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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

U.S. Releases 300 Detainees; Top General in Iraq Bans Aggressive Interrogation Tactics; Abu Ghraib's Guard Troubled Past

Aired May 14, 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 everyone.
The Pentagon seemed to acknowledge today without exactly saying so that its approved list of interrogation techniques was inconsistent with international standards, so it revised the list, and Jamie McIntyre will report on that in a few moments.

The number two man at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, told a congressional committee yesterday that he had never seen until that morning, yesterday morning, this list at all. He had never looked at it, never asked to see it two weeks after the scandal broke.

Now he is a busy man and maybe there are a lot of other things to deal with but you'd think that with all the controversy of the last few weeks over interrogations in Iraqi prisons of Iraqi detainees he might have taken a quick look to see what the Pentagon, his Pentagon, believed was legal and humane and what wasn't but it's the fighting part of the war that begins the whip tonight.

CNN's Jane Arraf is in the city of Najaf, a busy place these days, a dangerous one too, Jane a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, on a day, the Friday day of prayer that was to have been a day when hundreds of thousands of residents here turned out to demonstrate for peace. That demonstration called off to avoid bloodshed but there was bloodshed anyway -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

Next to Baghdad, CNN's Ben Wedeman with a big day for Iraqis at Abu Ghraib Prison, Ben the headline there.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron, well, burned by the prisoner abuse scandal the U.S. released around 300 detainees from Abu Ghraib but those detainees came out with more tales of abuse.

BROWN: Ben, thank you.

And finally the Pentagon, the prisoner abuse story and the changes in the way interrogations are done, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre with us again, as always, so Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, see if you can follow me on this one. The top general in Iraq has banned the aggressive interrogation tactics that have drawn so much fire on Capitol Hill, while at the same time saying they were never really approved. Now he says they won't even be considered.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. I followed you well, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, Specialist Charles Graner his face all over the Iraqi prison photos, a look at the man himself and his past which has a share of trouble.

Also bang for the buck in baseball, a conversation with a man some believe knows best how to win without money. You'll hear from Billy Bean tonight. We finally do a baseball story.

And get ready for bat boy, no, not the baseball bat boy. It's Friday. That means the tabloids to go along with your morning papers and very good tabloids tonight, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin in Iraq at what might, might be a turning point. For weeks now rebel Shiite forces have occupied parts of several key cities including the holy city of Najaf. They haven't always been welcome by the majority of Iraqis but dislodging them or persuading the locals to do it has turned into a very delicate job indeed.

So, for weeks now, the military has stayed clear of the most sensitive parts of the city. Today that changed. To what degree we don't yet know. For better or for worse we're not yet sure. But clearly things are happening with American forces on the ground.

Here's CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): The U.S. military overnight sent tanks and troops to secure the main police station in Najaf but from the governor's office where a U.S. general met with the new governor Friday to discuss how to dissolve the militia, a gun battle around the police station could be heard for more than an hour.

And, at the cemetery near the holy shrines, U.S. soldiers responded to attackers by entering the holy grounds. They later withdrew. They say they killed more than a dozen militia members. Commanding General Martin Dempsey said his troops that were still exercising restraint.

MAJ. GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, 1ST ARMORED DIVISION: There are places we have chosen not to go to allow the political process to be in the forefront. In other words, we're demonstrating some patience and we think that's exactly what's called for here. This is the holy city.

ARRAF: In such a volatile atmosphere one of the keys is giving Iraqi forces a prominent role.

GOV. ADNAN AL-ZURUFI, NAJAF: To make a difference in the city you have to support the police and the police stations with all equipment. Now we have pretty old guns and we have very small cars. We have no good training for the police, so what we're trying now ask the coalition to help us.

ARRAF: That's where the patience comes in. Thursday night the U.S. Army battalion commander visited the new chief of police, appointed amid allegations his predecessor plotted with the Mehdi militia to take over the police station and steal weapons.

"Yesterday there was a betrayal" police Brigadier General (unintelligible) told Lieutenant Colonel Pat White. He says he fired a lot of police officers and will form a new force unaligned with any militia.

LT. COL. PAT WHITE, U.S. MILITARY: How many Iraqi police does he have that he knows are good?

ARRAF: The answer out of an estimated 4,000 officers...

WHITE: A hundred.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A hundred.

WHITE: OK.

ARRAF: The new police chief has a warning to the Mehdi Army.

"In front of the camera I want to tell them their days are numbered" he tells us. "They should get out. The people of Najaf will no longer put up with this."

On the way back to the U.S. Army base, a rocket-propelled grenade is fired at our convoy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay down ma'am.

ARRAF: It misses the vehicle and appears to hit a darkened building. With the almost constant ambushes of U.S. troops and the killing of suspected attackers warnings to the militia are clearly going unheeded.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: And in the holy city of Karbala, U.S. forces say they widened their military operations as well. U.S. officials say this is a slow and deliberate policy to destroy the Mehdi militia -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, I just want to make sure I heard something correctly. He was asked how many of his 4,000 officers or militiamen he believed were trustworthy and he said 100?

ARRAF: That's it. That is the number of police officers who have still shown up for work who are trustworthy. We have to remember that when the Mehdi militia took over Najaf and other cities the police essentially melted away.

They were intimidated or they sided with the militia in some cases or they had their weapons and uniforms stolen and used by the militia. A year after the end of major combat it is just a terrible situation regarding the police and the defense forces in many of these cities -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you and we echo the words of that soldier, stay down ma'am.

There was fighting elsewhere today in Iraq, suspected Sadr militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades at coalition headquarters in Nasiriyah. Italian and Filipino forces fired back.

A number of coalition personnel and their staff may still be trapped inside the building. There are reports as well that Sadr gunmen may also be on the move elsewhere in the city of Nasiriyah.

Most anytime the fighting picks up, so do the consequences, the wounded, those hurt badly enough to leave Iraq or go home go first to the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.

As Beth Nissen reported last year, the people there do remarkable work. She paid another visit recently to see how things have changed after the bad month of April and we promise her report later in the program tonight.

First the prison story, today the Pentagon reversed itself on rules that some believe laid the groundwork for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Also today, competing stories came to light from two of the accused about who was responsible. That side of things in a moment, first, though something perhaps a bit more tangible to ordinary Iraqis.

With that part of the story here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Out of prison and on their way home. Five busses left Abu Ghraib Friday morning taking around 300 former detainees away from a prison that under Saddam Hussein was spoken of only in whispers and under U.S. control has become for many Iraqis symbolic of an American occupation gone sour.

A moment of joy for some, for others bitter disappointment. Samir Ahmed (ph) was hoping his brother in coalition custody for nearly a year would be released. He wasn't.

"My brother has six small kids," says Samir. "This is painful."

In Baghdad, Hussein Sami (ph) and his three brothers return home, months of anxiety finally over though one of Hussein's brothers is still a prisoner.

Coalition spokesman say more than 500 prisoners will be released next Friday and, as could be expected, many of the newly-released detainees claim they were abused.

"They stripped me" says one prisoner who didn't give his name. "They beat me and sprayed cold water on me."

Such claims have yet to be confirmed but few Iraqis who have seen the images of prisoner abuse are likely to dispute them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, ironically many of those who were released today were innocent to start with but after the experience of wrongful detention and possible abuse they may have become bitter and potentially violent foes of the U.S.-led coalition.

BROWN: How do we know they were innocent to begin with?

WEDEMAN: Well, if we look at two reports basically, the Taguba report that internal Army report said that 60 percent of those held in Abu Ghraib were no threat to society.

And the Red Cross report that was, of course, confidential and shared with the Bush administration coming out in February said that anywhere between 70 and 90 percent of those who were held in Abu Ghraib were arrested by mistake and none of these people have been charged.

In fact, speaking with some of them they said that they were never actually accused of anything inside the prison, so it's basically a given here in Baghdad that these people are being let go because they never should have been arrested in the first place -- Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you, Ben Wedeman in Baghdad on a Saturday morning for him.

As we mentioned, the Pentagon did an about face of sorts today. That's the never again part of the prison story, if you will. There were significant developments too on the what happened part of the story, the why and the who. One of the accused has cut a deal with prosecutors. He is talking. So, too, is the man he is talking about.

Talking for us is our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The attorney for one of the accused ringleaders of the abuse, Specialist Charles Graner, says this photo shows not just Graner and two other military police but also four enlisted men from military intelligence, along with a civilian translator. Graner insists higher-ups were well aware of the cooperation between the prison guards and interrogators and the methods they used to soften prisoners up.

GUY WOMACK, ATTORNEY FOR CHARLES GRANER: This was an interrogation center. He was being directed by military intelligence officers and others in the intel community and he felt these were lawful orders. He had to obey those orders. MCINTYRE: But another accused soldier, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who has agreed to plead guilty and testify against the other six, says senior enlisted and officers were unaware of the mistreatment.

"Our command would have slammed us," Sivits told investigators in a sworn statement. "They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on there would be hell to pay."

Sivits says it was Graner who ordered Iraqis to strip in Arabic and forced them into the pyramid of naked bodies. Sivits' statement also details abuse that went beyond humiliation. In one case he says Graner "punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that the detainee was knocked unconscious."

In another case, Sivits says Sergeant Javal Davis, another accused soldier, stomped "on either the fingers or toes of the detainees causing them to scream loudly."

In the wake of the controversy, a number of aggressive interrogation options have been banned including sensory deprivation, sleep adjustment, stress positions, environmental manipulation and use of military dogs.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The top commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez says he eliminated interrogation options that could have only been used with his approval, something he says he didn't do, with the exception of one technique that he's retaining and which he has approved on 25 separation occasions and that is isolating prisoners for more than 30 days, something again he's done on more than two dozen occasions -- Aaron.

BROWN: That would be solitary confinement. On the others, does the Pentagon -- well what is the reason the Pentagon says for changing the rules?

MCINTYRE: Well, the ostensible reason they say is that they weren't using these options, so they've taken them off the table because they've drawn so much fire but they also explain that a lot of these options at a low end could be fairly non-controversial.

For instance, stress positions could be something as simple as telling somebody to stand at attention while you're talking to them but you can also imagine how you could be in a very uncomfortable position for a prolonged period of time. Because these are subject to that kind of potential abuse they've just taken them off the table in Iraq but they can still be used in Guantanamo.

BROWN: That's an interesting but, Jamie, thank you, Jamie McIntyre. Have a good weekend Jamie. Thank you.

In Pennsylvania today, friends and family of Nick Berg attended a memorial service for the young American businessman murdered, beheaded in Iraq. The U.S. government now firmly attributes his death to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to al Qaeda. But, as we reported yesterday, many questions remain about the circumstances and the timing of the killing. Whether or not Nick Berg was held by the U.S. military weeks before his death remains a point in dispute. Today, U.S. officials tried to put the question to rest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): All day long, U.S. officials were making clear exactly what they knew and did not know about what happened to Nick Berg.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The U.S. military notified FBI agents on the 25th day of March this last year that Iraqi police had detained a U.S. person in Mosul, Iraq. The U.S. person was identified as Nicholas Evan Berg. Mr. Berg had been detained by Iraqi police who then notified the U.S. military.

BROWN: The important point being that Berg was arrested and held by Iraqi officials. On "AMERICAN MORNING" on CNN today, CPA Spokesman Dan Senor was just as definite.

DAN SENIOR, COALITION SPOKESMAN: To our knowledge he was detained by the Iraqi police in Mosul. He was in Iraqi police custody.

BROWN: Berg's parents have insisted from the start that their son was held by the U.S. military and only released after they brought suit against the Department of Defense. As proof, they gave Associated Press e-mails they received from an embassy official, one of them saying: "I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul."

The State Department now says that these e-mails were sent but insist they were based on faulty information provided to the U.S. Consulate and that Berg was released before anyone at the State Department was aware of the lawsuit.

The attorney general confirmed that FBI agents talked with Berg several times while he was detained but said they have determined that he was not involved in any terrorist activities, including the fact that Berg's e-mail password had been found in the possession of the accused 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

ASHCROFT: We do not believe that that reflects any association with terrorist objectives or activities. It is not uncommon for individuals from time to time to allow or to be involved, allow computer use by other individuals in university settings.

BROWN: What still isn't clear is why Berg refused assistance to leave Iraq, how he intended to leave the country and how he was abducted. What is painfully clear is how this young man's life ended.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, in trouble during his civilian life now in trouble in married life as well, a look at one of the men in the center of the prison photo scandal, Charles Graner.

And later, the genius behind the photos, some of the best photos in the world and you will see them here.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At first they were simply smiling faces in the awful photographs and now their names and their lives are coming into focus. As we heard earlier, Specialist Charles Graner has emerged as one of the alleged ringleaders in the prison abuse scandal, among the charges against him, cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners and assault. Before arriving at the prison, Specialist Graner worked as a prison guard in his home state of Pennsylvania. When he left for Iraq he left behind some trouble.

Here's CNN's Alina Cho.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Charles Graner already has had his share of legal problems. He was involved in a bitter divorce and his ex-wife has accused him of violent abuse.

In an incident in 2001, Graner's ex-wife said: "He grabbed me by the hair, pushed me down, dragged me and started banging the left side of my head against the floor." In all, there were three complaints. Each time a judge issued a restraining order against Graner who is barred from going anywhere near his ex-wife.

In the Pittsburgh suburb Graner calls home, a flag hangs in the window. A Bible verse painted on stone is just outside. He worked as a prison guard in a nearby maximum security lockup. It is here that Graner allegedly abused inmates.

According to court records, in June, 1998, one inmate accused Graner and another guard of putting a razor blade in his food. Later, the inmate said without warning or provocation, Graner began beating his arm with a baton. The allegations against Graner were never substantiated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Specialist Graner was not involved in any way in that incident.

CHO: A judge later dismissed the suit after the inmate failed to pursue the case and other prison officials dismissed the allegations as nonsense. Longtime friends call Graner a good father and a hard worker.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd say good luck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And hang in there. Keep things together.

CHO (on camera): Graner will be arraigned in Baghdad next week. He is facing several charges of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Alina Cho, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In addition to mainstream media, Iraq and everything else plays out daily, sometimes hourly in entries on web logs. Reading them is fascinating. Reading the best can be addictive. And Andrew Sullivan edits one of the best, andrewsullivan.com, funny how that works, what a clever name for a blog.

He's been grappling a lot with Iraq lately as well as the question of same-sex marriage about which he's edited a new book, "Same-Sex Marriage Pro and Con." He is a welcome guest and I'm glad to have him here in New York with us tonight. It's nice to see you.

We'll talk a bit about Iraq first. Then we'll move on to what's coming up on Monday. I have this feeling that you're in motion on Iraq. I mean you were certainly a supporter of the war and we're starting to hear more and more conservative voices raising more and more questions about not the rightness of it but the execution of it.

ANDREW SULLIVAN, AUTHOR "SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: PRO AND CON": Yes. I think there's been a lot of second thoughts in Washington among neoconservatives or supporters of the war, simply because I think our moral case was undermined dramatically by Abu Ghraib and, of course, the WMD issue has shown out to be false.

However, I think many of us also believe that we have to hand in there. The more broadly speaking as part of the broader war on terror this is the right thing to do but I have to say, you know, there's a certain amount of agonizing going on and hope that we've done the right thing.

BROWN: Even before Abu Ghraib you started to hear the rumblings that thee was a -- and, again, because I don't think honestly the Democrats have figured out their tone on this.

SULLIVAN: Right.

BROWN: The most interesting stuff is coming from the right that all of these assumptions the administration made have proven to be wrong.

SULLIVAN: Yes, I think blinded by idealism may be the best description. David Burks (ph) of "The New York Times" put it that way.

BROWN: Yes.

SULLIVAN: That in fact conservative instincts about the fact that it's not easy to remake a society, that it may have been better to go in, if we could have, with more international support have been borne out.

That doesn't mean that we're jumping ship or that we think this is the wrong thing to do or that we think that Iraq is worse off now than it was before but we have to be intellectually honest about some things that have just not turned out to be the way we hoped they would be.

BROWN: I want to talk about Monday. Monday is an interesting moment in the life of the gay community in America and the Black community in America. It's the 50th anniversary of Brown. You've got a piece in the "Times" on Monday talking about the connection.

SULLIVAN: Yes, I think there is a very big difference between the way African Americans have dealt with discrimination in this country and the way that gay Americans have but marriage in one way, the great thing on Monday is that gay marriage will cease to exist. What will happen is marriage.

The people walking out of those registry offices and town halls will just have a certificate that will make them neither gay nor straight, which is marriage, and that is a very integrative moment.

It's an integration of straight people and gay people and it's integration of gay people as their own families, which we were always excluded from because we could never get married like our brothers and sisters could.

BROWN: Tell me if you think it's necessary as a strategy how you go about thoughtfully, carefully convincing a skeptical at best in some cases antagonistic country that this is not only OK, this is right?

SULLIVAN: It's right because it's equality because we're treating everybody the same. We're not giving anybody any special privileges. And it's right because it's bringing gay people into their own families, which is a positive force. And it's right because they're not making distinctions anymore between people because they're gay or straight.

We want to make homosexuality a non-issue. I want to get beyond it. I want to get beyond being gay to being human, beyond being gay to being a citizen and that's what this is really about and I actually think it's going to be, although it's going to be an epochal event on Monday it will also be a non-event because people are going to get married. They're going to go home. They're going to make dinner. They're going to go to watch TV.

It's not a revolution. It's a homecoming of people into their own families and their own country and no harm, I think, can come of it. What harm can come of it?

BROWN: Whatever it is, whether it is a nothing day or a huge day, I'm more on the huge side to be honest, I'm interested to see how it plays out next week. I don't know what your schedule is like if you've got some time.

SULLIVAN: I'd love to come back, Aaron, and see what happens.

BROWN: Come back and let's sort of see what happens and go from there.

SULLIVAN: Absolutely.

BROWN: Nice to see you.

SULLIVAN: Thanks for having me again.

BROWN: Thank you. Travel safely.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the fighting in Iraq (unintelligible) of course of the casualties, Nissen returns to Landstuhl, a military hospital there where the soldiers are treated, their stories and their caregivers too.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Every war is marked by milestones, of course, and most of them are grim. Last month was the deadliest yet in Iraq. As the Iraq insurgency spread, the American death toll spiked, and so did the medevac flights. Every time the fighting worsens, a new surge of injured soldiers arrive at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. It will be that way again in the next 24 to 36 hours in the wake of fresh battles in Najaf and Nasiriyah.

NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen returned to Landstuhl recently to check on the wounded and the medical heroes who treat them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The number of sick and wounded troops arriving at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is at a six-month high. In the month of April alone, more than 1,000 were medevaced here from downrange in Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're busy. We're very busy. This is the new normal. So being very busy is the new normal here.

NISSEN: Part of the new normal, a sharp increase in the number of medevaced trooped with battle injuries, from 20 percent to more than 50 percent.

LT. COL. RONALD PLACE, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: We're seeing a large increase in improvised explosive device-type wounds, fragment wounds that are just open, jagged, ragged wounds.

MAJ. JIM MILBURN, CHAPLAIN: We have seen amputees. We have seen lots of burn patients, badly burned patients.

1ST. LT. TINA HALL, POST-ANESTHESIA CARE UNIT: Lots of broken bones. Sometimes, both legs are broken. Sometimes, one leg may be broken or they may have suffered an amputation on the other leg.

NISSEN: The surge in serious injuries reflects the escalation in fighting in Fallujah and Najaf and what seems to be a change in insurgents' attacks.

COL. RHONDA CORNUM, COMMANDER, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: Unfortunately, the enemy has recognized that our body armor is really quite good. And I think instead of aiming for the chest or torso, where they know they can't be very effective, they are probably aiming at the head and neck.

NISSEN: Many patients have head injuries, eye injuries. Shrapnel from a grenade blast damaged Corporal Joshua Carpenter's (ph) right eyeball.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Best case is I'll be back to 20/20. Worst case is, I won't be able to see.

NISSEN: Shrapnel from the same grenade blast also hit Lance Corporal Brian Carnot (ph) in the legs and chest, cut nerves in his face, sliced into his neck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was very close to my jugular vein, they were saying. And at the time, I thought it did hit it, because I had my hand on my neck and it was squirting through my fingers.

NISSEN: Like most of the seriously injured, he has vivid flashbacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can remember the screaming and I remember seeing what I saw when I first opened my eyes.

NISSEN (on camera): What was that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw another Marine looking at his arm screaming really loud.

NISSEN (voice-over): That Marine was Lance Corporal Zack Thunecannon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard a loud pop. Then I looked over to my left and I seen that my arm was dangling. I didn't think I was going to make it.

NISSEN: He made it to Landstuhl, but his lower arm was too mangled to reattach. Surgeons here had to amputate just below the elbow. It is hard for Landstuhl's corps of doctors and nurses to see so many so young with such serious injuries.

PLACE: While they are still here, while things are still fresh, typically, the reality of the situation haven't set in yet. They are so young, many of them don't really get it that they are hurt this bad.

NISSEN: It is hard for nonmedical staff, too, for the orderlies and the chaplains who meet every group of new patients bussed from medevaced flights that land at nearby Ramstein Air Force Base.

(on camera): What's been the hardest for you personally? MILBURN: Probably unplugging machines with some of the young men when they are not going to make it and to sit there with mom and dad or a wife while they pass away. That's very difficult, heart- wrenching, heart-wrenching.

NISSEN: Those heart-wrenches are rare. More than 14,000 troops, the injured and the sick, have been treated at Landstuhl since the start of the war. Only eight have died here. Doctors say the high survival rate is due in large part to the patients themselves, their resilience, their dedication.

CORNUM: We have a generally young population who can tolerate an unbelievable amount of trauma and will still -- will just fight to make it.

NISSEN: For hospital staff, the mission is clear, stay ready for incoming wounded in any number with any injuries, stay ready for the next six weeks, six months, two years, the new normal.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Landstuhl, Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We have much more ahead tonight. We'll take a break first and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There are certain things we do. The day after Thanksgiving, we do a retail shopping story, for example. Early each spring, we do a baseball story, always have, always will, except this year, we didn't.

Baseball at least on this program became a victim of the renewed nastiness of Iraq, until tonight. And this finally is our baseball story. It is a story about the man some say is the smartest man in the game, a man whose detractors say thinks he's the smartest man in the game. Which ever he is, he's a man who has shown you can do more with less.

Jeff Greenfield tonight on Billy Beane, the hero of small market teams everywhere.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Network Associates Coliseum for tonight's game.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It's a perfect night to baseball in Oakland, California. And more than 43,000 fans have come out to watch a classic David and Goliath battle against the mighty New York Yankees. But this man, Billy Beane, the A's 42-year- old general manager, won't be there.

BILLY BEANE, GENERAL MANAGER, OAKLAND ATHLETICS: I think I know myself well enough to know, when I watch a game, I think unemotionally. And I really don't want to do that.

GREENFIELD: In fact, substituting hard facts for emotion is the key to Billy Beane's success. With one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, Beane had to look for low-cost talent and found an approach developed by analyst Bill James, among others, that argued some of baseball's most cherished assumptions were dead wrong.

BEANE: Essentially, this is a business that's been around for over 100 years. And it really hasn't changed much.

GREENFIELD: For instance, sacrificing a runner to second base is almost always dumb. Why? Because the key to offensive success is avoiding outs. Don't look at a player's physique. Look at the numbers. How often does he get on base? How often does a pitcher throw strikes? That's why a less than supple journeyman catcher named Scott Hatteberg was turned into a valuable first baseman for the A's and a submarine pitcher named Chad Bradford became the A's middle reliever despite a slow-moving fastball.

And above all, use the numbers, not your hunches.

BEANE: A guy goes to the blackjack table and has a 17 and hits a four. Well, they film it. They show it on TV. And everyone goes, that's just good, aggressive play. That's a fool.

GREENFIELD: The success of the A's, four straight years in the playoffs despite one of baseball's smallest payrolls, drew a lot of attention to Billy Beane. But last year, he and the A's became the subject of a huge and controversial best-seller by author Michael Lewis.

MICHAEL LEWIS, AUTHOR: I have written about lots of different things, Wall Street, presidential politics. I've never had this kind of violent response.

GREENFIELD: More than anything else, critics point to Oakland's postseason failures. In the listen four years, they have never moved past the first round, proof, say the critics, that Billy Beane's approach doesn't really work when it counts, proof says Beane, that the short playoff series is a crap shoot, where probability doesn't work.

BEANE: What I find sort of interesting is the idea that the way we build a team is the reason for losing on the last pitch of game five. You know, it makes no sense at all.

GREENFIELD: In fact, Oakland's success has impressed even its richest competitor, New York Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman, whose payroll of $184 million is more than three times Oakland's.

BRIAN CASHMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: I know it riled a lot of old traditionalists. And that's fine. But there's a lot of things in the book that you might not agree with, but there are certain truths in there as well.

GREENFIELD: And that may be Beane's biggest problem now. The big market teams have caught on.

LEWIS: If Billy Beane with his $50 million is doing exactly the same thing as Theo Epstein's Boston Red Sox, who has $130 million, Billy is going to lose every time.

BEANE: It forces you to have to be better, because, let's face it, whether it's us or the Twins, having $45 or $50 million is a lot tougher than having $150 million, no matter what anybody tells you.

GREENFIELD: And with more and more teams learning from Oakland's past victories, the job of turning theory into success on the field this year may be Beane's biggest challenge yet.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, Oakland, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Our baseball story this spring.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, finally, NEWSNIGHT's kindred spirit, a place that loves still photos as much as we do, maybe even more

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tonight, we visit a place as deeply in love with still photography as we are. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles began collecting stills 20 years ago. The Getty is celebrating the milestone with an exhibition featuring the work of 38 photographers, a list of image makers you could call them, every one of them a genius in the view of the curator of the museum, at least, Weston Naef.

After a difficult week of hideous images, we are certainly glad for these.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WESTON NAEF, CURATOR, J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: I'd like people to see photography as a medium that is capable of inspiring and uplifting us to new levels of understanding, that it is a remarkably coherent stylistic evolution, a kind of unbroken thread where one photographer has stood on the shoulders of another, advancing the art by the example and with the assistance of those who came before them.

We began this exhibition at the point where the baby could walk. And that was 1842, when photographers could repeat their successes reliably. The earliest photographic materials were quite insensitive to light. And so whatever subject the photographer chose had to stay reasonably still. But once it became possible to make portraits, portraiture dominated the entire field for the first decade of its life.

Many of the photographers had to pay their bills using portraiture as their daily occupation. Le Gray one day just said to himself, I have to get back to my roots. He took his camera to the seaside and made extraordinary studies of the water with light and atmosphere dominating. He also made pictures of a harbor with the boat exiting, stopping the motion. And he stopped to motion of a wave crashing on the shore.

Carleton Watkins was trained as a carpenter and he brought to photography an extraordinary degree of instinct. He realized that photographs had to be much larger than they normally were. And in order to make them large, it was necessary to build a camera that he called a mammoth-plate camera that accommodate a negative, a sheet of glass 18-by-21 inches in size.

And this very large negative was best able to express the grandeur of landscape such as the ones he found in Yosemite. He has created an extraordinary illusion that his huge camera is poised on the precipice.

Lewis Hine occupies the incredibly fragile position between the documentarian and the artist. He used works of art to change social conditions. He was the first photographer that we know of whose actions, his pictures, changed the laws of the United States. In a dozen or more states, his pictures persuaded those who made the laws to create age limits for employment and the number of hours worked and the conditions under which children could be employed, thus revolutionizing the way our country was structured.

Cartier-Bresson is the only living photographer represented in this exhibition for one simple reason. At the age of 95, it is completely possible to survey his career. Cartier-Bresson was one of the people who believed fervently that the camera was important as a tool to record experience. And his life was lived in pursuit of real experience. That concept of making a picture that recorded the decisive moment for any subject was important for his aesthetic. To make the exposure at the perfect moment in order to record something that would disappear forever, except for the photograph.

Art, the very best art, is something that always moves forward. It never moves backward.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's at the Getty in Los Angeles. Weren't those cool?

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, 50 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, the changes and the problems that remain.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We mentioned this earlier, but Monday marks the 50-year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brown vs. the Board of Education, the ruling declaring that having separate schools for white and black children was unconstitutional. Separate was not equal and seemed to open the doors for opportunity for millions of African- American students in the country. But the promise of Brown has not been fully realized.

Dan Lothian reports this weekend for a special installment of "CNN Presents. And here's a sample.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Shaker Heights, Ohio, an integrated community of 30,000 people just outside Cleveland. People moved here for the schools, which are nationally known for excellence. But Shaker Heights has a problem, a significant gap between black and white students.

MARK FREEMAN, SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT: There's a gap. There's a gap in achievement. There's a gap in grades. There's a gap in test scores, just like there's a gap in the state, just like there's a gap in the entire country.

LOTHIAN: The numbers were impossible to ignore when in 1997 the student newspaper wrote about a school sponsored study; 82 percent of the students who failed proficiency tests were black; 84 percent of the students getting D's and F's on their report cards were black. And the average SAT score for black students was 305 points lower than for white students.

REUBEN HARRIS, SHAKER HEIGHTS PARENT: We can't say all of the negative outcomes are attributable to poverty or low income. The numbers just don't add up, don't make sense.

LOTHIAN (on camera): The issues in Shaker heights are part of a growing national conversation about how to bridge the gap. It includes tough talk, even broaching a taboo, the notion that some African-Americans are perpetuating a culture of anti-intellectualism, in other words, undermining their own chances for success.

RON FERGUSON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Even though it's difficult to say in public and particularly on television, I think there are racial differences in the outside school intellectual climate that we need to face up to and to work on.

LOTHIAN (voice-over): Eight percent of white eighth graders watch TV six hours or more each day. For blacks, that number is 30 percent, nearly four times higher. And these are kids whose parents graduated from college.

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Black kids themselves say, we have to watch a lot of television, because we otherwise wouldn't be part of the peer culture.

LOTHIAN: Black community leaders and academics are also touching raw nerves with hard-line ideas.

JOHN MCWHORTER, AUTHOR, "LOSING THE RACE": There's a cultural issue. Most black people know that a large part of the problem with middle-class black students is that a lot of middle-class black students teach each other not do well in school. Among people who are rather extreme, there's a quiet sense that to do well in school is to embrace the man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A taste of "CNN PRESENTS" over the weekend.

We will be in Topeka on Monday night for a special edition of NEWSNIGHT, as the country remembers, celebrates and wonders a bit about Brown vs. the Board of Education 50 years later.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, very, very tight for time tonight, so, quickly morning papers from around the country and around the world.

"The International Herald Tribune" leads tomorrow with John Kerry. Remember him? He's probably going to be the Democratic candidate for Kerry. "For Kerry, a Lifetime of Being Just a Little Different" is their lead. And a prison guard picture -- or the prison release picture on the front page, too.

"Philadelphia Inquirer" leads thusly. "Hundreds Mourn Nicholas Berg." This such a sad and curious story, both, I guess. But it's a picture of the people coming to the memorial service today just outside of Philadelphia.

This is the big story in Europe, OK, so we'll get it in now. This is "The Daily Telegraph." "A Fairy Tale Comes True. Love Story That Has Captured the World's Imagination Takes its Most Romantic Step, As Australia's Mary Donaldson Marries Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik." The reason we mention this is that her butler will be a guest of Larry's in about six months. I made that up.

OK, here's the...

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Every now, I make myself up, too.

"The Weekly World News" leaves thusly. "Mermaid Caught in Fishing Net." I don't know if you had heard that yet. "She Is Alive In Secret Government Aquarium." "Caring, W. Orders Special Diet of Special Catfish and Hush Puppies." You think maybe this is not going to be a good edition.

How much time do I got?

"My Toilet Bowl Holder is Possessed. Instead of Playing Music, It Spews Obscenities" -- that breaking story.

This one will break your heart, OK? This should be a funnier bit than it is, but this one is sad. "Kim Jong Il Eats Lassie."

And, finally, "World's Fastest Man Goes to War in Iraq."

It's a tough week. We'll leave you with a smile, OK? We'll be in Topeka on Monday, 10:00 Eastern. Join us for that.

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 May 14, 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 everyone.
The Pentagon seemed to acknowledge today without exactly saying so that its approved list of interrogation techniques was inconsistent with international standards, so it revised the list, and Jamie McIntyre will report on that in a few moments.

The number two man at the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, told a congressional committee yesterday that he had never seen until that morning, yesterday morning, this list at all. He had never looked at it, never asked to see it two weeks after the scandal broke.

Now he is a busy man and maybe there are a lot of other things to deal with but you'd think that with all the controversy of the last few weeks over interrogations in Iraqi prisons of Iraqi detainees he might have taken a quick look to see what the Pentagon, his Pentagon, believed was legal and humane and what wasn't but it's the fighting part of the war that begins the whip tonight.

CNN's Jane Arraf is in the city of Najaf, a busy place these days, a dangerous one too, Jane a headline.

JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, on a day, the Friday day of prayer that was to have been a day when hundreds of thousands of residents here turned out to demonstrate for peace. That demonstration called off to avoid bloodshed but there was bloodshed anyway -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you.

Next to Baghdad, CNN's Ben Wedeman with a big day for Iraqis at Abu Ghraib Prison, Ben the headline there.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Aaron, well, burned by the prisoner abuse scandal the U.S. released around 300 detainees from Abu Ghraib but those detainees came out with more tales of abuse.

BROWN: Ben, thank you.

And finally the Pentagon, the prisoner abuse story and the changes in the way interrogations are done, our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre with us again, as always, so Jamie a headline.

JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SR. PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, see if you can follow me on this one. The top general in Iraq has banned the aggressive interrogation tactics that have drawn so much fire on Capitol Hill, while at the same time saying they were never really approved. Now he says they won't even be considered.

BROWN: Jamie, thank you. I followed you well, back to you and the rest shortly.

Also coming up on the program tonight, Specialist Charles Graner his face all over the Iraqi prison photos, a look at the man himself and his past which has a share of trouble.

Also bang for the buck in baseball, a conversation with a man some believe knows best how to win without money. You'll hear from Billy Bean tonight. We finally do a baseball story.

And get ready for bat boy, no, not the baseball bat boy. It's Friday. That means the tabloids to go along with your morning papers and very good tabloids tonight, all that and more in the hour ahead.

We begin in Iraq at what might, might be a turning point. For weeks now rebel Shiite forces have occupied parts of several key cities including the holy city of Najaf. They haven't always been welcome by the majority of Iraqis but dislodging them or persuading the locals to do it has turned into a very delicate job indeed.

So, for weeks now, the military has stayed clear of the most sensitive parts of the city. Today that changed. To what degree we don't yet know. For better or for worse we're not yet sure. But clearly things are happening with American forces on the ground.

Here's CNN's Jane Arraf.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF (voice-over): The U.S. military overnight sent tanks and troops to secure the main police station in Najaf but from the governor's office where a U.S. general met with the new governor Friday to discuss how to dissolve the militia, a gun battle around the police station could be heard for more than an hour.

And, at the cemetery near the holy shrines, U.S. soldiers responded to attackers by entering the holy grounds. They later withdrew. They say they killed more than a dozen militia members. Commanding General Martin Dempsey said his troops that were still exercising restraint.

MAJ. GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, 1ST ARMORED DIVISION: There are places we have chosen not to go to allow the political process to be in the forefront. In other words, we're demonstrating some patience and we think that's exactly what's called for here. This is the holy city.

ARRAF: In such a volatile atmosphere one of the keys is giving Iraqi forces a prominent role.

GOV. ADNAN AL-ZURUFI, NAJAF: To make a difference in the city you have to support the police and the police stations with all equipment. Now we have pretty old guns and we have very small cars. We have no good training for the police, so what we're trying now ask the coalition to help us.

ARRAF: That's where the patience comes in. Thursday night the U.S. Army battalion commander visited the new chief of police, appointed amid allegations his predecessor plotted with the Mehdi militia to take over the police station and steal weapons.

"Yesterday there was a betrayal" police Brigadier General (unintelligible) told Lieutenant Colonel Pat White. He says he fired a lot of police officers and will form a new force unaligned with any militia.

LT. COL. PAT WHITE, U.S. MILITARY: How many Iraqi police does he have that he knows are good?

ARRAF: The answer out of an estimated 4,000 officers...

WHITE: A hundred.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A hundred.

WHITE: OK.

ARRAF: The new police chief has a warning to the Mehdi Army.

"In front of the camera I want to tell them their days are numbered" he tells us. "They should get out. The people of Najaf will no longer put up with this."

On the way back to the U.S. Army base, a rocket-propelled grenade is fired at our convoy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stay down ma'am.

ARRAF: It misses the vehicle and appears to hit a darkened building. With the almost constant ambushes of U.S. troops and the killing of suspected attackers warnings to the militia are clearly going unheeded.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARRAF: And in the holy city of Karbala, U.S. forces say they widened their military operations as well. U.S. officials say this is a slow and deliberate policy to destroy the Mehdi militia -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, I just want to make sure I heard something correctly. He was asked how many of his 4,000 officers or militiamen he believed were trustworthy and he said 100?

ARRAF: That's it. That is the number of police officers who have still shown up for work who are trustworthy. We have to remember that when the Mehdi militia took over Najaf and other cities the police essentially melted away.

They were intimidated or they sided with the militia in some cases or they had their weapons and uniforms stolen and used by the militia. A year after the end of major combat it is just a terrible situation regarding the police and the defense forces in many of these cities -- Aaron.

BROWN: Jane, thank you and we echo the words of that soldier, stay down ma'am.

There was fighting elsewhere today in Iraq, suspected Sadr militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades at coalition headquarters in Nasiriyah. Italian and Filipino forces fired back.

A number of coalition personnel and their staff may still be trapped inside the building. There are reports as well that Sadr gunmen may also be on the move elsewhere in the city of Nasiriyah.

Most anytime the fighting picks up, so do the consequences, the wounded, those hurt badly enough to leave Iraq or go home go first to the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany.

As Beth Nissen reported last year, the people there do remarkable work. She paid another visit recently to see how things have changed after the bad month of April and we promise her report later in the program tonight.

First the prison story, today the Pentagon reversed itself on rules that some believe laid the groundwork for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Also today, competing stories came to light from two of the accused about who was responsible. That side of things in a moment, first, though something perhaps a bit more tangible to ordinary Iraqis.

With that part of the story here's CNN's Ben Wedeman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN (voice-over): Out of prison and on their way home. Five busses left Abu Ghraib Friday morning taking around 300 former detainees away from a prison that under Saddam Hussein was spoken of only in whispers and under U.S. control has become for many Iraqis symbolic of an American occupation gone sour.

A moment of joy for some, for others bitter disappointment. Samir Ahmed (ph) was hoping his brother in coalition custody for nearly a year would be released. He wasn't.

"My brother has six small kids," says Samir. "This is painful."

In Baghdad, Hussein Sami (ph) and his three brothers return home, months of anxiety finally over though one of Hussein's brothers is still a prisoner.

Coalition spokesman say more than 500 prisoners will be released next Friday and, as could be expected, many of the newly-released detainees claim they were abused.

"They stripped me" says one prisoner who didn't give his name. "They beat me and sprayed cold water on me."

Such claims have yet to be confirmed but few Iraqis who have seen the images of prisoner abuse are likely to dispute them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WEDEMAN: Now, Aaron, ironically many of those who were released today were innocent to start with but after the experience of wrongful detention and possible abuse they may have become bitter and potentially violent foes of the U.S.-led coalition.

BROWN: How do we know they were innocent to begin with?

WEDEMAN: Well, if we look at two reports basically, the Taguba report that internal Army report said that 60 percent of those held in Abu Ghraib were no threat to society.

And the Red Cross report that was, of course, confidential and shared with the Bush administration coming out in February said that anywhere between 70 and 90 percent of those who were held in Abu Ghraib were arrested by mistake and none of these people have been charged.

In fact, speaking with some of them they said that they were never actually accused of anything inside the prison, so it's basically a given here in Baghdad that these people are being let go because they never should have been arrested in the first place -- Aaron.

BROWN: Ben, thank you, Ben Wedeman in Baghdad on a Saturday morning for him.

As we mentioned, the Pentagon did an about face of sorts today. That's the never again part of the prison story, if you will. There were significant developments too on the what happened part of the story, the why and the who. One of the accused has cut a deal with prosecutors. He is talking. So, too, is the man he is talking about.

Talking for us is our Senior Pentagon Correspondent Jamie McIntyre.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE (voice-over): The attorney for one of the accused ringleaders of the abuse, Specialist Charles Graner, says this photo shows not just Graner and two other military police but also four enlisted men from military intelligence, along with a civilian translator. Graner insists higher-ups were well aware of the cooperation between the prison guards and interrogators and the methods they used to soften prisoners up.

GUY WOMACK, ATTORNEY FOR CHARLES GRANER: This was an interrogation center. He was being directed by military intelligence officers and others in the intel community and he felt these were lawful orders. He had to obey those orders. MCINTYRE: But another accused soldier, Specialist Jeremy Sivits, who has agreed to plead guilty and testify against the other six, says senior enlisted and officers were unaware of the mistreatment.

"Our command would have slammed us," Sivits told investigators in a sworn statement. "They believe in doing the right thing. If they saw what was going on there would be hell to pay."

Sivits says it was Graner who ordered Iraqis to strip in Arabic and forced them into the pyramid of naked bodies. Sivits' statement also details abuse that went beyond humiliation. In one case he says Graner "punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that the detainee was knocked unconscious."

In another case, Sivits says Sergeant Javal Davis, another accused soldier, stomped "on either the fingers or toes of the detainees causing them to scream loudly."

In the wake of the controversy, a number of aggressive interrogation options have been banned including sensory deprivation, sleep adjustment, stress positions, environmental manipulation and use of military dogs.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MCINTYRE: The top commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez says he eliminated interrogation options that could have only been used with his approval, something he says he didn't do, with the exception of one technique that he's retaining and which he has approved on 25 separation occasions and that is isolating prisoners for more than 30 days, something again he's done on more than two dozen occasions -- Aaron.

BROWN: That would be solitary confinement. On the others, does the Pentagon -- well what is the reason the Pentagon says for changing the rules?

MCINTYRE: Well, the ostensible reason they say is that they weren't using these options, so they've taken them off the table because they've drawn so much fire but they also explain that a lot of these options at a low end could be fairly non-controversial.

For instance, stress positions could be something as simple as telling somebody to stand at attention while you're talking to them but you can also imagine how you could be in a very uncomfortable position for a prolonged period of time. Because these are subject to that kind of potential abuse they've just taken them off the table in Iraq but they can still be used in Guantanamo.

BROWN: That's an interesting but, Jamie, thank you, Jamie McIntyre. Have a good weekend Jamie. Thank you.

In Pennsylvania today, friends and family of Nick Berg attended a memorial service for the young American businessman murdered, beheaded in Iraq. The U.S. government now firmly attributes his death to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist with ties to al Qaeda. But, as we reported yesterday, many questions remain about the circumstances and the timing of the killing. Whether or not Nick Berg was held by the U.S. military weeks before his death remains a point in dispute. Today, U.S. officials tried to put the question to rest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (voice-over): All day long, U.S. officials were making clear exactly what they knew and did not know about what happened to Nick Berg.

JOHN ASHCROFT, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The U.S. military notified FBI agents on the 25th day of March this last year that Iraqi police had detained a U.S. person in Mosul, Iraq. The U.S. person was identified as Nicholas Evan Berg. Mr. Berg had been detained by Iraqi police who then notified the U.S. military.

BROWN: The important point being that Berg was arrested and held by Iraqi officials. On "AMERICAN MORNING" on CNN today, CPA Spokesman Dan Senor was just as definite.

DAN SENIOR, COALITION SPOKESMAN: To our knowledge he was detained by the Iraqi police in Mosul. He was in Iraqi police custody.

BROWN: Berg's parents have insisted from the start that their son was held by the U.S. military and only released after they brought suit against the Department of Defense. As proof, they gave Associated Press e-mails they received from an embassy official, one of them saying: "I have confirmed that your son, Nick, is being detained by the U.S. military in Mosul."

The State Department now says that these e-mails were sent but insist they were based on faulty information provided to the U.S. Consulate and that Berg was released before anyone at the State Department was aware of the lawsuit.

The attorney general confirmed that FBI agents talked with Berg several times while he was detained but said they have determined that he was not involved in any terrorist activities, including the fact that Berg's e-mail password had been found in the possession of the accused 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

ASHCROFT: We do not believe that that reflects any association with terrorist objectives or activities. It is not uncommon for individuals from time to time to allow or to be involved, allow computer use by other individuals in university settings.

BROWN: What still isn't clear is why Berg refused assistance to leave Iraq, how he intended to leave the country and how he was abducted. What is painfully clear is how this young man's life ended.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, in trouble during his civilian life now in trouble in married life as well, a look at one of the men in the center of the prison photo scandal, Charles Graner.

And later, the genius behind the photos, some of the best photos in the world and you will see them here.

This is NEWSNIGHT from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: At first they were simply smiling faces in the awful photographs and now their names and their lives are coming into focus. As we heard earlier, Specialist Charles Graner has emerged as one of the alleged ringleaders in the prison abuse scandal, among the charges against him, cruelty and maltreatment of prisoners and assault. Before arriving at the prison, Specialist Graner worked as a prison guard in his home state of Pennsylvania. When he left for Iraq he left behind some trouble.

Here's CNN's Alina Cho.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALINA CHO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Charles Graner already has had his share of legal problems. He was involved in a bitter divorce and his ex-wife has accused him of violent abuse.

In an incident in 2001, Graner's ex-wife said: "He grabbed me by the hair, pushed me down, dragged me and started banging the left side of my head against the floor." In all, there were three complaints. Each time a judge issued a restraining order against Graner who is barred from going anywhere near his ex-wife.

In the Pittsburgh suburb Graner calls home, a flag hangs in the window. A Bible verse painted on stone is just outside. He worked as a prison guard in a nearby maximum security lockup. It is here that Graner allegedly abused inmates.

According to court records, in June, 1998, one inmate accused Graner and another guard of putting a razor blade in his food. Later, the inmate said without warning or provocation, Graner began beating his arm with a baton. The allegations against Graner were never substantiated.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Specialist Graner was not involved in any way in that incident.

CHO: A judge later dismissed the suit after the inmate failed to pursue the case and other prison officials dismissed the allegations as nonsense. Longtime friends call Graner a good father and a hard worker.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd say good luck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hang in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And hang in there. Keep things together.

CHO (on camera): Graner will be arraigned in Baghdad next week. He is facing several charges of abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Alina Cho, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: In addition to mainstream media, Iraq and everything else plays out daily, sometimes hourly in entries on web logs. Reading them is fascinating. Reading the best can be addictive. And Andrew Sullivan edits one of the best, andrewsullivan.com, funny how that works, what a clever name for a blog.

He's been grappling a lot with Iraq lately as well as the question of same-sex marriage about which he's edited a new book, "Same-Sex Marriage Pro and Con." He is a welcome guest and I'm glad to have him here in New York with us tonight. It's nice to see you.

We'll talk a bit about Iraq first. Then we'll move on to what's coming up on Monday. I have this feeling that you're in motion on Iraq. I mean you were certainly a supporter of the war and we're starting to hear more and more conservative voices raising more and more questions about not the rightness of it but the execution of it.

ANDREW SULLIVAN, AUTHOR "SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: PRO AND CON": Yes. I think there's been a lot of second thoughts in Washington among neoconservatives or supporters of the war, simply because I think our moral case was undermined dramatically by Abu Ghraib and, of course, the WMD issue has shown out to be false.

However, I think many of us also believe that we have to hand in there. The more broadly speaking as part of the broader war on terror this is the right thing to do but I have to say, you know, there's a certain amount of agonizing going on and hope that we've done the right thing.

BROWN: Even before Abu Ghraib you started to hear the rumblings that thee was a -- and, again, because I don't think honestly the Democrats have figured out their tone on this.

SULLIVAN: Right.

BROWN: The most interesting stuff is coming from the right that all of these assumptions the administration made have proven to be wrong.

SULLIVAN: Yes, I think blinded by idealism may be the best description. David Burks (ph) of "The New York Times" put it that way.

BROWN: Yes.

SULLIVAN: That in fact conservative instincts about the fact that it's not easy to remake a society, that it may have been better to go in, if we could have, with more international support have been borne out.

That doesn't mean that we're jumping ship or that we think this is the wrong thing to do or that we think that Iraq is worse off now than it was before but we have to be intellectually honest about some things that have just not turned out to be the way we hoped they would be.

BROWN: I want to talk about Monday. Monday is an interesting moment in the life of the gay community in America and the Black community in America. It's the 50th anniversary of Brown. You've got a piece in the "Times" on Monday talking about the connection.

SULLIVAN: Yes, I think there is a very big difference between the way African Americans have dealt with discrimination in this country and the way that gay Americans have but marriage in one way, the great thing on Monday is that gay marriage will cease to exist. What will happen is marriage.

The people walking out of those registry offices and town halls will just have a certificate that will make them neither gay nor straight, which is marriage, and that is a very integrative moment.

It's an integration of straight people and gay people and it's integration of gay people as their own families, which we were always excluded from because we could never get married like our brothers and sisters could.

BROWN: Tell me if you think it's necessary as a strategy how you go about thoughtfully, carefully convincing a skeptical at best in some cases antagonistic country that this is not only OK, this is right?

SULLIVAN: It's right because it's equality because we're treating everybody the same. We're not giving anybody any special privileges. And it's right because it's bringing gay people into their own families, which is a positive force. And it's right because they're not making distinctions anymore between people because they're gay or straight.

We want to make homosexuality a non-issue. I want to get beyond it. I want to get beyond being gay to being human, beyond being gay to being a citizen and that's what this is really about and I actually think it's going to be, although it's going to be an epochal event on Monday it will also be a non-event because people are going to get married. They're going to go home. They're going to make dinner. They're going to go to watch TV.

It's not a revolution. It's a homecoming of people into their own families and their own country and no harm, I think, can come of it. What harm can come of it?

BROWN: Whatever it is, whether it is a nothing day or a huge day, I'm more on the huge side to be honest, I'm interested to see how it plays out next week. I don't know what your schedule is like if you've got some time.

SULLIVAN: I'd love to come back, Aaron, and see what happens.

BROWN: Come back and let's sort of see what happens and go from there.

SULLIVAN: Absolutely.

BROWN: Nice to see you.

SULLIVAN: Thanks for having me again.

BROWN: Thank you. Travel safely.

Coming up on NEWSNIGHT, the fighting in Iraq (unintelligible) of course of the casualties, Nissen returns to Landstuhl, a military hospital there where the soldiers are treated, their stories and their caregivers too.

Around the world this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Every war is marked by milestones, of course, and most of them are grim. Last month was the deadliest yet in Iraq. As the Iraq insurgency spread, the American death toll spiked, and so did the medevac flights. Every time the fighting worsens, a new surge of injured soldiers arrive at Landstuhl Medical Center in Germany. It will be that way again in the next 24 to 36 hours in the wake of fresh battles in Najaf and Nasiriyah.

NEWSNIGHT's Beth Nissen returned to Landstuhl recently to check on the wounded and the medical heroes who treat them.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BETH NISSEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The number of sick and wounded troops arriving at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is at a six-month high. In the month of April alone, more than 1,000 were medevaced here from downrange in Iraq.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're busy. We're very busy. This is the new normal. So being very busy is the new normal here.

NISSEN: Part of the new normal, a sharp increase in the number of medevaced trooped with battle injuries, from 20 percent to more than 50 percent.

LT. COL. RONALD PLACE, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: We're seeing a large increase in improvised explosive device-type wounds, fragment wounds that are just open, jagged, ragged wounds.

MAJ. JIM MILBURN, CHAPLAIN: We have seen amputees. We have seen lots of burn patients, badly burned patients.

1ST. LT. TINA HALL, POST-ANESTHESIA CARE UNIT: Lots of broken bones. Sometimes, both legs are broken. Sometimes, one leg may be broken or they may have suffered an amputation on the other leg.

NISSEN: The surge in serious injuries reflects the escalation in fighting in Fallujah and Najaf and what seems to be a change in insurgents' attacks.

COL. RHONDA CORNUM, COMMANDER, LANDSTUHL REGION MEDICAL CENTER: Unfortunately, the enemy has recognized that our body armor is really quite good. And I think instead of aiming for the chest or torso, where they know they can't be very effective, they are probably aiming at the head and neck.

NISSEN: Many patients have head injuries, eye injuries. Shrapnel from a grenade blast damaged Corporal Joshua Carpenter's (ph) right eyeball.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Best case is I'll be back to 20/20. Worst case is, I won't be able to see.

NISSEN: Shrapnel from the same grenade blast also hit Lance Corporal Brian Carnot (ph) in the legs and chest, cut nerves in his face, sliced into his neck.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was very close to my jugular vein, they were saying. And at the time, I thought it did hit it, because I had my hand on my neck and it was squirting through my fingers.

NISSEN: Like most of the seriously injured, he has vivid flashbacks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can remember the screaming and I remember seeing what I saw when I first opened my eyes.

NISSEN (on camera): What was that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I saw another Marine looking at his arm screaming really loud.

NISSEN (voice-over): That Marine was Lance Corporal Zack Thunecannon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I heard a loud pop. Then I looked over to my left and I seen that my arm was dangling. I didn't think I was going to make it.

NISSEN: He made it to Landstuhl, but his lower arm was too mangled to reattach. Surgeons here had to amputate just below the elbow. It is hard for Landstuhl's corps of doctors and nurses to see so many so young with such serious injuries.

PLACE: While they are still here, while things are still fresh, typically, the reality of the situation haven't set in yet. They are so young, many of them don't really get it that they are hurt this bad.

NISSEN: It is hard for nonmedical staff, too, for the orderlies and the chaplains who meet every group of new patients bussed from medevaced flights that land at nearby Ramstein Air Force Base.

(on camera): What's been the hardest for you personally? MILBURN: Probably unplugging machines with some of the young men when they are not going to make it and to sit there with mom and dad or a wife while they pass away. That's very difficult, heart- wrenching, heart-wrenching.

NISSEN: Those heart-wrenches are rare. More than 14,000 troops, the injured and the sick, have been treated at Landstuhl since the start of the war. Only eight have died here. Doctors say the high survival rate is due in large part to the patients themselves, their resilience, their dedication.

CORNUM: We have a generally young population who can tolerate an unbelievable amount of trauma and will still -- will just fight to make it.

NISSEN: For hospital staff, the mission is clear, stay ready for incoming wounded in any number with any injuries, stay ready for the next six weeks, six months, two years, the new normal.

Beth Nissen, CNN, Landstuhl, Germany.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: We have much more ahead tonight. We'll take a break first and we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: There are certain things we do. The day after Thanksgiving, we do a retail shopping story, for example. Early each spring, we do a baseball story, always have, always will, except this year, we didn't.

Baseball at least on this program became a victim of the renewed nastiness of Iraq, until tonight. And this finally is our baseball story. It is a story about the man some say is the smartest man in the game, a man whose detractors say thinks he's the smartest man in the game. Which ever he is, he's a man who has shown you can do more with less.

Jeff Greenfield tonight on Billy Beane, the hero of small market teams everywhere.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Network Associates Coliseum for tonight's game.

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SR. ANALYST (voice-over): It's a perfect night to baseball in Oakland, California. And more than 43,000 fans have come out to watch a classic David and Goliath battle against the mighty New York Yankees. But this man, Billy Beane, the A's 42-year- old general manager, won't be there.

BILLY BEANE, GENERAL MANAGER, OAKLAND ATHLETICS: I think I know myself well enough to know, when I watch a game, I think unemotionally. And I really don't want to do that.

GREENFIELD: In fact, substituting hard facts for emotion is the key to Billy Beane's success. With one of the smallest payrolls in baseball, Beane had to look for low-cost talent and found an approach developed by analyst Bill James, among others, that argued some of baseball's most cherished assumptions were dead wrong.

BEANE: Essentially, this is a business that's been around for over 100 years. And it really hasn't changed much.

GREENFIELD: For instance, sacrificing a runner to second base is almost always dumb. Why? Because the key to offensive success is avoiding outs. Don't look at a player's physique. Look at the numbers. How often does he get on base? How often does a pitcher throw strikes? That's why a less than supple journeyman catcher named Scott Hatteberg was turned into a valuable first baseman for the A's and a submarine pitcher named Chad Bradford became the A's middle reliever despite a slow-moving fastball.

And above all, use the numbers, not your hunches.

BEANE: A guy goes to the blackjack table and has a 17 and hits a four. Well, they film it. They show it on TV. And everyone goes, that's just good, aggressive play. That's a fool.

GREENFIELD: The success of the A's, four straight years in the playoffs despite one of baseball's smallest payrolls, drew a lot of attention to Billy Beane. But last year, he and the A's became the subject of a huge and controversial best-seller by author Michael Lewis.

MICHAEL LEWIS, AUTHOR: I have written about lots of different things, Wall Street, presidential politics. I've never had this kind of violent response.

GREENFIELD: More than anything else, critics point to Oakland's postseason failures. In the listen four years, they have never moved past the first round, proof, say the critics, that Billy Beane's approach doesn't really work when it counts, proof says Beane, that the short playoff series is a crap shoot, where probability doesn't work.

BEANE: What I find sort of interesting is the idea that the way we build a team is the reason for losing on the last pitch of game five. You know, it makes no sense at all.

GREENFIELD: In fact, Oakland's success has impressed even its richest competitor, New York Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman, whose payroll of $184 million is more than three times Oakland's.

BRIAN CASHMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, NEW YORK YANKEES: I know it riled a lot of old traditionalists. And that's fine. But there's a lot of things in the book that you might not agree with, but there are certain truths in there as well.

GREENFIELD: And that may be Beane's biggest problem now. The big market teams have caught on.

LEWIS: If Billy Beane with his $50 million is doing exactly the same thing as Theo Epstein's Boston Red Sox, who has $130 million, Billy is going to lose every time.

BEANE: It forces you to have to be better, because, let's face it, whether it's us or the Twins, having $45 or $50 million is a lot tougher than having $150 million, no matter what anybody tells you.

GREENFIELD: And with more and more teams learning from Oakland's past victories, the job of turning theory into success on the field this year may be Beane's biggest challenge yet.

Jeff Greenfield, CNN, Oakland, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Our baseball story this spring.

Ahead on NEWSNIGHT, finally, NEWSNIGHT's kindred spirit, a place that loves still photos as much as we do, maybe even more

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Tonight, we visit a place as deeply in love with still photography as we are. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles began collecting stills 20 years ago. The Getty is celebrating the milestone with an exhibition featuring the work of 38 photographers, a list of image makers you could call them, every one of them a genius in the view of the curator of the museum, at least, Weston Naef.

After a difficult week of hideous images, we are certainly glad for these.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WESTON NAEF, CURATOR, J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM: I'd like people to see photography as a medium that is capable of inspiring and uplifting us to new levels of understanding, that it is a remarkably coherent stylistic evolution, a kind of unbroken thread where one photographer has stood on the shoulders of another, advancing the art by the example and with the assistance of those who came before them.

We began this exhibition at the point where the baby could walk. And that was 1842, when photographers could repeat their successes reliably. The earliest photographic materials were quite insensitive to light. And so whatever subject the photographer chose had to stay reasonably still. But once it became possible to make portraits, portraiture dominated the entire field for the first decade of its life.

Many of the photographers had to pay their bills using portraiture as their daily occupation. Le Gray one day just said to himself, I have to get back to my roots. He took his camera to the seaside and made extraordinary studies of the water with light and atmosphere dominating. He also made pictures of a harbor with the boat exiting, stopping the motion. And he stopped to motion of a wave crashing on the shore.

Carleton Watkins was trained as a carpenter and he brought to photography an extraordinary degree of instinct. He realized that photographs had to be much larger than they normally were. And in order to make them large, it was necessary to build a camera that he called a mammoth-plate camera that accommodate a negative, a sheet of glass 18-by-21 inches in size.

And this very large negative was best able to express the grandeur of landscape such as the ones he found in Yosemite. He has created an extraordinary illusion that his huge camera is poised on the precipice.

Lewis Hine occupies the incredibly fragile position between the documentarian and the artist. He used works of art to change social conditions. He was the first photographer that we know of whose actions, his pictures, changed the laws of the United States. In a dozen or more states, his pictures persuaded those who made the laws to create age limits for employment and the number of hours worked and the conditions under which children could be employed, thus revolutionizing the way our country was structured.

Cartier-Bresson is the only living photographer represented in this exhibition for one simple reason. At the age of 95, it is completely possible to survey his career. Cartier-Bresson was one of the people who believed fervently that the camera was important as a tool to record experience. And his life was lived in pursuit of real experience. That concept of making a picture that recorded the decisive moment for any subject was important for his aesthetic. To make the exposure at the perfect moment in order to record something that would disappear forever, except for the photograph.

Art, the very best art, is something that always moves forward. It never moves backward.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: That's at the Getty in Los Angeles. Weren't those cool?

Still ahead on NEWSNIGHT, 50 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, the changes and the problems that remain.

From New York, this is NEWSNIGHT.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We mentioned this earlier, but Monday marks the 50-year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brown vs. the Board of Education, the ruling declaring that having separate schools for white and black children was unconstitutional. Separate was not equal and seemed to open the doors for opportunity for millions of African- American students in the country. But the promise of Brown has not been fully realized.

Dan Lothian reports this weekend for a special installment of "CNN Presents. And here's a sample.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN BOSTON BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Shaker Heights, Ohio, an integrated community of 30,000 people just outside Cleveland. People moved here for the schools, which are nationally known for excellence. But Shaker Heights has a problem, a significant gap between black and white students.

MARK FREEMAN, SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT: There's a gap. There's a gap in achievement. There's a gap in grades. There's a gap in test scores, just like there's a gap in the state, just like there's a gap in the entire country.

LOTHIAN: The numbers were impossible to ignore when in 1997 the student newspaper wrote about a school sponsored study; 82 percent of the students who failed proficiency tests were black; 84 percent of the students getting D's and F's on their report cards were black. And the average SAT score for black students was 305 points lower than for white students.

REUBEN HARRIS, SHAKER HEIGHTS PARENT: We can't say all of the negative outcomes are attributable to poverty or low income. The numbers just don't add up, don't make sense.

LOTHIAN (on camera): The issues in Shaker heights are part of a growing national conversation about how to bridge the gap. It includes tough talk, even broaching a taboo, the notion that some African-Americans are perpetuating a culture of anti-intellectualism, in other words, undermining their own chances for success.

RON FERGUSON, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Even though it's difficult to say in public and particularly on television, I think there are racial differences in the outside school intellectual climate that we need to face up to and to work on.

LOTHIAN (voice-over): Eight percent of white eighth graders watch TV six hours or more each day. For blacks, that number is 30 percent, nearly four times higher. And these are kids whose parents graduated from college.

ABIGAIL THERNSTROM, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE: Black kids themselves say, we have to watch a lot of television, because we otherwise wouldn't be part of the peer culture.

LOTHIAN: Black community leaders and academics are also touching raw nerves with hard-line ideas.

JOHN MCWHORTER, AUTHOR, "LOSING THE RACE": There's a cultural issue. Most black people know that a large part of the problem with middle-class black students is that a lot of middle-class black students teach each other not do well in school. Among people who are rather extreme, there's a quiet sense that to do well in school is to embrace the man.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: A taste of "CNN PRESENTS" over the weekend.

We will be in Topeka on Monday night for a special edition of NEWSNIGHT, as the country remembers, celebrates and wonders a bit about Brown vs. the Board of Education 50 years later.

Morning papers after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(ROOSTER CROWING)

BROWN: OK, very, very tight for time tonight, so, quickly morning papers from around the country and around the world.

"The International Herald Tribune" leads tomorrow with John Kerry. Remember him? He's probably going to be the Democratic candidate for Kerry. "For Kerry, a Lifetime of Being Just a Little Different" is their lead. And a prison guard picture -- or the prison release picture on the front page, too.

"Philadelphia Inquirer" leads thusly. "Hundreds Mourn Nicholas Berg." This such a sad and curious story, both, I guess. But it's a picture of the people coming to the memorial service today just outside of Philadelphia.

This is the big story in Europe, OK, so we'll get it in now. This is "The Daily Telegraph." "A Fairy Tale Comes True. Love Story That Has Captured the World's Imagination Takes its Most Romantic Step, As Australia's Mary Donaldson Marries Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik." The reason we mention this is that her butler will be a guest of Larry's in about six months. I made that up.

OK, here's the...

(LAUGHTER)

BROWN: Every now, I make myself up, too.

"The Weekly World News" leaves thusly. "Mermaid Caught in Fishing Net." I don't know if you had heard that yet. "She Is Alive In Secret Government Aquarium." "Caring, W. Orders Special Diet of Special Catfish and Hush Puppies." You think maybe this is not going to be a good edition.

How much time do I got?

"My Toilet Bowl Holder is Possessed. Instead of Playing Music, It Spews Obscenities" -- that breaking story.

This one will break your heart, OK? This should be a funnier bit than it is, but this one is sad. "Kim Jong Il Eats Lassie."

And, finally, "World's Fastest Man Goes to War in Iraq."

It's a tough week. We'll leave you with a smile, OK? We'll be in Topeka on Monday, 10:00 Eastern. Join us for that.

Good night for all of us.

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