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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

New York Father Arrested For Allegedly Killing Mother, Battering Children; Sen. Pat Roberts: Bulldoze Abu Ghraib Prison; Donald Rumsfeld To Testify Tomorrow Morning

Aired May 06, 2004 - 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.
The president said "sorry" more or less that ends that little kafuffle. The rest of the Iraqi prison mess still hangs out there.

Tomorrow, the defense secretary goes to the Hill to testify on this. We can't imagine he will say, as one talk show host said today that this really wasn't much worse than a fraternity hazing, mind boggling that one.

Amid all the finger pointing, the call for this head or that the best suggestion we've heard so far isn't for the secretary to resign, at least over this. It was something else, symbolic too but far more powerful.

The Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, suggested that maybe the answer is to bulldoze that prison. Abu Ghraib was a horrible place when Saddam and his goons ran it and now it is seen as an example of repression again, so just go in there and tear it down. Flatten it in broad daylight for the world to see.

It will not make everything better but it will send a message, a message that the evil of the past is really gone and the misdeeds of the present are gone as well.

Until then there is the scandal and the whip and our Senior White House Correspondent starts it off, John King a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president said "I'm sorry," after being told by one of his closest allies in the Arab world that so far up to today the administration's effort to quiet the outrage had failed and then some. Mr. Bush also made clear today he's not terribly with his defense secretary but he also made clear he doesn't agree with Democrats. Donald Rumsfeld, the president says, will stay.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

On to the Pentagon where the boss is playing defense, not used to that, Jamie McIntyre with that side of the story, Jamie the headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, don't expect much contrition from Donald Rumsfeld when he testified before Congress tomorrow. He does have a bone to throw Congress but aides say he's ready to rumble with his detractors on Capitol Hill.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next to Iraq, another day under fire for American troops there, CNN's Jane Arraf on the videophone with a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, the U.S. (audio gap).

BROWN: We'll get that fixed.

We'll go to Washington next for the tape and the voice and a new call to arms from Osama bin Laden, by the sound of it our National Security Correspondent David Ensor with that, David the headline.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, on this new audio tape, which claims to be Osama bin Laden, a chilling price list, prices on the heads of prominent Americans, U.N. officials and any other westerners who are supporting the U.S. in Iraq.

BROWN: David, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, honor killings a horrific fact of life in parts of the Muslim world and tonight a reality in the United States.

Plus the differences in two countries, how the British government and the American government deal with the deaths of their soldiers in Iraq.

And, at the end, the rooster stops by as he always does delivering your morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin at the White House on a day that brought more damage control with new photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghraib appearing in "The Washington Post" this morning, more on that part in a bit.

The latest graphic images surfaced as the president was meeting with a key Arab leader, Jordan's King Abdullah. The meeting produced an apology.

Here again our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): In the Rose Garden with Jordan's King Abdullah, the president delivered the direct apology missing from earlier efforts to quiet Arab outrage.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.

KING: King Abdullah called the abuses heinous crimes but said he trusted Mr. Bush's promise to find and punish those responsible. KING ABDULLAH, JORDAN: We hope that that will happen very quickly and that, you know, it doesn't reflect on the morals, the values that the United States stands for.

KING: The president dismissed Democratic calls for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to resign but, a day after chastising Mr. Rumsfeld in private, Mr. Bush did make clear he believed the Pentagon wrongly kept him in the dark about the scope of the abuses.

BUSH: And I told him I should have known about the pictures and the report.

KING: Critical Arab support in public but sources tell CNN the Jordanian delegation described the impact in the Arab world as devastating and the emergence of more pictures will only add to the diplomatic challenge.

BUSH: It's a stain on our country's honor and our country's reputation. I fully understand that.

KING: The negative headlines in the Arab world come as the president faces image problems at home as well. Forty-nine percent of Americans now approve of how Mr. Bush is handling his job, down from 60 percent in a Gallup poll in January and just 42 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling Iraq, down 20 points since the campaign year began.

Democrat John Kerry seized on Mr. Bush's statements that he did not receive critical information about the abuses.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As president, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command.

KING: And other Democrats say the prisoner abuse scandal is just the latest in a string of mistakes, including miscalculating the war's costs, underestimating how many troops it would take and failing to anticipate Iraqi resistance.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: The post-war chaos in Iraq has resulted from such miserably poor planning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Looking ahead, senior aides here at the White House say the president has told them to be quite aggressive in keeping tabs on the investigations in the days and weeks ahead and yet, Aaron, looking back the White House says it still cannot tell us when the president was first told of these abuses and how he reacted beyond saying keep me informed.

BROWN: Do they -- is the feeling there that they just have to ride this out that they have done what they can do at this point?

KING: The theory is they'll have to keep apologizing, not so much using those worlds every day but keep at the Middle East diplomacy and look for Secretary Rumsfeld. A senior official here tonight told me this is off our plate for at least a day. It's in Rummy land.

BROWN: All right. Well, and we're going to get to Rummy land in a minute but Jamie in the headline didn't indicate that the secretary was going to go up there and be contrite. Is that consistent with what you hear and consistent with what the message the White House wants to send?

KING: Yes. The White House believes, and Jamie will get into this more, that the secretary has quite a good explanation and can prove that once this came to the Army's attention, the military's attention, it actually acted quite quickly to investigate and to hold at least the first wave of those found to be responsible accountable.

Where the White House concedes things got off track is in the politics and the diplomacy. That's why you heard the president himself say he's not satisfied. He thinks people didn't tell him things he needed to know. And we are also told at the White House that the secretary will say the same thing that there are things that he needed to know that he didn't know.

BROWN: All right, John, thank you very much, our Senior White House Correspondent John King tonight.

And, as John just reported, the drumbeat for the defense secretary to resign is getting a bit louder. Democratic lawmakers calling for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down or be fired say actions not apologies are needed.

As for the secretary, he cancelled a speech today using the day to prepare for the congressional hearings tomorrow where the questions, as I'm sure you gather, will be tough.

Here again, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The morning's "Washington Post" brought fresh pictures of the abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. A female soldier from the 372nd MP Company holds a leash attached to a naked prisoner. Other unclothed prisoners are seen shackled to the cells with hoods or women's underwear over their heads.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: The actions of the soldiers in those photos are totally unacceptable.

MCINTYRE: It was left to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to deliver the denouncement at a speech in Philadelphia that was to be given by his embattled boss.

Sources say Donald Rumsfeld skipped the appearance to prepare for the grilling he's about to get from angry members of Congress, especially Democrats who are increasingly calling for him to step down.

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D), IOWA: I still believe for the benefit of our country, our nation, our honor that he has to resign and he has to go. Nothing I think less will suffice.

MCINTYRE: Senators are particularly miffed that the day the pictures were about to hit the air waves, Rumsfeld failed to mention the abuse in closed door hearings on Capitol Hill.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: Mr. Rumsfeld has been engaged in a cover-up from the start on this issue and continues to be so.

MCINTYRE: But even as President Bush admitted unhappiness that he too was kept in the dark about the gravity of the abuse, he says he won't fire Rumsfeld.

BUSH: He's an important part of my cabinet and he'll stay in my cabinet.

MCINTYRE: And some Republicans went so far as to suggest Rumsfeld's detractors were defeatists.

REP. TOM DELAY (R), MAJORITY LEADER: Calling for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation is as bad as saying the war is unwinnable.

MCINTYRE: Meanwhile, the magazine "The Economist" put its resignation call on the cover, along with a photo it says may become an iconic image that could haunt America for years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Now having been reassured that he'll keep his job, Rumsfeld is described as upbeat and anxious to tell his side of the story. Sources say he will announce an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled the scandal and, Aaron, that's a tried and true Washington tactic to deflect criticism, appoint a blue ribbon commission and then wait several months for the conclusion -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is it the secretary's plan, if you know this, to cast this what's going on in the last week as a political issue being waged against the -- waged by those who oppose the war against him?

MCINTYRE: No. I think what his tactic is going to be is to explain that he's under some restrictions with the military legal system and to try to lay out the case, a time line of exactly when they found out about things, when they took action.

There will be a minimum of apologizing and a maximum of explaining and he believes in his own mind that he did everything right and he has a lot of self confidence in that area and he's going to try to basically convince them the way he usually does by being a little bit combative and somewhat shrewd.

BROWN: And how have they managed the message up from the White House, which is the president saying to the secretary you should have told me more, I should have known about the picture, I should have known about the report?

MCINTYRE: Well, they haven't really talked about that here. Today, Rumsfeld was huddled preparing for tomorrow. By the end of the day the aides were telling us he was ready to go and looking forward to it.

So I guess we'll have to wait and see tomorrow how he answers that question. Another question is whether he'll apologize either for what happened there or to the Congress for not keeping them informed.

BROWN: Well, we'll be all watching. CNN will cover the hearings tomorrow. Thank you, Jamie.

In Iraq, other news to report, another hostage taken, the Arab television network Al Arabiya aired a video today showing a 41-year- old Iraqi American Aban Elias. Mr. Elias was born in Baghdad, returned to his native country from Denver after the war. He was working on a road building project near Fallujah when he was abducted.

Farther south in Iraq, U.S. troops strengthen their foothold in Najaf considerably today. The rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces took control of the city last month but today American forces seized a government compound to make room for the city's new governor.

Reporting for us tonight CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Not everyone approved of U.S. troops securing the governor's office in Najaf. As political officials in Baghdad announced the appointment of a new governor from Najaf that recently returned from the United States, U.S. troops moved out in his home city to secure his office.

The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment launched simultaneous operations in Najaf and across the river into Kufa to engage the Mehdi Army in other places while they took control of the governor's building. In minutes the building was in U.S. hands.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on inside.

ARRAF: Outside a loud speaker told people to stay indoors and off the streets and that the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a new governor for the city. But militia members were gathering and within minutes the gunfire started from allies and nearby rooftops.

Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion 37th Armored fired back. They considered it a minor engagement but they say they killed 12 suspected gunmen. There were no U.S. casualties. The extent of civilian casualties was unknown.

Forty suspected militia members were killed from across the river in Kufa, adjoining Najaf, military officials said. It was the first time U.S. forces retrained by their proximity to the Shia holy shrines had used mortar to fire back.

(on camera): U.S. forces are steadily widening the area they're operating in in Najaf despite resistance like this but they are still steering well away from the holy sites.

(voice-over): They're hoping the appointment of a governor will help Iraqi leaders solve the standoff here.

LT. COL. PAT WHITE, 2ND BATTALION 37TH ARMORED: The first step obviously was appointing the governor and now we've got to get him back down in here so he can talk to the religious and political leaders that are currently underground, bring them to the forefront so the Iraqis can find a solution to what's happening here in Kufa and Najaf.

ARRAF: With ongoing attacks, though, one of the challenges will be keeping returning leaders, as well as the building they occupy, safe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: A few hours ago we were in that bunker behind us with a barrage of mortar fire, the most intense in the last few days. The U.S. responded for the first time by dropping a 500-pound bomb from an F-16 on a mortar position. Now the coming day is Friday. It's the Muslim holy day and a day possibly of fiery speeches from the mosques, more potential problems ahead -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you. The audio is a little spotty so we'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Jane Arraf who's in the Najaf area tonight.

With plenty of Iraqis apparently eager to spill American blood yet another voice urging them on may in the end add up to nothing more than background noise. Just the same, certain voices rise above the background and tonight, again, a familiar one has, reporting CNN's David Ensor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): On the new audio tape a voice claiming to be Osama bin Laden offers rewards in gold for killing top Americans in Iraq and smaller sums for killing British, Italian or Japanese citizens there.

PURPORTED VOICE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator: You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill mujaheddin. We in al Qaeda will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer, or the American chief military commander or his deputy in Iraq.

ENSOR: In addition to offering rewards to anyone who kills Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority chief or the top American generals in the region, Generals Abizaid and Sanchez, bin Laden also offers the same sum for killing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan or his special representative for Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi.

PETER BERGEN, TERRORISM ANALYST: This very specific attack on the United Nations and the people who lead it I think is bin Laden's sort of way of saying, OK, the American handover is coming soon. The United Nations is going to take over but we're also calling for attacks on the United Nations because we don't want a stable Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: Ten thousand grams of gold is currently worth about $137,000. By contrast the price on bin Laden's head, the U.S. reward, is $50 million. A CIA spokesman says the new 20-plus minute audio tape is being analyzed to see if it really is bin Laden's voice -- Aaron.

BROWN: Any reason to believe it's not, I mean based on all the tapes that have come out?

ENSOR: No. It probably is his voice. In the past every tape that's come out has been found to be his voice. One or two times it's been decided that the tapes were, in fact, old recycled material but this time there are references to recent events. This is probably bin Laden and it's probably new.

BROWN: David, thank you very much, David Ensor in Washington.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, civilian contractors in Iraq, who gets held accountable when things go wrong, does anyone, and how many are there and why are they there?

Plus, honoring the war dead, how different is it in the United States and Britain? It is very different and we'll show it to you.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: What happened at Abu Ghraib is refocusing attention on military contract workers, some of whom were apparently used to interrogate Iraqi prisoners. In the usual debates about outsourcing the focus is on economics, how many U.S. jobs does it cost. Military outsourcing is a big business. It's creating lots of jobs and almost as many legal uncertainties.

Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If civilians participated in the alleged abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison, the attorney general says there are laws in place to prosecute them.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: There are tools available to the United States government and they would provide a basis for addressing this.

ARENA: Government sources say several cases regarding possible misconduct in Iraq have been referred to the Justice Department but that prosecutors are deferring to the Pentagon investigation for now. Some legal experts suggest that's because contrary to what the attorney general said the 20,000 or so civilians working in Iraq are free to break the law without any consequences.

GARY SOLIS, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW: I can see no way that they would be prosecuted, no practical way that those individuals could be prosecuted in a U.S. Federal Court and I know they can't be prosecuted by the military and I know they can't be prosecuted by the Iraqi courts.

ARENA: The debate focuses mainly on what is known as the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which was designed to deal with crimes committed by Americans accompanying the military overseas.

PETER W. SINGER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: The problem with this act is manifold. First there are certain gaps in it, certain individuals, certain areas that it doesn't apply to. Second, it wasn't equipped to deal with the changes in military outsourcing, how we've not just pushed the envelope but actually punched right through the envelope.

ARENA: The challenge extends beyond Iraq. There are civilians performing traditional military functions around the world and civilians are not held accountable in the way members of the military are.

EUGENE FIDELL, MILITARY LAW EXPERT: So, you might have quite different legal outcomes and quite different legal regimes for people whose conduct might be very similar.

ARENA (on camera): Sources say workers from two companies, Khaki (ph) International and Titan Corporation are being scrutinized. Both companies say they have no knowledge of allegations against any of their employees.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So there's something like 20,000 civilian workers in Iraq doing everything from driving trucks to providing security. We suspect we weren't the only one surprised to learn civilians might be interrogating prisoners in Iraq but in the age of a volunteer military it has come to that. There simply aren't enough troops to fill all the jobs.

Lawrence Korb served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and he joins us tonight from Washington. Is it really as simple as saying that there aren't enough people volunteering for the service or that we set, the government sets a limit on the number of people in the service and that the limit is too low?

LAWRENCE KORB, FORMER ASSISTANT SEC. OF DEFENSE: Well, right now it's too low, particularly for the Army because when the Army was downsized after the end of the Cold War nobody ever envisioned us basically building an empire. I mean we've got Americans responsible for rebuilding two countries with over 50 million people, Afghanistan and Iraq, so nobody ever envisioned that.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, has fought against attempts by members of the Congress to add a couple of divisions to the Army so you wouldn't have to rely as much both on Guard and Reserve as well as civilians.

BROWN: Just a couple questions on all of this I think. Look, it's one thing for I suppose civilians, you know, to be building sewer lines. It's another thing for non-military personnel to be providing security for the head of the CPA. Is this good public policy?

KORB: No, it's not because what started out as a good idea where you would outsource certain basic functions like KP, you know, cooking the food or guarding bases in the United States so you could free up the fighting men and women to actually perform the military tasks has basically crossed the line.

You've got private contractors now doing essentially government work and, even if it saves money, which is not quite clear, this has really crossed the line. As you pointed out in your earlier report they're interrogating prisoners.

They're not only guarding Ambassador Bremer, they're guarding the President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, and if in carrying out those functions they should cross a line and kill an innocent civilian or use their arms inappropriately, it's very unclear how you would bring them to justice.

BROWN: Are they essential mercenaries?

KORB: Well, I guess you could call them that in the sense that the people that are doing that are basically doing it for money. The money is very good, in fact it's causing another problem because you're getting a lot of military people, particularly Special Forces, leaving the service, going to work for those companies and the government is essentially paying twice. We paid to train them to give them those skills. Then they go out and we have to pay the companies to use them.

BROWN: Let's go back to the beginning then. Let's both agree for a second this ain't the greatest public policy ever devised. Is there any way to solve it other than accepting a reality that the Army, in particular, and perhaps the armed services more generally, but certainly the Army, needs to be bigger if we are to take on the kinds of responsibilities we are taking on?

KORB: No. There's no way around it. You're going to need at least two more divisions in the Army, which is about 40,000 people. It's going to cost you about $10 billion a year and you're going to have to make some hard choices.

Do you want to buy those men and women and put them in the military or do you want to cancel some weapon systems? There are people in the Congress who are going to propose that this year that you cancel something like the F-22, the new fighter for the Air Force to buy these divisions for the Army.

BROWN: But if you're paying -- I guess I'm not clear, sir, why it's more expensive or less expensive to do it this way. If you're paying these guys $100,000 or whatever to do this work where is the cost savings?

KORB: Well, basically the cost savings comes out right now because we're funding this war with a supplemental and see that's how you get around it because if you're a military person and you're on the regular payroll, in fact, that's not the supplemental. That's what we call the baseline budget.

But if I then fund the war, as we have funded the war both in Afghanistan and Iraq with a supplemental, last year we had the $87 billion supplemental, this year we know it's going to be at least 50, in fact they're going to talk -- send up a $25 billion supplemental, I pay out of there because theoretically these are temporary people that will go away once the war is over, whereas if I put them on the military payroll they're there for the duration and they come out of a different budget.

BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight, nice clear explanation of this. Thank you, sir, very much.

KORB: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Thank you.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the secretary of defense under fire in the prisoner scandal, the abuse scandal, will he take the fall? Should he take the fall?

We'll take a break first. Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As we reported earlier, a lot of members of Congress, as well as editorial writers around the country, are using the R word tonight, calling for the defense secretary to resign. In a speech on the House floor today, Charles Rangel, Democratic congressman from New York, went a step further, saying the I word.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLES RANGEL (D), NEW YORK: I think America and the world wants us to show the outrage, not by rhetoric, but by taking action. He kept the information away from this Congress. We have the responsibility of oversight. I'm preparing articles of impeachment today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Critics of the secretary say the issue is accountability. The secretary is one of last links in the chain of command.

Dan Henninger is a deputy editorial page editor -- or the deputy editorial page editor of "The Wall Street Journal." And he joins us tonight.

Good to have you.

Is it A or B?

DAN HENNINGER, DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": B.

BROWN: B, OK.

The easy question here is, should the secretary resign?

HENNINGER: No, I don't think so.

What you have to bear in mind here is, look at the people who are calling for him to resign. It's Charlie Rangel, Senator Harkin, Nancy Pelosi. What do all these people have in common? A, they totally oppose the war in Iraq. B, they totally oppose George Bush's reelection to the presidency. Nobody who supports the war or supports the president is calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation. So there is an awful lot of politics going on here, Aaron.

BROWN: That's the easy question. Let me ask you -- let me try and frame this a little bit -- because I think it is, in some respects, a little more complicated. Do you believe the secretary has in fact served the president well, not just in this -- because I think president clearly, or at least publicly, doesn't believe that -- but more broadly in the cost of the war, in the number of troops that were required in the planning or the lack of planning for the postwar Iraq?

HENNINGER: I think so.

We're talking about details that are awfully hard to predict in any war. If you would look back at World War II, did anyone predict the cost of that war or how many troops would be needed in any one of theaters? I think these are the kinds of details in which you can't really judge a secretary of defense's performance. You have to ultimately judge them on the success of the enterprise. And the question is whether we're going to succeed and when in Iraq.

And so far up until the last month or so it has been going pretty well. I think some of the more interesting questions have to do with the conduct of the war. Around our office, one of the most intriguing questions has been, what exactly happened in Fallujah? Recall, the Marines had surrounded it. They were poised to go in. And then suddenly they stopped and pulled back and we had this funny sequence in which an Iraqi general was picked.

BROWN: Right.

HENNINGER: And what happened there? Was that a political decision or a military decision?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Well, I don't know if you're being rhetorical here, but there is -- it has been said that one of the things that happened -- it's probably not the only thing that happened -- is that people within the White House got involved in the process.

HENNINGER: Conceivably, yes.

BROWN: That would be troubling to you, I would assume.

HENNINGER: I think it would be troubling to me if the State Department and the Defense Department were continuously squabbling over strategy in Iraq because of concerns over how it might affect the coalition government or affect Arab opinion in the world. Our job is to win in Iraq, I think, not so much to worry some of these about outside forces.

BROWN: I'm not sure how the State Department got into that. I think you just put it in there. The question was

(CROSSTALK)

HENNINGER: The State Department's very involved.

BROWN: No, I agree with that, but I'm just asking you if you would be troubled by the fact that political calculus went into the decision whether to send the Marines into Fallujah or not.

HENNINGER: Oh, I think -- I see what you're getting at. There is talk right now that the Bush political campaign, the political side, wants to put distance between the president and Iraq. And so some Republicans are starting to talk about whether the White House is looking for an exit strategy. That would be extraordinarily troubling.

BROWN: It would be troubling because the president has said all along we're not going to cut and run and that would be cutting and running?

HENNINGER: Yes. He would lose.

BROWN: How do we get out of there, then? What has to happen before there are not 135,000 Americans there?

HENNINGER: Well, something is going to happen, Aaron.

On June 30, we're handing the government -- the government over to the Iraqis. And they're going to bear responsibility for their own fate on the political side. We did the same thing in Bosnia. We have done the same thing in Afghanistan. The Afghans have a government. But the Americans are still there providing security. And that's essentially what is going to happen in Iraq.

BROWN: But as long as there are 135,000 Americans in that country at this time, isn't there almost certainly going to be trouble?

HENNINGER: Iraq is a very troublesome place, for sure. But I think -- to go back to the political part, over 55 percent -- the support for the war in this country has remained around 55 percent or higher. And it is an emotional commitment. It is a kind of moral commitment the American people have made. And I think they feel the president has to see it through and succeed there, trouble or not, and that if he pulls back, it is just going make the -- his father's breaking the "Read my lips" pledge look like a day at kindergarten. He'll lose the presidency if he does that.

BROWN: Good to have you with us. Hope you'll come back.

HENNINGER: Glad to be here.

BROWN: To talk about this and lots of other things that appear on a very lively editorial page in "The Wall Street Journal."

HENNINGER: Thanks a lot.

BROWN: Thank you.

A few more quick items from around the country tonight before we head to break.

FBI agents in Portland, Oregon, have arrested a lawyer in connection, they say, with the bombings now two months ago in Madrid. His name is Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who converted to Islam and who once defended a man with Taliban connections. Sources tell us Mr. Mayfield's fingerprints were found on a bag with bomb-making material connected to attacks in Madrid. He was detained, however, as a material witness, which means he can be held in secret without charges being filed.

Florida next, an update on the case of Terri Schiavo. A circuit court judge today struck down a law named after her, a law that keeps her connected to feeding tubes. He ruled that her -- that law called Terri's Law violated her right to privacy, wrongfully delegates legislative authority to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who pushed for the law. The governor's office filed appeals. Ms. Schiavo remains on life support.

The Food and Drug Administration today said no to selling the so- called morning-after pill over the counter. In a letter to the drug's maker, the FDA cited concerns about young teenagers using the pill, which goes by the name Plan B, without medical supervision. The FDA's own scientific advisory panel had already recommended the drug be approved. So as you might expect certain groups are now accusing the agency of bowing to political pressures. And so it goes.

And we also want to tell you about a program that caught our eye tonight. There are these friends, you see. And they live in an apartment. And it is pretty funny. And the program ended.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, a woman is murdered. Her daughters are battered, all in the name of defending a family's honor, all at the hands of the head of the family.

That story and more as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Someone once said that most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and right place, they are capable of anything, ordinary people, good people.

We say this because there can't be enough pure evil in the world to explain half the evil that people do. There must be another explanation and many would argue the explanation is culture, culture as in values, formal or otherwise, religious or not, that come together most of the time in the name of good, most of the time. In the end, it may explain what turned American soldiers into real bad actors in Iraq or a Turkish immigrant family man into a confessed killer in Rochester, New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Their modest apartment is empty now. About the only evidence that a family did live here is an abandoned automobile with an infant's car seat in the back and the front passenger door still unlocked.

PATRICK O'FLYNN, MONROE COUNTY SHERIFF: It really was a horrific scene. Our deputies responded around 7:25 in the morning. For the report of someone bleeding and then we received a call that someone was screaming and running through a neighborhood.

BROWN: That someone was a 22-year-old woman. She told police that she and her infant sister, just 4 years old, had been struck repeatedly with a hammer and a knife and that her mother was lying on the floor beaten and stabbed to death, that her two teenage brothers were unharmed and that the man who did it to her was her father, a Turkish immigrant, all a part of what authorities in Rochester, New York, now believe is the first of the so-called honor killings to have occurred in the United States.

MICHAEL GREEN, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Those were his words to the police officers. The allegations attached to the indictment are the defendant claimed that his family honor and the honor of his wife and he felt the honor of his daughters had been tarnished either by a family member or by a hospital staff during the course of an examination.

BROWN: That examination was a gynecological examination on the 4-year-old. As stark as that sounds, human rights experts say honor killings, while unusual, still occur with distressing frequency across the Muslim world.

JOSEPH SCHALLER, NAZARETH COLLEGE: It can be either the infliction of bodily harm, physical punishment up to murder against an individual for a perceived violation of the social code and values.

BROWN: Just the other day in Turkey, for instance, this man was charged with strangling his 14-year-old daughter after she was allegedly kidnapped and raped. He did it, he told reporters, to save his family's honor. At Rochester's Islamic Center, the news of what happened in that city is hard to swallow.

MUHAMMAD SHAFIQ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ISLAMIC CENTER OF ROCHESTER: This incident is very painful for all Muslims, whether they are Turkish Muslims or whether they are Muslims from any part of the world. To the Muslim community, this is unacceptable something like that could happen.

BROWN: The suspect in Rochester is 42-year-old Ismail Peltek, who police say moved to the city with his family a little over a year ago. He is behind bars now awaiting a court appearance. His court- appointed attorney would not comment on the case. But when he was asked by police if he had hurt his wife, Mr. Peltek's response was: "Yes, yes. I knifed her. I knifed myself. They took my honor."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Mr. Peltek's daughters are both out of the hospital now, the 4-year-old in foster care, her adult sister is in seclusion.

A quick look at a couple of other items now in our "Moneyline Roundup," beginning with the belated guilty plea from Enron's Lea Fastow. She drew a year in prison after admitting to a misdemeanor tax charge concerning money her husband, Andrew, made while he was Enron's chief financial officer.

Her deal, if it sticks -- first one, you will recall, fell through -- is expected to make her husband more forthcoming about his bosses, Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan fired another warning shot across the economy today. At a conference of bankers, he said growing budget deficits threaten the economy's long-term health. Regrettably, he told the bankers, the free lunch is yet to be invented. Just try and get a banker to buy you lunch some day.

That and jitters over tomorrow's employment report sent Wall Street into a blue funk or, for our purposes, a red funk, I guess. Markets took another beating in any way you put it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, they fight side by side. They come home worlds apart, two views of fallen soldiers, Americans and British.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It is has been said the British and American experience in Iraq is a study in differences, different approaches to governing and policing, to fighting and to dying. From theater to home, the American way of death is intensely private and officially secretive, some would argue needlessly so. The British way is otherwise.

Here is CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is how the British honor their war dead. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the exact moment of the armistice in 1918 ending the great war, even 84 years later, the dead are not forgotten. Led by the queen, all Britain's war dead are honored with dignity and beauty.

When the British war dead come home from Iraq now, they are not hidden. Grieving is public. Important dignitaries and families gather for the return of those killed. TV cameras are kept at a discrete distance, but the reality of war is not denied. To many British, it seems bizarre that the Pentagon, citing concern for family privacy, does not allow pictures of its honored dead returning.

GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT, JOURNALIST: To an Englishmen, it is very strange indeed because we have in fact this long tradition of honoring the dead and of treating war with great solemnity and making almost a cult out of the fallen.

RODGERS: Last October, the royal family, the prime minister and families of fallen soldiers all came together at St. Paul's Cathedral to honor Britain's Iraq war dead. To the British, the fact President George W. Bush has yet to attend the funeral of a single American soldier killed in Iraq seems more than strange.

WHEATCROFT: It would seem from this perspective that the statement he's trying to make is that he would wish away the fact that any Americans have been killed there, which, of course, he can't do.

RODGERS: Under Bush administration restrictions for covering the return of the American war dead, pictures like these broadcast by Britain's ITN could not be gathered in the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On that flight, five Royal Marines, the first, 34-year-old Major Jason Ward from Plymouth. Next came his colleague, Captain Philip Guy from North Yorkshire.

RODGERS: Those who carefully track this war here are appalled.

MULHOLLAND: In the U.K., there's an effort to honor those who have died. In the U.S., under this administration, it seems there's a real effort to hide the cost of the war both in terms of the number of lives lost and in terms of money.

RODGERS (on camera): As they did in the great war, the British and the Americans marched off together again, this time in Iraq. But for those who paid the ultimate price, they come home in a very different manner.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. I'm trying to find "The Chicago Sun- Times." But I don't think I have it. We'll figure that one out.

We'll start with "The Christian Science Monitor" today. Still a lot on the prison stuff. "Pressure Rises On Bush Team. Rumsfeld Rebuked Wednesday, Faces Senators Today Over Prisoners." But this is a story -- this is an awfully good story. We tend in the news business to kind of flip from one thing to the next. "In Fallujah, Civility Returns," a kind of normalcy in a city that for about six, eight weeks, was hardly that. That's "The Christian Science Monitor."

"The Boston Herald." "Meet the G.I. at the Center of the Scandal, Iraq's Queen of Mean." Lynndie -- Private 1st Class Lynndie England is the woman who is seen in a couple of -- the soldier who is seen in a couple of pictures, including the one with the dog leash, which made the news today. Yikes. That's got to be uncomfortable for her and everybody.

"Washington Times," pretty straight. "Bush Stands Behind Rumsfeld." Pretty straight there. I would put this on the front page. I think it's an awfully big story: "Morning After Pill Won't Go Over the Counter. FDA Might Reconsider." There's a lot of detail there.

This is a first-time paper. And we're glad to have it, "The Daily Inter Lake." This is from Flathead County, Montana. In fact, their motto is "Serving Flathead Since 1888." "Feds Sweep Down On Militia Suspects. Four Face Weapons Charges Linked to Alleged Project 7 Plot to Assassinate County Leaders." All in one breath, he did it. So thanks for sending it our way.

And also, I think this is new as well. How am I doing on time? Am I in trouble? Fifteen. "Santa Rosa News" -- this must be Santa Rosa, California -- leads local. Sure, it does. "Law Enforcement Week May 9 Through the 15th," Guadalupe County, New Mexico. Well, it's probably Santa Rosa, New Mexico, then, it stands to reason.

I'm sure there is weather in Chicago tomorrow. My guess is windy. I don't know. We'll find out.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we leave you tonight, here is Bill Hemmer with a look at what's coming up tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Aaron, thanks.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," tonight's final episode of "Friends" no small matter; 40 million to 50 million probably watched it. And just as many likely to have some thoughts about the way that sitcom decided to go out. Advertisers, they treat it like the Super Bowl. But what does NBC do now without it? Our "90-Second Pop" crew going to tackle that tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. Eastern time. Hope to see you then -- Aaron.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Bill, thank you.

And good to have you with us, all. For most of you, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" is next.

We're back here tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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 May 6, 2004 - 22:00   ET
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.
The president said "sorry" more or less that ends that little kafuffle. The rest of the Iraqi prison mess still hangs out there.

Tomorrow, the defense secretary goes to the Hill to testify on this. We can't imagine he will say, as one talk show host said today that this really wasn't much worse than a fraternity hazing, mind boggling that one.

Amid all the finger pointing, the call for this head or that the best suggestion we've heard so far isn't for the secretary to resign, at least over this. It was something else, symbolic too but far more powerful.

The Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, suggested that maybe the answer is to bulldoze that prison. Abu Ghraib was a horrible place when Saddam and his goons ran it and now it is seen as an example of repression again, so just go in there and tear it down. Flatten it in broad daylight for the world to see.

It will not make everything better but it will send a message, a message that the evil of the past is really gone and the misdeeds of the present are gone as well.

Until then there is the scandal and the whip and our Senior White House Correspondent starts it off, John King a headline.

JOHN KING, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, the president said "I'm sorry," after being told by one of his closest allies in the Arab world that so far up to today the administration's effort to quiet the outrage had failed and then some. Mr. Bush also made clear today he's not terribly with his defense secretary but he also made clear he doesn't agree with Democrats. Donald Rumsfeld, the president says, will stay.

BROWN: John, thank you. We'll get to you at the top tonight.

On to the Pentagon where the boss is playing defense, not used to that, Jamie McIntyre with that side of the story, Jamie the headline from you.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Aaron, don't expect much contrition from Donald Rumsfeld when he testified before Congress tomorrow. He does have a bone to throw Congress but aides say he's ready to rumble with his detractors on Capitol Hill.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you.

Next to Iraq, another day under fire for American troops there, CNN's Jane Arraf on the videophone with a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, the U.S. (audio gap).

BROWN: We'll get that fixed.

We'll go to Washington next for the tape and the voice and a new call to arms from Osama bin Laden, by the sound of it our National Security Correspondent David Ensor with that, David the headline.

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, on this new audio tape, which claims to be Osama bin Laden, a chilling price list, prices on the heads of prominent Americans, U.N. officials and any other westerners who are supporting the U.S. in Iraq.

BROWN: David, thank you. We'll get back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, honor killings a horrific fact of life in parts of the Muslim world and tonight a reality in the United States.

Plus the differences in two countries, how the British government and the American government deal with the deaths of their soldiers in Iraq.

And, at the end, the rooster stops by as he always does delivering your morning papers, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin at the White House on a day that brought more damage control with new photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghraib appearing in "The Washington Post" this morning, more on that part in a bit.

The latest graphic images surfaced as the president was meeting with a key Arab leader, Jordan's King Abdullah. The meeting produced an apology.

Here again our Senior White House Correspondent John King.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KING (voice-over): In the Rose Garden with Jordan's King Abdullah, the president delivered the direct apology missing from earlier efforts to quiet Arab outrage.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I told him I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners and the humiliation suffered by their families.

KING: King Abdullah called the abuses heinous crimes but said he trusted Mr. Bush's promise to find and punish those responsible. KING ABDULLAH, JORDAN: We hope that that will happen very quickly and that, you know, it doesn't reflect on the morals, the values that the United States stands for.

KING: The president dismissed Democratic calls for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to resign but, a day after chastising Mr. Rumsfeld in private, Mr. Bush did make clear he believed the Pentagon wrongly kept him in the dark about the scope of the abuses.

BUSH: And I told him I should have known about the pictures and the report.

KING: Critical Arab support in public but sources tell CNN the Jordanian delegation described the impact in the Arab world as devastating and the emergence of more pictures will only add to the diplomatic challenge.

BUSH: It's a stain on our country's honor and our country's reputation. I fully understand that.

KING: The negative headlines in the Arab world come as the president faces image problems at home as well. Forty-nine percent of Americans now approve of how Mr. Bush is handling his job, down from 60 percent in a Gallup poll in January and just 42 percent approve of how Mr. Bush is handling Iraq, down 20 points since the campaign year began.

Democrat John Kerry seized on Mr. Bush's statements that he did not receive critical information about the abuses.

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: As president, I will not be the last to know what is going on in my command.

KING: And other Democrats say the prisoner abuse scandal is just the latest in a string of mistakes, including miscalculating the war's costs, underestimating how many troops it would take and failing to anticipate Iraqi resistance.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: The post-war chaos in Iraq has resulted from such miserably poor planning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KING: Looking ahead, senior aides here at the White House say the president has told them to be quite aggressive in keeping tabs on the investigations in the days and weeks ahead and yet, Aaron, looking back the White House says it still cannot tell us when the president was first told of these abuses and how he reacted beyond saying keep me informed.

BROWN: Do they -- is the feeling there that they just have to ride this out that they have done what they can do at this point?

KING: The theory is they'll have to keep apologizing, not so much using those worlds every day but keep at the Middle East diplomacy and look for Secretary Rumsfeld. A senior official here tonight told me this is off our plate for at least a day. It's in Rummy land.

BROWN: All right. Well, and we're going to get to Rummy land in a minute but Jamie in the headline didn't indicate that the secretary was going to go up there and be contrite. Is that consistent with what you hear and consistent with what the message the White House wants to send?

KING: Yes. The White House believes, and Jamie will get into this more, that the secretary has quite a good explanation and can prove that once this came to the Army's attention, the military's attention, it actually acted quite quickly to investigate and to hold at least the first wave of those found to be responsible accountable.

Where the White House concedes things got off track is in the politics and the diplomacy. That's why you heard the president himself say he's not satisfied. He thinks people didn't tell him things he needed to know. And we are also told at the White House that the secretary will say the same thing that there are things that he needed to know that he didn't know.

BROWN: All right, John, thank you very much, our Senior White House Correspondent John King tonight.

And, as John just reported, the drumbeat for the defense secretary to resign is getting a bit louder. Democratic lawmakers calling for Mr. Rumsfeld to step down or be fired say actions not apologies are needed.

As for the secretary, he cancelled a speech today using the day to prepare for the congressional hearings tomorrow where the questions, as I'm sure you gather, will be tough.

Here again, Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The morning's "Washington Post" brought fresh pictures of the abuse at the Abu Ghraib Prison. A female soldier from the 372nd MP Company holds a leash attached to a naked prisoner. Other unclothed prisoners are seen shackled to the cells with hoods or women's underwear over their heads.

PAUL WOLFOWITZ, DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY: The actions of the soldiers in those photos are totally unacceptable.

MCINTYRE: It was left to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to deliver the denouncement at a speech in Philadelphia that was to be given by his embattled boss.

Sources say Donald Rumsfeld skipped the appearance to prepare for the grilling he's about to get from angry members of Congress, especially Democrats who are increasingly calling for him to step down.

SEN. TOM HARKIN (D), IOWA: I still believe for the benefit of our country, our nation, our honor that he has to resign and he has to go. Nothing I think less will suffice.

MCINTYRE: Senators are particularly miffed that the day the pictures were about to hit the air waves, Rumsfeld failed to mention the abuse in closed door hearings on Capitol Hill.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: Mr. Rumsfeld has been engaged in a cover-up from the start on this issue and continues to be so.

MCINTYRE: But even as President Bush admitted unhappiness that he too was kept in the dark about the gravity of the abuse, he says he won't fire Rumsfeld.

BUSH: He's an important part of my cabinet and he'll stay in my cabinet.

MCINTYRE: And some Republicans went so far as to suggest Rumsfeld's detractors were defeatists.

REP. TOM DELAY (R), MAJORITY LEADER: Calling for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation is as bad as saying the war is unwinnable.

MCINTYRE: Meanwhile, the magazine "The Economist" put its resignation call on the cover, along with a photo it says may become an iconic image that could haunt America for years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: Now having been reassured that he'll keep his job, Rumsfeld is described as upbeat and anxious to tell his side of the story. Sources say he will announce an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled the scandal and, Aaron, that's a tried and true Washington tactic to deflect criticism, appoint a blue ribbon commission and then wait several months for the conclusion -- Aaron.

BROWN: Is it the secretary's plan, if you know this, to cast this what's going on in the last week as a political issue being waged against the -- waged by those who oppose the war against him?

MCINTYRE: No. I think what his tactic is going to be is to explain that he's under some restrictions with the military legal system and to try to lay out the case, a time line of exactly when they found out about things, when they took action.

There will be a minimum of apologizing and a maximum of explaining and he believes in his own mind that he did everything right and he has a lot of self confidence in that area and he's going to try to basically convince them the way he usually does by being a little bit combative and somewhat shrewd.

BROWN: And how have they managed the message up from the White House, which is the president saying to the secretary you should have told me more, I should have known about the picture, I should have known about the report?

MCINTYRE: Well, they haven't really talked about that here. Today, Rumsfeld was huddled preparing for tomorrow. By the end of the day the aides were telling us he was ready to go and looking forward to it.

So I guess we'll have to wait and see tomorrow how he answers that question. Another question is whether he'll apologize either for what happened there or to the Congress for not keeping them informed.

BROWN: Well, we'll be all watching. CNN will cover the hearings tomorrow. Thank you, Jamie.

In Iraq, other news to report, another hostage taken, the Arab television network Al Arabiya aired a video today showing a 41-year- old Iraqi American Aban Elias. Mr. Elias was born in Baghdad, returned to his native country from Denver after the war. He was working on a road building project near Fallujah when he was abducted.

Farther south in Iraq, U.S. troops strengthen their foothold in Najaf considerably today. The rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces took control of the city last month but today American forces seized a government compound to make room for the city's new governor.

Reporting for us tonight CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): Not everyone approved of U.S. troops securing the governor's office in Najaf. As political officials in Baghdad announced the appointment of a new governor from Najaf that recently returned from the United States, U.S. troops moved out in his home city to secure his office.

The 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment launched simultaneous operations in Najaf and across the river into Kufa to engage the Mehdi Army in other places while they took control of the governor's building. In minutes the building was in U.S. hands.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on inside.

ARRAF: Outside a loud speaker told people to stay indoors and off the streets and that the Iraqi Governing Council had appointed a new governor for the city. But militia members were gathering and within minutes the gunfire started from allies and nearby rooftops.

Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion 37th Armored fired back. They considered it a minor engagement but they say they killed 12 suspected gunmen. There were no U.S. casualties. The extent of civilian casualties was unknown.

Forty suspected militia members were killed from across the river in Kufa, adjoining Najaf, military officials said. It was the first time U.S. forces retrained by their proximity to the Shia holy shrines had used mortar to fire back.

(on camera): U.S. forces are steadily widening the area they're operating in in Najaf despite resistance like this but they are still steering well away from the holy sites.

(voice-over): They're hoping the appointment of a governor will help Iraqi leaders solve the standoff here.

LT. COL. PAT WHITE, 2ND BATTALION 37TH ARMORED: The first step obviously was appointing the governor and now we've got to get him back down in here so he can talk to the religious and political leaders that are currently underground, bring them to the forefront so the Iraqis can find a solution to what's happening here in Kufa and Najaf.

ARRAF: With ongoing attacks, though, one of the challenges will be keeping returning leaders, as well as the building they occupy, safe.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: A few hours ago we were in that bunker behind us with a barrage of mortar fire, the most intense in the last few days. The U.S. responded for the first time by dropping a 500-pound bomb from an F-16 on a mortar position. Now the coming day is Friday. It's the Muslim holy day and a day possibly of fiery speeches from the mosques, more potential problems ahead -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you. The audio is a little spotty so we'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Jane Arraf who's in the Najaf area tonight.

With plenty of Iraqis apparently eager to spill American blood yet another voice urging them on may in the end add up to nothing more than background noise. Just the same, certain voices rise above the background and tonight, again, a familiar one has, reporting CNN's David Ensor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR (voice-over): On the new audio tape a voice claiming to be Osama bin Laden offers rewards in gold for killing top Americans in Iraq and smaller sums for killing British, Italian or Japanese citizens there.

PURPORTED VOICE OF OSAMA BIN LADEN (through translator: You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill mujaheddin. We in al Qaeda will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer, or the American chief military commander or his deputy in Iraq.

ENSOR: In addition to offering rewards to anyone who kills Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority chief or the top American generals in the region, Generals Abizaid and Sanchez, bin Laden also offers the same sum for killing U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan or his special representative for Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi.

PETER BERGEN, TERRORISM ANALYST: This very specific attack on the United Nations and the people who lead it I think is bin Laden's sort of way of saying, OK, the American handover is coming soon. The United Nations is going to take over but we're also calling for attacks on the United Nations because we don't want a stable Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ENSOR: Ten thousand grams of gold is currently worth about $137,000. By contrast the price on bin Laden's head, the U.S. reward, is $50 million. A CIA spokesman says the new 20-plus minute audio tape is being analyzed to see if it really is bin Laden's voice -- Aaron.

BROWN: Any reason to believe it's not, I mean based on all the tapes that have come out?

ENSOR: No. It probably is his voice. In the past every tape that's come out has been found to be his voice. One or two times it's been decided that the tapes were, in fact, old recycled material but this time there are references to recent events. This is probably bin Laden and it's probably new.

BROWN: David, thank you very much, David Ensor in Washington.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, civilian contractors in Iraq, who gets held accountable when things go wrong, does anyone, and how many are there and why are they there?

Plus, honoring the war dead, how different is it in the United States and Britain? It is very different and we'll show it to you.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: What happened at Abu Ghraib is refocusing attention on military contract workers, some of whom were apparently used to interrogate Iraqi prisoners. In the usual debates about outsourcing the focus is on economics, how many U.S. jobs does it cost. Military outsourcing is a big business. It's creating lots of jobs and almost as many legal uncertainties.

Here's CNN's Kelli Arena.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If civilians participated in the alleged abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib Prison, the attorney general says there are laws in place to prosecute them.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: There are tools available to the United States government and they would provide a basis for addressing this.

ARENA: Government sources say several cases regarding possible misconduct in Iraq have been referred to the Justice Department but that prosecutors are deferring to the Pentagon investigation for now. Some legal experts suggest that's because contrary to what the attorney general said the 20,000 or so civilians working in Iraq are free to break the law without any consequences.

GARY SOLIS, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW: I can see no way that they would be prosecuted, no practical way that those individuals could be prosecuted in a U.S. Federal Court and I know they can't be prosecuted by the military and I know they can't be prosecuted by the Iraqi courts.

ARENA: The debate focuses mainly on what is known as the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which was designed to deal with crimes committed by Americans accompanying the military overseas.

PETER W. SINGER, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: The problem with this act is manifold. First there are certain gaps in it, certain individuals, certain areas that it doesn't apply to. Second, it wasn't equipped to deal with the changes in military outsourcing, how we've not just pushed the envelope but actually punched right through the envelope.

ARENA: The challenge extends beyond Iraq. There are civilians performing traditional military functions around the world and civilians are not held accountable in the way members of the military are.

EUGENE FIDELL, MILITARY LAW EXPERT: So, you might have quite different legal outcomes and quite different legal regimes for people whose conduct might be very similar.

ARENA (on camera): Sources say workers from two companies, Khaki (ph) International and Titan Corporation are being scrutinized. Both companies say they have no knowledge of allegations against any of their employees.

Kelli Arena, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: So there's something like 20,000 civilian workers in Iraq doing everything from driving trucks to providing security. We suspect we weren't the only one surprised to learn civilians might be interrogating prisoners in Iraq but in the age of a volunteer military it has come to that. There simply aren't enough troops to fill all the jobs.

Lawrence Korb served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and he joins us tonight from Washington. Is it really as simple as saying that there aren't enough people volunteering for the service or that we set, the government sets a limit on the number of people in the service and that the limit is too low?

LAWRENCE KORB, FORMER ASSISTANT SEC. OF DEFENSE: Well, right now it's too low, particularly for the Army because when the Army was downsized after the end of the Cold War nobody ever envisioned us basically building an empire. I mean we've got Americans responsible for rebuilding two countries with over 50 million people, Afghanistan and Iraq, so nobody ever envisioned that.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, has fought against attempts by members of the Congress to add a couple of divisions to the Army so you wouldn't have to rely as much both on Guard and Reserve as well as civilians.

BROWN: Just a couple questions on all of this I think. Look, it's one thing for I suppose civilians, you know, to be building sewer lines. It's another thing for non-military personnel to be providing security for the head of the CPA. Is this good public policy?

KORB: No, it's not because what started out as a good idea where you would outsource certain basic functions like KP, you know, cooking the food or guarding bases in the United States so you could free up the fighting men and women to actually perform the military tasks has basically crossed the line.

You've got private contractors now doing essentially government work and, even if it saves money, which is not quite clear, this has really crossed the line. As you pointed out in your earlier report they're interrogating prisoners.

They're not only guarding Ambassador Bremer, they're guarding the President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai, and if in carrying out those functions they should cross a line and kill an innocent civilian or use their arms inappropriately, it's very unclear how you would bring them to justice.

BROWN: Are they essential mercenaries?

KORB: Well, I guess you could call them that in the sense that the people that are doing that are basically doing it for money. The money is very good, in fact it's causing another problem because you're getting a lot of military people, particularly Special Forces, leaving the service, going to work for those companies and the government is essentially paying twice. We paid to train them to give them those skills. Then they go out and we have to pay the companies to use them.

BROWN: Let's go back to the beginning then. Let's both agree for a second this ain't the greatest public policy ever devised. Is there any way to solve it other than accepting a reality that the Army, in particular, and perhaps the armed services more generally, but certainly the Army, needs to be bigger if we are to take on the kinds of responsibilities we are taking on?

KORB: No. There's no way around it. You're going to need at least two more divisions in the Army, which is about 40,000 people. It's going to cost you about $10 billion a year and you're going to have to make some hard choices.

Do you want to buy those men and women and put them in the military or do you want to cancel some weapon systems? There are people in the Congress who are going to propose that this year that you cancel something like the F-22, the new fighter for the Air Force to buy these divisions for the Army.

BROWN: But if you're paying -- I guess I'm not clear, sir, why it's more expensive or less expensive to do it this way. If you're paying these guys $100,000 or whatever to do this work where is the cost savings?

KORB: Well, basically the cost savings comes out right now because we're funding this war with a supplemental and see that's how you get around it because if you're a military person and you're on the regular payroll, in fact, that's not the supplemental. That's what we call the baseline budget.

But if I then fund the war, as we have funded the war both in Afghanistan and Iraq with a supplemental, last year we had the $87 billion supplemental, this year we know it's going to be at least 50, in fact they're going to talk -- send up a $25 billion supplemental, I pay out of there because theoretically these are temporary people that will go away once the war is over, whereas if I put them on the military payroll they're there for the duration and they come out of a different budget.

BROWN: Good to have you with us tonight, nice clear explanation of this. Thank you, sir, very much.

KORB: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: Thank you.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the secretary of defense under fire in the prisoner scandal, the abuse scandal, will he take the fall? Should he take the fall?

We'll take a break first. Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: As we reported earlier, a lot of members of Congress, as well as editorial writers around the country, are using the R word tonight, calling for the defense secretary to resign. In a speech on the House floor today, Charles Rangel, Democratic congressman from New York, went a step further, saying the I word.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CHARLES RANGEL (D), NEW YORK: I think America and the world wants us to show the outrage, not by rhetoric, but by taking action. He kept the information away from this Congress. We have the responsibility of oversight. I'm preparing articles of impeachment today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Critics of the secretary say the issue is accountability. The secretary is one of last links in the chain of command.

Dan Henninger is a deputy editorial page editor -- or the deputy editorial page editor of "The Wall Street Journal." And he joins us tonight.

Good to have you.

Is it A or B?

DAN HENNINGER, DEPUTY EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": B.

BROWN: B, OK.

The easy question here is, should the secretary resign?

HENNINGER: No, I don't think so.

What you have to bear in mind here is, look at the people who are calling for him to resign. It's Charlie Rangel, Senator Harkin, Nancy Pelosi. What do all these people have in common? A, they totally oppose the war in Iraq. B, they totally oppose George Bush's reelection to the presidency. Nobody who supports the war or supports the president is calling for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation. So there is an awful lot of politics going on here, Aaron.

BROWN: That's the easy question. Let me ask you -- let me try and frame this a little bit -- because I think it is, in some respects, a little more complicated. Do you believe the secretary has in fact served the president well, not just in this -- because I think president clearly, or at least publicly, doesn't believe that -- but more broadly in the cost of the war, in the number of troops that were required in the planning or the lack of planning for the postwar Iraq?

HENNINGER: I think so.

We're talking about details that are awfully hard to predict in any war. If you would look back at World War II, did anyone predict the cost of that war or how many troops would be needed in any one of theaters? I think these are the kinds of details in which you can't really judge a secretary of defense's performance. You have to ultimately judge them on the success of the enterprise. And the question is whether we're going to succeed and when in Iraq.

And so far up until the last month or so it has been going pretty well. I think some of the more interesting questions have to do with the conduct of the war. Around our office, one of the most intriguing questions has been, what exactly happened in Fallujah? Recall, the Marines had surrounded it. They were poised to go in. And then suddenly they stopped and pulled back and we had this funny sequence in which an Iraqi general was picked.

BROWN: Right.

HENNINGER: And what happened there? Was that a political decision or a military decision?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Well, I don't know if you're being rhetorical here, but there is -- it has been said that one of the things that happened -- it's probably not the only thing that happened -- is that people within the White House got involved in the process.

HENNINGER: Conceivably, yes.

BROWN: That would be troubling to you, I would assume.

HENNINGER: I think it would be troubling to me if the State Department and the Defense Department were continuously squabbling over strategy in Iraq because of concerns over how it might affect the coalition government or affect Arab opinion in the world. Our job is to win in Iraq, I think, not so much to worry some of these about outside forces.

BROWN: I'm not sure how the State Department got into that. I think you just put it in there. The question was

(CROSSTALK)

HENNINGER: The State Department's very involved.

BROWN: No, I agree with that, but I'm just asking you if you would be troubled by the fact that political calculus went into the decision whether to send the Marines into Fallujah or not.

HENNINGER: Oh, I think -- I see what you're getting at. There is talk right now that the Bush political campaign, the political side, wants to put distance between the president and Iraq. And so some Republicans are starting to talk about whether the White House is looking for an exit strategy. That would be extraordinarily troubling.

BROWN: It would be troubling because the president has said all along we're not going to cut and run and that would be cutting and running?

HENNINGER: Yes. He would lose.

BROWN: How do we get out of there, then? What has to happen before there are not 135,000 Americans there?

HENNINGER: Well, something is going to happen, Aaron.

On June 30, we're handing the government -- the government over to the Iraqis. And they're going to bear responsibility for their own fate on the political side. We did the same thing in Bosnia. We have done the same thing in Afghanistan. The Afghans have a government. But the Americans are still there providing security. And that's essentially what is going to happen in Iraq.

BROWN: But as long as there are 135,000 Americans in that country at this time, isn't there almost certainly going to be trouble?

HENNINGER: Iraq is a very troublesome place, for sure. But I think -- to go back to the political part, over 55 percent -- the support for the war in this country has remained around 55 percent or higher. And it is an emotional commitment. It is a kind of moral commitment the American people have made. And I think they feel the president has to see it through and succeed there, trouble or not, and that if he pulls back, it is just going make the -- his father's breaking the "Read my lips" pledge look like a day at kindergarten. He'll lose the presidency if he does that.

BROWN: Good to have you with us. Hope you'll come back.

HENNINGER: Glad to be here.

BROWN: To talk about this and lots of other things that appear on a very lively editorial page in "The Wall Street Journal."

HENNINGER: Thanks a lot.

BROWN: Thank you.

A few more quick items from around the country tonight before we head to break.

FBI agents in Portland, Oregon, have arrested a lawyer in connection, they say, with the bombings now two months ago in Madrid. His name is Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer who converted to Islam and who once defended a man with Taliban connections. Sources tell us Mr. Mayfield's fingerprints were found on a bag with bomb-making material connected to attacks in Madrid. He was detained, however, as a material witness, which means he can be held in secret without charges being filed.

Florida next, an update on the case of Terri Schiavo. A circuit court judge today struck down a law named after her, a law that keeps her connected to feeding tubes. He ruled that her -- that law called Terri's Law violated her right to privacy, wrongfully delegates legislative authority to Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who pushed for the law. The governor's office filed appeals. Ms. Schiavo remains on life support.

The Food and Drug Administration today said no to selling the so- called morning-after pill over the counter. In a letter to the drug's maker, the FDA cited concerns about young teenagers using the pill, which goes by the name Plan B, without medical supervision. The FDA's own scientific advisory panel had already recommended the drug be approved. So as you might expect certain groups are now accusing the agency of bowing to political pressures. And so it goes.

And we also want to tell you about a program that caught our eye tonight. There are these friends, you see. And they live in an apartment. And it is pretty funny. And the program ended.

Still to come on NEWSNIGHT, a woman is murdered. Her daughters are battered, all in the name of defending a family's honor, all at the hands of the head of the family.

That story and more as NEWSNIGHT continues on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Someone once said that most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and right place, they are capable of anything, ordinary people, good people.

We say this because there can't be enough pure evil in the world to explain half the evil that people do. There must be another explanation and many would argue the explanation is culture, culture as in values, formal or otherwise, religious or not, that come together most of the time in the name of good, most of the time. In the end, it may explain what turned American soldiers into real bad actors in Iraq or a Turkish immigrant family man into a confessed killer in Rochester, New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): Their modest apartment is empty now. About the only evidence that a family did live here is an abandoned automobile with an infant's car seat in the back and the front passenger door still unlocked.

PATRICK O'FLYNN, MONROE COUNTY SHERIFF: It really was a horrific scene. Our deputies responded around 7:25 in the morning. For the report of someone bleeding and then we received a call that someone was screaming and running through a neighborhood.

BROWN: That someone was a 22-year-old woman. She told police that she and her infant sister, just 4 years old, had been struck repeatedly with a hammer and a knife and that her mother was lying on the floor beaten and stabbed to death, that her two teenage brothers were unharmed and that the man who did it to her was her father, a Turkish immigrant, all a part of what authorities in Rochester, New York, now believe is the first of the so-called honor killings to have occurred in the United States.

MICHAEL GREEN, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Those were his words to the police officers. The allegations attached to the indictment are the defendant claimed that his family honor and the honor of his wife and he felt the honor of his daughters had been tarnished either by a family member or by a hospital staff during the course of an examination.

BROWN: That examination was a gynecological examination on the 4-year-old. As stark as that sounds, human rights experts say honor killings, while unusual, still occur with distressing frequency across the Muslim world.

JOSEPH SCHALLER, NAZARETH COLLEGE: It can be either the infliction of bodily harm, physical punishment up to murder against an individual for a perceived violation of the social code and values.

BROWN: Just the other day in Turkey, for instance, this man was charged with strangling his 14-year-old daughter after she was allegedly kidnapped and raped. He did it, he told reporters, to save his family's honor. At Rochester's Islamic Center, the news of what happened in that city is hard to swallow.

MUHAMMAD SHAFIQ, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ISLAMIC CENTER OF ROCHESTER: This incident is very painful for all Muslims, whether they are Turkish Muslims or whether they are Muslims from any part of the world. To the Muslim community, this is unacceptable something like that could happen.

BROWN: The suspect in Rochester is 42-year-old Ismail Peltek, who police say moved to the city with his family a little over a year ago. He is behind bars now awaiting a court appearance. His court- appointed attorney would not comment on the case. But when he was asked by police if he had hurt his wife, Mr. Peltek's response was: "Yes, yes. I knifed her. I knifed myself. They took my honor."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Mr. Peltek's daughters are both out of the hospital now, the 4-year-old in foster care, her adult sister is in seclusion.

A quick look at a couple of other items now in our "Moneyline Roundup," beginning with the belated guilty plea from Enron's Lea Fastow. She drew a year in prison after admitting to a misdemeanor tax charge concerning money her husband, Andrew, made while he was Enron's chief financial officer.

Her deal, if it sticks -- first one, you will recall, fell through -- is expected to make her husband more forthcoming about his bosses, Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay.

Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan fired another warning shot across the economy today. At a conference of bankers, he said growing budget deficits threaten the economy's long-term health. Regrettably, he told the bankers, the free lunch is yet to be invented. Just try and get a banker to buy you lunch some day.

That and jitters over tomorrow's employment report sent Wall Street into a blue funk or, for our purposes, a red funk, I guess. Markets took another beating in any way you put it.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, they fight side by side. They come home worlds apart, two views of fallen soldiers, Americans and British.

This is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: It is has been said the British and American experience in Iraq is a study in differences, different approaches to governing and policing, to fighting and to dying. From theater to home, the American way of death is intensely private and officially secretive, some would argue needlessly so. The British way is otherwise.

Here is CNN's Walter Rodgers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) WALTER RODGERS, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is how the British honor their war dead. At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the exact moment of the armistice in 1918 ending the great war, even 84 years later, the dead are not forgotten. Led by the queen, all Britain's war dead are honored with dignity and beauty.

When the British war dead come home from Iraq now, they are not hidden. Grieving is public. Important dignitaries and families gather for the return of those killed. TV cameras are kept at a discrete distance, but the reality of war is not denied. To many British, it seems bizarre that the Pentagon, citing concern for family privacy, does not allow pictures of its honored dead returning.

GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT, JOURNALIST: To an Englishmen, it is very strange indeed because we have in fact this long tradition of honoring the dead and of treating war with great solemnity and making almost a cult out of the fallen.

RODGERS: Last October, the royal family, the prime minister and families of fallen soldiers all came together at St. Paul's Cathedral to honor Britain's Iraq war dead. To the British, the fact President George W. Bush has yet to attend the funeral of a single American soldier killed in Iraq seems more than strange.

WHEATCROFT: It would seem from this perspective that the statement he's trying to make is that he would wish away the fact that any Americans have been killed there, which, of course, he can't do.

RODGERS: Under Bush administration restrictions for covering the return of the American war dead, pictures like these broadcast by Britain's ITN could not be gathered in the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On that flight, five Royal Marines, the first, 34-year-old Major Jason Ward from Plymouth. Next came his colleague, Captain Philip Guy from North Yorkshire.

RODGERS: Those who carefully track this war here are appalled.

MULHOLLAND: In the U.K., there's an effort to honor those who have died. In the U.S., under this administration, it seems there's a real effort to hide the cost of the war both in terms of the number of lives lost and in terms of money.

RODGERS (on camera): As they did in the great war, the British and the Americans marched off together again, this time in Iraq. But for those who paid the ultimate price, they come home in a very different manner.

Walter Rodgers, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) (ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: Okeydoke, time to check morning papers from around the country and around the world. I'm trying to find "The Chicago Sun- Times." But I don't think I have it. We'll figure that one out.

We'll start with "The Christian Science Monitor" today. Still a lot on the prison stuff. "Pressure Rises On Bush Team. Rumsfeld Rebuked Wednesday, Faces Senators Today Over Prisoners." But this is a story -- this is an awfully good story. We tend in the news business to kind of flip from one thing to the next. "In Fallujah, Civility Returns," a kind of normalcy in a city that for about six, eight weeks, was hardly that. That's "The Christian Science Monitor."

"The Boston Herald." "Meet the G.I. at the Center of the Scandal, Iraq's Queen of Mean." Lynndie -- Private 1st Class Lynndie England is the woman who is seen in a couple of -- the soldier who is seen in a couple of pictures, including the one with the dog leash, which made the news today. Yikes. That's got to be uncomfortable for her and everybody.

"Washington Times," pretty straight. "Bush Stands Behind Rumsfeld." Pretty straight there. I would put this on the front page. I think it's an awfully big story: "Morning After Pill Won't Go Over the Counter. FDA Might Reconsider." There's a lot of detail there.

This is a first-time paper. And we're glad to have it, "The Daily Inter Lake." This is from Flathead County, Montana. In fact, their motto is "Serving Flathead Since 1888." "Feds Sweep Down On Militia Suspects. Four Face Weapons Charges Linked to Alleged Project 7 Plot to Assassinate County Leaders." All in one breath, he did it. So thanks for sending it our way.

And also, I think this is new as well. How am I doing on time? Am I in trouble? Fifteen. "Santa Rosa News" -- this must be Santa Rosa, California -- leads local. Sure, it does. "Law Enforcement Week May 9 Through the 15th," Guadalupe County, New Mexico. Well, it's probably Santa Rosa, New Mexico, then, it stands to reason.

I'm sure there is weather in Chicago tomorrow. My guess is windy. I don't know. We'll find out.

We'll wrap up the day in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Before we leave you tonight, here is Bill Hemmer with a look at what's coming up tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Aaron, thanks.

Tomorrow on "AMERICAN MORNING," tonight's final episode of "Friends" no small matter; 40 million to 50 million probably watched it. And just as many likely to have some thoughts about the way that sitcom decided to go out. Advertisers, they treat it like the Super Bowl. But what does NBC do now without it? Our "90-Second Pop" crew going to tackle that tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. Eastern time. Hope to see you then -- Aaron.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Bill, thank you.

And good to have you with us, all. For most of you, "LOU DOBBS TONIGHT" is next.

We're back here tomorrow, 10:00 Eastern time. Until then, good night for all of us at NEWSNIGHT.

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