50 tanks, the 7th Cavalry had to be darn good, because you were always outnumbered.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It was about 1:00 in the morning on the East Coast and you reported that a military source had told you that they had gone into Baghdad?

RODGERS: That's right.

BROWN: And that they really had not found much resistance.

RODGERS: That's true.

BROWN: It was the first sign we had, the first reporting we had that somehow the Iraqi government had disappeared, had vanished.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: It is quiet in the city of Baghdad, according to what the U.S. Army is telling us now. We're in the southern suburbs of Baghdad. The lead of the story continues to be that a senior army officer has told CNN -- and this is a quote -- "that the majority of the Iraqi forces have now given up." By given up, we do not mean surrender. We're strongly suggesting -- and every evidence suggests -- that what they're doing is deserting, turning in their uniforms, running away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What do you remember about that day and that moment?

RODGERS: What I remember is that I had the best source in the U.S. Army at that point. And that was General Buff Blount (ph). And my colonel just let me listen to the general's briefings every single morning. So I heard...

BROWN: These were on the phone?

RODGERS: No, well, it was on like a walkie talkie system.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: And it was -- you were sitting in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle. And you could hear all the commanders calling in, reporting from where they were. And if you -- if there was anything you missed, the colonel I had, Colonel Ferrell, was just saying, well this is what they're getting there by way of resistance or what they're not getting by way of resistance.

And he would -- you know, there was that trust that's built between a reporter and his source. And they gave us everything, which is the way Torie Clarke at the Pentagon envisaged...

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: ...that this would work. And it was the way Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, who I think still sees embedding as okay you guys think you're tough? Go with our guys. And that was the way Rumsfeld approached it. And I thought that was quite remarkable.

BROWN: Do you think everybody got out of it what they needed to get out of it? That the Pentagon would, I think, honestly tell you that one of the things they wanted out of this was a human -- a more human look at American soldiers. Clearly, they got that.

RODGERS: Yes, they did, as rightly they should. And, again, I talked to a three star, I think the corps commander, General William Wallace. And I was grungy in a T-shirt. And I walk up, hello general, how are you? I said, "I'm Rodgers, CNN. By the way, how's it going?" He said, "Embedding is one of the best innovations of the war." They loved it.

BROWN: General Clark talked a lot about one of the reasons that he was so supportive of the process was he felt there were wonderful stories in the first Gulf War about brave, smart, professional soldiers that never got told because no one saw them. So let's say the Pentagon got what it wanted. Did CNN, did the media broadly -- there was a lot of media out there -- did it get what it needed out of it? RODGERS: Without a shadow of a doubt because a reporter wants access. And the Pentagon gave us -- my unit at least, total access. We were there when it happened. We got to report it. And the public got to see war real-time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is. We see some stuff in the sky. We may have to break this off. I think we're going to break off this live shot for the time being. We're not sure what we see up there. Goodbye. We've got to dive for vehicles, we think. See ya. Bye.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Were there ever points where you and the company commander disagreed on what was reportable?

RODGERS: Yes, just once. And I still don't understand the incident. We were headed -- we had crossed the Euphrates. We were headed for the bridgehead on Najaf. And we were doing such live real- time coverage shooting of the shooting and the sandstorm and the ambushes that I think somebody either at the command headquarters in Kuwait, or maybe even at the Pentagon said shut those guys down.

So it was the end of the day. It was a sandstorm. We were practically out of business anyhow running out of daylight. And they said "No more live broadcasting."

And it got dark and I asked why. And they said well maybe you showed that bridge up there and that was a -- that would have been a no-no, if we'd shown a location where we could have been hit.

Or -- and then we said, but we didn't look at our pictures. And they said, well, maybe it was this and maybe it was that. And we could never pin them down as to why that afternoon they shut us down. But the next morning, I talked to our colonel again. He said go on, back up again. Don't worry about it.

That was the interesting thing, Aaron. It was the military who wanted this to happen. And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was the last guy in the world. Or he was reluctant. And what they did, the generals in Kuwait slid the embeds in sort of when Rumsfeld wasn't looking.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: They let our vehicles in. And they were going to present the Secretary of Defense with this fait accompli and say, isn't this great coverage we're getting?

BROWN: A couple of other things. Wouldn't you agree that there is a certain amount of luck of the draw here?

RODGERS: Absolutely.

BROWN: And that you drew well?

RODGERS: I drew well, but I also calculated well. I embedded with 3rd Infantry in December. I saw it was going to be an overwhelmingly Army show. It was at least 70 percent Army. And I had done aircraft carriers before. I had done the Marines in Afghanistan before. I wanted to go with the Army this time.

I did not realize how well I had drawn. If you've got a second, we were on this bus going to our embed location. And a fellow from the BBC was beside me. And we were chatting. And they yell in the dark, "All right, BBC 3rd Infantry." And I sort of wanted to go with the 3rd Infantry. I'd never heard of the cavalry as, you know, in modern Army. And they said, "CNN 7th Cavalry." And there's this voice coming out of the dark on the bus that says boy, those guys got balls of steel. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

BROWN: That's a military term.

RODGERS: Yes.

BROWN: Yes. Did it change you?

RODGERS: Yes. After two weeks on this enormous high and then the let-down of having it all over, within two or three days afterwards, I became humble to have been spared, profoundly grateful to be alive. And I don't think there's -- even though I've been in these situations before, this one changed me. And now often in the morning, I just get up and say, no matter what, I'm glad to be alive.

BROWN: Well, I'll speak for me, but I think I speak for most of your colleagues. And I know you've heard this. I hope you've heard this. We are immensely proud of the work you did. You represented not just this organization, but television reporters as they ought to do their craft incredibly well. And it's an honor to have worked with you those days. And we worked a lot. Thank you.

RODGERS: Thank you. I feel the same way about your work, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The whole idea of embedding journalists, putting them with military units during the war was a first. Never before had so many journalists had such access to the military during the fighting itself. It changed the way we saw the war for sure.

Torie Clarke works for CNN now, but during the war she worked for the Pentagon. She was the Pentagon spokesperson. She's also the person who pushed for the idea of embedding. We spoke with her recently about that decision and about what followed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Torie, talk to me about what the Pentagon wanted out of the embed process. And it's pretty clear what we wanted. We wanted access. What did you guys want?

VICTORIA CLARK, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESWOMAN: Well, actually, the objectives were very similar. We wanted to get out as much news and information about what the military was doing because, one, it's the right thing to do. You really have an obligation when you work at a place like the Pentagon to help people be as informed as possible, because then they can make good decisions about things.

But we wanted people to see up close and personal what we knew, that these young men and women in uniform are incredible. They perform with such discipline and dedication and commitment. They're so good. And we knew the more people saw of that, the more support the military would have.

And public support over the long haul is very, very important to military success. We also knew one other very important objective. We also knew that we'd be going up against a formidable foe in the Iraqi regime, and that they would do terrible things, that they would spend a lot of time and effort on disinformation and deception and propaganda. And we needed a counterweight to that, if you will. And nothing's better than the eyes and ears of the international media.

BROWN: Don't run away from this. Did you feel by engaging in this process, by having these agreements signed, that you had some measure of control over media that you might not otherwise have had?

CLARK: It wasn't about control. It was about mission and intent, if you will, and a very good working relationship. Before the first boots hit the ground, before the war started, literally thousands of hours were spent by people who worked for me at the Pentagon and people who worked for all the news organizations, including technicians, working out the guidelines and the policies and the rules and regulations, if you will, by which we would undertake this extraordinary experiment.

BROWN: In transmitting live television pictures from a war, there is always the possibility that something truly horrific will happen, that an artillery shell will hit, that a tank will get blown up, that all of that will be seen live in a way that it never in fact would have been seen if it were tape.

CLARK: Right.

BROWN: Did you worry about that?

CLARK: Well, we worried about a lot of things. And as we were briefing this plan through the leadership at the Pentagon, across the river at the White House and other places, there were quite a few people who raised that and said -- you know, and one person across the river as we called it, said to me, "Are you out of your mind? There is the possibility that people, Americans will see their soldiers injured or perhaps killed on live television."

And I said, you know, there is that possibility. But it also happens to be the truth. And if we're going to ask young men and women to put their lives at risk and to go over there and die for a cause that we think is important, then I think we have a responsibility to step up to that kind of truth. So we were fully aware of it. And we knew that was one of the things that could happen.

BROWN: And as I look back on all of this honestly, it's the one fear I had that wasn't realized, that this horrible possibility -- I remember saying to viewers, you know, this isn't "Survivor Iraq," a reality show. This is the real deal.

CLARK: Right.

BROWN: Did you at the -- how early in the process did you think and did your boss think, this is working?

CLARK: Very early on, in different ways. Right in the first few days of the war, for instance, I was up on Capitol Hill to do a -- get ready for a briefing. And a woman comes up to me and she grabs me. And she says, "I want to thank you for this embedding. My son's in the 101st and I think I saw him last night on CNN. And I know I saw his friend, Jeff. And it's so great to know that we can keep up with what they're doing. And my friends and I have viewing parties very night."

So you say to yourself, okay, she's a mom. She's got a vested interest. Maybe we haven't really reached out to the wide swathe of the American people. The next day I'm walking down "K" street and these two women walking ahead of me, they don't look like anybody's mom. And this was the time when we had the third ID headed toward Baghdad. We had the Marine Expeditionary Force, the first MEF coming up this way.

And the two women were talking to one other. And the woman says, "Did you see what the 1st MEF did last night?

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: Here, your average Americans, like a lot of people, watching their military, caring about the military. So we knew that was working. We knew we were demonstrating to people how phenomenal our fighting forces were.

And then very early on, I will never forget front page of "The New York Times," top half of the fold was a picture of some Iraqi soldiers in civilian garb. And they were being led away. And the caption said "Iraqi soldiers disguised as civilians being taken away by coalition forces." And I took it into Secretary Rumsfeld. And I said, "look at that." I said, "I could stand at that podium until I was blue in the face saying the Iraqi regime was doing this, putting their soldiers in civilian clothing so they could ambush our coalition forces. Some people would have believed me. There are plenty of places around the world where they might not have believed it. The Iraqi regime clearly could have used it for propaganda, but there was the (unintelligible) media saying this is what the Iraqis were doing. Two examples of our big objectives.

BROWN: Every now and then, it works out great for everybody. For my money, this was one of those times. It's good to talk to you. Thank you.

CLARK: Good to see you. Take care.

BROWN: And that's it for this special edition of NEWSNIGHT. We hope you enjoyed the program. We'll see you soon. Good-night for all of us.

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 December 31, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, HOST: Good evening again, everyone. Welcome to a special edition of NEWSNIGHT. Tonight we'll spend an hour with some of the people who helped tell the story of the war in Iraq, our reporters who were on the front lines, some reporting on their own, some part of the Pentagon's program for embedding reporters with troops in the field.
We are always hesitant to focus on journalists and their experiences. This war wasn't about them. It certainly wasn't fought by them. But there's no denying that they had some extraordinary journeys, and they are all well worth hearing about. Maybe not the broadest picture of the war, but the pieces and the most fascinating ones we could find.

Before we get started on their stories, an update on some of the other stories that made news today.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: And now to the story that dominated the year, seen through the eyes of our embeds. CNN's Walter Rodgers was with the Army's Cavalry 3rd Division. Marty Savidge assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines. Jason Bellini spent the war with the Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. And CNN medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, left the newsroom to join the Devil Docs behind the front lines.

We begin our look at reporting the war in Iraq with Walter Rodgers, who even through the herky-jerky technology of the videophone brought back some of the most vivid images of the war as he raced north through the desert.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The situation here appears to be increasingly tense. A few moments ago, out on the horizon, not very far ahead of the U.S. Army's 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, we heard more than a few explosions.

The U.S. Army's 3rd Squadron 7th Cavalry has compiled a rather extraordinary record in the past several days. It was the Army which assigned me to the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry, and that was extremely fortuitous. It was like sitting in a poker game and drawing four aces, because this is a crack unit. It's the tip of the spear. We've had an absolutely terrific story, pushing forward north towards Baghdad. Seventy-two hours of that was under constant fire coming at us from both sides of the road.

We just heard a -- what the hell? No, no, I don't know what it is.

What you try to do is stay calm and continue your broadcasting, but the worst thing you can do, either as a soldier or a war correspondent, is panic.

We're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is. We see some stuff in the sky. We may have to break this off. I think we're going to break off this live shot for the time being. We're not sure what we see up there. Goodbye. We've got to dive for vehicles, we think. See you, bye.

We have been under heavy fire for the past couple of miles, mostly a small arms fire. But the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road.

Let me give you an example of what the dust is like. Look at this tarp. We have been through days of dust like that.

The dust and sand are blowing so badly, you're getting these vague images. It's like being in a blizzard, except, unfortunately, the sand doesn't melt as the snow does.

The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Cavalry racing across the desert. You've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. What you're watching here is truly historic television and journalism.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Next on this special NEWSNIGHT, the other embeds. Marty Savidge, Jason Bellini, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Being an embed in Iraq meant eating and sleeping, waiting out the sandstorms right along with the troops. It also meant putting yourself in the line of fire with them as well. On the battlefield, the most routine missions can turn deadly in an instant. CNN's Martin Savidge spent the war with the 1st Battalion 7th Marines.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Behind you! Behind you! Behind you!

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Usually the scariest moments are the ones you did not anticipate at all. One particular case, it was supposed to be a routine mission. We did find a team of demolition experts that were going about trying to blow up some abandoned Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers located behind a small village. It was as milk toast as it could be.

Suddenly out of an alleyway, wham, here comes an RPG that just fizzles through the air. We had been trying to get a live report out all morning with no success. As soon as the shooting starts, bingo, the satellites all click in, and now we're going live in the middle of what was a firefight.

It's getting hot. Let's go.

That looks like the armored personnel carrier. We're going to keep moving back because these also have ammunition inside of them. There goes your tank down the end.

I volunteered to be an embed. I wanted to be in a unit as close to the front or as close to the action, as we say.

Commanders with the 1st Battalion 7th Marines who we are embedded with say that, yes, they have had a problem with guerrilla tactics that have been deployed against the supply lines.

Many military conflicts, it's about 90 percent of frustration or doing nothing.

What have you been doing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sitting.

SAVIDGE: What you think about sitting?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not too happy about it.

SAVIDGE: There's an avenue of trust that has to be involved here that perhaps does stretch the boundaries when it comes to true journalism. And what I mean by that is we are in as much danger as the military force with which we are embedded.

Do you have any knives or anything on you?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Negative, sir.

SAVIDGE: By far, we're probably the most blacked out of any military embed. We can film and videotape during these blackouts. You just cannot file, which in our case means live reporting or beaming signals and images back to Atlanta. When you come out, it's like a black cloud has been lifted and bingo, let's get to work.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We started out with the veteran of our war correspondents. Now we turn to the youngest, CNN's Jason Bellini. Jason provided some especially incisive reporting from post-war Afghanistan, and in Iraq he brought fresh eyes, a big heart and a keen feel for the people he encountered as he and the Marines of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit made their way toward Baghdad. Here's his account.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We've been traveling by helicopter, and that's not a bad way to go. I know they're dangerous. But you get such a great view when you fly in, and they fly those helicopters very low. When we first entered Iraq, we saw villagers waving towards us. That was the very first thing -- one of the very first things we saw entering the country.

I remember what excited me about the opportunity to be an embedded reporter, and that was covering this war, be able to be at the ground level, get to know the Marines who I'm with, get to -- with this experience with them. You're eating the same food, or you're sleeping under the same conditions they are. You're waking up at the same hour that they are. And I think that earns you respect, it earns you trust.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're taking gunfire from them!

BELLINI: We're going to get things raw, the way things really are out here, and that's what we're really out here seeking.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know what? We don't want this to be seen. All right? You need to stay back.

BELLINI: You don't have a choice.

There are very strict rules under which we operate. In the event of a casualty, we're not going to show the person's face, we're not going to give the person's name, until the next of kin is notified. And you have to respect that. We have a job to do out here. We're here to be witnesses. We're here to report what's going on as accurately as we can.

Down here, we have some Marines who are listening to the radio, trying to get a sense of the big picture in this war. It's often difficult when you're out here, when you're only hearing about your own mission, to know where you fit into the larger picture.

You're going to hit home that this is really a war, this is not a video game going out there and shooting inanimate objects. You're going out there and you're going to be putting your life on the line in a very serious way. And that's been sobering in the last 24 hours.

One of the things that added to the richness of this experience for me personally is the fact that my father was in the Marines. He served during the war in Vietnam. And from the moment he heard that I was to be embedded with the Marines, he became very excited. So I kind of do him proud.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: When CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta was assigned to cover Operation Iraqi Freedom, it wasn't exactly clear to him or to us what he would see. But within days, his tale became greater than he could ever have imagined. Dr. Gupta became one of the fixtures for CNN's coverage of the war, embedded with the Devil Docs. He reported how the unit would receive and treat the injured, perform surgery in a tent when the elements outside were treacherous.

But during his assignment, Dr. Gupta, who is a neurosurgeon by trade, would have to make a crucial and a personal decision. This is his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In the middle of the desert of northern Kuwait, the U.S. military is going over their ABC's.

We started that, you know, back in February, several weeks ago, we were looking at medical preparedness. We knew this would be a different sort of conflict. Chemical and biological weapons would be discussed like never before. And have the troops to prepare back then was an important story.

We ended up in northern Kuwait, in the desert for some time, and then ended up on a convoy, a multiple car convoy, multiple vehicle convoy, 89 vehicles, three miles long. They told us it would take about five hours to get to the location where we were going to get. It took 17.

As you can see, we're wearing our masks, our kevlar and our helmets. That's because we're instructed to do so, as we're instructed also to be here in this bunker.

You know, I'm used to being in the studio, wearing a suit on the set. But this has been obviously a huge change for me.

We are here just behind the front lines in an FRSS, front line resuscitative surgical suite. Right behind me for the first time ever, an operation has been done on the abdomen for a gunshot wound.

There is dust and sand blowing everywhere, yet they're able to keep these operating rooms clean. They're able to do operations. We've seen them do it now, four or five operations just over the last couple of days.

And as soon as they found out I was a neurosurgeon, they immediately said to me, well, if we get any head injuries, we're calling you.

You have to be scared if you're here. (UNINTELLIGIBLE) killed in action. We are hearing about possible chemical and biological stuff. Absolutely, we're scared. We have been really pleased with the stories we've been able to tell. I think that really -- that's what makes it worthwhile. We're getting the truth out there, we're getting the truth about how people take care of their fallen comrades, how they take care of the Iraqi soldiers as well, how that all happens. We not only get to tell that story but we get to see it firsthand, we get to be a part of it. I mean, I think that's part of the embedding process, too, to not only just do the stories but to know what it's like for the people that you're doing the stories on.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BROWN: As we continue on this special edition of NEWSNIGHT, we'll update the latest news, plus hear from Walter Rodgers and former Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke. Around the world, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The embeds assigned to cover the war realized they would be breaking new ground on the battlefields of Iraq. Many, if not most, pressed for the job for that very reason. It was journalism as never practiced before, every embed a pioneer, even the most veteran of war correspondent. Even CNN's Walter Rodgers, who barreled all the way to Baghdad with the army's 7th Cavalry 3rd Division. We talked to him after he came back, after he had some time to reflect on what was a remarkable journey which began back in March.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: The pictures you're seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Cavalry racing across the desert. They will -- it will be days before they get to Baghdad, but you've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. You have to realize they've been riding along, bouncing along in these tanks for probably six or more hours now. And if you ride inside that tank it is like riding in the bowels of a dragon. They roar. They screech. But what you're watching here is truly historic television and journalism.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: The familiar voice and now the familiar face of our old friend and colleague, Walt Rodgers. It's nice to have you here.

We -- the people who watch this program shared many of those moments with you over the course of the war, including that one. That day, racing across the desert, the exhilaration in your voice matched the exhilarating pictures that you sent back.

When you think of it now, after far more dangerous days, how do you see it?

RODGERS: It's every bit as exciting and more so because I use an assignment as a graduate seminar. So I crammed for that assignment. And when we were rolling across the Iraqi desert with the 7th Cavalry, I thought of the Pantheons, the Chaldeans (ph) rolling across that same desert. Alexander the great with the Macedonians and Greeks rolling the other direction across that desert. To me, the Americans were the latest invaders to go across Iraq in a tapestry of history through 4,000 years.

BROWN: None of those people you mentioned had videophones.

RODGERS: That's true.

BROWN: The fact that you were able to file live while this was happening, that times you're going to say it well and perfectly and sometimes you're not.

Increase the pressure, would you have preferred to do spots than do it live?

RODGERS: No. I mean, I love spots. I love to do the creative process of videotape crafting and, again, creating a tapestry. But there's nothing -- nothing more exciting. I've never done drugs but I'm telling you there is no drug in the world as high as live television and particularly live television in times of war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: We are moving in the direction of Baghdad. We're taking small arms fire to the right. For the past 15 or 20 minutes, our tank in front of us has been firing. It's 120 millimeter gun off to the right of us, shooting targets no more than 200 to 300 meters away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: When things got nasty and they would get nasty really a couple of days later down the road, did you ever worry about live television and war colliding in the worst possible moment?

An artillery shell hitting one of those tanks, hitting one of those guys?

RODGERS: That sort of thing was happening the first night in the ambush as we approached the canal -- 7th Cavalry approached the canal before it crossed the Euphrates River defense line. The 7th Cavalry and we were just seven or eight vehicles back was ambushed by a battalion of Iraqis on both side of the road and I saw tracers coming in at night. Two vehicles ahead of me bouncing off and going straight up in the air. I saw rocket-propelled grenades. I thought the tank in front of me had been hit. And in point of fact, it bounced in the dirt beside it. That made great television, but, you know, you didn't think in terms of great television. You just said, this is where I'm supposed to be. This is the story I'm supposed to tell and I will tell it.

BROWN: You said to me one night -- I don't remember quite what was happening. It was early. And I think the expression you said was, "this is great fun."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: Thanks, Aaron. This is great fun. Listen we're out here with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry on a muddy road in south central Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I think some people heard that in a way you didn't mean it.

RODGERS: I love what I do. I really love what I do. And if it's reporting from a war zone, I love it passionately -- passionately. And if I can't do it -- if I don't enjoy it, I won't do it.

BROWN: How close did you come to Captain Clay Lyle, who became well known to all of the regular "NEWSNIGHT" viewers and that group that you traveled with?

How close were you?

RODGERS: You mean physically?

BROWN: No, I mean...

RODGERS: I mean, we were right behind his tank the whole time.

BROWN: No, I don't mean physically. I mean emotionally.

RODGERS: Well, he was from Texas and I'm from New England so he is a Confederate and I'm a Yankee. We could tease each other about that. But I respected him immensely, because he was a first class professional soldier in the United States Army. I consider soldiering an honorable profession. I -- it was easy to report on him and he was extraordinarily useful as a source. And it was a great colorful individual to report on. I knew his family. I mean, I knew his name. He's got a daughter named Emily (ph). I think she's 3 years old. Never met his wife, his wife Stephanie (ph). I got to know these people just because it was important to me and it helped me understand them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RODGERS: We have a surprise for you. We think we've established contact with your wife on the phone back at Fort Stewart. We're going to try to see if she can speak to you at this point. We hope it's working. Go ahead, talk to her.

CLAY LYLE, U.S. ARMY: Stephi.

STEPHANE LYLE, WIFE OF CLAY LYLE: Hi, Clay. Hi, sweetie.

C. LYLE: Can you hear me?

S. LYLE: I hear you. Hi.

C. LYLE: Hi. We're all safe.

S. LYLE: I know.

C. LYLE: We're all safe and a little tired.

S. LYLE: We've all been watching you and we're all very proud of you.

C. LYLE: Good to hear your voice.

S. LYLE: We've all been watching and we're proud of everything you're doing. Your in our thoughts and prayers.

C. LYLE: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). As long as and Emily are doing OK, I'm doing, OK.

S. LYLE: We're fine. We love and miss you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Of the criticism that some people have that the process, the embed process, put you too close to sources and inherently, because you come to feel affection towards them, makes it less likely that you will report the bad things, if bad things do happen, you would say what?

RODGERS: I've covered the White House and I like some of the people I covered. And I like people I didn't cover. I covered the Senate. I like some senators. I didn't like other senators. It's any other beat.

But what made the embedding process so remarkably unique was here you are in a football game and you're in the huddle. You are literally in the huddle. The quarterback is Lieutenant Colonel Terry Ferrell. He lays his maps out on the back -- or on the hood of a humvee and his captains are all standing around. I poke my neck in. I'm taking notes off the objectives following the route. And I raised my hand and I said, "Colonel, are we going to have close air support over there?"

You know, because you know it was going to get dodgy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS (voice-over): The Air Force was called in with a number of A-10 Warthogs. They have big gatling guns in the front. They plowed through the Iraqi lines over there.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: You were not in -- you were in the huddle. You weren't playing the game.

BROWN: And how did they see you?

RODGERS: It was very interesting. You know, it was a gradual process of getting to know and trust each other. And for them trusting me was knowing I would not blow their objective and get us all shelled with artillery.

How did they get to know us? I think they got to like us a lot. The interesting thing, Aaron, in retrospect, is I think our presence actually helped morale in the unit. They liked having us there. They liked me calling Atlanta and saying, these are the 16 teams in the sweet 16. They liked me handing a phone to a Puerto Rican medic who hadn't talked to his mother in two months. Here, call your mother.

BROWN: And that's down the road in the process. At the beginning, when you first met them, were they wary of you?

RODGERS: Sure, as rightly they should be and I was wary of them. But what was remarkable was when Colonel Ferrell briefed us the second day we were there, he just laid it all out in front of us. Here's where we're going, here's the route, and this is the way it's going to be. And you're sitting on the story before you ever cross the line, before it begins. You say, my God, I've got the greatest story in the world and I can't file.

It was really something, but you have to exercise restraint and you know what the rules are and you play by the rules. And when you played by the rules, it worked beautifully for everyone.

BROWN: What was the diciest moment?

RODGERS: A lot of those ambushes. And there was one time in...

BROWN: Were these during the sandstorms or after?

RODGERS: Well, sometimes it was during sandstorms. The 7th Cavalry was under fire almost continuously for two weeks straight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We have been under heavy fire for the past couple of miles, mostly small arms fire, but the sandstorm has enabled the Iraqis to come very close to the road. And if I sound a little nervous, it's because we're in a soft skin vehicle and everybody else is in armor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: The diciest moment I never knew about, my cameraman, Charlie Miller and I, were standing outside our vehicle in a huge firefight at night. There was no point being in the vehicle, because it was soft skin. There was no protection. And maybe if we stood out in the front and back a little, nobody could hit us.

And shooting the guy in the tank was shooting in front of us, Mercutio Posey (ph), a loader, in Captain Lyle's tank. And somebody came up to me the next day and said you ought to thank that man. And I said, "Why?" And he said because there was a guy creeping up in the ditch five meters away from you with a Kalashnikov and he was about to blow you and your cameraman away. And Specialist Posey (ph) had night vision goggles on. So he could see the guy. We couldn't. The guy was just over there. Five meters, that's halfway to a first down in a football game. And Posey (ph) saw him, swung his 7.62 around, cut the Iraqi down. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We just heard an incoming -- what the hell? No, no, I don't know what it is. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Did you ever wish were you armed?

RODGERS: Good question. There was one point in the sandstorm when the Iraqis were shooting at us. And I was so mad -- you know, somebody's trying to kill me. I said to myself privately, "I wish I had a gun so I could shoot back," just to vent my frustration. You know, I was really angry somebody was trying to kill me. It wouldn't have done any good. And I'm glad I wasn't.

(NEWSBREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: I'm sure you're aware of some of this, that there has been a fair amount of criticism that television in particular, and these days when you talk about news on television, pretty much talking about cable, sanitized the war, that the reality of the horror of war was kept off the screen. Do you think from the perspective you had, which was a limited perspective -- you had a view of one story, one part of the story -- that there's truth in that or not?

RODGERS: There is truth in it in that there were no embeds with the Iraqi army.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: You can see smoke rising from a Soviet vintage BMP, an armored personnel carrier. Again, just to the right of that, you see a figure lying in the road. That is a dead Iraqi soldier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: They were so overmatched that their story couldn't be told. But if someone has a complaint that the Iraqis don't let Western reporters in with their soldiers, that's not an issue that you should take up with a CNN correspondent. We wouldn't -- I know our management. If we could have had an embed with the Iraqi army, we would have -- CNN would have done it.

BROWN: Would that have been appropriate?

RODGERS: Sure. When we were in Sarajevo, we covered the Serbs and we covered the Bosnian Muslims. When we're in Russia, we covered...

BROWN: Well, here -- but here you had American forces. This wasn't Serbs and...

RODGERS: That's an excellent question. I don't know. But if I were assigned, I would have done it.

BROWN: You would have gone?

RODGERS: Sure. BROWN: Yes. You're 62?

RODGERS: 63 in a couple of months, about 10 weeks. And would I do it again? You bet.

BROWN: Did you have any concerns going in that this sort of work, this particular kind of work, covering a war, particularly a war in these conditions -- there's no going back to the hotel at night -- that this was young man's work?

RODGERS: I knew David Bloom well. And I knew how excited he got. He thought he -- he told me the night -- you know, before we parted and he went to his unit, that he was going to be the ace reporter of this war. And David was only 38. And you know, awful tragedy. He's dead.

Do I think it's young man's work? Well, not for me. I'll go back any time they send me back, because I believe in our craft. It's honorable. We're in the truth-telling business. And the best thing was I lost 14 pounds. I got stronger at the every day. And at the end of the time, I was keeping up with the soldiers 19, 20 years old.

BROWN: We've known each other literally for 12 years in two different places. You are to me the quintessential foreign correspondent. You spent much of your career overseas. Were you aware -- I'm sure you're aware now -- were you aware at all then that people talked about you as the "scud stud" of the war?

RODGERS: Only you.

BROWN: No.

RODGERS: And I think that's hilarious, because remember the first stud scud was Arthur Kent.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: And then his ex-wife came out and said he was the scud dud. Having said that -- I mean that was in all the papers. I'm not making that up. I -- whenever asked about that, I say my wife would be amused. And she was. The important thing, you know though as Oscar Wilde said, men get older, they never get very good. I think that's probably true.

BROWN: When you got to Baghdad...

RODGERS: Right.

BROWN: There was a couple of days spent just outside the airport.

RODGERS: Right.

BROWN: The first of those days, you and I were on the air for a long time together that night.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: What you're looking at is the furthest advance northward of the U.S. Army's 3rd squadron 7th Cavalry. They are not trying to advance any closer to the airport. That's not their mission, but the Bradley fighting vehicle, which you see in the distance and a tank beyond that is assigned to hold this position.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Talk about what it was like for the unit to have finally arrived there?

RODGERS: The 7th Cavalry and the CNN embedded with it was under fire all the time. It was a -- as long as you're under fire, it isn't over. And as soon as things started to quiet down, the unit and we as well had to be especially alert, because again, we were still in a combat zone. There were still people trying to kill us. That was when we were under the heaviest fire, well, at least as heavy as any other point when we were just two miles west of the airport. I had to hedge our distance.

BROWN: Right.

RODGERS: We're just two miles west of the airport. So 7th Cavalry was here. 3rd battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division was at the airport. And then here's Baghdad. And we were out there on a limb. We were the blocking unit in case the Hammurabi division or the Adnan division tried to flank and roll up the 3rd Infantry Division.

And what it's like is we're 7th Cavalry Apache troop was only 18 vehicles. I couldn't tell you that at that time. It was 10 bradleys and 8 tanks. And if they roll in 500 tanks or 30, 40, 50 tanks, the 7th Cavalry had to be darn good, because you were always outnumbered.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It was about 1:00 in the morning on the East Coast and you reported that a military source had told you that they had gone into Baghdad?

RODGERS: That's right.

BROWN: And that they really had not found much resistance.

RODGERS: That's true.

BROWN: It was the first sign we had, the first reporting we had that somehow the Iraqi government had disappeared, had vanished.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: It is quiet in the city of Baghdad, according to what the U.S. Army is telling us now. We're in the southern suburbs of Baghdad. The lead of the story continues to be that a senior army officer has told CNN -- and this is a quote -- "that the majority of the Iraqi forces have now given up." By given up, we do not mean surrender. We're strongly suggesting -- and every evidence suggests -- that what they're doing is deserting, turning in their uniforms, running away.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: What do you remember about that day and that moment?

RODGERS: What I remember is that I had the best source in the U.S. Army at that point. And that was General Buff Blount (ph). And my colonel just let me listen to the general's briefings every single morning. So I heard...

BROWN: These were on the phone?

RODGERS: No, well, it was on like a walkie talkie system.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: And it was -- you were sitting in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle. And you could hear all the commanders calling in, reporting from where they were. And if you -- if there was anything you missed, the colonel I had, Colonel Ferrell, was just saying, well this is what they're getting there by way of resistance or what they're not getting by way of resistance.

And he would -- you know, there was that trust that's built between a reporter and his source. And they gave us everything, which is the way Torie Clarke at the Pentagon envisaged...

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: ...that this would work. And it was the way Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, who I think still sees embedding as okay you guys think you're tough? Go with our guys. And that was the way Rumsfeld approached it. And I thought that was quite remarkable.

BROWN: Do you think everybody got out of it what they needed to get out of it? That the Pentagon would, I think, honestly tell you that one of the things they wanted out of this was a human -- a more human look at American soldiers. Clearly, they got that.

RODGERS: Yes, they did, as rightly they should. And, again, I talked to a three star, I think the corps commander, General William Wallace. And I was grungy in a T-shirt. And I walk up, hello general, how are you? I said, "I'm Rodgers, CNN. By the way, how's it going?" He said, "Embedding is one of the best innovations of the war." They loved it.

BROWN: General Clark talked a lot about one of the reasons that he was so supportive of the process was he felt there were wonderful stories in the first Gulf War about brave, smart, professional soldiers that never got told because no one saw them. So let's say the Pentagon got what it wanted. Did CNN, did the media broadly -- there was a lot of media out there -- did it get what it needed out of it? RODGERS: Without a shadow of a doubt because a reporter wants access. And the Pentagon gave us -- my unit at least, total access. We were there when it happened. We got to report it. And the public got to see war real-time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RODGERS: We're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is. We see some stuff in the sky. We may have to break this off. I think we're going to break off this live shot for the time being. We're not sure what we see up there. Goodbye. We've got to dive for vehicles, we think. See ya. Bye.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Were there ever points where you and the company commander disagreed on what was reportable?

RODGERS: Yes, just once. And I still don't understand the incident. We were headed -- we had crossed the Euphrates. We were headed for the bridgehead on Najaf. And we were doing such live real- time coverage shooting of the shooting and the sandstorm and the ambushes that I think somebody either at the command headquarters in Kuwait, or maybe even at the Pentagon said shut those guys down.

So it was the end of the day. It was a sandstorm. We were practically out of business anyhow running out of daylight. And they said "No more live broadcasting."

And it got dark and I asked why. And they said well maybe you showed that bridge up there and that was a -- that would have been a no-no, if we'd shown a location where we could have been hit.

Or -- and then we said, but we didn't look at our pictures. And they said, well, maybe it was this and maybe it was that. And we could never pin them down as to why that afternoon they shut us down. But the next morning, I talked to our colonel again. He said go on, back up again. Don't worry about it.

That was the interesting thing, Aaron. It was the military who wanted this to happen. And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was the last guy in the world. Or he was reluctant. And what they did, the generals in Kuwait slid the embeds in sort of when Rumsfeld wasn't looking.

BROWN: Yes.

RODGERS: They let our vehicles in. And they were going to present the Secretary of Defense with this fait accompli and say, isn't this great coverage we're getting?

BROWN: A couple of other things. Wouldn't you agree that there is a certain amount of luck of the draw here?

RODGERS: Absolutely.

BROWN: And that you drew well?

RODGERS: I drew well, but I also calculated well. I embedded with 3rd Infantry in December. I saw it was going to be an overwhelmingly Army show. It was at least 70 percent Army. And I had done aircraft carriers before. I had done the Marines in Afghanistan before. I wanted to go with the Army this time.

I did not realize how well I had drawn. If you've got a second, we were on this bus going to our embed location. And a fellow from the BBC was beside me. And we were chatting. And they yell in the dark, "All right, BBC 3rd Infantry." And I sort of wanted to go with the 3rd Infantry. I'd never heard of the cavalry as, you know, in modern Army. And they said, "CNN 7th Cavalry." And there's this voice coming out of the dark on the bus that says boy, those guys got balls of steel. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

BROWN: That's a military term.

RODGERS: Yes.

BROWN: Yes. Did it change you?

RODGERS: Yes. After two weeks on this enormous high and then the let-down of having it all over, within two or three days afterwards, I became humble to have been spared, profoundly grateful to be alive. And I don't think there's -- even though I've been in these situations before, this one changed me. And now often in the morning, I just get up and say, no matter what, I'm glad to be alive.

BROWN: Well, I'll speak for me, but I think I speak for most of your colleagues. And I know you've heard this. I hope you've heard this. We are immensely proud of the work you did. You represented not just this organization, but television reporters as they ought to do their craft incredibly well. And it's an honor to have worked with you those days. And we worked a lot. Thank you.

RODGERS: Thank you. I feel the same way about your work, Aaron.

BROWN: Thank you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: The whole idea of embedding journalists, putting them with military units during the war was a first. Never before had so many journalists had such access to the military during the fighting itself. It changed the way we saw the war for sure.

Torie Clarke works for CNN now, but during the war she worked for the Pentagon. She was the Pentagon spokesperson. She's also the person who pushed for the idea of embedding. We spoke with her recently about that decision and about what followed.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Torie, talk to me about what the Pentagon wanted out of the embed process. And it's pretty clear what we wanted. We wanted access. What did you guys want?

VICTORIA CLARK, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESWOMAN: Well, actually, the objectives were very similar. We wanted to get out as much news and information about what the military was doing because, one, it's the right thing to do. You really have an obligation when you work at a place like the Pentagon to help people be as informed as possible, because then they can make good decisions about things.

But we wanted people to see up close and personal what we knew, that these young men and women in uniform are incredible. They perform with such discipline and dedication and commitment. They're so good. And we knew the more people saw of that, the more support the military would have.

And public support over the long haul is very, very important to military success. We also knew one other very important objective. We also knew that we'd be going up against a formidable foe in the Iraqi regime, and that they would do terrible things, that they would spend a lot of time and effort on disinformation and deception and propaganda. And we needed a counterweight to that, if you will. And nothing's better than the eyes and ears of the international media.

BROWN: Don't run away from this. Did you feel by engaging in this process, by having these agreements signed, that you had some measure of control over media that you might not otherwise have had?

CLARK: It wasn't about control. It was about mission and intent, if you will, and a very good working relationship. Before the first boots hit the ground, before the war started, literally thousands of hours were spent by people who worked for me at the Pentagon and people who worked for all the news organizations, including technicians, working out the guidelines and the policies and the rules and regulations, if you will, by which we would undertake this extraordinary experiment.

BROWN: In transmitting live television pictures from a war, there is always the possibility that something truly horrific will happen, that an artillery shell will hit, that a tank will get blown up, that all of that will be seen live in a way that it never in fact would have been seen if it were tape.

CLARK: Right.

BROWN: Did you worry about that?

CLARK: Well, we worried about a lot of things. And as we were briefing this plan through the leadership at the Pentagon, across the river at the White House and other places, there were quite a few people who raised that and said -- you know, and one person across the river as we called it, said to me, "Are you out of your mind? There is the possibility that people, Americans will see their soldiers injured or perhaps killed on live television."

And I said, you know, there is that possibility. But it also happens to be the truth. And if we're going to ask young men and women to put their lives at risk and to go over there and die for a cause that we think is important, then I think we have a responsibility to step up to that kind of truth. So we were fully aware of it. And we knew that was one of the things that could happen.

BROWN: And as I look back on all of this honestly, it's the one fear I had that wasn't realized, that this horrible possibility -- I remember saying to viewers, you know, this isn't "Survivor Iraq," a reality show. This is the real deal.

CLARK: Right.

BROWN: Did you at the -- how early in the process did you think and did your boss think, this is working?

CLARK: Very early on, in different ways. Right in the first few days of the war, for instance, I was up on Capitol Hill to do a -- get ready for a briefing. And a woman comes up to me and she grabs me. And she says, "I want to thank you for this embedding. My son's in the 101st and I think I saw him last night on CNN. And I know I saw his friend, Jeff. And it's so great to know that we can keep up with what they're doing. And my friends and I have viewing parties very night."

So you say to yourself, okay, she's a mom. She's got a vested interest. Maybe we haven't really reached out to the wide swathe of the American people. The next day I'm walking down "K" street and these two women walking ahead of me, they don't look like anybody's mom. And this was the time when we had the third ID headed toward Baghdad. We had the Marine Expeditionary Force, the first MEF coming up this way.

And the two women were talking to one other. And the woman says, "Did you see what the 1st MEF did last night?

BROWN: Yes.

CLARK: Here, your average Americans, like a lot of people, watching their military, caring about the military. So we knew that was working. We knew we were demonstrating to people how phenomenal our fighting forces were.

And then very early on, I will never forget front page of "The New York Times," top half of the fold was a picture of some Iraqi soldiers in civilian garb. And they were being led away. And the caption said "Iraqi soldiers disguised as civilians being taken away by coalition forces." And I took it into Secretary Rumsfeld. And I said, "look at that." I said, "I could stand at that podium until I was blue in the face saying the Iraqi regime was doing this, putting their soldiers in civilian clothing so they could ambush our coalition forces. Some people would have believed me. There are plenty of places around the world where they might not have believed it. The Iraqi regime clearly could have used it for propaganda, but there was the (unintelligible) media saying this is what the Iraqis were doing. Two examples of our big objectives.

BROWN: Every now and then, it works out great for everybody. For my money, this was one of those times. It's good to talk to you. Thank you.

CLARK: Good to see you. Take care.

BROWN: And that's it for this special edition of NEWSNIGHT. We hope you enjoyed the program. We'll see you soon. Good-night for all of us.

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